Happy Thoughts Thursday

The guy from the Boulevard came to fix the dryer finally today.  That makes me happy.  The part took a while to come in plus with New Year's being a holiday where no one can type in an order (it's not like I wanted anyone to actually go to Salt Lake and pick it up or anything)  it just added an extra dimension of irritation. Thank you Boulevard Man for fixing my dryer and for throwing in your service to fix the icemaker that has been dead for about a year now.  I can now have warn jammies and a cup full of ice.  Warm/clean  jammies and cups of ice make me happy.  I also saved a bunch on our car/home insurance.  Me=happy.  Tomorrow is Friday which is always good AND the only cloud in my relatively sunny sky is that I have to go to Scouts.  What is it with me that I struggle to be happy about Cub Scouts?  Could it have something to do with the herd of boys that I am with ALL the time?  I love my super-great super-patient super-friend who is the actual Leader while I am the lowly assistant but that is really a bonus to not have to "be in charge".  We do have such fun together and it's an excuse to get together which is hard to do.  Question-what do you say to someone who says "How are liking your calling?'  Well I would like to say that I would rather shove an icepick in my eye or pour lemon juice on my paper cuts or never eat a donut again but that just does not sound very mormon-like to actually complain or dislike your calling.  My ideal calling would be Visiting Teaching Supervisor.  I would love to call you and ask you if you got your visiting teaching done and then call in that information to the Visiting Teaching Coordinator.  How about Physical Facilities Rep?  Don had that calling 7 years ago and that was a pretty sweet job.  It required making sure that the church was locked and the lights were all out during our 3 scheduled months during the year.  I think that he had to organize or atleast make sure the assignments to clean the church were out too.  I helped him with this calling because it was during the time when he had the horrible eye surgery experience and could not see.  It was a little creepy to walk through the dark empty church imagining all the ghosties and spooks hiding around the corner or even thinking that an actual person was there in the building somewhere.  I would recommend this calling be a 2 person calling so 1 person does not have to wander around the church in the dark of night.  I will probably be in Cub Scouts until I enjoy it or until I die whichever comes first! 
I started working on my taxes today.  Tax refunds make me happy.  I was just adding up all the medical expenses and stuff.  Do you want to know how much we spent in medical for the year 2009?  You better sit down and grab a bucket.  $13,592!!!!!!!!!!!!!   Do you see all those numbers?  Did you throw up?  Did you atleast gag?  I could take a very nice cruise with that much money!  Heck I could take alot of people on a cruise for that much money.  Thinking for the happy thought now.................................Oh yes.  We have health insurance.  That number probably would have quadrupled without insurance. 
One more thing-thanks to my sister-in-law Anne who said that I make her happy.  If you're reading this you are my happy thought.

Musings

Cayden said a funny thing yesterday.  He told us that he wanted to be baptized in the bathtub.

I enjoy Facebook.  It can be a colossal waste of time but it is fun to find friends from long ago and keep in touch.  It also is sort of sad to me to see that some of my Facebook friends and some long lost family members who have taken different roads.  I feel bad to see how far removed some of them are from the church and from a life that I know that they were a part of or were atleast familiar with.  I'm sure that they are all very happy with their lives but I sometimes I wonder.

I've decided that I need to find things that make me happy and seriously focus on the happy aspect. My usual way of thinking is that I need to be "grateful" which is good but to often grateful can connote just getting through something or it becomes a mantra that I chant to force myself to be grateful.  Being happy is different because you SHOULD be grateful but you have to choose to be happy.  Sometimes it is hard to be happy when things are hard or I don't feel that I am getting or doing or being exactly what I need to be.  It is hard to be happy when my expectations are clearly not being met by myself or my kids or others or my locality. So in an effort to do better I want to focus on happy.  So today I am happy because...
1.  My house is clean.
2.  We have shipped 8 boxes of school supplies to India.
3.  I can walk.
4.  I can and love to read.
5.  Today was a relatively easy day.
6.  I know that I am not the only one with struggles.  Not that I am happy others have struggles but just to know that I am not the only one.
7.  There are teachers who actually care about their students and want to see them succeed.
8.  I have acted like an adult today and have tried to love others when they are being unlovable.
9.  It is Taco Salad Wednesday.
10. I have helped someone else today.
11.  Oreos

I am reading the book Jacob Have I Loved.  I have been reading some of the Newberry Award winning books.  I always wonder how some of these books get chosen as awards winners.  Not that they aren't good books but it is just interesting to see how different they all are.  Case in point-Island of the Blue Dolphins.  It was an ok book but what was the award winning part of it?  I know I am not a literary genius but I do read alot of books so it's just a thought.

