Month: October 2016

We did it! We stuck to our schedule. I was literally running at times to keep us on track, but we did it, and it felt good.

We even managed to squeeze in a play date in the afternoon. We went to the Bean Museum with our neighbors, the Halls.

After FHE, I played the piano for a while to calm down. Lydia came downstairs and asked if she could climb into her harp cover and listen to me play again. She fell asleep listening to the music. I half wonder if she remembers (subconsciously) what it was like in the womb. In any case, we think this new habit of hers is unbelievably cute.

If I want to stick to my schedule tomorrow, this needs to be brief. I have some pictures from the museum below.

My computer is about to die and I am too lazy to move to its charger, so just a quick check-in for the blog.

We had General Conference today! This is my favorite weekend church-wise for the year. Sadly, we were so distracted by the kids this time around that I feel like I missed much of it. However, I did catch on to two themes. First, I feel like I heard a lot about repentance and relying on the atonement. I liked how one of the speakers said that without the atonement, repentance is just miserable behavior modification.

Secondly, I felt the Spirit witness to me that I personally need to be more forbearing. I can look back and see that a lot of the inter-relational difficulties I have experienced have come because forbearance is not my default mode. It needs to be my default mode. For example, at the end of cooking school I had a big internal debate about whether I should formally complain about some of my teachers. I prayed and debated with myself before finally deciding to go ahead and complain. In retrospect, I wish I had been more forbearing. I would have had fewer regrets if I had just kept my mouth shut and taken whatever injustices I felt were dealt to me. This is good to keep in mind for the future.

Apart from conference, I spent the whole day planning the next six weeks of homeschool. Teaching from Rest advises to plan in six week segments and to stick to the plan for the whole six weeks. Otherwise, the author points out, you’ll always be itching to tweak the plan. I am so, so thrilled to finally have a plan written down. This particular plan is the result of months of experimentation, contemplation, and methodology research. Maybe tomorrow I’ll take a picture of my plan and upload it to this post. I’m sure it’s far from perfect, but for now, I am so pleased.

First, the news on Abe: He made his quota! We are so thrilled and proud of him. He has worked for this particular promotion for three straight years. When he started at Qualtrics, he literally began his career over. Friday marked the day when Abe not only sold his millionth dollar of Qualtrics software, but it also marked the day when he finally made it into management. That has been his goal since day one, and he made it. He has worked so, so hard, and God has been so, so gracious in helping him achieve this goal. We feel grateful, thankful, and blessed.

This weekend we have all been exhausted, but that’s good because it’s General Conference. We are tethered to the TV all weekend long. Yesterday I taught Lydia how to embroider during the first session. My thought was that she could quietly embroider in front of Conference, but instead we had a lot of meltdowns whenever she made a stitch too big (in her mind). I spent a lot of Conference ignoring conference and giving pep talks about how in embroidery you can always undo your mistakes and try again. That’s a good life message, but I wish I had heard more of conference.

Guess what though? I get to try again today. 🙂

Lydia had a hard play date with our neighbor. The little neighbor boy, Eli, is a little rambunctious. He is very cute and has a lovely vintage-boy quality about him, but after yesterday we have decided (again) that we need to limit the kids’ time with him. Lydia was playing outside with Eli and his little sister when Eli demanded a treat. Lydia came in a begged for some applesauce packets to give to Eli and Chloe. I let her take some outside where Eli summarily rejected the packets. Instead, he yelled, he wanted a treat. Applesauce is not a treat. Then he took a pocket knife out of his cowboy boots and threatened to cut Lydia if she did not bring him a treat.

She came back in the house shaken. While I went to explain to Eli that he can’t talk to Lydia that way, she ran to her room, locked the door and sobbed. I felt so sorry for my sweet girl. Finally, when Eli understood that Lydia wouldn’t want to play with him again because he had scared her, he apologized and promised repeatedly that he wouldn’t ever show her his knife again. They played again for a little bit and then I sent the neighbors home.

Also, I played the piano for the first time in a long time yesterday. Lydia came and curled up in my lap while I played. Then she slipped onto the floor under the piano. I heard a lot of rustling but wasn’t really paying attention until she got very quiet. Then I peeked under the piano and discovered that the sweet girl had unzipped her harp cover, climbed in, zipped herself inside and fallen asleep listening to the music. It was, quite possibly, the cutest thing I have ever seen.