Celebrate a Country Day- BELARUS

Another year has come and gone and January once again has presented itself as the longest, blah-ish month of the year. Over the years I have become so grateful for our annual "Celebrate a Country Day" holiday that I invented when we were first married. (pat myself on the back.) It really gives me something to look forward to this month!

This year we celebrated the Eastern European country of Belarus. And I only took one photo of the whole party! haha! And that was of the poster I made:

But just know that I wore white, as did my girls, and I added red ribbons to their dresses and I wore a Russian looking head scarf. Here are some Belarusians and their traditional clothes and patterns. 

 The food was all pretty authentic, thanks to the Eastern European/Russian market we have in SLC (that I discovered is actually owned by Armenians! So that was exciting.)

We had dranski (potato pancakes,) red borscht soup (beets, cabbage, potatoes, etc) rye bread (everyone had a hard time with that taste!) "salads" (peas, carrots, weird fish all mixed with mayo,)  pelmini (meat filled dumplings,) and to drink a cherry compote juice and kvass (drink soaked in rye bread.... not great haha.) For dessert we had simple baked apples filled with honey!  

 We also had some mushroom candies because mushrooms are a big deal in Belarus. I added fake trees to my poster board because Belarus is 40% covered in lush, medieval forests, where many mushrooms grow. It's a cold, wet country and so for most of their history they didn't have any wheat! (hence the rye bread.) Just some fun facts for you all. ;) 

 I presented my poster board and taught a brief history, about their language, and some cultural traditions. Basically Belarus means "White Rus" so it is very Russian influenced as well as very Slavic in general and has a lot of influence from Lithuania and Latvia as well.  It's been through a lot of heartache and bloodshed from being caught in the middle of many wars, especially WWII, but, despite the cold, it seems like it would be an interesting place to visit!

 Despite my lack of picture taking, we had a fun night with our friends and letting all the kids run around together in the gym! (we had the party in our church building ha!) 

And I'm already thinking up my plans for next year. 

Past Years and Parties:

Italy

Laos

Botswana

Paraguay

Oman 

Greenland

 Tahiti

Simple Service- Dog Treats

For  while now the girls have been wanting to direct our service activities towards an animal shelter. June especially has a bleeding heart for all things furry, feathery, or scaly. But typically you need to be 18 years or older to do actual volunteer work in an animal shelter. But I had the idea to make some dog treats and take those in. Before doing so, I called the shelter to make sure they would accept them and they were thrilled with the idea! 

I found this easy recipe, bought some $5 bone shaped cookie cutters off of Amazon (but really you could do any shape! Dogs don't care haha,) and then used mostly ingredients that we already had on hand.   Kids always love baking so this was fun for them.

The next day we took them to the shelter and the staff was so happy. The girls also loved looking at all of the animals. The bummer, though, was that we got there at a time that only people looking for their lost pets were allowed back so we weren't able to go see the dogs and give them a treat. Better luck next time!

It was easy, fun, and felt good to serve in a different way.

Dinner in a Diner

A couple weeks ago we were in a small town outside of Utah Valley. We had done something Christmasy and now needed to eat. There were some restaurants and a "famous" burger joint but as we drove down Main Street I spotted a small, unimpressive diner. "That's the spot!" I exclaimed excitedly.

And out of all the outings and travels and activities we'd done together as a family that year, somehow that diner was the most healing of them all. The girls were happy and well behaved. We ordered a basket of fries, milk shakes, and a scone. I got a country fried steak. I always get a country fried steak. The cups were thick plastic, the booths were made of unassuming vinyl, wood paneled walls, a slot window from the dining room to the kitchen was interrupted by a simple silver spinning disc to hold the hand written orders in place for cooks. 

It grew dark outside.

And I felt so far from normal life. There was nothing to clean, nobody to answer to, nothing to organize or strategize. That diner, for whatever reason, became a little pocket of time where nothing else mattered except my little family.

And for whatever reason, diners have a way of charming me like this over and over again.

Does anyone else feel this way?

Perhaps it's all the road trips I took "back in the day." When you're on a road trip the whole thing feels like a tiny pocket of stilled time that follows you in your car. And finding a good, filling diner at any stop is always like finding treasure. Your belly gets fed but you also get a sense of the town you're in, and either good conversations are had or good silence of satisfaction is held.

And with any luck, you'll find the world's best country fried steak.

And your own pocket of time.

Night Time

I often find myself with the most serene meditation and prayers while sitting in the dark, on the floor, next to the beds while my daughters sleep. There's something sacred in the air of a slumbering kid- dreams being caught in the brambles of stars, little chests rising and falling with calm, steady breaths. Everything is so still, and my mind can't help but fall into my heart.

