family

A big helping of drudgery with bit of joy on the side.

When I first got married, I was a semester away from graduating college. During our engagement, I left my job at a local literacy center to work for a local software company, a job that yielded more income but significantly less satisfaction.
Though early married life presented its fair share of bliss, life overall was somewhat less than ideal. Since Tim still had two years left to complete his engineering degree, that left me to fulfill the role of “breadwinner”. But, as you might imagine, jobs for “almost graduates” were not particularly lucrative. Or fun, for that matter.
Add to that the fact that I came home from work on a daily basis to discover that my husband’s video game hobby was more like a habit-a fact that had not been adequately revealed to me during our courtship.
Life was somewhat monotonous. Indeed, those first few months of matrimony required adjustment.
In talking with an old friend from my early college years over the phone, I described what most of my life consisted of. She caught my hint of dissatisfaction and said, ” Susie, you have too much talent to waste it cleaning dirty toilets and dish rags.”
I immediately felt defensive. I hadn’t meant to complain. But my reality at the time was a huge helping of drudgery with a little joy on the side. And that somehow came across as dissatisfaction.
In our consumer and entertainment culture, many have grown accustomed to getting as much out of life as they possibly can. We chase lucrative careers, picture perfect families, endless entertainment, and adventures across the globe.
And why shouldn’t we? The world is literally at our fingertips. The American Dream is alive and well and our thriving economy facilitates our insatiable appetites for consumption.
And yet attaining all the world has to offer has not made us much happier. In fact, statistically-speaking, the correlation between happiness and wealth levels off at an annual income of $75K. (If one believes that happiness is measurable, anyway).
The truth is, I think happiness is often bred from drudgery. I don’t mind digging in and shoveling a bit of figurative manure because it makes the harvest that much more satisfying.
Why are we so afraid of things going wrong?
One of my daughters is a toxic perfectionist. She completely shuts down when she falls short of expectations. On everything. It’s exasperating to watch.
I wonder if she is partly the product of a world addicted to Tik Tok and Instagram. She doesn’t have either of those, but one has to wonder at how the culture is being shaped by those platforms.
Why do we think endless entertainment is the key to happiness? It certainly doesn’t build up our resilience to challenges in life.
If there’s anything this pandemic has taught me, it’s that there is joy to be found in literally any circumstance. AND, that one can be miserable and happy at the exact same time.
Except when I drag my kids out for a walk in the dead of winter and they spend the entire time whining about how cold it is and how tired they are.
There is no happiness in that. Whatsoever.

All the ways that our family’s pandemic experience was an “ideal” one.

When life was “canceled” a few months ago due to the arrival of a pandemic on our shores, I did a little happy dance. Read about it here.

I was suffering from burnout, which can easily become the norm for mothers of several children (five, in my case) who desperately feel the ticking time bomb that is my time with them at home.

It’s tricky to find a balance when trying to give our kids every opportunity in life because along with that comes a whole lot of chauffeuring, volunteering, teaching and training. All while trying to manage a semi-peaceful household.

Well, I have to say that during January through March, I was failing miserably at achieving that balance. Enter COVID-19. Devastating to most. A godsend to me.

So, while I don’t mean to minimize what others have gone through over the past few months, I would be forever ungrateful if I failed to acknowledge the countless advantages our family had during quarantine.

First, my husband had a job that could easily be done remotely. Not only did this guarantee us a stable income but it meant that we could take daily walks during his lunch hour. (And I had backup with child-rearing if I really needed it).

Second, unlike so many couples, who both had to work from home, as well and single parents who go at it alone every day, we had the luxury of a stay-at-home parent. That meant I could minimize interruptions to Tim’s many Zoom calls, keep the kids from killing each other and help with schoolwork without taking a hit to work productivity.

That is a position few families found themselves in and it was not lost on me. Or Tim, for that matter.

Third, we live in a neighborhood with numerous walking paths and enjoy a wonderful fenced backyard where we can be outside while social distancing. Watching videos of Italians serenading one another from their balconies was both heartwarming and heartrending. The thought of the only access to the outside world being from a balcony sure made me feel spoiled in my single-family suburban home.

Fourth. There are seven people in my family. No loneliness in these parts. Want to play a board game? Great! There’s plenty of people to join you. A round of badminton? Doubles? Easily accomplished. Need a shoulder to cry on? Not a problem.

The annoyances that come along with large families are not few, but you can bet we were all glad to have plenty of options for a partner in crime during our quarantine.

