MaeLyn's Musings

I've had a headache for the last three days. Sometimes I can push it to the back of my mind and focus on other things. Other times it seems to take over my brain and I just want to detach my head and stick it in a closet for a couple hours so I don't have to feel it. This is the menu that Peter made. Thankfully, this is Spring Break. Steven let me sleep in this morning since we didn't have to get the kids up and off to school. I ended up sleeping until about 9:30. When I did finally get up and wandered out of my room, my children met me in the dining room. Josh had a towel over his arm and a notepad in his hand as he led me to my seat at the table where he pulled out my chair for me. I sat, and was presented with a menu. I made my selections, and very shortly, Hannah was cooking me pancakes - to order, Peter was filling up a glass with water for me, and John was slicing my orange. I ate my wonderful breakfast - even having Peter refill my water glass a couple times. ...

Due to financial concerns, several months ago I started making my own laundry detergent. I received the recipe in a Relief Society meeting, and next time I ran out of laundry detergent, instead of buying more, I purchased the ingredients for the homemade stuff, which all together, was cheaper. What's the recipe? Well, it is posted in several places on the internet so I don't know who to credit with coming up with it, but here it is: 1/2 C. Washing Soda (It's like baking soda, but I found it in the laundry aisle at WalMart.) 1/2 C. Borax (I actually already had this at home because it really helps when trying to get out ink stains.) 1/3 Bar of Fels-Naptha Soap. (This is good laundry soap, other recipes suggest Ivory, or other types of soap.) Grate the soap. Heat 6 C. water and then add the grated soap and stir until the soap is melted. Add the washing soda and Borax, then stir until the powder is dissolved. Remove from heat. (One recipe I found suggested letting ...

What did you do when you were a child that got you in the most trouble and how did your parents handle it? In trouble? Me? I was always a perfect angel! I never got in trouble! Okay... I do remember one time... It seems I had an imaginary friend as a little girl. Her name was Suzy I think. Anyway, at dinner one evening I was pretending to be her and not behaving quite as nicely as my usually angelic self. My frustrated parents would tell "MaeLyn" to behave and I would reply, "I'm not MaeLyn, I'm Suzy!" Finally, my frustrated parents showed me to the front door and told "Suzy" to go home and send "MaeLyn" back. I ended up sitting on the front porch, a very confused little girl. I realized, of course, that I really was "MaeLyn" however, it didn't occur to me that I could just walk back in the door, say "I'm MaeLyn" and that all would be fine. It was very clear in my mind that my parents had just kicked me out of...

It has been a busy week. First, there is the shopping, visiting teaching, trips to the library, and running kids to and from school, activity days and scouts. Add to that the constant presence of a little boy with a hundred times the energy that you would imagine could emanate from a small four year old body, one who persistently demands my undivided attention, whether he wants to read a book or is playing hide-and-seek with his plethora of stuffed animals. I've been busy with Primary. My second counselor is moving to Utah at the end of this week (she got three weeks notice that her husband was being promoted and needed to move back to Utah) so last Sunday she was released and a new counselor was called. The previous Sunday, four new teachers were called, and so while praying and pondering diligently to figure out who my new counselor was to be, I've had to figure out which teachers to assign to which classes and make sure they had the proper lesson manuals, supplies and i...

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! The kids are all home from school today in honor of the occasion. They are supposed to be taking advantage of the occasion by cleaning their rooms, and while they got off to a good start, they seem to have run out of energy and will power and I don't know if anything has progressed in the last hour. Meanwhile, I cleaned my room, including cleaning the closet and changing the sheets on my bed. I feel like I've set my example for the kids, and now I can relax and play. Maybe I will work on my quilt. Hannah wants to have a picnic in the park if they get their rooms clean before lunch time. I don't see it happening, but they can try for it. On Thursday afternoon I took Peter to the doctor. He's had a blistery looking thing on his thumb for a week or so that seemed to be growing and crusting over. I didn't remember any injury to his finger that could have caused it, and since it was getting worse instead of better, I took him in. The d...

Peter threw up again this morning. When I got up there was a smelly mess on his bed. When I asked him about it he said, "That was just a mistake. I'm not really sick." And he doesn't act sick in the slightest. He ate breakfast and is running around acting perfectly normal. At least I don't have to decide whether or not to keep him home from school. Yesterday started out pretty good. I didn't get any phone calls from the school. I was able to walk to the school to pick up the kids, and so I got some much needed exercise. I worked some more on my quilt. Last night I took John to scouts. The difficult part was the long afternoon after the kids came home from school. I am frustrated because I don't know how to motivate my children to do the things they need to do. Everyone has an assigned room to straighten. Joshua had two homework assignments he needed to work on. John had homework as well as an assignment to clean out the cat's litter (which he had neg...