- Scripture success
- Pepper power run with friends: half way through my training plan!
- Separate service
- Library minus pants
- Groceries and a car wash
- Van upgrade
- Grampa Dan's pancakes
Now I'm going to write 2,371 words about it.
The kids slept in till nearly 7am on Saturday morning! It was so quiet while I ate my toast and I actually got to read more than one scripture verse in a row. In fact, I was able to finish reading the last chapter of the Book of Mormon! It has been a few years since I read the whole BOM cover to cover quickly and it felt good. Normally I don't like scripture reading challenges like "read the Book of Mormon in 90 days!" and such because I hate rushing (rushing stresses me out), but when I was serving in the young women's organization in our old ward, we accepted a challenge to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year. Making more time for reading the Book of Mormon is always worth it.
A few weeks ago, an old friend of mine from Tennessee Facebook posted a beautiful testimony of the Book of Mormon that I have been reflecting on for the past few weeks. She wrote:
"I love the Book of Mormon. So much of my faith rests on the spirit I feel while reading it. Nothing has brought me closer to my Savior than studying and applying its teachings. Today, I feel so full of gratitude for the grace offered by Jesus Christ. A grace that can strengthen weaknesses or allow them to remain simply so we know we are enough the way we are when we are close to Him."
Thank you, Charlyn! I have studied and read about grace before, but this single sentence made more sense to me than any of the other things I have read. Grace lifts and accepts. I am enough, whether I overcome my weaknesses or not. Now when I get caught up in my tendency to worry, (am I doing enough as a parent/wife/daughter/church member/sister/friend?), I have a ready answer. Sometimes the question "am I doing enough?" gets shortened in my head to "am I enough?" and even though my brain logically knows that yes, I am doing my best and that's all I can give, that inexplicable desire for external confirmation of my efforts still looks around hopefully. It's then that I can remind myself of this wonderful truth about grace--that my efforts are accepted and I am enough. Yes, He wants me to progress and improve myself, but He still loves me the way I am right now. We are always enough!
Well that was more than I expected to write! As anyone who's ever visited Where the White Things Are can attest, however, unplanned wordy embellishments are more common than not. Back to the busy Saturday...
After finishing the Book of Mormon with my breakfast, I drove to Grandview and ran 5 miles with two friends at 7:30am. It was fun to run with my friends again. With all of the effort it takes an introvert like myself to make new friends, it is especially comfy to see established friends every now and then. It reminds me that I can actually stop being awkward for long enough to get to know people eventually because these old friends are proof: I have done it before! And I can do it again in our new town and ward, even if it takes a while. When we met at the park, we discovered that all 3 of us brought our hand strap-on runner's pepper spray. Pepper power! With 35 pepper spray blasts per canister, we could have annihilated over 100 attacks! Who's pack-running now, dogs?
I got home from the run right around 9am, and immediately changed clothes [sans shower--no time for hygeine!] and dashed out again. Jeff and I loaded the Saturday morning cartoon-lounging bedhead-pajama'd kids into the van and dropped Jeff off at the house of a family in our ward so he could help move their stuff across town to their new house. From there I drove the kids to the church to do some vacuuming. Less than three months in the ward, and we're already on the cleaning schedule! Ha. Every time I am faced with a less than desirable church assignment, I remind myself of the inspired words of another wise friend, in regards to church service: "everybody takes a turn." Thank you, Janay. It's true! It's obvious, even. But that mantra has gotten me through plenty of hard-for-me church service. We all contribute to the ward and it works. When I'm not doing this, someone else is taking their turn at it. The church functions because everybody takes a turn.
In spite of that marvelous mantra, I must confess to thinking some somewhat melancholy/negative thoughts as I bumped the too-wide ancient cast iron church vacuum against pew after pew under a veritable strobe light caused by Amber flipping the chapel lights on and off, on and off, on and off. Time ticked my toast-and-OJ breakfast farther and farther away. Hunger! Endless heavy vacuuming! Misbehaving children! It was challenging. But everyone takes a turn, and we joined our other cleaning team members to take ours.
