Am I doing enough?

 I am always wondering if I am doing enough to protect my children.

There are so many evil influences in the world. Am I doing everything I can to safe guard their little minds and bodies? Is there more I can do?

 

During General Conference in October, when I heard Elder Scott's talk,

 Make the Exercise of Faith your First Priority, he so simply laid out four very easy tools to protect our children from the world.

The four tools are:

Prayer

Scripture Study

Family Home Evening

Temple Attendance

 

These are a few of my favorite things he said,

 

Prayer: 

"Parents, help safeguard your children by arming them morning and night with the power of family prayer. Children are bombarded every day with the evils of lust, greed, pride, and a host of other sinful behaviors. Protect your children from daily worldly influences by fortifying them with the powerful blessings that result from family prayer. Family prayer should be a nonnegotiable priority in your daily life."

 

Scripture Study:

"There are many prophetic promises of the blessings of daily studying the scriptures.⁶

I add my voice with this promise: as you dedicate time every day, personally and with your family, to the study of God’s word, peace will prevail in your life. That peace won’t come from the outside world. It will come from within your home, from within your family, from within your own heart. It will be a gift of the Spirit. It will radiate out from you to influence others in the world around you. You will be doing something very significant to add to the cumulative peace in the world."

 

Family Home Evening:

"While you are working to strengthen your family and cultivate peace, remember this third tool: weekly family home evening. Be cautious not to make your family home evening just an afterthought of a busy day. Decide that on Monday night your family will be together at home for the evening. Do not let employment demands, sports, extracurricular activities, homework, or anything else become more important than that time you spend together at home with your family."

"At last April’s conference, Sister Linda S. Reeves boldly declared: “I must testify of the blessings of daily scripture study and prayer and weekly family home evening. These are the very practices that help take away stress, give direction to our lives, and add protection to our homes.”⁸ Sister Reeves is a very wise woman. I strongly urge you to earn your own testimony of these three crucial habits."

 

Temple Attendance:

"The fourth tool is to go to the temple. We all know there is no more peaceful place on this earth than in the temples of God. If you don’t have a temple recommend, qualify to get one. When you have a recommend, use it often.⁹ Schedule a regular time to be in the temple. Don’t let anyone or anything prevent you from being there."

 

"These four tools are fundamental habits for securing your life in the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Remember our Savior is the Prince of Peace. Peace in this mortal life comes from His atoning sacrifice. When we are consistently praying morning and night, studying our scriptures daily, having weekly family home evening, and attending the temple regularly, we are actively responding to His invitation to “come unto Him.” The more we develop these habits, the more anxious is Satan to harm us but the less is his ability to do so. Through the use of these tools, we exercise our agency to accept the full gifts of His atoning sacrifice."

 

 

 

After listening to this talk and having re read it several times now, I keep thinking to myself. "It is so simple!" I can do these four things, I can do them right, and I can do them often. Our morning family prayer has changed drastically since hearing this talk. We pray for protection from the filth, we prayer that we will turn a deaf ear to sin, we pray that we will be a light to the world, and be able to be an example to our friends.

 

Since faithfully and consistently practicing these four things, I'm a happier Mom, our mornings are less stressful, and there is greater peace in my home. And, I know that I am doing everything in my power to prepare, protect, and safeguard my children against the adversary.

 

Speaking of protection....

Elena may need a body guard soon. In the last twenty days, I have cleaned no less than twenty surfaces that have been scribbled on by her. From walls to tables, couches to toys. I'm about to go crazy. The only thing she had going for her this night, is that she is the cutest cleaner-upper.

Yesterday she also used a tube of tooth paste as body lotion and found a tube of Lacey's play make up that she devoured. Eww!

Elena is growing up, slimming down, and losing her baby-ness. It's so sad for me to stomach. We have four kids now. No more babies. She loves babies, coloring (obviously), dancing, Oh, how she loves dancing. She will turn the piano on and dance the most beautiful ballet dance in a poofy dress, then she expects clapping. Lots of clapping. Elena says few words, but understands a lot. She is more than ready to be potty trained, bringing me diapers and wipes after going, or crying to get out of the bath tub and have a diaper so she can go in it. I'm waiting on a bigger vocabulary. I'm worried I'll miss read her grunting and we will miss the potty completely. She is finally loving nursery. Well, one nursery. She loves it at church, but Bible study, that's a completely different story. As soon as I pick up my friend, she knows that is where we are going, and she rides the 30 minute ride in full on grumpy mode, not breaking a smile for anyone. I usually leave her sobbing in someone's arms. Her teachers are so sweet and sometimes just rock her the whole two hours.  Elena just grew a love for stacking objects. It doesn't really matter what it is, she likes stacking them. She knows all of her body parts and a few animal sounds. She's NOT much for mimicking on command, so teaching her animal sounds has not been very successful. Due to Lacey's love for playing Cats and Dogs, she does have a cute meow and bark down! We sure love this little Laners.

