Pondering Patience

Yes. Unfortunately I’ve been pondering that dirty p-word. Patience. It tastes likes dirty gym socks in my mouth. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never had it and thus we’ve constantly been at olds since I was little.

How does one get this ever so elusive quality? Are you just born with it and the rest of us are left to languish over things that take WAY too long?

I keep thinking…what if I study up on it? But something tells me it takes more than book knowledge to acquire this incredibly hard virtue. Can it only be learned through the trials and hard knocks of life? That doesn’t seem very fun. Then do I really want it?

So what am I left to do? Pray for it? I feel like that will be asking for trials. Cue plagues and desolation to rain down on me. Seriously can I learn it some other way? Isn’t there some kind of spark notes out there on patience?

It’s like I know in my head what to do when it comes to patience, but I can’t quite get my nerves or my heart to follow through with its wisdom.

I get all sorts of anxiety when I think how much schooling Claudy has left, or when we should have kids…etc. My stomach goes in knots, and I start to feel sick. I wish it would all just be over with! I wish I’d wake up and Claudy would be in his career and we’d already have kids and be on the hum-dee-dum path of regular life complete with a mortgage and the daily grind of knowing that a lot of your hard decisions are behind you.

But then I hear my teenage sister wish how she was grown up, or my single brother wish he was married and I want to slap them. Don’t you know to enjoy these fun years? If you’re like this now, you’ll always want to move on to the next stage of life and never be happy. Life will pass you by.

So why can’t my heart accept my own words and learn to calm down about the future?

Help.

I know I joke around a lot, but if any of you feel you have an ounce of patience, or feel like you know how to you got a point where you have found out how to be patient I'd really like to hear.

Needed: Christmas Traditions

Now that it's going to be me and Claudy's THIRD Christmas being married I'm feeling the need to step my game up.

But I'm not quite sure how. This my blogging friends, is where YOU come in.

Besides making a smorgasbord of treats for family and friends, going to temple square and putting up our Christmas tree I'm kind of at a loss.

I want something fun to do every weekend until the big C-day.

Thoughts? I've heard the Forgotten Carols is good. Is this true? If so, where do you go to watch it?

My family used to make homemade white chocolate suckers. But Claudy doesn't like white chocolate and I'm too lazy.

Plus, I want to start our own. So let me steal yours ok?

Coolest Family History Story EVER

Ok, so you're probably not even reading this because of the title. I shouldn't have said family history right?

I'm guilty of it myself. I usually want to tune out when this is the topic in church. It's like all of the sudden my nails are SO interesting. Been there. Heard it. My relatives were all pioneers and have done their own work...etc.

However, this story put a very neat, and a very real perspective on it for me.

Perhaps you heard this in your Sunday school lesson as well, but just in case you didn't, I had to share:

Frederick William Hurst was working as a gold miner in Australia when he first heard Latter-day Saint missionaries preach the restored gospel. He and his brother Charles were baptized in January 1854. He tried to help his other family members become converted, but they rejected him and the truths he taught.

Fred settled in Salt Lake City four years after joining the Church, and he served faithfully as a missionary in several different countries. He also worked as a painter in the Salt Lake Temple. In one of his final journal entries, he wrote:

“Along about the 1st of March, 1893, I found myself alone in the dining room, all had gone to bed. I was sitting at the table when to my great surprize my elder brother Alfred walked in and sat down opposite me at the table and smiled. I said to him (he looked so natural): ‘When did you arrive in Utah?’

“He said: ‘I have just come from the Spirit World, this is not my body that you see, it is lying in the tomb. I want to tell you that when you were on your mission you told me many things about the Gospel, and the hereafter, and about the Spirit World being as real and tangible as the earth. I could not believe you, but when I died and went there and saw for myself I realized that you had told the truth. I attended the Mormon meetings.’ He raised his hand and said with much warmth: ‘I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart. I believe in faith, and repentance and baptism for the remission of sins, but that is as far as I can go. I look to you to do the work for me in the temple. … You are watched closely. … We are all looking to you as our head in this great work. I want to tell you that there are a great many spirits who weep and mourn because they have relatives in the Church here who are careless and are doing nothing for them” (Diary of Frederick William Hurst, comp. Samuel H. and Ida Hurst [1961], 204).

