I love spring weather. The kids have been spending a lot of time outside, and it makes my life easier.
This kid is cute and sweet…but annoying. He rolls onto his tummy and gets stuck and cries. He tries to get a toy into his mouth and can’t and cries. And try to read a book with him, and he freaks out. He wants to be older than he is and gets frustrated all the time.
I’ve been caught up in a horrible trap of worry and stress. I have more to do than I can do. I do like being busy, but lately I’ve been especially overwhelmed with everything. And because of it I haven’t been enjoying life at all. I’ve known I should just live now and not worry about the past and future, but I had a hard time actually doing that.
I think when I have desires to improve, I have to let them work inside of me for awhile. What starts as a desire is often not met for a while: life stays the same. Even when I try my hardest, change doesn’t happen at the speed I want. My self-control is faulty. But eventually in His timing, the Lord blesses me with change. Change is always gradual, and lasting change only happens through Christ. Lately, the Lord blessed me with a better ability to live in the moment, and by doing so my life is beautiful.
I can enjoy what I’m doing, instead of getting stressed by all the tasks to come. I’m not as distracted because I’m not as stressed. I’ve been better at putting things aside and not worrying how I’m going to get everything done, but just doing my best. I know sometimes that means things won’t get done, but if I’m prioritizing I also know the important ones will. I’m not worrying about micromanaging my whole schedule: instead I do the best I can right in this moment. All we have is right now anyway.
In order to show the progress we are making with out home remodel, I decided to go ahead a take some videos. Here is a before/during shot of the stairs:
We lowered them down just enough so that my husband doesn’t hit his head. In the meantime, we had this lovely large hole:
I haven’t been paying attention much to the garden. Occasionally I will realize I’ve fallen behind and spend a couple of hours weeding and planting seeds to get caught up. But the garden often just looks like a bunch of projects that I don’t have time for. So today is a celebration of what I have done and what is going well in the garden. No pictures of piles that need to be dealt with, noxious weeds to pull, or projects that I want to do later.
Chickens are just fun. Except when I found one of them dead in the coop. No apparent cause, just very disturbing. At least we never really decided on a name for her.
My little clover patch is still doing great, even without any irrigation. I’m sure once we get the water turn and start irrigating it a bit more it will start to grow even more. Usually it probably would be fine, but this spring has been dry minus one sporadic snow storm.
The sheet mulch in the front yard is still great. (Not the picture. I lost one of my cameras and the one I used for this photo has a scratched lens.) No weeds. It is probably the closest I could get to no maintenance. It has been the one method I throw at everyone and is my current answer to everyone’s frustrations of garden. Hate the weeds? Sheet mulch. Don’t have time or money? Sheet mulch.
This is my current experiment. The peas and lettuce were planted purposely. And then I threw down a lot of seed for all the other spring crops I wanted, just sprinkled it everywhere all together. The plan is to thin it out as it starts to grow and eat what I thin as sprouts.
It’s starting to come up, so I should get at least something here.
The cover crop on the swales/hugel mounds is doing well. In just a few weeds I’ll chop and drop and plant my summer crops here.
I’ve got a lot of biennials that are starting to flower–kale, onions, and parsley. It’s not usual to let any of these plant keep going until they flower, but they all overwintered for me well. I’ve started planting flowers and herbs to take over when these guys are done.
Baby H is an overachiever. He is super close to sitting up unassisted and he rolled over from back to tummy.
My camera is missing. Luckily it only had a few pictures from Easter. I’m hoping it will turn up somewhere. In the meantime, here is a dump of all my Instagram pictures. (My username is walkliz if interested).
My sister and I were cooking together in the kitchen and she asked where all my spices were. They were thrown in the pantry, not very organized or convenient. We started to talk about where to put spices in the kitchen, I mentioned that I wanted to put them over the stove in spice racks and I actually even had the shelves and had for months.
When we moved here, we inherited a lot of ancient junk. Most of it was just junk, but there were a few fun finds. They included a couple of small shelves that I held onto even though my husband tried to throw them away twice. I had a vision for them. With a coat of paint and a couple of nails, they would be awesome spice racks.
Almost a year later, I finally got them painted and hung up. And then a couple of months after that I actually got jars that fit them. Little things like these spice racks are why it is fun to buy an old house, even if it has tons of junk to go through and a never ending list of projects to work on.
I often feel tangled about in my weaknesses as a mommy: thoughts run through my head. I can’t do this anymore. Why did I do it again? Well this every go completely away? Where did I go wrong?
The desire to no longer have my weaknesses has sometimes consumed me. I know the atonement can, and has, changed me…why do I still struggle with this?? Recently I read this article and realized: the Lord will take away my sins, but not always take away my weaknesses.
So the answer I have is to keep going, keep trying. I can do it again, and my struggles, although they do not go away completely, are improving and becoming lessened.
Jesus Christ said to forgive 70 times 7, and that includes myself. His atonement is infinite and eternal. He expects me to keep going, to rely on Him and try my best, not to be perfect. One quote that has stuck with me is “Saints are only sinners who keep trying.” (Mother Teresa)
It seemed like a small decision at the time. Let’s stop using the dryer vent because it is inefficient. Next, the vent line came down, because it prevented the door from opening fully. And then, while the sheetrock needed repairing anyway, we took off the wall by the stairs to re-figure it out so the space could be used better. And since we tore off the wall, we went ahead and re-construct the stairs so we don’t hit our heads. Since the stairs were moved a bit, there is now room to move a door for a bedroom, which means we can completely re-model the downstairs.
Everything red is what we want to change.
My husband and I can make impromptu decisions together really well. I mention that maybe we should just take down a wall, more wondering than actually thinking of doing it. The next thing I know the wall is down, thanks to my husband in demolition mode. He was a bit hesitant to ask about re-doing the stairs next. It’s never bothered me much, but he has always hated it. I let him go ahead with the stairs so I wouldn’t have to keep hearing about it…but then that got me thinking about remodeling to get the bedrooms that our house sorely lacks. Now the only problem is finding the time and money to do it all. In the meantime we are living with some interesting views of the inside of our house.
Could Pi day count as a holiday? It certainly felt like one. Almost all of my siblings and families got together (which is a big deal because we live in four different states). We ate pie (of course), and swam and played disc golf. I was the female winner of disc golf, mostly because I was the only girl who actually finished. Here’s a good pie recipe in celebration.
Chocolate Pie
1 package chocolate chipsMicrowave in increments of 30 seconds until melted
Add
1/4 c powder sugar
1 tb. vanilla
3/4 c whipping cream
Pour in a graham cracker crust and chill for a long time.
St. Patrick’s Day is also so random. It was fun to be able to point out actual shamrocks in our big clover field out back. I did want to do something a bit more exciting than just wearing green and eating Lucky Charms. So the leprechaun came to visit and dropped off some gold candy. Afterwards, Peter made a trap to try to catch him again. It was unsuccessful, but he might try again next year.
I’ve decided on pretend things like Santa Clause, leprechauns and such, that I will allow my child to decided if it is real or not. Peter asked if the leprechaun was real, and I kinda just asked if he wanted it to be or not. He new it wasn’t actually real, but since his pretend and real are not as distinct as an adults, he could play as if it was.
Liz Braithwaite 