Where are you God?

For the past week our family has been well. Mason and Hailey are doing great in school. Mike is shining at work. Lily and Ducati have only given me a few migraines. I actually went visiting teaching this month. We're all healthy, happy (for the most part), and together.

Earlier this month I read the book, Heaven is for Real, that my friend recommended.

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I do admit that I stood up way to late some nights reading this book. I was completely hooked on what this little boy experienced. The accounts of what he described I was in complete awe.

But what stirred me up was his father. If you haven't read the book I won't go into complete detail but there's a part when his son is in surgery to try to save his life. And his father being a pastor was getting so angry that he left the waiting room were his wife was at and went into a small closet looking room. And vented to God on why this was happening. He pretty much laid into him. The father asked God why he took care of his servants like this? (Earlier in the year the father had alot of medical issues and a cancer scare and now his son,who's knocking on deaths door, is being operated on so he could live)

And this got me thinking....

In our own life we've tried to serve and follow Heavenly Father the best we can. We've prayed about certain decisions and followed the prompting that came to us that only later made us fall further from our goal.

But in the book the father later repents to his superior clergy guys. I'm not sure how the repentance process works in other religions so sorry for any mis-wordings. Anyways after talking to them he recalled a poem/story he heard about a boy....

(I couldn't find the poem on-line and I already returned the book back to the library so I'm going to just paraphrase the poem)

There was a boy who wanted to know where God was 
so he asked "God, where are you? I want to hear you"
then the loud sound of thunder came 
but the boy said, "God where are you? I can't hear you".

The boy asked, "God, where are you? I want to witness a miracle"
then a baby was born but he did not see it
so the boy said, "God where are you? I didn't see a miracle"

Then the boy asked, "God, where are you? I want to fell you"
then he felt the softest touch come from a butterfly
he pushed it aside and said, "God where are you? I can't feel you"

So at the end the father realized that Heavenly Father was with him always. Listening to his prayers. Listening to his vents. Showing his love to him continually.

So this got me back on track in my thinking.

God is blessing me with all that I need and want. I want to see God's hands so he sends this wonderful sunset. I want to feel his arms around me so he sends me a child who hugs me ALL THE TIME. I want to hear him so he sends comforting words from family, friends, prophets, apostles, neighbors, and complete strangers.

So I know where God is....he's everywhere. It only took me a rough week to realize this.

My Acceptance

This post and the other are all about ME :-)

This week has been very humbling for me. There's been so many things that I've had to learn, accept, and then be grateful for.

Confession:  the last one has been the hardest for me.

Learn
Having Celiac has been a complete struggle for me. I can watch over and help Ducati without any complaining. But for me...I just have a very hard time. Maybe it's pure denial. Either way I'm having a hard time adjusting. And it seems that I'm still experiencing some symptoms like my extreme fatigue even when I'm not eating gluten. So after reading and doing some research  I'm trying to cut back on my rice intake. Which is hard since most GF things are made with rice flour.

But thankfully I have friends who are on either a GF, Paleo, Primal, or no grain diets so I've gotten some recipes from them. As well as Pinterest and all those recipes. So for dinner we had pizza with a cauliflower crust.

 I was skeptical but hey it only cost 99 cents. And it actually came out so good!!! The girls absolutely loved it. I ate an entire small pizza which was about 300 calories. I'm not going to complain since 1 cheese slice from Little Caesar's is 240 calories and 1 slice of L.C. pepperoni pizza is 280 calories. (info from here)

Mike says he really liked it until I told him what the crust was made of. Now he can taste it and won't eat it. Next time  I won't say a peep. But I have felt better today so hopefully this will help me in the long run. 

Accept

The Relief Society Conference that's on Saturday night. I got 2 tickets from my Relief Society President and I planned on going with my sister-in-law. But a few days ago she had to cancel. Her little baby isn't doing well. So I prayed about what to do and the answer was to not go. Man, was I upset. 

 Mostly upset with myself. I should of prayed about this before I got the tickets. Anyways....I put the tickets up on KSL  and within 10 minutes a young lady from BYU-Provo called me asking for them. She really wanted to go but didn't know how to get tickets. So when I posted them she was so happy.

When I told Mike about what happened he said that maybe I was prompted to get the tickets for HER and not me. Humm.... thinking back on it I can recall dozen of times when that's happened. So I'm accepting that not all things that come to me are really for me.

Grateful
My lovely Mike. He's shining like a rockstar at his job. So much that he was transferred into a different department and is really amazing everybody with his mad skills. But he's been working alot of overtime. Hey- we have tons of debt. So does 3/4 of the world. But slowly we're getting out of debt.

 But I've have to learn that I need to cherish the minutes I do have with Mike. Usually we'd have weekly dates. Movies, temple, art showings, hikes, etc. But it's getting harder and harder since he's working around 60 hours a week (give or take) So I've had to learn that instead of going to the R.S. conference that would take up 5 hours of my time away from him. I can go to my local stake broadcast that will only take up 2.5 hours of my time. It's been a struggle since I was stuck in my old routine.

