Mama's Hips

I've been struggling with Half Pigeon pose in my yoga practice all summer. I've probably struggled with tight hips long before June, but I didn't notice it so much until I began yoga with the fabulous Beth Williams. She is building her new yoga business, Geneva Yoga, and I was lucky enough to join a free weekly class. Beth explains how to get into the various poses really well, and now that I'm setting up Half Pigeon correctly, I'm discovering a lot of tension that I didn't know I had. I find that as I lay over my left leg, trying to sink into my right hip, each breath brings a spasm to the muscle. This isn't my chakra vibration manifesting; rather, I think it's my hip fighting to keep holding the emotion it's been storing there for years.

Photo from nancynelsonyoga.com

Our bodies reveal a lot of what is going on in our hearts and minds. I haven't studied body language in depth, but I've learned that emotions and burdens show up in our muscles and how we carry ourselves. Like many moms, I carry my world on my shoulders, and my muscles become tense in response. Sometimes my shoulders sag under the weight, and then I'll remember to straighten up and bear it with strength. My shoulder blades will take on some of that burden, which eventually settles in the hips. Our hips are where we carry our emotional junk. It is the body's way of trying to protect us, by holding those emotions for us. (If body language fascinates you, you might enjoy this blog post about muscle tension and this one about tight hips.)

"Woman Carrying the World on Her Shoulder" by John Labbe
www.gettyimages.ae

For the first decade of motherhood, I carried my five babies on my hip. Yoga is revealing that, at least emotionally, I haven't put those children down on their own two feet. 

Four years ago, we began teaching our children about managing money. We dropped the bomb on them that they are expected to move out by September 1 after they turn 18. The 16-year-old in the family always finds this prospect  exciting! From inside the walls of our home--where they don't have to think about bills, and groceries magically fill the shelves each week--they envision their own stylish apartment where the chore list and curfew are nonexistent. Subconsciously, they also correctly understand that we, Mom and Dad, trust our children to be smart and to make good decisions. We want them to know that the wide, unknown world is theirs to explore and conquer.

As the high school years fall away, however, the realities of adulting rush in. Two years ago, Kassidy chose a somewhat easy transition, as her path went on to college paid by scholarship and subsidized honors student housing. Madelyn has taken a more difficult, but still admirable, start to adulthood. Her choice is to work full-time until she can serve an LDS mission. The jobs that are available for her young age and lack of experience don't pay a lot, so even when her budget is managed wisely, it will be stretched to its limits. Add the complication of finding affordable housing in a town with two universities and lots of competition for good housing, and you may understand why I worry over her. That worry sits heavy on my maternal hips.

My head knows that moving into their own place is a necessary step in my children's adult journey. Yet, as I push them out of our nest, my heart empathizes with their struggles. I doubt there has ever been a baby bird that thanked its parents as it fell toward the ground, trying to spread its wings. Instead, parents often become the receiving end of complaint and blame for being the source of their children's struggle. As I watch my babies in that unresolved space falling toward earth, hoping and praying that they fly rather than splat, my instinct is to swoop in and carry them to safety. With that internal conflict, my hips come to the rescue, trying to support and protect me from the pain and uncertainty of being a parent.

My prayers of late have earnestly asked that Madelyn will find a good living situation for the next 12 months. I prayed that she finds a clean apartment she can afford so the rent doesn't break her. I prayed that she finds a place with roommates close to her own age who will be supportive friends. I add in that maybe they could also be poor so they don't encourage her to blow her budget. And perhaps her new place could have a pool or a gym so she can stick with her workout goals. Most importantly, I prayed that she could stay on track with her goals to save and prepare for her mission.

One morning as I offered up these requests, I got an answer.

"I've got this."

And I remembered: her Heavenly Father knows her better and loves her...even more than I do. He's watched over billions of His children, helping them to progress. He's watching over her, too. He knows better than I which people and experiences will best help her continue to grow.

So my prayers in recent days have changed. I simply ask that she will know the right place to live when she finds it. I add in hope that she will recognize God's hand in the process. For myself, I ask that I will have courage to refrain from giving her all the answers. My role is to stop searching online housing listings for her. I don't need to go to every apartment tour with her. She's seen me ask about rental deposits and application processes. Now I need to pull back and trust that she can ask the right questions for herself.

In this morning's yoga practice, as I rested my forehead on the ground, seeking to open my hips, I found myself silently crying. Beth guided us to thank our hips for working so hard to care for us. As we breathed deeply into the pose, she encouraged us to give our hips permission to let go of the burdens they were carrying. For the first time in months, my hips stopped shaking and I melted toward Mother Earth, tears of gratitude and relief washing through me and carrying those emotions away.

