Here Comes Santa Claus

We have held season tickets to the family series offered by Utah Symphony for a few years now. Except for Malia, the kids have kind of outgrown that particular set of performances, but Malia still enjoys it. In particular, she looks forward to the Christmas symphony each year because she gets to visit with Santa. This year she even opted to come late to the girls only craft day we had planned with my mom, sisters, and nieces. It made for a busy day for her, but she had a great time!

Sweet Success

I used to make caramels every year at Christmas time. It was one of my baking/confectionary traditions. And then Matthew came along. With my determination to never make him feel deprived at home (knowing he would be left out foodwise everywhere beyond our door), I gave up the caramels. I mean, how do you make buttery, creamy caramels for a kid that is allergic to milk? So they became a thing of the past. By the time Matthew did his food challenge for coconut and passed with flying colors, caramels were no longer on the brain. But with coconut milk added to his safe food list, a whole variety of banned foods became an option. Coconut milk can substitute for milk, whipped cream, sweetened condensed milk, etc and makes amazing ice cream. We ran with it and quickly discovered that I needed to keep a stock of coconut milk in the house.

A few weeks ago, my relief society had a Christmas taster’s table for our midweek activity. Everyone brought a sampling of their favorite Christmas treat to share and had a copy of the recipe on hand so we could take pictures of those we liked. One of my fellow RS presidency members shared her recipe for microwave caramels. They were delicious and the cooking method was much simpler than the labor-intensive traditional caramel making method. And instead of traditional heavy cream, it called for a can of sweetened condensed milk. And thus, an idea was born. It made me think about making Matthew friendly caramels because sweetened condensed coconut milk is extremely easy to make. And guess what? The dairy free caramels look and taste just like their allergenic counterparts. Matthew has already laid claim (with my complete support) to the majority of the batch. First taste of caramel=success.

Give Thanks

Thanksgiving was this past week and as usual, it was kind of a whirlwind of family gatherings. We made pie on Wednesday. As usual, it was a lot of pie, although there were definitely fewer pies than we’ve made in some years.  Unfortunately, Malia came home from school sick on Tuesday, so she was not able to join us at my folks’ house. By that evening she was feeling much better though, so we were able to make her delicious raspberry pie at home. I love when food looks just as good as it tastes!

Thursday was Thanksgiving dinner, again at my parents’ house, and yesterday was the annual Thanksgiving gathering with Kevin’s family. That event was a bit smaller this year as one nephew’s wife was busy bringing a new baby into the world. How blessed we are to have such wonderful families! I never stop being grateful for my family and Kevin’s and in particular, I’m go glad for the positive relationships I have with all of them. I know many people who don’t get along with their siblings and it makes me so grateful that as adults, my siblings and I actually like each other, enjoy spending time together, and make that time a priority in our lives.

My little crew and I have spent the entire month putting leaves on a gratitude tree and I have really enjoyed taking the time to stop and think about just how many wonderful things for which I’m grateful. We used some gratitude question cards to help us think outside the box and as such, I found myself pondering things like what smell and what color I’m grateful for. I think my favorite thing about this year’s focus on gratitude is that Malia wants to keep things going. Due to crazy schedules, we had a few days when we didn’t choose a card and add leaves to our tree, and she wants to finish working through the cards.

As we move into the Christmas season, I hope that my family and I can continue to focus of things that we are thankful for, because we have been greatly blessed. We live an abundant life in so many ways. We are blessed with a multitude of tender mercies each and every day. Not the least of these is the wonderful gift our Savior has given us. He is not just the reason for the season, but the reason for everything. As December begins, hopefully I can help my family focus on the most important part of the holiday just as we were able to do for Thanksgiving.

Safety

There are many common elements in prayers, ones that everyone seems to say without thinking about them. One of those is safety. It came up in a lesson in church once. Someone made a comment about how everyone always asks that we will get home from church safely and really, what was going to happen between the church and your house one block away? We are taught not to pray with rote, repetitious phrases, but I often find myself praying for the same blessings in heartfelt, sincere ways. Safety is one of those. In my mind, I disagreed with that comment made in church because many things can, and do, go wrong in just such a short distance. In my life, I have had multiple occasions where I needed, and was blessed with, safety in the course of my normal travels, whether short or long.

