Photo by Wish upon a Cupcake

(I made this free printable on our craft blog!)

The Fifth Blogoversaryfestathon will continue this week with giveaways, but we’re dealing with a situation in my extended family and I’ll be offline for part of the week.

Celebrating with homemade angel food cake and strawberries. (We had angel food and strawberries for Rebecca’s first birthday, too, I believe)

Opening presents

Fun little wheely animals!

She knows the good stuff! And yes, that is a wrapped candy bar bite in her mouth.

Cute outfits! (Note the candy still in her hand.)

My personal favorite: a little car & dashboard. (I wanted a toy like this for my second or third Christmas. Apparently I could find the toy in the catalogue on command and point to it to tell my parents and anyone else who asked what I wanted.) (Oh, and I got it. It was awesome.)

Happy birthday girl! (With cake in her hair)

I keep wondering if she’s crazy small or if I just don’t really remember the other kids at this age. I mean, she can walk across rooms and my other kids couldn’t at this age. So finally I dug out some pictures and stats of the kids on their birthdays—she’s totally normal. (Take THAT, grocery-store-guy who asked if she was two or three months old!)

To the mothers who have brought children into their homes, hands and hearts.

To the mothers who nurture children at work, in school, at church and in the community, but perhaps not at home.

To anyone who has ever endured a tantrum, enforced the rules, set limits, been hated for doing the right thing, been reasonable, danced on a whim, learned to see the world with wonder again, rediscovered all there is to love about something, found innocence again—in short, loved a child.

And most especially to my own mother, who has raised four pretty fantastic daughters, and my grandmothers, who each raised four fairly awesome children.

Happy Mother’s Day

Photo by Chris Enns

Because today is mine!

(And to be honest, this is why I wanted to do the A to Z challenge. It’s just too perfect.)

I haven’t opened my birthday presents yet, but I have a couple for you: yesterday’s Aquaphor giveaway (entry form fixed now!) and the beginning of my latest fiction WIP, Façade!

Photo by Chris in Plymouth

The first thing he got for his birthday wasn’t really planned, but I had to make a quick run and happened to ask if he was old enough, and he was:

His first library card!

He insisted on checking out my books for me. I let him enter his own PIN on the touchscreen at checkout. He was very happy. (He was also quite proud of the map the librarian gave him. I was quite proud that he printed his first name himself.)

He got the Pillow Pet (or Piwpet, as Rebecca calls hers) he’s been wanting since before Christmas, and the “mo-trol” car (remote control) he’s been wanting since he played with his cousin’s at New Year’s, as well as some awesome building toys that he’s already hard at work with. (He’s built a two foot tall crane on the dining room table!)

Also fun: Aunt Jasmine is visiting!

In the last week, Rebecca turned 2.5, Ryan turned… another year older, Hayden turned 5 and Rachel will be 8 months tomorrow. Me, I’m just a loser .

Why are you thankful to be a mother?

Photo by Br Lawrence Lew, O.P.

Mona Kashani Heern was born in Iran. After the 1979 revolution, she and her sister were expelled from school because of their Bahá’í beliefs. Their father was later jailed for the same reason. After months of waiting in the snow for hours to spend ten minutes with him once a month, they found out he’d been executed. Eventually, her mother smuggled their family into Pakistan, where they lived in jail until they gained refugee status. They later emigrated to Germany, where Mona and her sister had to learn German, English and French in order to graduate high school. Finally, they moved to the US.

Despite the persecution and hardship she’d endured, a prevailing theme in Mrs. Heern’s acceptance speech was the love and kindness that she’d experienced even in the worst, most oppressive circumstances. As a junior high English teacher, she has a passion for sharing her story with her students so that we Americans understand the privileges of freedom that we enjoy (and take for granted).

Sgt. Merlin German, another recipient, served our country in Iraq, participating in over 150 successful missions. When an IED exploded and knocked him from his Humvee turret, he was burned over 97% of his body and given no chance of survival. He defied doctors and not only survived, but relearned to breathe on his own, talk and even walk.

