No more "I'll be happy when..."

From a wonderful talk by DIETER F. UCHTDORF, Second Counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: (the golden ticket reference is referring to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
"The happiest people I know are not those who find their golden ticket; they are those who, while in pursuit of worthy goals, discover and treasure the beauty and sweetness of the everyday moments. They are the ones who, thread by daily thread, weave a tapestry of gratitude and wonder throughout their lives. These are they who are truly happy."

Gratitude and Wonder



It reminds me of a quote from Joe Versus The Volcano, when Patricia and Joe are talking late one night on the boat, she says, "My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement."
My baby looks totally amazed sometimes, when she's not asleep, probably because everything is new to her, she just can't believe her eyes.



Beauty and Sweetness of the everyday moments



My cousin said newborn babies have "magical smallness." I love that phrase.

Here is a pic of the tiny Forget Me Not flower:

Bundle of Sweetness

September is quickly coming to a close. I waited all year for September to come and it has fulfilled the promise for which I was waiting so patiently:



We welcome our little girl to the world! Eight pounds, eleven ounces of sweetness.

O.K. September, you have my permission to move on over to let October come.

Plans too great for this narrow space

Today's Google logo celebrate the patron saint of unfinished business, Pierre de Fermat.

I enjoyed this article about him.

It ends with this paragraph, (my favorite):
"So the next time someone asks you about the dishes in the sink, the half-written novel in the desk drawer, or that '67 Camaro sitting on blocks on your lawn, simply think of Fermat, and respond that you have a truly marvelous plan to finish your project, but that the day is too narrow to contain it."

Liberal Arts

I hope this link works:
Liber & Public Virtue
It is a speech given by Oliver DeMille. Shanon Brooks published it as a tribute on the 4th of July.

I think it has some really important information. You're better off going to read it yourself than trusting my synopsis, but if you really don't feel like clicking on the link, (or if it doesn't work)...

It explains what Liber means, "which means the body of citizens reading the classics and history and knowing what is required to remain free," and how it is the root of liberty, libros (books), library, and the Liberal Arts which are "the knowledge and skills necessary to remain free...
What are those arts? Well, for the founders they were the arts of reading the classics and thinking clearly and independently."


There's more there that I wish I wasn't skipping, but I didn't just want to copy the whole thing, except for this paragraph:

"History has proven that freedom is not free. It must be earned. And one of the ways the founding generation earned it was in becoming Liber: getting the kind of education required to remain free. And by education they didn’t mean diplomas or degrees, but knowledge gained from reading the classics of history, law, government, and the arts."


The next two paragraphs are really good, too, though I already took a short quote and put it above. They basically say that if we lose the understanding necessary to remain free, then we will lose our freedom.
But the classics are still there, all we have to do is dust them off and read them. Well, that and do the hard work necessary to understand them.

Then it goes on to explain Public Virtue:
"In 1776 the term Public Virtue meant voluntarily sacrificing personal benefit for the good of society."


And it has really good examples and is pretty long and I haven't read it all, yet. Ha.

Education Quote

I was watching the documentary Darfur Now, and there was a really good quote from Hejewa Adam. Her village was burned down and (if I remember correctly) she was beaten severely while her baby was on her back and her baby died from the beating. Others in the village had their throats slit and boys under 5 were killed and the girls were taken away. Since she lost everything, she joined the rebels, fighting against the government that condones such violence against the people of their country, which is basically a genocide. She said, "The massacre in Shatia humiliated me and convinced me to join the rebel Army. I decided that I must help liberate our homes."

A little later in the movie she said, "Fighting alone will not solve the problem in Darfur. Those people who go to school and get an education are the ones who will solve the problem. But fighting with guns, that will not solve it. Even in a hundred years." (emphasis added)

I also like this quote from Don Cheadle in the movie, when asked by a random person "What can I do to help?" He says, "What can I do? I don't know, but more than nothing, a lot more than nothing."
Here is a link that explains a little more about the movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988102/

Free to Choose

This quote is from the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, the subject on Agency and Accountability:
"You are also responsible for developing the abilities
and talents Heavenly Father has given you. You are
accountable to Him for what you do with your abilities
and how you spend your time. Do not idle away your
time. Be willing to work hard. Choose to do many good
things of your own free will."

Before that it talks about making good choices and how we are free to choose our actions, but not free to choose the consequences.
I think the above quote goes one step further, in that we are responsible to develop our talents. Sometimes we have to try different things to discover our talents, but all talents require time and effort to make them seem effortless.

strange dreams

A few days ago, I dreamed that I was shopping at Target in the baby section and someone had left a baby on the store shelf. It wasn't a brand new baby, it was a rather plump probably 3-5 month old. I was pretty happy to find him/her (I didn't know which flavor it was) and thought I might just take him/her home and leave my name and number and address with the store so that if whoever left the baby changed their mind, then they would know where to find him or her. I'm not a kidnapper, after all.
But, in my beginning to wake state, I realized that the powers that be probably wouldn't let me just take the baby home. They would want to call child protective services and all that, not like in Moses's day when you could just draw a baby out of the water and keep him because you're a princess.

That's o.k. I'm going to have a new baby of my own in a few months, thus probably the reason for the strange dream.

I think it was the next day that I woke up dreaming about junk food. At church, there is a person or two that brings day old bread to give away for free. Lately, it has been from Trader Joe's, the good bread! I dreamed that we rode bikes to church and were just loading up on all kinds of stuff. There were bags (huge, clean garbage bags) full of day old kettle corn and there were different kinds of bags of chips and I picked up a donut bar with chocolate icing and just started eating it.
I haven't had a donut in a long time.

Oh, in that dream, I was so thirsty, but the drinking fountain spouted the water up through a bag of popcorn at first, then it switched so that it was running down the outside of the plastic bag that the popcorn was on, but it was still hard trying to slurp it off the plastic.

I hate dreams where I'm drinking and drinking, but I just can't taste the wetness of the water. That's usually when I have to wake up and get a drink and then the water just tastes heavenly.