Learning

To me, life is about learning and progressing - and about learning to love learning and progressing.  I'm sure my kids will pick up all sorts of things from me (hopefully a good dose of faith, some manners and respect for others and for nature, and strong work ethic, among other things).  But perhaps my top hope is that they will be launched from our home and into the next phase of their lives with a passion for learning and growing and making every day count.

As I sit here working on some Power of Moms stuff, my sweet Oliver just came and sat by me.  He said, "Mommy, I think I need to do some werning today.  I didn't do any werning yet."  What he was really saying was that he wanted my permission to get on the computer and play learning games on PBS Kids.  So now he's happily playing on the other computer next to me.  But I hope that deep down, maybe Ollie's already getting the message that learning is something wonderful and great and that there can and should be an element of learning and growth in virtually every activity - every day.

Isaac just came over and sat quietly next to me.  I think he wants some lunch and it's that time so I need to be done soon.  But I asked Isaac, "What do you think about learning, buddy."  Without hesitation, he said "Fun. Very fun.  Can we eat soon?"  Yeah!  They're getting it!  Let me try Liza.  "Hey Liza, come here.  When I say 'learning' what do you think of?"  Liza: "Easy and fun."

To Isaac and Eliza: "What have you learned in California and up at the Farm this past week?"

Liza: "I learned how they make those sculptures out of that metal at the Getty Museum.  I learned that the green rocks are called emeralds and they're really really rare.  I learned that baby cows can stand up and walk when they've only been alive for a few hours."

Isaac: "I learned how to sketch - I liked how you can look at the lines and shadows and do shading and be like a real artist in that special sketching room.  I learned that if you have your seat belt on and you're going really fast and you crash you won't die from that crash test dummy at the science museum. And at the Bull Sale I learned that auctioneers talk really really fast and that they use cow poo to make the soil better to grow potatoes.  Weird but cool.  I learned about how they give cows shots and saw how some cows have such big muscles that they break the really thick needle when they give them shots.  I learned that baby cows can come out when their mom is standing up and they're OK even though they fall on the floor when they get born - the hay was soft.  I learned that baby cows get born in a sack and their moms lick them off.  I learned how their mom pushes them over to go by her belly where all the milk things are so they can eat."

So I guess they are learning a lot.  And it seems like they're liking it.

This is my favorite thing about motherhood - seeing my kids' surprise and delight as they learn new things and being right there to point things out and expose them to things and experience it all with them.

Spring Break Extravaganza

It's Spring Break and we're packing in work, travel, family and adventure.  We're in Park City right now with my parents and sister Charity who just got back from working in a school for Leper children in India - amazing stories (my brother Tal and his wife Anita are still there...).  Before that we were in Irvine CA with Jared's brother Bruce and sister-in-law Connie and family enjoying their great dog, the super tasty bakery where Connie works (she gave us a tour and samples of tons of amazingly delectable treats and Ashton declared it "the best day of my life"), the California Science Center, Natural History Museum and my all-time favorite, the Getty Center for Art (the kids were seriously SO into each of these museums - so fun!).  Before Irvine, we were in Corona, CA staying with my Power of Moms partner April Perry and her family and planning Power of Moms stuff like crazy (more on this in the next post) while our collective 9 kids played amazingly happily together for 3 solid days (we threw in a beach trip and lots of fun stuff - it wasn't all work - but the work is fun when you've got partners like April and Eric!).

Today we played in the snow and saw Alice in Wonderland in 3D (I really liked it - lots of underlying thought-provoking stuff to keep me happy and plenty of action and whimsy to keep the kids happy) while Jared went skiing with some of his old fraternity brothers and had an excellent time.  Tomorrow we're headed up to Ashton Idaho to be there for the big Bull Sale and help with whatever we can help with (I'll post the great website Jared put together for the sale - I'm sure you'll LOVE checking out all those beautiful Red Angus bulls and heifers).

