So What's the Plan?

This morning after the kids headed to school I read this letter from my missionary father

On Saturday, mom went to a ward Relief Society party so I had a couple of hours to spend by myself. I went to a store that was near where the party was and looked around. When we were decorating the Rosetta building, we found a ceramic nativity set that had a wise man with his head broken off. So I saw some Super glue and thought I should buy some to fix it some time. I was going to go to another shopping centre nearby and spend the rest of the time but as I started to drive, I had the thought that I should drive over to Rosetta and fix the wise man. So even though it would take me quite aways away, I thought that it would be worth it to have the complete nativity set. So off I went. I got to Rosetta and searched everywhere, but could not find the wise man who had lost his head. I was quite disgusted. I could not imagine why it was not around somewhere. I had driven out of my way to get here and now could not even do what I came to do. Since I still had some time to spend, I decided I would do some indexing while I was there. So I went to log onto the computer. But there was not any internet access!!! What?? Things were definitely not going my way. I tried to troubleshoot but could find nothing wrong except there was no internet access. So I decided to reboot the router. Turned it off,
waited 10 seconds, turned it back on. Watched the internet icon. After the computer got through all the start up process, there was still no access. I was quite put out. I decided to go to the kitchen and get something to eat. But before I ate anything, I thought that I had better go back and turn off the computer, since we are not supposed to leave them running. I went back and lo and behold there was now internet access. It had taken almost 5 minutes for it to redo whatever it had to redo. Well just then the phone rang and it was mom saying that she was done and that I could come and pick her up. So, I thought to myself, this has been one totally wasted hour+. I did not get any shopping done, did not get the wise man fixed and did not do any indexing and now I have a 15 minute drive to get back to pick up mom. Why oh why did I come over here?????
Fast forward to this morning. We were to take two sisters to the ferry to go to Scotland to the mission home prior to returning to their homes after 18 months of valiant service. One was Sister Morgan, who was here in Belfast when we arrived. She had spent 9 months of her mission here. The other was Sister Hanson who had been her companion here at some time and had also spent 9 months here. They were Sister Training Leaders here in Ireland and had been given permission to come back to Belfast to attend the Holywood Road Ward on Sunday before heading to Scotland. We also had an appointment for servicing our car. The sisters had to be at the ferry before 10 and our appointment was for 10:30, so we figured we could do it. So we showed up to pick up the sisters at 9:15. They had just returned from Rosetta where they had gone to print their ferry tickets. But ... They reported that the internet was down and they were unable to print their tickets nd they were quite dejected since they had no other place to print the tickets. I asked if they had rebooted the router and Sister Morgan said she had but it had not helped. I asked if she had waited 4 or 5 minutes and she said no. I then told her of my experience on Saturday and we drove back to Rosetta. Sure enough, there was internet access.
I now knew why I had gone to Rosetta Saturday. Not to fix the wise man and not to do indexing, but so that I would know that we just needed to wait for the internet to have access. A SMALL thing? Yes. But so important to the sisters. So when I am tempted to ask WHY???, I will try to be more patient and wait for the hand of the Lord to be revealed. By the way, the wise man was in mom’s purse!!! She had put it there so we could fix it. And we did. I know who is in control. We just need to be patient and rely on His all knowing plan.

This is what I had in my mind as I headed out the door at 9:30am to go to Lethbridge to do some grocery shopping that I had been trying to do since LAST Monday. One thing after another had kept me from making the trip to Lethbridge. First, two crazy days of snow that shut everything down. And then came the days of sick kids. So today, with Daniel home for the day I decided that I would go to Lethbridge ALONE in Daniel's car to do the needed shopping. It was windy and the snow was blowing across the highway, but not so bad as to cause much of a problem. I never could get the car to go much over 100km/hr but I wasn't too worried about it in the wind and blowing snow. I did start to be concerned when the care started to slow down to the point that it wasn't going faster than 50km/hr. I pulled over and sent a text to Daniel telling him what was going on. I was a little more than half way to Lethrbidge, pulled over on a service road waiting for my hubby to come and rescue me. As I sat there, the visibility got worse and worse.  Mean while Daniel was at home bundling up the two kids so he could come rescue me.

