Let us ALL Press On

There's just something about fall and the pungent smell of apples and the crisp feel to the air that makes me happy. Don't get me wrong - I happen to enjoy all of the seasons mostly equally, but I especially love fall.

Some of the leaves are starting to turn, and they are the most beautiful colors! Perhaps one of the reasons I love fall so much as an adult is because I never really saw it for longer than a week as a child. Autum in Alaska arrives just like Spring does. Quickly and without warning. One day you'll see green leaves on the trees; the next you'll see a couple of trees that are starting to turn; the next ALL of the trees will have turned, and the next day practically you'll see naked trees. As a result, there's not much of a chance to enjoy the beautiful fall colors that other people can brag about.

I'm enjoying seeing the leaves turn colors here. Not so much at our house - the evergreens stay, well... ever green. It's the leaves on the trees downtown that are fascinating to me. They're starting to turn the most brilliant shades of red and orange; and there's the deep purple of the plum trees... it's all beautiful. If only there would be a constant barrage of that white stuff that falls in other states. Then, I might consider this to be heaven. Right now, it's close, but winters just don't cut it. (Heat wise, I'm not complaining. We've had our wood stove burning for at least one night of every month so far this year.)

Then there's the smell of apples that I love so much. Mr. Snicklebutt has been working on a cider press that we purchased for less than $1.00/year of its life. It's in remarkably good condition for being 134 years old, but it does need a little bit of work. So... he's re-building the baskets to squish the apples in. Once he's finished, we'll put the press to work and make our own cider. It is, after all, cheaper than that $6.00/gallon stuff we can find at any other farm! We will probably can the stuff too. It would be better for us to store it on our shelves than in the freezer - no matter how delicious the frozen concentrate may be.

So... before it gets too late - let us all press on... and get some good cider in addition to the great fall memories!

When Life Takes Over

Life... a simple word with so many different meanings. For example: Life can be the beginning of something - bringing a child into the world gives it life. Or, life can be simply the things that we do on a day to day basis.

In this case, MY LIFE refers to the day to day things that I do (or don't do as the case may be...). This past week, LIFE has meant that I have spent nearly every waking moment canning and processing food for my food storage. The moments NOT spent doing that were spent either picking the food to process it, washing the food to process it, keeping the kids from eating the food that I intended to process, feeding the baby, and feeding my children. Not much of the "NOT canning and processing food" moments was spent cleaning the house.

It has, however, been productive. I have discovered that I need to take breaks. I love canning and processing food, so taking this break from the OTHER life that I lead (that of being a full time wife and Mother and Housekeeper and Chauffeur and whatever else being a Mom entails) has been good for me. I have come to realize that I rather like sitting on the couch and reading books to my children. I thoroughly enjoy preparing a good sit down meal for my family. And, I like having a clean house.

Why does it matter so much to me that I have a clean house? It has been my experience that if I want to have the Spirit of the Lord dwell in my home, I MUST have a clean house. Quite simply, He will not dwell in unclean places. That's not to say that He has been absent from our home this past week, I have done a fairly good job of making sure that things have stayed on the north side of clean, but it has been harder for me to maintain that cleanliness that I feel is required to invite the Lord to be a guest. And it shows in the way my children treat each other and how they treat themselves.

So as much as I enjoy taking this break from life, somehow I need to figure out a way to fuse the two lives together. Perhaps that's a job for Wonder Woman...

It's a GREAT Harvest

Mr. Snicklebutt and I have a confession. We're addicted to canning.

He's addicted to eating whatever I can, and I'm addicted to canning. In fact, today I'm officially so far behind I may never catch up.

Numbers will be changed to reflect the TRUE amount of canning I have done in the past few weeks, but sufficieth it to say that today alone I canned 6.5 quarts of pear sauce and at LEAST 18 pints and 4 quarts of pear butter. And now I know why I NEVER make pear butter. I'm just now getting the kitchen clean for round two tomorrow.

I'll post tomorrow on the effects of the canning...

Right now, I'm seeing the screen wobble again. Something about too little sleep...

MUST CAN MORE... MUST CAN MORE...

Who am I?????

What do you mean, WHO AM I???

Well, here it is - Sunday... again. And weeks have flown by since I last posted - mostly because I let life get in the way of life, and needed to take a rejuvenation break. But that's another post for another day... look for "When Life Takes Over" coming soon.

Two weeks ago, I was talking to Mr. Snicklebutt on the telephone, and he mentioned that a friend of ours who lives in Florida commented on our personal blog spot. His actual comment wasn't posted, but it was something along the lines of this: "Your wife needs to put more pictures of herself on the blog for people who don't know who she is." I laughed. Seriously. I am forever the photographer, and, as happens, never the photograph-ed. Not that I don't LIKE having my photo taken, I just find that I look extremely dorky if I hold the camera out in front of myself to take the picture. So I don't do it.

