Everywhere in nature we are taught the lessons of patience and waiting. We want things a long time before we get them, and the fact that we want them a long time makes them all the more precious when they come.
Joseph F. Smith
For years this has been Steve when it came to Christmas. Well at least anything having to do with Christmas even a few hours before Thanksgiving Day ended. Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday after all and feels that it is often just squished between two holidays that get a lot more attention. He wants to completely enjoy all that Thanksgiving has to offer. The feast.
He's patient with my excitement over all that I enjoy about Christmas and over the years has become a lot more understanding. I love just about anything to do with Christmas and for all of you who say it is just too commercialized I say to you, "I just want to enjoy Christmas and the kindness it brings out in people for as long as I can. If that happens to start in September or even August, so be it."
This Christmas Mr. Grinch turned into Mr. Incredible. In my opinion we enjoyed the best ChristmasEVER today. I loved every bit of it. Thank you to my family, Norma and her family but most of all my Mr. Incredible for a wonderful day.
On a side note, there are a group of little girls we go to church with that call Steve Mr. Incredible because they think he looks just like him. When I first heard this I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it before! Last week at church Steve picked up a little boy with one arm and they said, "LOOK! He really is Mr. Incredible!" He makes me swoon too, I love you Mr. Incredible!
P.S. Can you just learn to smile like him now instead of like Mr. Grinch?
So we celebrated Christmas with Norma on Monday, since she is far away in a cold place now... Here's a quick recap of our night.
1. We went to see the Christmas lights at the temple and supposedly hear a Tongan choir.
Christmas lights with 3 babies and a huge crowd=miserable+no Tongan choir. Boooo!
2. We all came back to our house for a yummy dinner of tamales (which Norma generously provided) and chicken tortilla soup!
3. We opened presents and watched the babies play=so fun, fun, fun! Z loves his cousins just his size....well he does out weight both of them even though they are 5 months older!
Judging by this pic, Norma liked the apron I made her.
Norma made Z the cutest beanie hats, I'll have to take some pics of him in them if he'll let me.
All the babies know how to kiss now and since they have all been sick recently and are on antibiotics we thought, "Go for it!"
It was cute until Z pulled his curly locks...maybe he's jealous because we cut all of his off.
Don't you love his little innocent look? "What did I do and why is he crying?"
But they made up soon enough when the twins helped Z open his gifts. I think they get the whole opening a little more than Z does...maybe by his birthday he'll have it down.
Merry Christmas Norma, Sue, Monica, Kali, and twins! We love you!
So I tend to usually get in a little over my head. I have visions of grandeur for anything I plan to make, especially when it comes to something having to do with Christmas.
I am happy to say they were finished about two weeks ago and I even learned to embroider on my machine!
I planned them to look like the stockings my Grandma Frost made years ago for her kids but ended up not too much like them. They are made of red felt though which I love at Christmas and Z seems to like them.
When I look over most of the posts I've written this last year, they seem to mostly take on such a serious and spiritual tone. I think people who only know me through my blog may think I have no sense of humor or lighter side at all.
It just seems to be that I often end up writing in the wee hours of the morning when my house and mind are quiet. Usually by then all that's left in me are my inner most thoughts and so here we are again...
Christmas is so different this year, well in some ways. I am still making more plans to create things and go places and do things than we have time for but Christmas just feels so much more real this year.
For years, in fact every year we have been married, Christmas has been spent in Flagtown with my parents and siblings. This is...yes I can hardly type it, our 15th Christmas married! How old am I, are we?! I was 14 when my parents were having their 15th Christmas together...and they had 5 kids!!! But I'm getting off subject.
This year we are staying home.
This year we have what we have wanted for every Christmas since 1997 (in '96 we were only married for 4 months). In '96 we just wanted to be pregnant and were still completely hopeful that we would be...someday.
This year we received the greatest gift and it's not even Christmas yet!
Every song I hear sung about the Christ child seems almost as if they were singing about my little Z. Not that I am thinking he is as holy as the Christ child was, anyone who has been around him knows that. But the gift of a son, to us, at Christmas.
What sweeter gift?
Thinking of the wait we endured for our little boy has caused me to think of the wait the world endured until the Christ child was born. For centuries before his birth the world waited. Prophets since the time of Adam prophesied of Him who would come to redeem us all, of Him who loved us enough to come experience life on this Earth and eventually die for us. We all awaited His birth and I believe we were all very aware of when it occurred. I believe we lived before we were born and even then were aware of Jesus, who He was and what He would come to do for us.
The part that has really gotten me this year is of the incredible wait time we all experienced until that day and how we must have rejoiced when it finally came. How we must have desired to sing with the angels just to announce that He had come.
