For your entertainment

 

Michael found our engagement pictures on a CD  last night. They made me laugh. Check out Michael’s smile and his awesome glasses.  I look about 15 years old in these pictures, which I suppose isn’t that far off from the truth. Michael is wearing his church shirt because at the time we were engaged he had about 7 shirts which consisted of faded polo shirts that were too big, a BYU computer science shirt and his white button up church shirt.

Another great thing about our engagement pictures? They were taken at a rest stop in Malad Idaho. Michael and I were not a very demanding couple. Didn’t we look happy?

Nine years later, I have lost the bangs, and Michael has some new glasses. And I think we still look pretty happy.

Talents

I would love to have a beautiful voice. But I don’t. I have a small range and I have a very hard time singing a part if it isn’t the melody. I would not be able to sing a C if someone asked me to. I might be able to if they played the note first for me. No one has ever suggested that I join the choir.

Last night I went to a relief society activity that had a program about the women in the life of Jesus. There were some beautiful musical numbers. I think music has the ability to touch peoples hearts faster than any other medium. I know jealousy is not a good think but I have always been envious of people with beautiful voices.

I don’t really have any performable talents. I don’t sing or play a musical instrument well. I can’t dance or act or tell funny jokes. I am not a great artist. I can think of things to write about but it rarely comes out how I would like. My philosophy with photography is to take a bunch of pictures and hope one turns out nice. I don’t excel at any sports. I know that not everyone has obvious talents but sometimes I think it would be nice to have one. I think it would be nice to be able to perform a beautiful piece of music, or take credit for a beautiful piece of art.

Having an obvious talents makes it easier to define people. That’s Sally, she is a great cook and has a beautiful voice. Joe writes amazing poetry and is great at soccer. It is harder to say who you are when you don’t have something like that. I am Katie-Beth and I am ok at a lot of things but not really excellent at anything.

I am a happy person. And I know that I am good at a lot of things. But sometimes it takes a lot of effort, to remind myself that the less visible talents are just as important and valuable even if they are not as recognizable.  I am really good at budgeting. I can read aloud well and read very fast. I can look at a picture of something crafty and figure out how to make it. I can take care of four kids and help them become good people. I am good at research and know how to look up things on microfilm. I can wrap a baby up in a blanket nice and snug so they look like a little baby burrito. I can pick up things with my toes. I am a good friend. I can make yummy food for a family of picky eaters. I can brush things off easily and rarely get mad.

These are good talents to have. I can use them to help other people and they make my life more enjoyable. If I take the time to think about it I would have to say that these talents are probably more useful and bring me more joy than a more obvious talent like having a beautiful voice or being able to do a back flip would.  Knowing this it is still hard not to be a little jealous when I see peoples other peoples talents.

I may not be able to sing but I play battleship amazingly well.

This picture doesn’t really have to do with the post but I like how it turned out.

Clutter

I feel like my house is getting to that point where I either need to get rid of a bunch of stuff or go crazy. It seems like every room has an excess of stuff it, especially the kids rooms. And thinking about adding more stuff to our house through all the birthdays and Christmas we have coming up makes me feel like undertaking a serious purge of unnecessary things.

Figuring out what is unnecessary is the tricky part though. Which unfinished projects have a realistic chance of being finished? How many pie pans do you keep around when you only make pie a few times a year but when you do it is usually 3 for 4 at once? How many tubs of kid clothes do you keep when you still have kids growing in to them but you are running out room store any more? Which books do you get rid of when you can’t fit anymore on your shelf?

I know compared to a lot of houses I have been in my house really isn’t very cluttery, but for some reason the clutter I do have has really been bugging me.

Another challenge to clutter is finding the time to get rid of it. If you try to de-clutter a kids room while the kid is around suddenly all the things they never play with become their favorite toy. And for ever closet that is cleaned out there is a mess that has to be cleaned up and a few bags of stuff that need to me gotten rid of.

But I don’t think there are many things I enjoy more that looking at a freshly decluttered room or closet. So I am going to try and go through my house in the next few weeks and get rid of a bunch of stuff. Wish me luck!

Grandpa Thompson

Michael’s grandfather passed away this week and it has been making me think about how our lives affect those around us.

It is easy to see how some people’s lives affect and influence those around them. A great teacher can positively influence the lives of hundreds of children. Inspire them to believe in themselves and do more with their lives than they thought they could. The choices made by the leaders of our country have an affect that spreads to millions of people. People like Martin Luther King and William Tyndale did amazing things with their lives and truly made the world a better place.

But most people won’t have the opportunity to be a president, lead a civil rights movement or teach hundreds of children. The sphere of people that we have an impact may seem much smaller. It may seem like what we do does not matter as much as a more “important” persons actions might. This idea is wrong.

The grandpa Thompson that I knew was a quiet person. He was always there at family gatherings. He didn’t say much unprompted, but if you sat down beside him he was happy to talk. Grandpa didn’t have good vision but he won card games amazingly often. He liked to hold his new great-grandchildren for a few minutes and admire them. Grandpa and Grandma Thompson raised five children in a two bedroom home. The same home he lived in until he passed away. Grandpa worked at Hill Air force base for 37 years. He was a good father and husband and a good person. I never heard him say an unkind thing about another person.

You might think that a quiet person who lived within the same ten mile radius his whole life might not have had a big impact on the world. It would be easy to assume that his sphere of influence was somewhat limited. But I don’t think this is true. I can see Grandpa’s reserved personality in Michael. Michael would much rather sit back and observe a conversation than have to think of something to contribute to it. I can see Grandpa’s smile in my brother-in-law who also shares his name.

