Harry Potter Party

For Halloween(ish), we threw a Harry Potter Party!

-Owlet

FHE: Inclusion

The topic: Last week for Family Home Evening, El based his lesson on this article which discusses the principle of inclusion in the Church.

Resources: We read the entire article together, but here are some of my favorite parts:

...as an entry point to my topic I want to describe a negative experience I had in the missionary training center. We had fairly regular meetings with general authorities of the church, and it was typical in those meetings for a choir to perform a song or two. My boys can tell you that I like to sing, but they can also probably tell you that I’m not especially good at it. Certainly I have no training, nor can I read music. But I decided to join the choir one week with my companion (who actually was a good singer). Early in the first practice, the choir leader said something about how baritones should sing this part, and basses should sing that part. I leaned over to my companion who was seated next to me and said “What should I do? I’m not sure if I’m a baritone or a bass.” At this point a missionary seated in front of me turned around with a scornful look on his face and said “If you don’t know that, then what are you doing here?” 

I’m sure you can imagine how I felt. But I’m not telling you the story so you can feel sorry for me and my hurt feelings. And in fairness, the missionary had a point. But I want you to think about the message he was delivering: You do not belong here.

If we want to be more empathetic toward people who struggle with faith, or more forgiving of ourselves when our own faith falters, a good place to start is to recognize that the Lord appears to have intended for us to struggle. In church culture we like to use the language of certainty: we are taught to say that we know the church is true, and we like words like “perfect” and “firm” and “unshakeable.” But, in my opinion, an honest assessment of our relationship with God must admit that it involves a great deal of mystery and uncertainty and confusion. We’re told that if we’re unsure, we can just ask Him in prayer to tell us it’s true. But for many of us the answers to such prayers don’t come easily; inspirations, if and when they finally come, may be “dimly perceived” and difficult to interpret. I recently read a commentator who suggested we understand this not as evidence of God’s indifference, but as a way in which God poses the important question: “What will you do now?” 

...we should want everyone to be here, and we should want everyone to feel welcome here. Did Christ associate only with the faithful? He ministered to believers and unbelievers, to the sinful and to the repentant. You may say “Well – he was the Son of God, so his testimony was too strong to be shaken by anyone’s unbelief.” But I suggest an alternative: he was the Son of God, so his love was too strong to be shaken by anyone’s unbelief. 

Another threat to our sense of belonging is a perception that we’re not as righteous or as spiritual as everyone else. Ours is a church with many programs and prescriptions, many dos and many don’ts. It’s hard to keep up with all the things we’re supposed to be doing, and easy to feel like we’re not measuring up – especially if it seems like everyone else in the ward is doing everything right.

El-ahrairah also shared 3 Nephi 12:1-2:

 1 And it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words unto Nephi, and to those who had been called, (now the number of them who had been called, and received power and authority to baptize, was twelve) and behold, he stretched forth his hand unto the multitude, and cried unto them, saying: Blessed are ye if ye shall give heed unto the words of these twelve whom I have chosen from among you to minister unto you, and to be your servants; and unto them I have given power that they may baptize you with water; and after that ye are baptized with water, behold, I will baptize you with fire and with the Holy Ghost; therefore blessed are ye if ye shall believe in me and be baptized, after that ye have seen me and know that I am.
 2 And again, more blessed are they who shall believe in your words because that ye shall testify that ye have seen me, and that ye know that I am. Yea, blessed are they who shall believe in your words, and come down into the depths of humility and be baptized, for they shall be visited with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and shall receive a remission of their sins.

What we learned: I learned that I have a lot of pride and don't like being told that I'm doing something wrong unless I recognize it myself first. The talk was strongly worded, and a good reminder for me to consider many perspectives. I especially liked how the speaker discussed empathy; that's a life skill that I would consider in, like, the top five of all life skills for being a good person. I think it's valuable to consider all the many paths one can take to arrive at a conclusion, and then realize that you can't really know which of the infinite paths a person took, so all you can do is validate and empathize.

This is what El said: "One of the things I liked about the talk was that it encouraged us to recognize that the gospel doesn't come easily to everyone and sometimes it's not as instantly believe-able as we'd like to have people think. For those for whom it easy, great, but Jesus said blessed are they that believe in your words. So we're blessed if we believe without as much witness as other people have."

Challenge: One thing we want to work on is making sure we're being reasonably candid about the struggles we face with the purpose of helping others feel they can relate to and belong with us. (For example, bragging less about good things and being honest about things we don't understand.)

Photoshop & Scriptures

I've been spending a lot of time with Photoshop trying to practice design and stuff. What better way to practice than to use my weekly scriptures (my ponderize verses, if you will)? I've also been practicing with some of my favorite quotes and phrases.

