So what happened to me?

I feel like I dropped off the side of the earth in relation to this blog (for those who don't know, I have another blog to help me track my family history research).  I had a lot of fun in the Ukraine, but I am struggling to finish blogging about it.  In my head I have the entries, pictures, etc. but I just can't get it down.  I think it is in part what I have been juggling since I got home as well as what the Ukraine is.  

Since I got home I have been appointed to two more positions (Secretary of the Children's Sunday School Program in our church and to the GPS Community Budget Committee).  While I feel ready for these opportunities in my life, getting sick and having sick kids is knocking me off my feet.

Then there is the way I feel about the Ukraine.  It is a beautiful and wonderful place and yet it is also a sad hopeless place.  There are so many museums dedicated to remember the travesties of communism/Russia domination (the Museum of the Starvation, etc) that helps you to understand how evil it is, and yet many of the country want to re-instill the former type of government.  It makes me think of the biblical story of the Hebrews being led out of Egypt begging Moses to take them back to Egypt to be slaves.  I mix that with what I see in our country today, and it greatly concerns me the mentality that government is suppose to take care of us, even if that means we become their slaves. 

Having said and felt all this, I would go back to the Ukraine if the right opportunity came up.  I would have a few requirements (like I would have to learn Russian first and I would have to have an opportunity to build up the current situation).  So with that I will leave the history part of this trip undone knowing that emotional part of this trip is completed.  I enjoyed having a week and a half with my sweetheart as well as spent a considerable amount of that time examining the perspective of another culture/society and letting that have sway in my heart.

Locks of Love?

This is a very common tradition in the Ukraine.  They place a lock on the bridges after they get married.  It is difficult to see in the picture with Jeff, but there are literally hundreds of locks in the picture.  Jeff says that once they get a bridge all "filled up" then they come along and cut off all the locks so that more can be added.  What a wonderful tradition.

All aboard!

This was our return trip from Odessa.  A nine hour train ride.  We got a sleeping compartment that we shared with Jeff's parents.  These are his parents infront of us.

This is Jeff following me down the narrow hallway to our compartment.

This is Jeff in their with his mother.  This is not a bad idea.  If you must be on a train for so long, I guess this would be a good way to go.  The trip down was not bad for me other than my nights and days being messed up, but the trip back I started experiencing claustrophobia half way through the night.  We were on the top bunks (mine was on the left here and Jeff's is above his head while his parents had the bottom bunks).  I forgot that for me Claustrophobia gets worse when I am tired or run down.  I was more than ready to get off the train.  I am not even going to try to describe the bathrooms on these trains.  I will just share that I washed them completely before I  used them.

Another bird man

Do you recognize that fedora?  Yep, that is Grandpa Park.  He currently has a huge Eagle on his arm.  Yep, they have the same tourist traps here that we did in Kiev.  Remember our doves?  He got a real kick out of it.  He was at the top of the stairs of Odessa port.  These are literally about 14 flight of about 20-30 stairs a piece (or at least it felt that long).  These are pretty famous stairs although I never heard of them before we decided to come to Odessa.

This was a fun restaurant that had amazing food.  It sits on the beach of the Black Sea in Odessa.  We really enjoyed a delightful dinner with Jeff's parents and some friends of theirs.  This was suppose to be Christopher Columbus's ship.

This is me in "another sea".  So far I have been in the Dead, Red, and Med(itreanean) seas.  I have also been to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  I am afraid that those two are not all that glamorous, but I think the seas may make up for that!  It was chilly.  The weather was probably low 70's, the water was definitately colder than that.  Although after this summer, I have realized that I don't care to go to an (unheated) pool unless it is 100+ degrees or in July or August.  I am just not a cold water girl.

I can honestly say this was the funnest vacation.  It was a lovely opportunity for Jeff and I to relax and enjoy each other.  We got to spend a lot of time alone during the day and in the evenings we had the company of our parents (Park).  It was really lovely.

