Random Ramblings

Crepes and Spiced Peach Sauce

2012-01-27T15:12:00.000-07:00

One of the awesome ladies in our Young Women's Presidency makes these amazing creps! They are so delicious! I finally decided to try making them and they were so easy and super delicious! Just remember you have to refrigerate the batter for at least an hour before using.

CREPES

Steps:
1. Mix up your crepe batter and refrigerate for one hour, meanwhile;
2. Mix up your filling and refrigerate til finished with crepes.
3. Spoon filling into center of crepes and roll, place up to 6 crepes in a gallon size zip lock bag and place in freezer. Remove from freezer one hour before ready to serve.
4. Toppings can be served warm and spooned over top of crepes.

BASIC DESSERT BATTER FOR CREPES

1 1/4 cups flour 3 eggs

2 tablespoons sugar 1 1/2 cups milk

Pinch of salt 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted

Note: 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract can be added. Refrigerate at least an hour before using.

Tip: Crepes to be filled need only to be cooked on one side. Place a piece of waxed paper between each crepe and keep covered to prevent drying.

FILLING FOR CREPES

2 tablespoons Almond Extract (I was out of this ingredient so I just didn't add it and they were still delicious!!)

8 oz pkg cream cheese 2 cups powdered sugar

1 cup heavy whipping cream

Cream together cream cheese and sugar; add almond extract and cream. Refrigerate for an hour before using or until you are finished making your crepes.

SPICED PEACH SAUCE

~2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice (I used the bottled lemon juice and it was still delicious!)

~1 jar (12 oz) apricot preserves (I bought some but the seal was broken when I opened it to make the sauce so I had to improvise. I did about half peach jam and half strawberry jam. Still delicious!)

~1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

~1 large can sliced peaches, drain juice

~1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

In a medium saucepan heat together apricot preserves, lemon juice, cinnamon and nutmeg; cook and stir over low heat for 2 minutes. Stir in peaches; keep warm till ready to serve. Spoon warm sauce over top of your filled crepes.

Mr. Maxers...

2012-01-26T09:38:00.001-07:00

Happy 6th Birthday to my "Beautiful Boy", Max!!! I love you so much!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5BBEOjUKrI

He wants to be EXACTLY like his big brother, Zack!! he wore Zack's jersey and socks all the time.

He finally got to play baseball and was THRILLED!!!

A yummy recipe...

2012-01-25T08:40:00.001-07:00

So I LOVE Italian food! I made this delicious Chicken Parmesan last night. It is so delicious now that I figured out how to make it right. I used to dredge it in Italian bread crumbs until I ordered it at Applebee's one time and they just fry the chicken breasts like they do their normal fried chicken. It was to die for so I decided to copy theirs and it is soooo much better! All you have to do is sprinkle some salt and pepper, dredge it in flour and fry it up. I use Lawry's Course Ground Garlic Salt With Parsley instead of plain salt and I fry it in canola oil because Brian doesn't like olive oil and canola is a bit healthier than vegetable oil. So then you place your fried chicken breasts on a cookie sheet. Spoon a little spaghetti sauce on top, sprinkle with mozzarella cheese and grated Parmesan. Place cookie sheet in the oven on broil for a few minutes until the cheese is a light golden brown like pizza cheese looks. Serve over a bed of pasta and sauce, any kind works fine. I used angel hair pasta. I promise if you try it this way you will LOVE it!!!

Seriously?!

2012-01-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

I like to at least give the illusion that I have it all together but my family just keeps revealing how very much I don't have it together at all and it is so not nice. :( So yesterday I was at BYC for like ever and when I got home it was time to leave the house to head to church. Matthew was wearing a cowboy boot and a dress shoe. When I asked him what the heck was up with that he told me that he and Brian had searched high and low and hadn't been able to find either of the matches to his crazy little pair of shoes. Greaaaaat! So I did a quick search and couldn't find a match either. Now, some of you have actually seen their room and you are not surprised in the least but they had their room totally clean on Friday. I bribed them with a trip to the $1 store and they whipped that room into shape in no time. This fact made me even more upset about the shoe thing. The matches are probably hidden in abyss at the bottom of the toybox, never to be seen again.So he went to church with 2 different shoes on and even had to give a talk in Primary (which, by the way, went surprisingly well considering I forgot he had to give a talk in Primary until the last speaker in Sacrament Meeting was speaking, so I had to just throw something together), where he had to walk to the front of the room where EvErYoNe got to see his unmatched shoes. Oh, and by the way, I just LOVE what obnoxious kids say to other kids. (yes I know mine are probably obnoxious too and I'm just blinded by motherly love to see it) Last week he couldn't find the other church shoe and wore his cowboy boots and some obnoxious kid made fun of him for wearing cowboy boots to church. Ummm there are parts of Emery County, Salem, Kansas and, I'm sure a zillion other places, where cowboy boots ARE their only church shoes and that's totally cool.

Anyhoo...

So, just when I'm getting over the embarrassment of yesterday's shoe dabockle, Max is ready to walk out the door to wait for the bus, when I look at his feet and realize he has on 2 different sized snowboots. One being his size, and one being 4 sizes bigger. Seriously!?! Does he not see a problem here? Really? (big ol' sigh) So I frantically looked for a matching snow boot and Brian found the match and told him to put them on. The bus had already showed up and Zack was doing an outstanding job of stalling in hopes that Max would get out in time. Well, Max ran out of the house with one boot on and one boot off. Thank goodness Brian had shoveled snow so he wasn't running through that. So I close the door, and I'm still furious over this crazy situation and Brian tells me that Max didn't take both of the matching boots. He took one of those and the 4 sizes too big boot. So I furiously drove over to the school, in my pajamas and my hat that protects my trigeminal nerve from getting cold and causing me pain, but makes me look like the 3rd clone of the dude on the movie, Multiplicity, you know the copy of a copy one, that is always saying, "Hi, Thteve!" and tried to shave his tongue but they had taken out the blade on the razor. So, I get to the school in all of my glory and Max and Matthew just happened to be the only kids on the playground, seeing as how it's only 20 degrees out and all and they are clearly crazy. So I have Max switch boots but he couldn't get the one on his foot so he still has the 2 unmatched boots on. I told him that if anyone says anything to him about his crazy boots then he is to tell them that his mom didn't want him to wear them like that but he snuck out with them on, so people don't think I'm such a loser mom. If this illusion I'm trying to give is eVeR going to work then I'm going to have to have my kids on board. I mean really, they're totally cramping my style.

I Heart PINTEREST!!!

2012-01-22T17:34:00.000-07:00

K, so, if you don't know what Pinterest is, I'd be so happy to introduce you to it!!! Say, you're blog surfing or you've Googled something and you just love what you see, you can Pin it on your Pinterest board. Other people can see it and they can Pin it. There is a search engine where you can search a particular subject, for instance; cute Valentine's Decorations. It will pull up Pins that other people have pinned on Pinterest and the ideas are so conveniently scattered on the screen so that you have access to gazillions of cute ideas, right there. Each idea just takes up like a couple of inches on the screen. No searching and searching and searching the internet to find something you just simply type in your topic and it brings up so many cool choices!! When you click on it, you can go to the original place it came from, like it will take you to the blog it was originally posted on, so you can check it out to see if there are more fun ideas on that blog. You don't post stuff like on blogger. You can add a URL to post an idea but it's just different than on here. I have posted things from my blog on Pinterest by adding the URL of the particular post. It's just such a really fun thing. One fun thing you can do is add a Pin It button to your favorites bar so that when you are on a sight and you find something you like you can just click on that Pin It button and it automatically Pins it to your board. So fun and easy!! I know that this would be absolutely perfect for so many of you, especially my friend, Tara B.!!! It's really just perfect for anyone who loves blogging or finding ideas on the internet for fun, cute, yummy things to make. So, anyhoo, just give it a try! I know you won't regret it!!!

Manners...

2012-01-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

~Last night was so much fun! We had a combined young men/young women activity. It was about etiquette, which sounded pretty dull, but Sister Radley made it a LOT of fun!!! She had a panel of 4 adults who answered the questions she compiled. The questions were really fun and some were serious but the panel of adults were all really fun, silly people that made it so much fun. I asked her for a copy of the questions she asked, so if/when she gives it to me I'll post it on here. Each person chose 10 pieces of candy to put in a little cup. Sis. Radley brought Hot Tamales, Mike-n-Ikes, Junior Mints, and Dots to choose from. After the Q&A session we ate some different kinds of foods and we all had to use the good etiquette we had just learned. We weren't allowed to use our fingers to pick up anything. We had to use our utensils. The first course was grapes. Then came Wingers french fries and boneless sticky fingers. Then came a little spaghetti with spaghetti sauce. At some point there was a roll and red punch. And then for dessert we had the choice of a red velvet cupcake or a carrot cake cupcake. If anyone got caught using bad manners or just not following the "rules", like not touching your food with your fingers, or putting your elbows on the table, they had to eat a piece of candy from their cup. The people who had the most candy in their cup at the end got to choose from several different large boxes of candy as their prize. It was one of the funnest activities we have ever had!!! It was nice to learn good manners in such a fun way. I hope the kids all listened really well because they will all need to know this at some point in their lives. Most of the things she talked about were food related but at the end of the Q&A she threw in some cell phone etiquette, which I thought was wonderful!! I think we might just have to do this with our little family just for fun some night.

~I just have to share this Max story. He attended Munchkin Manor Preschool for 2 years. One day he used good manners, I don't remember if he said thank you or please or something and I said, "Good job for using such great MANNERS Max!" He said, "That's because I go to Munchkin MANOR Preschool." :-)

Grooming, My Birthday, and Silly Max

2012-01-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

My birthday was Friday the 13th this year. I hate when that happens! It was a great day though! My awesome friends, Mysti and Tamra brought me a chocolate cake in a nice. clear glass cake pedestal with a cover. And they brought me basket with movies, a throw, candy, popcorn, and my survival juice...Cherry Coke!!! And they stayed and ate some cake with me and visited. I just love them! I've been so busy lately that I haven't had a lot of time to spend with them so it was especially nice to hang with them! Brian had started making me a fabulous Coconut Cream Cake, that's to die for, when they came. So, I had 2 of my favorite cakes! Brian let me pick out some clothes at Maurices. I love them and it makes me feel good knowing I have some cute things to wear. I have such a desire to have cute clothes but no funds! :) So I got clothes for Christmas AND my birthday. I actually have 3 pairs of jeans I can wear without having my belly hang over the waist, as if I were a man because they are so low rise and they are a size smaller than I really need. My new ones aren't low rise which if fabulous! Anyway, it really was a wonderful day and I felt very spoiled! My Mom has been in Florida visiting my brother, Nathan and his cute little family, so she said she'll come here when she is back in town and I get to celebrate again! :) Usually I don't make a big deal about my birthday so this year has been especially fun! I've been kinda freaked about the fact that this is my last year of my 30's. Yeah, I'm 39! WoW!!! Where HAS the time gone?!?!? I'm going to try to make year 39 a great one!

~Yesterday, Max played at his friend, Gabe's, house. They invited him to stay for dinner. After I picked him up I asked him what they ate. He said it was lasagna. I asked him if he liked it. To which he responded, "It was good. She doesn't make it like you make it, with all the white stuff in it. It only had a little bit of the white stuff in it so it didn't make me want to puke." I am so grateful for my Max! He keeps us laughing, even when we are sad! I just love him so much!

~So, I can't remember if I ever told more about our dog situation. I was so embarrassed that I didn't dare talk about it. We had a dog named Tex. He was such a cute dog. And we all loved him. We only had him for a few days, however, because we were all allergic to him. The day we decided we needed to let him go, Zack had hives all over him. So, then we ended up with Lucy. Lucy we a cute little puppy. Max especially loved her. His brothers were in school and he wanted a little companion. Unfortunately, she liked to bite everyone. We had to put her on a cable leash thing out front where she could freely run up and down the full yard but she couldn't bite people when they came to visit. She bit almost all of us. We tried every googleable solution we could possibly find to try and nothing worked. One day she bit me twice and drew blood on my leg. That was the final straw. I didn't want her to attack my kids so we had to let her go also. So we finally ended up with Yager. He is a Miniature Schnauzer. He was 2 1/2 years old. His family was too busy to spend the time with him that he needed so we found him on KSL.com and met his owner and got the cute little guy. He is so much fun and we all love him. Since he was older I could ask important questions like, does he bite, chew things up, bark constantly, is he potty trained. He was been a perfect fit for our family. We didn't have him groomed the last few months because the poor guy shivered and shook all last winter. I couldn't take it anymore though and tried my hand at dog grooming last night. He looks so much cuter when he looks like a Mini Schnauzer instead of like Benji! If you don't look closely, he looks really good. ;)

A recipe, etc.

2012-01-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

~Last year all of our YW classes met together for all activities. This year our Beehive class is going to do an activity each month on our own so that the girls can do some of the things the other girls have already done. A lot of the older girls have earned their Medalians already or are really close to finishing so the girls in Beehives need some activities that are focused on the value project. So last night at YW we Beehives planned our year of activities and had brownies. The Mia Maids and Laurels made cake pops. If you have never made cake pops before, they, are, delicious!!! I had the one that was made with red velvet cake. You bake a cake and crumble up the cake after it cools. Then you add either cool whip or a cup of canned or homemade frosting to the crumbles. Mix well and then form into balls. Put a sucker stick in the top of the ball. Place them on a cookie sheet and put the cookie sheet in the freezer for a few minutes to help them firm up. Then you take them out and dip them in either melted white almond bark or brown almond bark. I'm sure melted chocolate chips would also work. I especially love milk chocolate chips and butterscotch chips melted together and I'm sure that would be DIVINE! The one I ate had the cool whip mixed with the crumbles. I think they just used a cup of cool whip but they may have used a bit more. Then they dipped them in the white almond bark. They were so creamy and delicious! It would be so cute to put some red food coloring in some of the almond bark and drizzle over the white dipped balls for Valentine's Day. You could do them for any occasion! I'm so excited to try making them and have my kids help out. They LOVE having food making projects! Give them a try. They are delicious, easy, and oh, so pretty! I wish I'd have thought to take a picture. :)
~So I'm trying to figure out how my children do so well in school, they are so smart, they amaze me all the time, yet...they can't figure out how to throw things IN the garbage can, or how to put their dirty clothes in the laundry room.
~Our wonderful bishop, Bishop Manley passed away Tuesday morning. He has been battling Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and Leukemia. I didn't get to know him as well as others I'm sure, but it was a wonderful thing to get to see him interacting with the youth of our ward. He LOVED them so very much and tried so hard to be a part of their lives. Their favorite time spent with him was when they did an over night Book of Mormon Read-a-thon at our church house. The best part was having him answer questions they had as they read. I wasn't in the program yet but they still talk about it all of the time. He has been a wonderful influence in their lives and such a wonderful example of faith, strength, enduring to the end, enduring it well, trusting the Lord. He has had the very best attitude I have ever seen in someone in this position. What an inspiration to us all! I loved the fact that he ADORES his wife so much! They are so cute together! I hope Brian and I can have that kind of love for each other when we've been married that long. I'm so sad to see such an amazing man leave this life, but I am so happy to know that he's not going through a physical HELL any longer. That he is free of pain and suffering. That he is being welcomed by so many loved ones on the other side. I know with all of my heart that Our Heavenly Father and our Savior, Jesus Christ are truly "well pleased" with this out standing man! I just pray that his sweet wife and children and grand children can find comfort as they try to live without him until they all can meet him again. :( If any of you know him or are interested in seeing his obituary click on this.

Not your average chore chart!

2012-01-08T19:03:00.001-07:00

So, after my little venting post earlier today, I decided I needed to make something. When I make something, it makes me feel happy. A few years ago when we lived in Pleasant Grove, I ordered 2 magnety board things for a Relief Society Super Saturday project. I made the one that was the Family Home Evening one but I never did anything with the other one. I've wanted a chore chart for my kids for some time now but I am really not a fan of most of the chore charts where they do the same chore everyday. I've tried other ways but I'm just so inconsistent. My friend, Mysti, has a dry erase board and she just puts everyone's name on it and writes what chores they need to do that day. A much better idea if you ask me! So I made over my little board. I'll just write the chores with a dry erase marker each day. I just used letter sticker that I ordered from QVC several years ago instead of my Cricket because I need a new mat thing, some vinyl, and possibly a new blade. Other than that it's totally great! ;) Anyhoo, it was already painted black. I Mod Podged the paper on and then just glued chip board letters (also from QVC). I decided it would be nice to have some positive messages on it to encourage them to do their work (once again, they are letter stickers from QVC). If you've never Mod Podged before, try it! It's so great you'll want to start Mod Podging EVERYTHING! It's kind of pricey but it lasts and lasts! I just got it at Walmart. I have used it and used it and I've let my friends use it and there is still like half a bottle. Just get a foam brush or a paint brush and brush it on fairly thick. If you do it too thick it will dry strangely but if you do it too thin the paper won't stick because it just dries so fast. Really watch for running or globs. Those dry so ugly so be sure to clean those up. Basically, I just painted on the Mod Podge, then put the paper on and made sure I pressed it down all over and tried to make sure there were no bubbles. Then I just put another layer of Mod Podge over the top of the paper, cleaned up the runny spots and globs, then I put a thin layer of Mod Podge on all of the exposed wood because I have the glossy kind and it looks best if you put a layer of it all over the wood so it all looks the same. It was SOOOO easy! Anyway, I'm so excited to start writing chores down for my kids tomorrow!!!

Just a little venting... :)

2012-01-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

~Well, Christmas is finally over at our house. Brian got tired of waiting for me to have time to take it all down so he decided to do it himself on Friday. We still have our Christmas lights on the house and fence but other than that it's finally all put away. I have mixed feelings about it actually. We got a real tree from Sam's Club this year. It.was.gorgeous! And our decorations looked so pretty on it. After it was decoration free it STILL looked gorgeous! The needles weren't even dried out or anything. Usually they are brittle by now. We had such a lovely Christmas this year! Kind of sad it's over! When Max was 3 years old, we were driving down the road and he asked, "Mom, can we go to Christmas?" I thought it was so cute that he loved Christmas so much!

~Brian's lack of employment is totally freaking me out now! I was cool with it at first because he had the severence package and will receive pay checks through February 1st. Well, in the beginning I was super busy and we had a little time to look for work so I wasn't too upset. Now that he only gets one more paycheck, I'm having a heart attack! One of my favorite parts of my job is that I get to see people I know, all the time. There are so many members of our church where we live that there have to be 11 different sessions in 5 different buildings. Each session called a ward and each ward has a number, so that we can keep track easier. Well, my parents ward was the 8th ward and it has been really fun to see some of the people I love who are in that ward. And the people from our current ward that we just LoVe! I've been able to see some of my friends from high school also. And a friend I made while attending the college here when Matthew was 3 months old and Zack was 3 years old. Her name is Kelly. She is an AMAZING woman! I just love her! I was SOOO thrilled to see her and it made me so happy that she was as happy to see me as I was to see her! I think of her as a "kindred spirit"! I've met a few "kindred spirits" over the years and they continue to bless my life today! The only problem with working at Walmart, and seeing so many people that I know, is that most of them are so awesome and concerned about us that they ask if Brian has found a job yet. He's applied in outher states and for jobs that aren't Accounting related. He just wants ANYTHING! I appreciate the concern and the love they have for us but hearing that all of the time is starting to really weigh me down. I'm already starting to get depressed about it and then to have constant reminders is just really hard. I need to pray harder that we'll be able to have joy in our trial because that has worked for us in the past and I really need that strength if I'm going to make it through this! I know it could be worse. People are mourning loved ones, watching their loved ones suffer through cancer, chemo, and other horrid diseases. Our trial pales in comparison! I just really worry about having to move our kids from school, the town we live in, their friends, our ward. We need to be able to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for our our 4 children. It's just so scary and overwhelming for me that I just can't take it! Not to mention how very much I hate the whole process of moving!!! The packing. The cleaning. the loading. The unloading. The unpacking. The sorting. The collecting boxes. The switching utilities. All of the deposits. The paperwork involved in registering 3 kids at their new school. I know, I'm so lazy, right! But U~G~H!!!!!

~I'll try to be more positive next post! :) Just needed to vent a little...

WOW! Long time, no post, huh!?!

2012-01-06T09:49:00.003-07:00

I can't believe how long it has been since I last posted on here! Our life has been pretty hectic, to say the least. I worked quite a bit during December. Probably not nearly as much as most people I know, but a lot for me anyway. I have been so happy that Brian has been able to take care of our little Gracie but it makes me so sad to be away from her. Wednesday I helped my friend out with her preschool for 4 hours and then I did my Hallmark job for 2 hours. Brian said that at one point Gracie went to him and said that she was sad because I was gone. I miss just snuggling in the rocking chair in our p.j.'s in the morning while she watches Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. This time is slipping away so quickly and I just hate missing any of it. I've missed being home some days when my boys get off of the bus. Last week I worked 19 hours and this week I'll only work 4 1/2 hours. I guess the hours really calm down during January. I'm glad! It is still a fun little job that I really like and the money really helped us out. I am just so looking forward to a bit of a break and to be able to spend more time at home!

~We had a great Christmas! At my family Christmas party, we were able to visit with Nathan's cute little family by using Skype. It was so much fun to see them! We all miss them a lot! It was especially fun to see his new little baby boy, Thomas, who was born in October!

~We stayed home for Christmas. Traveling with our kids on Christmas is just not easy, not fun, and really not worth it! We had a nice quiet day. Our friend's, Mysti and Randy, invited us over to their house for dinner. We decided we would all still make our Christmas dinner to share and we would be able to spend time together to help make our day feel less lonely. Mysti made Roast and potatoes and carrots, and a veggie, and dessert. Brian made ham, yummy potatoes (otherwise known as funeral potatoes), and rolls. It was a delicious meal and everything just worked out great! AND, bonus, I got to hold Mysti's baby boy, Landon, who was born on ll/11/11 at 11:01! I just had to throw in his birth date cuz it's so cool! He is such a cute little guy!

~My Max made our Christmas extra special! He's 5 now, and turns 6 at the end of January. A lot of you will remember the many stories of my Max's craziness since he is definitely my craziest child, so you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when my "crazy" little boy was the one who kept our focus on our Savior, Jesus Christ. At church, they learned the song "Samuel Tells of the Birth of Jesus" for the Ward Christmas Program during Sacrament Meeting on Christmas Sunday. For weeks we heard this song practiced over, and over, and over again. Even when he played the Wii! That's HUGE! Even on Christmas Eve when most kids are singing about Santa Claus and his reindeer, our Max was singing about Jesus. Here are the words...

Said Samuel, "Within 5 years, a night will be as day, and Baby Jesus will be born in a land far, far away." Hosanna! Hosanna! Oh let us gladly sing. How blessed that our Lord was born. Let earth receive her King!
Across the sea, in Bethlehem, Lord Jesus came to earth, as Samuel had prophesied. The angels sang His birth. Hosanna! Hosanna! Oh let us gladly sing. How blessed that our Lord was born. Let earth receive her King!

What a wonderful song to hear over and over again! What a blessing it is to have Primary for our little children. To have wonderful teachers and choristers and Presidency members help us teach our children the principals of the Gospel. Our entire family was blessed to have the words of this song ingrained in our heads. We needed that! And it NEVER got old!

~Some of you will remember the posts I made last year about our Christmas Jar. (each of those 2 words goes to different posts about the Christmas Jar) Well, on Christmas Eve, Max found a couple of scriptures he wanted to read in addition to the one we would take out of the jar that night. I just thought that was wonderful! He just really surprised me with his focus on our Savior. I can't even express how happy that made me feel!

~I'm trying so hard to potty train Gracie. If we weren't already, for sure, done having more children, THIS would have totally made me decide to stop! I HATE potty training. I seriously think I have A,D.H.D or something. It is so hard for me to just take a whole day and focus my efforts on potty training. She tries so hard to go. She really does. She sits on the toilet and tries and tries but she just can't let it out. I know that if she would just be able to do it once she'd totally be fine but she just can't. Any suggestions would be really great! Heaven help me! If only there was potty training camp or potty training school that I could send her to....

~I shared this on facebook the other day. I absolutely LOVE her voice! I have also always really liked him and had no idea he could sing too. It's kind of fun!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcrd5vpUGyk&feature=related

~Oh and one more thing. We played the game called LOGO at my sister's on New Year's Eve. It was so much fun!!! I hope everyone has a wonderful 2012!!

Just Some Silliness...and a Trumpet

2011-12-14T07:08:00.004-07:00

~Last night we attended Zack's first band concert. He plays the trumpet. He's in the sixth grade so this is his first year to play an instrument in a band. We waited in the auditorium for 45 minutes waiting for the concert to begin. That's a long time for an 8 year old, a 5 year old, a 2 year old, 2 grown people to wait for...anything! At one point Max's gum fell out of his mouth went right between the back of the chair of the woman in front of him and the woman's back. I about DIED!!! I had to tell her! What if it was sticking to her pretty sweater?! Thankfully she was really nice about it AND it didn't stick to her but fell to the floor. Max did not get another piece of gum!!! Well, the band finally started their concert. They played 4 songs. They did a great job...except one poor student that couldn't hit a single note right on their clarinet and always played an extra note when everyone else had stopped. The first 3 songs went so well! Unfortunately they did not stop while they were ahead and played ANOTHER song! It was very....entertaining. But bless their hearts they really tried, and Zack did a wonderful job of starting when he should, ending when he should, watching the band director's cues. The best part of the whole night, though, was that all 4 songs took about 8 minutes from start to finish. It was awesome!!! After the concert we decided to surprise the kids with some Little Caesar's Pizza. I can't remember the last time we did that. Of course, we had to watch the Biggest Loser season finale...after eating pizza! There is something really wrong with that!

