Book Review - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, 3.5 stars out of 5

I am always on the fence if I can really say I "read" a book if I listened to the audiobook of it instead of actually reading it, but more and more I'm leaning on the side of yes. Probably because I have been listening to audiobooks more and more frequently. They really do make cleaning so much more bearable. 

And this was a very fun audiobook. It was narrated by someone with a British accent, which made all of the ironic humor even more enjoyable. This is a book that I decided to read mostly for cultural literacy reasons, and there were several things in it that made other things make sense, like the website Babelfish. 

I decided in my book reviews to write one thing I like and one thing I don't like about each book, to help me structure my thoughts a bit more. 

I liked: It really was fun to listen to. The book is so full of improbability and impossibility all told in such a hopeless ironic way, is that a horrible explanation? Yes. Yes it is. But regardless I thought it was really just fun. The bizarre friendships and the robots with personality problems, the 30 second life of a sperm whale, it was so weird but somehow it all worked for me and was funny instead of just being annoying, which I kind of went into the book expecting. I guess that's one thing about starting a book with rather low expectations, I should always do that, because when I have high expectations I tend to not like the book as well as I wanted to. 

I didn't like: Some of the more random parts were amazingly... random. But I wasn't looking for life lessons, so I can forgive it for that. 

All in all, if you haven't read this book, I would say go for it. If your library has Overdrive or a similar app for borrowing audiobooks, that is where I listened to it, and I liked the narrator quite well. 

Help Thou Mine Unbelief

Tonight I was reading Luke's account in the New Testament of the birth of the Savior. As I was reading chapter 2, the classic Christmas chapter, verse 19 stood out to me-

19. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

I wondered why Luke had added that verse, what he meant by that. I pictured being Mary, the many months after the angel had come, of being pregnant, and having to travel during the 9th month, and ending up in a stable with my newborn baby. I wondered if even Mary sometimes had doubts about what was happening, if she was really and truly the mother of a God. Amid the hard of daily life, if sometimes she just thought "if this is right, then why am I not surrounded by miracles at every step?".

And so when these miracles did happen, when the shepherds came with tales of heavenly hosts, she grabbed those things and she held them, and kept them in her heart, where she could go back to them when things weren't going as smoothly.

 I love the story in Mark chapter 9 when Jesus is healing the boy "which hath a dumb spirit". Just before Christ heals the boy he looks at the father and asks if he believes.

24. And straightaway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

I can picture being that father, so desperate for help, and wanting so much to have enough faith needed to help my child, and pleading for help to make up the difference for my unbelief. Sometimes in life when I am doing something that I knew at one point to be right, but when it's gotten hard, and my initial vision isn't as clear as it once was, I start to wonder why doing the right thing has to be so hard.

In April 2013 General Conference Elder Holland gave a talk titled "Lord, I Believe" where he said:

When problems come and questions arise, do not start your quest for faith by saying how much you do not have, leading as it were with your “unbelief.”... Let me be clear on this point: I am not asking you to pretend to faith you do not have. I am asking you to be true to the faith you do have. Sometimes we act as if an honest declaration of doubt is a higher manifestation of moral courage than is an honest declaration of faith. It is not! So let us all remember the clear message of this scriptural account: Be as candid about your questions as you need to be; life is full of them on one subject or another. But if you and your family want to be healed, don’t let those questions stand in the way of faith working its miracle.

I have often thought that even Moses, and Joseph Smith, had long periods of hard times, times where they weren't constantly administered by angels, where they were living every day normal life while simultaneously trying their best to figure out how to accomplish the divine work they had been given. I think that there must be something to moving forward in faith even when the initial clarity I had has worn off a little, and everything don't look entirely rosy anymore, and things aren't going exactly as I had planned.

Recently I've been struggling with the move to Ohio, why things are working out the way they are. It is really hard being here without Grant, and sometimes I wonder why he wasn't laid off in November when the other people were, it would have made so much more sense, and to me it feels like it would have been so much easier. So my goal for this week is to, as Elder Holland said, "be true to the faith I do have". I need to hold onto the moments of clarity I have had, and ponder them in my heart, so that on the hard days I can go back to that, and stop my questions from standing in the way of a miracle.

Book Review - Paper Towns

Paper Towns by John Green, 2 stars out of 5

I read Fault in our Stars last year and rather enjoyed it. It wasn't life changing or something I foresee ever reading again, but it was a fun couple hours reading it. So last week when I was looking at a list of "Books You Should Read Before The Movie Comes Out This Year" (Some of those words probably didn't need capitalization, eh?), and saw another John Green book on it,  I decided to give it a try. 

Quite handily my library had it available as an eBook, so I've been using it as my "keep me awake when I'm nursing Simon in the middle of the night" read. But I never really got into it. Maybe I would have liked it better if I were reading it fully awake? But usually when I'm reading a novel for my middle-of-the-night reads I have a bit of a hard time putting them down and going back to sleep, but this one was always easy to set aside and forget about. 

