A little bit crafty

I have never really considered myself gifted in the crafting area.

I enjoy doing crafts, but often when I get finished I have a project that looks like I let my 3 year old do it for me.....and it has been that way most of my life.

For the most part, I am okay with this lack of talent.  Most of the time I am quite content with the gifts that I do have and don't worry too much about creating beautiful art-type projects.

There is, however, one major exception to my contentedness, and that is when it comes to making things for my family, especially my children.  Because of that, I often turn to my quite gifted husband who usually is able to create what I want--or better. For example these beautiful puzzles (which happen to be available for purchase here if you are interested)

Also these awesome candy collecting bags for the parade.

But occasionally, I like to do projects that don't increase the workload for someone else.  At those times, I am grateful for tools that make creating things easy!  A few months ago, I decided to get a Silhouette to be able to make cute paper creations.  And it has been fun!!!

And I have been able to create some cute stuff.  See...

For one project I have recently decided to do, I had a LOT of help from the internet.  Some awesome lady named Monsterrat colored all or most of the flannel board stories published in The Friend and made them available on her blog.  At some point, I stumbled across them and thought how cool it would be to use them, but that it would not be cool to have to cut out all those pictures by hand.  So I decided to use my cool new silhouette software (downloadable for free here) and make them into "print and cut" files.

Creating the files took a bit of time, but I am excited by the results on the few I have actually been able to do (we had a bit of a printer issue).  But since things seem to have worked out so well, I thought I would share the files so others could use them too.

If you don't have a Silhouette, you can still use the files to print to your computer, and the individual pieces are easily resized and separated from the other images.  I have only included the pictures.  If you would also like the story files you can get them from Monsterrat's blog Cranial Hiccups or from the Friend.

Here is a link to the print and cut files in dropbox.  Please let me know if it doesn't work as I'm a bit new to this file sharing thing.

Book of Mormon stories
Church History
New Testament
Old Testament

Eyes

The human eye is absolutely amazing.  At birth, most eyes are the same blue color.  But as the child grows, pigment may change those blue eyes to brown, green, or hazel in many different shades.

Our eyes have the ability to to detect light and adjust their dilation to allow us optimum perception of the things around us.  Quite the feat considering the thousands of objects and colors they are perceiving and sending to our brains, which then decipher the world around us.

Our eyes have even been called the windows to our souls.

But despite the capabilities of our eyes to perceive details, they do not act alone.  Our ever processing brains take that information and determine what is worth "filing away for later reference" and what can be "discarded."  It is my belief that this process is heavily influenced by our prior experiences.  Becaues of that, I don't believe two people can ever see things exactly the same way. Even looking at a painting, from exactly the same angle, a person's experiences will influence the perception of what is important about the painting--what is beautiful, what needs to be improved.


In recent months (and perhaps years) gender equality in the LDS church has been circulated in the news--particularly as it pertains to the Priesthood.  Some women argue that without the Priesthood women are inferior to men, therefore we must need to be ordained to it.  Others argue that women are superior to men without the Priesthood and therefore we don't need it (nor should we want it).  Of course, few if any actually state their arguments so plainly, but that's what it seems to boil down to.

The confusing thing is, both sides are looking at the same picture.  The history of men and women in the church is the same no matter what argument you are trying to side with, but your personal beliefs make certain aspects of it "stick out like a sore thumb," possibly even to the point that you can't see the rest of the picture.

In many of these arguments, men's and women's roles in the church and the family are compared and weighed to determine which has the greater value--or which one should be more prized.  Often this is done with the pretense of proving that we are "equal" (though it rarely feels like they have given equal worth to both the men's and women's roles).

In all this debating, I have come to realize there really is but one important question to ask about the equality of men's and women's roles:
  
 Equal in whose eyes?

In my eyes? In your eyes? In some person down the street's eyes? The feminist's eyes? The Chauvinist's eyes?