Gracie says that Santa says Har! Har! Har! Cracks us up! When the boys heard that, they tried to correct her but she just still always says that Santa says Har! Har! Har! She also likes to drop the first letter off of words. Makes understanding her a bit difficult sometimes but it's awfully cute! Oothbrush-toothbrush, andy-candy, ood-food, Anta-Santa. Sometimes she just uses the wrong letter at the beginning of a word. For instance, she calls Zack's friend Tanner-Nanner, and mink-drink, nammies-jammies, Yack-Zack, Yacky-Zacky. She also says Grandpa for GrandMa and for Grandpa. That gets confusing! We love her 2 year-old speak! She is so much fun! She's in the 95th %-tile for height though, so people often expect her to act much differently. She won't be 3 until May but people already think she should be potty trained. She probably should but I can't get her to actually GO when she's on the potty. I think if she can finally figure out what she's supposed to do when I put her on there, she might actually just keep doing it and life will be good. She tries. Any suggestions???

A few months ago we discovered that we LOVE the show, The Big Bang Theory. We watch the reruns at 10:00 most nights. Last night's episode was SO hilarious!!! I just have to share cause laughing is so much fun!!! If you don't know the premise of the show, they are all Geniuses (except Wolowitz of course, because he only has a Master's Degree HEHE). They are all a bit backwards but Sheldon is just totally socially inept it's ridiculous. He's always very serious and analyzes EVERYTHING. And he's a major germaphobe. Anyhoo, I hope you laugh!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqwPp--hy-c

Getting ready for Christmas...

2011-12-10T16:41:00.000-07:00

Our kids wrote their letters to Santa last night. Max's list (he's 5): A skateboard ramp, a green bike, a trampoline, $2,000,000, a Green (Grim) Reaper costume with a mask, a blue bike, or all of the Wii games ever made. At least he's keeping it simple and he's well grounded....UGH!!!

We took some snapshots for our Christmas card. Warning:
Scary woman in following pictures...I look very freaky and fat but I'm sharing them with you anyway...

Our cute little children...

Me and Brian...I think this will be my "before" shot and hopefully by next December I'll have a nice "after" shot to put on here. :( I hate being fat!!!

Zacky T

Matty Watty

Maxer Waxers

Miss Gracie Sue

We had a lot of pictures that looked like this...

I survived Black Thursday/Friday at Walmart...

2011-11-25T07:58:00.001-07:00

Well, Brian survived his first "Black Thursday/Friday experience. We went to Walmart in Payson. It was CRAZY! I've never seen anything like it and I've been going to these for years now. One chick's hand was bleeding from fighting someone over something. Not a fan of bumper carts! Had to ditch the cart to try to get through and I still couldn't get through. I thought I was going to have to punch a couple looney cart chicks when I still had the cart. My sister, KayTee would have totally mopped the floor with them! We were so excited though because we were able to get one of the $99 4-wheelers for Max. He will be over the moon excited! We were also able to get Matthew a pogo stick for $12 and 3 Barbies that were $5 each for Gracie and we were also able to find a Harry Potter Lego Wii game for $15 that my mom wanted us to pick up for her. There were lots of other things we wanted to get but they will have to wait until after Brian's payday. :) The lines seemed to be moving pretty well to check out so that was nice! I would much rather stay up later than get up at 4 a.m.! Unfortunately, so would everyone else! We were able to save about $150.00 and as cheap as we are and as much as we love a good bargain, it was totally worth it!. Fun times! Fun times!

We had such a nice Thanksgiving! The food was delicious, the company was wonderful, making gingerbread houses was so much fun, and the Black Thursday/Friday sale was very productive. We missed Rob, Jenise, Dana, Richard, Nathan, Heidi and everyone's adorable little children and grandchildren!!! I love Thanksgiving! It is such a wonderful time to reflect on all of the wonderful blessings we have! I hope everyone I know had a wonderful day as well! Later today my mom and sisters and I will go to the craft sale in Spanish Fork. Oh, I just love this time of year!!!

2011-11-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

Today I am thankful for Brian, Zackary, Matthew, Max, and Gracie, my family and wonderful friends, my doctor, medicine that makes my trigeminal neuralgia mostly under control, my church, the gospel of Jesus Christ, our prophet, President Monson, Joseph Smith, missionaries, the young women in our ward, answers to prayers, my little no stress job that helps us make ends meet better and that doesn't interfere with my little family (most of the time. It wouldn't ever but since Brian's home I've been leaving when he can watch the kids and poor Gracie has had it with that, so I'll have to start going at night again, which is totally fine), a house to live in, food to eat, cars to drive, clothes to wear, freedom, living in a free country is a beautiful thing, our military and their families who sacrifice so much and do so much for us so we can all be safe. Our old bishop is losing his fight with cancer. He is a very wonderful man and we all just love him and his wife so much! We are heart broken for them and their family. They have wonderful attitudes! They are wonderful examples to us of faith and strength!

I am so thankful for Thanksgiving so we can all take time to think of all of the blessings we have. Sure, life isn't perfect and we have our share of problems and challenges and stresses and worries but we are so blessed in so many ways! What a wonderful, positive holiday this is! I just love it that most of the people in our country are united in gratitude on this day special day. It's just neat!

Time Out For Women

2011-11-14T21:53:00.000-07:00

So Friday my mom, 2 of my sisters, Stephanie and Katie, and I drove to St. George for Time Out For Women. None of us had ever been to it before but we were all anxious for the experience. We weren't quite sure what to expect but we were sure it would be fun. It was wonderful! The presenters for Friday night were Jason Wright, Jenny Oaks Baker, and Heidi Swinton. Jason Wright wrote Christmas Jars. Jenny Oaks Baker is a professional violinist. She is absolutely incredible! So talented! I never knew a violin could sound like that. I never knew you could do things like that with a violin. Incredible! I hope she does a concert some day so I can hear her again. Heidi Swinton wrote President Monson's Biography. She told us some very neat stories. What a neat lady. How exciting to have the
Prophet call and request that she write his biography!

Saturday Hilary Weeks was the musical presenter. Mariama Kallon was the first presenter. She was raised in Sierra Leone. She saw her parents murdered by rebels. She and all the other women and girls in her town were raped. Then they lined them all up and made them choose whether they wanted to have their arms cut off with machetes or their legs cut off. Her sister was in the front of the line and had he arms cut off and bled to death. Mariama was 10th in line. She prayed to Heavenly Father and said I know that you can help us...PLEASE help us!!! Right then the military guys rolled into town and the rebels left. They got there just after the 8th woman had been tortured. So Mariama was spared. She was given a humanitarian kit from our church. At some point she was taught the gospel and was baptized and was called to the Salt Lake City Temple Square Mission. She has THE.MOST.AMAZING.FAITH! I can't get over her strength and forgiving heart. A truly, TRULY amazing woman!!
Then Hilary Weeks sang. She is so hilarious! She was crackin' us all up! She would talk for a while and then sing a song or two. Love her! She's awesome!!!
After a break Deanne Flynn spoke. She wrote The Time-Starved Family: Helping Overloaded Families, Focus on What Matters Most and The Mother's Mite: Why Even Our Smallest Efforts Matter. She has such a positive attitude. She's funny, down to earth, and inspiring!
Then Brad Wilcox spoke. He has written some books also. I'll Never Do It Again and The Continuous Atonement. He recently served as Mission President of the Santiago East Mission and he currently serves as a member of the Sunday School general board. He was a great speaker also.
After lunch break Hilary Weeks spoke and sang (is that the right word? Is it a word? I'm tired!)another song or two.
Then Wendy Ulrich spoke. She is a therapist. She wrote some book also. Forgiving Ourselves. Weakness Is Not Sin. The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win. She gave such an uplifting talk. She was funny and really had some great advice for us.
Then after a final break Hilary Weeks sung Is that any better? Still not so sure) another song.
Emily Freeman was that last presenter. She Wrote a couple of books, too. Love Life and See Good Days. 21 Days Closer to Christ. She did a fantastic job! I was taking some notes from all the other talks but when she spoke I was so mesmerized by her talk that I didn't remember to take notes. She is one talented and inspiring speaker!!! We stayed the night there again and then drove home Sunday. We had a great time and it was so much fun to talk and laugh and cry and eat yummy food. We are already talking about what our plan for next year is going to be.
Me, Mom, Stephanie Katie.

Randomness and some venting :)

2011-11-10T10:59:00.000-07:00

~So for some reason this morning I remembered something that has made me laugh ever since I remembered it. My older sister Dana is about 2 1/2 years older than I am. Stan used to drive us to school on his way to the college he taught at there in Dodge City, Kansas. He would drop Dana off at the high school and then take me to the junior high. On one particular morning Dana was just having a bad day. Nothing was going right as she was getting ready for school. So she was in a very bad mood!!! (we've all been there. especially when we were teenagers in high school LOL) The last straw for her was that her jeans were still pretty wet in the dryer. Oooo that just burned her up!! When we got to the high school she got out of the car and stomped off to school. It happened to be really cold that day. So there she was, all fired up, walking to the school, with steam rolling off of her pants. Stan and I laughed so hard! It was hilarious! I keep picturing it and it just makes me giggle. I can't help myself!

~The college has been firing people left and right. They repeatedly promised when they merged with our college that NO ONE would lose their jobs. Bunch of liars! When they fired Brian they were going to keep him there until January but changed their minds and told him to go October 31st. And they offered him severance of pay and benefits. I "get" why they would want to save money by giving the responsibilities from this college to the people that already have those responsibilities at their college. I mean, it's logical. I can wrap my mind around it and understand and realize it's just good business. What I just don't "get", what just infuriates me is that they fired 18 people last Friday. Basically they aren't getting rid of the positions. They even added 2 positions to what they need filled. So 20 positions need to be filled. But they told them that most of the positions will have lower pay. Some even have $15,000 less pay. They all have to reapply and re- interview for the positions they had before. Some of the positions can only be filled by people with Master's Degrees. The part that makes me the maddest is that they did this to Kathy. EVERYONE loves Kathy! She is the creator of the program she runs. She has been the director of it from the moment of it's creation. She does amazing things. She is a wonderful person and has overcome a lot of trials in her life with a smile on her face and a positive attitude. She is an example and an inspiration to everyone who knows her!!! They fired her and demoted her to supervisor instead of director. They are just dirty! You know, just down right dirty! How could anyone do that to KATHY!!! Oh I'm just so MAD!!! I don't know what her decision is going to be with it all but I know she is a strong, wonderful person and she will survive this and continue being a wonderful person but it just breaks my heart to think of people being so rotten to her!!!

~I love music! I have chosen some songs to play on my blog and I just love to turn it on random play and play it while I clean and do dishes. A few weeks ago I was listening to my blog music and I realized that one of the songs had the "f" word in it. I about died! Sorry if you happened to hear that! I didn't mean it! Really!

~I am such a bawl baby! I have been stocking those recordable story books that Hallmark makes. I think they are very cute and a wonderful idea. The other day I saw the Hallmark commercial for these books. It had a man in the military sitting on his bed and he opens up the book and hears his voice of his sweet little child reading the book. Of course I thought of my brother in law who just got home from his 3rd or 4th tour of duty in Iraq. I pictured his cute little granddaughter sending one to him and him opening it and hearing her cute little voice. Yeah, I cried! I got all teary just describing it just now. Hallmark commercials always make me cry...

~I know everyone thinks it's terrible that the stores put Christmas stuff out so early but it is really getting me excited for Christmas this year. I love walking into Walmart

~I am starting to like our house more and more all the time. It's amazing to me what a difference having beds for my kids, a couch that doesn't show dirt, a table and chairs that aren't broken, shelves for organizing stuff, shelves for displaying my cute stuff and for organizing movies and books, makes in my life. It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I am surprisingly happy even though Brian is out of work. I love my kids so much! They are such a precious gift! I am grateful for my husband! I love him and I am actually glad he's home more now! I am so grateful for the gospel in my life. For forgiveness and repentance. For families being able to be together forever. For spiritual music. For the opportunity I have to go tomorrow with 2 of my sisters and my mom to Time Out For Women in St. George. I haven't ever been so I'm anxious to so what it's like. I am thankful to have a roof over our heads. I am thankful to have a fun little job to supplement our income. I am just so happy to be alive and to feel no pain and to know all of the wonderful people I know. For my friends! For a wonderful ward! I my calling in young women. These girls are just amazing!!! So grateful for a living prophet, President Monson. For missionary work. Brian and I have benefited so much from the wonderful missionaries who taught our parents the gospel. Life certainly isn't perfect. Far from it actually. But I am happy that I still feel happy! Prayer, a loving Heavenly Father, a selfless, Savior Jesus Christ, the comfort and companionship of the Holy Ghost are the greatest blessings in this life!

~

Job security everywhere I turn...

2011-11-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

Well, today I spent nearly 5 hours at Walmart straightening cards, wrapping paper, gift bags, party supplies. I also put the 4 boxes of shipment away for Hallmark.When I left it looked GOOD! I had to go back to buy something tonight and the whole thing looked like a bomb went off. I know it's no different than cleaning at home and having the kids go behind me messing everything I accomplished. Still, annoying!!! It's been nice to have Brian home. He watches our little Gracie while I'm at work. Last week I was gone a lot. I just wouldn't have been able to work last week if he hadn't been here to take care of my sweet little girl! She is so much fun! I just love her so much!

Here we go again...

2011-11-03T15:30:00.000-06:00

Brian's last day at his job was Halloween. He's been applying places and had an interview, but hasn't found another job yet. When he lost his job before Gracie was born, he didn't have any warning or money and it freaked us out so much. We were truly blessed during that time and we were able to still have the things we needed. I just don't know if I have the strength and patience level and faith to endure this again. I know I don't have a choice because it is what it is and there isn't anything we can do to change it but it's just hard and life is just hard, isn't it. And yes, I know it could be worse. Much, much worse. But it's still hard...for me anyway. Maybe it wouldn't be for other people, I don't know. Anyhoo. I haven't posted for a long time so I just thought I'd just share what's been going on with us. I'm working a lot at Walmart/Hallmark. We've been tearing down the Halloween stuff and putting up Christmas stuff. It's been a lot of fun. We needed the money. And Brian's been home so he can watch Gracie. It's been nice to not have so much time to think about everything. Next week we'll be back to fewer hours but for now I'll just enjoy it while it lasts.

Just call the WAAAAmbulance...

2011-10-17T08:39:00.000-06:00

We've got a whiner here!

In November it will have been a year since I was finally diagnosed with Trigeminal Neuralgia. It took quite a few months to get my medicine right but now that it is right I am virtually pain free. I only have occasional pain. I can bend over to pick Gracie up or stuff off the floor just fine now. That alone is such an amazing difference and has made life a lot easier I must say! I just really really hate being on medication. I really do! I'm so weird. Loopy. Forgetful. Tired. I have to take Pepcid because my medications make me have horrible heart burn. I just hate having to deal with it. Yesterday at church I was embarrassingly weird. It was SOOO hot in the building and I had only eaten cereal at like 8:00 and by the time Sunday School rolled around I was really shaky and feeling really weird. So when it was my turn to read I sounded like a kindergartner trying to read. It was very choppy and strange. Then after Sunday School the ladies had to walk past me to go to Relief Society and these ladies that I am friends with wouldn't even make eye contact with me. I think they didn't know how to act. I actually take unrighteous pride in the way I read the scriptures and the comfort I have developed when reading scriptures. Not many months ago I was really upset to read in front of people but I finally felt comfortable doing it and then I humiliated myself in front of the whole ward by reading them so strangely yesterday. At Matthew's baptism I embarrassed myself by thinking that Stan was supposed to do the talk on the Holy Ghost instead of baptism and I said it loudly in front of everyone there. So embarrassed!!! There was something else like that that happened that weekend but I can't remember what it was. I'm not on pain medications since they don't affect the nerve. I'm on Lyrica and Amitriptyline. They are both used for lots of different ailments but they work to treat the nerve. It's so hard! My choices are: Be in excruciating, horrendous, searing pain all the time, OR be pain free due to medication that makes me really weird all the time. Well, you know, weirder than normal! :) I'm trying to be positive about Brian's job ending in January but I'm totally freaking out. Stress is a trigger for pain from the TN. I just hope and pray that he'll find some work before the job ends. I am really grateful that he has a little time before the job ends! HUGE BLESSING! I just worry so much because I know that the job market really sucks right now! I am trying to have faith that it will all be ok. We had a really fun weekend which was great! We went to our neighbor's baptism, we went to our friend's little girl's super fun birthday party and BBQ. And we went to the ward soup and bread fall social. It was great too! Yummy soups and fabulous homemade bread and rolls, and banana splits for dessert. That is one of our family's favorite activity for the whole year! Sunday was so relaxed and calm that I just had too much time to think about things after church. NOT a good thing! Today I just need to get super busy again so I don't have time to think. I worked twice this weekend doing my little Hallmark job. I LOVE IT! I went Friday and Saturday nights at 8:30pm and got home at I don't remember what time on Friday but midnight on Saturday. It's entertaining to see all the people at Walmart that time of night! I'm going to end this post with a picture because there needs to be something positive on here! Sorry I'm such a downer today. Next time I'll be more positive I promise. Sometimes I just need to wallow in self pity and get it out of my system.

One day I walked into the living room and saw these 2 like this. Just snugglin' in the recliner. I just had to capture this sweet moment!

A very....interesting baptism...etc.

2011-10-12T12:59:00.002-06:00

Our sweet little Matthew was baptized Saturday. He has looked forward to being baptized ever since he saw Zack get baptized 3 years ago and has talked about it often. As his baptism date has drawn near he has talked about it even more. He had started talking about how excited he was to be baptized but how scared he was to actually be dunked under water. We've encouraged him and I told him that I was TERRIFIED to have my head under water when I was baptized, too. I told him that our Branch President even talked with me and told me that everything was going to be ok. My wonderful Grandma Irvine sent me a lovely letter of encouragement also. I just remember praying really hard that I wouldn't drown and being so thrilled that He actually answered my prayers and kept me from drowning. HAHA I thought that might help him but it didn't. He got more and more nervous as the week progressed. Poor kid!

Well, the big day came. There was a little girl from another ward named Jessica who also was being baptized. When the talks finished the Bishop who was conducting said that they would like to have Matthew baptized first and then Jessica. Well, Matthew freaked! He did NOT want to go first! I was rather embarrassed and explained that Matthew was very nervous about having his head dunked under the water and wondered if she could go first. That's when SHE freaked out TOO! Her mom said she was scared too. It was seriously the craziest thing we all had ever seen! They both were weeping and wailing and yes there was some gnashing of teeth! They both were baptized...eventually. LOL! Some of us joked that we wished we could take video of it so we could show it at Matthew's wedding reception. LOL! It was definitely crazy! Now he says that being baptized was so awesome that he wishes he could do it again and that he can't wait until he's 12 and can go to the temple and do baptisms.

Interestingly enough, though, the spirit was very strong. Especially when Brian confirmed him. I'm thankful that Zack & Matthew have been blessed with that companionship. I am grateful that Brian holds and honors his Priesthood. What a beautiful thing! We felt the spirit throughout the rest of the day. It was like we just felt we needed to be reverent. I had to run to the store for my prescription and I hated going because it felt like I was breaking the Sabbath or something.

The luncheon afterwards was nice. Yummy food and spending time with family. I love baptism days! They are just joyful! I am so grateful for the gospel. I am so grateful for the joy that fills our lives as we strive to live righteously. We are FAR FROM perfect but Heavenly Father blesses us for our efforts and I am truly grateful for Him and the blessings He gives us.

~Brian was told at the very end of last month that his job will be terminated in January. They just simply have enough people in Logan at USU that do the work that Brian does here that they are going to give them the work from USU-CEU and terminate that position here. We are so worried and Brian is hoping that he'll be able to find something. It was nice to have Matthew's baptism to bring some joy to our lives since we've been pretty stressed out. If you hear of any Accounting jobs in your area please feel free to let me know. :) tarafree26@hotmail.com

~So my friend Nikki who was doing my hair in exchange of me babysitting her 2 awesome kids, moved away a couple months ago. She did hair but she also worked part time for Hallmark at Walmart and Smiths here. My friend Tamra worked with her. Well once Nikki moved they put Tamra in charge and they needed to hire someone else to work with her and they hired me! It's very part time and very flexible, which is what I need! So I started yesterday. It was SO much fun! I am really excited about the whole thing! There were about 9 of us yesterday working on a whole redo of the cards and displays and such. It was really fun working with those ladies and learning lots of new things. And those of you who know of my love for stationary, cards, and wrapping paper, and organizing, sorting, and filing, know that this is right up my alley!!! I'm just thrilled with the opportunity!

~So Brian had church meetings all morning Sunday. He usually helps me tons on Sundays so I was worried about making it to church on time when we are always late to church when I HAVE his help so I figured I didn't stand a chance on my own. I was really trying to stay on top of things. When we got to church I scanned the congregation for Brian and couldn't see him anywhere. So I looked at the congregation and I realized that none of these people looked remotely familiar. So I looked at the Bishopric and THEY were different too! So I checked my watch and it was 10:00. We were an hour EARLY!! Yes, I'm crazy! :~/

Matthew rockin' his 70's jumpsuit. He thought that big collar was totally groovy! :)

My hair looks like crap but I was there on time. :)

Matty with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa gave the best talk on Baptism. I cried like a baby when he talked about how 8 years ago we were all gathered together for Matthew's (and Jessica's family for her) baby blessing. The time is just slipping away... :(

Matty with Steph, J.J., Josh, & Emily. He's looks kinda like a little ragamuffin. He started undressing and I told him he had to take pictures before he could change his clothes. So his shirt is cockeyed, and his pants are twisted. But his cute little Jack-o-lantern smile makes the rest not matter!!! Grandma and Grandpa game him a suit and he was THRILLED to get to wear it for the first time on Sunday. He looked very handsome!!!

Matty with his cousins Jordan, Jeremy, and Marne. Jordan just came home from his mission a couple of months ago. We just love them!

Matty with Aunt KayTee. Uncle Chris had to work so he wasn't able to make it. We're so glad KayTee came!!!

Picture frame make over

2011-10-03T09:58:00.000-06:00

I bought this picture frame at D.I. a few weeks ago for $2. I was so excited to transform it into SOMETHING I just wasn't sure what. Well, I finally made it over this weekend. I think it turned out cute! At least Gracie's flowers are more organized.

BEFORE...

AFTER...

I think I can squish another row in but you get the gist of it.

Don't Mock the Fanny Pack!!!

2011-09-24T22:34:00.001-06:00

So, we took our little family to Disneyland. When we told our kids we were going they flipped out! Our Zack (he's 11) actually cried, he was so excited! We drove to St. George, Utah last Saturday and stayed in a hotel. Then drove the rest of the way Sunday. The kids were so anxious! Zack was seriously giddy as we rode in the bus over to Disneyland. We had so much fun! Zack and Max rode everything at least once. Matthew rode some stuff, then decided he doesn't like the feeling he gets in his tummy when the ride has ups and downs. After that we couldn't get him to try anything unless it was so tame that even Gracie could ride it. I am so proud of him though because he actually ended up trying most everything the last day or 2 that we were there. I know he was scared but at least he tried it! His most favorite ride was Star Tours. They have changed that ride and I like it so much better than I used to. Mainly because it didn't make me sick like it used to. Zack's favorites were Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Max's favorites were The Tower of Terror, Goofy's Sky School (basically the Wild Mouse), The Matterhorn, and Space Mountain. Apparently he's our biggest dare devil. Gracie's favorites were Winnie the Pooh and Buzz Lightyear. When she saw Minnie Mouse she gave her a big hug! It was simply adorable! Unfortunately our bag was stolen off of our stroller and it had the camera in it so we don't have that picture to share. The bag also had my cell phone, Matthew's Epi Pen, his inhaler, my cute little lipstick case Brian surprised me with a few weeks ago, my Clinique lipstick (my mom gets free makeup bags and makeup when she buys stuff at Macey's and she has given them to me a few times. The lipstick that was stolen was THE most perfect lipstick EVER!), my most favorite charcoal gray cardigan-ish thing that I got at Charlotte Russe and that I take EVERYWHERE, Gracie's cute little Minnie Mouse ears we had just bought for her at Disneyland that day. I usually wear a fanny pack when we go to Disneyland, with all of my most important things in it but Brian was making fun of me so I didn't. I caved to peer pressure. It may not be fashionable but certainly smarter and ultimately better!!! :) Basically that experience left me feeling stupid, violated, vulnerable, and scared. We figured people were watching the Tiki Room, waiting for someone they could rob. After that I was terrified that if there were people watching so they can steal from you then there could be people watching so they could steal kids. So then I was even more protective of them than I had been before. Other than that part of the trip, we all had a wonderful time! It was so wonderful to just spend time together as a family. It had been about 6 years since we had been on vacation so it was much needed and much appreciated!!! The kids handled the 10 hour drive there and 10 hours back better than we imagined. It was pretty touch and go a few times but for the most part they did well. The car looks HORRIBLE after spending 20 hours in our van. Nasty! We all loved the opportunity to spend so much time with Brian when he didn't have to work! We felt very grown up because it was the first time we've ever been on vacation with just our little family. I had a lot of guilt about going on vacation instead of putting that money in a savings account, until I saw pure joy written on each of my children's, and on Brian's faces when we were in Disneyland. Then, I made peace with our decision. It was priceless!!! I was telling one of my friends about my guilt over it and she said that sometimes you have to spend money to make memories. Her children are starting to leave the house and she has the perspective of a parent with children in their teens and one on a mission. Brian said, you know we only have about 7 years left to be able to take trips with just us and all of our children. Zack will be going on a mission, then comes college, and marriage. It makes me sad to think about how quickly my babies are all growing. It makes me really want to change my perspective. I've just been so wrapped up in trying to get from day to day, week to week, month to month that I forgot about the big picture. And so much time is just....gone. I want the next 7 years to be the most wonderful 7 years we can possibly imagine. I just want to savor this time. Every minute! Of all the things I don't want to look back on with regret, the very limited time I have to raise my children and spend precious time with them, building memories, is at the top of the list! What a blessing! What a gift! To be the mother of 4 fabulously amazing children...truly a gift!!!

