Entertaining Friends

When J. and I first got married I thought we'd do a lot more entertaining than we do. He seemed to have so many friends that he kept in close contact with that I thought we'd be inviting them over often for games and food and that sort of thing. Well, that didn't end up being the case, probably more because of me than because of him. As I've already explained, I'm not a good housekeeper so inviting people over causes me stress, therefore we don't invite people over very often.

I've decided tonight that one aspect of my new "happy at home" motto is going to be about sharing time with friends and family. I am going to get my house together and organized so we can invite friends over without causing me too much stress and anxiety. There's another motivation to get off my rear end and get some things done. Hopefully an invitation will be extended to you soon.

A New Direction

Tonight I picked up a book that's been sitting on my shelf for a while. It's called The Ultimate Career: The Art of Homemaking by Daryl Hoole. I've read parts of this book in the past but tonight a few things I read caught my attention and they've caused me to think about my life.

I'm not a good housekeeper. Anyone who's been to my house knows that. I'm not a complete slob but I'm definitely on the slob spectrum. I always have been. Dad, if you read this post, you will be able to attest to the truth of that statement. I don't want to be a slob but I have habits that make it difficult for me to change.

So, tonight I opened this book thinking that I need to make some changes in the way that I run my household. I turned to the first page and the first sentence in the introduction is a quote by a Samuel Johnson who was a writer and literary critic in the 18th century. He said, "The ultimate result of all ambition is to be happy at home." That hit me pretty hard. I am often not "happy at home" and one of the reasons for that is the mess and clutter that I live in. I have a hard time finding things when I need them and I'm often stressed by the overwhelming feelings that I get when I look around at everything I need to do. I'm often grumpy with the kids because they have picked up many of my bad habits and it makes for a perfect storm of chaos and clutter.

After thinking about all these things I've come to the conclusion that I want to make this my new goal and motto: Happy at Home. I'm hoping to use this blog as a way to keep track of my progress, ponder on ways to achieve happiness at home, and share any ideas that are successful. I'm excited about this and have high hopes. Here's to being happy at home.

I think I might be back

So it's been a year since my last post. I've wondered about starting up again a few times but I don't think I was ever quite ready. I'm not sure that I'm ready now either but I'm going to give it a shot.

Not much to say today but OrphanAnnie(8) did say something kind of funny yesterday. She was reading an article in the Reader's Digest (this was surprising in itself) and she wanted to tell me about it. She said, "There is this woman and she's kind of young. She has friends..." Okay, so once you get a little older you don't have friends anymore? Hmm. Does she think that I have friends or not...

General Conference

I've noticed recently that after every General Conference there is a talk or two that everyone talks about. In October last year it was the one about hope by Pres. Uchdorf. A few conferences back everyone was talking about Pres. Eyring's talk on the journal in which he wrote about how he saw the hand of God in his life every day. I guess I can't remember others specifically but as I watched this General Conference I wondered which talk it would be that I would hear referenced a lot over the next 6 months. I think it will be either Elder Uchdorf's again on discipleship or Elder Bednar's talk on the temple. It could also be the one by Elder Hales about the economic times and how we need to learn to live within our means. Which one stood out to you?

Things Heard and Seen

I know it's been way too long again and I really need to write a couple of posts about our trip to Disneyland and Destructo's(3) experience with preschool. Until I get to that though, I thought I'd post about a couple of interesting/funny things I've heard and seen lately.

While walking through the girls' section in Walmart I glanced at the racks of training bras. I couldn't help but notice the brand name of some of them: "Sweet Nothings."

I was running around the track at the Rec Center the other morning. Two older ladies, probably in their 60's were walking together and chatting. Just as I passed them I overheard one say to the other, "...and her husband's a tall glass of water, too."

On the radio I heard that in Arkansas there is a bill going through the state congress that would allow people to carry a concealed weapon with them into a church. Right now apparently, the only two places that concealed weapons are banned are in church and bars. Interesting pairing.

The "S" word

Not too long ago, Bookworm(9) was really grouchy and driving me crazy. I finally found out that she had been having some problems with her friends at school and that's why she was in such a bad mood. She told me how they had been having a conversation about some boys in her class and that one of them had used the "h" word. She didn't know what that meant and they wouldn't tell her so she felt left out of the conversation and she also felt kind of dumb. So, she asked me to tell her all the bad words as a remedy to her problem. My first reaction was to refuse but then I decided that she probably did need to know what the "bad" words are to be able to avoid then. I wrote down a little list because I don't like to say them out loud (I know, I'm such a baby) and then explained what they meant. She was so happy to finally "be in the know." We threw the paper away and that was that.

Fast-forward to today. She came up to me and said, "You know the 's' word that means poop? Well, in science class, Mr. L was talking about how scientists can tell what people a long time ago ate by looking through their human waste--I don't like to say poop. And he called it the 's' word."
Now you can imagine that I'm starting to get a little upset thinking that the science teacher said the "s" word to a class of 4th graders. So I said, "Really?! He said..." and I spelled it out.
She looked at me blankly and I realized there must be a mistake. I said, "Do you mean that he said 'scat'?"
"Oh yeah, that's what he said."
"Scat isn't a bad word."
"Oh. Okay."
Maybe we need to have a review lesson on bad words every few weeks.

Economic crisis?

We went out on Saturday night with two other couples in the Elder's Quorum presidency. We pulled into the mall and it was packed. I don't go to the mall very often so I don't know what it's normally like but we had to drive around for a while to find a parking space. Then we went in and tried to get a table at P.F. Chang's. It was an hour wait so we walked down to Spaghetti Factory. There was no wait but still quite a few people were there. When things first really started going south in the economy I saw a few signs of people tightening their belts but I'm not really seeing that anymore. Maybe it's not possible to observe a real change in other people's habits. Has anyone else seen evidence of an economic crisis outside of your own checkbook?