what do we do with our time?

today is saturday and this was what our day was like.

first, when i woke up, i went down stairs and played (worked out) on the wii fitness for a half hour. then i got in the shower and got ready to go to kendyl's first dance recital. i got donnie out of bed and while he got ready to go, i made the bed. we went down and picked up kamryn, because haley had to work at the quilt shop today. dropped the mower and edger down at cheyne's, and then headed to lehi to the dance recital. kendyl was so cute. she looked like a little princess. george, mel and siona were there, too. i think siona has been to one to many concerts or samoan dances. she kept woo hoooin' kendyl, and yelling "good job, kendyl!"

after the recital, kamryn talked papa into buying lunch for everyone (well, really, all she had to do was to look at him those puppy dog eyes, and he melted). so we picked up pizza and went out to chet and tiff's to eat it.
after we ate, the kids wanted to go out side. chet had water in kendyl's little pool and of course, water to kids is just like a kid magnet! first of all, we looked out and siona was butt naked in the middle of the pool. the mom's decided that these little girls needed to have something covering them (fun haters), so tiff went in and pulled out a few swim suits of kendyl's. they thought that it was major fun to splash grammaj. siona picked ryker up to help him in and he went head first into the pool. she wanted so bad to get him wet. she kept trying and finally mel picked her up and threw her in the pool and of course, siona didn't think that was too cool, (actually, i think it was pretty cold!). she threw her little tantrum. so i told her to look up at me so i could get a 'good' picture of her, and she did. she really put on a great show for me.

finally at about 3:00 or so (after don's cooking show was over), we left and headed to costco to pick up a few things. then to lowe's (whoops, sorry george! but we were right there!) to get some tomato and pepper plants for our "salsa" garden. the pick wasn't that great, so we came home, unloaded our goods and headed over to 'highland gardens' to see if they had any better selection. by the time we got home it was 5:00. then we remembered that don's shirts were still at the dry cleaners. so i headed back to town (you know... gas is so cheap ~ only about $4.00 a gallon), picked up the shirts, went and washed the honda, came home, changed cars, went back to town and washed the lincoln, came back home and donnie was tilling the garden space. we planted our little "salsa" garden, watered the flower beds with miracle grow, watered the garden, then i mowed the edges of the lawn with the walk behind mower and donnie mowed with his 'john deere'. then of course, he remembered that we had forgotten to get the icecream that we needed for tomorrow. so... now it is after 10:00 and we have to run up to the store before it closes. who has any spare time, and how do you do it ??

am i getting old?

kamryn graduated from preschool this week. kathy and i skipped our lunch to go up to watch. when she saw me, she wanted to know where papa was and if he was going to bring her the present that he promised her.
she is such a little cutie and is growing up way too fast! five years old already!, does that mean i'm getting really old? naaaa, i was just a baby when i started having kids!

memorial day weekend

sooo...our plans were to take our trailer down to our lot on skyline mountain. this is what we do on memorial day weekend (anyway since we bought our lot 4 years ago)! we had been watching the weather and the forecast for the past week, not really liking what we were seeing. but, hey, what do those weather forecasters know? we've thought about getting the trailer ready and stocked to go down, for the past few weeks, but donnie has been busy working on his barn and i don't know what i've been doing with my time, but it just wasn't getting done, for some reason. wednesday, the weather wasn't looking good, so we decided to go down to the godwin's cabin with them and just take the four-wheelers - just in case. don was actually thinking that he would see what it was like on top of the mountain and maybe come down friday or saturday and bring our trailer up. ~it didn't happen.~ in fact, craig and don decided the last minute, to not even take the wheelers down. so thursday night, we all (craig, ladawn, ocy (craig's mom), don and i) packed in godwin's car, and when i say packed, that is what we were ~oh... i forgot about "chrissy", ocy's dog~ she went with us too. so we got down to the cabin about 9:00 thursday night. the roads weren't too bad going up the mountain, but i'm glad that we weren't dragging the trailer behind us. ladawn and i were already white knuckled, but craig and don were thinking it was fun, slipping an sliding in the greasy mud. must be a guy thing...