I can't stand it when...

2011-09-15T09:48:00.000-06:00

*I can't stand it when my kids throw tantrums. OOHHH I just burns me up!
*I can't stand it when Gracie screams and freaks out every time I fix her hair!
*I can't stand it when my kids fight me about doing their homework!
*I can't stand it when my kids ask for a toy or treat or something EVERY time we go to a store!
*I can't stand it when my kids take their shoes off and spill sand all over the house!
*I can't stand it when my kids sass me! That really drives me up the wall!
*I can't stand it when Gracie and Max get food all over themselves when they eat! Seriously, you can give each of them 1 M&M...just 1...and they get it all over themselves!
*I can't stand it when my kids drink my can of Cherry Coke when I'm not looking and I come back for a drink and it's empty!
*I can't stand it when my kids dig in my purse and steal my gum or my pens!
*I can't stand it when my kids don't do what I ask them the first time I ask them in a super nice, lovely tone of voice so after the 3rd or 4th time I ask them I have to yell or talk in my very firm and not so lovely voice and THEN they do what I ask!
*I can't stand it when my kids don't put their shoes in their closets when they take them off and we have to frantically search the house looking for the missing shoes before school or church! Or they can't find their retainer or their backpack or their jacket!
*I can't stand it when my kids can't seem to find the garbage can EVER!!
*I ESPECIALLY can't stand the fact that they get all of this bad behavior from ME!!! Every time something like this occurs in our house I have a flashback to when I was a kid and I know that I absolutely, positively deserve to have to deal with every.single.bit of it! I am amazed that my mother is still sane!!! And I can testify that 'The Mother's Curse' really works!

What we've been up to lately...

2011-09-13T17:37:00.003-06:00

Holy smokes!!! I cannot believe how incredibly crazy my life has been for the last month!! I was so totally looking forward to school starting. I envisioned finally having a super clean house. Daily naps with my sweet little Gracie. Taking her to story time at the library. Being able to go visiting teaching. Having dinner on the table by 6:00 every night. Staying in my sweats or pjs all day long. And Bonbons...lots and lots of Bonbons!!!

BUT...

Life has only become BUSIER since school started. It's been fun though most of the time. Here are some of the highlights...

-We were finally able to get the kids some back to school clothes. We went up to Utah County the Saturday before Labor Day. It was a great day!

-I found a darling little full size, picket fence bed frame last year for Gracie at a yard sale for 10 bucks! It's painted pink. I'm thinking about painting it white. I don't know. A couple of weeks ago I found a full size headboard and foot board and frame at D.I. for $25. Max has been borrowing a bed of my parents for the past year. We decided to get Matty and Max bunk beds and since I found those bed frames for Zack and Gracie we needed to buy 2 full size mattresses and box springs. Max and Matty's room has been such a mess so it will really help to have bunks and free up so much room in there. And the nice thing is that they can be separate twin beds if we want them to be some day. The best part though was that Brian went online and found a set of bunk beds for $159 and a few days later Brian wanted to look at them before they came and they had upped the price to $219. I love it when we get a great deal when we buy stuff! Our poor table had had it too. My mom gave us her table when she got a new one like 5 or 6 years ago. We've moved like a zillion times since we got it from them. It was stored in a storage with all of our stuff and I accidentally fell and landed on one of the chairs and broke it while looking for something else. Another time I was looking for stuff I fell and landed on a leg of the table and it just couldn't handle the weight of my "fluffiness" and buckled under the immense pressure. :) Brian fixed it. Like 3 times. Aaaaand it broke again a few weeks ago when I was tying to move it over when I was vacuuming. Oh how I LoVe having carpet under the table!!! It's like a dream come true with 4 kids! ;) Anyhoo, we had been looking for a table for a long time but they all cost a fortune. I checked D.I. all the time for another table or chairs. We stopped by Sam's when we were up there and guess what we found...the most perfect table! It can be a square, and it has a built in leaf that folds out to a make the table rectangular and it comes with 8 chairs. And the price was great! So...I've been very busy trying to take out the old furniture and help put together the new furniture and reorganize the rooms. It's a great feeling to know that our kids have clothes and shoes to wear and their own beds to sleep in. I had some mixed emotions about getting rid of the crib and knowing that I will never need to use one again. But Gracie's room is very cute now and she LOVES her big girl bed so much!

-Zack ran for student council this year and he won! Last year he ran as well and lost so I am very proud of him for trying again and for doing so well! I am so happy that he has adjusted so well through all the moves we've subjected the poor kid to. He is truly amazing!!!

-I had an appointment Thursday of last week because I was having strangeness in my breasteses area. Well, the doctor told me that basically she had eliminated all of the possibilities of what my problem might be except CANCER...S-C-A-R-Y!!! So she wanted me to have a mammogram which I had yesterday. It wasn't painful at all for the first batch of pictures that she took. However, after the radiologist looked at the results and wanted more pictures, closer up pictures, to determined whether the spots that showed up on the pics were simply tissue or something to be concerned with, I thought my boobs were being pinched off! OUCHY WAWA!!! So, after my boobs were pinched off, they looked at the pictures and it turned out that it was just tissue. THANK GOODNESS!!! HUGE AMOUNTS OF RELIEF!!! And if you are afraid of a mammogram...don't be!! I'm feeling so blessed today! Both because I don't have cancer AND because I am not a mammogram lady that has to touch and configure other people's boobs all day! I am so truly grateful for people who are willing to do things like that to help people!!!

-And guess WHAT... We're going to Disneyland. We haven't been on a real vacation since Zack was 5 and Matthew was like 18 months old. Our kids are at perfect ages to really have a great time! The kids are positively giddy with excitement! It is great to see them so excited about something. We usually don't do anything or go anywhere fun. I just can't wait!!!

A Little Ramble

2011-08-19T20:01:00.000-06:00

This is a post from one of my friend's on Facebook who lives in Topeka, Kansas:

No electricity, cable TV, ac, Internet, laptop is almost dead, cell phone almost dead, what did people used to do before electronics? This is really horrible. Hmm how am I suppose to sleep?
Later she said this:
Just heard there are 19,000 of is in this situation. And they have no idea what the problem is or how much longer it going to be...Uhggghg..
Someone suggested she get a generator, to which she replied: We have one its too bad to go outside to start it up. But if it lasts much longer I'm going to have to suck it up and go fire it up lol!

It got me thinking, we all use cell phones and many people don't even have land lines anymore. We didn't have one until the stupid Internet company here forced us to. The phone we have for our land line is a cordless phone. If our power is out, our phone does not work. It's kind of freaky if you think about it. I mean what if something like that happened to us and we needed to call 911 and we couldn't because all of our phones are completely dependent on electricity.

At Church we are always learning about how important it is to have a good food storage. Also, to have soap, toilet paper, toothpaste, you know, the basic toiletries and such. It just never occurred to me to make sure we have a corded phone that doesn't require electricity.

I used to think we all needed to have food storage in case some sort of natural disaster or some such thing that would leave you with no way to get food or supplies. I learned that lesson at a young age when my dad and I had to walk 6 blocks in the snow to the nearest grocery store to get food for our family. My cousin lives in Australia and they had major flooding this year and they didn't have too much damage where they lived but food trucks couldn't get to their town because of the damage to the roads. They were so grateful to have food storage.

Some years ago I learned how important it can be for a family to have food storage. My friend's husband lost his job as a big wig at Geneva Rock. They had 6 kids and a large home and a couple vehicles. Well, they had quite a lot of money in savings and they were able to live for 6 months off of savings and food storage. She sold Tupperware to help pay for perishables, etc. that they needed. I was so impressed that because they chose to follow the council of church leaders, to not be in a lot of debt and to have savings and food storage, they were able to survive a difficult situation. Her husband was able to take some college classes during that time that would help him be more able to find work.

I've been really feeling like we need to start having a food storage. We have a hard enough time feeding our family from month to month, having enough money to buy food storage often seems out of reach. We're doing the best we can to start having food storage. It feels so good to at least start the process. We have a long way to go!!! And I am definitely adding a corded phone to my list of essentials to store!!!

Good Quote!

2011-08-19T10:37:00.000-06:00

One of my friends on Facebook posted this and I liked it so I thought I'd share.Yes I'm going on Facebook more. I just can't seem to stay away. I just love the interaction with friends and family who are far away or even in my neighborhood. Anyhoo, Here's what she wrote...

If life is a highway, I wish someone would finish with the construction already. I'm tired of the detours, road blocks, and pot holes.

FUN TIMES & DEFINITE BRUISAGE & I may have gotten a little carried away with all the pictures....

2011-08-12T12:42:00.001-06:00

So, my family rented a cabin together in the Heber Mountains. My brother Robby, my sisters Stephanie and Katie, and me and all of our families were there. We did miss Dana and her family (they live in Colorado and her husband is in the Special Forces in the Army in Afghanistan) and Nathan and his family who just moved to Florida in July!
This cabin was so awesome! It had 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a zip line, a game room, a movie room, a wrap around deck/porch, and a huge kitchen and eating area. It was beautiful & secluded.
Each morning we anxiously looked out the wall of windows in the living room in hopes of seeing some sort of creature. One morning Steph saw a mama bear and her cub. Two of the days we saw moose. Once there were two moose and once there was one big moose who walked right up to the fence that was made of a couple of cables, which lined the property. One day a fox walked up to the house while eating some little creature. We saw lots of deer.
Steph's husband J.J. brought up some 4-wheelers and a side by side. We had some very nice little rides and a couple of very exciting rides. On one of the exciting rides we were heading up a very steep, very rocky, trail. When we were to a point where there was about a 50-70 foot drop to the left of me, my 4-wheeler started struggling to make it up the hill since it was so steep. Well, it was a manual shift 4-wheeler and I was thinking, oh no I must be in 2nd gear instead of 1st gear so I shifted down. Turns out I WAS in 1st gear after all and shifted into neutral. Oh CRAP!!! So I shifted back up to 1st gear and floored it, which caused me to basically pop a wheelie. The thing stood straight up, threw me onto my elbow and my butt, while still straddling it, and started teetering over all the way. I saw it teetering and panicked! All I could think of was that when 4-wheelers land on top of people they often die! Brian and my Zacky were on the 4-wheeler directly behind me. I scrambled to get completely off of it, flipped over to my knees and crawled away as fast as I could. Thankfully, it didn't ever roll completely over. The rack stopped it. It scared the crap out of me, Brian, Zack and everyone with us. I feel very blessed that it just stopped! I have bruises and scrapes and I'm sore pretty much everywhere but it could have been so much worse!!!
On Tuesday afternoon, Brian and I, and all of my siblings (except Katie who was cooking dinner that night) and their spouses went on a kind of hairy, totally awesome, 2 hour ride! Katie's hubby, Chris rode with Robby's son Tyler. And oh my gosh, it was awesome! We rode to the top of a mountain with spectacular views. To the east we could see the Uintahs, Mount Timpanogas to the west, and gorgeous views to the north and south as well. It was really fun! It was nice to ride on the back of a 4-wheeler, snuggling Brian for 2 hours. We rarely have that kind of time away from our children. Our 18th anniversary was on Sunday so it was so nice to have such a great time together! It's funny though. You can tell how much older we all are now. Steph, Jenise, and I were so happy that there was a nice little outhouse in the middle of nowhere on the ride that had T.P. AND hand sanitizer! I kept saying to Brian that I am a mother of 4 and every time we went over a bump it felt like I was being punched in the bladder. I really wished I had been more diligent at doing my Kegel exercises. HAHA
The zip line was so much fun! The kids especially liked it! My Max and Steph's son Josh are little dare devils and just thought it was the coolest! My Dad even rode it once. My Mom and all of us adults were more than just a little bit worried about him riding it. Of course all of his grand kids thought he was a total rock star!!!
We had a blast! We all hated to see it end. Can you believe that there were 17 people there and we all got along perfectly! It was really great! We are supposed to do it again next year and we just can't wait!
Life is so expensive anymore that we don't ever spend enough time doing super fun things as a family so it was especially nice to just get away and have fun! I'm so glad that it wasn't a 'luxurious' cabin. It was nice, yet just rugged enough, and the PERFECT place to take kids! They knew they had to take care of the cabin but we didn't have to worry about them doing naughty stuff so much because they were constantly entertained by the zip line, the great outdoors, the game room, and the movie room. It was great!

My sweet little Gracie climbing the stairs

Gracie & Max getting ready for our ride.

Zack, Gracie, Max, & Brian

Matty rode with me on a 4-wheeler

Look closely between the rear and front tire on the black car. The fox that came up to the house.

Starting out on the ride where I crashed.

I love how you can see the moon between the trees in this pic.

This is the crazy path we took. It was NUTS!!!Especially since we had kids with us and the side by side that was too big to be on this path. It was pretty cool too just a bit scary! We were afraid a bear or something would jump out at us. :)

This is a nice pic of all of them

This is when J.J. discovered there was a small branch from the bushes in Steph's hair...

Brian on the 4-wheeler that I tried to roll. I was on with Zack after the incident. I should have gotten a picture of the crazy hill we climbed when that happened. It was Crazy!!

Rob and Tyler

We were all so happy to have survived the ride that I just HAD to get a picture!

The totally awesome moose...

Grandpa getting ready to ride the zipline.

There he is at the end where you fly upside down.

All done

Zack getting ready to ride

The kids thinking Grandpa is the coolest!!!

Kinda screwed up the sequence on these next few pics. In this pic Max is climbing the ladder to ride the zip line.

Here he comes. You can barely see him.

Max flew completely upside down at the end of the zip line

Matty on the zip line

My pretty little Gracie

Cuter than cute Joshers

Steph took the kids for a ride in the side by side

Tyler, Chris, Rob, Jenise, Me, & Brian

Me & Brian

J.J. & Stephanie

Brian pointed out this heart shaped patch of snow.

This part of the ride is VERY steep and scary to go up or down. All us girls bailed off and walked down...

Chris and Tyler

If you put sunscreen on right before a 2 hour 4-wheeler ride you might end up looking like this...

A few thoughts

2011-08-02T17:45:00.001-06:00

Sometimes if I ask Gracie if she wants to take a nap she'll say no and then a little while later she'll say she does want to go ni-nite. So I asked her today if she wanted to go ni-nite and she said, "No, dedo" and smiled really cheesy.
Max was playing with my hair today. I have my bangs pulled back in a couple of bobbie pins today. He had one of Gracie's hair flowers in his hand and said, "I'm just going to cover these up with a flower because when I see them I think they are kind of hideous."

I'm finally enjoying the summer. We're just kickin' back and havin' fun and I'm feeling very relaxed. In most ways I'm not looking forward to school starting. I am, however, looking forward to having a cleaner house. That's it. That's the only reason I'm looking forward to school today. Tomorrow if the kids start fighting I'll look forward to school starting then too. I'm really looking forward to having some one on one time with Gracie. She is such a sweetie and the poor thing is kid #4 so she pretty much just has to go with the flow. It will be nice to not have anybody in preschool. Being able to keep up with the house better will be nice. It will be nice to feel like things are more calm and relaxed. I really NEED some calm and relaxation in my life!

Can you believe I actually braved free swimming day at the pool for International Days? They said there were over 1,000 people there that day and I believe it! It was crazy! But we had fun! Gracie freaks out when the waves turn on but by the time we left that day she wanted me to take her to the biggest wave in the pool. She's so cute! I love spending time with my kids and feeling like I can actually feel like doing fun things like that with them by myself. I am really thankful for modern medicine!!!

To Forgive or Not to Forgive...THAT is The Question....

2011-08-01T20:04:00.001-06:00

When I was in college I started to really "get" the gospel. Oh, I was raised with it and went to church every week and listened to talks and lessons about the gospel but it wasn't until I was in college that it all kind of came together in my mind and I really started to understand it all. As I read the scriptures I began to question different teachings and principals of the gospel. It seemed that each time I went to church the lessons and talks were about the particular subject I was curious about and answers leapt from the pages as I read The Book of Mormon. Well, since we have lived here I have wondered about two different things; recognizing the spirit and forgiveness. Working with the youth of the church has been wonderful for me. I have learned a lot!

There have been many lessons and talks given at church about the spirit and how to recognize it. I feel much more confident about recognizing the spirit because of these talks and lessons. When we went to the Manti Temple once for baptisms a man told the youth to focus on the way they were feeling in the temple that day. He said there is a different feeling in the temple than anywhere else. That feeling is the spirit. The more you try to make choices that will bring the spirit such as; reading scriptures, attending church and other meetings, praying always, and attending the temple as much as possible, the more they will be able to feel the spirit and recognize it's guidance and direction in their lives. That really helped me a lot! Another experience I had happened just yesterday, actually. We were having a combined meeting and a counselor in the Bishopric was giving the lesson. It was about the spirit. He said that often times we wonder; is it the spirit talking to me or is it just my own thoughts? He said if it's a good choice then it doesn't really matter, if we just do it, good will come from it. Our bishop was in the meeting and was talking about that too. It just came to my mind when he was talking that if we just start always following that feeling when it comes, whether it's the spirit or our own thoughts, the spirit will know that we will actually listen to it and won't stop giving us those impressions. We are taught in the scriptures that we are to be submissive and ALWAYS listening to those promptings definitely helps us to be submissive. I know everyone else probably already knows all this and it just takes me longer to learn things but it sure feels great to understand the Holy Ghost better!

As for forgiveness...I'm still not there yet. There have been so many lessons and talks on forgiveness lately that it's kind of crazy and I STILL struggle! I know that we are supposed to forgive EVERYONE. I "get" that. We have forgiven and forgotten over and over and over again. We aren't big grudge holders. We can forgive and forget and continue to be around people no matter what. We have had issues with some of our family for over a year now and I have to wonder if what we are doing is acceptable to the Lord. We have chosen to just not have them in our lives. We love them very much (some more than others (<: ) and we really miss having them in our lives. But we have been hurt by them so badly. They don't feel that they have done anything wrong. They heard our side of things and they just flat out don't care. They have turned their backs on us and have listened to lie after lie that others have told them about us. So, the question is...do you have to forgive people who don't think they have done anything wrong and don't even WANT your forgiveness in the first place? We are very forgiving people!!! We would give them forgiveness in a heartbeat if they asked for it. But they jut plain don't want it. What they want is for us to just come around again and act like nothing ever happened. We feel that THEY should be asking for OUR forgiveness. So what do you do in this situation? There is one of the people involved that we don't really have anything against and we just kind of feel like they were caught in the middle and we would love nothing more than to mend that relationship and be part of each others lives again. We just can't picture family gatherings with EVERYONE. Just too much! So how does it play into the rules of forgiveness? Do you have to give forgiveness to people who don't want it? THAT is my question...

If we do forgive do we still HAVE to be around them and allow their toxic influences into our lives? Can we truly forgive them if we don't let them back into our lives? It's just so hard! Forgiveness, in the past has been easier because it was easier to get over the situation. This situation is just so stinking hard for us. We just can't ever imagine having most of the people in our lives again. Too much has been said and done. You can't just erase years of lies behind our backs and years of trying to destroy us in others' eyes, and all the words that have been spoken. The damage is irreparable it seems. Trust has been obliterated! I want to forgive them but I don't want to spend time with people who think so little of me and my husband and children. Is that WRONG?

I love our ward so much!!!!!

2011-07-31T15:28:00.002-06:00

I just love our Ward! When we lived in Cedar City we had a really great Ward! When we lived in Pleasant Grove you could say we weren't so fond of our Ward. We absolutely adored our Ward in Salem! It was just wonderful! We feel the same way about the Ward we are in now. Loving our Ward makes such a huge difference in our lives. We actually look forward to going to church. We go to activities. We feel the spirit at church. We have a calm, comforting feeling that we don't have when we don't love our Ward. We feel like we are part of a Ward FAMILY. We matter, you know?! It adds to our joy.....

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me....., scripture marking, that dadgum tooth fairy!, Brian's delicioso burritos

2011-07-22T09:14:00.000-06:00

~As a parent you I feel the magnitude of the responsibility I have to raise good, decent, humble, active participants in church, and successful, upstanding citizens of this crazy world. I realize that I have to be a good example to them in every way because they learn so much by watching others. Now that I have a daughter I feel this responsibility even more than before! What she sees and hears me do will shape the kind of person she will be, just the same as it will shape her brothers. But it will also shape the kind of wife and mother she will be. Kind of mind blowing for me! She truly watches EVERYTHING I do. She is so cute to watch as she does stuff I do. She loves to help me with every task. She is a hard little worker! Her favorite way to help is to hand me the clean dishes from the dishwasher. Today I got out a towel to dry the dishes with since I usually use plastic cups and they just never seem to dry in the dishwasher. Well, Gracie got herself a towel out of the drawer and came over and started drying off dishes too. Oh my goodness! It was adorable! She melts my heart! She.is.JOY!!!
~So I went to that little scripture marking class last month and the teacher gave us a piece of paper with all the scripture mastery scriptures on it. She said she figures that if the youth of the church need to memorize them she should probably at least have them marked in her scriptures. She marks them in a rainbow of colored pencils so she knows when she runs across them she will remember that they are scripture mastery scriptures. I have been marking them in my scriptures since Brian got them for me a few years ago and I haven't marked very many scriptures in them yet. Although, Gracie has done her fair share of marking them! ;) I have so enjoyed marking these scriptures because they are just wonderful, inspiring, faith building, thought provoking, scriptures! I don't really take time to read scriptures on my own. We do as a family and that is wonderful but I really feel like I need to make more of an effort personally to study the scriptures on my own. I am so grateful for the scriptures! What a wonderful gift we've been given by our Heavenly Father and our Savior, Jesus Christ! The prophets in the scriptures had such courage, such faith, such obedience. We can learn so many things from them!!!
~K, soooo, my face had been feeling like I was having birthing contractions for a couple days. So intense and unbearable! I don't think I've ever cried from the pain I have there before. I just try to be tough but that pain had me curled up in a ball on my bed, crying like a baby!!! Then my last tooth on the top on the right hurt so badly it's ridiculous so I went to the doctor. The crappiest part was that my T.N. could be causing that pain or it could just be a rotten tooth. My dentist said the only way he could tell if it was the tooth was to remove the filling I had in that tooth and basically do a root canal which would cost like $1500 and it could just be the stupid nerve causing it in the first place and I would have wasted $1500. I just had him pull it. He said it's really not that important of a tooth anyway. So, now I've had 3 teeth pulled. And not once has that dadgum tooth fairy brought me so much as a penny! Can you believe that?!?! :)
~Brian makes these AMAZING pork burritos! I mean seriously TO DIE FOR!!! They are super easy to make too. And the smell fabulous!!! Ok, so this is what he does....

Brian's Delicioso Burritos

*Place a pork roast in the crock pot.
*Pour a can of that green chili verde enchilada sauce over it.
*Cut some onion up and throw that in. Brian cuts it into pretty big chunks so the kids can easily pick it out. :)
*Cut up an Anaheim pepper and throw that in too. We didn't have one last time and it was still fabulous!!
*Let it cook in your crock pot for like 6-8 hours from frozen.
*Put some on a flour tortilla and roll it up and ENJOY!!! We put cheese on the kids' meat in their tortilla because they'll pretty much eat anything that is covered in cheese! :)

YA THINK, NANCY DREW?!?!?!

