Of Endings and New Beginnings :o)

It's been a while. I've been busy with school, church, and so on. But the semester is FINALLY over!!! I was stressed out a bit about one of my classes, but it seems that I pulled out an A after all! I'm SO grateful, pleased, relieved, and a little shell shocked by it all, to tell the truth. But, that's one more semester under my belt and now I'm technically a college sophomore! Yay me! :oD
I'm also VERY glad to report that Paul has finally finished up with school as well...after many years, a very long break, and then many more years! He put in a lot of time and effort to get his capstone project completed and it was a job well done, I think. YAY for Paul!!! :oD
I just spent this past weekend, along with my sister, nephew and husband, helping my brother and his wife with a big move. Sadly, we only put it into storage for now and will have to go back next month to help them get it into their new house. On the upside I finally got to watch Avatar on Saturday night on my brothers big flat screen TV with monster surround sound before finishing up the packing and moving of everything on Sunday. Sunday was a VERY long day, ending with 5 hours at the storage place getting everything situated into the units. :oP Paul and I decided it would be better to stay the night instead of trying to drive the 5+ hours it would take to get back. (I had to assert myself a bit on that one, but really, it WAS the most sensible thing to do.)
SO...here we are.
We've already been able to eat veggies from our garden, which I was unable to really help to plant because of school. :oP I'll get my turn to help, though. We still have more we want to plant. The semester is over, but I still can't get over the feeling that I should be doing homework. Rieka has only 12 days left of school, but one final project left to still finish up. Leila and I enjoyed some time in the yard and pool together this morning.
Summer is here. :o)

Of Irony, Gratitude, and Unexpected Things

It's been quite a week for our family. When you stick two families together in a small space you're bound to have times when people lash out. I think it's inevitable. But you get over it, move on, and love each other still. You know that you have to stick together. Things happen and you have to lean on each other.
When my phone went crazy on Thursday morning I was a little concerned about why people seemed so determined to get in touch with me. I was in class and they all knew it. When the message came that Lorinda had been taken to the ER from work I didn't know what to expect. We all felt a myriad of emotions that day. Things are fine now, though, but I think that we all have a renewed sense of love and appreciation.
That whole crazy experience aside, I'm grateful for so many things. I'm grateful that I got to see my brother and sister-in-law this week and that they were here when the whole emergency situation happened. I'm glad that I've been able to get some of my work done for a big school project coming due soon. I'm glad that I was able to renew my temple recommend. I'm grateful for a Sunday that ran pretty smoothly at church, even though the primary natives were a bit restless and we were short a few presidency memebers and teachers. Ah, c'est la vie!
So here we are. It's a new year, two months down and so much has already happened. Can't help but wonder what other unexpected things are in store for us in the months to come.

What's new?

It's nothing new that I haven't updated in a VERY long while. So, that acknowledgement aside, I can try to sum up the past several months in a nutshell. Really, only one word is needed: SCHOOL. Yup. That's what takes up our time. We stay busy with work and school. Not much else happens. Really. So that's all for now, because I have homework to do. ;o)

The last few weeks...with photos! :o)

Second post for this month! Whoo hoo!!! ;o)

I realize that it's been far too long since I posted any pictures, so that's what this post is mostly about. This month has been CRAZY CRAZY for me and I've been incredibly overwhelmed most of the time, but now it's nearly over. WHEW! After I get past Rieka's birthday on Wednesday (my baby will be 9! *sniff*) the coast is clear for a bit. Or so it seems at the moment. I guess we'll have to wait and see what tomorrow brings to the calendar...

SO...in brief, since my last post, I was pretty busy with church stuff mostly, with a smattering of household duties and yard work. Activity days, including prep for a recognition night for the girls (WHICH reminds me of the little Glamour Shots Lorinda and Shelby helped me with...which I made into CUTE little frames with a list of positive adjectives for each girl...I'll try to post a picture of Rieka's finished product) consumed me for a while, and I had to do my regular Sunday lesson stuff as well, and then I was trying to get stuff ready for the trip to Utah (me and the girls) for Tina's wedding. What BLISS! Lol! I'm amazed that I made it through it all unscathed. Then AFTER coming home from the trip to Utah, I had activity days again and once again had the usual Sunday lesson stuff to do as well as prep for sharing time in primary! JOY! *sigh* And now, I sit and try to think of the EASIEST way possible to pull off Rieka's birthday. Swimming and pizza anyone? I try to keep the numbers down, but we still always end up with SO MANY people! Ah well. I'll live.

As for the trip to Utah, it was quite good, even with all the clouds, rain, and mosquitos!

