Hayden's Thanksgiving 2013

Hayden had to write an essay about what he was thankful for on Thanksgiving. He's funny. Here it is:

      Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful. First I am thankful for the 49ers football. The 49ers are my family's favorite football team. We are going to California where the 49ers are. I like the 49ers because they are the best.
      Another thing about thanksgiving is my family. I love our family. Our family is nice but we are more nice on thanksgiving. Our family is fun on thanksgiving.
     Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for football and family.


Other things he thought about writing on-turkey, pilgrims and Indians, and food. At least he has his priorities straight. :)

No Donughts

When my oldest child was going through a "scared of everything once bedtimes comes around" phase, I taught him about prayer. I told him that whenever he was scared he needed to pray to Heavenly Father and ask Him to take away his fears. But I told him there was a second part to that as well. Along with asking for help-he needed to let his fear go. He didn't understand me, so I came up with an analogy to help him. Here it is:

Pretend you're trying to eat healthier, so you try to stay away from donughts. But there is this guy who is ALWAYS trying to give you a donught. So you decided to just hold on to the donught-but not eat it. You won't, your trying to eat better right? We'll that same guy follows you around and tells you how good the donught is and how much you want it. So now all you can think about it that donught. You've asked your dad for help to not eat the donught, but you won't let him take the donught away from you. That is the same with prayer.

In Hayden's case-he would ask Heavenly Father to take away his fears, but he wasn't giving them to Him so he could take them away. I'd say, "ask for help." Then he'd say, "but what if I start thinking about it again?" My reply, "then you haven't given your donught to Heavenly Father. Satan is the one who gave you that donught. (The scared donught) because he likes it when you are scared. So he wants you to hold on to that donught so you stay scared. If you push the donught away and give it to Heavenly Father, then you won't have anything to be scared of because you won't have that 'scared donught' anymore."

Why do I share this? Well because I've been thinking a lot about what donught a I've been holding onto lately. And part of becoming "a changed person" means giving up my donughts. It's harder then you'd think. Sometimes our donughts can be comforting, in a strange way. Like the "donught of pride" or the "donught of laziness" or my Texas size donught...the "donught of things past." Lately I've been praying to help me get through things and get over things that I'm working on. Then I remembered the donught analogy and it hit me. In order to be truly helped, I need to get rid of my donughts. So I did-at least one so far.i have a lot of donughts I'm still clinging to, but that's a start. And I, like my scared son, wondered "what if I think about it again and all my feelings come back?" So in my prayer, along with asking for help. Getting over things, I also asked to not think about my donught again. And so far so good. Anytime Satan starts to head toward me with his box of donughts, I just say (in my head), NO THANK YOU! I DO NOT WANT THAT DONUGHT!

So my question for you to PONDER (no need to share them with me.) is, what donughts are you holding onto? Are they holding you back from being truly happy?

Ch Ch Ch Ch Chan-ges!

Feeling a need for changes. In all aspects of my life. First change...my blog. I thought I would switch it up a bit and make it more of a "fresh" feel to it, since I'm feeling...fresh? I'm cleansing myself of things that are bogging me down. And it feels good. Will I start using this more then Facebook? Probably not. But I probably should post some of my "bigger thoughts" on here so I don't draaaaag on on Facebook.  I suppose this will be more for me then anything or anyone else. I am keeping my blog public (since I believe we can all learn something from everyone). I PROBABLY will be posting about my depressing issues along with any and all thoughts that go with it. Ok...that being said...bring on the change!

Recovering project Start to finish

The before shot

 Started with taking off the 'kick skirt'

 Step 2-pretty much just worked from the bottom up

 This pic is hard to tell, but I was taking off the back-and it had a line of nails holding it on.

 A straight line made to curve with a thin piece of cardboard.

 Taking off the sides

 Popping off the front pieces-harder then it looked.

 The front with the piece popped off.

 The piece was held on by nails and cardboard.

 Half way done

 Taking off the arm fabric

 I found that the easiest way to take the fabric off was to grab a chuck around a staple and twist

 I had to remember to hammer any staples that broke off or any other thing poking out that might snag

 The front-under the cushions. This stupid wood was insanely hard to staple. It kept bending my staples.

 What are these two strings for? Oh! That's how they made the crease in the front cushions.

 See-crease in the front cushions. Made by a string.

 Ta Da! A naked couch!

 What's in your wallet? I mean couch. (and I'm not talking about under the cushions)

 Adding more padding.

 Cutting out the new fabric. Lay down old fabric and trace around with white crayon. Sorry I didn't take a lot of pictures of the 'put back together' phase. I didn't have patience to recover AND take pictures

And now...the finished product. After several hours, lots of frustration (because I'm a perfectionist) and 3 sewing machines later.  Hayden said to me, "Mom, it looks like you are making a real couch!" So I must have done something right.

TARTS and PIE - My depression breakthrough!

So, I don't really have a cute way to lead into my post, so I'm just going to start typing...

