My mountaintop views

           

           I’ve been reading other people’s blogs today.  Not the ones I usually read- written by other Catholic moms much like me- but blogs by women who have no children, who have lives filled with exciting worldly adventures that are nothing like my quiet domestic existence.  

I usually stick with blogs I know and bloggers I can relate to.  But once in a while, it is fun to get a peek into other people’s realities.  Realities that include rock climbing and spontaneous moves across the country and whirlwind romances that culminate in dramatic marriage proposals.  This is what I love about reading-- both fiction and blogs.  Reading opens doors that nothing else can in life.  It teaches us so much about others and about ourselves, and about how we are all so different and yet all so very, very alike too.

Getting little peeks into other people’s lives also reminds me that I really love my own quiet domestic life.  I love my little adventures—like the trip to the library with my kids this morning.  What could be more adventurous than going into a peaceful library full of retirees on a Thursday morning with five energetic children along?  It may not come with breath taking views or life changing decisions but its adventure just the same.   

Then coming home (with dozens of new books to delve into later) to get some lunch for the five energetic children?  Its an adventure, I assure you!  Picture an ordinary suburban kitchen bustling with hungry kids all grabbing for the peanut butter jar and fighting over the bag of chex mix.  Who needs a mountaintop view?  Other people may have some pretty spectacular experiences in their exciting adventurous lives.  But, I’ll take the view of my children’s sticky peanut buttery faces smiling at me with love over mountaintops any day.

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jocelynmarie/6094784902/">Jocelyn Catterson</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>

Eight years old!

Some of my favorite blog posts to write are the birthday posts.  Every year, as my children grow older, I take the opportunity to reflect on what they mean to me, who they are, and how blessed I am to their mother.  Today my little boy is 8 years old.  As always, my thoughts go back to the day of his birth and I wonder how the years could have flown by so quickly.  As I contemplated my blog post to celebrate this special milestone, I remembered a very old post I'd already written about welcoming our youngest son.  So, today I am re-posting (from 2009) this story of unexpected blessings and my sweet, lovable, wonderful son.....

Our fourth child was a bit of a surprise to us. At the time we found out I was expecting again, we had a five year old, a two and a half year old, and a 14 month old already filling our home with commotion and pandemonium. Though I had every intention of someday adding to our family, I felt totally unprepared to face another pregnancy, and welcome another baby, so soon. My initial reaction was not one of joy but instead a sense of fear and exhaustion.
 
In fact, for the first few weeks my shock and fear continued to plague me. I just did not feel ready for a new baby and was completely dreading the long months of pregnancy. I kept reassuring myself that God would send me an uneventful pregnancy and a very easy-going baby because He knew I could not handle anything more. 

As the weeks progressed, I discovered I was not very good at determining God's plans. My first trimester was fraught with scares. I had three ultrasounds and numerous calls to the doctor. I had at least one weekend where I was sure a miscarriage was eminent. Thankfully, it never came. Though I was emotionally unstable throughout the pregnancy, the pregnancy did continue. I had only one more unexpected ultrasound before baby was born because his heart rate was unusually high, but that too turned out to be okay. 

Then came the last month of my pregnancy. By this time, I was at peace with the situation, after all I truly love babies and this one was coming soon whether I was ready or not. Soon, turned out to be a relative term. That last month was one of the longest of my life. For some reason, I was terrified about the upcoming labor and delivery.

In addition to my apprehension, I could not stand because my back was killing me, I could not sit because I was plagued with Braxton-Hicks contractions, I could not lay because I had such bad heartburn. I was completely over being pregnant, yet I was terrified about giving birth. I was miserable. I kept telling myself, this was going to be an easy baby. It had to be, God would not send me a challenging baby after all this.
 
So finally, the day came to welcome our new baby boy. Amazingly the labor was not too bad. I got quite nauseous though and the doctor gave me some medicine to help. The medicine made me feel very light headed and out-of it. The delivery was a bit hazy. Perhaps this was one little stroke of luck, because our baby was so big he got a little stuck on the way out and the doctor had to pretty much pull him out by force, as I was later told. I was unaware of it all in my slightly loopy state. I just remember looking at him afterwards, and upon seeing the rolls on my new baby's arms and legs, asking my husband, "Now do you see why I was so uncomfortable?" At 9 pounds 4 ounces, he was about a pound and a half bigger than any of our other newborns had been.
 
