05/28/23 Good Morning!

 Just so you aren't worried...I'm writing on time this week! 

This week seems to have FLOWN by...seriously...I don't know if it's because I wasn't around last week or what but WOW!

Monday I went to the Chiropractor and he adjusted me and released me...said I should be good now!  SO far he is right!  I have been feeling so much better in my neck and back. 

Wednesday night was graduation so for YW we decided to just have a swim party here at our house. We invited all the girls (knowing the older ones would obviously mostly not be interested). I figured we might get 2 or we could get 20. Really had no idea. But we had a nice turnout...8 - 11...something like that...just right. The girls giggled and played and had a great time. 

Thursday evening we played pickleball with the Casey's. When we were heading over dad said we are quitting at 9 no matter what. We have to get up early tomorrow and I don't want to be out late. 

At 8:55 we had just finished two sets (we usually play three...one with each of us matched up ... you know me and dad, me and Sandy, me and Kelly.)  So Dad was like...let's just play one game of our third set and then we'll go. Bad choice. About 10 minutes into the game dad took a tumble and skinned up his knee pretty good. It's Sunday and he's still super sore and uncomfortable from it. Poor guy. And he missed pickleball Saturday and swimming since them. 

Friday we tried a new restaurant called Jay Birds (in the old Arby's building by the mall).  We went with Gpa. He really enjoys our Friday dates. I didn't love the food...basically it's fried chicken. Meh. Not my favorite. 

Saturday we had a BIG birthday party -- there are 7 birthdays this month. Michael, Annie, me, Abbie, Diane, Laura, & GPA. Every couple going to Alaska has one person with a birthday! haha.  So this year for gifts I bought t-shirts for everyone that say family cruising 2023 and had a bear on it. Kinda fun!  Now we can all match on our cruise. 

Our party had Austin, Taylor & NIce -- and fam, Abbie and fam, AJ, Holly & Erik...us...Wendy, Michael, Ben and Laura and GPA. (Eldon and Diane were up north so they missed out sadly).  I believe our count was about 21 or 24 or som
ething. But it was really good. We had ribs and pulled pork and rolls and peanut butter bars, salad, fruit, beans. It was a real feast!

Spent most of the day preparing and then an hour or so after cleaning up.  But it was fun! And so nice to have everyone together playing and happy. 

Tomorrow is memorial day and Dad has a remote in Cedar City so we should have a fun different day tomorrow up in Cedar. And next week is the twin's birthday party so another trip to SLC (if we stay healthy!! haha)  Busy busy!

This week in come follow me they were talking about loving thy neighbor as thyself.  Whew. That's a hard one. I hardly even know a bunch of my neighbors, let alone like them or love them. I got some work to do! 

I admire Linda - she is so kind and giving and when she sees a homeless person she doesn't hesitate to give them food or money or a blanket or whatever. I NEVER do that. 

So I know I have something I need to really work on -- but I really don't even want to!  Oy. 

How do you do on loving your neighbor? And being generous to those in need? 

One thing the podcast mentioned was that we should just try to be more loving and kind in general as we go through life. And I have been working on that...talking to people in line at the store and clerk's as they are checking me out and just trying to compliment others and try to make them happy. I do feel better when I engage with others and they seem to also.  Baby steps!

Hope you had a fantastic week. Look forward to talking to you tomorrow. I think dad's remote is at 11...so we'll be driving up to Cedar around 10 a.m. tomorrow and coming home 2 or 3 p.m. 

Sydney Chase's farewell is today!!! Then home MTC for a week.  I believe her area is in California. Pretty exciting. 

Love you lots!!!

mom

05/22/23 Baseball Championship Week in Orem, Utah

We had a super busy week...Starting Sunday...headed to Orem to LaQuinta to stay because Dad had to broadcast Monday morning from 6 - 9 a.m. and then do 4 baseball games between noon and midnight. BIG LONG DAY!  

Bryce fed us delicious tacos and AJ & Becca came too. 

Monday I dropped Dad off at BYU for his marathon day and B&M and Momo and I went to spend the day with the twiners. The big twiners while Mama went to the hospital to be with the little girl twinners. We had so much fun! 

Tuesday rinse and repeat for all of us. 

Except Bryce drove up there instead of me this time. He dropped me off at Ruth's house after the day at Dallas' and I had dinner with Lauritos and Ruth and then she took me to her pickleball night. I even got to play some! And it was so much fun!

Hanging with twinners is EXHAUSTING!!! Momo slept A LOT the next two days after our visit! haha. 

