Six hour journey

I had six hours of alone time yesterday! Six whole hours: 9am-3pm. I went to the temple and then enjoyed a run at nearby Badger Mountain. When I got home, I felt like I had really journeyed, further than the 45 minute drive to Kennewick, the 2 hour session at the temple, and the 1 hour run up and down a mountain. My thoughts were free to soar and dream and refresh for six entire hours. I can hardly describe how lovely it felt. Like most mothers of small children, unless I intentionally carve out a few weekend hours for my own self, solitude only comes to me late at night when everyone's sleeping and I'm too tired to appreciate it. I have come to truly value peaceful time alone to ponder and wander. Props to my five star husband 'o gold, who understands this need and encourages me to go and recharge by myself every now and then while he holds down the fort at home.

My six hour journey reminded me of one of our favorite books: Bink and Gollie. Every now and then, Gollie has to journey:

It was nice not to have a small human knocking on the door while I journeyed yesterday. I love my little humans fiercely, but they sure know how to wiggle in to every moment! Sometimes we need to journey together, sometimes we need to journey solo.

The temple was perfectly peaceful. It's been months since I got to do a session, and it felt so good to be back. I sat in the bright, beautiful celestial room for a really really long time, absorbing as much of the peace as I possibly could. The sun streamed through the stained glass windows, lighting up the giant crystal chandelier and brightening the entire elegant, airy room. It was glorious. I had no kids waiting for me outside; not even a carpooler was waiting for me to finish. It was just me, the sunshine, and a handful of other quiet visitors, all basking in both the physical and the spiritual beauty of that holy place. I had dozens of uplifting thoughts and little bursts of inspiration while I sat there, being still. My instinct is to memorize, analyze, and hold on to any promptings and thoughts so I can write them down later, but I even let that impulse go. I simply sat and let those thoughts and feelings wash over my soul in warm soothing waves. :)

There is power in being still, especially in holy places. "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10, also D&C 101:16) I think that's the only time we CAN know that God is there, when we take the time to stop and be still. Of course the temple isn't the only place that we can be still; it's just easier to be still there, and to feel and understand truths. Laa!

 Be honest: is there anything more flattering than a selfie on a sunny, breezy day? HAH.

After I finished up at the temple, I went next door to the stake center and did a quick wardrobe change in the bathroom. Then I drove a few miles down the road to Badger Mountain for a little run. Badger Mountain is a popular hike around here--most people I know have done it at least once. Jeff has been to the top, but I never have (pretty sure various pregnancies are to blame for that). I'm doing a trail race on Badger Mountain next month and I thought it would be good to scope the place out. It was breathtaking! Literally! The trail I took was about a mile and a half UP UP UP to the top of the mountain--the ceiling of the Tri Cities area. My legs were shaking and my lungs were gasping, but the panoramic views of the sunlit valley with the blue Columbia River swirling through it were well worth the effort.

My photography was in rare form, I know--I kind of took pictures as an afterthought, on my phone. I was journeying! Not photographing! Those tiny little specks on top of the mountain are people, by the way. Badger Mountain is way more impressive in real life, especially without a finger obscuring it--trust me.

I ran up, across, down, and around Badger Mountain. The trail around the middle of the mountain was awesome--a narrow path carved along exterior with a drop off ledge plummeting down on one side and a steep sage brushy slope going up on the other. The breeze was blowing, and I felt like I was flying on top of the world up there! I spread my arms out in the wind while I ran and felt pure floating freedom, soaring along on that sky high trail! It was my slowest run in months, but I wasn't in it for speed--just hills and views. There were plenty of both to be had--just ask my hip flexors and hamstrings. Whew! Of course I wasn't about to run up a mountain lugging a camera, so you'll just have to take my word for it--the view was sweeping, clear, and far. Not Mt. Adams-far, but far enough!

Imagine this view, but 1,000 feet higher up. Blue sky: YES.