By the time we return home next week, we'll have driving a LOT of hours, visited a LOT of relatives, and learned about everything from Lewis Carrol's whimsy to gem stones and dinosaurs (Natural History Museum) to illuminated manuscripts and sketching and how to make a bronze statue (the Getty) to homeostasis and crash test dummies and solar energy (California Science Center) to auctions and stud bulls to what it would be like to be homeschooled and talk to trees and have your mom get cancer (we listened to Ida B in the car - excellent book - all the kids loved it).

So here are a few pictures of our Spring Break adventures so far:

With the Perrys at Laguna Beach

With the Perrys at the Arboretum

Playing Red Rover in Naples where April grew up (it's the coolest place - gorgeous little houses and canals sort of like Venice)

Checking out the walk-in freezer and tempting treats at The Layer Cake Bakery where Aunt Connie works. 

Connie is now the favorite aunt.

 

The Getty Center







My all-time
favorite
museum - the architecture!  The views!  The art!  The gardens!

Crazy Fun Power of Moms Planning Weekend

April and I are sitting here in April's kitchen planning tons of exciting things for The Power of Moms while our collective 5 boys are playing Monopoly and our 3 girls are making up a play - complete with props and dress-ups.  April's sweet little two-year-old is (thankfully) sleeping, and our husbands are chatting about various business ideas (we're so glad they're such good friends!).  We're getting lots of stuff done, even though we get interrupted with kids needing things or announcing that the play is almost ready from time to time.  I wish you could see this crazy and crowded - but busy and happy scene - here's a glimpse:


We took our families to the beach and tide pools and went to a great arboretum (where we filmed the 100,000 moms video on our home page while our husbands tried to keep our kids out of the background of the video!).  We've fed 9 kids and 4 adults lots of meals and had a double-family dance party.  But crammed in between all the kids' needs and great excursions, April and I (as well as our husbands who've added lots of great ideas) have been talking talking talking and planning planning planning.








We've got lots of exciting new ideas, and armed with the feedback we've received from so many thankful moms (check out some of their great comments here), we're committed to "going big" and doing all we can do to help this website reach all the moms who could benefit from it.  We're not in this for the money (our "salaries" are deep in the negative numbers right now) or the fame (I can't tell you how embarrassed I was when I watched myself on the 100,000 moms video we made!  Cameras are NOT something I like to be in front of).  We're in this because we need this and we hear again and again how much other moms need this community.  We've reached the point where we can't NOT work on The Power of Moms.

But to make all our hard work and best intentions translate into wonderful things for all those who could benefit from it, we need YOU to let all your friends know about The Power of Moms.  Almost everything on our website is absolutely free so you don't have to feel like you're "selling something."  You're just sharing a resource that quite possibly could change someone's life for the better.

So take a minute (right now so you don't forget!) and forward a favorite article or write a simple email to all your mom friends and let them know about The Power of Moms.  OK?

Reinventing Dreams

Sooner or later the vast majority of us will see one of our cherished dreams die (or at least experience a serious illness).  My sister, Shawni, experienced the death of one of her dreams last year when her sweet little girl, Lucy, was diagnosed with a rare syndrome that causes obesity, heart and kidney problems and blindness. She dreamed of a life for her family and for Lucy that is not going to happen in quite the way she'd envisioned.  But Shawni and her whole family have offered amazing inspiration to me and to so many others as they've moved on from mourning the death of one dream to embracing a new reality and building a new dream full of challenge, learning, growth - and beauty.

Shawni wrote a beautiful article about her experience on Dare to Dream (the website of one of our Advisory Board members, Whitney Johnson).  Click here to read Shawni's post and to ponder Whitney's great questions about reinventing dreams.  At the end of the article, you'll see some easy ways that you can get involved in helping Lucy and other children like her.

To read more about Shawni and Lucy, you can read Shawni's article on The Power of Moms website: When Your Fears are Confirmed.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

In our family, all of us (including me) often have a hard time accepting the basic but sad fact that you can't always get what you want.  One day, as I found myself telling the kids "I'm sorry, but we don't always get what we want" again and again, a certain song came to mind.  Since then, this song has become somewhat of an anthem around here.  