friday for fun...we watched ocy sleep. really! we didn't do a dang thing! well until about 4:00 in the afternoon, we decided to hook the 'wii' up. ~ okay, for mother's day, i decided that i was going to buy my own mother's day gift ~ the wee fit. it was delivered to my work on tuesday and i hadn't had time to open it up until friday afternoon. why? i figured that it might give me some ambition to get into shape for the summer. okay, this thing tells you your BMI, by standing on the wii fit board! and your weight, it has a graph that will tell you if you are obese, overweight, just right, or underweight, for you age, height, etc. (but you can put in a secret code so that no-one else can see it). then you can choose a trainer. we laughed our butts off! well, not really! but you get the point. it has a yoga, strengthening, aerobics, and balancing section. mostly we played with the aerobics - hula hooping (what a gas!) and balancing - ski jumping, ski racing down thru the gates, tight rope walking, and table tilting. the thing about it is while you are watching someone on the wii board, everyone else in the room is moving with them. it was quite a site! i would post some of the pictures i took of craig and ladawn ski racing, but then they would never invite us to go back to their cabin, and besides, you know craig is the stake president, and i always need something good to blackmail him with.
friday afternoon, we also watched it snow, rain, and hail. this is a picture of some of the hail that we got. imagine what it sounded like on the metal roof of the cabin! awesome!

friday night chet and tiff came down with kendyl and ryker. now it wasn't quite so dull. ~ grand kids always make things seem brighter! then saturday, jeff and jillyne came down with their four girls. chelsea, cassidy and miranda had a blast playing wii fit - sorry jeff, i guess we just cost you another $100. but worth every penny! kendyl loved playing with her "friends". she sobbed when they left sunday night.

don had to go to town to get stuff to hang our sign back up. during the winter, we got so much snow and it was so heavy that it pulled our sign right out of the hooks that was holding it.
even if we didn't get to take our trailer down this weekend, it still ended up being a great weekend! we got to relax and have fun. thanks craig and ladawn for your hospitality and entertainment! we love you guys!

this is what we woke up to this morning ~ even if we are sick of the snow, you have to admit this is beautiful!

i did it! i did it! he really let me do it!

how did i do? donnie really let me mow with his "john deere" tonight, while he edged and mowed around the edges with the walk behind!

what do you think? think he'll let me do it again?

if you look close, you can see how almost straight my lines are! i am sooo proud of myself, i can hardly stand it! doesn't even look like a drunk indian mowed it.

sure, he yelled at me a couple of times to sloowww down, and i had to go over some of it twice, but all in all, i think i did okay!

childhood summertime memories

well melanie gave the address of this blog she found, that has a topic to write about each week. i'm not apart of that blog, but thought that it was somewhat of a good idea. so here we go:

as soon as i saw this topic, my mind (yes, it sometimes, still remembers) went right to the summers that i spent in tempe, arizona. these are some of my choicest friends! we had some great times together.

* i remember alot of 'sleep outs' (or mostly, no sleep outs)

* toilet papering cactus in the rain

* sundays, after sunday school (dates me, huh!?), between ss and sacrament meeting, going out to markhams for sunday dinner (at the time, they lived forever out in the 'country'). one time we got a flat tire. brother markham said " okay everyone out! we are going to have a lesson on changing a tire!" he was not kidding! we all got out, in our dresses, no less, and he really did teach us how to change the tire.

* here we are, me, cindy markham, nadene noble, annette adams, and nancy raisor.

* riding our bikes to mcclintoc swimming pool in the blistering heat, paying a whoopin'10 cents to get in. flirting with the lifeguards. then riding our bikes home. it was quite the ride. but worth it!

* swim caps! yuk!

* girls camp at 'camp lo mia'. our first year especially, with amanda! (does anyone remember her like i do?) she was our camp leader. when we went to get on the bus, we were suppose to have this new leader who was : #1. a return missionary, #2. not married and #3. just a barrel of fun. when we got on the bus, we found out that most of that was true, (they could have left out the "barrel of fun" part.) i think she was about 85 years old, she had a dress on and combat boots! and, she was about 4 foot nothing. oh, and that year, too, nancy got her hand caught in the big mixer in the lodge kitchen and had to go to the hospital. i could go on and on, but you get the drift. at least it was memorable.

* swimming in the shontell's pool - playing "marco, polo".

* staying with my aunt georgia. she was the only family that we had down in az, and i loved to be with her when ever i could be.

* playing ping pong in raisor's basement. (i think they were the only people i knew in az that had a full basement). it was nice and cool down there! and... they had a fruit room with a hide a bed in it. it was the coolest place to play hide and seek!

* going to 31 flavors ice cream parlor.

* "legend city" ~ a place like "lagoon", but 1,000 times cooler!

* "jack in the box" drive in. hamburgers were 5 for a dollar. sometimes, if we were lucky, we got french fries, too.

* drive in movies, in the back of the station wagon.

* gas was only around 20 cents a gallon!

* floating down the "verde" river on inner tubes. what a blast we had! one time i got sunburned really bad, that wasn't so fun, but the rest of the day was!

* dances after m.i.a., for the scouts and beehives. cindy was always the dance instructor. boy she could do any dance move!

* baby sitting for the kempton's, lee's, macdonald's and the rays.

