Feel the Summer!

2016-03-20

We went on a walk today. Hyrum sat squished in the stroller with his puffy orange coat while I pushed him along with my dry-skinned, cold stiffened fingers and my aching ears. Meanwhile, our bright eyed four year old pedaled behind with her gold sequined boots and her freshly pumped tires yelling, “Feel the summer!”

Clearly while I was thinking about the relentless cold seeping through my clothes, she was rejoicing in the kiss of the sun on our backs and the clear sky above.

Thank you Ava, for reminding me to feel the summer in the midst of the cold. The sun is always there, even when we may not feel it.

*On that note… Jake and I have been watching the series “Human Planet” on Netflix and I never want it to end. It is FASCINATING. I could go on, but let’s just leave it as “highly recommended.” Anyway, in one of the episodes, it shows the way people live at high altitudes in the mountains. This one older lady lived blind for a few years, fetching her water barefoot along the cliffs of her village (along with all her other daily duties.) She received the gift of her sight after a charitable doctor performed a cataract surgery. Upon removing her bandages and walking the many miles back to her humble home she remarked, “This is the end of my problems.” I was impressed by her comment. I don’t think she was naive in her optimism, I think she was simply grateful, simply focusing on her great blessing. I’m sure life was still hard, but to her anything else that could be considered problem material was nothing more than daily living. She was feeling the summer regardless of any cold, and I thought that was really neat.

#mamanotes

Welcoming Spring

2016-03-08

kids being kids -- playing with water on the kitchen floor.

Happy “feels like spring even though it’s not really supposed to be spring yet” weather! It hit 70 the other day. Hooray!

Ava put on her bathing suit today. (That’s how we welcomed spring in Texas.) I think it’s so funny how she views the cold here. She ran around the house in her bathing suit well into December, couldn’t understand why I was making her wear a big puffy jacket, and the days it hit 40 degrees or more, she ran outside in shorts and a t-shirt only to have me to call her back inside for some layers.

She spent most of her life in Texas, so I totally get it. I’m all up for celebrating North Dakota spring in early march too!

(Except for the bugs.) Ava spotted a little lady bug the other day and named it Nina (and I’m totally ok with that.) But it’s been months since I have seen any sign of creepy crawly life, and with the little spider crawling across the floor and the buzzing fly running into my living room light bulb over and over yesterday, I think I’m a little more grateful for the really chilly days.

But not enough to discourage spring! We are warmly welcoming it with walks and parks and snacks on the back porch and apparently, bathing suits.

(These pictures are from when Ava made her own spring–back in November. Some of these pictures still make me cringe a little. Once it’s done you might as well have fun, right!? At least I had fun watching them…and resisting the urge to clean it all up. :))

Home Movies

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This Lake We Love from Tamara Schellenberg on Vimeo.

When we moved to North Dakota, we were thrilled that we would be so close to such a large lake. We both grew up boating with our families at Lake Powell, and we have always loved playing out on the water. This place couldn’t be more fitting for us with the third largest man-made lake in the U.S., after Lake Powell and Lake Mead. It covers 480 sq. miles!

We arrived in ND late in the season, but we still took as many opportunities as we could to get out and play–even into November. And when winter came, we visited this lake again–this time with a ball and boots for the frozen shores.

I put this video together with clips from some of our trips to the lake this year. Editing our family videos together is one of my very favorite things to do. If someone gave me a few hours without kids to do whatever I wanted, this would probably be it. That may seem totally weird, but I have always loved home movies. When I was a kid I would spend hours sitting on my parents’ bed watching them, inviting any family members that I could to join me. What happened to home movies??

Anyway, I am hoping I can squeeze in some more time this year to make them (and catch up on past ones.) The four of us love to watch them over and over.

And in terms of other goals I have for this year…

With my little wedges of free time, I am excited to pick up where others have left off in gathering records and memorabilia of my ancestors. My hope is to share their stories and their strength with my own family and make my temple experiences more meaningful. I have started doing this over the past few weeks, and I am loving it so much. It feels like a mystery game sometimes trying to piece names and dates and family lines together, but there is so much purpose to it. I’m finally doing what I have felt like I should do for so long and that always feels good.

I also plan on continuing this blog that I started. It’s another one of those things I felt inspired to pursue all that time ago, and I am really enjoying it. It’s been a nice place for my thoughts and little snapshots of our life.

And fourth, I’m going to try to get to know my sewing machine a little better so that those piles of clothes that need to be repaired don’t go forever unattended.

So those are my plans for 2016, my goals you could say. I like making goals as I go, January is sometimes too formal or intimidating to me. I am sure I will come across plenty more ways I want to improve my life as the year goes on. These are just a few on my mind lately. 🙂

What family rooms are for

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I walked past our family room all day yesterday kind of cringing at the thought of having to pick it all up.

