Friday Confessional

Psssst...see that sign up ↑ there? A fellow blogger is doing a confessional Friday every week so this week I've decided I want to give it a try. I'm new at this so bear with me. I've heard that nothing rejuvenate a person more than confessing some secrets onto a total stranger(ok, so I made that up, maybe somebody said that but for the life of me, I can't remember who).

Maybe I should do this confession thing Catholic style so here goes nothing;
Father, forgive me for I have sinned:

• I attended a funeral today and instead of being overly sad for the family, I was feeling a bit angry. Angry because the man who passed away was a good man...he's made a great positive impact on all who knew him. I can't really understand why good people had to die while there are awful people who live to implict pain on others still live.
• I stayed up late into the night camping on the computer and then when daytime comes, I'm too tired to do anything worthwhile or productive.
• I am now addicted to the game Farmville on Facebook...as if I don't have enough addictions already.
• I am the least consistent person. I can't seem to stick to a daily routine.
• I get bored of repetitious stuff...which explains why I'm the worst house keeper in the world.
• I've gained more weight in the last few months than I did over the years.

There ya go...my first patch of confession for this week. Oh yeah...today over at the Mars/Venus blog is meet the blogger day and yes, you guessed it..I'm the blogger squirming on the spotlight chair today. The floor is totally open over there for anyone to ask me any question they want to know about me. So head over there and shoot some questions my way.

In the meantime, enjoy your weekend.

WIMTS-Week 5

So, it's been a while since I last did one of these. But since it's Wednesday today and I'm in the mood to say what's really on my mind, this is just perfect. Feel free to check Chief out and play along.

My son, Jon lately has been going through the whining and complaining stage. I don't know, maybe all the hormones or whatever it is that comes with puberty is hitting him from all sides or something. Seriously, the boy complains and whines about everything. It doesn't matter what it is, whether chores, homework, a little errand, if I ask him to do anything, I will be hearing his whining and complaining til I just want to beat my head against the wall.

Last week, he had been complaining and whining pretty much non-stop and I just let it go. A couple days ago, I told him to wash the dishes, OMG, you should hear him whine. First, he tried coming up with an excuse not to do it, then he asked why couldn't I ask his older brother to do it and when he realized that I was standing my ground, he had no choice but to do the dishes, he started crying and then throw in my face about how unfair I was and that I love his brothers more than him that's why I was making him do chores and I'm a mean mom.

What I did..I just told him it's not true, I don't love his brothers more.

What I meant to say and should've have said was....

"Yes, I'm a mean mom and I'm sorry that I'm unfair, life is unfair so deal with it. And I must have hated you so much that I am trying my darnedest to raise you to become responsible human being so that when you do get married, your future wife won't complain to all her friends and family about what a terrible husband you are who can't even wash his own dish and can't do anything. Yes I guess I must have hated you so much that I am pushing you to be a better human being, that you'll learn to be successful in whatever you do so that you do not grow up to be a menace to society."

There ya go, my WIMTS for today. I mentioned before that I would like to send all you nice ladies beautiful hand-made Mother's day card so if interested, hit me up through email. I still have some of yours from last year, I do would like to send to all of you who follow me..FIRST PRIORITY to me..anyone else interested, send me your physical addy through email.

Have a great day and happy blogging!!

Charitable Acts of Two Angels

My husband and I got married in Texas and lived there for the first eighteen months of our married life together. It wasn't long after we got married that I found myself pregnant with our first child and suffering through the worst morning sickness ever. I had morning sickness (why anyone would call it that when it was practically an all day and night type of sickness is beyond me) pretty much all nine months of my pregnancy.

So here I was, married to the love of my life but living so far from my family, in a strange place where everything is different from what I was used to. My husband was working two jobs so that we can save up money to go back to school so his days started off at six in the morning when he leaves for work and didn't come home til nine at night. I didn't know anyone except for my in-laws. I didn't know how to drive so pretty much anywhere I needed to go, my hub had to take me. So I just kept to our apartment.

My first Sunday in our new ward, a beautiful red-head introduced herself to me and not long after that, she started visiting me at my apartment. As it turned out, she was assigned my visiting teacher. That first visit to my place, I met my other visiting teacher. These two ladies ended up being two of the most charitable ladies I've ever known. They were not the regular kind of visiting teachers who just come to visit me once a month and then relayed the message and then I don't see them til the next month's visit.

They started taking turns to come visit me if not everyday, every other day. On those days that they didn't visit, they would call me to see how I was doing. Phone would ring and I'd pick it up and it's one of them calling...