I didn't love any of the characters, and just had a hard time caring about the plot in general. Pretty much the whole book is set over the course of the couple weeks before Q and his friends graduate from High School, and since I never went to high school (as Grant loves to remind me, ha ha), I can't say how true-to-life the setting and characters were, but my strongest feeling at the end of the book was a general feeling that if high school was anything like that I'm quite glad I missed it. 

Summer 2013 Recap

I feel somewhat remiss at the idea of posting recap of something that is not fully over yet, but I've been thinking about what went right (and wrong) this summer, and wanting to write it down so that I can build on it in future summers.

I was so nervous about this summer, last school year Duncan was in school from 8:30 - 11:30 and Jefferson was in school from 9:00 - 3:30. So it was just me and Karl in the morning (and he still napped in the morning), then Duncan joined us for lunch, and I only had all three from 3:30 to bedtime. I have to admit this was a very nice schedule, but even then I had a hard time keeping up with the housework all the time, and once Jefferson got home he was so hungry for my attention, and it was really hard to get anything done. So I was terrified to think what would happen when I had all three home all day, and knew I needed a plan and schedule to make it through.

Thanks to good ideas from friends and several different mom blogs, I put together a combination of ideas that I hoped would work for us. It ended up being a bit over-complicated, and I will definitely try and simplify things next summer, but here is the basis of what we've done.

The first week of summer we made little magnet boards with each boys daily tasks:

Duncan decided to re-apply his name, so it has a little extra personality :). Now this part is really way too complicated (so complicated I'm really embarrassed to even type it out...), but here it is. If you can see, there are 3 different styles of borders on the different magnets. So when the boys woke up they were supposed to do the group that had "Make Bed" "Get Dressed" and "Put Pajamas Away" before they came to breakfast. If they did those 3 things, they would get 2 technology tickets at breakfast, which could later be traded in for 30 minutes of technology time or saved and traded in for quarters at the end of the week. I just cut blue cardstock with their initials on it into a ticket shape, and then made some extra red ones for when I wanted to give extra for a reward or just needed them engaged for a while or something.

The next grouping is "Brush Teeth" "Read Scriptures" "Chore 1" "Chore 2""Summer Journal" and "FlyLady Challenge". Chore 1 and 2 change each day, they come to me and I tell them what they are for the day. Next year I think I will make a chart and rotate or something so I'm not always trying to come up with things on the spot. Ones they have ended up doing a lot are unload the dishwasher (Jeff does the main part and Duncan does the silverware tray), wash doorknobs and light switches, sweep the front porch, and help switch a load of laundry. Right before I was making these I saw that FlyLady had a daily challenge for kids, so I threw that on there, but I'm not sure I'll use it again. There is a lot of repeat, and some times it was too much, but I guess overall it's been good, so I don't know, the jury is still out on that one. Anyway, each time they complete something in that grouping they get 25 cents, so they can potentially earn $1.50 a day.

The last grouping is the purple border ones, they are "Piano" "Reading" "Room Time" and "Math". We didn't really have anything set up as an incentive for finishing those, but after a couple weeks Grant suggested doing a red technology ticket that can't be turned in for money, so if they finish everything on their chart, they get one of those. They have been wanting to save all their blue daily technology tickets to trade them in for quarters, so that has worked out for this summer, although that usually only happens once a week or so...

At the beginning of the summer we went to the Lego store, and they both chose a set they really wanted, and that is what they are saving up for. At first I was keeping track of what they were earning daily on paper, and then at the end of the week I would transfer the amount they had earned to a new sheet, but that was not very motivating or visual for the boys, so Grant had the idea of giving them actual quarters, and made this money chart for them to color in, and then we went and got a couple rolls of quarters and made money jars, and that has been much better.

You can see the chart is pretty crumpled and well loved, the boys love taking it down and counting how much they have earned and how much they have left. Each day after they have done one of their chores that earn money I give them a quarter and they put it in their jar, and then at the end of the week they turn in the quarters in their jar and we color how they earned in on the chart and we start over again. I will say I *slightly* overestimated how much they would earn each week, with all the guests and trips and everything we've had going on, more days then not they don't get everything done, so I'm not sure we are going to earn these sets by the end of summer... I'm trying to figure out what to do about that! 

The last thing we did is make a Summer Bucket List while Megan was here (Megan made it for me, I wish I could take credit for how cute it is)

The first week of summer we brainstormed a lot of ideas for things we thought would be fun to do at some point during the summer, then put them all on here. We are not going to finish all of them, but it has been fun to have a place to go for ideas when we need something to do. One thing I haven't figured out, I would like it low enough that the boys could look at it more and get ideas, but then Karl grabs it and takes it apart. So right now it's hung up really high so Karl can't reach it, but it also means the boys aren't looking at it all the time. 

Another thing I did at the beginning of the summer was print off blank calendars for June, July and August, and wrote in different free or inexpensive activities that I found that were happening in the area (like dollar movies and free museum days and such), and then I could look ahead and plan for those things when we wanted to. I didn't have a good place to keep those calendars, and I keep loosing them, so next summer I need to make a place for them and so they are more useful. 

