Happiness at Home

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Taking a Stand to Protect Our Families

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Almost a month ago in my scripture study with the kids, we were reading Mosiah 20 in the Book of Mormon. This is the chapter where King Noah’s wicked priests steal away some of the daughters of the Lamanites. When the Lamanites discover their daughters missing they assume it is the Nephites (in this case, King Limhi’s people) and prepare for war.

In verses 8-11 it talks about how Limhi discovered their preparations from the top of a tower and was able to gather his people together and prepare to meet the Lamanites.

The Nephites laid in wait in the fields and forests and then “like dragons did they fight.” Even though the Lamanite army was more than double their size, they were able to push them back.

Among the dead they found the Lamanite king, who was wounded, and they bound up his wounds and with his help were able to make peace at that time.

As we read this story together, it struck me how this is applicable to our lives today.

We must be watchful and vigilant in our lives against those things or people who Satan would use to destroy us or our way of living. New laws, regulations, and policies in particular come to mind.

We need to be aware of what is going on so we are not caught by surprise when something happens that may affect our way of life. We need to “lie in wait” in “forests and fields” by taking action ourselves. I know for myself that too often I complain about what is being done, but take no action myself or I feel I am not well-read enough on a particular topic to feel I can really have a say.

The first step is knowing what you believe, what you stand for. You can’t really fight for something if you don’t know what it is you are fighting for.

Educating yourself is the next step. Read up on different issues. This may take some digging as news sources are quite often not very reliable or can be one-sided. You don’t have to be an expert, but being aware is like standing on your watchtower.

The third item is action. What are we going to do about it? It may be as small as when casually talking with others, or maybe it is writing to our representatives or attending political meetings.

I love this quote by Elder Quentin L. Cook, a modern-day apostle: “Many in this world are afraid and angry with one another. While we understand these feelings, we need to be civil in our discourse and respectful in our interactions. This is especially true when we disagree. The Savior taught us to love even our enemies. The vast majority of our members heed this counsel. Yet there are some who feel that venting their personal anger or deeply held opinions is more important than conducting themselves as Jesus Christ lived and taught. I invite each one of us individually to recognize that how we disagree is a real measure of who we are and whether we truly follow the Savior. It is appropriate to disagree, but it is not appropriate to be disagreeable. Violence and vandalism are not the answer to our disagreements. If we show love and respect even in adverse circumstances, we become more like Christ.” (April 2010 General Conference)

I think, “It is appropriate to disagree, but it is not appropriate to be disagreeable” is something that we need to remember and focus on finding ways to express ourselves while still being Christ-like. We can say when something is wrong when appropriate. We just need to do so in the right way.

With God’s grace and power we can still “drive” the enemy from before us. We are fighting for our families and we need to exert ourselves. We need to decide now how we will prepare and what actions we will take.

Recently an issue has come up that I have many concerns with and it could have a huge impact on religious freedom, as well as impacting other areas of our lives. First, I read up on it to understand it more fully, then I wrote to all my representatives, some with specific examples if I felt they needed it, and told them how I felt and asked how they were going to proceed.

Limhi’s people were not saved by sitting back and doing nothing. They were watchful, they prepared, and they took action.

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Here am I

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In the beginning, God asked for one who would be our Savior. One who would redeem all mankind so we could return to our Heavenly Father’s presence. Jesus answered with, “Here am I, send me.” (Abraham 3:27)

Several months ago at a ward conference, my stake president (a leader in my church) asked us if we could say, “Here am I,” when the Lord asks us to be willing and ready mothers determined to teach our children in truth and righteousness.

I have thought so much about that. As he spoke, my whole heart said, “Yes!”

It’s not the first time I’ve heard that phrase used in that way. In fact, there are conference talks you can find with a similar theme, but especially as I have been pondering motherhood, and all it entails, it really touched my heart.

Motherhood is not easy. Most of the time it is downright hard. But oh so wonderful.

I learned a long time ago to not worry about how many band-aids were being used, but to see a child in front of me that looks to me as that safe, loving person that can make “owies” better; sometimes with just a hug and a special mother’s kiss.

When we sit down to read books together and I feel my children snuggling up to me, not just sitting by me, it brings such a warmth to my soul.

We had a picnic out on the back lawn together after a family outing the other day and it was so peaceful that I felt like I couldn’t get enough. Everyone was talking and laughing with each other. One child was daring another to see if she could eat her pizza while doing flips on the tramp. Yes she can. And yes, we picked up pizza on the way home for our picnic.

