"You're like 22 girls in one"

 I think it would be so nice to have a blog that I wrote,
 that no one I knew, read. 

Only perfect strangers, who I would never meet, could read my blog.
That sounds like a safe relief.
There is something un settling knowing that your friends and family might read your blog.
Who knows what they think of some personal thing you shared.
 You don't know if they read it or not so you feel kind of un sure and weird.
You hope they didn't read it because then you still have your privacy,
 but then you hope they did read it because what is the point of writing a public blog post if no body reads it?
Plus, a day, a month a year from now my opinion or experience could lead me to no longer feel or believe what I wrote in that blog post in the past….
Then I might regret that my old opinion is written down for anyone to read.
You see my dilemma?

You know that song by John Mayer, Paper Doll?

There is a line in the song that says "You're like 22 girls in one and none of them know what their running from"

(Was he singing about Katy Perry?  Maybe you have to be 22 girls in one to be like Katy Perry?)

That sounds awful to be 22 girls in one. I think it sounds really complicated because I think I'm about 4….maybe 5 girls in one and that's bad enough.

5 girls in one.
I've been thinking about this theory the past few weeks.
Let me expound ;)

I feel like one girl thinks we should keep all things private and close to our hearts.
 Only sharing with trusted friends.
The fact that we have a blog and a youtube channel and are singing any where but church is appalling to her!
She is so embarrassed by all this putting ourselves out there behavior. 

This girl doesn't want to put herself out there! She wants to have babies forever!!!
 I think I shall call her the Quiet Wet Nurse. This girls still thinks we should be pregnant and wants to give birth on a regular basis.

Nursing a newborn is her favorite thing in the world.
 "Let's nurse and change diapers all day!
Hire out the cleaning and laundry! Get a nanny for those big, loud, unruly non new born kids!"
She wants to quietly nurture those in her care.
Bless the Quiet Wet Nurses' heart. She can only tend our friends or sister's  babies these days.
She is learning to be satisfied with nurturing other things in her own life,  instead of nurturing babies.

These multiple girls in me cause a lot of inner conflict.
Especially for another girl in me.
She is not content to sit at home.

She is fearless and loves the whole world. All she wants to do is give her heart out to anybody and everybody.
Let's call her Oprah's Mormon Sister.
Copyright 2012"Hey, I have a great idea! Let's turn our private journal entries into songs that we publish on iTunes!" 

That's so not embarrassing! That's sharing our heart and soul with our big, entire, human family that we love sooooooooo much!
We must teach and reach and uplift all of our brother and sisters. 

Nothing can hurt us. Have faith. Get up. Move it, please.

Let's get the heck out of here! If we have to stay home and clean and cook and do homework for one more day we are going to wither like a dry reed!!!
Where is my microphone? Give me my stage!
When we shine, God shines. What's embarrassing about that? Let God shine through you.
 Let Jesus look out through your eyes and be seen and heard by this tired and confused world."

Oprah's Mormon sister is really fun but not very practical.
The children must be fed, the laundry must be done. She enjoys preaching to her children and singing really loud while we do housework, blogging personal stuff, to tide her over until she has her microphone.

Then their is the third girl. 

She is the Zen Master.

"Let's just be. 

Let's just listen to the snow drip off the roof.
Let's wake ourselves up at 4:00 a.m. so we can sit in the dark stillness.

 Let's stare at our bright red geraniums.

 Let's just breath and be grateful for life. 

What do we need to work so hard for? Life will take care of itself.

Balanced chakras.
Being still.
 Connecting with God. What more is there?"

I love the Zen Master.
I know everything is going to be ok when I'm her.
But she just prays and sits and smiles all day so we can't always let her be in charge.
I'm trying to figure out how to be her when my kids hate my cooking or drop all their stuff all over my clean house.
Or when they refuse to wear the darling and practical outfit I just bought for them, that they picked out and said they would wear but now they won't because they want to wear the ratty clothes from last summer  that they won't let me throw away and we are late for school and I just want to be a nice mom but how can I when they are so exasperating???!
The Zen Master is so elusive. I can never hang on to her as long as I want to.

