Thanksgiving 2010

This year Tatum’s class did a “Harvest Celebration” and program on Wednesday. It was complete with handprint turkey shirts they made last week.

 

We met in her classroom to enjoy a “Harvest Snack” and do some fun activities.

After that, we went to the cafeteria to watch them perform the Thanksgiving songs they’d learned. It was ADORABLE!

She was a little nervous to be up in front of everyone. But when she was all finished, she was so proud of herself!

Later in the day, I went to Harley’s class where the class’s parents had prepared a Thanksgiving Feast. We made homemade cornbread muffin to contribute. She was very proud of them. (Love the silly turkey hat.)

She’d also decorated her placemat, and I LOVED what it said…

Thanksgiving day was spent hanging out as a family. Chandler helped me make waffles with our new waffle maker, which he was VERY excited about. When I say he “helped me”, I mean he read the owner’s manual cover to cover while I made waffles. (He does have a little bit of Papa’s blood in him.)

The boys played xbox, and dad had a little nap. (No pictures of either. ) Mom spent the entire day in the kitchen, which was exhausting. However, I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. I really enjoy the cooking and baking that accompanies Thanksgiving festivities. (Once again, no pictures.) The girls spent most of the morning coloring Thanksgiving pictures. It was pretty cute, so of course, I took a picture.

In the afternoon, we headed over to Klint and Corinne’s house. They hosted this year. Once again, we missed mom and dad! (We tried to Skype with them earlier in the day, but they were off having they’re own Thanksgiving—African style. So we never did catch up with them. Bummer!) We spent a few hours eating, hanging out, playing Rock Band, shopping through Black Friday adds, and even opened up a couple pre-Christmas gifts that had been arranged by Papa and Grammy.

It was another great Thanksgiving!

YW in Excellence 2010

Last night was the Lindsay 2nd Ward YW in Excellence. We based our evening on Pres. Uchtdorf’s talk, “Your Happily Ever After” from the YW General Board Mtg back in March 2010. It’s a GREAT talk!

It was such a great night! My presidency went to a lot of work over the past few months to make this night perfect. I would flounder without them. They’re FABULOUS! (Sorry the pictures aren’t that great. My camera died as I went to take the first pic, so I had to use my cell phone. Our colors were black and white with hot pink accents. SO CUTE!!!)

We gave the girls a picture frame that had a picture of the new Gilbert Temple that’s being built just a few miles away…

I was SO proud of all the Young Women. They displayed projects they’ve been working on all year. Their displays were so awesome! But I’m not surprised, because THEY are all so awesome!

Each YW, leader, and a couple moms who’ve been doing the program with their daughters presented projects. The YW told what they learned from doing that project. Next, one of the YW spoke about how her testimony is strengthened by personal progress, and did a GREAT job! Then, all the YW and leaders sang the song, “I Will” by Hillary Weeks, sounding BEAUTIFUL!

Next, I spoke, using Pres. Uchtdorf’s talk, with a little help from Grandpa Bird. Strange combination, right? As I prepared my talk, one of Grandpa’s famous phrases came back to me… Growing up, Grandpa would punch us in the arm or kick us in the rear end and say, “That's what you get for nothing! Think what you’d get if you did something!” As I continued to prepare my message, I realized that that phrase was applicable here, too. How? Our mere existence here and ability to return to His presence after this life is a gift from a loving Heavenly Father… “That’s what you get for nothing!” If we participate in the personal progress program, attend our meetings and mutual, read our scriptures, say our prayers, strive to be worthy to enter the temple and prepare to make temple covenants, the eternal rewards are endless… “Think what you’d get if you did something!” I also quoted Pres. Uchtdorf a lot; too many times to put them all here. But one of the best was, “Stand in holy places and BE NOT MOVED, regardless of temptation or trial!” Such a great talk!

Lastly, our Bishop spoke using Pres. Uchtdorf’s talk as well. He told them that their “Happily Ever After” starts today, but isn’t complete until they reach the presence of their Heavenly Father after this life. Then, he talked to the parents about how, in fairy tales, there’s always trials that the Princess must overcome. Often times, the antagonist in the story is the wicked parental figure. He urged the parents to be careful that they don’t create an environment where they become that antagonist. The YW will struggle, and the parents have a responsibility to create an environment where their daughters can spiritually progress, including encouraging them to attend all their meetings and mutual activities. 