This new year I really don't want to set resolutions per se because it just is a cause for disappointment in myself when I don't attain or complete the things that I need to.  The resolutions just become to broad and for a person that seeks perfection in most things, attaining perfection in these goals is not possible.  The only goal from last year that I can totally say that I did and accomplished was that I read the conference issues of the Ensign before the next conference.  I think that I just need to do better a little at a time and say that I want to better tomorrow or I will do better next time. To make a page long list of things that I think that I need to finish or be perfect at does not seem productive. 

Sleepy Boy

Cayden took the liberty of confiscating the box from the new punching bag set and turned it into his new friend-Boxde.  Our church time changed to 9am for the new year and of course after sleeping in really late every day for the 15 days of Christmas break, the 9am church schedule wiped out all of us. About 4:30 we found Cayden asleep in Boxde. He did not sleep very long but it was kind of funny.

No Blood No Foul

On New Year's Day we went to Vegas to let the boys use their Christmas giftcards.  We went to Red Robin for lunch and then low and behold there just  happened to be a Big 5 store in the same parking lot.  To "help" the boys with their punching and kicking and to help them not feel such a need to punch and kick each other we bought a hanging punching bag and some pads for them to kick at.  When they get going it sounds like a heard of buffalo upstairs.  It is a good tension and aggression reliever for them and for Don who incidentally started kicking it after a particularly frustrating business call. 

Happy New Year

New Year's Eve is not that big of an event for us.  We are not the partying type especially the Vegas king of partying.  We were going to go to Provo but the day before we were supposed to leave the dryer quit working and they could not even come and look at it until New Year's Eve day.  My sister's kids were quite sick AND the weather was horrible on the way up there so it was 3 strikes and you're out I guess.  We packed up all the Christmas stuff during the day while we waited for the Whirlpool man to come and tell us that he did not have the part and by the way it was going to cost $200 to get and install said part when they finally got around to getting it.  After the day long restoring-the-house-to-order event I made a delightful whip cream and angel food cake concoction while Don and kids alternated between the various Bowl games on TV and the glorious entertainment provided by the Wii.  Cody went to a friend's house and then to the Stake Youth Dance.  Cayden as pictured above played with his numerous Legos.  I lounged in my bed reading and flipping channels and waited for the old year to come to a close.  Connor fell asleep on the coach around 10 but then as soon as he heard Cayden and Caleb hollering the countdown he jumped up and ran out the door to bang pots and pans and to scream and holler at the top of his lungs.  Cayden and Caleb also woke the neighbors with their rendition of Auld Lang Syne on their kitchenware.  I did not venture out into the cold but laughed as I heard them screaming.  Cody got home around 1:30am just slightly disgruntled because he wanted to stay out later.  Needless to say not one of us met the rising sun of the new year.

