BYU Women's Conference

To start the conference experience right, we went to the idaho falls temple! It was my first time there and it was awesome!

Flowers! We don't have this at home yet. It was so nice to have spring. 

Sweet

I'm so glad I could capture this moment! 

The kids were out of school all last week for Easter break. It was really nice. I decided that we wouldn't watch any movies or play computer games. The result?

Many moments like this picture except this is definitely the best shot. 

We played outside a lot, all the kids read a lot, had some friends over twice, local and friends from our previous home area!, played with some toys, got their hair cut. For the first time this school year, the girls really don't want to go back to school. That makes me feel good. (Joel was off at his cousins house having the time of his life).

Thoughts on parenting

I wish I took more pictures of my other kids, someday soon...

My message of this post is that in parenting, many trying, annoying, aggravating, and frustrating things happen but are often "just a phase". My mom has said this phrase to me numerous times during my motherhood career but I'm slowly starting to get it. I think the biggest help for me has been the quiet whispers of the Holy Ghost reminding me of when my older kids did similar things that the younger ones are now doing. This encourages me to share these thoughts with the two older ones and helps us not to dwell on whatever annoying event or outburst that is bothering us. 

Opposition in all things

*Tantrums.....sweet snuggles from a toddler or "mommy, I need to hug you"

*Repeated loudness through voice or pestering of siblings.....holding little brothers hand on the 30 minute drive to town

*whining or complaining...compliments given after a meal is prepared or getting chores done without being asked or responding when mom and dad ask the first time

These things are all a part of raising children. When they are grown and gone it will be their turn to handle all of the parenting situations. 

3 cheers for Macy

Macy was so excited to have her birthday on a Saturday. She loves school but recognized that we would have more fun for a whole day, rather than just after school and in the evening. And we did!

She got to open presents before breakfast, watch her new movie "frozen", and swim with cousins, aunts, and uncles at a very fun place in Medicine Hat. 

She feels 7 to me. She's mature, treats others kindly, does well in school, plays well with spencer. 

Sweet moment of today. Macy was crying in her room after she messed up putting stickers on her new Barbie car. Joel, who often surprises us with his generosity, gave her $7 of his own money. He really does love her. And he showed it. 

So pleased

Our beautiful 3rd child. 

She really wanted to buy an iPod shuffle like her older siblings. Her allowance is $5 every 2 weeks. After tithing and savings she has $3 left. She started saving in January and her goal was to save $20 by her birthday, march 22.  She passed her goal and then received birthday money and was able to buy it much sooner than she thought. I am so impressed with her discipline, giving up treats, hot lunches at school, and anything extra. Way to go girl!

Once a month

I've learned this important truth for myself!  Talking on the phone to my long-distance friends is one of the best things I can do for my emotional and spiritual well-being.  I'm not much of a phone talker, meaning, I don't usually enjoy talking on the phone.  However, I've been blessed with some amazing friends and I finally realized this was the best way to stay in touch with them, glean from their wisdom, and share our ups and downs. So we schedule a once a month phone conversation and put it on the calendar, just in case we forget.  It's something I really look forward to and enjoy!

-A random side note-
Do I love living in southern Alberta?  Meh, it wouldn't be my first choice, I'm not a country girl, in fact, I think I like cities.  I don't mind driving everywhere but I don't like paying for the gas.  BUT it is delivering all the goods that we hoped it would.  We moved here because:
a) we wanted to be closer to family-in the area and within closer driving distance to many others across the U.S./Canada border
b)We wanted small town lifestyle for raising our family
c)we wanted to be close to the homestead which offers lots of great activities in the summer time
d)we are a little closer to the mountains (Waterton)
e)small town public school is an excellent compromise for me between homeschooling and bigger public schools 