Was he the easy-going baby I had expected? You've probably guessed by now, that he was anything but.  He would cry for hours every evening. He did not sleep through the night for months. He seemed to create a lot more laundry than his siblings had, between unending drooling and peeing out of his diapers regularly. He was a total mommy's boy and wanted to be held for the first 12 months of life. This was no easy feat considering his size and the fact that there were three other little ones also demanding my help and attention. Yet, God strengthened me (both emotionally and physically) and we persevered.  And, of course, despite his demands and fussy times, my littlest boy was lovable and adorable and a blessing right from the start.

Four years later, our youngest son is the most amazingly happy, charming little guy you'd ever meet. He makes friends everywhere we go and is incredibly easy-going now.
 
I tell my son often that I am so glad God sent him to our family. Sometimes God sends the most unexpected blessings and with them can come the greatest lessons of our lives. God is so, so good.

At eight, my son is still sweet, charming, and easy-going.  And, of course, I still feel incredibly blessed to be his mommy!

On this Thanksgiving....

I am thankful for.....

• my Catholic faith
• my beautiful family
• a roof over our heads and food on our table
• that I met my word goal for my 2nd novel yesterday (YEA!!!!!!!)
• that my first novel was good enough to publish and has received positive reviews
• that I am NOT working the midnight shift on Black Friday (thank you to my manager at work who must realize I am not as young as my co-workers and cannot pull an all-nighter selling baby clothes at this point in my life!)
• that our wonderful babysitter is home from college and available to watch the kids while I am working on Black Friday since Tim has to work his regular hours at work too.
• that I found a minute to blog about my blessings of the day......

Happy Thanksgiving to ALL

My mission as a mother

When I was just a young mother of one small child I came across this quote:

"When I was a child, love to me was what the sea is to a fish; something you swim in while you are going about the important affairs of life.”     ~ P. L. Travers

I knew, right then and there as I read those words that they summed up my goal as a mother.  I wanted, for my beautiful daughter and any other children God might someday send my way, a life so full of love it would be like swimming in a sea of it.  I wanted my children to be immersed entirely in a world *overflowing* with love.  I even wanted my children to take for granted that they were loved and adored, not because I wanted them to be ungrateful but because I wanted to them to know nothing less than an atmosphere of unconditional love and acceptance.  I wanted the mere idea of a life void of love to be so completely foreign that the thought of such a thing would never ever cross their minds.  I wanted being loved, and lovable, to never be given even a passing thought, as I am sure a fish never even considers the water it swims in.

It seems these days everyone has a mission statement-- churches, businesses, organizations, and institutions of all kinds.  If ever I was to draft a mission statement as a mother, it would be to do whatever P.L. Travers' mother did to inspire the above statement.

My mission is to raise my children in a world so filled with love, they feel like little fishies swimming about in it every day.

It has been years and years since I first encountered P.L. Travers’ beautiful quote  and I can only pray that I come close to achieving it each day as I work to raise my children to be the people God created them to be.  

I don’t know, day to day, how well I am really doing.  I do know, though, that I truly do love my children for the people they are today and the people I see them becoming as they grow and learn.  And besides loving each of them individually and personally, I really like them as well.  I enjoy spending time with them and sharing my days with them and I can only hope that my delight in them shows.  

I am not a perfect mother.  I have days that are marked by more mistakes than successes as far as parenting goes, and days I feel guilty for my impatience and selfishness.  I do not always treat my children with the love I feel for them, or the love I know they deserve.  I am pretty sure, if ever they were asked though, my children would answer with confidence that, yes their mother, and father, do love them unconditionally and completely, without a doubt.    In fact, despite my imperfections, I'm pretty sure my children do feel like they are swimming in love, at least, most of the time.

My oldest and youngest ponder some creatures of the sea.

Watching little fishies swim in tiny tide pools.