* going to california with brother and sister raisor to pick nancy up, when she flew home from hawaii. we stayed in a beach house in la jolla beach. we went to disneyland, sea world, the art show, the beach and a whole lot more (the first time i had ever been anywhere, except, to utah, for vacation.) we had a ton of fun. (except on sunday when brother raisor did our hair for church and we couldn't get in the ocean that day, (have a look at those do's!)).

a few years ago, i went back down to arizona for a visit and we were able to get together and reminisce

so...here we are again, nanette (cindy's little sister), jeanette (annette's little sister) nancy, annette, me and cindy. thanks for all of the great memories, girls! you were and always will be a big part of my life! love ya forever!

happy little helpers!

the past couple of saturdays have been quite nice, weather wise. a good time to go out and dig in the dirt! the funnest part is the 'happy little helpers' that have been here to help me. this is ryker (chet and tiff's). he is 9 1/2 months old and he had to be right under us as we were weeding. he's cute even when he's filthy dirty. he hadn't had a nap all day and was just as happy as could be ~ all boy!

this is down at grandma ruth's and poppie's. i was out weeding and the kids found a 'roly poly' (potato bug) and a lady bug. they dropped one of them, and were intensely looking for it, when melanie said, "well, here is your roly poly bug right here. and i've stepped on it!" at that moment kendyl (who is the drama mama) came running in and started bawling, "you killed it, you killed it, and i wanted it! why did you kill it, auntie?"

what small things keep kids entertained! they played with this lady bug and anything else they could find that crawled, for hours. they decided they needed a jar, so they put their bugs in the jar and then decided they needed to go 'visit' someone. so we sent them over to aunt ann's. (aunt ann is grandma ruth's sister who is 86 years old) they were so proud of their new little friends, but ann was not amused!

mother's day

i loved elder m. russell ballard's talk given in general conference last month titled "daughters of god". one of the comments he made was that " there is no role in life more essential and more eternal than that of motherhood".

david o. mckay once said "the noblest calling in the world is that of mother. true motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. she who can paint a masterpiece or who can write a book that will influence millions deserves the plaudits and admiration of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose immortal souls will be exerting an influence throughout the ages long after paintings shall have faded, and books and statues shall have been destroyed,deserves the highest honor that man can give."

all my life i wanted to be "just a mom". when i was 19 years old, all of the sudden i had someone else to care for, 24/7. someone that i loved more than myself. someone that i would do anything, including giving my life for. heavenly father blessed me with a precious little girl and trusted her to be in my care, to teach her and help her to return again to him, someday. (boy! did i have alot to learn!) i didn't think i could love anyone or anything anymore than i loved my little melanie. two years later, chet came along and i learned quickly that i had enough love for both of them. what a great responsibility, two of heavenly father's children entrusted to my care. when chet was 2 years old, we were blessed with little haley anne, the apple of our eyes. melanie and chet were so excited and somehow knew that heavenly father was going to send them a little sister to look over, love and care for. now, i was blessed with even more love to give. it's funny, how you think that you only have so much love to give, but as these sweet little spirits enter our lives, you love them all the same and heavenly father gives us enough love to go around again and again. cheyne came four years later, and now i had four of our heavenly father's children that i was responsible for. oh how i loved each of them! and felt sooo honored that my heavenly father loved me and trusted me enough to bless our home with four special little spirits.
discovering that with every child, your heart grows bigger and stronger - that there is no limit to how much or how many people you can love, even though at times you feel as though you could burst - you don't - you just love even more.- yasmin le boni

to know that i needed to teach them and be a good example to them. always! that i am responsible to help them return to their heavenly father! wow! how overwhelming! when i think of how i worried every time i left any of them for even an hour or two, and with people i love and trusted, it makes me think how heavenly father must feel each time he sends one of his children to this earth, trusting that those he sends them to, are going to teach them the things they need to know to get back to him someday. it makes me feel a sense of inadequacy.

i look at my children now, and they are all grown up, three of them married to wonderful spouses. what happened to time? sometimes, i think that somehow time slipped past me and i missed out on some of the most important things in their lives. if i could do it again, i hope that i would take a little more time to enjoy the moment. spend a little more time reading to them, playing with them, letting them help me with whatever i was doing, instead of always thinking that my house had to be cleaned, the wash needed to be done and everything had to be in perfect order, before i could take time to enjoy anything. in my wise old age, i've learned that the house always needs to be cleaned, the wash is never done and no matter how hard you try to make things perfect, they just aren't!
a hundred years from now... it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house i lived in, or the kind of car I drove... but the world may be different because i was important in the life of a child.- kathy davis

now heavenly father has blessed our family with 5 more of his choice spirits (with another one coming in october). it's a good thing that love isn't weight, or i would never have any clothes that fit!
now that I've reached the age, or maybe the stage, where I need my children more than they need me, I really understand how grand it is to be a grandmother.- mrs margaret whitlam

i am grateful to my heavenly father for trusting me enough to let me be a mother to four of his choicest spirits! i love them all and love being their mother. hopefully they will forgive me for my shortcomings , for my impatience, and for the things i should have, but didn't teach them.. i know i wasn't the perfect mom, but i hope each of them know that no matter what, i wouldn't trade anything in the world for the years i had them in my care and for what they have taught me over the years! melanie, chet, haley and cheyne, you are my life and i will always love you!

