I see an angel...

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” ~Michelangelo

I heard this quote tonight and I loved it. It made me think of myself and my life. Though in many ways I am still a simple hunk of marble I know that if I keep carving away, working everyday to improve and grow, someday the angel, the daughter of God that I really am will be set free and I will soar.

Joy...

Tuesday December 9~ JOY

...................................

As I listen to Christmas songs this season I am filled with immeasurable JOY.

When I hear songs about my Savior it's as if the heavens burst open, showering me with peace, hope and more JOY than I can express.

It feels at times like the whole world is falling down around me,

and yet I still have JOY.

JOY in Him

My Savior

My King.

Christmas ears...

Well I told Rick that I wanted plastic surgery for Christmas and his expression was a mixture of confusion and disgust when he asked me, "What are you talking about?"
I laughed and asked, "What do you think I'm talking about?"
He said, "Well it sure as heck isn't your nose." He likes my nose.
So I said, "So what do you think it is?"
He then shot me a look that said, "No way am I walking into that one."
I mean just imagine if he would have said, "I guess you might want plastic surgery on A, B, or C."
To which I might reply, "Why would you think that I might want surgery on A, B, or C? Do you think I need surgery on A, B, or C? Oh my gosh! You don't like my A, B, or C!" Then there might be great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. That is if I were the weeping and wailing type, which I'm not, but still you can see why a man might shy away from such subjects.
Rick then gave me the standard smart husband answer, shall we say it together on three--1,2,3-- "YOU DON'T NEED ANY PLASTIC SURGERY. YOU'RE PERFECT THE WAY YOU ARE."
You see a smart husband knows that a flattered wife is a happy wife so Rick makes it a point to compliment me quite regularly. What a guy.
I told him that yes I do need plastic surgery so he frowned and again asked me what I was talking about. I lifted my hair, wiggled my little earlobes and said, "I need to get these sewn."
Boy was he relieved, and very accommodating.
So it looks like I'm on my way to my first plastic surgery. Yippee skippy!

Plastic surgery for the winner...

I need plastic surgery. No, it's not what you're thinking although I could really use that too. I am speaking of my terribly stretched out (now what are you thinking?) pierced earlobes. A combination of the ridiculously heavy earrings of my eighties youth and the curious and quick hands of many a foster baby who grabbed hold of those ridiculously heavy earrings of my eighties youth while they were still attached to my poor little ears, has left me with ugly ear holes that are stretched almost clear through. I'm afraid that just one more bump or snag from Waylon and--RIP!--it'll be a flapping double earlobe for me (I apologize to the squeamish folks in the audience). Waylon accidentally snagged my right lobe tonight so you can thank him for this post.
So I'm thinking that I'll tell my Love that I want plastic surgery for Christmas.
Any guesses on what he'll think I'm referring to?
.
.
Now onto a totally unrelated subject. I must announce that I can now say that I am a...

That's right I am finally a winner. Today while Christmas shopping for Marlee, artist extraordinaire, I found an awesome art supply store, bought some fabulous items that just happened to be on sale (bonus) and entered a daily raffle drawing. Well much to my surprise the owner called me tonight to tell me that I won. Yippee! So tomorrow I get to go choose a free item from the exciting raffle section of the store and give it to miss Easton, my other artist extraordinaire, for Christmas. A free Christmas present, SCORE!
It's great being a winner. And don't you worry, I promise not to forget those of you who knew me when...

Love...

December's SPT Challenges:

Tuesday, December 2~ love
Tuesday, December 9~ joy
Tuesday, December 16~ comfort
Tuesday, December 23~ joy
Tuesday, December 30~ hope

*****************************

LOVE

.

I want to participate in SPT today, but I don't know how well I'll do. I want to share my thoughts on the wonderful subject of LOVE, but right now my heart is so full and so empty all at the same time so it makes it hard to sort my thoughts.

.

Today we took a quick day trip to my beloved valley home, but today it wasn't fun.

Today we attended the funeral of a dear friend.

Today I saw and hugged her family, her family that I LOVE.

Today I saw and felt their strength and was touched by the LOVE they have for each other.

Today I went to the cemetery and watched this family say goodbye to the one they LOVE the most and my heart ached for them.