Christmas Day in the Morning

Better late then never I guess.  On Christmas Eve we went in to Las Vegas and went to an early dinner at Olive Garden.  We also hit Target for the boys to get their gifts for each other and few misc items for the following day.     We usually don't go out to dinner on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day for that matter but half of Don's siblings were gone and Darbie could not come out to Logandale so we went to her instead.  It was a pretty stress-free day other than a bit of "set up"  Santa did not bring any major things to be put together so that made it really nice!  Nothing needed batteries either which is all the better.  We held a simple FHE that night since it was Christmas Eve.  We talked about all of the ways that we helped others in the month. The first week of December we started writing on slips of paper each night at scripture and prayer something that we had done for someone else that day.  We saved up all the strips of paper and made a chain with of all of them .  We had over 160 links on that chain which equaled 160+ acts of service we performed the month of December.  Some nights we did not do the papers for various reasons but if we had the chain probably would have been doubled.  I have a plethora of Christmas scrapbook paper that I just cut into strips and put them in a little basket with a pen.  Then I set in on the kitchen table as a reminder. We also read the Nativity story from the Bible.   Christmas Eve ended with the traditional opening of one gift.  We instituted this tradition years ago to help contain the excitement for the morning. Usually the gift is the always enjoyable pajamas but this year when I did my wrap-fest I forgot to label the gifts that were the jammies so the kids opened their gifts from each other. Cody decided to wait till the morning but the other boys could not stand it and they had to open something.  When we were little we always asked to open a gift on Christmas Eve but because we usually had been at Mawmaw's house and had gotten to open gifts from the cousins and gifts from Mawmaw and Pawpaw we did not get to open anything at home.  The kids were in bed by 10 or so but they could not sleep.  It took until after midnight for all of them to finally conk out.  This is the first year that Cayden has really gotten out of control excited about Christmas morning.  He used to just go right to sleep on Christmas Eve but not this year.  The plan has been for the last few years that when the boys wake up they are to go to Cody's room and tell him and then he can call us on his cell phone.  They are not supposed to come down the hall until we come and get them.  BUT... it can't be before 6:30am. This year Connor woke up at  4:30 and he probably would have gone back to sleep but his IPOD clock said it was 5:30 and he thought that he was almost in the clear.  If I remember right we did not hear them until 5:30 but I don't know if they snuck out and took a peek or not. At 5:30 Don went to see if he could get them to settle down but there was no way.  I finally crawled out of my toasty warm bed at 5:45 and after all the hard work of getting Christmas together it was all over in 45 minutes.  Grandma Dottie came over to see all the excitement like she has in the past.   Each of the boys got a new blanket that I made them. (Grandma Dottie helped on Cayden's)  Cody got tickets to see the Lion King in Las Vegas on January 9.  Connor and Caleb got sparring gear and a duffle bag for their Karate class and Cayden got an IPOD.  Don and I decided to have a present limit for each other this year because we bought a flat screen TV for our bedroom earlier in December.  He gave me some super cute pink jammies and perfume I have been wanting.  I gave him some new jammie pants, a new BYU hoody and season 4 of the Office.  The boys also got a huge box of Legos and a Wii and Wii Fit.  Both of those items were a big hit.  Enough that Don and I went back to bed around 7 and got up at 9 to get our traditional Christmas breakfast ready.  Grandpa Don, Grandma Dottie, Aunt Darbie came for breakfast.  We had pancakes, sausage, bacon and grits.  After breakfast was cleaned up I headed back to bed and Don dozed in the chair while the kids played the Wii out in the family room and Cody basked in the glory of the latest Harry Potter movie.  Connor and Caleb also tried on their sparring gear and we had the UFC in the family room.  We started getting dinner ready around 2 and then went to Don's parents house to open their gifts to us.  Then we headed back to our house to finish getting dinner ready and then stuffing ourselves.  Christmas night was uneventful. 

A Christmas Bummer/Blessing

We really wanted to go to Disneyland sometime during the time between Thanksgiving and New Year's to see the park all decorated for the holidays.  We could not find the time other than the few days right before Christmas but the Friday before we were going to leave I just felt like we should not go.  I really thought it was because of the amount of money it was going to cost but Saturday night  Cayden woke up with a fever.  We were supposed to leave on Monday morning. I told Don what I was thinking Friday morning and we decided that we weren't going to go.  It was a great blessing that we decided to stay home.  Cayden continued with fever through Tuesday when we decided that we better get him to the doctor because the only medical help we could get through the Christmas weekend would have been the quick care-which is where?  Oh right, in Las Vegas.  Thankfully Dr. Gorman was able to get us in and he gave Cayden a prescription.  He was doing much better by Christmas Eve morning which was a great blessing.  So had we gone to Disneyland Cayden would have been miserable with a fever and a cough-which would have left one of us sitting in the hotel with him while the rest of us were at Disneyland...............IN THE RAIN.  Been there, done that thank you very much-the rain part that is-back in February for Cayden's birthday.    I am not 100% for sure that it rained while we were supposed to be there but it was sure in the forecast.  It was just as well that we did not go and spend another $1000 right at Christmas.  I'm glad that I listened to the prompting of the spirit and ACTED upon it.  It was a much more relaxed and stress free week because I had prepared to be gone right up until Christmas Eve.  I did not have to run and rush and stress and freak out the few days before like I usually do.   I also feel like Mickey and Minnie really are not the spirit of Christmas that I want convey even though they are really quite nice little rodents.  Maybe we will go for Thanksgiving because they have the park decorated by then.  How else would anyone like to spend Thanksgiving then with a couple of rodents, a few fowl not trussed up and on the kitchen table, some furry 100 Acre Wood friends and an unidentifiable creature with big floppy ears and a goofy looking hat!  We really want to see Disneyland all decorated for Christmas so maybe one day after Ed McMahon comes calling.  Oh wait, he's dead so you can see how likely that will be.