I think of the wise men and shepards who believed He would come. What must they have felt when they saw that star and were visited by angels telling them He had come. Did they go and excitedly tell all their family and friends the joyous news? Did they gather what they needed and travel as quickly as they could just to see Him? I think they must have because that is what we did when we were told of a son coming to us.
In the days that must have followed before they arrived at the stable did they tell everyone they passed where they were going and who they would see? Did strangers look at them with wonder trying to understand what they were so happy about?
I think of Joseph.
What an amazing man. What must he have felt like?
And Mary.
Did they feel almost unworthy to be part of such a miracle? Did Joseph worry about being in a strange city and feel completely unprepared to take care of his wife and new helpless baby?
Maybe Mary had pictured herself giving birth in a clean, comfortable place with her mother or sisters present. Did she have plans to make this babe's entrance into the world the best she knew only in the end to be away from home, away from family, in a stall with animals. I wonder if she felt she had disappointed the Lord thinking it just wasn't good enough?
Surely, they did not think they would be there in a home made for livestock to even stay a night much less give birth to the Son of God. How hard it must have been for Joseph to be unable to offer anything better.
Maybe only later did they realize it was all just as it was meant to be. The Christ child born in a stable; quiet and kept away from the crowds, warm and safe. Surely that journey and stay was a trial of their faith and probably took them to the depths of humility.
What a gift to be blessed to be His mother. To be able to sacrifice a part of yourself for Jesus. What a gift it has been to be chosen to be Z's mother. How grateful I am to be a recipient of the two greatest gifts I know. Each such miracles in my life.
I rejoice this Christmas to have a deeper feeling of gratitude for all who had part in Jesus' birth into this world. Words I cannot type to express the feelings of my heart this Christmas. I thank my Father in Heaven for the tremendous gifts He has blessed me with. I will always remember the joy I felt over the news that I would be a mother. It gives me a glimpse of the joy I must have felt to know that Christ was born of Mary in a stable under a new star.
I haven't canned tomatoes for about two years...how I have missed their fresh taste in all my soups and chili. Using store bought tomatoes does not even come close. I've been thinking I missed the season to can them but then my friend Dyan came through and sent me a great connection! Normally I do most of my canning of fruit in the middle of the hot, hot, and miserable summer. But canning in November is a DREAM!!!! It was so much nicer, cooler and just seamed easier this time of year.
Canning in November means no cranking down the A/C, no multiple fans blowing from all directions, no steam from all the boiling water and pressure canners cooking yourself along with the fruit; basically I'm not sweating it out for 4-8 hours! I did all the tomato canning with my sister-in-law Jenny and best of all we had one canner going outside on a camping burner! Wow, that was nice! It went pretty quickly and we each came out with 14 quarts of stewed deliciousness!
Two years ago our stake split from one stake to two. A stake is a large congregation within our church made up of several wards, which are smaller congregations. Both are set up geographically which makes it really nice because you attend church with your neighbors and those that live near by. The stake we were in grew too large and so it was split. The stake we live in became the new stake which meant we did not have a building for all of us to meet. This has made things a little difficult as we have shared buildings with surrounding stakes while we looked for land to build on. Being made up geographically, ideally the new building will be in the area where those that will use it live. We were asked to pray and fast to help in this process and a while back it was announced that a location had been found. Today was the ground breaking.
I had never been to a ground breaking ceremony before, although they occur for just about every new building that is constructed within the church. It was incredible! I worked yesterday so when I got home last night I was not sure I wanted to get up early to attend because I tend to need and very much enjoy my sleep after a long day. But early sometime this morning, maybe 4am or so I woke up with voices of my grandparents in my head, "Angie, you have actual Mormon pioneer blood pumping through your body and you think you're too tired to get up and celebrate such a historical event?" I rationalized with thinking we had been told that parking would be terrible, we would have to walk quite a ways to get there and that we needed to bring our own chairs to sit in; aka: more junk to haul and haul it a long way (you all know my major adjustments in hauling so much junk around since getting Z). But then I next thought was, "You think you have to walk a long ways hauling a few chairs and diaper bag?" So that confirmed it, I was going. Plus, I really wanted to have Z there so I could tell him all about it one day.
We had lots of friends there, here are Bryce and Lee (ha ha, you're not hiding now)! I really love Steve's expression in the back too.
This was the choir, they sang Faith In Every Footstep, one of my favorites. The choir was made up of several members of our ward and another ward as well.
One Primary kid spoke, the Primary children (kids ages 3-11) sang How Firm A Foundation, a teenage girl spoke, then we all gathered at the pole...
I thought this was the coolest part. Our Stake President is really into object lessons and that was very evident today. This large telephone pole had been erected with a ring around the top and hundreds of cords streaming down. Each family was to hold a cord to represent that each person was needed to support the church and serve those people that need us. If one cord was dropped and several were; the pole remained strong and steady because those around kept hold until that person could grab and pull their cord again.