Today I visited my father's grave, my father who I LOVE, and remembered when I had to say goodbye to him.

Today I can still feel his LOVE, and can smile when I think of him.

I know that because of eternal LOVE our friends will smile again too.

But tonight...

Tonight it hurts.

.

.

I didn't have it in me to take a self portrait this time, but here is a picture of some people that I LOVE.

Shoe love...

Last time I went to the valley, my sister and I went shopping and I fell in love with these shoes. I just had to have these shoes. And happy day, they were on sale.

Well now that we are on a spending fast I thought that my love affair with shoes, sale or not, was over. So you can imagine my joy when my sister, who lives in civilization (you know a place with stores and such), called me from the very store where I got these beauties and told me that many of their shoes were on sale for $1.50. ONE DOLLAR AND FIFTY CENTS!!! So I did what any self respecting shoe fanatic would do and said, "Buy me every pair you can find in my size (provided that they are not flat out tacky ugly)!!!"

When all was said and done she had found me six pairs of new shoes! Six pairs for virtually nothing! So what if I have no idea what they look like, I am giddy with excitement!

I know I have problems.

But isn't life fun?!!

The almost silent SPT...

Tuesday November 25~

The blue room revealed.

So here is what I was painting last week. My guest "water closet" (and I do mean water CLOSET). Oh how glad I am to be rid of those kid dirty walls. How do kids manage to get walls so dirty anyway?
In decorating this bathroom (um, toilet room) I had to revisit the old days, back when Rick and I were living on love because we sure weren't living on money. In those days I had to decorate on a dime, and now I'm decorating on mere pennies because we are on a serious spending fast. Nothing but food and other necessities baby. So I made these pictures out of stuff that I already had.
Perfect? No. But good enough and a fun way to discover that we can still be happy living on love alone.
And lucky us, we just happen to have an abundant supply of it.

Did I say it was time for change? Well this isn't what I meant...

"The youth of this generation have a greater capacity for obedience than any previous generation" ~Neal A Maxwell

(...a few of our girls during our "paper project runway" activity)

.
"God has reserved spirits for this dispensation who have the courage and determination to face the world and all the powers of the evil one, visible and invisible, to proclaim the Gospel and maintain the truth and establish and build up the Zion of our God fearless of all consequences. He has sent these spirits in this generation to lay the foundation of Zion never more to be overthrown and to raise up a seed that will be righteous and that will honor God and honor Him supremely and be obedient to Him under all circumstances." ~George Q. Cannon

****************************************************

For almost two years I have had the privilege of working in the Young Women's organization with some of our Father in Heaven's greatest spirit children. The youth of today are the most valiant, righteous and obedient of any other generation. The opposition they face is staggering and yet they do it with such strength and determination, with complete faith, hope and allegiance to their Savior and His teachings. It's awe inspiring and I love them all so much.

.

That is why I was left with a very heavy heart yesterday when I, our President, and most of the advisers were released from our callings. It is so hard knowing that I will no longer be working with our amazing girls twice a week. I will miss them terribly.

.

We all, the leaders and the girls, had a major cry fest at church with many hugs and tears, but I feel confident turning them over to their new leaders, outstanding women who will take very good care of them. I am bummed though that I won't be with them on Wednesday nights for Twilight talk anymore. We've been talking Twilight since the books came out and now that we've all finally seen the movie I won't be there to yak about it with them. No fair. Oh well I guess Marlee and Paige will just have to come home with a report for me each week.

.

Change is good and I know that other wonderful experiences await me, but for now I am oh so sad.

Happy Birthday???

Yesterday was miss Jamie's 7th Birthday.

The day started out very well with a yummy birthday breakfast just for her. The afternoon was lovely too with cotton candy treats for her school class. Then came the birthday party.