Surrounded by the Gulf all around, my boys are fascinated by all they encounter at the beach near our home.

We did it! and more....

I feel like I’ve been gone for weeks- busy in a sort of fog of accomplishing a life-long goal of writing a book.  But, today it is official—  I wrote a novel!  

I actually met the 50,000 word goal on November 17, and finished up the story on November 20 but today the NaNoWriMo website validated my novel and pronounced me a winner amid the cheers of the website staff!  Then I proceeded to enter my children’s novels (with their help, of course) into the system and hear the shouts of joy all over again-   because they too met their goals and wrote whole novels successfully in *less than* one month!  The experience required lots of prayer and lots of creative time management, but we did it!  It was quite a journey and SO MUCH FUN!  My son is already planning his novel for next year.  I am too busy editing, editing, editing to worry about that yet.

Believe it or not, life did go on in the midst of the writing and a few significant things happened between plot twists and character development.  

            So here is a sort of catch-up post on our November happenings….

            Tim and I renewed our wedding vows in a beautiful ceremony with our children and my parents present.  I have always wanted to do that and, as I suspected, the words meant every bit as much, maybe more, the 2^nd time around!

            My oldest daughter decided to have her hair cut and since we were doing it anyway, we looked into Locks of Love and ended up donating her thick, curly, auburn ponytail to them to be turned into a wig for a child in need.

            Of course, yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving.  It was a lovely day that we spent with my parents and a few of their wonderful friends.  We got to try real English Yorkshire pudding for the first time.  My children took advantage of the gorgeous Florida day and went swimming in the heated pool for quite a while.  Then, too full to drive home, we spent the night there, which is always another super special treat for the kids!  The only down side to it all was that our oldest son woke up this morning not feeling too well. :(  I guess we can all be thankful his tummy did not hurt on Thanksgiving Day.

            Now, we are all looking forward to the beginning of Advent and the changes at Church on Sunday as we start with the New Roman Missal.    

There is just never a dull moment but, still mindful of yesterday’s day of giving thanks, I am grateful for the love of God and family to see us through it all.

Always watching over me

    At about 10:30 last night, as we were finally heading to bed, I smiled at my husband and asked, “So, should I blog about today?”  He shrugged and sort of smiled back. We had been doing anything but smiling earlier in the day but sometimes, when life is at its most unbelievably craziest, you get to a point when all you can do is step back in ironic appreciation of how things sometimes end up....
    When I started my blog, almost three years ago, I wanted to write about the times in my life where I could see God at work.  The ordinary moments and extraordinary moments when I see God’s hand on me and my family.  Now, I believe, without a doubt, that God is always at work in my life and always with me.  So I guess every story is valid.  If my criteria for what makes the cut on this blog is just that God is working through the events and happenings I write about, than everything potentially makes the cut.
    Anyway, yesterday was not one of those days I was feeling very blessed, at least not at first but maybe it was one of those days that God really blessed me most……..
    The day started with the air conditioning repair man coming.  It was a long stressful morning that resulted in a hefty bill to fix the a/c for the 4th or 5th year in a row.  Both the manager and the technician admitted it was a bit unusual to have so much trouble with a 6 year old system and that something seemed not quite right about it.  Neither one would take any responsibility for it though, nor would they offer to do anything to assist us in solving the bigger problem of why things keep breaking.  They were “kind” enough to give us a 10% discount off the current repairs, bringing the final bill to $530.  Tim was at work, virtually unavailable, and I was trying to juggle school work with the kids in between phone calls to the a/c company, conversations with technician, and freaking out about yet another repair bill that was not in the budget.  In the end, I just put it on the credit card, offered my worries and frustrations up to God, and then quickly proceeded to get the kids ready for their home school P.E. class.
    Once the kids were all signed up and settled in at their class, I took the little one and headed off to do some birthday shopping.  My oldest is going to turn 13 next week and I’ve found one of the greatest challenges of home schooling is finding opportunities to shop for Christmas and birthdays.  It may seem silly but I really do have to be creative about it because the kids are always with me.  This seemed the perfect opportunity though.  I went quickly, visiting three stores, and making various purchases.  It was fun to be out with just the 2 year old, chatting with her about all the things she saw- “mama, doggy,”  “mama, shirt”, “mama, baby!” 
    We rushed back to P.E. with 10 minutes to spare and I was met at the door by a friend.  She informed me that my 8 year old had fallen during class and hurt herself.  They were getting her ice and she was pretty upset.  I went to her quickly and looked at the scrape and bruise on her right eye.  She would not tell me anything but seemed to be okay.  I snuggled her a little while, trying to cheer her up.  Then I gathered her and her siblings up and we headed to park day with our home school group.  We were not there long when my poor little bruised and battered girl started throwing up unexpectedly.  “Uh-oh, she must have hit her head harder than I realized,” I thought to myself.  I called the pediatrician right away and was told to take her right to the ER.  So, in the car again with the 5 kids and off to the hospital, calling Tim along the way.  He promised to leave work and meet me there to pick up the 4 healthy children.  Of course, he works about 45 minutes away. 
    In the end, all was fine.  My daughter got a CT scan and was checked out by the doctor.  She was diagnosed with a concussion but was discharged and we headed home for a late dinner.  We watched her closely all evening and I got up twice in the night to check on her.  By this morning, she was back to her old self with barely a headache to remind her of her adventures.  The bruise will be around for a while but that will just remind me that, though it was an insanely crazy (not to mention expensive) day, it could have been much, much worse.  I am so grateful she got away with just a concussion and not a more serious head injury.  I am so grateful for all our home school friends who were praying for us at the park while we were in the ER and who later called to check on how my daughter was doing.   And, I’m so, so grateful that even after the most chaotic, unpredictable days I get a little quiet time to pray and thank God for being with me through it all, even when I am too crazed to even notice Him in the midst of it.  Though the day was a roller coaster of stress, worry and fear, I ended it feeling grateful for the blessing of my (overall very) healthy children all snug in their beds, and the amazing perspective that only the craziest day can give...
       