What General Conference does for me

These wonderful men remind me what the gospel of Jesus Christ looks like.  On their faces, I can see joy, peace, hope.
I can't say that I have a favorite talk from General Conference because there were things I liked from each one, but the whole experience for me does this:
-gives me peace and comfort
-joy
-assurance
-courage to set goals and achieve them because, with God, all things are possible
-faith-faith to know that because I trust God and that I'm willing to do my best, He will make everything work out for the best, for me, for our family
-nudges to try a little harder to overcome a particular weakness or two but not to be too hard on myself.
I had an added bonus this time too.  I've recently started seeking out names of my ancestors who are in need of Temple work.  My nephew(by marriage) is awesome at family history research and helped me find two names!!  So exciting.  I can now see how people get hooked on doing family history.  It's so exciting to find work that needs to be done, and know that you are the one that gets to help bring them the amazing and essential blessings of temple covenants.

Here's some inspiration

I love the talk by Jeffrey R. Holland "Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence."  It's been a favorite for a long time because it reminds me to stay focused on answers to prayer that I've already received and to move ahead with confidence. Some of my favorite quotes:

"It is the plain and very sobering truth that before great moments,certainly before great spiritual moments, there can come adversity, opposition, and darkness. Life has some of those moments for us, and occasionally they come just as we are approaching an important decision or a significant step in our lives."

**this is significant for me right now because we are trying to buckle down and be more disciplined in our finances. As Dave Ramsey says"live like nobody else so later you can live like no one else". I was gung-ho about cutting all sorts of expenses and was going a little extreme, which was hurting me and not anyone else in the family. The spirit helped me back on track and we just keep being blessed. Here's some of the ways: tax return came and another rebate of nearly $1000 came. The cell phone bill got slashed, home phone bill reduced, I had fun creating our new budget and could actually assign our money to places it needed to go!, I am filled with hope for our future financial life, I'm excited to have a huge garden and to preserve lots of food, we finally have a budget for car maintenance, and I'm going to spend cash for many things because it's easier to keep track, our fuel bill was $70 less than we budgeted so I was able to use that for something that came up, and today while shopping, almost everything I needed was on sale at Safeway! I got to save gas by not going to Costco and I spent the same amount on food. So many exciting events are coming up too, the new general women's meeting for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints  general conference, and BYU Women's conference. I know that life is a series of ups and downs so I'm going to savor this up for as long as it's here!

-Elder Holland again "...but once there has been illumination, beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now. Don't give up when the pressure mounts. Certainly don't give in to that being who is bent on the destruction of your happiness...."Cast not away therefore your confidence." Stay the course and see the beauty of life unfold for you."

-"you will need information too, but in matters of great consequence it is not likely to come unless you want it urgently, faithfully, humbly....  If you can seek that way and stay in that mode, not much that the adversary can counter with will dissuade you from a righteous path."

Here's the link:

http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=795

Happy weekend. The sun was out for a little bit today!

Miracles

I've started calling our phone companies to see if there's a way to reduce my bills, cutting off features that aren't necessary. After much patience, prodding, and speaking about my past successes with getting good deals, the cell phone company delivered, to his surprise and mine!  I was able to get out of my contract, have zero balance on my phone, was not charged cancellation fees, and my month to month rate is $25 less, plus I have unlimited calling and texting all over Canada. The Lord has blessed us. Our home phone bill can be reduced by $20 as well. Every little but helps. I'm feeling so grateful!

I'm gearing up for change

This is a follow up to the post about money/finances.  I have been a fan of Dave Ramsey for awhile but obviously haven't stayed on track.  We actually don't have too much debt right now, which I'm really grateful for.  But, we have no savings, and not much of an emergency fund and no wiggle room for maintenance things.  So, I'm going to get serious about cutting expenses wherever we can and if we have to add income at some point down the road to help us get to our goals, we will.  For now, I'm just going to really assess needs/wants.  Something that really inspires me is this video from the Mormon Channel:
http://www.mormonchannel.org/come-follow-me-the-atonement-of-jesus-christ?v=1383591963001
I appreciate the encouragement from those readers who commented. I do believe that we will have our own kind of miracles as we try to get our finances in order.

