Cegan took this picure of Key Lime Pie & Candy Bar last week. I love it!
Mother’s Prayers
14 May
I’ve been thinking more about Mother’s prayers. I know of at least twice when my mother’s prayers saved me from danger, and I’m sure the same can be said of most of my brothers & sisters.
There is a story from the Book of Mormon that always gets brought up on Mother’s Day, probably because it is one of only 3 times that a mother/mothers are specifically spoken of. Alma 53 & 56 tell of these mothers, who were Lamanites, who had converted to the gospel of Christ. They had raised sons to love God, sons who obeyed every commandment with exactness and who were valiant and trustworthy. These sons were still young, but they had committed to go to war to protect their families from an invading enemy who would destroy them & take away their liberty.
These Sons explain to their captain why they do not fear death. “…they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it.”
I’ve thought about this scripture a great deal. How did the mothers know their sons would be protected? The Book of Mormon makes a clear distinction more than once that faith or believeing is different than knowlege or knowing. The prophet Alma and the prophet Ether both explain that at first you have faith and believe or hope for things that are not seen. But once the Lord answers your prayers, you have faith no longer, because you KNOW, it is no longer just belief.
So these mothers knew that the Lord would protect their sons, and the sons believed their mothers’ word. How did the mothers know? I have prayed for blessings before, with faith that the Lord could bless me and would bless me if it was His will, but I didn’t know that the answer would be “yes.” I hoped the answer would be yes. There has been one time when I prayed for a blessing that I felt my family truly needed and it was a right thing to ask for. Yet as I prayed, I knew the answer was “no” or at least “not now.”
I believe those mothers knew because they pleaded with the Lord for the lives of their sons and were given a promise through the Holy Spirit that their sons’ lives would be spared if they had faith. The mother’s testimony gave strength to their sons and they were all saved.
What I think is the prayers of mothers are powerful indeed.
p.s. This isn’t church doctrine. It is just me pondering on the scriptures, but I did a little search and this guy agrees with me.
Images from:
praying hands from here
“Two Thousand Young Warriors,” Arnold Friberg. copyright 2002 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved
Happy Mother’s Day 2012
13 MayMost of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends – but only one mother in the whole world. ~Kate Douglas Wiggin
I’ve been blessed in my life to be surrounded by many women who were good and lovely and wise. Surpassing them all in courage and selflessness is my own beautiful mother.
I was her first born, and therefore her favorite (hey, it’s my blog, I can say what I want.)
There are things I don’t know about my mom. I do not know, for example, what my mom’s favorite color is or what her favorite music is. Perhaps she was too busy listening to me talk about what I liked as I grew up to have time to tell me what she liked. I do know what her favorite food is: anything she didn’t have to cook. And I would hazard a guess that if she didn’t have to wash the dishes up after the meal, that would make it a favorite, too.
(Here is a page from my journal. Mom has come with me to my 2nd grade classroom for the school open house, a momentous day.)
My mother is a teacher heart and mind. She taught me and my 10 brothers & sisters all the important stuff while we were growing up. She took us kids on nature walks. She showed us how tadpoles turned into frogs and how caterpillars changed into butterflies. She taught us how to make little dolls out of flowers and acorns. She taught us how to short-sheet our best friend’s bed at girl’s camp. She taught us to work (and we wickedly disobeyed and hid and didn’t do our work.) She taught us to love reading books. She taught us to be happy. She taught us how to recognize promptings of the Holy Ghost.
Someone said, “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool mom.”
When I was a teenager, she always knew when I was headed into trouble. It was her words (and prayers) that saved me when I was perilously close to throwing away all that was best in my life.
My mother sewed my wedding dress & finished a quilt for me–in the heat of the summer while she was pregnant with my littlest brother.
If I end up a good mother to my children, it will only be because I have succeeded at being as much like my mother as possible.
If you counted, there is a brother missing from this picture. He was in Siberia at the time.
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base. ~Dave Barry
4 May
This person took care of my 6 children while I went to the hospital fearing appendicitis.
When I came home without appendicitis, just a really bad kidney infection, she stayed and took care of me.
If everyone had a helper like Cegan, everyone would be overjoyed to be sick.
Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City
30 Apr
A little over a week ago, we took a family trip up to Kansas City, MO, to see our new temple. It was a lovely trip, the temple was beautiful, and the spirit we felt was wonderful.