new toy...........

okay... all of our kids were moved out last summer, so i inherited the "great and dreadful" chore of mowing the lawn. i actually took a liking to this chore. we had a walk behind mower and it gave me a little 'alone' time, a little - much needed- exercise, i love being outside, and i love the satisfaction of how everything looks after it's done.
well... towards the 'very' end of the mowing season last fall, our wonderful son in law, george, called to let donnie know what a "great" deal they had on riding lawn mowers at "the home depot". (george knows don can not pass up a good deal!) so... we headed to town. i think we checked out every stinkin' riding mower they had there, once, twice, three, four, and probably five times! (donnie likes a good deal, but it also has to be the best! and... they had brought mowers from all of the home depot stores in utah to a.f.)

if you look at something four or five times, or long enough, do the looks change?

anyway, we ended up buying one - a 'john deere' (not a 'donnie dear', but a 'john deere') the mowing season was over, but i think donnie snuck in an extra cut or two.

don was sooooo excited for the lawn mowing season this year ( ya, go figure!). the first chance he got he ran down and bought and fertilized the yard. anticipating the time when, finally, he could get on that 'john deere' and "mow the lawn". he couldn't wait, and the first time he mowed it was after dark. then of course, he decided that we needed a bag, to catch the grass. ~ that dang thing costs as much as a regular lawn mower! yes, he picked it up last weekend - it needed to be put together and he was sick all weekend, so it didn't get done.

last night i came home from work and thought (i know, scary, huh?!) maybe, i would mow the lawn while he finished putting the bag together ~

our conversation went like this:

me: uummmm, maybe i'll go out and mow the side lawn.

donnie: well...the bag needs to be put on the mower first.

me: maybe, while you're putting the bag together, i could just 'practice'.

donnie: we would have to go over it again to catch the grass, and do you know how much gas is???! but... i guess you can... if... you really want to.

he did not want me to rain on his parade!

i ended up weeding the flower beds, instead.

maybe, just maybe...this could be a good thing!

isn't he cute, sitting on his 'john deere'!

so ...my question is ~~

WHY?

don can crawl out of bed in the morning ~ brush his teeth, run the deodorant under his armpits, slip into his jeans (the ones he had on the day before), add a t shirt , through on a hat, and... presto! he is ready to walk out the door. it only takes him, at the most 15 minutes, can you believe it, and he's ready for the day. he doesn't worry about WHAT to wear, doesn't care if his hair is not perfect, or that people can look at him and know that he just got out of bed 15 minutes ago.

i on the other hand ~ get up, crawl into the shower, shampoo my hair, shave my legs (and pits), get out. brush my teeth, through on the deodorant, lotion up, then the underwear goes on. i make the bed (a little pet peeve of mine....can't stand to get into an unmade bed at night), through the dirty clothes to the laundry. blow my hair dry, add a little product, blow hair dry again, add some more product, blow hair dry again ~ flat iron (ya gotta love the natural curly hair when you are trying to make it straight!) spray hair, pick it out, spray again, flat iron a little more, add more product. check out the back of hair to make sure it looks 'just right'. flat iron some more, add the finishing touch. i put on my make up ( granted, i don't use much), but it takes time to make it look 'just right'. i run downstairs, plug in the iron, while i wait for it to heat up, i put in a batch of laundry (usually have to empty the dryer first so i can put the clothes from the washer in). run back, iron my clothes (thank goodness for 'scrubs', they make it easier, because i don't have to decide WHAT to wear, just what color would be best for the day). , get dressed, hop upstairs to grab something to eat for breakfast on my way to work, and something for my lunch, clean up any messes left. gather my goods, and then... i'm off to work!

over an hour later!
(and i don't even have any kids to worry about!)

is it vanity ? ~ or what?

wouldn't it be great if we all looked good in a hat!?

spring ??????

did i say "it's finally spring" just 2 days ago?

well...this is what i woke up to this morning.

'SNOW'

yes! i know.. it's only a skiff, but it's still snow and it's cold!

cheyne had the sprinklers on out in the pasture all night and it looks like a winter wonderland out back where the water hit the trees.

no! no! no! no! nooooooooooo... i am ready for spring!