When I was freshman at BYU, I was living with my Aunt Geneal and Uncle Deverl in Orem. I was driving a little old Honda and it was a persnickety thing. When it decided to act up, it went home so my parents could get it fixed and I generally drove my mom’s station wagon on those weeks. The brakes on the station wagon were a lot touchier than those on the Honda, so try as I might, I always ended up jerking to a halt rather than slowing down nicely. I happened to be driving that station wagon one day in mid-winter when things were extremely icy, and the roads were treacherous. At that point in time, BYU owned twenty snowplows, but Provo city only owned three. That meant the campus roads were kept pretty snow free, but off campus was another story. One morning I was headed to campus. I was driving cautiously, knowing that I was on a stretch of road that was always particularly icy. As I traveled down the road, I felt the car begin to slide. I slowly depressed the breaks, but since the brakes were super touchy and there was no such thing as antilock brakes in those days, the brakes locked and suddenly I was sliding down the road. The car turned completely around as I slid and in the rearview mirror, I could see that I was headed directly for a UPS truck that was parked by the side of the road. I knew things were completely out of my control at that point, so I just sat there and waited for the impact. But the impact never came. One second I was sliding, and the next, the car had stopped. When I say stopped, I don’t mean it slowed down and gradually came to a stop. I mean that one second I was sliding and the next the car was at a complete standstill. There was literally only about a foot between me and that UPS truck. With my heart pounding, I realized that my morning prayer for safety had been answered. I have no doubt in my mind that without a little divine help, I would have hit that truck.

A few years later, the Honda was long gone, and I was driving a dependable Subaru wagon. Its only caveats were its tendency to overheat in very hot weather and the fact that it was an oil guzzler. Other than that, it was a great vehicle. One Sunday evening, I was headed back to my apartment after eating dinner at my parents’ house. Just as I was approaching the point of the mountain, my car lost power and I quickly steered to the shoulder where the car stopped and would not start again. It was just getting dark, I was wearing a black dress, and I was quite a long way from both the exit behind me and the one in front. So I sat in my car, said a prayer for safety, and then got out and started walking. I had only gone about a car’s length when another car pulled over. Now in general, that’s not a great situation to be in, right? It’s getting dark, a young girl is alone on the freeway, a stranger sees her and pulls over. Sounds like a great situation for a kidnapping or something, right? But despite all my knowledge about how not to become a victim of a heinous crime, I knew absolutely without a doubt that I could trust the people in that car and so I got in. The Spirit told me I could trust them, and I believed. Back in those days, cell phones were a rarity and the ones that did exist were the size, shape and weight of a brick. What are the odds that the couple who pulled over would have one? And that the man would be a BYU employee? And that despite their hard rule never to pick up strangers by the side of the road, when they saw me, they knew that they were supposed to stop and help me? When you factor in the Lord’s tender mercies, it all makes sense. They called my dad and he must have broken every speed limit between home and my location because he made it there in record time. After conversing with my helpers, my Dad felt safe letting them give me a ride back to Provo. Seriously. Once again, a prayer for safety had been answered.

About a year after we moved to our current home, I was still attending book club in my old ward. I had good friends there and didn’t really feel connected in our new ward yet, so I looked forward to that once a month gathering with my cronies. On one book club day, I spent the entire day feeling like I should not go to book club that night. I didn’t know why because I’d read the book and was really looking forward to going. It just didn’t seem to make sense. I argued with that feeling all day, rationalizing that I really wanted to go and just couldn’t see any reason not to. But by the time dinner rolled around, I finally conceded the battle and decided to stay home. By bedtime, I actually found myself feeling very glad I had not gone, although I still didn’t know why. The next day, I saw on the news that there had been one particular stretch of road that had become dangerously coated with black ice in spite of the clear weather and dry roads surrounding it. In between 9 p.m. and midnight, there were six car crashes in that one spot. On book club nights, I would drive that exact stretch of road between 9 and 10 p.m. Although I have no way of knowing exactly what would have happened had I gone to book club, I know for a fact that I would have been in a dangerous situation at exactly the wrong time. I can’t express how humbled and grateful I was that the Lord would keep me safe, even when I tried to deny the impression I received.

