We all go crazy sometimes...Don't we?!

I'm figuring out that life is not a long, straight drive down a newly paved road with nothing on it but me. It's a rickety roller-coaster with rusty wheels that need periodical greasing. Steep climbs with breath-taking views at the top and heart-stopping dives with near-death experiences next to cliff edges. Sitting next to a loved one that sometimes wants to push you out, and vice versa, but that, mostly, you want to hang on to with all your strength. Feeling somehow energized, enlightened, and gaspingly short-winded and small-minded all at the same time. How is this possible? 18 years ago I was a single girl with no IDEA of what the future held for me, but hopeful. Here, in the present, I am a happily married mother of 6, with no IDEA of what the future holds for me, but hopeful, if a little overwhelmed at times! Sometimes I feel like I could conquer the world, at other times like the world just got up and sat down on me. I like the former better. What do people do who don't know who they are and where they can turn for help? I would be a complete wreck. Sometimes my only salvation from my own self-imposed insanity is going to church on Sunday, and it's a trick getting there...but I'm always so glad I did. What do people do who don't know they can pray and get help? If they don't have the faith that there is a God who loves them and answers their need, sometimes before the words are even expressed out loud. I am feeling so grateful for this knowledge! I am a daughter of Heavenly Father, who loves me, and I love him...I have so many shortcomings and weaknesses! but...He loves me anyway. What merciful compassion. I find myself telling my children things like, "When you make good choices, you are happy...when you choose bad things, you are sad...why would you want to not be happy??" And then catch my breath....so obvious!
It's been snowing off and on pretty hard today. We were going to go see my brother and sis-in-law today and cut down a tree, but ended up buying a pre-cut for the first time in several years. Turns out we're surrounded by nat'l forest, but can't cut a tree in it unless we drive for a long time. We'll remember that next time and go closer to Thanksgiving when the weather's a little better.
I miss my Mom and Dad. Rob's mom came to stay for a couple of days. The older kids went to visit the Reeder grandparents a little while ago and they're going again next week. It's been a month since I've seen my folks, and a long time before that. COME VISIT! Stay a couple of days! The kids need you. We all need you. Be no more strangers!
Friends in Logan. I'm grateful for email. Thank you, friends, who write to me. It has been a difficult 5 1/2 months. I didn't know how much I would miss my friends in Logan. I've always been the one who has moved and moved on without too much thought. Not this time! Even with some very good friends here, I have not wanted to be forgotten in Logan. How do you keep friends that you thought you'd be near forever after you move? Haven't figured that out. Blogs seem a little impersonal sometimes.
Isn't it great we have Christmas right at the darkest time of the year? I've never really thought about that before...Winter solstice coincides with the celebration of the birth of the light of the world. We've been getting the most incredible sunrises lately-pink all over the sky and cool cloud shapes. Who gets to paint those??

Post-Thanksgiving Bloat

http://http://www.lds.org/conference/languages/0,6353,310-1,00.htmlOk, I know, it's been a long time since I posted. Oh well, get used to my M.O. ... I am, at best, an inconsistent writer-kind of like my journal. I actually wrote a long post about Halloween time and in the process of trying to get pics on there, I lost it. (Picture it: Me, "rackenshnaken stupid pictures..." Kids: "Mom! mmommommommomomomomommm!!! MOM! I'm HUNGRY!!!" Me: "justaminute. justaminute....OK! I'm COMING!" Somehow after that it never comes together again.
I'm writing this having eaten a LOT. of EVERYTHING. It's the day AFTER, and I don't know if I'll ever come off the carbohydrate-induced roller coaster. Sluggish? It's my middle name today. HEY! I know! I'll eat some pie! That'll help...maybe a roll, too. and potatoes and gravy. It's ALMOST 11 a.m., close enough to lunch time, right? I'm hoping that when the supply dries up, so will my desire to eat my own weight in lunch.
Things I'm thankful for:
My husband, who shares his pie with me.
My kids, who are willing to try new dishes that the neighbors brought over: brussel sprouts with parsnips and carrots. Actually, this was VERY good. I HATE brussel sprouts. They're the only veggie I actually can't swallow. But I keep trying it, just in case. It was a success this time.
Our new (2005) white Toyota Sienna. I LOVE this vehicle. Especially since it has windows that roll up and down without getting stuck, a side door that doesn't fall off when you open it, a glove box that doesn't lose its contents when you open it due to the non-attachedness of the door to the car and functional clock. If you want to know why we had to get a new van, you weren't paying attention to that last part.
My life. It's a good one. I wouldn't trade it for anyone else's, warts and all.
My pillow. It's about to claim a victim as I type this in bed.
My Mom and Dad. They're the best I could have ever hoped for.
Good books, both serious and recreational. I've been reading my Conference Ensign http://www.lds.org/conference/languages/0,6353,310-1,00.html (I don't know how to do links very well yet, but since I've noticed that there are people commenting on my blog from other countries, maybe this will help). There's so much HOPE. It's so hard to be scared about things happening in the world when you read these talks. Also I re-read the Twilight books before going to the movie...Have to say, I was disappointed in the movie. Not NEARLY enough detail.
Having sufficient for our needs. Maybe not a lot of frosting, but we are able to be fed, clothed and sheltered. I'm so grateful.
This was a long post, I'll try to do better! :-)