I was tired out too! Wednesday I dropped Dad at UVU for 3 more games and then spent the day with B&M and Momo. Which was mostly B and Momo because M had to work (all week...so she was in and out with us!)

I had him give me chores to do -- we cleaned his back porch, weeded and cleaned his front porch, cleaned the kitchen, did some laundry (my own! haha) whatever...just some stuff to keep me busy and out of trouble!

Thursday Dad only had one game so we got Bryce and did Trader Joe's and Winco. More hanging with B&M and Momo. Aj and Becca stopped by after work. 

Funny story...so we were on our way to Trader's but it was lunchtime. So we decided it would be better to eat than go to the stores hungry and stopped in a taco shop that Bryce loves. And who is there...AJ!!!!!!  What the heck! He is there with someone from his real estate work and I just go plop down at their table and I'm like, Hey AJ...you didn't even save me any lunch, what the heck!  His buddy was confused! AJ's like, yeah, this is my mom! And I just randomly stopped in...I wasn't even stalking him... seriously!!! Random WOW!

Thursday night I took Dad to his game and then went to Walmart and tried on like 18 dresses...they had some really cute ones that were totally great up top (unusual!!!) but...TOO SHORT! aagh.   I finally found two that were almost not too short and bought those, only $8 each!!! I'll have to send you  a pix next time I wear them. 

Turns out one is just like one Holly picked only in a different color. And I thought we had such different taste. 

At like 9 p.m. Thursday night after I got done shopping...my throat started tickling. And my head started hurting. And my nose was snuffy. Ugh. I had to cancel my Friday with my babies!!!! And Baby Amelia came home Wednesday too!!!! 

And I didn't get to hold baby Momo the rest of the weekend. So sad. 

But they did let me hang out and still enjoy time with everyone so that was good. We hung out at Bryce's the remainder of the weekend. 

Another Funny Story: Momo is soothed by white noise played on the phone by Bryce or Marlee (interesting...never had that when I had babies!!!) -- also EFFECTIVE... surprisingly works quite well. Holly came over and played a video of a ceiling fan spinning round and round (no noise)...SAME EFFECT!!!! What the heck!?!  It's like Baby hypnotizing

!

Bryce blessed Momo on Sunday at 9 a.m. He sent out a link to Gpa, Gpa & Suzanne, D&M, E&D...and they turned off the feed for the blessing. NOOOOOOO. So disappointed. It was short and beautiful. He said a lot about her life being joyful and happy and having what she needed in life and that her heavenly father loved her. 

We had a nice coscto muffin and fruit with drinks afterward at the park. Really nice event all around. 

We headed home around noon and got to St. George by 3:30 or so. Relaxed and jumped right into another busy week. Whew!

The speaker in sacrament meeting was widowed 24 years into her marriage (probably had young kids and he was likely around 45) - fast forward about 20 years and she's about 60 or 65 now and still alone. She lived with different of her kids and help raise her grand kids. She was really delightful little lady. She talked about knowing that you are a child of god and how much like Jesus you are. She had a children's book that basically said...jesus prayed...I can pray too, I'm just like Jesus.  And it went through a bunch of scenarios. It was a neat talk. I hope that I can have a good influence on my grand kids like she did on hers. 

05/14/23 Happy Mother's Day

 Good Morning! What a fun way to start my Mother's Day morning then a text from my Hermana!!! Look forward to talking to you later today!

Let's see...what went on this week...

Eldon and Diane were out of town for Elderhostel so we had Holly and Gpa over for Monday night pizza. We tried to make it out on our new Pizza Oven. Which we haven't mastered yet. And we got scrambled pizza. And the reminder done in the oven in the house. I just really want that to work...so I'm not giving up! We gotta figure this out! Poor grandpa is the guinea pig!!! hahah. It was his pizza that scrambled!

I've still been going to my Chiropractor regularly and I hope I'm almost all better. If you wanted to pray for my quicker recovery I would be grateful!  I have a knot in my neck and my arm keeps going numb -- pinched nerve likely. He says I am very tense through my back and has been trying to loosen it up but apparently I'm resistant! 

Tuesday, Sheron took me to lunch at Rumbi's for my birthday. It was fun and delicious. I haven't seen her for almost a year and she looked great and we had such a nice visit. It went way too fast and we promised to get together again before many many months pass again!

Tuesday evening was Relief Society and we did the nox box lesson - next of kin -- what items you should gather in case of your passing to make things easier for your survivors. It was my idea - I started my noxbox last year -- but they had kind of a lousy turnout. So maybe they shouldn't ask me for ideas! haha. We had about 13 people and 5 of them were on the committee and one of them was me. Hmmmm...Oh well!