And I know it sounds silly but it really was. I didn't want to accept that things between us have changed. We don't have much face time. And he can't change that; so that only leaves me. Now I wake up with him (5am...yuck!) so I can spend some time together. I do ALL my running around while he's at work so when he gets home we spent all that time as a family.

Like tonight we went to the temple for the first time in 2 months. And  instead of a 4 hour trip we did the quick version and only spent 2 hours there. Afterwards we picked up smoothies from BK (thanks to a facebook coupon)  It was just nice to spend time with him. And the rest of the evening Lily and Cati played with their very missed Daddy.

So after a hard but humbling week I've had to learn that I can't always keep the plans I've made. I've learned that I need to be more flexible or I just might miss out on the blessing that are sent my way.

Neighborhood Party

Our old ward was throwing a neighborhood dutch oven party at the park last night.

Man I miss that ward :-)

Anyways my friends from that ward gave the OK for  Mike and I to crash their neighborhood party. Well..it's not really crashing since it's for the neighborhood :-)

Our girls were so excited to play at the park/party.

The Young Women had set up a face painting table with tons of stencils for kids to pick from. Lily picked a rainbow but the stencil was too big for her face to the ladies had to freehand it. Alittle harder than imagined with a wiggling toddler.

 Ducati...she also wanted a rainbow which meant the YW  had to freehand it. It turned out great. She was able to even paint on a couple of clouds on Ducati's small cheek.

Here's Cati trying to lick the paint brush. I don't know where this kid gets it :-)

 Lily was so happy that the YW put sparkles on her rainbow. As you can see she loved showing it off. 

 Here's my attempt of taking their photo. Cati is looking at Lily's face. It looks like she's checking out her rainbow.  It's so adorable that they both wanted rainbows. I guess their more alike than I thought.

 There was also a Bounce House. YEAHH!!!!!!

 Ducati was frightened to go alone so Lily helped her up the chairs.

 But just because Lily was nice enough to help her up doesn't mean she helped her down. She was way too excite to slide down that she left Cati up top.

 Ducati on the other hand....was freaked out the entire time. She ended up crashing into a boy and landed on her head. There's Lily on the bottom cheering Cati on.

 But after that type of crash all she wanted was Daddy's cuddles.

 Which I think Mike enjoyed...see the smirk :)

Lily's sand angel...hahaha....I love this girl and her imagination.

Despite all of our kids adventures Mike and I had such a great time. There was so much great and yummy food. However with our Celiac me and Cati's plate was mostly filled with fruits and veggies.  Which was fine. I was grateful that they shared with us. But a friend of mine I was sitting with introduced me to a family who also has Celiac. We chatted for alittle bit and they kindly shared their GF dutch oven meal with Cati and me. We were so thankful for their sweet gesture.

We also had the chance to see and catch up with people we haven't seen in a while. Mike and I were amazed to see the kids we use to teach in Primary all grown up. And a few men from our old Sunday School were just astonished when they seen Ducati and how much she's grown. They couldn't believe how much time has flown by. (I think she was around 9 months when we left that ward.) I'm so happy that we were welcomed to their party. We had such an amazing night. 

Sneaky Date

With so much happening this weekend we could not find a sitter. Friends, family, Babysitting Co-Op, and YW were all busy this weekend.

But I was determined to spent some ALONE time with Mike. So I put on my thinking cap and the thought came to me.

*some might think it's tricky, sneaky, not truthful...
But desperate times call for desperate measures.

The local grocery store gives their customers 1 free hour of childcare in their playland. So...we took advantage of this little benefit.  We dropped the girls off and had a grocery store date. :-)

We're still customers.

Anyways for add some laughs I printed off a game that I seen on DatingDivas. It's their version of the gameshow, The Price is Right.  

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It's a great grocery store date so it fit the occasion. 

I didn't have color ink so I just colored the border with some color pencils. Hey...it worked :-)

We took a minute to fill out the cards then it was game time.

I thought I had an advantage since I do most of the grocery shopping but this wasn't the case. We went with the original prices and NOT the sale prices so my mind was somewhat confused. Oh well...

Mike won the game at the showcase showdown. I overbid by way too much. What can I say...the boy knows his electrics.

Afterwards we enjoyed a quick lunch date from the hot case.

 Really Gross but we were hungry so we covered everything in ketchup. Ketchup fixes everything! :-)

 Our grocery store date was really fun. It gave us a chance to laugh together, play together, and enjoy some non-kid conversation. It's wonderful what 1 hour can do.

After we picked up our girls we showed our thankfulness to the store by spending more money inside with our grocery shopping.

 Here's Mike entertaining them with the shopping cart train.

 They loved it so much that they didn't let go of the other cart the entire time. Luckily Mike knows how to steer long and large vehicles. So don't judge....this afternoon we killed 2 birds with 1 stone- Date and groceries.  I call that a great and successful afternoon- haha.... :-)

All about Mike

Mike participated in his company golf tournament last weekend. He was part of a 4 guy team which he liked since it was all his buddies from work.
Now how the tournament was played- I can't explain it. Something about the best ball for each hole. So any golfers who reads this will understand what that means. Anyways Mike is a great golfer so most of the time he says his team played his ball.

