Park City With Derek

Derek and I had on the calendar for quite a while a trip to Park City.  When Dan asked why we were going I told him it was a late birthday trip, but it really was just some time with Derek that I really, really wanted.  Time away.  Our lives are good.  We have good kids, and a nice place to stay, but I really do love having Derek to myself sometimes!  The weather was beautiful (It was the weekend of Oct. 10).

       Derek and me in front of a random waterfall somewhere in Park City.

This was taken in a Halloween Store for the benefit (?) of our kids who hate clowns.

We watched some people practicing ski jumps into a pool.  It was pretty cool!  You can see someone flying upside down in this picture.

We found this little cemetery by accident and enjoyed walking around.  Most of the graves were quite old, but there were a few newer ones.

This was a picture of a wire / rock wall in case we ever want to try to build one.  They did a good job on this one!

We stopped at this little lake in Midway on the way home, and then Derek stopped at BYU duck pond because I wasn't quite done with vacation yet and wanted to chat.  We don't have a picture of that.

Every now and then, it really is nice to get away from the every day routine.  I like routines, but I like to change things up sometimes!

Trisa's Birthday

 Back in October our oldest daughter Trisa had a birthday!  She came home so we got to properly celebrate with her.  I am so grateful for this daughter of mine.  She is very incredible.  Being the oldest child isn't always a piece of cake, but I think she does oldest child perfectly.  That doesn't mean she's perfect, but that she deals with all of life's hardships and challenges with as much love, patience, and forgiveness as she can muster while clinging to her faith and while helping those around her on the way.

This is Trisa sitting by some of her biggest fans.  Jake, Chewy and Teddy.  Actually, Trisa has lots of fans -- though she probably thinks of us as family and friends and students :-) 

                           Trisa in her new coat, and Mike in the background.

Trisa opening some more presents by Jake.  And yes, we think it's fine to wear Christmas leggings all year long!

Have I mentioned that I love Trisa?  Trisa teaches kindergarten and loves her students even though they sometimes are kind of naughty.  She has some honorary nieces that she really enjoys, and she has some very loyal and kind friends that I love with all of my heart because they love her.  I hope this year is full of much happiness for our Trisa!

Winter

Winter is coming up, and though our weather has been beautiful lately, it is getting darker and the cold is coming.  Since I am trying to come up with a health plan for the winter, I have been looking for the benefits of winter, the challenges of winter, and solutions to the winter blues, or SAD.  I already deal with some depression, and when the sun isn't seen as much, this often becomes more of a battle.

One of the good things I learned from Business Insider is that cold temperatures can help people think more clearly, which I think means I will all of a sudden be smarter if I go outside :-) There are other things too, but that was my favorite.

What's hard about winter?  It's dark.  And often cold.  It's kind of gray, and not fun to drive around in if it's slushy or icy.  I can start to feel trapped, or like I spent the best part of my days inside working instead of enjoying the smaller amount of sunshine.

So here are some ideas I want to try for dealing with the dark. 

1.  In the dark music sessions

2.  Candlelight (It makes the dark romantic instead of bleak).

3.  Twinkle lights or party lights. (Mine are already in place!)

4.  Bright colored decor

5.  Use a Happy Light (we love ours!)

6.  Load the family in the car with a thermos of hot chocolate / hot citrus and go to someplace dark to look at the stars!

7.  Hide and go seek is fun in the dark.  Someone taught us about "Hide and go seek with socks".  You don't wear socks necessarily.  The person who is it uses them to throw at the people who are trying to sneak to home base.  If you get hit with the socks you are out!

8.  Wear warm clothes and go outside as much as possible -- especially to the woods, or a park.

9.  Do service to brighten someone elses dark day!

10.  Meditate, or offer up prayers of thanks.

11.  Communicate with other people!  

12.  Do Tai Chi or Yoga

13.  Work on an indoor hobby (painting, sewing, writing)

14.  Play games or do puzzles

15.  Make meals festive!

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer."                     Albert Camus

I'm hoping we can all discover an invincible summer inside ourselves no matter how dark, cold, and hard to deal with our winter may be!