But the prayers offered by a mother as she watches her slumbering child are not just an utterance of gratitude or wishes for safety and health. For me, at least, my nightly reverent routine is a series of pleadings, begging God to forgive me for all the ways I fell short, once again, as a mom. I beg Him to let me have more time to get it right. I plead that they will wake up loving me still.

Night after night I make deep and personal promises over the alter of motherhood. 

Because motherhood is not always some fanfare of kisses on the nose, band-aids, grapes for lunch, "I love you," "buckle up!",  story time, tickling, time out, naps, laughter, messes, boogers, "But this is all worth it!"medley.

There are a number of deeply lonely days; dark days.

Sometimes it's hard to find the purpose of it all.

And it's easy to loose perspective.

But every dark day ends with a dark night. Those little snores begin again- one belly sleeper with her bum in the air, another tangled up in three blankets, the oldest nearly impossible to find among all of her stuffed animals. It always takes a wiper to my rainy, blurred view and I feel like I can see clearly again for a moment. Purpose and perspective. It's them. It was always them. 

2017 Year in Review!

These yearly recap posts probably don't mean very much to anyone else, but they are always somewhat therapeutic for me. Especially this year. Just before writing this I was sitting on the couch, talking to Buck about how 2017 felt weird. It was such a tiring time trying to deal with three kids, side businesses, and keeping a good marriage. For some reason, I felt like maybe I had failed the year. But as I went back over old posts and pieced this together I saw how many memories we made, all that we did and accomplished. I was surprised! Maybe it's because even though we had a lot of adventures, how I was feeling underneath it all was different. But I'm grateful life still went on. And not that everyone's life, or even mine, HAVE to look like this, with all the outings and such, that's not what makes life important and meaningful. I know that. I guess, it's just that, for me getting out and adventuring is a very ANNA thing to do so it was nice to look back and see that I didn't lose myself as much as I fear that I did. 

I'm probably not making any sense. But there it is.

And now here is the 2017 recap!

2017 Adventures

We had lots of new and fun times such as:

Celebrating Tahiti for "celebrate a country day"

Exploring the Ice castles

Seeing the Circus

Swimming with a mermaid

Roller skating/ scooting

Getting passports

Holding baby chickens

Golfing

Hanging out with a kangaroo

Riding on a Wild West train ride

Getting pet Luna

Going to the Carnival/state fair

Seeing the Antique car show

Attending a Jello fight

Seeing the American Fork summer parade

Raising and hatching butterflies

Shearing llamas

Viewing the Solar eclipse

Going to a Princess tea party

Getting a new car for Buck

Going to Boondocks

Viewing a Quilt exhibit

Selling at the Kids entrepreneur fair

Going Raspberry picking

Getting a hammock

Going to a Pumpkin patch

June losing 2 teeth

Touching the Mediterranean Sea

 Seeing Disney on ice

Going to the "Christmas Adventure"

2017 Lessons

 Dance Classes

Tumbling Class

Acting Class

Swimming

 June graduated Kindergarten and stared first grade

Hazel started a two day a week preschool

2017 Regular Repeats

Old Stand By's, year after year, that we went to several times: 

Mountains

Curiosity Museum

Dinosaur Museum

Animal Farm

Aquarium

2017 Festivals

Tulip Festival

Colonial Festival

Chalk Festival

Scarecrow Festival

Luminaria Light Festival

2017 Good Byes

Grandma Darlene

Cousin Micheal 

💛

2017 Plays

Annie (with my dad playing the very bald Daddy Warbucks)

Wizard of Oz

Lion King

Singing in the Rain

Christmas Carol

2017 Service

We had a special year. I was looking for ways to get more involved in service with my girls and then I had a friend reach out to me, asking if I would blog every month about doing service with my kids for her non profit blog. It opened up our world of service and pushed me to keep going!

Our projects included:

Earth Day Clean Up

May Day Flower Giveaways

Memorial Day

Homeless Kits

Lemonade Stand Fundraiser

Singing at Disability Center

Making Dolls of Hope for Refugees

Gardening Service

Ginger Bread Man- helping around home

Thank You Notes for servicemen

2017 Dates

Our date nights suffered big time this year. But we still had a few fun ones AND we kept up on our monthly temple dates, so that's good!

Dates included:

Ropes Course

Temples

Top Golf

Movies

Getaway

Salsa Dancing

Date Night Boxes

2017 Trips

2017 didn't slow down for travel!

