An attitude of gratitude

"This is a wonderful time to be living here on earth. Our opportunities are limitless. While there are some things wrong in the world today, there are many things right, such as teachers who teach, ministers who minister, marriages that make it, parents who sacrifice, and friends who help."We can lift ourselves, and others as well, when we refuse to remain in the realm of negative thought and cultivate within our hearts an attitude of gratitude. If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues" (Thomas S. Monson, "An Attitude of Gratitude," Ensign, May 1992, 54).

Whenever I go to the grocery store lately, I always end up going to the commissary on a Saturday after payday, and dearly regretting it. I mumble and grumble to myself about how it is not enjoyable to have to fight my way through the aisles, most of the time finding it easier to abandon cart a few times to go snag something down the aisle. Then I start to feel a little guilty for being grumpy about it. Here we are, blessed with a commissary with way better prices than I can find anywhere else, not to mention blessed with a grocery store...period. It seems like every time I pile our cart high with food, I start to marvel and wonder about how lucky we are to just go to the store and buy whatever we want when years ago people had to make their own butter and soap and milk the cows, and grow their own food, and trade for things they couldn't produce on their own. And washing their laundry by hand (I spent a huge chunk of my time doing laundry even with machines!) I think about how busy I feel like I am all the time and wonder what it is that makes me so busy.

Anyway, as my sister Tara has been here visiting this past week, I have had many more chances to marvel and feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the day we live in and the blessings and technology that God has given us. As we were in Washington DC and got to read and ponder more on the beginnings of our country, and think about the sacrifices people made to bring us where we are today (not to mention the amazing people who were inspired by God and led to do such great things), the history of slavery and the long way we have come, and even in the Natural History Museum marveling over all of the creative and amazing creatures God has created and the beautiful and intricate world that we live in. Then as we visited Jamestown settlement and saw more of the way people lived (average lifespan of 40 years), the Victory center in Yorktown to see how people lived in times of war--which brought up more ponderings about the frailties and imperfection of men that always lead us to war with one another. That cycle that you always see repeating in the Book of Mormon.

I don't know my point exactly, I am just feeling very grateful for all of the great men and women who came and went before us, and for the progression of man and for the opportunities and blessings we have in this generation. I'm grateful to see God's hand in everything and to feel of that great love that He has for His children. I hope I can keep my focus in the right place and do all I can to serve Him and show my gratitude in some small way.

We love visitors!

Well, I just took Tara to the airport this morning. She is our first official (and unofficial) visitor in Virginia, and we had so much fun with her. The time went much too quickly--probably because we were trying to squeeze in as many cool and fun things as possible for being here for just 9 days. Tara got here last Tuesday night, and we had a day to get ready before heading up to DC for 3 days. I'll do a separate post with lots of pictures for that and the others places we visited when we got back home. We finally got to see Jamestown Settlement and the Yorktown Victory Center. And we took her to the Living Museum and went to see the Atlantic coast from Virginia Beach. We all are wishing Tara could stay much longer, and are hoping for more visitors soon. Any takers? More to follow with pictures of our fun adventures....

Parties every day...

Kaden's new past time seems to be celebrating my birthday. I think I have had a birthday every day now for the past 4 days. I think I'd like to cut my birthdays back about now to once every 5 years instead. He had had so much fun, though. He gets a blanket, then a book, and then builds a birthday cake of blocks, or a few of them. Then he wraps toys in baby blankets and hides them around the house for me and makes a treasure map to go with it. It's very cute. I should have taken pictures the first time because that time was amazing but these pictures show the jist of it...

Snow Day in Virginia

Okay so the truth is that this is actually the day after snow fell in Virginia, which is why Noah is not there. He was back in school. I didn't even take them out to play in it the first day! I was so cold and they weren't that excited, and I figured we got our snow fix in Idaho in January, right? But after seeing all the fun people had around here and the excitement it generated, I got feeling very guilty and pulled out all the snow year the next day. Don't know that Kaden should be playing with that...I just now noticed that...

Our new favorite place to visit--Urgent Care...