2011-07-18T19:11:00.000-06:00

K, so, I have had SO much pain lately and the last thing I want to do is wash my car but it was so dirty I decided I just couldn't take it any longer. I washed it on our driveway and I was drying it off with a towel when this lady pulls into the driveway and stops her car. She was super skinny. She had bulgy eyes and long, stringy, yellow hair and was smoking a cigarrette. She kind of reminded me of a witch on a movie or something. I walked up to her car and asked if I could help her and she said, "I called the police!" I was like "Why, what happened?" She looks at me like I'm stupid and says, "Well, you ran into my car at the stop sign getting off the highway!" I was all, "NO I didn't!!!" And she was all, "Yes you DID!!!" I was like, "When did this supposedly take place?" She said, "About an hour ago." It was around 4:00 at the time. I was like, "Well, I haven't left my house since noon!!!" She was all, "Well, I drove by a few minutes ago and you were washing your car and it looked suspicious." Since when does it look suspicious to wash your car?!?! She said,"Well, the lady sure looked like you and the car looked just like yours!" I drive a silver Ford Windstar. I said, "It's a VAN, we live in UTAH, they're everywhere!!!" I was all, "I don't appreciate you coming here, accusing me of something that I didn't do!" She said, "WELL, can I LOOK at your car?" I was all, "Go for it!!!" So she looks at my car and of course she saw nothing and said, "Well, you aren't the one!" YA THINK, NANCY DREW?!?! Then she said, "I'm sorry but I am just so upset and I thought you were the one who did it." I said, "Well, I would be upset too but you really shouldn't accuse people of things they didn't do." She said that the police got the other lady's license plate # so they would be able to find her. They also told her that the lady lived on Rose Avenue. I was like, "Well, this isn't Rose Avenue! It's over..." She interrupted and said that she knows where Rose Avenue IS! Right about that time she noticed Zack, then Gracie walked around the car with our dog and Max was walking around and she just said again that she was SO sorry, that she was just upset. I told her again that I understood and that I would have been upset about her situation too if it were me. Then she drove off.

CRAZY!!!

I needed this one...

2011-07-14T08:56:00.001-06:00

My friend Holly posted another good thought on facebook. I really needed to read this one!

Don't lose hope. When you are down to nothing, God is up to something. Keep your faith strong! ♥

Welllllll....

2011-07-12T16:44:00.001-06:00

I went to that Dr's appointment. The first lady that came in acted like I didn't even have TN and was trying to diagnose me. I was like I know what I have I just need further treatment...HELLO MCFLY!!! So she finally got her superior who knew a lot about TN and she came in and was like yes, I totally think you have TN. She said that she thinks I should just keep trying to find the right medicine and the right dose for me and if I ever get to the point where I don't get relief from medication anymore then I should consider surgery but otherwise it should absolutely be a last resort. She said that she understands my desire to get off of my medications and not have to take them forever but since TN can go into remission and since I am much younger that most people with it I should just patiently wait it out. Most people who get it are in their 60's or 70's but you can get it at any age. She said the surgical treatments are fairly new and they can be scary. They can cause you to have even more problems than you already had in the first place. Or the problem can happen all over again. I have heard some real horror stories so I suppose it is best to not have surgery. BUT since November, when I FINALLY had a diagnosis from 3 different doctors and I started researching treatments and stuff I have just been dealing with the pain the best I could knowing that there was an end in sight. I just KNEW that I would go to this appointment that I have been on the waiting list for all of this time and they would tell me which of the procedures they thought would work best for me, I would have it done and then I would be all better. I could be the mom and wife I really want to be again. So today I have been very upset. I just can't help it. Now that I don't have an end in sight, no motivating factor, what do I do. Am I strong enough to endure this crap? It seriously sucks! I don't want to have Trigeminal Neuralgia!!! I just want it to go away! I don't want it to continue robbing me and my family of ME!!!! I know that this stupid thing gets progressively worse and I am really scared about that. The fact that they call it "The Suicide Disease" because it just gets so horrid that you just can't take it anymore terrifies me. I have tried so hard to be as positive as possible. People are always surprised when they find out what I have because I try so hard to not let it show. But right now I just want a whole day of just staying in bed, just sleeping and crying and wallowing in self pity. Just accepting it fully as something I will have to endure the rest of my life and trying to get all the negative feelings out. Then the next day I can just get out of bed, dust myself off and go forward. But instead I have to just keep going and that really sucks. No wallowing in self pity for me. Ok, so I am still wallowing today but I just can't do it while laying in bed. :) I get to do it while I clean the house. Tomorrow is a new day and hopefully I have a new attitude because today's attitude really bites!!!

Yeah, right! In your ever lovin' dreams!!!!

2011-07-09T09:35:00.002-06:00

So, I'm officially old and all. It's my 20 year high school class reunion in August. I already have trepedations about attending the reunion anyway because of things like:

~my fatness

~the cost of attending (especially the dinner...WOW 50 bucks a couple at the Country Club)

~my fatness

~not sure if any of my friends will attend anyway

~my fatness

~what if nobody even remembers who I am because I only attended school with them for 2 years since I moved from Kansas just before my Junior year. That would be so humiliating!!!

~my fatness

~what if nobody recognizes me because of my fatness and all and even if they would remember me they just don't recognize me because I weigh like 100 lbs. more than I did in high school. (not quite but it sure feels that way!)

~and oh yeah, have I mentioned my fatness?!

Imagine the laughter that ensued as I read the schedule of events for the reunion and saw where they are planning to have us all meet at the pool that Saturday afternoon and swim....I honestly cannot think of anything more humiliating than showing off my flab-alanche, farmer tanned (mostly ghostly white), stretch marked from having 4 babies, 38 year-old, "booty"licious, boob hangin' low, body at the POOL at my HIGH SCHOOL class reunion!!!! WHAT can they POSSIBLY be thinking?! I know there isn't much to do here for entertainment but PUHLEASE! I'm thinkin' I'll take a big ol' pass on that one. Thanks anyhoo though! "major rolling of eyes"

I'm so excited!!!!

2011-07-01T17:05:00.001-06:00

So, I've been on a waiting list with University of Utah Neurosurgery since November. I could have had an appointment a long time ago if I wanted to go to just any old doctor but this is my HEAD we're talking about here! I want to go to someone who knows what they're doing. Since I've had this Trigeminal Neuralgia diagnosis I have heard many a horror story. Most likely I'll have to have surgery where they cut into my skull and treat the nerve so I really don't want to just go to some Joe Shmo that wants to use me as a guinea pig or something. It's been SO tempting to just go to someone else, especially lately since my medicine hasn't been working so well but I am SOOOO excited because they finally called today!! I have an actual appointment on July 11. I am so happy I could cry. I'm also more than just a little bit scared. I mean, surgery is scary!!! I'm hoping and praying that they can help me and I can be a little bit closer to normal. ; )

It's exactly the way I pictured it!!!

2011-06-30T17:35:00.000-06:00

Today is wonderful! I feel fantastic! The kids are having tons of fun! They played in the mud with friends. I mean PLAYED in the mud, mud from head to toe. It rained today, whatchya gonna do?! They rode their bikes. Our back "yard" is just dirt and weeds. I think it is ugly but I also think it's a really cool "boy" backyard. There is a big dirt circle drive kind of a thing that the kids like to dig in and ride bikes on and stuff. There is a big area that is like an acre that they can ride bikes on. They catch lizards. They get super dirty every day. They have a couple of adorable little neighbor friends to play with. I have a friend who comes over sometimes to play and our kids like to play together. They have the 2 little kids to play with that I babysit. I'm so glad because I had to FORCE them to play outside last summer! They hated it and I felt so bad for them. So now they are happy and I am just so glad!
As I was hosing them down and we were laughing and they were having so much fun being hosed down, it occurred to me that THIS was exactly how I always pictured motherhood being. Everything about today just feels...GREAT!! It's great to feel good and to feel like I'm able to keep up today. I have felt really rotten for like almost 3 weeks now. So-much-pain. Yesterday pretty much sucked!!! No other way to put it! It was painful and I had to take 6 kids with me to the vet to see what is wrong with my poor, sweet, dog. More about my dog later. He's a mini schnauzer. I LOVE HIM!!! He ADORES me! He's been with us since January and has been my little pal through all the good days and bad. They say he's bleeding internally and they think he got into poison. He's on vitamin K and an antibiotic. After that I had to take Gracie to the doctor because she has an ear infection. Thankfully I only had to take Gracie and Tessa, they are both 2. They are adorable! But every time I turned around it was something. It just kept getting worse and worse all day. So it's amazing to feel so much better today! It's great to feel like I'm more "together" today. I really just love being a mom today!!!

Tomorrow is a new day.

Hopefully it's a pain free day.

Hopefully it's another day where things just flow and everyone is happy.

Hopefully it's another day that is exactly like I always pictured it being.

I just always pictured the house being a LOT cleaner so hopefully tomorrow it WILL be!!

;)

I'm hoping you are having a really great day too!!!

Hooray for great days!

2011-06-25T09:56:00.000-06:00

My hair before...

My hair after...

I'm loving this deal I made with a lady in our church. I watch her sweet as pie little kids for a few hours a week and she does my hair and my kid's and Brian's too. Our kids all love each other so it's almost like she's doing me this big favor by letting her kids come play with my kids so my kids don't fight with each other all day and complain about how bored they are. I love it!

Pageant, Rockets, Summertime, S'mores, Scripture Marking Class

2011-06-18T16:42:00.001-06:00

~I went to The Mormon Miracle Pageant in Manti last night with the Y.W. It has been so many years since I last went that I can't remember how long ago. Before we had kids anyway. We ate BBQ Turkey dinners at a ward building...the only way to go! Then we ate yummy custard and Italian Ice treats. SO YUMMY!!! Then we watched the pageant. There were parts in it that I didn't remember from years past. I'm sure they were there before but now that I'm old (they are having our 20 year high school reunion this year...that's OLD!!!) and have kids and have a stronger testimony and such, it just was so emotional for me to watch. I got teary quite often. When they portrayed the part in The Book of Mormon when Jesus visited the Nephites and blessed them and healed the sick and taught them and blessed their children, I really cried. It was so spiritually moving and just wonderful! Of course it's one of my favorite parts to read so being able to see it acted out was really neat. I am just so grateful for the opportunity I had to go this year. I was worried about going. The umbilical cord doesn't stretch all the way to Manti ya know. :) But I went and I am so glad I did! It was even worth getting home at 1:30 a.m. and not sleeping until 2:30a.m.! Our Y.W. are such amazing girls and I just love spending time with them! I want to go next year with my little family.

~This morning the kids woke us up at 7:30 and we got ourselves ready and went to the home of some of our church members to watch an awesome rocket show! They set off tons of rockets. All different sizes. From super tiny to about 5 feet tall. I figured I could put this in the category of "things we do for our children". I was super surprised when I actually had a lot of fun watching! The time flew by! It was fun for everyone there, especially the kids! They all wanted to be the one who found the rocket after it landed. The people live out in the boonies so the kids had plenty of room to be free and run wild! Who can ask for anything more than that when you are a boy? Gracie hated the experience. It scared her to death each time one went off. But there were some adorable little baby bunnies nestled together by their house that a wild bunny had and oh they were the cutest little things! Gracie really liked them so at least it wasn't all bad for her. The ward member's who invited everyone out do this show every year. They invite people from the college out since he used to teach at the college, they invite ward members and friends. Their kids plan their summer vacations for the rocket show weekend. It's so much fun! One of their daughters said to me that she was surprised by how many people came out for the show. I said, well, there isn't a lot of entertainment in this town so when someone invites people for a fun time we're all there!!!

~Don't you love summertime. Some days I just absolutely love summer?! Some days not so much! When the kids get along pretty well...and they make the most of the opportunity to ride bikes and dig in the dirt all day long in our back yard...we eat some kind of yummy summer food like a BLT, juicy watermelon, corn on the cob, BBQ ANYTHING, yummy potato salad and Aunt Marilyn's fabulous baked beans...we walk through the store and smell the sweet scent of ripe nectarines and peaches throughout the produce area and my mouth starts to water...Strawberry Shortcake...spending lots of time outside...the smell of freshly cut grass, lilacs, and roses...THEN, all is right with the world and I LOVE summer!

but...

when the kids can't stop fighting with each other, hurting each other, and hurting each other's feelings...having to take 4 kids along when I go to the grocery store...having to pull pokey stickers out of my kids feet constantly because they refuse to wear shoes outside...the whining...complaining...fighting over which wii game to play or movie to watch...the constant messes...not being able to afford to go on nice little mountain drives because the price of gas is OUT...OF...CONTROL!!!, THEN I'm not such a big fan of summer!

~There is a fire pit in our back yard. Tonight we're going to roast marshmallows over it and have s'mores. I can't wait!!! Brian is cooking some delicious chicken and rice in the dutch oven. I sure do love to eat! :)

~Thursday night there was a scripture marking class for a Relief Society activity. Oh, it was awesome! The lady brought us fun little sticker things to put in our scriptures. She suggested some fun things like, mark words in your scriptures that are about Jesus, Heavenly Father, good, happy things with yellow soft color pencil. Mark scripture mastery scriptures in kind of a rainbow pattern. Mark things that are about Satan or evil with red pencil. Use other colors you like for other things. She just really got us all excited about the scriptures and taught us things that will help us be able to understand the scriptures better. It was a really great experience! I can't wait for her to come again!

Randomness...

2011-06-09T15:42:00.001-06:00

~There is a chick in our ward named Nicki who has the cutest hair! I asked her who she goes to, since I'm still trying to find someone to do my hair. She said she does it herself and that she works at a salon here in town. I figured if she can do her own hair that well, she must be GOOD! Well, you can imagine how thrilled I was when she called me a couple of weeks ago and asked me if I would like to do a trade. I would watch her kids 1 or 2 days a week and she would do my family's hair.

Ummm, yeah!!!!

To be honest, I was a bit worried. I mean, you never know what you're gonna get when you watch other people's kids. But they are so well behaved. Ty is 8 years old and Max and Matthew LOVE playing with him. Tessa is going to turn 2 in July and she and Gracie get along really well too. I do have to save poor Tessa from my bully daughter, who has a hard time with this whole sharing thing, from time to time. But other than that they are getting along really well. Ty has great manners too. So far it's going great and everyone is happy! It's been fun getting to know Nicki as well. I finally found a picture of what I want my hair to look like and I can't wait to have it done!

~Between having Zack on a Cal Ripkin Majors team, Matthew on a Cal Ripkin Pee Wee team, and Max starting T-ball this week on a city league team, we go to a LOT of baseball games! We have 9 this week alone. Tonight will be #7. It's been a lot of fun watching the kids having such a great time! It's been really fun to see the different ability levels too. T-ball and Pee Wee are just so remedial compared to Majors. Everyone cheers for both teams and are just so positive and nice. There are a few overzealous (crazy) parents who expect super great things out of their poor kids at this level and are continuously disappointed when it just doesn't work out the way they want it to. It cracks me up to listen to them! Then you go to the Majors and h-o-l-y c-o-w! The parents REALLY get into it! Last year was really fun to watch but this year is AWESOME!!! All of the players finally really get how to play and they make some incredibly awesome plays! It's exciting to watch and I don't dread the games like I used to. I think a lot of why I dreaded them so much in the past was the way I felt physically. It has been so incredible, the contrast between how I feel this year as compared to how I felt last year. It was bad! It just makes me so grateful each and every day that I feel better. I still have some sporadic pain here and there most days but most of the time I feel great! It's truly a blessing!!! An answer to prayer for sure!!!

~I have finally started trying to lose some weight. I have gained 20 lbs since November and I can't fit my fat butt into any of my jeans except my maternity ones and ones that have that stretchiness to them. Definite low point!!! And I saw some very cute, thin, girls I went to high school with and I looked like the stay puffed marshmallow man. So humiliating!!! So, I decided I have to do something about it! I've been trying to exercise and I have made some minor changes with my eating habits. I lost 10 lbs!!! Which inspired me to keep at it! Brian has lost some weight too. We both need to be healthier for sure!

~My kids have finally figured out that it's so much more fun to play outside than it is to stay in the house, which is a huge plus! Last year I had to force them to play outside.

~We were able to find Matthew's backpack that he left at school on the last day of school. It had his inhaler in it and some other medicine equaling about $70. I was totally freaking out. We looked in the lost and found 2 different times before we found it.

~I feel like we live at the dentist office. Matty and Zack both have retainers. Both of them have broken them twice. They have only had them since like April or something. Matthew even threw his away at school and the super nice janitor spotted it on his tray in the garbage can and took it out. Thankfully! Course, about 3 hours later he broke it. I tell ya, this could drive a mom to drink!

~So we all know it's not good for us to eat fried foods. I rarely fry. Maybe a few times a year. I found another reason not to do it a few weeks when I was frying some chicken for my family to have between baseball games while I was at a Young Women's barbecue and homework burn. I placed a wing in the front of the pan and reached over it to put another one on the other side of it at the back of the pan and right when my hand was about an inch above the first wing, it popped. Oil splattered on my wrist. It burned it bad! It blistered up and has gone through some interesting changes over the past 2 weeks. Not fun! There is one part that I can't get to heal and it was the most blistered. So frying is not my friend! I feel so bad for people who are burned in accidents.I can only imagine what they must go through!

~Oh, and for those of you wondering, the Essure thing has been wonderful!Just make sure you get everything worked out with your insurance company and your drs office before having it done.

I'm not as good at it as my cousin is!!! But at least I tried! :)

2011-05-26T20:42:00.001-06:00

My incredibly talented cousin, Becky, makes these AMAZING cakes. She lives in Utah County and has started a business making cakes for people. My sister Steph has asked her to make 3 different cakes. They are all masterpieces. I don't have a picture of the fabulous cake she make for my nephew, Josh, but it was so awesome!!! She made a Toy Story one and it was a moving day box and the characters were all coming out of it and there were packing peanuts and stuff. It was all edible except for a couple of the characters that she bought at the store but otherwise she made each character and everything herself. You can see it on her blog if you want. http://thecakemama.blogspot.com/

She made this fun cake for my beautiful little niece's birthday.

She made this one for my mom's 70th birthday party. She was born in Kansas and lived there until I was 16 then we moved out here. This cake was perfect for my mom!!!

Gracie's party had a Hawaiian theme. I found this adorable Hawaiian Hula Girl cake idea online and copied it. You make it the same way you make the Barbie cake with the Pampered Chef Large Batter Bowl or you can use a Pyrex bowl. My friend Sherelle suggested to cut it in half and put some frosting in between so there isn't just a big ol' piece of cake without frosting. It was super easy and I think it turned out cute. It of course wasn't professional looking but still cute and fun! I'll post some more pics of her bday on my Word From the Zoo blog soon.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the $1 store for cheap, cute, fun decorations!!! The only reason I chose a Hawaiian theme was because the $1 store had such cute Hawaiian decorations! So much fun!

I had so much fun with these cupcakes! Aren't they cute?!

A little catching up...

2011-05-24T12:08:00.003-06:00

K so I know I haven't blogged in a really long time, it's actually been almost a whole month! Crazy for me! But my medicine has been working REALLY well...most of the time anyway. I still have some really bad days, sometimes for several days in a row. But I'm definitely having more good days than bad days...I'll take it!!!! On the really good days I think of a zillion things to blog about but I'm running around doing all the things I can't do on the bad days. I still try to just work through life in pain on those days, I'm just a LOT slower! I have to sit down more often and rest. Thank goodness for recliners! I just try to find joy on those bad days by spending more time with the kids. Reading to them. We like to watch movies and eat popcorn together when it hurts too much. I love the chance that those bad days give me to just spend time with the kids, snuggling 1 or 2 kids on the recliner while we watch our movies. The good days have been like a dream come true! I can mow weeds, clean more deeply, run errands, organize our house better. When we moved in a year ago we just haphazardly put things away just to get rid of the piles boxes in the house. I have reorganized most closets, drawers, cabinets, to make them more functional. I just get so much more done on good days than I do on bad days for sure!!! I have caught myself feeling FANTASTIC many times and doing things I couldn't for so long and I just feel so incredibly happy that it always brings tears to my eyes to feel NO PAIN and I feel like myself for a change! Then when I go back to having my Trigeminal Neuralgia pain on bad days that brings tears to my eyes too. I am so grateful to have found a wonderful doctor who knew what was wrong with me AND how to help me! I am grateful to a wonderful friend who, when I mentioned I didn't have a dishwasher, gave us a dishwasher that they had in their garage that was from a different house they had. Her very clever husband build a cover for it since it is the kind of dishwasher that is meant to be built in to your cabinets. We had to have it as a portable one so he made it portable. He also came over to our house 2 evenings in a row hooking it up. I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am to have a dishwasher!!! As you might imagine, we have a LOT of dishes around here seeing as how there are 6 of us and we eat out once or twice a month, if that often. So 3 meals a day for 6 people.....fun stuff!! I have spent more hours washing dishes this past year than I care to think about. What a time saver a dishwasher is! I feel giddy every time I close the dishwasher door and press the buttons to start it and walk away after spending a few minutes loading it! It's unbelievably freeing! And I am so incredibly grateful that they so generously gave us the dishwasher and that he sacrificed 2 evenings hooking it up!!!

Baseball season has been going on and tonight Matty has his second game at 7:00 and Zack has a game at 6:00 to make up for the game they couldn't play yesterday because of rain. Matty is a natural when it comes to hitting! He's awesome! Zack has been playing second base this year. He has always played third base before so it's a bit different but he likes it and does a good job! He's been hitting the ball, being pitched to him since he was 2 years old but he's been hit by the ball a couple of times from some wild pitches and he has not hit much at all for 2 or 3 years. It drives us nuts because we know he can do it he just needed to get past the fear of getting hit. I finally told him a couple of weeks ago to just forget everything his different coaches have told him about how to stand and stuff and just watch the ball. It doesn't matter how he stands or what he does if he doesn't watch the ball. I told him baseball is meant to be fun and if you aren't having fun then what's the point?! And I told him that the worst case scenario is that he gets hit by a ball. He's done that and he lived so don't worry! It did the trick! That night he actually hit the ball!!! We were so excited for him! He has been hitting the ball at games ever since! They had a tournament last week. Friday night his team won which meant he had a game Saturday morning at 9:00. That was Gracie's bday and I had a zillion things to do so I couldn't go to the game. He hit the ball way out to right field and made it to 2nd base and 2 of his teammates scored off of that hit! What a confidence boost for him! I was so happy for him! His team lost but they still have the best record in the league for the tournament with only one loss, so they play tonight again. They would have been finished last week but with all the cancelled games because of rain, the tournament is still going on. I can't wait to see how his team fares!

Can you believe Gracie is 2 now?! It just blows my mind! I'll try to post some of the fun pics of her bday. For now I have to go...busy, busy, busy!!! :)

This is beautiful!!

2011-04-26T08:26:00.001-06:00

I saw this on facebook and HAD to share it! It is just beautiful!!! Made me cry! She has been given a wonderful gift of a beautiful voice and a stage to sing anything she wanted and she chose this. I so love this song and she did a marvelous job!!!

A few random thoughts

2011-04-16T12:54:00.001-06:00

~Life has been so crazy busy lately but nothing bloggable has really happened so I am at a total loss for what to blog about but I never go this long without blogging so I just had to say something so y'all know that I'm still around.

~I would like to give a shout out to my brother-in-law, Richard, who left Wednesday for his 4th tour of Iraq with the Army Green Beret's/Special Forces. I am so grateful for his willingness to serve his country! And I am so grateful to my sister and her kids for the sacrifice they are giving as well. It's not easy to have your husband or father gone from you for months on end to a scary place!!! Our thoughts and prayers are definitely with their family right now!!!

~Can you believe my Max is going to start kindergarten next school year. I have been looking forward to it quite frankly because he just needs that structure and interaction and mental stimulation. He is so smart and I have been so sick and it's been really hard to do what I know he needs. Thank goodness for preschool!!! He had kindergarten kickoff yesterday and it hit me how grown up he is and it made me sad. I can't believe my babies are growing so fast. My Zack will be 11 this month. How did that happen?! Matthew will be baptized and he'll begin the scouting program later this year. It just goes so fast! And my baby will be 2 in May. Wow did that fly by!!! I'm sure going to miss my Max when he goes to kindergarten but I'm happy for him!!! I know he'll LOVE it!!!

~So, I think we might have finally found the medicine combination that will work for me. For the past few days I've only had pain for a couple of hours in the evening when I need to take my medicine again. That has been fantastic! The medicine makes me really tired and kind of dopey but it helps the pain so that's a great thing! It's been a very busy week so it's been nice to have a couple of days without so much pain!!!

I'm A Worry Wart!!!

2011-04-07T20:01:00.000-06:00

So, pretty much if you know me or have ever read my blog you know that my son Matthew is allergic to peanuts and tree nuts. Well, he's been having random breakouts of hives and itching and mild allergic reactions to who knows what lately so we decided to have him tested to see what else he might be allergic to. He was tested today and wellllll, lets just say, what isn't this kid allergic to?! Seriously bad!

Oats

Shellfish

Soybeans

White Potato

Egg

Whole Wheat

Horses

Cats

Dogs

Pretty much EVERY weed, grass, and tree known to man

FUN TIMES!!

Some friends of mine were telling me about some of the symptoms their kids have with their food allergies and they are things like...fatigue and orneriness because their poor little tummies were torn up and they would have headaches lots and then once they either eliminated the food item or cut their intake way down after they had their allergy tests their kids were like completely different people. Happy and relaxed and enjoyable to be around. I decided it would be a good idea to just test all of us to make sure I'm not feeding us all things that could be causing us problems. Zack was tested today as well and he is allergic to

Milk

Soy

Oat

Egg

Horses

Cats Dog

And pretty much every weed, grass, and tree known to man

Matthew has been allergic to soy all along but when he was tested at around 2 years old it was a very mild allergy and now it is much, much worse. We've been thinking it must be worse because he is affected now to things with soy in them, where he used to be fine to eat stuff with soy in it. Soy is in almost everything!