His comment, however, has made me think. Who AM I? Really. Do I know who I am? I've been thinking about it for the past week or so. What defines ME? What makes me, the person that I am today? Is it my childhood? Is it the experiences that I had as a missionary in Ukraine? Is it the fact that I am a wife and a mother? What makes me, well, ME? So I've been on a mental quest to define myself.

I was born in Alaska. I am the second oldest of seven children (5 girls, two boys). I play the violin. I love crayons. I considered myself to be a fairly decent student (terrible study habits, but a decent student nonetheless). I served a 19 month mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Ukraine. I am a mother. I love KFC chicken. I like my eggs fresh, and fried over easy (unless I'm in a restaurant, then I ask for them to be fried over medium - that way they always turn out right, instead of just the wrong side of sunny side up; although I did go through that phase too...). I like living on a farm. I LOVE canning and preserving food. I am a master fudgeologist. I love making jam. I like hiking. I love making friends - even though it's not always easy for me. My favorite television shows are MONK and PSYCH - they just make me laugh. I collect miniature oil lamps. I love cooking on a wood stove. My ideal house is the one that I live in, and I hope NEVER to move. I love working with the Young Women of the church. I like to read. I enjoy scrapbooking, but more than that I just love getting together with friends for a great gab fest - even if I don't get anything accomplished, it's relaxing enough for me to just hang out with great women. I love learning. I love photography. My favorite food is Russian. I love my kids. My biggest pet peeve ever is people who come for dinner and graze before the rest of us have a chance to get to the table; it makes me feel as if they aren't really going to sit and enjoy the dinner with the rest of us - or as if they feel that they can take over a carefully planned meal and stuff themselves before the rest of us can try it. I love cooking.

And I could go on for hours with what I love and what really bugs me. My question, however, is this: "Do all the things that I like (or love) really define me? Are there other inner things that define to other people who I am?" My answer is a resounding YES! Above and beyond the fact that I am a daughter to two very wonderful people and a loving wife to a magnificient husband, I know beyond anything else who I really am, and it has very little to do with my likes and dislikes, my loves and my hates. More than anything else, I AM A DAUGHTER OF A HEAVENLY FATHER! He loves me. He wants me to succeed. He wants me to develop divine qualities that will help me to be like him. All of my likes and loves and dislikes and hates are qualities that I have that HELP to define me, but they are not me. They are a PART of me, but they are not me.

It's taken the last few years of my life for me to truly understand who I am. I was raised with the song, I Am a Child of God - and by two parents who taught me that I could do anything I set my mind to doing. It took, however, some difficult trials and some extreme heartache and pain before I truly understood what I had known all my life. I am a DAUGHTER; a CHILD of GOD! How wonderful is that??? During the most trying trial of my life, my Mother had the wisdom and the foresight to ask me, "What are you going to do now?" And without missing a beat, or truly understanding what I was saying, I said to her, "I don't know. Before I do ANYTHING, I have to find out who I am again. I have to take some time to just be me." And so I did. But I am just now understanding that what I REALLY did was to define qualities that help me to be happy and to be me.
Who we are is determined by our eternal potential and what we are aspiring to become - Gods and Godesses. I am especially grateful for the difficult times and trials and blessings and, dare I say it without being cheesy - PEOPLE who have helped to shape me into the woman that I am today. It is through all of those experiences that I have come to understand who I am. What I like and what I do is my role. I hope to play it with the same grace that I see other women of stature playing. And, one day, I hope that I can SEE in myself the woman that I know I am.

So, who am I? I am Mdme. Sloopy Snicklebutt. Daughter of a Heavenly King. What else is there???

Monday, Monday...

Well... it's Monday. Again. And today, I am officially 20-13 and 354 days old. Tomorrow is my 20-14th birthday, and there is no one here to celebrate it with me. Mr. Snicklebutt is in Arizona on his way to California and then hopefully home, and the children are too young to do anything about a birthday.

Birthdays growing up were never really a big issue at our home. My most memorable was the birthday that my parents decided we were going to celebrate the way the Irish supposedly do and the birthday person was to hand out gifts to everyone instead of receiving gifts. I was the only one that they did that for. I'm not sure if I was a selfish child - I like to think that I WASN'T, but... the things parents will do to teach their children.

My second most memorable was my first year at college. Happened to be that I was so incredibly sick that I spent all day in bed wishing that I was home with Mom's chicken noodle soup. At midnight I called Alaska to let everyone know that I wasn't waiting any longer for them to call to wish me a happy birthday. It took an hour for them to call me back. AND to compound the terrible day, the box that the family was sending for my birthday was extremely late. I think I got it for my brother's birthday.

I told Mr. Snicklebutt that it wasn't really a big deal that he was going to be gone for the big 20-14; but the more I think about it, the more certain I am that I lied. It would be nice to just spend the day with him and to wake up to him telling me that he's glad I'm there with him. BUT... oh well. Instead, I get to spend the day baking my own birthday cake, making pearple (cross between apple and pear) sauce, taking care of children, cleaning the house, trying to get life organized enough to teach a class for Enrichment (of which this is my first one as the leader, and my entire committee has bailed...) SO..................

