A Bit O' Good Advice

I found this through a family friend.  What good advice this is to remember that your spouse is your sweetheart. You don't get another, he or she is yours forever. So treat them differently. Treat them with kindness.

"Look in the Mirror..."

By Brad, QuatroMama

http://4tunate.net/2011/08/look-in-the-mirror/

Have you ever caught yourself being overly critical of your spouse? 

Have you found that you tend to hold them to a higher standard than anyone else in your life? 

Do you hold them to a higher standard than even yourself?

I began asking myself these questions a few weeks ago because of a very trivial thing that happened early one morning before anyone else was out of bed.  I was cleaning up a few toys the boys had missed the previous evening, and without much thought, I got irritated after picking up Jen’s shoes for the second straight morning.  I will admit, I actually had the selfish thought, “do I seriously have to pick up her shoes everyday too?”  (Yes I know, it was only twice, but my complaining heart was exaggerating.)

When I arrived at the basket where we keep our shoes, something struck me immediately.  There were two pairs of my own shoes laying on the top of the shoe pile that I distinctly remembered had been left laying on the floor in our bedroom the day before.  I also knew with certainty that I had not put them away, so Jen had obviously done so. 

At that moment, I actually sat down and asked God to forgive me for having a complaining heart.  I also began reflecting on my marriage.  I recognized a tendency on my part to not only be critical, but I was often getting irritated about things for which I am equally guilty.  I realized that I was generally holding her to a much higher standard than anyone else in my life, including myself.  Was I hold her to a higher standard than is even achievable or reasonable?  At times the answer was, YES.

I am beginning to recognize that sometimes when Jen says something offensive, rather than communicating that specific problem and resolving it, I have been elevating my standards and expectations of Jen.  This gives me ample opportunity to find other offenses to hold against her, which helps me justify my prideful resistance to seek reconciliation. 

It is always difficult for me to admit that a recurring problem in our marriage might be mostly my fault. However, the Bible says that our hearts of desperately wicked by nature, so I want to be on the lookout for these tendencies.  I need to regularly look at myself in the mirror and assess my own failures that contribute to the problems.  There is such freedom in admitting these discovered faults to Jen, and then prayerfully committing to working through the issues together. 

After talking about this initially, we wanted to share this with all of you.  I assume we are not alone in this struggle.  Jen and I are passionate about finding the cracks in the foundation of our marriage and fixing them before they become a major issue.  We have seen the terrible pain that friends and family have endured due to marriages failing.  We know thaPublish Postt we are not immune to the sins that lead to our marriage failing.  We pray that God would protect our marriage by providing the wisdom needed for marital success.  We pray the same for your family as well.

Brad

Run Forest, Run!

We did it!  August 27, 2011 my sisters, mother and I ran our first 1/2 marathon! Austin had been sick with a virus about 5 days before the race started so he wasn't able to run. No worries! We'll run the next one together.

It was great doing it with them though, for some reason it didn't seem as scary. I think it's because when ever all four of us get together we get extremely silly. Example A: 5:00 am on a yellow school bus riding up the canyon and we're giggling in the back of the bus about something I can't remember now because it was 5:00 am and nothing should be remembered at that time.

I didn't let my mind psych myself out until after the race. If I did it would have gone something like this "WHAT THE HECK AM I DOING?!?!?!" at which point I would have found a perfectly rational thing to do like hide on a bus. Surprisingly to me, I was calm during the whole thing. At each water station I calmly calculated how far into the race I was, thinking it was totally normal to have 10 more miles to run. And got excited when I realized I only had 4 more to go! It wasn't till afterward that I wondered what the heck I just did :)

Jennifer and Michelle on the last leg 

We all started out together, but ended up spreading out at our individual pace. The canyon was beautiful and was fun to run it being shaded and down hill most of the time. When I got out of the canyon a big wind picked up. I was so grateful for it because it propelled me forward and cooled me off.

Crazy how miles are relative.  When I hit mile 7 I remember thinking "More than half way! I can totally do this". Mile 9 I still felt good and realized I only had 4 miles to go "I've done that twice over! Psh, easy!". I chuckle because before this 3 miles seemed an impassible barrier.

Almost done!