Wednesday was my birthday and it was a fun day all around. I worked but when I arrived the girls had a sign on my door. Then I got a couple little gifts. We had a luncheon -- Don Pedros Mexican food at lunch time (unrelated to my birthday!!! but convenient! haha) 

After work we met Ben and Laura and took Gpa to Black Bear Diner in St George for my birthday dinner. I got a free meal and so did Ben and it was yum. French toast, eggs and bacon. 

Wednesday evening we did indexing with our YW which turned out to be kind of a bust...so we had a great turnout - probably 20 or so people (this was just the beehive/miamaid class activity) BUT apparently you have to be 13 to access indexing and with the way the church has kids starting YW at 11...well...MOST of our group was not old enough to participate. BUST.  They were very patient and quietly listened but I think overall they were bored. We'll have some more "fun" activities in the next couple of weeks to make up for our lack of knowledge!

Thursday I worked upstairs in the court for most of the day and had to get a luncheon to WCCC from Costa Vida. So it was a fast and fun busy day. 

Friday morning started early with cleanup day -- 7:30 -- we had a GREAT turnout and employees dispersed and spent about 1 hour picking up trash around the city.

Friday evening was our Baseball BBQ appreciation night at Dixie Tech - only about 1/2 the people who RSVP actually came. Losers. So we had tons of extra hotdogs and fixins. When I realized I opened it up to people coming to the game. But sadly...I wasn't early enough realizing and they probably threw out close to 100 hot dogs and buns. (I only ordered 200 total).  Oh well. 

Saturday was another busy day starting with pickleball, swimming, visiting AJ at Desert Color for an open house BBQ, more hanging by the pool with Becca, and then me and Becca went to Tuacahn for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Which was really good BUT it was kind of windy and cool. Luckily I had one sweatshirt and dad had a big BYU shirt and hat - so we took those in with us. Toward the end it started raining (and no there is no cover! ) and blowing and we could see lightning off in the distance. And then, about 1.5 songs before it was over they said -- ACTORS - please exit the stage immediately. And the show was OVER!  I think the lightning got too close plus it was blowing hard and raining. Becca and I ran to our car and got outta there! It was a fun night!  

So that sums the week!  

I haven't been reading anything inspirational or fun to share with you...So I'll just give you a thought of my own. 

A long time ago I read a book by Lucille Johnson called Enjoy Life's Journey, finding happiness along the way. To this day she is one of my most favorite authors and I think she helped me to change my attitude and improve my life. Her basic premise is that more than just getting to goals and celebrating the milestones we need to enjoy getting to those goals. I believe I struggled with that A LOT when I was younger. I just wanted to be "there" -- wherever that was...Like get married, get a degree, have a baby, get to a destination...whatever. And I was kind of miserable in accomplishing my goals. I struggled with the amount of work required to have a baby and maintain a household...I was kind of grumpy about it sometimes!  

Now I am trying to find something fun and enjoyable every day (pickleball, eating with friends, going for a walk...whatever!) And even the less fun activities - I'm trying to find the fun in them. It's amazing how much more enjoyable things are with the right attitude. 

So my thought for this week is to make sure you schedule something enjoyable every day and find ways to enjoy the hard stuff. Attitude is everything. Make yours a good one!

Love you lots! Thanks for making me a mom, again! 

Mom

05/07/23 Preparing for a wedding and such

 It's been a good and busy week!  

Still been doing time with the chiropractor trying to make my neck and back feel better. This week he taped me up (2nd week in a row) and had me lay on a round pillow for 5 minutes every night trying to relieve the knot in my back. In addition I decided to ditch my work chair and get a different one (like the hard chairs in the council room) -- and I think that may be the problem because after a week of the new chair I'm feeling better than I have in a LONG time!  

It was kind of quiet this week at work because one of my bosses had a 3 day conference -- so I got to do some fun different things. I did put some items up on the auction and ordered signs for our whole building (we are remodeling). 

I had an ultrasound on my breast this week because they found a lump 6 months ago that they wanted to watch. I am happy to report it is just fine -- no growth. They will peek again in 1 and 2 years I think they said but honestly I am not worried...I swear they found this several years ago at a different office and put me through the same routine. I also think it's because I have good insurance so -- easy money. (am I cynical?!) 