-Owlet

Adventures of Grocery Shopping

When El-ahrairah hasn't had ice cream for a while, he gets a little crazy. We go to LoLo's grocery store for the student discount on Thursdays, and a few weeks ago El really needed some ice cream. (Really. Needed.) We picked up a tub of Sprinkled Animal Cookie flavor. Like this:

Source: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55819710e4b0f153d10a6de0/55898abce4b0bafb124d6037/55899695e4b09503829b3c7d/1437690295862/?format=300w

Oh, and we got some healthy food too! :D

Farm-fresh produce!

I don't know if farmer's market food is healthier for you, I have no idea if supporting local businesses is good for the economy, but visiting the farmer's market is sure fun (and the samples are dang good too! I love the salsa one). I love the autumn-y feel of the vendors' booths, seeing all the newly harvested goods and the homemade wares for sale. It's definitely a symbol of the season.

-Owlet

Sick

No, not the good kind of sick.

El-ahrairah was feeling a little under the weather earlier this month. He had the sniffles, mostly, so it was your basic common cold. When I found out, I made sure to make him as comfortable as possible and help out where I could—and then my next thought was I really, really don't want to get sick. Let's see, I'll just wash my hands often, and not touch my face, and we'll wipe down all the doorknobs and clean all the things ...

And then I remembered that he and I make out on a regular basis.

Dang it.

-Owlet

Date: Exploring Center Street

If you have't noticed, exploring is the of El's and my favorite things! I was having a bad day one Thursday, so El-ahraiah said "Hey, wanna check out that cool-looking bookstore downtown?" He was talking about Pioneer Book! I'm so glad that I have a husband that so often knows exactly what I need. So I, being me, excitedly agreed and we spent the rest of the evening walking down Center Street in Provo.

Center Street is a pretty happening place. For one thing, that's where the Tempernacle is being built (temple + tabernacle; we're trying to make that one catch on). And there's a bunch of random art too.

Finally we ended up at Demae, a Japanese restaurant. Apparently, Tuesday and Thursday nights are their "Sushi Special" nights when they offer discounts on sushi. So we got a tempura shrimp + spicy mayo roll and a roll with salmon, cucumber, and crab. Yummy!

We liked the tempura shrimp roll the best. Only $3.95 or something like that.

All in all, it was a great way to spend our third month-aversary! Here's to many much more exploring in the months and years to come.

-Owlet

Special Plate!

I found about the special plate tradition when my former roommate received a special plate at her bridal shower. The idea is that you have a special plate (obvious, I know) that you bring out when a family member is having a special day, or when you have a special guest visiting. For example, it could be used for a child's birthday dinner, or for the last day of finals, or when your sister visits for a sleepover. I don't know, lots of things I'm sure. Anyway, the "traditional" special plate sold at stores like Target and Kohl's or wherever is red and says "You are Special Today."

Image source: http://www.redplatestore.com/you-are-special-today-red-plate.aspx?gclid=CjwKEAjw3uWuBRD_s-3a8-_h6j0SJAC-qgtHH3jRsdv6-K6D9bXl_LqEh0hlZ6LnQBK6FP6yiYicIBoChLbw_wcB

Which is kind of cute except I'm not a huge fan of the color red nor of the saying "You are Special Today" -- I'm not sure why. (Plus, these babies run for about $30 each. Ouch.)

However, I super love the idea of celebrating the little things in cute but simple ways, so of course when El-ahrairah and I stopped at a ceramics-painting shop on our honeymoon, I knew we needed to make a "special plate" of our own. Something that would be unique for our family, so it could be a tradition all our own.

So we set about designing and painting our very own special plate. We got the plate from the "discount" basket (I guess there were some kind of abnormalities about it; we couldn't tell, though), so it was only like $10.

It took us forever to decide on a design, and quite a while to paint it, but it was totally worth it. We decided to go with the quote "You are the special" from one of our favorite movies, The Lego Movie. Mostly because we couldn't think of anything I liked better.

The finished product is super cute and matches the colors of our kitchen decor (red definitely wouldn't have). I'm super excited to pull it out for our future children and celebrate the successes in their lives! No picture because it has our last name on it :/

Oh, and I got to use the special plate the other day! El-ahrairah was setting the table and put the plate out for me because I drove stick shift on some real roads with real other cars on the road! I thought it was kind of a little thing to go through the trouble of using the special plate, but I was excited to try it out and be all special and stuff.

Come to find out, the only reason he brought out the special plate was because all our other plates were dirty. Geez, El. Special plates are supposed to be special.

We're going to work on that. (El-ahrairah insists that we used it because I AM SPECIAL. To which I say ... everyone is special, dear, but having all our dishes dirty does not exactly make that day special. Ha.)

-Owlet