I have never been so happy to see a finish line. I didn't take my eyes off it, afraid I would stop running and have to walk into the finish (no way!). Once I passed the line and someone handed me my medal, I walked as normally as I could (my legs felt like planks of wood) to the water station. Gatorade, water anything sounded amazing right then. After gulping down cup after cup, my stomach finally told me to stop. Wish I had listened to that sooner because I ended up just throwing it up later, anyway.

Our super star momma!

And now two days later I'm feeling great! No soreness, no aches. My body is still recovering, though. One minute nothing sound good to eat, then all of a sudden I am STARVING; sleep is also doing wonders.

 It feels so good to know I did something that was pretty hard for me. I've always wanted to do something like this, but didn't want to do it alone. How grateful I am for my mom and sisters!

Now on to my next race!

Blog-itis: Inflammation due to excessive blog changes

Blog Schizophrenia /blôg//skitsəˈfrēnēə/ Noun: (in general use) A mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradicotry elements when designing a blog.

Symptoms may include: Having an influx of mindless time which tempts you to change blog design multiple times a day, then running into problems and not knowing how to fix them.

Treatment: Do not touch the blog thus preventing violent outbursts and possible name calling ("stupid blog")

Cry for help: Let me know if any one can get my side bar information from the bottom of the blog to the side of the posts the way I formatted it to go.

Please help. Blog Schizophrenia is a serious problem and incapacitates millions of lives everyday.

Heeding The Call of The Wild

Austin and I have been playing vagabond for the past month. It's really fun, you should try it! It's sort of like playing house, except you live out of your suit case for weeks at a time, sleep on the ground (other people's bed's are sometimes allowed), bum food off of your parents, and shower only once in a while. It's wonderfully simple, this wild vagabond life. Sometimes you don't even need a toothbrush!

For our little family this has been the wonderful month of vacations. What happened was that Austin and I looked over our schedule for the next 10 years and decided that instead of spreading out our vacations over those years like normal people....we'd just stuff them all into this one month!

So we've been cabining up in Idaho with my fam where we went biking, hiking, and paragliding; went water skiing/ skin burning at Bear Lake with the Beck's and the Bear Lake families; did some time in Liberty with old pals; Beaver Mountain with my extended family; spent some time at Beck's for Keslie and Jake's birthday; Pocatello for cousin's homecoming; St. George for a wedding and now my memory is fading so I can't remember the rest. Whew! What a blast! I love being with both Austin and my family. It draws us closer together and gives us ridiculous memories to laugh about later on (like listening to Jake try to convince Jenny to go golfing at 7:30 in the morning...good times)

Cooling off at Bath Tub rock

Girls and Dad on a hike while the boys are flying

City of Rocks

Mom and Dad found a peep hole at Bath Tub Rock

And now we are back to reality and man is she demanding! Reality sure does have a long "to do" list....it's much more fun pretending like you live in reality then to actually be in it sometimes. But don't worry, we didn't dawdle. Reality grabbed us as soon as we walked in our door. She gave us packages of reality surprises like: mold in the sink = dishes getting washed with bleach, a plugged bath tube that caught ginormous spiders, moldy bread on the shelf, a stinky garbage can, and lots of ear wigs because we live next to a field. But! It's good to be back in our little apartment where I sleep in my own bed, just be with Austin, make my own food, clean all our clothes, wash all the dishes, and pay my own bills---wait a minute, that's not fun. Oh reality, you are such a kidder.

(More pictures to come once I can kyfe them from various sources)

No pain no gain

Austin and I have re-re-re-re-dedicated ourselves to exercise. Of course the reason why is because we want to be one of those awesome 92 year olds kicking trash, be there for our children's weddings, and not have to live off of ventilators in order to breathe. Yes, we are purely motivated  by responsible foresight....okay not so true. Maybe we felt a little ambition and signed up 6 months back for a 1/2 marathon and maybe we now feel the fear of god bearing down on us and realize that the day of judgement is coming in 19 days 5 hours and 12 mins. But hey! Procrastination is a great motivator.

I've always enjoyed running. Good way to clear your head. Austin has also always enjoyed running.  The difference between Austin and I is that he is like unto a gazelle and I am like unto a tortise: slow and steady. He likes to set goals for us like: Hey! Let's run 8 miles without stopping. After hearing said proposal I suggest: Hey! How about you go complete your entire MCAT portfolio without stopping? Both suggestions for each person is equally ludicrous. I enjoy my walking breaks! I run for them! Don't take them away from me!

