Made Me Smile :-)

Last Friday Old Man Winter decided to exercise His muscles and hit our area with a blast of snow.  I was not pleased to see the storm when I looked out the window.  I am sooooo ready for spring!  It would seem that the rest of the family wasn’t very happy to see the storm either, and they responded by being in s-l-o-w motion as they got ready for the day.  We were all running late. 

Hoob was the lucky one of the family with a late start at school.  Every Friday her school starts at 9:30 instead of 8:05.  Because of the late start, Hoob often saves her Thursday chores for Friday morning.  In my haste to get to my morning crossing on time I rushed Yawlin out the door and yelled over my shoulder to Hoob, “Don’t forget to do the dishes.  I love you!”

As I drove to my crossing I realized with shame that I hadn’t said one word to Hub or kissed him good-bye before I left.  It would have been easy to do so.  He was already at work in his home office right by the front door.  Shame!  As soon as I had turned on the speed limit signs and set up my cones, and before I practiced spelling and vocabulary words with Yawlin, I decided to text Hub.  Here is our exchange:

Me:  I love you, you sexy man, you…

Hub:  Have nothing better to do than sit in a cold car in a snowstorm and text your husband that he is sexy, huh?

Me:  No, I just think he IS sexy…

Hub:  SEXY – Simply EXcited to be all Yours.  😉

That exchange made me smile all day.

🙂

 

It’s About Time

Some ways I’ve spent time with my family members recently:

*The kids were listening to music in the living room and dancing to their favorite parts.  Huh saw me as I was coming down the stairs and said, “Mom, watch how we used to dance to this at school dances.”  She then proceeded to jump around and wave her arms.  “Some people would even get in your face like this.”  Huh moved to within two inches of me and continued to jump and wave her arms.

I watched for a few seconds and then said, “I can do that.”  I then started to jump and wave my arms.  The kids stared in shock and then burst out in laughter.  The laughter spurred me on to even more crazy moves (I am so glad there wasn’t a video camera around).  The kids joined me in my crazy dance.

*I have some upcoming training for some testing I will be performing at my son’s school, and I have an upcoming camp meeting for the summer camp I will be taking the young women of my ward (congregation) to this summer.  Both places have addresses I was unfamiliar with.  When that is the case, I like to drive to the address a few days before so that I can make sure I know where I am going.  I invited Huh to come along with me to find the addresses.  I used the time in the car to visit with her about certain things going on in her life and some of the choices she is making. 

It was a much needed visit.

*We used the movie tickets my sister gave our family for Christmas  for a fun family outing to the movies instead of just distributing the tickets and telling the kids to go to a movie with their friends.

*Juju sent me a text from school asking if we had Jello in the house.  I stopped what I was doing to check the pantry to see if it contained Jello.  It did.  She then asked me to text her the flavors.  I took the time to do that as well.  It turns out she was bringing a friend home after school to make Jello and they wanted to make sure that the Jello flavors we had were “the good ones.”

*Mack’s boyfriend, SkiShop, has gone to school in Hawaii for a Semester.  She is missing him terribly.  While moping in her bedroom she used her cell phone to call our house phone to ask me to come down to her room and rub her back and “play with her hair.”  I immediately recognized it as a desire to talk.  Though it wasn’t the most convenient time to do so, I went to her room and granted her request.  And, yes, we talked–for almost two hours.

*Shroom came home from a church basketball game and joked about his lack of  offensive skills.  I crumpled up a piece of paper and aimed it for the kitchen trash.  “Watch my basketball skills!”  I missed.  And missed.  And missed again.  I’m not sure how many tries it took before I finally made the shot, but once I did, Shroom said that I should probably never try to play basketball.

*Hoob is the only one of our kids who has school today (the other kids’ schools have a teacher compensatory day).  She was pretty down about it last night.  I told her to hurry and get her homework done and then the two of us would sit by the fire and I would give her a neck rub to relax her for school.  She liked the idea and quickly got her homework done.  And, yes, I kept my promise.

*Sunday night I was so tired that I planned to go to bed early.  Because the kids didn’t have school the next day for the Martin Luther King holiday, Yawlin decided he wanted to stay up and play a game.  Any guesses on who he asked to stay up and play the game?  Yup, I didn’t get to go to bed early.  And he beat the pants off me!

