Sweet Moments!

Today, we received the December edition of The Friend Magazine that is published by our church for children (ages 0 -12 or so). The last couple of months, whenever we get this magazine, reading the stories from it replaces books for Sarah in the evening as she's so excited to read it and color some of the pictures in it. Anyway, tonight I was reading the story titled "The Language of Dance" on p. 32 (not linkable online yet because it's not December yet, so they don't have the electronic version of this edition). It's a sweet story. Anyway, as I was reading Nathan was being his distracting self... making noises and such. I could tell Sarah was really trying to listen to the story but was having a hard time. The interesting thing was that I would typically just hurry through this, regardless of Nathan's noises, so I could get them to bed. But tonight, for some reason, I asked Nathan several times to be quieter so Sarah could hear. Then I rearranged the seating so Sarah could hear better. Then I went back a little in the story and read what she might have missed during Nathan's commotion. When I finished the story, I looked over and was surprised to see that it looked like Sarah might have been a little teary-eyed. I asked her how she felt and she said "good". I asked if she had cried and she said, in a sweeter than usual tone, "yeah Dad, but it was a happy cry". I asked her if this was the first time she had had a cry like that and she said "yes". I I asked her what she was feeling inside and she said she felt "love" and, after a brief pause, "good". I told her that I knew that that good and love feeling that she felt inside of her was the Holy Ghost. I asked her why she had felt like that and she said that the girls in the story had made the right choice and that they were good friends. It was a really neat experience and I told her that I was proud of her for listening to and feeling the Spirit and that I knew that she could make similar choices in her life.
I love sweet experiences and moments like this where your child learns something that, developmentally, they may not have been at a point where they could make sense of those experiences yet.
This particular situation is one that I've struggled to explain to her over the last couple of years. She's frequently asked, when she's seen me or Mary or someone speaking at Church shed tears of joy, why we/they are crying if they are happy. I've tried to explain it, but I haven't really been able to do it in a way that made sense to her as crying has always been coupled with sad/upset/painful feelings in her experience. But she learned the difference between those kinds of feelings and those kinds of tears tonight! We love you Sarah!

It was Hard not to Laugh!

So in my profession and in my current job working with teenage boys with specific behavioral issues, I work with kids that have some very sad and traumatic histories and experiences in their short lives. Most of them are extremely sad because of them experiencing things that no one in this world should ever experience. Some of them, on the other hand, are kind of humorous while also being sad.
Such was my experience the other day. Every third Saturday of each month we have what we call a Family Day where we do a lot of sessions with families/guardians of the kids that we work with. This is the only Saturday that I have to work each month.
Anyway, so Saturday I met with this kid and his mom and her fiance' for the first time. I knew some of the history of this family, but not all of the details. Sometimes, I do a genogram (a glorified family tree) with the family to understand them better and find out about some of the important people in this kids life. As we were doing this this is what I found out. Mom's first marriage ended in a divorce. Shortly thereafter she got married again. Not very remarkable until you discover that she married her ex-husbands sister's ex-husband (her former brother-in-law). She was married to this guy for a while and then divorced him. Who is she currently living with and engaged to? Her most recent ex-husband's brother (yes, another brother-in-law). So, in short, she's married her brother-in-law twice. How does this work out for the kid (my client). Twice, his uncle has become his step-dad and his step-dad has become his uncle. There are more juicy details in other areas of this family of course, but they require more detailed and confusing explanations. The family seemed to know on their own that this was pretty messed up and/or weird at the least.
So, to make this a little more clear, here is an example. This is like Mary, my wife, divorcing me and marrying my sister's, Rebecca's, husband, Chris. Then, after being married to Chris for a little while, she might marry, or at least be engaged to, either Dougie or Mike (my vote is with Dougie). Yeah, pretty crazy!
Suffice it to say, it was hard not to laugh!

7th Anniversary!

