Painting & Life

The other day, through a pretty roundabout way - I heard about someone who was talking about me and my blog. The way that they were speaking wasn't in a very positive way - and it was apparent that they had totally misinterpreted what I had written. I like to think that I am a positive person. I'm fairly flexible when obstacles crop up and always try to look for the good. I live a happy life and always try my best to share that happiness with others. 

I think that sometimes people interpret that happiness as being fake or unrealistic and so I try to temper things (like our blog) with "real life" as well as all of the happy things that are going on. But sometimes I forget that it's hard for people to read a blog and interpret correctly the attitude or voice behind the words. I hate the thought that people would read my blog and think that I was a negative person who complains about too many things. Not that I really care what people think of me, but I hate the thought that my children would someday read the things that I've written and not believe 100% that I loved my life and the joy that they brought to me. I want to be known as a good, kind, loving person who loved her life with all that she had - even through the tough times. I want to be known as the kind of person who may not have been perfect, but certainly tried her very hardest to love and serve those around her. I want my children to know that I loved them every minute of every day - even on the days when we were all tired and a little bit grumpy. I want them to know that I loved God and trusted in his timing, even when things weren't happening in the exact way that I wanted them to happen. I want to live my life so that if people were to say negative things about me - no one would believe them. Obviously, I'm not there yet... but I hope that someday I will be.

It's hard to balance the good and the not-so-good when trying to give an accurate picture of our life. I look back at our blog through the time when I was having an extremely emotional and painful miscarriage and I didn't say a word. It was too personal, and so I didn't share. Part of me wishes that I would have said something. Other times on our blog, I have shared some tough things that we are going through. Life can be hard - but I don't want to post all of the frustrating aspects of life for fear that they will overshadow all the good in my life. Frustrating things happen, but that doesn't mean that life isn't good. 

Because, our life is so good. 

I am grateful every day for the life that I have with my handsome husband and our sweet Lydia Elise. 

I'm grateful for our home, our jobs, our family, our religion. 

I'm grateful to know that the Lord has a plan, and even when the tempest is raging, I have the hope and faith that our Lord has the strength to help us overcome and calm the waves and comfort us in our sorrow.

I'm grateful for a blog where I can write out my thoughts, share our family memories, and keep in touch with family and friends. 

I have many things to be grateful for. And, with that being said - I hope that anyone who reads this blog (whether it be a friend now, or a child later) knows that the person who writes this blog is a happy and loving person, who is trying every day to be a happier and more loving person. I'm not going to try to hide away the un-polished aspects of our lives, but I'm also not going to be afraid to post about the beautiful and happy things that make up this thing called life. 

And, in the spirit of sharing what our life really looks like: 

This is Lydia's first experience with painting. She loved it. She tried to eat the paint a million times, and preferred to stick her fingers in the paint and play in the water with the paintbrush, but you could tell that she was having a good time. The event didn't last very long, maybe five or ten minutes, but it was fun and we both enjoyed it. 

About halfway through we switched our rinse cup from a glass one to a plastic one (she kept trying to knock it off her tray). She wouldn't stop eating the paint, and so I took the paint tray off her high chair and when I turned back around she was drinking the paint water. (After which I frantically found the paper that had come with the paint tray to make sure that it really was non-toxic.) 

And that is real life here. Some fun with paint - some drinking of the paint water.

That is just the way our happy life rolls. 

Things I think.

I seem to go through stages with blogging. I get behind on things that I want to post about and when I finally get the motivation to blog them - I do them all at one time. Like four in a day for a week and half straight. Then I slack off and let myself get behind again. Oh well. I love blogging. That's why I do it. (Of course, I also love to print out our blog books as our family journal.) So whenever I get stressed out about it - I just stop and remind myself that I should just do it when I love it. Some of my favorite posts are the ones that are about little funny adventures or about the random thoughts of my brain. So I'm trying to remember to write more of those instead of just about what we did.

That being said... Here are some of the things I have been thinking about lately.

