Christmas Letter

I love the whole Christmas season. I love the colors, smells, and the music. I love the whispers and shouts of “Merry Christmas”, and the children’s wishes and dreams. I love the spirit of the holiday beginning with remembering the Savior who came into the world so humbly. The dichotomy is crazy—spending so much while honoring a babe born in the manger. But I love it all, the whole package. It’s just so ……….JOYFUL!! It is a great end to a blessed 2009.

Scott has had a life changing year for sure. He reconnected with an old high school friend (crush) through Facebook. We all could see the writing on the wall immediately, and in a hot air balloon over Temecula he asked Cynthia Allen to marry him in August. They bought a “forever” house that is big enough to raise their future family, and Scotty got his BA degree. To top off that very special year they are going to have a little girl around May 22nd. Neither of them wandered far from where they were raised. Scott is a policeman and Cynthia is a teacher in Chino. They both knew they were waiting for someone special, and they found each other…….again!

Jim, Samantha, Hailey and Madyson are thriving in Lake Elsinore. Hailey started middle school this year…I know can you believe it? She will be 12 in January. Mady is 9 and besides school she enjoyed competition dancing with Just Dance It. We are so proud of both of our beautiful girls. I especially enjoy our “girlie days” together. Jim is working as Guest Services Manager at Riverside Community Hospital where he loves giving hospital patients and their families the kind of attention they need and deserve. Samantha is looking forward to some great opportunities ahead as she works at Winco in receiving. They have had some great family moments this year! One of the best was Madyson's baptism. Uncle Marque did the praying and the dunking but there was lots of family and friends there supporting.

Marque, Sarah, and Leah have done quite a bit of traveling in 2009, disproving those naysayers who said life would change with a baby. Have to tell you they seem to pack and carry a ton of stuff with relative ease. They have really been here for the family this year. I think they have made the trip to California five times. Marque is Vice President over legal stuff (I think) at PMI. Sarah is so creative with her time and talents while she is a full time Mommy to Leah. Leah has had an eventful year learning new words, how to crawl, then walk and lots of other new things. The biggest event for the family, the whole family, was the day the adoption became final. Another special day was when she was sealed in the Mount Timpanogos Temple to her Mommy and Daddy. What a spiritual feast that was. Leah is very proficient in engaging everyone with her big blue eyes and sparkling smile, and is growing way to fast.

As for Bud and I, our divorce became final in February of this year. We have remained friends which makes gathering with family so much easier. Today he is coming over to help wrap the presents we bought together, and then we are heading to Scott and Cynthia’s for a pre-Christmas celebration. He had a heart attack in September which scared all of us, but him particularly. He will be doing some life changing so he can stick around for awhile. I have had some recent changes too. I will be working 3 days a week from now on. Not my idea, but it’s growing on me. Who knows what 2010 will bring?

It is so funny that as our divorce ended our marriage we had such an incredible year of family. We were all together for such magnificent events this year including a baptism, wedding, birthdays, Thanksgiving, and a cruise together to the Mexican Riviera. Bud and I definitely did something right as we raised our children because they are truly amazing. They have turned the tables and given us such love and support as we have lived through this challenge. My boys have chosen the most amazing daughters for me, and have given me a wonderful identity as “Gramma” to the cutest granddaughters ever. I feel incredibly blessed!

Let me wish all of my friends and family a very Merry Christmas and a spectacular 2010!

Analyzing Farmville Addiction...

I have never been a person who was too crazy about Atari, Nintendo, XBox or Wii. Well, I suppose that isn't totally true because I did love me a little pong, pac-man, and tetris all in different periods of time. I also have to admit to this crazy little addiction to Farmville on Facebook.

It's crazy. Sometimes I wake up early, before dawn early, and think "I have to go milk my cows", or "I have to harvest that corn before it goes bad". Why? This is a question that I ask myself almost immediately after. If I have an opportunity to sleep in, why am I concerned about a virtual farm?

Since I am an analytical person and speak often to the self in my head I was determined to figure this out. I do not have an addictive personality usually. Okay, all that know me know that I am addicted to my big blue jug, or maybe the diet coke inside, but other than that I am a pretty sane person. After having an internal conversation about the nature of this escape into Farmville I realized it is an escape from reality. But, not only that, it is having a sense of control over something.

Control. This is one small word that I think has a big impact in our life. Control can be defined not by Webster but by Leslie in two ways: 1) Having power over someone or something 2) having power over someone or something. I know that sounds the same, but it really is very different. #1 implies overpowering, using a forceful nature to make someone or something go your way. #2 means being empowered to change a perspective or situation for yourself.

Confused? Let me explain how I happened to be aware of the importance of control. I had a very good friend who got the HIV virus from a transfusion she was given when she had her sixth child. It became AIDS and she was terminal. She certainly didn't have control over this situation. There was nothing she could do to change this medical diagnosis at that particular time. But, we don't like to give up control of our life that easily so Carolyn called on our church congregation and the priesthood to help give her back control, or in this case her life. We all prayed, blessings were given, but we also asked that we all could have the strength to survive God's will, whatever it might be. Carolyn was so brave as she faced the rest of her life. But, if she couldn't control this major aspect of her life, she could control other aspects.

