A Musing Mother 6

Once upon a time there was a beautiful, intelligent and skinny young woman who entered graduate school. Within the walls of academia, she drank up the psychological theories and diagnostic tools the professors had to offer. She learned solution focused therapy, transactional analysis, group therapy tools, and she discovered herself within the pages of the DSM-IIIR; Axis II (everybody does, by the way). She drank up all the books and professors had to offer. She knew she was going to be fabulous in everything she did because she was beautiful, intelligent, skinny and now very educated. Upon graduation, job offers were abundant. She worked at a psychologist's office doing group and individual therapy, at a group home doing the same, but finally settled on the career that offered benefits; the public school system. She was wonderful at her job because she knew all the answers. She had studied her books and got straight A's during school. She also knew that she was going ...

Two fun-filled days at Clear Creek Now I can have higher expectations of this boy.

Being married to the physical facilities director in our ward is not as glamorous as one might think. Sure, last year was full of excitement every time there was a snow storm. That was the year we had the coveted 11:00 church time. While all my ward members extolled the virtues of being the chosen ones to have the best church time in our building, Mr. Taylor did not have to set up chairs or take down chairs before or after church, but he had the opportunity of snow removal. In my mind, the drought is no longer an issue. Cleaning of the church is best organized with a sign-up sheet during the month that ward is assigned cleaning. March has come and gone without a sign-up sheet. This has meant that every Saturday (except the week there were baptisms), my husband and children have cleaned the church. I simply could not bear that much of life in the fast lane. I found that Costco, Albertson's, and the Shades Warehouse Sale were always calling my name. This week we all decided t...

District Science fair finalist! Look who's 9! Potatoes, the new art medium. Can you guess what it is? ( Courtesy of 11 year old red head )

Last Halloween someone who was clearly far too concerned about plaque, gave out spider rings instead of the usual Costco candy. Although well intentioned, I'm sure, the ring has been kicking around the property for the past 5 months. It has mostly been ignored until the three year old suddenly developed arachnophobia last week. He saw it on the van floor and screamed. I picked it up, held it away from him, showed him it was a ring then tossed it aside. He hasn't forgotten it and now he sees bugs in everything. He's terrified there are bugs in Girl Scout cookies which suits me just fine. More for me. Yesterday while driving children to school he started whimpering, "I'm scared of the spider!" "What spider?" I asked. "The one in my car seat," he whimpered back while trying to not let his back touch the car seat to which he was securely buckled against. I pulled over, took him out, and we examined what was on the car seat. "See? ...

I realize that most of my readers are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but a few are not. The LDS church has been in the media a lot in the past year or so with Mitt Romney in the political arena, and Proposition 8 which was written to protect the traditional family (not to discriminate, as anti -Prop 8 people might ascertain), and now with a scene on Big Love that involves part of the temple ceremony. In case you wonder, I will not be watching that episode of Big Love for two reasons; 1) I've never felt inclined to watch it before simply because it doesn't interest me and 2) I know what happens in the temple and I know that a television scene can't duplicate it. Yes, there are signs, tokens, blessings, covenants that can be copied and pasted onto a t.v. show but that's a very small part of the temple. I've watched concerts on t.v. and enjoyed the music. I've been to concerts on the front row and even on stage and I've experien...

With some trepidation, we took the family out in public again. We had tickets to tour the Draper Temple right at dinner time. Frightening but true. It turned out to be an amazing success. We fed the kids some Rhodes rolls that the milkman had so generously given us a sample that morning which seemed to hold over any hunger pangs and drove to the chapel where we were herded into the cultural hall to sit and wait until we were called into the chapel for a short film and then onto a bus for a six minute ride. We walked through the covered walkways and into the temple where I was complimented for my reverent children. Really! The temple is gorgeous and my children seemed to be equally as impressed. It looked to me to be a logistical nightmare to get the jillions of people through in a reverent manner but the organizers had thought of everything; including a quiet moment in the sealing room with ushers to discuss the purpose of temples and families. We were encouraged to look into the mirro...