Alex Boye - Doing Good as a US Citizen

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this song - and this arrangement - and this video!!!

I discovered these videos a month or so ago - and just never finished writing a blog post, sometimes I get so caught up in researching that I forget to come back and actually write the post! I really enjoyed learning more about Alex Boye . . . what an amazing person to go go along with his talents. I first learned about Alex Boye (see this podcast) a few years ago when I was a regular listener of The Cricket and the Seagull Fireside Chat by Steven Kapp Perry.



Here is the making of video.


Alex Boye became and American Citizen this year and had an amazing experience at his naturalization ceremony. I like this article by the Church News - Singer Now a Citizen.

And here is the video:


What an amazing immigrant who will love and contribute to his new country!

James, James, Morrison, Morrison

James, James, Morrison Morrison,
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his mother
Though he was only three

These are the opening lines to a poem that I memorized in middle school. It is amazing how these lines have stayed with me for so many years. 

Here are two more poems that I learned as a kid – and still remember and say to my kids at random times, like when we are having graham crackers and milk, which I like better than animal crackers.

This book is old – but very well loved. It fell apart and the cover was lost when I was a kid – and it was probably old then. The book is missing the first 18 pages, so I don’t even know the name of the book. But I loved it as a kid, and still have fond memories of it.

My kids and I have been attending a Poetry Bee once a month. It is like a spelling bee, but you recite poems instead. It has been very inspiring, and we have enjoyed learning new poems. Afterward the Poetry Bee we go for a walk by the river and enjoy the great atmosphere and company.

Parking Garage Tips

I attended Time Out For Women with my mom and daughters tonight and it was a very fun and inspiring event.  However, the tips I have to share are from our parking garage adventures.

1. IF YOU know you are parking in a parking garage at an event center leave home early.

Woo Hop! We have been in the car a full 30 minutes and have no made it down 1 level in the parking garage!

2. If you will be driving in rush hour traffic on a Friday afternoon . . . Leave home even earlier.

3. Make sure you know exactly what lane you need to be in to get to said parking garage. 

4. MAKE SURE YOU GET in the correct lane as early as possible. Failure to be in the correct lane means an additional trip around the block. 

5. Leave home earlier so you have extra time in case you do have to drive around the block.

Another level down - only 8 minutes that time.  There is hope.

6. If you are prone to motion sickness, getting dizzy, or afraid of heights be prepared with a paper bag and or pills. It is a long spiral drive up to the 7th floor.

7. If you didn't follow tip # 1 accept the fact that you are late to your meeting and pledge to leave earlier next time.

Another level down -  8 more minutes.

8. After your event visit with your friends. Walk around and look at displays. Try to find some new friends.

9. When you think it is time to go . . . Wait a few more minutes. Visit with another friend.

11. Go to the bathroom, even if there is a long line, it is ok, you have plenty of time.

7 more minutes and another level down. Progress.

12. When  you get to your vehicle check the line of traffic. Is it moving? More than an inch a minute? If not don't get in the car, it will be hot and stuffy. Turn around and leave the parking garage. Find a nice place to rest, maybe get a drink or even better ice cream. (This idea courtesy of my sister and her friends, the smart group)

Oh no, another level already. 5 minutes. I'm running out of time to write this blog post, driving is taking up too much time.

I have a Little Brain too

It may have taken me years – but I am finally getting it. Books are important! I know, I’ve loved books for my entire life. I would often walk to the library several times a week to get new books while I was growing up, and one summer I kept track and read over a 100 books.

I’ve always enjoyed reading – but it has only been recently that I have finally learned to find important principles in books and apply them to my life – maybe it was the conveyor belt education where I taught to search for the answers to a long list of questions, or maybe it was just that I read books way to fast, just for pure enjoyment, and to find out what happens, instead of reading for deeper understanding, and maybe it is because I am reading as a Mom, and looking for ideas and concepts for my children to absorb through listening that I am noticing so many amazing ideas in books.

Now that I have begun to see principles in books it makes reading take a lot longer, because I am pausing to go – aha!, ooh, that is good, and wow, I want to write about that. So here goes . . .

