Cheerfully and With Patience

On Sunday night, Daniel poured a whole bottle of Olive garden dressing onto his small salad. And I confess that I pulled out the leafs of lettuce and I poured it back into the bottle, cause we are not going to just waste a whole bottle of that stuff. Then somehow it was left out again, and he did it again, and so I did it again. Shhh don't tell the kids. And the hairspray mess that they made on Saturday was still on the walls and dresser still needs to be cleaned up. So, I'm doing my best to cope with the mess that toddler and Christmas decorations bring. I'm also a little frazzled cause apparently we are having a guest from Guatemala join us next week. Joseph threw it out to him that he could come here, he called Corey, and now he's coming. I'm not thrilled, he's going to be here for 10 days and it will be over Christmas. I that got me a little stressed out and in effort to not lose my cool, I turned to the scriptures. Cue Mosiah 24:15.

And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.

I shall now liken it unto me:

And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Tiffanie were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen her that she could bear up her burdens with ease, and she did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.

I think I do okay at submitting with patience, but I know I need to work on the "cheerfully" part. (I tend to murmur and vent...) So I come out after my scriptural coping session Sunday night, and I come downstairs to find Natalie and Owen took off all the ornaments off of the white Christmas tree and put them all in a white garbage sack for whatever game they were playing and then I felt like I needed to go back up and hide with my scriptures. I get it doctrinally, but putting this into practice is hard.

They've continued their un-decorating of the Christmas trees the past few days. Owen found these pretty gold bags (that Lily got after a fun Christmas brunch at Grand America with her friend Isa) and he filled them up like he was shopping for ornaments.

Got his purse... got all the ornaments he wants to purchase...

Ready to take his goods to the check out line -

I had to breath and try to not get too upset about this undoing of the decorations. I might be letting lots of thing bother me. I might just need to calm down? I'll try to breath. One thing that I hope will help is something we started today: Beat the Parent. I've heard about "Beat the Teacher" through many years of 2nd graders. And if teachers still use it and have been using it for years there, this might work for us. I learned about this when I took Peter there for show and tell in October. When I went there for that, school was almost out, so the kids were understandably restless, and they weren't as quiet/respectful as the teacher would have liked so she gave herself some points. Today I asked Sophi how that worked. We started today with just two things that are the same as what her class does - a "Wow List" for kids that save the day (like Abi when she wakes up early on Saturday mornings and cleans the main floor while we're all still sleeping) and a cleaning Beat the Parent tally mark paper. We're just using paper for now. And tonight I added three more Beat the Parent contests: Scripture Study, Clean Bedroom, and Music Practice (I'm gonna win that one easy! ...even if it is just me against 6 kids - E sax, Wes on trumpet, Abi on flute (she's my only real competition) Lily on Sax, Sophi and Natalie on violin) For our rough draft trial this week, it's just pieces of paper taped to the wall by the stairs

We'll see if having the different categories makes it more fun or more complicated. I'm trying to earn lots of points. Or I'm avoiding it all and just playing with Peter to hide from all my other responsibilities. He's getting big. He's showing me how big he is by trying to stand up while he is precariously holding on the post of our bed.

Near the corner... don't fall Peter!

One of his other favorite things is chewing on tooth brushes.

I had some spares in my purse that I picked up from the orthodontist. I think it helps his teething. His top teeth are almost in. Maybe chewing tooth brushes is good for coping with stress or something, maybe I'll pick some up for myself to chew.