4 Seasons of Happiness Health Plan

 Hi all!  I was having a happy mental health day the other day.  I spent over an hour at Barnes and Noble doing my best to find the "perfect" planner for me for the year ahead.  This is something I love doing, and a planner is something I love having!  As I was heading to the store I was thinking about a friend who had posted a health plan that she was excited to follow.  I looked at it, but was less enthused about following it, and was pretty sure it wasn't for me -- but I like the idea of having a health plan!  I decided that I could create my own!

I was contemplating gardening, and seasons of life, and all of the things we can learn from nature, and I decided to make a health plan for each season of the year.  So, ever since then I have been studying up on winter.  What is winter good for?  What are the challenges of winter?  How can the darker days be dealt with so as to not cause more depression?  If I get nothing else out of this, I will have learned a few things and had a good time trying to create something good!

For today I will just leave you with the quote I have decided to use for my whole "4 Seasons of Happiness Health Plan"

"We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming.  We cannot stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are.  They are gifts from the universe that we cannot refuse.  But we can choose what we will contribute to life when each arrives."               Gary Zukhav

This is up at our property in ER.  Apparently right now it is turkey season!

 

 

Focusing on What I CAN Do

Picture by Kayli

I was just trying to come up with questions that I should be looking for the answer to at General Conference, and during prayers, and just generally as I study.  The problem?  I am gifted at coming up with what I don't know, or what I don't do well and might need help with, and after a while I start to feel depressed.  Perfection is such a long way off, and I forget it's not required.  Thankfully, I was gifted with remembering what I learned last conference from President Nelson!  

"...the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives."

So, I decided to focus on what I can do -- at least for tonight -- and I am feeling a LOT more motivated to do good things now than I was when I was trying to think of all the things I needed to work on and what question I might need to ask about them!  

Here's my list:

I can use my writing to lift others

I can create letters and poems to inspire others

I can create songs that share faith and joy

I can listen

I can use my time to help others

I can speak kind words

I can create beauty

I can share what I learn

I can call people

I can plan get togethers

I can play games with my family

I can walk with others 

I can communicate through Marco Polos and texts

I can look, and find things that I can make better

I can make gifts, and buy gifts

I can create stories

I can do puppet shows

I can dance

I can laugh

I can share my gratitude

I can watch shows with my family

I can notice those around me

I can create order

I can clean

I can read

I can memorize inspirational things

I can pray for others and for myself

I can spend time with Heavenly Father

I can repent

I can forgive

I can smile

I can hope

I can love

My Happy Birthday!

 I had a good few days of celebrating my birthday.  I always try to plan what I want to do, and I sometimes buy myself a gift or three, and I also am spoiled by my wonderful family and friends!

Birthday Celebration Day 1 -- Jenny's birthday

I started out sending Jenny a happy birthday Marco Polo which included my lovely bed head hair and me not being so sure I wanted to go on the hike I planned.  However, I had decided that if we bought some good snacks that I wanted, and I took some water, it would probably be fine.

Derek bought me flowers while we were at the store getting snacks.  I somehow forgot to take a picture of them before they wilted a bit, but they are still very beautiful!

This is a part of the trail that we took up to the pine forest.

It is very pretty up there, and once we got to the pine forest, we started collecting pine cones for an activity I wanted to do later.

Trisa took a lot of the pictures for this post, and Tia took the rest. (Other than the flowers that I took a minute before posting it).

It was a beautiful, beautiful day as you can see.  I was afraid it would be too cold, but it was actually a bit hot by the time we were headed down (which is lots better than being hot when we headed up!)

I'm not sure why Derek has Teddy by the tail, but that is his arm, and Kayli is standing by her dog.

I am on the left wearing the shirt my sister Tina sent me for my birthday.  Then Derek, holding Teddy's tail, and then Kayli.