We finished around 10:30am whereupon I discovered that Amber had pooped a big one in her saggy soaked night time pull-up diaper (which we hadn't managed to change before leaving the house). It was large and disgusting and the sag made the poo rub all over her legs nearly down to her knees and all over her pj pants. Too graphic? After the past two months of riding the ups and downs of Amber's "potty training," I feel rather numb to the nuances of bodily fluids. It's all everyday life right now, so plug your nose while you read this or something if it helps, I have lost my ability to gage the grossness! I wiped Amber down as best I could in the church parking lot (lost count of the number of wipes I used, and that's saying something--Jeff and I rank the awfulness of a diaper by the number of wipes it takes to clean up. "That was a four-wiper!" earns an immediate groan of sympathy.). At last I put Amber in a new pull-up. Insert another mantra: everyone gets potty trained eventually--it will happen eventually.
Then we drove to the library to pick up the books we had on hold there. We had not extra clothes for Amber in the car, so she wore a grubby yesterday's t-shirt, pull-up, and pink croc shoes with her crazy curly halo of bedhead blonde curls. And she owned it! She happily ran her lil' white thighs around the library collecting books while we browsed.
The rest of the day went rather like the "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" story.
After we had library'd sufficiently and picked up Jeff, we found ourselves driving past Walmart, and I remembered that I needed to pick up some chicken so I could make dinner for the family that just moved (they also just had a baby 2 weeks ago--doubly deserving of dinners). So we pulled in and Rose helped me dash in and grab the necessary meat. THEN the SHS dance team was having a car wash across the street so we went and supported their fundraiser and got our old CRUSTY dusty van all washed and sparkly. That dance team earned our donation! THEN since we were already out and about, we decided to go over and check out the van Jeff liked at the local car dealership just a few blocks away. Amber was still clad in only her pull-up and dirty t-shirt.
While we were getting out of the car at the spiffy shiny dealership, I was laughing my head off. We were such a ragtag motley crew! Jeff was drenched in sweat (like, WET to the touch t-shirt) from all of his lifting and moving. I was in junky baggy cleaning clothes and had salty dried post-run sweat all over myself, Rose's hair was falling out of yesterday's braids, Amber was still in her advanced state of undress, and Jay was taking 100,000 years to put on his socks and shoes, which he had removed while riding in the van. I made up nicknames for all of us while we melted in the hot parking lot waiting for Jay to shoe himself: Sweaty, Salty, Slow-Poke, Crazy Hair, and Pull-Up. We met the salesman and set up an appointment to see the van after lunch (the van was at another location, so they had to go get it for us). Then we gratefully went home for lunch and showers at noon. I had been out and about since 7am, with the exception of my quick wardrobe change at 9am.
We looked a bit more put together when we got back to the dealership at 1:20pm. Amber was fully clothed, and Jeff and I were clean and dry--although I didn't manage to fix Rose's crazy hair. I couldn't face wearing pants in 105 degrees, so I threw on one of my floral dresses, which was breezy and COMFY. But Rose grilled me about WHY I was wearing a SUNDAY dress, while Amber immediately wanted to wear her own floral dress. She stripped (thankfully at home) and demanded help putting on one of her nice dresses. So Amber and I were in nice dresses, Jeff was in unseasonably heavy jeans because all of his shorts were in the wash, and then Jay and Rose were still in yesterday's clothes. With yesterday's hair.
Long story short: after nearly 3 hours at the dealership, we had a marvelous replacement for our van! Instagram squeezed a succinct summary of the afternoon out of me: We bought a car today. Goodbye, Vincent VanGough. Thank you for your 188k miles of faithful service. Two hours of mind-numbing waiting room cartoons for the kids, a 2016 Kia Sedona van for all of us. Introducing Vanna. Vanna White. She's only one year old, but we're going to put her to work.
Our old 2005 Honda Odyssey van first belonged to my parents, who drove it while my younger siblings were still van-able. They dubbed it Vincent VanGough--a wonderful name for a van, and eventually bequeathed it to us five years ago. We decided that we needed an equally excellent name for Vincent's replacement, even though we don't really actually use car names very often. We brainstormed names while we were driving home free as birds after a long boring afternoon at the dealership. It came almost instantly. Jeff said "how about Vanna?" I said "yes! Vanna White!" The kids, inexperienced with game shows as they are, didn't really get too excited about it. But Vanna is her name. She's almost too fancy for our dusty driveway and penchant for passing crackers around on road trips, but we'll get to know each other soon enough.
