Happy New Year

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Christmas Wishes

This holiday season has been very dear to my heart. I have had a chance to contemplate the birth of our Savior and all that He has done for me - and for you. This holy birth was the beginning of the most marvelous and wonderful life ever seen on this earth. The suffering, the crucifixion, the resurrection of Christ did happen and I am so thankful for it. I am thankful for a loving Father in Heaven that allowed his son to come to earth to teach us and show us a life of love and giving - and yes, even the pain and agony that came with his death. Both our Father in Heaven and our brother, Jesus, knew that there had to be a way to allow us to come back to Them in the end - and so the events unfolded. Everyone complains about the selfishness and the materialism of the Christmas Season - I don't look at it that way - I find that the Christmas Season allows me to think more of others - especially those I love. It gives me a chance for my heart to grow a little larger. I love the music, I love the lights, I love the gifts!! I even love it when someone wishes me a Happy Holiday - I simply thank them and wish THEM a Merry Christmas.


Take a moment and appreciate the beauty of the ecard that Ashland University has prepared. Let the Light of Christ feel your hearts this Christmas Season ... and all year long. I love you.

http://ecard.ashland.edu/index.php?ecardYear=2004adm

Things I have done

Things I Have Done...

To participate just copy and paste in your own blog, and bold all of the things you have done.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
7. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept over night on a train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23.Taken a sick day when you're not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo's David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone Deep Sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the changing of the guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone's life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

December Update

Last Sunday Dirk and Da invited Kecia and Glenn over for Sunday dinner (since they didn't get to see each other on Thanksgiving). They invited Ed and I too and we went down to Lehi for a delicious dinner (you should try her cinnamon lasagne!! DELICIOUS!!) Then we moved downstairs to visit. Pretty soon we found outselves in the playroom so the kids (??) could play.

Grandpa Ed is the designer and builder of the fancy towers seen in the foreground of this picture.


Here's Simon enjoying all the attention!!
Ben and Glenn were fascinated with the dinosaur puzzle - they played with it for a good 30 minutes!



Emma is enjoying the family party too - (take note of the cute outfit - how many babies do you know that wear satin onesies!!

I gave Kecia her birthday present that night since I had already given Kelly his and we wouldn't be having a birthday party per se for them until Christmas eve.

Now we are back in Layton - this is my tree this year... and who needs Santa to come with this load already under the tree!

We bought this cute display after Christmas in 2006 and then in 2007, since we were in New York for ten days from the 10th through the 20th of December we didn't set up our outside decorations. So this year we had a NEW decoration to our front yard !! And it is sooooo CUTE!! The picture doesn't really give you the full effect. They are much brighter and more sparkly in person.


Here is my cute snowball - sad to say it doesn't blow the snow too well anymore but its still cute.

Here is a full view of our yard this year.

And finally - last but not least - here is what it looks like all together.

Merry Christmas

Another video of cute grandbabies

I went down to Lehi on Wednesday to watch the boys while Dirk and Da had a short getaway up at Park City. I knew that Wednesday would be easy because Simon and Ben are used to me watching them all afternoon, feeding them supper and then putting them to bed. What they are not used to is waking up to grandma the next morning and I figured that it would be a difficult morning. So I invited Kecia and Emma to come play that day.

The boys slept till 7:10 am and that was great. I walked into Simon's room and he was just a grinning at me. I thought - okay one down, but Ben was the one I was most worried about. I walked into Ben's room and he grinned and said "Grandma" (or at least his rendition of it!). It was so easy. The boys didn't mind having me for 24 hours at all. They were sweethearts and they napped when they were supposed to and played like the cuties they are and all was well. Kecia and Emma showed up about 10:15 or so, figuring that they would be walking into a screaming mess. NOPE!! We were downstairs watching Mama Mia (we have a new ABBA fan on our hands and he's only two years old!) We started the movie over for Kecia so she would know what was going on. I had been just about ready to take Simon upstairs for a nap cause his eyelids were getting heavy.

But when Cousin Emma and Aunt Kecia showed up he was ready to play again - for maybe ten minutes. Kecia wanted hold him and he just cuddled up under her chin and lay there like the softy he can be. After about ten minutes we decided we better go ahead and put him down for his nap or else he would be falling asleep on Kecia...which she didn't mind but we were afraid that he would wake up when we transferred him to his crib.

So Emma and Ben played (rather well as long as Emma didn't play with any of BEN's toys!!! Or even grandma's yarn balls that she had brought for Ben to play with!!) - she was allowed to play with Simon's toys!