This is us at the ballet.  I am not really into the ballet, but thought we ought to give it a try since we were going to be in the Ukraine (AKA former Russia province).  It was great.  We got $6 tickets, but I thought our seats were wonderful.  Unfortunately jet lag was still getting me, so I slept through part of it.  It seems that whenever Malicifient came out, I fell asleep.  So I remember everything except her.

Architecture in Odessa

Odessa is on the shore of the Black Sea.  The story says that many years ago when Odessa was first being built up that the town gave land to anyone who would build of building of "interest".  So many of the buildings have fantastic architecture.  Unfortunately that was many years ago, and so we saw many building literally falling apart.  We were also able to discern some of the short cuts that were taken.  For example one building that we saw had dowels, 2x4's and paper to build up the stone looking edifice and then they put mortar on top.  Makes me think a bit of the facades that were famous through out the west in the United States.  The picture above is actually a cathedral.

This is the train station.  One might think it was just a judicious use of an old building, but rather it was designed like this and it's original purpose was as a train station.  I was amazed by how many statues, columns, pilasters, etc there were in these buildings.

No idea what this building is for, but I loved the color of it!  Even in this picture you just don't get how strong and beautiful the color of green was.  Amazing architectural decorations!

This is the side of the Opera house, the front is below.  Now one expects an opera house or cathedral to be this decorated.  You should see the inside, statues everywhere.  It actually made it difficult to get to our seats because a lot of people were posing on the stairs, etc to get pictures of this amazing place.  I guess I was tired of the crowd because I did not take a picture of the stairs or hallway.  Once we got in to our seats I did take a few pictures which I will show in the next post.

Independence Square - first half

Have you seen "Despicable Me"?  Our kids love to pretend they are holding up a building, etc in a picture that is in reality just a perspective twist on taking pictures.  Jeff is "holding" the sceptere looking statue that is in actuality about 1/4 mile away.  We took pictures like this thinking the kids would think they were hysterical.  

This is a street vendor looking to make some money off of us.  I did not know what he was doing with these birds.  He had one in his hand and the other was on the ground.  He stomped right by it and it hopped up on his outstretched hand.  Then the man walked over and put them on me (without my permission) and poked Jeff and told him to take a picture.  So yes, this is mostly my initial reaction.  I got a little use to it as the next picture shows.  Jeff got pushed into the picture and the man took our camera to take this picture.  I was a little hesitant and apprehensive trying to memorize what he looked like in case he ran away with our camera (not that we have an expensive camera at all).  Then after he gave our camera back he charged us about $8.  I laughed because I realized this was what he did all day, watched for people showing interest in his birds, dumping the birds on them, taking their pictures, and then charging them after the fact.  Not a bad Capitalistic gig. 

St Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church

This is a lovely picture I got of off a Google search.  It shows the really pretty color of the church.  When we first got there we just sat for about twenty minutes and relaxed.  This is the stop that made me realize how hard it is to travel in non-English speaking foreign lands.  Most of the time I have traveled (in Europe, Middle East, Africa) there have always been lots of English signs, English speakers, tour guides, etc.  This was the first time I went to a foreign country and had none of those to help me.  Jeff was with me so he was able to navigate us around quite a bit, but he speaks and reads Russian, not Ukrainian.  With the liberation of the Ukraine from Russia, there has been a bit of National Pride which has replaced a lot of the former Russian name plates, descriptions, menu's etc with Ukrainian.  

To enter the compound you have to go through the bell tower.  We finished our visit by climbing up the tower.  I knew it did not bode well when we started our trek up the tower through a hole in the wall.  It was not much larger than we are.  It caused me to wonder how people who were larger than Jeff and I would be able to make it into such places, however, now that I reflect on it I only recalled seeing two people who were overweight (by appearances) and at that nothing compared to what we see in the United States.  This may have to do with the amount of walking one must do in the Ukraine or it could do with the amount of support we give in the United States to make all places accessible to all people.