I got to see my brother and his family as well as their new house which is still in the fixing-up stages, and on my second stop there on the way home, we had a nice afternoon with the kids walking around Utah Lake, skipping rocks. We had a SUPER time that night being WAY too crazy while staying up WAY too late, laughing at ourselves and each other and playing silly games that we played as kids. Ya GOTTA love times like that. ;o)

It's always fantastic for me when I get to go home. I absolutely LOVE coming down out of the canyon and seeing Cache Valley spread out in front of me. The rain was even a bonus, since one of my favorite things is driving through the canyons when the clouds are low and the mountains are so green!

I got to see Tina get hitched, which was great even if things did get rained out it wasn't the backyard wedding she planned.

I got to visit a bit with family and hang out with my best buddy, Amy, who fortunately had copies of some photos that I could have lost forever due to the computer catastrophe mentioned in the previous post. We ate good food, stayed up FAR too late, and complained to each other about our kids. Ah...ya gotta loves times like that. ;o)

So for now, I can take a breath. I think that sharing time went well yesterday. We had a most excellent dinner with salmon, shrimp scampi, pasta, asparagus, squash, salad, jalapeno poppers and so on. The squash, jalapenos and cucumbers in the salad even came out of our garden! :oD

Now maybe I can just sit a bit. Maybe I can have a bit of time to read. I can enjoy the beauty of the yard and the garden , and I MIGHT even take a dip in the pool a little later.

Catastrophe and Gratitude

I recently had a major computer catastrophe and we lost everything that had been put onto the computer since the end of January. All documents, e-mails, and yes...photos. This has done little to help motivate me into blogging. It takes a LOT of time to organize, categorize and resize photos. I was fortunate to that I was able to have copies of many of those photos on another computer, but the ones that I had already tampered with were lost as well as some that were NOT on the other computer. :o( Not much you can do about it, though.

Moving on to other things, it's been crazy busy. Since my last post, we had fabulous spring break, Paul finished up with his job at Echelon and became unemployed, Leila celebrated her 2nd birthday, Paul and I had marked our 13th anniversary, and Rieka went on a couple of field trips. School is now out for the summer and Paul finally started a new job this past week. My cousin is getting married on the 20th of this month and so I'll be heading up to Utah for that, as well as visiting some family and friends. We're also planning on going to the Oquirrh Mountain temple open house.

I'm terribly grateful for all the little things in life. Our patches of garden are doing well and we've already gotten a few veggies as a result of our labors. The sunflowers are doing quite well, and despite being a bit mutated, are still nice to look at. ;o) We're looking forward to having peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers soon and hope that the pumpkins and watermelons produce for us, too.

I'll have to see if I can get some photos put up soon, but not sure when it will happen since I have to work on resizing and categorizing again. :oP And that, as mentioned before, is what takes so much time to do. Until then...love to all!

Slacking

Lol...I logged on to check some things and saw a comment from a friend that reminded me of something I already knew. I've been slacking off. :oP
Things have just been super busy lately and nothing makes this more apparent than the state of my DVR box. SO many recordings, SO little time! ;o) HOWEVER, I shall make a valiant effort this week to update the blog and post some of the very cute pictures that have been taken lately.
I wish to my friends and family who read this much love and happiness at this beautiful time of year, and I remind you all to look forward with anticipation to the upcoming General Conference! :o) Aren't we so amazingly blessed to have the sweet prophet that we do! I absolutely LOVE listening to him, and I always have.
I shouldn't prattle on when I have to be getting ready for church so this will have to be it for now.
Until next time!

Musings: Who are we?

I was just reading my friend's blog and it was making me think...who are we really?!?

I think that some people have multiple personalities, per se, that they shift between depending on the company they're in. I think that I've even done this myself. Not dramatically so, mind you, but to small degree. But despite my bouts of MPD over the years, I think that I've pretty much stayed true to the essence of who I really am. I may have lost sight of my foundation now and then, but I've always been able to find it again.

In the things that I've been reading and studying about recently, I've been thinking a lot about what I am and SHOULD be about; who I really am and what I'm meant to be. It's been said that the more you do something the easier it gets. I think that this philosophy is also true for being yourself.

Do you know how it feels when you stretch yourself to test out new and different things or ideas? It can be hard to get back to your original shape...you almost feel lost, and your sense of self can become completely abstract. It may even feel like you never knew who you were to begin with before your sense of self became so contorted. When that happens, we have to dig to find our foundation again. Whatever that foundation may be, and however long ago it was placed, it IS there. It can be mighty difficult to do, but if we can be diligent, it can be found. That's where our essence is. That's where we begin and where we find who we really are.