Happy to Call Happy Valley My Home

Provo's Mayor Curtis linked to an article about Provo on his own blog, and I am here to echo his thoughts.  Our family moved to Provo nine years and 13 days ago.  We've loved it here.  It's a good city and we have wonderful neighbors and friends here.

                              

Kent and I have recently noticed how delightful Provo's downtown is becoming.  I'll give a shout-out here to our dads who have each been influential in making this a great place to live.  Kent's dad, Steve White, was one of the Utah County Commissioners for several years, and played a big part in getting the County Convention Center, which just opened this summer.  My dad, Paul Glauser, is the director of Provo City's Redevelopment Agency, and has done a lot to revitalize the city's older neighbors and downtown.  Just a few weekends ago, Kent and I enjoyed a rooftop concert (following a tip from my dad), and it was great to see so many people out dining and walking the streets of our beautiful city.  My favorite part was the lack of drunk college students spilling their beer on me in the press to the stage.  It was just good ol' fun with good music.  I would even take my kids to these concerts.

It's nice to see someone else bragging about my kids' hometown, too.  Check out the article by Stephen C. Fehr who writes for The Pew Center and is former editor of the Washington Post.

Ch, ch, ch, Changes

Our lives, recently, have been full of changes.

#1  Hair

I cut mine.  Kent grew his--on his face.

#2  The House

A year after realizing that I really could get rid of the clutter, the bare walls, and the pink carpet of our master bedroom, the project is complete...almost--I still have some decor to change up a bit.

#3  Health

After taking most of the summer off, I'm getting back into exercising with the stake aerobics group.  This has given me positive energy; but it also complicated the sciatica I've had on and off for seven weeks now.  It's to the point that most mornings I can't stand up straight until I've done a few yoga poses.  I'm usually fine for the rest of the day, but it's not a fun start.  I also finally went in for a annual checkup--six years after my last one--and found out...(I'll come back to this one, just to build suspense.)


#4  Five Kids in School All Day

I thought that being a stay-at-home mom with no kids at home for seven hours of the day would open my life to free time.  I've looked forward to this day as a time that I could finally get organized, keep a clean house, and write a novel.  Instead, I follow the kids to school once a week to help out in their classrooms.  I also had job opportunities land in my lap this summer that have taken all my free time.  So my house is worse than it was with children at home, and I am buried under a pile of late paperwork.


#5  Work

At the end of August, one of my kids asked me, "So Mom, how many jobs do you have?"  Being forced to count them, I totaled up four part-time jobs: piano teacher, Volunteer Coordinator for A Child's Hope Foundation, bookkeeper for a friend's new company, and beta tester for a new cell phone service provider.

This is the phone I got to use for free for two months.  Kent says I don't have to use my brain anymore because this smartphone will remember everything for me.  He's right!  I love it!  It even reads my book club books to me.

#6  Spirituality

All these changes have brought a lot of stress into my life as the demands on my time ask more and more of me.  Subsequently, my spirit has suffered.  Our family devotionals and scripture study became too easy to skip.  My already-infrequent meditation exercises became a thing of the past.  And my personal prayers were rattled off in less than 60 seconds each evening.  As I evaluated my relationship with God each Sunday, I knew I was found lacking and that the Lord was just waiting on me to reinvest in our relationship.

I have stayed committed to my personal reading of the Book of Mormon.  My goal was to read the whole book this summer with my two oldest girls, and then treat them to lunch for a mom-and-daughter book club discussion.  None of us finished before school started, so we reset our lunch date for sometime during winter break.  This week I discovered that I can bring the scripture to the floor each morning as I stretch out the muscles around my sciatic nerve.  Two birds with one stone there, baby!

This morning, I felt to pray and had a relatively long one-way conversation with Heavenly Father.  I told Him that I felt like I was trying to do so much good for my family that it was killing me with stress.  I told Him that my efforts have changed from trying to keep everything in balance to just trying not to be pulled over the edge.  I told Him my desires to add household income to start eroding our mortgage, or at least keep up with rising gasoline and food prices; to stay involved with my children at school and have fun with them at home; to keep a clean house and a pantry full of food from the garden and up-to-date food storage; to have more time for my church callings.  I prayed for our country, that good, thoughtful, but busy people would at least take the time to see the choices we are facing this political season and that we not have our minds confused with political spinning.  I want our citizenry to be informed with truth when we vote so each of our votes reflects what we truly value.  My entire prayer was a plea for help with prioritizing the good things I am trying to do.