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=ce109207f7c20110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=198bf4b13819d110VgnVCM1000003a94610aRCRD

Someday these boots...

...are going to wear out. But for now I refuse! So my crafty blogging friends please advise!

I spent a good chunk of money on these leather boots. I spent said money because I was told that they would last forever. Maybe two years is a long time, but not to a cheap miser like myself!

The boot itself is doing good, but the heel has seen better days!

It's like walking on a pin, it's noisy, loud and not to mention very slippery. Darn plastic! What can I do to mend this situation?

Also, the toes on my boots are scuffed. By scuffed I think I mean that I tripped up the stairs and the stairs took off some of the leather as it's victory prize.

I've tried polishing them but it won't really stay on because there's a chunk of leather missing.

Any ideas on how to resurrect these boots? They're my only boots and with winter coming on I NEED them.

Thanks!

Will someone make me this?

I love to bake, but I'm just not in the mood to muster up the strength to attempt frying. I've never fried anything and I can just imagine the scalding that might come.

I'll give you a BIG huge. And I'll even share one with you! Don't they look so tasty?

Thanks,

http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/10/apple-cider-spice-doughnuts.html

Dear windows of heaven, please open up

Mal. 3: 10
"...prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."

I think our windows might need some WD-40, cuz they seem to be catching on the hindges or something.

I know I'm no Job, and we are very blessed to have a working vehicle, food to eat, clothes to wear, a warm abode...but dang Gina, I'd sure be tickled if we'd stop having these huge unexpected bills keep cropping up.

It's like bad weeds...anyone have some bill roundup?

I'm not trying to be ungrateful, and I know that the Lord blesses us in many ways that my stubborn eyes don't always see...but I'd sure be ok if blessings instead of financial plagues would come.

I'm ready...and Lord I think we've learned our lesson now :)

Please don't strike me down because of this post, I need to vent and writing or crying to my mom is the best way for me to do that...and she's already gone to bed.

If thou wants to bless us in other ways than my preferred way, please help me to see it, so I can learn to be grateful.

Skank-o-ween

Since when did Halloween turn from little kids in pumpkin costumes to grown women trying to use it as an excuse to dress like a hooker?

Me and Claudy decided to go to “The Loft” and go dancing with some friends for Halloween. Holy cow.

I think what’s even more disappointing is the fact that at least 90% of them had to be BYU students.

We had to stand outside for at least 30 minutes to get in and to be honest I was kind of glad it was freezing. I hope their booties that were hanging out of their Daisy Dukes fell off.

And come on ladies. If you’re above a size 20…please don’t try to dress up as a Victoria Secret model. No one wants to see that. Do you own a mirror? Dress appropriately for your size! No one wants to see rolls unless they’re fresh out of the oven! I’m not saying I have a perfect body…but I at least don’t flaunt my cellulite!

It only got more disappointing from there. I haven’t gone dancing in a long time. I think I forgot how sleezy and easy girls become once they hit the dance floor. They will let any guy that they don’t even know their name come up and grind on them. Hello? Did you leave your self respect in the coat closet? But then I’m sure that same girl will be crying that no guy is calling her next weekend…

I was so disgusted. We were dancing by the outer wall so we didn’t suffocate and that seemed to be the place for guys to just rest up against and have girl after girl after girl come up to him and look like they were having sex with their clothes on. Really? Didn’t you just see another girl right before you do the same thing?

WOW. I can proudly say I’ve never done that. Even after me and Claudy are married I will not dance like that.

I think girls that "dance" like that obviously don’t know how to dance. It’s not hard to put your butt in some guys crotch.

Get some class.

I wish they could see how pathetic they look.

Between the costumes and the horrific dancing it was so disappointing.

On a positive/non soap box note: I did have fun dressing up though and yay for the ward party where there weren’t ho bags in every direction!

At least the dancing (hopefully) burned off all of the candy corn I ate!