Concerned about burn victims who couldn’t afford the costly treatments, Sgt. German started Merlin’s Miracles. The foundation has helped thousands of burn victims pay for surgeries, compression garments and hospital stays. During a routine surgery last spring, Sgt. German passed away. His legacy lives on through the hundreds of doctors and patients he personally touched and his charitable foundation.

President Boyd K. Packer was the final honoree. He longed to become a pilot like his older brother. He promised God that he would devote his life to His service if he could live that dream. President Packer spent forty months in the Air Force during World War II.

Less than two decades after the end of the war, the Lord called President Packer’s promise due. Packer was called to be an assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, then to a member of the Quorum. Since then, he has devoted nearly forty years of his life in the full-time employment as an Apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His ministry has included service all over the world. He is now the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second most senior apostle.

The first award recipient, Neil Holbrook, was one of the original eight Navy “Frogmen,” the predecessor of the SEALs. In his acceptance speech, he told of a friend who was standing next to him on deck when his friend was shot. They both fell to the deck and his friend struggled to say something, but died before he could speak. Holbrook has spent six decades wondering what his friend would have said.

I’m passing the torch to the future generations. Please take care of that Constitution that I can’t enjoy. … I don’t have the liberty to go home.

When we thanked him for his service afterward, Mr. Holbrook said he would do it again tomorrow for people like us.

To honor the sacrifice of so many people this independence day, we have to remember what they were fighting for. We have to remember that the freedoms we enjoy in this country are privileges that not everyone has. We cannot forget those founding freedoms, and sometimes we have to fight with words or with weapons to keep them, at home and abroad.

Please remember this today as you celebrate Independence Day—and tomorrow, and afterward.

Newspaper coverage of the award ceremony with brief bios

Photo by Benjamin Earwicker

My sweet, wonderful, well-meaning husband supports our family and goes to work ten hours a day, four days a week. He comes home and often the house is a wreck, the kids and I may or may not be dressed, dinner isn’t even planned—and I know that although he respects what I do for our family, he can’t fathom what I do all day long (or, apparently, why I’m usually running low in the patience department).

The world perpetuates an image of mothers, especially stay-at-home mothers, as either lazy layabouts who use daytime television to occupy their hours or drones who have given up all hope of future earning potential, “real” careers and intelligent conversation in favor of wiping noses and bottoms in a life that is a litany of thankless chores and children.

The world would have us think that we’re not “contributing to society” if we’re not working, though apparently it doesn’t really matter whether we’re “contributing” as tattoo artists or professors of medieval literature, as long as we aren’t at home caring for our own children. And if we’re not out in the workforce, we don’t have a “real job.”

I’ll be blunt like I never have before on this blog. That thinking is a load of crap.

Do the wonderful people who earn their living caring for our children while we mothers are doing more “productive” things have “real jobs”? Do the wonderful people who donate their time, talents and efforts to volunteer causes—striving to make a difference, to improve the world—have “real jobs”?

Mothering is the most important “volunteer” opportunity I could be involved in right now. I am consecrating my time, talent and efforts to raising my children—and most days, it is grueling.

Mother’s day may seem like an odd time to point this out, since we often take this day as a day to rest from our motherly labors and let our families take care of the meals, the cleaning, and the diapers (oh! the diapers!). But really, this is the perfect time to point out all that we do, because they’ll never understand and appreciate it more, as Elder M. Russell Ballard did:

After sitting on the stand [at church] for 10 years, I was now sitting with my family on the back row.

The ward’s singing mothers’ chorus was providing the music, and I found myself sitting alone with our six children. I have never been so busy in my whole life. I had the hand puppets going on both hands, and that wasn’t working too well. The Cheerios got away from me, and that was embarrassing. The coloring books didn’t seem to entertain as well as they should.

As I struggled with the children through the meeting, I looked up at Barbara, and she was watching me and smiling. I learned for myself to more fully appreciate what all of you dear mothers do so well and so faithfully!

Mothering is not just a “real” job—it’s the most real job there is. No other profession has the influence, the reach and the eternal importance of contributing to society by raising up the next generation to be good, hard-working, righteous, moral individuals.

And you know what else? I have no idea what my husband does all day at work.

“I hate you.”

“Mommy . . .”

“. . .”

“That’s silly.”

“That’s better!”