This last weekend was the Superbowl for Mormons, aka General Conference, and it was, in a word, fulfilling.
I felt renewed and refreshed after listening to these talks that reminded me of the fact that what I do, day in and day out, as a wife, mother, friend, sister, and daughter is in fact important, regardless of how I feel on the days when it seems that nothing I do stays done....when the laundry is piled high and the dishes are overwhelming and I've found yet more mouse poop in the pantry (next post is going to have to be about the seemingly neverending saga of my battle against the mice that somehow refuse to leave) and the kids are fussy and hungry and I feel like cleaning with them around is akin to shoveling the sidewalk in the middle of a blizzard--I work and work and have nothing to show for it.
You've all had those days, right? The ones where you can't figure out why you're so tired and you still have a billion things unfinished on your to-do list? Yeah. I know you have. Everyone has them.
I've had a lot of those days lately. So to be reminded by men who I sustain as prophets of God that as a Daughter of God and a Mother in Zion, the work I'm doing on a daily basis is actually eternal in its nature and importance was exactly what I needed.
Steve didn't have to work, so between us, we got to listen to basically all four sessions (although I'll admit that I did doze off during the Sunday afternoon session, darn it), and between sessions we enjoyed our food--we Mormons like to eat, okay?
I prepared a bunch of fun snacks for the kids for a "Conference Store" (they would get paid during every talk they sat still for--extra if they took notes or drew pictures about it--and then could use their "money" to buy snacks). I wish I could say it was a resounding success, but we still had a lot of wiggling, fighting, tattling, and running off into the bedrooms to play for the majority of the sessions. They would then come streaking back, sit down for approximately 2 seconds and write something down, then say, "How much money did I make from that one?"
Oh well, it's a work in progress, right?
I made a green smoothie after the Saturday afternoon session, and the boys had fun making green mustaches with it.
Why just drink your food when you can play with it, instead, I ask?
On Saturday night, we kept to our usual tradition and headed over to my mom's house to make treats while all the menfolk were at Priesthood meeting (they did a full-on barbecue while we watched the General Women's Meeting last weekend, so we figured it was our turn to provide food and child care so they could go get spiritually fed then come home and get physically fed).
While in past years, we've done donuts and cinnamon rolls, this time we decided to make little tarts out of pie dough and pie filling (that way the kids could cut out a bunch of cookies). Maggie and Clark wanted to help, and even though I've had 6 years of experience around preschoolers, I was still foolish enough to turn my back long enough to take a measuring cup to the sink.
It was also long enough for this to happen:
Clark really wanted to turn on the mixer.
I was initially frustrated (especially because I knew my parents had spent all day deep cleaning and I felt bad for spraying their entire kitchen with buttermilk-smelling ickiness), but my mom laughed and told me to get out the camera and take a video. So I did:
Interesting how just remembering that this will be funny someday helps to curb the irritations that arise with motherhood, isn't it?
Luckily, between Daliah, my mom and I (Clark and Maggie "helped," too), we got the mess cleaned up quickly, finished the pie dough, and still managed to make several tarts and have a clean kitchen (again) by the time the guys got back. I ate several myself, and they were quite tasty!
I guess it was good for me to remember that even when I make mistakes and messes and things don't turn out at all how I'd initially planned, there's still always a way to make something good out of them....if I choose to have a good attitude and learn the lesson I need from it (in this case, four-year-olds shouldn't be trusted alone with Bosch mixers), instead of sitting down and feeling sorry for myself, that is.
Now, that's the tricky part.
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