We were able to get exactly what we wanted for our old van's trade-in, or at least exactly what Kelley Blue Book said we should be able to get. We were also able to purchase a SWEET 100,000 mile/6 year warranty for Vanna. The last add-on we chose was a nifty maintenance plan. Jeff and I were very impressed with the service and straightforwardness of the Sunnyside C. Speck Motors dealership. I feel so secure in this van with its warranty and maintenance plan--bring on the road trips! We are armed and ready!
This was our first time buying a vehicle. Gasp! I know. We have been very blessed to have our past two cars gifted to us, and I felt quite conflicted with this purchase--though not for the average reasons. I surprised myself by feeling nothing much at all about getting a shiny new van. No excitement, no apprehension, not much of anything--apparently I'm neutral territory when it comes to vehicle selection. In fact, I didn't even want to test drive the van. It made me nervous! I just wanted Jeff to go in and buy it if he thought it would be a good one. But he dragged me there for a test drive which I completed, palms sweating like I was in driver's ed again. I did not like having a stranger car salesman watching me fumble around trying to drive an unknown car with unfamiliar buttons and dials! But I survived, we bought the van, and I didn't really...care?
Since we have always taken our vehicle in for yearly maintenance (and paid a-plenty for it), it has always functioned fine, so we don't know what it's like to drive an unreliable car. We have never had a car payment (blessing!) so we don't know firsthand about that soul-sucking monthly bill (although if it's anything like a mortgage, we do know how that feels...). We used some of the money from the sale of our house to pay cash for the van, so still no car payment. (yay!) When people congratulated us on the purchase of our new van, I started feeling almost guilty that I didn't really think it was that big of a deal! Oh well, I'll take my excitement at Christmas, camping trips, and the occasional bookstore, and then placidly drive home in our normal minivan.
We got home from the dealership around 4pm, just enough time for a little relaxation before heading BACK out again on Vanna's maiden voyage to Grandview for the weekly Saturday night White family pancake gathering at Grampa Dan and Grama Leslie's house. When we were finally home again and the kids were in bed, Jeff and I collapsed onto the couch at 7:30 after our unusually out-and-about day and finished the last episode of Flash.
Saturday had its fair share of beginnings and endings.
The kids slept in till nearly 7am on Saturday morning! It was so quiet while I ate my toast and I actually got to read more than one scripture verse in a row. In fact, I was able to finish reading the last chapter of the Book of Mormon! It has been a few years since I read the whole BOM cover to cover quickly and it felt good. Normally I don't like scripture reading challenges like "read the Book of Mormon in 90 days!" and such because I hate rushing (rushing stresses me out), but when I was serving in the young women's organization in our old ward, we accepted a challenge to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year. Making more time for reading the Book of Mormon is always worth it.
A few weeks ago, an old friend of mine from Tennessee Facebook posted a beautiful testimony of the Book of Mormon that I have been reflecting on for the past few weeks. She wrote:
"I love the Book of Mormon. So much of my faith rests on the spirit I feel while reading it. Nothing has brought me closer to my Savior than studying and applying its teachings. Today, I feel so full of gratitude for the grace offered by Jesus Christ. A grace that can strengthen weaknesses or allow them to remain simply so we know we are enough the way we are when we are close to Him."
Thank you, Charlyn! I have studied and read about grace before, but this single sentence made more sense to me than any of the other things I have read. Grace lifts and accepts. I am enough, whether I overcome my weaknesses or not. Now when I get caught up in my tendency to worry, (am I doing enough as a parent/wife/daughter/church member/sister/friend?), I have a ready answer. Sometimes the question "am I doing enough?" gets shortened in my head to "am I enough?" and even though my brain logically knows that yes, I am doing my best and that's all I can give, that inexplicable desire for external confirmation of my efforts still looks around hopefully. It's then that I can remind myself of this wonderful truth about grace--that my efforts are accepted and I am enough. Yes, He wants me to progress and improve myself, but He still loves me the way I am right now. We are always enough!
Well that was more than I expected to write! As anyone who's ever visited Where the White Things Are can attest, however, unplanned wordy embellishments are more common than not. Back to the busy Saturday...
After finishing the Book of Mormon with my breakfast, I drove to Grandview and ran 5 miles with two friends at 7:30am. It was fun to run with my friends again. With all of the effort it takes an introvert like myself to make new friends, it is especially comfy to see established friends every now and then. It reminds me that I can actually stop being awkward for long enough to get to know people eventually because these old friends are proof: I have done it before! And I can do it again in our new town and ward, even if it takes a while. When we met at the park, we discovered that all 3 of us brought our hand strap-on runner's pepper spray. Pepper power! With 35 pepper spray blasts per canister, we could have annihilated over 100 attacks! Who's pack-running now, dogs?
