Rip

Yesterday during church, Kate laid down on the pew and went to sleep. I took her hair and tickled it under her nose, and Ruth took her hair and tickled inside her ear. Kate batted us a way in a good humored way. I turned around to attend to some of the littler kids. Kate then scooted over to me, cuddled up and said, "Mom, why can't I rip?"

"Rip?" I asked confused.

Kate said, "Yeah, you know rip-- R-I-P-- Rest in Peace."

So I laughed aloud in church.

Day Off

There was no school yesterday. Hurray!! We love no school days. I wanted to do something fun with the kids. Life has been hard for them. I thought it would be worth a little bit of money spent to let them do something.

We woke up just after 8am, skipped breakfast and went straight to video game playing. I wasted an hour finding people on facebook, while Ruth, Kate, Johnny, Adam, and Rachel played Nintendo Game Cube Super Smash Brothers. (They had borrowed this Wednesday from their Grandma.) I did some laundry, fed, changed, and played with the little ones. Then I did my weekly hands and knees wash of the kitchen floor. By then, it was noon time, so I did some more laundry and put a frozen pizza in the oven for lunch. Ruth, Kate, Johnny, and Adam were still playing Super Smash Brothers.

We had planned to meet Aunt Emily and cousins at McDonald's playplace for sundays. I told everyone to come get a peice of pizza while I changed and fed the baby, showered and combed hair. A few pieces of pizza got eaten. But still they played on. At 1pm when I was ready to go I shut off the nintendo game cube. Everyone started complaining that the game was almost over. I said they had been playing for 5 hours straight. They seemed a bit surprised but said, "Cool!" They did get into the car, though. We had fun at McDonald's. I gabbed with Jay and Emily while the kids ran and played for a little over an hour.

We went to the grocery store next to get a few things to make dinner for another family. As soon as we were home, they headed back for the nintendo. I played a game on the computer, read and did an art project with Rachel and Anya. I am sure I fed the baby too. The kids played on. When I needed to get dinner put together I kicked the kids off of the nintendo once again. I put Ruth and Kate to work and told Johnny that he had to read for an hour. Well, guess what Johnny read???? The manual for the Super Smash Brothers game!!!!!! And of course when Dad came home, it was Super Smash Brothers again. I believe my children played that game for a total of 9 hours yesterday. And can you guess what they did first thing this Saturday morning?

Amazing Behavior Modication Method By Adam

Adam and Rachel sat coloring together on the floor. Rachel kept asking Adam to draw pictures for her. She does this with any willing victims a lot. You start to draw a picture for Rachel and then she snaps-- she gets all emotional and starts crying and declaring that you have drawn the picture all wrong. There usually isn't a good remedy besides time out for Rachel. (those drawings mean sooooo much to her.)Of course, that is what she was doing with Adam at this moment.

I have seen Adam deal with this in a couple of ways. He often will just start drawing four headed princesses, or snake princesses. This is surprisingly effective because Rachel tends to give up on getting her perfect picture and instead of a complete emotional breakdown, she walks off mad and plays something else. The second happened yesterday and worked incredibly well. We ended with no crying, no time outs-- just a subdued easy going Rachel.

As Adam was drawing the princess the wrong way and Rachel started to cry. Adam sang, "Jesus said love everyone treat them kindly too." Adam sang this to Rachel about three times, when Rachel blurted out, "Stop it. I hate that song!"  Then Adam sang, "Jesus said love everyone treat them kindly, and like them, and always share everything with ADAM!"

IF, Then

If I leave a list of chores I want done with John (The Father) and go out to run errands, then I will come home and do the chores. If I leave a list of chores I want done with Ruth (The Daughter) and go out to run errands, then I will come home to a nicely cleaned house. But if I leave a list of chores with Ruth and go out to run errands, then John will think I don't trust him enough to take care of the house and children when I am out.

A Valuable Lesson

Yesterday I learned something important that has the potential to help me be a better mother. I realized that when I have good music or general conference playing in our home I don't lose my temper. So I need to keep music like hymns or classical playing or I should be listening to conference while I do chores. I figured this out because yesterday the kids were really hard and I had a lot of chores to get done. I listened to both conference and some hymns preformed by Fiddlesticks. Adam went from breaking something, to hitting someone, to dumping out food etc, and I never even raised my voice at him. Joseph, Rachel, and Anya were taking turns crying this entire time too. The day before I had a really hard time keeping my cool for much smaller things, like when Adam and Rachel took all the labels off the tuna fish. I about blew up. They cleaned, and they went into time out and I made them swear they would never do such a terrible thing again. When Rachel wanted to eat baby food I was pretty mean to her that same day too. So, when I thought, "Hey, why is it so much easier to behave today?" yesterday, I thought back to other times when I listened to conference or hymns and I realized that I have never lost my temper while listening to general conference, and I always feel good when I listen to hymns. I think from this day forward, if I am feeling the slightest bit annoyed, I will put on some good music.

