Sister's Day and Simplicity

My sister-in-laws are kind to include me in a monthly "sisters day". I am lucky that way--I feel like Pete's sisters are my older sisters, since I'm the oldest and didn't have that experience growing up. Pete also has a great big brother and wife who I adore as well, although they live in Texas, so we don't get to see them nearly enough!

Anyhow, today we drove to Ogden to Aunt Renon's to carry on the Fisher family tradition of making homemade applesauce. What a great experience--cutting, cooking and canning applesauce, with a pleasant interlude for lunch (quiche made with garden fresh zucchini and yellow squash, lemon bars, homemade zucchini bread, oh dreamy!) In some ways, it felt like going back to simpler times, when women (and Byron) worked together in the kitchen and when that work directly impacted the family's food supply. I think that kind of connection to our food is important! It would have been a lot easier to go to Costco and buy applesauce in bulk, but you should taste this applesauce! It has inspired me to plant a garden next year--garden tomatoes are my favorite--and to really use the fruit of my apple tree's for more than just apple pie! Plus Tyler got to play with his cousin John and Renon's darling grandkids, independently, no TV. I think that's good for kids too. Anyway, I'm grateful for this great learning opportunity and to spend time with people I love.

We also had a family experience that has caused me to contemplate a bit about how we plan to live our lives and the reality of how we actually end up living. Wouldn't it be nice if life went according to our plans? I use to have what I called my 12 year plan, for those years that Pete and I were going through school, including a child-bearing schedule of 3 to 4 children born 3 years apart. Yeah, so much for planning! Life tends to throw us curve balls that tend to ruin our plans. But when do we learn the most important life lessons? When I coached drill team several years back, I had a fairly successful first year as coach. It started out pretty rough, but my team ended up winning first in novelty and qualifying for state, something that hadn't happened in several years for that team. The next year, I made all the right plans and hired choreographers, trying to do all the right things to keep us on that winning path. It was a big disappoint to not qualify the next year--completely deflated my ego and was really hard on the girls. I felt like I'd let them down. But in so many ways, it built better character in those girls and helped me focus on what was important. In the long run, qualifying for state would have been nice, but it didn't necessarily help build character for those girls. That's kind of a lame example, but I think that applies to bigger things as well. Maybe life doesn't go according to plan, but it's how we get through it that matters! I strongly believe that! I have a quote on my wall (hand-stitched, though not by me, probably from someone in Indonesia) that says, "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget the way you made them feel." To me that says that all the successes and things we acquire in this life may be nice, but the most important thing of all is the kind of people we are. I hope that I can be a good person who cares about other people. I hope that as hard things happen in life, I will be able to have empathy and compassion for others, that I will be able to see the good for what it is and learn from my trials. I hope to be patient with my children and help them to learn and appreciate those things that really matter in life, which is the relationship we have with our Heavenly Father and the people we love.