This is Tia and Mike.  Chewy is behind Tia.  Mike was pitching pine cones for Tia to hit.

Here is Tia again.  I suspect she had just been hitting a pine cone.

This is my happy hiking buddies and me.  Mike, Tia, Trisa, Kayli, Derek, Me, and Dan!

This is me with "Sher Bear" that Tia and Mike made for me at Build a Bear for my birthday.  So fun!  I think I get the best birthday presents!

After our hike Mike had to go to work, but some of us made Pine Cone owls.

The left one is Derek's (what a good husband he is!), and the right one is Trisa's.

The left "snowy owl" here is Dan's and the right one is Tia's.  I LOVE how she did the owls "hair"!

This is my owl family.  Daddy owl, Mommy owl, and baby owl.  

Next we played Boggle -- 3 rounds, and my niece Avery came in time to get in on the last one.  Later we had breakfast for dinner.  Waffles, with peanut butter, strawberries, and whipped cream.  Mmmmm.  There was a BYU game that night so we postponed the movie watching and I finished a book and watched the game until I got so sleepy that I went to bed.  We were winning anyway.  Go Cougs!

Sunday:  Birthday #2

On this day I opened more presents and we watched Singing in The Rain, which I chose.  I slept through some of it, but enjoyed all the funny parts!

My shirt from Trisa.  I opened my presents from me too which was another shirt and a magazine.  The picture above is freaky because I have a weird sun halo!

Monday:  My Actual Birthday

This was more of a communication day.  I talked to My Mom and Shannon on the phone.  I talked to My mother-in-law and my friend Carrie in person.  I had lots and lots of texts, Marco Polos, and Facebook messages, and am thankful to all those who thought of me on and around my birthday!

 I did laundry on my birthday, and since Canvas was down I decorated for Halloween with Dan, which was really fun.  I had a note from Derek tucked in my Bran Flakes cereal box in the morning, which was a good way to start the day!  I made the roast and potatoes on this day that I mean to make on Sunday.  We were going to have Apple Crisp for dessert but I got too tired to make it, and we didn't have enough apples, and I just bought brownies and we called it good.  

Last of all we solved a mystery!  I had got it from Finders Seekers to give it a try.  Some of us enjoyed it a lot more than others, but I thought it was fun.  I'll stop here and post more pictures another time!  Happy Birthday to Me!

Grace AND Truth AND time

 The ideas for this post come directly from a book I am reading called Changes That Heal:  Four Practical Steps to a Healthier, Happier You by Dr. Henry Cloud.  

The first section of this book explained very clearly that God is grace AND truth, and how desperately we all need both.

Dr. Cloud called truth without grace "judgment".  If we just have truth, we feel like we and everyone else must live the truth perfectly. We find ourselves judging ourselves and others harshly for not being able to do everything we know as truth.

On the other hand, grace without truth is described as "license".  If we have only grace, we can do whatever we want.  This might sound good, but the consequences of this are just as bad as living in judgment.  Living this way, without truth as a guide is like trying to navigate the Amazon Jungle without help, and without knowledge of what is dangerous and what isn't.

To illustrate this principle Dr. Cloud tells the story of the woman taken in adultery and how Christ used both grace and truth.  With grace he loved the woman even as an adulterer.  With truth, he recognized her sin, and lovingly instructed her to sin no more.  

And Time?  This is what God gives us to become more like Him.  We do this when we access His grace and His truth.  But whether time does us any good or not is determined by how willing we are to share our true selves with God and with others.  Bringing our true, real, selves into God's light allows us to feel His grace.  His love for us no matter what happens.  It also allows us to be open to His truth so that we can make progress, and become better.

It is easy to overbalance on the side of truth or grace.  But growth comes from recognizing both.  I need to have grace towards myself when I make mistakes, and continue to reach for truth.  I need to have grace towards others always, because only when given grace will any of us feel the desire or ability to change.

Extreme Creepy Closet Makeover

 

This was after I had cleaned out half of the closet!

