mothers day

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Happy Father's Day

First off I want to say THANK YOU to all of the fabulous father's in my life.

My DAD! The memories of growing up involve my dad so very much. I was dad's right hand man until my little brother Bruce grew big enough to replace me. I remember fighting the waves on Yellowstone Lake as a storm moved in ever so quickly and we would rush to shore and deposit Mom and Merrilee (to help her) and baby Kelly and little Jill and not so big Bruce - then dad and I would have to cover the boat in the wind and the rain and tie it down a few feet out in the water with long ropes running to different trees on shore so that the boat could ride out the waves without being battered. I remember heading with my dad back into the trees to find where mom and the little ones were waiting out the storm - dad and I would come squelching and dripping into the camp. One time I went back to find mom's tupperware container of home made cookies for us to munch on and we pulled it out of the back of the boat full of water - I remember the giggles as we poured the water out of the cookies and ate the glop as is, cause it was cold and cold wet cookies still taste good when you're hungry.

I remember dad being a quiet soul - mom was the one we faced when we did something wrong and we often got a spat across the bum from her... but when she would say "your father is disappointed in you'...oh how that hurt. I hated to see the sadness I would put in my Father's Eyes.

Dad took us on vacations to Yellowstone and Lake Powell and Bear Lake - so many years of Bear Lake. Everywhere we went all six of us kids would ask questions and it seemed like he had an answer for every one of them.

I admire the man my dad is now, missing my mom so very much after five long lonely years without her but still reaching out to help family and neighbors whenever he can. He struggles with a broken collar bone still but doesn't let that stop him from planting flowers and tomatoes and such. He is constantly fixing something somewhere in the house. He is so cute with Jill and I think it broke his heart when she quit recognizing him.

I remember the joy in my heart as a 15 year old girl kneeling across the alter in the Salt Lake Temple from my father and mother and five siblings as we were sealed for time and for all eternity. What a precious memory that was. I decided that very day I was going to be married in the Salt Lake Temple. And I was - to my wonderful Edward.

The Father of my children - he has loved each and every one of his babies as they have come into the world. We shared to excitement of the first steps of each child, the first words, etc. Most of our years of vacations were going to or from one of the grandparents houses but we had to let them know how special our babies were. Hunting of course played a large part in our vacations through the years - but in turn that left such fun memories of camping by the BIG ROCK behind TV hill - and as his boys got bigger they got to go with their dad hunting.

Together we watched our babies grow from the rolling, crawling and toddling stage to the all out running stage. We watched as they each headed out the door to school and come home proudly with a paper they pasted or cut on, and then, as years went by, the paper would be written words by our babies - words that won them prizes and accolades.

Now our world is much quieter at our house. It stays relatively clean - very few handprints or toys strewn about the room - and we look forward to visits from our kids. It is so fun to see the grandkids grow and develop and it has been such a thrill to watch all five of my children grow into such wonderful special adults.

The other Father's in my life are my three sons and two sons in law- and the love and care they show for their children. and know Kelly is going to be right in the middle of everything his babies do (just watch him with Harley!!! :-) Shawn Dirk Ira Kelly and Glenn - you guys are fantastic fathers...keep up the good work. Love and support your wife and kids - continue to Love God and Honor him. Be honest with your Fellow men. What more can a mom ask?

PS....I cannot close this blog without mentioning my mom - it was five years ago that she died. The pain is still there - buried a little deeper but so easy to pull the scab off and discover that it hurts and I still miss her so much. The anniversary of her death was yesterday, the 20th, but Fathers Day will always be connected to her death. Mom was a person with a heart of gold - she could sting but she raised six wonderful kids and we all know that she loved us till her dying day.

