Category Archives: Life

Grant is Great!!

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This is my little brother Grant, and his sweet wife, Kammy.

Grant had a birthday a few days ago.

I was thinking about what a cute little brother he was. When he was a little guy, maybe 1 1/2 to 2 years old, he tried to run away from home. We lived in the little white house that I call my second home.

I really don’t think he was running away, I don’t know where he was going, neither did he. He must have had places to discover.

One night in the middle of the night he climbed out of his crib, and walked out the door. It was winter time. We lived in the country with very few homes nearby. He started walking down the road in his little footed pajamas. He had walked about a quarter mile down the road when one of the neighbor girls drove up the street coming home from a date. At about that same time little Grant was tottling down the street, it started to snow. So in the middle of the night my parents get a call from the neighbors saying they found a little boy wandering down the road, and wondered if they were missing a child.

They checked Grant’s crib and sure enough, he was missing. Our family had been blessed with a miracle. Our little brother and my parents baby had been rescued from certain death. If our neighbor had not come up the street at that moment, Grant would have continued to walk on with no idea where home was. If he walked and the snow kept falling his little footprints would have disappeared in the night and we might not be have been able to find him, when we discovered him missing.

I am sure that my mom and dad held him close when they got him home, and said a prayer of thanksgiving.

I am so glad my cute little brother Grant is a great son, brother, husband and daddy to his four wonderful kids. Grant is really great! I love him.

Multiple Personalities and These Girls of Mine

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I have multiple personalities.

Only two.

What does this have to do with these beautiful and darling girls?

Well, all of my life I have struggled with these two sides to me. My two personalities.

First of all, I am silly, fun, happy, energetic, and I giggle at inappropriate times. In fact, I laugh a lot more than your average person.

Second, I am very serious, ready to learn, responsible, and I love to be alone.

At certain times my serious side gets so frustrated with my silly and fun side. I have thoughts come to my mind like, “Why do you do that? You’re so annoying!” after I just had a blast and maybe had a little too much fun (like that’s possible). Then my silly side gets after my serious side, with thoughts like, “You need to lighten up! You take things way too serious!” It was a constant battle; that is, until I figured it out.

Now I just smile and love all of me. It’s ok to have two sides to yourself.

The girls are both so much like me, except that Kelsey is like my serious side and Emily is like my silly side. (Or at least as of the moment that I’m writing this post.) Which means that Kelsey is always getting after Emily for being too silly. And Emily is annoyed at Kelsey for being too serious.

Now we mostly just laugh about it! Both personalities are needed in this world of ours.

They are both beautiful, loving, wonderful, responsible, happy and amazing girls, and I feel so blessed to have them in my life. I am so grateful for the things I learn from them.

My Second Home!

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When I was five our family moved from my first home. My mom and dad wanted to build a home in a neighboring town. Because it would take some time to build the home, we lived in a little house that had actually been abandoned, or at least it wasn’t lived in at the time we moved in.

It was empty and a bit run down.

The yard was overgrown, and the paint on the house was peeling and worn out.

 It had one bedroom, a family room, a kitchen, one bathroom, and a little room behind the kitchen where my mom’s washer and dryer were.

My dad got to work. He mowed the yard, it sort of worked for grass. He painted the wood.

The house looked like a cute little home by the time he was done, and we moved in, all 7 of us. We were very cozy to say the least. In the one bedroom, my three older brothers slept in a big bed. I slept on an old army cot, or at least that’s what my dad referred to it as. And my baby brother slept in his crib. My mom and dad slept in the family room on a hide-a-bed couch.

My dad spent most of his time working full time, working on his Phd, and building the new home. He built it mostly by himself. My mom was a wonderful homemaker. We lived there for a year or so and then we moved to the new home. It is amazing to me how I have so many memories of that house and living there, and I was only there for such a short time.

It was a good home. I loved living there.

When You’re Feeling Sad…

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Or overwhelmed, or picked on, the best remedy is to get your mind off of yourself and on to someone else. In fact, this has happened to me a few times recently, and I am so glad. Honestly, I wear myself out.

I went to visit a friend who is going through a challenging time. I wanted to be a support to her, and not bring with me my own frustrations.

I said a prayer before I left, asking Heavenly Father to help me to love her and be understanding to her the way He would have me do. I left and drove to her house, still not knowing what I would say to her.

When I got there, I played with the dog, I played with her baby (I can’t help it; I love dogs and kids), then we sat down. I had a great visit with her. I felt so much love for her. I felt like I expressed the things I wanted to express in a way that told her I care. And best of all, I felt so great, happy, and not overwhelmed, at all when I left.

I’m going to think of others more often. I’m going to visit someone who is struggling and love them. And do you know what that means? I am not going to wear myself out with my sad, overwhelmed and picked on attitude. 🙂

Can It Get Busier? Don’t Answer That.

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Well, I have been quite the slacker on the blog lately. I can honestly say that life is giving me a boat load of wonderful busyness and blessings.

