Poetry Time!

Harmony

There’s a beauty that comes at a certain time,

when everything seems out of place.

Things have fallen and you can’t seem to climb;

you tell yourself you’ll lose just one race.

It’s when all seems lost and you’re ready to break,

You put on a smile and courage you fake.

Turning to your maker, you concede to His will.

With all of your might, you take one stride.

Into the darkness you go; fear sends a chill

up your spine. But you know He will guide

your paths to a place where you can see.

A whole person you might one day be.

You can’t seem to see how things will end.

He must be mistaken, there’s no way out.

Try as you may, things don’t seem to bend,

plans fall through and your heart starts to doubt.

But He is there to lift your soul;

He’s the one knowing the ultimate goal.

You continue to move through the thickening mist,

but this time your worry and doubt is gone.

All that you needed is crossed off the list.

The sun is breaking; it’s a breathtaking dawn.

He’s the one that carried you through;

A person you’ve become—whole and new. 

Trying Something New: Nail Tutorial

Today I decided to try to make a tutorial while avoiding my homework. I love painting nails and I always see cool designs online but I get frustrated when I can't figure out how to do them. So here's to hoping I help someone not face that same frustration!

To start off, all I used to create this look is in the top picture. I used OPI base and top coat; China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise; Black, White, and Silver Glitter from Kiss Nail Art paint (I got these at Fred Meyer for pretty cheap....LOVE THEM and use them all the time. Worth the money! Similar here); and a comb with a skinny handle (Rattail comb?). 

Note: Be sure to let layers dry in between steps. The thicker your layer, the longer you should wait.

1. Start with clean nails and apply a base coat

2. Apply your color of choice

3. Add a second layer of your color 

4. Using the Black Kiss Nail Art, create a line going from the bottom, outside corner of your nail (away from your thumb) toward the top, inside corner (near your thumb)

5. Fill in the nail above the line with the black. I used the nail art brush because it's the only black I have, but this would be a lot easier if you use a thicker brush.

Note: I loved this look on it's own. Feel free to stop here, continue on, or jump to step 7.

6. Take the white nail polish and drip 1-2 drops onto a piece of paper or cardboard. 

Note: Napkins and paper towels don't work too well for this step because they tend to absorb the polish too quickly.

Using the end of the comb, dip it into the nail polish and dot your nail. (You can also use a dotter, but this is the cheap, home-made way to do it). Create whatever dot design you'd like. 

7. Using the Silver Glitter, create a line between the color and the black, just like you did with the black in step 4. 

8. Finish off with a top coat and you're done! 

Hope this inspires you in your nail art endeavors! I'd love to know if anyone tries this :)

Splitting up and reforming families

Separation. Divorce. Remarriages.

Topics I was not at all thrilled to read/learn about.

However, this became a topic that brought more joy to me than I thought it could. Yes, it is really sad to think about families splitting up, and I still don't like thinking about it. But, learning about remarriages and blended families and how you can diminish the typical difficulties in them made me really excited for some reason.

 Some interesting statistics we learned this week:

• After being divorced for 2 years, 70% of those people regret the divorce and could've saved it.
• 95% of people say they're satisfied with their marriage. (it isn't true that everyone is so unhappy in their marriages)
• It usually takes 2 years for blended families to reach normalcy. 

My professor married his wife when she already had two kids. His wife came in and they told us about their experiences. As we were closing up the class, he told us a video/song that his adopted son (one of the ones from his wife's previous marriage) showed him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjO1F6oCab8

I was tearing up and realized how great of a professor I have. We have the choice of how we treat our families and the example we set for them. He said that sometimes we glorify having the same genes as our children, but really we can be great parents whether they have our genes or not.

I've learned so much from this class and I have so much more confidence in my ability to have a successful, happy family!

Raising those kiddlets

Parenting! My favorite subject! I just absolutely love learning about how we can become better parents and the effects of certain parenting styles. The biggest thing that stuck out to me this week was about what happens when children don't have their needs met--which needs don't just stop with food and shelter. People need things like contact and a sense of belonging, along with a feeling of some type of power. When these types of needs aren't being met, kids often act out and we attribute negative motives to them, when in reality they are just seeking to satisfy needs and may not know where to find them.

