The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Welllll..... What a week. We had a really hard week. Upon reflecting on the good, the bad, the ugly of it all.... I have decided not to elaborate on the grumpies, the tears, the temper tantrums, or the emotional outbursts- and no, I am not referring to the children, though they had their fair share of all of the above.

On Friday morning I was looking through the memoriam on President Hinckley, reading what Pres. Eyring said about him being an optimist. I realized that so often we (meaning "I") think to ourselves, "What's the worst that could happen?" when we are worrying or stewing about something, and plan out what we'd do or feel, just to make sure we could handle it if it happened. I thought to myself, "Why not think'What's the best that could happen?' and plan for that instead." In that same way, I feel the need to move past the uglies of the week and highlight the goods.

Our neice, Sadie, is in middle school, and her Family and Consumer Science class put together a 3 day preschool as a class project. She invited Kaeleb to go, and he was Oh So Excited. He played games, did art work, ate snacks, and learned a few thug gestures from his 8th grade buddy. He ran out every day bursting with excitement. He kept saying "and then, and then, and then, and then...."

Kwint's wellness center had a booth at the Washington County School District's Wellness Fair (thank you, Tam.). He had a lot of fun and felt that they got some good exposure. Two other colleagues were in L.A. and established a contract with some of the schools there to do workshops and trainings in parenting and such. It is so exciting to watch things progress.

We have started on our yard. Kwint and Kaeleb have been out contouring the dirt with their shovels. (Kaeleb uses a garden spade.) This will be *quite* the project. We are so looking forward to the reward of our efforts though.

We enjoyed the weekend with our family. We went to the home and garden show with Dave, Tam, and Coby (which, by the way had very little in the way of home or garden, so we went to the Home Depot and got sprinkler stuff), then to a new pizza joint with Mom and Dad Kemp, and Kris and Barbi's family.

We learned a lot about parenting this week. Love, love, love. We have to stay in touch with the innocence underneath the limit testing behaviors of our 3 year old or the reflux and teething of our baby, and teach with patience and love. We learned about repentance in sharing time today First, a funny story- Sister Rousch said "Have you ever done something you felt bad about and wished you could make it better? .... What can we do if we feel that way?" Kaeleb blurted out "Well, we just have to deal with it." We ended up having a rough evening where Kaeleb was able to practice repentance (which was, of course the answer Sis Rousch was looking for) and we were able to learn patience and forgiveness. There are so many valuable lessons to be learned from our kids as we teach.