slightly personal, but I'll share.....

I'm awake at 1:37 am this morning - I laid in bed with heartburn- something I haven't had for several months. I'd like to blame the onions in the salad I had eaten at Shar's cooking class Thursday morning or the lasagna I had at a wedding last night, whatever the reason, I am here in the kitchen looking for some TUMS. But I can't deny what I'm really thinking- my heart has had a big blow today. Uh oh, here come the tears again. Really they should be tears of joy. The kind that you get when a bride and groom say "I do", and I'm hoping that is in me somewhere, but right now they are tears of losing a close friendship, tears of missing her smile, tears of missing her funny little laugh, tears of missing our walks, tears of hearing about her woes and her kids woes and being able to share mine as well and tears of just not having her near. I'll miss her period. 12 1/2 years ago we moved into this neighborhood. Around the corner 6 houses away and practically backyard kiddy-corner neighbors, was a woman 1 year and 2 days younger than I, who too, had 8 kids. A rarity in and of itself. It took several months for us to become friends but when it happened we were inseparable. I've had women that I've been friends with but with her it felt as though we were meant to be sisters or roommates or co-horts in mischievous adventures. (Wait that did happen - remember our initials in the wet cement Vayla). I could be brave with her around. Our sense of humor was crazy fun and nearly identical. Hold on, I need another tissue. Our youngest children were 6 months apart and as they grew they became fast friends. When we moved here, Allan, was 9 months old and so he has grown up with Cameron all his life. For 2 1/2 years of our lives Vayla and I walked Monday-Thursday 3 miles a day. You can say alot in 3 miles, but in all those hours and those many miles together we always had something to talk about. We never ran out of ideas or problems. It's like you could pause a 'tape-recorder' at the end of one days walk and when we got together the next day we could hit 'resume' and the conversation would continue as if nothing had been interrupted at all. She and I could complain softly and kindly about our kids or our spouses, knowing it would not go further than our walks. A 'venting' walk, we liked to call them. I am not a cryer as most of you know, but I could not stop last night. Yeah, it wasn't a 'sobbing my eyes out' type of cry, but it still didn't end. (And continues now as I relate it). I'm sure we will be friends forever but I am losing her by distance. She says 'It's only a ten hour drive: and with texting and emails we can be in touch every day. However, her comforting arm, her darling smile, her look of strength is what will be missing. (new kleenex). I've cried like this before as my kids have left for missions or school or as they moved far away, but I know I will see them again. I know they will be in my home many times over. But for Vayla, I don't have that assurity. Sure I'd like to think she'll be here again, but she has many siblings and many kids to visit or they to visit her and I'll have to be patient to see if I'll fit in somewhere when or if she gets to visit here. She is leaving all her family: 4 kids, another serving his mission, 4 brothers, 4 sisters and her parents. She takes with her her 3 youngest kids. She is suffering more than I. Her darling Hannah has grown close to us, especially Doug and she too will be missed greatly.
Vayla has had a few bumbs and pot-holes along her lifes road and I've seen her suffer through them. I think Lee, her darling new groom, has been sent her way to fill those holes and smooth her bumbs and continue helping rebuild her road of life . I sadly have to give her away. But for Lee from Kanosh, Utah, I gladly will.
I have to leave and go buy more kleenex's.




A list for Vayla to make you smile:
Dr. Phyllis
Party Pants
Girls camp
Girls camp cooks
Girls camp skits
The Price is Right
Education Week visits

Aahh....yesterday. What a great day it was. 6:30 am Family time. 6:45am Doug leaves for work and takes Shannon on his way. Perfect. 6:50am Katie leaves for volleyball training. Her school doesn't officially start until August 25th, but vb training has to start early (did it ever stop?), to be ready for the season to begin. 8:27am Allan leaves for the bus stop. Quietness. Real quietness. So, I begin my day. I have had a stack of unread/or at least scanned magazines that have been piling by my bed. I got through 9 of them yesterday. And I mean I looked at every page, wrote down websites I want to visit, tore out new recipes I want to try (won't happen. Or maybe I'll make it happen just so I'll have something to share with you all), coupons cut out, cute crafts I might make and dresses or outfits that sometime I would like to make. Wow, I sound like I'm going to be so busy. Some day. I stayed in my pj's until 3pm - right up until the Allan came home from school. Sadly, Doug and Katie caught me in my jami's. Oops. Also yesterday, I wrote, or I should say 'rewrote' words to 3 songs. We, Doug and I, are involved in our ward's roadshow. We have lived here in this home for 12 1/2 years and we have NEVER had roadshows in our Stake before. We are excited. Shannon and Allan will be our only kids who will get to participate in this experience. When I was a youngster, we had a roadshow and then a dance festival rotating every other year. I thoroughly enjoyed them all.

