General Conference and Women's Session

We are enjoying the General Conference of our church this weekend - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It's been great - my favorite talk so far was probably Elder Renlund's talk - "Be Not Troubled" - It went along with lots of things that have been my pet topics since giving a talk at Church on trials last month. So this evening, after the first two session/four hours of talks, we girls met up at my parent's house so the Hibbert ladies could take the semi annual trip downtown for Priesthood Session, but of course this is the first time in history that it's not priesthood, it's the Women's session! Yay, Ladies' turn to go downtown together! 

Hyrum asked me "Are you going to the Lion House after?" Yep! "NO!! That's our tradition!" Correction - no, it is not your tradition, it's the Hibbert Grandparent's tradition, and so now Grandma is taking keeping the tradition going by taking her daughters and granddaughters. My dad has gone down town every General Conference for Priesthood session for 45 years! Yes, this is a tradition we must keep. We took a quick picture in front of the Lion House, where Corey and I had our wedding reception in 1999.

Heading in to watch the conference at the Legacy Theater. Love all the flowers around Church headquarters.

Group selfie in the theater.

 Don't love these pictures of me, but oh well.

The Women's Session was pretty awesome. I bet all the sessions were awesome, but this was the only one that I heard all of, seeing as I was able to listen to it without disruptive children around.

(Thanks, Corey, for holding down the fort!)

 And as promised, yes, over to the Lion House Pantry for dinner!

"Thanks Mom!"

So, the take away from day one of General Conference can be summed up from this card that was on the wall at my parent's house -

Ha! Neil and I liked that. I'm ready to get busy! But not just busy - as Holly says - but Productive! I've got a good list of things to do that are important to me, cause at the Women's Session tonight, our prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, invited all the sisters to do four things:
1) Do a 10 day Social Media fast
2) Read the Book of Mormon between now and the end of the year
3) Make a Plan for Temple Attendance
4) Participate fully in Relief Society
For #2, I printed up this chart to keep track of my Book of Mormon reading.

I had already been reading the Book of Mormon everyday since I made a new resolve on June 15th. I had started from the last book, Moroni, and was working my way forward. I was almost done with Alma, ready to start Mosiah, when Pres. Nelson gave us the new challenge, so I started over, this time doing it the normal way from the beginning. After I finish I'll pick up in Alma again and finish working my way forward. I am also starting my 10 day social media fast on Monday, which is just cutting out facebook, since I'm not on Instagram or other things. This blog doesn't count at social to me, this is just my family history. :) Excited to hear more tomorrow!

Phone Reset

So, I don't wake up the high school kids for school anymore. I did last year, but we turned a corner this past spring when we decided they are almost adults and it's not my job, they need to start owning their life. So, I don't wake them up, but Ethan was having trouble setting his alarm last night or the app was being weird or something, Corey didn't want to stay up any longer to fix it, so he asked me to wake Ethan up for jazz band at 5:30. I usually get up at 5:45 or 6, so no biggie, I can do that. Well, come 4 a.m., I wake up with my horrible cottonmouth, a common occurrence, and so I get a drink of water and while I was at it I decided to get my phone from the charger and bring it closer to me for when I got up in 90 minutes. I double check that it's charged, and I can't see the charge percentage. I can't see anything. All my phone has is a black screen that reads:

Um... any chance I can not do that? I'd like to cancel the reset, please? I try to turn it on and off, I did, but no lock screen came up, no pass code for me to enter, just the black screen telling me my phone needs to be reset and all my data will be erased. On and off a few more times, ugh - oh drat, what the heck is this?!? What did I click yesterday that would cause a computer bug or virus like this to get on my phone? Maybe it's a network wide thing? I check Corey's phone to see if his has that mean black screen, but his is normal. Man. Well, thankfully I got all my pictures off from yesterday, wahoo! And possibly loosing pictures is usually the biggest thing I'm worried about. Yesterday when I was transferring them after getting Mel's rainbow pics sent to my phone, while I was on I also cleared out all my screenshots and other saved pictures too, so... I guess I'll be okay. I am resigned to this turn my phone's fate has taken. Looks like I don't have any other choice, not that I was thinking super clearly at 4:15, but I was now wide awake. I click reset and it starts to do whatever, a black screen that has a pulsing white word "SAMSUNG" and is taking a long time. I set it down. I go get Corey's phone so I can set a 5:30 alarm on his phone so that I can go back to bed until my official wake up time. I'm gonna make it 5:35, give myself 5 more minutes cause of this 25 min interruption to my morning sleep. It took me a while to get drowsy again, but I did fall asleep, woke up at 5:35

So I woke up, woke up Ethan and Wes, did my 20 min of stretching, then went downstairs for a treadmill walk/jog, cause it was raining outside. After that was done, I fiddled around with my phone, couldn't re-install my apps cause I needed the wifi password, got that later today from Corey, now all the apps are back up. I got a new lock screen and home screen! So that's exciting. Here's the new homescreen look -

 And the old - Nevermind... I thought I had a screenshot of that, but I can't find it. Maybe I never got one. I guess there will be one memory and documentation casualty of this unfortunate phone rest. Goodbye old wallpaper. I can't find the image of you, but if I ever do, I'll come back and let the posterity know what backdrop I had for the past 10 months. This is my new lock screen.

