Over the semester break, Brett and I were able to go down to Utah to see some family. We were able to see Grandma Brooksby and Uncle Rick and Aunt Tammy. It was a nice break and well needed. We are both so grateful to have family close by.
Brett and I also had a great Easter together. We did the whole shebang! It was really fun. We dyed eggs, we decorated sugar cookies and the Easter bunny hid our eggs ;) We each hide a few eggs and then the other person had to find it. It was pretty hilarious. Needless to say we had a great ole time and it was nice to finally take a break from school, work, and every other stress out there.
Hello Everyone!
It's been a while with work, school, and an awesome distracting spouse. Luckily, enough though I've been given the opportunity for one of my classes to write on my blog. Therefore as fair warning this blog post will be directed toward my class and hopefully for my future children. I was given the assignment to choose 7 different principles in Parenting and incorporate that with a doctrine from the standard works. It's a great tool to use and hopefully something that I can look back on when I need it.
My first principle is: "Adjusting your parenting style to your child's temperament" (Steinberg, 69). Being able to adjust your parenting style to the how your child's temperament will be less of a hassle then constantly trying to conform your child. The doctrine of repentance helps create this connection with adjusting. It's not easy to change habits and to change especially to someone who can be needy and cranky but through repentance we are going to be able to see the goodness in the child and not get so irritated and expect so much of the child. In Doctrine and Covenants 19: 15-20, shares the story of Christ's infinite atonement and says "For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent" This is the ultimate gift and that God suffered so that we don't have to. By not allowing to change for your child is not healthy for you or for your child. We must use this gift and allow that child of God develop the way our Father in Heaven wanted him or her to develop.
My second principle is "hearing your child's point of view" (Steinberg, 170). In order to incorporate this principle there needs to be a great amount of humility. In Mosiah 4: 11-12, "... I would that ye should remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own nothingness, and his goodness and long-suffering towards you, unworthy creatures and humble yourselves even in the depths of humility, calling on the name of the lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come, which was spoken by the mouth of the angel. And behold, I say unto you that if ye do this ye shall always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God, and always retain a remission of your sins; and ye shall grow in the knowledge of the glory of him that created you, or in the knowledge of that which is just and true"
I love this scripture. It clearly represents the joys of humility will bring. Applying this to the principle of "hearing your child's point of view" you are allowing your child to be heard and you are going to recognize the divine gift that your child is and be willing to listen more often. Not only that but your child will hopefully recognize that great example that you are representing and willing to listen to your perspective.
The third principle I have chosen: "Deciding Together"(Kohn, 171). One of the greatest gifts that our Heavenly Father has given us is the opportunity and blessing of the power of Agency. In Helaman 14: 30-31 it states "... ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and hath made you fee. He hath given unto you that he might know good from evil..." By allowing your child to experience this great blessing you are teaching your child the loving gift of agency and you can teach how to use it. You are also becoming more and more like our Heavenly Father who has given us the blessing of making choices. We, as parents, should not try to control every decision for our child but work with them and allow them to make their own decisions.
The fourth principle: is to "Talk less, Ask More" ( Kohn 127). Kohn taught the importance of just simply asking questions. Most of the time parents just assume what their child is thinking and feeling but if we give the time and attention to our child and truly ask what they are thinking and feeling. You can discover so much more than what we probably could have anticipated. Throughout the scriptures we hear about the importance of personal revelation. It is when we take the time to truly figure out things out in our mind, ponder, pray, and study things out through the scripture we are then able to realize that if we didn't just preach what we think is right or what we assume something is but actually take the time to study and to learn from our Heavenly Father and from Prophets and Apostles. This is when we can gain personal revelation and help our children obtain answers to their prayers through careful study. In 1st Nephi 11: 1 tells the story of Nephi who after hearing about Lehi's revelation of the Tree of Life. Nephi went out and wanted to know what his father had seen. He began to ponder and pray unto the Lord when the Holy Ghost spoke unto him. It was through careful consideration and time before Nephi was able to get that gift of personal revelation in order to know for himself.
The fifth principle I have chosen is: "Change how you see, not just how you act" (Kohn 124). It's important to apply the principles of parenting as well as the principles of the doctrine. In order to change the way we act AND the way we see is through having a change heart. The best thing that we can start to do is with keeping the principles of Keeping the commandments. In Doctrine and Covenants 78: 7 states that we wish to have a spot in the celestial kingdom then we need to take the time to keeping the commandments. If we are willing to apply the doctrine of keeping the commandments we are much more likely to change our behavior and how we see our life. We will treat our child with love and respect.