1975 Looks like we got a bit sunburned.

Doug and I were engaged here and able to teach for the dance festival that year. March? 1979. We were in 36th Ward in Phoenix, AZ. at the time. Looking back on all these pictures, I realize that we made all of our own dresses!

Shannon didn't get home from school and then practice until 6pm. She was gone 11 hours to school! Homework, Mutual, chore (chortle), school supplies from WalMart at 10pm. Busy has started.

P.S. I threw in the picture of the little girl in mismatched jami's because that is what I wear. I don't even know if my kids know what a set of pajama's are - oh, wait.....Jill gave me a darling set that have somehow made it into Shannon's wardrobe. Actually only the bottoms are what she wears, I still have the top in my stuff. But my stylistic towards pj's are as follows: what feels comfy. End of discussion.

And so it has begun......

Monday - 7am-9am - volleyball tryouts........10-11:30 am - seminary 'get to know you'.......6-8pm - continuted volleyball tryouts......worked in Sports Authourity - shopping for new shoes....Kohl's - Allan's school clothes shopping.......Old Navy - additional clothes shopping. (Shannon of course found a few items of interest to her too).....Last late night allowed.
Tuesday - 6:30am - to Carolyns to babysit the boys for the day. Started at her home, waited for the boys to wake-up, couldn't figure out the tv changer, back to our house......8:30am -Brimhall Junior High open house for Allan...didn't want to be seen with his mom.....wandered by myself.......left to go to Big Lots.....home.......1pm- Shannon - volleyball tryouts......2pm - boys down for a 'rest'.....3:45 watch and then pick up Shan from VB.......made the team.....starting DS (back line hitter - same as Katie and Kevin)......5:50 - back to Mesa High for 'Get to Know you'....pick up class schedule....walk the campus to find your rooms.....meet teachers, etc.....treat Shannon to Panda Express for making the vb team........home by 7:43.....tired and ready for bed.

porches...

I will appologize ahead of time......this will be boring to most of you. Since the monsoon season was just here and maybe a few days more still to come - all I have been dreaming about is porches. I drive the streets looking for houses with porches on them. My kids all know that I long for a porch. I told Doug that when the time comes for us to move out of this house and look for another - the porch will be the selling point for me. Small kitchen - fine: one bathroom - oky doky: 2 bedrooms - superior. Sorry kids - if you want to visit us in the new house you better bring sleeping bags and a fan because you'll be sleeping on the porch. Hopefully it won't be here in the heat of the city, but maybe it will. Anyway - enjoy the porches.

Ahhh..

Alright....I've been pretty bummed about this silly 'photobucket'.com box out in the middle of my blog and so I haven't done any writing. I am still working on re-doing my background, I'm just a dunce when it comes to figuring some things out and then I am a scardy cat in case I do something that will erase or delete stuff. So, bare with the box for a few days more.

Since my last post I have done a few things. 2 more puzzles. (and we are now working on a puzzle that does NOT have a picture to go with it) - (an explanation....I bought this box at DI

expecting to get THAT puzzle - oh, no- tricky DI......there were 4 ziploc bags with different puzzles in there. Luckily the bottom of the dice box was a lid to one of the bagged puzzles, Dentist Delight, so we got that one done, then there was only a paper copy of the castle puzzle (forgot to take a picture of that one done) and now we are working on one of the last two -NON-KNOWN - puzzles. We have figured out it looks like a leapord/jaguar/or some large cat type thing sitting up in a tree. All I can say about that one so far, is that the edges are done.

