The Last 5 weeks

Where has the time gone. I swear it hasn't been 5 weeks since I last blogged. Okay, maybe it has. Life has been crazy with preparing for field day. I am always glad when that is over with. With the end of school comes performances and field trips and of course softball games, and making up rained out softball games. Then before I know it the kids are saying goodbye to their teachers. We also spent the last week and a half taking Ashley to the school at 5:30 in the morning to do her student driving. She gets her licence tomorrow so it is now not safe to be outside. When you hear the loud music coming down the street, run in the house. Then June begins and it is Brooke's birthday and then Ashley's birthday and then tomorrow is Ellie's birthday. This really makes me crazy. It's hard to find out what they want and then taking the time to find it is a difficult task. For Brooke's birthday, I spent the day in Salt lake tracking down her gift and then ended up buying something different and cheaper. She got a battery operated motor scooter. She spent all evening at Celeste's house riding a motorized 4 wheeler on Memorial day, so I thought this was the perfect gift. It was close enough. Ashley didn't know for sure what she wanted. She did want a ctr ring and I got her that but she didn't know what else she wanted. So cash it was. She was away to youth conference on her birthday so I decided to send her some flowers and have a cake waiting when she arrived home. I don't think she liked them as much as I thought she would. Now Ellie wants a bat. I struggled trying to figure out what kind of bat she needed. So she won't get it on her birthday. Maybe I'll just have to take her clothes shopping. With birthdays also came a little puppy. Ashley begged that's all she wanted. So we have a new black lab added to our family. His name is Beau or BO or BoGus. He is confused at what is name really is. Wish me luck with this new adventure. Always after birthdays comes all stars. Ellie's team took 2nd this year and Ellie made the all- star team. She most likely will play third. She would rather play 2nd but you play where you are told. She has a strong arm, but not the strongest on the team. But she is accurate. The 2 girls who can throw harder than her don't have the accuracy. What makes me sad is I will miss her first tournament. I will be in Cedar playing at the summer games. Mandy also made the all-star team and plays in her first tournament this Friday and Saturday. She might have to miss a game if they play during Ellie's baptism. So our summers will be softball tournaments, scout camps, and girls camp and birthdays. At least it won't be occupied with volleyball except with Ashley. I turned in my resignation that I needed some time off to be with my family. So now you can understand my lack of blogging.

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Today is mother's day! For me it is wonderful. I got breakfast in bed courtesy of Mike and Ellie. Ellie was more giggles than anything else. Ashley had to speak today and it had to be on her mother. She did a good job and she was willing to speak is what made me the most pleased. Jase, Ellie, and Brooke sang a lovely mother's day song too. Now, I get to blog while dinner is being fixed for me. What more could I ask for. Also, yesterday, I took my girls to Sparkle Tips and toes or something like that. Ashley and I got a manicure and Ellie and Brooke got sparkly fingernails and Mandy had her toes painted with poke dots put on. It was fun to spend some girly time with my girls. It was a first for me. I have never paid to have someone do my nails. Hopefully they thought it was fun too! But this blog is not meant to be about me but about my mother. I know that I won't make it through without crying so the positive thing is at least you can't see me bawl. Growing up we didn't have a lot of money and my parents made life good by being as I call it "tight wads." My mom made me many outfits and dresses growing up. She is a great seamstress. Too bad I didn't learn this from her. Hopefully she can pass this on to my girls. I loved that my mom was a stay at home mom. It was fun to come home for lunch and to be able to bring my friends with me. I especially loved when I had a game. I would come home and she would have potatoes and gravy or spaghetti. Wanting me to eat the best on game day. She probably never thought I appreciated it but I always thought that was a wonderful thing that she did and I have never forgotten . I also loved coming home to fresh hot bread or goodies. That is something I like to do for my kids. I know it wasn't easy raising 8 kids and having a husband who was the bishop or stake president. But she taught me by her example to not complain and gripe when your spouse is serving the Lord. She taught me to be a hard worker. She never sat idol. She was always busy. She still is. She makes me laugh when she comes to my house. She feels she needs to do jobs at my house. When I had Jase she came and washed all my windows. Scraping all the paint that was left on when they built my house. I know by her example that, that is the reason I keep busy cuz that's what I saw growing up. She's always a positive person and I can tell that people who have worked with her in the temple know she is so positive and fun to be around. I love having girls weekends with her. Probably the funniest was when we went to Vegas to find Tiffani a ring. The man in the jewelry store told us that he was once married to a "mormon" girl. My mom couldn't believe that a mormon girl would get divorced. That one will never be forgotten. I also loved when we stayed at Cheri's friends house and she and I were sharing a bed. I loved staying up all night with her laughing and talking til late into the night. I am glad she is my friend and I love calling and talking to her. There are so many more things to share but I can save them for another mother's day! I love her and I am glad that I was sent to her. What better example could I have. Happy mother's day to my mom, sisters and friends.