It started out fun with a few sweet little girls happily making crafts and getting their faces painted, then came the paradigm shift and all went crazy when Jamie's best friend from her school class showed up with not one, not two, but three of her siblings, one of which was a little boy (this was a girl themed party). Huh? How did this happen? I hadn't planned for this many kids and didn't have enough stuff for them. What the heck?
.
Turns out that Jamie's friend had told her that she would only come to the party if her brother and sisters could come too. Jamie, wanting her friend to be there, said, "Sure, bring them all." But failed to fill me in on the plan.
.
Is it just me or if your first grader came home and said, "Mom I got invited to my friend from school's birthday party and she said I could bring the whole family." You would call the mom of said friend (my # was on the invitation) and say, "My daughter told me that all of my children that you have never met are invited to your child's birthday party. Is this true? Are you sure you want all of my children that you have never met, one of whom is a boy, to come to your child's birthday party?"
Is it just me or would you also feel the need to confirm such a thing?
.
I tried, oh how I tried to be hospitable, but the boy was so ill behaved and really out of place in a girl themed party so he made the night miserable for everyone else. He was loud and crazy and made a couple of the little girls (who were supposed to be there) cry. Nice.
.
All of the plans for the party went right out the window and I found myself desperately watching the clock, which moved so very slowly. I felt like I was babysitting not having a party. Seriously, how did this happen?
.
As the end of the party finally neared, I started gathering every one's crafts and party favors which I some how miraculously had enough to give all but the boy, but they were girl things so I thought he would be okay with that. Thought wrong. He wanted one anyway. I told him I was sorry, but that they were girl things so he probably wouldn't want one (Waylon didn't get one either). His older sister then decided that she needed two of the fuzzy scarves that I had given the girls. When I explained to her that the green one was the one that Jamie had chosen and that she needed to give it to her, she got quite the attitude and became rather sassy with me. Where was I? I didn't even know these kids and they were so snotty to me.
.
That is when I lost my mind entirely and became cross with the naughty children. My own children looked at me with disbelief because I don't normally become cross with people, especially guests. But I had had it. I was FRAZZLED to say the least.
.
At that point the little girl called her mom to come and get them which was really okay because the party had been over for 20 minutes, but I felt bad because I had made her feel bad. This was like a knife to my heart because I hate to make children feel bad, especially guests in my home (whether they were invited by me or not). So while they waited for their mom I tried to be extra nice to them and in retrospect I know that I should have asked Jamie to give her girl themed party favor to the little boy. That would have been the hospitable thing to do, but at the time I was too stressed out to think of it.
.
Now that it is all over, my biggest regret is not that the party was ruined, but that I didn't handle it better. Because the only thing I have control over in this world is how I behave. And I am disappointed in how I behaved. Yes it would have been easier if the children had behaved, but still...


I guess the important thing is that Jamie had a wonderful time and was quite oblivious to the chaos around her. So all is well.
.
(No we don't normally dress with no sleeves in November. Actually we never dress without sleeves. Jamie wanted to wear a dress at her party, but threw the top sweater off early on. And things were just too crazy for me to care.)

Silent SPT...

Tuesday November 18

***

Get up...

Tonight was a you tube 80's addition night at our house. It started with a little Billy Idol (he still melts my butter) and as we all stood around gawking at his awesomeness, I turned to Rick and said, "You know, we really grew up in the coolest decade ever." Of course he agreed and so did the kids. They love the 80's music and styles and are quite jealous that we got to live it.
.
A few bands later I was twitchin' and a itchin' to get up and move. As I've said before, dancing was one of my favorite things to do in the 80's so when I hear that music I can barely contain myself. And when Rick played "I Need You Tonight" by INXS (another butter melter) I didn't contain myself. I jumped up and started dancing with miss Jamie right in the middle of the kitchen. We continued to dance song after song and I loved it. Rick loved it too. Yes he did. He rather likes it when I dance. I guess I should do it more often.

Ahh, life is good.

If you don't think so

just get up and DANCE.

.

.

Have you danced lately?

What's your favorite decade?

What rock stars, if any, melt your butter?

It's about time...

I know I'm behind on posting, but I have been so busy CHANGING MY LIFE. That's right, things are a changin' and it has taken every ounce of my free time to stay on top of it. It's too early to share with you what's been going on, but I've been having the best time going through my transformation. I promise to tell you about it later, but for now please accept my apologies for not being around as much. I'll try to do better with the whole juggling thing.

.

Now if you will excuse me I have to go see what all y'all have been up to lately.

.