My sixth principle is to "Be involved" (Steinberg, 47). Staying involved with your child's life and knowing where he or she is and what they are interesting in and what they love to do. This will teach the child that you are there for them and that you are always going to be interested in their life. This to me, is a sign of charity. Charity is defined as the pure love of Christ. We are demonstrating love towards the child and that will speak volumes and teach the importance of giving time to you child. In Moroni 7: 45-48 talks about how we need to pray for this love. Once we get this love into our hearts is when we are going to start demonstrating to our child, the amount of love we give to them, especially through our involvement.
My last principle I have is "Keep your eye on your long-term goals" (Kohn, 122). Alma 34: 32-34 speaks about how there will be a time to meet our Heavenly Father and talks about the importance of procrastinating. We do not want to waste the time that we do have with our children on something less importance. By looking at the doctrine of enduring to the end we can think of all the hard time and work we can do for helping our children study and learn the own doctrines and principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Below is a Mormon Message that goes along with this principle:
I hope that you enjoyed this! Hopefully gave you some insights but more importantly I'm pretty happy that I did this assignment for future reference. I hope my professor, Brother Rarick had a good time at my little blog as well! :)
Brett & I have a little whiteboard on our fridge and I took the liberty of decorating it. :)
Also, as you can see below we finally got some more pictures on the wall. We have been meaning to hang them for a while now and now hopefully we hang two more pictures that we got from Christmas from both of our parents! One will go in our Bedroom, which has nothing on the walls, and one will go in the living room. We just didn't think that two giant pictures (11 x 14) of us in the living room would send off the right message to other people. haha.
Brett & I built a Snowman and then we got in a snowball fight (shh ...don't tell the anyone, it's illegal in Rexburg to have snowball fights.) Of which, I totally creamed Brett. I had him running for our little apartment. haha. Not really but I like to think that I won. :) He is such a good sport!
Wow. I cannot believe that it is already 2012. The year of graduation and it smells GREAT! Lets recap on the last few weeks. Brett and I went home to Oregon for Christmas and New Years. It was a lot of fun to see my family and the best part was that Brett is officially apart of the family! :)
Brett and I had a good ole time besides catching a cold at the end of the season. Its a nasty little thing and we are still not completely over it. We would just like to say to everyone THANK YOU!!! We are appreciate all of your love and support. Thank you for all the Christmas Presents. They are all super awesome!
During our time in Oregon we completed some awesome projects such as a super duper hard puzzle which my grandma slaved over. I relearned how to knit and I made a cute washcloth with the thanks to my grandma for helping me. I learned a new stitch called the pearl stitch. I gave it to my mom on her birthday.
My family and I all went out and saw the movie "Warhorse". Personally, I liked it. Little did I know that only half of us liked it. But I guess I'm more sensitive than I used to be and almost cried a few times. (Brett kept teasing me about it the whole way home).
Another great thing that Brett and I got to witness was my mom's english bulldog puppies! They were SOOO cute!!! Brett was smitten at the first sight of them and couldn't put them down the whole time we were there. We were there to see 3 of them get sold to some great families. Here are the puppies at a younger age than when we saw them as.
Brett and I have created some super sweet resolutions for the year and already its getting hard but we still have the rest of the year to keep going with them.
I'm currently going to school and it has been such a long time to be going to school during the winter its almost exciting. haha. Actually I love my classes and so far I'm doing pretty good.
Brett got hired at the Rigby Airport! He is super excited and is very anxious to start working again. He also got into Utah Valley University for Fall Semester and he got accepted into the Professional Pilot Department. So by August we will be saying goodbye to Rexburg and moving to Provo/Orem area. :)
Anyways Brett and I are doing great! We got some fish but they got sick and two out of the four died. Then Brett went out and bought a fiddler crab which ended up attacking the other fish.... so now we only have a little crab. :)
One of these days, I'm going to be super creative and make things such as this super cute Thanksgiving board. If your interested in making it, its found at Jellybean Junkyard.
I hope everyone is going to have a fantastic weekend and only 6 more days until TURKEY DAY! I'm so excited. Brett and I are going down to my grandparents house in Nampa, Idaho with 2 of my sisters.
Two of my aunt and uncles and their kids should be there too. It should be a blast. :)
Brett and I have done quite a bit in the last few weeks. I'm not going to attempt to put anything in order so I'm sorry. I just am going to write things down on what comes to mind.