This sounds like an incredible pity party. Maybe it is. Don't we all have days when we just want to sound pitiful in the hopes that someone else is having a rotten day as well and we can be rotten together? Not really. But it sounded good.

I will admit that having a birthday sure beats the alternative... at least from my perspective.

A Rose by Another Name...

Would still smell like a rose. And some roses don't have an odor. I know. I have about 20 DIFFERENT varieties of roses here at my house. Don't worry, I have no idea what they are, they were all here when we moved here, and my job is to not kill them. My children are the ones who discovered that while they ALL have thorns, not all of them "stink".

But really, I didn't want to talk about roses. What I really wanted to ponder on is names.

Before we went to the hospital to have our second baby, Mr. Snicklebutt and I had already picked out two names. One for a boy (just in case), and one for a girl... (also, just in case). This last time, we had a name for a girl... (just in case), and we were in deliberation on a name for a boy. I didn't like the name he REALLY wanted, and he didn't like the name I REALLY wanted, so we had decided to not worry about a boy name until we found out the gender of our baby.

It would have saved a lot of time if we had just come up with a name before we got to the hospital. But then... none of the names that we had considered seemed to fit. It took us three days to come up for a name for our little D.F.

So why the struggle with a name for a boy? I have come to the conclusion that a name is something that you give to a child that they can never get rid of. (They can try, but their name will always be there...) A girl child has the option of changing her name a little - when she gets married, she can either keep or drop her maiden name; as a middle name or even as a hyphenated name (not my choice of an option, but hey - it happens). A boy child on the other hand - that's his name for life! This knowledge became so much an integral part of our decision to name our little guy that it was almost a battle to decide what we wanted him to be known as. The name decision came down to a name that really sounded strange to me. I didn't want to have any sort of a way for people to make fun of our child's name, but then again, I didn't want to give him a name that other people would wonder what we were thinking about. So... after much deliberation and some arguing and some debating, we decided to leave the name alone. I would pray about it overnight - there were some surface issues with the name that I was concerned about - and then make the decision in the morning.

End result? Our son is named after a concrete company. He has a good solid name. It's one that has taken me some time to get used to, but it seems to fit him - strangely... His first name is LeGrand. He is definitely "The Large". Everything that he has done has seemed to be LARGE.

I wonder often though - what causes a person to name their child after fruit? Or after a day of the week? Or after a CAR??? What really is in a name? Is it just a series of letters strung together to make a word, or is it something that is to be treasured as it used to be?

I was named after the wife of a friend of my parents after the friend was killed in a plane crash. The wife is still alive and living in Florida, I think... I have two sisters who are named for virtues. I have a brother who shares my Dad's first name as his middle name. I have neices who are named after grandparents. I have a daughter who is named after a favorite great-aunt - and then we found out that we have MULTIPLE Great-Aunts who all share the same name... So what is it with names?

I know the history behind my name... Do you know yours? Does your name have a special meaning? Is it spelled the way it is because of language nuances? Why is your name important? What makes you... well, YOU!?

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...

The time has come... The time is now. Marvin K. Mooney, will you please go now???!!!

Not really. But every time I hear the phrase: "The time has come, the time is now..." I think of that Dr. Suess book with Marvin K. Mooney in it. And I wonder - has he gone yet? Better yet, where is he supposed to go?

Of all the things to wonder at, I wonder at the marvelous nature of babies. The miracle that they are. I am always amazed at the little things that they do - from the first time they smile at you to the first words that they choose. A good friend of mine from college used to say frequently:

"A child's face can say a lot... especially the mouth part!"

I'm inclined to agree. This afternoon, D.F., our youngest, opened his mouth and laughed for the first time. It was such a marvelous little noise! I've been trying all day to get him to repeat it with no success. I'll keep trying. I find that there are few things greater in life than the true love of a child. D.D. has been trying to get me to play with her on a more regular basis. I am almost ashamed to admit that I have forgotten how to play. She is teaching me how to be a child again. And me at almost 34 years old.

Two of my favorite phrases are. "Mommy, will you pin with me?" (substitute the word spin for the word pin, and you'll understand my reluctance - I know that my equilibrium is incredibly off since having two babies, I'm not sure I want to find out what the third has done for it!) My second favorite is having her hold her arms out to me and asking me, "Mommy, will you dance with me?" What mother can resist a dance with a two year old? Especially when said two year old is wearing said mother's highest pair of heels so that she can be just like mom? I certainly can't. I can, however, refuse to "pin". I just don't like the feeling of having the room spin around me...

So my advice today - it's free. You don't have to pay for it - or even take it, for that matter... it's simply this. Enjoy your children. Take time to "pin" or dance with them. LOVE them. Because soon enough they don't want to "pin" or dance or even talk to you. Sometimes they don't even want you to love them. Do it anyway. Your children depend on it.