For YW we had a mother/daughter night (and Holly came with me!!! -- she said it was my mother's day and birthday present! ).  We made some fancy treats and each monther got up and told a little about their daughter. (Holly made me promise I wouldn't do that to her...so I didn't. But I would have like to. ) We played get to know you games and then one of the ladies told the story of her daughter and how she didn't fit in at church and has gone away from the church and encouraged the girls to be kind and inclusive. Honestly it felt a little over the top - Holly agreed -- like made everyone feel bad about their behavior -- guilty -- whatever...but we've got some major clicks going on and they are trying to stop the nonsense. They've done similar things about 3X...I think they need to back off now and hope they get better!

Thursday night I had a presidency meeting to plan girls camp...and I'm struggling with it!  They told us no we couldn't have camp about 3X but our President kept pushing and they finally agreed. At that point most of the dates were taken for camp little thunder. There was basically one in June and one in August. And of course the one in June is the same week we are going to Alaska.  I could potentially go Wed/Thur and maybe even part of Friday but we fly out Friday night. It's just a lot in one week. But you know I LOVE girls camp.  But I love being there the WHOLE time!!! I was going to just not go but several of the girls have begged me to please come. And I want to. And I don't!  haha

And camp little thunder may be under snow and unaccessible so we are having to pick an alternative but they don't want to change the dates (which makes sense since we told everyone). 

Also...we are 5 weeks away and our Bishop has not called a Camp Director so all the planning falls back on us. And it shouldn't be on us!!! 

I need an attitude adjustment! 

I'm trying to be quiet if I can't be positive!  

At least I hope it's working that they don't know I'm struggling with all this!

Friday night Holly came over -- I put my dishwasher together because I finally got all the right parts. (and the heating element still isn't working. Sigh).  But the dishwasher runs and uses hot water from the water heater so I have to decide if I'll pay someone or just not worry about it!)

After I got it together we went to the DI and found 400 invitations for her wedding for $20.  We figure we can use those and print 4X6 pictures for another $20 and for $40 plus postage she'll have invites!!! We went and checked out the Covington Home and she absolutely loves it. It may or may not actually be available...Barry is working on that for us to see if it can be!  And we came home and ordered a dress...she loves it on screen...I hope it translates well in person. We'll have it in about a week or so. Overall good progress on the wedding planning. And that's two Friday nights in a row that Holly said, thanks mom...I really had fun tonight. (It's been a LONG time since I've felt like she enjoys spending time with me...so that made my mama heart happy.)

Saturday AJ and I played pickleball (dad slept in...long week) and I did tons of yard work and we went to the Ironman and dad announced (cheered on the runners) and I took pictures. I saw Emma and Katie Meidel and their little two year old. That was a fun surprise!!! I told Emma to reach out to Holly and try to be friends (maybe work together!! But it's possible that ship has sailed.

So overall a good week and looking forward to a good week ahead. I am going to work up in the courts again a lot next week because Mindy quit and the new girl is starting on Monday so they want me to cover phones/desk so that they can get her trained up. She has 7 years experience and started the West Valley court many years ago so I'm hopeful she will have a lot of what is needed to jump in and get going full speed in no time!

My thought for the week - I'm reading a book called the Aladdin Factor (I have been reading this a long time...it's seriously about 6 months of a chapter or a page here and there...I don't know why it's so slow...but it is!)  Anyway this book is about how, like Aladdin, you have to know what you want and then you have to ask for it. You can't fear rejection or overthink or whatever. You just decide that you want something and then you make the effort to make it happen. 

The thing that I think is really important in this is to discover what it is you really want. Because I think half the battle sometimes is just deciding which path to take...what it is you want. Once you decide WHAT you want it is easier to discover how to get it. 

And then stop being afraid...Just put yourself out there...Hey, you are really good at XXXX can you show me how to do that? Or I need funding for my service project would your company be willing to sponsor us...Or whatever.  And stop thinking of NO as a rejection of you and don't take it personally.  THEY just weren't able to fulfil your request but the next person might be. 

I don't know if I'm relaying this in a way that makes sense...but to sum it up...figure out what you want and then ask and expect to get it...and you just might! 

On a spiritual note - I really enjoyed come follow me this week and the story of Lazarus. Jesus came after he was dead for three days and everyone was mourning and he mourned with them and comforted them and then he performed the miracle of raising him from the dead. And he helped people to understand that he had the gift of eternal life and salvation. And that he mourned with them even though he knew he could remedy their sadness. We need to be aware of others sadness and mourn with them and their happiness and rejoice with them. 

I'm excited to hear about your week and if you are getting transferred and just what's up in CHILE!

Sister Geary says Hi!!!! (next door neighbor)  

Also Emma Meidel said she is planning to go on a mission later this year. 

Love you lots! mom