What's been going on

Recently I started reading the book A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870, and as I read the introduction it occurred to me how fortunate we are to have the diaries that the author used to write the book. It's kind of a miracle that Eliza R. Snow's diaries are still in existence. There were women's diaries that narrowly missed the trash can or bonfires, and one diary was found behind a wall. But there also just weren't very many women who kept diaries. For that reason I decided to write this blog post. Memories disappear so fast. I know it's kind of a long-winded/rambling post, but I know I just need to get the memories down while I have them. And I don't know if this will be a relief or an annoyance to my readers, but this is partly a post about me working through trials and challenges that are shaping who I am, so don't expect me to gush about how I'm seriously so blessed or something. (I'm not looking for people to feel sorry for me either.)

I had a rough patch. It's better now, but I guess it could get worse again. The week after Ryan's parents left was rough and I was really sad about the baby and in general felt empty and depressed. Plus the months of being stuck at home with no car finally added up and I realized just how lonely and isolated I was. It got better for a while after that and then I had another even worse week that culminated in me yelling at my kids, probably about the huge mess in the house, throwing duplos at the wall in the playroom while furiously cleaning up (not a moment I'm proud of), and finally breaking down and ugly crying on Ryan's shoulder while asking what was wrong with me. And then a few days later things were better again.

Easter happened and it was great. We repeated our tradition from last year of celebrating Holy Week by using our scripture study to talk about what Jesus was doing each day leading up to the resurrection. I laminated my Holy Week signs from last year so we can reuse them every year. We made construction paper palm leaves and drew pictures some of the days. The signs and the other art work went up on the Holy Week Wall. On "Spirit World Saturday" I had a really great talk with the kids about what's going on in the Spirit World and why we do family history and temple work. We talked about people we know who have died who we know we will see again.

We had a lot of Easter egg hunts. I really dislike Easter egg hunts, but these things saved me this year because they got me out of the house and spending time with good people. Both Kevin and Heidi had class Easter egg hunts, and Ann Marie and I went to Heidi's (we walked to the school). Then a neighbor had an Easter egg hunt/party at her house on Friday, so that was a chance to talk to a lot of friends from church. And then on Saturday we went to another Easter egg hunt/potluck breakfast at Camp Helaman (owned by our stake president--mostly it was our ward attending), and I spent a lot of time talking to a couple of friends who are in the Primary presidency. When we got in the car to go home I told Ryan how great it was to be with people who share their light with me. Then on Sunday we had a beautiful Easter program, and in the choir we sang Christ the Lord is Ris'n Today and a beautiful arrangement of He Sent His Son. And Sunday evening we had another Easter egg hunt/dessert potluck with more friends from the ward. As much as I dislike Easter egg hunts (mainly all the candy and wrappers and the sticky chocolate-coated plastic eggs that are everywhere afterwards), it was a big blessing this year to have so much time to spend with friends from Relief Society. There are not many other places where I can associate with so many people who bring light into my life like that. At the time it was very much what I needed.

I know that to see friends I am probably going to need to be more out-going. It really could be as simple as texting, "Want to come over for ice cream on Sunday?" But even that has been hard.

I've been sewing Days for Girls shields a lot. I'm almost through my stash of cut-out pieces now, so I think there will be a Jo-Ann's trip in my near future, followed by a Downton Abbey/cutting fabric binge if I'm lucky. (And by binge I mean I get to watch a whole episode, which is a rare treat. I discovered the show months ago and I'm just now starting Season 4.)

I hosted Book Club at our house in April. I tried to clean the house up throughout the week, but it became clear pretty quickly that we were just going to have to do a mad tidying up that evening because KIDS. I worked the entire day trying to get things picked up and in the end it was Ryan who saved me because when he got home he made the kids pick up all the toys and books and then vacuumed the living room while I tried to make the kitchen sanitary and got the seven loads of laundry out of the way (there were two more in the washer and dryer). And somehow it magically worked out. We talked about the book A Man Called Ove, which I really enjoyed (although it does have swear words). Several of our members have moved away and our numbers are diminishing, so we're trying to get books planned for the next few months and figure out how to get more people to come. I still really miss my Book Club friends from Chapel Hill, but I'm grateful we have a book club here.