Oh well. Whatchya gonna do!?

This just makes me more determined to make our treats from scratch and make our meals from scratch instead of feeding our kids processed foods because there are so many crazy things added to processed foods and it's just all around healthier to make our own food and to be able to control the ingredients our family eats.

Many a child in the world would give their right arm to be allergic to oats and not have to eat oatmeal for breakfast anymore but my kids were actually disappointed. Go figure!

I'm trying to "cut the cord" as Brian said and be ok with Matthew going on his first REAL field trip next Thursday. They will be on a bus for 4 hours round trip and all the kids will have uncrustable peanut butter sandwiches to eat except Matthew and the other 2 kids in his class that are also allergic to peanuts. It just scares me to death. I know I probably should trust that the teachers and parents that are going will be able to keep my son alive from 8am to 5pm with lots of other kids around him eating peanuts. It just makes me sick to my stomach to think about it. I'm such a worry wart!

2011-03-30T13:57:00.001-06:00

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions.....

Tonight I can either....

Support my son by going to the Pinewood Derby

OR....

Carry out my church calling and go with the Young Women for a pedicure at a spa....

Hmmmm

Think......Think......Think........

It sure is a toughy but I'm thinkin' I'd better 'serve' these girls and get a pedicure...

What would you do???

I feel like summer today...

2011-03-28T12:35:00.000-06:00

I was just thinking how wonderful it was to sit outside last summer while the kids ran and played on the freshly cut green grass. Or while they played in the frigid pool or ran through the sprinklers to get some much needed relief from the sweltering heat. I read a book or fiddled on my laptop or just sat and watched their funny little antics and interactions wishing time could hold still and they could stay like this forever. I remember one day in particular when we were outside enjoying a hot summer day when the ice cream truck magically appeared. The kids were thrilled!!! They ate their treats while they sat in our little pool and everything was right with the world. I wanted to take the kids outside to run and play and just pretend that today is a beautiful summer day but then I remembered that it's chilly and windy today and that yesterday we were surprised to wake up to see beautiful blanket of white snow outside. By the time we got home from church it had all melted away and now we have a big ol' MUDHOLE in our back "yard" of dirt!

I planted some tulip bulbs in the fall and they haven't come up yet. They were covered in ice until a couple weeks ago. I've anticipated seeing those pretty, bright colored flowers come into bloom all winter long. I hope they do and that I didn't plant them wrong or something. Don't you just love spring when the grass turns green and the flowers start popping up. Even the smell in the air is different. I can't wait until the weather starts feeling like I feel today....

I'm still alive...

2011-03-26T20:34:00.000-06:00

So, I've had some major writer's block lately but I am still alive in case you were wondering. I was in a really crummy mood for a few days there. I just felt really, really discouraged. No hope. No joy. Just empty and sad. My pain had started to go away because of a combination of medications I was taking. It was still there but very dull. Occasionally bad still, but mostly dull. I'll take it!!! Well, the medicine stopped working and it upset me. A lot!!! I've also been having a time where I'm so sick to death of scrimping by and pinching pennies I could scream. Just not in very good spirits. Low. Very low. Then last Sunday at church Brother Banasky asked me how I was feeling and I gave him my standard answer of, "I'm ok. How are you?" Then he said, "No. Really. How are you feeling?" I told him it really hadn't been a good day, painwise. He asked if I had asked Brian to give me a blessing. I told him that I hadn't even thought about it with the crazy morning we had getting ready for church. But I did ask Brian for a blessing after church and it was a really beautiful blessing! Brian even explained some neat feelings he had as he gave me the blessing. After that I had a REALLY low few days and then on Wednesday I was able to talk with my friend, Sherelle and she helped me talk some of my feelings out. Then that night some very kind members of the Relief Society came for a visit while I was at YW and Brian talked with them a bit about me. They just recently found out about my health issues and wanted to express concern and support. Our wonderful bishop called later and talked with me. Having so many people reaching out to me and praying for me really has helped me these past few days. I have felt so much happier and have had more energy and strength than I have had in such a long time I can't even remember. I know with all my heart it is because of a Priesthood Blessing and the prayers of others on my behalf. I am so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am thankful for my membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I am thankful for all of the inspired programs of the church. I am thankful for members of our family, members of our ward, and friends who follow the spirit, and try to live like Jesus and serve others in His behalf.

Tonight I went to The General Young Women's Conference Broadcast and a wonderful dinner that the Stake YW Presidency prepared for us. It was a wonderful night. I so enjoyed visiting with the leaders from our ward and the YW from our ward who attended. The broadcast was wonderful as well. I am so grateful for my calling. I am so grateful for my YW leaders when I was a YW and for the amazing General leaders of the YW. At the end of it Elder Eyring talked a bit about the challenge in the Book of Mormon that Mormon gave to everyone who reads it to pray and ask for the witness of the spirit testifying to them that The Book of Mormon is true. It made me remember when I was in college and fervently reading The Book of Mormon. I will never forget how I felt as I got to that part in The Book of Mormon and how strong my desire was to pray and know for myself that it was true. I already had felt the witness of the spirit telling me the words were true throughout my reading but I just felt strongly that I should accept the challenge and pray for that witness. I had a lovely and sacred experience that I will never forget as I prayed and received that very strong witness that it was indeed the true word of God. It was so strong and powerful that when I have struggled at times in my life since that moment I CANNOT deny the truthfulness of the book!!! It is the most wonderful feeling and I feel so strongly that everyone should get that witness for themselves as well. Especially in this day and age when there are so many evil forces surrounding us trying to lead us astray. We HAVE to be steadfast and immoveable in our commitment to living the gospel. Having that strong witness and testimony can be THE thing that keeps us going no matter how hard it gets. I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who knows me and loves me and never gives up on me, even when I give up on myself. I am so grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ who loves me and suffered my sins and pains and challenges and frustrations and sadnesses and everything that I go through. I am grateful for His compassion and understanding. I am also so very grateful for the Holy Ghost and His companionship. For His comfort and peace that buoy me up and carry me through the hard times I face in this life. I know with all my heart and soul that nothing else on earth can bring us such joy and bring our spirits such comfort and peace than living the gospel to it's fullest and bringing ourselves closer to the members of the Godhead through our faithfulness and diligence in keeping the commandments and asking for their help when we need it! I love them and I am thankful for them. I am thankful for a wonderful husband and beautiful children that keep me going. I know I am incredibly blessed and I am so grateful for all of the many blessings I have been given. I know I am so far from perfect and that I have so far to go but I am so happy for the patience and love of my family and my Father in Heaven!!!

I have an idea...

2011-03-15T18:34:00.001-06:00

How about we change the way Visiting Teaching works. How about, when we have one of those rare days when our house is REALLY clean and tidy and has no strange smells or any horrible messes and everything feels put together, in it's place, and totally presentable...WE call our Visiting Teachers and ask if they would please come visit us today. That would be so awesome don't you think?!

So, this morning I decided it would be super great to finish the second book in a series I'm reading and start the third book because I just couldn't stand to put it down. Sure, there was a sink full of dishes that needed to be washed. And, yes, I have 4 baskets of laundry that need folded and put away. My bathroom needs cleaned. The living room needed vacuumed because we had popcorn last night and the kids got little bits all over the place.

They ALWAYS get little bits all over the place.

Why do I continue to buy popcorn?

Do I REALLY expect a different outcome?

You know what they say about that, right?!

Expecting a different outcome, that is.

Anyway, my room looks like a bomb went off, mainly because I have the 4 baskets of laundry in there. And I shampooed the living room and Brian shampooed the dining room on Saturday and I need to shampoo Gracie's room and the kitchen. And I know I have Kindergarten Roundup in just a couple hours. But, I decided to read instead. I NEVER do that anymore. I mean, I read but I just don't do it for hours on end in the middle of the day when I have a zillion things to do. I do it in the late hours of the night or the wee hours of the morning when I can't sleep. So this afternoon my visiting teachers called and asked if they could come visit me tonight..........Uuummmmmm.....Sure! That would be grrrrreaaaaat.

Hence, the wonderful new idea to change the way we do visiting teaching.

Who's with me????

Rice, Surviving Sacrament Meeting, Ipod Touch, Spiritual Thought, Crazy Life, Please share!

2011-03-13T14:27:00.000-06:00

~I finally perfected rice after 17 years of trying. When Brian and I were first married I was the worst cook ever!! I was especially bad at cooking rice. I also had a hard time actually remembering to cook rice in the first time with meals until the sauce or whatever I cooked was finished. Brian was also bad at cooking rice. He can make fabulous bread, rolls, meals. I can cook just about anything that doesn't require yeast. But we just couldn't get along with rice. It always ended up crunchy in spots and gummy in other spots when we made it. So gross!! So we started making Minute Rice all the time. It saves time and it is always cooked right. Now that we have a family of 6 people to feed and a VERY limited budget, we decided we better master the art of cooking rice. We've been trying for a few months now and Brian finally figured out Jasmine rice. But still more expensive than regular old rice. I was still struggling until I started cooking 2 cups of rice with 5 cups of water and I cook it at a bit higher temp than we were before. Now it works! Every time!!! I am SoOoO happy!! I know it's kind of weird to be so happy about that I just felt like a weirdo for not being able to figure it out before. It seemed EVERYONE but us could cook rice. Yay me!!! Now I just have to get serious about mastering recipes that require yeast. Wish me luck!! :)
~I've decided after attending Sacrament Meeting with my kids last week as usual on Sunday morning, that every single one of them must have ADHD. Sometimes they're worse than other times and last week was rough. We've tried taking snacks, books, coloring books, notebooks, Friend magazines, lacing boards to keep them entertained but it seems they just fight over them. Or discuss what they are doing...LOUDLY!!! Make huge messes. Cause many distractions and big scenes. It just isn't pretty! So last week we tried the -not bringing anything- thing...again. I think it worked about the same as anything else does. My biggest problem is that Max and Matthew think their voices only have one volume. Full blast! I wish there was some kind of muzzle for kids that I could use at church. Is that bad? This week we didn't bring ANYTHING again and it worked pretty well. Much better than last week. Matthew's volume is still full blast but they behaved as well as any little wiggly boy could be expected to behave.
~I am truly grateful that we decided to buy Zack an Ipod touch for his birthday last year!!! He had been begging for a Nintendo DS or an Ipod for a couple of years. An Ipod touch costs more than they do but you can use it for both games AND music as well as about a zillion other things. We NEVER spend anywhere near what we spent on that thing for birthdays but he's a great kid, we can't afford to pay allowance, we can't afford to take him anywhere fun ever, he NEVER gets ANYTHING fun so we figured it was worth a splurge for him!! Thank goodness we got it for him! If you don't have one in your family you definitely need one!!! We were sitting there in Sacrament Meeting when Zack remembered he was supposed to give a talk in Primary today. He whipped out his Ipod touch, that Brian was going to borrow for Sunday School and Priesthood since it has the scriptures and lesson manual on it, and looked up the Friend magazine and found a lovely little story by Elder Uchtdorf to read for his talk. Saved again!!!
~Our lesson in Sunday School was fantastic today! I just love it when this certain man substitutes! He is outstanding!! We talked a bit about The Word of Wisdom and about how some people don't want to commit to following that commandment or any commandments but want to eat, drink, and be merry and not be accountable at all. Brother McCourt talked about how Jesus suffered all of our sins and died for us that we might be forgiven of our sins and return to live with Him, our Heavenly Father, and our families forever and what does he ask of us in return? That we obey His commandments. That we live lives that emulate Him and that we be instruments in His hands in serving others, loving others, and bringing our brothers and sisters to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that none of us is perfect and that ultimately we are all striving towards the same goal. And that we all know what we should and should not be doing but I just love how each week at church we can be inspired to live certain commandments and principals more fully. Each of us may find something different that we, as individuals need to work on but if we all go with the same attitude of being humble/teachable, the spirit can speak to us and help us find ways to achieve our Celestial goals. I was really not thrilled to go to church this morning. Time changes are hard and I turned off the alarm and decided say a quick prayer before getting in the shower and accidentally fell asleep until 10 minutes to 8:00. Not good!! It's a circus at our house Sunday morning and sometimes when I'm sitting in Sacrament Meeting after all the craziness, I don't always have the right spirit about me. But I forced myself to go and I am so glad I did! I eventually humbled myself and allowed those wonderful whisperings to happen. Next week I'm going to try to not FORCE myself to go but to go with a happy heart and with an excitement to learn.
~The last few weeks have been crazy! Here are a few of the things we've had going on.
*baseball sign-ups
*baseball try outs
*New Beginnings: LOTS of hours and details and work but oh so worth it!!! It was a really great night!!!
*Zack received his Arrow of Light badge through a really neat ceremony at the Blue and Gold Banquet for scouts. Incidentally, the entire Blue and Gold Banquet lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes! Only church should last that long and even then...kind of iffy! :)
*Meal planning for a month
*Grocery shopping for a month
*Zack's D.A.R.E. graduation
*Matthew's Patriotic concert for school on a Wednesday night that lasted 1 hour and 40 minutes
*Zackary's Patriotic concert for school the very next night that lasted 1 hour and 40 minutes also. Same program. Same parts. Same songs. Different kids. They didn't have enough room for all of the parents and families to be there on the same night so they decided to split it up and have them do it on 2 different nights. UGH!!!
*Fire station field trip with Max's preschool
*Parent/teacher conferences: Warning: Shameless bragging ahead!! Have I mentioned lately that my children are positively BRILLIANT?!!!!! I am so proud of them! I love that the teachers always say they wish they had a class full of students as well behaved and smart as my kids are! They are awesome!!! And they both have THE best teachers EVER!!!
*I had a couple of Dr.'s visits, medicine additions and tweaks, and 8 vials of blood for testing. Fun stuff!
*A 3-4 hour Book of Mormon Read
*My beautiful niece Emily's 1st birthday party

We've been busy and having fun! Brian and I are gearing up for a very busy baseball season as many of you are. I've GOT to be more organized with our meals this year. Last year we ate so many hot dogs that the mere thought of them makes me gag a bit! We never tired of sandwiches though. What is your favorite "go to" busy night meal. Please comment and share your tip with me! Even if I don't know you PLEASE help me out here! Take care everyone!!!

Nakies...

2011-02-28T09:25:00.002-07:00

My little Gracie has begun the adorable, yet, often terribly annoying 'naked stage'. All of you mothers know exactly the phase I'm talking about. Every morning when we go into her room to get her out of her crib, we find her in only a diaper with her warm pjs in a pile on the floor near her crib. When we go ANYWHERE she rips off her shoes. If I'm lucky she leaves her socks on. So when we get to our destination, I have to put shoes, and sometimes socks, back on her. She often strips all of her clothes off during the day as well. Thankfully she keeps her diaper on instead of streaking around the house in all her glory. We used to have to duct tape the boys' diapers on them when they went through this stage. I probably wouldn't mind too much if it wasn't wintertime and if we didn't live in an old, drafty house. Oh well, I'm sure she'll outgrow it like her brothers did before kindergarten. :)

She has finally started talking more. Most of what she says is hard to understand but she is trying so that's improvement.
Some her cute little words are.....
DeDe-Gracie
DooDoo-Doggy
Yeah-Zack
YeahYeah-Zack-y
Me-Drink
oo-Food
MaMa-Mama AND Grandma I once said, Gracie, say G-R-A-N-D-M-A. She said...M-A-M-A
wahwah-sock
wahwah-washcloth
And the ever elusive ~DE~ Still can't figure that one out. Sometimes it means cheese but other times she says it over and over and cries and gets upset when we can't figure it out. We've pulled out our best charades playing skills but still...nothin'.

Rise and Shine...

2011-02-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

We used to be so diligent about having family scripture study every night before our kids went to bed. That was until Zack started playing baseball. The hours are so crazy! It throws our whole schedule out of wack and we have such a hard time recovering it when the season ends. Course once that ends, football season is right around the corner and it's just as difficult to stay on track. We have a hard time squeezing dinner in, let alone scripture study. And the kids are so hard to keep under control for scriptures in the evening when they are more energetic (won't keep quiet) and can't stay still (they poke, punch, and bug the heck out of each other which leads to lots of referreeing and a general lack of feeling the spirit). When this school year started we decided that Brian and I would take turns reading scriptures while the kids ate their breakfast. They just talked to each other the whole time instead of listening. And then Brian started working 4 days a week,10 hours a day so he can be home on Fridays to help me more and he started waking up at like 6:10 a.m. The boys have to wake up at 6:50 in order to make the bus on time. So, we've started getting the kids up at 6:30 to read scriptures and I must say it is FABULOUS!!! We have iliminated all talking, poking, punching, and bugging each other. They're still half asleep so they're too tired to do anything but sit there on the couch, wrapped snugly in their blankets, listening. It's wonderful! We should have done this years ago! Getting them up a little early has been awesome! By the time we are finished reading scriptures they are good and awake. When they get dressed and eat breakfast they aren't so sluggish and that parts easier. I've even made eggs and toast for breakfast a few times and Brian made pancakes once on a Friday morning with the extra time we have. They eat cold cereal, instant oatmeal cooked in the microwave, or toast and yogurt or fruit most mornings so they love this improvement. And I don't feel so guilty so it's all good. :)

Great idea...

2011-02-20T13:58:00.003-07:00

Matthew's Primary teacher last year was INCREDIBLE!!! All the kids loved her. She was there almost every week and really took her calling seriously and did a great job! In January she gave Matthew this book to take home and keep. It is a journal he worked on each week last year. There is always extra time after the lesson in primary. Some teachers fill the extra time by taking the children for a little walk, singing songs, letting them color, or if the kids are older, the old reliable "Spiritual Hangman". Sister Hamaker, however, chose to have the kids work on a little journal each week. I think it is just fabulous! I wish I'd had this idea with the zillions of primary classes we've taught over the years! I thought it was such a great idea I'd share.

It was also really fun to see the improvement in his handwriting since he was half way through Kindergarten when they started the books and then halfway through 1st Grade when they finished.

These are some of my favorite pages...
This is the first page but could have easily been put on the cover of the 3 ring binder. She left the cover plain. She put the pages in page protectors.

Apparently he was absent this week but it's quite nice.

This was the Father's Day page and he wrote on the hearts...he is nice...he makes me laugh.

I shared my blocks with Max and made him happy

It says on the bottom of the page...I'm grabbing my sister so she won't bite my brothers. hehe

The next picture has nothing to do with the rest of the post but I thought the roses that Brian gave me for Valentine's Day were so pretty. They all opened up really big just like they do on a rose bush. Usually they stay pretty closed, which is equally pretty.

I organized my...

2011-02-19T10:39:00.001-07:00

recipe blog. Finally!!! I decided to label my recipe blog. I'm still working on labeling this blog but the recipe blog is finished now. I hope you check it out!! http://www.tarasyummyrecipes.blogspot.com/

Loser mom...again, Chore chart progress report, and Way to go Zacky!!!

2011-02-17T08:48:00.064-07:00

~So, I'm checking facebook (rare for me because it gives my computers viruses but I was totally bored) on Sunday night around 9:00 and I read one of my friend Emily's posts that talks about her son's Valentine box he made for school. UH OH!!! We totally spaced off the Valentine's boxes. We were going to do them on Saturday. Matthew was going to make a dragon. Zack was still figuring his out. They were going to be awesome and they were totally going to win 1st prize in the Valentine box contest at school! Man I suck sometimes... Sorry mom, I had to say it! Luckily Zack was still awake because Brian has been letting him stay up until 9:00 lately. The poor kid had to stay up late and throw a box together. It was pretty cool and even had a monster drawn on it with it's mouth open around the card slot. Matthew had to get up early and throw his together. They would have totally rocked when I was a kid but since the Valentine's box competition is CrAzY and people are really intense about it, they didn't have a chance! When there are Spongebob, Bunnies, a whale, and a dragon that are all HUGE and intricate and totally awesome there is NO way my kid's had a chance at winning. They knew going into it after their experience last year. That is why we were going to make totally awesome ones this year. Unfortunately, I taught Zack to clean the bathroom Saturday, made the other kids do chores, took Max to his friend Michael's super fun 2 1/2 hour birthday party at the Wave Pool. We finally got faster Internet for several reasons and now we can watch our Netflix movies through the wii so we pretty much spent any spare time we had over the weekend watching movies. So, after the bday party we watched a movie while the kids played outside since it was a beautiful afternoon and apparently none of us even thought about the Valentine's boxes. Next year...it...is...on!!! We are going to start making them in like January so I won't be a loser mom and my kids will at least have a chance at winning! You'll see! It's going to be great!
~Max is cracking me up lately so much. He is always hilarious but lately he is just really funny. I am SO like Dori on Finding Nemo so I can't remember 5 minutes later what he said but it is fun to have a good laugh at the moment. I'm going to start writing everything he says in a notebook in my purse now so I can remember and share. I'm just a mess!
~Zhack talksh really shilly lately becaushe he hash retainersh now. He got them last Friday. His top one is cobalt blue (he picked it because it's called BYU blue but I am a Utes fan so I'm choosing to call it cobalt blue) with the Batman symbol. Totally awesome!!!
~This new chore chart thing is the best! Last night Matthew's chore was to straighten the living room, Max's chore was to vacuum the living room, Zack's chore was to peel potatoes. When they were finished Matthew asked if he could wash the dishes, too. Who am I to stand in the way of a kid that wants to work! When he was finished he was disappointed that there weren't any more for him to wash. AND he's totally stoked about learning to clean the bathroom on Saturday. He keeps telling me everyday that he just can't wait until Saturday so he can learn to clean the bathroom. He was my biggest grumbler about chores for the first few days and now he's my biggest helper. How cool is that?!
~Zacky has always been a great student. His kindergarten and first grade teachers in Cedar City called him "brilliant"! He was always one of the 3 top scoring kids in the class. His second grade and third grade teachers in Pleasant Grove were INTERESTING!!! At that school they literally tried to dumb things down for students that excelled so that everyone was on the same learning level instead of having different levels for different kids. I talked to his second grade teacher about how he was reading at a fourth grade level in the first grade and just wondered how he was doing. And she said that she didn't realize he was that great of a reader, she would have to test him. This was in FEBRUARY!!! It was just not the same, to say the least. The teacher he had in Salem for the last 3 months of 3rd grade (we moved there in March...HARD for him!) was interesting. Each time someone misbehaved EVERYONE was punished by having to put their heads on their desks for a minute. The next time it happened it was 2 minutes, then 3 and so on throughout the day. How is that fair to anyone! Here's my poor Zacky who has always behaved so well (every one of his teachers has said they wished all of their students were as well behaved and as kind to the other students as Zacky is) and he's being punished off and on all day long for other's bad behavior instead of rewarded for his good behavior. Not cool! One morning on the way to school, he was crying because he didn't want to go so I started crying too and just kept him home. I just couldn't do it. Fourth grade here last year was..eh. Now, this year his teacher is outstanding and recognizes that he is "brilliant" :) and LOVES my boy so much! She challenges him and helps him become the best he can be. It's been amazing! He and 2 other students this year are always the top scorers on everything. She moved all 3 of them up to accelerated programs in reading and math. He is doing so, so well! He's happier! We're happier! It's been a wonderful year and I am so grateful that things are going so well for him! He really needed this boost in his confidence after so much weirdness! And with all of our crazy moves and everything I am just so proud of him and his ability to be so resilient and remain the "brilliant" :) amazing boy that we love so much!!!

Valentiney stuff...

2011-02-16T08:41:00.000-07:00

I have had some empty veggie cans that I intended to decorate cute for teacher's treats since before Halloween. I FINALLY decided to do something with them for Valentine's Day. I think they are cute. I know they could have been embellished more but I think they are cute, yet simple. :) I also took some to some new girls in our YW and one to the kid's bus driver. She always gives them cute treats for each holiday. I had a plate of goodies for her for Christmas but couldn't get out there fast enough so I made her one of these cans. I made them Sunday evening. Then on Valentine's Day I made some red velvet cupcakes with white cream cheese frosting, some strawberry cupcakes with pink cream cheese frosting, and some of those little cherry cheesecakes in cupcake papers. I delivered those to friends, Brian's office, and gals I visit teach. I just love Valentine's Day! It makes me happy! Brian gave me a dozen red roses. They smell so good and are so pretty!

This is my favorite one...

This one was my favorite...

