The produce guy

Leila's quite the talker. Yeah, I know. The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. ;o) ANYWAY...last night Lorinda and I went to the store and took Leila along. As we were going through the store Leila saw some grapefruit and decided to reach up and get herself one. Carrying it as she walked along, she spied the other fruit and started to say "Apple!" over and over. We say to her, "Yes! Those are apples. Lots of apples!"...and the conversation goes on.
"Do you like apples?" I ask her.
"YES!" she says. "Want it!"
"You want an apple?"
"Yes."
So Aunt Rinda then tried to see if there are any precut packages of apples. She spied a produce guy and asked him, only to find that there were none. I then tried to divert her attention to another, more easily consumed, piece of fruit.
"Ooo! Look at these bananas! Would you like a banana?"
But she was off following her aunt to another corner of the store, still saying "Apples, apples!" as she went. I decided to get a couple of bananas anyway because they DID look pretty good, and while I was doing that the produce guy asked me what kind of apples Leila liked. I told him that she just likes any kind, and he then picked one up and said that he'd be right back. He came back a few minutes later with the apple all cut up on a plate for her. I then reminded her to say "Thank you", and she did. We got the rest of what we needed and left the store to the tune of Leila saying, "Thank you welcome, guy! Thank you welcome!" over and over.
Kids are fun, huh? ;o)

The "Twilight" Zone and Tales of Snow!

First of all, I flubbed up! I missed the weekly posting mark by ONE DAY! Darn it all!!! Actually I've been meaning to post for the past couple of days but I just haven't had a chance. It's just a little something funny (to me) that I really wanted to make note of...

My dear ol' sister hardly ever reads. She just keeps herself so busy with other things that she hardly ever reads much other than scriptures or church books. However, we've had various maladies making the rounds through the house recently and she was feeling a little under the weather a couple of days ago. We were talking about something, I don't recall exactly, and Twilight was mentioned. She got an interesting look on her face and said something like, "Fine! Give it to me. I'll read it!"

In short, I was pretty happy that she had finally caved. ;o) So THAT happened on Monday night. By dinner time on Tuesday (after about 14 hours reading, INCLUDING in the car and while eating pizza at Sam's Club) she was done and wanting book two, even though I was in the middle of re-reading itmyself! I graciously passed it on for her to read, and once again, by the next night, she was done. Today, however, work threw a small wrench in the works and she was only able to read a little bit here and there between appointments. Alas, since she got home from work she's back on track! Two books in two days so far. We'll see how long it takes her to get through book three.

Since I was such a slacker before, here's a little bit of a backlog. During December, we had several days that it snowed. I know, I know. It HAS snowed here before, but only ever (in the 8 1/2 years that we've lived here) on the west side of town, where we lived. It has NEVER snowed over on the east side since we or my sister have lived here. One of the days it snowed so much (for Vegas) that the Clark County School District actually declared a Snow Day for the next day! I got a few random photos and thought that they should definitely be posted.

The photos above are from the FIRST significant snow that we had on Dec. 15th. Two of them I took when I was on the way to get Rieka from school, and one I took of the front of the school itself. It was pretty interesting to see the teachers' cars all covered with snow. The two photos at the bottom of the lot was the day after. THIS snow, however, was not the one that warranted the Snow Day. THAT snow would be from two days later as shown in the photos below (pay no mind to the inaccurate date on those photos)...

WHAT is THIS?!?


Snow on the EAST side, baby!!! ;o)

The snow hadn't been coming down too very long at the house, but Kaleb said that it had been going all day over at his school, such that he and some other boys had a big snowball fight before he cam home for the day.

And these are a couple from when Lorinda and I went out later that night to go run some errands. They're a little fuzzy, but you get the idea. I'm only disappointed that I didn't get any good ones of the sad looking palm trees. Most of the fronds were weighed down by the snow except for a few sticking straight up on top. Lorinda and I both laughed when we realized that we had the same idea about how those trees looked: like something from a Dr. Seuss book. ;o)

Until next time, love to you all!!!

A New Leaf

I created this blog quite a while ago and have hardly done anything with it thus far. With the new year, I'm going to attempt to post something here at least every other week, if not weekly. I've also been pretty terrible about keeping my photos downloaded, cataloged, and posted. So I'm going to try and keep up on THAT as well. It seems like a tall order to fill for me, but it's just something I'm gonna have to do. SO...here's something new in the line of photos! Nothing fancy; just a little family photo (along with Paul's parents) taken at temple square when we were up in Salt Lake visiting for Regan's baptism at the beginning of December.

With the new year and a new ward has come new callings for me. Along with teaching the Valiant 9 class still, (which will include Rieka) I'll also be doing Activity Days. THIS is something completely new for me. I'm not really sure what kinds of things to do with the girls (a group of about 5 to start with...again, including Rieka!), but I have great faith in my VAST network of friends and family who are incredibly talented, witty, and crafty! ;o)

As for family happenings, things are well and good. Paul enjoyed a bit of time off during the holidays (see photo below of him and Kaleb playing Rockband, which was Kaleb's big gift for Christmas!) and is now back at work and just started his classes again as well. He also found out when they play basketball in this ward and went for the first time last week. It's well on the way to becoming his weekly work out.

Rieka spent a LOT of time visiting with family (cousins) over the winter break from school. The time really did fly by and she returned to school feeling a combination of reluctance that it was all over and joy to see all of her classmates. She continues to keep herself busy with the computer, Aunt Rinda's dogs, reading, and playing with her little sister.

Leila is just as busy as ever!!! She's a movie fiend and loves the Disney princess movies as well as Mary Poppins, Shrek, Elf. She loves to sing and dance and can frequently be heard singing "I know you...." from Sleeping Beauty. We have to watch her closely when she gets near the dogs because she loves them SO MUCH and just wants to lay all over them; it makes us just a LITTLE nervous and we want to make sure that she doesn't hurt them, so that they don't hurt her. She spends a lot of time with her puzzles and books, and likes to draw and color also with her favorite canvas being Aunt Rinda's refridgerator doors! How I LOVE washable markers!!! ;o)

I keep busy enough dividing my time between various things...home stuff, church, reading, computer time, family, friends and so on. With all of the changes of the past year, I've had to put school stuff on hold but I'm looking forward to the time when I can start up with that again as well.

We love you all, and hope that you all are healthy and happy with many wonderful prospects for the new year!!!