Now to the part I would prefer to avoid, but will share anyway.  First of all I have a slight claustrophobia which for the most part I dealt with just fine.  The bell tower brought out my acrophobia.  I was OK as long as I kept my self looking forward or at my feet.  If I looked over the side from the stairs, oh, it was not good.  I found at the second level up I was able to go up to fine.  It had a solid complete floor.  Then we had to go up about 3 more flights of stairs to the third level to which I basically clung to the walls (go ahead and start laughing now).  Jeff wanted to go to the top level, I told him to go for it, I wasn't going up anymore stairs.  I should have taken a picture of the stairs for you.  They looked like they were glued up, no iron beams, no walls, etc.  The were "caged in" so that you could not drop something off the side of the stairs.

These last two pictures are ours.  It really is a beautiful place to visit.  

The Golden Gates

I have heard about these before...the Golden Gates.  This was the entrance to Kiev when it had a city wall build entirely around it.  Legend has that it had Golden Gates, but now it has none at all.  Usually you can walk through it, but this day they were having some type of film festival and they had blocked the entrance so that they could watch movies inside.

This shows what it originally looked like.  Obviously the dirt and timbers extended out to the left and right of the gate, but it is "earth thrown up with a workmanship of timbers above" that.  I had heard of how cities defended themselves this way, but had never seen an actual representation of it.  As soon as I saw this, it clicked with the description in my head.

This is the side where they had a monument to someone (we were not always able to decipher statues, etc.  For some crazy reason they rarely had anything listed in English.  Sometimes they did not even have it in Russian preferring to have it in Ukrainian only.).  I don't have a picture of the monument but let me tell you that when they do monuments, they are serious about it.  They are almost always huge.

This is on the 3rd or 4th floor?  I lost count.  Lots of climbing in this fort.  You can see over my shoulder our next stop, St. Sophia's.

Dayover in Switzerland

We had the opportunity to spend the day in Switzerland on a trip out to the Ukraine.  Zwitzerland is a beautiful country.  We visited in Zurich with one of my best friends from high school Cathy.  She has lived there for a year or two, but has always been a big world traveler.  She took the day off from work and walked us around to see the beautiful architecture, teach us about the culture there, catch up on old times, and also took us to lunch.

This is us having cheese fondue at a side walk cafe.  That car that is approaching us is probably about the only one that came down that way during our lunch.

This is Cathy looking smashing, and me goofy.  Yeah, that was probably par for high school too.  Cathy is a wonderful friend and a beautiful lady.  I am so glad that we had the chance to catch up after twenty years, and here is my secret confession - I only joined FB so I could catch up with good friends like her!

Wow, I am not sure if it is normally this sunny, but we managed to get great weather here (and for most of our trip).

Our trip begins!

This is Jeff and I three hours before our flight leaves on Tuesday morning.  We are the only ones at the gate.  We flew through security (which if I remember correctly Jeff got his first of several extra screenings on this trip) and breezed through to the gate to sit and wait for 2 and a half hours.  We were a little tired (we got up at 4:30 am) and just enjoyed the opportunity to read and relax.  We are unaccustomed to such activities and have decided that must be what R & R(read and relax) stand for.  This was such an unusual thing for us we actually found waiting enjoyable.  I could not help be reflect on our previous trip with the 6 kids on a discount airline (where we had to pay $40 for checked luggage) so we had each of the kids take a rolling suitcase and carry-on.  Did I mention that the twins were 6 months old at the time?  Did I mention that the oldest was 8?  Did I mention we had 6 kids?  I did not think to take a stroller, so Jeff and I were carrying the kids in addition to pulling our own rolling suitcase and carry-on and helping younger kids with their stuff.  Just for the record MaggieMae's bag was not as heavy as the rest of us...come on the kid was three.  Then there was the occasional nauseous kid, plane turbulence (did I mention we flew into a hurricane?  Seriously, we were the last flight out of both airports, they had closed down all airlines and we only got to land cause we were so close.  When we left the airport the rain was literally flying sideways).  Oh, that was an eventful trip.