Delusions of a Super Mom

2011-02-13T15:24:00.001-07:00

I used to have chore charts for the kids. I just had them do a few chores like making their beds, cleaning toys, setting the table. Easy stuff. When we first moved to Price I never started that up again, having faith that we'd be moving any day and we'd start it in our new place. Then, when we moved here life was crazy! My health was steadily declining and I just didn't do it. Now that the medication I'm on helps with some of my symptoms I have been able to start doing more deep cleaning, organizing and just plain trying to make more sense out of life. Some days are really hard and I just can't do much so I have to play catch up for the next couple days and when I change medicine I have harder days but when it kind of evens out and I actually feel pretty decent I really dig in! I can't do EVERYTHING! I know that! Ever since my diagnoses in November I guess I have felt more like it's ok to start asking Brian and the kids to do more to help out. I have so much guilt over that usually because I have that whole complex about being a stay at home mom and feeling like because I do that I have to be super mom and super wife and get it all done and not ask for help because that's how I "earn my keep". Brian NEVER has made me feel that way I just feel that way!!! I think a lot of it is the stereotype of a stay at home mom sitting around eating bonbons or something you know. I am ALWAYS busy! There is ALWAYS something to be done. I WISH I could just sit around and eat bonbons all day. I have to force myself to take breaks because my body needs breaks and even still I have that guilt. Brian keeps encouraging me to scrapbook and sew and stuff but I just have a hard time giving myself permission to do those things. Well, I've started asking Brian and the boys to do more to help and it's been wonderful! I still have plenty to do but it really helps to have them do more. I really shied away from the usual chore chart because I have my kids help me all the time and I hated to put more on them than they already were doing not that they were over worked or anything. I was just feeling that stupid supermom complex crap that made me think I should be able to do it all and what the heck is wrong with me that I can't! My kids are always putting dishes away in lower cabinets, getting things out of lower cabinets, picking stuff up off the floor and handing it to me, getting the clothes out of the dryer for me when it hurts too much to do that, getting stuff out of bottom drawers for me, just basically being at my beck and call all day to help me perform tasks that have become impossible or at least extremely painful for me to do on my own. We had them take care of the dog most of the time and we have them do quite a lot of stuff outside as well. Well, even with the extra help I finally decided we need more organization in our lives. I knew I needed to do a chore chart again so that things were more organized and so that the kids were helping more and learning to clean and such, I just didn't know where to begin. After talking with Brian, my Mom, my friend Sherelle, and reading some chore chart stuff online I decided what I need is a flexible chore chart. There are some things that are just expected, everyday things that MUST be done every day by each of them. Like brushing teeth, making beds, doing homework, straightening bedrooms. It's the blank spots on the chart that are my favorite parts!!! Every day I get to write chores down that I need done specifically for that day. One day I needed the dining room vacuumed, the table cleared off, and the toys cleaned up around the house. Every day is different for each of them and they (mostly Matthew) grumble a lot but I keep assuring them that it will be good for them to learn to be hard workers. And it has been great to teach them about working together as a team/family to get things done and how there are 6 of us and I am only one woman and it's just impossible for me to take care of everything for 6 people. It's hard getting used to all of this again after having a break for the past 2 years from chore charts but all in all I think it is going ok. Today, I taught Zack to clean the bathroom. Many of you will be appalled that I am just now teaching my 10 year old to clean a bathroom. I know. It was that supermom thing, and the fear of bleached out clothing, etc. that held me back. I have to say that it was one of the funniest things I have ever experienced in my entire life!!! He was literally gagging when he was cleaning the toilet and the floor around the toilet. It was hilarious! He's quite the little comedian and had me in stitches the entire time as he over exaggerated his disgust at having to do this chore!!! I haven't laughed that hard in I don't know how long! He laughed too and it was actually a fun experience. Next weekend it's Matthew's turn to learn to clean the bathroom. I have a feeling it might not be so enjoyable...Wish me luck!!!

Popcorn Popping

2011-02-11T17:05:00.005-07:00

Our Young Women activity was extra fun this week! It started out with one of the leaders reading this Parable of the Popcorn to us.

The Parable of the Popcorn

Behold at the time of the harvest, the ears of corn did bring forth

kernels which we dried and prepared for the popper's hand.

And then it was that the popper did take the kernels, all of which

appeared alike unto him, and did apply the oil and the heat.

And it came to pass that when the heat was on, some did explode with

promise and did magnify themselves an hundred fold, and some did burst

forth with whiteness which did both gladden the eye and satisfy the taste

of the popper. And likewise, some others did pop, but not too much.

But lo, there were some that did just lie there and even though the

popper's heat was alike unto all, they did bask in the warmth of the oil

and kept everything they had for themselves.

And so it came to pass that those which had given of themselves did bring

joy and delight to many munchers, but those which kept of the warmth and

did not burst forth were fit only to be cast out into the pail and though

of with hardness and disgust.

And thus we see that in the beginning all appear alike, but when the heat

is on, some come forth and give their all, while others fail to pop and

become as chaff to be discarded and forgotten.

Which are you?

Bursting with enthusiasm, ready to give your all

OR

Content to keep to yourself, and not pop or just pop a little

Then, another leader gave some examples of ways this applies to us and stuff. It was nice. Then the fun part! All of the leaders and some of the YW brought different kinds of popcorn to share with everyone and exchanged the recipes. I LoVe getting new recipes!!! And they were absolutely delicious!!! We loaded up bags full of all the different kinds of popcorn to take to our inactive and less active girls and then we each got to load up a bag full for ourselves. So fun!!! Then we loaded up into cars and visited the girls. It was a great night! I thought I'd share in case you all needed a new yummy treat to try. Also, at Max's preschool Valentine's Party yesterday a girl brought white cheddar popcorn that her mom made. Her mom says that there are some different flavored salts at Walmart by the popcorn and she just popped the popcorn in her popper and then sprinkled the white cheddar flavor on it. It was fabulous! I don't usually like cheese popcorn but this white cheddar flavor was so salty and delicious! Good stuff! I just made some and the bottle suggests buying some sort of spray stuff to make it stick to the popcorn. I didn't read it until I was home so I sprayed some cooking spray on it and it stuck and was good. Also I salted the popcorn more with regular salt as well and that made it better.

Sesame-Ginger Popcorn

This snack is as fun to make as it is to eat. It's popcorn with a twist. Toasted sesame oil, sesame seeds, brown sugar, and fresh grated ginger give this popcorn it's unique sweet and spicy flavor. If you are looking for something tempting to serve at your next movie night, this delicious snack is the one.

Ingredients

6 cups popped popcorn
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
1-1/2 cups lightly salted cashews
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons light-colored corn syrup
1/8 teaspoon baking soda

Directions

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Remove all unpopped kernels from popped popcorn. Put popcorn and cashews in a greased 17x12x2 inch baking or roasting pan.

In a medium saucepan combine brown sugar, butter corn syrup, ginger, and sesame oil. Cook and stir over medium heat until mixture boils. Continue boiling at a moderate rate, without stirring, for 5 minutes more.

Remove pan from heat. Stir in sesame seeds, vanilla, and baking soda. Pour mixture over popcorn mixture. Stir gently to coat. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown, stirring twice. Spread popcorn mixture on a large piece of buttered foil to cool. Store tightly covered. Makes 8&1/2 cups.

Cinnamon Popcorn

2-3 quarts popped corn in a large bowl
4 Tablespoons butter-melt in a small saucepan.
Add: 3 Tablespoons water, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Increase heat. Boil 3-4 minutes. Stir into popcorn. Stir while cooling.

White Chocolate Popcorn Crunch

5 cups popped popcorn
1/2 cup dried sweetened cranberries
1/2 cups sliced almonds
12 ounces white chocolate baking chips, chopped white chocolate or white candy coating
1-2 tablespoons vegetable shortening

Here's how:

Cover a baking pan with foil or wax paper; set aside. Place popcorn, cranberries and almonds in a large bowl; set aside. Melt chocolate in a double boiler over barely simmering water, stirring until smooth OR melt according to package directions. (If chocolate in not smooth after melting, stir in 1-2 tablespoons shortening until mixture is smooth and loose enough to coat popcorn). Pour chocolate mixture over popcorn mixture and stir to coat. Spread onto prepared pan; allow to cool completely. When chocolate is cooled and set, brerak into chunks for serving. Sotre in an air-tight container at room temperature.

Variation: White Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn Crunch: Omit cranberries and almonds. Stir in 1 cup crushed hard candy peppermint after chocolate is melted.

Marshmallow Pink Popcorn

1/4 cup plus 2 Tblsp. light corn syrup

2 Tblsp. butter

1/4 cup water

3 cups mini marshmallows, divided

2 cups powdered sugar

6 drops red food coloring

4 quarts popped corn

1 cup salted peanuts

In heavy saucepan blend syrup, butter & water. Cook over low heat until mixture thickens. Add 1 cup of the marshmallows and stir until they melt. Add powdered sugar and coloring. Stir and cook until bubbling. Pour over corn and salted nuts and the rest of the marshmallows.

Jello Popcorn

1 c. unpopped corn (24 c. popped popcorn)
Salt, optional

3 oz. pkg. Jello

1 c. granulated sugar

1 c. light corn syrup

Put popcorn in large bowl. Salt to taste. Put Jello powder, sugar and syrup into saucepan. Heat and stir to dissolve. Bring to boil. Pour over popcorn. Stir to coat well.

One of our girls brought raspberry flavored Jello popcorn and one of the leaders brought strawberry flavor and grape flavor. All delicious!!!

Gummy Bear Popcorn

I took this one. It's my ex-sister-in-law, Anna's recipe. LOVE IT!!!

1 cup butter
1 1/3 cups sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1 tsp. vanilla
3 cups marshmallows

Pop 2 or 3 bags of buttered popcorn. Pour onto cookie sheets and gently pick up popcorn and put into large mixing bowl so that the unpopped kernals fall to the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle gummy bears over popcorn and gently toss. Melt butter-add sugar and syrup. Bring to boil, stir and simmer for 3 minutes. Add vanilla and stir in marshmallows. Pour over popcorn and gummy bears. It will melt the gummi bears if you it this way otherwise you have chewy gummy bears mixed in and trust me it isn't so yummy! Just stir and stir until gummy bears are nicely melted and eveything is mixed well. Then poor out onto cookie sheets and ENJOY!!! Anna insists that Kraft marshmallows and real butter are necessary for the recipe. I am cheap and use Great Value marshmallows and it works out well but I totally agree on the butter!!!

Mouse attack...

2011-02-09T09:01:00.002-07:00

So, I totally hate mice as most people do. We had one in our apartment in Pleasant Grove and it totally freaked me out! That was the first time in the whole time we've been married so I guess that's pretty good. Then we moved here. To the outskirts of town. Everyone kept warning us that we would probably have problems with mice but we just kept our fingers crossed that there wouldn't be any. One morning we came to the living room for scripture study and the boys noticed a mouse sitting on Brian's shoe. We brought our dog in and thought she would attack it because she likes to catch mice under the bushes and play with them to death. She never noticed the stupid thing and the mouse never moved once. Brian picked up his shoe and took it outside and threw the mouse off of it and the dog "played" with it and we thought that was that. I haven't been able to put shoes on without shaking them out first ever since just in case a mouse has decided they would make a nice cozy home to live in. So freaked out! Well, Brian decided to get me a HUGE bag of Peanut M&M's for my birthday which was a Thursday. He bought them the night before and hid them in his sock drawer until he would give them to me in the morning. Well, when he brought them to me there was a hole in the bag where a stupid mouse had chewed through the plastic to get to the M&M's. I was so freaked out! Another mouse! And since the month of January was so tight (see previous post) that was my only present from him which I totally appreciated other than the fact that I had to throw them away because of a stupid old mouse! Brian set some traps out. A couple days later on Saturday morning I was in my bedroom getting something out of the closet and had all of my weight on one foot and the other stretched back a foot or so behind me, when I start feeling this weird sensation on my heel. It feel like little claws coming around both sides of my heel. Like put your forefinger and your thumb around your heel and scratch and pull back lightly til they touch again and that is what it felt like. It creeped me out a bit but I just figured it was no big deal and moved my foot several inches away from that spot and...it happened again. Well, I FREAKED OUT!!! I don't know exactly what happened after the initial screaming started. I kind of blacked out or something. I ended up on my butt on the floor, right where I'm thinking this dangerous, killer mouse is right, Brian's exercise bike is on top of my face and I'm screaming bloody murder and repeating at the top of my lungs, "Brian, HELP ME! Brian, HELP ME!" He comes rushing in, along with all of my children, asking what's the matter. My nose is bleeding at this point and it really hurts from the scuffle I had with the exercise bike I'm still on the floor and can't get up and they are all looking at me like I've lost my mind when I tell them about being attacked by the dangerous killer mouse. Especially poor Gracie just looked at me with this very concerned look on her face. Not my proudest moment. But what would you have done if you thought a mouse was attacking you. I mean really. Under such circumstances you just don't always think logically you just think about survival! :) I was thinking this morning that my nose seems all better now and thought I'd share my ridiculous story with you all. I hope it made you laugh!

Dana's here! Stupid Medicine! Fun weekend! Blessed! Making stuff...

2011-02-07T11:47:00.002-07:00

I really try to be positive and remember the many wonderful blessings our loving Heavenly Father has given us. But sometimes I have a bad day. Today is one of those days. I really hate feeling like this. I hate thinking of the things we don't have and really facing the disappointment of unrealized dreams, wishes, hopes, as meaningless and trivial as they may be. I hate feeling like I know my joy is there somewhere I just need to try harder to find it today than most days. I changed medicine last weekend and it made me weird. Well, I'm already weird so I guess I should say it made me weirder. :) I went off the first medicine too quickly which caused CRAZY withdrawals. I was a MESS!!! My mom came and helped me Monday and Tuesday and left Wednesday morning. I appreciated her help so much! I just hate having something wrong with me! I really hate medicine and all that goes along with it! I just hope this one actually helps and then I can start appreciating medicine in my life instead of resenting it! Every time I add a pill or switch medicines I am just plain weird for days. I added one Friday morning and I was still weird from changing the medicine in the first place and now I'm definitely weird!!! It was fun spending time with my mom! I have missed having her come and stay and the kids were THRILLED about her staying!!! Zack thought she had gone home Tuesday because Brian had her car and when he came in the house after school and saw her he dropped to the ground and said YES!!! You're still here!!! Cracked me up! I said, Hey, no one ever reacts like that when they see me! :)

My sister Dana came Friday for a visit from Colorado. She stopped by on her way to my parents' town. Then we went up Friday and stayed until Sunday night. Brian gets paid monthly now instead of twice a month. It started in January. We only had 1 of his 2 week paychecks to last the entire month of January during the lovely transition. I only mention it because it was truly a miracle that we survived the month! We were so truly blessed! We didn't have to beg, steal, or borrow or anything we just...made it through. I know we made it because we pay our tithing!!! If it weren't for that who knows what the month would have been like. It wasn't an easy month at all!! It stressed me out so much I just can't tell you! We had some touch and go moments. Syphoning gas from one of our cars to the other was involved but we made it! LOL!! Definitely a low point! But it all ended up well and when the month ended and we evaluated the situation we just truly felt blessed! We felt like marathon runners crossing the finish line! When payday hit it was like a drowning person finally getting water! We were so happy!!! We had run out of EVERYTHING!!!! We had plenty of food and clothing and gas (just not in the right car LOL). I ran out of laundry soap on Thursday or Friday and payday was Tuesday so that was kind of hairy but I had planned my last soap well so that we had everything we needed to last til payday. The laundry room just became a VERY scary place! HAHA All in all it worked out! I just mention it because I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father who always takes good care of us and makes sure we have everything we NEED. I am grateful to be His daughter and to know that He loves me and my little family and that He is mindful of us and our needs. My testimony of His love for us and my love for Him grew during that month. It was difficult going through the month but looking back it was such a blessing. I know He loves all of us and looks out for us! See there, I'm already feeling happier just remembering His love for me! The best gift!!!

Well, now that Brian is only getting paid once a month and we have 6 people in our family and a limited budget we decided while we were in Utah County we would make a trip to Sam's. I so miss living in Pleasant Grove where I could go to Costco every paycheck and load up. I'm learning to be more organized. I have always made up a menu for the entire 2 weeks and shopped right on payday for everything we might need during that 2 weeks. I don't ever want to find ourselves at the end of the pay period, out of food to eat and out of money so we always cover that base first thing!! I guess I am pretty organized already but now that I have to do it for an entire month at once I have to kick up the organization a few notches. Life happens and things come up and if I don't do it up front we won't have it at the end. I bought 2 things of laundry soap this time I can tell you that! And I bought Ziplocs at Sam's because we ran out of those and I use those for EVERYTHING!!! And flour lots of flour! I'm learning as I go. We love a good trip to Sam's or Costco so it will be fun for us to make a monthly grocery shopping trip up there and to some of my favorite grocery stores like Macey's and I have heard wonderful things about Winco. Can't wait to check them out!

I got a pedicure while I was up there too. I used a gift certificate Nathan and Heidi gave me for my birthday. It was nice! I was going to get my hair done there but chickened out and a pedicure was just what I needed! So relaxing! My friend Sherelle taught me to make those cute little flower clips for little girls' hair so I took all my supplies up with me and we all made cute little flower clips! It was really fun! It was fun spending lots of time with my sisters! I love them all so much! Dana, Stephanie, KayTee, and Heidi (Nathan's wife) are all different, beautiful, talented, wonderful women! We laughed and had a great time! I wish we all lived close and could just spend time together like that all the time!!! I think about all the times we spent singing into our hairbrush microphones, dancing, watching chick flicks, braiding each other's hair, talking, playing games, and just being silly when we were kids and I miss that time. Now we enjoy each other in different ways. Instead of Prom dress shopping we went grocery shopping. We're more tired and poop out sooner than we used to. We have little kiddos to care for and to put to bed early. But we savor the moments we can spend together and I'm so grateful to have them in my life!!! Last night we went to Steph and J.J.'s for a fun Super Bowl Party. It's always fun to go to their parties! The food was divine! It was a fun weekend! Dana will be here until Friday. Maybe that's what I'm most upset about today. She's in UTAH and I'm HERE! Not fun! Whatchya gonna do?!

I am going to embellish the middles of some of these differently. I just put a brad in for now til I find what I'm looking for. They were fun to make! Remember if you click on the picture you can see them bigger. :)

The difference between a man and a woman...

2011-01-28T12:14:00.002-07:00

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and the conclusion that I finally have come to is that men's lives are finishable. What I mean is, typically they go to work at a certain time. Their meals are eaten at basically the same time each day. Their tasks at work involve steps that, if followed, lead to actual completion of said task. When Brian worked construction, masonry, he had a visual reminder of the progress he had made that day and eventually the job would be completed and he would move on to the next job and never look back except to admire the beauty of a job well done! He is an accountant now and he has different tasks to perform. He must finish some, each day, others, each week, often they are only completed each month, and there are some that need attention only once a year or longer. But no matter what, he, at some point, finishes them. No one comes along and destroys what he has done. It's complete! He comes home at the same time each day and leaves his work behind until the next day or until the weekend is over. When he's home he gets the "honey-do list" and he will usually help me out with whatever I specifically ask him to. But if he wants to watch a TV show or a movie he can do that with no thoughts of anything that needs to be done around him. He is "done" for the night or whatever and can truly relax and enjoy the show. I know a lot of men's jobs are different than that. They are on call, or they work in varying positions that have varying hours or whatever but the main point I am trying to make is that at some point, most of them can feel like their job is "complete" and they can TRULY relax.

Women, however, live a completely different existence. Especially mothers with more than one child. Whether you work outside the home or not, basically your home life experience is the same. You start the day going a million miles an hour. You are lucky to eat whenever you finally get a sec to do that or, when your body finally threatens to revolt if you don't feed it, whichever comes first. This is true with breakfast and lunch and in a lot of cases, dinner, depending on how many sports and extracurricular activities your children are involved in, the varying ages of your children and the different levels of attention they require, whether or not you have a tiny baby to feed at their command, if you have an out of the home job or 2 in addition to your mom job that keeps you hopping from one place to another all the time and you wonder if that next meal is ever going to come, which calling you happen to have at the time among other variables to your life's equation. It's a given that dishes and laundry are just never going to be "finished". As soon as you finish vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, or picking up things you can bet money that someone is going to mess that all up at some point, usually sooner than later. You work from sun up to sun down and at the end of the day you finally melt into the couch, exhausted and look around the house and realize that there is absolutely no proof that you have done anything all day because it all needs to be done again, tomorrow. You sit there, feeling defeated, half watching the TV as you make a mental list of all the zillions of things that need to be done tomorrow. You get up during each commercial to switch loads of laundry, straighten up, add something to your calendar you are worried you'll forget, check on the kids, on and on it goes. Then you somehow muster up the energy to fold some laundry during the show, because....what woman can ever, truly, RELAX!!!! Seriously!!! It's impossible. Our minds are always going. Always thinking of something we need to do. Planning something for someone or something. 'Complete' and 'finished' are rarely part of our vocabulary. This is why we all love scrapbooking, reading, sewing, needle work, crocheting, card making, crafting, creating, whatever it is you like to do on the RARE occurrence that you get the chance! When else do we ever get the chance to really, truly get something finished that will stay finished.

So...this is the difference. This is why when he is sitting on the couch completely enthralled in this show and is completely relaxed, without a care in the world...YOU WANT TO SMACK HIM!!! OR SCREAM!!! We all just want him to see that there is a load of towels that you folded but you are too exhausted to put them away. We don't want him to step over them, or slide the basket out of his way, or use it as an ottoman, we want him to PUT...THEM...AWAY!!!

Or is it just me????

Ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble...

2011-01-27T10:06:00.017-07:00

So, yesterday was Max's 5th birthday. I let him invite some friends for the first time. He was so excited and anxious for his big day. One really nice thing about having a birthday in January, in a small town, is that Walmart has some super sweet deals on toys they've marked down that were left over from Christmas. We got him a scooter for 15 bucks!!! We found some other great things too and he was happy with his loot. I had been running around like a chicken with my head cut off for 2 days. I had a Dr.s appointment and a dentist appointment and I've had to run Brian to work all month because we need to register his car but can't until February 1st (UGGHH!!!!), which means back and forth to take him, to get him at lunch, to take him back and pick him up if I need the car in the afternoon, if not he drives back after lunch. I had to run some errands, visit a new young woman in the ward (which was the highlight of my 2 days of crazy and turned out really well!!!!), run Max back and forth for preschool, wash a million dishes and clean frantically every extra minute I could find, all one handed while lugging around my adorable 20 month old little Gracie who is getting over a cold and NEEDED her mommy. Yesterday morning I made a batch of strawberry cupcakes (yes, pink, I know, I tried to talk him into chocolate but he's stubborn) and a chocolate cake. Of course my stupid pain was terrible all day both days because stress makes it worse and I was more than a little stressed! So, I'm at my dentist appointment that took an hour and a half and I get this phone call from the school saying Matthew threw up. SUPER!!! I go to pick him up after my appointment and I'm asking him on the way out to the car if he was sick to his stomach or what and he completely fell apart and says, through his tears, that he was choking on a piece of chicken and tried to drink to make it go down but it wouldn't go down so he started puking and it finally came out. SCARY!! He did that once at home and I had to do the Heimlich on him. He needs to chew his chicken better! I was sad for him that he was obviously so traumatized by the whole experience but relieved that he didn't have a stomach bug that would cause me to cancel the party or anything. So, it's getting down to crunch time. 2 hours till the party. I still needed to pick everything up and vacuum, make frosting in at least 4 colorful options so the kids could decorate their own cupcake, wash a bunch more dishes (they never end!!!), clean the bathroom, dust my adorable Ikea shelves, decorate for the party, wipe off counter tops and stove...I'm only ONE woman needing 14 more hands. I decide a prayer is in TALL order. I called the boys together and we thanked Heavenly Father that Matthew didn't choke to death at lunch and then asked that I'd be able to get everything done in time for the party. I was frantically trying to do my best at that and running out of time when my angel friend, Sherelle, drove up in her chariot (mini van) and offered to help me out. Bless her!!! She really saved my tail! And she stayed and helped me with the whole party too! Thank heavens! We didn't quite finish all the tasks on the list but we did get all of the really important stuff done and the rest didn't really matter in the end anyway. I don't think I'll ever do another midweek party again. It was fun but just too CRAZY!!! Once the party was over I still needed to make the chocolate cake I made earlier in the day, into a football. I was definitely channeling my inner Paula Deen yesterday with all the butter and shortening I used in making two kinds of frosting and a chocolate cake from scratch. And it...was...good!!! Sherelle showed me the super fun little comment thing I added to my blog. I am so excited about it! Then when Brian came home from work he made a pizza crust and homemade pizza (that's what the birthday boy requested) and I got to work looking for scrapbook paper for our little Y.W. activity. It was so fun! I'll post about that later! Then we ate and sang Happy Birthday to Max and then Zack and I were off to pack meeting at 6:30. His leaders were nice enough to give him his awards first thing so I could be there for it before I needed to go pick up a couple of the YW for our activity at 7:00. When I got home I CRASHED!!! I am exhausted today! Oh to have the energy, focus, and cleverness I used to have before my pain started sucking it all out of me. I'm starting a different medicine combination today and I'm really keeping my fingers crossed that it does the trick since the pain seems to be worsening and the ibuprofen doesn't seem to be doing anything for me anymore. Crazy days! Crazy life! That's what keeps it interesting, right! I hope you all are having fun with your interesting lives too!!! Have a good one!!!

His cake that kinda, sorta looks like a football....I'm NOT a professional!!! ;)

Sassy Style: “Mix Tape Monday”

2011-01-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

Sassy Style: “Mix Tape Monday”

2011-01-21T08:35:00.002-07:00

When I was combing Max's hair the other day I discovered that he had decided he needed a hair cut and cut a big chunk out of the front of his hair and the side of the top of his head. Like almost to the scalp in spots.

