Here she is!

Here is our new little one. After an extra long wait she is here, healthy, and happy (most of the time). It took a little time and some medical intervention to get her here, but it all worked out and our baby Evelyn is officially and finally part of the family. Her big brother isn't quite sure that he likes sharing Mom, but he is getting used to having her around.

Granddad and Grammie are thrilled to have another girl in the family after 3 grandsons. Grandpa and Grandma and equally pleased even though this is grandchild #14 for them.

We are doing well and slowly returning to a new state of equilibrium. It will take a little while, but life is still good!

Netflix Pics

Here are a few of our favorite series from Netflix in no particular order. You will probably notice that they are heavily influenced by my husbands love of military history. I enjoyed them too.

1. Danger UXB - Set in WWII England, UXB is unexploded bomb. This is a series about a team of engineers who are sent in to disarm the UXB.

2. Sandbaggers - This is also British, about goverment intelligence agencies in during the cold war. It deals with the harsh realities of beurocracy.

3. Sharpe's Rifles - This time the British are fighting the French in Spain in the Napoleonic era at a time when rifles are specialized equipment.

4. Frontier House - a recreation of life on the western frontier of the US. It is interesting to see how modern people deal with some of the restrictions of frontier life.

5. Colonial House - a recreation of life in colonial New England. Again it is an intersting social study.

These last two prompted a lot of discussion about how people deal with modernity and how that is so different from the past. Many of the difficulties that the people had in these series was accepting social structures and norms.

When I grow up...

So what do I want to be when I grow up? I'm still deciding. When I was little I wanted to be a baker or a florist. I really like baking, especially breads (even though I don't do much now). Then I realized that bakers get up REALLY early and I decided against it as a career. I also wanted to be a florist because I love fresh flowers. Then I realized that florists work most around holidays and weekends. Again this didn't quite work for me. When I was choosing a major for college I seriously thought about interior design and nutrition. I liked the visually creative yet practical aspects of interior design, but I didn't want to have to cater to someone else's taste. I really liked the combination of science (especially physiology) and the practical that nutrition offered. After all everybody eats. I studied that for a long time and have had several different nutrition related jobs. It has been a good path. Now I am ready to get back to some other things in my "spare" time.

One day as some fellow students and I were sitting around the lab we talked about what we wanted to do with the degrees we had spent so many years working toward. The answers were decidedly not nutrition related; teach English in Japan, study and teach Yoga, be a wildflower artist (me). I like to sketch when I travel. (Traveling with kids will make that a lot more difficult now.) As a break from the classes and research I took a couple of sculpture classes in clay and bronze. All I can say is that molten metal is really cool. I loved it. Those things are a little hard to do in your living room so I am back to being an aspiring painter. I don't do much, but my latest project has been to paint a couple of flowers for our little girl's room. They are a little Georgia O'Keeffe. I like it. I hope she likes them too. She is a little too young to express an opinion since she won't be born for a couple more weeks.

A couple years ago I painted frogs on some furniture we had for little Buddy Boy. My grandfather originally built it for my aunt when she was a little girl and then I used it growing up as well. I have painted it several different colors in the time that I have had it. So this is just the latest version.

Be a quality person

One of my favorite inspirational talks of all time was given by Marvin J. Ashton. Here is the link.

http://www.lds.org/portal/site/LDSOrg/menuitem.b12f9d18fae655bb69095bd3e44916a0/?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=224f9209df38b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&hideNav=1

Here is how he describes a quality person.

1. A quality person has self-respect.
2. A quality person is someone with integrity.
3. A quality person will not be offended.
4. A quality person will develop the capacity to love and be lovable.
5. A quality person ...will not find fault or criticize, belittle, or nag.
6. A quality person is one who has real faith.

He quotes a woman who was talking to a friend,
“Last summer I complained to a non-Latter-day Saint friend that I was exhausted, having no fun, living like an automaton. Nonsympathetically, she countered, ‘What do you think this is? A dress rehearsal? This is your life, Carol. Fix it.’ I expected a pat and a kind word. Instead, I got a splash of reality square in the face. She was, of course, quite right. I wasn’t giving my life value, so I didn’t feel it had value. I went home, reread the parables of the sower and of the talents, and regrouped.” (A Singular Life, ed. Carol L. Clark and Blythe Darlyn Thatcher, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1987, pp. 35–36.)

He then says, "...fill your life with service, education, personality development, love for all, and other such meaningful traits. Live with purpose each day." This was something that I have looked back to frequently. I try to live the good life by living with purpose rather than drifting along. It can be so easy and comfortable to just drift.

Fall Favorites

I really like the changing of the seasons. I especially like the transitional seasons of spring and fall. Where we live now, these seasons are a little more subtle. You have to look for the differences, but they are there. Here are a few of my favorite things about fall.

1. Brightly colored leaves. My Mother-in-law has a tree with leaves that turn a shockingly bright red. I love it.

2. Changing light. The sun is lower in the sky and gives the light a completely different quality.

3. Cooler weather. Enough said. Not too cold, not too hot.

4. Memories of High School cross country. It was awhile ago, but it was a good time. Ever since then I always get the urge to go running in the fall even if I'm not in shape for it.

5. Thanksgiving. Good food, good family.

6. Pumpkin and apple things. Yum.

7. It feels like a time to start new. Maybe this has to do with being in school for so long.

Late summer fun

The day trip to the pebbly beach was great! Buddy boy had a fantastic time with Grammie, Granddad, and the cousins and there wasn't much sand to clean up later. I did have to watch and make sure that no little pebbles went up the nose or in the ears. I don't think he swallowed to many. If he did I figure they are small and round and will pass easily.

I loved sorting through the little pebbles. They had been polished by the surf and sand and were so many different colors from black to brown, green, gold, red, and white.

On a different day we took a little trip to the Santa Cruz Yacht harbor to look at boats. I had had a lot of requests for boats, but we don't have any that are very satisfying. It was a great evening walking along looking at the different boats in the harbor and the catamarans parked on the beach.

Life is good

I just have to say that my life is good. It is good now and it has been for pretty much my whole life. In the recent past I quit a job that I thought I really liked to move to a different state and become a full time mom. It was a bit of an adjustment at first, but I wouldn't go back. At the end of my short career I felt pulled in too many directions and I wasn't doing anything that I did as well as I would have liked. So we changed. As my husband says, "If you keep doing what you're doing, you keep gettin' what you're gettin'." I wasn't happy with what I was getting. At first I thought that I would want to keep my fingers in my professional life in my old office. I found out that I really didn't. I was happy to let the job go, but redefining myself without the profession took a little getting used to.

What is the "good" life?

There have been several times when I have stepped back and said, "What am I doing here?" Usually it has been a little while after a big change, after the dust has settled and I have time to think and breath again. At times like this I have thought about what it is that I really want to be doing. Here are a few things that I have come up with.

Live proactively
Enjoy life
Make my corner of the world a better place
Seek beauty
Be informed
Be wise
Find peace through troubled times
Seek spiritual refinement
Give your best effort without regret
Love yourself and others
Share with family

None of these things is really tied to the material aspects of what some may think of as the good life. However, having enough of the material things of life makes the other things easier. Living on the financial edge is pretty uncomfortable for me. I have always worked hard to make sure that I knew I had a relatively comfortable place to live and enough extra to indulge in some of the fun that is beyond the necessities of just making it through. This has also allowed me the mental and emotional energy to pursue some of the things that make life better.