He had alot of fun. His team didn't win but he doesn't mind. He enjoyed himself.
Later in the day there was an employee raffle. And Mike won an iPod!

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And he was so sweet and gave it to me.
The only rule to having it is the KIDS CAN NOT TOUCH IT! ......EVER!
So easy enough. Deal taken :-)

It's been so nice. It holds notes, music, books, all my scriptures, random thoughts of things I want to do, a few games, camera with a huge photo storage, etc. I know most people have an iPod. But for $200 it's something that we never wanted.  But to get one for free- it's very nice :-)

Also new happenings for Mike. He was transferred into a different department at work. So now he is in shipping. Which he likes a whole lot more. Mostly since he doesn't have to drive a forklift anymore. Plus this transfer also changed his work schedule. He now works 4x 10 hour shifts. And Fridays will be overtime. But that means he's home both Saturday and Sunday. YEAH!!!! He's worked Saturdays for most our marriage. No big deal since I've gotten use to it. But it's very nice to have him home Saturdays. Today for example we're going to the temple, doing some work on our house, having an easy movie date, and who know's.... it's just great that he's off on Saturdays.

Week of Photos

Things this week have been up and down.
A little bit of this. A little of that.

But here's some cute photos that I want to keep to remind me of the good that happened this week.

Lily woke up asking for a bath when she just took one the night before. She asked me why she couldn't have another bath. I told her that she wasn't dirty. So Miss Lily went and put soup all over her face, hair, neck, hands, and shirt.....then came to ask me, "I'm dirty. Can I have a bath now?" *sigh

 Cati's sleep schedule is all crazy. After I was washing dishes I came over and seen that she fell asleep in this position.

 While Hailey was in her tumbling class all the other kiddos play outside. Today Lily wanted to climb up a tree to grab some little brown circle things. ( I have no idea what they are but they interested her) So she figured out a plan on how to get up the tree.

 Cati didn't want Lily to climb. See her face of concern.

 Alright she's doing it....

 Nope.

 Even though she fell I know she was going to try again. It's just her personality.

 And she did try again. This time she used the tree for balance support.

 Success!

 I started on Halloween costumes this week. So I started with the easiest of them all. Lily wants to be Diego for Halloween. So I seen an super easy tutorial on how to make a shirt into a vest. So during nap time I made the Diego vest.

 Ignore that the pockets aren't perfectly symmetrical. When she woke up from her nap she was really excite to see her vest. Now all I have to make is her rescue pack and she'll be done. :-)

 I'm in redecorating mode right now. So Cati is helping me paint some MDF so I can make some signs for their bathroom to add to all that blank space on their wall. She really enjoyed it since the paint ended up on her shirt, hair, under her nails, on her lips, etc. Oh well...she's like me in this area. I love to paint so much that I don't care if I get dirty.

Mommy Preschool

When Mason and Hailey leave for school that's when "Mommy Preschool" starts. All our kids have schedules/lists that they should accomplish daily. 

So Lily and Ducati will hurry and start on their morning list. Making their bed, brushing their hair and teeth, getting dress, and meet me at the table for some school work. 

Every day we'll have story time. Which is pretty simple since we do weekly library visits. Afterwards I'll give the girls a worksheet. Today is was a word search. 

 When I said a word, such as Lily, she had to find it and circle it on her paper. Lily aced her's.

 Ducati on the other hand...just circled everything and drew a few doodles on her paper.

 I thought this would be easy since their so close in age. NOT THE CASE! I'm finding it alittle difficult to teach Lily when Ducati just wants to either color or eat her paper. Thankfully we only do 1 worksheet.

 Each word on this page is color coded. I read an article that stated when you just try to memorize a word it takes alot longer to remember. However if you add an action to it ( like the coloring) or an association to it (the word bed is pink) it helps your brain remember a lot faster. And for Lily it really works for her. She was able to remember all 8 new words. I think she's up to around 14. Not bad for 2 weeks.

 After that we'll play a game to help with their skills of taking turns, patience, following instructions, and problem solving. Today I made this flashcard game using the words from the worksheet. It's so fun to watch these 2 girls. Lily will memorize a word and just doesn't care to learn the phonics of it. And Ducati; she loves to hear the sounds of each letter. C-A-T is all she kept saying. I haven't figured this one out yet but oh well....they're learning :-)

 She was really proud of herself for finding the first match. And then there's my playful Cati putting the cards on her eyes.

Afterwards we'll have a snack and start our afternoon chores. Take a bath, put clothes in drawers, they have to put their dirty clothes into the washer which is fun for me to watch since we have a top load washer. Afterwards we'll do a craft and practice Lily's name in sign language. She thinks it's the coolest thing that she's learning to spell her name with her fingers. After lunch is nap; which means I get a chance to clean up, make Mason and Hailey their after school snack, and prepare for when they wake up. And afterwards it's pretty low key-they either want to play outside some more, build something with their legos, chase Pinkie, color a picture for Mike, or read more books.

I've enjoyed this special time with my littlest girls. Mike and I really want our girls to grasp onto the love of learning and have a passion for reading. So starting early is always the best.