03/18/12 Traveling kids: Disney & Grandma's houe

3/18/12

Holly & Katie love each other!

Well the week has flown by again.  The boys went to Disney and had a great time.  I don't think they spent much time actually sleeping.  They came home Friday night and both said they might have slept 2 hours on the bus. Maybe.  They got home at 7 a.m. Friday morning and went right to bed.  I think they came out about 2 p.m.  Aaaah.  Ashley Brimhall also went on the trip.  Her mom posted that she got up at 5:30 p.m. Yes, a great trip!

Bryce got put in as President of the Teachers Quorum today.  So we have 3 presidents in the house right now.

Bryce went to the Stake Dance last night.  He really enjoys those.  Especially since he gets to see that one girl from Desert Hills that he is sweet on.  He is a funny kid.

The girls spent Tuesday night and Wednesday at Grandma's house with Emma.  Far as I can tell the girls had a blast.  Emma and family have moved back down here so we should be seeing a little more of them for awhile.  Emma came over and swam with us yesterday.  Grandma had bought the girls all goggles so they were dying to swim.  Nice that it is so easy to make them happy.

Holly Dolly

Saturday morning I took the girls out to the Paul Mitchell hair school and we spent 2 hours getting our hair cut and styled.  Then I took them to Old Navy and got them so flip flops.  They saw some cover-ups that they wanted.  They were $35 each.  So I took them to D.I.  and found some for $4 each.  Score.  They are really cute.  We stopped at Artic Circle and got some burgers and shakes.  Pretty great girls day, huh?  They were pretty excited.  In between girls day and swimming we sold girl scout cookies for a couple of hours.  Kind of a overcast cool day and sales were slow.  Only sold about $500 worth of cookies. I guess there is still a pretty large stack in the garage so they have at least another weekend of sales to go.  Last weekend the troop sold about $1100 worth of cookies.

Katie

The Merritts moved out.  It was really fast.  Their house was for sale.  Then the sold sign was up and like the next day they were moving out.  And within a couple of days they were completely cleared out.  We haven't met the new neighbors yet.  I have seen cars over there.  I think they are spending a lot of time "cleaning up".  Merritts left a pretty big pile of debris outside the house and they've pulled out carpet and who knows what else.  I haven't actually seen them moving anything in yet so I think they are deep cleaning and maybe recarpeting or painting or something.  Katie says she recognizes a boy and girl 4th and 5th graders but we are not sure if they are the kids or relatives of the family moving in.

Katie playing soccer

We started planning youth conference today.  Should be fun.  We'll have the Warby cabin looks like.  Bryce said there isn't much room around the cabin to do stuff so we may have to rethink things.  We are talking about doing a warrior theme...arise and shine forth...we wanted to have a medival times type dinner on the last night and have workshops and stuff leading up to it.  Like we will make a flag for our team and make javelins out of foam pool toys and stuff.  We would make bows and arrows and while they are making that talk about the importance of being on target in our choices and stuff.  It's all pretty young in the development stage but I think it could be great.  Given lots of work!  We think we will be lucky to get 14-20 kids so it won't be super huge.  I think 14 is more likely but shooting for 20!  Hopefully they don't all flake out and only have half that.  This whole thing would probably not be that cool with less people.

We didn't go to Gma and pas today.  I guess they are having snow.  So we made potato soup and rolls and peanut butter cookies.  Pretty yummy dinner!   We'll have to play some games or go for a walk or something now.  It is pretty cold here though so not sure about walking anywhere.

One of our Monday night creations

Today Brother Whitney (ward mission leader) came around to every organization and handed out the 21 day plan I told you about several months ago.  I had already done the program back in December and it was a neat program.  Now he is challenging every member of the ward to do it.  I hope they have some success.  I told our YW that we have it easy since we have so many non-members in our group already to write down and pray for.  We still have 6 non-member girls in our ward that come on Wednesdays but never Sunday.