Whenever someone's having a really hard time with not getting what they want, we break into this little song and it helps dissipate the tension.  It's great hearing the big kids sing it to the little kids when they're on the verge of a meltdown - and to hear the little kids sing it to the big kids on occasion as well! I'll admit that there are times when kid facing some disappointment yells "I hate that song!" at the singer.  But in general, it works pretty well.

I really try to make sure people gets what they need most of the time and they want quite a bit of the time around here.  But we just plain can't get what we want all the time. And the sooner we can all accept that fact and learn to live with it, the better! 

There are lots of things I want.  I want more time to read great books and go on beautiful bike rides.  I want a husband who is just a tad more romantic at times.  I want laundry that does itself and kids that never whine.  I want floors that don't get sticky and covered with crumbs.  I want kids who happily obey me and even do things without being asked.  I want to be with my sisters more.  I want my kids' homework to be more meaningful and shorter and less tedious.  I want the other parents at the school to start volunteering more so that I can feel OK about volunteering less.  I want this saggy baggy twins-tummy of mine to disappear.  I want more great women to get involved with The Power of Moms so that I don't have to work quite so many hours on it to make it successful.  I want world peace.

I can make some of these things happen (to some degree).  But just like I have to explain to my kids again and again, "wanting doesn't make it happen - work and patience can lead to things happening - sometimes." (You've got to include that "sometimes" at the end - only in fairy tales does hard work and patience ALWAYS get you want you want.)  

I can chip away at getting some of the things I want and need.  I can read on the treadmill so I can couple my desire to get exercise with my desire to read.  I can model and encourage the behavior I long for in my kids.  I can work and wait and pray and help many of my "wants" become reality.

But I need to remember the "Serenity Prayer" that my mom had on a plaque on the wall in the house where I grew up: "Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." 

We've got to pick our battles.  We've got to choose our causes.  We've got to decide where to put our time and effort and money.  We CAN really change some things - and it makes me sad to see so many people who seem to give up too easily - or who never even try in the first place.  We CAN get what we want.  But first we have to decide what we really really want.  And we have to learn to accept, with serenity, the things that we can't - or shouldn't - change.

What do you want most for yourself?  For your marriage?  For your family?  Looking at your "wants," which ones are most important to you?  Are there some "wants" that you might need to let go of because they're objectively not that important or because they'd be more work than they'd be worth? What are you going to do to get the things you want and that feel right to you?  How are you going to dismiss the wants you've decided aren't right or aren't worth the effort?

Try singing it to yourself and to your kids - "You can't always get what you want - but if you try sometimes (and really think and work), you can get what you (and others) need!"

Spotlight on Eliza

I've promised Eliza that I'd do her spotlight for months now.  I'm finally sitting down to do it!  With her birthday last Saturday (the 13th), this seems like an extra good time to spotlight my wonderful little girl.

Eliza is everything I could ever ask for in a little girl - affectionate, beautiful (she's got such a unique beauty with her "platinum hair and violet eyes" - as my dad puts it and her freckles and dark eyebrows), graceful, smart as a whip (she writes whole essays on her own - because she feels like it - and can read chapter books already), musical (always singing some cute song in Spanish from school or something she heard once on the radio and already knows all the words to), artistic (she produces about 5 major works of art a day - collages, watercolors, sketches, artistic arrangements of items in a room, you name it...), kind (she gives me the sweetest notes almost every day and is almost always so kind to her brothers).  She's full of spunk and style and I love seeing the outfits she comes up with.  She's into everything girlish from nail painting to dolls to mothering everyone younger than her.  She's also highly dramatic and emotional - but that keeps things exciting!

 

While being "all girl," she's still tough and adventurous and athletic.  She's a great little hiker and can go for miles and miles (she complains when we say we're going hiking but she loves it once we're out there and we don't hear another complaint from her).  She's also a great biker (got 3rd in a mountain bike race) and rock climber.  She's my only child who'll do the Jillian Micheals 30-day Shred with me from beginning to end.  I love that Liza is such a great combination of so many things!