I love you mom and miss you lots.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Newest Necklaces

Tuesday morning - about 12:30 am in fact and I can't sleep so I decided to post some of my newest creations for you to see. The one on the top of my blog is called Leaves of Green and I couldn't believe the number of compliments I received on it the day I wore it. It was fun!!!! It was amazing how it came together too - try this and this and this and this and there it was. It is kind of busy to my mind but that is what the ladies are buying and I had the name for it before it was ever finished.This is a copper illusion with the swarovski crystals and it is more delicate than the goldstone cube illusion just below. I wore it today to the doctors office (where I got a shot in the spine that will hopefully help the burning and itching of my feet) and got compliments on it - even the doctor said he liked it and that it matched my blouse - then he proceeded to laugh at himself , saying he works with too many women!! It was cute.




This is is made up of brown goldstones in cube form with pearls and copper metal daisies.












I really like this set










This is a long copper double chain with a simple pendant on it. The pendant has two lime green sparklies and they are repeated in the earrings. Simple, but pretty. I kind of got in a copper mood for a few days.
















This is a bracelet made on memory wire with green toned shells hanging off the end. There are all tones of green beads -it is prettier than the picture shows







Here are a couple of redand crystal necklaces that I made up with red satin beads. I think they will sell better to an older crowd
































This is a pretty set - bracelet and earrings and necklace all three. The necklace and bracelet are made on memory wire.








This necklace was so fun to make - amazing in fact. It started out as a blue illusion type necklace and as I strung the beads I liked the effect of all of them close together. so i decided to hang them off of a silver chain. then I thought - a second level of chain would be gorgeous...and as I was rummaging through my beads and charms I found this pretty inch and a half long dragon fly. I posted this one to etsy and the next morning I had a lady asking if I could make 15 of them. I finally decided not to because I had bought the charm on clearance and to buy them wholesale they would cost three times as much so the necklace would end up costing more - also I figured I would be bored stiff making 15 of the same thing.

Just thought I would keep you up to date with what I was making.

It is Tuesday night now and I have been working on the same necklace for two days and it just isn't coming together - its amazing sometimes the things just fall into place and other times I feel like I am pulling teeth to get a necklace created.

Tonight though I made other stuff - I am in the process of crocheting around two receiving blankets and four burp pads for my soon to be grandbabies. Plus I bought fabric for 12 more burp pads that I am sewing on the machine - I figure with twins, Kelly and Jamie will need all the burp pads they can get!!

And then a dear friend that is getting married on saturday brought over her excess flowers and I get to make a 'throwaway' bouquet for her. this is her second marriage, she has a 15 year old daughter that she has raised by herself and she has found a wonderful man who is taking her to the temple on saturday. Hurrah for Kathy!!

So I am keeping busy!

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Grand Visit with Wonderful Friends


Jewel and Andy standing by the last remaining wagon from the Hole in the Rock

I was going to title this "Great Visit with Old Friends" but that was just a little bit too literal!! Where did the years go? Jewel and I decided it had been about 35 years since we had seen each other!!! She still looks like Jewel...I would have recognized her anywhere - she couldn't say the same about me. Nor Andy - and he hasn't put on weight - just the gray hair. When he grinned I finally saw the old (young) Andy.

I guess a little bit of history here -Jewel was my first roommate in College in 1965 - I remember she and Pat moved in with me about the first day of school that fall quarter. Pat didn't come back after Fall quarter and Linda and Sally moved out of the dorms and in with us and the four of us roomed together for two years after which we ALL got married - first Sally, then Ed and I , then Linda and then Jewel. I helped do the decorations for her wedding. Jewel and I are third cousins!! Through Lars Nielson on my dad's side and on her mother's side. We had never met before becoming roommates. She grew up in Oak City - just 14 miles from Leamington!