Girl #4….
The Mirror.
"I'm you and you're me. When I'm with you, I am you.
 I empathize and imagine so deep how it feels to be you, I forget I am me and only feel like you.
When you cry, I cry. When you feel pain, I literally feel physical pain too."
This can be quite distressing. I've had friends go through some hard divorces. It has plunged me into sadness and confusion with them. My sweet husband will come home and all I see is the man they are divorcing. Nate has to remind me he is not those men, he is Nate and he is kind and my best friend. "Oh ya! Thanks. I've been empathizing too much today and forgot who I was and what my life is about."
It even happens every time I watch a movie or TV show I find interesting.
After I saw Gravity I was in shock. I didn't want to speak above a whisper. The whole theater of teenagers stood up and started blabbing away. I sat there wanting to plug my ears and curl into the fetal position. I wanted to say to them "How can you get up like nothing just happened to us? We almost died? We were alone in space! Spinning and spinning and freezing and lost. We just made it back to Mother Earth and our legs can't handle gravity. How can you stand there and laugh and blab to your friends? We almost died!"
My husband, who knows I'm weird didn't question me at all when I whispered to him after the movie. "I need to go straight to the car and straight home. Don't talk." He believed me, thank goodness. Put the kids to bed himself while I washed dishes alone in my dim kitchen,  my ears still feeling like they were hyper sensitive and my head feeling open and tingly.
It took me 12 hours before I stopped feeling like I was the smart and beautiful Sandra Bullock.
Wow, It feels great to be Sandra Bullock.
The Mirror Girl, makes us late. It's not our fault, it's her fault we are always late.
We miss a lot of freeway exits too because she is lost in the beautiful blue of the sky or swept up in ecstasy by the sight of the perfect puff of the clouds. My kids know when she starts to drive.
They must feel it somehow.
They say, "Mom! The turn is coming up"
At times it's like she is crystal clear and who ever she is with shines right through her.
There is no time or space, no barriers. She can feel her deceased grandparents close by, sometimes she can feel your deceased grandparents close by. The angels make much better company than the mortals.

How am I even functional with all these sensitive  and emotional girls living in me?
Maybe I have undiagnosed multiple personality syndrome?

Thank goodness for girl number 5.
She get's the job done.
I shall call her No Nonsense Nellie.
She gets the laundry done, the meals cooked and the dishes washed and she even enjoys it!
She takes quiet satisfaction in her simple work.
 She doesn't need anything fancy.
Her beat up minivan is great as long as it's clean and runs well.
She loves a good cheeseburger with fries and a coke.
 She lets the other girls worry about what too many cheeseburgers is doing to us.
(She can have as  much coke and cheeseburgers as she wants as long as she keeps doing the laundry!)


I think unity must be our goal.
Inner conflict and arguments with voices in my head can get tiresome, as I'm sure you can imagine. Maybe you have the same problem, :) Maybe we all do?


Well this has been fun.
Theorizing about the multiplicity of my personalities is a great way to entertain myself.
Now if Oprah's Mormon Sister can convince the Quiet Wet Nurse that we should publish this post then maybe we are making progress…..

Keeping a history of my days….

August 27th,

2013

So I have reached a major mile stone. I have arrived in the promised land. The land I have been walking towards for over 14 years. My hopes have soared pretty high with all the plans of what I will do when all 5 of my kids are in school. Today I went to the gym because I had no excuse not to and my back hurt because I haven't done Pilate's. Then I ran an errand, then I came home and took a long shower. Then I was tired from the warm water and all those core exercises so I curled back up in my bed and took a 40 min nap. Then I came down and made myself lunch. Lately the thought and process of making and eating a meal seems like too much work. I'll do it for my kids but I just want to go out and have someone else cook for me. This isn't practical, so I have been avoiding meal eating and have been eating snacks all day. Nectarines from our trees, raw green beans from our garden, lots of raisin bran with a little cream…yum. Today I made myself make and eat a real meal. It was good. I wish we had fresh garden produce all year.
It's sprinkling outside. I'm sitting in my sun room where there are windows on the ceiling. It's a nice sound. I have so much to post and write about my summer. I ditched my blog in June and so I'm behind.

October 21, 1013

Hey, here I am. Writing a bit of a blog post while I bottle grape juice. My in laws have grape vines. Not purple grapes but WHITE grapes. Oh they make delicious juice. Since they are white they don't stain my counter and floor. It can get messy with purple grapes.

After dinner tonight we had about 30 minutes of day light left. We left the dinner dishes and raced up to Grammy's house to pick grapes. 

It is still amazing to me that we can sometimes, effectively work together as a family.

 It really is a new stage of life we are in. 

Another example of our new stage of maturity...

We took a little road trip to St. George, to see my nephew give his farewell talk for his LDS mission.

The car ride was easy. No melt downs. No major fights.

What is happening?

I need to post our summer pictures.

You ready?

I 

Hyrum House 

Summer Vacations with the family.

Hehehe……:)

Going out with the sister in laws and momma. 

Painting pet rocks.

Hours of fun for all ages.

The baby cousins in our family love my boy Luke.

He is fun and gentle and attentive with them.

The Amazing Race

My sister in law Carrie planned a game for our family of 33.