Today is our 7th Anniversary. It's interesting how it seems that on one hand the time has just flown by. But on the other hand, that it seems like Mary's been in my life for so long... my life before Mary seems like it was sooooo long ago (and don't take that the wrong way). Here's a brief statistical summary of our seven years together:

-We've been married for 2,558 days and over 61,300 hours.

-We have three cute kids

-We've lived in 8 different locations and 5 different cities

-We've been in 9 different wards

-We've had four vehicles

-We've gone from having one nephew to four nieces and six nephews (w/ at least one more on the way - probably a boy!)

Alright, this is getting kind of boring and tedious to think about some of this somewhat unnecessary info.

Needless to say, we've had a great 7 years! We're planning on doing something fun in the Spring/Early Summer without the kids, but I'm taking the day off tomorrow to enjoy the day with just my wife (and Jane for most of the day).

We're fully aware of the 7 year itch and the stresses of kids on a marriage (we KNOW!), but we are still in love and enjoy spending time together. We pine for minutes, hours, and (gasp!) days where we can just get away and be together. We look forward to quiet moments in the evening after the kids are asleep where we get to just talk with each other about our days and just connect. We love doing our own things and then being together again. We enjoy being around each other in both large and small social settings. We love watching each other serve in the church as we develop some of our talents. I am frequently amazed at how she makes our income expand and go much farther than I could even hope it would. I'm amazed at how organized and driven she is when she sets her mind to something. Life is busy, crazy, fun, hectic, frustrating, enjoyable, silly, rewarding, tiring and everything in-between and more... and I'm so glad that I can spend this life, and particularly eternal life, with my Sweetheart. Happy Anniversary to Us!

Primary Program '08

As part of our church services on Sunday, Sarah attends two hours of "Primary". One of the hours is spent with her in a class with other kids her age where they have a lesson from their volunteer teacher. During the other hour they are in what's called "Sharing Time" where they learn and sing songs, give talks, read scriptures, do little presentations, etc. Anyway, each year the primary organization (kids ages 3-12) in each congregation puts on their annual "Primary Program" presentation during the "Sacrament Meeting" portion of our worship services. Anyway, during this presentation the kids typically sing songs on a certain topic and most of the kids have very brief speaking parts where they answer a question or share a brief thought on the topic. This year's program title was "I Am a Child of God". About a month ago we were asked to ask Sarah the question "How are you being a missionary now?" and get her response and then let them know what it is. Even though we'd like to help her come up with the answer to such questions and guide her in what she says, we also like to just let her say what she feels, as she probably has something better to say than us anyway. Such was the case here. This is what she said in the program today:

"I am being a missionary now by sharing the Gospel with other people. I tell the stories of the Book of Mormon to Elizabeth. She is my friend from school. I told her if we don't interrupt we can follow heavenly Father's commandments, and get blessed. Mrs. Murphy is my teacher at school. She knows that I read the Book of Mormon every night. She doesn't have a Book of Mormon. If it's her next brithday, and I am still here, I could share new scriptures with her.
I could call Kylie and her family and say 'can I please tell you about the Gospel?' I think she would say "yes" and then I would get ready and go. I am not big enough so I might need a map."

We were of course supposed to help her practice this so she could present it. The funny thing is that she would resist whenever Mary wanted to sit down with her to go over it. Mary would sometimes just recite it to her over lunch or dinner, but Sarah didn't really want to practice it. Then yesterday during dinner she basically recited it (almost word-for-word) by memory, we were fairly floored by this. She did a spectacular job in the program reciting this. It looked like she was getting help on two occasions by looking down at the person that was there to help if she struggled, but that lady informed us afterwards that Sarah would just look at her and say something like "Mrs. Murphy now, right?" or "Kylie?" to confirm that she was saying what she had planned to say. Pretty cute. She seems to have an uncanny memory (albeit sometimes selective!) about things at times. Great Job Sarah!

