I used to be an impeccable journal writer, but once I became a mother journal writing, like many of my other interests, went to the wayside. Blogging has been a great alternative to get my writing fix, but I’d like to get back to a place where I write from my heart every day. Instead of filling an old vintage suitcase like I have with all my childhood/adolescent journals, I’d like to fill a hard-drive. I have tried different journal sites over the years but I have never stuck with them. In fact if I even wanted to go out and find all my entries I wouldn’t even know where online to even go back to look. I need something central. Why not the blog where I already visit so frequently?

After having some family drama over a post a few weeks ago, and not wanting to delete the raw feelings that were unappreciated, I figured out that wordpress allows me to turn posts private, where only I can see them when I come to my blog. Because I can use the private feature, When I know I can go private, I will be more comfortable to just write out my heart’s thoughts without inhibition. At the end of the entry if it isn’t something I want the world to see, I can just hit private. The best part is none of you will ever know if you missed anything.

So, here is my first of hopefully many more diary entries. On this first one I will try to be politically correct enough and use my filter, but in the future I hope to just write freely and share or not. I am excited to get back to my journal writing. Being so sporadic has given me a lot of frustration over the years. I know journal writing is a really effective tool for emotional well-being, history chronicling, and proper perspective, so I hope this new plan will work for me.

So, on with the entry.

I was just chucking at myself because I had to go to school to pick up the class gerbils that Bella gets to keep for the weekend and then two seconds after getting the gerbils situated I found myself holding Abigail’s box of bugs she has collected for Biology class. I feel like we are running a zoo around here. I hate rodents. The girls have been pretty excited about the weekend with the gerbils and have been counting down the days. They like to taunt me about the fact that we get to keep them an extra day because I was the idiot mom who signed up for Labor Day weekend. I mostly just wanted to get it over with. Eeek. LG says I deserve mother of the year because a couple of weeks I collected a maggot for Abigail’s collection off a dead bird that Olive killed in the back yard. I quite agree. What we do for our kids’ education.

This week I started babysitting Shiloh. It hasn’t been bad at all. I was dreading going back into the babysitting business and I was really upset with God that he keeps telling me to be home and then I have to take these side jobs that I don’t want: at the top of the list is childcare. I don’t even want to hang out with my own kids half the time. I had a conversation with the marriage counselor about it last week and she said that I need to make a plan to get what I want. What do you want Alice? I want to get my college degree and be a teacher. I want to have my own career. I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to be the girl in the family that always has to pick up the slack and take the crappy jobs to make it all work. I don’t want to keep feeling like I get the table scraps. She suggested that I save some of my babysitting money in my own college account so that the job will gain greater meaning to me and I will feel empowered knowing that I am working towards my own goals instead of just giving everything to the kids. She then suggested that next year when Caroline goes to kindergarten I can get a part-time job at UVU that will allow me to get half tuition. Save all that money and then I can use it towards adding in the classes I want when Caroline goes to first grade. Why is it that I can’t come up with plans like that myself? It felt so hopeful having a plan.

LG and the girls and I met with the foster care recruiter this past week. I absolutely know we have at least one more kid, but I can’t seem to get pregnant. Ever since my miscarriage last year and since that really cool experience I had at the temple, I can’t get it out of my heart. I’ve been pretty much begging LG to get on board with me to foster to adopt. He finally came around. He is having a hard time getting excited about it after seeing so many of his foster kid clients’ issues. He is mostly just worried that it will drive me crazy and strain our relationship. I think LG will be the best foster dad ever and any kid would be lucky to have him. He is so patient and attentive and loving and kind. I worry about what kind of toll it will be on my sanity (the possibilities of issues are infinite) but I just know in my heart this is the right thing. I know there is a kid out there waiting to join our family and he/she doesn’t want to be forgotten. LG and I have always talked about adopting even before we were married. I just think doing the foster thing will be harder as we may have to send kids back and that will be heart wrenching, but we can’t afford to adopt any other way right now and I want to get it going as I am just getting older by the second.

Abigail broke my heart yesterday as she bore her soul to us about some mean girl stuff going on at school. It was a great talk that LG and I got to have with her in Carls Jr playland of all places. She even cried which is very uncharacteristic of her. We listened and tried to advise the best we knew how. What it boils down to though is Abigail needs to learn to move forward when friends aren’t willing to forgive her. She also needs to just love herself. Last she needs to be o.k. with the fact that she will make the same mistakes repeatedly. All she can hope to have is people who are willing to love her in spite of them. She is so much like LeGrand in the way that she gets lost when she screws up. She doesn’t know how to fix it because she feels so much self loathing and shame. I know as a mother I have fed into that and it hurts. I wish I would have learned about shame a whole lot earlier in my life and I wish I could keep my cool better when the people around me screw up.

Overall, I am really happy right now. I have lost 15 pounds in the last 3 weeks and that feels amazing. I have been trying to avoid all unnatural sugars. It’s taken a lot of self-will but it’s been a fun challenge and an eye-opening experience towards my greater physical health. LG and I still have stuff to figure out but we are happy. The girls make me so proud every day. They are truly amazing kids and beautiful girls. They are smart and talented. They are more than I could have ever wished for in kids.

I am trying to focus on loving my church calling. Primary is a hard calling for me, but when I’m honest, I really don’t like most of my church callings and so I am trying to change that.

Things are super super tight financially, but I have been amazed at how focusing on gratitude makes it all so much more tolerable.