Ficker Family

My heart has been filled and my soul has been renewed. I had such an amazing weekend that there is no other way to put it. I went to time out for women here in Salt Lake and I had such a good time that I can't wait until next year. I am so grateful for the women who spoke on Friday and Saturday. Every single person spoke about something that related to me. I wrote so many notes that when I came home, I re-wrote them so that I could have them in a more organized fashion.

I left there remembering that I am my own best mother and the worst thing in life could really turn out to be the BEST thing. So many stories that I want to share and retell but I know I would not do these women justice so I wont, but I will recommend to anyone who has never been, LDS or not to go. (Although, it does primarily have LDS speakers.) But still, even if you aren't, they still talk about things that effect all of us as women. I highly recommend it. Yes indeed. Counting down the days until next year!

So for those of you that don't know, when Brock turned about 6 months old or so, I started worrying about him. He wouldn't respond to his name like Everett would and so I just started to worry that he might either be hard of hearing or that he might have aspergers. You hear so much about it with our generation of children that its hard not to think one of your children might have some type of autism. Well i talked to the boys doctor about this for a few months and she gave me a phone number to have him evaluated. I call the number, set up an appointment and it finds out, he's absolutely fine but he is a little behind with speech and comprehension so we were able to get services through the state to have a speech therapist and a behaviorist come out a couple of times a month and work with him. These two women are just awesome. Our behaviorist works so well with Brock AND Everett and has taught me a lot about how to work with my boys. She is very down to earth and i think above all what I like most about having her come visit with us, is that she reminds me that I'm doing a good job at being their Mom. I really appreciate her and how she has help our little family. Over the past 3 months she has been our teacher and now become our friend. I can tell how much she really cares about my boys and above all, I am thankful for that on this fine day in November! :)

I forgot to post yesterday because we have some visitors staying with us again and it was a busy day. Today I will be posting twice.

What I am thankful for today is: My computer!

Our "newer" laptop has been OUT OF ORDER for the weekend until today. The laptops charger was not charging the computer so we had to order a new cord. Well in the mean time we have been using our old laptop and it is old and heavy! Today we got a knock on the door from the UPS man and we received our new charger. Thank goodness.

I took the weekend off from my thankful list but I am now back. So what am I thankful for today? Honestly I wanted to save some of the best for last but I just can't go another day without sharing how thankful I am for my one and only, Joaquin Geronimo Ficker. What a guy! What a MAN! We were able to go on a date this last weekend with some friends of ours and it was so nice remember why we got married in the first place. Lately he's been busy with work and hunting and I've been busy with our children, that sometimes we lose sight of why we got married in the first place. Well I will tell you why,

He's handsome. He's smart! He's loving. He'll eat anything I cook, even if he doesn't really care for it. He loves the Gospel. He loves me. He's an outdoors men. He loves nature. He's sweet. He's kind. He's a very hard worker. He's dedicated to his job. Once he puts his mind to something, He gets what he wants. He cares about people. He loves books. He LOVES music. He respects women. He loves his mom and sister very much. He does laundry. He takes out the trash. He's HONEST. When he wants to be, he can be deep. He's a thinker. He's big and manly. He loves my family. He deals with my irrational and hormonal personality. He would do anything for me.

And now that we have a little family of our own, He loves his little "brushers" more than anything and would do anything for them. I was really lucky marrying him and this is why today I feel truly lucky and blessed to have him in my life.

Today I will put it simply:

I am thankful for naps! Seriously...Joaquin went to work today and I put the boys down a little later than normal for their nap and they did not want to sleep. This made me so irritated that I just let them sit in their rooms for probably well over an hour and just let them figure it out....eventually, they fell asleep.

And so did I.

Now before I dive into this one, I just wanted to preface it by saying, I'm not in any way a feminist by any means and this is not a post against men, because there are some really great men (which I happened to be married to) but I just think it is such an amazing honor to be a woman!