When times are sweet and wonderful like that I store away those memories for when times are not so easy. When a child is refusing to do their kitchen jobs, or taking FOREVER to do their school work, or magically disappearing the moment my back is turned to go build another Lego contraption. When I hear name-calling or a child is disrespectful to me, their father, or another sibling it really makes me sad and mad. Life is hard sometimes. A lot. But don’t give up.

The Lord said he had a spirit to send down. Who could he send it to that could teach, love, and care for that spirit to help it return home to Him? “Here am I,” I said. I have six of these beautiful little spirits in my home, and I will do everything that I possibly can to help them on their return journey to our Father.

Who will teach these children the gospel? Here am I.

Who will teach them to love God and one another? Here am I.

Who will teach them to serve? Here am I.

Who will teach them to pray? Here am I.

Who will teach them the divine roles of men and women and the wonderful role of the family in God’s eternal plan? Here am I.

Who will teach them to have faith, integrity, and how to gain a testimony? Here am I.

Who will teach them how to recognize, feel, and follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit? Here am I.

Who will teach them the scriptures and where to turn when they are in need of answers? Here am I.

Who will bathe them, feed them, and clothe them? Here am I.

Am I perfect? No. I most certainly am not. But you know what is really neat about this whole divine plan of our Father’s? I become more perfect and more like Christ the more I strive to mother my children in the way I feel He wants me to.

Christ served, helped, loved, forgave, taught, healed, and fed (spiritually and physically) those around Him. Isn’t that what we as mothers do? How amazing is that?

There was another that also said, “Here am I.” Lucifer offered himself to be our Savior, but he wanted to do it his own way and receive all the glory for himself.

We must stay close to the Lord through constant prayer and scripture study so that we are sure we are raising our children the way the Lord would have us do.

Are we focusing on God’s plan or do we sometimes get too caught up in what the world’s ideas and views are? Too often I think we are focused on what our kids need to be amazing and successful here on Earth at the expense of what they are going to need for eternity.

We will make mistakes. But as we move forward each day using the atonement to cleanse and uplift us, we can indeed do all things through Christ.

Look around at your family. Picture your Heavenly Father asking who will help those dear children return to Him?

I hope you will answer, “Here am I.”

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10-Day No-Sugar Challenge

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Today is the last day of my second 10-day no-white-sugar fast.

Did you catch all that?

I think I confused myself writing it out! 😉

Because of some health issues and weight loss goals that my mom and several siblings have, I decided to get as many of my family members as I could on board with doing a sugar fast.

To make accountability easier, I started a private family Facebook group to help us all encourage each other with our efforts.

The Facebook group is nice because I can make the group invitation-only, and I can create different challenges throughout the year. We also share our favorite healthy recipes there.

We started our first sugar fast at the beginning of January and I think we all went into it a little excited and nervous, but it was fun to challenge ourselves and see how creative we could be to go without the sugar.

It’s amazing how many things you have to watch out for! I knew I wouldn’t be eating ranch dressing or ketchup, but I was heartbroken to find out sriracha sauce has sugar! Sriracha makes a great steak marinade by the way.

And the pretzels that we would often have as an afternoon snack no longer fit.

It actually kind of tuned me in more to how much I was snacking and on what.

Now I have to be honest with you. I was pretty perfect during each of my 10-day stints, but notice I said no white sugar.

I did use molasses, honey, maple syrup and coconut sugar if something called for a sweetener.

But, let me be clear, I wasn’t drowning things in it or making cookies. I’m talking like 3-4 tablespoons of coconut sugar in my huge pancake recipe. Instead of adding chocolate chips in the batter, after the pancakes were done cooking I spread a thin layer of peanut butter on top (extra protein and healthy fat) and topped that off with a drizzle of maple syrup over all.

Something interesting that happened during this whole experiment is that I naturally stopped eating so many grain carbs.

No more sandwiches at lunchtime for me! Most store-bought bread has sugar and I wasn’t going to pay for the super-expensive stuff. So while I fed my kids the customary PB&J, I usually ate leftovers from dinner.

I made bread once using honey, but that was it. I used to make all our bread, but that’s something that got cut when child number 5 came along.

Instead of rice, I discovered riced cauliflower. This is pretty awesome because I would serve myself the riced cauliflower and then mix the rest in with a small batch of rice I made for the rest of my family.

Score! Just snuck some veggies in them!

Ok, not really. They could tell and whined a bit, but the little ones wouldn’t have noticed if the older kids hadn’t ratted me out.