Our Little House, and theirs

    Years ago, I started reading the “Little House” books with my oldest daughter.  We read a couple together but then, she was so enthralled with them, and I was too busy to read them fast enough for her, she finished the rest of the books on her own.  I, too, enjoyed them thoroughly and so finished reading them on my own as well.  As I read the true stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life,  I could not believe all the hardships her poor family endured.   They built a life for themselves in Kansas with a nice little house and a beautiful piece of land only to be kicked out after a  year of back-breaking work, because the land belonged to the Indians.  They went north and settled again, starting over to build everything they had left behind in Kansas.  They built another house, planted more crops, and made a new home for themselves.  Then grasshoppers came and ate their crops.  All their hard work was undone and they had no choice but to start over again.  They dealt with fires, blizzards, illness, loss, more blizzards, and more blizzards.  They did not ever have a truly successful year of farming.  They never got to really enjoy the fruits of all their labors.  There was always something to take away their rewards, or ruin their work, or destroy their plans.  Always.  Yet they never gave up, they never lost heart, they never felt sorry for themselves.  It was pretty amazing really.  They walked around feeling blessed despite the hardships and difficulties of pioneer life. 
    Tim and I are not farmers.  We have never built anything with our own hands or moved with our family to a whole new place.  But today, I find myself thinking about the Ingalls family and feeling a lot like I can relate to them.
      Our house has been a challenge since the day we moved in ten years ago.  We have had problems with the air conditioning, plumbing, air conditioning, electrical system, and air conditioning.  We have replaced doors, carpeting, duct work, windows, the roof, and the air conditioning.  Every time we make a list of things we’d like to do in our house- things like re-paint the family room, buy a new kitchen table, upgrade the cabinets, get a new fence in the backyard, etc…   something else goes wrong and we pour more money into the house without ever really getting ahead.  The maintenance is killing us.  We can barely keep up, and yet things keep going wrong.  Last weekend, Tim spent his Labor Day working on the house.  Tuesday evening, I put our dinner into the microwave expecting it to be hot and delicious in just 25 minutes.  40 minutes later, our potatoes were still crunchy.  They hadn't cooked at all.  The microwave was clearly broken.  This morning, I noticed the air conditioner did not seem to be kicking on.  I checked the thermostat, and went outside to check the unit.  Everything seemed to be fine but there was no air coming through the vents.  None at all.  This is the fourth or fifth year we have had problems with the air conditioner that we just replaced 6 years ago.  As I held my hand in front of the vent that no cool air was shooting from this morning, I felt my spirits sink into a state of deep depression and self-pity over the whole thing.  But then, (maybe it's message from God?) the old Little House stories popped into my head.  I feel like the Ingalls, trying so hard to get ahead, trying so hard to do the right things for our family and make a nice safe home for our children, only to be hit with bad luck at every turn.  The Ingalls learned to persevere despite their struggles.  They appreciated the gifts of family and friends and the opportunity to start over when things went wrong.  Like the ideas of embracing my suffering, praising God in all things, and finding joy in even my challenges, I am just not there yet.  But God sure does keep giving me opportunities to try to get there…..