Fifth, I finally found myself grateful for the extra 750 square feet we added onto our abode almost two years ago. The process was a terrible headache but you can bet that seven people (most of whom are now adult-sized) crammed into 3200 square feet around the clock is a whole lot better than those same people fighting over 2500 square feet of territory.

Sixth, after evaluating our food storage, I was delighted to find that we could probably last about 6 months without going to the grocery store. Aside from fresh milk, produce and eggs, we were in good shape! And I even had canned varieties of all three if we really got desperate. (But…yuck!)

And on that note, I got my hands on a cow from a local friend (we’ve done this before) just before meat processing plant outbreaks and the price of beef shot up. Our freezer is jam-packed with locally-butchered beef that will last us two years, easy.

Lastly, I can’t say enough about how much my faith sustains me in daily life.

When all this pandemic crap hit the fan, church was canceled indefinitely. Being able to meet in our home for Sunday worship and daily scripture study has been a tender experience. As our family has refocused on the things that matter most, we’ve gained an added measure of peace that things are gonna be all right in the end. It is our faith in Christ that grounds us in that soul-sustaining belief.

So, while I can’t say my first pandemic has been ALL fun and games, I CAN show gratitude for the fact that, in our case, we were dealt a much softer blow than so many. My personal hope is to ease the burden on others for whom this has not been the case. I’m trying anyway.

Meridian temple open house.

During the month of October and early November, the Meridian Idaho LDS temple, which was recently completed was open to the public.  Our family scheduled a tour and brought Lily’s cute friend Katherine to tour it with us.  This was our third time to tour a brand-new (or renovated) temple, which I consider quite a blessing, considering that all three temples we have toured are within a 1 1/2 hour drive of our home.  How we got to lucky to have three temples so close is beyond me.

The temple was beautiful, and it was fun to talk with the kids about the significance of each of the rooms and the ordinances that are performed there.  It’s always a humble reminder of how closely linked heaven and earth are and our connection with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

We took a picture at the end of the tour to commemorate the experience.  It was fun to add another face to our “family” picture.

Apple-picking.

Our backyard apple trees yielded no fruit this year and since eating grocery store apples is practically an abomination, we opted to visit the orchard this year.  It took us over an hour to get there, but we relished the gorgeous sunny weather and the delicious Honeycrisp apples that awaited us.

While the kids were away, the rest of us play.

We drove down to Utah a couple of times to take the kids to various summer camps at BYU.  Much as I tried to get all my ducks in a row, we could only schedule two of the girls at the same time so after spending a week there while Lily attended a dance camp, we ended up right back there after a week at home for Rachel’s chemistry camp and Anna’s Remix Vocal Academy.

Having thrown all our money into these summer enrichment programs, the rest of us enjoyed a bit of free fun at the splash pad, swimming in the duck pond with the cousins(not really a duck pond, but since we shared it with them that’s what my kids affectionately called it), experiencing a bit of pioneer history, and visiting with family and friends.  Utah’s great that way.  Plenty of free fun.

A day of pretending.

We’re too cheap to buy a boat.  Strike that.  We’re too practical to buy a depreciating asset on one income.  That, and half our family is particularly prone to skin cancer so spending days on end out on the water just doesn’t have a ton of appeal.

Still, because we are cheap in everyday life, it gives us the opportunity to splurge on vacation.  So renting a boat while camping at Ponderosa State Park seemed like a fair plan.  We got to pretend we all have olive skin and mad wakeboarding skills for a day in exchange for sunburns and swallowed water.  It was fun.

We learned that our kids were wusses inherited their father’s aversion to risk and preferred leisurely tube rides and swimming in the lake.  Lucky for us, we got to turn the keys in at the end of the day and drive boat-free to a restaurant for a delicious dinner on the town.

Summer fun. More aptly named June fun.

We kicked off the summer with some pretty awesome routines to ensure that we were enriching our minds and bodies , reveling sufficiently in the outdoors, exploring our town, and building relationships.  It lasted through June before it all went down the tubes.  We had several summer camps and a family vacation to thank for that.  But June was the stuff summers are made of: cooking with the kids, sewing, reading, hiking, biking, field tripping, and the like. Here’s a taste of June 2017:

Our family is so unbelievably blessed.  We fit this and so much more into a few short, blissful weeks.  I seriously LOVE summer with my family!

A California new year.

Tim’s company required that he use a certain portion of his time off between the months of November and March, so naturally we started looking at warm weather destinations.  We briefly toyed with the idea of a Hawaii trip before opting for the less-expensive option of driving to visit family in San Diego.  Despite getting stuck in Las Vegas traffic for six hours(warranting a last minute stay in Barstow to calm the crazies) on our way down, we managed to get our fill of family, fun and sunshine.