This past weekend I had a chance to go on a little trip to help clean out a creepy closet so that it didn't have to be avoided.  This is my kind of project!  Hard to make worse, and no matter how much improvement it seems like a lot!  I had looked inside the closet before, so I had some idea what to expect, but once I emptied it out I did find a couple of surprises.

The first surprise (besides the good surprise that the floor of the closet was in decent shape) was that you could see light coming into the house.

The second surprise was that when I moved the cabinet door that was propped up against the left side of the closet floor, I found this.  Not a great surprise!  When I knelt down I could see all along the foundation of the house and light came in a good way down into that gap too.

So, a trip to the Ace hardware was in order where I got some nifty expanding foam, some paint and a couple of shelves.  The end result certainly isn't perfect, but light no longer comes in from outside, and the spiders and webs have been disposed of.

Not bad considering I had about five hours or so to get the job done.  It's not perfect by any means, but at least there won't be as many worries that creatures will climb in and haunt the closet!

Dancing With Connor

Before Dan turned 14, Connor got married to Amanda!  They got married Friday August 28th at 2:00 p.m.  I haven't posted about it because I took exactly 0 pictures.  The photographer took so many I felt like I could just enjoy all of the moments.  The wedding itself was at the Payson Temple and, thanks to Covid, only 8 people were able to come support the groom with another 8 coming to support the bride.  This meant that Connor's Grandpa Christensen wasn't able to come and that made us sad -- but other than that it was a happy event and lots of pictures were taken with more people afterwards.  Grandpa Christensen was even in some, but not as many as he should have been because I forgot to tell him he was supposed to come!  Double sad!  We haven't gotten pictures back yet, but Kayli took a few pictures towards the end of the reception that was held later that evening.  

The first dance was Connor and me.  I had a good five minute warning, but who needs a warning to dance with their handsome boy while lots of people stare?  I just focused on Connor.  I enjoyed dancing with him.  He chose the song written by Michael Buble' for his son called Forever Now.  I'm glad Connor gave me the opportunity to spend time dancing with him at his reception!

This is a picture of one of the tables.  Amanda danced with her Dad after I danced with Connor -- but I don't have any pictures.

Finally, Amanda and Connor danced.  They cut the cake next and were very civilized and respectful while feeding it to one another.  Then we lit sparklers and they ran to their car while people driving by honked.  It was a beautiful day and we hope it will remembered by Connor and Amanda with happiness forever.

Dan's Happy Birthday

 My "baby" turned 14 on the 29th of August.  It turned out to be a pretty good birthday for him.

Kayli made Dan some ginger cookies and Dan and I made peach sorbet.  He got to blow out some trick candles.

Then he got to blow out his trick candles again and again!

I took this picture of him wearing his new shirt.  His hands are covering some of the letters.  It says ANIMATION.  Dan loves animating things on the computer.

This is a bench for his art desk.  Honestly.  His art desk is mostly used as a catch all for stuff, but I refinished this bench for him and I think it turned out pretty cool!

This is a picture Dan took of most of his other presents.  It was a good present year for Dan.

Dan's favorite gift was probably the gift of an adventure.  He wanted to ride a horse!  Thankfully we know nice people who own horses and who gave Dan the chance to ride one.  This is our friend Dave (also our builder) who is leading Dan.

This is Kayli, Derek and Jake headed to the zip line that they went on even on this windy evening.  We also visited some pigs and horses and cows and saw the chickens.

Dave was trying to teach Dan how to saddle a horse.  Dave rode the dark brown horse and Dan rode the other one and we can't remember their names!  Kayli rode the light colored horse too.  Dave told Dan and Kayli both that "next time"...

Dan wondered if Dave was going to call and have them come again.  I think probably we will call and see if we can go again.

Dan is a smart boy with a good heart.  He loves to tell people about the things he is interested in, which unfortunately, often go right over our heads.  He loves animals and enjoys communicating with cousins and friends when he can.  We love him and hope he has a happy year to go with his happy birthday!