Yay. Holly shared that in the EJC today, perfect timing cause I was looking for something cute and positive. Yes, maybe reasons to be happy, this will be good for me to see each day. I'm still a part of that online community of moms. We're doing the courage challenge right now, like we did last year when I first joined. I'm really proud of how far I've come this past year, I think I'm doing really good! Workouts are on track (with daily stretching!), and they usually aren't this solid when I'm pregnant, maybe #12 will be my best one yet! I'm competing against a younger me - when I had Hyrum 15 years ago, young and 27. That was my best pregnancy, followed by Daniel's, we'll see how much spunk I still have in me. Back to other goals - I make my bed everyday, the house is pretty clean, considering our large family, but I don't to accept excuses. I want to improve our home routines and life, and that's kinda where my focus is this go around. If you want help improving your life, it starts by taking back your mornings. Holly still has facebook videos of her last 10 day Take Back Your Morning Challenge, if you want to go give them a listen! Might just be life changing for you too. (I'm still hoping to somehow get my kids to watch these videos, or I just need to memorize all these sayings and teachings - "How you choose to wake up and spend your time spills over into your entire day"
Day 1/Video 1 - What are your mornings like now? Describe it in 3 words. Either you run the day or the day runs you!
Homework: Choose ONE THING to do differently to help you love your morning
Day 2/Video 2 - Stop being at the mercy of a messy morning. Design a meaningful morning routine to create a morning that matters. How you choose to wake up directly impacts your mood, your energy, and the momentum of your day. When your win the morning, you win the day!
Homework: Draft up a morning routine, set a consistent wake up time. Write it out, protect your time, weave your routines around your responsibilities so you can DO what is important to you. A written routine provides an anchor.
Day 3/Video 3 - "I don't do mornings" Are you ready to rise or reluctant to rise? Reluctant? Why? It's cause you are #1) sleep deprived or #2) bad attitude. For #1 - Sleep deprived: is it seasonal and temporary (like if you have a newborn)? Give yourself a break to do your best in this season. It's just the way it is, accept it. Or are you sleep deprived because of a pattern in your life? Get to the bottom reason of why you are not getting enough sleep. Get honest about the underlying reasons. What choices are you making that are contributing to a lack of sleep. Own it. You can't change what you refuse to confront.
Day 4/Video 4 - You SNOOZE, you LOSE! Just set your alarm for the time that you are going to get up. Stop tricking yourself into thinking that a few more minutes of sleep is going to make you feel better or more rested. It won't! But that attitude will ruin your mood and morning. I want to wake up and live! I commit to quit hitting snooze! Make it harder to hit snooze, put your alarm across the room, where you can't reach it lying down. Alarm off - LIFE ON!
Day 5/Video 5 - Huge difference between being busy and being productive.  How to beat the "busy" trap - "If only I had more time, I would..." Busy - going all day and doing all day with nothing to show for it. How to wake up PRODUCTIVE. Three words - What's important now? What's important now in this season of your life? What makes most sense to you and to your family (the people under your roof). You are the expert of your life. You get to decide what matters most to you and your family. Your life, your terms. What other people think is none of your business. If your actions defy your values, your priorities, all your efforts to be productive GO TO WASTE when you're spending your time on things that are not your priority. Cause what moves you forward is to focus on your priorities. You do not need more time, no one gets more time. The most successful people that you can look up to only have 24 hours a day. But they are doing what is important to them and they protect their time for what matters most. You don't need more time, you just need more reasons to protect your time wisely - because you've decided what's important NOW. What is important? Busy is a decision, it's not an excuse. Instead of "I'm too busy" say "that's not important to me right now". Saying that might hurt, but that emotional charge could be what you need to make the change you need to in your life.
Day 6/Video 6 - ... I'll finish doing typing notes on these later if I can. Good stuff, go give a listen.
Day 7/Video 7
Day 8/Video 8
Day 9/Video 9
Day 10/Video 10 - Doable Action Steps

So excited for General Conference tomorrow! I love being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ!