Marie-Therese Gown GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!

Marie-Therese Gown GIVEAWAY !!!!!!! Gorgeous!!

General Conference Sunday

We had such a great day yesterday. Slept in forever, watched the first session of conference with no interruptions. We were worried for a minute because the doofuses that put up our satellite DISH put it in the wrong spot, so every time the wind blows, a tree gets in the way. So we listened to the radio and put the TV on mute. Jackie Chan lip syncing and all. After that session ended, we hurried and had some lunch and went up the canyon to a place called Cherry Springs. Of course, we forgot the camera. Sorry. Use your imaginations: incredible leaves, little creek, over-hanging boughs of wonder. :-) It was just wonderful. Family togetherness, nature, good spirit, what more could you ask for? Glorious. Came home, watched the last session (this conference seems extra good this time). I think it's so cool that with all the economic turmoil, etc. that we've had lately, there was no "We told you so!", no extra emphasis on being prepared, more than is ever mentioned. Either we know it, or we don't. Either we're out of debt and solvent....or we're not. Any questions, people?? We had our traditional Conference Feast: roast chicken, carrot-potatoes and gravy, homemade rolls, cranberry salad and acorn squash. Allie's little tummy was stretched tight. We all helped clean up and put the girls to bed early. It turns out that when Julie can sleep as long as she needs to, she needs 12 hours of sleep! This is my 6 year old! Since we get up at 6 a.m., I figured a 6:30 bedtime was not out of the borders of reason.

General Conference Saturday

Today was a good day. I slept until 7:21 a.m. (unheard of! I get up at 5:30 on weekdays, about 6:30 on weekends) and suddenly woke up realizing I was supposed to be doing our Biggest Loser Weekly Challenge at Curves. At 7:45. I got up, got dressed, and left. Pretty fun. Didn't get back till almost 9:30. Ate breakfast (you've got to try this: fresh peaches cut up on mini wheats, fiber 1, yogurt and milk. Sometimes I put blueberries on too. De-lish.), raced into the shower just in time to hear the first speaker for General Conference. President Monson announced 4 new temples, including one in Rome! I don't know why, that just sounds so cool. Major headquarters for the Catholic Church, joined by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I love it. We have a family tradition that every October conference we get out our WONDERFUL 72-hour backpacks that my mom put together for all the members of her family (what is it, 19 grandkids, 4 kids, 4 kids' spouses, 1 grandmother and her and my dad!) for Christmas one year. Of COURSE, the food it contains needs to be rotated every year, so we have ready-made snacks while we're watching. I think Allie chewed and spit out 15 pieces of gum. Grant had 3 or 4 juice boxes and then wondered why his stomach hurt. I was grateful that the only "junk food" in there was Jolly Ranchers candies, which don't appeal as much as they used to. Good to have when you need it, but I don't want to know there's something accessible in a backpack that would alleviate the day-to-day craving. You know? Then we had crepes for lunch with whipped cream, blueberries and cherries. After General Conference, Session 2 (REALLY GOOD-Elder Christofferson and Elder Bednar) Rob took the boys out for their traditional "boy's night out" to eat, then Priesthood Session, while I took the girls out (we figure we get a night out too...the boys get 2 of these per year, and Caroline and I will go again for Young Women's Conference). After the boys ate, Rob dropped off Grant and left again. We're going to get out our Halloween/Fall decorations finally. Clean house means I can think of something else besides AAAAGH!! I can't stand the clutter!! Guess I'll go for a walk. Love, Amy

