Very good article

Great article about new changes to the Church Handbook of Instruction.

I wonder how long it will take for these things to "trickle down". And apparently I need to check and see if our Activities Committee is still in effect (since I'm on it).

Hmmm I just may have to make an appearance.

Skipping Services

For a while now our family hasn't attended any church services. I think that most of this has to do with the fact that I no longer believe in the LDS Church (which is where we always used to go), though I have to be clear... I'm not opposed to going to the ward.

I was talking with a family member a while ago about this and mentioned that Jer and I had come to an agreement. I would come to the ward every other time we went to any service, and I would help him the the kids etc, if I was allowed to go to another congregation the rest of the time. I asked him if he would please come with me when I went, mostly so that I would be able to talk about the services without having to do a "play-by-play", he was amicable to that.

When I recapped a recent conversation between Jer and I with this family member, One were I made clear to Jer that if he was more adamant about wanting to go to the ward, which he hasn't been, then I would be more adamant about making sure I went to another congregation. He stated that honestly if I were more set on going to another congregation, he would then be more insistent on going to the ward. Both of us shared the opinion that if one view was exclusively shared with our children, we would want them to have a counterpoint.

In response to my conveying these ideas, the family member I was talking to stated "So, your discouraging him from attending the ward?"

Now, this family member is LDS and I have to admit, I understand where they would want to fault me for Jer's inactivity... I am, after all, the one that is doomed (according to their beliefs) but I find it somewhat interesting that they don't see it the other way as well... that Jer is "discouraging" me (and the kids) from going to another congregation as well. I figure that our family is more important than what may happen after this life... and if being tolerant of each others religious beliefs is necessary to help our family run smoothly, then that is fine with me. It really is a small price to pay when it comes to the people I love dearly, which my husband is no small part of.

What's amusing to me is the fact that I'm not really discouraging anyone to do anything religion-wise. I'm just no longer the one that makes sure everyone gets out of bed and dressed to the nines. Church is no longer important to me... if it's important enough to Jer then he will make sure that we all get up and out the door, or at least make a really good effort towards that. I'm not discouraging, I'm just no longer encouraging. I'm sitting firmly in the middle... though I have to admit, I don't know if the kids "church clothes" even fit them anymore, I kind of think not.

So for now we are considered "inactive" at church. We are not attending any church. Isn't "inactive" better than "not a member" to those that adhere to the LDS belief system? And on the flip side (from my point of view), isn't "inactive" better than only sharing one sects opinions on life with my children? I do, after all, want my children to always use their intellect when deciding what they think about things... and that includes God.

I don't want them to ever just "take someones word for it" when it comes to their belief system, I did that for far too long and I think if I had really thought about my beliefs sooner I probably would have been more likely to retain the belief system I was raised with, as it is, I'm don't... I want my children to believe things because it feels right to them, not because someone tells them it is right.

On No, Someone Told on Me...

  So recently I've been having a bit of a faith crisis, or whatever you want to call it. I've recently change my status on Facebook to "Cultural Mormon" because I have decided (at least temporarily) that I no longer believe a lot of what the LDS Church believes. I will continue to go at least every other Sunday to the LDS ward because Jer adheres to it and I respect that choice. Plus, I don't think it's a bad thing for my children to at least understand the culture. The other Sundays I will be attending whatever church I choose fits me... I haven't really found one yet, but who knows. Could happen, then again, maybe not.

  Now, just to be clear, I don't have any problem with other people believing as they will, I won't try to break down anyone's faith intentionally. I will not take offense to people talking about church in front of me etc etc etc... I think that would be, at very least, overly sensitive.

  Who knows, maybe some day I will decide to come back to the LDS faith, then again, maybe not... we will just have to wait and see really. Life goes on, things change, people change.

  Anyways, today the missionaries showed up on our doorstep :) They really are great kids, but we had friends over that were getting ready to leave and it was a inconvenient time for them to come and want to share a message. So they made an appointment to come again on Thursday. Did I mention that they are good kids? :)

  Anyhow, I found it somewhat amusing that they showed up within a couple of days of me changing my status on Facebook... where I have a few friends who are orthodox LDS to say the least. I know if someone DID tell on me that they had the best of intentions, so no hard feels... I still find it amusing though.

Sunday Sunday

Did anyone else have a lesson on "Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy"?

I'm sorry, but this is one of the most BORING lessons I have ever gotten. Even I, ME!, didn't have much in the way of comments.... and I'm a FREAKING TALKER!