You really don’t notice much when you eat it with stir-fry or curry.

And you can make your own, but it is also sold with the frozen veggies. It would be super easy to make since it’s just cauliflower that’s been diced up pretty fine. I have been buying it ready-made to save time.

I also started making zucchini noodles (zoodles). Again, I would have just the zoodles, and then mix the rest in with the regular noodles for my husband and kids. We all got sauce and meat on top and this dinner has gone over very well with the family. We’ve had it several times since.

Making zoodles is super easy and the kids love helping! You can find the spiralizer (zoodle maker) that I use here. My 10-year-old daughter likes to use it to make curly hashbrown-like potatoes too.

As wonderful as this all is, sometimes I just wanted a sweet treat. For years now I have been making energy balls instead of granola bars. These are the things I grab before I go for a run or when I feel the need to have just a little something sweet.

They’re kind of like eating healthy cookie dough-but better. I take them on hikes and hand them out to the kids during the day when they need a snack. Take a look.

My overall thoughts for this challenge are:

Pros

  • It has been helpful to stick to a no-sugar plan with other people holding me accountable.
  • I had to get a little more creative about how I made some things, but they are changes that I now incorporate into our regular eating habits.
  • I’ve always been one to look at ingredient lists, but as long as there was no corn syrup, sometimes I would let the sugar slide. Doing this challenge introduced me to some great new products that taste even better than the ones we had been using!

Cons

  • I feel like to really be successful for health and weight loss, you ought to do this longer than just 10 days. I did learn new habits, but I don’t think it was enough time to really break me of my sugar cravings.
  • The only sugar I eat more than I should is chocolate. And without my chocolate I turned to nuts to snack on. Waaaay too many yummy roasted nuts! For weight loss purposes, I would have been better off just eating my bit of chocolate before bed! Make sure you have a healthy alternative you can turn to when the munchies hit. Carrot sticks anyone?

On that last note, I believe the key here is moderation in all things. We didn’t use much white sugar in our house before the fast, and we now use even a little less.

But I still like me some dark chocolate every now and then.

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“Planting” a Garden in Winter and Making Memories

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I love spring. The new life, new growth, and beautiful flowers that spread cheer and beautiful colors everywhere.

Just lots of visual happiness after a long cold winter. Not that I mind winter much since we moved.

We used to live in a very small home in an area where the winters were so cold that I didn’t want to take the kids outside most of the time. One winter, we had several weeks where we thought it felt warm when we got up to zero.

Warm, huh?

Anyway, we now live in home where we aren’t stepping on each other constantly, and even when it’s snowing, my husband will run outside barefoot.

Like last week. He wanted to get the mail, which is clear down at the other end of the street, and didn’t put shoes on. He thought he could go and be back home again before any of the neighbors saw him.

Except that he chose the exact time when kids were getting out of school and everyone was stopping to get their mail.

No wonder our neighbors all think we’re nuts!

Not really. Well, maybe they do but they’re all good at not showing it.

Enough sidetracking.

Several weeks ago I got thinking about my yard again. We moved into a home with an unfinished yard that we got to plan from scratch and I have loved the planning process.

Still doing it. In fact, I think I may want to be a horticulturist when I grow up. Or a landscape architect. Anyway, something with yards and plants.

We finally got the sprinkler system and grass in last fall. Now as soon as spring arrives, I need to do soil prep and then start on the really fun part: all the other plants!

This excites and delights me so much! Like, seriously. I love to pore over plant magazines and have been collecting them over the years as I bide my time.

I’ve got quite a collection now and wanted to share my passion and love with my kids, so I pulled out all the older ones (this year’s I’m keeping because I may actually be ordering soon! Yay!) and rounded up scissors and glue and let the kids have at it!

It was so fun to see them go through page by page and pick their favorite plants. It was interesting to see which plant collections the different children chose.

One child wanted to paste a lot of vegetables. Maybe we did our project too close to lunch and he was hungry. Lol.

Actually, he takes eating very seriously and is always asking what I am planning for the next meal!

Another loved the more ornate, colorful plants.

Still another preferred my native plant catalog. I think he liked to see all the bees and hummingbirds in the pictures.

One of my kids chose to add trees and vary which way was up when he pasted on his pictures so that something would stand out no matter which direction you looked at it.

I loved seeing their different personalities come out in this project and I feel like I got to know them a little more deeply.

And now I have many colorful beautiful gardens hanging on the wall in my kitchen that I look at all through the day. They bring me joy not only because of their beauty, but because of the memories made in creating them, and the promise they hold for spring.

