Blog Prompt 1

This week's random prompt seemed to be a no-brainer.

 I was relieved to pull one that was fairly straightforward and easy to answer. It wasn't going to require any soul searching or deep thought, I would just answer the question and consider it done and I would feel good about having finally begun this challenge.

 

I answered it on Friday. As I often do with longer posts, I slept on it to see if I still felt like it was the right thing to post the next day.

It wasn't.

So, I answered it again on Sunday, slept on it and...delete.

I answered it again yesterday and....nope. It's not right.

 

The prompt:

What religion did your parents and grandparents practice?

As I've written and erased three blog posts answering this, I realized what the problem is for me.

I enjoy talking about my faith and my belief system. It brings me happiness, a sense of purpose and a strength. I have a very strong testimony of the church, and even in times when I had decided I wasn't going to be a part of the church any more, I still had that testimony. What I lacked was faith in the Savior's love, I lacked an understanding of the atonement on it's most basic level and I lacked faith in my own soul or self confidence.

Those things are sometimes as powerful as a hurricane, sometimes they are as weak as a breath.

 

They are always things that don't come easy and always are things that you have to want and strive for, they don't just happen by chance. I think I've been lucky and blessed, I think my feet were guided to the right place at the right time often in my life. I don't think I am smart or clever or deserving. Mostly, I am thankful for the blessings I have and I am and aware that even with a solid knowledge that the church is true, a person can be so far off their path that they get no joy from...well, from anything really. I am thankful that I know that men are that they might have joy and that we each have lives where we can have joy, regardless of one's theology or circumstances.

Each one of us has a very personal journey.

Each one of us has methods of travel and tools we use in life that are specific to our eternal plan, to our personal 'big picture'. Not everyone wants the same things, not everyone has the same needs.

When I was younger, I LOVED road trips. In high school, my friend, Tara, had a car. We'd hop into the station wagon with a Diet Coke, a couple of Smiths tapes and (hopefully) enough gas money to get us where we needed to go and back. We went to Indianapolis, we went to Cincinnati, we went to the Gap outlet in Kentucky where we waited in line for an hour to pick up two dollar t-shirts.

 We were such worldly ,wise girls of 16.

Road trips were THE way to travel, I loved everything about them.

Fast forward 10 years and I'd just about rather stab my eye out than take a road trip.

 

You have kids, you know why.

 

It sometimes took 3 hours just to get to Kristine's house in Phoenix, an hour away.

The drive to Provo, Utah from Gilbert, Arizona?

Before kids, I could make it in 9 hours, 10 if I stopped to take pictures at the dam.

 

After kids?

Never less than 14 hours.

 

 

At that point in my life....screw road trips. It was cheaper to fly the person we wanted to visit out to see US and we went practically  nowhere.

 

Now, when we want to have any sort of adventure or experience, we have a lot of things we factor in. We consider the travel time, the cost and how that travel is going to impact our bodies when we arrive at our destination. Every month we get to where we need to be by using cars, the ferry, the subway, the jitney and at least once a month, someone is on an airplane.

My not-so-subtle point?

I'm not comfortable looking at the mode of spiritual transport one person uses and inevitably, comparing it to my own.

As I answered the prompt, most of my posts quickly became a comparison between the way my parents or grandparents journeyed towards the same location.

I know that they way they chose didn't seem to work very well and I have all of the luxury of hindsight that they didn't have as they were simply pressing forward.

The short answer to the prompt is that my parents and grandparents were LDS.

The long answer involves my feelings, experiences and opinions about how they practiced the religion.

But the long answer isn't actually an answer at all because their journey isn't finished. It isn't even finished when they die. They have their own way to get where they need to be and I don't believe anyone deliberately went the wrong way.

That has to be where I end and they begin, I have to simply be okay with knowing that we all have different paths and nobody deliberately goes the wrong way, even those who not only go the wrong way, but they run you over in the process.

They are figuring out how to get there, too.

And that is the right answer I am supposed to post.

I do have one story I remember as a kid about my Grandma and Grandpa on my mother's side. She was a young woman and he was in the service, Navy, I believe. They met at a dance. She asked him what religion he was because she wanted to be with a man who was a Mormon.

not knowing that was what she was going for, but knowing that she was the prettiest girl there, my grandfather dodged the question by answering "I go to a round church, so the devil can't catch me in a corner."

When she told him she was a Mormon, he was relieved and told her he was a Mormon, too.