Photo from www.melissawest.com

Just as years ago I had to set down my baby to let her learn to toddle...just as I am watching her take her first steps into adulthood now, her Heavenly Parents--and mine--are watching all of us walk through this life. They support and guide us, Their children, along our difficult paths. They know when to carry us and when to let us toddle along, because those steps we are taking are for our growth.

But Who's Counting?

Two weeks ago, Kent and I began the X3 12-Week Program. The program is centered around a relatively new type of resistance-training equipment known as the X3 Bar. Each week comes with a set of videos that teach us to improve our form on eight basic exercises plus one thing to improve about our nutrition habits each week. Kent has done so much research about sugar, supplementing, fasting, etc., that we've so far learned nothing new about the eating side of the program. Because we already have pretty good habits in place there, we're hoping to see some serious gains in muscle weight over the next few months. The workout itself is surprisingly difficult. It takes about ten minutes each day, and I finish with exhausted and shaky muscles! (If you're in the market for a quick strength-training system that takes very little storage space, feel free to come try ours out.)

Because X3 is confident in its customers getting into great shape when they follow the prescribed routines, I decided to track my progress. Each week, I measure my weight and waist size. I'm already pretty happy with the way my body looks, so I'm mostly interested to see weight gain as a representation of building muscle. Last week, my scale said I weighed 132 lbs. That was a little lighter than I usually see, but I was measuring after a day of fasting and before eating breakfast. I figured it was probably right. Today, the scale said 142 lbs. What? Ten pounds gained in a week? Even accounting for my normal weight range, that's six to eight pounds of gain. That has to be impossible, right? I called #3 in to check her weight. She has been participating in a research study at the local university, so I could sort of compare our scale to theirs. It put her only one pound off from the university's measure. I weighed myself again: 142. When I came past the bathroom a few hours later, I weighed myself again again: 142. This was freaky! Was this even possible?! If I had put on ten pounds of muscle, where was it all hiding?!?!

I love Jim Gaffigan's bit about whales. Poor whales. 

"It's mostly water weight."

When Kent returned from work, I told him what had happened and asked him to weigh himself. He doesn't use the scale weekly like I do, but for the past decades his weight is fairly consistent. Before his enlightenment about sugar, he used to measure dramatic weight changes with his trips to Mexico. It was always entertaining to see him put on seven pounds of tacos and soda in a week, and then lose half of that in his first week home as he stopped drinking sugar and retaining water. By the next trip, he would be back to his regular weight and ready to watch it swing again. Today, the scale showed within a couple pounds of his norm. He started telling me what I already believed: eight pounds of muscle gain in a week is physically impossible. He assured me that I must be retaining a lot of water and grilled me on what I'd been eating lately. Two days ago was my 24-hour fast day, and I'd had no sugar or highly salted foods for several days...though Kent's insistence that this couldn't be muscle gain was pushing me toward some chocolate in that moment. He then wanted to know whether my clothes were fitting tightly, as proof that it must be water weight. I had treated myself to my annual clothes shopping over the weekend, so the clothes were new and I had no way to compare on that basis. (Budget and sanity tip: I like to wear my new clothes right away so I can see them in natural light and determine whether I still like them outside the store. This little test resulted in a top and a skirt being placed in my return bag and $30 coming back to my bank account.)

We both were dumbfounded about my weight gain, so I stepped on the scale again: 120 lbs. As impossible as a ten-pound increase in a week sounded, we both knew losing 22 lbs. in half a day was truly ridiculous. After 21 years of use, our spring scale has finally lost its ability to weigh and measure.

You may think it odd that I know how old this scale is. Even if it were still under warranty, I wouldn't know where to return it because we received it as a wedding gift, and today also happens to be our 21-year wedding anniversary.

Despite it being our anniversary, I wasn't feeling particularly happy about the day. I woke before my alarm--my writer's brain likes to do that often--so I was somewhat short on sleep and temper. When Kent woke a couple hours later, one of our first exchanges brought me to the verge of tears. Granted, I asked him a question as he was headed downstairs in the middle of his morning supplement routine. But still, he cut me off and gave a terse answer before hearing my question out. This was on the heels of a frustrating marriage meeting (our weekly couple council) last night, which had also brought me to the brink of tears. When Kent saw that his quick response this morning had hurt me, he asked, "Are you going to cry?" I nodded and he offered a short, defeated apology followed by a hasty explanation. I believed he hadn't meant to hurt me, so I referenced our running joke, "Well at least you met your daily quota for making me cry early on, and now we're done for the day." While I felt frustrated that he had once again interrupted and plugged in advice without hearing me out, I'm sure he was likewise discouraged that I had once again chosen to interrupt his flow to subject him to a conversation that turned out to be high stakes. Both of us felt disheartened that the years of work we have put into communicating better don't seem to make a difference.