Finally, some good news

    It was about 2 months ago now when Tim got the news that he was being “laid off” from his full time youth ministry position.  He was told he would have a job only until the end of July.  We were scared, not knowing how long it might take to find a new job, especially in the horrible job market we are experiencing.  But thankfully, he was able to find something else almost right away.  After just a few weeks of applying for any and every job he could find, after a ton of phone calls and quite a few interviews, he was offered the one job he really wanted.  The one job that wasn’t just, “well, this would work in the short term, to get us through until something better comes along.”  The one job he was actually excited about, and really, really cared about doing.
    So, in a few weeks, my husband will go from being a full time youth minister to being a middle school religion teacher.  He will still be blessed to work with young people.  He will still be able to share his faith with them and teach them about the beauty of the Catholic church.  He will still be able to support our family, paying the mortgage and putting food on the table with no break in income.  We are very blessed to have found gainful employment so quickly and so easily.  God is good and has provided as we knew He would.  But, I can’t help but wonder if the school even realizes how very blessed they are as well.  How lucky they are to have found such a wonderful new religion teacher.  How fortunate they are to have such a strong Catholic man to guide their students in learning about the teachings of our Faith.  How passionate he is about the subject matter and the importance of sharing it with the kids.  I’m not sure who is luckier, them or us, but I sure am glad we have found each other.  May we all be blessed abundantly by this next step in the journey of life.

Journaling our way to good health

    My kids are pretty healthy.  A runny nose here, an ear infection there but they really don’t get sick very often and when they do, they seem to get over it relatively quickly.  Still, a sort of plague has hit our house recently.  A plague of monumental proportions and it has been infecting everyone in its path. 
    We are suffering from a serious outbreak of complaints around our house.  It seems there is some sort of unwritten law that if someone is unhappy about something, anything, they must make sure that everyone else knows about it.  If the dinner is not to their liking or their school assignment is too challenging, or too boring for that matter, or their sibling’s piece of cake is bigger, or they don’t like the volume of the radio, or the good pencils are all taken, or someone said something they didn’t like, or they did not get to play with their friends, or we have to leave the park before everyone else, or they are staaaarving, or they are thirsty, or it is hot, etc., etc., etc….   I could go on, the children seem to.  All day long it seems, there is one disappointment after another.  And everyone feels the need to voice them all.  I never realized how contagious complaints are but around here they seem to feed off of each other and the negativity just grows and grows. 
    The antidote to all the complaining, of course, is a dose of gratitude.  Since our case is so serious, so deadly (to the happiness of our home), we are going to need a steady diet of gratitude if we are to overcome this ailment.   So, fed up with it all and knowing that complaining about it was counterproductive, I decided to take decisive action.  With Tim’s help, I located a few blank notebooks.  As a sort of spiritual prescription, I thrust one into the hands of each of my 3 older children and told them to fill them. 
     I read about the concept of a gratitude journal years ago.  I have kept one on and off since then.  The idea is to write down, before bed, a few positive things about your day.  The hope is that it will change your perspective, not only at bedtime, but throughout the day.  If you know you must come up with a list of blessings at night, you inevitably start looking for them all day long and, before long, you find less to complain about and more to rejoice about.  Less complaining and more rejoicing is exactly what we need around here!  And in my experience, gratitude journals really work, but only if you truly put your heart into them. 
    So having given them their notebooks, I instructed my children to write down five things they are thankful for.  The did so dutifully, if not happily, for the first time tonight.  We will do this each night at prayer time and they will share their lists with us all.  I have stipulated that each day’s list must be different and unique to that day.   I will not accept “my family, my friends, my house, my toys, and dessert” every night because that takes no thought, encourages no real gratitude.    My hope is that they will put their hearts into their journal entries and that hearing their siblings lists will open their eyes to even more blessings than they originally saw. 
    Gratitude is one of those virtues that seem to overflow into every part of life.  Gratitude brings us closer to God.  It fills us with peace and makes our lives truly joyful.  Gratitude really does make us healthier, in mind and body, and even more importantly, in our souls.  A negative attitude may be contagious and, in our case approaching critical status, but it is certainly never incurable and for that, I am grateful. 

