first blog post of 2016

Happy New Year! It's finally the year that I was going to marry my friend who I did marry almost twelve years ago. He had asked in high school, "Hey, if you're not married by 2016, will you marry me?"

It has been snowing ALL DAY here and hasn't stopped. It's so beautiful. We had a great Christmas season and enjoyed the December snow too.

I have been outside for a total of about two minutes. We stayed home from church because of First Girl feeling sick. (She is mostly better by now but starting Friday night she didn't feel like eating.) They've watched some Veggie Tales, and we had the TV off for a while, I played some Primary songs on the piano and sang along, we read a kind of long book together, and we saw some Mormon Channel videos on YouTube. Two out of three kids had baths; the other will need one also. The four-year-old hurt the six-year-old's feelings so I helped with that. I think we should probably call grandparents, after dinner. Oh, but a lot of clean clothing still isn't put away. I can do both at the same time.

I wasn't sure how to begin this blog post. Maybe I feel like I did then. I wasn't sure what this blog would turn out to be.

I think I want to have few if any public photos of our kids now.

What do I do with what's here already? I began blogging in 2007. I could slowly use the best posts to make digital scrapbooks that I would print, and delete them from Blogger. I don't want to change it to private.


Basically, I need to figure things out, how I can best spend my time. The ones I need to communicate and share with most are my family and close relatives. I have an email draft to finish that is a simple letter and photos for our parents and siblings to see. I have other places where I share photos now, but not publicly. And if I wanted to back up with Flickr again like I did a long time ago (I think mainly in 2009), that sounds like work and I would need a new login or account. I started a private Instagram account in October, and I use Facebook.

These are the measurable goals (resolutions) I came up with for 2016:

1. Turn off the lights to sleep by 11:00 p.m., and closer to 10:30 might be best. This is hard for me. 
2. Wake up by 7:00 and do first things first. But 5:30 is too early.
3. Start and end the day with personal prayer.
4. Read / feast / ponder from the Book of Mormon daily -- the verses on @bofm365. I feel peace every time. I'm glad that my husband is going to do it too!
5. Read more books this year than I did the last couple of years. (Only six in 2015.)
6. Work on postpartum doula certification for at least one hour a week.
7. Publish recipes on my whole foods plant-based blog.

That's probably enough to work on. :-) And that's how I will spend some of my time. I bought a little composition book to keep track of spiritual goals such as "✓ morning kneeling prayer".  I could get another little book for the other goals. 

Things are going well for our family. We'll be able to pay off most of our debt this year and we are so grateful. I / we will definitely spend time with new friends here too. I am looking forward to a vegan potluck next week.

I did not quite finish 360 BYU devotionals by the end of 2015 but I listened to 347! It was 360, not 365, because the idea came to me on January 5th and 360 is a nice round number. I am continuing until I have finished that goal. I listen while I get dressed, make meals, do chores, etc.

time for your thoughts on the new design

This should be a quick post, on this historic day for Egypt (not that I know a whole lot about what's happening, and the tasks I need to do are the real reason I need to get off the computer). I have spent some time today -- I don't really know how much -- changing the look of my blog: its colors (lavender-y instead of orange-y), layout, font, etc. I have stuck with Blogger. I don't want to put money or too much time into web design, and I'm not at all an expert on things like html. I think I love the new look! I am not satisfied with the header, and I am not done adding links to other blogs. I hope the links within my posts stand out well enough. Any thoughts on the changes or my pages (the five (for now) things across the top of the blog, just under the collage)? Please scroll all the way to the bottom before letting me know. Thanks!

One of the Oldest Bloggers

Back in my very first post I mentioned a stranger's list of reasons for blogging. Tonight I wanted to read it again, and I took (probably too much) time to do a Google search. Didn't find what I was looking for. But what did I find? Since my search included the word "mother," I found a mother named Millie who happens to be about 82 years old and a blogger. I think it's so cool that she's blogging. I think my 89- and 90-year-old grandparents on my mom's side have never used the internet at all.

If you want to hear a great laugh, Millie has one. Click here to see her videos about not being able to open things; I can relate because our applesauce has been hard for me lately. Click here to see her blog. Time for me to go to bed!

Behind on Posts!

There's a lot I could write about, and I feel like writing tonight. I thought I would at least say that I'm still alive. How was your Christmas? :) Oh, Shboogoo turned 13 months old on Christmas Eve and she can walk FAST! Her first two teeth came in on December 15th. D and I still need to search through our camera cards to see if we can find pictures of her birthday party. Although we did watch the videos of that day, we haven't posted any pictures on our flickr site.

This has been kind of a crazy December for our family. We haven't written a Christmas letter yet but have appreciated receiving some letters and cards. D took his last final on Dec. 14; he had tough classes and we're glad he gets a break [only 5 and half years of schooling left!]. Since then he has been closing most nights at the pizza place (he's a driver), getting home around 2 am instead of 9 or 10 pm. Other crazy or busy things:

• D's mom got hurt at work; she has to lie down most of the time and didn't receive a Christmas bonus.
  
• My little sister is getting married January 11 and I still need to help with one of her bridal showers and find a mauve dress for myself. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good and exciting thing! She found the perfect guy for her.
  
• Two of our close friends (two families) are moving really far away. We're going to miss you!
  
• For Christmas we drove around to see our 4 households of parents and then had to backtrack a bit. We managed to leave my phone at Mom's, D's jeans in the dryer at other Mom's, and ham in the fridge at Dad's!
• I used a confusing recipe tonight and got a little sick from eating a few bites of it because the beef wasn't fully cooked. I was supposed to brown it before baking the whole thing. Fortunately I was the only one who tried it. I am not the best cook, but I'm learning.
  

I've really enjoyed reading and pondering, during the last few days, some of the prophecies in the Book of Mormon about Christ's birth -- some from the index under Jesus Christ, First Coming of. I love 1 Nephi 11, Mosiah 3, and Helaman 14. The gospel is true, and that's why Christmas is special to me. "Jesus is the reason for the season." These are lyrics to one of my favorite songs about Him:

One Star
(Cherie Call)

One star, one manger,
One child, one tiny little life
So meek in the arms of His mother,
Could this be our Savior from evil and strife
One soul in a stable,
With the beasts He created with His hands
Now sleeps in the hay and dreams of one plan

Five loaves, two fishes,
Five thousand hungry people fed
Two hands, one voice,
To make the blind to see and to raise the dead
One life selflessly given,
Bruised and torn in the hands of angry men
Every nation redeemed by one man

We like sheep have all gone astray
We’ve turned every one to his own way
And He like a lamb was the sacrifice
So we can return to our Father someday

Every land, every nation
Every rock, every leaf on every tree
Trembles to know the name of their creator
Spirits numbered as the sands of the sea
One voice, when you lift it,
Reaches onward, travels far
Let it ring on the wind as it speaks of one star

Whatever I Want It To Be

Welcome to my first post, which I have put off writing for over a week. But it's okay because at this moment while I am writing it, nobody knows I even have a blog! Only my cute husband and I know it. He helped me come up with the name. See, I'm not sure what this blog will turn out to be. I decided that I'll be "random" if I want to be (my college roommate Emily said I was very random).

My blog won't be:

• full of photos of our child, because we have a separate photo site.
• a personal journal, because I have a separate journal.
• limited to religious topics, although I do like to read mormanity sometimes.

Recently while blog rolling I found a really great explanation from a woman I don't know about reasons she blogs. If I can find it again I will add a link for it. One last thing for now: My husband returned home from his LDS mission five years ago yesterday. Time flies.