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Show -NEWS- Spanish Fork Covering what matters most WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2008 • A3 Holding off on separation Life after Birth Janene Baadsgaard Children leave home. This separation is a universal rite of passage all parents and children have to go through if they want to develop a healthy adult relationship. As a parent we know the day is coming, but often put off feeling the angst of separation. I mean, who really wants to think that after several decades of devotedly caring for and loving someone night and day — they just leave? Even if you are the child who has been looking forward to growing up and leaving home for years, when the day actually arrives, you still get a major lump in your throat. I've been through this parent/child separation routine many times. So why doesn't it get any easier? Sooner or later we all have to deal with the bewildering feelings of loss that accompany our children leaving home. Marriage, college, career or religious duties hover on the foreseeable horizon and we have to face reality... our days of living together are numbered. One foolish way we parents attempt to soften the blow is by thinking about all the everyday irritations that this separation will eliminate, things like how nice it will be to have wet towels actually hanging on the rods in the bathroom instead of. being tossed in a heap on the floor. We imagine a huge reduction in our grocery bill because the food our child usually eats will now hang around in the refrigerator for days. We contemplate quiet, peaceful nights where we go to bed early because we're not up late worrying that our child has been in a car accident or the victim of a hormone driven dating partner. Our child, who is also thinking about this major life change, is likewise trying to make it easier on themselves by doing the same thing. They think about how great it will be to finally eat potato chips in the living room, let dishes stack up in the kitchen sink, sleep in on Sunday and come home when they darn well feel like it. This psychological attempt to make the break easier seldom works. Yet, pretending not to care makes both parent and child a little testy during the days and weeks before the actual separation. It's like, "Yeah well if you're not going to feel sad when you leave, Preparing animals for 'spring' weather Round and About Benjamin Kathleen Olsen As this column is being written it is snowing with a north wind added to the mix. It does not feel like spring or that we should be involved with'spring'activities. Nevertheless, it is April and no matter the weather, another season of stock shows is approaching. Right now there are many young people up and down our country roads that are outside caring for their livestock projects. They may be feeding them, brushing them and practicing showing them. They will also be washing them and trimming them — all things that have to be done to make the animals presentable at the shows. Working in all sorts of weather is just one of the valuable lessons of responsibility the young people learn when they take on a livestock project. They also learn tenacity, diligence and seeing something through to completion among other things. Occasionally, the exultation of winning comes at the end or there can also be the depths of disappointment when things don't work out. But more often comes the satisfaction of seeing a project through doing one's best and being grateful for the long lasting things that have been learned. We are looking forward to Saturday, April 26, 2008, when our 4-H Livestock Show takes place at Brown's arena on the north side of Payson. Everyone is invited to attend the event, which will begin at 10 a.m. and watch 4-H and FFA members show their animal projects for the first time this year. Pigs, lambs, and steers will all be exhibited with Grand and Reserve Champions named in all three categories. There will also be a mini division which is always fun to watch, where those too young to show in the state livestock shows still get a chance to practice for the day when they will be old enough to show in the regular classes. Benjamin 4-H Livestock Club • • l - , " ^ " leaders, Wendell and lana Lee Williams and David and Tammy Peay report that once again Benjamin has one of the largest 4-H clubs in Utah with 89 members enrolled, They report that in addition to the exhibit contests, a concession stand will be in operation serving lunch for a nominal price. There will also be tickets sold for a quilt, a gift certificate, and other items. All of the money raised from these areas will be returned to the young people as prizes for their work. The leaders also remind those entering record books and/or decorated cakes, to have them at the arena by 9 a.m. on the morning of the show, in order that they can be judged, Setting up for the show will take place on Friday evening, April 25, 2008 at 6:30 p.m. Club members and parents are asked to help with this. This year, with the changes at the Fairgrounds in Spanish Fork that will affect the Utah State Junior Livestock Show the following week, Benjamin 4-H club members and parents have been asked to help set up pens in the big show arena on Monday, April 28, 2008. Good luck to all the Benjamin's club exhibitors! then I won't either." That attitude is all a big smoke screen. Underneath all this pre-separation crankiness is something incredibly tender. As the parent you tell yourself that you're not