Today I am grateful for good friends…these are just two of the many beautiful people Heavenly Father has allowed to be a part of my life. They, and others, have changed me for the better. Shari was a part of my life when I was younger….so much younger! She was there when I was a teenager…so young! My family was falling apart. My life wasn’t a mess yet…even though my family was. Shari kept me from personally jumping off of the deep end. She kept me focused. She gave me direction and vision. I don’t know if she has any idea how profound her effect on me was. This photo was a ‘chance’ meeting. I bumped into her in a place where I usually would not be. And, at the time, I thought to myself, you know, if Shari was anywhere, I bet she would be here right now. There were thousands of people there. The venue was huge. We were on a 15 minute break and I began looking for her. After about 10 minutes of looking, I thought, what am I doing? There is no way I am going to find her in this sea of people. And I decided to hit the bathroom before I sat through the rest of the presentation. As I headed to the restroom, there she was! I saw her talking to someone else. Just so you know, it had been probably 25 years since I had seen or talked to her. And there she was!

Linzy? She was my secret friend in Eureka. 🙂 There were some other people in our lives and they did not appreciate the love we had for one another. We kept our friendship quiet…I mean, how much time we really spent together. We had reasons to interact, working together in church and things. We were both struggling with relationships, in many areas. Our hearts could just unload on one another without causing stress to the other person. (Love you Linz!!! 💕💕)

I am so grateful Heavenly Father has always given me good friends. Wherever I have lived, He has provided some amazing people who have supported me and strengthened me and listened to me and been there for me. These are just two of my people. If I posted about all of them, I could probably post for the rest of my life! Such good people! Anywhere I go…there are more people to love!

#GiveThanks

I am Mother to some amazing people! I LOVE being a mother. The opportunity to help bring to earth and grow another person, in my case 9 other people, has been my journey of a lifetime and has helped me to grow and change in really amazing ways. Has it been challenging? Understatement of the decades! So much work! Heavenly Father has known exactly how to push all of my buttons and show me my weaknesses, harness my strengths and force me to grow in very painful but productive ways. Motherhood has made me become, and required me to reach deep within my soul and call forth everything I could give and ask the Lord to make up the difference. Sometimes I have had to do what Elder Holland says, ‘come to the Lord in meekness and lowliness of heart and,…, “pounded on the doors of heaven to ask for, to plead for, to demand guidance and wisdom and help for this wondrous task,”’. I have done that more than once….probably more than once for each child. These are incredible people…and I don’t want to mess them up because of my inadequacies. I want them to reach for the stars and to soar! I want them to believe in themselves and to go after and obtain their dreams. I know they can do it with the help of their Father in Heaven! I KNOW they can! I am so very grateful for the opportunity I have to interact with them on a daily basis and have them all as a part of my life!!

#GiveThanks

Lenise 🙂 (I need more photos of you and Johnathan!)

So Kyle sent that video a few days ago. I have been prepping and prepping for Johnathan’s wedding and have not even downloaded Kyle and Iasmin’s wedding photos off of my phone. Funny story. Yesterday Darren finally posted the wedding photos of him and Sarah because Johnathan’s wedding is less than a week away! I have been trying for days to download the video of Kyle and Iasmin’s wedding without any success. So I will keep working on that….but not until I am finished with Johnathan’s wedding. And I will post about Darren and Sarah’s wedding after Kyle and Iasmin’s posts, but before Johnathan’s and Lenise’s. So you are just going to have to wait for me to manage all of that! But in the mean time, you can enjoy these amazing photos of our May wedding with the beautiful flowers, while we are all freezing in the winter weather. Maybe I will post the snow wedding photos next spring, just to keep thing interesting! Here you go…… ENJOY!!

Aren’t they beautiful?? It was such an amazing day! I held it together most of the day, totally crying the night before and sobbing for the next three days. But their wedding day was so beautiful! I saw so many of my dear, dear friends who I really haven’t seen since I left Utah. When one of my favorite girl friends walked into the restaurant (where we were holding the reception), I walked up to her, threw my arms around her and just started sobbing. I was a blubbering mess, but I didn’t even care! It was so very good to see her!!

