July, and Summer is Half Over.

What a busy month July was. The first week was busy with the monthly luncheon with my neighbor ladies and then Alex's birthday and flying off to Washington for Kyle's baptism. To celebrate Alex's birthday he got to drive me to the airport so I could leave town. As the baby in the family he is finally realizing that when you are an adult birthdays don't count as much and since he has no kids he can celebrate in his own way with his friends. This weekend was going to belong to Kyle rather than Alex.

Kyle's baptism was early evening so I flew in the same day and rented a hotel room so the kids could swim as much as they wanted during the week I was there. Unfortunately, the town doesn't have a lot of motels so it was mediocre at best but we made due. I was so hurried though that I forgot to take any pictures at the baptism or gathering afterward. It is so like me to space out on pictures. and then regret it later on! I did take a couple pictures while I was at Courtney's house though.

Kids playing on trampoline in backyard.

Emma taking a nap in her bed.

While at Courtney's they finalized the job offer Brad got and it is finally settled that they are moving to Idaho Falls, Idaho to work and be closer to family. That meant that as soon as I got back home I had to clean my house and get it ready to sell. I am moving to Idaho Falls, too! I really liked living there years ago and think it will be better than being so far away from the rest of my family if I had moved to Washington. I will still be able to check in on my dad once a month and get him what he needs without having to impose on my kids. He never went out of his way for his grandkids so I don't think they should have to do more than they already have in helping with his many moves. During the month of July I had 4 showings but no offers. So sad since the realtor thought it would sell that month. My brother, Brian, came to visit his kids and dad during the month, also. He stayed in Dad's old room and helped my by putting a door on the TV room. I couldn't put one there before since dad's couch blocked the doorway and we couldn't open or close a door so I just left it doorless. Much better now - he was a good helper.

Beth and her husband bought a lovely house in June and I finally had time to go visit and take her some little gifts I had made for the baby she will be having soon. Her house is lovely and I hope she will like living that far away from town. It is about an hour drive north of my house and even further from Alex's house in Draper. When I move to Idaho I will get to stop by and visit and spend the night there while I check in on dad and visit with Alex once in a while. It will be about 3 hours from my house in Idaho. I guess that isn't too bad since I hardly ever saw her when she lived 3 miles from my house. It is a really nice home and the elementary and junior high are both just down the street about two blocks. It will be so nice for the kids.

It's June 2013

June was not a very interesting month. I have been working very hard on the inside and the outside of the house to get it ready to sell whenever Brad takes a new job and we all know where we will be living. Apparently, my plan to move to Washington will definitely not be happening because he wants to get another job and there aren't any there he is interested in. I want my house ready to sell when he accepts an offer wherever it is, so I am working hard on sorting any cleaning and planting and weeding.

Going through my boxes to sort I discovered dolls I made for Courtney when I was preggers with Beth.  I didn't get the hair done in time for Christmas so she got them anyway and then I took them back to finish the hair and 35 years later I finally got around to finishing them. Haha

The dolls I finally added hair to finish.

I think they are happy to have hair.

This chair used to be yellow but I have red accents in kitchen now so it fits perfectly!

I guess I am not very prompt but life got in the way and I kind of forgot and they got packed away in all the moves we have made. I was inspired by Beth and her makeover of the high chair I had for all of my kids and then she borrowed 12 years ago for Kaven. Since he grew out of it she has been intending to refinish it and she finally did and brought it over before she moved into her new house. My son teased that it only took her 10 years but I think I am much worse with the 35 years it took me.

Aaron and Beth's new house. 

The Merry Month of May 2013

Ryan relaxing in his kitchen on the weekend.

May was another busy month of getting a lot of things done that I hadn't planned on. I have started to seriously work on the yard to get it ready for selling the house. I want the house to have some street viewing appeal when it goes on the market. I also had to get me another car since I could only have the rental for a week and then had to pay to rent on my own or get another to replace my Civic that was totaled on the last day of April.

Nathan now wears glasses, but only at school he says.

So, off I went to Omaha after talking with Ryan about Jill's old Ford Explorer. He had been wanting to sell it for the last couple of years but hadn't done anything about it. I have driven it when I visited them in Denver and in Omaha so I knew most of the history and it had less than 75,000 miles on it. That was less than my 10 year old Civic and the Explorer is a 2002 model year. I flew out and had a fun time with the "boys" for the weekend and drove back home after the weekend since they had school and work to attend. It was quite a change after driving my little Civic to drive the big Explorer and the gas mileage is not as good as my old car. But the price was right. After the settlement I had enough to pay for the car and the trip and a bit left over. All in all I am pleased with the whole deal.

Here I am at home with my "new" car. 

Front view of short hair.

Side view of short hair do.