Friday night we went out with Ben and Laura for dinner.  Ben has been released as Bishop and they are ward mission leaders in their ward now.  They seem to be so much more relaxed now.  They actually chilled and ate with us and visited and were laid back and cool.  In recent past it seems like Ben has been exhausted and Laura stressed about the kids or whatever.  None of that!  Oh yea, and their missionaries moved out.  So it's just them at the house again.  Yes, they seem very happy with their slowed down life!

Bryce and Dallas cruising around in the Hyundai

Nick and Bree are officially done. She had him served with divorce papers within the last week or so.  Nick is a mess from what I can tell and Bree seems pretty pleased with her choice.  Sounds like Nick is trying to make some changes in his life but it is not going to be easy.  He's addicted to cigarettes and got his share of tattoos (he's not sad about those, he just got another one a couple weeks ago).  I guess he recently spoke to the youth of B&L's ward and just cautioned them to not take the path he had taken.  I hope he can get things together and be happy.

So Luke Peck's last companion was Elder Griffin from Texas.  Funny, eh?!  Luke's doing pretty good on his mission from what I can tell.  I have started sending you some of his letters throughdearelder.com.

 

I can't believe the sisters you went out with our gonna be home by Mother's day!  That is so fast!  Sounds like Sister Watkins is ready to be home.  She has really struggled from what I can tell.  I don't get Sister Martinez's letters.  Her mom quit sending me info early on.  I only see her on Pres Carlos website.  Seems like she is doing well and happy.  I guess that's the downside of going out with sisters.  They get to come home before you!

Well stay well and happy and keep up the good work!  You are amazing!  Keep taking lots of pictures.  What a great foundation you are creating for the rest of your life.  Love you!  Mom.

03/11/12 Long week -- busy work & illness

3/11/12

Well this has been a long hard week!  Nothing really bad...just seemed like extra busy and hard and tired!

Kathy's husband (my helper at work) went into the hopsital last Thursday.  So she has been pretty much gone for 7 working days now.  He has been really sick.  I haven't heard an update so I guess no news is good news at this point.  He will probably make it but he has been so sick he might have preferred the alternative several of the days!

My volunteer worker went to Colorodo last weekend and caught the gamboo...so she didn't come in on Monday.  She usually spends about 3 hours and enters all my new citations in the computer.

My community service worker also got the gamboo and called out.  The 2 hours she was in the office on Wednesday she was hacking and sneezing and politely asked her if she didn't want to go home ... NOW ... and thanks for coming yada yada.

So that left me on my own like the good ol days...only we handle a lot more cases these days!!!!  On Tuesday night between video court and night court we handled about 70 cases.  So yeah, needless to say, work has been...challenging!  (It does go quickly for the most part though).

Oh yeah. And the finale to the work week.  Friday morning came in ready to "clean up" the balance of the week and the state computer system was DOWN.  Basically they hi-jack all your records when that happens.  I had NO access to ANYTHING.  For 4 hours.  Then I went home.  When I got home there was an email that said they came back up at 12:15.  Yeah.  Ok.  But I was D.O.N.E!!!!  I didn't go back which means tomorrow probably won't be the easiest Monday ever!

Dallas texted from school about 12:30 on Friday and said I needed to come get Bryce, he was NOT well.  Bryce started running a fever last Sunday but went to school all week (because he is stubborn and just like other people in his family).  It was the end of quarter and he wanted to get all A's again and there was work to be done.  Anyway, Dallas said I needed to take Bryce to the dr.  They had Math class together and Bryce was hacking the whole time and it was not pleasant and they both agreed a dr visit was in order.