Saw this on facebook

And I love it!

http://tofw.com/YOU-Their-Perfect-Mother-Whitney-Permann%20of%20Mercy%20River/s/975

I've had these thoughts many times as my kids ask why we can't have more parties or make cute cards. 

Thank you, Whitney(from Mercy River), for sharing this great insight. 

What would you do if?

So, here are the facts and then I'll ask a question:
Stan makes good money, we have great benefits that a chunk of our income goes to, we pay a lot of taxes, we get a good tax return
It is expensive to live in Alberta, it's usually cheaper to buy than rent a home
our grocery bill, with household costs is about $1000 a month
Fuel is expensive, especially if you have to commute
We have 4 children, not sure if we are done
We only participate in minimal extra curricular activities, partly due to our location but the other big one is that it costs too much.
We don't have a mortgage right now and we aren't saving any money
How did we survive when we had a mortgage?  Well, we didn't really.  Much of our married life we have been able to get by with our normal living expenses but if something came up that needed to be fixed on our vehicles or house, we have had to borrow money.  Because of this we have accumulated large amounts of debt every house we've owned.  The plus side is, EVERY house we've made enough profit to pay off that debt, have a down payment and start again.  Blessings, I know, HUGE ones.  But we are tired of living like this.  We want to stay out of debt, pay cash for everything possible, prepare for the future, the rain does come!  We also want to let me stay home and be with the kids and honestly without more schooling, I can't earn too much anyway.
Because of the stage we are at, no mortgage, we are trying to figure out a plan for the next move.  I don't want to buy another house because it seems as if we can't afford it but we can't live with in-laws, it just isn't good for family relations.  so here's the question.  Knowing our situation, would you live with in-laws until you could save up lots of money for a down payment, thus reducing your  mortgage? Would you have your husband get another job and be gone even more?  Would you get a job you could do that wouldn't take much away from your family life to help with the extras, saving, car expenses etc? Would you live in a trailer or old house that feels too small?  Other things to consider: winters can be long, emotional issues are often there to deal with due to cabin fever, too many kids in tight spaces with nowhere to go.  I'd love thoughts from readers, even if there are only a few of you!  

Check

Off my to-do that is. I filed our taxes today. I love turbotax. It's easy to use and inexpensive and we get our return within a couple of weeks. Thanks to deductions for 4 kids and their activities like piano and soccer, deductions for moving, and deductions for paying tithing we are going to receive a nice chunk to help us fund a car. And I'm hoping for another miracle: that our van will keep driving until we can afford another one.

I'm grateful for the blessings we receive from paying a full tithe and other offerings. For inspiration read this talk:   https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/the-windows-of-heaven?lang=eng 

I want to buy a camera.  I've been using my phone camera for most everything and the quality just isn't that good.  I would like to spend less than $200.  I'm not a photographer but I want to capture my kids and the things we do.  I've been really slacking.  This is my attempt to recognize and appreciate the little things that make us happy.  Suggestions for a brand, or any other tips to help with this?

An unusual solution

Stan and I planned our budget for the next little bit and because of some extra car repairs that need to be done, we wondered how the numbers would reconcile. Well, I've been really sick and unable to take my kids the 30 minutes into town for their activities and I've had a couple of extra things I needed to do. I was supposed to drive in all 5 weekdays but I couldn't and so I've saved us a ton of gas money. And we paid our tithing. It was funny to see how it worked out. But mostly I'm grateful, even though it hasn't been awesome to be sick. 

And here's one of my sick kids:

The boys

Spencer has had an interesting transition to a bed from the crib. So after Christmas, I rearranged their room a bit to accommodate a bed that would fit both of the boys. They both love to sleep together. Spencer was screaming tonight when I put him to bed so I put him back in his crib. But Joel insisted that I move him from the crib into the big bed. I love that my boys love each other right now. 