Left out

    There is a little scene that keeps repeating itself at my house lately.  Or rather a few different scenes, all with the same feel….  My little one, now 19 ½ months, standing by the front door crying after it has slammed in her face because her siblings are in a hurry to go out and play with their friends…. leaving her behind.    My little one, standing with her little face pressed against the window of our back door watching her siblings playing happily outside with their friends while she is stuck inside….left behind… again.  My little one with her shoes in her hand following me around the house saying “ish, ish”  (her word for shoes) and trying desperately to convince me to let her go outside to play with her siblings and their friends…. because she has been left out… once again.  Though, I still see her as my baby and want very much to keep her little as long as possible, she is so ready to be one of the big kids and a part of all their big kid fun. 
    I, too, was the little sister.  My sisters and I were much closer in age than my own girls are, but my sisters were still older than I was and I spent a lot of my childhood feeling left out…. just like my baby does.  I grew up just wanting to be let in on the big kid fun and never feeling like I quite made it to full inclusion.  Even today, my sisters are very, very close both emotionally and in proximity.  They live just a few miles apart and I live about 1000 miles away.  They see each other everyday and I see them each about once a year. 
    Being so far apart has made it okay.  I do not desire to be included all the time anymore.  I am very happy living where I do and living the life I lead, one that is different in many ways than my older sisters, but it is amazing how those old left out feelings can still show up from time to time.  How envy can creep in when I least expect it and drive out the gratitude I have for the life God has blessed me with.  My envy is no longer centered around my relationships with my sisters but I still experience it.  And, though, I rarely see my sisters I still walk around, at times, feeling like the left out little sister. 
    As I watch my baby, heart broken over being excluded, I remember those feelings.  I remember the hurt I felt.  What perspective parenting can give us though!  I see now that, though she wants to do all that the big kids do, my baby just isn’t as ready as she thinks she is.  She really cannot keep up with her siblings and would be better off enjoying the toddler stage she is in.   The world is new to her and she has the opportunity to delight in the littlest discoveries, things that no longer impress her siblings.  She would do well to focus her energies on scribbling with crayons and markers, playing with her “Little People” toys and with her baby dolls, or looking at her lift-the-flap picture books.  These are the things she loves to do, when she is not too busy feeling left out.  These are the things that bring her joy, when she is not focused on what she is missing. 
    God gives each of us our own lives.  No two people are given the same blessings, the same opportunities, or the same gifts, no two lives are the same.  When we spend our time standing at the window watching others have fun we miss out on so much of the fun awaiting us in our own lives.  I hope I can show my youngest daughter the blessings in her life, the gifts God has prepared for her.  They are not the same gifts as her siblings necessarily, but they are wonderful gifts just the same.  I hope I can teach her to appreciate all she has and not to worry about what she doesn’t.   I hope she will learn early, what I am really just beginning to learn…..a life filled with gratitude is so much more worthwhile than one filled with envy.

So small...