So I went and found Bryce in Seminary about 1 p.m.  Banished.  The teacher had removed him and put him in a chair in the corner.  I think he was pretty glad to have me remove him!  We got lucky at the dr. and were able to get right into the walk in clinic.  By 2:30 we had completed the exam, and x-ray and were on our way to the pharmarcy for some antibiotics and heavy duty cough syrup.  Bryce has "influenza" and pre-pnemonia.  He had fluid on his lungs and the dr. was worried it would develop into pnemonia if Bryce didn't nip it in the bud.  So he was immediately put on 4 days home confinement.  Not sure if he is going to make the Disney trip but he is really hopeful.  That is 7 a.m. Tuesday.  He had a fever Saturday and threw up (due to cough drops he said???....not a stomach ailment) -- I tend to agree...he only had one episode and was able to eat again shortly after.  He has been dehydrated and oogy.

The girls have been keeping us busy with Soccer practices and games.  We've played 4 games so far this year and they have won 3 out of 4.  Yesterday Holly was gowlie and the other team didn't score against them AND she made her teams only goal.  The final 1-0 for Holly's team.  She was pretty happy.  Funny too cause she didn't want to go in the second half and her coach kinda made her ... for 5 minutes...which I guess was all she needed!

We spent 1 hour walking around the soccer field selling g.s. cookies and then 2 hours on Telegraph selling cookies.  They were selling pretty well.  I know we made over $500 on Saturday.  The troop was out for about 5 hours I think.

I took the girls swimming and ran into Gene Hanson and his 2 little girls.  That was fun!   They are 8 and 6 now and cute girls.  The little one said she didn't remember me but she went down the slide with me 3 times and played with me and the girls for the better part of an hour. Then some little kid barfed in the pool and we decided that was enough fun for one day!

The weather is beautiful here and we had BBQ at the back table last night.  A nice ending to a too busy week.  I think my head hit the pillow about 9:30 or 10 last night and I slept like a dead woman until dad's early meeting today.  

Spring forward on the clocks this week so we'll all be a little messed up I'm afraid!  

Oh well.  That about sums up the week.  Making rolls and potatos and jello and heading up to Gma's for dinner.  Wendy and the older girls and Aaron will be there for dinner too.  They are moving back to their old house this weekend and Edy started his job as Santa Clara City Mgr last week.  Crazy time in their life.  I guess my week was probably easier then theirs!  Maddy went to prom last night and then moved this a.m.  Crazy!  Funny they really wanted to move back and now that they are they are a little hesitant...started realizing all the friends they had made and stuff.  Tuff to do that to a kid in high school like that.  You're welcome that we never did that to you!!!! (I'm thankful my parents never did that to me too!)

K, gotta run.  Love you lots. XOXO Mom.

03/04/12 Stake Conference

3/4/12

Just finished Stake Conference.  Pres Ellsworth did a great job as always.  Nick Bassett got called out of the audience.  Poor guy.  He did great though.  The theme was feast upon the words of the scriptures and follow the commandments and everything will be ok.  Sister Jordan (Dave's daughter Anna) recently returned from New Mexico and gave a great talk.  She is pretty and a good speaker.

Busy week again.  Last night I took the girls to Dixie College to watch the Fiddler on the Roof for girlscouts.  That is one dang long show.  3 hours.  Geesh.  Guess we got our $5 worth and then some.   The actors and actresses did a good job but I wouldn't have minded the sweetend condeneced version!

They boys have been spending lots of time with the band getting ready for different performances.  In about 2 weeks they head to Disneyland with the band.  Should be pretty fun.

For YW this week we announced that we were doing Personal Progress stuff so ALL my non members bailed and didn't show up.  Love it.  We are going to start doing that 1X per month from now on.  Wonder if they'll start coming anyway or just keep ditching?!  I don't really care...my members need this program and they haven't been doing it on their own so I'm hoping the monthly motivation will help them.  We'll see.

The weather is up and down lately with cold days (snow up north) and then warm sunny 60 degree days.  I love those!  I think that is one of the things I love about this area.  You don't have the long dreary winter like some areas.

I hope you are doing great.  I can't think of anything else exciting to tell you.  Take care and keep up the good work!  Love Mom