The first wedding of our amazing children……a family, organized for eternity. I know it took you some time Kyle, but Iasmin has certainly been worth the wait! As your mother, now you know what I have to say about your wedding!!

When I am in this place, I avoid writing. I know I need to. I don’t want to. I fight it. It is because I am sad, so very, very sad….and I need to access my sorrow, feel my emotions, and explore my feelings….and I don’t want to. I have been very sad the last several weeks. I have just kept myself really busy. I mean, I am a busy person anyway. It isn’t hard to do. But as soon as I have any down-time and my heart says, Oh, you have time for me now…. my brain says, I don’t think so and I find something else to do.

I have known for six hours that I need to write today. Yesterday I tried to polish off a few more of my wedding tasks, and I was told, Carin, just stop and cry. Do it now! You know you need to. I crumpled up on the love seat, the tears started flowing and just kept going for 45 minutes. I had plenty to do. After some serious ugly crying, I read a few scriptures, said a prayer, had a few insights and inspiration….then ran to take a shower and tackle my day. I ran all day long. By the evening, when it was time to make dinner, I was too tired. I was so grateful I had picked up that rotisserie chicken and threw on a pot of rice (my guys are hard pressed to eat vegetables anyway🤨) and even though it was my night for the dishes, I let them sit until this morning. I have known since I got up, that I really didn’t have anything pressing on me today and I would be free to just sit and write. And what did I do instead? A few more wedding tasks, wash the dishes, finish a book, and read my blog before I made my self start writing. I could have read the entire blog, taken all of my writing time and never even bothered…..just wasted the whole time. And now I have been writing two paragraphs and still have not even started to discuss what my feelings are…..except how sad I am. I am so good at stalling and procrastination!! It is really just my attempt to make myself start the process. Ugh!

Don’t you just love my self talk?

Be brave Carin, move forward. I am sad about the wedding. I am really happy for my boy! His bride is beautiful and really just perfect for him and we all really, really like her. There aren’t any problems with the wedding. Things are coming along just fine and there really isn’t a lot of stress. I am a really great plate spinner, so the balancing act isn’t too difficult for me. I am sad about people………people I love……..people who won’t be there………people who haven’t been there, people who still aren’t there and aren’t really in any kind of an emotional place to be able to be there. The people are what (who) is important to me….. I don’t care about all of the things or the place. But I am so very, very sad about the people. The closer it gets to the wedding, the more clearly I am reminded that the people are not there. We will have plenty of other people there and some of them are very important to me. But some other very important people, will not be there, and actually participating in the event, without them, will remind me of how sad I am about that and how my heart wanted them there. When I really let myself think about that, I am so full of sorrow I think I could just hug the floor again….for several more days.

There is nothing I can do about them not being there. They have been invited. They know. But they are choosing not to come. They didn’t come to my wedding and they have not come to any of my sons weddings either. My life reminds them that their life is not what they want it to be and so they avoid a relationship with me. I am so full of sorrow that they do not really know me or my kids or my family. So very, very full of sorrow.

Drew tries to remind me that we are building that kind of a family in the future. We are attending our kids’ weddings. We will attend our grandchildren’s weddings and significant events. We are creating those kinds of relationship into the future generations. My children and my grandchildren will have those kinds of families and relationships. But I am so very sad that part of my family is missing and I do not have those kinds of relationships with them.

I was thinking about this the other day. Do we hold ourselves back from blessings that could be ours because we don’t want to change, or because we are afraid of what might happen if we try? What things would be available to us if we went outside of our comfort zone and reached out in love to someone we have lost contact with? As Bob Goff would say, What if we weren’t afraid? (My friend Linzy sent me an amazing book! Bob Goff’s Everybody, Always! What a GREAT book! Thanks Linz!)