So memories of other trips made this one delightful, although I felt compelled to ask anyone who had small children if they needed help.  They all turned me down.  Let me warn you, if I am in the airport with lots of kids, and you ask me if I'd like help, I WILL say yes.  I am not an idiot.  I have never received an award for wrestling a stroller down a flight of stairs.  Actually, I have never received an award for any of the labor intensive things I have undertaken so that my unusually large family can do the same things that many smaller families do without thought.  And I am OK with that.  I know what I do is because I want my family to enjoy life, not wait for it to happen.  Which is just the reason why I found myself in the airport waiting for 2 and a half hours, because when given the chance, I am going to enjoy the world around me, with or without my kids.

Mommy will lava melt your eyes?

Yes, this sweet little 4 year old girl actually asked me that question. The conversation went like this:

"Mommy will lava melt your eyes?

Yes, if lava touched your eyes they would melt it. Lava will melt almost anything.

"How bout my hands?"

Yes, it would melt your hands.

"What will it do to water?"

Water?

"Yes, will it melt water?"

Well, the water will cool the lava down and turn it to rock. The lava will turn the water to steam because the lava is so hot.

"Will it melt rocks?"

Yes, lava can melt rocks.

"Could it melt my ears?"

Yep, it could melt your ears.

And with that our conversation closed with me taking a picture of her making a face about her ears melting. My children are fun to chat with, fun to hang with and I never know what we are going to talk about next.

This year's rainbow cake

Last year I made a two level round cake that was multi-color with white frosting and a skittle rainbow that went over the whole cake. Maggie wanted another one. I initially agreed, but then I flubbed up the day before and did not make it and foolishly I scheduled her party for 9:30 the next day. So I pondered a bit (my way of saying I was stressing a bit, mentioned it to God in my nightly prayer, and got this idea sent to my head) and came up with this.

Last year I mixed the cake mix in half a dozen bowls and then poured each one in the correct sequence to make a great cake that ended up splitting down the middle because it was so heavy/large? Anyway, I decided to switch to a 9x13 pan, and just put in different swirls of color as I went. Below is the pre-cooked cake, I wish I would have gotten a post cooked picture. It really looked awesome. I frosted the top of the cake and we put on a small (compared to last year's cake) rainbow of skittles and we were all set!

Doesn't this just look fun?

My American Dream

The other day I was responding to a friend of mine about something she had posted on her blog, and it occurred to me what the "American Dream" is.  For me, I think this is having the right and opportunity to be involved in the community around you to determine your future.  This could be as simple as being involved in the PTO or voting for the President of the United States.  But why do we do these things?  I feel for the same reason that our colonial patriot's fought the Revolutionary war to improve things for our kids.  Stop for a minute to ask yourself why you get involved in things beyond your home.  The two reasons that come to my mind are 1) because you like the way it is going and you want to support a successful system so that the results can bless you and your posterity or 2) because you think the current system is not being successful and you want to correct it for yourself and your posterity.  In the Colonial times, they felt they were being treated unfairly and wanted to be able to have a voice in the issues that affected them.  In modern day I think about what I get involved in and why and they fall under these two reasons.

I think back to my perspective on this idea as a teenager.  I thought the "American Dream" was a small house of  your own with a white picket fence.  That may be someone's dream, but it is not mine.  I thought I would have to give up what I wanted to have the American Dream.  Now I realize that the American Dream is something that we must all define, search for, and then in all probability create.  For me, my American Dream is a place where people treat each other with respect and patience.  Where we don't have to have laws to govern the people because we realize that we are not all the same, we don't all think the same, but we all deserve the same respect.  A place where my huge 5 bedroom house has as much right to being on the block as a small three bedroom regardless of our fence out front.  I have come to realize there are two ways that I can influence these ideas 1) by articulating them to the world and 2) teaching the children to understand and do them.  These are the ways that mom's rock the nation.  While many programs have been put into place to teach basic principles of respect and patience, it really comes back to the home (as do most things in our nation).  This is what we as women (and men) need to understand that we determine the future by our actions now and choosing to be involved in the solutions.