P.S. I started to do the SPT yesterday but I knew I didn't have time to leave comments for all of the other SPTers (not required, but still...) so as not to be rude I decided to skip it this week.

Do you want to SPT?

You should. It's fun.

Just click on Lelly's name on my sidebar to check it out.

We do an SPT post every Tuesday.

This month we are posting pictures without words.

Try it.

You'll like it.

So worth it...

Once upon a time a little boy decided to color his mommy's carpet with mascara just as they were getting ready to go upstairs to play guys and blocks (the little boy's favorite game). So the mommy said, "Now I can't play guys with you because I have to clean my carpet instead."
The little boy, feeling very badly, retreated like a turtle inside of his 3 big shirts (he wanted to wear 3 of daddy's shirts yesterday (?)).


When the mommy finished cleaning her carpet, which wasn't easy let me tell you, she turned to the little boy and said, "If you want to tell me that you are sorry then we can go play guys."
But the little boy lay silent and still.
So the mommy covered the remaining stain on her carpet with an area rug, looked at her preciously adorable, 3 shirt wearing turtle boy sleeping so peacefully on her floor, and SMILED

as she thought, "Well if having a 3 shirt wearing sleeping turtle boy means that I must also have stained carpet, then I'll take it."
.
It's a small price to pay.

Silent portraits...

November's Challenge as explained by Lelly:

.
I cannot think of a better way to embrace the path to the winter holidays, than to find ways to simplify. and so, we shall start here. the challenge for November is to simplify your self-portraits. each Tuesday, take a self-portrait. and post it on your blog. this month, our portraits will speak for themselves. at the end of four weeks, you will have four self-portraits that capture you in the moment. no doubt, you will be able to look back at your four self-portraits and notice subtle changes. you will remember little things about that day, just from the color of your cheeks, the play of light in the background, the gleam in your eye. what stories can you tell when you can't use words?
simple enough?

(This one is going to be hard for me. I'm a writer not a photographer, but because I enjoy SP-Tuesdays I'll play along.)

All Hallows Eve and Chicago Dogs...

I meant to write about Halloween before now, but I've just been too busy. Thursday night we went trunk 'r treating around the church parking lot. The kids had a great time and I was happy because it wasn't freezing cold this year. Hooray!

Waylon dressed up as Frankenstein's monster, Easton was a renaissance girl and Jamie a vampire. The next night for trick or treating Easton was the vampire and Jamie was a dead 50's girl. Easton didn't want to be the renaissance girl again because everyone kept calling her Rapunzel and she said (with attitude mind you) "I am NOT a princess!" That girl cracks me up.

Paige was also a renaissance girl of sorts. Not a princess, but if you called her one she probably wouldn't have gotten too bent out of shape about it.

But never, never call miss Marlee a princess especially on Halloween. Halloween is Marlee's holiday and for her it is always about being something scary. She finds those who play up their feminine charms on All Hallows Eve to be utterly ridiculous, for Halloween is meant to be a holiday for ghouly ghouls not girly girls (I always lean more towards the girly costumes myself, but hey that's just me). I guess if I was as talented as miss Marlee in the ghoulish makeup department I just might like to be scary too.

.

Halloween day we traveled down to the valley to watch Landon's soccer game then spent the evening trick or treating with my sister Jillene's family. It was fun trick or treating in the valley again. I loved not being cold, but I would have taken the cold the next day when we went to the zoo. Dang it was hot! I am so not the valley girl that I used to be. I hated the heat and couldn't wait to get out of it. How crazy is it that I am now complaining about November heat. True valley people know that November heat is nothing. What a wuss I've become.

.

Rick was very pleased when I admitted that I have finally gotten to the point where I don't mind leaving the valley to go back "home". That's right you heard me. This feels like home now. Don't rub it in.

.

And it's an even better home now that we have

yummy hot dogs here. Our friends just opened an arcade and dog house and tonight I had a spicy polish dog with all of my favorite HOT fixin's on it. It was fabulous. Just like the old college days when Heidi and I would eat a Chicago style dog pretty much everyday for lunch. So yummy and so worth smelling like hot peppers, onions, and mustard the rest of the day.

So is it still worth it now? Well my honey won't smooch on me tonight so maybe not. But then again... It was really tasty.