Besides all that, it just looked really cool and was so moving to see members of our stake all around holding to their own cords. We all sang True to the Faith. The line, "True to the faith that our parents have cherished," always touches me but especially today as I thought of my own ancestors and the sacrifices they made for the faith they loved and believed in. There in the mist of all those people with my own little Z, I couldn't help but think of Zadok Knapp Judd Jr. and all that he did with his life.
Finally, it was time for members of our Stake Presidency and a few others (including a few Primary children and young women and young men) to grab a golden shovel and be the first to "break the ground." All at once, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was piped over the loud speakers singing Come Come Ye Saints and most moving for me was the release of a flock of white doves. It was incredible and brought me to tears as I watched the doves fly and the words, "Come, come, ye Saints, no toil or labor fear; but with joy wend your way. Though hard to you this journey may appear, grace shall be as your day."
The Stake President spoke about how Mormon Pioneers who had been asked to settle parts of Arizona had actually crossed the Salt River right at this point and walked the ground where this new building will be. He wondered if they had any idea of how much would follow; the saints that would come after them, how they would sacrifice and survive and later thrive here in this desert. How they came 90 years before any air conditioning would be available. I am so thankful to them, and so thankful to live in this time with so much comfort. What an incredible blessing this turned out to be, one that will not soon be forgotten.
So I've already been in bed tonight all ready to go to sleep for work tomorrow. But I just can't sleep thinking of Norma. I know many of you are probably sick of hearing me talk about how wonderful she is to me, so you can skip this. In fact, right now I have some of the cutest Halloween pictures and stories to tell about Zad's first Halloween. But for tonight that will have to wait.
Tonight was our ward's Halloween Trunk or Treat. I invited Norma at the last minute a few nights ago not knowing if she would want to come but she did, so she did; get it? Afterwards we came back here and bathed and dressed Zad for bed. She wrestled him in his pre-bed wild state for a while before she left and for some reason I started asking her some questions about if she missed being his mother. She said, "yes." I asked her a few more questions and we talked for a little bit, the three of us with Pirate Z crawling and climbing around thinking we were all there to entertain him.
Hours later I was rummaging around our pantry when I found a little bottle of Gas-X for babies. I put it there back in January after Norma gave it to me the night she gave us Z. I have glanced at it all year and thought of her but tonight I just stopped and for a moment if felt like my heart stopped too.
I remembered her handing it to me so gingerly after all the hubbub had died down. I remembered her explaining why and how she would give it to him. I didn't get it back then but she was talking to me mother to mother. She had written up a whole list of his likes and dislikes that she had discovered in just his first two weeks of life. I remember thinking, "How could she possibly know all that already?" I didn't get it then but I get it now. She was his mother then and some things mothers just know. I didn't get then how a mother would feel if she were handing off her most cherished piece of herself. How much that mother would want to make sure I knew all I could about him so that I could care for him the best. I remember loving her for her sacrifice but just not understanding really all that she was giving up, I felt numb that night. Really, I felt numb for months afterwards. Numb since that first phone call that there was a girl my age in Queen Creek, who had just decided to place her 10-day old baby boy, and was looking for a couple that was willing to be in an open adoption. I remember for several minutes wondering if I had dreamed it all. It just seemed too good to be true. I just now feel like I might be thawing a bit.
Z and everything that came with him was just such a huge change; along with becoming a mother for the first time I really inherited a wonderful new family. It feels as though I got married again; new man in my life, new family that came with him, new ways of doing everything, new schedules, new career so to speak, blessing and sealing to plan, baby showers, rearranging my house, babysitters, more laundry, baby sized everything, visitors on top of visitors, and then speaking on adoption twice a month or so. And all of that with about 48 hours notice.
Through it all I just didn't get it.... until tonight.
Tonight with just a glance at that bottle of baby drops I felt maybe a little of what Norma felt that night. My heart physically hurt for her again as I realized just how much she gave of herself for him. This time I felt for her not as a person watching another hurt as a bystander, but as a mother. A mother who would send all the instruction and advice she could to give that baby the best she could if she were in my place. My heart aches tonight for that mother. And I'm complaining about not being about to shop at BR anymore? How could I even compare her sacrifice to my inconvenience? Who am I?
Then I think of the Savior and the Father of us all. How grateful I am to have become a mother this way. To see the Savior and His sacrifice and the sacrifice our Father made in a deeper, richer, more vibrant light. To have gained an inkling of Their pain and Their love for me and all of us. To know that They love us even more than Norma and Steve and I combined love Z. It makes me want to do all I can do to live the best life I can, to forgive others, be more patient, more kind, more loving, and give Z the very best of who I am because he deserves nothing less. How blessed we all are and especially me.
Z, Steve, Norma, and all of my family and blessings..... they still seem too good to be true.