After college Jewel and Andy moved to California for a short while until he was drafted and went to Vietnam. Jewel finished college and then went to Blanding to teach. Andy had been born and raised in Blanding and Jewel lived with her in-laws and taught school there. A few years after he got out of the Army Andy got a job in Kayenta Arizona (about 80 miles South of Blanding) and he stayed there for 35 years until the job closed - he retired from that company in 2008 and he and Jewel returned to Blanding. They had bought a nice piece of property in 1982 just North of the city and that is where they are now living. They have a lovely home and are really enjoying it. I didn't realize that Monticello is over 7000 feet in elevation and Blanding is over 6000 feet. When I asked Jewel about their winters - she just said "IT IS WINTER!!" After 35 years in Kayenta I would imagine it would be hard getting used to cold winters again!

Jewel and Andy have three children, two daughters and one son, and one grandson. When we arrived Tuesday afternoon we talked and talked and talked. We went to the Monticello Temple Tuesday night. Then we talked and talked an talked some more the whole week! We enjoyed our visit with them so very much. It is amazing that after 35 years we could feel so comfortable with virtual strangers at this point!

Wednesday we went four wheeling out of Bluff Utah through some of the same areas that our ancestors traveled over. We got to see and climb up to some Anasazi ruins from 900 AD - 1200 AD!! We could see their sleeping areas and their storage areas and were amazed that the mortar in their bricked up areas was still so solid after a thousand and more years!


We ATV'd to San Juan Hill which is a rough rocky hill that couldn't be traversed around - they had to go over it and they still tell how they would hitch 7-9 horses, oxen and mules to each wagon to pull them up and over that horrible hill. They said that as one horse would start to founder others would be getting back to their knees and still others would be pulling...then another would go down and on and on and on. They said that by the time they got all of the wagons up and over the hill it was covered in the blood and hair of the animals knees(?) ... this was the Hole in the Rock group who had already spent six months trying to find a way to the Bluff area. I think the main 'climb' of the hill is farther to the left. I will have to see if Ed has a better picture of it on his computer.
This is the one wagon still 'living' after all these years that was part of the Hole in the Rock Expedition.

We went into Bluff and went to the museum there - they had a fascinating movie that told about the trials of the pioneers who went through the Hole in the Rock

They are in the process of rebuilding the fort there - the descendants of each family group that had a home in the fort is invited to donate about $15,000 and a couple of weekends to go in and rebuilt the cabins where their family lived. I wonder if the Lillywhites will do that. (Ed's great Aunt Mary Ellen Willden Lillywhite was part of that group with her husband and five children, one little boy less than six months old! She would have been a sister to Feargus).

After we left the museum we went to a fun restaurant called The Trading Post - I believe it is run by Indians, and had some Indian Fry Bread. I THOUGHT I had had Indian fry bread before but that was always served with butter and honey. Imagine a delicious taco salad served on fry bread instead of taco chips!! Wow! It was so good. I wonder if there is anywhere here in Northern Utah that you could find it! Jewel and I had little ones and they were huge but sooo good to the very last bite.


The next day we went out towards Bridges National Monument and four wheeled all over - saw lots of lizards and a rabbit. The cactus are in bloom right now and they were beautiful. We saw yellow blossoms and pink blossoms and red blossoms.


This is a view half way up the mtn that we traversed - very dry desert

We were looking for an arch that we never found but we did find slick rock (ugh) and drove through mud and sand and water and found some horrible ATV roads and some pretty good ones. We drove up the old road from Bluff to Hite and it is no longer used for a road but I wouldn't have wanted to pass another vehicle on it when it was in use - it is kind of like Farmington Canyon but alot narrower. The guys both had their Garmin's but neither had any maps loaded into it so we were lost a good part of the time but that just adds to the fun! (Ed left his computer at home by accident, and he called Jamie from Beaver worried that he had left it under the carport but not loaded into the truck. Jamie made Kelly go over and break into the house and make sure that it was still in the house. It was - it had never made its way out of the basement! Thanks Jamie and Kelly!) Thus no maps on Ed's Garmin. We NOW know where we were and where we should have gone!!! But that is what makes four wheeling so fun. Andy felt bad that he couldn't remember the way to the Arch but we had a great time looking for it!! And that is what it is all about.