Before he left for the day, we both wished each other a happy anniversary, signaling that we were willing to forgive, and trying to not let hopelessness settle in for the day. To put him at ease, I added that I had no expectations for celebrating the day. Kent's improv class meets on Tuesdays, so I had made other plans for the evening, which still stood after he learned yesterday that class was canceled for the holiday. We've both grown less interested in gift giving on holidays and birthdays, so I figured our anniversary would be no different and wanted him to know he was off the hook. A decade ago, I still wished that each anniversary would come with a romantic date and a bouquet of roses. Two decades in, we've run out of romantic surprises. As we made plans this year, we just agreed to do something this weekend, which probably means we will simply go to a nicer restaurant than usual. And that will be fine. I'm happier to have a good marriage overall than to be upset if one day per year to celebrate our marriage fails to meet expectations.

I thought all day about our 21 years. How we've each changed as individuals, and we still like each other better than when we fell in love. How there has been a lot of joy on the flip side of the hurts. I thought about our adventure in parenting and the time we'll have to watch our family grow into generations. About the fun we have dating and traveling and supporting each other. About the growth, and discoveries that await us. I decided that ebbs and flows in our relationship are good. They ensure that our marriage doesn't go stagnant. We are each still committed to coming back to kindness and love, again and again.

I spent half an hour writing these sentiments in a card for Kent. When I returned late at night, I found a card waiting for me too, holding a poem. Over the two-plus decades that he has been writing them, Kent's somewhat infrequent poems have become my favorite gifts.

Perhaps our broken scale is the perfect anniversary gift, too. In our 21 years of marriage, we have learned that measuring each other and keeping a tally are great ways to feed bitterness and chase away love. When I seek a fair balance by keeping score of my contributions and subductions in comparison to his, we find that each person's requisite 50% plus the other's 50% never makes a whole. It always goes negative and we end up with hurt.

And so, we work to not keep score. We each pull our weight in the marriage, and practice patience and forgiveness when the other person has less to give. We are not perfect in loving this way, but practice does make progress. When there is nothing to be weighed in the balance, the love flows more easily and we truly do have happiness in our eternal enterprise of marriage.

Shifting Interests and Growing Up

It should come as no surprise that my children continue to grow up. They've been doing that consistently for the past almost-20 years. In contemplating all the things I might write about in this post that marks the end of another school year and the graduation of my second child, I took a look at the most recent such post two years ago. Two years ago in May, I thought I knew what my children would be involved in for the upcoming school year. A lot of those plans changed over the summer of 2016. Now, as June 2018 approaches, I see that plans for the future are up in the air for most of us. I think that will always be the case, and I'm getting used to being okay with that.

Kassidy gets a mention in this school post because she is still in school. She has wrapped up her second year at Utah Valley University, where she is now in the art program studying graphic design. I love seeing the posters and pottery she creates. To pad her portfolio, she volunteers one day each week creating social media campaigns for A Child's Hope Foundation, and works the other days as rep support for a retailer called Agnes & Dora. Oh, and she got married last fall. (I really need to catch up on this blog.) Our new son-in-law, Cache, is a great partner for Kassidy. He picks up his studies again this summer, where he learns the science of politics.

Two years ago, I thought #3 was going to be a sneaky add-on to the Freedom Academy ballroom team from Provo High. That never happened. Instead, she spent a summer in Mexico and jumped into high school with a focus on learning Spanish and continuing to procrastinate homework while still pulling straight A's. This last year, as a sophomore, she sang with PHS' Bella Voce and danced with the JV ballroom team. Being on that team required a new level of work and commitment from her who seems to live a charmed life. She spent hours dancing in private lessons, with the team, and over holiday breaks. She missed the first day of fall tour to attend Cachidy's wedding, and then missed our Christmas break trip to Mexico to attend all-day ballroom rehearsals. It has been good for her to work hard at something, rather than waltzing right through it, so to speak. #3 also picked up a job at our local nursery a few months ago. I had hoped it would feed her obsession with succulents, and we wouldn't need to find more window space at home for all her plants. Not so. Now she just brings stray plants home. We are grateful she doesn't work at an animal shelter! #3's wish for next year is to study abroad. Since applications with foreign exchange programs got procrastinated along with homework last fall, we're working to set up our own exchange. If you know anyone in a Spanish-speaking country who would like to swap teenagers for a school year, please put us in contact!

