Keeping Up

In all of my cleaning I discovered many things that Sarah had done. I'm too tired to provide an explantion. (I secretly wonder if the picture may have been chopped up by one of the boys. Hmmm. Nope, probably Sarah.)

As Clean As It Gets

Lynea and kids came today. My basement was unliveable just two days ago. I have cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. I actually vacuumed all of the carpet in the house today. (Usually I do one floor at a time.) So proud of myself. In fact, I was so proud that I had to run around and take some pictures...

A poor picture of the basement - but it's now so functional and the kids play down there a lot!

Another view.





The new (used to be craft) toy closet.

The guest room with my never finished painting. I actually kind of like that it leaves it open to your imagination. I have my 'craft' stuff in here now and draping it all was the only way I could think of to disguise it (mostly from Lynea's two-year-old). :)

My office area. I'm finally posting a real picture of my bookcase. LOOOOVVVVE IT.

See all the pictures above my desk. New idea. I like it so far, but I'm not done yet.

I need to look at the settings on my camera. I have a bright lovely house. Anyways, this is the master in it's latest arrangement. One of these days I'll take of picture of the newly framed mirrors and the rest of my projects. One of these days. :)

P.S. Have you noticed that the quality of uploaded pictures on blogger suddenly seems much worse. (Try looking at pictures with faces like the ones in my previous post.) I'm guessing they decided to make the files smaller, but I'm not liking it.

Only a Year Ago...

This photo was from last July. I never seem to remember my kids looking like they did in old photos, but it really hasn't been that long that Sarah has had hair.

This is her right now, hair in her eyes as she prefers. Having a girl with hair is every bit as fun as I dreamed. :)

Utahn, Mormon, Non-Republican

I live in Utah. I am Mormon. I am NOT a Republican.





....or a Democrat for that matter.


The entire idea of a two party system frustrates me. If I agree with some of one party's opinions, but not all, then why in the world would I define myself by it?

I really don't like talk radio. Well, at least some of it, such as far right and left wing political talk. Most of it plays on emotions; the key one being FEAR. Fear of others, fear of others' actions, fear for the future. I am not enjoying so many around me telling me all of the doomsday predictions fed to them by others.

I have a hard time with the "I am right and there is no way you could be right. You will see..." attitude.



Granted things are not good right now, but for heaven's sake, they're not that bad either.

Frozen Dinner Group

I did do something to be proud of today. I successfully made 16 quiche.

My friend Julie invited me last month and now for a second time as a sub in their frozen dinner group. I LOVE quiche and thought I'd give it a go. Yummmmm.... (I hope they taste as good as they look!)

Also, I got ready. Somedays, even if the only place you have to go is to exchange frozen dinners, it just feels good to be clean and pretty.

P.S. Thanks so much for the nice comments on my last post. Today has been great knowing that I'm not alone - and I would love to hang with all of you!

Thinking About Myself

DISCLAIMER: I really am doing fine. I know what it's like to be really down and I'm not, even if this post makes it seem like it. I'm just a little lonely and disappointed in myself - that's all. Trying to title this post helped me to see how very, very inward-focused this is. Maybe it's time I step back on the service bandwagon.

(Photo courtesy of Adam - to which he replied, "I'm good at taking pictures.")

Life is good. Really good. Great everything. But I'm just happy-ish. It seems that I've been short on gratitude lately and higher on blah-ness. Why? I don't know.

What frustrates me more than anything is that I just don't seem to be able to stay 'up'. It just seems that I'm fighting against my nature when I want to be happy and energetic and kind and productive all of the time.

I've also been walking around with heaps of guilt on my shoulders wondering why I can't live up to more of my potential. I KNOW what I am capable of, but I just can't seem to do it.

How much can we really improve our overall temperaments long term? (I can say that I am definitely less emotional now than I was years ago, but there's also not as much drama as say, when I was a teenager.) It just seems so much easier for a born optimist (ahem....Kerri) to see the cheery side of things and relish the good in life. (Let me mention here that I don't think that means their life is easier by any means, just that they have a greater ability to see the positives.) Me? I'm somewhere in the middle of the 'glass-half-full, glass-half-empty' battle. I want to be more cheerful and optimistic though. How do I focus on the positive?