I know it is not easy being a mom but I hope that some day my kids love me as much as I love my mom! (tears)

IT IS DONE!!!!!

So there are many of you who have anticipated this post so..... here it IS. My friend Celeste and I decided to take on a huge challenge. We decided to build me an entertainment center. Many are wondering why did I need one and why not go buy a new one. Well, I will answer all of those questions. I received an entertainment center for my 18th birthday. I have held on to that entertainment center until 2 weeks ago. When Celeste and I carried it out to the road for the garbage man to carry it away. (this was a challenge also) It had been moved many times and with each time, it became wobblier and wobblier. When my basement flooded months ago, we decided it was time. The problem was the entertainment centers I liked would not fit coming down into my basement and they were between 1500 and 2000 dollars. So the solution was to build it and bring it down into pieces and assemble it in my basement. (yes this means it will stay forever) We began by sitting at Celeste's table and sketching out the plans. Knowing things I wanted and the measurements, we then decided on how much wood we needed. We went to Home Depot and left the kids at home. (thank goodness cuz it took a lot longer than we had planned.) We decided that we would have the wood cut down so we didn't need to make as many cuts and it is a lot easier to cut wood when they are smaller pieces. We got a grumpy, sweaty, fat man who did us the honor of cutting our wood down. I tried to help him lift the wood up and he told me to just stand back. It is funny to laugh at now but it wasn't at the time. We found everything that we needed and then began the process of loading it in my van. I wish we would have gotten a picture of it but needless to say we were full. We waited for a couple of weeks before we began. It was still cold the first day we started. I remember it took a long time to warm up after the day was over. (shower and soup didn't help.) Thank goodness it did warm up during the couple of weeks of building. It made it possible for Brooke and Camden to play outside too. Those 2 kept us busy themselves but considering they are 3 they did pretty good. Brooke liked to bug Camden which would make Camden mad and then someone would be tattling. We started building the 2 book shelves first. They went fairly quick and by the weekend, we had them moved into the storage room to be painted. (This was a bad idea cuz there isn't much light in there.) I had to do a little sanding and fixing of things. Then, we began building the big beast. We first built the bottom part. This was much like the book shelves but much larger. Then we built the top piece. We used a machine that Celeste had. We had never used it before but it cuts little slits that you put a little disc into it and you cut another slit in the other piece of wood and they slide in together. After playing around with it one afternoon, we decided we were ready to give it a shot. It worked beautifully. Now was the fun part. We took the two pieces downstairs. They were 10 times heavier and much more awkward. I ended up bruising Celeste. We finally got them down and glued the discs in and nailed the back on and it was ready to putty and paint. That weekend I painted. Then it was ready to be polyurethane. I kind of thought all were the same and failed to read all the instructions(Warning to all who might build and use polyurethane READ THE LABEL! ) I began using the polyurethane and I got a phone call. I went to wash my hands and realized my 30 dollar purchase was oil based. I thought oh well that just means I have to clean up differently. So I continued like an idiot. When I got to my doors I was talking to Celeste on the phone and I told her that it looked like I had taken a brush with water and placed it on the door. She thought after another coat it would be fine. So I got everything Polyurethane. With the book cases I worked harder at brushing out the oil which meant it took me longer. When Celeste arrived at my house on Monday, she looked at everything and knew there was a problem. Because I had never used it, I thought I was just a sucky painter. She read the can and it said do not use on paint. My heart sunk! That meant it had to be peeled off because that is what it was starting to do on the bigger piece. So a kind friend began spending days helping peel all of it off. Some came off easily and most we used a razor to get off. By the end of the week it was scraped as good as I was wanting it to be and painted and polyurethane. I had bought a satin on accident and instead of returning it I just bought the kind that I needed. I accidentally grabbed the satin kind and didn't realize that I was using it til the can was empty. So then I had to start over with the glossy. Then it was ready to be moved and decorated. New problem.... When we got the TV and tried to hook it up to the satellite, it wouldn't work. We tried to see if Mike could fix it but he couldn't. He called the satellite company and they told him that if he could see the screen that everything was hooked up right. So that meant we had to have a repair man come out and see what was wrong which meant we had to wait until Monday. When the repair man came, he discovered it wasn't hooked up right. After he left we hooked up everything including a "cheap" home theatre system. We spent hours trying to hook everything up. We finally moved it back. Then the next day we put the lights on it ( something my kids like to trick their friends on how they snap their fingers to turn it on.) and we also put the doors on. The next day we decorated it. It is finally done. (until I have to pull the oil base off of the book shelves.) Thanks to a wonderful friend who never gave up and gave me plenty of things to laugh and cry about, it is Done and I have a beautiful entertainment center.

