Blended familes

Blended familes is becoming moe of the "normal" these days if we even know what "normal" is. Blended familes have a lot of adjustments to make with making a new family out of two familes. It is important to rember both familes when it comes to making the new one. It is important to remeber that you may be going through so many transistions butt your kids are going through a lot more and they dont know how to handle there emotions. I have watched a lot of my friends go through blended familes and they have had to make a lot of new adjustments. This last year my oldest brother got married and his wife has a child from a previous relationship. They have only been married for 10 months and they have had to make a lot of adjustments, My brother had to move from Alaska to Las Vegas because his step-daughter and the custody with her dad. that is just one of the several adjustments that they made my brother had to figure out where her fit in because he is not the dad but he is with her for 50% of the time they had to find a balance of who dose what and now they are exspecting there first child together and ther is going to be even more of an adjustment to be made in such a short time. I would hope that parents and step-parents keep the children in mind and make the transitions as nice as possiable for them.

What is our jobs as parents.

I am not yet a parent butt I have some ideas as to what the job and responsibilites are of a parent.  A parent needs to teach the Gospel, provide, they need to be humble about what they are doing, parents need to relize tha they dont kow eeverything and just like there kids they too are learning and growing everyday. Parents need to teach respect and the only way to teach respect is to show respect and parents need to teach there children to become self reliant and trust that they can go out into the world and succedde.

We talked about NEVER WITHHOLD CONTACt. Just because you are ad at your child dose dnot mean that you shoul sennd them away or make thiem feel that you do not love them or that they are not important. We all want to belong and the place of all places that we should feel that we belong is in our homes with our familes.

Again communication is so important it is vital that you speak to your kids and that they know what is exspected butt alos that they know no matter what you will love them even if they make mistakes because they will make mistakes.

We need to show that we love our kids and that they are important and that belong here and they have a purpose on this earth.

Work and Money

Over the last 200 years there has been a lot of things that have changed when it comes to working and money in the family. 200 years and even as recent as 70 years ago it use to be that families would work together on the farm to earn money as a family. Families wee close and they just took care of each other. Now days you have families that have one or more parents that work out of the home this separates the family and they do not have a since of unity. Researches show that often times a family that has a two parent household where they both work you are losing money because you are paying for child care and that cost a lot of money. It is my opinion that if at all possible a parent should stay home with the kids at least until the kids are all in school. It is not far for your children to be raised by someone else. If your children are in childcare they are NOT getting the attention and love that they need and I say this because I know I worked as a preschool teacher for 6 years and even though I tried my best to give all of the kids the love and attention that they needed and deserved I could not do it I was one teacher to 10 kids and I would have kids that would get all of my attention or most of my attention because they would difficult children that would disrupt the class room and it would take my attention away from those who were good and did what they were suppose to do. Our children are our future and they need us to invest our time in them ad show them love and dedication and not ship them off to others.

Communication

Communication with your partner is streamline important.  I have seen so many relationships end because there is a lack of communication in a relationship. There are so many times in relationships that a partner dose not tell the other one what is going on and this can begin to put up a wall between the two and than things start to fall. Everything starts with communication when you don't communicate about things you are not working together in the relationship and trust is loss and you often become your own person and not a couple. A quote by Myra Kassim says " In the absence of information we jump to the worst conclusions." I know this to be true even in my relationships with family and friends when I feel that someone is holding information from me I feel like they are lying to me and nothing good ever comes from lying and I jump to the worst conclusions and often times I loose my trust in others. COMMUNICATION is the key to any relationship. find ways to told with your partner find ways to show them love through more than just being physical.

conflict and trials and tribulations in a family

All family go through periods of transitions and have trials and tribulations. My family has had many experiences whee we have had to learn from the exspereiance that we came across. One of the harder things our family had to overcome was my dad losing his job very suddenly and things in the family had to adjust to. My dad had to adjust to working jobs that had no meaning they were just ordinary jobs that paid minim wage and he deferentially tock a pay cut. My mom had to go back to work and help support the family. Our family had to adjust to a different kind of life style and we as the kids had to adjust to not having our parents around as much because they wee working more hours. I started to work to pay for my own things because I wanted to take as much financial stress off my parents as I could. My family pulled together and worked together as a team to make things work. Every family has there own situations it comes down to how you handle those situations that makes all the different. 

It has now been 5 years since my dad lost his job and he has since gone back to school to receive a bachelor  degree and a masters degree. My dad has taught me about hard work and even when the going gets tough to not give up. I would not change the experiences that my family and I have shared together for the life of me. We can not always prepare for what situations may come but we can have a say about how we handle those situations when they come and we can pull together as a family or we can pull a part the choice is ours. 

Intimacy

What do we mean when we say intimacy? In today world I feel that intimacy is a dieting art other than when people refer to sex and even than it is becoming something that is way to casual and has no meaning. Intimacy should be something that means something between two people and is something that requires work between two people.  It takes a lot of work for people to shave a continues connection with one another and it is something that needs to have work between two people. The point that I want to make is that it is important to love your partner and to share with one another. Remember that there are two people in a relationship and intimacy is not just sex it is a connection that you share with one another

There needs to be a strong connection with each other to share a life or even a friendship with more than just one person. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses and we bring them into any relationship that we enter and it is our job as a partnership to work together and to build those bonds stronger and show each other how much we mean to one another. .

