Success

From my brother Isaiah on 03/12/07

Candice! I loved the story (See Happy Snakes post from 3/11/07).  Haha it made me laugh quite a lot.  I could picture it perfectly.  I miss you and your children! Come here! Send them here!  Haha! Candice, what did you do to fight being frustrated on your mission?  I am happy but trying not to be frustrated at times.  How are you feeling?  I understand that you are about to pop and don´t always feel up to writing.  I won´t be offended if you don’t write.  I love you Cando. Tell everyone hi.  Thank you so much for the email

From me to my brother Isaiah on 03/18/07

What did I do to fight being frustrated on my mission? I punched my companion in the face, went for a long swim alone in the Mediterranean, then spent the rest of the day laying on the beach in the sun until I felt better. HA HA. Truthfully? I tried to get exercise- jogging at 5:30 am on my mission was so wonderful- I was breathing too hard to talk to my companion. I wasn’t expected to talk to anyone and the whole world was just waking up. For some reason even though we were walking and biking miles and miles every day that jog in the morning helped so much.

Also, I had to constantly re-adjust my definition of success. Success, when you are doing your best and still not having “Golden” investigators falling from the sky could sometimes mean just being able to testify at every chance you get whether anyone listens or not. Success could mean just feeling love for everyone you meet and not wanting to curse them or resign them to their fate. (I sometimes had to bite my tongue to prevent myself from saying, “Fine, BURN! See if I care!!!”) Success is also being able to laugh at life, at yourself and your weaknesses and at some of the situations you find yourself in. Success most of all is living close enough to the spirit to know that the Savior will go before you and will be on your right hand and your left and will ALWAYS be with you and will understand how you feel- for did he not experience all and more?

I love that you asked me that question because that was something I struggled with my whole mission. It is something I struggle with right now!  My mind is willing but my body just won’t cooperate. You know how I am in the spring… I get all excited about all the wonderful possibilities in our yard. There is new growth and life budding all around me and I feel almost what I imagine a manic person to feel like- I am exploding with ideas and plans for our yard. So this week I went outside and decided to put up some fencing around the tender little peach trees I planted last year because they are budding now and the deer have already started to snack. Well, I was attempting to drive six foot t-stakes into the ground but my pregnant body balance was so bad that I kept falling over and couldn’t get them in. I endured as long as I could and did a pretty shoddy job but at least I finished one of the two trees. I thought, “FINE, I’ll prune the apple trees then”. The only problem with that is that I literally couldn’t fit between some of the branches in the tree because I am so big. So I could only get some of the perimeter branches. After miserably failing there I decided that really the only thing I could do was rake out the flower beds. I raked part of the front area and by then I was so physically tired that I couldn’t finish and it is nearly impossible to bend down and pick up an armful of leaves with this beach ball size belly of mine in the way. I WANTED success, and I was willing to work hard but everywhere I turned I couldn’t do what I wanted to do! Grant got home that night and I voiced my frustration to my caring, loving husband who reminded me that of all the things I do at home with Sammy and Lizzie and that I am also growing a baby inside of me (a somewhat exhausting endeavor). It is amazing how many times we get to learn the same lesson over and over again.

Now for the our family news: Grant has attained perfection (or is that not news to anyone?) Yesterday he woke up and was outside BEFORE the sun rose and started digging post holes. By the end of the day he had dug and set all the posts for our garden fence (150 feet) ALL BY HIMSELF! (I had meetings all day) Oh, did I mention he had stained them all too? We are doing only the posts in cedar but the rest of the fence will be 6′ metal ranch fencing. We all got excited talking about what kind of fruits and vegetables we will plant in our garden once the deer can’t feast on everything! (Lizzie is going to plant corn and Kiwi for Sam because he love Kiwi so much) Grant has also begun to wage war on the gophers that have started to make themselves at home in the new part of our lawn. I bought smoke bombs this week and he has had a great time planting them in their little holes! (Morbid I know, but when you have worked as hard as we have on this yard, you aren’t very tolerant of anything that mars your hard work- whether they were here first or not!

I am getting released from my position in the primary presidency. I have loved my calling but I was a little nervous about how I was going to do a good job and have a baby at the same time. I am getting  a new calling in the cub scouts! It is amazing how I get all these callings that are so far beyond anything I feel comfortable doing! Scouts is a whole new world! It is overwhelming but not so demanding as my current calling. It will definitely be a learning experience. And, now I will be able to go to Relief Society which I have missed, but still be involved with primary children which I love. I am still on my health kick. We eat a smoothie a day, hardly any sweets, no white bread, no soda, no chips besides tortilla, and I am trying to cut out all trans fats. The kids and Grant have been really good sports about it.

Sam, what can I say about Sammy-bam? We have been working on helping him not sound like a “Know-It-All.” Especially with Lizzie. She will proudly announce a new finding, “‘B’ says ‘Buh'” and Sammy will say, “EVERYONE knows that Lizzie” I want her to have the benefit of learning things and feeling like the smartest kid in the world like Sammy did. He is aware of it now and working on it. Sammy has also taken on the role as Lizzie’s protector, (except when he is in the mood to tease), and comfort giver. Which totally delights me. If she falls down and scrapes her knee (which happens all the time- as we are all aware of how graceful she is) Sammy takes it upon himself to sit down next to her and hug her and kiss her. Then he will check the wound and get her to lie down (even on the pavement outside if that is where the accident occurred). It is very cute.

Lizzie is blossoming so much. She struggles still with fake crying and whining and her normal girl theatricals- but she is getting much better about that. She got a bike last Friday that she is finally able to ride. For the first day or so she just proudly sat on the seat and put stuff in the basket. What four year old girl wouldn’t be proud of a purple and white bike with a basket? Her drawing is even better this week than it was last week because she spends more than HALF her day doing it. She has even started to not just draw what is in her mind but she will look out the window and draw what she sees, mountains, trees, birds etc. It is wonderful. I know I need to send out some of her artwork to you. I promise I’ll do it before you come home. It is so interesting how different these children are from each other.

Well, we are getting very excited for General Conference. I LOVE this time of year. It combines my three favorite things: Easter (my favorite holiday) Conference (so relaxing and uplifting) and Spring (so exciting and fresh and NEW) and this year we get to add one more- when conference rolls around we will only have ONE MORE MONTH before our little baby is born. I feel funny calling him a little baby because he certainly seems big enough right now. He is probably around four pounds and will double in weight in the next seven weeks. Can you believe it? Right now he will move and Grant sitting near by can see my whole belly move. Or, the baby will shift a little in there and suddenly there will be a big bulge on one side of my stomach and I will look lopsided! Grant and I were laughing last night while watching the migration patterns of Jr. because we realized how funny it would look if all of a sudden Grant’s stomach did that! Maybe “funny” isn’t the right word- I think I would be more inclined to take him straight to the hospital! We still haven’t settled on a name but have ruled out Soloman, and Saul-my two favorites. Grant finally helped me see that we couldn’t name our child after a man that had 40,000 concubines, or a man who persecuted members of the church. Why couldn’t they have been better men? They had such great names!

Ok, I think I will end now. Bed time you know. Keep up the good work. I am so glad you are in an obedient mission. We were told ours was the hardest mission too (ten years ago) but we didn’t have an obedient mission and that made it all the harder. Let me know if there is anything you need or want. Do you need any simple recipes or anything? Do you eat with members ever? Or are you always on your own for meals? We love you so much!

Love and xoxox,
Cando