With my people and the wedding? It is not because I have not reached out. It is because when I reach out, they are uncomfortable and my efforts to encourage, to them, feels like I am pushing my agenda. I have to wait for them. They are not ready. It has been 30 years and they are still not ready. I do not know if they will ever be ready. And in the mean time, the gap between us keeps getting wider and wider and wider. I reach out once in awhile to try to bridge the gap, but they remind me that they like it where it is and they do not want to make the effort to come where I am. Unfortunately for them, I do not want to stay where I am. I want to grow and to keep becoming. They think they aren’t moving. But the truth is, they are slipping. It would be nice if we stayed in the same place when we decided that we just needed to rest and wait for awhile before we continued on our journey of becoming. But that is really just an illusion. We are never stagnant. We are either moving forward, or we are slipping backward. There is no staying where we are. And so the gap keeps getting wider, year after year, after year. These huge, milestone events in the lives of my children, just highlight the fact that the gap is ever increasing, and so is my sorrow.

There, I put some of it down. It must be a lot deeper though because now my brain says, don’t I have some other things I can do? This is enough, right? My clue that I am getting closer but have not quite hit the issue yet and I am still avoiding the the feelings. Sometimes I hate knowing myself so well.

I had a girlfriend when I moved here who used to say, You know Carin, I just really am not sure I like this whole agency thing. (Agency being the principle that we can choose for ourselves how we will act.) It is a doctrine that is foundational to our lives. We do not control other people. Trying to do so will cause significant damage to them and to us. Agency must be respected and owned if there is going to be moral development and growth. So even when people do things we do not like, we respect their agency to have made that choice. There have to be consequences when your agency restricts or inhibits the use my agency. If everyone did whatever they wanted, there would be chaos. In order to live in a society or a community, agency is respected to the degree that it does not infringe upon the rights of another or cause them harm. That is the basis of law.

Back to my friend, she was speaking as a parent of teenagers. She felt like her teenagers were not being so wise with their agency and she just wanted to tell them what to do and how to do it. She is actually an amazing parent, lest you think less of her. She is one of my role models. When she shared those thoughts with me, I really couldn’t wrap my head around why she would feel that way. After all, I didn’t have any teenagers at that point. But with or without teens, with the wedding people, sometimes I feel that way. I wish they would hear me when I want to say, Your choices are making you miserable! You could have so much more happiness and joy in your life if you just did it MY way. But that would infringe upon their agency, you see. So I just have to wait. I can pray. I can cry. I can feel sorrow and pain, but eventually, I have to come to the place where I love them, regardless of their agency…..I love them enough to let them live as they choose, even if those choices hurt me.

There….I think that is enough now! Don’t you?

Well….our power is set to be turned off at any time now. For the second time this week. It has been quite a ride navigating all of life without power. Not bad, mind you. Just interesting. Our schools are trying to figure out if they are holding classes or not. Some do, some do not….some modify their schedule. Most of the traffic signals are out and we are all four-way stopping…except at that light that is a five way stop….that one is just nuts without the lights working no matter what time of day you go through it and it is the main way to Costco….so most of us go through it. When the power is on, we all run around and wash our laundry, run the dishwasher, vacuum, go to the bank, get gas, stock up on groceries, drop off packages to mail, download anything we can off of the net, catch up on email, phone calls, texts and if we are really lucky, we can find a few minutes to stick up a blog post. Haha!

I have been running around like a wild lady, because in the midst of all of this power outage craziness I am trying to help our second son plan his wedding! We have a THIRD wedding this year! Which means I am trying to email contracts back and forth, and ordering and returning clothes online, and trying to communicate plans with the many people who are involved in our celebration….all with intermittent power and internet. So lovely!!

In the mean time, several of the people I work with in seminary (my director, his secretary, and other members of his staff) are being evacuated due to the fires in their area. I am not too put out about the power issues when my friends have no homes and are crashing with other family members so they have a place to be safe, while they await word of whether or not their belongings and those of their friends and family will be there when the fires are extinguished.