I had my therapy last Friday and it went pretty good. I didn't have any "AH HA" moments while there, but we did talk about pie. 'Pie' = time, attention, and sense of value. We related my mom's time and attention to pie and how I didn't feel like I got enough of her pie, because I had to share it with 7 other siblings, plus a dad, church callings and such. Long story short, my depression has come from a combination of low self esteem and feeling like I didn't have enough "pie" (from my parents and siblings) growing up.  Needless to say, I turned to others for the 'pie' I was seeking. (mainly from boys and making wrong choices)

So childhood life went on to middle school, then high school. That's when I became the football manager and also got a job.  Both places filled my need for 'pie'. But then I graduated and moved, but all was well-I managed to find some 'pie' in Indiana too!  Then I moved again.  Without looking for it 'pie' found me (Matt) and we got married. AWESOME! I now had someone who was legally obligated to give me 'pie'!  Alas, Matt did not have pie to share. Not that he didn't want to-he had all the ingredients, just not put together- he just liked to eat the fruit out of the can. Having 'pie' was never that important to him before we met, so he was unsure how to give me the 'pie' I was needing.

Then I got pregnant, which was good because babies LOVE 'pie' so we could eat our 'pie' together (each giving the other the time and attention they wanted) Then came along baby number 2. That baby DEMANDED all of my 'pie'. So much so that I didn't have ANY time to get more 'pie' for myself or for the others who needed some of my mom/wife 'pie'.  That's when the depression really hit.  I was out of 'pie', I didn't know where to get more and my life seemed pretty hopeless.  Soon baby 2 eased up on her needing of  'pie' and I (through working and such) was able to get some 'pie' for myself.  That's when baby 3 came along. Baby 3 was A LOT like baby 1-which was a good thing because neither of them required much 'pie' to be happy.  The bad part was, because of my "having to give up so much pie to baby 2" experience, any time that baby 3 needed 'pie' I was VERY reluctant to give any away. (Which then made me feel like an awful mom-then added to my depression)

So, now skip to the last few weeks...A few weeks ago I sent out an email to my family and some friends 'asking for pie' (not in those words exactly and I didn't know that's what I was doing-but that's a post for another time)  About 3 weeks after I sent out the email I had my most recent therapy session.  That's when my therapist told me that now I am an adult-I can make my own pie.  It didn't really "hit me" till I was thinking about it later. And it "hit me" even more when I was talking about it with my sisters and my mom.

I DON'T NEED OTHERS TO GIVE ME 'PIE'! I CAN MAKE MY OWN!!! (this is a new thought to me)

So, here is the sort of confusing part-so I hope you can follow my thought process and get my "break through" What I really wanted was TARTS from people, not PIE.

TARTS from other, PIE is my own doing-follow me so far?

So what does TARTS mean? T=time, A=attention, R=respect, T=truth/trust, S= sincerity.
And PIE, you ask? P=purpose, I=identity/individual, E=enough

I can not force others to give me their TARTS.  If I do-I just might receive a poisoned (negative) tart, which would then give me food poisoning. And I don't want that.  I can ask for others to give me suggestions on how to make my 'pie' (i.e. use less salt-or sarcasm. Or you can never have enough sugar-kindness) and I will have some of their TARTS if they would like to give it to me out of love.  I don't have to accept poisoned tarts or even flavors that I don't care for-and that's OK. Yes, it will take me a while to figure out how to make my pie (I've started working on that-but it's a whole other post) And I will find things in my recipe that I want to add or take away (i.e. being passionate about something and stop being judgmental) but it's all trial and error-just like baking!

*For those who don't need an analogy to understand...I am the only one who can change MY life. I am the one who can change my low self-esteem, and STOP internalizing EVERYTHING. I can take control of the things I can change, and accept the things I can't.  If I have a problem-I can fix it instead of waiting for others to fix it.  If it's not my problem-I DON'T NEED TO BE THE ONE TO FIX IT! (yes, if the person asks for my help, I will willing give it with love and concern)

It may seem little and meaningless to others-but this is a BIG DEAL for me and I am feeling awesome because of it!!!! Bring on life!

playing around with my new photo editing software!

Why Bon Bon....?

So the story behind the nickname goes a little like this...

It was the last week of my 9th grade year at Union Middle School in Sandy, UT. I knew my family was moving during the summer, so I decided to make it a little more interesting for me. I decided to make up a new nickname for myself. I tried out a few different ones during that last week, like Bambi, and Fletcher(to name a fed) but the one that I liked the best was Bon Bon. Not exactly sure why, I just liked to say it. Anyway, on the first day of school I remember in science class when the teacher was taking roll, he would call your name and if you went by a nickname you were to tell him (I.e. Matt instead of Matthew). Well, I decided to tell him my nickname was Bon Bon and that I had just moved and everyone at my old school called me that. No one knew any differently, so it stuck. It was awesome! I had students calling me that, and teachers....everyone! It was kind of like my own little inside joke. :) Toobad it fizzled out by my senior year. Some people would still call me that, and I thought it was cool. Now I guess I'm the Bon Bon Mom. :)