Marriage

So I started this post back in October and never ended up finishing it. I still think it has thoughts worth pondering though so I'm going to post it even though I was hoping to flesh out some things more.

Okay, on to the post! So we had a Stake Conference which included a regional broadcast and it was wonderful!

But the one talk I wanted to share about here was given by our Stake Relief Society President in the Saturday evening session. It was on love and respect in marriage.

She shared a scripture in Ephesians 5:33:

"Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband."

I think this scripture can often get women up in arms about what reverencing husbands exactly means but our Stake RS Pres applied it as respect. She talked about how women have a need to be unconditionally loved and men have a need to be unconditionally respected. She pointed out how it was interesting that the scripture doesn't command women to love their husbands, that is a given, it is easy for us to love. But we do receive specific counsel about reverencing or respecting our husbands.

She talked about how many marital problems and division happen because the wife is feeling unloved and the husband is feeling disrespected and how both of those play off of each other. The wife feels unloved so she criticizes which causes the husband to feel disrespected and he distances himself thus continuing the cycle. She talked about how it is important to remember the unconditional part, even when the other spouse is not deserving of love or respect, it is still important to show it.

Anyways, I thought she offered some perspective on a scripture that I hadn't really considered. And I know when Ammon and I feel off in our marriage it pretty much always comes back to myself feeling unloved or Ammon feeling not respected. And I know that when I most need to feel loved is when I haven't been very lovable or in other words when I may not deserve love that is when I need love most.  I'm working on remembering this and making sure to be respectful of Ammon especially around Zeke. And most especially when I may not think he deserves it. I have found that my feelings of his just desserts usually have more to do with my hunger/tiredness level and not really anything to do with Ammon :)

Favorites as of late

Gardening
We had several spring-like days in January and it made me very excited to get going on my garden this year. Since we moved into the house in June and it had no existing garden plot, we didn't get one done last year and I really missed it (the planter beds had PLENTY of cleaning out to keep us busy, though, since they were a little overgrown).

I'm actually thankful we didn't already have a garden because I just learned about a totally different style of gardening that I am eager to try. A friend of mine from grad school started a new garden using the Square Foot Gardening approach last year with amazing results.

The method is based on the idea that you really just need optimal soil without a ton of extra space around each plant as long as you aren't walking on the soil and packing it down. They recommend 3x3 or 4x4 boxes (so you can reach across for planting and weeding without walking on it) and a specific mixture of soil: 1/3 blended compost, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite.

After reading the book she lent me, I'm converted! We plan to put in a garden this spring, and I can't wait to get the kids involved and get planting. I am also SO excited to have lots of sun here so we will get a better yield than in Western Washington.

I'm trying to come up with a design I like best for the garden boxes. Here are a couple options (the boxed in areas would be the garden beds, the other areas are walkways). What do y'all think?

 

Kid Activities
I've followed an amazing blog for a while called Made By Joel. This guy draws little scenes for his kids (along with other amazing art projects), and offers the PDF files free for download. My kids needed something to keep them busy while off of school yesterday, and these were a hit! They like to make little movies, too, and I can see this turning into a multi-use activity.

 

Housework
We have a rather crummy dishwasher (it must be as old as the house, which makes it about 15 years old now), and I get frustrated when I pull out dishes that were rinsed really well and still have crumby nast on them. Anyway, I am happy with a solution I found to the problem we had with cloudy glasses.

After doing some research, I discovered it's most likely calcium deposits due to hard water. A little bit of citric acid (usually about $3 at Walmart) in the dish detergent has made a huge difference! I've even been making my own detergent and simply increased the ratio of citric acid in the mix to help keep the clouding to a minimum. Doesn't make me love my dishwasher, but it has helped me hate it less.

Finance Family Council
Matt and I have made it more a priority to meet together formally to discuss finances and make budget plans. We decided to do this more proactively, because I don't discuss things well if I'm emotional (and I get emotional about money and budgeting in the heat of the moment). This month's Ensign had a nice discussion on how to be more successful in couple family councils. The only thing I would add is that our last council was so much more fun because we sat in our formal room and drank "Mormon wine" that Matt had run across at the store! It was super fun to feel so fancy during our discussion.