Our Miracle

I have needed to write this blog, but I have been putting it off because I know that it will take a long time to type. I need to write about how miraculous our experience with John getting his new job has been. I have to start back in Wichita about 3 years ago when we were driving home from the OKC Temple. John said, "I don't know why and  it seems crazy, but I feel very strongly that I am not going to get tenure." I replied, "That is stupid. Get tenure. You are capable." He said that he was not going to give up and that he would keep working and trying to publish and to do what he needed. But that he felt like he needed to start programming and moving his research toward machine learning. So that is what John did, and he starting putting in almost 80 hours a week. I was not happy, but I knew that I needed to trust him. Our parents were not happy too. We had a good house, a good school we should not ask for more. But John persisted.

John started working on the Netflix problem in the  Summer of 2008. This problem had a lot of machine learning. He thought he was capable of getting the prize and was very depressed when he did not. John said that he felt like the Holy Ghost was whispering for him to work on this problem.  So again, I just trusted John.

In January of 2009 we felt like it was time to prepare to move so we started fixing up our house a bunch and getting it ready to sell. Again, our parents warned us that we were doing something stupid. We stuck to it, as hard as it was and got our house on the market. In March 2009, John was notified that his contract at WSU would not be renewed. We could stay one more year, but a lot of people in Wichita were being laid off and the housing market was being flooded. We took the leap, sold the house for a $15,000 loss, and moved to Utah.We decided years earlier that if we were going to move again it would be near family.

John got a job at his dad's company. We were a little disappointed because the work had nothing to do with what John had been preparing for, but it was a job and we could buy another house. I looked around  A LOT for a home we could afford. The search was hard and depressing. When I found the Davencourt Townhouse that we are now living in I had very strong impressions that this was where we were to be. But the bank was taking a LONG time accepting the offer. Joseph was born , school would be starting and we still needed a place. I looked around at a lot more places. Still I felt like we the Davencourt townhouse was the right place for our family. My realtor, noticing our frustration got us in touch with a realtor who sets up empty short sale homes as rentals. Even that was tough and took about 2 weeks longer than we thought it should. So we moved in intending to buy  the place when the bank finally accepted our offer.

We were not in our house for an entire week when we got water in the basement. I asked the neighbor in the connecting unit if she was getting water in her basement too. She was shocked to find that we didn't know there are three cracks in the foundation. Short Sales do not have to advertise such things. So John and I started to look for another home to buy. But after a lot of prayer we still felt like we needed to stay here. We did not know why, and we really questioned our own ability to receive revelation. So did everyone else that knew any of the facts about our situation. But we decided to keep praying about it. In the October general conference Elder Richard G. Scott said:

I witness that as you gain experience and success in being guided by the Spirit, your confidence in the impressions you feel can become more certain than your dependence on what you see or hear.

I decided to trust the impressions and instructions that John and I had received from the Holy Ghost over the past few months-- even though my eyes and ears had been telling me differently.

A few days later John's work quit paying.  A month and a half after that the company basically folded. John, his Dad, and brother were all unemployed. After two full months of no pay we got food stamps and unemployment. We no longer knew why we needed to stay where we were-- that was obvious. We just prayed that the bank would continue to take a long time on accepting our offer. We had enough money from unemployment to meet our bills and we received more than twice as much money for food from the government than we ever had when John worked. Things were scary, but our needs were completely met-- including maintaining our good credit. Then early this month we got the notice that the house would be sold at auction. We new that we could be homeless in less than a month. We started looking around and praying very hard. Again we felt like we needed to wait and do nothing. Crazy!!!! We did gather a lot of information and formulate good plans. Then after 8 nerve racking days John got a job-- a really good job.

 The job is in Machine Learning. John was hired because of his math PhD and his work specifically on the netflix problem. If we lived further from the job site, John probably would not have gotten the interview in the first place. Because the commute is 35 to 45 minutes away we want to move closer. If we had bought this house or any other that we looked at we would not be able to move without further financial loss. If we would have tried to rent a place to begin with our rent would have been at least $200 more a month while we were unemployed. We got an incredible deal on rent because of the risk of the home being sold to some one else.

Another thing is John will be making $1,000 more a month this year than he did last year before we left Wichita.

The whole time we were going through these trials we knew that The Lord was at the Helm and guiding our family through inspiration to John and I through the Gift of the Holy Ghost. There were times when we had to fight off doubts, complaining feelings, sorrow, and criticism. There were times when I wanted to criticize John for not caring for us better (glad I didn't.) But still we knew in our hearts that God was there watching over us and that we would be fine and even better off than we were before. We now know that all of the revelation concerning the jobs, the moves, the houses and all was so that Heavenly Father could bless John to better support and care for his family. We had to go on the faith we had from listening earlier in our lives and we had to exercise greater faith that we did not have.

This is our miracle and we are so thankful to a loving Heavenly Father who sees fit to guide the very details of our lives. The Lord is at the Helm. He loves us, inspires us, and directs us even when our eyes and our ears are telling us the opposite should be true.

Adam likes to be Babysat

Most mornings Adam quizzes me about when he can watch a movie. Most days the answer is not today we are too busy. Yesterday, he was asking about what we were going to be doing to see if he would get any TV-time in. Near the end of the days schedule I said that mom and Dad were going to the temple so Ruth would babysit and put him to bed. I thought he would be unhappy about that, but instead he jumped up, clapped his hands and declared, "I love it when Ruth babysits. Do you know why Mom?"  I guessed, "Because you get to watch TV." Then Adam said, "and I love, love. love watching TV."