-I love Lehi. I really do. I love how it still has that small town feel, even though it's huge. The other day we were talking about the population of Lehi and so I looked it up. In 1990 the population was less than 9,000 people. In 2011 it was almost 49,000. It's amazing. As I was driving by the Lehi Roller Mill I was thinking about how much has changed - and then when I drove past the abandoned gas station by I15 and 2100 North, I had this irresistible urge to stop and take a picture of it because it won't be there for much longer. Some new building will come in and no one will ever remember what it looked like when we moved here. 

-It makes me sad when people talk so negatively about gaining weight during pregnant. I totally understand the feeling of wanting to look nice and be healthy but when I hear people talk about hating their body because they are getting fat (or about not wanting to get pregnant ever again because then they would have to loose that extra 40 pounds) it really makes me SO sad. Not only do I feel sad for them because they are missing out on the beauty and joy of a happy healthy pregnancy, but because I immediately feel that they must think that I was fat and ugly during pregnancy. But you know what? I didn't ever feel fat and ugly. Of course, I was big and sometimes uncomfortable - but I thought my body was more beautiful than it had ever been before. Maybe that's too much for some people. But I'm being honest. I wish I could help people understand that sometimes you have to look past the scale and take life for what it is. Pregnancy is about so much more than "gaining weight" and "ruining your body". I feel like people sometimes take for granted what a blessing and a miracle it is to be pregnant.

-On a similar note: I read this article about passing on body hatred several weeks ago and still haven't removed it from my browser tabs on the iPad. I. Loved. It. Again, I loved it. I cried as I read it, and as I am rereading it now, I can feel the tears welling up again. I love the closing statement: "Let us honour and respect our bodies for what they do instead of despising them for how they appear. Focus on living healthy and active lives, let our weight fall where it may, and consign our body hatred in the past where it belongs." This sums up exactly how I want to live my life. I want to teach Lydia that she can be anything and do anything and that she is inherently valuable. Her divine nature, her role as my daughter, her life - these things make her valuable. The way she looks is a tiny tiny tiny part of her whole self and she can contribute so many things that have nothing to do with appearance. I want her to know that she is smart, funny, and caring, and that those qualities (and the qualities like them) are the most important. I want her to be confident in herself because of the things that she does and that she accomplishes. To quote from the article again, (Lydia's name inserted) "When [Lydia] looks to us to learn how to be a woman, we need to be the best role models we can. We need to show her with our words and our actions that women are good enough just the way they are. And for her to believe us, we need to believe it ourselves." This is why I am making an effort now to stop criticizing myself each time I look at a picture of me. No more "Please take another one, my bangs look funny, or my arm looks fat, or whatever tiny detail I don't approve of." This is why I am making an effort to gracefully acknowledge and accent complements that I receive instead of saying "No, but you are very nice."  This is why I am making an effort NOW to love myself for who and I and the things that I have done/do in my life instead of focusing so much on my appearance. Because I can't just tell Lydia these things, I have to believe them and act on them. This is why right now I am making an effort to live a healthy and active life and to let my weight fall where it may and instead spend my energy that used to go toward worrying and criticizing myself on serving my family and friends and letting the more important things shine through in my countenance.  

--On a lighter note: When people do smilies like (: instead of like :) I always think that they are doing a frownie face like :(  - because the parenthesis is the wrong way. Sometimes it makes for really confusing emoticons. "I really love my husband (:" ends up in my head as "Oh, they really love their husband... but they are unhappy about it. Wait. Is that a smiley face? It looks like a frowny face. Oh, nope. The colon is on the right-hand side which makes it a smiley face." Jeez. Am I missing something? (I do notice them more in people younger than me - so maybe it's a generational thing?)

--It may be towards the end of the summer, but we are finally getting a move-on on putting plants in our yard. We don't like bees, so we are going with mostly non-flowering and easy to maintain plants in our flower beds. The thing that I am thinking about the most is whether or not we should put a little bench in our front flower bed. The sun hits our backyard hard in the evening and so we will probably be spending lots of hours in our front yard. Most of our neighbors have covered porches -but we do not. So it might be nice to have a bench to sit on. But I worry that it will look funny to me to have a bench in the flower bed. Hmmm. Obviously I haven't decided yet.

And that's it for today's edition of "Things I think." Some of them are a little deep. Next time I'll do a "Thinks I Think - Light" Haha.