I made it back to the parking lot all wobbly-legged, fully charged with vitamin D, and drove home. Somehow all of my adventuring lasted straight through lunch--I didn't eat lunch till nearly 4pm! That's SO not me--I can't even fast anymore! I paid for that oversight with a headache and leaden-limbed low blood sugar fatigue that evening during our family movie night. But the temple! That run!

As I was taking my first bite of food in eight hours, guess how many small humans invaded and begged for bites from their starving mother?

Family time is a treasure, but personal time is too--balancing both is the secret to happiness, if you ask me. It was incredibly, restfully refreshing to...you know, commune in the temple and then again on a mountain. I love a good journey.

Spaghetti night

We had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner tonight. I used a can of Hunt's spaghetti sauce and Costco frozen meatballs. The entire meal took like 11 minutes to make. It wasn't gourmet, but all five of us ate our fill and liked it. I mean, everybody loves spaghetti night! When I was little we called it bah-sketti. Always a favorite. Every time I make it I wonder why I don't make it more often. It's a cheap, healthy, family-friendly, FAST, filling dinner. Boom.

Let me tell you about my recent existential kitchen crisis. Don't get too excited! There wasn't really a particular catalyst or an official crisis moment, just an overall progression away from the old and towards the new.

Lately I have been experimenting with my meal planning and preparation. I used to plan an entire month of meals and make a giant grocery list and do all of the shopping at once to save time and money. I did that for years (minus pregnancies), and along the way I got really good at fitting a variety of meals into our modest food budget. A couple of months ago, I got tired of the lengthy process of thinking up 20+ meals all at once and listing out the ingredients in one day, and then hefting all those groceries around all at once on another day. It was turning into a dreaded task. It was time for a change! Refresh! So instead of doing a monthly meal plan, I started doing weekly meal plans. It is so much easier! (duh, I know) And I feel so free when I can decide what I'm in the mood to cook week by week, instead of being shackled to the monthly meal plan I dreamed up three and a half weeks ago. Even better, I've figured out how to stay within our slim food budget without monthly meal plans too.

This month I dumbed my meal planning and prep down even more. Yikes! Instead of searching for exciting new recipes to try, I have simply been making easy, mostly kid friendly food. In other words, I've been relying on the old standbys, like spaghetti, eggs, taters, rice, and chicken nuggets (not all at once, of course). I know this all seems so obvious, but it has been so liberating! Why didn't I free myself from the need to cook for more than 15 minutes a day sooner? Cooking was becoming drudgery. Now I can whip up a pot o noodles in 8 minutes and we're all perfectly happy. 

I must add that I wasn't cooking all of those other previous meals out of some sense of obligation or anything. I wasn't even cooking gourmet things! The recipes I chose just took longer than 15 minutes to make. After a while I discovered that I was cooking those harder recipes more from habit--I used to really enjoy searching out and cooking up new dinners, so I kept doing it for a while after it stopped being fun. And then my Amber-pregnancy demolished my list of quick and easy standby dinners. I had to nearly start over finding quick and easy family friendly meals! A daunting task indeed, but I've accumulated a small list in the past year or so. I still appreciate good food, and we still have good food; it's just not always new or time consuming to cook. 

Here's my current trend: each week I choose one big meal to cook, such as a big batch of burrito filling in the crock pot, which lasts us 2-3 dinners. Then I fill in the remaining days with easy simple foods like grilled cheese and tomato soup, mac and cheese, or eggs. Friday is pizza night. Sometimes I make a double batch of crust to last us an extra night. Grampa Dan started making pancakes for the family on Saturday nights. Then we're back to Sunday and a new week. So little effort is involved in this meal planning method! I love it! Who knows how long it'll be (if ever) before I'm recovered and ready to jump back into culinary craftiness, but for now this is WORKING for me.

