I had a crisis of relevance last month.  Probably everyone has those moments in their lives.  In those moments you wonder, Does what I do matter? Here are some of the things I do:  I go grocery shopping and make meals--lots of those.  I do laundry and dishes.  I clean the house.  I make menus and manage our finances.  I walk kids to school and pick them up, and babysit for my brother once a week.  I buy birthday and Christmas presents and take children to the doctor. I serve in my church and support my husband in his service. Most of all, I try to persuade my children to become the people they need to become.  Some days it feels like I'm not making any progress in that area! At that moment of crisis, I wondered if I was making any difference?  Does any of the work I do help anyone very much?  Am I doing what God wants me to do? Fortunately God helped me feel a tiny bit more relevant.  I decided to read the Gospels this month to help me focus more on Christ's li

Like lots of moms, I struggle with how to celebrate that big giant holiday at the end of December.  It has felt overwhelming for a long time, pretty much since I had two little boys born the week before Christmas, adding their birthday celebrations to the mix, along with my mother-in-law's and my father's.  Buying presents for all my relatives for all the big events in December can be a stress factory.  I have tried different ways to "celebrate Christmas" and haven't been totally satisfied with any of them. Jan and his fiancee, Sallie. This year is potentially more overwhelming because my second son is getting married 4 days after Christmas in California.  His birthday is a week before Christmas so he is going to have all his big holidays within 11 days!  We're excited for both of them though. As soon as they got officially engaged September 24th I knew I had to go into high-speed.  So I made a list for both the wedding and Christmas and I've bee

Recently I went to Salt Lake City on two different days in the same week.  I almost always drive when I go to Salt Lake, but one day, I took the train (Frontrunner) and Trax (light rail).  I had never done it before so it was enlightening. I love to analyze the most efficient way to do something so here are my conclusions: 1.  Public transportation takes longer.  Maybe someday this won't be true but the traffic here is not bad enough yet, that it's faster to take the train.  Taking Frontrunner takes about 2x as long as it does driving with no traffic--if everything goes smoothly.  One way took 1.5 hours. Driving in the car took 50 minutes with minimal traffic at midday.  Unfortunately the traffic was much heavier on my way home (and there's construction) and it took me about 15 minutes longer.  But it was still shorter than the 1.5 hours on public transportation. 2.  It is definitely more pleasant to travel on the train than drive in the car.  I especially hated

I saw this book Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating: A Step-by-Step Guide for Overcoming Selective Eating, Food Aversion, and Feeding Disorders  for the first time on Amazon.com a few weeks ago.  It's a new book, out this spring, and I really had high hopes for it. You know how it goes:  the higher your expectations, the more disappointed you will be. Sure enough, I was disappointed.  It really didn't have anything new that I haven't already read many years ago when I read How to Get Your Kid to Eat:  But Not Too Much by Ellyn Satter.  I read it when my oldest (now 25) was a few years old and it was helpful to me as I raised my children.  It is a really good book and it reinforced ideas I already had.  My mother had instilled good eating habits into me that I just passed on to my children.  We ate at regular times (she always cooked breakfast and dinner and made our lunches for school), she wouldn't let us ruin our appetites with a snack right before, and

An important birthday for children in the LDS church is when they turn 8.  That is the age of accountability, when they start to recognize what is right and wrong, so that is when they can get baptized.  Camille was very excited to get baptized and we tried our best to make it a special day for her. We had the baptism right after lunch last Saturday, November 7th.  I always get a little stressed trying to make sure everything is the way I would like it to be.  I shouldn't worry so much.  And now that all of my children have been baptized I won't even need to! After the baptism, we headed up to Salt Lake City to visit the Church History Museum which has recently been renovated.  We spent a lot time in the children's section which has some fun activities with the theme of "Tell Me the Stories of Jesus". On the way to SLC, we saw this dog riding on the back of a motorcycle.  Do you love the goggles? Here is Camille with her cousin Matthew.  More