We had another one of those experiences yesterday. This time it was Nathan’s experience, but it supports my own experiences concerning praying for safety and having a prayer answered. Although he often lingers after school, yesterday Nathan was headed straight home so he would have time to get some homework done before his call time for the school musical. As he hit the foyer of the high school on his way to the parking lot, he suddenly had a thought that he needed to go back to the choir room. He said it was a strange thought because he knew he didn’t need to go there, but he listened and went anyway. Before he ever got back to the choir room, his phone rang, and a friend told him that his car had been hit in the school parking lot. The accident ended up damaging six cars, Nathan’s being one of four parked cars involved. Three cars were totaled and while our little Aveo ended up having only bumper damage, the impact was hard enough that it was moved completely out of its parking space. As Nathan looked at the timeline of the accident, his return to the choir room and the phone call, he realized that if he had not gone back, he would have been in the parking lot, walking to or getting into his car at the time it was hit. And had he been in the vicinity but not yet in the car, he most definitely would have been in harm’s way. He believes, and I concur, that he was the recipient of some divine inspiration.

With all these experiences resonating in my heart and mind, if I don’t pray for the safety of my family and myself every day, I spend the day weighed down by an impending sense of doom. And so I pray for the same thing every single day, but I do it with sincerity and the knowledge that the Lord has heard my prayers and blessed me and my family on multiple locations. And I have an immense sense of gratitude for those occasions when my prayers have been answered and I have seen his hand in my life. I know that those prayers will not change the outcome should the Lord deem otherwise, but I trust him. I know that he hears me, and I know that he answers. And I know that my repetitions are not vain, but sincere.

They Definitely Don’t Get This from Me

I am not a great artist. In fact, the only kind of drawings that I ever did well were perspective drawings of buildings and fences because that is all done with a ruler. I’m bad enough that when I was teaching elementary school, my students would make fun of me. It was all in jest because I was not offended at all, but still, it’s pretty sad. On the other hand, my children have a good deal of artistic skill. Nathan used to love to draw and took several semesters of art classes in middle school and really enjoyed them. Malia loves to draw and seems to have a good eye for detail. And Matthew has brought home several projects that I think are fantastic. In 5th grade he did a chalk drawing of some toucans that I like so much that we framed it and have it hanging on the wall.

This morning he happened to find a sketch that he did sometime during sixth grade. He is very proud of it, as well he should be. Unlike me, the kid can definitely draw more than a stick figure.

Daniel is really the only one of my kids who didn’t really enjoy drawing, but he can take a 3 foot square piece of paper and fold it into a dragon that has scales and individual claws, so I don’t think that he really needs a writing implement in his hand to create art. 😉

Second Sadie’s of the Season

One of the perks of going to a new school this year is that Nathan has friends, and lady acquaintances, in two high schools. That means double the school dances. Nathan’s second Sadie’s for this month was on Saturday and while it was at his previous school (which we are all glad he is no longer attending), it actually ended up being much more fun due to an extreme lack of drama. And besides, what’s not fun about getting to dress up as Sully from Monster’s Inc.? 😊

Healthy vs. Harmful

When I got up on Wednesday morning, the water coming out of the faucet smelled like bleach. With further investigation, Nathan and I discovered that not only did it smell wrong, it tasted funky as well. And the load of laundry that I started first thing that morning came out smelling like I’d washed them by dunking them in the community swimming pool for a few hours. It was not pleasant. A call to the water department let us know that we were not the only ones who had noticed a problem and that they were working to figure out what was going on. Later that afternoon, we were informed that a flow meter in the city water system had malfunctioned and was injecting chlorine into the system when no water was being added. This led to a higher than normal chlorine level in the water. It was technically still safe (below 4.0 is considered safe and testing in the city ranged from 0.7-3.1), but although my brain knew that, the taste and smell invoked a deep gut instinct that the water simply could not be good for us.

All this had made me think about how things that are good can become harmful and at what point they do so. Chlorine is added to the water to disinfect it and to prevent bacteria and such from contaminating the water supply, but obviously there is a point when it becomes a hazard. And there are many things in life that are the same way. Food, for instance, is a similar two-edged sword. Obviously too many cookies are not great for us, but even something wonderfully healthy, like broccoli, can become harmful if it is all you eat. Sleep is needful and getting enough leads to health and happiness, but too much can leave us feeling groggy and eat away at our productive hours. And the internet is an amazing tool which can easily become harmful in a myriad of ways.