I got home from the run right around 9am, and immediately changed clothes [sans shower--no time for hygeine!] and dashed out again. Jeff and I loaded the Saturday morning cartoon-lounging bedhead-pajama'd kids into the van and dropped Jeff off at the house of a family in our ward so he could help move their stuff across town to their new house. From there I drove the kids to the church to do some vacuuming. Less than three months in the ward, and we're already on the cleaning schedule! Ha. Every time I am faced with a less than desirable church assignment, I remind myself of the inspired words of another wise friend, in regards to church service: "everybody takes a turn." Thank you, Janay. It's true! It's obvious, even. But that mantra has gotten me through plenty of hard-for-me church service. We all contribute to the ward and it works. When I'm not doing this, someone else is taking their turn at it. The church functions because everybody takes a turn.
In spite of that marvelous mantra, I must confess to thinking some somewhat melancholy/negative thoughts as I bumped the too-wide ancient cast iron church vacuum against pew after pew under a veritable strobe light caused by Amber flipping the chapel lights on and off, on and off, on and off. Time ticked my toast-and-OJ breakfast farther and farther away. Hunger! Endless heavy vacuuming! Misbehaving children! It was challenging. But everyone takes a turn, and we joined our other cleaning team members to take ours.
Posing post-cleaning with my 500 pound vacuum friend, SS-18 #2. Makes it sound like a Star Wars droid.
We finished around 10:30am whereupon I discovered that Amber had pooped a big one in her saggy soaked night time pull-up diaper (which we hadn't managed to change before leaving the house). It was large and disgusting and the sag made the poo rub all over her legs nearly down to her knees and all over her pj pants. Too graphic? After the past two months of riding the ups and downs of Amber's "potty training," I feel rather numb to the nuances of bodily fluids. It's all everyday life right now, so plug your nose while you read this or something if it helps, I have lost my ability to gage the grossness! I wiped Amber down as best I could in the church parking lot (lost count of the number of wipes I used, and that's saying something--Jeff and I rank the awfulness of a diaper by the number of wipes it takes to clean up. "That was a four-wiper!" earns an immediate groan of sympathy.). At last I put Amber in a new pull-up. Insert another mantra: everyone gets potty trained eventually--it will happen eventually.
Then we drove to the library to pick up the books we had on hold there. We had not extra clothes for Amber in the car, so she wore a grubby yesterday's t-shirt, pull-up, and pink croc shoes with her crazy curly halo of bedhead blonde curls. And she owned it! She happily ran her lil' white thighs around the library collecting books while we browsed.
The rest of the day went rather like the "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" story.
After we had library'd sufficiently and picked up Jeff, we found ourselves driving past Walmart, and I remembered that I needed to pick up some chicken so I could make dinner for the family that just moved (they also just had a baby 2 weeks ago--doubly deserving of dinners). So we pulled in and Rose helped me dash in and grab the necessary meat. THEN the SHS dance team was having a car wash across the street so we went and supported their fundraiser and got our old CRUSTY dusty van all washed and sparkly. That dance team earned our donation! THEN since we were already out and about, we decided to go over and check out the van Jeff liked at the local car dealership just a few blocks away. Amber was still clad in only her pull-up and dirty t-shirt.
Fresh library books make excellent waiting-in-the-car entertainment.
While we were getting out of the car at the spiffy shiny dealership, I was laughing my head off. We were such a ragtag motley crew! Jeff was drenched in sweat (like, WET to the touch t-shirt) from all of his lifting and moving. I was in junky baggy cleaning clothes and had salty dried post-run sweat all over myself, Rose's hair was falling out of yesterday's braids, Amber was still in her advanced state of undress, and Jay was taking 100,000 years to put on his socks and shoes, which he had removed while riding in the van. I made up nicknames for all of us while we melted in the hot parking lot waiting for Jay to shoe himself: Sweaty, Salty, Slow-Poke, Crazy Hair, and Pull-Up. We met the salesman and set up an appointment to see the van after lunch (the van was at another location, so they had to go get it for us). Then we gratefully went home for lunch and showers at noon. I had been out and about since 7am, with the exception of my quick wardrobe change at 9am.