My professor told us a story about this little boy who used to be in his ward that drove people crazy. He was that boy that is all over the place, going crazy, stands way too close to you, and seeks attention in obnoxious ways. My professor said that one day this boy jumped unto his head. Brother Williams freaked out and threw him on the ground. He was stunned and couldn't believe what he had done. He preceded to apologize incessantly. The kid looked up and said "It's okay, my mom told me something like this would happen eventually." My professor decided to try something. During every transition period he would seek this boy out and talk to him, he would put his arm around him and show genuine interest. Very soon after he started doing this, the boy calmed down. His contact and belonging needs were being met so he didn't need to try to seek them out in outrageous ways.
Too often we see people like this--whose needs are not being met and they're doing whatever they can to try to fill those needs--and we push them away, making their needs even less met. Instead we should help them to meet their needs and this unbalance will likely diminish.

Dads and worrrrrk

I don't have too much to say this week since it was thanksgiving and we only had one class! But this week we studied about the importance of fathers and how working mothers affect the family. I could not believe how much families benefit from having a father involved in the family--I mean I guess it makes sense, but I didn't expect the value to be so tremendous. I really want my husband to be extremely involved in our family so that our children will have that strong influence.
I learned something about myself this week...I am conflicted. The more I become invested in my schooling, the more passionately I feel about it. This makes me want to share my knowledge with people and to bless other families. But I've always wanted to be home with my kids and learning about the benefits of that, makes me want to be there. It's just a conflict within myself. Maybe I can find a way to help families from home.

Talkin' it up!

Well this week we talked about everyone's favorite topic------COMMUNICATION! Three things go into communicating with others: nonverbal cues, tone of voice, and the actual words. I think I get really caught up in the words I'm saying, heck, I love words! But in reality, the actual words we say have little to do with the message we send. Communication is a case where it doesn't matter so much what we think we're sending, but what matters is the message that is received.
Try to imagine this as a circular diagram (it was kinda hard to make) but this is how communication works:

thoughts and feelings=>encode=>send through a media=>decoded
^                                                                              v
^                                                                              v
Decoded<=send through a media<=encode<=thoughts and feelings<=

You can see that there is a lot of room for misinterpretation as we try to figure out our own feelings and the feelings of others. This day brought me back to the symbolic interaction theory and how often people aren't meaning to send the message we receive.
It's important to create shared meanings so that you both know what you are talking about when you say certain things. I think this helps us to feel connected and better understand each other.
We also got this cool tip:

Describe the situation
Express feelings/opinions
Assert your wishes
Reinforce, reward people who respond positively
Mindful--stay on topic
Appear confident
Negotiate--willingness to give to get

I am a little apprehensive about parts of this model, but I think overall it's pretty good.

We're goin' crazy!

This week it was all about crises and how families deal with them. Crisis is defined as something that makes it so a family can no longer function as it did before the event. We learned a cool little formula:

Actual event--observable part, the stressor
Both resources and responses--attitudes, $, insurance skills, flexibility, cohesion, lean vs. blame, church
Cognitions--how they perceive the event
------------
total eXperience--the crisis

It was cool to learn about how it isn't the event that determines whether the family will survive or not, but rather how the family deals with it. Certain things make it easier for a family to deal with crisis like the things under the resources and responses. The way we think about a crisis really affects how we experience it and how the family will be able to function after the crisis. Our thoughts sure do have a lot of power!

Some tips we got were:

• "It's the structure, not the stressor"  We often focus on the actual event and not how we deal with it, but really it's the structure of our family and what we choose to do that affects how we'll be afterward.
• "Making decisive acts, being mindful of other's situations, and not following natural tendencies tends to lead to improvement through crisis." Families can either go through crisis and be worse off, the same, or better off afterward. I think most of us want to be better off, so if we think about how we're acting and choose to be agents who act rather than objects that are acted upon, our families will be better off following a crisis. 
• "If it doesn't get resolved, it won't change." Too often we think if we just kind of ignore things and let them "blow over" they'll go away, but this often leads to extended periods of hard feelings that are unresolved.
• "Observe and describe reality" ex: I'm really sad and it's hard to deal with VS. I'm really sad , it isn't fair that someone did this to me. 

We're all bound to face a crisis at some point in our family lives, but we can choose to make the best of it and come out better than we were before!

"We often think the event creates the feeling but in reality our thoughts of the event create our feelings which lead to our actions...we decide how we respond to events."