Sunday morning

I am sitting outside on the back patio in the cool of a Sunday morning (it's going to be over 100 degrees today) and William is here beside me in his Spiderman jammies chowing down on a big bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Frosted Flakes mixed together. I love watching him eat and the little facial expressions he makes with his cute chubby cheeks as he chews. He is seriously the funniest, always barking orders in his raspy voice and asking the funniest questions. His feet are crossed as his legs dangle off the patio chair and he's breathing heavily because I'm sure he has a couple big boogs (like always) stuck up there. I love him so dang much.

I have struggled a bit on Sundays lately with home church. It has been really challenging to really feel the spirit and I know it's my fault. I miss going to church and being fed. I love being able to have sacrament in our home while we can't attend church regularly, but at the same time it's hard to be the one having to provide the spiritual experiences. I know whatever the situation, I am the one who decides if I will feel the spirit and so really, even if we actually go to church, I choose to have a spiritual experience or not, but it seems to be harder for me at home for some reason. I'm trying, and yet I know I need to try harder. My relationship with God is not as strong as it should be. I miss it. There have been times in my life where I've felt incredibly close to Him, where I feel very in tune with His love for me and what He wants me to do. I don't think I have been making enough of an effort recently to feel as close to Him. It is my doing, and I am going to try harder. Better morning prayers. Better scripture study. More time spent in quiet to try to truly hear Him.

Every time we are on vacation somewhere I usually try to find a mountain or a trail of some sort to run. And every time I reach the top or an incredibly overlook, I take me headphones out, stand there, close my eyes and say a prayer, mostly in gratitude for my body, my mind, my life and for the beauty of it all. In those moments I feel SO close to Him. I feel a profound sense of His love for me and of my worth and His child. I feel immensely grounded in those moments. I want to feel that certainty and that love always, but even if I get it here and there on those runs, I am so grateful for those moments to reflect back on and again feel that certainty that often feels far away. My headphones were dead yesterday when I got up to go on my run (I love running listening to a book or podcast because it keeps my head engaged as I go) but when they weren't charged I decided to go without them, for the first time in a long time. It felt good to just be in my own head and think. I forget how much listening to something really directs my thoughts for the morning and really, for the day. That has often been a good thing because I'm listening to things that I love that are helping me change my habits, but I also think sometimes the quiet is what I need to allow God to really speak to me. I have heard Him so clearly in my thoughts sometimes and I want to lean into those thoughts a bit more. Often is a quick little blip that passes through my mind and I want to really try this week to hold onto those and then record them in the notes in my phone or something and then try and decide how best to implement them into my day or week.

August 11, 2020

I am grateful for:

1. Our back patio and the lights Robert strung up around them that makes it feel like we have a little bit of summer magic outside our backdoor. 

2. Habits I am building.

3. Road trips and getting away.

4. Coming home and sleeping in my own bed and realizing how much I love being home. Quarantine and all the weirdness Covid has created has made me question my sanity in my home is it was necessary to get away to remember my love for it.

5. Cousins that are like siblings to my kids.

6. The mountains right next to us that I get to stare at as I run every morning.

7. A stomach and digestive system that has felt really good for the past six months to a year. I was having so many issues for so long that I have almost forgotten how bad it was. Bless eating well and exercise!

8. Designing my own house. I have made some little changes here and there lately and I find it so insanely fun. Sometimes I wish I would have just gone with my heart and done interior design in college, but alas, my life isn't over and I can still do something fun with it in my own way.

9. Bacon. I love bacon so much. Oh, and my Costco protein bars. It's so weird how obsessed I am with those things.

10. Laughing with Robert. He just came upstairs for a second from working downstairs and we just bantered for a minute. I feel like we are together and around each other so much these days that sometimes we just forget to be fun. I love him so much and the joking and laughing between us is one of the things I love most.