New Goals

I guess I'm taking a couple days off from finishing my project. Just turns out that way. I'd better get going or it will end up in my closet for another 3 years!
For those of you who don't know this already, I am doing "The Biggest Loser" with a group of my new friends here in Pocatello. We meet every Wednesday to get weighed. We lose points for eating junk food. We get points for drinking enough water, no eating after a certain time (7 pm for me...I would like it earlier, but Rob gets home too late and we really ought to eat all together...), and the biggie, EXERCISE. Which sounds like a real drag. But actually, it's been so much fun! Every week we have a different challenge, which gets us more points. We get points for weight lost, inches lost and body fat % lost. A couple of weeks ago I actually ran a 5K! Ok, so I walked a lot too. Shin splints. But I ran! A 5K! I've been doing these abdominal exercises and have mended the relationship with that quadrant of my body! in other words, I can suck it in, and it stays there longer than 5 seconds! Goodbye chubby buddy! I've been doing pushups (up to 25 at a time on a good day!) and reverse arm presses (anyone? what the heck are those really called??) and my "Relief Society Jiggle" is giving up the ghost. Wandering off looking for more tolerant pastures. Or something. After the bout with Grave's Disease last year I had absolutely no upper arm or thigh muscles. Someone stole them in the middle of the night and they were missing in action. They have been retrieved from the garbage can from whence they were tossed and I keep getting surprised that I can feel something there. DON'T MESS WITH THE WIFEY! YEAH! So the big challenge in addition to our regular weekly challenge is to get 50 points this week and lose at least 1 lb. I haven't done a whole lb. for a couple of weeks now and 50 points is a lot. Rob's so impressed that I'm actually doing this. Sometimes I don't get a chance to do my pushups all day, and I've done them at 10 pm. Husband impressed = 20 point. No, just kidding. But it makes me happy. :-) Wish me luck. I'm going to have to walk up my huge steep hill TWICE a day this week. I'll let you all know how it goes. Love, Amy

Banner continued

Ok. I was trying to figure out how to do the temple. Felt? Stencil? Then I went to a craft store, and lo and behold they had a vinyl version of the same size and view that I was looking for. When I talked to the lady whose banner I saw 3 years ago, she told me that she used something called ??Nillium?? Coat lining?? For the temple. No one on earth knows what that is. BUT the craft store lady came up with shiny gray/silver fabric used to make ironing board covers! So I put the vinyl thing on the silver stuff, and it looks pretty good! Here it is. Then I made some paper templates. I want a kind of sunrise look behind the temple with the words, "LOVE, WORK, ACHIEVE," one to a circle. I think I'll free-hand embroider those on. Traci, I miss you and your embroidery machine. But especially you. :-) Here are the circles. I just used a compass and cut 'em out of the felt. I free hand traced some bush and tree shapes and cut them out too. I have a friend who knows a lot of stuff I don't and she helped me figure out what to do to tuck under the excess silver to put the sunset pieces behind the temple. I didn't put a picture of that, but it's yellow, light orange, and dark orange circles. Then I think I'll hand applique everything on to the base fabric. I'm feeling very impressed with myself that I'm finally doing this after 3 years. It doesn't take a lot to impress me, obviously! Love, Amy

Hey! It's Working!

I can't believe how relatively simple this family banner making has been. Caroline calls it our "Tribal Flag." YEAH! I'll post some pictures as I go to show how I did it. These are blank patches I got at the Scout office. Everyone drew (on paper) something that represents them. Interest, talent, whatever. Then I drew them on the patches with fabric marker. These patches are Rob's and mine. Rob's is a picture of the amazing "SUPER SPINEMAN!" complete with cape, and of course,...a spine. I am a tree hugger. I love trees, planting trees, sitting under them, looking at them. Tree hugger. The next two are for Daniel and Scott. Daniel loves anything mechanical. Robotics, legos, inventing things. Also marching band (that's not a football field, it's a marching field, complete with trumpet, clarinet and drum, in case you were confused. Scott is a stick figure master. He can portray any situation with sticks. He also loves to ripstick (twisty skateboard on 2 caster wheels), so his pic is of him going up a ramp on a ripstick. The original showed him flat on his back headed for the ambulance, but we opted to keep it positive. :-)

The next two are for Caroline and Grant. Caroline "loves a good book." We can't keep her out of them. A couple of years ago her grades were starting to slip because she KEPT READING in class. The consequence was that I took her books away. Whole bookcase, out of her room. She had to get special permission to read. Have you ever seen anything like that? Ok, so I did the same thing. Sue me. Grant is a "math-head." Can you see his hair says, "32 div. by 8 = 4?" He is SO GOOD at it. The last ones are Julie and Allie. Julie is a friend-maker. We've always said that she gathers friends like ants gather crumbs. Allie is the Smile Queen.

They are very simplistic drawings, but I told everyone that did their own that they had to be-I wanted to see the detail, not just a smear of marker. I don't know how to move pictures around where I want them so I'll post this and then do another one for the rest of it.