I think that is pretty much all of it... I will say that while I have NOT been able to keep up with the house work this summer, overall the summer has been a lot of fun, and gone really well, and I am really grateful for good ideas from other moms that have helped me create a little more order and sanity in our home this summer! 

A little slice of our days

Picture taking is not my forte, actually I'm pretty terrible at it, but I was looking at the pictures on my phone from this last week, and bad as they are, I wanted to save them here. Do you ever feel nostalgic for something you are in the middle of? I guess that's how I'm feeling today, so in an effort to capture our life, here are a few pictures from this last week that are pretty typical of our life right now

Karl LOVES Food. This baby can put food down like no other baby I've known. He will eat a couple pancakes, a bowl of yogurt and a whole banana for breakfast, and then be hungry as soon as he wakes up from his morning nap.

This smile melts me every time. Here is his newest trick of standing on his head and then trying to do flips on our new rug. It is super soft, and he loves playing on it. 

Duncan is such a social little guy and LOVES his friends. Every day after preschool he asks whose house we are going to, and is traumatized that we are hardly ever going to someones house, ha ha. Here are his best friends at a little Valentines party we had on Valentines day

I found a paper he had been writing/drawing on the other day, and he'd written his name on it, I had no idea he knew how to write his name!

He loves his "glass cups", and is sad when I give him the kid plastic cups. He always asks now "Can I please have a drink of water IN A GLASS CUP"

Jefferson decided he wanted to make a "quilt" for his pony Snowflake a while ago, and we finally got around to making it this week. He chose the fabrics, I helped him draft the pattern, and then he told me the widths and I cut the strips with the rotary cutter, then he pinned and sewed them together, then pinned the pattern on, cut it out, and then sewed a back on, and turned and topstitched it (he had a few areas where the topstitching swayed in from the edge, and he said "I did it on purpose, to make it look extra fancy"). He did it almost all by himself, I was amazed at his patience with this project!

All finished!

My Thoughts are Fragile

One night as I was trying to get dinner on the table Jefferson was telling me about an episode of something he had watched on PBS kids. He was explaining each scene of the show in detail, and I have to admit I was not really listening as I worked around the kitchen. I stopped him, and asked him to clear his project off the dinner table and put his shoes in the closet. He did those things, then came back, paused, then looked at me and declared "You made me forget what I was saying to you! My thoughts are fragile, you can't stop me when I'm in the middle of telling you something!"

I love how he phrases things.

Several times recently I've seen this quote floating around the internet:
"Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big. Because to them, all of it has always been big stuff" Catherine M. Wallace

Sadly, I have always been much better at making noise then listening. From the time I was little I've been a non-stop chatter-box. I remember my grandma always saying "You just never stop talking!"

Jefferson takes after me in that way, and processes things by talking through them. He wakes up talking and falls asleep mid-sentence sometimes, and then talks in his sleep during the night.

I'm trying to figure out ways to set times of when I can give full attention to him and still encourage him talking to me, but also have some time when I am "off the clock", if that makes sense. I don't feel capable of "listening eagerly" all day (I wish I did!!), but I do want him to feel loved and like I want to hear things that are important to him.

I am wondering if I set aside small portions of time where I'm listening to him with all my attention, if he will feel heard enough then that he won't feel as needy at the other times? For now that is going to be my goal, a set "Jefferson" time each day when my focus is just him, and then see how that goes and go from there.

Being Happy Now

Today in church in Relief Society (our womens group) we talked about this talk.

Two things really struck me. The first thing she focused on was the enabling power of the atonement, which she said is also called Grace. Recently I've been feeling frustrated at the slowness of change in my life. I just couldn't see that I was making forward progress, even though I really desired and was trying for change.

I think in the past whenever I heard or read the word "grace" I viewed it as a form of pity. Because God felt bad for us, He would still love us, even as imperfect as we were. Today I realized that it is not a form of pity, but a source of power. Because God loves me, He wants me to be powerful and whole, as He is. Further, He knows precisely what I need to become that way, and He offers me His grace to enable me to accomplish that change in ways that I couldn't on my own.

I loved this quote from Elder David  Bednar that the teacher used:
"The gospel of the Savior is not simply about avoiding bad in our lives; it also is essentially about doing and becoming good. And the Atonement provides help for us to overcome and avoid bad and to do and become good. Help from the Savior is available for the entire journey of mortality—from bad to good to better and to change our very nature." (from this talk)

The second thing that struck me was when we talked about this principle: "All that is unfair in life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ".

The teacher talked about what being "made right" means. That it's not just that we can survive hard things, and in the next life all will be well. But that through the atonement, in THIS life, His love can truly make all things right. It won't solve all our problems, but we can be just as happy and just as full of love as if our lives were "perfect". I realized that often I put off happiness, saying "after such-and-such happens, I will feel so much happier", but it really struck me that I will never be any happier than I am today. Or I guess I should say my capacity for peace and happiness in my life is complete today, that through Christ I can have full joy in my life today, and it's a choice I need to make, not something external that needs to happen in my life.

I am feeling very grateful today for God's love for me, for His patience and continued reaching out and lifting up. I feel hopeful that through His love I CAN change, and can become a better, kinder person, more like Him.