So I seem to be going in the blow-by-blow daily-event-review direction on this blog. Maybe that’s because I feel the need to see what I am actually doing at the end of each day? Normally I fall into bed and have a vague sense that I cleaned stuff and kept the kids alive. It’s kind of nice to write down exactly what happened during the day so I can see there was probably more to it than that!
So today. Was Sunday! I love Sundays. I love church, both for the spiritual uplift and for the social charge. We had an awesome relief society lesson on service and why we serve. The teacher made the point that we should be Christ’s means of serving others and that should be our sole motivation in serving. A great lesson, made even better by this tear-jerker of a video: https://www.lds.org/youth/video/daytons-legs?lang=eng
I also love my Sunday School class. We talked about trekking to the Promised Land. I am always humbled by a lessons like this. I agreed 100% with a woman who remarked that “We always say stuff like, ‘We have different trials than the pioneers, and in some ways our trials are just as hard,’ but really our trials are so much easier than the trials of the pioneers.” I wanted to shout, “Yes!” I know I whine a lot, but I would NEVER EVER EVER want to trade my life for a pioneer’s. No. thank. you.
I also appreciated one woman who had researched the pioneers and remarked that we often idealize them, but they were a mess. They fought and struggled to get along, and they had all sorts of social problems–in addition to the obvious physical trials. I guess God has never worked with super-humans, and, as one teacher remarked today, the imperfections of the church and people in the church help us become more perfect individuals. I agree.
Then Abe and I sat in the foyer during Sacrament because, speaking of messes, our kids were one.
After church, we came home, picked apples from our tree and ate those and a caprese salad for lunch before putting the kids down. No sooner than I started to drift off to sleep myself than our home teachers came over. We enjoy their visits, but it was hard to drag myself out of bed. Not to mention that there was no nap to be had after their visit because the kids were up and wired.
So I took the children out on the front porch to shuck some corn:
Then I blew bubbles with Lydia next to a bush. Did I mention Lydia will eat anything? The next thing I knew, Lydia has pulled off a twig with leaves off the bush and started chowing down. Within a minute she was practically crying because her mouth hurt, and I tried my best to be sympathetic to her self-created plight.
Then I went inside to line up a babysitter for tomorrow night, after which I came outside to the idyllic sight of Abe and Mary lounging in the grass while Lydia rummaged through the tomato bushes for ripe tomatoes. Just as I was about to remark on how peaceful everything looked, Abe groaned, “Do you ever feel completely defeated by our children?” Ummm…yes, in fact, I am acquainted with that feeling. I then noticed that Mary was quite fussy (church messed up her nap schedule) and Lydia was spurting raw tomato everywhere, including on her church dress. I guess there are two sides to every image, right?
So I unfeelingly left Abe to his fate and returned to the kitchen to make mussels for dinner. I do not know why I don’t make mussels at least once a week. (Actually, I know why. They are expensive!) But seriously, they are such great kid food. Lydia loved pulling the mussels out of the shell.
To accompany the mussels, we had…cereal and graham crackers. All I can say is, I ran out of steam. After turning out lunch, cleaning up lunch, following the Cook’s Illustrated mussel recipe to a T, cleaning up that mess to a T, I realized I had but one dish in me for dinner, and so cereal and graham crackers on the table it was.
And then it was clean up dinner, bath time, bed time (for the girls), blog time, and now bed time for me too.