Bonus: this new-found culinary simplicity is good for the ole budget--aka, it's cheap to eat simply! We'll cross the February food finish line with a sub-$300 grocery bill! Woot. These days I don't really try to save money out of our food budget anymore because I've streamlined it half to death over the past few years and we always eat well for $350 per month. Imagine my surprise when I saw just how much was still hanging around in the ole food $$ allotment this late in the month! That extra $$ means a nice hefty pantry-restock is headed our way. Wins all around. (said in Jack Sparrow's voice)

With these fast and easy meals I've been making, it often takes longer to clean up dinner than it did to cook! 

Dirt, sticks, and rocks

Two things about this February:

1. Amber has been waking up anywhere from 1-5 times per night for 85% of the month. It could be from teething (those molars are killers) or her lingering congestion or just some other one year old phase. I don't think it really matters at this point. I suppose I can't blame Amber entirely for my sleep deprivation, since I have had a series of brain-won't-shut-off sleepless nights myself. Ugh. All I know is that I am declining into tired-Shaina again and it's hard to keep a grip on my cheer and goodwill with such a hacked apart sleep pattern.  
2. In spite of the slightly desperate sleep situation, we have managed to have some very pleasant moments this month. Winter seems to have given up on our pocket of the country, and we have been enjoying long sunny afternoons with temperatures in the 50s and 60s. As I typed that I glanced outside and noticed that it is cloudy and raining right now--haha. I love being outside in good weather, but I especially love that exciting NEW feeling of the first hints of spring in the air. We have enjoyed walking, running, and visiting the park multiple times in the warmer weather. Dirt, sticks, and rocks are really all kids need for a good time.

STICKS!

 ROCKS!

DIRT!

 Amber's lips and cheeks and little sunshine-squinty brow! Yum! And her cutie patootie little secondhand pink sneakers. Adore. She's my little teddy bear in that fuzzy pink jacket. Perfection.

 

We brought some leftover cupcakes from Rose's birthday to the park one day. Those cupcakes were lying around the kitchen for a solid ten days after the party! We really are not cupcake people. So I brought them to the park--nothing like the fresh cool air to give kids an appetite for sugar! Since that's what I want them to eat right before dinner! Hah. I ended up throwing away the last couple of cupcakes. 

 Walk-running to school. Rose takes the lead.

 We have walked to school like three whole times this month! Rose likes to run all the way there and then hitch a ride with Amber on the way home. Amber has mixed feelings about that arrangement.

 Instead of suffering with the double jogging stroller, I have started using the single stroller and letting Rose and Amber either share it or take turns walking and running with me. We have had some very enjoyable extended walk-jogs after taking Jay to school in the mornings. It's not as cardiovascular-ly stimulating as a nice clippy 4 mile run, but exercise is exercise and it's fun to turn it into an adventure with my girls.

One of the few times that I was able to play with Jay and Rose back when I was sick and pregnant with Amber was the day we registered Jay for kindergarten. I had taken all of my most powerful anti nausea medicine so as to be able to handle the outing, and when we were done registering I still had nearly an hour left of ok time before it would be time to wrestle another snack down my throat. So we went to this park--Westside Park--since it's next door to the school, and we played. I sat under this big tree and showed the kids how to make little fairy houses and potions and worlds among the big tree roots. I told them that was one of my favorite things to do when I was little, and they still remember that two years later. I love that they have at least one lasting positive memory from that nine months of agony. They still like to go to the same tree at the same park and build, dig, and play away around the gnarly roots. I loved watching them play in the last of the afternoon's golden sunlight. 

Dirt, sticks, and rocks: elements of childhood!

Ten years and tidbits

Happy Valentine's Day! The day started a little bit earlier than I hoped it would, but c'est la vie with kids. Today is the TEN YEAR anniversary of mine and Jeff's first date! We may not go on many dates these days, but true love is still sweet.

Before church today, Jay took a couple of 10 year Valentine pictures for us on our sunny back porch in the gorgeous 60 degree air. Could winter actually be over? I've seen plenty of sage rats over the past three weeks, and none of them have had shadows. Maybe spring is really here.