  1. Our sweet “Bonus Baby” Emily is busily getting ready for her LDS Mission.
  2. I was given a wonderful and busy calling of Primary President in our new LDS Ward. (We didn’t move, our LDS Stake was reorganized.)
  3. And our “First Born” son Riley, just got engaged to his sweetheart, Janet.

They say things come in 3’s. I don’t know who they are, but they nailed it here. I am not at all complaining. I feel so blessed to have exciting things to look forward to. I have always done my best, and been my best self, when a lot is expected of me. I do have a bit of a scatter brain sometimes though. I’ll give you an example of what happened last Friday.

Our darling Emily needs a background check to go on her mission. It’s not for the church, it’s for the countries she is going to be serving in. In order to accomplish this we: Had to get her fingerprinted at the jail in the county where we live. Take the finger prints, an application for a background check, a cover letter explaining what we want, and when we want it, to the FBI, and a cashiers check for $18.00. I went to the post office and paid for two express mail envelopes; one to send everything in, and one for them to send the back ground check back to us. So, I get everything together and head to the bank for a cashiers check, then off to the post office. I got to the post office, and waited in line for about 15 minutes. I got the envelopes and stepped aside to write the addresses on them and then filled them and the postal worker took them. I headed for home. As I parked in the garage, I suddenly realized I forgot to put the check in the envelope. I was sooo frustrated. The thought came to me, “Go back right now and see if you can get the check put in the envelope.” So I backed out and went straight to the post office…again. I waited in line for the same worker. I came up and said, “Do you remember me?” The postal worker said, “Express mail? Right?” I said, “Yes, I forgot to put the check in the envelope 🙁” The worker said, “I can open it up for you.” I said, “YES! Thank you so much!” I went out into the car and just cried. Then I said a prayer of thanks. I had spent a lot of money to send the things in the envelope, if they didn’t get the check, I’d have to start all over. I am so thankful that worked out!!

The Internet!

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Have you ever wondered what you would do without

the Internet?

I remember not having computers, cell phones, and all of the other modern conveniences we enjoy and take for granted. For the last week and a half we have been without the Internet. We had an issue that was quite involved and I spent a lot of time on the phone trying to resolve it.

Now it is back up and we are all enjoying our various activities.

I’m not sure if anyone missed me, but that’s ok. It’s a new year and I am ready to do as good of a job as I can in making my blog a fun and interesting place to visit. I hope you’ll visit and leave a comment so I know you were here. Thank you for coming to visit me on the Internet.

My Cold Hot Water Bottle.

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When I was just twenty-one years old, I served an LDS mission to Texas. I arrived in March.  The temperature was beautiful and mild during the day, and became cold at night. For some reason, while packing to go on my mission I packed a hot water bottle that belonged to my maternal grandma. I don’t remember why I packed it, but at night when things cooled down, I would fill it with hot water and snuggle in bed with it till I fell asleep. Soon, it was summer and quite hot. We didn’t have air conditioning in all of the places I lived on my mission. It was quite difficult to fall asleep when it was so hot. Sometime between filling the hot water bottle to stay warm and summer coming the lid became stuck on the hot water bottle. I could not remove it, no matter how hard I tried. A nice benefit to not being able to remove the lid and summer coming was that now my hot water bottle was a cold hot water bottle. I would fall asleep moving it to various place on my body my, neck, legs, back, until I would finally be able to fall asleep. I was so grateful for my cold hot water bottle.

Happy Birthday!

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 I had a great birthday!

I slept in, had lunch with my cousin Vickie, my visiting teachers brought cake and a gift and I had dinner with my family and friends! It was a good day!

Yummy food and lots of love! 

Absolutely beautiful roses from Riley and Janet! 

Thank you!

Lights on!

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The other night Kelsey and I went to the grocery store. In the parking lot there was a car with it’s light still on, but no one in the car.

I know there are some pretty amazing cars around now that have lights that stay on for a minute or something like that after the driver leaves the car. I don’t have one of those cars, and personally it would drive me nuts. First of all, people would always be telling me, “Hey, your lights are still on!” I know they would, because I do it to other people. Second, I don’t see the sense in it. Why?

So we saw this car with it’s lights still on, and I said to Kelsey, “We better tell someone in the store to announce it so that car battery doesn’t run down.”

We went in and proceeded to shop. Completely forgetting to tell anyone about the car. We were only in the store for about ten minutes and then came out to go home. Kelsey said, “Hey, that car is gone. The one with the lights on.”

I was amazed that all of a sudden, it came back to me. “Whoopsie,” I said to Kelsey, “I try so hard to be a helpful person, but being helpful is only helpful if you’re helpful!”

I won’t be surprised if that quote ends up on pinterest. 🙂

Just a Little Snow Storm?

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 It’s hard to believe it’s not even Halloween, and we have snow. It has been snowing on and off since yesterday. Although our family has commented that we’re not quite ready for snow, it looks so beautiful!

We didn’t get the toys put away, and now they’re covered. The daycare kids think it looks so cool! It’s a winter wonderland in fall!!