And what about those amazing men and women who are battling those blazes?!! What about them and their families as they put their lives on the line to save the rest of us? I have a few friends here whose husbands are fire fighters and they take time out of their rotations at their stations to go and help battle these blazes that come out of nowhere and consume everything in their path, living or not. Their families worry about them while they are away and breathe sighs of relief when they return home.

Meanwhile in Idaho, my little daughter is experiencing her first major snowfall and she sent the winter coat and boots she ordered here to California instead of to her in Idaho. Utah is set to have one of their coldest winters on record—of course, during our wedding.

During all of this physical upheaval, for all of these people (200,00 just for the fire evacuations!), there is emotional trauma and stress that goes along with all of it, whether you are one who is experiencing evacuation, battling the blaze, patiently pursuing power….or freezing in a frozen wasteland (not really a wasteland 😉). People are grumpy and stressed. How do we manage all of this chaos and still treat each other properly?

It is hard work!

But here are a few suggestions, which obviously cannot all be managed well all of the time because of the circumstances. But as much as possible:

• Get adequate rest
• Drink water (lots)
• Try to eat regularly
• Take time out to feel and process–even in emergencies, people need down time. It may be awhile before you have the things you need to be able to do this, but take a few moments wherever you can find them. Step outside. Breathe deeply. Cry (just do it!). You will be much more effective if you are not a time bomb that may explode at the drop of a hat.
• Pray….it may have been a long time. That is OK. God is still there and He can hear you even if no words come out of your mouth! Reach out to Him. Know He is aware of you, even especially when times are hard. He IS there…it may take you a little while to notice. But as you are in a more stable place and choose to reflect on your experiences, you will see His hand in your life.
• Look to serve….whatever circumstances you may be in and however had things are for you right now, recognize that there are those around you who are hurting too. You may be able to relieve some of their suffering. As you reach out to serve, even in your difficult circumstances, your heart will be comforted because you have acted the way Christ would have if He was there. Just reach out to those right now in your immediate circle….even if they are strangers. One of them may become one of your best friends!
• Express gratitude for all of the little things, especially people. As we look around, even through all of our loss, and recognize the good we have (even for little things, like a glass of water, blades of grass, electricity, or the good men and women fighting to save you and your belongings), as we can see these things, they will bring us peace even amidst our turmoil. It will remind us that there IS good in the world! Maybe we have just been too busy and distracted to see it!
• Above all, know that there are people out there who are praying for you! We know you are hurting and times are hard. But we are all watching the news, and in our hearts and homes, we are praying for your safety and your peace. Hang in there! Hold on!

A few weeks ago in General Conference, one of the speakers shared this poem:

Sorrow prepares you for joy.

It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter.

It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place.

It pulls up rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.

Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

See the Mathnawi of Jalalu’ddin Rumi (1925-40) trans. Reynold A Nicholson, vol. 5, 132. Quoted from Elder L. Todd Budge, Consistent and Resilient Trust

I am not sure who the author of the poem is. BUT…..

I have been pondering it for a little while now. I love the imagery of violent sweeping, shaking yellow leaves from my heart, and rotten roots being tossed out. I love the thought that sorrow makes room for greater joy. I do not like sorrow. It is painful. It hurts. It is not fun and it takes a lot of energy. I have spent most of my life trying to figure out how I can avoid sorrow altogether. But I have experienced what the poem teaches. Sorrow has allowed me to clean out old feelings and dusty behavior and has given me space, emotional and mental space, to start fresh and make changes and those changes have brought me new hope and greater peace and a richer life. I AM more, because I have allowed space and time for sorrow.