Earning superior ratings at the State Solo & Ensemble competition

#5 built the best water rocket in his STEM class

I also thought #5 would never give up his interest in ballroom dance. As it turns out, when his coach announced at the end of his fourth-grade year that she wouldn't be returning, he announced the same. He can't imagine having another coach as good as Miss Stephanie. Instead, #5 has pursued soccer and Ultimate Frisbee. As long as that kid is running, he is happy. He will occasionally join a random 5K, and always finishes in the top three overall--meaning that he beats out adults, too! He continues to be a happy and helpful student, a favorite of all his teachers. This was his first year at middle school, which meant I was more hands-off with his education this year, which meant I only went to parent-teacher conferences for those classes I had questions or concerns about. His Language Arts teacher was surprised that I set an appointment, but was delighted to meet me. She welcomed me with, "I've been curious to see who is raising [#5]. He's such a wonderful student!" I was not surprised to hear that familiar sentiment, and let her know that it's all him.
About a month ago, #5 asked if he could be home schooled next year. He wants to get through his studies faster and take on a special project. I asked him to pray about it. As he did, I also started to get excited about teaching him and working beside him for a year. He didn't feel like he got a yes or no answer to his prayer, so we counseled and thought homeschool would be good to try for just one year. Then, last Friday, he felt like he got a strong answer to stay at the charter school...three days after I told them they could give his spot to someone else. We'll see if he can get back in!

#4 is very happy to be leaving the same middle school. She is ready for high school and the many class offerings available to her. When her PHS counselor handed her the long list of high school classes, her jaw dropped. She is interested in volleyball, art, foods, photography, interior design, and choir. I had to remind her that she has four years to pursue all these interests! She has lost interest in recording and editing YouTube videos, but had some fun on the yearbook staff, and will probably enjoy learning to use the Canon SLR camera we bought for her birthday--to also share with the family. (Our kids don't get exclusive rights to expensive gifts, especially when they can benefit all of us!) #4 continues to take voice lessons and is starting to learn to play piano by ear and with chords so she can accompany herself. One of her greatest frustrations this year has been sharing a room with #3, who is not the most tidy roommate. When #2 leaves in a few months, #4 will have her choice of two bedrooms. She is looking forward to decorating as she likes and keeping her space clean and peaceful.

At the district science fair, which sent #4 to the regional fair!

#2 entered the legal adult years last month, so she now gets to be known by name on this blog. Madelyn has perhaps stayed busiest of all my children. Between schoolwork, choir, drama productions, a job, and time with her boyfriend, we've barely seen her. It has not been unusual to visit for five minutes or less at our morning family devotional, and then to not see her until the next morning devotional. Somehow, in the midst of all those demands and pursuits, she has carved out new interests and talents. A year ago, when the drama kids learned they would be putting on The Phantom of The Opera for the 2017 fall school musical, Madelyn--and everyone else--knew that her talented boyfriend, David, would have the lead role as Phantom. She decided if she wanted to spend time with him, she needed to also have a role. She took private voice lessons from a well-known coach over the summer, and expanded her alto range to a soprano's high A. Unfortunately, she did not get the part of Christine (we think the director wisely wanted to avoid high school sweethearts playing the lead roles in the production), but she did get cast in the ensemble, which required just as many hours from her. Simultaneously, she also worked hard in Provo High's Concert Choir and Chamber Singers. As her parent, one of my greatest gratifications was that the other adult mentors in her life recognized her quiet hard work. Last week, Madelyn was surprised to receive the Director's Award in choir. Madelyn sang in PHS' choirs for six years. She toured with them and served as a section leader. As her peers received other recognition and filled officer roles, Madelyn quietly and cheerfully supported the younger choir members. Mr. Wiser, the choir director, explained to me why he chose her for this award: "I wanted to make sure that [Madelyn's] hard work, dedication, and incredible growth has not gone unnoticed. I'm glad that I've had the opportunity to teach her and help her over the years." Two nights later, at the drama banquet, Madelyn received the Best Female Ensemble Award. As a member of the Phantom ensemble, she brought positive energy to the rehearsals and performances, especially helping other ensemble members learn the choreography. At the drama competitions, her group won straight superior ratings. I know I am biased, but when I watch a performance full of singers and dancers, my eye is constantly drawn to Madelyn. She truly lights up the stage.

After an exhausting and emotional
final choir performance.

