So sings my soul

Please turn your speakers on and get to know and understand what makes me me. These are a list of some of my favorite 30 songs. I probably missed some but these are the ones that make my soul almost jump out of my skin. I picked most because they pull so much emotion from me and have so much meaning to me. Yes, I love me some pumpkins! I am probably the most eclectic person when it comes to music other than Jason. Almost all the songs Jason and I love together. We both are obsessed with music so it is not a big surprise that all of our kids have such a love for it too. You should see them all sing some of these songs together. They memorize songs so quick it always shocks me. I swear I should take them on the road! Music has always been my escape and has always brought me sanity. Even as a child I would retreat and sing to myself for fun, though it was always more fun to sing constantly and annoy everyone within earshot. I now love to sing with my family and I love that they love to have me sing. It truly means the world to me because no matter the struggles that this life brings music has always made me feel the spirit instantly. So please go through my list and see if you know them or if you remember when we loved them together. If not consider yourself enlightened!

Just rambling

I have been so busy lately that I have been neglecting my blogging. These darn kids are so demanding of my time, don't they understand that I'm trying to have some time by myself:) Ha Ha!My blogs have been perhaps too serious lately but i cannot help myself when I sit to write I become so reflective and turn all church ladyish. Hopefully I haven't turned to many people away due to my preaching. It can be just so therapeutic to ramble on. I went garage selling yesterday and today. I love to garage sale, dang these gas prices. My sister and I are going to share a bike trailer that i bought today. I was trying to find a high chair. i guess I'll have to turn to craigslist for that one. My baby is screaming so I'll post more later about my undying love for garage sales

endure to the end

I'm feeling very reflective today on ones ability to control ones life. I was at the park today with some friends from church and we began discussing challenges we have or are facing. All of us have husbands that are in school or are looking for work. It actually struck me as odd that we all had so much in common. Even though we had individual struggles we all had the same ultimate one which is it can be hard being the wife and supporting your spouse as they find there way in this life. There is a fine line we have to walk to gently guide them and be supportive while they are going to school or looking for work. If we say too much we are being nagging or controlling and if we don't say enough then we are not being supportive. I am by no means saying that a man's role is easy either, common they have to put up with our hormones, and they have to be the one that is suppose to support the family. I guess right now I find it humbling that no matter how different our lives are there are many things that most LDS women have in common. I will hopefully never know how hard it is to have the pressure of having to do well in school so I can get a job to support my family. But like wise our husbands will never know how much we have to do to hold it altogether so that we add no more pressure to them. Sometimes I forget that while I'm waiting for this period to be over ,so that we can truly get on with our life, I realize that our life was really going all along. If you miss the opportunities to cling to one another while things are tough you will never really realize how great things are when things are easy. Being a wife can be even more challenging when the end destination is the same but the road you travel to get there on is different. It can be tough to decide whether you should give up your road, especially when you know it's the right one:) or nag them over to yours, it doesn't matter how you say it they will take it as nagging. Somehow all marriages come to these roads and while some women are content to never budge from there roads it really isn't any worse then those that never acknowledge there is any other roads but there husbands. Hopefully our husbands married us for our brains and not just our perfect bodies, otherwise they are in for a surprise to see what's left after 5 babies! We just have to be better about our approach It can just be so tough to sit and watch there choices affect our lives even when they make the right ones. I am lucky my husband values my opinion, for the most part anyway as you might have noticed I have an overabundance of them, He trust me and I trust him that no matter what road we choose to walk down, we do it together. We can only truly control a few things in this life and one of them is our attitude no matter the situation we can chose to be happy and positive. The most life changing book I have ever read , other than scriptures, was Dr. Phil's Life Strategies. I wish that everyone could read it. I recommend it to everyone who has ever struggled, will ever struggled or has ever been born! We all have similar struggles we couldn't all be alone otherwise during the atonement Jesus would have been there forever enduring each individual unique pain we each would have, he'd still be in there, so with each new struggle we can take comfort that even when we don't know anyone personally with the same struggles there have been many and are many that have endured this and isn't it always amazing how quickly the struggles are forgotten once they're over

Enjoying Life

First off my sweet Addalyn rolled over on Fathers Day for the first time, while I love that she is growing up I hate that she is growing up. she rolled to get a my little pony. I snapped this pic right after she rolled. She was not much happier after she rolled because she then was stuck. Jason had to work on fathers day so we celebrated mainly yesterday. We made him breakfast then he played on the computer with the kids with the new games he got to play with them. We then planted our garden, which you have never seen kids more excited to do. After that we BBQ and went to the park( on the other side of our backyard) to play croquet. After some really awesome fits by Jackson, he absolutely hates to not do well or have people"beat" him, we went inside and got ready for the end of the year LDS Homeschool potluck. After getting lost for 40 minutes we arrived ate, played, talked and left. We then went and filled up at Costco for $4.13, which by the way is about 15 cents cheaper than the rest of the stations. These gas prices are truly going to change all of our lives. After 9/11 I remember thinking that our world has forever been changed and that there are things I will probably never do now, like go back and take my family with me to Europe. Those bombings altered my perception on my families safety here and everywhere. In some ways though it made me realize that truly the time is at hand, but with gas prices and food prices skyrocketing I realize that we are again that much closer to the end. I'm in no means saying that it will happen tomorrow only that look how much has happened in the last 7 years. For me I see everything as signs to get myself and my family prepared. We are buying a lot of food storage supplies this week and hopefully will be getting our water barrels soon. I found this out of a talk by Dallin H. Oaks and it really made me stop and think.