Presidents Day!

The kids were out of school for President's day, so regardless of the weather, we were going to the zoo. It took forever for us to get out of the house. The kids had to do their chores regardless of it being a holiday. As we were preparing to leave, I noticed both Ashley and Mandy were wearing their slippers that look like boots. I told them that it wasn't a good idea to wear their slippers to the zoo. They did their usual "I don't care attitude" so I left it at that. I was thinking more that we would be doing lots of walking and slippers aren't shoes to be walking around the zoo. We had to stop at Mike's work to pick up his computer so he could work from home the next day and then we headed to the zoo. Of course as we neared the zoo, the rain picked up a little more. It wasn't a heavy rain just a nice drizzle. Brooke had never been to the zoo before so I was determined to let her enjoy her first zoo visit. We saw most of the animals but of course spent most of our zoo time in the covered areas such as the giraffe's and the lizard and snake area. Any time there was a bench in a covered area, Mandy would take off her slippers and wring them out. Of course I let her know that slippers were not a good idea and she let me know that she KNEW!

We spent a few hours at the zoo and then decided to end it with a good lunch from expensive chuck a rama. jk While at lunch, I asked Brooke what her favorite animal at the zoo was? She said the camel. This made me laugh since we didn't even stop to look at them, we just walked by them. HA ha ha. After the kids had eaten all of the ice cream at chuck a rama, we had to stop at Joann's to find some material for Ashley to make a dress. Being a holiday, it took us about an hour to get out of there. Thank goodness Mike kept the kids with him in the van. So if someone doesn't think that we taught our kids about presidents day, we did! That some presidents are donkeys, elephants, and some are snakes. See it does apply! Here's wishing for more great President's Days!

HOLIDAY FUN!

I realize that it has been awhile since I have blogged. The ladies (you know who you are) at volleyball gave me grief that I haven't done anything since September. So here is the catch up....
Volleyball season came and went. It was a hard season having Ash on my team. It was hard to feel like I could ever play her for fear the other parents would think I was favoring her. It made it a rough season for both of us.
Thanksgiving came and we spent the holiday in St. George. The night of Thanksgiving I spent the evening with all of my sisters scrap booking, eating, checking out all the adds and trying to order all we could on line. We stayed up all night and about 4:15 we headed to our designated stores to find the items we were in charge to get. I managed to get almost everything I wanted.
Christmas came quicker than I wanted. It took me at least a week after Thanksgiving to get my tree and decorations up. My kids called me Scrooge thanks to Celeste cuz I didn't want to put up my decorations. I never got my lights on my house cuz it was too cold and snowy to put them up. The kids did chores again this year and earned money to help donate money to a family in need. Some of the kids did really good at wanting to do extra chores to earn money and then there were others who didn't do as well. Christmas also brought chorus concerts. We attended 3 this year. One for Ashley, Mandy and Ellie. Also, Mike and I took Ashley to the Forgotten Carols. I love that show and so does Ashley. Mike enjoyed it but let me know he didn't need to go back. During the month of December, Jase did club invention and loved it. He has spent weeks building catapults and talking about how to build this and that. It definitely was worth the money. Ashley has also been playing basketball for the High school team so everyday we are driving to and from the high school for practice and games. During the Christmas break I got sick and so I spent a few days in bed or lying around. That's not like me but I really didn't feel good. I was able to cook Christmas Eve dinner and help the kids make gingerbread houses.

