PreEarthlife Motherhood Convention

I wish I could remember what was said at that PreEarthlife Motherhood Convention. Not that I can even be sure there was one, but I have to assume at some point we sat in Council with Heavenly Father and hopefully took notes on all the advise he gave us. "It will not be easy being a mother...."was one of the topics addressed. I have no doubt that within that subject they shared the following thoughts....

As a mother, we will start you off nice and easy. As the children arrive, you will receive them in small packages, that do not have the ability to speak back. You will live through countless nights of sleeplessness as you tend to their every need. You will be frustrated and weary, you will cry and look as though you have not done anything with your hair or face for days. Your clothes will be drooled on and stained with various baby messes, and you would never qualify to show up in a Beauty Pageant without considerable work at this point in life. But you would not care. To counter the downside of a baby, we will give you the uncountable moments of immediate joy as the baby will coo, giggle, hold onto you, lay its head on you, look at you in the eyes, find pleasure in your touch, do silly things, and just experience life. Through the first few years, it will be a time when the ups and downs balance themselves almost effortlessly and you will find satisfaction in being a mother.

As the child grows bigger and gains the ability to speak, you will still find tender moments of joy and sometimes moments of hysterical laughter, but you will also need to gain new strengths and talents to be able to survive what we up here call, motherhood and some on earth call insanity. But we are here to tell you that, it will all work out, if you follow our advice and gain the following skills. It is best to start gaining them while they are still fairly young, because as they celebrate each birthday, it becomes more difficult to enjoy the simple joys that you experienced when they were just babies.

The first skill that we hope you will be on your way to gain is the "Patience of Job".
This skill comes neatly packaged and is greatly desired by people all over the world, not just mothers. We encourage you as mothers, to seek this out specifically, as you will find a daily use for it. In fact, just to be sure you receive it, we will instill it directly in your programming. In order to have it, you just have to practice it like a popular video game. Each time you play with your patience, you will find that you will reach new levels and be able to defeat the stresses and downfalls of life without much trouble. We caution you not to ask for it again though. If you decide to ask for patience, thinking that you do not have it, you will find that your patience will be tested to the fullest extent and you will regret ever offering up a prayer for patience.

The next skill we will go ahead and automatically instill in you is the gift of Faith. You will need this gift as much as you need patience. You will especially need Faith in yourself. You can pair faith with patience, you can even use faith to know that you have patience and that you will succeed. Faith will serve you as you begin to wonder if your children will ever grow up. You will need faith when you have had to repeat yourselves 100 times in one day and you begin to wonder if your kids even speak the same language as you, because they sure do not act as if they understand anything you have said. You will find may ways to use faith. But remember to use it....when some like to say "use it or lose it" we like to say use it or you may think you have lost it" . No matter how much you think you have lost, you always have the ability to rediscover the gifts that were instilled in you. It will take time though. That is where your first gift will come in. You will need to have patience in yourself.

We do not want to forget to add humor to your gift. You may ask why this is so important. Our Father in Heaven has said that men are that they might have joy. The Joy you receive as a mother is far more difficult to discover than the joy you sought before you became a mother. Humor will serve you in that you will be able to laugh at things that never seemed funny. You will even be able to laugh when your child has done something so absurdly wrong that you will be laughing on this inside and will have to turn away before they see the smirk that crosses your face. Sometimes, this urge will be so strong that you will have to leave the room. But, do not worry. Your children will learn right from wrong even if you find yourself laughing at them.

Another gift we will give you is the gift to learn from your children. You may enter motherhood with extreme confidence and you will think you know all the answers, but the moment you have to come up with the answer, you may be left dumbfounded. We will not let this happen all the time. But we will allow it to happen enough so that you realize that life is not black and white and that every spirit that comes down to the earth is completely unique and will experience things differently than others. Heavenly Father did not create any two people alike. There will be similarities, but no two children born in the same family will be alike. That is where the gift of diversity comes into action. We don't want you to get bored in life. So we will make sure that things get changed up almost daily. As soon as you feel you have mastered something, anything, we will change things up so you get the chance to master new stuff.".....

I am sure the angels were cheering now. They were thinking.."How can anything go wrong with this setup. They will have adventure and tons of gifts. Everyone likes gifts right? And everyone likes a good adventure. "

As for us, we are now thinking...were we crazy? Actually, there are probably sparse moments when we think we were crazy to think we could do motherhood well.

But, I am certain they also had a topic at that PreEarth Motherhood Convention that covered the downfalls of motherhood.....

"We do not want you to forget what joy is, so we will be giving you some sorrows. You will start out will lots of pain as you bring this child into the world. The pain will be countered by the tons of joy that you will discover the first few years of life. As the memory of the pain fades, so will the amount of joy you discover. So we will allow your children to create sorrows for you, so you can rediscover the joys of your children. They will fight with each other so you can teach them and so you can be grateful when they do get along, and be joyful when they serve each other and help each other out. Your children will break things that you thought you loved, than they will come to you with tears in their eyes as they feel really bad. You will receive joy in knowing that you can hold them and comfort their sorrow and your love will grow. Your children will create sorrow as they make some terrible choices in life and you begin to wonder if you ever taught them anything at all. Than, when they remember what they were taught, they will come back around again and your joy will overflow as you see them receive the blessings of making good choices, that you know through repentance they will not have to suffer anymore and that they will begin to find joy again. "

The angels than probably had tears in their eyes as they announced one more gift to all the mothers in attendance.....