Yesterday we had a stay at home date of sorts: Jeff hooked up our TV antenna and we snagged NBC with it to watch the US Olympic Trials Marathon race. Our kids were running amok around us during it, but we persevered and managed to watch the entire 2+ hour Olympic Marathon Trial race. It was incredibly exciting! Those runners are machines! Until they collapse and cry at the finish line. Then their humanity returns. I love seeing the passion, effort, and sheer GUTS of elite marathoners.

 Amber gave Galen Rupp "knucks" on the homestretch, clearly securing his dominating win. Jay and Hobbes were shooting pistols at us to keep things lively.

This morning Amber woke up around 4:30am and kept crying every time I covered her up and left her room. So I took her out and held her in the recliner in the family room. Eventually she dozed off a little after 6am. A little while later, Jay and Rose came out and joined us in the recliner, rousing Amber from her snuggly slumber and me from my neck-cricking stupor. We all lounged in the slowly graying dawn, elbowed each other and talked, all squished and crammed into one chair. When the light was bright enough, Jay read us a story, and then we went and dog piled Jeff who was still in bed. It was after 7am at that point and I thought for sure he was awake by then because he rarely sleeps in. So I rallied the troops and we piled onto the bed. Turns out Jeff had been fast asleep! He took it in good grace, like the king of patience he is. I get hungry--like ravenous--in the morning after a whole night without eating. While we were all piled in bed together, I rolled over and mumbled "I'm SO hungry!" Jeff asked me "what do you want?" I said "toast with apple butter and orange juice." And he brought me breakfast in bed! Toast and OJ are my favorite breakfast. It's crazy that the last time I had breakfast in bed was at the hospital when I was deathly sick and pregnant with Amber. It's way more fun to have breakfast in bed as a Valentine's day treat than as a means of survival!

Amber lips

The bigger these kids get, the harder it is to all squeeze into the recliner. I have been thoroughly gouged by elbows, knees, shoulders, tail bones, rib cages, and I think skulls too.

 my little breakfast. I chowed down the first piece of toast before even thinking about taking a picture. I was so comfy and at ease, listening to Jeff get the kids breakfast while lounging in bed.

Here are a few more tidbits from our week:

On Friday, when Jay got home from school, he told me that he got to bring home a snail from his class. He was so excited! I was so not! I did my best not to dampen his enthusiasm with my inquiries. Here's the story I pieced together from what Jay said: The teacher drew names out of a hat to decide who got to take home their latest science project study snails. 12 lucky kids got to take home one snail each (there are 17 kids in his class).
"I said a prayer that I would be able to take home a snail and it WORKED" (insert big eyes and O-shaped mouth), Jay said.
"Where is your snail?" I asked.
"In my backpack." Jay replied, matter-of-factly.
"Oh dear, I hope it's in a container!" I thought to myself.
Jay removed a paper cup with a paper towel rubber banded across the top. He asked for a place to keep his snail, telling me that he was going to put lots of soil in it for the snail. I got him an ice cream bucket. When he removed the smelly snail from the cup, however, the snail's soft body was hanging limply down out of the shell.
"I think he's dead." Jay said (again, matter-of-factly)
"Try putting him down in the bucket and see if he moves" I said. Nothing. The thing was totally dead!
"It must have happened while I was running," Jay said.
Swallowing a burst of laughter, I said (in what I hope was a kind, constructive tone) "Next time you bring home an animal, you probably should not carry it in your backpack."
Breathing a small sigh of relief (and being hit with a disgusting stench of snail slime in the process) I quickly suggested that Jay put the snail and his cup into the bucket and throw the whole thing out in the trash can on the driveway. Whew!
Jay came back in and said, "Mrs. Aguilar said that if the snail dies, we should bury it in the ground."
"Well, the trash from our trashcan eventually gets buried in the ground at a landfill," I said. Thankfully that satisfied the ever-logical Jay. I can't help but wonder how the other eleven snails fared.

I had the best time recounting this story to Jeff. We were rolling with laughter! First graders are so awesome.