I often find them snuggled up when I go to wake Joel in the mornings. It's so adorable. 

Becometh as a child

Two boys that love me no matter what!

Spencer showed pure love to someone yesterday. He is not the personality to sit on anyone's lap or play with anyone that comes along, but he could sense that she cared about him and so he attached himself to her. It was a powerful lesson of loving as the Savior does, regardless of life situations or unfair judgement that we as adults give. Maybe this is why I'm still having children. It took me until my fourth to notice this principle. At this rate I could end up with twelve kids. :) The Lord must really love me to be so patient with such a slow learner. 

These things make me smile

Farm kid wannabes. They love to pet and ride the donkeys, explore the barn and the old house, and climb on hay bales. 

-Macy woke up this morning feeling sick to her stomach so we sent her to the bathroom. After a few minutes she came out having only coughed, we've all had bad colds, and told me she coughed out the sick feeling. 😀

-Spencer singing songs from the movie Frozen, or any song. His vocabulary is amazing and I love communicating with him. 

-Joel is spending time with his cousins for a few nights and they made this. 

He has some amazing aunts! Someone asked us how we compete with all the fun. The answer is that we don't. We've accepted the fact that we won't ever be as cool or as much fun. 

-seeing and hearing brynn interact with friends.  She's entirely different. 

-The Olympics make me smile. I've really enjoyed watching some full events but lots of highlights. It's fun learning about the athletes. It's fun cheering for two countries and it's fun that Canada is doing so well in the medal count this time.  

a call to family history

For a long time, I've been content and felt good about my methods of working on family history, ie. writing a blog, journals, indexing, and attending the temple. I've been doing well at all except indexing. The last several times I've tried to index, there hasn't been anything for me to do.  I was starting to feel a little bit bad.  Also, Brynn turns 12 in December and will get to go to the Temple for the first time.  We thought it would be really neat for her to have a family name to take with her.  I guess it got my mind on it.  I've always thought I couldn't do anything because so many in each of our families has been working for years on our family lines, researching, etc.  And I don't know where to start.  Well, the other night, I had a dream.  In the dream I had a conversation with someone about family history work.  They asked why I hadn't been involved in this way.  I told them it was because so many others were doing it and I was choosing to be involved in other ways, and I believed I wouldn't be able to find any names.  The person then said that there were names that only I would be able to find.  I was shocked!  I woke up excited and compelled to figure out how to research our family lines.  Help! Does anyone have any tips?

I love it when the answers finally come

Patience is a virtue that most of us are working on.  I've been struggling for a LONG time, years, with an issue.  This issue is trying to have joy amidst life's challenges, particularly family life.  I have been trying to figure out what I can do to help set a happy tone in our home and to try to keep it when the kids come home from school and immediately begin to fight.  I have tried a few things but I had an inspiration filled scripture study Saturday morning.  I often get inspiration as I'm reading but this one really stood out to me and it was something I've really been trying to get an answer for. I was reading about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and their choice to eat the forbidden fruit, which brought physical and spiritual death to them, and all mankind.  I was reading that when we sin, we feel guilt and shame, and this is what helps us to repent.  I finally realized that I have been feeling guilty about what is going on in our home, because I have been breaking one of the commandments, "Love thy neighbor as thyself."  My family members are my neighbors as well as the rest of the people I come into contact with.  I often don't feel joy because of this sin-sin leads to unhappiness.  I can fix this.  I know how to repent!  I am so grateful that the Savior atoned for this sin of mine, as well as all others, and that I can repent and be made clean.  Since I had this realization, I now can look at my family differently.  Loving all of them, each of them, as my neighbor will help me keep the proper perspective that I need to help reduce the contention in the home.  I love that I can receive personal revelation, straight from Heavenly Father, through the Holy Ghost.  What a huge blessing in my life!