Today was one of those times that part of the answer came quickly, and in quite an unexpected way, which also introduces more changes:


#7  Work

I cleared my calendar and headed up to Draper this morning thinking I was going to a meeting to help my friend make some bookkeeping updates and discuss how he could streamline and better control his company's expenditures.  Instead, I found out I was being replaced.  My first thought was, "Now I might have time to put my household in order.  This is an answer to prayer."  I admit that my second and third thoughts were more along the lines of disappointment, anger at being rejected, and worry about our finances.  However, I can see that this change is for the better, both for his business that needs a full-time bookkeeper, and for me and my family.

Dropping the bookkeeping will also give me more time to work on my newest business: being a social services member for Solavei.  I've been impressed with the beta testing phase, and now that the company has launched nationwide, I'll be signing up anyone who wants $49 cell phone service with unlimited data, text, and voice with no contract to sign.  Yes, I'm advertising.  I will avoid writing about it again on my blog, but it will probably show up occasionally on Facebook.  This is a service I feel good about promoting, and this one-minute video explains why:

                       


#8  Health

...I found out that I'm still healthy and that I should be taking a calcium supplement.  Shout out to all you ladies in your mid-30s: add calcium to your daily regimen, and get a baseline bone density test and mammogram so your doctor can track that information as you age.

                                               


#9  The House

The master bedroom may be redone, but it is currently a storage area for everything that will go back in the playroom-soon-to-be-bedroom.  Look what we're doing!  (More pics to follow.)

#10  Our Hair

I had wanted short hair before I had white hair and had the same hairstyle as everyone else.  I guess I cut it just in time, because I've already pulled out three white hairs this month!  Kent changed his facial hair back to zero when it affected our kissing too much.  I liked how it looked, but two weeks' growth never got soft enough.


Isn't it funny how many changes bring us full circle in a spiral of improvement?  I find myself in high-stress phases of adulthood, but they are centered around good things that bring me joy.  And having joy is the whole point of life.

Stretch Marks

Don't worry, I'm not including a photo of my stretch marks.  I figure no photo is better than any photo of that.

Last week I went to a Mother's Blessing for my friend Mindy, who is ready to birth her twins any day now.  In case you've never heard of a Mother's Blessing (I hadn't), it's similar to a baby shower, but for the mom.  And instead of cute games and gifts, the guests bring poems or thoughts about pregnancy/labor/motherhood and symbolic beads or charms to add to a bracelet for the mother-to-be.  In many ways, it was a spiritual event where we friends encouraged Mindy and each other in the journey of motherhood.

Luckily for me, another friend of mine, Charlotte, had posted some thoughts on her blog earlier this month that I felt were helpful for a mom-to-be as well as moms-in-action.  I read her thoughts at the Mother's Blessing.  I won't copy her entire post here, but I highly recommend that you read it at this link; it provides some context for the rest of my post.

I've spent much of this summer feeling like I'm being pulled in too many directions.  Just as my preggo friend has worried about losing herself to the twins' schedule and her body to their growth, I've wondered if I'm losing myself as I serve my family.  Charlotte described perfectly what I've been feeling about my own self stretching to meet the demands of back-to-school children and a husband who takes on too many projects and who is married to a wife (me) who takes on too many projects plus one.  Will the essence of "me" be swallowed up in being a wife and mother?

This paragraph from "Memories for Later" (emphasis added) touched my heart and brought tears to my eyes:

"I think my poor little soul might be getting some stretch marks.  I can't possibly fit in anything else, and yet more comes and I stretch a little more to hold it.  But the marks are showing and my resolve threatens to rip wide open.  I know I will never be quite the same.  But when I worry about what will be left of me, I try to remember that what now appears too much will eventually be a faded memory.  I will be left with the proud marks of a mother who's paid her price.

And maybe those marks will sparkle silver someday.  It seems to do so in the older mothers I admire."

 #s 1 and 2 off to catch the bus to high school.  Only four more years.  Yikes!

Taking the long view helps, because, like the end of pregnancy, I can practically count down the months I have left with my precious children before they leave the safety of my home to grow as young adults.  That day is coming too soon.  Motherhood will never leave me quite the same as when I began, and I look forward to that!  Raising children has forced me to change for the better.  And when I have graduated from the school of raising children and my silver hair matches my silvery stretch marks, I will have many years to develop my individual interests again.  The me at that point will be more interesting for the stretch marks I'm adding to my soul now.