And that brings me to my day #3 of gratitude, I am thankful to be a woman.

I feel so blessed to be a woman because of the fact that we are born nurtures. We love to take care of others. We love being there for others and we just love to LOVE! It's in our D.N.A.

One day I was talking to a friend of mine and she explained something to me that I had never really thought about before. She talked about how Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ created the light from dark, then the waters and earth, then the trees and bushes, you know, so on and so forth. Well then it came time to create man. Man was created and then God saved the best for last, Woman. He saved his most precious gift for last. Wow, that's pretty awesome. Talking about that just made me realize how special I really was. So for that reason alone, I feel blessed to be a woman.

I think the number one reason I am so grateful to be a woman is I get to be a Mother! I love being a Mom more than anything else in the world. It was a little difficult for us to get pregnant and I had grown up wondering if I was going to be able to bare children at all and luckily I was blessed to do so but even still, I had it made up in my mind, even when I was just a teenager that I would have kids one way or another. (Actually after I lived in Guatemala, I always thought it would be awesome to adopt a baby from there.) It all goes back to being born nurturers. I love to love. I love to care for those two little boys I was given more than anything else in this world. Some days are good and some days, (like yesterday) are not so good. But I think that's just life in general. We have to take the up's with the downs.

Okay, I think I'm done with my rant. I just hope we (and I keep saying "we" because I really think only 3 or 4 ladies read my blog.) can remember that we are beautiful spirits that God has blessed and instead of getting down about not fitting into our skinny jeans, remember what beauty we really do offer to our families and this world.

Blah- The End

Today was kind of an "eh" day so it was a little more difficult for me to be super excited about deciding what I was especially grateful for today. It was just one of those days that didn't go exactly how I had planned it. The babes were driving me nuts-o and I had to put Brock on Time out about a thousand times, which doesn't really work by the way. (I have to find time this week to go to the library and check out some parenting books because if I don't, I may only have one child turning 2 in a month. I kid, I kid.)

So today I am Thankful for Christmas music:

To most, this probably sounds a little crazy but honestly it's one of the best things to calm myself and the boys down. We mostly listen to it when we are in the car. Every year I usually start listening to Christmas music around the beginning of October. Fall is one of my favorite times of year because I feel like is the beginning to all the fun holidays. I think the boys were destine to love Christmas music from birth because I was listening to it while they were in my belly as well. Joaquin starts to get a little irritated with the music but he will still tolerate it just because he knows it make us all happy. Anyway, I know that's kind of a silly thing to be thankful for but I really do love it. Always have and I always will.

So I have decided to be more positive this month and to take time and think about one thing a day I am truly grateful for, being that this month is all about giving Thanks. I have SO many things to be grateful for and I could go on and on about all of them in this one post but I think it is better for me to focus on one a day. So this is my challenge for myself this month and I think it really will help me realize what a great life I really have. Sometimes I think people find themselves getting sad or down because they think life could be better but really, I think life is actually pretty good.

I am Thankful for wonderful neighbors:

I was driving home from the gym today, trying to think about all the things I have and what am I really grateful for today. Well I noticed Our Nations Flag was lining the street outside a post office, then I realized it was out because it was the day to vote. (Which I didn't do because I didn't feel comfortable about what I would be voting on, but not to worry, I have already pledged to vote next election, but now I'm just getting away with my story.) Seeing the nice people taking advantage of their American duty to vote then made me realize what an amazing country we live in, I then turned that into a more local/personal level and realized what awesome people I have living around me. This then brought me to day one of what I feel Thankful for, which are my good neighbors. Not just my wonderful, quiet next door neighbors but the whole Foxboro community. I live by some really great, caring people and I'm so glad because I could live somewhere not so great, like I once did in ghetto, Rancho Cordova, California where we had the "ghetto bird" fly around our house like twice a month. The first weekend I moved there, my car was broken into. Which wasn't the worst of things that happened while living there. We had some adventures living there, that's for sure. So I feel pretty lucky to have have good friends who live around me. I have been able to meet a lot of people my age, in the same stage of life by living here. I'm pretty sure, even if we move away from this area, the friendships I have made here will last forever. And that is pretty AWESOME. ;)

Anyway, I just thought it would be appropriate to blog about. I actually didn't come up with this idea all on my own. A friend on facebook said she has been doing this for a few years now but she and her husband take turns doing it. What a great tradition. Especially with all the bad, negative things we have going on around us, why not try and bring on a little sunshine!