I used the clippers and cut it down as low as I dared go in the dead of winter. If you look closely you can still see spots that are lower than I went but oh well. Silly boy! I just laughed until it occured to me that he might try doing that to his sister's hair some time. I had a flashback to a story a lady told us once about how her mother had put curlers in her long, beautiful hair and she thought it would be cool to cut the hair off at the roller and unroll the hair on the bed and look at the pretty curls. Then she said at some point she realized if the hair was on the bed, it wasn't on her head, and she CRIED!!! I decided to threaten unspeakable things to Max if he ever dared touch scissors to her hair. Hopefully that works!!!

I survived my first time!!

2011-01-20T09:02:00.006-07:00

Last night was the first time I had to be in charge of a combined YW/YM activity. I was scared to death! I don't know why. I just need more confidence in myself I know. As I thought about ideas for the activity I thought playing a game would be a lot of fun. There is a really fun sounding LDS Family Feud game idea online but I was a bit worried about pulling that one off. I thought about our 'Spiritual Pictionary' game we play for Family Home Evening and decided it would be perfect! It was pretty easy to prepare for. I wrote like 30 different clues or whatever you call them on the back of cute scrapbook paper strips for cuteness and just used sharpies to decorate a white sack to put them in. Not real clever looking but colorful and 'cute' enough to not be too boring. Then the YW leaders brought cookies for dessert. The kids LOVED it!!! We all did! We laughed a lot and had a really fun time! We put equal amounts of leaders and youth on each team. We had 6 youth there and 8 leaders. I couldn't play because I knew the clues and one of the leaders took score. We have a small group but they are a lot of fun!!! Now that I think of it it might have been fun to have kids against leaders. But it was really fun to watch them all play! The leaders AND the kids all said what fun it was and some of them even said it was the most fun they had had at an activity in a long time. I was SO relieved!!! I know some of you have Young Women's callings and thought I'd pass the idea along. Some of the clues I used were things like...Be strong and of a good courage, Pinewood Derby, for the strength of youth, Resurrection, Love at Home, Ammon, Samuel the Lamanite, Joseph Smith's first vision, Baptisms for the dead, Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam, Pearl of Great Price, Golden Plates, etc. I hope you give it a try!!! Please let me know if you do and how it turns out!!

Please google My Sisters Love at Home and listen to their totally awesome version of this great song! I can't figure out how to link it but it's so worth taking a minute to listen to it!! Have a great day!!!

I've fallen off the wagon...

2011-01-19T17:11:00.001-07:00

So, most of you know that my 7 year old, Matthew, is SEVERELY allergic to all nuts. We pretty much kissed all nuts goodbye in our house because it's so scary to even consider the possibilities of accidental cross contamination and also he was so little that we were afraid he would accidentally eat something he shouldn't have. SCARY!!! Well, I LOVE peanut butter!!! I never cared much for it as a child but I can't get enough as an adult. It saved me during my first trimester when I was pregnant with Zack and NOTHING sounded good but peanut butter sandwiches or Arby's regular roast beef sandwiches. I used to gag over Reeces Peanut Butter Cups as a kid but now....LOVE!!! And who can get enough peanut M&M's?! I mean really!!! Sometimes I sneak some when he's at school but then I have to really watch my kisses with him. I can only kiss him on the top of his head on his hair after I've eaten anything with nuts or he breaks out in hives. Even if it has been HOURS since I ate it. So I usually just don't have any. Well, this week I've had 2 peanut butter sandwiches and Brian snuck me some peanut M&M's and I needed to make some cookies for YW/YM activity tonight so I did it...I made peanut butter cookies. I even licked the peanut butter spoon clean afterwards. I feel so guilty and like everything is contaminated but I've truly scrubbed and scrubbed and I think it's all good. And can I just say that these may be the best peanut butter cookies I've ever eaten. Could be that they are just so dang yummy because it's been like YEARS since I've eaten any but still.. YUMMY!!! If everything goes well with these and we can keep him safe since he's old enough to really understand the dangers and stuff then I'm going to have to make more peanut butter goodies. Oh, scotcheroos, how I've missed you!!!

Like a kid again...

2011-01-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

So I have wanted some of the dark chocolate brown UGG-type boots for ever!!! I have either been too broke to get them or they don't carry them in my ginormous size 11!!! Brian tried to find me some for Christmas but ran into all the same road blocks. My mom and sister, Steph, were looking for some for me for my birthday at the mall and told me that they had once again ran into the same problems. Well, today Mom, Steph, Steph's kids, and Stan drove the hour through the canyon to take me to lunch for my birthday. Mom made me her special strawberry cake and they gave me a gift to open. You can imagine my surprise and JOY when I looked in the box and saw dark chocolate brown boots in a size 11 and everything!!! I was so THRILLED!!! I haven't been this excited over a gift in a really long time and it's really fun!!! I feel like a kid again! I was thinking about sleeping with them on tonight. Or hugging them while I sleep tonight. I am just so happy to have them! They are so pretty! And comfy! And the fur inside is so soft and fluffy and lovely!!! And I just LOVE them!!!! :)

Good for them!!

2011-01-12T09:36:00.001-07:00

http://ldsliving.com/story/63283-sister-missionaries-get-a-new-wardrobe
I think this is great!

P.S. Does anyone know what "de" means? Gracie keeps asking for it. Begging for it. And sometimes crying for it. It's not drink because she calls drink "me". I've tried EVERYTHING!! Usually she's pointing at the frig when she says it and yesterday I showed her everything inside hoping to unfold the mystery only to hear NO!!! over and over again!!! Wish me luck!!!

Here's Hopin'!!!

2011-01-10T11:49:00.003-07:00

I've known for a long time I needed to get healthier but I just wasn't there mentally. Do you know what I mean? When you decide to get healthy it's such a mental change!!! It is for me anyway. If I haven't really done that it's not going to work!! Well, ever since I was thrust into this stupid world of drs and medicine and pain and CRAP I have felt such a lack of control. I really really hate having to take medicine. I really really hate drs appointments and wasting hours of my life in waiting rooms, on hold with receptionists, on hold with my insurance company, etc. Well, one of the stupid medicines I'm on causes you to gain weight. SUPER!!! As if all that elbow exercise I've been getting doesn't do enough damage on it's own I have to take a medication that makes me gain weight.When I was first diagnosed I was just totally grateful that my kids are healthy!!! I can handle having health problems better than I can handle having my kids have health problems!! I was also so incredibly grateful that I didn't have a brain tumor I didn't care what else they said. Now the realities of my "condition" or whatever you want to call it have sunk in and honestly it's HARD!!! It SUCKS!!!!!!! I hate it and I'm ANGRY!!! I'm not angry at anyone I'm just angry! It sucks and I'm angry! I can't help that! Probably natural to feel that way. I'm not living IN anger if that makes sense. I STILL feel so incredibly GRATEFUL for the kids good health and that I don't have a brain tumor I'm just mad about this stupid thing. I am trying to learn to function and deal with it to the best of my ability. When I bend over and my face explodes in pain I get MAD that this stupid thing effects me and the way I funciton and take care of my family. I am grateful for my freakishly long finger toes now because they help me pick stuff up! I knew there had to be a good reason for them!!! I'm hoping to get one of those little claw picker upper things for my birthday so that will help, too!! It's hard to not have control over my body. I may not be able to control the stupid medicine I take but I DO however have control over whether or not I get my fat @*# up and ride the exercise bike or what kinds of food I put in my mouth. Now that the medicines have gotten me back to a pretty decent functioning level (haven't helped pain but have helped dizziness and nausea, etc) I feel like exercising!! Brian asked for an exercise bike (see January 1st post) for Christmas and has been riding it faithfully for a couple weeks now. I've been trying to mentally be ready to do it. The end of last week I couldn't even button my fat pants. It's definitely TIME! I became mentally ready at that very moment!!! Seriously bad! Granted I just had that Essure procedure and there was some bloating and swelling but STILL!!! So, I have ridden Brian's bike twice so far. I feel fantastic when I'm done. Don't you just feel so good about yourself and your efforts after you've taken good care of your body and have exercised? And don't you feel so invigorated? It's the best! So I'm hoping that exercise and some food changes will help counter act the effects the medication has on my weight!!!

Here's hopin!!!!!

Back to reality.....

2011-01-08T20:04:00.001-07:00

So, for the last 2 weeks our church building has had no power. We couldn't meet there or have weekly activities for 2 weeks. We met at the stake center with the 2nd ward for Sacrament Meeting and then we were...justifiably...with permission...even encouraged...

to go home!!!

Isn't that totally awesome! We ALL loved it!!! Don't get me wrong I do enjoy church but it sometimes feels more emotionally and physically exhausting than it's worth wrestling 4 kids and all. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that way. And sometimes I dread it like crazy so having a nice little break was great. The super nice bishop of the 2nd ward invited us to stay for all the meetings. But our bishop said we could go home so we did!!!! The other ward's members were very welcoming and kind to us and we appreciate them letting us steal their designated pews for 2 weeks! But now...sadly...it's back to reality for us. Our ward building has power again. It sure was nice while it lasted though!!!

Better late than never...I hope!!

2011-01-07T10:58:00.004-07:00

I was finally taking my friend Tara B's advice and labeling my blog posts since I REALLY needed to sit down and ran across a couple of posts I was going to make over the holidays but for some reason forgot to actually push PUBLISH POST. Yes I'm a goofball! Here they are...

11/28/10

So, I totally love the prices of Black Friday! I'm not a big fan of the crouds but I do enjoy getting in on all the sweet deals! My Mom and I decided to avoid most of the crazy loons by leaving around 7:00. No offense to any of you crazy loons! I am usually one of them but just wasn't up to it this year. Most of what we were interested in was gone but I got some super cute brown dress boots at Penney's for 30 bucks. We got a few other things but the best deal this year for us HAS to be the ladder we got!!! They had these 6 ft ladders that are usually $50 on for $19 at Lowe's. We haven't ever really needed a ladder much before. But since we've lived here we've needed one lots of times but they are so stinking expensive. So this was like HUGE for us!!! I wanted Christmas lights up and that was just NOT happening without a ladder. So we went on over to Lowe's and to our HUGE disappointment they were OUT of them!!! Brian used to work at Lowe's and he knew that they price match so we decided to check out Home Depot and see if they had the ladder and if they price matched and sure enough they DID!!! Not only do they price match but they also give you 10% off of the purchase as well!! We got a $50 ladder for $17.10!! So cool!!! It was so fun having our Christmas lights on the house and I'm sure we'll use it lots! I LOVE a great deal!!!

12/23/10

~Today I finally finished my Christmas shopping. I am so excited to have it all done and hopefully everyone is happy with what they get. I used to have all my shopping finished by October so having to wait until two days before Christmas to finish things up made me hyperventilate often but it was actually kind of fun being at the stores today. Walmart totally rocked today too! They had someone there to help the cashier bag groceries and put them in the cart and there was even an employee in the parking lot who offered to help me put my groceries into the car. It was the best customer service I've ever had there!!
~I checked over my list of all the things we have bought for the kids for Christmas and can you believe that somehow we managed to buy only gifts that don't require any batteries. Usually we spend between $20-$40 on batteries alone at Christmas time so I was so excited not to have to buy any!!!
~I made some projects at Super Saturday last month that were so cute. I made a cute, big, brown bracelt. 7 sets of blocks that say Family for me, my mom, and each of my siblings. One of the things I made was one of those fancy big watches that everyone is wearing. It has black, silver, and clear beads. I love it! I debated over giving it as a gift or making it for myself. I've wanted one for myself so bad for a long time and I rarely get anything for myself so I decided to make it for myself. SO EXCITED!!! Today at Walmart while I loaded up the conveyerbelt I accidentally smacked it on the little metal edge and broke the cute little crystal cover. :( Oh well. It was fun having something cute and fun while it lasted!
~I finally finished everyone's Family blocks on Christmas Eve. Yes I'm a procrastinator! They ended up cute and I was so sad I couldn't give them to my sisters and brothers and parents right that moment! I can't send them to Dana and Rob until February but hopefully they think it's better late than never!! :)

This one is mine and the others were a variety of dark reds, cream/tan, and navy blue or green. I have fun making them and learning to use Mod Podge and can't wait to find something else to mod podge!! I made a sign for Matty and Max's room using the technique that says I hope they call me on a mission. I need to make one for Zack now and I want to make one for Gracie's room that says I love to see the temple, I'm going there some day.

Can you see the broken crystal? :(

A few of my favorite things...

2011-01-07T09:33:00.003-07:00

So a couple weeks ago I took some pics of my favorite decorations around our house and I was going to post them on my blog but completely forgot until I was checking out blogs today and one of the blogs I follow had a post with all of their fun decorations on it. So now that I remember...here goes...I don't have a lot of fancy stuff and my camera bites and I'm not so good at using it anyway but whatever!

This little star was my Grandma Hazel's ornament she used to hang on her tree. I have another like it that is just white. I LOVE to see these ornaments when I'm decorating the tree and throughout the month. It makes me think of her and I miss her so much! And my other grandmothers too!

Zacky's little first 5 years Hallmark ornaments.

Matthew and Max both had the same little set for their first 5 ornaments.

Gracie's first 2 ornaments.

Mickey Mouse of course!!!

This is not how we hung these I just squashed them all together to take the picture of all the ornaments we've made the past few years. 2 years in a row we made mittens then last year we made snowflakes, and this year we made stars. The kids got really creative this year and last year their snowflakes were rainbow colors and covered in glitter. It is a fun part of our Christmas celebrations now. I just googled salt dough ornaments and used a recipe that popped up. I think they are really fun!!! And a little old fashioned which I like!

When my Dad was alive he would send us a hand carved and hand painted Santa ornament. I looked forward to getting these in the mail every year and cherish them! I love hanging them on the tree and thinking of him and including him in our Christmas celebration in this small way each year. They are hung as high on the tree as I can hang them for safety purposes of course! This one is my most favorite one!!

Well, it's done...

2011-01-06T17:40:00.003-07:00

I had that Essure procedure done Tuesday. No more babies. :( :) Can't decide whether I'm happy or sad. I always wanted 5 or 6 kids but we couldn't have kids for like ever and now I have this stupid nerve pain crap that makes it impossible to imagine being pregnant again or caring for a newborn baby again and I live in constant fear of getting pregnant again under the current circumstances but still...I'm kind of sad. I officially can't EVER bring another life into this world. No more kicks. No more exciting ultasounds. No more teeny tiny clothes. There are a million negatives and a million positives. I am INCREDIBLY grateful for the 4 beautiful children we have been blessed with and thank my Heavenly Father every day for being blessed with the divine gift of motherhood. I'm totally feeling like it is the right decision for us. For me. The procedure only lasted about 5 to 10 minutes. It went super well. I watched the whole thing on a little screen and it was rather interesting. You could see the entrance to the one tube just as clear as day but the other one was covered with endometriosis which made it rather hard to find and then he had to put it through the endometrioses. I've had a lot more pain on that side than the other but the pain still hasn't been too horrible or anything. It's been a great way to go about this whole thing and I would definitely suggest it to anyone! Especially if you have Dr. Thorpe in Provo do it because he was AMAZING through the whole thing! He totally redeemed himself in my eyes! He delivered Zack and it didn't go so well and if I could have kicked him I would have but I couldn't feel my leg because of the epidural :) But after this whole experience I say he's WONDERFUL!!! I am glad it's all over now. Just 3 months until I have an xray with dye in me to make sure they are completely closed off and then it will truly be OVER!!! I'm blessed and grateful and everything but still...I'm a woman...and sometimes women can feel happy and sad at the same time and that's ok. For 16 years becoming a mother has been a BIG part of my life and thinking. Each child took time to come to our family and there were lots of hoping, praying, begging, pleading, etc. It's just kind of strange to think it's over. That that part of my life as a woman is over. That my mind has to switch. That we are entering a new chapter of our lives. I'm sure it will be a wonderful chapter as well, it's just going to take me a while to wrap my mind around it and accept the new realities of my life.

Christmas and ringing in the New Year

2011-01-01T08:55:00.020-07:00

We had a wonderful Christmas this year even though I almost totally ruined the whole thing and we had a little change of plans.

How I almost totally ruined Christmas (for Zack anyway): I put Zack's basketball goal he wanted on layaway at Kmart early in November. I was going to get it off layaway December 23rd and it was going to work out perfectly! Well, lots of Dr's appointments, pain, festivities, callings, and craziness in general and apparently somewhere in there I was supposed to remember to make a payment on the thing at the end of November...big OOPS!!! Brian was inspired one day in December to check out the status of the layaway online...it was...CANCELLED!!! WHAT!!! WHAT!!!!!! Total heart attack city for me when I got that lovely phone call! Thank goodness Brian was able to find one on walmart.com that was actually like $40 cheaper anyway. There weren't any left in the stores here in our little town and we weren't planning any trips to the big city anytime soon so we were so LUCKY (blessed!) to find that one online! And it was delivered 2 days later which was awesome!!! Thank goodness Zack has a great dad!!!

Change of plans: We were planning to go to my parent's house for Christmas dinner but my mom and my sister Katie got sick with a stomach virus that morning that they got from my adorable niece, Emily. I feel so bad for them that they were sick because that would be a totally rotten way to spend Christmas. And my brother in law Chris who is married to Katie has his birthday on Christmas day. So he spent his big day watching Katie be sick. Fun stuff! Well, we obviously stayed home and it turned out to be an awesome day!!! I was worried how the kids would react to having a slimmer, but still, very nice Christmas gift getting experience this year compared to last years major over indulgence. They LOVED it! They were so happy with everything they got! They were disappointed to not be going to my mom's and we were too but it was SO awesome to just watch our kids relax and enjoy their gifts and enjoy the day. We haven't traveled for Christmas in several years because it just doesn't work for us anymore but we thought it would be nice to go for Christmas dinner. I'm thinking while our kids are still young enough to really enjoy the magic of Christmas this may just have to be the way we do it from now on. It was a great day! I had a lot of energy that day which is highly unusual for me so I cleaned a lot and accomplished a lot of things I had been wanting to get done so it worked great for me. I kept getting teary thinking about not getting to see my sister Dana and my brother Rob that day. I knew we'd see the rest of my family in a few days anyway but I was really sad to think I couldn't see Rob and Dana! We did enjoy just being alone for the day though and realize sometimes a change of plans isn't such a bad thing after all. We spent New Year's Eve with my family and had our belated wonderful Christmas dinner and exchanged gifts and had a great time!!! It's all good!
Here are some of our pictures from the fun and crazy month of December...

Gracie had so much fun tormenting our poor tree this year. Eventually we had almost all of our ornaments on the top of the tree and only indestructible ones down low. I gave up trying to rearrange them to look halfway decent. I took this picture on Christmas Eve. Poor pathetic tree!!! I didn't want to put the gifts out until Christmas Eve because of our sweet little tornado but Brian talked me into it on the Sunday before Christmas and sheesh...we should have waited. She unwrapped like 6 gifts. You can see that Brian's exercise bike he got was unwrapped. Silly girl! P.S. I wasn't trying to send Brian a message by giving him that bike or anything! That's what he wanted!!! Just wanted to make it clear that I didn't say here's an exercise bike fat a.. USE IT! He would just have said ditto!!

Brian made us each a hat for Christmas. Love them!!! We usually do Christmas pjs for Christmas Eve but didn't this year. Oh well, we survived! !

Apparently Gracie agrees that being surrounded by presents and chocolate = pure bliss!!!

Cute little Lucy on our way to Spanish Fork. Thank goodness Katie and Chris let her sleep over at their house with Sam and Sia when it's too cold to leave her home!!!

We came to Spanish Fork for our New Year's celebrations a day early on Thursday so we could go on a date while my parents watched all the kids. What I won't do for a date night! Even driving through white out conditions in the canyon couldn't stop me from cashing in on that prize!!!

So, 2010..not my favorite year I must say!! A lot of trials and bumps in the road! Also many, many blessings!
Great things that have come from this year:
~A stronger testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ and a greater feeling of closeness to Him, our loving Father in Heaven, and the precious gift of the Holy Ghost.
~A stronger testimony of the power of prayer.
~A closer family unit seeing as how we are so CLOSE in our tiny house. They say love grows best in little houses and boy are they right!
~The joy we feel in watching our children grow and enjoying the precious gifts of being their parents is truly a blessing!!!
~Our children have been really healthy this year and we are so very grateful to our Heavenly Father for that amazing gift as well!
~Our gratitude to our Heavenly Father for all He has provided us with in our lives has grown tremendously this year!!!
~Brian has a great job with great benefits. We have a roof over our heads. We have food on the table. We have clothes on our backs. We have cars to drive. We have the gospel in our lives. We have friends. We live in Utah in the United States of America. We have people to love. We are blessed!!! And we are grateful!!!

So GOODBYE 2010 and HELLO 2011!!!!! Please be kind to us!!! :)

Gotta learn as you go...

2010-12-21T18:46:00.001-07:00

As with everything else in life, having Trigeminal Neuralgia is a learn as you go kind of thing. Apparently there are some super fun triggers for the stupid thing. It is always painful but some things REALLY set it off and make me feel like when the dentist hits a nerve when he's fixing your tooth that EXTREME pain lasts for HOURS. So far I've learned that drinking, eating, heat, cold, chewing gum, talking on the phone, and touch are my triggers. Drinking cold or hot stuff on that side of my mouth or chewing food, especially hot or cold stuff on that side of my mouth, or rinsing my mouth out with cold water after brushing my teeth just send me to the moon! Wearing my cute little adorable hat I showed you all in August just sets it right off because touch is NOT good for the stupid thing. :( Being out in the cold air is NOT good. :( I love winter! :( Waking up on that side of my body is incredibly painful. Apparently it's because of that touch thing again. I TRY to sleep on my left side but HELLO I'm a crazy sleeper! Like I can control what side I'm sleeping on. It totally sucks waking up like that! I am convinced that that is where that saying, "She woke up on the wrong side of the bed" came from! I think that when I hold the cell phone on the right side of my face when I talk it sets it off. It's either the heat from the phone or the touch of the phone on my face or both. I have noticed some of these triggers for the last year or in some cases, 2 or 3 years but I just thought they were teeth problems. I was accepted by University of Utah Hospital's Neurosurgery clinic for treatment I just have to wait til June to be seen. I am on a cancellation list so I'm praying that I move up quickly so I can see if I qualify for the treatments they have for TN. I'm trying to remain as positive as I can about it all but I'm really irritated with the stupid problem! The medication I'm on hasn't helped the pain at all but it has helped some of my residual symptoms, like, I don't feel so dizzy or nauseous most days. Which is a nice improvement I must say! I have more and more good days which is great. Still lots of bad days but improvement is always good! I'm up to 5 pills a day. I start 6 a day tomorrow and have to do that for a week to make sure it isn't helping the pain. If it still doesn't then I have to switch medication and this process continues until I finally find one that actually treats the nerve. I really hate taking medication! I really do! But hopefully it eventually helps! Then I would be cool with it! Sometimes I wish I could put ice on it or a heating pad or something but hot and cold make it worse so...Anyhoo, just thought I'd give a little update.

STOP...and...THINK...

2010-12-19T11:17:00.003-07:00

This time of year is the best! It snowed yesterday, and last night, and it still is...FINALLY!!! I am so excited! I love seeing the world around me covered in a blanket of snow. It makes me smile! The kids built a snowman. Gracie is thinking this snow stuff is pretty cool! Mostly this time of year I love focusing on the Savior. We, as Christians, focus on Him throughout the year. Each year the stores put out the Christmas decorations for sale earlier and earlier. I started seeing them out in October...OCTOBER!!! Crazy! My first thought was the same as many of you would have. What are they doing putting decorations out in October! Why do they try harder and harder each year to take the focus off of Christ and put it on all the worldly stuff! Then, I remembered the shame I felt last Christmas morning when I realized that for the first time in our 17 years of marriage we hadn't really stopped and focused so much on Him as we always have before. I determined right then that I would make it more meaningful next time as we have in the past! Well, when I saw those Christmas decorations in October and my thoughts, feelings, and heart went straight to our Savior and how I could make it a more Christ centered celebration this year I decided having decorations in the store so early, and lining Main Street, wasn't so bad afterall. It got me thinking about Him. It gets us ALL thinking about Him. Our defenses come up, we think of our testimony of Him. We think of what we SHOULD be thinking about. We think about what is really important at this time of year. So...good for commercialism! Hooray for Christmas decorations in October! It helps us Christians, all of us, no matter what religion we are, to think so strongly of Him during our busy, crazy lives. During our busy, crazy errands, we STOP...we THINK...of HIM!!!

Exhausted, even crazier than before, and more than just a little bit sparkly...