We have GREAT YW, and they’re doing a GREAT job of remaining faithful. This night was a great opportunity for them to show just how faithful they are. I love them all and feel inadequate as their YW President. I learn more from them than they will ever learn from me. Hopefully, when I am a mother of teenage daughters, I will have a little insight into how I can help them to remain faithful, too.

The good… the bad… and the ugly

I’m told by Eric, that since this blog serves as our family history/journal, I have to blog about everything… the good, the bad, and the ugly. Well, if you look back through our posts over the years, we’ve had our share of the good. I guess it’s time to document a little bit of the bad and the ugly. :(

Back in June, I went to girl’s camp for a week. I admit that going is always a challenge… getting everything and everyone ready, arranging schedules, getting babysitters, grocery shopping, packing, etc. However, it’s always a great experience! This year was especially wonderful. We had a new camp director who also happened to be a good friend, Rachel Buchanan. She did an AMAZING job of making sure EVERYTHING was taken care of, which is not an easy task, considering that we do real camping; none of this Camp LoMia business like we did growing up. Camp is whatever we haul in, camp in, bring with, and pack out. So it’s a major chore to get it all organized and ready. I also had my 2 YW councilors there for the week, as well as 14 great girls.

The attitudes of the girls were great, and as leaders, we had a BLAST! We even won the spirit stick on the 1st day because we had the task of helping the kitchen staff to get ready for and serve dinner, as well as clean all the dishes for the entire camp once dinner was over. I was SO proud of our girls. They jumped right in, even singing girl’s camp songs while they did it. EVERY SINGLE GIRL HELPED!!! Every single girl had a great attitude, and it really made a difference. Here’s a picture of our group with the spirit stick (the pic is missing our older girls who were 4th yrs and YCL’s. They had to spend most of their time with other groups as part of their certification/assignments)…

One day we were given the job of cleaning the port-o-potties. Not cool! However, instead of complaining, our girls jumped in and even made a few laughs while taking care of business (no pun intended).

One of my favorite parts about camp is the “ward time”. This was just a little time here and there when we weren’t running off to certification classes, or taking care of chores. This was time when we just hung out and talked, washed our hair, played games, and did craft projects. One of the things I loved most about this time was that our older girls would gravitate away from the wards they were YCL’s for, and back to our ward. I was so thrilled to see this happen. Those older girls wanted to be with us, and get to know us better. We really bonded through that time, and I am so grateful for the unity that “ward time” afforded us.

I spent my week hanging out with the 3rd yrs. I only had 2, but they were AWESOME!!! And so much fun. We went to classes, made fires, and spent the week acting pretty silly. But it was great! On Thursday of that week, the 3rd yrs went to a fire station about a half hour away. The station had donated all the water for girl’s camp for the week. That’s alot of water. So, the 3rd yrs went to wash their fire trucks to tell them thank you. It was a great time, like all the rest.

After washing the trucks, there were lots of pictures taken… of girls, of leaders, of everyone on the trucks. As leaders, we joined in the fun and took this picture…

After taking that picture, one of the leaders did a cute little toe touch off the back of the fire truck, and I decided, after much coaxing, that I would do the same. So, I did. And I’m told that it was FABULOUS! However, (here comes the BAD part) the way I landed wasn’t so fabulous. My foot went out and my knee went in. It felt like my knee cap shifted to the right, while my thigh and shin bones slammed together. NOT GOOD! Here’s the picture taken of me directly after landing. (See the height of the fire truck behind me? Yeah… I see now how stupid the whole thing was. Hindsight is 20/20, right?)

I immediately felt some pain, but thought I could probably just walk it off. After walking around for a few minutes, pretending nothing was wrong, I started to go into shock. AWESOME!!! I immediately dropped to the ground to sit for a while. I felt sick to my stomach, dizzy, flushed, pale… all of those symptoms we had talked about at our 3rd yr first aide certification the day before. CRAP!!! I knew there was something wrong, but was too embarrassed to admit it. So I carried on with the activity as best I could. Then, I drove my car load of girls back to camp and dropped them off.