Grateful today

Today I am grateful for:

1. Getting up before the sun and the cool of a morning.

2. Being able to smile at people when I run because most of the time I'm out and about we are wearing masks.

3. A hot breakfast.

4. When my kids are excited to see me, even when I feel like I've been an awful mom all day.

5. Habits that I've formed that I don't even have to think about doing anymore.

6. Hannah's little voice and the way she forms her sentences.

7. Looking forward to things. I've been planning this last minute trip to St. George for a few weeks and it has had me so excited and I've loved researching new places to go eat, hike and see. I've been to St. George a million times but I do this whenever we go anywhere and I love having things to look forward to.

8. Warm summer nights spent in our backyard.

9. Moments where I'm recalling IN the moment. Where I'm sitting there and I see the beauty of the situation I'm in right there and I know it and recognize it. 

10. Clothes to wear. I have three baskets of laundry in my bedroom that I'm dreading to fold but I have to remind myself how blessed we are to have clothes to wear and then I'm hoping the gratitude will outweigh my dread to fold it.

be happy for no reason

“be happy, for no reason, like a child. if you’re happy for a reason, you’re in trouble, because that reason can be taken from you.” - deepak chopra

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. The day-to-day of life can sometimes feel so monotonous and even with all of my greatest blessings right in front of me, swarming around me all the live long day, I still often struggle to feel happy, to be happy. But I want to. I really do. I want to just be innately joyful, quick to smile, laugh, play. I think I always used to be a "glass-half-full" kind of person, but lately I've had a tendency to be a bit more quick on the draw with complaints, especially with Robert. The thought that there is a choice to be happy, just because you want to be, for no other reason than to just BE happy and with no strings attached, feels so liberating. That's my goal this week. To just ease into a smile when it may not feel natural, or to hold my tongue when I feel a complaint about to seep from my lips. Not today Satan! I am happy for no reason and that's the end of it!

The kids go back to school in a few weeks. It's hard to even believe summer is coming to an end. It feels like it's gone by in a blink and yet it's been our longest summer yet, with distance learning ending mid-May. The Adseros have been here all summer and it's felt like a dream to kind of quarantine with them. The kids have been in heaven. Most schools across the country are either doing distance learning or some hybrid of distance learning and in-person school for the first term as they carefully open because of COVID. Our school district was initially planning to go back full-time in-person but have now scaled back to two days a week in-person and three days distance learning so more social distancing can take place. I was actually considering homeschooling my girls because I was nervous about sending them into a packed classroom five days each week, so I am somewhat grateful for the change in plans. I'm not sure how working parents or single parents are ever going to be able to make that work. It's going to be bananas and I feel awful for them. I am grateful I'm able to be home with my kids so decisions like these are so much less taxing on our family and we can weather them a bit more easily.

Houston's COVID numbers are out of control, so they are all distance learning for awhile. Charlotte will stay here with her boys until after Eldon is baptized in early September and then they will head to their new home there, which they've never even seen in person before! I think this summer has been a major whirlwind for them and I'm so grateful they've had their cabin to come to amidst all of this, and that we've been able to be together so much. I'd love to be able to drive down there and quarantine with them this fall for a bit, but I'm not sure how realistic that will be. Robert is still working from home, which he's done since March. This new life we've been living now for the last four months is still so surreal. 2020 has thrown us so many curveballs and yet here we are, still standing with most of our sanity intact. 

The world feels heavy in so many ways right now, and it is hard to really justify feeling happy when everything feels so uncertain and so many people seem so angry. The government is a mess, the economy is a mess, there is so much racism, sexism, judgement, hate, cruelty and evil that it seems impossible to eradicate it all, to find happiness in a world filled with so much heaviness. But I want to feel light. I want to be light. I want to know those things are there, find ways to make positive changes in my little corner of the world, and in spite of it all, after going through it all, still feel happy. I'm going to try, really hard anyway, to do just that. And while doing so, I'm going to try and help my kids finish out this summer with a bang. We are heading down for a long (super HOT) weekend in St. George with the Adseros this upcoming weekend and I am so excited for a change of scene. We have been home pretty much all summer, besides a small stint in Idaho and a trip to the cabin. A little getaway will be a nice change.