2010-12-16T09:06:00.003-07:00

~I told the kids that we'd go to the $1 store sometime and let them buy gifts for each other. I got a wild hair Sunday and suggested they make each other gifts. I thought it would be more fun to make some bacelets and book marks with my jewelry making stuff than it would be to fold laundry so I joined in the fun. I was completely unprepared for the glittery explosion that I was unleashing but it's all good. Who doesn't need a little sparkle in their lives, huh?! Zack made God's Eye's for each of us and his teacher. Matthew made God's Eye's for Zack and his teacher and the teacher's aide, a bracelet for me, a pencil can for his dad out of an empty vegetable can that I hot glued around the inner edge to avoid cuts, I hot glued popcicle sticks around the outside and had him paint it and decorate it. He also made a gold star out of popcicle sticks and glitter. Max painted a star salt dough ornament for my mom, and he put LOTS of gold glitter on it. LOTS!!! Then he made a paper weight for his dad. He painted the biggest rock he could find in their "rock collection", then covered it in LOTS of glitter. LOTS!!! Then he drew a picture and made a picture frame for it out of popcicle sticks and suprisingly he chose to COVER it with LOTS of glitter!!! The boy loves glitter!!! I made like 14 little girl bracelets and 6 book marks just for fun! Gracie just enjoyed stringing items from each of our projects all over the place. She LOVES glitter too!! AND beads! By the time I finally packed up all the supplies at dinner time Monday night I was seriously SPENT!!! And very sparkly. I looked like a character out of Twilight standing in the sun. Brian has been making each of the kids a hat with our hat making looms. Matthew still has to make something for Max and Gracie. Max still has to make something for Gracie, Matthew, and Zacky. I may have to take a valuum to be able to survive our next little craft making extravaganza!!! Any suggestions for cheap, cute, little homemade gifts for a little girl that little boys can make? I'll be finding glitter in nooks and crannies for the next 2 years! At least we had a lot of fun together, eh?! I didn't think to take pictures of our creations until after they had wrapped all their creations but here are some pics of the bracelets I made, the bracelet Matty made me, and the book marks.

Here are some random pics just for fun and to save me from having to do more posts since I'm finding it hard to find time to lately...

This is of us at Rodizio Grill. Yes I'm fat! I told it to rotate the picture but it didn't. Nobody ever listens to me anyway so I'm used to it! ;) Steph and her adorable kids (Josh is the cute little blonde in the striped shirt. His head is turned but trust me...ADORABLE. Emily isn't in the pic but she was there. What a cutie!!! Love them!) and KayTee came with us. It was fun. Zack ate himself sick for a minute but we all loved it! And we even have one of the $50 gift certificates left so we can go again some time!

We also made a trip to the mall to see Santa. I am so glad they let you take one snapshot with your own camera. Obviously Gracie was less than thrilled with Santa. That is until he gave her a coloring book. Then smiled at him and I said Santa is nice,isn't he?! She nodded yes really big and even gave him a quick wave goodbye.

Thanks Grandma Irvine for the super cute outfit you gave Gracie! LOVE IT!!! Once again, it didn't listen and didn't flip. Oh well!

While we were up there we also got to go to Ikea! HOORAY!!! I've missed Ikea so much!!! It was a fun weekend! We came back Saturday.

Also, I went to the High School Choir Concert last night with the young women and young men to support the young women and young women who were performing. It was a wonderful experience! I am so glad I was able to go! The last song was so lovely it made me cry! Most of the songs were actually about the Saviors birth. What a novel idea huh?! Way to go Mr. Pinedo!!! It was awesome! All the school concerts I've attended in past years all have goofy Christmas songs about Santa and the commercial side of Christmas. It was refreshing to actually go to a Christmas concert that focused on CHRISTmas!!! Very uplifting! Can't say enough good things about it! I may have to take my little family with me next year so they can experience the beauty of it! Rarely have I felt the spirit at a school related activity but it was definitely there. Especially during that last song! So good! I hope you all are having a wonderful month!!!

Fun time!

2010-12-09T14:42:00.002-07:00

For our Young Women activity this week we had an ornament exchange. We were supposed to think of a meaningful ornament to give to everyone. We could make the ornaments or buy them. We had to bring 16 to give to the girls and leaders. It was so much fun! I made some little salt dough ornament stars. I painted them red to represent Individual Worth and I gave them each a copy of the words to Every Star Is Different. I love that Primary song and thought it would be a good reminder that they are unique and of great worth to our Heavenly Father. My little ornaments were pretty plain and ordinary compared to everyone else's I think but that's ok. Hopefully, it's the thought that counts!!!

Here is what the stars looked like. Some had silver ribbons and some had white.

Here are the words to the song...

Here are the ornaments from all the very creative and talented young women and leaders...

On the other side of the white ball ornament it says faith. She personalized each one and put faith on them using her cricut and vinyl letters. Clever! The gold high heel shoe had this scripture with it...Who can find a VIRTUOUS woman? For her price is far above rubies. Proverbs 31:10. She put the little red rose on it as the "ruby". She wanted the girls to think of their Virtue value when they see it since Virtue's color is gold. Love it! The clear ornament in the middle has a picture of the nativity on the outside. Lovely! I didn't hear the significance of the others because I had to run with Brian to the Stake Presidents office where they issued him a calling as the assistant ward clerk over memberships. Incidentally, they also called him to be the secretary in the Elder's Quorum just 2 weeks ago. They wanted him to be over home teaching routes. I think he should do both! LOL!!! Can you imagine!!! Silly silly!!! Anyway, it was fun when I was there at the activity anyway! And who doesn't love a whole bunch of new ornaments for their tree?! My tree is very hodge podgy so I love adding to the collection!

Winner, Winner, we get a free dinner!!!

2010-12-06T15:42:00.005-07:00

When we lived in Pleasant Grove, Brian commuted for at least 30 minutes each way depending on traffic. He could be driving for an hour or so. Well, he used to listen to B98.7 and would call in to win prizes. One time he won a $25 gift certificate to a steakhouse in Salt Lake. Another time he won 4 tickets to the Living Planet Aquarium for singing A Few of My Favorite Things on air. Wish I'd have heard that one!!! ;) Well, now he goes online to My 99.5 and listens to that while he's at work. They also have a contest each week where they post a picture and you have to write a caption to go along with it. If they pick your caption you win a prize. Today they called him and told him he won the caption contest and the prize is $100 gift certificate to Rodizio Grill. Hooray!!! Now he just needs to win a contest where the prize is a gazillion dollars or a trip to somewhere fun or a dream house! That would be even cooler! For now though, we'll enjoy dinner at Rodizio Grill!!! I can't wait! We haven't eaten there in forever!!!
http://www.my995fm.com/pages/photocaption/7.html

PART 2 OF...Stick a fork in us...we are DEFINITELY done!!!! (we think!!!)

2010-12-03T05:55:00.005-07:00

Oh yeah, we're done! To see part 1 go here . There is absolutely NO way I can go through a pregnancy again! I realize now that the Trigeminal Neuralgia was most likely the cause of the major dizziness I felt while I was pregnant with Gracie and why I had so many headaches and why I felt so crappy. I know I would have felt that way to some degree but the feeling car sick all the time, like my head was spinning and stuff is how I feel a lot of the time from TN anyway and add pregnancy to that and UGH!!! When I think about being pregnant again it makes me hyperventilate a bit so I'm thinking...definitely done!!! We were weighing the options...vasectomy or tubal ligation. I told Brian that I figured I had carried and delivered 4 babies so he was up! It was his turn to experience a bit of pain and sacrifice his body a bit to keep us from having more since tubal ligation is supposed to be more invasive, more costly, more of an uncomfortable recovery for a longer period of time than having the big V. He is a big ol' chicken :) and started googling options for this sort of thing and discovered a procedure called Essure. Basically, it is something they do right in the Dr.'s office, all we have to pay is our $25 copay, they give you a percocet and a Valium for pain management because it can feel a bit crampy during the procedure if you don't do that, you don't have to be put under or anything, the Dr. says its like having a pap smear. They open you up with that double shoe horn looking gadget and insert a scope into you and release metal coils into your fallopian tubes. Scar tissue forms around them, eventually blocking them completely. 3 months later you go have them put dye up in you and do some sort of x ray to make sure nothing is getting through the coils. This is a permanent fix. No reversing it. The accuracy of this procedure is even better than either the tubal ligation or the V mainly because they actually check to make sure it worked and things are COMPLETELY shut off. There is no affect on your hormones or periods or anything like that. Everything continues on as normal, whatever your normal is. The recovery is the easiest of the options as well. They say you feel loopy that day from the medication you took and then some people feel a little crampy like you're on your period for a day, some people a few days. That's it. Seems like the best option for us financially and physically. I still would prefer to have Brian have a V instead of me having to do anything but since I live in constant fear of getting pregnant again, at this point I don't care I'll do anything to ease my mind. This TN is just more than enough to deal with right now. I was a bit sad as I watched all the cute little pregos at the Dr.'s office. It's still hard to think about that part of my life being completely over. Not an easy choice. If I could guarantee another pregnancy would be as easy as my pregnancy with Matthew was, and if I could know for sure that the baby would sleep through the night from day 1 like Gracie did, and that the baby would be as easy as Gracie was, and if I could know that if the pregnancy was as hard as it was with Gracie I could hire a full-time maid to clean while I was pregnant and a nanny to take took care of my other kids while I laid around feeling like I was going to die, and I could know that I could hire a maid to clean once the baby came or a full-time nanny to help me take care of the baby while I cleaned and kept up with life, then SURE, I'd be all over having another baby! So, there you have it, we are DONE!!! I am scheduled to have the Essure done on January 4th. Dr. Thorpe will perform the procedure. He was the Dr. on call ,instead of Dr. Dayton, the night we had Zack. I'm trying to look past THAT experience!!! No fond memories there!!! Not many Dr.'s do this procedure and my favorite Dr., Dr. Harrison referred me to him. Little nervous but also looking forward to a little peace of mind!!!

Gratitude post...

2010-11-24T09:50:00.002-07:00

So, with tomorrow being Thanksgiving and all, I thought I'd list some things I'm thankful for. In no particular order of course...

~My family...Brian G., Zacky T., Matty, Maxers, and Gracie Sue!!! They are the best!!!
~My family. I keep thinking about my childhood and all the fun memories I have! Thanksgiving was so awesome when my Uncle Don's family, Grandma Hazel, the missionaries, and people in our branch who didn't have anywhere to go, would come over and we had so much fun!
~The gospel of Jesus Christ and His redeeming sacrifice for us and His great love for us!!!
~My Heavenly Father and His love for me and all He does for me and for my love for Him!!!
~My calling
~Having our own place to live and just...be
~How cute it is when Gracie runs...cutest thing ever!!!
~My friends
~Sewing (I never thought I would say that one!!!)
~Making projects
~Modge Podge :)
~Paper plates and plastic cups
~Chocolate popcorn
~A working forced air furnace
~Snow!!!! :)
~Warm clothes
~Pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin bars, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pancakes...basically all things pumpkin. Oh, and decorating with them too!
~Washing machines and dryers
~Blue skies in the dead of winter
~That Ibuprofen helps take the edge off of my TN when NOTHING helps most people!! HUMONGOUS blessing!!!
~Being diagnosed with SOMETHING. Not the actual diagnosis..that sucks big time..but I have gone to so many doctors and no one could tell me what was wrong. It was horrible not knowing for so long why I feel the way I do. Someone that was supposedly close to us even told people that he thought I was bipolar because of the extreme changes in me from one day to the next sometimes from one hour to the next. You try feeling excruciating pain in your head and different parts of your face ALWAYS but with varying levels of pain and then some days you don't feel SO bad so you actually CAN function a bit better and then the next day you're back to feeling like crap. Or sometimes you feel super for hours in a day and then suddenly you have so much pain you can't stand it or you wake up in pain at 4a.m. and don't get enough sleep on top of the pain you have and then see how super bright and smiley you are and how consistent your moods and functioning levels are. You never know what can trigger it to intensify it just happens (it turns out stress can make it worse and I was beyond EXTREMELY stressed in the living situation I was in at the time. AND you have 4 precious kids to care for AND I had a person in my life who was trying to make it as difficult as humanly possible. Not a good combination!
~I am so thankful for Brian I know I already said that but he has been amazing through this whole thing. He loves me and I love him. Our relationship has grown in many ways over these past about 2 years or so and he has helped me so much and has been so loving and understanding and I just don't know what I would have done without him!!!! We are not perfect. Our life is not perfect. Our relationship is not perfect. But we have learned a very important lesson this year. We might not have a lot of worldly possessions and life isn't easy but as long as we have each other and our sweet little kids we are ok. So sorry he has been through so much this year but I am so grateful for his unconditional love and I want the best for him!!! He is an amazing man and I just wish EVERYONE knew that!!!
~Prayer
~The Priesthood
~Blogging
~Music
~The scriptures
~My notebook/laptop thing Brian gave me for my birthday in January
~Nursery
~Vacuum cleaners
~Reading
~Journaling
~The healing power of gratitude! Life is so much easier, happier, and more enjoyable when we look for the good things in it rather than the bad things.
~Modern Medicine
~Healthy, happy kids!!!

A bit of randomness...

2010-11-22T09:25:00.003-07:00

~We've been waiting for this moment for so long, and finally, yesterday, it happened....Gracie turned 18 months old and went to nursery!!! Hooray! Doin' a little dance! She is, by far, our child that has been the most attached to me. She LOVES church though, which is great! She won't go to family, she is such a stinker about that. She likes all of them at a distance, she just doesn't want them touching her. At church, though, she becomes a social butterfly. She is hilarious! Everyone oohs and aahhs about how pretty she is all the time and smiles at her and they even indulge her when she touches their scriptures and other pretty things they might have. She has even run her hands up ladies' legs playing with their silky pantyhose and they just let her. She is funny! But I wasn't sure how she'd handle being in nursery...alone. She cried for just a minute until the leader held her on her lap during their little singing time. Then she had the most terrified look on her face and had her little hand shoved in her mouth for comfort which completely tore my heart out. Seriously PAINFUL for mom to watch secretly through the awesome little window in the door! She is so sweet I really hated for her to be so scared and sad. Then there was snack time. She LOVES food and water in her own little cup. She was in heaven at that point. My friend, Sherelle went in there to help the leader who was in there alone, and Gracie knows Sherelle well enough that I think that helped her out. She didn't cry again and did really well. YES!!! We'll see how she does next week when she knows we'll leave her again but so far so good.
~Have you all seen the commercial for pistachios where "Snooky", whoever that is, eats a pistachio off of a tanning bed? Do y'all remember when I worked at Steph and J.J.'s tanning salon? Yeah, I used to clean tanning beds. Do you know how many butt cracks and hoo-hahs slide across that part of a tanning bed in a day. DISGUSTING! I am such a germaphobe, as you know from previous posts, so I REALLY scrubbed those beds down after someone used them. One time a coworker came out so quickly when she was supposed to have cleaned a room. You have to spray the little plastic rug and wipe it (that person could have athlete's foot or who knows what else), spray and wipe down the chair (umm, yeah, someone could have sat their in all their glory, you just never know. And their undies were just sitting on it and I don't even want to know what could be on that chair if you don't sanitize it), spray and wipe down the bed. I had to give her a little "cleaning the room" demonstration after that because ICK!!! So, watching someone eat a pistachio, or anything else, off of a tanning bed, that I'm sure was EXTREMELY sanitized, makes me want to hurl every time it comes on. WHAT were these advertisers thinking. SERIOUSLY nasty!!!
~WHAT do these young girls see in Justin Bieber? I "get" the attraction to Joe Jonas, and Zac Efron, but Justin Bieber?! Just don't get it! We had so many "hot" guys to have crushes on when we were growing up. Maybe that's it. Maybe there just isn't enough manmeat out there for them to crush on so they are DESPERATE! I just don't "get" it!!!
~Max has his Thanksgiving Feast at preschool tomorrow. This morning Brian reminded me that when Zack was little he called it the Thanksgiving Veast. Loved that!!
~So, we get to speak in church again Sunday. We are SO thrilled about it. We're praying that lots of people are still out of town for the holiday. We are forcing our children to each speak too to take up more time. Aren't we nice parents!? They were like, NOOOOO!!! So I said, ok, here are your options...either you give a little talk or you sing a song together. They decided the talk would be better. I was like, seriously dudes, you just had to do your parts in the Primary program and you did AWESOME!! And you have to give talks in Primary so you can give a little talk in Sacrament Meeting and it won't kill you. We need to settle in one place and never move again if for no other reason but to avoid speaking in church so often.
~Brian made this yummy dessert the other day that he got in an email the other day. You make it like you do a cobbler in the dutch oven. It's best to mix the cake mix some with the butter so you don't have clumps of uncooked cake mix just like a cobbler. He just cooked it in the oven in our big pot and he didn't line the pot with foil. He cooked it at 350 degrees for about an hour. It was really good!!!

Pumpkin Pie Crunch

Ingredients:

1 can solid pumpkin (15 ounces)

1 can evaporated milk (12 ounces)

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsp. salt

1 pkg yellow cake mix

1 cup butter, melted

Optional 1 cup chopped pecans (we did not add these)

Line dutch oven with heavy-duty foil and spray well with cooking spray. Combine the first 6 ingredients in a large bowl. Pour into oven. Sprinkle cake mix evenly over pumpkin mixture. Sprinkle with pecans, if desired. Pour melted butter evenly over whole cake. Place 6 hot coal pieces in a circle under the Dutch oven and about 20 pieces evenly around the outside of the lid on top for 50 to 55 minutes. Cake is done when the pumpkin custard is firm. Lift the foil out of the Dutch oven and place on a large dish to cool.

Roller coaster week

2010-11-21T08:03:00.001-07:00

I started my anti-seizure medication, Gabapentin, Monday. It has been a roller coaster week! The plan is to take 1 each night for a week. If I don't see any progress I take 2 pills for a week. I can add a pill each week if I'm not seeing improvement until I'm up to 6 pills a day. If I still don't see improvement I have to switch to a new medication and I will continue this pattern until I finally find the right one. I took the first one Monday night and when I woke up Tuesday I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. I felt HORRID!!! On top of just feeling so horrible my head felt like it was spinning. Some of the side effects are fatigue and dizziness. I already have fatigue and dizziness so added fatigue and dizziness was so bad!! I thought there was NO way I could live like that!!! Then when I woke up Wednesday and Thursday I felt a bit better but not much. Thursday night Brian convinced me to take a muscle relaxer I had been prescribed a couple years ago, along with my gabapentin. When I woke up Friday I felt FANTASTIC!!! No pain! And can I tell you that sleeping straight through the night without waking up at midnight or 4:00 in excruciating pain because the ibuprofen wore off was AMAZING! I can't tell you how WONDERFUL I felt! I can't tell you how long it has been since I felt THAT good! Around 8 am the pain started to come back and I took some ibuprofen and then throughout the day it got steadily worse but I felt great for a few hours and that was SOMETHING! Saturday when I woke up I didn't have the nerve pain. My head felt like it was in a vice. Warning: TMI coming up! I was having a visit from my Aunt Flo and the cramps were comparable to labor pains and just horrid all day and the ibuprofen didn't touch the pain. I only occasionally take darvocet and I would have done that yesterday if it hadn't been recalled on Friday for causing heart problems in people that take it and even causing deaths. Apparently gabapentin can cause added problems with menstration and can even cause early menopause and stuff like that so that's a super fun side effect. Anyway, even though I was in pain in other ways yesterday I'd take that over the nerve pain any day of the week! This morning I feel good again. It takes time for the medication to build up in your system and it takes time for your body to adjust to it but hopefully once everything gets adjusted it will be the perfect solution and I won't have to take more than one pill a day. I really don't like to take medicine of any kind. I hate that I am even taking so much ibuprofen but I'm grateful it helps take the edge off the pain since most people with TN don't get any relief ever from anything.
There are 2 permanent solutions we have learned about. One of them is a gamma knife procedure where they pinpoint radiation to the nerve which damages the nerve which stops the nerve from causing pain to the face. It is all done on the outside, no surgery. I think this would be an awesome solution but I've read that it usually helps people who have pain that comes and goes but not so much with people who have it constantly like I do. I am going to find a neurologist who can perform this treatment and see if it would work for me. The other solution is to cut open your skull and treat the nerve right up to where it goes into your brain. Sometimes it is caused by a blood vessel pressing up against your nerve so when they cut you open if they see that that is the cause the move the blood vessel away from the nerve but sometimes it will move back there eventually. This procedure sounds very scary to me and the recovery is excruciating so I'm really hoping the gamma knife thing will work for me so I don't have to take medication all the time that can cause side effects that suck or have to have surgery. Hopefully I can find something that will help me feel human again and will help me be the kind of mom I want to be and that my children deserve!!! Here's a picture of the nerve and everywhere it hurts me. Fun stuff.

Putting Christ back in Christmas, Part 2...

2010-11-18T08:52:00.002-07:00

At Shani's request, here are the things I wrote on my papers in my jar. Hope this helps!

Sing I Know That My Redeemer Lives Hymn 136
Sing The Lord Is My Light Hymn 89
Sing I Feel My Savior's Love Page 74 (childrens' songbook)
Sing A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief   Hymn 29
John 9:1-11
John 11:1-45
Mark 7:33-37
3 Nephi 17:11-25
Matthew 9:1-8
Luke 8:41-56
John 13:34-35
Matthew 14:14-21
Read "None Were With Him" by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland ( I found this on lds.org it was from the May 2009 Conference Issue
Ether Chapter 3
READ How Great Thou Art Hymn 86  (I decided reading it would be better because I cry when I read it or sing it so I can just have someone else read it and cry without sounding like a freak. Such a beautiful song!)
Matthew 3:13-17
Luke 17:12-19
Sing I'm Trying To Be Like Jesus Page 78
Matthew 6:1-4
Matthew 14:22-33
3 Nephi 17:4-10
Read "The Certainty of the Ressurrection" by President Spencer W. Kimball ( I will just read the first part of this talk. Found it on lds.org)
Sing I Stand All Amazed   Hymn 193
Christmas Eve: Read Luke 2    Sing Jesus, Once of Humble Birth (Remember to put this one on a different kind of paper so that it stands out as the one to save until Christmas Eve)

You can certainly mix this up and change things to what you like better or whatever. Maybe you'd rather sing a song about Resurrection or read a different article that means a lot to you. You can personalize it however you want but this is what worked for our little family.

P.S. Make sure the mouth of your jar is big enough to put your hand in. Mine barely is I just discovered. Brian would never be able to fit his hand in there. HEHEHE Might want to check that detail out before decorating up your pretty jar. Course maybe kids' hands would fit or you could shake the papers out. Remember that I printed the references on the white, back side of pretty Christmas paper to make the jar look prettier. Hope you have fun with it! :)

Putting Christ back in Christmas...

2010-11-17T08:22:00.003-07:00

So when I think of last Christmas it is just a big ol' blur of craziness! Lots happening, not living in our own home, I was in pain, it went by SO fast, I just don't remember much of anything except that at the end of it all I really felt like we hadn't focused on the Savior through the month like we always have in the past and I was really sad and felt ashamed that we hadn't tried to stop and really focus. Well, I decided this year is going to be different. The kids are fully aware that they won't be getting as much as they did last year. I asked each of them if they care if we don't have pj's to open on Christmas Eve. Zack and Matty were cool with it. I was honestly quite suprised that Matty was cool with it. Zack has given us a very small, modest list of things he would like to have. It was like pulling teeth to get Max to tell us ANYTHING at all to get him. Even after a special trip this weekend to Toys R Us, walking up and down each aisle, he still only said he wanted a skateboard. What 4 year old doesn't usually say he wants EVERYTHING at Toys R Us! It's awesome in some ways but hard when you're trying to buy him something for Christmas! Then there's Matthew who wants

EVERYTHING!!!

I was SHOCKED when he said he didn't care about the pj's and Max was the one that was upset about it. Turns out he just want SOMETHING to open that night so I'll just make a trip to the $1 store and wrap a little something up for them that night and all will be right in his little world.

Back to the focus...our Savior! I decided it would be nice to dress up an old pickle jar and fill it with little pieces of paper (I printed them on the backside of pretty Christmas scrapbook paper so that it makes the jar look pretty) with scripture references written on them that have to do with miracles he performed or teachings of his or just special moments like when he blessed the Nephite children. Some of the papers had the title of a song about Him that we could sing. Some were from the primary song book others were from the hymn book. None of them were Christmas songs or scriptures about his birth. As I studied the scriptures, looking for just the right ones that our children could appreciate and understand, and as I read the words of the songs as I searched for just the right ones, I was so filled with the spirit and so grateful for my Savior and His love for us and His atonement and sacrifice and example and life. I felt that I should add something about his atonement and about the resurrection and I decided to search for talks on LDS.org. I found the one by Elder Holland a year ago in May that was so beautiful about the atonement and decided to use that one. I just put Read, None Were With Him by Elder Holland, on the piece of paper and printed the talk. I'll highlight parts to read that night. I also found one by President Kimball about the resurrection that I thought I'd read the first part of. We will have a little prayer, sing a lovely Christmas song. No Santa ones! And pull a paper out each night of December and follow it's instructions. I put the Christmas Eve one on a different piece of paper so we know not to take it out til last and it tells us to read Luke 2, which we do each year and it will be a nice end to our little Christ centered Christmas. I really enjoyed this project! It really brought me closer to the Savior just preparing it and I hope it will help bring our family closer to Him as we return the focus back to Him again this year. I just used what little things I had in my scrapbook stuff to decorate the jar and I thought the Merry Christmas sticker was just right because I want the kids to relate the whole Christmas holiday with Jesus and it's decorated festively and stuff and I'm hoping they "get" that the true gift of Christmas is our Savior. I know we've talked about this before with them and in years past we have always tried to focus on Him in some way the whole season, as I'm sure you all do too. I just thought this was a neat little way of doing it that hopefully helps us have a truly meaningful Christmas season! Just thought I'd share in case any of you were looking for something different to do.