Christmas Memories

It's almost Christmas, I love this time of year! It's not the same as it was years ago when we had those mornings when we would wale up at 5 or 6 a.m. and watch our children open their gifts. There's nothing like it in the world and I so much miss those times. I miss the fun Christmas eve's we would have when the kids would open their p.j.'s and Santa would come visit them, and tell them to make sure they went to bed and go to sleep,so he could come back.
Now it's our kid's turn to do all that fun stuff. One thing I don't miss is the wrapping of all the gifts, when there is 7 children with gifts, that's alot of wrapping. I also loved taking the kids shopping to buy gifts for their brother's and sister's, the way they would pick names out of a bowl and then we would have to figure out how to seperate them when we would shop,so that they wouldn't see what they were getting each other. I remember going to Jobber's Odd Lot and be in that super crowded place and try and get to the checkers buy the gifts and get out alive, it was crazy but so much fun! So to all of you out there that are stressing and worrying about how it's ever going to come together....this is the best times of your lives and it will be fun and you'll make memories that will last a lifetime. Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!

December

Hi!
So this is December, the last month of 2010, this year had flown by.
We had a fun trip to S.L.C. at Thanksgiving, Maxine and Mark and family were so good to us,and we had a great time. We ate turkey and all the trimmings,soooo good. Maxine set the table with everything Chicago Bears for Mark, it was his birthday also, we even wore party hats!
Then on Friday we all went to Leana's, dad was at her house,and it was his birthday so we went to see him and wish him a happy birthday. While there we got to get to see 3 adoreable new babies, and hold them . So much fun, plus getting to see the rest of her family that was there. We got to eat some yummy birthday cake and ice cream.
Then very early on Saturday morning we got to go with Shane,Anngee,and thier children, and see them be sealed in the S.L. Temple. It was absolutely wonderful!! We were blessed to have dad and Dockie, Rochelle and Scott, Leana and Calvin,Natalie and Nathan, a couple of Shane and Anngee's bishops and Wayne Perkins. Afterwards Anngee's parents had a luncheon at Golden Corral, and they invited all the families of both Shane and Anngee's . They are such great people, we thank her parents for being so good to everyone. We are so happy that everything went so well that whole day.
We got to see our 5 children that live there in S.L. and we were so glad that all of them are doing great.
So on Sunday we headed for home. What a day. It snowed and we were on the freeway and it was like being in a parking lot!!! There were soooo many accidents and slide off's, the tow trucks had a great day I'm sure, the rest of us...not so much! We were so glad to get home....the animals were REALLY happy to see us,we had all 4 of them sleep with us.
On Monday...we slept in, and then started getting out Christmas stuff to decorate the inside of the house,we did the outside of the house before we left. Anyway the next morning when I tried to get up I couldn't move...My back was out and stayed that way till this morning. I'm so glad it's decided to let me walk and sit now.
We are looking forward to the Christmas season and love the happiness it brings. So I hope everyone has a super and happy Christmas. Keep Smiling!! See ya next year!!!

This is the Thankful Month soooo....

It's November,so ,I thought I would name some of the things I am thankful for,I am most thankful for my Heavenly Father, who without Him and His Son Jesus Christ I would have nothing. I love them,and all that they have done for me ,and made it possible for me to have an Eternal Family! I am thankful for the all time,most loving,highly tolerant and the BEST husband in the whole world...my Jeff! Then there are our7 wonderful children,thier spouses,and 16 amazing grandchildren, we are so blessed,and I love them all so very much. I have been blessed with the best parents ever,and 1 brother and 3 sisters that are so awesome, they also have great spouses and super children also. Family is VERY IMPORTANT to me, they are what make's my life worth living.
I am thankful for our home,I love that when we were both in our 50's we bought our first home. I love that we get to decorate it and paint it and do what we want with it,because it is ours. I am thankful for our car(it's UGLY but it runs). We enjoy getting to drive to places, and that we can get where we need to go. And then I'm thankful for our pets, 2 dogs and 2 cats, they are fun and give us unconditional love. We are thankful that we live in St.George....We absolutly love it here!!! We are blessed with a wonderful ward, they are like an extended family, they are the best.
We are also blessed with some really terriffic friends, we have some that we have known for40 years , some alittle less and some we've known for just a short time, at any rate, they are good people and we are happy to have them. And lately I decided I'm thankful that we have computer's, they help us keep in touch and play games and do church calling, and are generally something to help you pass time, when you're bored, as long as you use them wisely they can be quite useful!
And we are thankful we get to go to Maxine,and Mark's house for Thanksgiving, some wonderful things will be happening while we're there...I'll tell you about that in my next blog.
So Keep Smiling till next time!