Then I decided I was sick and tired of my longish hair. After being bald for 6 months and super short hair for another 6 months I had let my hair get too long. So I had it cut short and I am happier. I think I may keep it shorter now that I am entering the age of the "old" and not in the middle years any longer.  That and yard work after the whiplash was healed was my month.

April 2013

 It is finally time to post about April's adventures. I got back to town from Disneyland on the third but included all of Disney's adventures in March. The first major incident of April was dad getting sick. He was having pains on his right side and not always able to keep food down. We thought it was his appendix so I took him to the emergency room and discovered that instead he had kidney stones.
Off to another doctor's office and then we set up the appointment for the next day to have them blasted.

Here he is just before the nurse took him into the room for his procedure. She weighed him before he got into his hospital gown and he has lost a lot of weight since a year ago when he broke his hip. He is down to 140 pounds.  He just doesn't feel like eating much: whether I take him to his favorite restaurant or to my house for one of his favorite meals, he isn't much for eating.

In the middle of the month, I took Kaven to Park City for a Lego exhibit at an art gallery. We were both quite enchanted with what can be done with Legos.

This is a self-portrait of the Lego art work exhibit's creator - made with Legos of course. 

This Lego art was Kaven's favorite piece. I wonder why?

This was my favorite piece and though you can't tell - it was life size.

Finally, on the very last day of the month I decided to visit the plant nursery to get some fertilizer while I had my nephew with me to be the muscles of the operation. While sitting in the turn lane waiting to turn left, and with my signal on: a lady hit us going 45 miles per hour and knocked me out for a minute and totaled my car. We were so fortunate that dad wasn't with us as we had just dropped him off at the assisted living center after taking him out to lunch.  Devon wasn't hurt but I had a bit of whiplash and they had to take me to the hospital for a few hours of observation. Other than being a bit stiff and without my car that I loved all was well. We were so blessed as we both could have been hurt really badly.  Unfortunately, my brains were scrambled for a week or two because I would forget things easily and totally forgot to get a picture of the car after the accident. The back bumper was behind the front seats and I had really wanted to get a picture of that. Plus, I forgot to get ALL my stuff out of the car before the insurance company picked it up and trashed it.

March 2013

 It is now the first of June and I am so behind I decided to put March info here so I don't forget. My life doesn't seem that busy, but the days seem to run by so fast that the fact that I can't even get a post entered once a month is ridiculous. So here is March. I am going to put lots of pictures in and hope that I remember everything I wanted to write about back in March.

I finally made the black curtains for my office/sewing room and got them hung up in the cleaned out rooms. The front door was painted black last year so now the windows on each side of the door are black also and it looks better than the miss-mash I previously had hanging in the windows. I got the curtains from my daughter who didn't like them in her house and I traded fabric for them. I cut them in half and had the perfect amount of fabric left over to cover both windows.

The end of March I flew to Orange county to meet up with the Browns for a romp at Disneyland.  We all met at the airport and then motored over to a house they had arranged for us all to stay at. It was a large home that the owner regularly lets her extended family stay in while visiting her, Disneyland, or California in general. Luckily, she trusted her grand daughter's opinion of us and let us stay there too. The house was huge and had a yard for the kids to run in, a hot tub and a swimming pool. It was so much better than being cooped up in a motel for 5 days. Here is a picture I took of the Browns at Disneyland. I am not sure at what time of day it was but I think it was first thing on the first day. The youngest had never been so were still unsure what a treat was in store, plus it was verrrry early.

The first few rides we weren't standing in line long but after that - oh brother!  We managed to get the rides in FantasyLand the first day, AdventureLand the second day, and repeats the third day. We took a break of two days between the second and third day of standing in line and going on rides. The "fast pass" helped the lines a bit but it was still a lot of standing. The kids took it like champs though and we had no meltdowns or temper tantrums. They are such good kids.

Standing in line again.

Bumper cars

I got to sit out on Dumbo and just take pictures!

Kyle just being "Goofy."

The hat Aaron picked for his take-away.

Just trying on funny hats.

  

The hat Chloe chose for her take-away.

Trying on hats was really good for a lot of laughs from us all but only Aaron and Chloe bought them. It was truly entertaining for us all though just to observe.

Sarah trying on BiG HaT.

Emma crowned as Princess of Love and Beauty!

We spent one night dining and being entertained at Medieval Knights eating establishment. After our knight won the tournament he crowned Emma his princess. She wasn't nearly as thrilled at it as we were.  Thus, ended my month of March,  although a couple days of Disney were in April. Oh, well.

February 2013

February and I do not get along! When I was younger it was all of winter, but now it is just January and February. This year January went by quickly and it was fun spending it with the Browns in Washington but I hibernated in February. It has been so snowy and cold this year that I snuggled in my blankets on the sofa and watched TV and movies. I think I watched more movies this month than in all of last year.