One of the best surprises this senior year was her discovery of auto shop. She signed up somewhat on a whim to fulfill an elective credit, and ended up really loving the subject. When 4/5 of the class left to sluff most days, Madelyn and a few others stayed with the teacher and learned about engines and other car repairs. That interest led to a job with Clegg Auto in Provo and Spanish Fork. This past semester, Madelyn has been running their marketing on social media and online advertising for the used cars they sell. After graduation, she will probably work the front counter, explaining to customers what repairs are needed. I think it's been difficult for her to decide what comes after high school. She's known since her sophomore year that she wanted to serve an LDS mission at age 19; but deciding what to do with that 18-year-old year has not been easy. She's felt pressure from school leaders and friends to apply to colleges, and pressure from home to get out of debt and be able to support herself while also saving for her mission. I hope the greatest gift that Kent and I gave her was our approval to not jump right into more school. With her good GPA and ACT score, college is a viable option. But when application season was upon her last fall, and she didn't know what she wanted to study or even do with her life after the mission, college seemed like an expensive way to try to figure that out. And so we encouraged her decision to just work at a job where she can learn more about what interests her. At the present, my guess is that she'll come back from her mission, ready and eager to start school in the the winter of 2021. With her brain for math and science, she'd make a great mechanical engineer. But I think it's just as likely that she'll audition for local musical theater and develop a greater love for acting. Or maybe she'll learn a foreign language on her mission, and ended up nannying for a family on the other side of the world. As she walks out the doors of high school graduation, her future decades lie open before her, waiting to be discovered and shaped. She has chosen a good path for the next two-and-a-half years, and I am excited to see how this first step into adulthood will shape the rest of her life.

An Experiment in Familial Love

One of the basic tenets of our LDS faith is that the family is ordained of God and is the fundamental unit of society. Our prophets even released a proclamation to the world about the importance of family, which includes the following guidance for finding familial happiness: "Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities."

We have put all those principles to the test in our home, and I can tell you that statement is true. Sarcasm didn't make it on the list; but I have to wonder if that's one for our family to add.

At the beginning of November, I attended a 3 Key Elements self-improvement seminar with a friend. We had a fun and insightful three days together. (It could have been condensed to two days, but I'll leave my review out of this post.) One of the ideas they presented that has stayed with me is the power of words. Words thought, written, or spoken. Words can create or destroy. I can use words to rewire my thinking and thus my life.

The presenter (and the president/founder of the company), Kirk Duncan, did a show and tell for us of an experiment he did, similar to Dr. Masaru Emoto's rice experiment. Kirk added rice cooked from the same batch to two glass jars. He applied a strip of tape to each jar and labeled one of them "love" and one of them "hate". He held the "love" jar and thought love toward it. Then he put the lid on it and stuck it in a dark corner in his office. He thought hate toward the other jar, closed it, and kept it next to the first jar. He then showed us a picture of the two jars taken a few weeks later.

I couldn't find Kirk's photo online, but it looked basically like this.

The rice in the jar of hate was rotting, while the rice in the jar of love looked fresh.

I decided this would be a powerful object lesson for my next Family Home Evening. I cooked up a couple cups of rice and brought the family into the kitchen. They helped me scoop rice into two jars. Then I handed one jar to #3 and asked her to tell the rice that it was stupid, she hated it, or any other negative comment she could come up with.

"What?" she asked.

"Just do it please," I asked, which earned me a a few this-is-weird-and-maybe-Mom's-finally-lost-it looks.

Finally, #3 held the jar near her mouth and said, "I hate you." It was the most unheartfelt hate I've heard from any of my children in a long time. But at least she was complying. I asked her to pass the jar to her sibling, explaining that we would each say something negative to the rice.

Kent, seeing where this was going, chimed in. "Won't the other rice overhear us?"

"Good point," I said, and rushed the innocent little jar to #2's room where it could sit peacefully behind a closed door.

The family passed the hated rice around, growing increasingly convincing in their negativity. They were having fun with this! Then I popped a lid on the jar, labeled it "HATE", and tucked it away in a kitchen cupboard.

I brought the as-yet-neutral rice out and asked everyone to give it love, handing it to #2...who is 17 years old. She raised her eyebrow at me, like she couldn't believe I was still insisting we all talk to food. But she also complied--sort of. "I love you rice," she said. Then she brought the jar's mouth right to hers and in mock whisper added, "Just kidding. I hate you." Argh! Haven't my kids put me through been through enough science fair experiments to know how important it is to keep the independent variable controlled?! Losing a bit of control myself, I snatched the jar away and handed it to the next child.