Here's Liza with freshly painted finger nails and one of her snazzy outfits.  Below are a couple of her lovely, colorful art pieces.  Lots of kids simply eat their Halloween candy but Eliza decided to celebrate all the candy she ate by creating a collage with all the wrappers.   

Sorry this one is sideways - I tried and tried to get it turned but had no luck.  When I was on the phone one time after promising to take Eliza and the twins on "a loop" around the neighborhood, Eliza got sick of waiting for me and rather than interrupt my phone conversation, she wrote me a very frustrated note.  Here's what it says in case it's hard to read sideways: "Cum! un!! now!  You !! sed! we!! wr! goin! to go! arawnd The lup!!"  I got off the phone pretty quick after this polite but firm reminder!

Here's the front and inside of a card Jared and I found on our bed:

And here's Eliza ready for her birthday tea party with her beloved Christmas doll, Tasha (in the new princess outfit the twins got for her for Eliza's birthday) and the tiara and sash she dug out of somewhere.  This is a girl who dearly loves dressing up!  Every year, Eliza has insisted upon a proper tea party (with cucumber and peanut butter and banana sandwiches as well as lots of fruits, veggies and treats - but just apple juice for tea) as well as sugar cookie decorating for her birthday.  She was so cute about helping to set the table and arranging the food nicely on trays.

 

 

These are Liza's best friends - with no sisters, friends become extra important - Olivia, Hattie and Grayce

 

Can you tell how much these boys love their sister?  They couldn't ask for a better one.  And she's so good to them (most of the time, anyway).  Liza's got a little tomato soup (we had her favorite grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup for dinner) on her face - even a princess can be a sloppy eater, I guess.

I love you Liza Loo!

 

Happy Birthday Krawnchie Boo!

Krawnchie Boo is our house. The twins came up with this lovely name a couple years ago and somehow it stuck. Today was Krawnchie Boo's birthday and the kids came up with this for our celebration: clean the house ("Krawnchie Boo hates to be dirty"), make and eat cookies, have a dance party where we dance through every room in the house and top it all off with our favorite dinner (green chili chicken enchiladas) and a game night. It rained all day and we all loved just staying here and celebrating this wonderful house that we get to call home.

On February 6th 4 years ago, we moved into this house. The twins had just turned 1, Eliza was 3, Isaac was 4 and Ashton had just turned 6. The month leading up to moving into the house was sheer craziness with 4 preschoolers (two of them wild babies), one 1/2 day kindergartner, a hard deadline for getting out of our rental house and into our new house that really wasn't finished at all. A couple weeks before our move-in date, I remember telling one of the subcontractors that we were moving in on February 6th to hurry him along and he looked at me in credulously and said, "This here house ain't gonna be ready." I told him ready or not, we'd be moving in. What else could we do?

Jo and Aja helped out a ton and my Mom and Dad came down for a few days to help us push through the craziness. The twins spent quite a few hours fussing and whining in their pack-and-play set up on the front walkway and we tried to engage the other kids in somewhat helpful little jobs to keep them out of trouble while Jared and I painted and urged contractors along and dealt with one problem after another (the wrong baseboards were sent, several doors were wrong, we had to fire one set of painters and bribe a new set...). Plus we had to pack up the rental house. I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Jared developed some sort of odd pain that felt like appendicitis and we spent the one evening that my parents had the kids so we could work like crazy on the house in the ER instead. We never found out quite what the pain was but he literally could barely move - might have been a kidney stone that broke up, might have been acute stress... I look back and have no idea how we managed to stumble through.

