jennifer, Author at Hopeful Homemaker

Tumbler Quilt

January 24, 2012 jennifer Quilting and Sewing

Meet my first quilt of 2012! I was so grateful to finish it in time for last weekend’s baby shower. It’s now in the hands of an amazing mother-to-be. Full of color and pattern, I hope it is used often.

I did something I’ve never tried before for the back. I used two different brown solids and made wide stripes. I quilted it on my machine along both sides of the seams on the quilt top.

I bound the quilt in a bright red alphabet print. I like the way it carries the cheery center of the quilt top out to the edges and ties it all together. The red also looks great against that chocolate brown.

This quilt was a lot of fun to piece together. I’m pleased with how it turned out.

Life with 8 kids, no. 2

January 23, 2012 jennifer Musings on Life and Beauty

Sunday night.

My two oldest boys are wrestling with their Dad, who “ties them up like shoelaces” every time they attack. I admit that it’s fun, and I know that it’s healthy but I can only handle so much because it makes me cringe and wonder what will break before we’re done, especially with bodies this size flying around the room. But they’re laughing. They’re bonding. They’re making a memory.

My youngest is sitting next to me on the chair, doing my hair, which really means she’s pulling my hair. Three of the girls sit at the table calmly and quietly, giving themselves a little lesson in who knows what. The seven year old just ran into the room and turned off the light mid-match. Suddenly our five year old son is bouncing happily on the couch, waiting to dive on top of the next pile.

This is my life. Crazy, noisy, children sitting on the table, laughing, crying, yelling, smiling. Now seven of the children have combined to attack their Dad and somehow he’s like an octopus with an arm shooting out in time to catch anyone about to get away. And in the middle of it all he finds a moment to reach out and tickle my feet with a happy smile on his face. Then he rolls over, lets them all climb on his back, and does a pushup just to show that he can. He makes their lives so much more fun than I do. I’m so grateful for him. At last even our two year old wants in on the action, and he pauses to let her “pin” him.

Our four year old yells, “Dad! Remember the pygmy stuff?” [referring to a wrestling match from Friday with just the little ones] She runs to the other room and returns with a roll of wrapping paper, her sword of choice. She bounces a little and looks up with an enormous smile on her face, ready to take him on.

Soon someone will get hurt. Dad will be done and we’ll read scriptures, pray, and put them to bed. But for these brief moments we’re all in a jumble, four year-olds and fourteen year-olds in a tangle of screaming bodies. Vaguely I wonder what someone would think if they stood on our porch right now. We wouldn’t hear them knock or ring, but I’m sure they’d walk away wondering what kind of crazy people live here.

So, naturally, I’m typing. Because it helps me stay calm while they howl. Because all of this craziness is part of being a family – an important part – and THEY. LOVE. IT.

Suddenly the craziness ends, as quickly as it began. Everyone collapses on the couch to catch their breath. My oldest daughter helps the baby hide under the nearby desk, behind the chair and the last activity of the night is for Dad to find her. He looks happily in all the silliest places, in big brother’s shirt, in big sister’s backpack, in big sister’s lunch box. Then he pulls out the chair she’s hiding behind, turns his back on her, and looks under the chair, all the while yelling “Puddles! I can’t find her!” He gets on his knees and grabs the camera bag right next to her to see if she’s in it. He looks on top of the desk. And she sits there, calmly, still as a statue, watching him look all around her while the other seven pile up behind him squealing with laughter and delight at the ridiculous nature of the search, the knowledge that we all know where she is, the fun of pretending that we don’t. All of it happens inches from my elbow and I pause to look at them. All of them, oldest to youngest, faces plastered with happiness and wonder and LIFE, laughing together.

And I think, THIS is why we had 8 kids. THIS is what life is all about.
I cannot, I cannot forget THIS. I sat there, absorbing the joyful faces around me, trying to fix in my memory this moment so I can return to it when the laundry pile seems bigger than I am, or when the homework battles rage, or when I’m just plain tired.

Life with 8 kids is a lot of things. It’s legos all over the floor, more laundry stacked up than I care to admit, toilets always needing cleaning. It’s two dishwashers running every night, a pile of toothbrushes and toothpaste smeared all over my counter, books everywhere you look. It’s a fifteen passenger van, a grocery bill that amazes me, a life fuller than any calendar has room for. It’s a mother who forgets a lot, but remembers a hundred things for every one thing she forgets, a mother who goes to bed exhausted at the end of the day thinking “I’ll try again tomorrow.” It’s worries and hopes and fears multiplied. It’s a father who carries the weight of our needs on his back, giving up time and hobbies to provide financially by day then come home and provide emotionally by night. It’s planning and teamwork and tears and toil. But 8 kids is mostly about love. All those pluses and minuses somehow add up to more love, more laughter, more joy than you can imagine.

