Fun Surprise and Update

Monday, Ginny Steve's brothers wife and daughter Lindy came to visit and spend the night. The next day I took Ginny out to see the greenhouse. She had never seen it. On the way out I told I her it had never had so many weeds before. She was looking around and said, isn't that lettuce? On the floor of my green house in between the bricks was the most beautiful head of leaf lettuce you have ever seen. Not far away is a smaller one. It cracks me up how plants will just grow all by themselves and at other times we nurture baby and the plant will die. I haven't tasted it yet. I hope it is still a healthy plant when I get back. I also found some carrots, I am assuming they are seeds that didn't germinate last summer. A volunteer petunia, they really love the greenhouse. And a petunia that was tiny last summer and I thought dead. I love my green house. I know I have said this before, but someday it will be a producing machine all year round. It is the perfect environment for so many plants.

Life has been crazy lately. In preparation to go to Disneyland with Rebecca and the girls I have been busy getting our website on our dot com and refining our website. I still do Beach house business while I am on vacation, so we have been looking for ways to make it easier for me to do business away from home. I had to create a new email box which that in itself was easy, but transferring our address book took a little researching. I found an easy way and it was awesome. Gotta love the Internet, the answer to any question! In the process of trying to make our website as easy and efficient as possible we observed a calendar on another site we loved. That sent my sweet and wonderful husband out on a hunt. He could hire himself out as a researcher I swear. He found the coolest, easiest to maintain calendar. I then had to connect it to the web. It took me forever because I didn't' realize it was working. Long story short, my web program has several different views, in the view I was using it appeared that the calendar wasn't showing up. But all along it was. So many emails later with the calendar people I finally realized all on my own that it was there all along. I was looking out of the wrong window so to speak!!! I must have said crap a thousand times. Steve teased me that I was going to teach all of our grandchildren that. Hopefully I don't, but I have taught it to my children sooo...... you know what that means. Anyway check out our website it is basically the same but cooler!

Because we live in the sticks and have a branch, we have to adapt things at church sometimes. One of the adaptations was to put husbands and wives together and have them vt/home teach at the same time. Now as all the women know, that doesn't work. The Lord never would have set up visiting teaching if there wasn't a reason for it. I never felt like I was really serving the sisters. So eventually I just became the worst VT ever! Often Steve would catch my ladies either at church or Chris at the beach house and others on the phone. Since he was my partner, I would get lazy and not make contact, just count his. Well, about 4 weeks ago they changed the program back to the way the church has it normally set up. I don't have a partner, but I was reminded how important VT is and how much I love it. I got a 100% and it felt so good.

I am in the airport in Boise right now. I love how they have wireless Internet now days in the airports!

There was something else I know I was going to share, but alas I have forgotten.

I am very excited for Easter at Lizzie's and Disneyland for the next five days after!!! I plan to blog the trip, wish me luck!

Love you all!!!!!

Thursday

Hows that for boring. I don't' have a lot to say and I am tired, the only remnant of my illness. Oh we have been watching the Roots series, we love them. the second generation is better than the first. I went to Weight Watchers today for the first time in two weeks, it seemed like it had been forever. I was so out of sync at first. I lost about 3.5 lbs over the last two weeks. I was one happy camper. I have been doing a little too much lately, but I am trying to pace myself, I want to stay well. I have been spending a lot of time on the computer, fine tuning and just keeping up with our beach house business. It takes longer than I thought it would with two houses. I got some really cute clothes when I was at Lizzie's. I wore a black sweater I bought today to ww's. It is one of those longer sweaters. I have two of those now. They are very slimming and I like them! :-) Oh my new plan to try to stagger work with play is doing pretty good. I think it is going to take some practice and determination. I planted potatoes on Tuesday. It felt good. My next goal is to get out there and organize my greenhouse. I think I have said that before! Well, it is late! Love you all!

Getting better!

I feel so bad for Lizzie, I can't imagine the way I have felt lately and having toddlers. No wonder she is still sick. I think (cross my fingers) I am almost well. I stayed home from all my meetings on Sat, and Sun. I am going to try not to go to wild tomorrow, because I know I will feel a lot better. But I want to be well for the big trip coming up in 12 days!!!!! Disneyland with the Leslies!!!! Anyway besides that a good friend of ours offered to refinish our coffee table, it looks gorgeous. We will have to start using the coasters now!!! Well, that is about as exciting as it gets right now. Maybe once I'm doing more than the dishes and sitting on the couch, I will have more to share. Oh

Gorgeous Day!!! And fun Pics-scroll down!

Well, it has been an unbelievable day today. I wanted to go out and take a walk, but it didn't happen. Since reading the book I recommended, I have decided to be more like Danielle and Steve, and do one thing I have to do and then do something I want to do, continue that throughout the day and I think life will be better. I have a skirt that I started over a month ago, I finally started to work on it again today. I'm not where I want to be yet, but I'm walking forward! I realize that the things you have to do will always be there and there are more than we can do in one day. Then as the week goes on more gets added to the list. The reality is that none of us can do what we have to do forever, so we crash and do something stupid like watch a dumb TV show because I am too exhausted or brain dead to do something I would really like to do! So wish me luck on my new mission in life!!!