But somehow we did actually move in here on the target date of February 6th. One of the missing doors was the front door so we lived here for a week or so with just a piece of plastic for a front door and the first two weeks of living here involved living with a mess of contractors and projects. Plus we had the silly idea of showing our house during the Parade of Homes so that we could maybe get some homebuilding and interior design clients so we worked like crazy to make our house not only liveable but "showable" (the home show was mid February). As I write this, I realize we took on way more stress than we should have - but somehow at the time, this seemed like a good idea. So along with installing baseboards, finishing some painting, and the huge job of unpacking (not to mention taking care of 5 kids), we were hanging pictures, putting together crates of furniture we got wholesale through some connections and shopping for lots of odds and ends we needed to stage the house. In the end, even though the home show didn't result in many clients, it was very nice to have a deadline and push through so much stuff so that we could get on the business of living our lives again - and be able to do it in such a lovely and mostly-finished house.

October 2005

February 2006 (2 weeks after moving in we got the landscaping in)

Spring 2007 (I love all the flowers in the spring!)
February 6, 2010

Krawnchie Boo was a great house when we moved in. But four years later, Krawnchie Boo is so much more than a house - it's a beloved home. We've celebrated Christmases, Easters, Halloweens and tons of birthdays here. We've read 100's of books together and had over 200 Family Home Evenings and almost as many family movie nights, dance parties and game nights. We've cooked and eaten thousands of meals and made countless batches of cookies. We've hosted lots of little get-togethers and some great parties (our favorites: adult Halloween parties each year and our Children for Children concerts each Christmas). We've had literally hundreds of house guests. We've prayed and cried and celebrated and fought and laughed so much here. We've worked through big decisions and dealt with hard problems and had so much fun together within these walls. I've taught Joy School to 4 different Joy School groups here and hosted summer classes for the kids and their friends. We've cleaned every Saturday and we've gotten to know every nook and crannie. We've done piles of homework and piles and piles of laundry here. Jared and I have made a couple websites right here and sent them out to the world. We've seen our kids go from little babies to fun people who we love to hang out with.

We thought we'd build this house as a spec house - make it really nice so it would make us some money when we sold it after living in it for a couple years to avoid capital gains taxes. But we fell in love with this place - and since the house values went down, we're quite happily stuck here.

The once-pristine walls that we painted so carefully are now banged up, the cork flooring we had to drive to Vegas to pick up due to a shipping problem is now faded and worn, the furniture is a dinged up, the pricey maple doors and woodwork that we agonized over now has plenty of dents. But Krawnchie Boo doesn't really mind - so much living and loving is bound to leave its marks. And can a house really be a home without a few scars?

This afternoon, after doing a ton of cleaning and photographing the house so we could always remember how it looked at this point in our lives, we were celebrating with a smoothie when Krawnchie Boo talked to us. It was pretty darn cool. Through the speaker system built into the house, Ashton had this "text to speech" program he found on the computer say "Krawnchie Boo here, thank you for cleaning me. Can you please sing me Happy Birthday now?" The kids got these incredulous looks on their faces then broke into huge grins. We all sang happy birthday. Then the house said "thank you so much. I love you guys!" I was pretty impressed with Ashton for coming up with this! After that, Oliver and Silas kept everyone on their toes by saying things like "hey, don't make a mess! Krawnchie Boo hates messes!" or "We need to talk nice because Krawnchie Boo hates loudness and meanness." I guess having a house that talks and probably has feelings can be a good thing for your kids' behavior!

Everyone got a candle in their cookie and ice cream to blow out on behalf of Krawnchie Boo.

Here are everyone's favorite things about this house: (skip this if you want - I just recorded it for posterity- might be boring to anyone but us. I was sort of surprised by some people's favorite things.)

• Eliza -I love that our house can talk to us. And on regular days I love that whenever I'm in bed, I feel so safe. I like that there are lots of windows so we can see the beautiful view and I can draw it. I like that I have such pretty pictures on the wall in my room and all the colors look really nice together.
  