Last week I attended one day of the World Congress of Families IX held in Salt Lake City.  I felt like I should go so I bought a ticket and went on Friday.  It was held in the Grand America Hotel and many of the sessions were in the main ballroom, a very large room. My impressions were that it was more openly religious than I expected, especially more openly Christian.  And it felt a little like a revival!  I enjoyed all of it but here are a few highlights: I arrived late and heard the very end of Stephanie Nielson's talk.  I'm sure it was good  but I missed most of it. This guy talked about how we need to become better at telling stories that promote the family through movies, TV shows, etc. I enjoyed the performance of the Salt Lake City Mass Choir.  I guess I don't get out much because this was a unique performance to me--it seemed very evangelical.  They sang "I Want More of You, Jesus" which I think is a song you can buy on iTunes.  They wor

Yesterday was Susanna's birthday--she turned 15.  It was a good day for her and she enjoyed presents and a special family dinner with French Silk Pie for dessert.  She is looking forward to getting her learner's driving permit! It was a little extra special day because our son Garrett came home from his mission that night.  A little before 10pm (so late for my youngest two to be up--we didn't get home until past midnight) we all got in our van and drove up to the airport.  After a short wait, soon we saw our son Garrett coming down the escalator with 4 other missionaries.  Garrett has been serving in the Ukraine Dnepropetrovsk Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the past two years.  He really enjoyed being a missionary and grew a lot in his spiritual and emotional maturity.  He was so positive in his emails home every week and it was fun to read them. Here is Garrett, hugging his brother whom he hadn't seen for over 3.5 years

Yesterday was Camille's birthday!  It was a school day and Camille was concerned that her teacher hadn't sent home the poster that is supposed to be read on your birthday in her class.  It turned out that one of her parents put the wrong date for her birthday on the teacher's information sheet--it was an honest mistake. We sent treats for her class yesterday and we finished the poster this morning so she could take it in today. Here she is covering her ears while her brothers sing VERY loudly. For her birthday dinner, she requested this dinner that no one loves as much as she does:  6-Can Chicken Tortilla Soup.  We serve it with rice.  You make it with literally 6 cans of various ingredients--the easiest dinner ever.  We always have it when we camp because it requires nothing fresh. Her amazing Activity Days leader brought over a chocolate cake the day before so I didn't even have to make a cake for her--she decided that was the cake she wanted to have

I have to admit that I am not a sports fan.  So I've really pushed music a lot more than sports.  Which is not to say we haven't done sports.  We did a lot of soccer with my oldest boys until I couldn't handle the craziness of soccer season any more (our worst season was 4 boys on 3 teams with our oldest doing soccer reffing).  We've also done swimming, a little football, basketball, and cross-country and track.  This fall, my two high-schoolers are on the cross-country team for Orem High. At the beginning of the school year my daughter wasn't planning on doing cross country but her friend convinced her to sign up and so she bikes to the high school every day from the junior high to do the workouts.  She's really enjoying it although fitting in all her responsibilities and some free time has been challenging.  She's done well and has actually been on the varsity team as a freshman which we weren't expecting--that's brought its own challenges. My

At the top of my blog is a picture of a mountain covered with snow.  It's called Mt. Timpanogos and it is very much a part of our everyday landscape.  I look out my windows and there it is in all it's glory.  It's a beautiful mountain. I've had a goal to climb this mountain for a long time but this summer it finally became more concrete.  I'm not getting any younger so this was the year!  My husband and I did a lot of practice climbs--not for him because he's already in great shape--but for me. For Mother's Day, I got a pair of good hiking boots and socks.  Then a week later Scott and I hiked Squaw Peak.  It was quite muddy and my hiking boots had great traction.  Over the summer I frequently hiked the Y on Saturday mornings and kept up my running.  We did several family hikes. The second Saturday in September we hiked almost to Emerald Lake, about a nine-mile hike.  It was all good practice for me. Finally we decided to do it on the last Saturday in S