Kevin has had a fun and busy month as well. Our local subway has been running a special, if you color a turkey picture, they will give you a free kids meal. Kevin has four turkeys hanging in subway, and four kids meals in his belly. He also enjoyed two days at Castle in the Clouds hiking with four different friends. He also had the chance to serve Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless shelter. He loved every minute of it and thought it was the neatest experience. He is participating in Rad Ropes, a jump rope club at school, and Catch Kids, an after school exercise program. Both of which he loves. We had his parent-teacher conferences last week; I'm fully aware it is the teachers job to make every parent feel like a rock start, but I had a hard time holding back tears. I was so proud of my Kevin boy. His teacher told me a few amazing stories of Kevin helping friends and apologizing for a mistake he made that hurt someone else feelings. I was proud to be called his Mama. He is excelling in all aspects of school and his teacher says he is a great helper.  This is his veteran's day letter, which I sent to my brother, J.D., it says, Dear Veteran, I think you are awesome because I like your uniforms. Thank you for saving the world. Sincerely, Kevin.

Kevin is currently obsessed with Camo. On the day of the veterans day assembly we were told the kids were not allowed to wear Camo. Kevin told me that he was told it was disrespectful. He said, "I want to wear camo because I want to be just like them!"

(Kevin made this awesome Turkey bread. It was our practice fun for Thanksgiving.)

 

Lacey Baby is the funniest child I've ever met. She keeps me laughing all the dang time.

I was recently helping Lacey scrub a bunch of "Ls" off of her bed when I realized she had not used a washable marker. I went to get some soap and we were both scrubbing when I said, "Lacey, what did you do this with?" Her reply...."Oh, just a little imagination."

 

I was playing house with Lacey and she said, "I am the Mom, your pretend name is T-X-R-P-C-Y." I said, "Okay, how do you say that?" In a high-pitched Mommy voice she says, "With lots and lots of practice!"

 

When I was putting her to bed I told her I would only lay by her for a few minutes because I needed to tuck in the other kids. She folds her arms over her chest and in a very suspicious voice says, "Just who do you think these other kids are?"

 

Oh man, I could go on and on with all of her goodness. She is a laugh a second. On Thursday last week I was sent a picture from her school teacher of Lacey's name that she had written completely unassisted and unprompted. I was in bible study and again I had to hold back more tears. On November 1st we made a Thankful tree to hang in our house and Lacey and Julia have been all about filling our tree up.  I love hearing the things they are thankful for.

Because Cody was gone most of October, I've made sure to take up as much of his time as humanly possible in November. I miss him so much when he is gone and I love spending all of my time with him. It was our anniversary this month and we knew I was going to be gone the day before and pretty busy the day of with Youth Activities and church meetings, so about six times before we said things like-- "Lets go grab lunch, we will count this as our anniversary date." We went to an auction and bought this super awesome zebra couch, and had dinner and "counted this as our anniversary date." We went to Pat's seafood as a family on Veteran's day and "Counted it as our anniversary dinner." SO, even though we didn't get to be together much on the day of, we did make up for it! Cody made us a delicious dinner of gnocchi on our anniversary and gave me a big bouquet of Lilies. The biggest bouquet I've ever seen. They are amazing!!! I sure love this guy of mine. I still can't believe it's been eight years. Eight wonderful years full of lots of laugher and great adventures.


November also started out wonderful because my brother, Tyrel, and his wife, Alyona, welcomed their first bundle of joy. Cozette Alitza. She is beautiful and perfect and I wish I could love on her.

 

I saved the best pictures for last. Two weeks ago I checked Julia out of school for two hours so while the little girls napped we could spend some one on one time with each other. We made a backwards dinner and had so much fun. For dinner we made meatloaf cupcakes and for dessert we had a spaghetti cake. Julia did almost all the work herself, including mixing the meatloaf with her hands. We had so much fun! The icing on the evening is when we sat down to dinner Kevin took a ginormous bite of his cupcake (it looked that good) thinking it was real, and with a mouth full of cheesy garlic potatoes, disgusted he said, "what is this!?" Julia and I laughed and laughed and laughed! It was the best!!! After the cupcake incident, Kevin knew the Spaghetti was actually cake, but her noodle frosting looked so real. She did a really good job. 

I also went to Julia's parent teacher conference. As I'm sure you suspected, I held back tears for the third time this month. Julia's teacher used words like: Kind, respectful, friendly, helpful, to describe Julia. She too is excelling in school. Especially in reading and math. Her teacher (and teachers aid) love Julia and when I told her of some of the craziness that happens at home her teacher covered her mouth and started laughing. "I don't even believe you!" Is what I heard. The good news is, I think we've figured her out (once again) and things are sooooooo much better. We love Julia to pieces. She is 100% intensity in everything she does. She loves with her whole heart, is sad with her whole heart, and gets frustrated with her whole heart. I love her drive, her cuddles, and her imagination.

 

I am one lucky Mama. With all the good also comes the bad. A dear friend was diagnosed with cancer, my grandmother has been having heart problems, another dear friend has a pituitary tumor. I'm grateful for the knowledge I have of prayer, of my Savior Jesus Christ, and of the power the Atonement can have to comfort us in our times of trial. And, I'm grateful for Elder Scott's reminders on the importance's of  having family prayer, scripture study, family home evening, and temple attendance, I know the peace we feel is through doing those things.

We are blessed and we know it.