I have a hard time imagining a peaceful Sunday in our house with only the "approved activities", sorry crayons and coloring books barely last through one hour of meetings. It ain't going to last much longer... Maybe visiting Grandma and Grandpa would work better, then again who knows! My kids can be unpredictable sometimes.

On a brighter note, we had the missionaries over for dinner, those guys are a hoot. Totally crack me up! It was so good to have them, and they even had seconds (so I know my new recipe for Chicken Enchilada's was good to people outside of myself). In fact between our family and the three missionaries we polished off 2 full 9x13 pans of the stuff, the rice, and almost all the corn. Then the got huffy cause I forgot to mention that I had Fat Boy ice cream sandwiches for desert until AFTER we had mostly finished dinner. :)

They really are fun though, I hope I get a chance to have them over for dinner again some time soon, if only for the laughter!

I am a Mormon Feminist....

Oh, contradiction that it seems to be...

I feel that women truly are equals to men, but that the world (and sometimes the Church) perpetuates attitudes that are not in keeping with the fact that women truly are just as capable as men, maybe differently capable but not unequally so.

I hate to use the word "differently" there. Not because it's not true, but because so often it is used to replace more belittling language.

Anyhow, I came across a truly beautiful idea today while reading one of my favorite blogs. This was in a comment that was responding to a post about how to make sure that our children know they have a Mother in Heaven (among other things) when so often She is not mentioned.

A poster with the tag JC stated this:

"...The other night my son, age 11.5, asked me why girls don’t have the priesthood. I asked him why he thought they didn’t, he said he didn’t know - but it wasn’t fair that boys HAD to go on missions and girls get to choose. I told him that girls do have priesthood that they use in the temples and that parents share the priesthood. We talked about how both parents are expected to be good parents, but moms (mostly) seem to spend more time with small children than Dads. This led nicely into a talk about Heavenly Mother. DS has some interesting thoughts about her. He suggested that maybe she is a stay at heaven parent. Maybe earth stuff is Heavenly Father’s “job,” and She is in charge of preparing people to come here and takes care of them when they get back to heaven. He thinks that is a very important job and that HM is in charge of that because people are going to be sad to leave their families here on earth and will need some really big cuddles when they get to heaven. He also thinks that Her favorite colors might be reds and pinks because HF created a LOT of flowers those colors to show his love for her. Maybe She is in charge of the beautiful things on earth that make us happy, like sunsets, snow, cool animals, and that leaves HF some time to deal with other stuff. (As a side note, I help DH with a lot of the paperwork for his job, so doing a job together isn’t a big deal to him.) These are just his thoughts and I think that they are good ones. He doesn’t feel that She loves us any less, maybe more, because we spend lots more time in heaven than on earth..."

What a beautiful idea! To think that it came from an 11 year old astounds me. I like it oh, so much better than the "we don't talk about her to protect her." idea that is so often repeated (almost to the extend of being offensive. Why would a mother need to be protected from her own children?) But this? This idea rings more true for me and brings me more peace of mind.

From the mouths of babes ... and all that jazz.

Went To Church

Sacrament happened. (there was a lot of off-key singing. cringe)

Gospel Doctrine happened. (Class member states that Adam had no choice -really?- but to follow Eve in eating the fruit. Hmmm... What if he did? Nowhere does it say he immediately followed her in eating the fruit. Now THAT would have been an interesting discussion.)

Relief Society happened. (Where in the world is the Christmas lesson!?!?! Come to find out, the men had one... think I'll go to their class next time *snicker* would love so see the reactions to that!)

The end. :)

Ready for Church

Welp, after several weeks of simply not going, we are ready for church. And don't the kidlets look cute!? :) They are all in church clothes they have never worn before so they look extra snazzy!

Happy to go to Church!

So yesterday I took my two older kids shopping for new church clothes... I should have taken EB too but he has had the Crud this week and I figured a nap would be good for him...

Anyhow, Goober was NOT very pleased with me for dragging him shopping, while Missy was all girl and was excited to go. :) Needless to say, they were happy to go to church today (they would have been happy to go anyways due to the "friend making" opportunities that church brings about).

