Pumpkin Slime Means Fall Time

It's the time of year when we get to have our yearly rite of traditional vegetable mutilation and Funnest Ever Family Home Evening activity: The Carving of the Pumpkins. Let me educate you on the proper technique for this family adventure, just in case your skills are a little rusty:

First, you have to do it up right and go to the pumpkin patch to pick out your special pumpkin. It should really be the pumpkin patch run by the little old man who grows them in his backyard and has each one priced with a price gun sticker, but whatever you have nearby will do. Your pumpkin must reflect your personality and age appropriately.

And, luckily, they have wagons there so you can knock over all the piles of pumpkins and pretend you are a dump truck.

Then, you take them home and decide what kind of face you want on it. When the top gets cut off, you can say, gross, these stink! And you can also pull your own seeds out and yell, "Eww, Slime!" If you are doing it right, you should have your copy of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on the DVD player for your little sister so she doesn't mess you up.

You can also get sad that dad won't let you use the sharp knife, but you can turn that anger to your advantage by hassling him for twenty minutes to carve your pumpkin NEXT. When they are all scooped out and cut up, you can dump the seeds into your garden and hope that more pumpkins will grow next year in your own yard. And then you find the little candles in mom's pantry and light up the neighborhood with really, really spooky pumpkins. I just love Halloween.

You know how it is when you're around kids. There's usually something that is their favorite thing to do that they want to do all the time that completely annoys you. Playland at McDonald's. Nickelcade. The mall. My youngest child loves to go see "The Nemo's," which, if you don't speak Maggie, means The Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. So today I pulled up my big girl panties and decided to muscle through yet another trip to the aquarium. And my children pleasantly surprised me.

For starters, none of them ran away in the crowds of people to hide behind someone else. They stayed right with me. They patiently waited to look at the tanks of fish and seahorses and octopuses and starfish without clotheslining any other children. They were too scared without their bigger brother and sisters to touch the sting rays in the tank, so we didn't even have to wash our hands. They got scared when I tried to poke the piranhas through the glass. And they let me take their pictures and even said "Cheese." This may not seem like a big deal, but to a mom who has usually chased up to five children in public places for eight years, this was a welcome relief.

I believe in field trips. I think there are things you can learn out in the big, bright world that you can't learn at home, internet or no. But I have to admit, field trips take a toll on the parents. There is a lot of preparation to be done before you leave. And 70% of that preparation is mental. The difference in today's trip? Totally spontaneous. We just did it because everyone else was at school. No pressure, no preparation, just going in for fun with plenty of time to wander. I'm going to have to remind myself to do that again sometime.

Pictures of You

This is what I have hanging above my piano in my house. There's all my little people in a row. In case you can't see it, the sign above the pictures says, "See the Possibilities."

I had an interesting conversation with one of my friends the other day. She told me that her son and her daughter both had major anxiety issues, and they would get very emotional or cry if they were nervous or unsure in any unfamiliar situation. I gave my condolences and mumbled something about how kids are so funny and don't they come up with strange behaviors sometimes. She corrected me and said, "No, my husband just has really strict standards for them, and if they don't measure up, they get in trouble." She was telling me that they had made a parenting mistake and were now seeing the aftermath.

When I used to be an important person who had a full-time job and a paycheck, my boss gave me some advice I will never forget. He was a seasoned parent of six, 40 years old (so old!), and had the wisdom of his own parenting shortfalls behind him. He said, "The trick is to love your kids for the children they are, not the children you want them to be." I think we often fall into the trap of, "My kid is so good at this," or "My kid will be a successful---(fill in the blank)," when really they just want to be a zookeeper or a cake decorator.

It's been fun for me to try to encourage my children's interests in the times they have them, not when I decide it's okay for them to like something. Abby and Emma have always had a chalkboard, and they love to "teach" but really they just like to boss people. Wyatt loved the American flag for a while. We had lots of 99 cent flags laying around our house, desecrated and laying on the floor. Sam loves to build with anything, but Legos in particular. We have a huge secondhand bucket of Legos and he spends hours building intricate holders for popsicles and ships for droids. I try to ignore all the little bits on the floor and the pieces strewn all over the bookcases. Maggie, she just loves animals. And not your everyday run of the mill little girl animals. We're talking llamas, frogs, giraffes, horses (okay, that's girly) and sharks. Far be it for me to try to get them to be interested in something else. That's just money wasted at the toy store!

Loving kids is easy. Letting them be who they are is hard.

This is the Place

My family is my greatest blessing, and my greatest source of jobs. I have five children and one man-child husband, who is really great with fourteen-year-old boys because he secretly is still a fourteen-year-old boy with a checkbook. I love them all dearly and appreciate all of their funny little quirks and annoying habits. We all have them, don't we?

Secretly when I was in high school, taking all of my important classes and trying to be a smarty-pants, I had a talk with myself. What do you really want to be in this life? I asked myself. The answer surprised me. I just wanted to be a mom. I just wanted to raise beautiful, happy children and be the one responsible for that success. Not a captain of industry, not a noted author, and certainly not a salesman. Just a mom. It's been the best job ever.
One of my favorite things to do is take my kids out to see the fabulous sights around our city. Every city has a zoo, but does your city have a fully-functioning authentic pioneer village? Ours does. It's called This is the Place State Park and its one of my favorites.

I love pioneers. I always have. I'm sure it comes from hearing all the stories about my ancestors coming to America from Norway and Sweden my whole childhood. I would always ask my great Aunt Aurora to tell me the stories of her grandparents, who came and settled in a small dusty town in the middle of nowhere long ago.

Every time I take my children somewhere, especially somewhere historical, I always try to help them understand how people had to live way back when. And how they would have to change their lives as they are now to be able to survive back then.

I feel the same way about mothering. I wish someone would have taken me to the mother park before I had kids and explained to me that this was something that would change my life, and how that change would affect every cell of my body, every thought I would have, and every choice I would make. Sometimes I feel like I have settled down into a dusty little town in the middle of nowhere with little strangers surrounding me. I have had to scratch out a living with my bare hands, learning how to farm and harvest for the small ones who depend on me for so many things. Sometimes I look around and wonder, why would I ever do this to myself? And sometimes I look around, pleasantly surprised at how I love the land I live in, and say, This is the Place.