 

Paint, Bleach and.... Say WHAT, President Monson?

This weekend I did some little projects.

 

I really am trying to finish what I start these days.

Unless I start something really boring or that takes too long.....

 

Our new place has a pretty small kitchen. Small, but sufficient for our needs.

It could use a little more counter and cupboard space, but with the addition of the cheap-o butcher block island from Ikea, it's perfectly fine most of the time.

One of the things I liked about this house was that the interior had all been repainted in neutral colors that I would have chosen myself.

 

 

 Neutral colors with flat paint.

You can't tell from the picture, but that wall by the fridge was nasty.

The kids lean against it while they stare into the fridge and try to figure out where I hid the good snacks. Four months of that, and I just got too grossed out, so this weekend I repainted the kitchen.

One of the bonuses of having a small kitchen was that it was finished in about 2 hours.

 

 

The color is kind of a mushroom gray, it has a hint of purple in it. I am not a purple fan, but this is a really good neutral and the color looks nice with the cupboards and counter tops.

The black rectangle is actually a chalkboard-we will see if that works for us or if it ends up a colossal mess. I do not plan to share the chalk with the kids because I'm a mean mom who doesn't want chalk dust tracked all over the house.

 -----

 

I saw these on Pinterest:

 

 

They were just plain t-shirts, decorated with a bleach pen.

We always have a good supply of t-shirts that are loved by the kids, but they have a stain on them, so mean mom doesn't let them wear them to school.

(I'm telling you, I'm the meanest mom-ever!)

 

I had nothing to lose with this one, if it ended up being on of those Pin-pocalypse failures, eh, the shirt was junk anyway.

 

My version: 

 

 

I printed up the shape on paper and used it as a stencil.

I wanted it to have that scribbled in look, so when it had developed to a place I was happy with, I carefully rinsed the bleach out and then washed and dried the shirt with a few white towels, just in case the bleach spread throughout the load.

 

I'm going to try it on stained blue jeans next.

 

 In other news...

HOW ABOUT CONFERENCE YESTERDAY?

 

(coughcough you're ...)

 

This means Zane and Emma will be putting in their mission papers within a few months of each other.

Holy Moley.

Suddenly, it's right around the corner.

 

 

Who I Am VS What I Do

This post has taken me days to write.

Bleah.

Into the volcano I go....

 

 

As part of a blogging group challenge to share more of who we are rather than just what we do, I will be posting once a week a response to a writing prompt.

The prompts are not designed to make me the next great Mom Blog author, they are simply there to help and encourage me to share more of myself with my readers and family. The prompts are just simple questions. Some answers will be short, some will probably be too long, but I signed up to post at least one a week.

 I have no idea what direction this will go, if any, but I agreed to it and I'm nothing if not committed to things until I lose interest.

 I've opted to choose my prompts at random.

And that is that.

 

As I read over some of the prompts, I feel there needs to be a basic understanding of how the branches of my family tree hang.

Gulp.

I am the oldest of five children. My brother and I are the children of K, my three sisters are the children of M. When I was about three, my father left and did not return until I was an adult.  My mother remarried and M adopted my brother and I. My three sisters were born and there was never an issue of 'half siblings' or anything like that, we were brother and sisters, nothing less.

 

M and my mother are no longer married, there are a number of step-siblings that I have but I did not live in the same home as those children and therefore a tight sibling bond was never formed. I was like an older aunt to many of them and we are all comfortable with that dynamic.

I am sealed to my father, and as an adult he and I struggled to find peace in the relationship. When it was found, it came after a great deal of soul searching on both our parts and we both carry with us some serious emotional baggage, but we're working on it.

 

I love my father and his wife so much.

It's a relationship that has helped me come to a greater understanding of the promise of healing in the next life. I am thankful for the sealing power of the temple and to know that we have a long time to take out cautious baby steps towards eternity as father and daughter and that our relationship can be made whole through the Savior, as long as we are both trying and obedient.

 

There have been some branches that broke in our family tree and those breaks remain difficult to understand and reconcile.

Some of the breaking comes from the home we grew up in. It was not healthy. There were some great memories there and I cherish those and choose to focus on those, but there were also things that never should have happened in any home.

 Every person grows up and looks at their childhood and has moments where they say to themselves "What the heck were my parents thinking? That was total crap."

The things I refer to were not those kinds of things.
There were bad things.
 

Many of my siblings do not speak to each other, this includes me.

 If I could fix our family, I would.
 

