Egg Bash

Almost a week has gone by. I'm sorry bicycle. I know you have missed me. Today I managed to ride. A short ride, but here is one of the reasons why:
Snot. I don't understand it. I wake up in the mornings seemingly clear and within a few minutes I have snot dripping. So, I go to blow my nose and hello - I'm blowing for a good 3 minutes!! Where does all of this snot come from? I don't get it. Does it generate itself so fast, just as fast as I can blow some out, that it is really a never-ending river, pool, or ocean? And when we are NOT sick, do we have snot - but it just knows where to stay until we are sick? I swear I've used 2 boxes of kleenex and 3 rolls of toilet paper. And do you see all those little balls of used tissue in the picture??? Yep, they're here at my house too. I was discussing this snot issue with my sister, Carrie, and she hopes that Brian might be able to answer these questions for me. Oh, Jill, that is who I was talking to about your blog. No worries. SO, I had to end my ride sooner than I would have, but I was grateful just to get out of the house today.
However, even though I've been sick, I have had to carry on with everyday family life.
Every year, for the past 5 years or so, we have had a family Egg Bash. It normally happens within a day or two of Easter, but this year we postponed for a week. The huge amount of pictures I am about to add will really mean nothing much to most of you. Enjoy if you will.










Okay this needs explaining - Lukas saw candy in the tree and Grandpa decided to let him climb up on his back to reach it. This is Luke falling face first to the ground because he lost his footing. He was okay.



Now that we've finished our egg find we can finally do our Egg Bash.... You'll never guess who wins.....Stay tuned
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Brooklyn didn't ever really get the whole rolling bit. She more like pushed it and wouldn't always let go. So whoever rolled against her, usually had to wait to see if she was going to let to of it so they could roll their egg. And who wins it? Yep, Brook. A 2yr old. I got to be in this picture because I won the 2nd game we played with the Gardner Clan. She's calling her Dad to let him know that she won!!!

After the 'immediate' family one, the Gardners showed up and we had a great time with a few more games - one being the giant Twister!

Luke with a lot of patience.

Sorry I missed it, but this is Brook and Kai in the final round of egg bash. Brookie won!!


Calling daddy Brian.

Under the weather.....

I guess I spoke too soon. After claiming that I had been 'untouched' by the 'sick-bugs' that have been going around in our home, I somehow caught one. Didn't it see me knock on wood when I was talking about it earlier? Sore throat, runny nose, clogged nose (I hate that - it can't even decide on which one it wants to be....clogged or runny). My medicine cabinet has become my new friend. Okay, my daughter is now telling me to wash the keyboard with Lysol wipes after I'm done. I'm a little offended - it is after all MY computer. Maybe they could use the 2 computers downstairs. Just joking everyone. (I'm off to get the wipes).

New Hair-do

I didn't get around to posting yesterday, so this info is from Wednesday. 4.44 miles. Yeah, I took it easy. Not that I wasn't sweating when I was done, oh, I was. I'm so NOT looking forward to summer. We, here in Arizona, have had a 'sweet' ride of nice weather hanging on. Nice to us anyways. My sister who lives in Idaho, would probably want to be swimming if she came to visit, but the 70-80 degree weather is great. The warmest it's been here this year, is March 17th, Saint Patrick's Day, at 87 degrees! However, we tied the record low temperature for the date of April 2nd, with 40 degrees! Now with all of this rain, we have had great 'weed growth', and of course desert flowers. Here was a funny looking cactus I saw yesterday.

Purple-y sprouts on this dull green cacti. Kinda neat.

Now this next part is for Jill. I had mentioned to her that I had my hair cut, which has been nearly a week now, but I had to learn how to style it myself to make sure I could do it before I mailed her pictures. You be the judge - how'd I do Jill? I think I look spectacular except the front view! What's going on with the right side (of the picture) hair? Oh well, it looked good in real life. Take into consideration that I am NOT photogenic. Where ever my face wasn't showing looked cute - right?

And as usual - I found a couple of hearts. Actually Griffin, my oldest grandson, found this first heart. And what's funny about that is it was here at the top of my stairs where some wax had spilt YEARS ago, and he is the first one to notice this! Maybe we just didn't want to look at it because of the nasty spill and I've tried to cover the spill with my milk jug, so we just didn't see it. I can see that it is a little blurry at the top, but it was close enough to take a picture of it. I'm not sure it is wall worthy though.

The second heart is one I found on Clovis, 3738, right in front of their house. Grease stain. I wish you all a happy day! Off.

Yesterday during conference, Shan had me mess with her hair. She LOVES when anyone brushes, fixes, up-do's, etc., her hair. Here's what she had me do today:

A ton of bobbie pins, but it turned out cute.

Another good ride

I spent all day in my jamies yesterday - from 9:30 on Saturday night until 8am Monday morning - 35 straight hours! Wait a minute, is that gross?