Halloween '08

The kids had a fun Halloween this year. A week or so before Halloween we painted pumpkins. This is the first year we've painted them and I think we'll do this until the kids are older. They seem to enjoy it more because it's more colorful, they get to actually do more of the work and the designing and we like it because it's less messy and doesn't take as long. I hope next year we'll do a little of both. The kids loved "mixing colors", which usually just ends up with most colors looking a tannish gray hue, but they had fun and that's what counts.

Above is Sarah's pumpkin that she painted. You can see that she started with a good face and then just started mixing colors.

As far as costumes go, Sarah chose to be a witch and was excited about getting a little black kitty cat to go with her outfit. Nathan, who has fallen in love (read 2.5 year-old obsession!) with Thomas the Train was able to wear a costume that we borrowed from our friends the Angerbauer's. We also borrowed a Giraffe costume from our friends for Jane as well. All the kids were cute and excited. We went to our church's Trunk or Treat. It was nice because they started early (5:30) so we were actually home a little after 7 pm. The kids are still young enough to just be excited with whatever is in their bag at the end of the night, though I'm sure the days out with friends where they fill large containers full of candy and go out way beyond when anyone answers the door will come in a few years (such fond memories!). I guess that we did get a hint of that this year as Sarah has been so interested in counting her candy and playing with it when Nathan naps (I figured she would end up eating some pieces unless I watched her closely but, no, she just loved sorting and organizing her candy. She really did just want to play with it! Coincidentally, this was something I loved to do with my candy... when I was younger). The kids get a couple of pieces of candy a day and are excited about choosing and often sharing with one another. One thing that was crazy was how warm it was... it had to be in the 60's, which was a really nice break from the usually really cold weather this time of year. We didn't have a Halloween Party like last year, but maybe we'll do that again in the future. Mary and I didn't do anything to dress up this year, no surprise there... I love how the kids enjoy it but I don't really want to dress up, though I would if I had a good costume. Anyway, below is what you really came here to see.

Sarah and Nathan before we headed off to the Trunk or Treat.
Sarah was really excited about counting her candy before she went to bad that night and was pretty pleased with her results.

Bless that...

From Sarah's prayer over her breakfast this morning:
"Bless that the birds will have enough fish to eat and the jaguars will have enough animals to eat... Bless that Jesus can be our bestest King forever and ever, and Heavenly Father too."

After a spell of fairly rote prayers that were brief, fast and straight to the point, she is starting to put more meaning (from our limited adult perspective) into her prayers. We tried to not make the routine/rote prayers an issue and just let her speak to her Father in Heaven however she wanted to (though we did have a Family Night lesson on the subject) and it's nice to see her choosing to be more expressive vocally in her prayers.

A Cure for this Obnoxious (Posted by Mary) Stuff (Posted by Jeff, just to be clear)

I know it's been absolutely abnoxious to have Mary "hijacking" my blog while I was away [and even when I wasn't... the nerve] so I've solved the problem. I changed my password for my log-in so now she no longer has access to my blog. I'll just have to make sure that I sign-out when I'm on the blog and I'll have to log-in each time, which will be a little annoying but it obviously serves a purpose. Okay, so I didn't really shun her, I just finally added her as an "author". So this blog, appropriately, now has two authors... Mary and myself. So, she will no longer have those odd titles to her posts. Instead, if you're curious who authored the post you'll have to look at the bottom of each post to see if it was me, or her. Although, astute readers will quickly be able to identify the different idiosyncracies that we both have in our writing. Anyway, problem solved.
So, let's all welcome Mary, officially, into the blogging world by leaving a comment that mentions one quirk/oddity or something interesting that you know or have observed about Mary (even the lurkers can comment!). She will now be able to leave comments on your blog as well that are actually from her. And the nice thing is that any comment from her is also a comment from me since I taught her how to blog, just remember that ; * ) The pic above is the one that Mary chose for now for her profile picture, the one below is the one that I wanted her to put in there. I guess I'll let her choose such things now that she's an official blogger. Welcome to the HammFamilyFun Blog, Jeff and Mary edition!