"Come on guys, just be nice to the rice and then we can go back to the family room," Dad reminded them. We finished loving the rice--sort of. Some kids worked with me and seemed sincere in their positivity. There was also some, "I love you SO much. You're the most amazing rice I've ever seen." Is rice a stranger to sarcasm? Would it be able to differentiate between words of love and intentions of love? I held the jar last, giving it all the sincere love I could muster--for rice. Then I capped it, labeled it, and put it away next to its brother.

I kept an eye on the jars a couple times each week as I used their cupboard. For the first month, there was no noticeable change. I began wondering how rice kept in my refrigerator seems to fare worse than rice kept in a non-vacuum-sealed jar at room temperature. But that's an experiment for another science fair.

There are plenty of pictures online from people who performed different variations of this experiment. Most results seem to support the hypothesis that things fed with love thrive, and things fed with hate rot.

After two months in the cupboard, the jars of rice made their appearance again last night:

(Click the picture to enlarge.)

#4 saw them first and laughed, "This explains why our family works the way it does!" When the rest of the family gathered for dinner and game night with friends, they had pretty much the same reaction. But as I type the previous sentence, I realize that whether our sarcasm does or doesn't communicate love, we are still building our family on important rituals and good principles. We laugh together. We eat meals together. We play together. And even if our humor is a little sarcastic or off-center, we still get each other. Most importantly, we hug and kiss (and hiss--that's for yet another blog post) and tell our kids multiple times a day, "I love you." And usually, they respond sincerely with a quick, "I love you too."

P.S. We do also maintain our family on the principle of working together. After avoiding it Wednesday night and Thursday morning, I decided tonight that I had to face the rice rather than leave it on display. #s 3 and 5 were in the kitchen visiting with me as I did the dishes, until I took the lids of the rice to scoop it into the garbage. They wisely vacated as I began dry heaving at the disgusting smells of mold and rot. Working together doesn't always work well when you're disposing of "loved" rice. Bleh!

Milestone

There are important milestones in life. Certainly, accomplishments and events such as graduations, marriage, and the birth of a child qualify. Most people also experience less public milestones, including career advancement or leaving an addiction. Whether public or private, milestones deserve celebration. Celebration is important for helping us to see our progress. As we advance along a chosen path, or when we've reached the end of a path and attained a goal, celebrating keeps us motivated to keep choosing the right paths. It is a means of unleashing gratitude and connecting with those who helped us reach our path's milestones.

In our case today, our path was mostly asphalt and our milestone was literally measured in miles. 300,000 to be exact.

300,000 miles

This milestone has been more than 20 years in the making. Our role in this accomplishment began in June of 2011 when we took ownership of the car we affectionately call "The Camry". (I know, real original.) When my parents bought a new car, they suggested we give our hand-me-down Buick to the African refugees they were serving in Salt Lake City, and they sold us their Camry for $1, which also happens to be the amount required by law to transfer title. They had taken great care of the car, and Kent was excited to advance to a better auto audio system.

March of 2014 marked another important entrance into The Camry's life. That was the first time our car met the mechanics at Clegg Auto for its first oil and filter change there. In their hands, The Camry continues to drive well, even in her old age. Last year when she got stuck on a gravel driveway, and we wondered if she would ever run the open road again, the guys at Clegg gave her the car version of hip replacement surgery; I think the technical term was a new driver's side ball joint and axle.

1. She's fallen and she can't get up!
(Cars struggle when their wheels aren't parallel.)
2. Aw, back in the pre-deer meeting when The Camry
still had her insignia. (Cars also struggle with teen drivers.)

So of course Clegg Auto had to be part of the celebration! This afternoon, Kent ordered pizzas for the guys and they all posed with the car to laud it's new odometer reading. Celebrate good times!

Post script: I'm glad the shop was open today (Monday). Kent reached 299,994 in the car last Wednesday. He's had this pizza party in mind for the last 300 miles, and when he didn't make it in before they closed for Thanksgiving weekend, he was adamant that no one put any more miles on The Camry. Since we celebrated Thanksgiving as a family, it worked fine to have only the van available for the holiday--but I was not loving Kent's suggestion that I drive him to work Friday to avoid overage. Thankfully, he instead stayed home all weekend and helped with house projects. If he had pressed me on chauffeuring him around town, I would have followed #5's idea to secretly drive the car during the night, pushing it past 300K and pushing Kent past his hang-up on the event of that number turning in the mechanic's parking lot. It all worked out for the best; celebrate!

Chicken Casserole

I have a love-hate relationship with breakfast casserole.

With the right recipe, it is delicious!  The combination of sausage or ham with sharp cheddar and Swiss cheeses is tasty.  Sometimes I throw in some pepper jack for a kick, or top it with diced tomatoes fresh from the garden.  It is substantial enough for breakfast or dinner, and the leftovers are great for lunches, too.  It's a winner for serving to guests.  All it lacks are realistic expectations.