There is a book I have that I LOVE! I was going to write a book review about it, but I will just tell you about it here. It is called, Bonds That Make Us Free. It is an amazing book! The basic premise of the book is that if we are angry at someone else, it is because we have mistreated them. I know, I know….you are thinking, (Scoff) No way!! That cannot possibly be true! I thought the same thing. In fact, the first time I read the book, this was my experience. I had just dropped a pretty nasty, scathing letter into the mail for one of ‘my friends’. We live in the same city. She was going to get the letter tomorrow. I had been sitting on it for three days before I mailed it. I had asked my husband to proof it for me and to help me to soften it or adjust it if it was not Christ-like. I thought I was completely justified in expressing my thoughts and feelings as I had in the letter. I sat down and read the first chapter. It is a very intellectual book. I had to close it a couple of times to process what he was saying and once I understood what he was saying, decide if I agreed with it. As I was processing, I thought, wait a minute….if what he is saying is true, then in this situation with my friend, I have mistreated HER? That cannot be true! I thought deeper about what he was saying. I walked back through the interaction in my head. I tried to look at it from someone who saw it from outside of the relationship. As I was doing so, I found the place where I mistreated her! I was dumbfounded…… Dr. Warner was right! I was wrong! I was hooked! I continued reading the book. But not before I called my friend and said, ‘Hey, uh, by the way, tomorrow you are going to get a nasty letter in the mail from me….and uh, I just want you to know that I have reconsidered my feelings and recognized that I do not feel that way and I am really sorry and I would appreciate it if you would just tear up that letter and throw it away BEFORE you read it.’ She just laughed. And said it was no big deal. When she got the letter she read it. Then we talked about it later.

I have read the book a couple of times since then. Every time, I am fascinated as I find new gems of information. The last time I read it, I recognized this truth: Sorrow and grief are emotions that do not carry accusation—meaning, those feelings are not necessarily blamed on others. I suppose we can blame others for them. But sorrow and grief are feelings inside, emotional pain that accompany a sense of loss—whether that loss is a relationship, an ability, a resource, a comfort, or any other number of things.

It has been my experience that most people do not know how to respond to another’s sorrow. It makes a lot of people uncomfortable. They do not know what to say or how to say it. They truly do not want to hurt the other person. They recognize things are sensitive and so to avoid the possibility of causing further pain or stress, they just avoid the person altogether. Then the person experiencing the sorrow feels isolated and alone. Sometimes that is OK. But a lot of times people just need to know others are thinking about them and wanting to help them. I have found the best response seems to just be direct, but gentle. “I heard about your loss. I am so sorry. That must be a very difficult thing to be managing. Would you like to talk about it?” or “Can I help you with anything?” People will usually just tell you if they don’t want to talk or want your help. How people respond to your compassion and outreach is more of a reflection of where they are emotionally, so you don’t have to take it personally. And if they need a friend or an ear, now they have one.

With my sorrow and grief over the last two years, I haven’t really wanted to talk to anyone about it. If I have, I call those I can trust and reach out to them. But for the most part, I have just sought out my Father in Heaven through prayer. That has been my greatest comfort. He knows what I am feeling, and why, and He can usually give me things to do that help adjust my perspective about my experiences and feelings. Service to others, paradoxically, provides a major focus shift. As I serve others, my personal sorrows and griefs are lightened. I know, I know…..how can you reach out and serve when you are so sad and hurting inside? You just decide you are going to. I don’t know how it works, I only know that when I do it, it does! Every time! Just try it! The next time you feel down and sad, say to yourself, who else is feeling this way? What can I do for them? And then DO IT! You will feel better!

Sometimes my sorrow, grief and sadness are due to the actions of others. Sometimes those feelings are a response to my own choices. Other times they come because of things that happen in my life, where I have little or no control over them. But regardless of why I am experiencing those emotions or what my reaction is to….eventually all of those responses culminate in an attitude of submission. I always end up at the place where this is just the way it is now. I can rant, scream, have a temper tantrum, be frustrated that this is where things are…..but always in the end, I cannot change it and I have to come to terms with my new reality. Like the poem says, I really am shaking out the yellow leaves, ripping up old roots, and violently sweeping things in my life and heart to make room for new and better and greater joy. But I have to be willing to embrace it.

I wish I could embrace the process. I wish I didn’t fear it or run away from it. Not because I like pain, but because I understood the process well enough to look to the joy at the other end–to recognize and to remember that the process of grief and sadness really is about changes that make me grow. I LOVE the story of the current bush!