(Maybe this is a little cheesy, but it wouldn't be the first time I've been called that!)

This summer has been one of the busiest and most fun ever! Our summer started early in May and is now sort of ending in September. I was able to get away for 4 days up to Oregon for one of my dearest friends wedding. Becky Boatwright got married to the love of her life, Kelly Bectell and she asked me to be apart of the wedding. That was really exciting and fun. Joaquin and the babes didn't come along just because it would have been a little hard and much more expensive. This was the first time I have ever been away from the boys and it was wonderful to get away to feel like someone other than just a mom but when the four days was up, I was MORE than ready to get back to being with my family.

Shortly after I got back from Oregon, I had another one of my dearest friends come visit us. Rocky, her husband Tiu and little Jaden. I met Rocky almost 10 years ago while volunteering in Guatemala. She and her family were living in Florida and decided they would move to New Zealand with Tiu's family for a while and on the way there, they made a 2 week stop in Utah and stayed with us while visiting family and friends they have here. It was so much fun and we did a lot! SO just so you know, there is an OVERLOAD of pictures! Seriously! Forgive me.....

We have had a busy summer and this is the reason I haven't been blogging as of late. I apologize for that. Today is Sunday and I wasn't able to make it to Church today. Church has been a real challenge for us as a family since the boys have been born. At first we were so worried about our little babies getting RSV and then it turned into laziness, then it turned into, they are crawling all over now and it's too hard and now it has turned into they don't like sitting still during sacrament and the run away from us the second they get the chance. It's very hard on me emotionally and it's hard on Joaquin physically. Sometimes I feel like giving up, at times I have given up. Leaving the Church building alone with two screaming children, hardly being able to reach those doors to the outside so I could let the tears that were sitting in my eyes stream down my checks! It's so difficult and I have to say my testimony has really suffered because of it. Now this is no one's fault but my own and I realize this but sometimes (or most times) it's just easier not to go. The only problem with that is I know that going to Church has always helped me out spiritually and so for a while now I have been lacking in that department and it makes me feel sad because I think about how important it is to bring the boys to church to get them used to it. Then I have feelings of sadness about not being an emotionally strong enough person to deal with my kids......such frustration all the time.

So now here I sit. Look at some friends blogs, checking my email quickly while the boys take a little nap and I come across an old friend from high schools blog, who also happened to just have twin girls. She is a woman of faith and strength to me. She had some thoughts about being a mother and she also had a quote from a pamphlet someone had given her and it said this:

You were sent here into your mothering role and given the awesome responsibility for the physical, emotional, and spiritual welfare of your children without any experience or expertise. Why do you suppose that Heavenly Father has so decreed that we become parents without any previous experience? I think it is because He wants us to be on our knees where we need to be, seeking Him, pleading for patience and forbearance and understanding.

A little light bulb turned on in my head after I read this. I haven't relied as much as I have needed to on God and this is where the problem begins. I wonder if He just thinks, 'Michelle, I will help you but you just need to ask! It's so simple my girl, just get on those knees and ask.' So here I am writing this to the blogging world with tears floating around in my eyes, wondering why am I divulging this to everyone....I'm not really sure but that little quote gave me some enlightenment so maybe someone else will find as useful as I did.

I think God works in funny little ways and he knows us all so well, better than we know ourselves and I am grateful for that!