After dropping off the girls, I realized that my leg was starting to go numb. When I pulled up my pant leg to see if there was any visible damage, I realized that it had swollen to the point that the pants were cutting off circulation, and that’s why my leg was numb. I panicked! I couldn’t get out of the car because it hurt so bad, and I didn’t know what to do. I knew at that point, that I had done something pretty serious to my knee, but was stuck in a place where there was nobody who could do anything. I called Eric on my cell and told him what I’d done, and asked him to help me figure out what to do. Eventually, Rachel Buchanan walked by, so I stopped and asked her to drive with me down to the nurses’ station to find the nurse and get her opinion.

The nurse helped me ice the knee, but the pain was pretty overwhelming. One of the other ladies at camp had some pain pills for her back problems, so she gave me one which helped a ton. I also received a blessing from a member of the Stake Presidency. There is only one specific phrase I remember from the blessing (which I’ll tell you about later) because I was so blown away at what most of my blessing was. It wasn’t about me, it was about what my injury would do for the girls under my stewardship. It talked about how they’d have to step up and serve each other, as well as me. It talked about how their testimonies would grow through watching me deal with my injury. I was floored by that. In my time of need, the Lord wanted me to know that those I was worried about, would be ok… that they would probably be better off because of my injury.

Over the next 2 days, that blessing was played out as I watched the girls jump in and serve each other in capacities that I would have normally filled. I watched the 3rd yrs become leaders to the younger girls, and I watched the younger girls gain admiration and respect for the older girls. I watched as the girls that I have served for 2 year, stepped up to serve me when I needed them. Some brought me food and drinks, some gave up their chairs so I could put my leg up, some said prayers for me, some just sat with me while I was icing my knee and made me laugh to get my mind off all of it. It could have been very easy for those girls to think poorly of me; like I deserved what I got because I did something so stupid. Instead, they chose to serve me. Nothing unifies and bonds people together like service. I will have a bond with those girls forever, and that never would have been that way without my injury.

The one specific part I can remember from my blessing directly after my injury was that he blessed me that I “would have the faith and patience necessary to be able to heal.” I’ve remembered that often as I get frustrated with my limitations. After MANY Drs. appointments, x-rays, and an MRI, it was determined that I fractured my tibia, tore through my ACL, and tore part way through the MCL. AWESOME!!! I’m feeling pretty functional, but, I constantly have to watch my footing. Not good for a mom on the run.

The Dr. determined that the best course of action for me is to have surgery to replace my ACL, and repair my MCL. So, on January 10th, I’ll have surgery, and THAT’S the UGLY truth!

Grand Canyon Trip

Last week, we took the family to the Grand Canyon. It’s an amazing sight to behold, and the kids loved it!

They mostly loved that there was snow on the ground. I think they’d have been happy if that’s all they saw.

But, the looks on these faces prove that they had a great time…

We also took Eric’s coworker who is visiting from India for a month. He’s a young single guy with no children, so I was a little worried that the 4 hour drive… each way… with 4 kids, would drive him to the edge. I’m happy to report that he handled it very well. I think he actually enjoyed their company.

All in all, it was another successful adventure for the Stewart Family.

Veteran’s Day Celebration 2010

Today was the Veteran’s Day Celebration at the school. They always do such a great job with the celebration. As in other years, we turned in my Uncle Keith’s name to be honored in the Flag Garden honoring those who died in their service. This always means a lot to the kids to see him honored there. Keith Strong was my Uncle, but I never got to meet him. His plane went down, and was never recovered. My sweet Aunt JoAnn lost him when they were young with 2 very young children. Our kids have always felt a connection to him, and respect for what he and his family sacrificed for our freedoms.

The kids were all involved in the celebration in one way or another. Chandler (5th grade) made a paper quilt to honor the Veteran’s. His quilt square was really creative. He’s become very artistic…

Shelby (4th grade) was in the chorus. Because of her height, she is always in the front row. She doesn’t like being the center of attention, so it’s kind of hard for her to be front and center. She has been SO brave! I’m so proud of how well she did, standing there in front. She knew every word, and did a GREAT job!…

Harley (1st grade) had a small speaking part that she practiced, and had down perfectly—“…While we are far apart.” She did great, and looked adorable with her big yellow ribbon…

Tatum sang a song with the other Kindergarteners. She knew every word and had a great time participating in her first Veteran’s Day Celebration…

I’m glad I got to be there for another great celebration.