• Oliver - I love that I have tractor pictures and a drawer for all my special stuff in my room. I like that our roof keeps the rain from dropping on our heads in here. I like that we have a couch for reading books. I'm so glad our house has every food we want.
• Isaac - I love that we have a movie theater. I like that we can fit lots of stuff in our house and we have lots of cupboards for everything. I like that you can see the red rock mountains out the window and the wash. I like that we have a downstairs and I get to sleep down there.
• Ashton - I love the view and that we can play in the wash all the time. I like that we're really close to a bunch of hikes. The movie theater is awesome. I like that my room is really big and I have a huge closet and a cupboard for all my inventing stuff.
• Silas - I love that our house can really talk to us and I love that our house has computers in it and I have tractors and transformers to play with in my room and I have a picture of me and my cousins on a snowmobile in my room.
  
• Me - I love the mudroom where all the kids backpacks and shoes can be stashed away. I love the big kitchen and huge pantry that makes cooking so pleasant. I love all the paint colors and how they reflect all the colors of nature outside our windows. I love all the built-in storage. I love the speaker system that makes it so we can have music all the time (and love Pandora for the great mixes of music it makes for us). I love the way I can see the sun hit the red mountains from my bed each morning. I love the basement where the kids can be noisy and messy without driving me crazy and I love that we can have an adult party upstairs and a kid party downstairs at the same time. There are plenty of things I don't love and would have done differently if I had it to do over again - but there's a whole lot right about this house.
• Jared - He's not here right now but I think he'd say he loves his workbench and tools in the garage, the fact that he never has to mow the lawn (landscaping upkeep in included with our HOA fees), and the movie room (his baby when we built the house). I hope he's pretty darn proud of all the baseboards and casing because he did all that himself - serious big job. And I hope he's pretty pleased with the over all house since he was the general contractor on the house and oversaw every little thing that had to happen to get this house built - plus he worked alongside a lot of the subcontractors. Jared really built this house. I came up with the ideas and Jared made them into reality.
  

Photo Contest

On our website, The Power of Moms, we're having a photo contest and over the past few days, my email inbox has been filled up almost hourly with wonderful photos of moms and their kids - photos that show joy and love and that have filled up my heart with gratitude that I get to be part of the ranks of wonderful mothers who are changing the world, one hug, one story, one meal at a time.

If you'd like to participate in the photo contest, please send your photos in TODAY! This is the last day we're accepting photos. Click here to see the details of the contest.

Next week, we'll be posting all the photos we received and inviting everyone to come and vote on their favorites. Then we'll be featuring all the top photos on our site, awarding the winners with free Motherhood Book of Secrets books or Learning Circles materials, and using all these wonderful photos to really enhance The Power of Moms.

So if you've got some great photos of you and your kids or want to take some today, send them on in!

Amazing Travels

I'm sure lots of you might already be following my parents' blog about all their amazing adventures traveling and speaking around the world. But just in case - here's the link:
http://eyrealm.blogspot.com/

And my brother Talmadge and his new wife Anita are spending their "honeymoon" traveling and doing humanitarian service in Africa, the Middle East and now India (where they've met up with my parents and sister Charity to all serve together at a school for the children of lepers). Here's their blog:
http://talandanita.blogspot.com/

The kids and I have loved participating vicariously in their adventures through their blogs. We've loved learning about people who are so rich they're worried about their kids turning out OK (my parents speak to some high-powered groups of parents as they travel) and we've learned about lots of people who are so poor they're worried about getting their kids the basic necessities of life. We've seen beautiful things (the Taj Mahal, the great architecture and art of various places, the beautiful colors of India, the faces of gorgeous children of all colors). We've seen sad things (the feet and hands of lepers, the humble homes, the dirty streets, the children in rags). I'm so grateful for this chance to give my children a larger view of the world through these blogs and I thought you might enjoy doing the same.

Michael Jackson Sings "Clocks" and "Power Rangers"

Oliver and Silas worked hard on a special show for me yesterday and I thought you'd enjoy seeing it as well. They break into this song that they call "Clocks" all the time but I think it's actually Vida La Vida by Cold Play. And this video also features a new song they made up about Power Rangers - it's snappy, it's simple - sure to be a big hit. They attribute the whole thing to Micheal Jackson somehow. Oh these boys are fun!