3 a.m. insight

It happened again! I woke up at 3 a.m. with a HORRIBLE dream about my Grant (age 8). The dream itself didn't do more than make me frantic with anquish (he was being mocked by some older kids I didn't know and was hugely distressed, and the words I woke up with were spoken to the older kids: "your words nearly killed a boy today.") but I could NOT get back to sleep because I started thinking about some goals I made yesterday that I want to start working on. So here I am at 4:02 a.m., writing them down. You all knowing will maybe keep me on the straight and narrow till they're accomplished. About 3 years ago I went to a Relief Society thing where a couple spoke on how to strengthen marriage and family. It was amazing. I took precise notes, which are wonderful in themselves, still, after 3 years! But the thing that I loved was that this woman had made a Family Banner. She had appliqued the outline of a temple, with trees surrounding it, and around that was a kind of sunrise/rainbow thing with words on each of three layers. I changed it a little, but it was something like, "Love/Work/Achieve." To the left of that were several patches (blank ones you can get at the scout office) on which she had drawn (colored? painted?) something that represented each member of her family. At the time I thought I could, for example, draw a lego brick to represent Daniel...stuff like that. Then, across the bottom, was the family name, in fancy writing. BLACK. I am going to make one. I have no idea how to do it, quite, but I've had the materials for doing it for 3 years. Isn't that pathetic. For those of you who watched the Relief Society broadcast, do you remember Elder Uchtdorf saying, "create something that never before existed" or something like that? It really hit me, and then while I was trying to pull together a Family Home Evening lesson, that idea sprang into my mind. The lesson was on baptism, because Grant's getting baptized on Oct. 11. The attention-getter at the beginning was this: everyone's first names and everyone's last names were supposed to be cut out separately and scattered around the room. Everyone was supposed to look for their names. Then we talk about how we all have our own first name, but the last name belongs to everyone. What we do, good or bad, affects our whole family's NAME. What do we stand for? Integrity, kindness, belief in the Gospel, hard work, etc. Great start for a lesson! Except we have 2 names, Reeder/Black. That has always been a bit of a stumbling block for family unity. So I switched the idea around a bit. I put everyone's own name out, and EVERYONE got a "Black" name. We talked about how when Rob and I got married, sealed in the temple for eternity, we all became part of the BLACK FAMILY, regardless of what our last names were. Every time one of our kids is spoken of by anyone who knows us, they are referred to as, "Rob and Amy Black's son (or daughter)." Then we talked about this banner idea, and everyone came up with something to put on their patch. THEN we talked about how when we are baptized, we take Christ's name upon us. What are we doing with it? What covenants do we make? Are we honoring His name? I think it went quite well, and everyone was excited about the idea of a family banner. Wish me luck. I hope I can do it! I thought it would be really cool to bring out our FAMILY BANNER every time we have FHE, go camping, to the family reunion (anyone else want to make one??), etc. to build family unity. My kids get along remarkably well, but there's always room for improvement. Long post. I'll write more another time. Love, Amy

Things you think in the middle of the night...

Does anyone else do this?? I wake up as I turn over at night (for some reason I did that a lot last night), and little thoughts come out that didn't have a chance during the day. For example: "I need to teach the younger kids to write in their journals." I don't know why, but it occured to me that there are things I've taught my older kids that the younger ones haven't learned yet. All three of the olders know how to get a bathroom reasonably scrubbed. I taught Grant a couple of years ago but haven't been very consistent. Same with the journals. I think it's a great thing if a kid can write down joys and sorrows, frustrations and great accomplishments and look back at them later. I do that, even though I don't write very often. The other thing I thought when I woke up last night (different time) was: " I'm so grateful I didn't have huge mental problems when I was born because Mom had German Measles while she was pregnant with me." I know that some will beg to differ, but you'll have to go beg somewhere else. For those who don't know this story, the doctors told her she needed to have an abortion because I would be born so severely challenged. She was so worried, but did NOT want an abortion. My dad gave her a blessing, she felt completely at peace, and here I am! I hope it all turned out ok, Mom!

Milestone for me!

I always considered myself to be on the cutting edge of computer technology...after all, my dad is a brilliant electrical engineer, (as is my brother Paul), and I think we were among the first to have a PC in the house. Complete with Basic and that wonderful game called Zork (in which you have no graphics whatsoever, you have to use...*gasp!* your imagination...to maneuver around a cave to find treasure). ANYWAY, it turns out that I'm on the dull, scuffed up, bent edge of comp.tech. I have spent hours trying to put together this here blog. So if you think it needs work, tough tootles. Maybe I'll figure out a better font or something later (sorry, Julie, couldn't do it. See above.) Love, Amy