April Tree

Bird's Nest

Among the trees
Is a bird's nest,
And in the nest
Her three eggs rest.

And in each egg
--Hush, you'll be heard!--
There lies asleep
A tiny bird.

H.N. Bialik

Feasting With the Prophets III

Week #3: John Taylor
Favorite Dessert: Applesauce Cake

This was our first sugary dessert! President John Taylor was known to have a sweet tooth: in fact, he was a big reason that the sugar beet industry started up in Utah. Regular sugar was too expensive to import from the U.S., costing almost $1 per pound to transport. So the Utahns tried their hand at processing sugar beets into refined sugar, which didn't turn out well. But we got an Applesauce Cake out of it all and Sugar House, Utah, where (funnily enough) my friend now lives and works in a bakery.

Applesauce Cake Recipe:

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup chilled applesauce
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Cream butter or margarine with sugar. Add applesauce; beat well. Stir in flour, soda, and spices. Add nuts and raisins.
2. Pour the batter into a greased and floured 8 inch square pan. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 40 minutes, or until done. Serve warm.

We topped ours with cream cheese frosting, and it was delish.

Come One, Come All

Our good friends invited us along to the CIRCUS last week.

I don't think I had ever been to an actual circus. I was so excited that when someone flagged us down outside the parking lot and threw pamphlets in our car I just assumed it was a helpful parking attendent giving us programs.


Thanks for ruining the circus, PETA.



Regardless, we had a really fun afternoon. It was kind of a low budget circus, so the death defying acts were really quite terrifying, either because the eqipment didn't seem safe enough or the circus folk weren't good enough. We were pretty sure someone was going to die in front of us.



These silver spandex guys fell so many times, it was so scary.



This guy is a contortionist. McKay thought it was cool. I thought it was kind of gross.

Oh, by the way, we rode an elephant.

An elephant! Yes, our fun was their misery, but what fun it was! Just kidding, this elephant looked pretty happy to me. He got these huge snacks everytime he dragged another passel of kids around the ring.

I felt a little silly up there with all the little kids: I think I was more excited than Tyler. He kept asking where the elephant was, so I'm not entirely sure he knew what was going on.

Dancing elephants!

This girl gave up part of the way through the elephants dancing. A circus is no match for jetlag! (This was about 48 hours after our plane landed from California.) Speaking of jetlag, we all followed suit and crashed when we got home.

Building Cathedrals

It's been one of those weeks. Rather, one of those months where the runny noses and dirty diapers and tantrums never seem to end. Feeling rather sorry for myself and my lost 20's, I wiled away naptime googling "tired of being a mom," hoping to find some sympathy. Instead, I found this:

The Invisible Mother

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I'm on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I'm thinking, 'Can't you see I'm on the phone?'Obviously not; no one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I'm invisible. The invisible Mom.

Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more! Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this??Some days I'm not a pair of hands; I'm not even a human being. I'm a clock to ask, 'What time is it?' I'm a satellite guide to answer, 'What number is the Disney Channel?' I'm a car to order, 'Right around 5:30, please.'

Some days I'm a crystal ball; 'Where's my other sock?, Where's my phone?, What's for dinner?'I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history, music and literature -but now, they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She's going, she's going, she's gone!

One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England . She had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when she turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, 'I brought you this.' It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe.I wasn't exactly sure why she'd given it to me until I read her inscription: 'With admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.'

In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work:

1) No one can say who built the great cathedrals - we have no record of their names.

2) These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.

3) They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.

4) The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

A story of legend in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, 'Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof, No one will ever see it And the workman replied, 'Because God sees.'

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, 'I see you. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does.

No act of kindness you've done, no sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've baked, no Cub Scout meeting, no last minute errand is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can't see right now what it will become.

I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder, one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on. The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we're doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible mothers.