Everybody Learn Globish!

I enjoyed this article in the BBC and had to share. What do you think? Would it be like those Frenchies to try such a ploy? :)

And on a more serious note, I found this Mary Poppins article interesting as well.

Divine Potential

Wow. It's been almost a month since I've posted anything and, despite Kate's request, no one else has posted! Sorry Kate, I'm not trying to hog the family blog, but I can't force others to post. C'mon everyone! Believe it or not, my life is not always/usually/ever blog-worthy!

I've been reading a Young Women's oriented blog for the past several months, which I usually find to have interesting and worthwhile insights, even though I do not have a calling in young women. I particularly enjoyed one of today's posts, on what I assume is an upcoming lesson. The topic (as you can see if you followed the link) is "Finding Joy in Our Divine Potential". (Don't you just love all the cliche terms and phrases we have in the church that we hear all the time but don't ever stop to think about what they actually mean? Or if they even have a meaning? I think "divine potential" falls in the first category. The best I've recently heard is "faith is real".) I've been drawn to the subject of divine/eternal potential ever since teaching this visiting teaching message, trying to get my companion and visiting teachees to actually (heaven forbid!) think about the topic and what our various roles as women (and men) are, and having the idea that women have roles other than motherhood be completely dismissed. Oh, and I'm pretty sure after those visits my companion was convinced I'm apostate. I think I've managed to dispel that notion over the past few months.

Back to the topic at hand, I like the attitude of the writer of the above-linked post. She isn't saying marriage and family aren't important. She's careful to say that they are, and that she loves being a wife and mother, and that those roles are fulfilling parts of womanhood. But she recognizes that they are not a complete picture of womanhood, that that's not all women were created for, and that many women can and will fulfill their potential without being a wife or mother. She mentions President Uchtdorf's talk from the Relief Society broadcast, which I agree is a perfect fit for this topic. I loved that talk! Basically, the writer has expressed my thoughts on the topic of divine potential perfectly (I think, as they currently stand).

And, even more than that, she's helped me realize that I'm very happy I've yet to recieve a calling in young women's. When I read about having a panel discussion on what about their womanhood brings them joy, my heart froze and my thoughts were "Um...um...crap! I haven't the foggiest idea! I need more time!" So, yeah, I'm glad I'm not having to teach these lessons yet. I'm suddenly very happy to be keeping 2 year olds fed and happy in nursery. I know how to help them get where they need to be. I'd like to serve in YW some day, but for now I think I'd like a while longer to figure myself out before I'm thrust into a position to help guide young women into womanhood.

Blanket Woes

Well, I think anyway. Gareth is very attached to a certain orange blanket. We'd once previously partially detached him from said blanket, getting him to leave it in his crib all day and only use it to lay his head on while sleeping (he will scream for 2 hours, possibly longer, without falling asleep if he doesn't have the blanket - we've tried before). After tears upon leaving the blanket behind in the crib a few times, it seemed to work. He didn't care that he no longer had it to carry around. And the couple of times we tried to soothe him with it, it didn't work.

Then he mysteriously re-attached to it, apparently stronger than ever. And I just haven't had the will or energy to force him to leave it in the crib (read: I haven't felt like dealing with his crying), so I've let him become re-attached. At least we don't have to take it out of the house with us usually.

But over the past week or two he's become very difficult. For instance, he no longer willingly helps pick up toys in the evening, something he used to love doing. All he wants to do is sit holding his blanket and sucking his thumb. Tonight we had many, many tears trying to get toys picked up. At one point he even wanted to carry his new xylophone to his room, BUT, to do that required both hands. Which meant that even though he was still carrying the blanket over his shoulder, he wasn't sucking his thumb! Disaster! He couldn't even make it from our living room down the hall to his room without bursting out in tears (I could only assume because he wasn't sucking his thumb). He wants his blanket on his lap while he eats. I hate to think what will happen when I throw it in the wash, which needs to happen soon.

So, my question for all of you is, will I be causing my son severe emotional trauma and psychologically damaging him forever more if I force him to not have his "blankey" during the day? Or is it not the blanket at all and he's just exhausted from the pre- and post-holiday bustle? Or perhaps he just needs an earlier bedtime and is too tired by the time I start our usual bedtime rituals? What would you do, if you were me?

Merry Christmas!

We hope everyone had a delightful Christmas!

At our house we took all day (and into the next morning) to open gifts. This will get a little shorter over the years, but is keeping with tradition on my side of the family. The Layton's always took turns opening gifts and took time with most gifts to discuss/explore the present before moving on, so even on the smallest of Christmases opening presents often went past noon. Gareth now gets pretty excited whenever we ask if he wants to open a present. We'll see if he remembers what that means when his birthday comes around.

We also enjoyed talking with both of our families, knowing that Ryan passed both of his classes this past semester, watching movies, and eating a delicious non-traditional holiday meal. Neither of us are big ham people and we'd just had turkey, so we decided to make chicken with asparagus in a white wine sauce (sans the white wine).

For Christmas pictures, go here.

The Tree

We purchased our Christmas tree yesterday! We ended up getting a smaller one than we'd planned on because we just couldn't bring ourselves to go with the Scotch Pine (which apparently is native to the area and therefore cheaper). Scotch Pines are bushy with super long needles. Because they're so bushy they look even shorter than they already are. The ones at the farm also had a very pale green color that didn't appeal to me. And, every time I looked at one I heard Lina Lamont saying, "I can't make love to a bush!" So, yeah, that wasn't going to cut it. All the fir trees are more expensive, so hence why we had to get a shorter one. But that's okay since we don't even have enough ornaments to fill what we got!



Getting our first ever Christmas tree has also helped us realize that we don't have many decent tools. We didn't realize until after we'd got the tree in the stand and put water in that we were supposed to cut off some more of the trunk so that the tree would actually drink. We waited for several hours to see if it'd be okay anyway, but it didn't drink any water so we attempted to do what we'd forgotten to earlier. But we only had a really, really thin saw blade - the kind that are fairly flexible - ring a bell anyone? Definitely not what we needed for the job. Halfway through the trunk it snapped out of the handle and we were left with a twisted saw blade. All we could do for the other half was try to drill (with a hand-crank drill) away some of the base. We succeeded in making a few small dents on the second half of the trunk before we decided to give up. At least our tree is drinking, albeit rather small amounts. Thankfully it only has to last a week. I think we'll try to actually own a decent tree-trunk-cutting saw by this time next year.

Hooray Grapefruit!

Every year growing up my Grandma would send our family a large box of grapefruit at Christmastime. Yes, grapefruit. And we all loved it. It has slowly become a favorite tradition that none of us can imagine foregoing. Ryan was introduced to it the first time he went to NJ for Christmas, and he fell in love with it as well (though he eats it with sugar, which I'm fairly certain none of us Laytons do). After we were married we spent our first Christmas in New Mexico, but we still found some grapefruit to buy because we couldn't have the holidays without it! Over the past few years we've made very certain that my parents promised to continue the grapefruit tradition, and sure enough, we just received our box of grapefruit. They even ordered us some "santa bowls" and grapefruit spoons along with the fruit. So over the next few days we'll be enjoying some delicious Texas grapefruit. Hooray!

Paramecium Poems?

On my way to teach a lesson yesterday I caught the tail end of this poem being recited on the radio (our NPR here has a poetry segment at that particular time every day). I think it might be the oddest poem I've ever come across. Even stranger than the one about fossilized fish.