Too-high expectations are the bane of my existence.

You see, the instructions for breakfast casserole wrap up with a baking time of 35-40 minutes.  Ha!  I've learned the hard way that that cooking time is not even close.  The first time I got burned--or, rather, not even close to burned, as you'll see--by those instructions was years ago at an overnight gathering with the women from church.  We made our breakfast casseroles at night, stuck them in the oven in the morning, and than had to push breakfast for 40 people back about an hour as we patiently waited for our food to finish cooking.  It was inconvenient, but we were having so much fun together, that we didn't much notice our hungry tummies.

That casserole was so yummy that I forgot about the increased time in the oven, and I decided to make it again for a brunch where I served ten, and again on Christmas morning for my family of seven, and yet again for my mock trial team of 15.  Each time, I opened the oven after 35-40 minutes, only to find an uncooked egg mixture.  I guess I'm a slow learner--or just a hopeful optimist--because it took multiple late breakfasts before I was frustrated enough to remember that this recipe takes about 75 minutes to bake until the eggs aren't runny.  Yep, twice as long as expected.

Last week, Pinterest came to my rescue with a new-and-improved version of my favorite breakfast...or so I thought.  It looks good, right?  And do you see that title?  Crock Pot Breakfast Casserole!  The combination of two of my favorite things!  I love my slow cookers.  I love that I can assemble everything hours before mealtime, while I still have energy, and then it's all cooked to tender perfection when I'm hungry.

Our family's Sunday brunch seemed like a good time to premiere this new slow cooker recipe.  Sunday brunch has become a favorite tradition this year.  Everyone wants to sleep in as long as possible on Sunday, but even the most sleep-deprived teens will wake before noon at the wafting scents of bacon or dark-chocolate brew.  When I come home from my morning church meetings to find my husband donning an apron and scrambling eggs, it absolutely melts my heart.  We all sit down to enjoy each other's company, catching up on our week and laughing together.  Dinners are good, but sitting around a table with my whole family, everyone in PJs with no place to be in a hurry--well, it's a little piece of heaven on Sunday.

The evening previous to this fateful Sunday, Kent and I assembled the casserole.  As I gathered ingredients, he layered them in:
     1 bag frozen hash browns = $1.48
     1 bag diced ham (substituted for
        bacon because it's easier) = $2.38
     1 onion, diced = $0.30
     8 oz. shredded cheddar = $1.83
     Red and green peppers = priceless
        (These were from my garden.
        After caring for them all summer,
        I had high hopes for their use.)
     12 eggs = $0.87
     1 c. milk = $0.11  (But I had to buy the whole gallon, so $1.80.)

I list the prices because I'm that bitter about being fooled by this recipe.  For those of you living on the East or West coast, you probably don't believe those prices.  I know.  I bought groceries while on vacation in LA this summer, and I must say that for people living in an agricultural state, you all are paying way too much for food.  For those of you living in Utah who don't believe those prices, you really should shop at Winco.  Oh, and have I mentioned before that I do bookkeeping for a living?  The total cost of this recipe was $6.97...plus tax!  So $7.18.  Does that not sound outrageous to you?  Then consider my time and Kent's time.  It was probably ten minutes each in prep time PLUS the backbreaking sum-total minutes of turning on the drip irrigation to my garden all summer and picking two peppers off the plant.  We're easily talking a value of $10 for this meal.  Does that still not sound outrageous to you?  Yeah, I was hoping those numbers would more impressively build my case.  Oh well.

However, the greatest loss stemmed from my expectations for a lovely, hot, Sunday breakfast with my family--and you can't put a price on that!

I came home from my meeting and was a little surprised to not to be welcomed by the warm smells of food upon entering.  I took a serving spoon to the slow cooker, where the casserole had been cooking on warm (as per the directions) for 12 hours (four hours longer than the directions, because I know breakfast casseroles take extra time).  I was greeted by a layer of melted cheese floating on a mass of eggy vegetables.  Bleh!  Foiled again!!  Surprisingly, I was only disappointed, not angry.  I think I've finally learned my lesson.  Breakfast Casserole, to you I say, "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice (or more like half a dozen times over the past eight years), shame on me."

But I was not giving up!  I removed the lid, turned the cooker to high, and started boiling some quinoa for a different Pinterest recipe that hasn't let me down yet: Five Ingredient Quinoa Superfood Breakfast Bowl.  (Yes, the name is longer than the ingredient list.)