As I sat waiting for Daniel to arrive, I began to wonder, Why? Why had I felt like today was the day to go shopping? in Daniel's car? Alone? We could have all gone together in the van and got some other errands taken care of? After all, we were all going to end up in Lethbridge now anyways. I started to think about my dad's letter that I had read that morning, and wondered "So what's the Plan? What does Heavenly Father have in mind for us in this little adventure? What's the purpose in all of this? So far, I don't have an answer. Daniel was able to drive his car slowly the rest of the way into Lethrbridge. So even if he had been headed to work tomorrow, he would still have made to work....late yes, and even with his car in the shop, he would have been able to use the Bert and Mac's truck to get back home so he wouldn't have been stranded in Lethbridge...so as of yet, I'm not quite sure why, maybe that will come once we know what is wrong with the car, or maybe it will be one of those things when you just never know what the "Plan" was.

Whatever it is, I was grateful that I had read my dad's letter before I had ventured out. Because of my dad's words I was able to endure the adventure with patience and sit and ponder on Heavenly Father's plan for me. Thanks Dad, for your help today!

Let the 3 year old take care of dinner

So I am standing in the kitchen this evening and I say to myself "What should we do for supper?" James comes around the corner and stands beside me and says "Hmmm? Have supper for supper!" I laugh, and thanked him for the insight. He then goes to the fridge and opens it up and stands there looking in it. Then he pulls out some cheese, and then the pickles, and the cold water, and the pop, and margarine, and a cucumber, and the cheese whiz, and some left over home made chicken noodle soup. I laughed and said "Alright James, lets make some supper with this."

 So here is supper. We heated up the chicken noodle soup. We made cheese and pickle sandwiches, melty cheese sandwiches, sliced up the cucumbers and set out the pickles. And James, well he wanted a peanut butter and jam sandwich.

Good job James! Supper was delicious!

How'd he know?

James just came to me with the box of Halloween chocolate that I had hidden under my bed. He says to me "Is this what you were looking for?" as he hands me the box. "No, Were YOU looking for it?" he answers enthusiastically "Yep! It was under yours bed!" Hmm...well, I hadn't actually been looking for it(since I knew where it was) but now that I think about it, maybe I would like a piece or two. So we shared some chocolate. Good thing that boy can read my mind. However, now I need to find a new hiding place.

Missionary Daughters

Earlier this week Kathryn asked me if we had a Book of Mormon that she could give to her friend. I told her that we did and where she could find it. I then witnessed her write a little note explaining about the book and her testimony. She took the book to school to give to her friend. After school I asked her how it went she was thrilled she told me that she had offered to read it with her if she ever wanted to. A day later, Tansley asks if she could give a Book of Mormon to her friend too. I told her of course she could. She too wrote a note and put it in a gift bag and took it to school to give to her friend. When she came home she was all smiles and told me about how at recess they sat and read some of it together. Today Tansley told me that again today at recess that they read scriptures together. Tansley and another friend from church had brought their scriptures another friend had also brought her bible from her church.So the four of them sat over by the garbage bins away from everyone else because it was more peaceful and thy could talk with out interruption. They even made up some games about following Jesus Christ, something to do with the hop scotch, even numbers were good and odd numbers were bad, and then you had to tell something you could do to stay on the right path. So totally clever. She was just beaming as she was telling me all about her missionary experiences. She told me that she had read a little bit of her friends bible but that she liked the King James version better because it felt more peaceful the way it was written in the "fancy" language. She hopes to invite her friend to church.
I know that her friend attends the River of Life Church. I have to admire my daughter and her boldness. As an adult, I would be far more cautious of "offending" somebody of another faith. In fact I am quiet certain that I wouldn't likely even bring up the subject of religion. I think I must learn something from my own children. In the mean time I am praying that her friends parents won't take offense to the gift, the things my daughter is trying to teach her friend at recess, or the invitation to church. I am praying that their hearts and minds will be open. That there will be no damage done to their friendship. Mostly that only good will come from my daughters efforts. I'm so proud of her for wanting to share what she holds dear. 

Sweet Talker

I head down stairs to get some sewing done. When I get to the bottom of the stairs I can hear talking coming from the girls room. What the heck? Those kids went to bed more than an hour ago. I glance at the clock, it's 10pm for crying out loud. My first reaction is to bust into their room and tell them to GO TO SLEEP, but then I stop and listen.

