Friday, October 25, 2013

Papa Murphy's

Last night we ate Papa Murphy's for the first time in FIVE months. The kids and I ate to our hearts' content and say what you will about emotional eating, it made us all so very happy, happy, happy. That's a long time to go without your favorite pizza. I can remember the last time we had it: our load-the-moving-truck party. Since I save our limited eating out allowance for amazing Pho, it was not on my radar to look up the nearest Papa Murphy's. During our Rochester years (read: very low mortgage payments and access to lots of student loans) we ate out all.the.time. Let's face it, my kitchen was too tiny to cook in 7 days a week and I was pregnant or nursing or volunteering or studying or crafting or [insert any number of things other than grocery shop and cook and clean up afterward]. Eating out is so much easier. Anyway, the nearest Papa's is a 5 minute drive and just moved in to the area the same exact month we moved in. God knew I'd need a Papa's nearby. Best thing about it is that since they are trying to promote their business they are very generous with coupons and promotions. I'm going to take one of my friend's traditions of eating Papa Murphy's every Friday and watching a family movie and make it my own. It's the little things that make this transition easier.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Sweet Smelling Sweat

We had ice cream from Culver's and a short trip to a new park today. On the way home I overhear this short conversation:

Jacob: I can smell myself. My sweat smells good.

Bella: (quietly) Your sweat smells good?

Jacob: (sniffs himself loud enough for me to hear all the way up in the front seat) Ya, it smells like cake. And armpits. It smells good.

Yep. We're that family.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Longest 20 Seconds of the Week

The weather is crazy beautiful in AZ this week. Chilly in the mornings, sunny and 70's by afternoon, cool and breezy at night.

This week the kids got their solos for their choir's fall concerts and have been practicing all week long. The director is amazing and does all this extra work for this ministry out of the kindness of her heart, and I can't even begin to imagine how insanely busy she is between home schooling her kids and managing this ministry. That being said, she goofed up Bella's solo. She assigned the wrong solo to Bella via email so when it came time for her solo she was completely shocked. Luckily, it was just practice, but if you know my introverted, type A, perfectionist firstborn child, this was terrifying. Why couldn't she have goofed Jacob's instead? There she stood in front of 30 peers with a microphone in her hand and her teacher coaxing her to sing a solo which she had fervently practiced all week long just to have the completely wrong verse! Okay, now imagine her mother's terror as I stood at the back of the room filming this scene for her father. Those crazy mother thoughts started rolling in....

"Oh man, I can not wait to show this to Albert when he gets home! This is so entertaining!" TOTALLY KIDDING! This is what I would have thought if it were Jacob instead of Bella, because in the word's of the great Sy Robertson, Jacob's "like an owl... [he] don't give a hoot!"

Seriously, here were the mile-a-minute thoughts:

"Stop! Stop! Stop! This is all wrong! YOU assigned the wrong words!"

"Oh Snap! Just grab the kids and run. These people don't really know us anyway."

"I should stop filming. Wait, no, if I stop then she'll know something's wrong. Just keep smiling and thumbs upping her."

"Maybe she's just fine and I'm overreacting."

"Lord, I pray she doesn't cry."

"Why did I encourage them to take solos?"

"Failing in front of large groups is just a rite of passage, right?"

"Don't pass your own emotions onto your children."

"It's all my fault. I should have double checked. This verse didn't play twice in the original song, I should have known."

This solo was TEN MINUTES LONG! I could have passed out and woken up and the dang thing would still be going on. Luckily, it wasn't the last song they practiced so I had time to gather my thoughts and observe Bella before the danger of making an irrational decision. I decided the only benefit in mentioning the goof was to save face (mine and Bella's) which is totally selfish. I don't know the director well, but I do know she has the biggest heart for these children and the orphans around the world (this song "No Orphans" is the key song for the ministry after all). I know she would have felt terrible about it, and to me, saying "WE REALLY DID PRACTICE AND BELLA IS AMAZING AT HER ORIGINAL SOLO!" was not worth making this sweet woman feel bad. I decided to pull Bella in real close, rub her back gently, and whisper in her ear. It went a little something like this:

"Hey Bella?"
"Ya Mom?"
"Ms. Angelique accidentally assigned you the wrong solo, huh?"
"Yeah."
"I am so sorry you worked so hard practicing those lines just to be surprised with different words. Sometimes those mistakes happen. You know what though? You did AWESOME! I am so proud of you for improvising and winging the new words. You are so much braver than I ever was! It was like you had been practicing those correct words all week long and I couldn't even tell you were confused and I bet nobody else could either, it was THAT good!"
"Really?"
"Yep!"
"I was so nervous I was shaking" she says with a smile on her face.

She saw me filming and thought I was snapping pictures. She asked many times that night to see the pictures and I kindly said no and quickly distracted her. The last request I snapped and said "NO! It's time for bed anyway." I was afraid she'd see the reality of the situation and notice that she didn't sing it perfectly and be terribly embarrassed. I wanted her to believe that nobody else in that room even noticed she didn't know her solo perfectly. I was afraid to watch it myself.