We're still working on our garden with varying amounts of success. The latest problem is that some tiny fly things have laid eggs all over the leaves of many of our plants, including the camellia bush and the vegetables, and some leaves are turning yellow, so I guess I need to go to the extension office and get some advice for how to deal with the bugs before they kill all the plants. I've joined Ryan in the battle against poison ivy. I think we've decided we have to clear away the entire mess of pine straw and vines under the trees on the side of our front yard so we can find the poison ivy vines and pull up the leaves while they're small. Ryan has had a couple of nasty rash things on his arm where he accidentally brushed up against the poison ivy. Half of the candy tuft plants are turning brown and shrimpy while the other half are doing well, so we'll see if they make it. If I can find the receipt, we might be able to take them back to Lowe's. The fire ants are also an ongoing problem, and it seems like whenever I put poison on their hills they just build a new one next to them the next day. My dianthus are thriving and I just love them. I keep deadheading them and they keep making lovely blooms. I also love my geraniums. It's so cool when a cluster of them blooms all at once.

I can't seem to keep clothes on Ann Marie. On the days when she does wear clothes she goes through six outfits, and on the other days I feel like every time I turn around she's taken her clothes off. She also keeps taking off her diaper and putting on underwear, but she always has accidents on the floor and has yet to use the toilet for its intended purpose, so we'll see what happens. Heidi mostly potty trained herself a few weeks before Ann Marie was born, so I'm sort of hoping that since Ann Marie's third birthday is coming up maybe something will click. My attempts to officially potty train my kids have never gone well in the past, so I've been reluctant to try anything other than watching Daniel Tiger's episode about the potty.

Ryan bought a car on Friday! I'm so excited to have more freedom to go places during the day. I've managed okay for quite a while being stuck at home, but lately it's just been really hard to not be able to go get groceries or go to a park during the day without the logistical nightmare of dropping Ryan off at work and picking him up in rush hour traffic with bored kids who've decided to use what I call their "Dora the Explorer" voices. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays when he leaves so early I'm always worried that the kids will miss the bus (they did once, and we ended up walking to school because I'm prideful and didn't want to call a friend for help).

I've still been doing quite a bit of Family History, but it's mostly been correcting the Family Tree and putting isolated family units where they belong in the tree. A lot of temple work has already been done for Danish people who were born before 1880 or so because of extraction projects, so a lot of people are on the Family Search Family Tree as little isolated families (like just the child and their parents) and I just have to add them where they belong and merge the parents. Sometimes finding them involves some interesting acrobatics because they don't always turn up in searches for some reason. I also apparently have many cousins still in Denmark who are interested in doing genealogy, because they've uploaded their trees on MyHeritage.com. Technically you're allowed to do temple work for descendants of a common relative if they were born before 1907, but if I get on My Heritage and it's clear that a person's grandchildren or even children are still alive, I feel uncomfortable reserving those ordinances, so I tend to add them to Family Search and then leave them. It's not like I need to reserve the ordinances anyway because I have more than I can do already. Lately I've been adding information about the descendants of Jacob Andersen, older brother of my great-great-great grandmother Maren Andersdatter. Interestingly, out of all his children, there's only one who might have living descendants (of the rest, two died as babies, one died childless soon after her marriage, one had children but those children didn't have children, and one married at an older age and apparently had no children of his own). And yet Maren Andersdatter could easily have a thousand or more living descendants. I also have to watch the people about whom I've already added substantial information because sometimes people make incorrect changes. A few days ago I realized Jens Peter Pedersen (the first Danish ancestor I ever started working on, btw) and his wife had been incorrectly merged with another couple, so I had to clean that up. It's nice that Family Search will email you about changes. I try not to be annoyed, but if I stopped doing family history I have to wonder if all these people's pages would devolve back into chaos.

I finally made it back to the temple a couple of weeks ago. The only day I can really go is Saturday, but even Saturday is hard because so often we have other things to get done. I did an endowment session and was hoping to get through some of my pile of initiatories as well, but they didn't have space for me, so I left. Unfortunately, I missed an important exit and ended up driving an hour and a half in the wrong direction before realizing it (the freeways all look the same--two lanes, grass in the middle,  trees on both sides), so then I had to turn around and it was a two and a half hour drive back. I was pretty embarrassed and mad about the lost time. Ryan was really nice about it, though, and didn't complain about being home alone with the kids all day.

A while ago I discovered fitnessblender.com. They have over 500 free workout videos. I had been doing Jillian Michaels DVDs since August, which were fine, but I like Fitness Blender a lot better because they don't yell at you and there's such a wide variety of workout styles and difficulty levels in their videos. Plus they have such a positive and uplifting outlook on exercise and nutrition.

A few weeks before the miscarriage I had a strong impression in the temple that I needed to immerse myself in the scriptures. Since then I've been trying to read the Book of Mormon plus a conference talk and/or chapter from the Bible every day (before I was mostly just reading the Book of Mormon). It was interesting that I was prompted to read the scriptures more just before I started having a lot of challenges. It didn't make the problems go away, but I think it was helpful to be closer to the Holy Ghost and thinking more about the gospel at a time when I needed my faith in God's love and the plan of salvation to be strong.