I'm becoming quit good at calculating how many mins (sometimes hours) he is in head of me by how small he is. 1''= ten minutes, .5'' = half hour, that little red dot bouncing up and down = too far gone to comprehend.

I am actually not doing as bad as I thought. I ran 8 miles in a little under 2 hours yesterday (good for a little 5 foot nothing girl) this being my second run of my training. No need to mention that I may or may not have looked like a grandma shuffling her feet for the last 1/2 mile.

I heard somewhere that one may experience a high from running. I would like to put in a stronger dose to my runner's high drug lord because I feel like he just gave me the equivalent to a baby aspirin. Maybe Novocaine would be more effective, buddy.

So to wrap it all up: running is great! Feeling old and achy never felt so good.

Sunshine

Things to be happy about this week in no particular order:

1. Being with family

2. Tickle fights with Austin

3. Training for 1/2 marathon

4. Awesome lighting storms

5. Getting caught in a hail storm with Jenn and Josh

6. Studying Preach My Gospel

7. Figuring out this stinkin' blog stuff

8. My primary kids :)

9. Helping Jen and Jake with their sprinkler system

10. Talking with Michelle on skype

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.

Life is a dream, realize it.

Life is a challenge, meet it.

Life is a duty, complete it.

Life is a game, play it.

Life is a promise, fulfill it.

Life is sorrow, overcome it.

Life is a song, sing it.

Life is a struggle, accept it.

Life is a tragedy, confront it.

Life is an adventure, dare it.

Life is luck, make it.

Life is too precious, do not destroy it.

Life is life, fight for it.

~Mother Teresa

Bunnicula and his Pellet Presents

Austin and I have been deemed babysitters of our neighbors seemingly sweet bunny, Oreo for the past week. I don't know how many have read "Bunnicula" by James Howe, but that author has forever tainted my view of bunnies up till this point. Sweet in the day time, but "blood sucking carrot killers" at night . I almost expected our carrots to be shriveled into nothingness by morning with tell-tale bite marks along the shaft.

Oreo wasted no time showing us his flaws, we were introduced early on to Oreo's pellets presents magically sprinkled everywhere. But never fear! we found an easy-sometimes-sorta effective remedy: bunny barricade. We set up boxes and anything else we can find in an attempt to save our crappy carpet and keep Oreo presents allotted to the kitchen tile. Not to be out smarted by mere mortals, Oreo likes to find creative and sneaky ways to bust out of his set parameters before we can catch him....what a teenager ;) When we do catch him, his back legs scramble a few seconds on the tile before he picks up enough momentum and friction to scamper back to the other side of the kitchen. That brings a smile because it reminds me of Wile E Coyote on the old Bugs Bunny Cartoons...or more accurately the Road Runner totally wasting Coyote.

But all things aside....Oreo...dare I say it....is...cute. He's an active bunny who likes to keep in shape by hopping up and down our basement stairs. He prims and pampers himself with his little paws and when he's really excited he'll do this karate twitch kick in mid air with his back legs. If you pet his face, he'll be putty in your hands until you stop. His favorite lounging position is to be stretched as far as his body will go, back legs spread eagle. He's got quit the personality.

So, minus your little pellet presents Oreo, you're an okay kind of bunny. We can be friends till your parents come pick you up.

Hip Hip Hooray!

I did it! Finally after multiple kind suggestions, nudges, and proddings from many family members I have started my blog! And believe it or not...I enjoy it!

I've never been a champion recorder. Evidence being all my half finished projects collecting dust in some forgotten corner of my closet: journals, scrapbooks and anything else which can date the passing of time.

But, the idea that I could record the comings and goings of our family so conveniently and then print it off into a compact little book was what tipped my vote. Getting married is changing my mind set from "right now" to "in a few years when..." I all of a sudden want my kids to know what Austin and I were before we became their crazy parents! "We were normal once, see?" I'm not sure they would believe us otherwise ;)

So! Until my fingers fall off, Obama passes some ridiculous blogging law, or some other unlikely/ crazy event happens I will be a blogger. So sit back, relax, and have a laugh on us. We hope you enjoy our happy chaos as much as we do!