So - Kecia and I watched Mama Mia (I had seen it in the theatre, had seen it once the night before, and had already watched it through once that morning plus the restart for Kecia - but I love the movie and it wasn't a hardship to watch it again.

As soon as the movie got over Benji was saying 'again, again" but I talked him into going upstairs for lunch. He ate a carton of yogurt and then wanted me to fix him a quesadilla but then he decided he didn't want it. That was okay - Emma ate it. He ate Emma's raisins. Kecia and I ate Melinda's wonderful homemade pot pie. All were happy.

About 1:00 Ben started getting tired so I put him down for his nap. Simon was just waking up. He had been sleeping for 2 1/2 hours! So I gave Simon a bottle and then sat him on the floor to play with cousin Emma and he thought she was great fun!

Kecia was all excited over Emma's newest "word". All morning she was trying to get Emma to tell her what a duck said. Emma wasn't about to perform on command. Actually I had the camera on and Simon was being just darling for the camera and then I panned up to Emma and she said 'quack quack quack" and then she hissed like a snake.... her two newest tricks. Then I panned back to Simon who was laughing so cute....and then I realized I had the video on 'standby' and missed it ALL!!!!!




So here you see us being ignored royally by Miss Emma and some darling grins and laughs by Simon. Of course, Ben isn't in any of the pictures cause he was upstairs sound asleep.

As you can see, Emma still has her jammies on. Kecia did bring clothes to dress her in but she looked so dang cute in her jammies with her pink bows we left the jammies on. Here is another video of Emma ignoring us and Simon bobbing his head in excitement but it is kind of fun to see Simon just learning how to creep... it won't be long and mom will have to get out the stair guards cause he will be moving all over the place!



Dirk and Da came home about 2 or so on Thursday and they seemed to have had a great time. Thanks guys for letting me play with the babies !!! I sure wish I hadn't been working full time when my other grandbabies were this little! Now they are big kids.

Festival of Trees

After I left Lehi today I headed to South Jordan to the Festival of Trees. As always there are more gorgeous trees than you know what to do with. Sad to say, as I wandered through the trees I still had my camera on video.

Go ahead and play this video - it shows the tree and then garbledygook and then focuses in on the statues in the front of the tree.



So you will need to go to the end of this blog to see the rest of Randy and Colleen's tree. The tree was purchased by Robert Allphin and if I remember right, they run the mortuary in Beaver. When you get to them don't play the video...just look at the still picture. And yes, I know they are sideways but I still don't know how to turn a video. Treat all the rest of the video's as still shots!!

Now for a glimpse at the a few of the other trees.

This was a fascinating tree. It was made out of glass - blown glass and cut glass. The presents are stained glass with lights inside.

The real trees on each side of the glass tree were full of beautiful glass flowers. They were even more gorgeous

This was the tree decorated by the people of Beaver to honor April Yardley (if you remember, she was Colleen and Randy's friend that was killed in the same accident that they were It was a lot prettier than my picture shows - the photo is kind of washed out.


This doll was part of a Victorian Christmas and I thought she was so beautiful - she probably stood four feet tall!

There was a twilight tree!!! Fun!! The lady I talked to said that it sold for $4000 and it was a neck and neck auction between two buyers!!



The people that decorated it went to the real town of Forks, WA and bought a sweatshirt from the Fork High Spartans and then went to La Push and bought another sweatshirt. Of course the four novels are part of the gift.

There are presents under the tree for the different people in the movie. For instance, there is a black bear rug for Emmett, and a camera and scrapbook for Bella. An "operation" game for Carlysle, a Risk game for the Volturi - Edward got the keyboard. The lady told us the tree also that the 'tree' included a bracelet for Bella and also a diamond ring! The tree was donated and decorated by a Jewelry company.You can see Jacob's gift - a took kit. And the cute plate that says "Dear Santa, Vampires Believe!" Jasper's gift are the books about the Civil War (isn't that about the time he was "born"?










You will need to turn the video on this one so you can see the picture of the St George Temple

What a BUST!!!

I woke up at 6:45 am this morning and I thought to myself....hey - there were some sales at both Wal Mart and Kohls that I wanted to check out...

so I got up and dressed and even put on the makeup and headed out the door by 7:03 am and went to Wal Mart first of all. I must admit I didn't have a lot that I wanted to look at there - the ladies jeans that were on sale for $8 and maybe an Emma toy. Nothin, nadda, forget it. Couldn't even find the womens jeans that were on sale. Wandered all thru the store and looked at everything on sale - and there were some goooood sales. So I left without buying anything.