I delayed posting about our trip because I didn’t know what to say about how special it felt to be together with our children in that beautiful, beautiful House of God. I still don’t know what to say. The only words which come to mind are these:
And no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, … and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time …..(3Nephi 17:17)
Only, if know that if you have been there, you do know that joy.
Golly! I love my family so much.
26
Apr
Cherry Pie is 10.
Her favorite color is orange.
Her favorite food is lazagne.
Her favorite things to do are solve mysteries and create science experiments.
She is full of ideas. One time she created a restaurant menu. She posted signs at the end of our driveway, and wanted me to start cooking food for all the people that were sure to start pouring in.
For birthday cake, I made Lemon cake with vanilla pudding & cream & strawberries. Yum-O
Cherry Pie likes to create checklists, long checklists. She has a checklist for her birthday party on Saturday. The final check box reads “If all the boxes are checked this is the best birthday ever.” I hope I can make all those boxes happen.
Scary Sewing
24 AprA friend of mine’s daughter got married last week, and at the last minute, she needed the shoulders of her wedding dress altered. Apparently everyone she asked told her to come to me.
I was happy to help. It was good to find that drooling over all those sewing blogs has actually taught me a few things. 4 years ago I would not have had the courage or the ability to alter a wedding dress.
When I agreed, I knew there was a good possibility that I’d have to remove lace and then re-attach it as I worked.
What I didn’t expect was that there would be beads and sequins which had been attached to the lace flowers after the lace flowers had been sewn to the tulle. So I had to unpick beads (carefully knotting the threads so the beads from the entire dress didn’t come off) THEN unpick the lace.
Most of my time was spent unpicking the sleeves so that I could take 2 inches out of each shoulder. It is tricky to unpick tulle and not create big holes. I also shortened the sleeves, but the scariest part was altering the sleeves to fit the new, now smaller arm hole. For a little while I was thinking that if I don’t repent good enough, I’ll be sent to a place where I have to sew layers of tulle into sleeve holes all day for eternity.
Re-attaching the lace flowers and the beads was actually the fun part. Luckily, I’ve watched my Aunt Jeanie do bead work before, so I knew to use my sewing needle to pick up the beads I wanted instead of trying to pick up the beads with my fingers. That little trick makes the difference between torture & fun when it comes to beads.
I used a hemming trick my mom taught me to finish the sleeves, and they looked more professionally done by me than the original seamstress, if I do say so myself.
It all turned out okay: the shoulders of the dress stayed put and the neck line lay flat. I think I’d like to make a wedding dress from start to finish someday. I’ll probably get the chance. I do have 5 daughters.
As always when I pull out my sewing machine, the girls want to start projects too. I can never get them excited about sewing until I’m working on something and under a drastic deadline. Then they want me to find them fabric and thread their needles and untangle their thread and show them the next thing to do. Arrgh!
However, Cherry Pie made this for her teacher, all by herself, and I’m super proud of her.
You can’t see the words she stitched very well, but it says: “I ❤ Mrs. Blessing” I think she did a great job choosing fabric, buttons, and ric-rac.
Peach Pie also sewed some buttons.
Why I will never ever ever be a size 8 again
17 Apr
It tastes even better than it looks.
*cue the music
Ahh, Sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found thee!
Cookie Cutters
16 Apr
Baby Dumpling is four months old. She weighs 13 lbs. 2 oz (35th percentile) and is 26 inches long (98th percentile) Tall and skinny.
I don’t know how you feel about your kids, but mine all seem to look quite a bit alike–they are born and I think, “well, it’s mine alright. Cookie Cutter kids.” But as they grow, they remind me of first one and then another sibling. So I went to the scrapbook and pulled out a 4 month old picture of each of my babies to compare.
First thing I thought was “I don’t remember them looking like that!”
Second, though there are similarities, I can easily tell all six apart. I think a lot of their similarities are in their expressions and the way they move. These are things you can’t see in pictures
Psalms 127:3-5 Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. 4 As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. 5 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them….
Matthew 18:5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.
Shades of Josh H
10 Apr
A Hahahahahahaha. Leave me a comment if you are nerdy enough to get it and know tthe author of the book that inspired the other movie I’m referring to 🙂
Made this for a friend. I mean no disrespect to Josh–he is super cute and I’m sure if I was 16 I’d be swooning my way through the movie. Maybe I swooned a little bit anyway.
Marvelous Pigs in Satin 