After the kids were tucked in, Albert grabs my phone and starts scrolling through my pictures, something he does periodically to catch himself up on our happenings. Then I remember our fiasco and the video. I tell him the story and we watch the clip.

"She did great!" Albert says.




Yes, she DID do great! And it really only lasted a few seconds? Really?

"Yes, but, you know Bella. She was already nervous about getting up in front of the class and having all eyes on her, so this must have been REALLY bad for her." That is the truth and I can say that confidently because nobody knows their child like a mother does.

"Man. That child is braver than I am." I'm realizing that being in that situation and overcoming it (in style at that!) was one of the best lessons she could ever have. We can't always protect them, but we can prepare them with awesome tools like flexibility, being confident in your best, and a good healthy sense of humor.

"She did practice the whole song many times over, of course she was going to be fine." Why didn't this run through my head when it was happening?

There's a fine line between allowing your children to experience their emotions on their own and guiding them to cope with difficulties in a healthy manner. It's also really hard to decide what healthy coping actually is as a 29 year old youngin' like myself. While I want to be careful not to impose what I think healthy emotional responses are, I do realize that by birthright they are Gutierri and they will likely deal with these kinda things like their parents do. After experiencing firsthand how our daughter handled one of her fears, I guess mostly I'm okay with them turning out like their old folk.




Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Habits

I was reading my 1,000 Gifts book by Ann Voskamp last night and she quoted a really smart person. I could go get the book and find out exactly what the quote said and who said it, but that would entail me getting out of bed and I'm pretty sure my backside glued itself to the mattress. The quote said that it takes a nail to drive out a nail, a habit to replace a habit. Nothing profound, but so profound to me. My daily life is so much busier than it has ever been in my ENTIRE life now that I'm schooling a 4th grader, a second grader, and a preschooler. If things are gonna run like a well oiled Tahoe, I need to replace some old habits with new ones. Note that I didn't call them "bad" habits, because truthfully I wouldn't constitute sleeping until 9am as a bad habit. Some are bad habits, but most just don't fit in with my new lifestyle.

Here are my top habit swapping projects: going to bed earlier, waking up earlier, planning meals more than 2 minutes ahead of time, exercising even just a little, scheduling time to do the things I love, scheduling period.

The biggest and most important habit swapping is my attitude. I took Ann's idea of naming all of God's gifts (much like Adam named the animals God created) everyday until it becomes a habit of gratitude. We start with the seemingly trivial gifts, ones we don't often recognize daily. Things like golden sunlight hitting strands of cocoa colored hair and the soft hum of a dishwasher. The idea is that by giving His gifts names we'll become more aware of and grateful for them.  This idea is also reiterated by Dr. Amit Sood in his Book, which is gruelingly painful to read, but good to have on your bookshelf nonetheless. Dr. Sood is the director of complimentary and integrative medicine at Mayo Rochester. His theory is that when we focus our attention and learn to positively interpret life we are capable of training our brain to naturally recognize good, all of which decreases stress and gives more peace and joy. His work brings me back to these words every time:

"Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." Romans 12:2 

and also this:

"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5

It's insanely hard to focus in this sort of way when you've got 3 people talking at you and dinner to get on the table while folding clothes and knitting dolly hats and lesson planning and trying to keep a 3 year old's play dough filled hands out of the science experiment, but today was a little better than yesterday and hopefully tomorrow will be better than today. The triumphs seem like tiny little anthills, but collectively they are mountains. When I started this brain training years ago I usually used it for emergencies, like when I was at the end of my rope. I missed the whole point of it. Gratitude is a lifelong habit to develop, a habit that replaces discontentment, ungratefulness. Today I'm grateful for people who live courageously grateful for life and all God's glory. I know that even they have at some point struggled to maintain a grateful heart. 

Good night readers, its high time I replaced a late bedtime with an earlier one.

Thursday, October 03, 2013

iPhone Post

I'm doing this from my phone so forgive me if a random autocorrect turns something into a Spanish word.

Top 5:

1: We're obsessed with Duck Dynasty, for too many reasons to list. For one, I'm half redneck, just ask my mom and she'll tell ya. Two, they are hilarious. Three, faith, family, and facial hair. Four, their love of the great outdoors. I could go on.

2: Albert has worked too many hours in the last 5 days. I know us resident families are supposed to be a tough breed, but no matter how long we've been in training we just can't get used to the long hours. He misses us, we miss him, we miss not having anything to do. I am really grateful this is temporary. All we can do is laugh at the chaos and make the most of the time we do have.

3: The big kids started choir and it rocks. Jacob gets a little distracted, but otherwise we all love it.

4: The weather has dropped to the 90's! Hallelujah!

5: I am learning to knit. Is there anything we can't learn on our own nowadays with YouTube and endless tutorials? Thank you, Al Gore, for creating the WWW.