Headed to Kohl's - their toys were all 40-60% off and I wanted to look for a tie for Glenn and a nice shirt and tie and slacks etc for Edward.

The toys are in the back of the store on the North side and as I headed back there I realized that the 'crowd' (per se) was the line of people waiting to make their purchase. The line was 2-3 people wide and it ran all the way across the front of the store AND ALL THE WAY TO THE BACK!!!

Sorry, but I didn't want to wait two hours to buy something...so I didn't even shop!! I turned around and headed back out to my car.

The Grinch has spoken. This is the first year I have even looked at the Black Friday sales and it will be the last!!

I am going back to bed!!

He's HOME!!!

Dirk arrived in Utah shortly before 4 pm today - Hurrah!! He beat everyone - Melinda and I and grandpa Nielson and Ben and Simon got at the baggage area about 4 pm . We figured it would be about 15 minutes before Dirk got down to the baggage area. HAH!!! His flight got in early and the soldiers were the first ones off the plane. Melinda was just looking at the flight schedule and had turned to me to say - his plane has landed when I looked up and here comes Dirk just a truckin!! If I had wanted to I could have gotten the first hug!!


This is the sign I made with the help of Jeff and Teresa - I thought the vinyl lettering was really nice and they added the flags!! WOW!! Special Thanks to teresascustomcreations.com!! If anyone wants some awesome vinyl or steel signs and lettering that's the place to get it!

Melinda of course got the first hugs and she sobbed her welcome to Dirk in his arms. Then she turned to the boys and Ben was somewhat shy about going to his dad, but he knew his daddy and was glad to see him. He got big loves from daddy and then was more interested in the yellow balloons tied to Simon's stroller. (as is normal!)
Simon watched everything with those big blue eyes of his and didn't mind having daddy hold him. The picture above shows Ben pointing to the balloons again!
About five minutes after the joyful welcome Shawn and Cade showed up. I guess they would have made it on time but the airport police thought Shawn was traveling too fast!! Shawn gave him the "but officer, I was just hurrying to welcome my brother who is just arriving from Afghanistan!" The officer merely said " then I will hurry and write the ticket faster!"
Here Ben is playing with the balloons and by now Grandpa Ed has made it too. He had me come earlier because he had was teaching a class and couldn't get away early enough.
This is the cute sign Da made - the back of it says DAD! Ben thought it was great fun to play with and he also liked the flags - he had one for each hand.
If Dirk is looking a little spacey its because he left Kuwait 26 hrs before landing in SLC - longggggggg flight. He said that Dallas really gave them a royal welcome. As soon as they got to the window to connect to their next flight - they were told there was an earlier flight leaving that they could come on, and they were immediately upgraded to first class seats!! He said there were lines of people waiting to shake their hands and welcome them home. Of course, his luggage didn't make the quick connection so the airlines will deliver it in the middle of the night to his home.

We are sooo glad to have Dirk home for this two week visit. He looks really good ...I think he has put on 10-20 pounds which look good on him. WELCOME HOME KID!!! I LOVE YOU!!!

Fluff ball

A few posts ago, on Kecia's blog she showed you this cute dress that she got back from her sister Mauri and Mauri's daughter, Adrie Anna. I had given it to Mauri when Adrie was a four years old and Adrie was adorable in it. Then Mauri put it away until now. Kecia took the dress that was 24 years old!! home and washed it and put new ribbons on it and it looks like new in her blog. I have been hunting for THIS picture ever since because I thought it would be fun for all to see what a precious little fluff ball Kecia made - she would have been four years old the year this picture was taken. I can't wait for three more years until Emma is four - and can wow us all again!

Wasn't she a dolly?

Another visit to Provo and Lehi

I blogged about Wednesday - our Relief Society Visiting Teaching Conference (its two blogs down, just keep scrolling) and I blogged about Friday - going to see the movie Twilight, but I left off the most important day - Thursday. I drove down to Provo and then back to Lehi for my weekly playdates with my three youngest grandkids. I need to make playdates with my older grandkids too!