Today my daughter had a sore throat. Okay, she told me she had it yesterday too, but I must have forgotten. I do have a recollection of her asking for the salt shaker and then hearing gargling sounds and a few clearing/scratchy type noises coming from Shan during the day. But being a mom, I knew what was coming.......'mom, I'm too sick for school. I need to stay home. blah, blah, blah. Nothing like that happened. She didn't even want to stay home. What??? She really must be sick. I told her to take some sore throat medicine and just put some lozenges in her notebook to take through-out the day. Well, we didn't have any lozenges (I love that word) and so I told her that I would drive her to school today, passing right by a Walgreen's, and that we could stop and buy some sore throat lozenges for her. Driving there we saw 2 helicopters 'hovering' right above the area we would be driving by. When we reached the Walgreen's we saw that they were right above the freeway there at Greenfield Ave. (more on this later). I stop by my Moms to see her newly painted back room and loved it. She lives directly across the street from Brimhall Junior High. I don't know if she likes it or not. Traffic, but controlled traffic.

So for my bike ride today I ended up riding 8.21 miles. If some of you read my last blog (or maybe it was 2 ago), I had ridden a great distance with my oldest daughter. While riding with her, actually I more like straggling behind her, I thought I spotted a 'heart' in a tree. Because I was behind already, I didn't stop to look and make sure I thought it was picture worthy. AND it has been on my mind all weekend. So, that's where I went today:

South on Val Vista - 3.28 miles

West on Juniper - .31 mile (u-turned back) I had to check the tree out! Look

Yep! There's a heart in there!

East on Juniper - .31mile
North on Val Vista - 2.8 miles (east bound traffic backed up from Greenfield - I took a detour coming home to go see the accident on the freeway)

East on Hampton - .38 mile

South on 39th - .26 miles

Looked at the accident for a while

North on 39th /a maze of streets/passing by Johnson Elementary - 1.72

That should equal to 8.21 miles. So here are a few of the pictures I snapped today:

A tree to ride under and a heart (what?) flower bush. Yeah, you see it too.

This is the reason the helicopters were out this morning. It looks as though a gravel truck flipped over. It's being turned right-side up by the diesel truck.

Conference/Easter Sunday

Our family tradition on General Conference weekend is to have scones. I've mentioned this on my blog before, but I don't like the 'smell' that is left on us when we deep-fry foods.

So, as usual, here they are. Um, yummy.
Jill I hope you made scones for your family. Brian, what about you?

Another fun thing we sometimes get talked into is doing something with someone's hair. Here is one of Shannons lovely doo.

Nothing really special. Just fun!! Usually Doug gets his hair done by his girls, but maybe his hair has gotten thinner, just like his tummy! Yep, he's down about 15 pounds or so. You can really see it in his neck and gut.

Carolyn had an Easter basket for her boys and this was one of the fun things she got them.

It was funny before, because Toby was biting at the bubbles, but I guess he got tired of doing that and seeing me, he thought I would protect him. Fat chance Toby. I'm encouraging it!

8.96 MILES!!

To my dear friend Susie - Please get better soon. I'm sure you won't see this until your out of the hospital, but we are thinking about you and hoping you recover fast! We love you!

Okay, it's a record for me. 8.96 miles! I hope I don't feel the after-math of it tomorrow. Carolyn was the instigator of this lovely ride - and I really do mean that literally. We rode down to/and around Freestone Park. Guadalupe and Lindsay area. And after all of that riding I only got one picture, but it's pretty cool. I had never seen one until today.

A drinking fountain with a doggie one on the side! Is that so cool?

Well, I thought it was. So that is what I'm sharing with you today.

Alright, I have to share one more thing with you all. My oldest daughter belongs to a grocery/coupon site that is called 'The Grocery Game'. It helps you match up what is on sale at certain stores to the coupons you should have if you get the Sunday and Wednesday papers. She took a LOT of time getting a list and coupons all together and ready for us and then for FHE we went to Frys. She had 5 lists with the coupons matching that list and marked the amount we were suposed to buy and off we went - 5 shopping carts going 5 seperate ways.

We, Carolyn, Doug, Me, Allan, Katie and Shannon all went, but KT and Shan wanted to shop together. We did really well and in about an hour we were all together again and in line. I was so excited to see how we did. Now, don't jump the gun and think that we got it all for free.......we didn't even come close to that, but here is what the receipt says: all 6feet - 8 inches of it:

I guess I should have been talking so it wasn't so boring, but you could just replay it and hum some grocery store music during it. 56% savings?! She did good. 194 items for $312! What does that amount to? - all of you math smarties out there? Less than $2 an item for sure. Anyway, it was fun. Here's some pictures of the receipt with a few of it's friends.......