Words of Inspiration

Every day that Wesley rides the bus to campus he memorizes something--usually a scripture, but also things like all the verses to "The Star-Spangled Banner," poems, and the new Duty to God requirements. I've decided I need to actively learn every day and I miss memorizing, so I've been memorizing a few small things also. Over the last three days I memorized the Relief Society theme--oh, it's great.

"We are beloved spirit daughters of God and our lives have meaning, purpose, and direction. As a worldwide sisterhood we are united in our devotion to Jesus Christ, our Savior and Exemplar. We are women of faith, virtue, vision, and charity who:

Increase our testimonies of Jesus Christ through prayer and scripture study.

Seek spiritual strength by following the promptings of the Holy Ghost.

Devote ourselves to strengthening marriages, families, and homes.
Find nobility in motherhood and joy in womanhood.

Delight in service and good works.

Love live and learning.

Stand for truth and righteousness.

Sustain the priesthood as the authority of God on earth.

Rejoice in the blessings of the temple, understand our divine destiny, and strive for exaltation."

I have a long way to go before achieving all of this--particularly "understanding [my] divine destiny" on a daily basis. I usually delight in service and good works, but there are times when I get distracted by activities rather than focusing on people...Basically, there are days when I can hit on a few of these and days when I really need to find my start button. I want to live worthy of such goals and become a woman of "faith, virtue, vision, and charity" who knows my heritage to Heavenly Parents and honors them in my daily life.

So Excited for Saturday!

Saturday is the general Relief Society conference. I love Relief Society! To make sure I am prepared for and worthy of inspiration, I've decided to do something each day to bring extra focus.

Yesterday, I listened to this great interview between Sheri Dew and Julie B. Beck and her daughters. It's about an hour--and awesome! Wes and I talked about it all through dinner.

At one point, Sister Beck stated that she wanted her children to become people she would want to be friends with; that meant that she needed to parent them while they were young. They needed to learn virtue, manners, and a desire for education. This has me thinking: what skills/standards do I need to teach my sweet boys so that we can all be friends in the future?

A love of the Lord. A  love of learning, service, and charity. A desire to communicate clearly and effectively. Honesty and selflessness. So how to go about this?

Catching up with a few pictures

My new rocking chair. It looks a lot different now that we cleaned and oiled it--but it works great. Levi might be getting too big to share it with me! (Or maybe I'm just getting too big...)

Yes, this is Levi trying to climb into his pack-and-play. He'll be doing chin-ups in no time.

I love this face.

Throwing the bear!

Loving the bear.

Working hard with Dad.

Little red shoes. He wore them all day on Saturday just because he loves them and wouldn't let us take them off. Despite smelly, sweaty feeties.

Levi's cupboard in the kitchen. He plays, I cook.

A common position with books.

Bathtime! (He doesn't sit in the water, he runs in it).

Sharing dinosaurs. So charitable.

Love this sweet bum. Little did we know that we'd find a scorpion next to the toilet when we pull Levi from the tub! At least we found it and not him.

Isn't he great?

Boy oh Boy!

Ultrasound yesterday. Our little monkey was quite modestly curled up on my left side and not interested in even showing off his stomach, but by the end he somersaulted and pulled up his knees to prove he is definitely not Venice Christine! She'll come later.

We're tickled to have another boy. He and Levi will be buddies. They can share clothes and toys and a room (even in puberty! Though we may have to separate them for their safety and my sanity...). They can prepare for their missions together. They can build with Legos and play catch. They can terrorize their mother and sing "I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home" while putting bunny ears behind each other's heads. This can and will happen eventually with a sister--we're excited for the male bonding, though.

Unlike Venice we don't know who this little man is! He's surprising us as Levi did. So we're calling him Urias until he's born sometime in January. (Urias is my great-grandpa; Wesley says no to the name as a permanent thing, so it's a good embryo name). Urias is due January 20--Grandpa Merlyn's birthday; as long as he doesn't arrive before that during Wesley's Ph.D. exams, we're good.

Urias has a beautiful beating heart, tiny kidneys, and a good healthy brain. We watched him swim around for 45 minutes. How do we create such miracles? God guides this sacred process.

Walk the Walk

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

This lovely creation perches right on top of our back window. When we moved in she was the size of my hand, perhaps larger. One of her sweet legs was about the size of my middle finger. We can see her from both sides--which is a rare treat with spiders, particularly ones this large. She's golden on the bottom, but as you can see here more yellow, blue, and brown on top.

I've watched her with chilled interest. Mostly for Levi's sake. Still every time he moans in his sleep I have to remind myself that the sound would be much different had she snuggled up next to him, or had he stuck a scorpian in his mouth, (or had our six foot "garden snake" slithered through his window...things really are bigger in Texas). Regardless, she has a definite grace and beauty about her. We decided not to spray her and let her catch some of our critters herself.

Then she started to shrink. I despaired over this, actually. Her grand presence slowly diminishing in her three and a half foot web. She cocooned a batch of her darlings and now withers. She won't see them grow up (and neither will we, for although we appreciated her one existence, her millions of posterity can scatter elsewhere...). She's made me think about motherhood and what it means to be a parent. Reproduction is a way to begin the ritual of dying. It is casting a hope for the future, but it's also acknowledging that we can't last, and they can't last, and at last the last can't last. She sacrificed herself completely and now we glance in awe at her hollow image.

I don't mean to say that motherhood is depressing or draining; it's beautiful, but parenting requires that we give of ourselves thread by thread for the love and sake of those we create.

Amazing boundless creation.

Levi Tells Me He Hates Moving

I tell him I'm sorry. I say more but I packed any way--which is confusing and frustrating and makes eating and sleeping more difficult. He hasn't let go of his binky or his special car blanket for over a week. Poor kid.

Suddenly, Levi has an increased interest in everything--including cloves. He clung to the little container until his knuckles were white. Finally I had to put it back in the box, and he screamed until his dad came home.

But--now we're in Kansas. After driving through Wyoming with its oil wells, wind turbans, beautiful plateaus and wind. After driving through Nebraska with its green fields of corn and the zillions of moving trucks and semis passing on the freeway. After driving until one in the morning because staying at a hotel when Levi won't sleep there is just not efficient when he'll fall asleep in the car.

So here we are! Enjoying family and looking forward to discovering our new place on Tuesday. Who knows what it will be like--but we're just glad we have somewhere to go!