Anyway, here is Ben - and his new toy. I bought it for all the grandkids and accidently left it at Ben's house. I have now decided I want the green spiny ball back but I will find another worm to share with the rest of the grandkids. I am sure I can find one at Flying J. I bought it on the way to Beaver two weeks ago at a gas station. This spiny orange thing is about a foot long and has an lcd light inside of it that rolls from one end to the other. It turns on with action and if it sits more than a minute, then it turns itself off. When it is on, it flashes the light through the orange body and Ben loved it. He played with it for 20 minutes --- light on, light off, light on, he would say over and over again.


Here is Simon - he can sit up on his own very well. He is downstairs in the playroom - I sat behind him on the cushions for a half an hour until I realized he didn't need my protective arms close by ready to catch him. He is the sweetest little guy and his grin is just adorable - what is Dirk going to think when he sees and holds him ... don't forget the tissues on Tuesday!

We were down in the playroom so Ben could play with the play doh. Ben's idea of playing with play doh is to take it out of the can and put it back in and put the lid back on. He goes from one color to another to another. Of course he knows the colors of each - such a talented kid for only being 2 years old !!

I was playing with Ben and got out my camera and Simon grinned the cutest grin so I turned the camera on and started videoing Simon and Ben quickly brought my attention back to what he was doing. So here you have video of Ben and his play doh - you can hear him tell me the colors very quietly...and then I turn to Simon and got some really cute video of him. Now that he is sitting by himself he sees something he wants and stretches for it. I think he will be crawling in another month to six weeks. Lets hope for Melinda's sake he doesn't start crawling until after the Christmas tree is DOWN!


I have tried for six hours to download this video and its not working. I will try again another day.

O f course I got some cute pictures of Emma too - she was sleeping when I got there and I got to get her up from her nap. She was so excited to see grandma Susan. Her mama hadn't gotten her dressed yet and her hair wasn't in its normal cute bows but she was darling anyway.


I really liked this softness of this picture even though you don't have a good view of her face. Her hair is growing so long and is such a warm pretty color.


I also had a fun visit with Kecia and with Melinda that day. I hate the fact that Dirk is so far away but it is so nice to have a good excuse to drive down to Utah county and see the babies. They grow up so fast...I am thankful I have a chance to share in their lives.

Twilight

I saw it, I loved it, I want to go see it again!!

Relief Society's "Purse"onal Enrichment Night

Tonight at church we had our annual visiting teaching conference. It was so nice and since I was in the middle of the planning and the doing it made it even more special. We used the theme that Kristanne did in her ward a year ago. I am on the Home, Family and Personal Enrichment Committee and I was so excited when I heard that our ward was going to use that theme.

This is what the table decorations looked like. A couple of sisters in our ward are real purse-aholics and they brought purses for us to use as the main focus. I was in charge of getting the balloons and the tissue and completed the decorations. The little purses around the main purse were the favors that went home with each sister.

Here is a picture of the whole hall and it looked so cute.


The day before the big event Chris Balmforth called me and asked what decorations we were planning for the serving tables. I said NONE!! She suggested that I use a Thanksgiving theme and so I got to bring all my 'pretties' from home . We served fresh salad and homemade soups and chili's. There were some nummy ones. I brought my butternut squash soup. They had plenty of bowls so we could get a taste of several soups. Another sister in the ward made home made breads, rolls, and breadsticks. YUUMMMY!
These were the nummy pies and you will recognize my candlesticks on the table.

I stretched my autum leaves the length of the table and put more of the cute decorations I have at home on each end of the table too. We also had yellow, gold, and orange balloons at each end of the serving table, continuing the theme of the main hall. It looked so festive!

Last but not least before our planning meeting, Chris Balmforth had called me and asked me to "pick my daughter-in-laws' brain" for ideas for the evening. Which I did. The leaders had already decided to do a weigh in of purses (Stephanie Scholes won with her backpack weighing in at 14 plus pounds...and she had taken her computer out of it already! Her mom, Cheryl won the smallest weight category with her wallet...that is what she always carries.) I told them about how Kristanne's ward had slipped various items into the women's purses when no one was looking and then playing a game where Lisa would call out an item and the person that had it in their purse would hold it up and the first one in the air would win. Amazingly... when she called pliers, there were two ladies holding them up!!! One with a bewildered look on her face wondering where the pliers had come from, and Sue Ann holding her pink pliers up because she had gone to a friends house today and made jewelry and so had her pliers in her purse!! I had slipped my mini leatherman into one sister's purse, and Lisa Hatch also had a pair that she always carries!! So our odd items weren't so odd!

It was a fun game and lots of laughs. Then, I got to give a talk. Again, it was an idea from Kristanne's ward and as I told the committee about it they really liked the idea. They liked it so well that they assigned it to me!!!