It was like that show The Amazing Race.

She planned and set it up for all of us and she was even 7 months pregnant at the time. 

When I'm pregnant I'm proud of myself for going grocery shopping. There is no way I would plan a game for 33 people. I'm glad there are fun, active people in my family.

One of the stops included making and eating an ice-cream Sunday.

Another stop we formed a line to take water from the lake and fill up a bucket. It was so fun to see the little cousins feel like big helpers.

It was a great family party this year with our Morris side.

We also had a family reunion with my Samsel side of the family.

It was great to be with all four of my siblings and our parents and our children and spouses.

My youngest brother David took this cool picture of our neighbor's cow and will tree.

It looks like the cover of a book or CD or Magazine to me.

Sarah makes a darling nerd.

My beautiful sister Melissa, my girl  Gwenyth and my daughters's girl, Camilla enjoying the sunny day.

And here we are. 

The 4 Samsel kids all grown up.

We are even in birth order from left to right.

Melissa, 41, Kristen 39, James 36, David 32

Boating was a blast. 

The funnest was watching my Older sister and my youngest brother get whipped around on the tube.

Nate drove around like this all day.

I'm glad I didn't have to drive the boat.

Sophia, Ella, and Gwenyth.

Somehow I didn't get a picture of my parents at our reunion.

It was a fun time this summer.
My family and Nate's family are pretty different in all kinds of big and small ways.
Some of the differences make me laugh and others make me crazy.
The biggest difference was that with my side of the family the house was always clean.
My dad kept the kitchen perfect at all times, plus we ate out for dinners.
The beach blanket stayed clean because Melissa and David were on guard duty;
Directing the children "Wash the sand off your feet at the hose first!"
The first night as I lay in bed I said to Nate, how am I going to relax with all these people that are more intense versions of myself?
Happily, I did relax.
Nate finds all our idiosyncrasies endearing. Good thing. I guess that's why he can be married to me.

Well, that's my summer catch up.
Back to the present.
The kids are at school and I have lots to do.
I'm trying to find the balance of it all.
Happy Monday to you.
It's my favorite day of the week.

Camping, Summer of 2013.

I have a couple summer posts that were never posted. 

We went camping in August? Or was it July? Either way, I started this post and then never published it. Here it is, a little late. ;)

The first, official, family camping trip!

My kids have been asking to go camping for years.

 I have ignored their requests for years. 

How could that be fun? 

It's hard enough to make meals and clean up at home. 

Why would I want to do it in the dirt? 

Plus, I think it's hard enough to keep my kids alive around here let alone next to a river and a fire and woods.

 I didn't grow up camping with my family,  so to me, camping looks like a big job I do not want to be in charge of. 

Mmmmmmm, tinfoil dinners.

But I do like camping without my children, when someone else is in charge of meal planning and food packing and fire building. I have loved going to girls camp with the youth of my church. 

I decided after seeing how much my girls loved girls camp this year, that maybe I could handle camping with my children now. 

My youngest are 6, it's not like I have to change diapers and keep them from falling into the fire pit.

So we finally went this past weekend. 

We only went for one night. We could have easily enjoyed another night.

Every new stage of parenthood has wonderful, new, fun things to offer!

That's good, because every stage of parenthood has hard, no fun things to go through too.

Ever had a banana boat? 

They are yummy. Wrap that it tinfoil and put it in the coals to get all melty.

Fishing in pajamas.

Making whistles out of snake grass.

The clouds kept it cool. 

It didn't get hotter than about 83 degrees most of the time.

It even rained for about an hour an a half. 

We snuggled down in the tent. I napped and read and the kids played some made up game all cramped in one half of the tent.

  Distant thunder rumbled, keeping it exciting but not scary.

Then it stopped.

 The sun came out and we played in the river.

Nate is great.

This water is freezing. 

My feet went numb standing in it.

I loved camping. I am looking forward to doing it again. 

I loved watching my kids enjoy nature.

Most of all,

I loved watching my kids enjoy each other.

Summer Contentment

This morning's poem

*****************************************************************

Manna falls down into my hands

I have what I need today

One day forward

No faster, no bigger than that

It's less confusing that way

Feels slow

 Progress almost imperceptible

I look back and then I can see

All the progress within me

No need to panic and rush

There is time allotted for this

Stay calm, stay focused on the steps in front of your feet

BE where you are

So you don't miss the sweet

******************************************************************

I'm being a very fun mom.

I need to write that down so I feel like I get some kind of credit.

This summer is going along very nicely.

Lots and lots of fun, family, friends and good food.

I'm glad I can type that. When school gets out I feel very freaked out at the prospect of having my kids home all day.