We looked a bit more put together when we got back to the dealership at 1:20pm. Amber was fully clothed, and Jeff and I were clean and dry--although I didn't manage to fix Rose's crazy hair. I couldn't face wearing pants in 105 degrees, so I threw on one of my floral dresses, which was breezy and COMFY. But Rose grilled me about WHY I was wearing a SUNDAY dress, while Amber immediately wanted to wear her own floral dress. She stripped (thankfully at home) and demanded help putting on one of her nice dresses. So Amber and I were in nice dresses, Jeff was in unseasonably heavy jeans because all of his shorts were in the wash, and then Jay and Rose were still in yesterday's clothes. With yesterday's hair.
Long story short: after nearly 3 hours at the dealership, we had a marvelous replacement for our van! Instagram squeezed a succinct summary of the afternoon out of me: We bought a car today. Goodbye, Vincent VanGough. Thank you for your 188k miles of faithful service. Two hours of mind-numbing waiting room cartoons for the kids, a 2016 Kia Sedona van for all of us. Introducing Vanna. Vanna White. She's only one year old, but we're going to put her to work.
Silver: Vincent. Navy: Vanna.
Our old 2005 Honda Odyssey van first belonged to my parents, who drove it while my younger siblings were still van-able. They dubbed it Vincent VanGough--a wonderful name for a van, and eventually bequeathed it to us five years ago. We decided that we needed an equally excellent name for Vincent's replacement, even though we don't really actually use car names very often. We brainstormed names while we were driving home free as birds after a long boring afternoon at the dealership. It came almost instantly. Jeff said "how about Vanna?" I said "yes! Vanna White!" The kids, inexperienced with game shows as they are, didn't really get too excited about it. But Vanna is her name. She's almost too fancy for our dusty driveway and penchant for passing crackers around on road trips, but we'll get to know each other soon enough.
We were able to get exactly what we wanted for our old van's trade-in, or at least exactly what Kelley Blue Book said we should be able to get. We were also able to purchase a SWEET 100,000 mile/6 year warranty for Vanna. The last add-on we chose was a nifty maintenance plan. Jeff and I were very impressed with the service and straightforwardness of the Sunnyside C. Speck Motors dealership. I feel so secure in this van with its warranty and maintenance plan--bring on the road trips! We are armed and ready!
The temperature was 105 degrees, but in a giant black parking lot full of cars it was definitely hotter. Our salesman Ricky insisted on taking a family picture of us in front of our new van. I have to confess, it was nice having someone else demand a group picture for once, instead of me.
This was our first time buying a vehicle. Gasp! I know. We have been very blessed to have our past two cars gifted to us, and I felt quite conflicted with this purchase--though not for the average reasons. I surprised myself by feeling nothing much at all about getting a shiny new van. No excitement, no apprehension, not much of anything--apparently I'm neutral territory when it comes to vehicle selection. In fact, I didn't even want to test drive the van. It made me nervous! I just wanted Jeff to go in and buy it if he thought it would be a good one. But he dragged me there for a test drive which I completed, palms sweating like I was in driver's ed again. I did not like having a stranger car salesman watching me fumble around trying to drive an unknown car with unfamiliar buttons and dials! But I survived, we bought the van, and I didn't really...care?
Since we have always taken our vehicle in for yearly maintenance (and paid a-plenty for it), it has always functioned fine, so we don't know what it's like to drive an unreliable car. We have never had a car payment (blessing!) so we don't know firsthand about that soul-sucking monthly bill (although if it's anything like a mortgage, we do know how that feels...). We used some of the money from the sale of our house to pay cash for the van, so still no car payment. (yay!) When people congratulated us on the purchase of our new van, I started feeling almost guilty that I didn't really think it was that big of a deal! Oh well, I'll take my excitement at Christmas, camping trips, and the occasional bookstore, and then placidly drive home in our normal minivan.
We got home from the dealership around 4pm, just enough time for a little relaxation before heading BACK out again on Vanna's maiden voyage to Grandview for the weekly Saturday night White family pancake gathering at Grampa Dan and Grama Leslie's house. When we were finally home again and the kids were in bed, Jeff and I collapsed onto the couch at 7:30 after our unusually out-and-about day and finished the last episode of Flash.
Saturday had its fair share of beginnings and endings.
1 comment:
This was a great post! I enjoyed every one of the 2,371 words!
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