It is obvious that some things come easier for some people than others. Take my kids for example. They are so different! And they've been that way since birth. One is often just plain grumpy, another is overall pleasant but sinks often, and one in more or less happy (and less emotional). These temperament differences affect almost everything in our/their lives. Expectations have to be different for them, but does God see it that way too?

Does He understand that sometimes, for no real reason, I just don't feel happy?

On another note, I'm suffering in the friend department a bit again - need more time with the girls. I've found that the more Daniel works, the more I need to talk to others to fill the void. Part of the problem is that I tend to be spontaneous and then think that no one would be available or want to do anything. I've got to make a bigger effort to keep the wonderful friends I do have (and actually call and do things with them).

Something that really, really frustrates me is when blogger does not preserve your formatting. Where are all of the paragraphs?? Arrrrgggh. Does anyone have this problem/know how to fix it EASILY. I do know how to edit the html, but I just don't want to deal with the problem in the first place - seems to have something, maybe, to do with photos or with enlarging text?!?

Up Too Late

So, I'm back from the Segullah Studio Night, which was AWESOME and of course I'm up late as usual. Daniel is working downstairs and I have the hardest time making myself go to bed.

I thought I'd try to quickly stick one of our new pics up. I did, but it's late and I don't want to fix it right now. We have so many good ones to use. I just have to take the time.

I know I still need to blog about the Wasatch Back also. The Seattle trip threw me off!

A Day to Remember

My neice Kaitlyn turned 16 today. She is a fantastic girl (and is my most regular and WONDERFUL babysitter). Watching her be so crazily excited for today has been fun.

Turning 16 was one of the best days of my life. Being the youngest in my family and my grade, I was never as old as everyone else. It seemed like it would never happen, but eventually (partway into my junior year) I was finally able to drive and date.

Here's me on my 16th birthday headed out.

Now in my 30's, I'm good with my age. No need to get older.

and of course....

Happy Birthday Kait!!!

Segullah Studio Night!

Kerri got me started reading Segullah a while ago. It's a lds women's literary magazine (and spinoff blog) that has a lot of thought provoking posts and good discussion afterward. A few weeks ago there was a post of an interview with a featured artist, Leslie Graff. I liked her artwork and when I read that she did 'studio nights' in her ward, I wished that she lived closer. (She lives in the New England area.)

Turns out, she is visiting Utah and is going to do a studio night here this Thursday! I am so excited to go and have no problem going by myself. However, I thought I'd throw this out there for anyone else that might be interested in joining me.

Here's the link to her interview (I like the first tree picture a lot):

http://segullah.org/artist-interviews/interview-with-featured-artist-leslie-graff/


Here's the info on the studio night:

http://segullah.org/announcements/youre-invited-segullah-studio-night/


I don't think it matters if you're an artist or not. It sounds like she just loves teaching women a fun way to be creative.

(It's true that I've done some oil painting in the past and some other art stuff, but I believe she uses acrylics. I'm looking forward to trying a whole different style than what I've done before.)

Would you maybe want to join me? Why not?!?!

Seattle, Part Two

On our way home, we stopped at Snoqualmie Falls.

Zach's birthday was Tuesday so we all went to his fishing party. Everyone there got to catch a small fish in the pond and had a great time.

We took the kids to Dash Point beach which (by my request) wasn't too far from Lynea's. They had a good time and we did too until the 2-years-olds ended it with plenty of screaming.

I wasn't sure I did Lynea's back yard justice with the last post, so here's two more pictures I took.

That's it for this post.

Princess PJ

Lynea's had TJ for a long time. (His name is short for Tigger Junior.) Well, Sarah took to calling him PJ while we were there, even going as far as to call him Princess PJ.

Even Hunter (Sarah's age) laughed when she called him PJ.

She climbed up on my lap tonight and asked to see PJ. Of course I had to find a picture of him for her. So now, for your viewing pleasure, I present Princess PJ.....