This was my talk:

You know, we are all purse-ons. We all have things in common.

I remember looking at the grandma’s in my ward when I was a newly wed thinking how different they were...how little we had in common. Now I know that grandma’s are teenagers with grey hair and wrinkles....but we all love purses.

We all know how important a purse is – whether it is a simple wallet or a huge carry all– and we feel lost without it!

We start out as little girls with our first easter hat and purse.... then we move into our school years...and we are lost without our backpack— each year of school finds us packing more and more into those backpacks ---- not just papers and books, but ID’s, lip gloss, cell phone, ipods, etc. Of course in my day...it was a transister radio... but that’s getting off the subject

As we get to the dating age, we might find ourselves buying - with a thrill- a pretty little rhinestone clutch bag to go with our prom dress, but we quickly go back to the backpack for our everyday needs.

Finally as we graduate and start our first jobs we find everything being moved from that backpack to a briefcase - nowadays it would be on wheels as we also need to tow the laptop computer.

Then hopefully we move to the diaper bag and let me tell you, as a mother of twins I KNOW how much they can carry!

It is with a partial tear in our eye as we put away the diaper bag as our babies grows past that stage ...but yet with excitement as we peruse all the cute purses we get to choose from now!!

Each of of us moves at a different rate through normal purses, large purses, small purses, gigantic purses....

I used to go for the biggest one I could find until I realized that I was getting tennis elbow from carrying it.

I think it is important to realize that though we are each different, like all the different purses we find ourselves carrying through the years, that we are similar in ways - we are all daughters of God...and we all think we need all this stuff in our purses until they are too heavy for us to carry....But we need to realize that God gives us spiritually, the purses we need to carry. Not too big, not to small. He knows us and he knows what we can handle.

Another outlook on purses is in a cute story by Marsha Jordan called “I’ve found the perfect purse.”

The most important accessory in a woman's wardrobe is her purse. I spend more time purse shopping than I spend on shoes or clothes. As a busy grandma on the go, I spend much of my life in the car; and my purse provides easy access to many of the comforts of home.

I know women (my sister for one) who suffer from multiple "purse"onality. They have a different purse to go with every outfit in the closet. Not me. When I manage to find the right purse for my needs, I use it till the straps fall off. But finding just the RIGHT purse is no easy task.

In my purse I carry a supply of every medication in my cupboard along with a drink to swig with pills; cosmetics for touch ups; toiletries (in case I'm stranded overnight), books to read while waiting in line, and emergency snacks. I also stock my purse with plenty of quarters for video games (for my grandson, not me!) an extra pair of pantyhose (for me, not him) and a change of underwear (for both of us). My purse must be big enough to hold anything I might need as I travel: safety pins, paper clips, notepad, three different checkbooks, sunglasses, reading glasses, and driving glasses; silverware, straws and napkins (because fast food places often forget to provide them) and a sweater, an umbrella and a rain poncho for inclement weather. My purse carries eye drops, ear drops and gum drops, bug repellant, nasal spray, hair spray, and pepper spray, a first aid kit, a sewing kit, a tool kit, and a pool repair kit. Oh, and an inflatable raft (you never know when you might fall overboard).

After a tiring, three-hour search in Wal-mart, I was delighted to finally find the perfect purse. It has 327 compartments and it holds all my "necessities," plus a liter of Dr. Pepper. The only things this almost-ideal carry-all lacks are wheels to drag it along behind me. After filling my "dream purse" with all my treasures, I sadly discovered that I don't have the muscles to lug the thing around. I've developed tennis elbow, low back pain, and a perpetual stiff neck from hoisting the sucker over my shoulder; and I'm afraid I might need a rotator cuff transplant.

I was stopped by airline personnel on a recent cross country trip. They accused me of trying to smuggle in carry-on baggage that was too large to fit into the overhead compartment! I refused to give up my treasured, dog-house -sized purse; so they reluctantly allowed me
onboard with it - but only after I promised to hold it on my lap instead of trying to squeeze under my seat. Because the monstrosity weighs more than I do, my legs were asleep during the entire flight!

Well, I found the perfect purse that I'd dreamed of -- only to discover that it's not so perfect after all. Back to the drawing board -- or should I say back to Wal-mart's purse department?