But my suffering does not end their suffering. It doesn't even help with it. Cutting another person does not make you bleed less. I do not know the answer, but I know that at this point in my life, I choose distance. It isn't an easy choice and I think about it every day. I feel sadness over it, but every day when I ask myself if it is still the correct choice, the answer is yes.

 

I am close to my sisters, Sunnie and Lisa.

 

I do not have a relationship with my mother. I do not anticipate ever having a relationship with her again.

 I wish her well, I hope she finds peace and happiness. I put her name in the temple and I even miss her, but this is not something that is going to change.

 I've done the therapy, I've done the self help books, I've done the counsel with priesthood leaders and the answer is always the same. That bridge burned to a crisp.

 I do not share this to air dirty laundry, which is why I am not giving details and reasons, but it is a thing that exists in my life. It is a painful thing that I feel too many people wanted to be a part of and I dealt with it by withdrawing completely from the lives of those who didn't have boundaries there.

 

 I am telling MY story, sharing the things I took from the life I have lived and how things worked in my life, from my perspective. 

I am almost 40 years old.

Memories fade and details slip away.

Time changes how we see things, too.

 Some of my memories will be different from those others may have, my opinions will be different as well. This isn't testimony in court, it's simply me trying to share more of who I am in my dumb little blog. I share my memories, as I remember them.

I'm going to get details wrong.

 

I recently posted this quote on my facebook wall from Doctor Who:

 

The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. Good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant.

 

That's kind of how I subscribe to life.

I choose to see that which brought me closer to becoming the person I believe I came here to be.

 

That was all very weird to write.

 

 I don't talk about this stuff, really.

 I do not value the purging of emotional poo simply for the sake of spreading out the manure everywhere. I do need to just state what the dynamics are, where they stand in my life and that in spite of all of the messed up pain, I do love my family very much. I just cannot have relationships with all of them and they cannot all have one with me. Maybe one day it will work better, but we all still get to be happy and move on with life in spite of those fractures.

 

None of the writing prompts will be used to tell 'my side' of some ugly family story. I do not blog to infect and burden others and I will not be doing that.

I blog to share and explore the memories I hold inside of my on heart. 

 

God will mend the broken branches of His trees and I believe that one day, he will mend our tree as well. Until that day, there are still happy memories and funny stories and many many good days to look back on.

 

We are not defined by our mistakes and our worst days.

The atonement applies to everyone, even those who hurt and offended ME. I am thankful to know that, even if I don't know what to do a lot of the time.

 

I think that's enough for one post.

I won't do the actual prompt today.

Today, it is scary enough to write that all out and hit "publish."

 

 

 

Homey

I know you were hoping for a third post about apples, but I finished making enough applesauce to feed an army and I'm all appled out.

 

I'm sick of them to the core.

Nyuk nyuk...

Oh, count your blessings, I have at least 5 more really stupid apple jokes I could post.

 

Speaking of counting blessings...

 

 

This little house with the deli on the corner is starting to feel more like 'us' every day.

 

I've been going through some hard things, struggling with a shadow that was resting on my heart and it's starting to lift. 

 

Getting out our little box of Halloween decorations helped.

 Seeing our old and familiar stuff in the new place helped.

The walls are in different places and the sounds are all new, but it's still home.

 

 

We never use this door, but it's an awfully cute space.

 I'm sure the mailman is enjoying it- that is, if he bothers to come.

 

 

 Four times since we started living here, he just didn't show. The next day we had a ton of mail. The neighbors said that sometimes he runs out of time so he just skips our street. Weird.

Even weirder is that sometimes, he comes twice. I thought maybe it was just on days we had packages, but he has delivered letters and bills twice in the same day, too.

New Jersey is weird. 

Anyway...

 

Isn't this pretty?

 

 

My friend Lee made it for me last year in a little craft swap we did.

It's so gorgeous. The modge podge birdhouses I made in exchange were pretty  lame in comparison.

Lee is an old friend, though, so I wasn't worried about comparisons. I just got to feel loved by her generosity and admire her talent.

 

That giant skull in the corner? Matt saw it at the store and HAD to have it. He's not one who HAS to have many things, let alone decorative things, so when Matt HAS to have something, we get it.

The eyes have red LED lights in them.

Very spooky.

 

 Now, who wants to come Trick-or-Treating at the Olson house?

I promise, we're giving out candy and not apples.

 

Martha Made Me Do It

Eight solid hours on my feet.....