I had a lot of things I wanted to do but the apathy overcame the good intentions and nothing got finished but many things got started. My family room is a mess with sheets spread over the carpet and all the moveable objects in the laundry/storeroom are sitting on the sheets. What a mess! I had hoped to clean and purge during February but it didn't get done. Now it is waiting for March. I have a trip the end of March so I am sure it will get done as I must leave the house clean before leaving for California.
My dad's old bedroom is filled with all his stuff that needs to be sorted through and my office is a mess of piles of papers and projects that need to be sorted and filed.

I did several doctor appointments as follow ups to aches and pains of getting older seem to require of me more and more over the years. It used to be once a year for the yearly check up but the cancer episode seems to have changed that.

No pictures and nothing completed. Oh boo hoo.

January 2013 (sort of)

  It is a new year and I had new ideas for my blog and then life (or maybe just traveling or laziness?) got in the way. But, my main new idea was to blog at least once a month and to recap the month as a sort of journal instead of actually keeping a journal. Plus, I would add pictures. Well, you can see how that worked out since it is almost the end of February and I haven't posted anything for January. I have noticed in the past few days I have a really impatient feeling inside my brain (and stomach) that I haven't done anything about this idea so I am starting today.

January:

Mom and the five brownies

What a great month this was! I usually hate the first two months of the year because it is winter with the cold and snow and I sort of get cabin fever. Not this time, however. It started out with our luncheon with the Lunch Bunch group at a new place for me but not them. It was a great soup and sandwich shop nearby and I even splurged and had dessert. I have been trying very hard to not have sweets, starch, etc. since the day before Halloween. Isn't that a good time to turn over a new leaf and start to reform eating habits and lose weight? Well, it is working - slow but sure - but I still splurged at lunch.  The rest of the next seven days I spent putting away Christmas decorations, cleaning my house and getting ready for a three week trip (almost 3 weeks since it was really 19 days) to Washington state. I hate to leave a dirty house and love coming home to a clean house.

Aaron

Kyle

On January 10 I flew off to Courtney's to spend a few days with her and the kids until she left for Japan on the 14th to spend time with Brad. Brad is working in Japan again but for two months this time. She left on Monday for the airport but came home again when she found out the flight had been cancelled due to a storm in Japan that had delayed the plane's return to the states. She did get off on Tuesday, though, and I was the caretaker for the five kids (ages 2-13) for 10 days. I was just a little bit concerned I may have forgotten all I ever knew about being in charge of a house full of people.

Sarah helping with Emma.

Chloe

Sarah

Me and the five brownies

Aaron and the ipad playing games.

Kyle doing his chore.

Chloe reading.

It was great! Those five kids were on their best behavior and we had no problems except for Aaron being off food. He would eat a small breakfast and lunch and no dinner. Of course, after Courtney got back we figured it was because he was so tired by dinner he had no energy for food and he took a couple little sleeps during the next few days and was back on dinner food. Luckily he didn't starve. I think the fact that it was me cooking and not his mom had him concerned, because he is a huuuge stickler for things being precisely the way he thinks they should be. I made only things his mom said he liked but that didn't matter. When I bought take out one night he ate pretty good and when I took them all to brunch one morning he did terrific. So no starving on my watch!

After Japan the kids all wanted to cuddle with mom!

Our fancy toes.

After Courtney got back from Japan I stayed a few more days to help with laundry and kids while she napped to get over jet lag and my sleeping in her bed. She brought back a lovely decorative dish hand made in Japan for me, gifts for the kids and fun food treats. Did you ever have strawberry or blueberry cream cheese Twix? They were so good! While I was at their house the kids had fun with my ipad and discovered how to take "funny" pictures. I am going to try to add them to this blog but I may not remember how to correctly. They also enjoyed playing the kid games I have on the ipad. On the last Saturday we had an all girls pedicure time a local spa. It was so fun and we enjoyed being pampered and having pretty feet. All in all, it was a long time to be gone but I think we all had a good time. It would be so much better if I lived in the same area though. I hope I get to move near them in the next 6-18 months.

The day after I got back from Washington I had book group and it took me a couple days to unpack and recover from being so busy while there. Then January was over! I think traveling in January made the month much more fun and quick to pass through. While in Washington the days were not as cold and snowy as in Utah. Utah had terrible weather while I was gone and I am glad I missed it. My life is so low keyed now that getting up at 5:30 each morning to start getting kids off to school and keeping up with their schedule did wear me out a bit. Not as bad as I thought it would though. The worst part was physical problems I had before I left and that continued after I came home. I find the physical part of getting older annoying. I am trying to be more active but physical ailments limit what I can do and I am getting really frustrated. So I guess off to the doctors starting in February to see what can be done before spring and my more active seasons begin.

As you can see, I figured out how to add pictures but I still can't get them exactly where I want them. I came close though, so maybe next time will be better.