Aren't you glad that God isn't like me with my purse? I search for perfection. He accepts imperfection. I look for something to fill MY needs. He looks for those who have needs HE can fill. And when we disappoint Him, He doesn't throw us back and start looking for
something better. God loves all the imperfect "purse-ons" of this world, no matter what our size, shape, or color. He doesn't care how much we can carry whether we can fill every need ourselves. He accepts us as we are. And He makes up for what we lack.

In Jeremiah 31:3, God said: "I HAVE LOVED YOU WITH AN EVERLASTING LOVE." Isn't that great to know?

Then I bore my testimony about Visiting Teaching.

It was a neat night and I enjoyed being a part of it. Thanks Kristanne for helping me with such a lot of fun ideas!

Another old picture

This picture is newer but still special. Grandpa Merritt is scanning his old slides in to his computer and every so often he emails them to me!! YEA!!


I would guess that this picture was taken on Feb 11 1983...the twins would be two and Mauri eight, Dirk 11 and Shawn 13. At least that is my guess...and it would be Jill's birthday party the year she turned 29!! She looks exhausted but I think it is just how she has her eyes looking down at something. It looks like she got a cute lamp and a pink care bear!

Old Pictures

My dad emailed this picture of our family to me just the other day. It is a treasure. It shows us on Christmas Day probably about 1956 or 1957. I would have been 9 or 10. Dad and Mom are behind my brother Bruce, my sister Merrilee and me with Jill sitting in front of Merrilee. The old chair in the side of the picture is the one that Merrilee and Bruce and I used to entertain ourselves when Mom and Dad went out on a date. We would run across the living room and hit it, landing in the middle/back of the chair so that the chair would tip all the way over. Great fun!! Usually we would take turns running with one person watching out the window on the South side of the house so we could see the headlights of the cars coming down Green road. When a car would come, we would set the chair upright and scatter to our beds!!

Mom and dad never could figure out why the chair didn't last as many years as they expected it too...dang, they just don't make furniture like they used to!

Dad added another story to this chair. Evidently one night they had a bunch of people over to the house and as one lady sat down in the chair, OVER it went. As dad was helping her stand up he said to her "You're the second woman to tip over in that chair, and both of you were wearing pants!" As he realized what he had said he went ever color of red!! I can just imagine his embarrassment.

Emma is ONE YEAR OLD

Video clip #1

Please ignore the lousy singing ...I should have just hummed... at the end when we are singing Happy Birthday like people sing it (as compared to kitties or hippopotamus's) you will see Emma bouncing. I am not bouncing her on my knee. She would start bouncing with the music as we sang Happy Birthday to her!




Video clip #2. It gets really wobbly at the end because Emma decides that she wants the camera and takes it away from me and I am trying to turn the thing off!!


Emma's birthday party was held in a giant fishbowl!! Mom and Dad had covered the floor with blue tarps and there were paper fishies on the wall and stuffed fishies on the floor.

Here we have Emma (whose face was slightly orange due to chewing on crepe paper!!) and Simon.

The birthday girl is dressed is a cute outfit made by her talented mom!








Here are all three of my precious grand babies...
my other grand kids are just that - kids!! But these three still qualify in the baby range.











After the whole group joined in singing a bunch of cute fun songs then they sat Emma down on the blue tarp and let her go at it!! Cute duckie cake had big blue bubbles that it had been sitting on - those were the cupcakes mama passed out to the friends who came for the party.







She went for the bright orange duck beak and after she had frosting and cake all over her and her dress Emma was stripped to just tights and shoes. I picked up the cake she had smashed all over the floor and put it in a cup. Now she is going after every last drop of that nummy stuff in the cup.








Anyone want to shake hands?? Note the cute shoes she got for her birthday.












Fun birthday Party!! Big GIRL

Emma's birthday party

This is the birthday girl enjoying her birthday cake - she loved it!! YUMM!

I'm only going to post this one picture tonight - I am soooo tired. I didn't sleep well last night and then I kept rolling all day long...from a walk to getting my nails done to driving to Lehi and playing with Simon and Ben and then to Provo for the birthday party and then driving back home tonight.

I shouldn't be this tired but I am....more to come tomorrow!

I'm an Esme too

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Jamie - I need to borrow your Twilight books!! I can't even remember who Esme is!!

Does anyone know who these people are?

warning!!
warning!!
warning!!
warning!!
warning!!

The following pictures are not for the faint of heart. Some crazy people got ahold of my camera and I am not responsible for the pictures taken. Anyone that can identify the culprits are welcome to come drag them away from my house. I am sure they must be dangerous!!