Rain and a Rainbow

We beheld a beautiful beautiful double rainbow tonight. Here's a picture of it that a neighbor caught on their way home toward our canyon.

When Mel saw it, she sounded the alarm "THERE'S A RAINBOW!!!!" and then all the kids came running from their rooms, like students clearing out of the school when the fire alarm sounds... we all went running! I peeked out the laundry room window, yep! Let's go! "To the front yard!" I instructed. The kids had been using my phone and they didn't know where they'd left it, so I ran outside without it - we had to hurry! Mel found her phone... "I can't enjoy this moment if I can't post it on Instagram!" she joked. She was ready for us to capture the moment - I took some pictures of her -

"Text these to me later..."

I got a few of her, but I was getting soaked, so she passed me the umbrella and I went out to the street where I could see the full 180 degrees of this vision of color. The last few rainbows have come and gone so quickly, we didn't want to miss it. This one seemed to be staying a bit. "Mom, you should get your nice camera!" No, if I go in, it will be gone before I get back. Well, maybe it will still be here - it was really bright and vibrant and the rain was still coming down. "Where is it?" On the chair by my closet. Mel ran in and in 30 seconds she was back out. Yay, we can take more pictures - she got this one of me enjoying the glory of the moment -

Rainbows are seriously so incredible, like who comes up with these ideas!?! There's the head of some committee up in heaven getting creation ideas to present to God: "I love the snow idea, I like that they'll be able to pack it and build with it and skis and sled on it. That sounds like fun. What should we do when it's not freezing? Any ideas?" An angel raises her hand - "How about in the summer or fall, when it's just rain, how 'bout if we make it that when it's raining, we'll make it so that if the sunlight hits it, like it makes this huge beautiful arched wonder of color up in the sky?"  "Oooh! I like it! Let's do it!"

That's the inside rainbow arch, you can't really see it was a double, but there was a faint second arch reaching across the whole sky -

My camera lens seemed a bit stuck and I couldn't get it to zoom out far enough to see both rainbows on that camera, but there's the ones from Mel's phone. Owen was really cute - pointing up to the sky saying "Wook! A Wainbow!!" Cute Daniel holding the umbrealla. From Mel's angle -

My point of view -

He took his umbrella holding very seriously - I could tell from his expression that he was really concentrating and he walked up the driveway and held it as high as his little arms could reach and still allow him to see where he was going. Cute kid.

We love rainbows! They are a sign of God's covenant with Enoch that Zion will return and the Lord will come again - we Latter Day Saints are so lucky to have the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible!

- Rainbow 

An outward token of God’s covenant with Noah (Gen. 9:13; see also Ezek. 1:28; Rev. 4:3; 10:1). The rainbow no doubt existed before the Flood, but with Noah the rainbow took on a new significance as the token of the covenant. JST Gen. 9:17–25 enlarges the terms of the covenant to include not only that the earth will never again be covered with a flood of water, but also that the Zion of Enoch will return and the Lord will come again to dwell on the earth (see Gen. 9:11 note c, 15 note b; JST Gen. 9:21–25 [Appendix]).

Fall Drive

On Sunday, I loaded some willing children into the van and we went on a fall drive. We went down to Utah County, headed east toward Provo Canyon, and then turned north up to Sundance where we began our drive on the Alpine Loop around Mount Timpanogos.

I had wanted to leave around 4, but we ate dinner at 4 instead, so we weren't on our way until 5. I had been watching the sunset time the day before, so I knew it would be getting dark at 7. We've got a limited time window of opportunity here. Let's hurry and go enjoy the colors
Here are some pictures we took to try and capture the moment. A close up of some red leaves -

Trying to capture the beauty of the mountains - 

A curve in the mountain road -

It's hard for the camera's to do the mountains justice.

But, we tried. Mel, my official photographer -

We parked on a little turn out to see the gold of the aspen trees.

I need a "vibrant" setting on this camera. It was glorious! (The pics at that 2014 link were on vibrant setting, back before I lost my little point and shoot camera. Those do the fall color justice.)

Pretty pretty, gold everywhere you look -

 We soaked it up for a minute, then decided to get out and stretch our legs.

 Owen was fine until the girls started screaming and pretending there was a bear.

GIRLS! Stop that! You're little brother Owen is a very timid little boy, so don't do stuff like that!

Ok, y'all scared him, I guess we'll go back in the car. It's getting darker anyway, let's go and see how much more we can see -

This one was a pretty spot - we stopped at the same place where I had been a few weeks ago with Owen and Daniel -

The sky was starting to turn pink -

...but you gotta choose if you want the camera's lighting adjustment to capture the sky or the leaves - it can't do both, darn it... So Mel took a few of the sky -

Then a few of the mountain - 

Gorgeous! Does it look as amazing to you as it did to us? Sigh, probably not... tragic.