“But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up” (Matt. 24:42–43). “But would have been ready” (JS—M 1:47).

“Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:44; see also D&C 51:20).

What if the day of His coming were tomorrow? If we knew that we would meet the Lord tomorrow—through our premature death or through His unexpected coming—what would we do today? What confessions would we make? What practices would we discontinue? What accounts would we settle? What forgivenesses would we extend? What testimonies would we bear?

If we would do those things then, why not now? Why not seek peace while peace can be obtained? If our lamps of preparation are drawn down, let us start immediately to replenish them.

We need to make both temporal and spiritual preparation for the events prophesied at the time of the Second Coming. And the preparation most likely to be neglected is the one less visible and more difficult—the spiritual. A 72-hour kit of temporal supplies may prove valuable for earthly challenges, but, as the foolish virgins learned to their sorrow, a 24-hour kit of spiritual preparation is of greater and more enduring value.

Homeschool'in

Ya, ya, I know you've all heard me go off about my homeschooling a million times but today I got to go with my sis in law Becky to a big homeschooling fair up near Seattle and had such an amazing and overwhelming time. For anyone that has concerns about not knowing how or what they'd use to homeschool because they think public schools are the only ones with access to good educational stuff just needs to step foot at a fair like this, you can get a good taste online also, to realize that public school kids are truly being short changed. No matter how your child learns there is several options of curriculum for your child , it is just awesome. No matter your views on the subject of homeschooling isn't there a comfort in knowing that if your neighborhood school doesn't fit your child or your child doesn't fit that school you have still an awesome option all hope is not lost. For me homeschooling showed me the path in which I was meant to parent. I do not look down on those that don't but you know how when something changes your life and you feel very strong about it it's hard to not want everyone around you to join in. I just hope that everyone at least has an opened mind to the option. If nothing else all moms should think of themselves as homeschooling at least in the beginning of their kids lives the only difference is some get to be the captains while others chose to copilot. It's just hard to turn that job over to someone that does not have the same love and devotion to my child that I do. That said I had a great time and we took my mom's Prius so we really saved on gas. It has been sunny for two days it almost is tricking me that it is June!

Visiting Teaching

I've been wanting to repost but time has been in short supply lately. I went VT the other day and it was my turn to teach the lesson. I was a little disappointed when I first looked up the lesson, still haven't received my Ensign this month, it was on, for those of you who have yet to read it:), pre-mortal life. Yet when I actually read it and pondered it I couldn't believe how perfect it was for me. The part that stuck out the most was the quote from President Kimball which said how sad and depressing our lives would be if this was IT, if this life was all we had to look forward to. How true that is, I think sometimes we all get caught up in our everyday life and forget that this is a prerequisite for something even greater. The other part that stuck out was that we had to all be on an equal footing here so the veil was placed over our eyes. Yet I truly think that although our visual memories are gone our spiritual memories are not and there are different times within our lives when we can feel and relive those memories for example when we feel the spirit and more easily noticed is at the birth of your child. The love felt can only give us a glimpse at the love that was experienced by our spirit before. I hadn't intend to go off on a sermon again but I really did enjoy feeling new insight with this lesson so I thought if nothing else would motivate others to either read the ensign, do their VT or conclude that I'm a religious fanatic.
We went to three of our sisters but only saw two the third I had to sit in the car and try to take care of the baby so my companion went to the door which I felt bad about because I knew she was nervous because we'd never met this person before, but she did it and when she came back from the door, we were just dropping off cookies and a letter, she was laughing because I guess the lady wasn't there but a really, lets say very large man, opened the door with nothing more than a blanket around him, she quickly explained who she was and that she would call the lady later to explain who we were. We laughed all the way to our next appointment. It is true that sometimes VT can be an interesting experience. Here is a link that I found on a fun family to do list http://www.angelfire.com/md2/moodyfamily/100things.html just copy and paste it and it will get you there. Addalyn has been sick the last few days and I'm half way out of my mind. and hopefully today we will finally see some signs of summer it should be 70 degrees! I keep joking that we've skipped summer and gone backwards to winter but maybe I can stop. Jason starts school next week. I'm not sure I'm mentally prepared yet but maybe that's a good sign sometimes I am more ready when I'm out of my right mind. By the way the pic is of us having milkshakes and playing games. It is amazing how pictures can make things look so CALM and loving.