As I am mourning and lamenting when things have not gone as I have wanted, or as I have planned, I have to remind myself, I am not the Gardener here. God has a different plan for me than the one I have seen for myself. He knows me just a little bit better than I know myself. He loves me more too. And He knows the potential I have to become and He has already seen the vision of who I am and what I need to do to get there. I need to have faith and trust in His plan for me and recognize that He has removed those things from my life because He is making room for me to experience greater joy and happiness. Hang on, Carin……the Light will come!

Maybe you heard recently that California had the lovely opportunity of having their power cut off because of an impending weather threat? Sure you did! We received notice Tuesday morning that PG&E would be shutting off our power at midnight for an undisclosed time period….Please plan accordingly. If you want to see if you are in the shutoff area, call this phone number which directs you to this website (which by the way, was having so much volume you couldn’t get in or access it). So that was great!

I wasn’t too concerned. I like camping. Camping at home sounded fun. I think the Lord had been preparing me without me even knowing it. Last week, during grocery shopping day, I was purchasing pork loin for a dinner I was making and noticed that I could buy three times that amount of meat for the same money if I wanted to cut it up. I had the thought, Get the bigger package. OK. Then Costco had pot stickers (my favorite) on sale so even though I was not planning on making pot stickers that week, I grabbed a package of those too. On Monday (pork loin cooking day) I cut up that huge roll of meat and separated it into meals and shoved it into the freezer. We have been trying to follow the prophets’ instructions and be prepared for a rainy day by having food on hand at home, so we had plenty of rice, flour, sugar, oats, dried beans, and a few other things. So as far as food, I was not too worried about if we would have enough for however long we needed it. It may not be what we would want to eat, but we would eat. We also have a wood shed and it has plenty of wood in it since we rarely build fires and mostly pay for our heat.

Drew called me several times throughout the day to say, things are crazy at work. We are trying to prepare for no power here (he works for the court….so they have a lot of things going on). But he was also concerned that we would be prepared at home. He said you should probably go and grab some charcoal so we can use the bar-b-que if necessary, candles, matches, stick up lights and anything else you might think we will need. OK. So after I got the kids all picked up from school, that is what I did. The stores were crazy. But I found what I needed without too much fan fare. I heard from friends (while I was shopping and bumping into them) that the grocery stores were bananas. I was glad I didn’t feel like I needed to be there. I had plenty of water on hand (I store it for emergencies) and they weren’t shutting off our water. I had a full tank of gas in the car. I told the kids to dress warmly for bed or get an extra blanket. The Bishop and I touched base and we decided to cancel seminary because trying to study your scriptures in the dark….that might just be a bit much for our families. One of our schools cancelled classes, but the elementary school decided to brave the storm and held classes without electricity. Ryan was bummed!

That morning, as I got up during my usual prepare for seminary routine, the house was freezing. I forgot how dark it is without ANY light (no street lights, no neighbors, no stores, even the hospital looked dark). Grabbed my flashlight and went downstairs to read my scriptures. As I was doing that, I had the thought….Carin….this is an opportunity. Oh right, I am suppose to look for the opportunities presented as obstacles. Those high school boys of yours now have no school. They have no media. They have no computers. They will be all yours. Home all day. What do you want to accomplish? Waaaahahahahahhaha (evil, maniacal laugh)!!!! I made a list.

After I dropped poor Ryan off at school, (He was not happy. He was fretting about what school would be like without power. I just reassured him and told him to think of it as his great adventure! He didn’t know what was going to happen! It was all new! Then he could come home in a few hours and tell us about it! Ryan doesn’t do new well. He likes normal and predictable as long as he is in charge.) after I dropped Ryan off at school, I sat the big boys down and said here is what I would like us to do while the power is off. What would you like to help me with and what are you willing to do. They grumbled. But they made their choices. Then we jumped in!