 

We pulled over for Mel to take a few pictures of the sunset -

Cue angelic choirs - 

The kids in the back were playing some silly game... "Girls!!! Look at the sky right now!" Then we quoted the movie CARS - "I'm not the only one seeing this, RIGHT?!?!" 

Very very pretty.

Ok, I guess that's enough. Ok, one more.

 And a little video I took to also try to savor the moment -

We were happy and loved what we were able to see, but it's like watching the moonset or the sunrise.... it's never enough. It's glorious ~ but brief. I wish the colors of fall and spring lasted as long as the 3 months of summer and winter. But instead of 3 months of color, it's like 3-4 weeks, then brown the rest of the time. Spring is 3-4 weeks of blooming flowers, and then just green. And that's ok, I can deal with spring, but I wish the fall colors lasted longer. We'll try to get out a few more times this year before the leaves are gone!

Follow Up Ultrasound

Hooray hooray, 24 weeks of pregnancy was completed today - yay, the 2nd trimester is DONE. I'm 2/3rds of my way through this forever pregnant groundhog day I'm living in, just one more trimester. But it's the long home stretch, the dreaded third trimester, where time slows down to a snail pace. I'm hoping that this pregnancy will be an exception to the last 7 pregnancies in memory - that the time will keep chugging along nicely with the fall and then winter holidays right around the corner. I've had summer or fall babies for the past 15 years, so I'm excited to have a winter baby again. I think January is the perfect time for a baby. September is the worst (unfortunately I've got 3 of those). January is very appropriate and fun too since that's Joseph's birthday, so that makes this little one a nice and official replacement for our missing first born.

What else, so more pregnancy stuff - I went on a walk this morning, I was jogging and feeling good keeping it up for almost 10 minutes, I was ready to take the jog uphill, but then I tripped over a curb when I was moving into the street to avoid some sprinklers on the sidewalk, cause I didn't want to slip, so I my moving made me get what I was trying to avoid. I almost caught myself but then I hit the ground. My hands didn't get it back but my left knee got a good scratch. It didn't tear through my pants, but darn it, I was shaking my head at myself and walked almost the rest of the way home, except that I was kinda far from my starting point and had to hurry to be back to take Wes to school, so I did jog a little bit more, but mostly was speed walking. I've been here before, where I've fallen or had a hit with kids in utero... with baby Joseph I was in a small car accident - I got hit when a girl ran a red light and spent a day in the hospital to monitor him. In July 2003 with Hyrum in utero, I tripped over a curb up at Park City when we were checking in with Corey's family - so then I turned around and headed back to the valley to go to be monitored. Then, lastly, in Brazil we had an exciting evening with Wesley choking, I ran to save him and tripped with baby Owen inside. So then we were able to go to the ER there. It was less expensive in Brazil than it is here, and I didn't have to stay to be monitored for long, just a quick look with the ultrasound. So... here we go again, being the responsible bearer of children that I am. I would have been mad about going in, but good thing I already had an ultrasound scheduled for today, so yay!  Everything placenta wise looked good with baby, 3 of the 4 concerns they had last ultrasound looked normal today, yay. My amniotic fluid still measured high, she gave me a thing to come back in 4 weeks but I didn't stop at the desk to schedule it. I already did the Panorama test, that came back all low risk, I don't want to go test and poke around for whatever numbers they want to take and measure anymore. So I'm in charge, I'm going to tell my dr. I don't want to go in again. We'll see if he lets me have my way. But since I have the bad condition of AMA maybe they won't let me (Advanced Maternal Age! I'm so old)

One cool thing about today's ultrasound was that she gave me some 3D pictures of our little guy.

So cool!!!

After she did those first two scans, he gave us a little grin, awww!!

A few more head shots -

One of the concerns last time was his hands, that they were in fists, so she did the 3D images as another way to see his hands. better.

A few of them were in fists -

But like in this one below, she said it was good, his hands looked opened and relaxed. So all good news today. Good job baby.

Later today - Daniel down for his nap, he always goes down so easily, he's been a piece of cake kid. So cute to see him snuggling with his "baby"

Owen is becoming less high maintenance for his father. Corey told me that yes, he does feel that their relationship is less dysfunctional (last paragraph). That's good. That'll give Corey about a 3 month break until I have to pass Daniel off to him when this baby arrives. And I think Daniel might be easy on him, fingers crossed. Cute boys, it's fun having these cute little friends.