I am reading “Me and My Little Brain” by John Fitzgerald to my boys. John and his Papa are having a discussion about Johns abilities:

“How do you know what you can do best?” I[John] asked.

“A great burning desire to become something is a good indication a person has the ability for it, “ Papa said. “A man who has this desire to become . . . almost always achieves his goal. And it is this gift of birth that divides people into all the vocation that are needed for mankind to survive. But there are some people who stifle this desire to be something they can be. They are motivated by admiration or envy to try to be something else. For example, J.D.[John], you were motivated by admiration for Alex Kramer to become a trader, although you lacked the ability to be a successful trader. As a result you failed.

. . .

Find your own identity and say to yourself, this is me, and I can’t be anybody but me. Know thyself and be thyself. That is the key to a happy and well-adjusted life.” (Me and My Little Brain, John Fitzgerald, pg 36)

Papa explains so well what I have been trying to teach my kids about the concept of “mission”. The philosophy of education that I subscribe to is called Thomas Jefferson Education (TJED), or Leadership Education. A very vital and key component of TJED is that everyone has a personal mission in life, and the purpose  of their education is being prepared to fulfill that mission. Inherently, I know that this is taught in my religion as well, I’m just not sure how. The exciting thing is that as I’m coming to understand the principles contained in TJED I am seeing them pop up books, in movies, in my scriptures, in life. I know that they were there all along, I just didn’t know how to recognize them.

It might have taken my little brain a long time to catch on(+ or – a hundred years), but know I am becoming . . . , I am searching my my identity (you, not them), I am learning to be happy(secure, not stressed), and I am striving to mentor my children, to help them to discover and prepare for their mission.

I want them to be who they were born to be.

Like Papa says, I want them to “Know thyself and be thyself.”

For even those of us with “little brains” deserve to be happy.

 

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Isaac is taking a Human Anatomy class at TEACH Co-op this semester. The story goes that during lunch he was walking around with his paper brain hat on, and someone said to him, “I didn’t know you had one of those.”

Payback or Pay it Forward

Last week I was finally able to pay back some debts that I owed. These weren’t financial debts, these were debts of service. In the last few years we have had a lot of rough spots. Time when I, as the Mom, especially, was really struggling to be able to do the things that Mom’s do, like clean the kitchen, make the meals, do the shopping, etc.

We have been very blessed to belong to a church that believes in reaching out and serving each other. Many time members of the Relief Society have brought us meals in our times of need, after the birth of babies, surgeries, etc. Several times they have also come and helped to clean the kitchen and vacuum the floors.

I remember one time especially helpful, physically I was well, however, I was fighting depression and mentally and spiritually was not in a very good place. One dear sister came over and helped me to clean my house. We worked as we visited, and she listened to me as I told her about Holly’s birth, and showed her pictures. I felt so blessed to have someone that would listen to me, and work with me, and the time she spent helped me out not only that time but other days as well as I remembered the love she shared with me.

I have so long been the one in need, and after Lydia’s birth I felt like it took me forever to recover. I know 6 weeks isn’t forever, but some days it sure felt like it. Again, I was so blessed to have wonderful daughters who are entirely capable of cooking, cleaning, and with a ride to the store, shopping. Also, the Relief Society stepped in again and meals were brought, along with cute outfits for Lydia, and my visiting teachers helped out by driving the girls and my grandma to the grocery store. It was a wonderful blessing, but still, I wanted to be able to give back.

Finally, I got my chance. Last week not only was I able to make a meal for a family in our ward, but I was also able to drive my friend to the doctors office. These were little things, and I was happy to do them.

However, when I read on facebook that another friend was having a rough week and feeling overwhelmed it was so exciting that I knew what I could do. The next day I loaded up my kids and we went made a surprise visit. I put Lydia in my moby wrap, rounded up a few of her kids, and with my kids we cleaned her kitchen. Emily said, as we were working, “It’s more fun to clean someone else’s kitchen.” That is what made me realize how wonderful being able to serve others makes you feel! I was able to payback -  by paying it forward -  some of the service that I had received by reaching out and serving others. And it felt wonderful!