Some great days,and some sad days!

September was a month full of things for us to do. The first week we worked for dad and Dockie,cleaning the w.f.s. building. Then we had Kimi and Jesse and Logen visit for a few days. Then we had Rochelle, Scott and family visit for one night. Then some freinds in our ward asked us if we would like to help them , while they were gone for a week, and clean the buildings they do, so we had a couple of training nights... then we cleaned for them. It gave us some extra cash so we could order parts to turn our wood burning fireplace into a gas one. I have never ordered anything from online,so we gave it a shot...half the order came, the other half they said would come in November! I don't think i'll ever order anything else off the internet again, what a pain!!!
Kimi, Jesse, and family are back in St.George, they are renting a home behind the mall. We are so excited that they are back in St.George. They wanted to be close to his parents to help them because of their health issues, whatever the reason ,I'm just glad they are back.
On Monday Sept.27 we got news thatJeff's brother Bob was on hospise, he had any where between 2 weeks and 2 month's to live....he passed on the 29th. We went to Salt Lake for his funeral on Tuesday. We figured we couldn't stay with any of our children, they were all busy ,or moving or didn't have room for us, so, we invaded my sister Nadine in Elsinore on Monday night, cause it was half way to Salt Lake. She was so sweet to put us up on the way up there and on the way down. Thank you Nadine. The funeral went really nice, we got to see alot of Jeff's realitives,and we got to see my sweet freind Joyce. I feel like Bob went at a good time...before he got worse,and as hard as it is to have him gone, it was probably the best way for him to go. We love him and will miss him.
While we were in Salt Lake Kimi found me a cute little black pom, his name is Harley, he's one year old and super cute. He learned how to use the doggie door quick, and he is doing better with the cat's now. He was so funny when I put a leash on him...he laid down like a cat, he didn't like the leash and he wasn't going to walk with one on. I worked with him last night and little by little he was walking. This morning I had him on the leash and I thought I would see if I could get him to walk around the yard, I didn't have shoes on cause I wasn't going anywhere but, he did soooo good ,that I ended up walking him around the whole block. He's so smart, i'm happy to have an energetic ball of fluff. I love him already...thank you my Kimi!
I also need to thank dod and Dockie for cleaning w.f.s. building for us on Monday night...they traded us so we cleaned it on Wednesday night. Plus dad came over and fed our spoiled little dolly, dolly gives dad a hard time...but he's good to put up with her. Thanks dad!
That's it for me for now. Keep Smiling,and have a great October!!

Time goes by fast...even if you aren't having fun!

It hasn't even reached Sept. yet, and I'm posting a new blog!! August has been somewhat warm here, I look forward to being able to turn off the A.C. and opening windows. We should be able to do it by mid Sept. We want to turn our wood burning fireplace into a gas one. We are doing this cause it's cheaper than trying to fix our furnace that doesn't work....so if we have the gas fireplace and a space heater in our room , that should do the trick for us ,because our home is small.
Petal (the cat we got in June) has finally figured out the pet door,and goes in and out as she pleases now. She gets along great with our dog and our other cat now also,she has an anoying meow and leaves furballs where ever she goes because she is so hairy. She has some mats,we've tried everything to get them off, we think maybe we'll have to shave her. (hey girls remember when you shaved Kittan)Maybe I can get the girls to shave Petal!!
Jeff and dad went to Lander to plumb a house for a friend in the ward here,and was gone for 5 days. I was so glad when they came home. I don't enjoy being by myself for that long. Today they are up working on the Bishops cabin in the Kolob canyon area. Dad and Dockie are leaving Sunday to go on a vacation with her son Dwight...they are headed to the redwoods in California. We will clean the Workforce Services building all week for them, they should be back the following Sunday.
Kimi and Jesse and family came and spent the night last Tuesday, then left Wednesday night for Vegas, they will come back on Sat.or Sun. night and spend the night another day or two. I'm glad we are on the way to Vegas, cause we get to see our kids when they are headed to Vegas. We get Rochelle, Scott and her family in Sept. ,we can hardly wait to get to see them next.
Well I guess this is it for now, I hope everyone had a super summer..Cause i think it's almost time for Fall. Keep Smiling!!