So here is Goober in his new duds:

And Missy in one of her new dresses:

And here is EB (he didn't go to church today due to aforementioned Crudiness) just cause he's cute and I kinda feel bad not including his picture when I included one of both of his older siblings)
Notice the length of his hair, pretty long I know, but I just can't bring myself to cut it!!! I have before, but now it's more thick and I think of all of the trendy possibilities I have there. For any of you that have ever touched Goobers hair, you know that his hair is course and thick and that only short, shorty, short hair really works on him due to it being incredibly stubborn on top of it. Well, EB's hair is not as course and seems to have potential for actually laying down when I comb it with water... so I guess we shall see. I know, I know... I'm over thinking the whole 18 month old hairstyles thing. But where I've never had brothers, I've always been a girl (GASP!), and Goobers hair is so very uncooperative, I see potential for experimenting where I haven't been able to before.... MwhaHAHAHA!

Ok, so this post has now degenerated to the point that I feel the need to cease and desist. So TATA!

HORRAY!

Yippy! Today Our whole family made it ALL THE WAY THROUGH CHURCH!!! YAY! No potty accidents, no uber crying crankiness, and no freak outs! Though I struggled through the first meeting, after that the other meetings went ok. So I count that as a VERY successful Sunday!

While I'm Waiting...

Be forwarned this is a frustrated/complaining post. If you don't want to read it I won't be offended!

Some of you may have noticed. Those of you that attend church with us anyways... that Jer and I are struggling to come on a consistant basis.

We may make excuses when asked directly why we weren't there ...

Caring friend:"Why weren't you at church last week?"

Myself: "Well, you see, it was the last time my kids
would get to see my parents for a couple of weeks due to them going to China and
there was no other time to go to see them except during church. And I know my kids would have been really mad if they didn't see them before
they left on their trip."

While this is technically true, I think that had we truly wanted to go to church, we would have been there.

Don't get me wrong... I believe all that is being taught. In fact, I team teach the five year olds.

The thing is, I have this almost entirely selfish attitude I'm struggling with. It has to do with the fact that that:
.
G tends to have issues going to his own class when I sit right behind him in the opening excersises and he spends almost the whole time looking at me or trying to get my attention.
.
That Missy My still has potty accidents as far as #2 goes (She has #1 down pat) and she tends to have these accidents in nursery and for the life of me I have a hard time putting her in Pull-Ups during this time because I feel like that would be enabling her to continue to resist actually using the potty.
.
It also has to do with the fact that Li is still breastfeeding and if I can get him to nurse during the first meeting he might fall asleep for Jer, but if not then Jer is stuck with a crying baby out in the foyer that he can't do much for (Li still won't take a sippy I don't know what I'm going to do with him), but even if Jer can get him to sleep, Jer can't move once Li is asleep or he wakes up. This does away with moving between meetings. So Jer ends up missing ALL of his meetings except Sacrament and even in that meeting both he and I are constantly paying attention to the kidlets.

So, while I believe church is a good thing, especially for my kids, if it were only about me and not about my kids learning about Christ, morals, values, a good way to live life, and all that fun stuff from someone other than mom and dad... to be honest, I probably wouldn't go at all for a while.
.
Give me strength!

Little Li's Blessing

Yesterday at church Jer blessed Little Li. In our religion this means giving the baby a name on the records of the church and in life and pronouncing a blessing on them to help them throughout their lives. We do not believe in baptizing infants and wait until the child is old enough to know right from wrong (age 8) before we give them the choice of if they want to be baptised or not.

The little blanket and jacket that he is wearing are the same ones that I was blessed in by my great grandfather as an infant. Both of Li's siblings and most of his cousins on my side of the family were also blessed in the same outfit.

A Little Spooked

So, this morning at about 3 am I woke up with a killer pain my my side. For those of you that know me well, you know my pain tolerancy is high... well about the time I decided to take 800 mg of Ibuprofen (about 5am), Jeremy got a little spooked decided to take me to the ER. I was worried I was being a major wuss and that it would be gas or something. Before I went my In-Laws came over to be with the kids and Jer and Gpa S gave me a blessing... it was really nice. Told me the pain would go away, but just in case I needed to go to the ER to get it to go away we still went. Well, by the time the bloodwork and that was done the pain had pretty much gone away on it's own. Yay... no appendicitis for me!

Turns out they think it was a kidney stone... OUCH. Never had that before. Hurt like a booger, but I was greatful to get home in time to get to church because G had his first primary program today. I was really glad I didn't miss it.

On the way up to the front of the church with the rest of the kids he decided he needed help... so what did he do you ask? He said "I need help" ... reasonable right? well, he said it right into the microphone. LOL At least the kid isn't afraid to be up there or to ask for help!