Grandpa and Grandma Thompson raised five good children who have grown up to raise families of there own. He had 20 grandchildren and 24 grandchildren. I’m sure they all have a little bit of Grandpa Thompson in them. He taught his children to love and serve others, values which they passed on to there children. Those children and grandchildren have gone on to be positive influences for countless other people. Like a pebble thrown in a pond.

I don’t think it is possible to measure the impact that a single person has had on the world. But I do know that Grandpa Thompson left a positive one. When those he has left behind think of him it will be with love and desire to leave this world better than we found it. Who could want have any other impact on the world than that?

Four generations: Ray Thompson, Michael Thompson, Ron Thompson and Stephen Thompson (the baby)

Snickerdoodles and backsplashes

Some of my favorite posts to read on other peoples blogs are the ones where they just talk about what they are doing lately. So I figured I would give a post like that a try.

Monday night was FHE. Parker was assigned the lesson and when I asked him what he wanted to do a lesson about he said trains. So in an effort to keep his attention for more that 25 seconds I had him help me do a lesson about determination featuring the little engine that could. I think it might have held his attention for at least 3 minutes. For a treat we had snickerdoodles made from store bought dough which the kids really liked. It reminded how yummy homemade snickerdoodles are so I will probably be making some in the next week. I also think I will be making my aunts famous oatmeal cake because it also sounds really tasty and its not the kids favorite so I can eat most of it myself.

Tuesday during the day one of my friends volunteered to watch my kids while I did my grocery shopping. So I got to go grocery shopping, in the day, without any kids. It was awesome. Tuesday evening we drove up Provo canyon to take some pictures with pretty leaves as a backdrop. The trees that turn red were out but the ones that turn yellow were mostly still green. I think it might be worth another visit in a week or so.

Tuesday I also started reading Unlikely Heroes: Ordinary Men and Women Whose Courage Won the Revolution. It is a compilation of small stories and has been pretty good so far.

Wednesday turned into laundry day which usually goes something like this. I try to keep rotating through the machines during the day but don’t ever have time to fold it when it comes out of the dryer. So baskets of clean laundry pile up until after the kids go to bed. Then Michael turns on a episode of MacGyver (MacGyver is great laundry folding TV,) spreads a few big blankets out on the living room floor, folds our laundry and sorts the kids laundry into piles based on what drawer in will end up in (shirts, pants and pjs/underwear.) We gave up actually folding the kids clothes once they started dressing themselves because once they dig through a drawer to get what they want, folding becomes pointless. Usually the last load is coming out of the dryer while the rest of the laundry is being folded. I put the piles of clothes in to laundry baskets for each kid for them to put away the next morning.

Michael thought we needed a treat to eat while folding laundry so I made peach milkshakes which we ate out of the cool parfait glasses my grandma gave me this summer. I don’t think there is a treat that is more reminiscent of my childhood than peach milkshakes.  Chop up some frozen peaches, add milk, sugar and vanilla, blend. One of my favorite things in the world.

Today I am going to the park because it looks beautiful outside. Either tonight or tomorrow we are going to home depot to buy the tile for my new kitchen backsplash. Once it is completed my kitchen redo will be completed and I will post before and after pictures.

So what have you been doing this week?

Mud Run

Way back in the spring my awesome friend Amanda asked me to sign up to do a mud run with her. For those of you not familiar with mud runs they are basically a regular run (the one we did was a 5k) with a bunch of muddy obstacles thrown in.

I had been looking forward to the mud run all summer long. Mostly because as adults we don’t get many chances to play in mud. The particular mud run that we chose was called Kiss Me Dirty and was an all women mud run. Mud runs tend to attract a different group of people than your typical 5k. It really isn’t about speed at all so get a lot of people who would never want to do a normal 5k running in a mud run.

Shortly after we signed up Amanda said we needed to make some sort of costume. I thought it would be fun to stand out a bit from the crowd but it ended up that there were more people in costume than not.

It is hard to tell from this picture but we had capes on as well as knee high striped socks. We are the ones in the middle with the yellow shirts.

 

Crawling through a mud pit.

In the soap suds at the finish line.

We got pretty muddy but there were people even muddier. Overall it was a very fun run.

Kathryn and Parker were pretty jealous that we got to get completely muddy. Stephen was glad he didn’t have to get muddy. Amanda had a waterproof camera with her we used to to take pictures during the race. But it was a film camera and I don’t know if the pictures are developed yet.

When your hiking your happy

I am going to do a post about the coolest parts of my Glacier National Park trip but first I wanted to post about something a noticed over and over while on out trip last week.

Everyone that I met was happy and helpful. I didn’t meet a single grumpy rude person the entire trip. A maintenance man helped us put air in a low tire. We talked to some very friendly retirees on the shuttle, who found me to return my hiking pole after I left it in the shuttle. A hiker that we passed several times on our long highline trail hike gave us a ride back to our camp so we didn’t have to wait forever for a shuttle. There was the friendly biker gang  that Darcy got a picture with. And met a very friendly hippie who showed me how I could use my hiking pole as a didgeridoo and made sure I knew the dangers of pvc  (apparently it can give you cancer and give men a more feminine voice.)

All of the park rangers campers and hikers we met were fun to talk to and happy to be where they were.  I have wondered about the reason for this. Does being in such a beautiful setting make people happier? Are happy people more likely to go on a vacation to a national park? Or do grumpy people not like to go to beautiful places? Whatever the reason is I thoroughly in enjoyed spending a week around happy people.