Inside this brain...

‎60 watt Type A lightbulb?!? Seriously do they have type B as well. Do type A's have a harsh light that gets everywhere, shows up on time, etc? Do B's only come on when they feel like it, a gentle influence, and everyone likes them even though they don't always get the job done?


Well, I posted this to Facebook to show my shock at this.  I recently was trying to replace all the burned out light bulbs in my house.  It seems we have different bulbs for each room.  In our bathrooms we have the round bulbs - 4 bathrooms - 20 light bulbs.  Then you can add in the nightlights in our house - only 4 we use, although we have more like 6 or 7 - but we were short replacement lights for a while - picked up 8 replacement bulbs.  Then on top that we have can lights, ceiling fan lights, and fluorescent lights.  And then lastly, we have a lone piano light.  You know it sits on the back of the piano and you pull the chain and it lights up.  This is where my sense of frustration ended and humor started.  I read the description "‎60 watt Type A" and I had to laugh.  All I could picture was this light bulb running around pointing it's finger at people and telling them they needed to finish doing this, that, or the other.  I then thought of what a type B light bulb would then have to be like.  My laid-back light bulb, works most of the time, but don't yell when it doesn't because it won't change it a thing. The only way you are ever going to change this light bulb is by removing it and replacing it with a Type A.


Reminds me a bit of my marriage when we first got married; one of us was more type A, the other more type B.  Now time has passed and we both are more towards the middle of that spectrum, but I always giggle when my husband shows his Type A side (who knew?).


Side point - does this image look like a little man inside the bulb?  He looks like he has no arms, but I can see that he is wearing these coke-bottle thick glasses, with a hat that has a halo over that.  Just in case you needed another giggle.

In their footsteps

One of the unifying things about us is that we were all little once. Some of us may still be little, but most of us grow up, move on, and move away. I am inspired by my children - their innocence, simpleness, and joy. I look to my childhood and see the same. I expect the same thoughts have occurred to my parents, grandparents and so on. We don't realize how connected we are to our future and our past. This is why I am starting this blog, to keep stories of my past, the past that came before my birth for my future - my children and so on.

I enjoy doing family history research. I have done it off and on for almost two decades. Recently I felt the Siren call of family history and started up again. I am amazed with how much has changed or been improved upon in the last 9 years. Until the internet, family search has been time consuming, arduous, and expensive. Now I can do it for 15 minutes searching libraries around the country while cooking dinner (and an extra bonus is I don't have to get a babysitter).

Recently I have been delving into Sons of the American Revolution applications, Pioneer indexes, and census' galore. I have also found journals shared by others through Ancestory.com. I have shared these via email with a few relatives, but now I am starting to get overwhelmed by the stories and sources. As a result, I have decided on this blog for keeping stories, pictures, etc. I might even through in an observation, how to do, etc so that it can be a complete resource for me as well as an over-the-top resource for my living relatives.

Games and more

This is one of the gifts that Maggie got for her birthday - Princess Monopoly Junior. It is fairly fun game. We are enjoying our board game time in the afternoon's. Maggie continues to beat me almost every time, which I am flummoxed about because it is a total luck of the draw on this game. Oh, well just thankful that Jeff has not challenged me to it!

My girls and their hats

Rosi was running around with Anna's hat on. I just thought it was too cute! I wish we lived in more of a "hat society". I am sure that will surprise some because I am so casual in much of my daily attire, but I think that a hat just finishes off an outfit so nicely. Now I am not talking about the baseball cap to cover my messy hair action that is so common today, but rather a well thought out outfit with a hat that accentuates the colors and them of the outfit. Even in the picture little Rosi has nicely color coordinated her outfit (down to her pacifier ribbon) albeit probably not a conscious thing.

