Hallelujah!!!

It's over! After 15 years I am finally done with Boy Scouts! Yippee! Yahoo! My last son was awarded the position of Eagle Scout last night and I am so happy and relieved and excited and...well, you get the picture. I can't count how many hours my husband and I have put into helping our 6 sons achieve Eagle. And we are finally done! I'm giddy. The Young Womens Personal Progress Program looks like a walk in the park now, mainly because I only have to go through it ONCE. Oh joy! No more merit badges, no more scout camps, no more sewing on patches and no more Eagle projects. I'm dancing a jig right now as I type. I'm immensely proud of my sons and all the hard work they put into earning these awards. Excuse me while I puff out my chest a little and proclaim that ALL of my sons are Eagle Scouts. That was so fun to say. Way to go, Moore boys! You da men!

Families

I've been pondering on the dynamics of families lately. Everyone is born into one and then most people create another one and then that one starts creating other ones. Who do we actually belong to and how do we loosen the ties to the other ones?

I had a really good childhood as far as I can remember (which, with my Halfs-Heimers isn't very far). I thought of my family as very close. My brothers and sisters were my best friends, my mom and dad were very cool and very good looking so I was really proud of my family and thought we were really tight with each other. I didn't think I could love anyone as much as I loved them. As we grew up our differences were magnified more and more. Now that we are all grown we are still pretty good friends but we don't really hang that much with each other.

I have spent my entire adult life loving the family that I created with my wonderful husband and I am now quite positive that I could never love anyone as much as I love them. We are way closer than my first family. As they grow up, though, their differences from each other are standing out more and more. They are still great friends but they are discovering that they can love someone even more than they love each other.

This is actually God's plan but it can be a little painful letting go and going backwards as my family slowly shrinks back down to eventually being what it was in the beginning, me and Pat. In the end, we really only have our eternal companions. We go from being the center of our childrens' lives to being a bit player who is still greatly loved but definitely not who their lives revolve around. Thank heavens I picked a great partner.

Holidays are the times when these changes really stand out the most for me. The days of having everyone in our home for the holidays are pretty much gone. I have children in just about every walk of life right now. I have grown children who live at home, college students, married children, a missionary and some who still depend on me at home.

The oldest is definitely old enough to be out on his own but because of changes in his choice of careers he has taken a little longer to get where he wants to be job-wise. He is very pleasant and no trouble at all but a little part of me wants him to experience the joy of being on his own and starting a family.

The almost college graduate will be back home in a couple of months and isn't really sure what he wants to do with his life career-wise so I worry about him a little. I also want him to experience the joy of being a husband and father.

The married kids are very happy with their little families and so am I even though I occasionally (OK, frequently) miss having them in my home. I know they are experiencing the same joy I have felt for 28 years but I still miss them.

I miss my missionary like crazy. I know that now that he has gone on his mission, the next time I see him he will be a full grown 21 year old man. He will never be my baby boy again and even though I've gone through that 5 times it doesn't get any easier.

My high schooler is fun and challenging and part of me is thrilled that I still get to go through this fun time with more kids and part of me is kind of weary of doing this.

Thank heavens I had a girl for my last child. I never and I mean NEVER wanted a girl. I thought they were way too much work and I didn't want her to feel some of the feelings I felt about my mom growing up which I'm sure are very normal for every girl. I'm so glad the Lord knew better. She is the joy of my life. She is my best girlfriend and I can't imagine ever fighting with her. I have learned so many things from my relationship with my own mom and by watching others with their daughters and I am determined to have a wonderful relationship with my daughter for our whole lives. Plus, I know she will never completely leave me even when she gets her own family. Little girls will always need their mothers to be in their lives to some degree.

So, as painful and as wonderful as it may seem, in the end it's just me and Pat and the more I think about that, the happier I get. If my children could love their spouses even half as much as I love their dad then they will be the happiest people in the world.

My Sweet Baby Girl

I went to Utah last week to see my little granddaughter and had a blast. She is 4 months old now and smiles constantly. She still has no hair but she is adorable. I love her to pieces. I wish she lived closer.