So how do we find balance? I believe the answer to that lies in the gospel. As saints, we are counseled to exercise moderation in all things. Of course, when I say that the first thing that comes to mind is probably the word of wisdom, but the principle of moderation applies in all areas of our lives. In the October 2014 General Conference, Quentin L. Cooke talked about the choices we make every day:

"My concern is not only about the big tipping-point decisions but also the middle ground—the workaday world and seemingly ordinary decisions where we spend most of our time. In these
areas, we need to emphasize moderation, balance, and especially wisdom. It is important to rise above rationalizations and make the best choices.

A wonderful example of the need for moderation, balance, and wisdom is the use of the Internet. It can be used to do missionary outreach, to assist with priesthood responsibilities, to find precious ancestors for sacred temple ordinances, and much more. The potential for good is enormous. We also know that it can transmit much that is evil, including pornography, digital cruelty, and anonymous yakking. It can also perpetuate foolishness. As Brother Randall L. Ridd poignantly taught at the last general conference, speaking of the Internet, 'You can get caught up in endless loops of triviality that waste your time and degrade your potential.' "

So how do we find moderation, balance, and wisdom in the decisions we make? Elder Cook gives us several nuggets of wisdom to help us.

"I believe it is of particular importance in our day, when Satan is raging in the hearts of men in so many new and subtle ways, that our choices and decisions be made carefully, consistent with the goals and objectives by which we profess to live. We need unequivocal commitment to the commandments and strict adherence to sacred covenants."

So obedience to the commandments and keeping the covenants we have made. Seems pretty simple, right? Of course, we all know that it isn’t always quite as easy as that. For many years, one of my yardsticks has been “Good, Better, Best," a talk Dallin H. Oakes gave in October 2007. As I move through my days, I try to consider into which category an activity will fall. And when I have a project I really want to work on and I don’t get to it because something else was higher up on the to-do list, I frequently remind myself that I chose the better or best, not just the good. (Seriously, when I’m alone in the house I’ll find myself muttering out loud, “Good, better, best, right?”) And I rely on the Spirit to help me make those choices. I pray for guidance, pray that I will be able to spend my time wisely and when I have a day when I squander a bit too much time browsing Pinterest, I try to acknowledge my lack of moderation for that day and do better the next. For me, this approach leads to more days when I feel like my time was well spent, when I accomplished what was needful, when my family was well cared for and my spirit was nourished. It leads to greater joy and fulfillment in my day to day life.

Going back to the chlorine, my nose and my tongue were my warning signs that something was not right. I could have ignored it, but it may have led to some unpleasant consequences. As we try to find moderation in the many different aspects of our lives, the Spirit is our warning sign when we are headed into dangerous territory. We can choose to ignore it, but the eternal consequences can be devastating. Once the faulty flow meter was repaired, flushing the city water system and flushing our own pipes returned the chlorine levels to normal. When our personal balance is off, repentance plays the role of flushing the pipes to restore balance. So here’s the challenge-find your yardstick, heed the warning signs, and find the balance between what is healthy vs. what is harmful. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but with the Lord’s help, it is completely within our grasp.

Just Keep Breathing

As most adults well know, high school is the epitome of social drama. Nathan, who is viewed as a highly dateable boy (he’s tall, cute, talented and nice-seriously swoon inducing for the normal sixteen-year-old girl), is learning this, much to his dismay. Yesterday was Sadie’s at his high school and there was a good deal of drama involved in the occurrence of events. He came home shaking his head and wondering why high school has to be so completely soap opera worthy. Seriously, he is just completely flummoxed about the whole thing. He is very reasonable, well grounded and in many ways very mature for sixteen, so he just doesn’t get it. And all I can tell him is that teenage girls just think that way. Everything is either the best thing that has ever happened in their whole existence or is the end of the world as we know it. He’s just not lucky enough to be as oblivious as most teenage boys.

The day date portion of the event was his favorite part. Their dance group divided in two for the day date, so most of the drama occurred after they met back up. Nathan’s small group ate lunch at Chick-fil-a and then sat and talked for a couple hours. They went to a mini corn maze designed for little kids and had a blast. And when recombining with the remainder of the group led to the first infusion of drama (and the missing of the official date photos), they went to Harmons for their photoshoot. And honestly, I think they turned out great. I mean, Dory, Nemo, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Patrick Star posing in front of the seafood department is just funny!

The whole group did come back together for dinner, but all those bright smiling faces were hiding some powerful social drama and Nathan was glad when it was all over. For better or for worse, he has another Sadie’s event coming up this Saturday. He has been invited to the same dance at his old high school and he is already concerned about all the drama that event may hold.