We finally got around to tiling Carolyn's extended laundry room. If you'll remember, Carolyn brought up the idea of expansion, Doug and I just followed up with that. It turned out really well. Someday I might add a picture with it in. On Friday I took Allan in to the dentist thinking he had a cavity to fill because of a toothache he'd been having for a few days. SURPRISE! He needs his wisdom teeth out - especially this one that is causing all the pressure on his lower jaw line. He is only 13. Now all of my other boys have had their wisdom teeth out too, but usually not until their senior year of high school or right before their mission time. This is crazy and even Dr. Gass (yess - that iss hiss real name! Check it out - Chandler, Arizona). And yes, I did add those extra esses on purpose). So, tomorrow morning he will be getting out all 4 wisdom teeth. School starts in 5 days. Oh well, he'll have this whole weekend to recover.

Okay, this was funny to me and Allan, but I'm sure you had to be here to laugh out loud with us. I had just watched this movie called 'Fallen' with Denzel Washington. Allan happened to catch the last, oddest, part of the movie with me and I pushed 'pause' and sorta filled him in on what the movie had been about (bad spirit (the devil?) possessing bodies to try and kill Denzel). After it was over we went to the kitchen for a snack and he grabbed one of those small cups of applesause along with a spoon. Oh, I forgot to add from the movie, that this spirit can move from one body to another just by being touched: a handshake; pat on the back; etc. So Allan and I were doing this touching thing - oh, I touched you last, you have the spirit - back and forth. He got up on the edge of the couch and sorta came down with his spoon like a javalin trying to touch me and of course, being a good blocker, blocked him and his applesause went all over the living room floor. (That's not the funny part, although we did laugh). After he cleaned up the mess, yes Brian, He cleaned up the mess, he came into the puzzle room and we were talking about it and he said, " Yeah, I was spooning you", I said, " you were spooning me?" and I broke out laughing. He's going, 'what, what?'. I had to explain what spooning meant to me. And then he was kinda embarrassed but was laughing too. It was funny. Yeah, like I told you, you had to be here. More updates later. Safe spooning picture.

Wait - I forgot to tell you the best part of my last 2 days.....PUZZLES! The first one we did was called "What TV show is that?". Totally fun. On one piece it gives a clue about a TV show or character of a show and then the 2nd piece is the answer. Then when you get all of those together you still have to figure out how the puzzle goes together - Take a look:

Enlarge this 2 times to see the questions....

Apparently there are 7 more: Who Said that? What word is that? Which golfer did that? What animal is that? What movie is that? Who sang that? and Which sports star did that? I'm putting all of you on a quest to look for them next time you are at a local thrift store or a used book store. I'll pay you a shipping charge - just not an outlandish one.

So after Katie and I finished it in about an hour, we decided to leave it up for the rest of the night and the next morning we started this one. Dentist's Delight. We sped right through all the colored stuff but the chocolate brown, although it looks different in the picture, is VERY close in color to all the browns. And the 'black' background is really a dark chocolate brown black. BUT I LOVE IT!!!!!

Two full days of monsoon activity! I love it! I remember as a young girl living on 36th Drive in Phoenix, that we could see this huge dust cloud rolling our way and knowing that that usually meant a monsoon storm would soon hit our home, but I don't see that any more. I don't know if that is because there are so many subdivisions built out east or whatever, but I miss them. It looked something like this. But we could see it coming for miles.

I can't believe it but my laundry is done. I can tell that my family is shrinking and that those who are here, seem to do batches on their own. It's nice. I remember having to do at least 2-3 batches EACH DAY for me to stay on top of things.

Also, this summer the kids haven't been swimming as much as usual so there are less towels to wash. They say the pool water is warm and it's not even refreshing.

What have I been up to? Not much. Trying to keep my foot up as much as possible. Letting it heal. The kids school starts in 2 weeks and I know things will start being busy again. Then my foot will be hitting the ground hard. I'm thinking of taking some classes when they are back in school. I'd like to hear from you all about that.......have any of you taken online courses? Do you recommend them? Or is in classroom classes better? I'm nervous about on campus because of my age. I'd be the oldest in all of them I'm sure of that. I guess I'm scared! So, that's why I'm thinking online is my better choice.