No.  The real eyes we should care about are God's.  And He has told us through many prophetic teachings that we are all equal in His eyes.  For example:

Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.

In the eyes of God, whether in the Church or in the family, women and men are equal, with different responsibilities.

Where spiritual things are concerned, as pertaining to all of the gifts of the Spirit, with reference to the receipt of revelation, the gaining of testimonies, and the seeing of visions, in all matters that pertain to godliness and holiness and which are brought to pass as a result of personal righteousness—in all these things men and women stand in a position of absolute equality before the Lord. He is no respecter of persons nor of sexes, and he blesses those men and those women who seek him and serve him and keep his commandments.

So, I guess there is a second question:  Do I believe Him?

"I have pee in me"

You were warned in the title ;)  If you don't like reading potty stories, you should stop here.

My Little Man will be 3 way too soon, and I have been trying to encourage him to start going on the potty, but sometimes what Mommy wants and what Little Man wants are not the same thing.

Probably 5 or 6 months ago, I started putting him on the potty to start getting him used to the idea of using it.  Unfortunately, he really didn't like it.  He would scream that he didn't want to use the potty.  So instead of scaring the poor kid for life, I decided to back off a bit and wait a little while.

Well,  now is that little while later.  Last week, I took Little Man with me to Wal-mart and let  him pick out 10 new pairs of underwear (to go with the 5 he got for Christmas).  We also picked out a step stool (the "cool stool") for him to use to get up to the potty.


I have been telling Little Man that "soon" he will have to start using the potty instead of diapers.  He would tell  me back "Yeah, soon, but not today."  So after our shopping trip I told him that he will get to learn to use the potty tomorrow.  He wasn't too thrilled with that idea and told me "But you said we will do it soon."-----which he has sadly come to associate with "not right now".

Anyway, the next morning after I had gotten myself dressed, I put my Little Man in underwear basically for the first time.  I also changed my normal habit of restricting liquid intake (to encourage eating) and kept filling up the sippy cup.  I think we went through 8 of the 15 pairs of underwear before 6:00 p.m. when I put him back in a diaper so we could go for a walk and put him to bed. But I was expecting that.  What I wasn't expecting was how quickly Little Man would tell me he was wet afterwards.  He also seemed to be grasping the concept of feeling the need to use the bathroom.

Several times he told me "I think I have pee in me."

Don't get me wrong, we had quite a few accidents on day 1.  One of the funniest was about 5  minutes after a prior accident.  I put him up on the toilet after to let him pee if he still needed to.  He said there wasn't any more pee, so I put new underwear and pants on him and sent him to the kitchen to wait for me to wash my hands and come get his "sat on the potty" treat (one handful of goldfish).  He climbed up on the counter to wait, and proceeded to pee all over it before I could even get out of the bathroom.

Day 2 actually went quite well.  Before I even got him out of his (DRY!) bedtime diaper he told me "I have pee in me!" I continued to fill his sippy cup up VERY frequently and ask him if he needed to go potty.  In the 6 hours he was wearing underwear, he only had 2 accidents, and many successes!  He (and I) would get so excited when he would go on the potty.  And most of the times he would have a success, he would remind me "Now I get a chocolate coin and lots of goldfish!"  I think my favorite time was when he told me "I put lots a pee in the potty, so now I get lots and lots a goldfish!"

I'm not stressing learning to use the potty quickly, and I suppose it will be several weeks before I really consider him "potty trained" but I am certainly happy with his progress.

Time to get Serious

You know those things you wish would happen, but you never really put time into making them happen.....yeah I have a few of those.

One of my current ones has been losing weight.  I would love to loose about 70 lbs....but have set my current goal at 50. 

The problem is, I have kept making excuses about making healthier choices (it's too cold to walk, I can't reduce my calorie consumption because I'm nursing, we've had lots of parties and it would be rude not to eat the food, and on and on).

The problem with that is, if I keep  making those excuses, I will never get what I actually want!

I know that having other people watching me is a huge motivator for me....so here it is.