I thought this was a fun picture of Jewel, Andy and Ed all looking out and taking pictures of the Anasazi ruins near one of the 'bridges of Bridges National Park"

You will have to enlarge this picture to see the ruins - they were across a big gully but fascinating to study. They are tucked into the cliff with a small living or storage area at the far left, a bunch of 'homes' in the middle. To the far right we could see even more ruins. The climb down to the water was not an easy one - but the Indians would have been very protected from their enemies when they pulled up the ladders or whatever helped them up and down the cliff side.

The experts think that the people that lived here only did so in the winter and moved up onto the high plateau areas in the summer where they farmed! There was a natural bridge here but you could only see it 'sideways' so I didn't even take a picture of it!!!

This was the third of the three bridges in Bridges National Monument. This is actually the smallest of the three but it is also the most famous - There are pictures from the early 1900's of men on horses posed on top of it! It is called 'landscape arch'.

These are some friends at Landscape arch - I have a picture with all four little chipmunks out at the same time but I pulled in the wrong picture. I set the raisins there on the rock thinking they might want to eat them, but they just sniffed them. It will take them a while to decide they are safe!

At this point we headed back to Jewel and Andy's for a delicious meal. Jewel is a great cook and she fed us well the whole time we were there. Both Wednesday evening and Thursday evening I worked on jewelry while we set and visited. I gave her one of my copper illusion necklaces to say thanks for such a fun week- I hope she enjoys it.
Finally - it was time to head back home. We packed up and told Jewel and Andy good bye and headed out - we headed back North through Monticello and on to Moab. Arches National Monument sits just North of Moab and we thought we would just drive through and look. Hah!! We ended up spending several hours hiking and looking and enjoying the beautiful arches. We hiked about a quarter of a mile to see this...as we were taking pictures I told Ed that we were dumb!! We see this arch on our license plates every day!! But again - seeing it in person is really special. We took the short trail - there was a 3.5 mile hike we could have taken and gone right out under the arch. If you enlarge this picture and look closely you can see the tiny ants - those are people out there taking pictures and walking up to and around the arch.

We did walk up to this arch - it was only a few hundred feet away and it was gorgeous. It is actually three arches in one. I climbed right up in it. It was so beautiful - an totally amazing when you think that it started out to be solid rock but through thousands and thousands of years of wind and rain and freezing opening were literally carved out of rock.

We got home late Friday evening - tired but so glad we made the trip. Thanks again Andy and Jewel for a wonderful week and some great memories. You are still wonderful, old friends!!

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

X-fuze

Just a quick blog to defend myself from certain parties who keep laughing at us. For our whole lives we have punched a time clock - we worked and worked for a comfortable retirement. The year before we were supposed to retire out 401 k was cut in half by the economy. Kelly and Terrie introduced us to X fuze and from the first I was impressed with the fantastic marketing plan. I told Ed that maybe, just maybe, this would be the way to get back on track towards our retirement. I have studied multi level marketing before and been a part of some... but NEVER have I ever been so impressed with a company and what they are doing. They have a fantastic product, help impoverished children on the other side of the globe with every bottle of nutrition that is sold, and help their 'downliners' all the way to reaching their goals.

Ed and I wouldn't have signed up for the program if it had been just 'another' multi-level' marketing plan.

So before you laugh and turn your nose up, come with us to ONE meeting...just one. Two hours. And let them show you the potential - this is a new company on its way up in a proven field with a product so much better than the others have - and its been put together by people in the know of how to make these things work best for us.

Nuff said - please don't laugh at us or deride us - (I don't even dare ask if you even opened your bottles of exfuze, or if you want another free bottle!) We did it the old fashioned way for years and it didn't work... now we really think we have found a way to meet our dreams. Who couldn't use an extra $500 or $1000 a month? OR MORE??

mom

ps I promise not to mention the word exfuze at our future parties (unless you do first!)