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The Parents’ Guide to Dating When You’re Too Busy for Dates

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With six kids it can be kind of hard to get out on dates with my husband.

It’s expensive to hire a babysitter and also hard to find one that I think can actually handle all six of my offspring.

There are days when I feel like I barely survive caring for them!

I know there is the typical watch-a-movie-together-when-the-kids-are-finally-in-bed date, but I want to offer a few alternatives.

After all, your parents told you as a teenager that movies are the worst kind of dates for a reason. You don’t even actually get to talk to your date or get to know them better.

Yeah, think about that one. You don’t get to talk to your date and get to know them better.

I like movies with my husband too, but we try to limit the TV in our house and we’ve found some great alternatives where we actually get to talk to each other.

Date idea #1

My husband and I were sitting down to dinner a while ago after calling the kids to the table.

The kids’ selective hearing kicked in and my husband and I remained alone at the table. Minutes slipped past. In exasperation, my husband suggested we start without them.

Normally this is a no-no. I have it so ingrained in my head that every dinner meal must be all of us together if at all possible. And we do a pretty good job of it too!

But that night we didn’t feel like waiting any longer.

It. Was. Amazing.

Here’s what happened:

  • We didn’t need to talk over other conversations.
  • We could make eye contact unimpeded.
  • Kids never interrupted us with tangential comments or whining about siblings’ actions.
  • And best of all, no one told us how terrible the home-cooked meal tasted.

I’ve got good kids, but there are those days though!

My husband said, “Hey! This is like a date!”

I agreed wholeheartedly.

It was crazy how fun it was to have a conversation about whatever and enjoy each other’s company.

Just. Us. Two.

Now before I go any further, I want you to know that I DO absolutely believe that families should have meals together, especially supper. Please make a special effort to do so.

Mealtime is a great time for everyone to discuss their day and share their ideas, feelings, and thoughts.

What I am saying is that when you get out together as little as my husband and I seem to, then this is a fun, simple way to have a little together time every now and then.

We don’t even really plan it out.

Usually it happens if the kids were watching a show while I cooked dinner and it wasn’t quite done when the food was ready. Or the kids are enmeshed in building Lego houses together after school. Or chaos will reign if they can’t find out who wins the game they’re in the middle of playing.

So nothing fancy, just some good old-fashioned one-on-one time.

Date idea #2

Put those cute kids to bed a little early, get out the fun snacks, and dust off the games!

My husband and I used to do this a lot before all the kids came along, but every now and then we’ll pull out a favorite game or two after all the little ones are sleeping and have a game night.

I’m actually getting excited just writing about it!

You may want to plan this one out.

Write it on your calendar and make sure everything is lined up for a smooth, quick, bedtime routine for the kids. Plan ahead for some tasty snacks or treats that maybe you don’t normally have.

The fun thing about games is that you can laugh, talk, tease, flirt and even compete if you want to.

Do you know how many times I “lose” games against my kids? It’s kind of funny and I need to get a little sneakier about it. They’re starting to catch on.

“Mom! You let her win!”

Don’t have to do that with my husband. I can trounce him. (He says he lets me.  Riiight.)

But you may want to be selective about which games you play.

Have you ever played Othello? That game is not good for my marriage! Seriously.

I end up so mad at my husband because he wins every time! Argh!

He remembers playing it with his grandfather and loves it (even though he could never beat his grandpa).

Luckily my son is pretty good at it and he’ll play it with my husband.

Currently, our favorite game to play together is Splendor and its expansion set. We play these a lot with our kids as well, but they work really well as a two-player husband-wife game too.

A few of our other favorites have been: Scrabble, Blokus, Labyrinth, and Rumis.

Rumis is really fun, especially since I usually win! It’s like a 3-D Tetris. Unfortunately, it looks like it may have been discontinued because it’s really expensive now. I’ll need to guard mine more carefully!

Date idea #3

Since some of our kids are old enough to watch their younger siblings for short periods of time, sometimes we’ll leave a phone with the kids and take a short walk somewhere in the neighborhood.

That only works if you have responsible older children.

I feel very blessed that I have one in particular that I can really count on!

What Do You Do?

Now it’s your turn to share.

If you have a great idea for an at-home date, please put it in the comments! I’m always on the lookout for something new.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, I hope you’ll have an awesome date with your Valentine.

But if you can’t get out, I encourage you to find a way to still make your day awesome and full of love! (And maybe a mini-date.)