Now lately you have probably noticed my hat wearing which has to do more with sun protection than coordinating with my outfits, but I have noticed that I am taking more thought to the clothes when I know that a hat is part of the outfit.

Last swim of the year

This is Anna getting ready to dive. I should have had a great action shot, but I am still learning the new camera.

Our church rented out a swimming pool and had an end of the summer party. It was a lot of fun. I can't say that I socialized too much, but our family had fun together. Maggie, Rosi, and William had lots of fun putting mom and dad through the ringer but jumping from the side of the pool in quick continuous succession. I would not have thought I could do that for more than ten minutes, but I think we actually got up to around 20 minutes of it. The boys mostly enjoyed going down the swirly slide, and Anna with her friend Brook in tow, spent a lot of time on the dive board. Jeff wisked them all away about half way through and put them to bed (with a babysitter at home) and came back to join me. We got to splash around in the pool and I swam about 4 laps. Lots of fun!

My "Pretty, Pretty Princess"

This is some more great 1-1 time with Maggie. We got to play one of her favorites - Pretty, Pretty, Princess. You go around the board picking up earings, bracelet, necklace, ring, and then for your crowning victory, yep, the crown. Maggie won this time. She wins a lot in our games. I don't try to let her win, but I am not as tough to beat as when I play against an adult. She does seem to have a fair amount of luck on these games.

It is fun to dress up with her, although I can never do the bracelet on my own.

I do enjoy this wonderful little girl and in many ways she has been my oasis in the desert of "mommyhood". Maggie will often come up to me and kindly tell me she loves me. She is very gentle, kind, and thoughtful. I enjoy her so much, and to top it all off, she is so cute!

You can still be manly and hang out in the kitchen

I love this little guy! He is so much fun. In the 6 months he has struggled so much with speech and movement, but he is doing great. We are finding that he has quite the mischievous streak now that he has found his voice. While this picture is not showing a portion of that personality trait, it is showing off some of William's other interests...like his sister's shoes. I found him playing in the kitchen wearing his sister's white sandals. I went to grab the camera and all I can figure is that he figured out that at some point in the future he would be embarrassed by this and pulled them off. If you look close, you can see he had just finished pulling off his right sandal. We just giggle at these things. We know that he is surrounded by a lot of girls and we just love that he is getting so much more social and is having fun dressing himself.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Top of Maggie's cake. Very yummy!

Line of Choristers

A few years ago during church, and mostly out of frustration, I started helping whichever whiny child it was on my lap to "lead" the music much the way a chorister would. They quieted down and life was a little easier. Since then I have used it on numerous children and evidently the others were watching because now all of my children enjoy "leading the music".

This is "Family Home Evening". A tradition in our family that every Monday evening we turn off the TV, close our front door, and spend it with just our family. We usually incorporate a few songs, a lesson, activity, and hopefully a dessert. We have various success with this attempt. Some nights I want to run and hide, others like this one I want to...take a picture! I love all my kids, but even for me sometimes it is a lot to deal with. Savoring these sweet moments is wonderful (and necessary-not every melt down is solved by a little music lesson).

PS A special shout out to my friend Becky who taught me in our college years how to lead music by asking me to substitute every Sunday for Sacrament meeting.

My kind, um I mean Maggie's kind of birthday party!

I asked Maggie what she wanted to do for her birthday this year. We have never had a friend party for her and she asked if she could invite some friends and dip chocolate. Maybe I should not have asked her so soon after we did this as a friend "playdate" for my older kids during the summer time. So we invited a few cousins and friends (Maggie is no respecter of persons or age, all in this picture were invited with the exception of me). We were just getting done dipping gummy bears and were starting in on the pretzels. All enjoyed the activity. We ended up not doing any other activities as the kids were happy doing some playing in the other room and my game activity did not work out as expected, so we cancelled it. All in all, it was a lot of fun and very low stress (again, my type of party). Happy birthday big girl!