Oregon coast

McCall, Idaho

Girls Road trip to Idaho

Park city, UT

Glamping at Bear Lake

and of course,

ITALY

2017 Holidays

 Mostly, I was just happy to see that I managed to pull off fun holidays for my girls. Looking back I'm shocked that I did, since I was always feeling so frazzled and spread thin. But look! Fun times.

 Yours Truly

 I think what threw me off to begin with was Postpartum depression. I ended up taking medication for it, and it DID actually help. But there were side effects and so weaning off of it when the time was right was also a journey. But I survived and it's over for now!

I also did a lot of yoga and grew in that. For the first half of the year anyway. Then I became inconsistent and fell off the exercise boat over and over again. But I still haven't given up and some highlights of yoga this year, besides doing it in my living room were: 

Yoga in a Hindu temple, hot yoga at a studio, and of course, "Goga,"(yoga with Goats, HA)

I also went to a "sound bath" meditation thing which was wild

Then there was the whole struggle with self doubt and keeping up with my non profit. I BARELY survived this but did not give up and I'm looking forward to an even better year!

I also went to my first ever concert! ;)

And I joined a community choir this past fall and that has been so so wonderful and I am loving it and excited to continue. 

I also wanted to mention that Buck got his 5th AND 6th promotion at work in 2017. He works so hard and still comes home and does so much for us and he is making all our dreams come true. ;)

 Lastly,  

 the new house we are building. That's taken a lot of brain power, decision making, budgeting, driving back and forth, meetings, and a WHOLE LOT of PATIENCE. ;) But, praises to Buck for taking all the hard parts on himself, it's all mostly been fun for me. We should be moving in this spring! (I say "should" because we originally thought we'd be moving in this past November. 😂) I don't even care that it's taken so long though, our builder has been great, I didn't want to switch June in school anyway, now we own our lot, and we're getting a wonderful home for a super good price. 

Frick, guys. I hope this doesn't sound like one long, bragging post. I just wanted to focus on the highlights and good things of the past year. So, yeah. That's all for now! (and if I post the hard parts too much I'll be "negative" but if I post the good things then I'm "bragging" so I don't know what to tell you all other than sorry if I'm obnoxious! The internet is obnoxious!) 

LOOKING FORWARD TO 2018!

Party Like it's 1999

You know me (or maybe you don't) I love a good party. And I love the change into a new year. Some people think New Years eve parties are dumb but not me! I love them. And I love our New Year's party traditions. 

Starting with the sky lanterns. We've been doing this for several years now. I've tried lanterns for other events as well but it never felt as right as it does on new years eve. Something about the fire in the cold night air, sending it off, thinking of the past year and making some wishes as it floats high in the black sky. This has also only gotten more and more fun as the girls get older. This year it was just us and my parents.

We also let some sparklers and a wimpy little firework.

Then we came home and I busted out my best party lighting and lava lamp, we had our traditional chocolate fondue, and played some games! I also found the best party play list of pop songs from 1999.

Then we put on a fake ball drop and had a count down with the girls, had some cheers, pulled some crackers/poppers, threw some pop its outside and yelled "HAPPY NEW YEAR" to the neighborhood.

And if you're wondering where Rose was in all of this, she was in the warm car (right by us) during the lanterns and then asleep in bed for the after party. Baby life. (This kind of reminds me of TV shows when the two main characters have a baby but that baby doesn't always fit the exciting story lines and the child seems to be absent most episodes like they have a live-in nanny or something.) (we do NOT have a live-in nanny.) 

And then my parents left for another party and the older girls went to bed. So Buck and I sat down and talked about this last year and the upcoming one and wrote down goals and stuff. Then we quietly counted down to midnight and stole a kiss. 

And as soon as the time hit, the whole entire Utah Valley went INSANE. I went outside to witness it. Fireworks exploding in the air, both near and far and all around. BOOM! CRACK! POP! From behind, to the side, up ahead. Hundreds and maybe thousands of people setting off their best fireworks all at the exact same time for several minutes straight. I heard whoops and shouts, car alarms, fire truck sirens, noise makers. It was like a true war zone! Except everyone was happy (except that guy that probably got some firework in his eye and that's where those sirens were headed.) Despite it all, most humans seem to love the idea of a new year, a fresh start. And we celebrate that. So many people! So much beauty, pain, emotions that happen in one single year. So we set off fireworks, clink together glass cups, and hope that maybe this next year wont hurt so bad, maybe I wont be alone anymore, maybe I'll meet someone, maybe I'll get a raise, maybe I'll go somewhere, maybe my health will improve. And at midnight we all feel hope for I guess about 15 minutes, judging by the sounds of those explosives. It's ridiculous but I nearly started to cry at the emotions I felt as glitter and stars erupted in the distance and all around me. 

Life is weird. 

And now it's a new year!