Two-and-a-half hours later, the breakfast casserole was finally cooked and ready to eat...right as we were leaving for church.  "Well, at least tomorrow's breakfast is ready," I thought, as I turned the Crock Pot dial back to warm and replaced the lid.  Wrong again!  The next morning, my kiddos expectantly dug in, bringing bowls of casserole with them to wolf down on the ride to school.  After the carpool, I parked the van in the garage and looked around at the half-eaten servings that were still with me.  Weird.  But not so weird once I scooped up my own serving.  It smelled right.  It was warm.  And then my lowered expectations came crashing down completely.  It did not taste great.  I think it was the peppers, which I had so lovingly sacrificed for this disappointing recipe, that ruined the taste.  I shook on some hot sauce, but even Tapatio couldn't save this casserole.  Halfway through my plate, I looked deep into a forkful of potatoes and eggs and thought, "This casserole is not bringing me joy.  In fact, it's making me more sad with every bite."  I put my fork down and walked away to mourn.

Have you reached this point of my too-long saga of the breakfast casserole to wonder why the title of this post is "Chicken Casserole"?  That's not a typo.  Here comes the answer.

After another 24 hours of the slow cooker warming this breakfast disaster, I realized that I had reached the end of my mourning period, and was ready to say goodbye.  As you may have guessed by my recipe calculations, I am a person who abhors food waste.  I couldn't just dump this creation in the trash.  Fortunately, I have a visiting teacher (a church friend who is assigned to visit monthly, watch over me and my family, and help as needed) who I knew would not balk at my plea for assistance.  Or rather, the assistance of her small livestock.  I sent her a text, and she said to come on over.  63 hours after assembling the wonderful ingredients, I lovingly boxed up the mess and delivered it to Dovie for the culinary enjoyment of her chickens.


Luckily, chickens are not very discerning.  They gobbled it up.  (Is gobbling reserved strictly for turkeys?)  Regardless, they consumed those potatoes and eggs, which will help them make more eggs, and that is pretty cool in a circle-of-life sort of way.

For the daring among you, here is the recipe for the first breakfast casserole that broke my heart, though we are now reconciled.  The flavors are right, but the cook time is way off.  I've thought about trying these ingredients in a slow cooker, but I don't have 60 hours to kill on this recipe again.

Breakfast Casserole - Proceed With Patience

24 oz hash browns

1/2 c melted butter

seasoned salt

Press into 9x13 pan.  Bake 20 min at 350 degrees.  (This cook time is correct.)

1 c chopped ham

1 1/2 c. Swiss cheese - grated

1 1/2 c. cheddar cheese - grated

Sprinkle over baked hash browns

6 eggs - beaten

2 c. half & half

Mix together.  Pour over hash browns.
Sprinkle with seasoned salt.

Bake 35-40 minutes for at least an hour at 350 degrees.  Let stand 10 minutes.

Pink Slip On Life

Our local talk radio station used to carry the Dr. Laura show when my children were little.  I listened often, trying to learn from others how not to screw up my relationships and my children.  Being a stay-at-home mother of five small children was the most difficult thing I've done in my life so far, but Dr. Laura and her callers reassured me daily that mothering well was the most important thing I could be doing for those five little ones.  To that end, Kent and also I took parenting classes every year or two, and tried to remember that we are not raising children--we are raising adults.

The first of our brood is now 18, and as Dr. Laura would say, it is time to give her her pink slip on life.  We will help her move into her off-campus apartment this weekend.  I am excited for her, and I'm curious how having one less at the dinner table will change the dynamic for those of us still at home.  I think these are good changes.












I also wonder if we've taught her everything we were supposed to.  She can support herself, but does she know how to balance her checking account?  She is physically healthy, but I never got around to teaching her natural fertility regulation.  She can boil ramen, but will she feed her body the nutrition it really needs?  She has enrolled in 17 credits at school, which look manageable on paper, but does she have the time management skills to balance that workload with her job, social life, and sleep?

She feeds her spirit, but does she know God well enough to trust that He is still watching over her during the difficult times when He will step back and let her struggle?

Obviously, we have not run out of time to teach her.  But I expect that this new phase of relating to my adult daughter will now be a two-way street.  We will do a lot more listening and learning from her.  We will observe and love and hold our advice until she asks for it.  She will continue to make mistakes, and she will continue to learn from her mistakes, just like the rest of us.


Could we have parented and prepared her better?  Certainly.  But I look at this smart, fun, kind, talented, loving, faithful young woman, and I am blown away by the person she already is.  I know she has the capacity to keep learning and growing and becoming as she forges her own adult path.  Kassidy, we love you and can't wait to see what you do with the rest of your life.  It is yours to live!