Seriously, I am so anti-urgent care. It's a place to go and wait for hours amongst many sick and germy people, and then be seen by a Dr who may be great but it seems most often is rushed and NOT a pediatric doctor, and I always doubt them. If at all possible I always try to get my kids seen by the pediatrician if they really need something. Mean, I know. But it does seem like we almost always end up going the doctor on a Friday, when I just don't know how much worse they might be the next day and certainly don't want to take them to urgent care. Well I guess I changed my tune and officially made it our favorite hang-out. THREE times in one week. Micah had a fever last Friday night and got sicker throughout the weekend. I actually held off until Monday, but when I called on Monday morning, Pediatrics didn't have any available appointments and said to take him to urgent care. Trav happened to be home sick with the flu, so I figured this was the best day engage in such a pleasant adventure, when I didn't have to haul the entire happy and joyful gang. So we went and spent 4 hours of time wishing I could be accomplishing great things, for the doctor to look in his ears and say he had an ear infection and gave us antibiotics for him. I must say, that after a couple of days of the grumps, it was a great relief to see his big smile return and remind us of how fun he is.

So then, again on a Friday night, this time during the night (like 2 a.m.)--Noah came down and told me his ear was hurting badly. So I hugged him for awhile and gave him some motrin with a glass of milk and sent him to bed, thinking "great". Noah has had so many infections, that by the time he complains like that, the eardrum is about of perforate, which makes him feel much better, but then....well, he has a perforated eardrum with yucky stuff draining from it and I feel horrible. So sure thing the next morning, that's what happened and Noah and I (and Micah)went to urgent care to get it looked at. The doctor prescribed eardrops this time. I was a horrible mom and not a good advocated for my own son, because the doctor looked at the obvious problem, and didn't even check his other ear or his throat or lungs. And I totally almost said "Can you maybe check everything else, too?"--but didn't. What's up with that? To further make my faults be known, I picked up his eardrops and later went to give them to Noah, and couldn't find them anywhere. I looked for a couple of hours, scouring the house, called Krogers, and later went to Krogers myself to look and it was nowhere.

I called urgent care to check out my options and they said Tricare would only fill a prescription once, and if they gave me another I would have to pay out of pocket. Or the other option was to have the doctor put in the Rx to the pharmacy on base and pick it up on Monday. Since the small tube of medicine cost a whopping $145 (at the time I didn't know it was THAT much), I opted for the base pharmacy on Monday. Then last night at 2 am, Noah came down and said now his other ear was hurting. And by this morning his left membrane also perforated! The poor child. So I called again to see what they thought, and they did end up writing another prescription. So while the rest of the family got to go to church and be spiritually uplifted--Noah, Micah and I went to get the prescription and talk to the nurse there (why don't they just let you talk to the doctor? they walk 2 feet to ask him questions and relay them on the phone and it would be so much better to talk to him myself!)> Then went to Krogers and she looked up the out of pocket cost, then said she would try it and if (or when) it didn't go through, she would call and explain that one bottle got lost and that now his other ear was also infected. By some miracle, it went through, and she didn't even have to call. Not that anyone really wants to know this whole long story, but tomorrow I am just going to take him in the the Pediatric clinic anyway and get on a real plan...He actually has seen an ENT on base here and they are scheduling him to get another set of tubes one of these days--possibly as late as May. Sheesh. In the mean time, 90% of the time we have to speak very loudly for the child to even hear us, and he sits in the front row at school, but still just watches and follows some of the time. He thinks he hears most of it, though. Hmm. It's a good thing he doesn't struggle in school to start with.

Greener Eating

Here is a site for anyone to check out who is interested in eating healthier. My friend Marian and her Mom and sisters are the most healthy people I know and have inspired me (very slowly but surely) to change my eating habits a bit at a time over the past few years. Some people are able to just be healthy but for me it has come a bit at a time, using a little more wheat and spinach, substituting applesauce for oil, and starting to experiment with the healthy recipes I get from awesome people (namely Marian--thanks!). Even if you never plan on being "Vegan" (no animals products or dairy), these are super healthy and super yummy recipes (including desserts) that you can work into your own menus. Anyway, I was super excited that they started this blog, because I have been for some reason in a slump the past couple of weeks and started to eat really bad things in place of some really good things. Now I am remotivated and excited to try out a bunch of these. There are a few that we already have and LOVE.

Funny Faces

Here is the face Micah makes when I try to feed him something he doesn't think he will want. Pure torture and face squishing. Sometimes after the first bite, he changes his mind, and other times, he gets more adamant. He is eating more of a variety since he's been able to not choke on some of the big kid food, though. How would it be to always have someone deciding what you are going to eat and not knowing what is going in your mouth next? I can understand his pain, yet the baby food is kind of nice because you can get more in their little tummies faster and with less mess. . .