Raising Children, a Family Affair

Tonight I am going to go with Dick to the church because while they are in their meetings, I will be with the R.S. sisters who are having a special celebration of the Birthday of Relief Society. We will be having a really nice dinner and talks, plus a demonstration of something to do with color and personality given by one of my best friends, Lee Child. I have heard her do this before and it is really fun and entertaining, so even though I am not feeling much like going out, I'm just going to do it as I wouldn't want to miss all the fun and socializing. I have been away from the scene way too long as it is. I wasn't able to go to church for the last four weeks!! I'm beginning to think people might feel like I'm apostatizing or something.


We are also going over to another friends for dinner on Saturday evening. She corns her own beef for corned beef and cabbage. We have been going there for Saint Patricks day for years and even though she isn't feeling so great, she is doing it again this year. Just goes to show that if you make up your mind to do something, even though you feel lousy, you can usually do it. She wouldn't even let me bring dessert, which I offered to do. She'll do the whole thing by herself. I think she is a great example to me, because if she can do it, I can do it.


My daughter, Sue, just called and she is doing the program for her ward on Easter Sunday. I would absolutely love to be there for it. She is writing the program and using some of her poems and she called me to get my input about having a violin accompaniment along with the piano for a new song she found on the internet that sounds absolutlely beautiful. The soloist is very good.

She also heard a duet (The Prayer, which I truly love too) at the wedding ring ceremony that Dave conducted for some newly weds. and she is having the two of them do it for Easter Sunday also. I haven't even said anything to Dick about it, but oh, how I would love to go. There is nothing more I love than to go to a beautiful musical program and Sue's ward has so many of those.


Well, I still haven't even started the subject I had chosen to write about today. I was reading Sue's blog today and I got the idea as she had guest written on one of her bloggers blog and it was about rearing children and mom's making a special time for themselves just for them. It is a wonderful concept and I got to thinking about how very fortunate I was to have had my children spaced the way they were. It certainly wasn't planned. Quite the opposite. I had dispaired of ever having children and I so wanted to have a large family. We were married almost six years before I had a very spiritual experience. We were living in Wilshire Ward in Los Angeles and we were walking down the hall when our Stake Patriarch who lived in our ward, told me he had a special blessing he wanted to give me. We followed him into one of the rooms and he gave me the most beautiful blessing, assuring me that we would have children both by adoption and conception. I was stunned and so thrilled, because we had been trying for so long to adopt a child and we had our names on lots of lists, but so far, nothing. It wasn't long after that that my father in law's girl friend (yes, he was one of those men that always had a girl friend on the side and my mother in law chose to just live with it) but anyway, she had a girl friend who had come to live with her so that she could have her child adopted through the same Catholic agency that she had used for her first pregnancy. That poor girl lived for years with this same man whose wife wouldn't give him a divorce as she was a strict Catholic. My father in law met her at his girl friends house and when he heard what she was planning to do, he told her that she just couldn't do that as his son and his daughter in law needed to have this baby. To make that long story short, he actually talked her into it, so she went to my doctor for her delivery and we paid for all her expenses. I was always so afraid that she would change her mind, but she didn't and we took our little Nancy home from the hospital when she was three days old. Let me tell you, there is no difference in the love you feel for an adopted child from the ones you have the hard way. We hadn't bought one single thing for her in the time we knew we were going to get her until she was born, because I was so afraid she would change her mind. We had to buy something to take her home in and when we got her, we stopped and bought a crib and things we would absolutely need to take her home. She went on that shopping trip with us and was as good as gold all the time. Needless to say, we were one happy couple and we so thrilled to tell our dear President Norberg about his first part of the blessing coming true. Then when she was eight months old, I got pregnant. I was so surprised, I just couldn't believe it. All went well with the pregnancy and Sue was born just 9 months later. They are just 17 months apart. Of course, Pres. Norberg was the first to know. He wasn't even surprised. I was sure this was all I would have and I was. satisfied with that. Then six years later we had Nikki. She was a true surprise and Jayne and Rich were born after Nikki, just two years apart.


It was really so easy for me. Most people were so surprised that our children were so good. We would take them out to dinner every week, even when they were really small, and people would come up to us and tell us that they had been really concerned that their meal would be hopelessly interrupted by unruly childen and ours were so good. They never ever got out of their seats and they were quiet the whole time. Why? Because if they were not, their dad would take them out and give them a spanking and they knew what they would be in for if they didn't behave. He was a pretty hard taskmaster, but they learned to obey. The same thing would happen in church. They never made a peep or the same thing would happen. They wouldn't be taken out to let run around and play. Oh no, they got the same spanking. He did not believe in sparing the rod. It used to bother me a lot, but fortunately the kids seemed to thrive and they didn't hate him for it. They actually loved him and respected him a lot and he also gave them a lot of love. But the thing that REALLY made it easy for me was that they were spaced so that Nancy and Sue each took one child under her wing and did everything for her. Nancy took care of Jayne, Sue cared for Nikki and I managed the baby, Rich. So it was relatively easy for us to get ourselves and our special child ready for church and they would sit with their big sisters and I would take care of the baby and all went well for us. I had plenty of time to do my practicing on my violin and almost everything we did was as a family. Still, the older girls did get to have plenty of friends and activities as I was always ready to take over the three whenever they were away. It really did work for us. I would never have made it if it hadn't been for Nancy and Sue. They never seemed to resent their responsibilities either. I will say, we were VERY organized. And now I am going to have to get ready and go.


I left it to edit when I got home and when I did it and posted it, it didn't post. In fact it was completely gone. At least the original was still there, so I had to edit it again, really quick tonight. It is what it is so. now I will try again. Til next Tuesday then...............