Brett and I were MarioKart for Halloween. Brett was Donkey-kong and I was Princess Peach. The best part about it was just making the costumes. We found these cardboard boxes (our Karts) from Walmart for FREE! We got to color pretty much everything on our boxes. Brett was great at Spray painting our boxes. It was so fun and we got quite a few responses. Except everyone knew exactly who Brett was then they would turn to me and guess cotton candy?? Um... when was cottoncandy ever in MarioKart??? I don't understand it... Brett thought it was pretty hilarious though.
This is when we were constructing our karts
Brett at the Truck-a-treat
Growing up I never had trick-a-treaters before so this was SOO much fun for me. We had tons of cute little witches and princesses and ninjas and darth vaders. I loved it! Brett was so sweet to me and let me hand out majority of the candy. Our ward also did a truck-a-treat. We were freezing. These poor little munchkins had no idea what it is like to have a halloween without wearing super large snowjackets over their costumes.
Brett and I celebrated our 2 month anniversary on November 2nd! We decided to go to eat at Wingers which they messed up on our order so we got a lot of extra food. Then we walked over to FatCats and played some skiball. It was a ton of fun and we won a bouncy ball and a temporary tattoo. I still can't believe its been 2 months! Not to get me wrong, we have had A LOT that has happened within these two months, We started school, we had to deal with 3 police visits from our obnoxious neighbors, Brett got tonsillitis and I got a really bad cold, we went to the Haunted Mill (scariest thing of my life), tried to change my name on my social security card and found out that the Marriage License we have isn't even valid. Thank you, Oregon. Bah! I got accepted onto FastGrad so I can graduate in JULY!!!! Woot! Soooo excited! [But did I mention that BYU-Idaho does not accept Psychology students onto fastgrad anymore because of not enough teachers and classrooms and too many students]. So, I had to go through a major long process and it took me 3 different visits and running around all over campus to fight for my case.
As I'm sure you guys know, I'm in a Bakery class and I'm learned a lot about food. haha. This is my pie! I made Sour Cream Peach Pie. Brett looved it! He says its his new favorite (which is great because it was easy to make).
It snowed in Rexburg. It was crazy. Brett and I walked into walmart for just about an hour, once we checked out and were walking to our car it was a blizzard. We have to admit, it was kind of fun driving through the ice and the snow. Of course, its been snowing on and off for a while now. The first time it snowed, we got so excited that we went out and took pictures. We sang Christmas Carols in the car (I know its not after Thanksgiving yet but hey.. I love Christmas songs), and we made some great looking snow angels.
Last night, my ward had a Thanksgiving dinner. We were in charge of making Mashed potatoes. It was my first time and they turned out great! This ward activity was the largest thing I've ever seen in my life. It looked like a giant stake activity. There was about 8 tables deep and 8 tables wide and the tables were all back to back. There was tons of food and Brett and I got to sit next to our new friends Brother and Sister Dexter and their family. They were a ton of fun and Brett and Brother Dexter talked up a storm about England (Thats where they both served their missions). It was a ton of fun and I'm excited to get to know our ward a lot more. :)
Afterwards, Brett and I headed over to our friends Peter and Jill's house and talked, drank some hot chocolate and hot cider. The boys ended up playing some zombie game. Brett had me play for a little bit and I'm surprised that they understood it so well. It was pretty hilarious though hearing Brett trying to teach me and tell me "NO NO, Not that button the other button!!!" Haha.. I guess you can say I didn't get it. haha.
Have a great day!
Brett and I also had a great Easter together. We did the whole shebang! It was really fun. We dyed eggs, we decorated sugar cookies and the Easter bunny hid our eggs ;) We each hide a few eggs and then the other person had to find it. It was pretty hilarious. Needless to say we had a great ole time and it was nice to finally take a break from school, work, and every other stress out there.
I still can't believe its been 2 months! Not to get me wrong, we have had A LOT that has happened within these two months, We started school, we had to deal with 3 police visits from our obnoxious neighbors, Brett got tonsillitis and I got a really bad cold, we went to the Haunted Mill (scariest thing of my life), tried to change my name on my social security card and found out that the Marriage License we have isn't even valid. Thank you, Oregon. Bah! I got accepted onto FastGrad so I can graduate in JULY!!!! Woot! Soooo excited! [But did I mention that BYU-Idaho does not accept Psychology students onto fastgrad anymore because of not enough teachers and classrooms and too many students]. So, I had to go through a major long process and it took me 3 different visits and running around all over campus to fight for my case.
