Dancing with Daffodils

I had a goal to read 30 books this year and thanks to a great website that helped me keep track, I did it! Some were long and emotionally intense, some were okay, some were fun, some were so depressing, but each one was a journey and I'm grateful for books and the joy I find in reading. Here is my list! 1. Ms. Bixby's Last Day --I loved this book. So sweet and meaningful. 2. The Midnight Rose --Reminded me of The Forgotten Garden except in India. It was good. 3. House of Robots --I read this to my kids and loved it. It was positive and smart. 4. The Orphan Keeper --Sad but interesting read and I suppose it had a happy ending 5. The Emperors of Chocolate --Fascinating but outdated (it was published in the 90s and a lot has changed since then). I loved learning more about Mars and Hershey and now I look at the candy in line at the grocery store with a more educated eye. 6. The Family Romanov --Interesting, kind of slow, but I learned more about them and that was the idea...

I learned two very important lessons yesterday. First, I am not a performer. Second, practice does not make perfect, unless you can practice in the very environment in which you need to perform. I was having a fantastic day yesterday. We had some wonderful and seriously quality family time, I found a $20 bill hiding in a Christmas mug, and there was the most perfect and magical Christmas snow falling. I was even excited to be participating in my church's community Christmas concert. I have a friend who is an amazing singer and she asked me last year for this same annual concert to accompany her while she sang O Holy Night. I got the music and it has six flats (this means it is challenging) but I spent hours practicing it last year and performed it well enough. I made a few mistakes but felt it didn't distract too much from her performance. When she asked me again this year I was excited because I already knew the piece and therefore could focus on nailing it. I started prac...

Ten years ago we lived in southern California and had season passes to Disneyland. It was a tough year because I struggled getting a job and also getting pregnant, but it was a super fun year going to Disneyland at least twice a month and exploring all that the greater LA area offers. I was also working with some amazing teenage girls at church and I loved them dearly. After two years of trying to get pregnant, I finally succeeded and spent the last month of our annual pass to Disneyland just walking around but not riding rides. The sad part was that then I miscarried and by then our passes had expired. It was too tight financially for us to go back just for a day but right before we moved, one of the girls from church (also a fellow Disney enthusiast) took me to Disneyland for the day. She knew how sad I was over the miscarriage and how I felt like my Disney experience was incomplete and she took me and gave me such a magical day. It is one of the kindest things anyone has ever done...

Sorry for the 4-month hiatus. I've had lots of thoughts floating around my head and haven't taken the time to sit down and develop them. I've decided that I just need to write them down so I'm anticipating a few shorter, perhaps less refined posts over the next few days. Starting off with one on weight. I put on a decent amount of weight with my first two pregnancies but nothing obscene and after the first two kids I used Weight Watchers and managed to lose the extra weight. That got me back to normal (thought not to my ideal) and I was feeling pretty good, especially because I knew I would be pregnant again. After kid number four, I was heavier than normal and then due to some hormonal changes with my body I put on 10 pounds in what felt like over night. At this point I was almost back to my pregnancy weight, which was way more than I really should weigh and I'll admit I was feeling pretty low about it. I started exercising two or three times a week at a gym wi...

It has been too long since I've written. I'd get a good idea and then go off to the pool with the kids and promptly forget about it. Summer is the season that I enjoy my kids most. I'm not busy trying to get them certain places at certain times and I'm completely in charge of our schedule, which I love. They have time to be more helpful around the house (which is good since they have more time to make messes) and we get to play together. I love swimming with them and watching them play at the park and reading together and going on adventures together. I like being able to say yes more often because it is okay to stay up a bit later when we can sleep in the next day and no summer is complete without at least one ice-cream-for-lunch day. I love watching fireworks with them and going to the beach together and doing things that help me feel happy and have fun too. I feel more relaxed and generally like a better mom during the summer. As a kid I spent my summers riding my ...

My husband and I started dating in the late fall of our senior year of high school. I broke up with him in March because I felt like we weren't good enough friends. I told him I needed the cake to go with the frosting and things seemed a bit too serious to me and not fun enough. But then we started hanging out as friends and things were more relaxed and wouldn't you know it by July I was in love with him. But by then we had graduated high school and my parents were moving across the country and I was headed to college far away from where he would be. In my head I thought, well, we have three weeks before I leave so we'll make the most of it and then we'll just part ways. I was wrong. I remember laying on the floor of the apartment my parents were living in while their house was being finished in Idaho and just crying on the phone with him, just days after I had left. He kept saying that we had been blessed with a wonderful relationship and he just didn't think we ...

Last week was a dark and heavy week for me; not my usual "dancing with daffodils" kind of moment that I want to record but there is something I want to remember from last week. My sister texted me 10 days ago to tell me that her doctor had found an abnormal mass in her breast and that they were testing it. She asked us to pray for her, which we did. Monday we found out it was malignant and she had to wait until Friday to have an MRI done to see if the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. All last week this information weighed on me. I was consumed with worry and sadness and felt like tar was running through my body instead of blood. My heart literally felt heavy to me and dark. I also had a friend get hurt by some really unkind words and then later in the week my daughter was upset about an incident at school when a kid in her class was rough with her for no reason. It sounds dramatic now but in the moment it felt like everyone I loved was being attacked and it crushed me....