Christmas arrived and the kids were happy with the things they received. (these are the pj's they got Christmas eve) Mike even took the kids sledding a few times during the break. The last time he took them sledding, he decided to go down himself. He had injured his back the week before (dresser drawer accident, aka old age) so he decided to be cautious and go on his knees. This was probably the biggest mistake he could of made. I won't describe all that happened. I'll let the video do that for you. It seems like there is no way he could have been injured but his shoulder shows a different picture. What an IDIOT! (inside joke)
I received a text from Mandy letting me





know that my husband had hurt his shoulder and couldn't drive home. I was at the salon getting Ashley's hair done. I called him and he reassured me that he could make it home. When he arrived home, sure enough there was a lump sticking up. I thought for sure it was broken. After a Dr. visit and x-rays, (days later) we know it is not broken. That's a great way to end the year! Sledding with your kids and getting hurt. So this means he can't play tennis or his guitar for a few weeks until it heals. (This makes for a real grouchy dad) We spent New Years eve with the Killians playing the wii and eating lots of good food. The next few days we layed around watching ball games and shopping with the girls (except Brooke)

So that has been my life in a nut shell for the past few months. I hope everyone feels better now that they are all caught up! jk

Ensign Peak

For a combined activity, the youth in our ward were going to climb Ensign Peak. (For those who don't know what Ensign Peak is, it is where Brigham Young climbed up and proclaimed that this was the place.) Mike being somewhat in charge of the activity, wanted to make sure he could find the place and make sure the youth could climb it. So on Saturday, all of our family except Ashley (because she has a hurt foot) drove into Salt Lake and climbed Ensign Peak. It was a fairly easy hike. The kids enjoyed picking the Acorns off the tree and eating them as they hiked along. It was so pretty to see the Salt Lake Valley from so high above. Mandy had an attitude and didn't enjoy waiting for her mom to take pictures of the family with her cell phone camera. (I'm trying to figure it out. What can I say, it's a new phone.) But over all it was a huge success. Especially when you get to go eat at Wendy's when the hike is over.

Summer Fun

Before I know it, the summer will be over and school will be starting. I can't say that we have done anything great and grand for the summer but I have tried to do little fun things with the kids to keep them occupied. But because the two older girls have had softball tournaments the last 4 weekends beginning on Thursday- Saturday, we haven't had as much time to go and do things. Because Ashley's team got beat out early at the West Valley tournament we made it home at a decent time of day a couple of Saturdays ago, so that we were able to take the kids fishing up at the reservoir. The kids have been begging all summer to go and since Mike had to get a fishing licence to go to scout camp, we didn't have an excuse not to go. Of course Mike had to teach them how to prepare their line. Then he had to show them how to cast their line. Of course this happened about 20 times. Finally he gave up the pole and let Mandy give it a shot. She was a great fisher woman. She made the only catch of the day. Granted it wasn't a fish but the next best thing is a crawdad. I guess crawdads love grasshoppers cuz he wasn't giving it up. Every kid except Ash and Brooke got a turn to fish. (Ash stayed home and Brooke isn't capable of doing it.) The one thing we learned is we need more fishing poles, one isn't enough.

Of course as I mentioned, we have been doing lots of softball. We just finished the last tournament yesterday. Ashley's team ended up taking 2nd in the Kaysville tournament. She pitched the championship game but ended up loosing 2 to 1. It was tied 1 to 1 until the last inning. She even hit good. She managed to hit off of the girl who supposedly can pitch 60 mph. Not many of her teammates could, so I told her she should be pleased with how well she played. So Ashley's team finished with 2 second place trophies a first place trophy and who knows what happened in West Valley. Mandy's team didn't do as well. But they improved greatly. Mandy had a rough rec season so it was good to see her make great strides. She is hitting good and is a great bunter. Her coach said that Mandy is a utility player. He knows she can play anywhere and do a good job. She played mostly second but when they knew they would be playing teams that could hit in the outfield, they put her out their to catch the balls. She did great! I just wish her team had one more game, because they were finally learning to work together as a team. After saying that, I am glad that softball season is over. It has been a long 6 months of softball and practices. Now I have to get prepared for volleyball which begins tomorrow. Yes tryouts begin tomorrow. I think this year will be the hardest cuts for me to make. I like all the girls yet I know in order for our program to improve there has to be cuts. This stinks!

Besides volleyball, I am going to try to make some more memories with the kids before school starts. Then what will Brooke and I do by ourselves once the kids go back to school?????

PARTY!!!!