Three meals to make and clean up, kids everywhere, all there junk and noise filling up my house with chaos.

Fighting, too much TV consumption….

The list of my reasons for freaking out goes on.

But then, I calm down. I realize it's all going to be OK. I can handle it.  ;)

The kids and I get into a summer groove and it's all good.

There is no real routine. Everyday is different. With family vacations to break it up, summer ends up feeling very short.

Why do I panic every year?

This is what we have been up to the past 6 days.

The fourth of July celebrations, then cub camp. (Did you forget I'm a den mother? Are you jealous of my yellow scout shirt?)

AnnaKate's 12th birthday on July 6th. 

My sister is in town so we have had a family activity every day.

Today we are going to a water park.

I have that contented look on my face because Nate came with me to cub camp. He did the driving. I love being the passenger. It rained the night before so it smelled like woodsy heaven.

 That is one of my very favorite smells. Trees, streams, wet earth. 

There I am with my eagle scout.

Have a great day.

I better eat a big breakfast since I'll be going down water slides all day.

:)

feeling blessed

Before the fireworks show even started I got teary. Sitting there with so much family and friends in my town that I love. My little girl on my lap. Thinking of my grandfathers who have served our country. There are times when I realize my life is perfect. I have everything I have ever wanted. I am surrounded by love and blessings and opportunities for more love and more growth. 

I just feel so blessed.

Let me count the ways.

I feel blessed because my AnnaKate has opportunities and teachers and church leaders that are helping her discover her talents,  and the true desires of her heart. Above is her acting teacher. She is growing into herself and growing out of childish ways that only hold her back.

I feel blessed to be a witness to this beautiful girl's life. 

She looks older and more feminine and lovely every day.

She was in a play in May.

Thoroughly Modern Millie.

There she was, singing and dancing and shining like a star from heaven!

She will start  her last year of junior high in the fall. 

Time is moving fast for her and me. 

I hope I'm teaching her what she needs to know. She is so wise and good she is practically raising herself. 

 I feel blessed that my kids get to do so many of the things I got to do as a kid and so many other things that I would have loved to do. It's wonderful to see the American dream still exists even though our world can be so crazy.

I feel blessed because I can send my children to school down the street with great friends and teachers.

Here my twins are in their Kindergarten graduation program.

They are just so sweet.

AnnaKate is moving on to junior high. She seems too small and young. It is so exciting and a little scary to watch my children grow up.

Last day of school joy!

So many cousins on both sides of the family.

Here they are with my side of the family. We had a surprise birthday party for my sister's daughter at my house. It fills my heart up to see my kids with my siblings kids, loving each other and having fun.

I feel blessed because I live in a neighborhood where kids still know how to play and entertain themselves with the simple things of life. Like a plastic pool filled up with cold water from the hose. 

9 kids in that little thing!

I feel blessed because I get to be a mother. I get to record and witness everything from loosing a tooth to performing in their first play to scoring their first goal to reading their first words.

I get to be the one they want the most, to watch them. 

I'm the one they want to tell about all the little things in their lives.

I feel so blessed because my twins and I had the funnest time at the water park last week.

I felt so proud as I walked around the park, me in the middle with a little girl on either side of me. 

The three of us holding hands.

It brought back all the feelings and memories of when they were my little babies that never fought, that I could parade around and dress the same.

For that day at the park, the three of us were as in love and harmonious as we were when they were babies.

It was wonderful to have those feelings rekindled because I'm telling you, life can't get tiresome with 2 feisty, stubborn 6 year old girls who have strong vocal chords and know how to use them.

I feel blessed that my mother in law is so wonderful. 

She raised a kind, strong, good,  man who makes me laugh and is my best friend.

She is as kind and fun and wonderful as she is beautiful. 

This picture doesn't capture her emerald green eyes that sparkle with love and fun.

I feel blessed that my children have about a million cousins that all live within 10 minutes! 

They built this gigantic sand castle village in grammy and papa's sand volley ball court.

I mean seriously.

How cute and creative can they be?!

I feel blessed that I can take my kids to fun places with good friends.

Life is good and we have so much freedom. I have the time and the money to have fun with my kids.

Look at my first born.

I feel more proud of her every day.

She has a pure heart.

Sarah's shirt says it all.

No wonder I cried tears of joy at the fire works show tonight.

I have so many more blessings. These are just the ones I took pictures of over the past few months.

Tonight I just needed to send out some love and gratitude into the universe since so much love has been  given to me in my life.

Goodnight.

I'll be up bright and early for the parade.

I can't wait to see the jets fly over head.

I'm sure I'll cry tears of joy and gratitude again.

God Bless America.