Five Things For Friday, 18th Edition

I am so excited for General Conference this weekend! Anyone else? My husband translates for Conference and so this time of year our home is filled with the words of the prophets– and I love it. He translates a language called Papiamento which is a mixture of Dutch and Spanish and is spoken on the islands of Aruba, Curacao, and Bon Aire. He learned Papiamento during his mission in Venezuela because he served part of it on Aruba (which is just off the coast of Venezuela). He has been translating Conference for as long as I’ve known him and so there is nothing that gets me in the Conference spirit more than to hear him walking around the house practicing his talks. He never tells me which talks he is translating but every once in awhile I am able to guess which talk he has done. Like the year the Elder Bednar gave his talk “Ye Must Be Born Again” about how cucumbers become pickles I knew it was the one Jon had done because I’d been hearing him walk around the house saying “cucumbernon” (which I guess is how you say cucumber in Papiamento) all week! I have probably already heard several of the talks for this year all the way through already but haven’t been able to understand a word of them. Still, I have definitely felt the spirit of the words and it has gotten me excited. He tells me that there are some really good talks this year and that I am going to love Conference. I’m sure I will.

I was so excited to see an article by Diana Webb this week in the Meridian Magazine. It is called “Eve as a Help Meet– What Does That Mean?” If you aren’t familiar with Diana’s work or with the REAL meaning of the term “Help Meet” make sure you go over and read her article. It is so enlightening! Here is a just a tidbit from it:

“Most of the stories in the Bible follow the “wife and mother” model and reinforce the idea that God most often is seen as doing his work through men. When women in the Bible don’t fit into this “wife and mother” definition of what it means to be a woman, they experience great personal pain and social ostracism. Other women have seemingly ideal lives until the premature death of a husband causes them to be at the mercy of a society where they do not fit in. While pondering these questions, I was impressed to consider the vision that God had for women when he created them. Although the Bible strongly validates the role of women as wives and mothers, it also shows that “God values them just as much when their lives follow other paths. Women bring different questions as well as a different point of view as they consider the stories from the scriptures in a new light…
… As Carolyn Custis James has asserted, God created the woman to be an ezer to man. To strengthen and to save. She is his greatest ally. This is Eve’s legacy for all women, not just within the bonds of marriage, but wherever she touches the lives of others in the world at large.” Read the whole article

Two weeks ago I got a speeding ticket. I was going 45 mph in a 30 mph zone and wasn’t paying attention. I think I must have looked really pathetic (I was having a bad day and on the verge of tears anyway) because the officer only gave me a ticket for going 5 over the limit rather than 15. Well, somehow I lost the ticket and totally forgot all about it until last weekend when I got a notice from the police saying that if I didn’t pay it there would be a warrant out for my arrest! Yikes! When I went to go pay the ticket online I was shocked that it was for $140! I haven’t had a speeding ticket in a really long time and so I wasn’t sure if this was just how much speeding tickets usually are of if they fined me a ton extra because I was two days late in paying it. Does anyone know? Because if you get fined $140 for only going 5 miles over the limit then I am definetly going to start paying more attention– I’d hate to see how much the one for going 15 over would have been. Ugg.

I have always carried my babies and toddlers in slings and wraps. I have quite the assortment of different sizes, colors and styles and can’t imagine motherhood without them. I have one that I use with Rose every once in awhile (mostly when I am making dinner and she is cranky) which allows me to carry her on my back and keep my hands free. I haven’t worn her in it for awhile because my belly has gotten too big but for the last few weeks she has been telling me that when the baby is born that she is going to wear it on her back! I thought that was really cute and so a few days ago when I was playing dolls with the kids I pulled out a long scrap of material that I had left over from one of the moby wraps I’d made. I showed them how to wrap it and how to carry a baby in it. Rose loved it and it was so sweet to see her carry her doll around in it. It sure made my mothering heart proud.

I just hope that she isn’t too disappointed when she isn’t able to carry the new baby around for real!

Oh, and I just wanted to thank those of you who have been linking up your own “Five Things For Friday” posts. It has been so much fun for me to read them and to get to know some of you better. Keep it up! Also I thought that I’d mention that even though the linky tool says that you should enter the “link title” of your post you can really enter in whatever title you’d like. My hope with having the link up is that it will encourage my readers to get to know each other better (and to let me know you better) and I want to encourage traffic to your sites. I think that if you use your blog name or blog alias as the “link title” it might get more people to click over to your site then if all the posts are labeled “Five Things For Friday”. For example if your name was Bertha and your blog was “I Love My Life” you could label the link something like Bertha@Ilovemylife or I Love My Life and that would give people more idea of whose blog they might be hoping over to read. Just an idea 🙂

If you want to link to your own “Five Things for Friday” post you can use the tool below to add your link. 1) Please link to the URL of your blog post and not your main blog and 2) Please include a link back here.