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I am so glad that I was able to take my kids with me, that they were excited and willing to serve. We should incorporate this pay it forward concept into our lives more often.

Look Who’s Popped Out!

 

Obviously I haven’t used my laptop to write a blog post in a long time, I opened the program tonight and found this blog post that I wrote a long time ago ( I’m guessing about a week after Lydia was born) and never posted. But it is so cute – that I can’t not post it!  2 Sept 2012

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Our little Lydia arrived as scheduled by a planned C-Section. It was very different experience to have everything go according to a schedule . . .  and to happen so quickly. We arrived at the hospital at 6am, and at 8:12am we had a baby!

Brad and Lydia headed off to the recovery room while the doctors were still working on stitching me back up. By the time I got to the recovery room my Mom was there with Brad and Lydia and they had already sent out emails and text messages to the family!

It was Rebecca’s job to post the news on facebook and email my friends that are not on facebook. It seems like I read this facebook post on Facebook while I was still in the recovery room.

MaryAnn has been looking forward to “my baby sister” for quite awhile. When she got to the hospital she sat down with Rebecca and held Lydia, and told me, “My baby sister popped our of your tummy!” It was so adorable, made me laugh, and was basically true, how else do you explain a c-section to a 4 year old, and she figured it out all by herself.

Lydia Darleen Georgeson - 28 June 2012 - 10lbs - 21.5 inches

We are recovering well, and catching up on our sleep. The other kids are amazing at taking care of the house, and we have wonderful friends and church members who have been bringing in meals help out. We are truly blessed.

Zucchini and the Book of Mormon

Did you know that there was Zucchini in the Book of Mormon? Well, neither did I, until Isaac told us that his primary class has been giving nicknames to the Book of Mormon characters, and Zucchini was the nickname for Zerahemnah. (Reminded me of Veggie Tales, but they don’t have any Book of Mormon videos).

During my recovery period after Lydia was born I had a lot of free time just sitting around, so I finally made a Pinterest account. It was a lot of fun, and I found a lot of neat ideas, but the ones that I like the most and have implemented in our home are the Scripture Journals. Do a google search and you will find lots of ideas, or check out my Devotional Board, my favorite source of inspiration is The Red Headed Hostess, but I really figured out how to do it with my kids from this post on Latter-Day Homeschooling.

We have doing our scripture journals for about a week now, and we are really enjoying them. We spend more time talking about the stories and the doctrine, trying to understand what is going on. The discussion is really good for the older kids, they get the scriptures so well, and want to dig deeper, but the younger kids were always goofing off, so now I am trying to work with the younger kids to draw pictures or write words to keep them interested in quieter. (This part doesn’t always work as well as I had hoped.)

Now back to Zucchini. I am not an artist, but that isn’t the point, the point is to try and convey something about the scriptures that will help us to remember the story or the doctrine. We were reading about Zerahemnah, and I remembered that Isaac called him Zucchini, so I drew this picture in his book for him, and then like a game of pictionary he had to figure out what it was.

It took several kids to figure it out, but once they decided it looked like a fruit, and not a banana, they got it. Isaac busted up laughing at my drawing. I’ll interpret the picture for you now.

Zucchini (Zerahemnah) refused to make an oath of peace, then he was scalped. For more information check out this wiki article or Alma 44.

 

Inspire, not Require!

I don’t require my kids to write in their scripture journals, and the first couple of days Isaac barely even opened his up, but he has been starting to add stickers and copy the pictures off of the stickers a little bit the past few days. Today, he produced this!

I think his artwork is much improved over mine. I didn’t even think about putting a face on my zucchini. I have a feeling he is going to remember the story of Zarahemnah for a very long time.

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I was going to write this last night, but I went to bed instead. I took a nap today, so I decided to write this tonight, I realize that the article isn’t up to my usual, my writing style doesn’t seem to flow tonight. I really miss writing though, so I’m just going to plug on and hope that as I practice again my writing will again flow and improve and inspire.