flashes of clarity

I am so not a morning person as my parents can painfully recall I'm sure. I have homicidal tendencies when awakened by someone that isn't myself exactly when I want to wake up. This has posed a problem in parenthood and then I heard some life changing advice from that sage counselor, that learn-ed man....Steve Young. He said, after the BYU game on Saturday which I still get a little tingly thinking about...anyway, he said in response to that annoying sports interviewer who asked him, "what have you learned from being a parent of little kids?"...he said "selflessness...you better figure out how to get selfless really quick and your life will be so much better". Genius. It sounds so basic and is so hard to practice. I don't know a whole lot of folks who enjoy putting most all of their needs and wants and druthers aside all day every day. I'm working on it so when I hear the pitter patter of small people invading my otherwise peaceful, it's snowing outside so it's not even light in the room, perfect temperature and so much space now that Gabriel is gone to work sleep...I immediately start praying not to have a cow. So far there have been no cow births.

I woke up at 4:45 the day after Thanksgiving to go shopping with some girls here on my street. We went to Wal Mart, Target, Old Navy, Toys R Us, Shopko, Downeast Home and another Shopko and Starbucks for some hot chocolate and pastry. I basically had all my Christmas shopping done for the girls so I bought about 9 movies, a red crock pot, a dust buster and some stocking hangers.....all these other people were totally trying to make others happy at 5 in the morning and I'm like...what can I buy for myself....then later on, Gabriel, feeling much the same sentiment as I did, drove us all to Sears where we bought a television larger than our children so that they can be even more frightened of Scar on the Lion King than they already are. good times.

Remember Josefina? Yeah, she's gone. We now have Ruth who is from Peru and is in our ward. She lives here with her 22 year old daughter who is seriously like this tiny little insanely beautiful wood sprite and her 15 year old who is mentally handicapped. Her husband is in Peru and they're getting a divorce and she lost her job as a nanny recently so Cinthia (the 22 year old) works like 20 hours every two weeks at $9/hr and that is what they live on besides the baby-sitting that Ruth does and the Medicaid that Nathalie gets. So sad. And you know the saddest part....that amazingly intelligent and beautiful girl has never been on a DATE! out of control. She spends her whole life with her mom and sister and had to stop studying at college so she can help pay for their life. It's enough to make me want to call Ty Pennington if they had a house to redo. Anyway, in order to help a smidge and have her feel like she is also working, we have Ruth come to clean one week and babysit the next, then clean, then babysit. For $100 every 2 weeks we have a date and clean showers. Also, she is actually the kind of person who genuinely is in love with little kids. She speaks this really fast, really slurry Spanish in a baby voice and they just think she is the best thing ever. This morning I heard Dellah asking Gabriel after tiptoe-ing in my room if that was Hermana Carbajal in my bed....no, he said....that's your mom....like always. I could hear their disappointment....THEY LIKE HER MORE THAN ME!
whatever. I like her more than me too.

So I've started playing primary music on CD while my children eat breakfast to try and squelch potential fights and then read them the little comic book Book of Mormon from the 70's to try and give them some perspective. I'm pretty sure every little bit of spirituality that you try to have counts somehow even if you don't see any changes immediately. Monday I taught Family Home evening about the commandment to love and honor your parents....we listened to "When my mother calls me, quickly I'll obey" about 400 times until they knew it by heart. That made it easier 5 minutes later when they were ignoring my pleas and pulling each other's hair and kicking. At least they're making an informed choice to break the commandments. Knowledge is power people.

I have a practice tonight in the Conference Center for the Christmas concert and, from the looks of it, It's not going to stop snowing any time soon....nice...life-threatening feats to be one of 140 people dressed exactly the same and one of 8 maids a milking (we have two buckets by the way, did I mention that I am dancing with a wooden bucket in each hand?...yeah...awesome)
I'm teaching a Spanish class for the Relief Society on Thursday night....tell me actually and without too many jokes what you would want to learn from a Spanish class like that. So far we don't have a second one scheduled so it might be the only one.
te amo. adios.
I just realized how many times I have said the word 'I ' in this post and it's a little nauseating. just so you know I know.