October 27, 2013
8:30am – I love late church because I get to sleep in.
Sleeping in is one of my all-time favorite things to do. If I could set my own
schedule, I’d go to bed around 1 or 2am and wake up around 9 or 10am. I’m not
sure what circumstances will ever be conducive to a schedule like that, so I’m
happy with an 8:30am wake up time on a lazy Sunday morning. Neither Jared or I
have meetings today and neither one of us is teaching, so that’s a good start
to the day for sure.
I found Leah sitting on the floor about two inches from the
fireplace reading “National Geographic Kids” magazine. Leah is always cold.
That shouldn’t be a surprise to me, considering that she is clear up in the 14th
percentile for her weight. Sometimes I catch her shivering in 80 degrees. So
I’m really glad we have the fire going in the mornings. I love the coziness of
a fire and it thrills me to see the girls drawn to it as well. Curling up by a
fire in a nice cozy room is one of the simple pleasures in life.
11am – I put Meg in the bathtub and she was so happy that
there was enough time for her to play. This past week, I’ve been in such a rush
that I have to pull her out as soon as she’s clean and that’s rough! I know how
I feel short-changed when there’s not enough time for the heat from my shower
to soak into my bones, and I’m sure she feels the same when she can’t play with
her ducks. She has given each of them swimming lessons and she recently got a
new duck out of the treasure box at school who doesn’t know how to swim yet. So
today, she was able to spend some time with her new duck-friend.
11:30 – Convinced Meg to jump out of the tub. Blow drying my
girls’ hair is something I love to do. I don’t necessarily like to “do” hair,
but blowing it dry is a different story. I love a clean kid with clean, bouncy,
and fluffy hair. As soon as Meg’s hair was dry enough, we curled it up cute and
she wore her fancy green dress from Amy’s wedding because she wanted to dress
up for the primary program.
Leah also got dressed up pretty and it was great to have
both of them ready by noon. Even though church is at 1pm, getting there on time
is still a challenge for me. I can’t figure out how to schedule late
breakfast-early lunch stuff, so I just don’t. On Sundays, we are all on our own
and sometimes we scramble for our first bite of food for the day as we are
running out the door at 12:55. It works well enough for me and I’m not
motivated enough to put in any effort to change it.
1pm – Young Women’s started. Walking into the Young Women’s
room with Brita is something I’ve looked forward to for such a long time. It’s
great being in there together and I think we’ve helped each other a lot over
the past nine months. Lisa Thomas taught our Mia Maid lesson today and it was
phenomenal. She is a fantastic teacher and I love to learn from her. We talked
about gratitude – something we talk about and hear about all the time in the
church. When we walked into class, each of us had a hymn book on our chair and
she had us look up all the hymns under the topic of Gratitude. She gave each of
us a 3x5 card and told us to look up one or two songs and write down a few
select phrases that stood out to us. I love the song “For the Beauty of the
Earth”, so I went to that song first. The phrase that caught my attention the
most was “For the beauty of each hour.” I thought about how each hour is a gift
and regardless of what happens in each hour of my life, good or bad, I hope I’m
growing and learning. I thought about the dark hours of my life and how in
retrospect I see light because of the growth and learning that came from the
hard experiences. I thought about the bright hours of my life and how much
gratitude I have felt as I feel and see the influence of the Lord in both
simple and complex things. I love how that exercise provided me with the
experience of being grateful for
something and not just learning about the why’s and what’s of gratitude.
1:50pm – Jared met me in the hall to go to our Sunday School
class. We have been going to one of the small break-out classes they are offering
this year and it’s been amazing. We both feel like we are getting more out of
this class than the typical Sunday School class because of the great
discussions and teachers. Kristine Manwaring taught today’s class and she is an
exceptional teacher. Jared likes the way she phrases things and the cool words
she uses. I like how she thinks creatively and shares research and
thought-provoking experiences from her own life as she teaches. Today we talked
about how Christlike characteristics can help us be better teachers. I liked
the part that made me think about how love is the overriding characteristic
that comes to my mind when I think of Christ and if I feel love, then I will be
better at being patient with the people I teach and I will be diligent and work
harder on their behalf. I have had experiences where I have had to pray hard to
see people the way God sees them, and I have been blessed with more love for
them and therefore been able to teach them better. My goal from this lesson is
to pray more to feel His love for people I am struggling with.
2:45pm – We found a bench in the chapel and got ready for
the primary program. During the sacrament, Meg found us and wanted a tissue.
Good thing Brita could come to her rescue on that one – my church bag is fresh
out of tissues. The primary program was so good. I love hearing kids sing, and
I especially love hearing kids sing primary songs. Leah and her little class of
four girls sang “I’ll Seek the Lord Early” and I cried. I couldn’t help it when
I heard Leah’s voice stand out in the sweetest way among those four girls while
singing such beautiful words. Leah and Meg had both memorized their speaking parts
and of course I was proud. Leah’s part was, “Our living prophet, President
Thomas S. Monson, leads the church under the direction of Jesus Christ.” And
Meg’s part was “Heavenly Father wants me to pray to him often – anytime,
anywhere.”
4pm – We hurried home from church, changed our clothes, and read
scriptures in the car while we drove to West Jordan to eat dinner with Jared’s
parents. I feel so spoiled when they invite us over for dinner. We got there at
5pm and sat right down to a delicious meal of roast beef, carrots, mashed
potatoes & gravy, jell-o and bread. During dinner we heard about Casey and
Allison’s recent vacation to San Francisco and now I want to go there. After
the dishes were done, I got to visit with Mozelle, Amber, and Kathleen for a
while. Lon likes to do stuff on his iPad and interject here and there when an
interesting topic comes up or when he finds something interesting on his iPad
to share with us. Meg ran around crazy with Tess - she is always so excited to
see her. Leah and Brita hung out with Anne for a while (Alyse was practicing a
violin piece with Allison). After they had hung out long enough, the kids
played Mexican Train Dominoes with Jared and Eric.
I think it’s great how the
kids can now be part of the long-standing Szymanski game-night tradition. On
our way out the door, Mozelle gave us two little loaves of pumpkin bread filled
with chocolate chips – that’s my very favorite quick bread in the world.
Between me and Meg, we ate almost a whole loaf before we even got home.
9pm – We finally got home and the kids went to bed. Meg had
fallen asleep in the car on the way home, as she usually does. It’s hard to
break away at a decent hour when we don’t see everyone often. I just need to
stop letting life get in the way of relationships. It’s too easy to do. But unless
we decide to make relationships a priority, our time and energy will get filled
in with less important things.
10:30pm - I was catching up on e-mails and playing Candy Crush on my phone while I waited for Jared to come to bed, but I wasn't feeling well and I kept falling asleep so I turned off my light and never heard Jared when he came to bed. I do remember reaching over and rubbing his head in the middle of the night though. I woke him up to tell him I could feel a bump on his head. He was nice enough to respond and tell me that it had been there forever. I told him it was getting bigger and he should get it checked. At that point, he was done conversing. He loves when I wake him up in the middle of the night for a good chat.
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