Kymimo

Yesterday was my little boy's birthday. He is 26 years old now and not very little at all. He is 6'4" tall and has HUGE muscles. How well I remember, though, 26 October conference weekends ago when he finally (after being 6 days late) showed up. It was at 6:10 p.m. on conference Sunday. Everything about his pregnancy was wonderful and nothing about his birth was wonderful (except him, of course). There were massive complications to getting him out and I can honestly say that he has caused me the most pain of all of my children, bar none. Luckily all that ended at his birth. Since then he has given me nothing but joy and happiness. Of course a mother is entitled to selective memory but, really, Kyle Miles Moore has been the epitomy of his scripture alter-ego, Captain Moroni. You can't get closer or hold tighter to the rod than Kymimo. He is brimming with integrity, kindness, obedience and goodness. Now if I could just find a wonderful young lady that he could shower these attributes on I could die a happy woman. He will graduate from BYU in December and then...??? I'm quite sure the Lord has wonderful things in store for Kymes, I just can't wait to see what they are! Anyway, thank you son for being such a fun, entertaining and terrific child to raise. Happy Birthday and I love you Moore than anything in the whole wide world!

Nash

My daughter and I went to the Miley Cyrus concert with 2 very fun girls. Nikki Nielsen and Ashleigh Tanner are best friends and are always together so I am going to start calling them "Nash" (Nik and Ash, get it?) I love these girls. They are half my age and Savannah is half theirs so we make quite a diverse bunch. Somehow, we all relate to each other though. They are the sweetest, funnest girls and I just love being with them. We have a lot in common. You might wonder where I would find girls who are young enough to be my daughters to hang out with. Nikki is my daughter-in-law's sister-in law and Ashleigh is friends with all of my sons. They are so mature and such good role models for my real daughter. We have had so much fun watching Hannah Montana concerts on T.V. with 3-D glasses and dancing around in my living room. We play Catch Phrase and do puzzles during the holidays. I love having them over to my house and now I love going to concerts with them. I hope we do it a lot more. Nik is already part of my family so now I need to work on getting Ash in there. I still have a few single sons :) Nash forever Moore!

Goodbye Hannah, I Miss You :(

Well, she never said it was a "Hannah Montana" concert. And it definitely wasn't. I guess I now know that it was Hannah Montana I loved and not Miley Cyrus. Me and two friends took my 13 year old daughter to see Miley Cyrus in concert last night and we all came home sad, disturbed and thinking we had just wasted a lot of money. I guess it wasn't really Miley's fault since we were the ones who expected something else. The whole time I was watching her I was thinking, "Are her parents watching her right now?" "What could they possibly be thinking?" There she was, a 16 year old girl wearing nearly nothing, shaking her body in ways no 16 year old girl should know how to shake and screaming rock and roll lyrics at decibal levels that may have permanently damaged sweet Emmerson Claire's ears. No sign of Hannah anywhere. I felt bad for the scared little kids in the audience who were probably wondering where Hannah Montana was. Again, not her fault as she never said it was a "Hannah" concert. I will be much more careful the next time I consider taking myself or my daughter to a concert. The whole way home I couldn't help but be very grateful for a church that espouses very different values than the ones I saw last night. I'm pretty sure that my beautiful Mormon girl would rather die than ever be seen doing those things, in those clothes, in public or anywhere else. So I guess I will have to be content with watching Hannah Montana reruns on T.V. Sniff, sniff. Goodbye Hannah, I miss you:(

The First Law of Heaven

On my walk today the thoughts that ran through my head seemed to form themselves automatically into a blog post :) So, here I am up on my soapbox (and at my height this is a dizzying feat). I was thinking about certain friends and family members of mine who are not very happy right now and why that might be. My first thought was that they were not being completely (or in some cases not even remotely) obedient to the things they have been taught. Obedience is the FIRST law of heaven. First being most important and having the most weight. What is obedience? Back in the day the people needed the Law of Moses to guide them because they just weren't quite there in understanding the spirit of the law. They had to have the letter of the law and believe me they utilized every letter of every alphabet known to man. They measured steps and had a law for every breath they took and were instructed down to the nth degree on everything they were supposed to be doing. Guess what? We are waaaayyyy beyond that now. We are so advanced and so cool and so "above" all that that we now have a higher law. This means that we are supposed to be able to understand "why" guidelines are given to us not just that they "are" given. So when we just barely keep the laws as we choose to interpret them, it looks like we are really chafing at those laws and are not really understanding the purpose of why they were given. We are just obeying because we are scared not to. When we drink every caffeinated drink except coffee and tea or wear immodest clothing right up until the day we go to the temple or use words that sound so much like swear words that they have the same meaning then we are showing that we don't really understand the principles of good health, purity and modesty and Christlike thoughts and language, we are just fulfilling the letter of the law so we don't get into trouble with our parents or our church. I submit that when we fully understand and live the law of obedience out of a true desire to receive the blessings waiting for us by doing so that then is the only time we can truly be happy. If we think about the purpose and love behind the law, we might see it in a different light and live it in a different way. As an added bonus we might help the Mormons keep that wonderful reputation of being a "peculiar" people.