Hang out or not

'If so what" Elder Packer
What dose this mean when I heard this I thought about asking it to myself in situations of improvement. Ask yourself if so what is this going to make things better or worse, am i going in the right direction or the wrong direction, am I doing what the Lord would want me to do or not. these are all questions that we should be asking ourselves everyday in order to live and be successful. When it comes to dating are we asking ourselves "If so what" how is this relationship moving me forward to the next step or am I ready for this serious relationship am I ready for that next step? there are so many times in our lives hat we can as ourselves "If so What"

4 things that I want you to think about when dating
1. dating
2. courtship
3. Engagement
4. Marriage

We have been warned that if we are ready to move ahead in our lives to the steps of marriage then we need to stop hanging out. We need to date and that means to date with the intent to someday get married and that dose not mean to marry whom you are dating at that time butt to be open to learning about you partner and investing me into them. Courtship is a step further than dating if you are interring into a courtship then you have interned into a serious relationship that could be heading down the path of marriage and then there is Engagement this is promising yourselves to someone else before marriage and that you guys have made a commitment to one another that is going to take you to Marriage winch is sharing your life together and eternity.

Love

What is love? In the English language love is one word that is used for so many things. We say i love you to our friends, family, people we hardly know. I feel like in some ways the word love has lost meaning in the English language.  In the Greek language they have for different words to describe love. 1. Storage- the affection between parents and there children. 2. Agape- A love that is independent of one's feelings for another. charity words others. 3. Eros- attracted, erotic, romantic may be sexual and it may not. 4. Philia- love between friends.

I love having 4 different wards to have to show the relationship of love between different parties of people. How are we to say that the word Love can really share the relationship that we have between everyone in our lives and how it means what we really want it to mean or are we using it to loosely.

I think that it is important to understand the different stages of love and truly express our feelings to those we are trying to tell that we love them and how we love them.

I want everyone to know how I feel about them butt I do not want to sends them the wrong message also I do not want them to think oh she says that to everyone so she doesn't really mean it to me. How do we use the word Love appropriately in the English language so that it dose not lose its true meaning.

2 dad's is better than none

Same sex attraction is becoming a rapidly growing thing in our society these days. Some would argue that having two dads or two moms is better than having no one at all and I would have to agree with that. I do not feel that it is right to act upon same sex attraction I believe in the sacredness of a marriage between a man and a woman and the importance of a a family with a mom and a dad. I recently learned of some one that is close to me has  felt feelings about same sex attraction and they are struggling with how their family will take the news as well as how everyone that know  them will accept them.
I do no not understand same sex attraction and I know several  people who are I do not understand the life style that dose not mean that I am not going to associate with them or no be their friends they may not agree with my life style or what I do.  We have been taught to love everyone and I strongly believe that.

The roles of family is changing quickly and often times you look at a family and it is not what you would have seen 50 years ago or even 5 years ago, today we see house holds with a single parent with two dads two moms or older siblings taking care of the younger siblings because parents have to work just to stay alive. The roles of family and the ideas of family is changing. I am great full for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints and the importance of family. I love that I know how important a family is to have a mother and father and children and to be there for one another and support each other

Class or no Class

Social class is something that no one is immune to in this country and often times it is something that we don't even think about at times and at other times its all people think about or it is what people are judged by and how we look at them. I grew up in the military and lived on bases for most of my life and on a military base your class is based on your military rank and if you are a higher ranking officer than the person next door. Also with military housing your rank can determine what kind of a house you get an E8 officer is going to have a bigger and nicer house than an E1 officer its just how it works. When I think of social class it often makes me sick that we judge people by where they live, how they live, how much money they have or don't have or their name, social class can be as widely classified as the country or even world or as small as your community and family. I do not find it fair that we are classified to a cretin title because we may fall into a cretin class statics I would like to think of us as all being equal and unfortunately that is not the case. In the eyes of the Lord we are all his children and he dose not love one of us more than another and I am going to try hard to follow that example and I would encourage everyone to do the same.

Family future, past and present

This week we have been talking about family and the structure of family and how over the generations your family may have stimulates that you may not even realize until you take a look at the family history. some families have things that are common through the years they may see patterns As I was looking at my family history I realized that my dad is a lot like his dad and my brothers are a lot like my dad. I am a lot like my mom but in ways my mom is not like her mom. Families are funny and different but they are your family and they shape who you are but if there are things that you do not like than it is your responsibility to change it. I know that I got really lucky with my family and we didn't really have any big family probables I have learned so much from them and I hope to some day to teach my family the things that I have learned and allow them to teach me.

To work or not to work

This week in class we have been talking about a lot of things one of the things that I have found to be the most interesting is the topic of working moms. We kind of brought up how over the last decade more and more moms are working and less are staying home with there children. I understand that there are some situations where there is no other option than for a mom to wok and for there children to go to daycare or a babysitter. Over the years it has become a demeaning stereo type to be a stay at home mom and a lot of wean think that it is not as so much more to do out there in the world. I personally grew up with a mother who was able to stay home with us until my little sister was in school and than she worked a job that she was home when we got home now I understand that this was a very fortune thing to have I have also been a preschool teacher for the last 6 years and have seen children that spend more time in a day care than they do at there own home. I feel that it is so important that if it is possible for a parent to stay at home during the most curtail time of a child's development.

Welcome to my blog

So this is the first ever post on a blog I have no idea what I am doing and I am looking forward to learning more about it. I am creating this blog for my family and marriage class and so a lot of my topics will be directed to those topics. I am looking forward to feedback and comments thank you all for your time to read this and enjoy.