Ever since Amber mastered saying "Dada" a couple of weeks ago, she has abandoned saying "Mama" cold turkey. She used to say it all the time! Yes, I should be grateful that Mama was her first word (especially since Jay and Rose both said Dad first), but I've been trying to get her to say it again for well over two weeks with no luck. Then Wednesday night she saw Jay and Rose eating leftover birthday cupcakes and demanded some in  her 1 year old way, with persuasive loud ahhhhhh sounds and emphatic hand gestures. I cut of a little piece off of a cupcake and gave it to her. Right when she took a bite she looked at me and said "Mama." Hah! Apparently the way to her heart is through her stomach! I can't believe that she already loves treats. She's only ever had bites of cake or cookie a handful of times, but she adores them already! She recognizes when I'm eating one of those sweet foods and begs for a bite. It really has only started in the past week, with Rose's birthday cupcakes and I made cookies last week too. But still! Little sweet tooth Amby. Jay had one dessert per year for the first three years of his life--on his birthday. He didn't care! He didn't know! But the youngest knows. Hah! My old principles are cringing. But oh well! I only give Amber a few tiny bites--just enough to satisfy her--so I don't feel that bad about her begging for sugar.

[looking extra handsome for church today]

Last week, Jay asked me about the cover of The Week magazine where it said "Pick your poison" with a picture of Trump and Cruz on bubbling smoking goblets. He asked me what pick your poison meant. I did my best to explain that neither one of the candidates are very admirable, and that's why it's like picking poison no matter which one is chosen. Jay asked why they were not good, and I told him about how Trump doesn't want to help people from other countries that need help, and that he says rude things. I'm no expert, but I chose one simple explanation to satisfy Jay's question. Jay replied "he probably didn't get enough hugs when he was little." and then he gave me a big hug. I told him he he's the best. I love that boy!

On Monday morning this week, I read Matthew 22:42 "what think ye of Christ?" While I was thinking about that, Rose came in. She woke up and snuggled up to me while I was reading scriptures in bed. When I asked Rose that question, she thought for a minute and then confidently said "that he healed people." The more I thought about her response, the more perfect it seemed. Yes! Go, Rose! In four short words she captured the essence of Jesus Christ's love and mission: healing people. He healed people when he was on earth and he heals people today. How? We have to soften our hearts and turn to him. When we ponder and pray and keep on trying to do better and to be better, he heals us and helps us. Amber has really given me a run for my money this week--she is not sleeping well due to congestion, coughing, and teething. I am totally exhausted from answering multiple wake up cries each night. It's amazing how hard it is to think past a certain level when sleep deprivation kicks in! Monday was the last day that I can even remember what I read from the scriptures, even though I know I read every day. I'm currently especially thankful that Jesus Christ heals and forgives and bears with us in all of our trials and weaknesses.

On Friday, my need for sleep was at its peak and I was struggling. I had things to do, Amber was cranky and needy, and Rose kept asking me to do other things with/for her: play Barbies, make a Barbie castle, read books, paint her nails, etc. Finally after I put Amber down for her nap, I sat down with Rose to read her carefully selected stack of library books. Well, it was three books, but in my tiredness it seemed like quite a stack. Snuggling on the couch to read a stack of stories after saying "just a minute" to Rose all morning made me feel like a good mom again.

Jay just came out of his room and hugged me.
"I just wanted to give you a nice big hug." he said.
"I love you. I'm so glad you're  my sweet boy," I told him.
"I love you too," he said. Then he walked away and went back to playing.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Temple walk

Last week after a long morning of errands in the trusty Tri Cities, the girls and I decided to take a walk around the temple on our way home. The sun was shining, the temperature was in the mid forties, and the temple was gleaming white against the blue sky. It was the first time Amber has been to the temple since she got the hang of walking, and she was quite pleased with herself. She romped all over the grass...I hope that's allowed. I did keep Rose from climbing on the terraced flower beds and splashing in the fountain most of the time... 

Amber was in no kind of mood for selfies.

Rose likes to touch the temple.

We love our temple walks.