One Day...Trained...Inspired

I'm tired. I need to get ready for bed (but it's covered in clothes that need to be put away), and it's just so much easier to sit here and get lost on pinterest or a baking/cooking blog. I have just the slightest - ha! - infatuation with new recipes. In fact I tried a new one this past week - butternut squash ravioli with browned butter sage sauce. It was delicious. I know it was good because my kids wouldn't touch it. Beau cried just looking at it. I'll make up for it sometime by getting a sitter and serving them kraft mac and cheese. Blech. One day they might have decent tastebuds. One day all of their drive-me-mad qualities will suddenly spin in the right direction and Bekah will no longer be dramatic and irrational - she'll be a passionate advocate (lawyer? animal rights activist? *please no*)...and Jacob won't be slow and hyperfocused, he'll be methodical and hyperfocused (engineer-style). And maybe Beau won't punch everybody he walks by - instead he'll join the football team and take it out on well-padded young men of the opposing team. And if there's hope for all of them, maybe there's hope for me too - like I'll stop leaving my earrings out in random places all over my house, really loosing my keys and/or phone at least once a week, and irrationally yelling at Rus in the middle of the night when Marianne cries. Oh and sticking my foot in my mouth on a regular basis. But we won't go there...
So I'd like to take a paragraph and talk about the Bug. She is fourteen months now and such a ham. I talk to her all the time like I do with any of my other kids and I swear she understands every word. She even talks back and I'm pretty sure she's saying "thank you," "please," "night night," and "Bekah." Some of them resemble the actual word (like "Beba"), and some don't. But she says it the same everytime, so I'm sure she knows what she is saying. She still loves climbing the ladder to Jacob's bed and has thus trained me to put the ladder away every morning. I gave her a hair cut tonight because her hair was getting a little mullet-ish, and I almost cried when I saw the back of her head without her cute little curls. I hope they grow back! She loves anything and everything soft and will hug said-soft-things fiercely. It doesn't matter if it's a towel in the bathroom or Bekah's favorite stuffed animal or a stranger's baby blanket - she wants them all to hug and love. In this respect she reminds me so much of Bekah when she was little. She also loves to color. None of my children has colored so early. If you give her a paper, she will want a crayon so she can scribble. Of course I think this means she's going to be an amazing artist. ;)

One other thing I should mention about her - she has trained me to put her on the toilet at least once every day so she can poop. I'm serious. If you have known any of my children when they were little, you know that they hate to poop and make some serious noise whenever it's time. Marianne is no different and I have found that she is a more successful pooper if I sit her on a kid's pottyseat on the toilet and let her have at it. I haven't changed a poopy diaper in a month and a half. Great, right? I don't know how it will work when we have to go out of town.

I love when my kids all enjoy something together. Here they are admiring our first fire in the fireplace. 

 Here is Marianne and Jacob. She wanted to "read" this book, so she backed up to Jacob (who was sitting and getting his shoes on), and sat on his lap. She should come with a "BEEP. BEEP. BEEP."

On a more serious note - I was in charge of a holiday dinner and program for the women in ward at church. My calling is the Relief Society activity leader - which I have decided means "Spiritual Party Planner." It's a great calling! For our holiday dinner we wanted to have a program with speakers and music and a "Bread of Life" theme. I found a talk to serve as a framework for the program and needed four women to speak on four different attributes of Christ. I had no idea how to pick four women for that task! So I prayed. And I pulled up the phone directory for the relief society sisters. And then I looked at every name of every sister in our ward and wrote down any that stuck out. I purposefully avoided most of my peers because while I knew they would each do a great job, I didn't want to choose them just because I knew them better than other names on the list. When I had a list of several sisters, I looked again at each of the topics and could clearly see who would be perfect for what. The point is - I was inspired, because each of those sisters' talks was amazing! They were just right for their individual topics. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father showed me who to pick and allowed me to see His hand in our activity. We also had musical numbers that night by several different women and they were amazing. Our committee wanted to turn everyone's focus to Christ before the holiday madness, and I think we did that.