Recent thoughts from Ruth

Retirement

A few days ago I was reading an article directed to people who are 50 years or older and don’t have a “nest egg” for retirement. The first line of the article indicated that those individuals who didn’t have a nest egg shouldn’t expect a luxurious retirement. (That’s obvious.) Then, the very first thing the author suggested was to go and buy a book about how to enjoy retirement and life on a small income—along with being content with what you have. Lee and I thought it was kind of funny. The first thing I would have suggested is to start saving/investing like crazy (and of course get out of debt if needs be). Overall I am shocked that there are people out there who haven’t started saving for retirement—especially when they’re already 50 years old! Lee opened a Roth IRA in 2004 and then opened one for me the next year. Granted we don’t have much in either, but we have time on our side for our money and the interest to compound and grow. When we do retire, we aren’t counting on Social Security monies being around either.

Conference

In January, after moving from North Carolina to Tennessee, we somehow misplaced our Ensigns of the October General Conference. I went ahead and purchased the DVDs of that conference. We have been watching them here and there, but I realized about a week ago, that conference is coming up again! We always try to review/read the previous conference at least once before the next begins. (Our church holds a world-wide semi-annual general conference in April and October. Through the internet, local tv/cable stations, or via satellite at church buildings, people worldwide listen to the Prophet and the apostles and other church leaders.)

For several evenings, including tonight, we’ve put a conference DVD in, listened to a hymn and a couple of speakers. It’s been great and we are getting so excited for conference next weekend! Conference is Saturday and Sunday (April 5th and 6th this year), with two sessions each day. Then the men have a Priesthood session on Saturday evening. I always enjoy Lee’s report about the Priesthood session.

Anyway, I just love spring and Easter and General Conference. The weather outside is more bright and sunny, and a comfortable, spring afternoon is so energizing and invigorating! And for conference, it’s great to be with my family and listen to a Prophet’s voice, and hear spiritual and temporal guidance that the Lord wants us to have at this time in our lives.

Thanks to Lena, we have a breakfast tradition on the Saturday morning of conference—French toast with strawberries and whipped cream. YUM! Enjoy General Conference everyone!

Eat your words, Ruth

I’ve been realizing lately that I am now doing things that I never said or thought I would do. My mom can chuckle at me on this one, because it would happen when I was at home too. So I thought I’d share a few of those things for all you people out there who want to delve into my brain.

First, I started taking all of my kids grocery shopping with me, myself and I. Of course I would go shopping when I had just two kids, but the thought of taking four was a bit overwhelming. Granted, when I initially had four kids, I was home from the hospital recovering from a c-section and didn’t feel good physically. As time went on and I felt better, Lee would come with me and we’d take two kids each. Or, he’d stay in the van with three and I’d take one in the store with me. (One kid is a piece of cake! But I would have never realized it unless I had more.) And for some Ruth trivia, once I did a week’s worth of grocery shopping in 10 minutes! Gotta love Aldi! So, to wind up this story, now I mainly go shopping with them all by myself because I can take my time during the day to complete this task. Then when Lee gets home at night we can enjoy being at home instead of juggling the whole shopping thing. And so you don’t feel bad for me, it’s pretty easy because there is only one kid to watch—Clark. I have a girl in a front pack carrier (thanks Ruth Whitemarsh!), a girl in the cart seat, and Cal in the main cart area. It will become tricky when the girls are too big to put in a front pack carrier. And when we go shopping, I try and make sure we all look gorgeous. I’m not ashamed that I have four kids, but I sure want to avoid any nasty comments. I love it when people tell me what a beautiful family I have—who doesn’t?! And people stop me all the time and look at my kids—mainly because of the twins. Frequently people ask if Clark and Cal are twins. Once they get a better look at them though, they realize they are different sizes.

The next thing I thought I would never do is exercise with my kids awake and around. I woke up early a few times and exercised and it sure is nice to do that all by myself. But I do not like to get out of bed at 5:45 am or 6:00 am. (And I don’t like exercising in the evening.) So, I made a trade-off with myself—exercise later in the morning, but with the kids around. It hasn’t been too bad. The girls are good, and the boys have fun dodging my kicks and punches, or looking at books. And when my cup runs out of water Clark will refill it for me!

And for the third item, when I was first married, the idea of having twins was intriguing. After having one child and later on a second child, that intrigue flew out the window, as some of you have heard me thus state. But, if you hadn’t noticed from previous posts, I absolutely love having twins—not that I had a choice—but I love my little girls! It is weird to think of just having Shanna and not Haley, or vise versa. And since I’ve had twins we’ve heard from multiple people how their sister-in-law or niece or themselves had two sets of twins or a set of twins and triplets, and so on and so forth. Lee tells me to be careful when I say I don’t want triplets…