And by some incredible twist of fate, it’s my life. My life with 8 kids. And I love it.

Joy, week 3

January 22, 2012 jennifer JOY in 2012

I smiled as I typed the title to that post. I smiled because it’s fun to type the word “Joy” and think about how I’ve felt joy this week. It’s fun to see that I’m only three weeks in, to know that I get to do this almost 50 more times this year.

Phew. It was a busy week, a good week, an exhausting week, capped off by a Sunday morning complete with two unwilling boys preparing talks and a teen-aged daughter having outfit trauma. But we had a great night tonight, lots of laughter and personality and good times. Really good times.

How have I done? Pretty well, thanks. I feel really good about how things are going. I’m getting better at some things, although as I track my efforts I realize I’m improving faster in the areas that are more exciting/interesting to me than I am in the areas that I know are important but don’t sound enticing. I’m going to work on that but I’m also glad I’m improving in areas that readily bring me joy.

First and foremost, I must say that I do feel happier, that focusing on joy is helping me to recognize and savor it, if only for a moment. I’m still writing daily in my “joy” books for the children. I’m adding quotes to my Joy notebook. I’m pausing more often to connect and enjoy my children. I’m noticing when they’re happy, too. I noticed my nine year old daughter’s smile when she made a mistake in a futsal game, and how the joy of playing so quickly overcame the mistake. I noticed it last night when my son came home from a youth dance and entertained us until well past midnight with his observations, stories and humorous perspective. We laughed so hard that my husband finally fell off his chair, and then of course we all laughed harder. We’re laughing more. It feels good.

On my daily lists, things have been pretty steady for the past three weeks. I’m doing well with reading, study, creativity, a clean kitchen and homework. I’m still struggling with drinking enough water and folding all the laundry immediately after washing it. But this week was more tightly scheduled, so it’s also been nice to see that I’ve maintained that much while being away more. This morning I reviewed both my monthly list and my January list and was happy to see that much of it has been taken care of. I just might send January into history with a check mark next to all 20+ items! That would be a first, and it speaks less of getting a lot done and more of learning how to prioritize and plan.

It’s the weekly items I’m struggling with. Some of them are Sunday items and I haven’t quite worked out the Sunday schedule. Some of them I have no excuse for. I just get swept away in the week and then it’s too late. So of all the areas I’m working on, my weekly checklist needs the most help. It’s good to see these things so I can adjust.

Some specifics:

I’m almost 2/3 through The Happiness Project and am really enjoying it. She cites so much research and it’s fun to see how much of it I was aware of and how much I knew intuitively, along with how much there is to learn and try in my own life. In the care I’m reading The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp and enjoying it. I’ve paused in the 7 Habits to work on implementing what I’m learning and I’m trying to find and use the pause button in moments when I tend to get upset or respond poorly.

I finished the quilt I was making for a friend. If you heard a huge sigh of relief around 6 a.m. yesterday morning, it was me. At least I can thank my four year old who woke up vomiting at 5 a.m. for making sure I was wide awake and ready to finish the quilt before everyone got up.

I emailed most of my friends this week to check on their birthdays. I was happy to see how many of them I’d remembered correctly and I’ve enjoyed reconstructing a birthday calendar. It also surprised me to discover how warmly my emails were received by old friends who I talk to rarely or never, friends who have mostly been in the Christmas card only contact mode for a few years. And while I knew it would happen, I was also surprised at how happy it made me to have these email conversations.

Along those lines, I made my first handmade birthday gift of the year for a dear friend who was in town. It was a lot of fun to do, but it also surprised me how worried I was about it being good enough. But I promised myself I would do it this year, so I did and I think it turned out. It also gave me a creative project to complete.

I attended a function with friends this week, meeting my monthly goal of doing something social at least once.

One thing I picked up from Rubin’s The Happiness Project was to “tackle a nagging task.” I tried to work at nagging tasks this week and was able to make progress. I finished some things that weren’t fun to do, but were a relief to complete. I have quite a few of those things to take care of in the coming week and while I’m not looking forward to them I know I’ll be glad to have them behind me. I’ve taken care of paperwork I dreaded, made phone calls, sent emails, etc.

Most of all, I feel grateful for the goodness of God. He has been generous to our family this week, and I feel joyful about it. I’m grateful for answered prayers, for sustaining love, for tender mercies. And I’m so, so thankful for my husband, who makes the sun shine for me on cloudy days.

Yep, it’s been a joyful week. Hooray!

Jennifer