Fall is in the air

As a kid I was asked many, many, many times "what is your favorite season?".  And I mean MANY times.  I was asked on school paper assignments, by teachers, by friends, by relatives.  For the longest time I couldn't understand why I didn't have an answer for them. Sometimes I would just say "summer" because summer had no school and I didn't have to wear a parka and moonboots to keep from freezing. I like something about each season, and I dislike something about each season.  So for a long time I would just say that I didn't have a favorite. Much to everyone's incredulity.  How can you NOT have a favorite??  You have to have a favorite.  Hmmm. Let me think about it again. Nope, I really don't.

Then one day, as it was not so much summer anymore and yet not quite autumn it hit me.  I DON'T have a favorite season.  What I have, is a long term love affair with the transitions.  I love the feeling of the change that somehow inexplicably begins to take place in the temperature, and the foliage, and the precipitation.  Watching as plants and animals either prepare for a long nap or slowly begin to wake up from a really good dream.  I love the chance to start drinking more of something hotter or colder.  The interest in new soup recipes or new things you can eat frozen, or deep fried, or on a stick over a fire.  

One of the best is  the changes in the smells everywhere you go.  I love the feeling of traveling from one place to another without even leaving.  

I should have known as a child that this is what I loved.  I always felt so bad for the kids that lived in Florida or Siberia.  I couldn't fathom not knowing what all four seasons felt and looked like in person.  I marveled at stories of parents spending a truckload of money to bring a truckload of snow for their child's birthday party because they had never seen it in person. 

Now as an adult I get just as giddy each time the signs begin to show that change is around the corner.  There is no constant like the constant of change.  I love it.

I really hope heaven has seasons.  I can't imagine it not. 

If it was great, did it have to be fun?

I think Hannah has it right.  Not everything that is a great experience in our lives has to fall under the category of "fun".  After she and Luke returned from trek yesterday afternoon she had a lot of people asking her the same question - "did you have fun?".  She didn't feel like "fun" was the right way to describe what she had experienced.  She said it was hard, and great and life changing but not fun.

So I have been thinking about some of the greatest experiences in my life that made the biggest impact on me.  Were they fun? Nope, not really.  Giving birth to my 3 children was probably and will probably always be the most life changing, awesome, spiritual experience of my life.  But F U N was not how I would have spelled it.  And even after it not being fun, I voluntarily did it 2 more times! But fun definitely came with those 3 little people.
 I think we are supposed to gain and learn the most from the things that make us inhale and fill our lungs and remind us we are alive.  Fun is the way we show God that we appreciate the life we have.  We make our own fun.

940 Saturdays

I am missing my two oldest today while they are away trekking.  I read a little blurb in a magazine yesterday that said you have 940 Saturdays with your child from the time they are born until they turn 18.  It reminded me of when Hannah turned 6 and Tim said "we only have her for this much time, two more times" (or something like that).  When you break it down like that it makes it seems so much shorter.  I have really been trying to do stuff with my children as they are growing up.  It doesn't have to be anything big.  Some of my best memories with my parents as a child were doing everyday things with them.  Time is a gift we are meant to share with people we love.  And not just on Saturdays ; )

How Did They Send Their Children?

I have been preparing for my two oldest children to go for 4 days on the handcart trek.  I have been thinking lately about the families over 100 years ago that sent their children and loved ones a few at a time across the ocean to a foreign land.  Parents who stayed behind while they sent their children ahead to what they felt was a better life, a place where they could worship God as they chose without fear.  What kind of faith does that take to take that leap?  I don't know that I could have done it.  I don't know that I could have separated our family in that way.

Love is in the air

This was the weekend of weddings for us.  They were two very different settings and situations but both were a celebration of marriage and the love of two people starting a life together.  It also stirred alot of memories in me of my own wedding and reception.  The reasons I got married and the reasons I married the person I did.
The first reception was for a good family friend Daniel Hansen.  He and his wife were married in the temple earlier that day.  Their family also was able to celebrate the baptism of a grandchild and the blessing of a grandchild on the same weekend.  It was so great to see the happiness in that family.  The bride was beautiful, the groom beaming.  The reception was simple and low key.  Friends and family visiting and congratulating the new couple.  The focus was the life they were beginning together.  No fancy honeymoon right away but a pack trip scheduled for later this summer.  We were so happy for them.
The next night we attended the wedding and reception for our nephew Ryan and his wife Hope.  I call her his wife because they have been married already for over a year.  They were engaged last year and planned to marry this summer after Ryan returned from a Marine deployment in Afghanistan.  But decided it would be better to be married before he left. So a quick ceremony at the courthouse then and the wedding they had planned promised when he returned.  The weather was pretty windy but the wedding was still beautiful.  Ryan in his dress uniform and Hope in her gown.  The reception was indoors.  It was a traditional style reception with wedding party at the table in the front and tables all around with family and friends.  Dinner was served and fabulous, toasts were made, cake was cut and Ryan wore some frosting on his face.  They had just started using the dance floor when we had to head home.  They have a honeymoon in Jamaica that has been planned for awhile. 
While both weddings were very different in style from the other, one thing was the same.  The love in the room was palpable.  It made me appreciate the marriage I have, the family I have, regardless of the imperfect wedding and reception I may look back on now.  Because if time has taught me anything, its that the great marriage was the planned destination. The wedding was just the ticket there.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ProcterGamble/featured?v=NScs_qX2Okk

Just feeling so blessed to be a mom today.   This commercial makes be cry every time.  No job is harder, no job is more rewarding.

If this is Cabin Fever - give me more

The last few days have had us under Mother Nature's house arrest.  The kids were back to school on Tuesday for one day after MLK holiday weekend which was extra long due to an extra day off last week after finals.  By Wednesday morning a stormfront started rolling in and brought with it a little snow and a lot of rain that quickly turned to ice.  No more going anywhere for 4 days.  For any of us.  I have loved it.  It is a vacation that was unforeseen and therefore - unplanned.  We were free to make it up as we went along.
 Luke had a great air soft battle with friends, the neighbor boys come down to our hill in front of our house to fly down it on large colored plastic discs that double as rockets.  Piles of snow pants and boots lay next to the wood stove.  I am cooking broth from scratch from the turkey I roasted yesterday. Popcorn and Choffy are made on a regular basis. The house has been messy but smelled yummy. I gave Tim his anniversary present early (Adele's 21 CD) so that he could listen to it while he reads. (And we LOVE it.)  Bedtimes and morning routines loosely followed.  Orthodontist appointments rescheduled, church activities cancelled.  Nothing I HAVE to do.  I will have that again next week.  I will always have that to go back to.
Time has slowed down.  We have to check with each other to remember what day of the week it is.  We have just been able to be present in the moment. I will have to send Mother Nature a thank you note.