Our Te-aH camping trip

We got to go camping last wenesday up on Cedar mountain by Navajo lake. We were happy that Nadine invited us to go with camping with her and Coy and a couple of their children. When we got close to the campsite it looked like it would soon be raining,so we hurried up and set up camp. It took us a good 2 hours to get set up. We got done before Nadine ,Coy,and Kenneth ,and Ashly got there. They got all set up and then it decided to rain,not alot ,it would rain for a few minutes and then stop. But it was all good,because it didn't have a downpour. We had fun visiting and the area is soooo pretty. The next day we decided we would go to the lake and watch those Christensens fish, me and Jeff don't like fish and we don't do the fishing thing. The lake was pretty and Kenneth and Coy got out to the middle of the lake and were fishing,Nadine was going to fish from the shore. Me and Jeff set up some chairs and were doing our word finds, when I decided I was too cold ,so we decided we would watch from the car.About 10 minutes later it started raining and there was thunder and lightning, needless to say Kenneth and Coy had to come to shore, and we went back to the campsite for lunch. We decided that on thursday night we would have dutch oven chicken at Nadines campsite,Pam came up for dinner that night. Nadine had a campfire going and we were getting ready to put the dutch ovens in the fire, it was a little rainy but not bad. Coy and Kenneth had gone back to the lake to try fishing again. Then at about 7:30 p.m. when we had everything on the fire we had our down por, then it started hailing, the fire went out everything was wet. We took our dutch oven to our campsite, and proceded to put it on our campstove to try and get it cooked. Ashly went to see if Coy and Kenneth were alright cause it had been a while since the storm had stopped. They found them they were fine wet,but fine. Meanwhile,we thought that our tent had held up pretty good to the storm. It looked like there were some blankets that got a little wet,but all in all it looked okay. We put our cover over the table back up. and got the food done, we decided to just stay at our camp cause it was to far to carry it back to Nadine's campsite. The dutch oven chicken tuned out fine...but our cherry cobbler didn't work,we ended up throwing it out. When we went to bed that night ,we discovered our blakets were soaked and there were places in the tent with puddles. I froze that night and told Jeff we needed to go home and dry everything out. So Friday morning we folded up camp and came home. Nadine and Coy and their kids stayed for another night, I hope it didn't rain on them again! Nadine said the down pour was worse then what happened at Elkhorn, she say's whenever she goes camping it rains. It's funny but it didn't start raining until Nadine got there. We loved the area and will go back there another time, but we decided we would do it next year in mid august after the rainy season is done!!!It was still fun right up until the hailstorm that brought 1/2 inch of rain in 35 minutes.My Kimi will post pictures for me on this blog a little later tonight, i'm not that smart I can't do it. Any way we still love camping and we will try again next year. Thanks Nadine for a fun time...we love ya.

37 Wonderful Years

So this last weekend we celebrated our 37 wedding anniversary. It gets you thinking of all that has happened in those years. In our first 7 years we moved 9 times.When we moved to Midvale we stayed in the same house for 21 years. We moved to St.George June 1 2001, then in Jan. 2002 we moved where we are right now. It's the first house we ever bought, we were both in our 50's crazy huh!
We've had 7 children and 2 miscarriage's in the first 9 years. Now we have 5 of the 7 married ,we have 1 daughter-in-law, and 4 sons-in-law, plus 16 of the most beautiful grandchildren ever!!!! We are sooooo blessed we love you all so much.
We've had a countless number of pets of every kind...when we left Midvale we said that if anybody dug up that yard,they would think it was a pet cemetary. I'm still a person who absolutely loves our pets, Jeff loves them too, even though he says he doesn't ,he has spoiled our dog Dolly beyond belief!
Jeff is the best husband ever...he has had to put up with me for all these years,and still a day doesn't pass that he doesn't tell me he loves me, he still opens the car door for me, he has always been a hands on dad....he has changed so many diapers in our baby day's . He's always been a good provider,even though we had a few rough spots when he couldn't find work, but we got through them. He has always honored his Priesthood and been able to give blessings when they were needed. He is just the best husband ever, I love him dearly..more with each passing day.
We've enjoyed many family camping outings when our kids were home, we don't go that often anymore and we both miss that. We are retired and money is tight ..but we still have each other,and that's what keeps us both going. We have become fans of jigsaw puzzels and watching some of those addictive t.v. programs ...like Bones, and all the csi's and Dancing with the stars. Jeff still reads ALOT, and I do facebook. All in all we are happy,and we look forward to our "golden" years together.