*Hub was feeling a little stressed about work.  He needed to vent.  I listened.  The dishes, laundry, and vacuuming got put on hold.  But having him kiss me and thank me for listening made it all worth it.

Many times in posts on my blog I talk about the importance of spending time with our families.  I emphasize that again here.  There is nothing more important than making sure your family members know that they are loved enough that you will make time for them.   Look for those opportunities.  They will come.  

And you won’t regret it.

******************

Update:  My doctor thinks the lump I felt is a lymph node, though he’s wondering why we can feel it since that is not usually the case.  I have a mammogram today to make sure there is nothing going on with the breast to make the lymph node more prominent.  My doctor doesn’t seem too concerned, so I’m not going to be either.

 

Sometimes You Compromise

When I think of going on vacation I usually envision a tropical paradise with palm trees and beaches.  Since I live far away from any ocean, it’s to the ocean I want to go when I get to vacation.  Hub, on the other hand, doesn’t care if he ever sees another beach.  The beach simply isn’t “his thing.”  As a couple, we have learned to compromise on vacationing.  Sometimes it is my destination of choice.  Sometimes it is his.  When it comes right down to it, it doesn’t really matter where you vacation as long as you get to spend time together as a couple or as a family.  Building memories is what is important.

In keeping with my blogoversary goal to post pictures that could have been posted in past posts I am now going to post a few pictures from our anniversary trip to Moab, Utah last June.  Obviously there won’t be a palm tree or beach seen in any of the pictures.  But, we enjoyed being alone together and memories were made.  We had so much fun together that I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.

View of Moab from the Sunset Grill

The first night there we ate at the Sunset Grill, a cute little restaurant that sits on a bluff above Moab.  The food was good, the conversation even better.  The next day we rented ATV’s and rode the Chicken Corner’s Trail.  We took along a picnic lunch and were on the trail most of the day.  I am hoping that the pictures I post won’t make us too identifiable (ax murderers, ya know!). 

Hub near one of the rock formations.

Shall I jump into the Colorado River?

On the way back from our picnic we stopped at Catacomb Rock to explore and take some pictures.  We have decided it is a place we definitely have to let the kids explore sometime.

One view from Catacomb Rock

 

Another view at Catacomb Rock

The trip was wonderful, because, as I wrote in my post last summer, it helped to solidify my love for my husband.  Moab was his destination of choice, not mine.  But it is a place he visited often when he was growing up and is, therefore, a special place to him.  And now, it’s a special place to me too.

And, to end this post…one more picture of Hub…couples should learn to laugh together too, right?  If I don’t post ever again, you will know that Hub killed me for posting this pic.  🙂

No caption necessary

 

Mopping Can Wait

Mack plopped herself down on my bed.  Lying on her stomach, she stretched out the width of it, crossed her arms in front of her, and rested her head on her crossed arms.

“Mom, my phone is dying.  Can I get some money from my account.  Dad says that when we are with him this weekend we might be able to run to WalMart and get one of those cheapie phones.”

I continued sweeping my bathroom floor.  The goal was to sweep and mop the master bathroom and then move on to vacuuming the stairs.  “I don’t know, Mack, maybe we can get to the bank later this afternoon.”

Mack nodded and asked an unrelated question.  And then another.  I finished my sweeping, but left the mop leaning against the wall.  My daughter was in the mood to talk.  Our conversation lasted for two hours.  We covered almost every topic imaginable.  We talked about our upcoming family vacation, the consequences of dishonesty, laundry, the purpose of child support payments, what some of her friends are doing this summer, some doctrinal points from our religion, and much more.  At one point Mack got emotional about some information I gave her that touched her heart.  She made a commitment to try one of my suggestions.  And the mop didn’t move from the wall.

Dale Carnegie in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, tells the story of a short conversation between a mother and her son:

Robert:  “Mom, I know that you love me very much.”

Mrs. Esposito:  “Of course I love you very much.  Did you doubt it?”

Robert:  “No, but I really know you love me because whenever I want to talk to you about something you stop whatever you are doing and listen to me.”  (pg. 83) 

Listening and talking to my daughter delayed my morning routine by two hours.  Did Mack feel more loved because I stopped what I was doing and listened to her?  I don’t know, that never came up in the conversation, but I do know that it was a conversation that I wouldn’t have missed for the world!