But at the end of the day I just stood in the middle of it, soaking it all in. And I felt happy. We relaxed and played and rejuvenated this weekend and after getting home late Saturday night, we put the kids to bed and didn’t worry about the mess. We talked about good, important things, then went to bed later than we should.

Then Sunday came and we spent the morning making breakfast and cleaning up breakfast and getting ready for church and coming home from church and playing and resting and eating together, not worrying about messes.

So here is Monday and for the first time in a while I totally don’t care about the messy house that I’ll be cleaning today because I have a great place to live in and my favorite people to live in it with me, and it was a good weekend with them and this just shows it.

So here’s my family room and my husband, and I really love them both.

“My House is clean enough to be healthy and messy enough to be happy.”

Why it didn’t just go away

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I ran from the car to the front door with my arms full of slipping blankets and jackets, a bag of prescriptions, a baby on my hip and my four year old trailing behind. “I’m gunna pee my pants. I’m gunna pee my pants.” WHERE ARE MY KEYS?!

In we go. run run run!

I had a uti this morning and once I got in the bathroom I didn’t want to come out. Know the feeling?

Today I’m feeling grateful for good health. And medicine and doctors and cars and available doctor’s appointments.

I know this is such a small thing, but sometimes it’s nice to have these little experiences to remind me that I am so blessed and life is going well and we are so fortunate to have our good health when so many do not.

This morning when the symptoms were in the minor stages and I really hoped I could just flush everything away with water and not have to pack up my kids and go to the doctor and pay all that money and then go to the pharmacy—all the while going crazy because I was feeling so uncomfortable–I asked Ava if she would say the prayer on our breakfast and bless me too that I might feel better.

She did, and I was hopeful, for 30 minutes or so.

And then I started feeling worse. It quickly progressed and knowing how this goes I wasted no time making a doctor’s appointment, and then rush rush rush out the door to make it in time.

Ava seemed a little confused when I told her we were going to the doctor so I could feel better. Every time we prayed to find the remote or my keys or her toy, we would find it. Why didn’t this prayer work?

These are times when I am grateful for faith. Faith reassures us that when we pray to God, He listens and He cares. And then He answers them in His own way, in His own timing, all for our greater good.

But why did I have to go to the doctor and spend that time and money and discomfort when He could just make it go away?

Why is life so hard?

I know I would be a far more lazy, entitled, unsympathetic person if life was easy and my prayers were always answered the way I wanted them too. I wouldn’t learn patience and humility and I certainly wouldn’t have much compassion for others in trying circumstances. I wouldn’t know how to really love. I wouldn’t learn how to endure, to commit. I would throw my hands up and jump ship if things didn’t go my way. I would be self obsessed and anything but enjoyable to be around. And I know for certain that motherhood would be pretty much impossible.

Regardless of circumstances, I trust God because I have learned time and time again that He knows what He’s doing. Things always turn out better when I let Him work things out and I let go. And wow, I’m really glad He didn’t answer this prayer or that one the way I wanted because things would have been a whole lot different if we got that job and ended up there, or bought that house that went upside down. Many times the things we wish with our whole hearts, the really good things, don’t work out like we hoped and prayed and prayed that they would. I don’t mean to trivialize the really hard things–the traumatic, heart breaking, real test of endurance kinds of experiences, those often require lengthy time for grief or understanding. Sometimes understanding doesn’t ever come in this life. But faith can still be there, and it will always lift us up when we are ready.

So I am grateful that we have a God who understands life a lot better than we do, who knows what will ultimately bring us growth and happiness–what will ultimately bring us back to Him.

We are often reminded in the scriptures that “all these things shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good.” And then the comforting, faith inspiring promise, “Therefore, hold on thy way…for God shall be with you forever and ever.”

I love this comforting reassurance Linda Reeves gave in General Conference last year– She reminded us from the scriptures that “this life is the time to prepare to meet God,” not the time to receive all our blessings. She said, “I do not know why we have the many trials that we have, but it is my personal feeling that the reward is so great, so eternal and everlasting, so joyful and beyond our understanding that in that day of reward, we may feel to say to our merciful, loving Father, ‘Was that all that was required?’ What will it matter, dear sisters, what we suffered here if, in the end, those trials are the very things which qualify us for eternal life and exaltation in the kingdom of God with our Father and Savior?”

I believe that’s true.

So while we drove to the doctor I told Ava that I know that Heavenly Father heard our prayer. He wants me to get better too, but sometimes getting better right away isn’t always the best thing for us. Sometimes we need to experience hard or uncomfortable things so that we can become better and stronger than we were before, so that we can help other people, and so we can become who we need to be to return to our heavenly home. And that makes it all worth it.

I don’t know that she really understood, but someday she will, I hope she will. My faith has carried me through my trials and I know it will for her too. #mamanotes

(We played on the frozen lake up here in North Dakota. Winter’s quite fun this way.)