The First 2 1/2 Hours

Now I know how neurotic I am.

I spent the first 90 minutes of school vacation zonking out with no alarm set, which was well deserved because I woke up at 3:45 a.m. today...for no apparent reason.

After 90 minutes, I bolted awake to a sitting position with my heart racing!  "There must be someone I should be picking up or dropping off, or somewhere I'm supposed to be, or something I'm supposed to be doing!" I thought.  With heart still racing and hands shaking, I double checked my new exterior brain--the calendar on my Smartphone--and no, there was nothing until #3's ortho appointment, for which I had set a reminder.

After a few deep breaths, I was comatose again for the next 60 minutes, during which time I caught up on all the dreams I had missed at 4:00 a.m., and which I will not bother to bore you with.

Clearly, I can't trust myself when I give myself the day--or just five hours--off.  I need a real vacation.

14 Years in the Making

This day has finally arrived!  

We've had a faltering start to school this year.  It's been so busy around here that I even only managed to capture a back-to-school photo of one of my children.  (Actually it was a back-home-from-the-first-day-of-school photo.  Note the dirt on her tights.  She must have had fun on the playground.)  Isn't #4 sweet?

Back to the point: school vacation has started!  You read that right.  Summer vacation is for the kids.  School vacation is for me!  The three youngest started school one week ago.  On the fourth day of school, my fifth grader threatened my school vacation plans by staying home sick.  Yesterday the two oldest went to a half-day orientation to high school while my niece and I worked on her scrapbook.  But today is the day!  The house is quiet and will remain so for six more hours.  School vacation is IN!

For the past couple of years, I've looked forward to August 2012 when I would start putting the house in order, catching up our financial records, and maybe even stay on top of a part-time job or two.  Now that the day has arrived, am I going to tackle the piles of canning dishes I created two days ago?  Sort the stacks of hand-me-downs that have accumulated?  File some receipts or argue with the health insurance until they cover our doctor check-ups?  All of those are so tempting.  But no.  I am celebrating this momentous day of having all five children in school all day by taking a nap and reading a book.

Oh yeah.  I still have to check my fifth grader out for an orthodontist appointment, teach two piano lessons, and make dinner for a new mom.  But at least I have a few hours of me time for the first time in a long time!

Plastic, please

Yes, I usually ask for plastic bags at the grocery store so I can recycle them and imagine them turning into a lovely park bench.  But that's not what I'm talking about here.

Last September, Kent won a cake stand and other cake accessories at a Corporate Alliance auction.  It was all so cute that I immediately hid the stand, forks, and candles in an almost-never-touched cupboard in our furnace room.  You see, nice things don't last long in our household.

For example, I was hesitant a few years ago when my parents offered to go in on the cost of some new couches for us.  They thought the faded, stained leather sectional with the baggy cushions and unraveling stitching needed to be replaced.  I agreed; but I feared for the new furniture.  Would it be able to withstand my children's childhoods without also quickly becoming faded, stained, and worn out before its time?  I didn't think so.  I was right.  (But it's still nice to have comfortable couches, and the microfiber does withstand the stains better.)

Today I hosted a birthday lunch for a friend of mine.  (Happy 30-something Diana!)  I used the gift card that also came in the auction to buy a darling cake, and decided the cake accessories should make an appearance.  The children would be gone, so the glass cake stand had a higher chance of survival.

It's just too bad that I put it "away" in the kitchen instead of the furnace room.  The kids came home.

I handled #2's unsolicited confession quite well.  Probably because I knew the stand was doomed the moment I brought it home eleven months ago.

The icing on the cake, so to speak, was #1's accident while moving dishes into the sink an hour later.

Notice the missing spout.  This pitcher is was the only nice beverage container I own(ed).  I loved it's simple yet elegant lines.  It lasted 19.5 months because I kept it hidden in another out-of-reach cupboard.  It now resides in the garbage can.

So much for nice stuff...for now.  The reason for this post is not to complain--after all, I'm thankful to have kids around, even if they ruin my stuff--but rather, to make a record for future use.  In the next decade,  when #1 and #2 are opening their wedding gifts, I'll just confiscate everything glass.  This way they won't even have to think about taking care of nice things while also taking care of their future children.  It's for their own good, as well as the good of my future grandchildren.

And when you get a wedding announcement from one of my kids--many years in the future--just remember that "they" want a cake stand and a pitcher.  I'll even send you a thank you card.  Oh, and you can wrap something from Tupperware for them, too.

Humans Amaze Me