This is where I learned that a survivor doesn't just give up when life doesn't go their way they look for another place that they can have control. We went to help her with her children, help her clean her house. I know she appreciated it, but it probably made her feel even more out of control. When I went to her house one day to lend a hand I was surprised when she didn't want me to do those kind of "mundane" chores, she wanted to go into her garden and pull weeds. We must have been a funny sight her leaning on me to get to the garden because she was six feet tall and a little over, I am five feet tall and a little under. But when we made it into the garden she loved shoving her fingers into the soil....it gave her so much to have a little control over something. Before she was bedridden she had also gotten a space for our congregation to use as a community garden and she was very busy organizing it, and then making it ready for all of us to use. After she was bedridden she found some control by making sure the congregation had water for our food supply by locating water bottles.

So thanks to Carolyn I am aware that if life gives us things we have no control over...like death of someone we love, illness, loss of job, divorce or a plethora of life's challenges, we may have to give up our control in that part of our life, but we can empower ourselves in another way. We can give into depression, anger, and frustration or we can look forward by manning ourselves with tools that keep us going.

Am I saying then that I play Farmville because I can control that when I can't control how my body works, or my marital situation? Yes, I guess that's what I'm saying. Maybe I am not as altruistic as my friend Carolyn but I am finding ways to keep me from just feeling sorry for myself. Really there are other ways that I have used this theory to my own good other than just playing Farmville and I do encourage others to do the same. Right now, for instance, I have a bum knee. I haven't been able to do alot of things I would like to do. Generally I like to get my house clean before I do anything else, but since my leg is in pain after just a minute or two of being up it doesn't get cleaned, and the next day I just start over again. So I was finding myself sitting in front of the "boob tube" being lazy and feeling sorry for myself. At one point I had to do laundry, no choice, so as I was sitting on the couch folding my clothes I sensed a bit of control or empowerment. No kidding, I realized I could do that and it felt good to be able to do something. So I wrote down a bunch of things I could do sitting. Write thank-you's, sort filing, reorganize my filing system, clean drawers, write blogs, write in my journal, were just a few of the things I wrote down. This took me from the doldrums and being out of control, to empowerment. Oh, and I also can do Farmville! Gotta go harvest those olive trees now. Bye.

The Glass Half Full

My mother is the optimist of all optimists. Whenever she faces a tough time, or when one of us faces an obstacle she reminds us "Well, I always choose to see the glass half full....and....", then she will continue making an observation about the situation that finds that positive point of view. For instance: when I was crying about my marriage ending and how I didn't have any choice or control in the situation she said "Well I always choose to see the glass half full, and you and Bud are lucky that you are such good friends."

You can see how I tend to be an optimist myself, I was trained well. I am so grateful for my Mom's point of view. It has always been helpful to look for the silver lining in any cloud. It helps me be resilient. I think of myself like a basketball...usually in the air, in the middle of a fun game. Once in a while I hit the ground but bounce up rather quickly to be passed on to another situation and maybe even score a few. But, there have been times in my life that I have been dribbled pretty close to the ground and had a harder time finding the resilience to bounce back up and into the game. However, I always do because I have been trained to look for the bright spots, the open spaces, and have learned that it's a lot more fun to be in the game high, than close to the ground.

That being said, I have objected to my mom's theory that it's best to look at the glass half full...be an optimist. At one point when she was reminding me of her optimistic view I pointed out that I would never be a pessimist. I can't even imagine not trying to find the "sunny side" of any cloudy day. My question is how do we appreciate the glass 1/2 full and still want it to be completely full? That requires a step beyond optimism in my view, it requires a blend of realism with the optimism. Thomas Edison would never have invented the light bulb if he had been content to see the glass 1/2 full. I believe Tom was an optimist. I believe he saw the world through pretty rosy glasses, but he wasn't content to say "I see the glass half full, or "Aren't I lucky that I have a fire to study by?", or "Gee this candle is sure a bright one tonight." No, he took a look at how lucky he was to see the world as a pretty optimistic place, but how can I make it better? He had to push beyond the "Pollyanna" vision and the rose colored glasses to make life EVEN better.

I have a friend who raised way more than her share of kids. What an amazing person she was. Always optimistic and funny as heck. She wrote me a poem once thanking me for seeing her as she was...through the clown surface. "I've always been the village clown. Always up and never down..." She would help us mothers get through our grey days by cracking us up with her kids antics. She was an artist too so she had tempra paint around the house. Tempra paint is powdered and then mixed with water for the desired consistency and color. Her kids got her paint and made it "snow" in their bedroom. Can you just imagine that picture of them jumping up and down while making it snow. Well they were good kids and recognized they better clean up the mess so they put a hose through the window to wash down the "snow". Can you imagine Mom's surprise to enter to the room and see rivers of "green" tempra paint all over the room? If only I could tell the story with the antimation she did appreciating her kids ingenuity. I admired her because she could see the humor in this devastating circumstance. What I saw later in life is that she chose to see the "bright" side of situations with her children when they were older that weren't so bright, really. She helped me see that we can't always see the glass as half full because it isn't. I recognized that rose colored glasses can sometimes turn into blinders. We have to be able to see things for what they are or we won't be able to resolve them.

So in summary, I believe it is absolutely awesome to be raised in a household where we looked on the "sunny side of the street". It is good to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. But sometimes you have to recognize that the better plan is to be grateful for whatever is filling your glass, but wonder how you can fill it up to overflowing. Take off the blinders, take off the rose color glasses so you can see the world in all it's beautiful colors and for what it really is. Life. Life, full of clouds so we recognize the rainbows, full of sticky thorns on beautiful roses, dribbling the ball down on the floor to get the resilience to bounce up for a pass and a basket.