"I'm heading out to the grocery store, I thought I'd come pick you up and bring you along in case there might be something you'd be needing from there." or

"I'm taking my kids to the pool, want to come along and keep me company?"

One of them home-schooled her kids so she would call around lunchtime.."I'm making my kids lunch so I thought I'd come pick you up to join us...how's tuna sandwich sound to you?"

The other lady would call and say.."I just got a feeling to call and see how you're doing. How about I come pick you up and you can hang out with me, keep me company while my kids are in school and we can visit?"

Little things like that, totally meant a great deal to me. I was alone during the day and they kept me company. And they might make it sometimes sounded like I was doing a favor when in reality they were the one helping me. They had gone beyond the call of duty by taking me under their wings and did some of the things that I couldn't have done by myself. And mostly, they have shown such great love and compassion by being wonderful friends who would go out of their way to make a stranger feel welcome.

A few weeks before my baby was born, they called me up to let me know they wanted to throw me a baby shower but they wanted me to pick the date I wanted. Where I come from, we celebrated the 10Th day of a baby's life...something about when a baby is ten days old, he/she is kinda out of harm's way (I'm not even sure if that's true or not). So these two wonderful women went out and invited every RS member in our ward (only a handful of them I knew) to come to the shower. They had instructed each woman to come with a gift(any gift of their choice) plus a blanket and then on the side, they had gotten together with these ladies also to make a baby quilt for my baby. I went to the shower and had the one of the best times of my life and came away with almost two carload of baby stuff.

It was the most generous thing any one's ever done for me. I was humbled and in total awe of these two ladies' incredible compassionate attribute and their generous act of kindness. They reached out to me when I needed it most and even in all those times they were helping me, to help me fit in, they never once make me feel pathetic like I was some helpless child. Everything they did for me, I could truly feel the genuineness of their act. To me, they were like these guardian angels sent to earth specifically for me. To this day, I will always remember these two angels masquerading around on earth as humans who had taken a very young and unsure bride and mother under their wings to care for her as if she were one their own. Because of what they did for me in that early year of my married life, I hope that one day (I am always looking for ways to help anyone who might have been in my shoes back then) I can return the favor and show the same act of kindness to someone else who may need it.

Rambling Again

My goodness, it has been a week since I last posted. It's not that I don't have anything to say or write about, I'm just too lazy, I guess. Yes that's it, I'm too lazy. I can't seem to bring myself to stick with something for long lately.

That reminds me though, I'm a walking-thinking-non-stop type of person. From the minute I opened my eyes in the morning til I fell asleep at night, I have thoughts swirling around in my head. Sometimes I'm awakened by my thoughts yet I am unable to put them into words. Then again, maybe it's a good thing because if anyone read half of the thoughts I have, they'd run and hide from me..LOL. But enough about that.

Last month I was called into the Bishop's office and offered a new calling. I was extended a call to serve as a Bear Den Leader in the Cub Scout Program. Anyone who knows me, know I always jump at the opportunity to carry out any calling, doesn't matter what it was, I'm always ready (well, as ready as I can be). Yet, for the first time since I became a LDS, I actually hesitated. I actually told the Counselor to give me a time to think on it.

What he said to me when he extended the call was that they know I can do the job, those boys would be better served with me being their leader, but they don't know if I have the time. Well, in my thoughts and I think I even told him..."Hmmmmm, I have all the time in the world since I'm home and it's not whether I have the time, I can make time but I'm just not sure I can do this calling or if I even want to." It actually took me two weeks to get back to him and accepted the calling, I even have to call my dear friend Swirl and freaked out on her (she used to be a den leader and still in Cub Scouting program and she loves it) to ease my worry.

Seriously, I don't think I've ever had a calling that freaks me out more...even when I was called to be a Branch pianist as a 16 year old after taking piano for only six months and had to mess up on some keys here and there...nope, I saw that as an opportunity to practice my new found talent. Nope, not even when I was called a District Assistant Clerk when I was 17 and I was given the responsibility over the finance, a teen who had never earn a wage to be suddenly handling a budget like that, nope that didn't even phase me in the least bit. Or when I was called to be a pianist for RS when I first moved into this ward..again, I would literally screwed up on the song but even that didn't matter to me. Or to teach RS(have I mentioned how intimidated I am to be in front of other adult let alone teaching them a lesson which I'm sure they know more about?) which I wasn't as freaked about as I thought I would. I've lost count of all those different callings I have done, some hard and others easy but I took them all with the same attitude.."I will do my best and give my all and yes I'm ready to serve now."