sure your child can make it without you. Yet somewhere deep inside, you know they can and you don't know howH you feel about that. Your deepest fear is that you don't know if you can make it without them. As a child you have lack of experience and naivete* on your side, so you're pretty confident you can make it without your parents. How difficult can adult life be? Your parents make it look pretty easy. Yet, there's a secret part of you that still wants to take all your old stuffed animals with you when you go. At times of separation, love and loss get tumbled around in our heads and hearts until both parents and children feel a bit dizzy and unsure. If we've shared a healthy, loving relationship, parting is (as Shakespeare put it so well) such sweet sorrow. Each child is a piece of sunshine and when they leave it feels like someone turned out the light. It's hard to say goodbye. It helps to know that, though we have to let go of living together, we never have to let go of loving each other. Though our roles and stewardships rightfully change, our love remains constant. And where there's love, the light is always on and children find their way back home. Janene Baadsgaard is the author of many humorous and heartwarming books for families, including Families Who Laugh . . . Last, On the Roller Coaster Called Motherhood, Winter's Janene Baadsgaard Promise, Financial Freedom for LDS Families, The LDS Mother's Almanac and her most recent publication, 15 Secrets to a Happy Home available at local book stores or on-line at www.springcreekbooks. com. She can be reached at janenebaadsgaard@juno. com. How do you react? Ready or Not Dawn Van Nosdol Have you ever wondered how you would react in a crisis? Or how about afterward, when all is said and done and the "clean-up" has begun? When I was sixteen years old I was asked to baby-sit for a family of 13 children; the oldest was 13 and the youngest was a week old. The parents were going to be gone for about four or five hours, but the kids were all pretty wellbehaved, and, being sixteen, I could handle anything. Of course, there is always the proverbial wrench that gets thrown into the works and that is exactly what happened that day. The family had a preteen cousin that was visiting from another state; he was going to stay with them for the summer. The only problem was that he wasn't too thrilled about it. You can imagine how much he wanted to listen to me, the baby-sitter with no authority, at least in his eyes. The other kids were playing with each other and I was trying to feed the baby when the visiting cousin came in the house and was looking really guilty and scared. He wasn't supposed to be outside, but I hadn't caught him, so I didn't know why he was acting so weird. I started asking him questions and finally he broke down and told me that he had been playing with sparklers, or some other kind of fireworks, out by the haystack and "a gust of wind pushed my hand against the haystack and it started on fire!" collapsing into a heap on the Talk about the twilight ground. I cried and cried. I zone! I called all of the kids have had to go through a together and did a head few other disasters that were count, gave the baby to the , life threatening to me, or oldest child and told all of others, and I have found that them to stay in the house I keep pretty level-headed and not move from that until somebody else can take room. This was in the pre- charge, and then it's all over 911 days and I lived out for me. in the country and I really My point is — don't ever didn't know who to call. I baby-sit for someone who ran outside to see how bad has a haystack next to a it was, and it was pretty bad. building — and get to know The haystack was indeed yourself. Know how you on fire and I would have react in tense situations. Be just let it burn and tried to honest with yourself and if keep it from spreading, but there is something that you it was stacked up against think you would like to be the barn, where there were better at, then practice until a lot of combustible items, it becomes your strong point. such as gas, diesel, grains Become C.E.R.T. certified or and grain dust, tractors take an E.M.T. class. and such. I hurried and Also, know that once turned the water on and the crisis is over, that started trying to put out the emotionally it is just getting haystack fire and the small started. I didn't want to fires that were starting on baby-sit for a long time after the wooden eaves of the that because I was afraid barn. that something else would To • make a long story happen. I had nightmares for short, a neighbor driving a while and when my dad by saw the smoke and then would do the spring ditch noticed me trying to keep the burn, he would have to send fire at bay and he called the me in the house because I fire department in the next was always putting the fire town and rounded up some out before it finished burning neighbors to help contain the weeds. Be prepared for the fire and to knock down the emotional aftermath of a the haystack. Me? I was as crisis as much as you prepare calm as a cucumber — until yourself for the possibility of somebody else came and the emergency. And get your took over, then I just felt like water stored. !! Spring Super Savings Sale!! Luxury Dependability Safety ^ ARTERS uality Phofogfjdph meftimt Pictures JrBndal Photos * Weddings!Receptions DEANIS EQUALITY TRANSMISSIONS Celebrating 20 years serving great customers. 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