Day One: chopped bushes, mowed the lawn, cleaned out drawers, moved laundry and reorganized bedroom space, and hand quilted the quilt I have been making for Joshua. The boys weren’t too hip about learning to do that. I let them off the hook by asking Joshua to mow the lawn and had Spencer walk to school to pick up Ryan. That left me home to quilt by myself! But the big boys were excited when I said one of you needs to chop wood and the other one needs to start the fire so I can cook on the wood stove. We started a little early (4:00) because I wasn’t sure how well our fire would go. Spencer was the master fire man and he had it high and hot by 4:15. So I started cooking dinner. Spencer kept the fire going. For dinner that night? We had pot stickers, rice and warmed up the stir fry from a few nights before. The elementary school sent word that school would be cancelled until the power was back on. (I knew they would do that.) Ryan was super relieved! The high school said, yep, no classes Thursday either. And we cancelled seminary one more day. PG&E said, power might be on tonight. Because it was so dark, I wanted the kids to see the stars. Drew and I were sitting in the car charging my phone😉. Ryan came out to join us and we opened up the sunroof and just admired the stars and the beauty of the night sky. The big boys fell asleep in the family room around the wood stove. Drew and I set Ryan up on the couch next to them so they could all be in the same place and be warm. Ryan still doesn’t like the dark and doesn’t like being alone.

Day 2: Woke up at 2:30 a.m. to see that the power was on! Yea!!! Looked like it had been on for 30 minutes. (We are on the hospital grid…we probably had power first😊.) Went to the bathroom. Tried to go back to sleep. Laid in bed, awake, for an hour. Finally got out of bed at 3:00. Set the clocks. Moved refrigerator stuff from the freezer back to the fridge. Sat down to study my scriptures. Sent out a text saying we would have seminary on Friday. Was up until 4. Decided I could probably take a nap. Slept until 6. Back up. The kids were up because they fell asleep so early. 6:30 got an email….elementary school is in session, power is on. Ryan started crying and declared he WAS NOT going to school and no one could make him. The power is suppose to be OUT! 😒 Ryan eventually decided he was going to school. Whew! Dodged that bullet. Wasn’t sure how I was going to handle it if he kept insisting that he wasn’t going. Got everyone up. Made apple crisp for breakfast. Sent Drew to work. Dropped Ryan at school. Went walking. Came home. Cut the big boys’ hair. Told them today was window washing day and gave them various other assignments and I mostly finished Joshua’s quilt. Picked Ryan up from school and finished out the day the usual way.

Here are some things I learned from our power outage.

• Always have a week’s worth of food on hand–for the cat too. Then there is just no stress. If an emergency comes up, I definitely have a week.
• Think of your new situation as an opportunity to do new things.
• The old day, where we didn’t have to drive people all over town to do their things? They may not have had all of the modern conveniences we do, but they had something better. They had time with their family…..without television, radio, computer. They had the time, or took the time, to have relationships with each other. It wasn’t only about them. Just to do the normal work to live? They had to work together as a unit to accomplish those things. They had to rely on each other. I think our society has lost a lot of that. Those are important things! We need them. We need to learn to be interdependent and to be able to rely on one another to help each other. That is part of our shared community as a family, neighborhood, state and nation.
• I wouldn’t want to go for a week without power. But think of the things we could gain as a family if we did!
• Ryan said, “I LOVE Power Outage Days!!” I think because it wasn’t as bad as he thought and building fires and cooking on the wood stove, using flashlights, and seeing the stars were great things that made his heart sing. And he was really sad that we didn’t have more days without power and use the bar b que to cook our pork chops.
• I think I always want to have enough charcoal, wood, fuel, flashlights, medicine, etc…stored at my house so that if I needed to manage for a time without conveniences, I could–especially if I had to do it without any warning.
• Before the power was out, I looked everywhere for one of those phones that just plugged into the wall….no electricity. That is the only reason we have kept our landline….in case of an emergency. Guess what? Couldn’t find one….anywhere I looked. I will do some more checking and see if I can find one–just to keep in the cupboard in case of an emergency.
• I really like my family! They are a lot more fun when we spend more time together…working, playing, laughing, living and even sometimes when we bond together during an opportunity that appears as an obstacle!