Not so with this Cub Scout calling. Why is that, you ask? I've actually thought I would be lucky enough to never be in Scouting even with four boys(ahah, the joke's on me). So why is this calling different for me and why even now I'm having serious doubt about ability to do it? I'll tell you why....it's because the thought of having little boys, three or more all in the same age, just the thought of them in the same room totally wears me out. All those active energy of theirs, I seriously don't know how to deal with all that energy. But I have four boys, how did I deal with that, you're wanting to know? Well, it's like this...my four boys are different in age, different levels of attention and activity so therefore I can focus on each one of them individually..see?

I am not a very active person. My level of activity or exercise is walking up and down the stairs for my daily chores, run to the grocery store and walk up and down the aisle, stand at the kitchen sink to wash dishes and the occasional running of the vacuum across the floor...you see what I'm saying? Take a very inactive person and throw some very active boys her way to keep them doing something fun yet informative and manage to keep their attention for one hour and tell me if that is a good match. Oh yeah, I was informed it's an easy calling since it's by the book. Everything is in the book, I don't have to try to come up with something creative or fun to teach them...well, I've looked through the book, I can understand all in there but I am still as clueless as ever. Do I keep them indoor focused on the project in hand first then take them outside and have them run their energy off or do I have them run their energy off first then on to the lesson on hand? Which one do I do first? Yeah, we meet in the afternoon, right after school so I know there's no way they would want to be indoor doing some lesson, they've already been in school for six hours...but if I have them outdoor working off their energy, they'll be too tired to even bother with the lesson later. Yes I know, some of you this is piece of cake, you probably can't figure out what the fuss is all about but this is still a dilemma for me.

So last week, we had our first meet. It went well. The Primary needed help coloring eggs for their Easter egg hunt so our den was recruited to help out and that was what we did last Thursday. Which worked out great because while the boys were coloring eggs, I went through their books to see how far along they are on there. Yesterday was supposed to be our second meet. I forgot to call them on Wednesday to remind them to come but I did call yesterday morning but nobody showed up except of course my son(my son Joey is the one in this den). Yes, my first failure as a new leader. A bit disturbing, it doesn't do good at all to my confidence but that's ok...I've resolve to do all I can to make this calling the best one I've done so far...after all, I'd probably end up doing this calling til way after Danny came and went. So I went to Round Table last night, learned a few new things and next Saturday I'm going to the Leadership Training all day meeting. Who knows, I'll probably end up liking Scout more than anything else and will probably be sad to leave it when my time ends :)...hey, I'm trying to think positive here.

So yeah, this my most recent challenge/or adventure(take it anyway you want) that I'm having now. Other than that, it's been pretty quite here since we've gone to court with our neighbors. I'm happy to report that after I posted this post, we've resolved our issues with our neighbors, don't know how long this peace and quiet will last but we're enjoying it all the same. We are not all the way there yet where we can chat up with our neighbors but at least they're leaving us alone so that's a real plus.

By the way...Mother's day is coming up and I'd like to send all of you who follows me, even those who don't follow but are interested, a genuine Mother's Day card made by yours truly and the ladies in my card swap group. Interested, send me your physical address through email, aighty?

Have a great day and if you're going out tonight with your SO/hub/BF...be safe and enjoy!!

God bless with all my aloha!!

A Prankster

Yesterday after school, my son Joey, came bursting into the house with alarm in his voice,

"Mom, Mountain is eating a dead cat in the backyard. His mouth is bloody and looks totally gross!!"

I was sitting at the desk in front of the computer so I jumped up and knocked off the seat as I was running out the door, muttering, "oh no, he didn't." And at the same time yelling at my son...

"Where did Mountain get a cat from and why didn't you take that thing away from him?"

I was feeling grossed out, and wondering how in the world am I going to take that dead cat away from our gigantic dog when stepped out the backdoor and saw our dog laying on our back stairs snoozing. Just as I took a breath of relief, Joey yelled back from the house...

"April fools!!" The little prankster.

When I realized how good he had gotten me (I gotta say, he was good), I couldn't stop laughing at myself. He was pretty proud of himself though. He asked if I liked his trick...heck I LOVED it. Because of my reaction to his prank, he called his dad at work and told him the same thing.

How about you guys? Did any of you pull any pranks on your family or did anyone pull one on you?