I am enjoying finding new places for our decorations. This year we gained two mantels and a banister. We lost our tall ceilings, but gained built-in bookshelves.
I’m not sure what I’m doing with mantel #2 downstairs.
We had to get rid of our tall tree when we moved, but luckily we still have the tree that Richard and I bought 17 years ago at an after Christmas sale at Ben Franklin. That makes the cost of the tree about $3.50 a year. Bargain!
As a teenager, I made a decision that my house would be filled with books someday, and I began collecting literature. If my class was studying a text, I would buy my own rather than use a classroom copy. If I had a few extra dollars, it would often go toward the purchase of a classic. My efforts have continued all these years, depending on circumstances. As we packed up the house, I realized that we amassed around 7 bookshelves of books while we were in Arizona. Many of these books were for home school, but since we were so literature-focused, it means that most of our books are useful for everyone.
I have my library.
Have I read all of the books in my library?
Not yet.
This week I picked up the copy of Silas Marner by George Eliot (a woman) that I bought 20 years ago but never read. My maiden name is written in the cover. I read somewhere that Silas Marner was a sublime tale of restoration… you know how people go on when they feel elevated by a book. I finished it today. I loved it.
I’m getting back into reading. During the move I just didn’t have time. After the move, I had no energy. I fell asleep when I tried to read. There were more naps inspired by my reading of Peter the Great: His Life and World than I can remember. Oh, those monarchs! Oh, those battles! Oh, the exhaustion! But I finished Peter in the last few days, too. Hooray.
The house feels really empty today after spending 5 great days with these people. The boys had their first Thanksgiving in Utah. We have such a big family network here that I only needed to prepare desserts!
And that’s really all I have to show you from our weekend. We made jello, pies, and dozens of sugar cookies. Richard spent approximately 18 hours raking leaves while we did all of this baking.
And when those autumn cookies were gone, we made some Christmas cookies. This morning I discovered that my children had taken pictures of them on several cameras. Maybe we all thought that if they were properly photographed, they wouldn’t be missed after they were eaten.
My mom came by and she and Paige rocked the polka dots.
Timothy won the school Reflections contest for his short film of Spring Lake.
Mark lost his first tooth. I owe you a picture.
Somehow we also neglected to take pictures of all of the family we saw this weekend. Boo!
httpv://youtu.be/xhYW_td_n04
…so happy to be a Mormon woman.
The Sanchez women have been through a lot this year. Here is a picture of us in January 2012. Since this photo most of us have dealt with huge changes in our lives. Most notably, we gained a new sister-in-law this month.
I decided that each of these women deserved a medal so I made some. Can you guess which medal belongs to whom?
I presented one to each of them when we went out to lunch this week.
Becky couldn’t be there, but here is everyone else, including our new sister-in-law Stacy. Well done, ladies, well done.
My mom took me out to lunch for my birthday. We couldn’t remember the last birthday we spent together. It was warm and sunny and everything tasted good.
My mom brought a home movie that my cousin made of my grandmother’s surprise birthday party. Watching my grandma and great aunt laughing together brought back beautiful memories of family celebrations with them in Salt Lake City when I was a little girl. Susan always had something special to give each guest so we could remember the occasion. The food was always delicious. I have never found anything to equal Great-grandma’s and Aunt Susan’s parties.
Mark was appalled that he had to go to school on my birthday. He said that he should stay home with me and help me with my work, eat with me, and wash my car. What a lovey.
Timothy gave me a diorama of a road leading to some mountains, I think to remind me that my wish to live in the mountains has finally come true.
My cake was cream filled and delicious and Richard got me the book that I wanted.
I was disappointed to watch my friends preaching to one another about the election online. If only everyone could have just come over and given me birthday hugs, I am sure that would have been a better use of everyone’s time.
We love to walk to school through the fallen leaves. We love having enormous trees, even if they drop so many leaves that it takes all afternoon to collect them.
I just discovered that my favorite tree on my parents’ block was chopped down this year. I have so many memories playing under that tree, jumping into its piles of leaves and the tough crunching sounds those leaves made under my feet as I walked home from school.
I had actually planned on walking through those leaves tomorrow to celebrate my birthday. Yes, that’s really what I was going to do.
I’m a nut for sentimental traditions.
“You is smart. You is kind. You is important.”*
I got a note in the mail this week that said all of this and more from someone I admire. I blushed, I beamed, I bloomed. (Name the Kevin Henkes book.)**
I also opened up my blinds to see that the leaves outside had changed to this vivid yellow color.
A stamp and some pigment. That’s all that it takes to make me happy.
* The Help
** Chrysanthemum
Halloween felt different this year. There were leaves on the ground. There was a public school parade of costumes. Mark wore the tin man costume to make me happy. I actually sewed this costume years ago for Daniel and I hinted to Mark that I wanted another kid to wear it. We sprayed his hair silver and he sneezed all day because of it.
Timothy agonized over his costume choice. After hours of shopping, we came home and pulled out a classic cape from the dress up clothes collection in the basement. I made his pendant from his piano medal and some costume jewelry from his great-great grandmother.
We had cousins drop by to show off their handmade costumes inspired by How to Train Your Dragon, Shawn the Sheep, and Brave. My sister Susan is amazing and talented.
My big kids didn’t dress up this year. Paige had too much homework and Daniel was just not interested. The day before Halloween I realized that we had forgotten to carve pumpkins. That has always been such a big event at our house, but this year we settled for orange twinkle lights in the windows instead of jack-o-lanterns.
Mark, freshly bathed and no longer sneezing, chose to pull out the knight gear for trick-or-treating.
Six years brings a lot of change.
I studied a conference talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland last week in preparation for a lesson I was to teach. It was about the parable of the laborers in Matthew chapter 20.
There are many thoughts that emerged from this study, but the biggest for me was that we can school the way we perceive events.
We can make a choice about how we feel about things… perceived injustices especially. We can make a choice to let go of grudges. We can choose to see the good in a person or group of people. We are not naive to wrongs, but wise as serpents, harmless as lambs, we can more forward with courage.
My friend said that the philosophy of trusting and acting on everything that comes into your head is dangerous. We need to school our thoughts so we can act in the best ways. We can’t always trust our feelings to lead us to the best path. We can’t always trust our first perception of things. We certainly can’t trust that desire to hang on to past hurts.
Parables invite us to be participants. I tend to put myself in parables among the sheep and the 99, not as a goat or the lost ONE. The truth is, we all spend time as the prodigal now and then and it would be healthy to read the parables from the sinner’s perspective. It’s when we do this that we can find our Heavenly Father’s love and grace. We can school ourselves to find new perspectives.
I get the impression that many women tend to place themselves in the prodigal’s place too often, feeling that they can never measure up.
There is danger in both kinds of one-sided thinking. When we forget to school our thinking, we either become too concerned about justice in one case or about mercy in the other, forgetting that we need both.
“Be kind, and be grateful that God is kind. It is a happy way to live.” -Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Elder Holland’s talk can be heard here.