Hungry, Hungry, Hippos

This was probably the first day of school. I, like almost all people, make resolutions to spend more time with my kids. Little brother was sleeping, which makes this an unusual selection, but the girls wanted to play it. Hungry, Hungry, Hippos is a game I remember from my childhood, although I don't remember it being so obnoxiously loud as I feel it is now. We had fun each playing our own versions. Maggie was playing what most would call the "traditional method". Rosi was having a kick loading up the "loading trays". These are where the marbles go to wait until they are released into the furry of the game. Rosi had no qualms reaching into your "captured pool" of marbles to re-stock her fun. And mom, I got to try to balance the two players and keep everyone happy. Oh, it is fun to spend a good 20 minutes playing with the girls, however I definitely needed some "mommy quiet time" afterward. It is good for them to watch movies every once in a while, right?

Dress up

Maggie helped Rosi get into this dress. I was impressed that they even found the headband with the ears and bow! Rosi loves this dress, but it is about 2 inches too long (I think it is actually 5 sizes too big). Rosi had fun running around in it, but got very frustrated with tripping. I followed her around for a bit holding it up, but I gave up.

This mom rocks!

Every once in a while life parallels my emotions...in a good way! This morning is one of those days where while everything has not gone according to my plans, I have none-the-less had great achievements. I have gotten laundry washed, sorted, and put away with the kid's help (all my kids have about two weeks worth of clean clothes). I have washed dishes, and re-packaged 40 pounds of hamburger (bulk purchase in too large of containers to just shove into the freezer). I have bathed two babies, gotten three kids off to school, and I am sure half a dozen more things. But for me the most important parts are helping my kids feel successful and ready in getting ready for the day, having a good attitude all morning long, and did I mention playing games with Maggie after I successfully got two babies to sleep?

I am learning to measure success on my terms. For me, it is not about what most of the world values or gawk at, but rather helping my children take those baby steps to becoming successful, happy and independent individuals. I have seen a lot of success by giving them responsibilities to accomplish every morning and then assisting them with the chores. For example, the older three kids do dishes four times a week, two breakfast and two dinners, I tell them I am available to help them for the first 15 minutes after the meal is over. They can choose to waste that time or take advantage of it to their benefit. I know this means I am still doing dishes almost 100% of the time, but I am finding my kids quality of doing dishes improving, and I hope they are starting to learn how quickly and easy dishes really are.

This picture was actually taken a month ago, not today, but it so represent how happy our family feels when I am being successful for my family.

Books read - The Lost Symbol

I read this book recently (on my husband's new E-reader) and found it to be fun and interesting. I learned a bit about Mason's through it. I have a grandpa and others who I have known who are/were Mason's. I thought it had an interesting perspective about symbolism. He described taking communion/sacrament that most Christian groups do every Sabbath. The way he described it to his college students, they were all repulsed. When he pointed out he was talking about communion (eating and drinking the symbolic equivalent of another person's flesh and blood) they thought he was describing some type of pagan or demonic cult. He then explained to them that often when outside the group, it can be difficult to understand symbolism.

The book on the whole was great. I had a difficult time putting it down to do what I needed to do (laundry, cooking, playing with my kids, etc), which was additionally challenging because it was a really long book, so I spent a lot of time in this dilemma. It was a fun book and I appreciate a book that causes me to stop and think about how I perceive the world around me.

How many...?

Who can forget this commercial from our childhood days? How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie center? One...two...three...crunch...the world may never know. Very clever advertising. This is somewhat the way I feel about growing out my hair. Two weeks ago I shaved it bald. Now I anxiously await it's growth. My kids will tell you that it is no longer prickly. It is considered by most who rub it as being soft. So two weeks in it is soft although you can still see my scalp through it. And thus we will wait to see how long it will take to grow out.