NOW I will admit that I was absolutely nuts to buy 150 pounds of apples.

 

I know you already knew that, but I had this vision of myself having some totally Martha Stewart moments as I filled my home with the smell of cinnamon and apples and sang songs about pioneers and ...um...apples and stuff.

 

 I did not envision nearly amputating my thumb with the paring knife, burning the bottom of my most expensive pot because I got distracted and covering my hands with hundreds of splatters of boiling hot apple water.

The fact that it happens every single time had no impact on my canning fantasy.

It never does.

 

Actually, it was just fine.

Romy helped me for the first 45 seconds and then went off to go watch the video of that I Love Cats lady on youtube.

 

I cooked and mooshed 50 pounds of apples and got about 12 quarts done.

I tasted it after everything was finished and I'm not in love with the flavor of this batch. It's a little on the tart side. Sour apples are great, but not in applesauce.

 

Normally, I boil my apples in apple juice and sometimes add a little sugar to make it sweeter. This time I was going for super healthy organic.

Super healthy organic isn't awesome, IMO, at least not the way I made it.

It's not a loss though because applesauce makes a great oil substitute in a lot of baking, so I'll add it to my fats and oils in my food storage. It's always good to have some 'oil' that doesn't go rancid quickly. This will keep for 10 years, so I am happy with it, even if it isn't yummy applesauce.

 

I don't plan to touch the apples tomorrow, but I'll be back at it on Monday.

Try to wait until then for my third, fascinating post about apples.

Apple Pickin'

We love apple picking......

We went up to New York with the Hawkins, Ralston and Mathusek bunch and had a regular Mormon Mardi Gras.

There were apples as big as softballs and the kids had fun pummeling one another with rotten apples from the ground as we ate lunch. Okay, they called it "apple bowling" but I think that when you use people as pins......there's a little bonus if you manage to hit a sibling.

We had a great time.

 I bought 150 pounds of gorgeous apples.

When I tried to leave and realized I forgot my checkbook.

Duh.

Cyndi helped me out and I was able to leave the farm with all of my treasure.

Last night we made these:

Can Jay-Z and Beyonce do that, my friends?

 I think not.

Granola, Eaten In Moderation....

Granola is such great stuff.

My grandmother's granola was the best, I've never had anything that quite compared to what Grandma Westfall use to make. I know that time and memory have probably transformed her granola from being simply great into the most amazing marriage of oats and coconut ever to occur on this planet.

Don't get me started on her peaches.

Romy and I love granola more than others in this house. 

When I buy it, I know that as much as I want to eat an entire box, it will have consequences.

One does not simply eat an entire box of high fiber cereal.

I will spare you the story of the Great Cracklin' Oat Bran Girls Camp Disaster of 1988.

Romy has been told to go easy on the granola and she has been told the reasons why, but she just caved in the face of temptation. 

She ate nothing but granola for almost 2 days, until the box was empty.

Live and learn, Kid.....

She wanted to miss school and I told her we do not miss school for tummy troubles due to eating a horse-size portion of grains. I gave her some Kaopectate and sent a note to her teachers, telling them that Romy was NOT sick, but she was over-fibered and if she asks to use the restroom, to please let her go as often as she asked.

(taken yesterday, NOT on  Fiberday)

She was mortified, but she survived.

She vowed to NEVER eat granola again........until yesterday, less than one week after her fiber fiasco.

I made granola yesterday and she's having a hard time finding anything else to eat because it's so good.

It's my own twist to a recipe that was just a little too bland.

Olson Peanut Butter Granola

2 cup light Karo Syrup 

1 cup peanut butter

Microwave for 1 minute, blend together

add 4 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

mix together

add

6 C quick oats

1 C chopped peanuts (I used dry roasted, the kind you snack on because I like salty and sweet)

1/2 c sliced almonds

1 C coconut

Mix it all together in a big bowl until all of the dry ingredients are coated. 

Divide between two cookie sheets and spread out. 

bake at 275 for 40-50 minutes, take it out and stir it every 15 or the bottom and edges will overcook and burn.

I do not like fruit in my cereal and this granola is not overly sweet. It's a crunchy nutty granola with a subtle peanut butter flavor. Add whatever you think will make it yummy to you. If you want a ton of peanut butter flavor, add another half cup or full cup of peanut butter. It's granola, you can't screw this up. I'm going to add hot cocoa mix next time and see how that goes. 

Eat it, it's good.

Just don't eat it all in one day.