"We know that being a mother is the most divine thing you can do. It will be the most difficult thing also. Running a country, a business or anything else on earth will not bring as much joy or fulfillment, pain or sorrow as being a mother will bring to you. You will walk through the fires of hell to be a mother and you will hit the floor every night as you take to your knees to plead to Heavenly Father for your children and for answers and strength. But he has already heard the prayers that you will offer up. He has declared that angel will attend to thee. That no matter what you face he will be beside you. We will be your invisible angels who will perform the acts of service that no one else can perform. We will protect you and your children when needed, we will comfort you in your times of sorrow and lift you up when you think you have strength no more. We will remind you of the gifts that you have hidden inside you. The divine gifts of motherhood. We will watch over your children when you cannot and we will stand by your side as your fight against the evils of the world that would seem to tear your family apart. All we ask in return is that you be an angel to the person next to you. To the mother that sits next to you, we want you to protect them when no one else will. We want you to comfort them when sorrow swells within them and threatens to burst out in a million pieces. We want you to cry with them, laugh with them, walk with them and love them. In so doing, you will find that your children will be blessed with more than you alone could have offered and nothing will stand in your way as an eternal family. "

This they said while we all looked around us and nodded in agreement and looked forward to the friends we would make on this earth. Perhaps being a mother was not going to be so bad. Perhaps, even when we forgot how to be a good mother, when we got angry and frustrated that perhaps, we would be able to have one of our silent angels and one of our "Motherhood" angels whom we call friends sit down beside us and give us back our strength and help us find joy again.

Not the beginning nor the end...somewhere in the middle of no where

The beginning of parenting can be compared to a fairy tale...there is a time of torment and hardship only to be transformed into a moment of pure joy and what might seem to be a happily ever after...till mom becomes weary and tired. That is when she becomes Cinderella before the Fairy Godmother came to visit. She is constantly washing dishes, laundry, picking up after others, cooking, cleaning and dreaming of the day when her Fairy Godmother will pay a visit....than when she arrives, The cinderella mom will not ask to be put in a pumpkin carriage to wear a beautiful gown to a ball, what she really wants is for the fairy godmother to stop waving her magic wand and actually get down on her hands and knees and help too.

Most of us do not want a fix all...where would the fun be in that....there wold be no purpose to life nor would there be anymotivation for anything really. But we really do want a helping hand sometimes. This is where I turn into the Snow White Mom, albeit, I do not have 7 little dwarves running around, I only have six. Instead of them picking up their little pick axes and heading off to hunt for thier treasure I would like them to pick up their dirty socks and clothes, wash their dishes before they start growing into a science project and stop taking lessons from the The Evil Step Mother when it comes to brewing strange concoctions in the bathroom sink. Now you know why buying cheap shampoo is so important...that and bars of soap that have been turned into bars of slime. YUCK.

My Prince Charming of a Husband is often off slaying dragons at work or gaining new knowledge so that he can head off on new and more exciting adventures...of course he has to head off to foreign lands in the mean time, but I think he would prefer the exciting adventure of school over sandy hot terrain...so hopefully he will get his chance sooner than later...there is no magic potion to turn one young again and we are only getting older by the day. LOL

No matter what Prince Charming is up to, this Snow Whitish, Cinderella Mom kind of wishes she was a bit like Sleeping Beauty with time standing still while she takes a long nap. It would be nice to know that while you are taking a much needed break your children are all sleeping quietly too. But every mother knows that if you close your eyes for a second, take a break at all, that your work load will be doubled and that you will only have to work that much longer to catch up to where you want to be.

So for now, this Snow Whitish, Cinderalla mom/ Sleeping Beauty Wannabe is going to turn into the Wicked Witch of the west and call her kids downstairs to do thier chores.

Memories of a not so long ago time

The day that Allen came home was really cold... We were so thrilled to have hime home. Here we are surrounding him and wishing that we could get home and keep him there forever.....

This is right before the buses drove up as we huddled on the icy benches...really, they were scraping off the ice with ice scrapers right before we sat on them.....brrr....but yay, it is the end of a long year and the beginning of a new chapter.....

A Piece of (double chocolate with ribbons of creamy fudge) cake

No one ever said raising kids would be a piece of cake. I never imagined it would be and as I sit here writing this message, I am succumbed to the notion that if it is a piece of cake, I will have to wait till the kids are fully grown and out of the house before I can enjoy it. Hopefully it will grow sweeter with age and not become stale and dry.


Can I really have my cake and eat it too?

Really, I am not one of those people who like to eat the low fat sugar free imitation kind of dessert. I want the full experience of the flavor and the texture and all the calories that will go straight to my hips...


Perhaps that is not so far off from raising kids....They are full of flavor..sometimes they are sweet and sometimes they are sour. After all, cakes have to have some bitter in them to bring out the sweet......You know how cakes will always have crumbs left over....Well, kids do too. It does not matter how often you sweep...There are still going to be crumbs on the counters, floor and who knows where else....

Children, like cakes have the benefit of becoming irresistible.....You know what I mean.....kids make messes, break all the rules and never listen to you...well, that is exactly what cakes do. They are messy, break all the dieting rules, they never listen to me...OK OK I never listen to me...I see that delicious cake and I want a piece.....but in the end, no matter how much agony they bring you, they have a way of melting your heart and being the sweetest things in the world.

Both are full of personality....No two cakes are exactly alike, just like no two kids are exactly alike...It does not matter if they come from the same parent. They are going to be different.

When baking a cake, if you mix it too long the resulting cake will be tougher than it should be, if you run through the kitchen while it is in the oven, than it will fall in the middle....Kids are the same...if you put unneeded pressure on them than they will become too tough and not so soft hearted and sweet...If you run through life neglecting to acknowledge what is going on with them, they may fall flat on their backs.

So, even though I would love to indulge in a decadent cake right now, I guess I will stick with my kids for now...the only difference I see is that kids will not put a hundred pounds on my hips. They will keep me energetically enrolled in the exercise program called motherhood....trust me, it is a workout......