Kymberly is sobbing. " I just keep hearing the scary Halloween song. It just keeps popping into my head and I get scared!" It is hard to make out exactly what she is saying. Kathryn calmly and sweetly repeats back what Kymberly has said to make sure she understands and Kymberly confirms that she heard correctly. Kathryn then says "Oh sweetheart, just pray to Heavenly Father and ask him to help you stop thinking of the scary song and then sing some primary songs in your head to help you calm down. That's what I do when I have scary thoughts." There is a little more chatter and then I hear Kymberly offer up a simple prayer asking Heavenly Father to help so that the scary Halloween song wont pop into her head and she wont have any bad dreams. Then Kathryn helps her think of some primary songs to sing in her head to help her fall asleep. And that's the last thing that I hear from them. With in minutes I can tell that Kymberly has fallen asleep peacefully.

I knew it. I did. My girls can show incredible patience and love towards one another. It only seems that they increasingly irritate each other. They do in fact love each other and can indeed be kind. Does a momma's heart good to witness such things, both the kindness shown and the complete faith in the power of prayer.

Random

I made a quick trip to the grocery store to just pick up some icing sugar for my daughter so she could make some icing for her sugar cookies. I pulled up and saw a young man, dressed in black, with kinda scruffy hair and smoking a cigarette standing in front of the liquor store. He wore black jeans that were much to long for his already long legs and I noticed that he had unusually large feet, or so they looked. I have never seen him before, but I quickly passed judgement as to his character. I stepped out of my van and headed toward the grocery store with my back to him. I hear him call out "Excuse me ma'am". I turn around wondering what he possibly could need. He asks if I am headed in to the grocery store. I tell him that I am. He tells me that he isn't allowed in the grocery store and before he is even finished talking I am thinking that he is going to ask me to buy him some cigarettes to which my answer would be a stern NO. He continues, "I was wondering if you could buy me a bouquet of flowers?" I am taken back. "I'll give you the money" he says quickly. I smile and tell him of course I can, and ask what he's looking for. He hands me $11 in change and says to just pick out something a young mom would like. So I go in, and grab my icing sugar and the biggest and prettiest bouquet of flowers I can spot regardless of price. I bring them out to him, and when he sees me his face lights up like I wouldn't have expected from my original take on the kid. I hand him the flowers and ask if they'll do. He says "Thank you, you are a life saver!" and then he steps in and gives me a quick light hug and adds "May good Karma rain down on you" as he turns and walks away. I drove home happier than I had been when I arrived and hoped that the spirits of the young mom who would be the recipient of the flowers, would be brightened.

Just now I checked my email and there was a youtube update suggesting that I watch this little video.

Yeah, there's definitely something to this kindness thing...

Autumn treasures

Last night, after singing lullabies, I laid beside my boy to cuddle him. I asked him what he wanted to do the next day. He told me he wanted to find ladybugs. So I suggested that maybe we should go for a walk. He enthusiastically agreed. This morning, before we had even got the girls off to school he was asking if we could go for our walk. I suggested that we do it a later when it had warmed up a bit. He asked again while Ella was napping. I told him we would go as soon as Ella woke up. So when she woke up, even though it was almost lunch time, we headed out on our walk. The kind of walk with out a destination in mind.

 I pushed Ella in the stroller, James rode on his bike. I let him tell me which way to go. We stopped and looked in piles of leaves for ladybugs. At first we didn't have any luck. I was worried that maybe our ladybug hunt might be a bust because it has certainly got cooler the past few days or so. But we just kept moving on, looking for whatever cool treasures we might find on this beautiful autumn afternoon. James picked up a few rocks, and some colourful leaves.

 And then as we were walking along through grass covered in leaves, suddenly James spotted a ladybug...a tiny little baby lady bug on a leaf.

He picked it up and we put it in our lady bug jar. That was the first of many many more ladybugs we collected. He even spotted a little spider in the dirt, but we thought he might not be a friendly addition to the lady bug jar.

Can you spot the spider? I promise it's there.

An hour and a half later we eventually made our way back home (with a little coaxing, I was getting hungry). It was such a wonderful way to spend our afternoon. I love walking through the crunchy leaves, it may just be one of my favourite parts of fall. Apparently James has the same love, he would go out of his way to ride his bike through a pile of leaves.This may or may not have had a influence on the direction he would choose to go.

Check out all our fun autumn treasures! We found three different kinds of pine cones, a little feather, some purple "seeds" on a bush, a couple of "cool" sticks, a little yellow flower, leaves in a assortment of size, shape and colour, and a plethora of ladybugs, oh yes, and some rocks. All in all, a success I think.

This one gives a little better view of all of our ladybugs