Mr & Mrs Smith

Today I realized I'm 4 years behind on our family albums. That may seem inconsequential to many, but if I don't write it down & bring the photos together, it's almost as if it never existed. I skimmed through our most recent book & it helped hearing how I described my then 1 yo in such a way that I can better relate to my now 7 yo. It's important for me to remember my journey so that I see the big picture & stay the course God has set. Otherwise, it just seems like I'm wandering.                                                                                  To at least catch us up in the present, I just have two kids at home during the day! My bookends. L joined a homeschool cha...

  Perhaps I'm ready to begin again, again. I struggle to add more words to the universe & I feel the same with photos. I let two of my passions die, both rather abruptly. My posts used to write themselves, I felt so guided in what God needed me to say. But this past year, my words have been removed. I moved from this blog over to Instagram as a better place to connect, but then everything became a distraction, and even the good distractions soon became too overwhelming. I can't possibly do every craft or recipe I've saved at this point. Unfortunately, I became painfully aware of my addictive attachment to my algorithm & lost much of my peace & productivity because of it. Satan knew, but I was too slow to recognize complacency & emptiness disguised as creative options & worldly debates. "The days are gone that you can be a quiet and comfortable Christian." I am definitely not raising quiet Christians, but perhaps we are still trying to be too co...

I love change. I love variety. I love mixing things up just because I can. It's helpful, but it's kind of a double edged sword.  I'm terrible at consistency, even though Clifton Strengthfinder told me that was my #5 strength (I think they meant something closer to wanting things fair & equitable which isn't wrong). I not only move furniture in & out of my life, or make sure we don't eat the same thing too often... but I love that I can give my kids a flexible education. God knew this is something I would love & has allowed for it even when it comes with significant sacrifices (as many good things do). This has been a beautiful way to grow me over the last 4 years, and I definitely missed it, but I also started to doubt ever doing it again, which felt odd. I found myself questioning why I wanted to take the harder course. I had a little break with just E & M at home, but now B is back too, so I'm giving up some me time (I was never good at it any ...

I don’t care about your crumbs or your disheveled mess. I care about you.  I don’t care that you yelled at your kids or that you are running late. I care about you. I don’t care that the baby is crying or that there are dirty diapers on the floor. I care about you. I don’t care that you don’t have any children. I care about you. I don’t care that your marriage is difficult or easy or non existent. I care about you. I don’t care that you don’t share the same religious beliefs as me. I care about you. I don’t care that all you accomplished today was taking a shower. I care about you. I don’t care that you didn’t take a shower. I care about you. I don't care that you make different choices from me. I care about you. I care about you and am not blind to a mess or differences at some level but it's not my focus; I know how many variables go into our choices & I'm here to help wherever you’re at. What do you want & how can I help you get there? A quote from Dr Finayson-Fi...

God expects us to hold happiness and sorrow at the same time. It’s a beautiful contrary that many of us struggle to understand, but it’s really key to understanding our purpose on earth. We can easily find ourselves in a battle of emotions if we can’t accept that both can exist at the same time; we will falsely accuse ourselves or others as either ungrateful & weak, or overly strong & fake. Perhaps a lot of it is how we speak to the struggle.  Our main purpose is to experience heartache & frustration (one side of the coin), but to overcome it through the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, which provides everlasting joy (the other side of the coin). In order to really value the Atonement of Jesus Christ, many of us are humbled by the feeling of hopelessness. We will all experience some level of loss & acute awareness of our own weaknesses, usually when things start to feel out of our control. But what does holding both sorrow & joy look like? That is a quest...

At what point do you ... 1. Keep holding on waiting for inspiration to come 2. Try something different 3. Let go & walk away I'd say most of us are usually somewhere in between #1 & #2, but there are occasional moments where I find myself locked into another Jane Austin film with some oreos & milk ignoring reality all together.  Today, I'm trying to rise above some level of complacency & clear my mind at your expense. Mr Smith & I had a good run of it, but since blogs became obsolete in 2017 while Instragram chained us all to algorithms, I had no audience nor desire to write in this world. But times change, after it murders our souls, and alas we are famished for an authentic keyboard with less distractions again. So, let's catch up. They say it comes in threes... Since our job change in 2017, we experienced three more moves, three additional job changes (that don't necessarily align with the moves), and three additional children.  2018-2022 were ver...