    A friend of mine recently shared a story with me of a tour she took of the astronomy department at a prestigious English university.  She described a map of the sky that included hundreds of pinpoints of light that captured her attention and she told how she stopped and stared at it contemplating the stars each dot must represent.  She inquired about the map and the stars but was quickly corrected by the experts; the map showed galaxies not stars, she was informed.  Each pinpoint of light indicated the existence of a whole galaxy of stars and heavenly bodies, not simply one isolated star in the vastness of space.  There are, as she was told, more galaxies than can ever be counted.  I listened to the story as shocked and amazed as my friend had been when she originally encountered that map years ago.    
    My children love big numbers.  They are fascinated by the names and interested in learning more about them.  So, one day, a few years ago, we set out to find out as many really big numbers as we could.  We went beyond millions, beyond billions, even beyond trillions in our search.  We came across the number googol.  A googol is the number represented by a one followed by one hundred zeros.  My kids loved that number and I would hear them say things like, “I am a googol times better at checkers than you are!”  After playing around with the concept of a googol for a while they were interested in finding out even more big numbers.  Even bigger big numbers, that is.  So we looked further and found that there is a number called googolplex and it is the number 10 to the googol power.  Now this really was beyond my own understanding and, therefore, way, way beyond that of my children but they decided they loved googolplex about a googolplex times more than just plain old googol, if you follow all that!
    I remember as a child, myself, learning that both numbers and the universe are infinite.  Infinite, as in never ending.  Never.  They both just go on…forever.  I could not grasp the enormity of it all.  I could not really imagine never ending.  I kept thinking there has to be an end, somewhere.  But then I would wonder, if there was an end what was beyond that?  I would think about it sometimes and my mind would just be boggled by it all.  I felt so small as I imagined the unending universe surrounding me.
    I was doing my nightly scripture reading last night and came across the following, in the book of Wisdom 11:21-22, “For with you great strength abides always; who can resist the might of your arm?  Indeed, before you the whole universe is as a grain from a balance…”   As I was reflecting on my reading I thought again of my friend’s story of the map of the galaxies.  I thought of the big, huge numbers my children are so fascinated by.  I thought of myself, as I so often do.  I thought of all my problems, problems that no matter the size, I tend to magnify in my own mind.  Then I thought of God, the creator of it all.  God, who holds it all in His hand, who sees it all, all the time.  I thought of God with the whole universe, all of His creation, spread before Him and it amounting, next to Him, to only a tiny bit of grain.  And me?  I am barely a speck in that bit of grain and yet my heavenly Father sees me, watches over me, loves me.  And as I sat there, contemplating it all, my tiny, infinitesimal mind was boggled beyond belief.  Yet I felt at peace with my smallness and blessed by His greatness and, above all, thankful for things that I will never fully comprehend that remind me that nothing is bigger than God’s love. 

A long overdue Father's Day thank you....

    He wrestles with the kids after dinner, gets them all wound up and wild right before bedtime- the highlight of their day.  He spends his Saturday night, after a long week of work, happily folding and folding and folding, as they all line up with paper in hand begging for just one more airplane.  He talks with them in their rooms as the sun sinks low in the sky outside the window, explaining why mommy got upset and what they should have done better after a rough day of punishments that just don’t seem fair.  He shares his ice cream, his popsicles, his cake with the already sticky demanding little faces that stand next to him mouths wide open and waiting for just one more bite of daddy’s dessert.  He leads the family prayers, lovingly tucks the big kids into their cozy bunk beds, kisses them good night, and then bathes the baby so I can have ten minutes to myself at night.  And all this, in addition to working two jobs to support 5 kids who are not always as grateful as they should be for the food on the table, clothes on their backs and their mommy home to care for them during the day.
    Neither the kids nor I say thank you often enough but today, on Father’s Day, I want to share with the world how grateful I really am for the wonderful man and fabulous father my husband is.  Thank you Tim for all you do to support our family.  Thank you for being such a devoted dad to the kids.  Thank you for being so much fun- playing with them, teasing them, making them laugh and smile, and, most importantly, making each of them feel special and loved.  Thank you for helping me out, with the day-to-day chaos and juggling act of caring for the kids and meeting their never-ending needs and demands, and for never forgetting that that is only a small part of our job of raising them to be good, holy people.  Thanks for being an awesome dad and the best husband ever!