The pics of the ocean -one was from today- the other is one I took before I went to Lizzie's, to me it is amazing. The gorgeous days I have decided are better in real life!

I can hardly talk, but I am going to go to ww's anyway. Hopefully noone gets upset about it. I just can't miss another week.

Well, here are some pics the day of grandma's funeral, we were having a good time, I think she would have liked that! This pic cracks me up because it is so not Jake!

Mom and I! I love this one of us!
Beautiful girls!
couldn't resist this one!
Check out these next two pics, can you tell they are related? "Do we have to do this pic?"
I love this of Eddies kids!
Not the best pic of my dad, but the only one I got that day!
Cute Gracie! The names sake, it will be interesting to see if the personality is similar. Right now she seems a little calm compared to Grandma Grace.
Couldn't resist the dancing Ruby and Amy looking on!
Cute Grandma and Miles!!!!
Well, hope you liked the show!!! Love you all!

Home again, home again, jiggity jig! And a book you must read!

Well, it is always soooo fun to go visit my kids and grandkids, but as I rounded the bend and the ocean popped into view, my heart was ready to be home. I love my hubby, and we have our routine, and routine feels good.

I had a great trip, we had so much fun. Tanner and I made the car cupcakes and vehicle pancakes twice. The second time we used a yellow cake recipe and I forgot the sugar!!!! Needless to say they tasted like very okay muffins. Even Tanner didn't like those. The bonus is that Lizzie and I weren't tempted at all!!! Plus I hope Lizzie blogs at least one of the pics of the colored cars, because they were gross looking, they looked like playdough, so like Lizzie said it made you not even want to try them! I didn't bring my camera, next time I will! I am more comfortable with my camera. I think that Tanner thought they were cool, and I think most boys would. I think they would be popular for a long time, as the boys got older they would just get more intricate with their decorating. Great party idea!

We sat in the back yard while the kids played in the sandbox, and it felt soooo good. There is nothing quite like warm air moving softly with tropical plants around. The only thing that could have made it cooler is if the citrus was ripe on the trees. Someday....

Kate came to me a lot and that was fun, Lizzie said that wasn't normal for her. I got to see her taking some of her first steps, that was cool. Tanner and I built tower after tower with his blocks. He would pretend to be a monster and chase me around the house. I think I burned a lot of calories, at least I hope.

We went shopping also, have to do that when I'm with Lizzie, cause she always helps me to choose clothes. You'd think at 51 I could do it by myself. I buy clothes on my own more now, but it always helps to have Lizzie's honest and good taste. As Rebecca used to always say, "Lizzie always knows what's coming before it's in!" We also hit Williams Sonoma, have to say one of my favorite stores. I think I finally found my dishes. I don't have china, and have decided to spend a little more than I planned since they will be my "good dishes" and my everyday dishes. They are really beautiful in person. They look really cool with the other white dishes they have in the store, so I can use the other white dishes for the serving pieces. This particular set doesn't come with serving dishes. Because I am going to Disneyland with Rebecca and the girls, I probably won't buy them right away. I'll have to save for these!
The only sad thing this last week was that they were sick, and then I got sick. But at least there were fun distractions. On the way home even though I did everything I was supposed to on the last descent on the second flight I thought my eardrum was going to burst. It hurt and felt plugged until this morning. On the way to California I had a layover in Salt Lake, I knew I had a layover, but never really looked to see how long it was. When I landed I discovered it was 4 HOURS!! When I had little kids at home I would relish layovers, now its just annoying. Because I hadn't planned on that long of a layover, I didn't have enough to read, and I wasn't in the mood to do internet stuff, sooo off to the book store I went. Purusing the books is always a scary propisition. I don't want to spend money on a book that I will have to throw away before I even get very far into it. So I was milling around, and saw a Nicholas Sparks book. I thought, well he is probably safe, so I picked it up. It was non-fiction. I thought that was odd. I read the back and it sounded really interesting. It is one of the more thought provoking, entertaining books I've read in a long time. I want everyone of my kids to read it. It has all the elements of a good read- funny, sad, true, and teaches great life lessons. I think we all look at others and think there life is so easy. I've decided that just isn't true, and this book really teaches that. Also it talks a lot about choice and being too busy. I think it would do me some good to read it over several times! I left it with Lizzie. If you finish it Lizzie I'll pick it up at Easter and loan it out to some of your sibs. Anyway, I was reminded of how much I love to read, and that I need to always have a good book nearby!

Well,it is late and just a note to my kids and their spouses, thanks for fasting as a family for Danielle and Clay. I feel truly blessed to have kids that love and support their family like you all do!!!! I always know I can count on you when I need you! That is very comforting!

Love to all!!!!