Each Monday until the first snow fall, I will post the following things--on a blog I set up specifically for that purpose to avoid having this blog become overwhelmed with boring posts.

Number of days I exercised 30 minutes or more (goal of 5 days per week)
How many calories I was under or over budget
Number of pounds lost or gained

So drop on by once in a while at robynsweightlossreporter.blogspot.com to keep me motivated :)  And if you would like to join me, feel free to post your weight loss/exercise goals in the comments!

If I manage to loose 50 pounds, you may even be able to convince me to post before and after pictures.

Biking adventures

Jake loves to bike.

When we were living at BYU, he would ride his bike 7 miles nearly every day to UVU to get to school and then over to work.  Even in the dead of winter.   (Seriously, I remember he had biked to work and wasn't able to come rescue me when my car broke down on the freeway on what had to have been the coldest day of they year--Thanks again Chad!)

What he has not liked is wearing a helmet.  In 5 years of marriage,  I have never known him to wear one.  Thankfully, there are those rare occasions I didn't know about.

The Young Men are planning an 80 mile bike ride early this summer, so biking has become a frequent weeknight activity for them.  This week they headed out on a dirt road west of town.  As young men (and their leaders) often like to do, several of them decided to go REALLY FAST.

From what I hear, Jake had taken a pretty good lead and just after he had rounded the bend on a downhill slope, his jacket fell out of the carrying basket and jammed into the breaks on the front tire bringing the front of the bike to an abrupt STOP.  Unfortunately, it didn't have the same effect on the back of the bike or its rider.  Jake apparently flew over the handle bars, landing face-first on the hard gravel.  One of the young men commented that it was the "coolest wreck" he had ever seen.

Unfortunately, "coolest wrecks"  often involve more than just a little dusting off to get over...and this one was no exception.  One of the rocks that broke his fall decided to take a portion of his front tooth as payment for the service.  A handful of others decided to rent some space under the skin of his palms, and a few more decided to do some scratch-off art on his arms.

Jake tells me he could feel himself loosing consciousness shortly after the crash.  He said he remembers the feeling of loosing consciousness and not wanting to actually pass out.  So he offered a prayer and felt prompted to drink water.  As soon as he did so, the sensation of passing out decreased.

Our Bishop (who is also a doctor) was able to take Jake to the hospital and help take care of his wounds.  While they were on the way to the hospital, Jake called me on my cell phone but I didn't recognize the number.  When I answered, he asked, "Is this Robyn?"  (Which is not really something you would expect a husband to ask.)  "Yes."  Then he said "This is Jake."  And my mental response was "Jake who?"

Of course I know who my husband is, but in all honesty, I did not recognize his voice.  I'm not sure if that was a result of his dazed state or that his mouth may not  have been functioning normally after taking such a banging.  In any case, I did eventually figure out who Jake was as he was explaining to me that he had been in a bike wreck and was headed to the hospital.

Thank Heaven for having close family members and friends.  I called my mom and she agreed to keep my kids while I went to the hospital. I hadn't even had time to finish packing up the kids before I got a phone call from Sister Lee offering to come over and watch them for me.

Of course it was after regular office hours, so Jake wound up in the ER.  When I got there he was covered in bandages and wrapped up in a blanket.  I was expecting the bandages....the blanket was a bit weird since Jake almost always feels warmer than I do, and the room felt quite warm to me.  Turns out his temperature had dropped to 94 degrees.

Brother Lee (Young Men's President) showed up shortly after I got there.  He told us several of the young men had commented that they were impressed Jake hadn't cursed during or after the accident.  Way to set the example, Honey.

Thankfully, since Jake was wearing a helmet (supplied by Brother Lee), most of his wounds just needed a good scrubbing--and they evicted the rocks that had take up residence in his hands.  After about 3 hours, he was released to head home.

Getting scrubbed up

Bandages and numbing medicine

Gonna be okay

All cleaned up and ready to go