Some Days Are Better Than Others

Some days are better than others.

This was my post on FaceBook yesterday and I thought I'd expound a little for you. At first the day sounded like a disjointed country song... (even if it is actually a U2 song quote)... but I added the good parts in italics so we could see them. It took me a day to see all the good stuff.

• Dee's Grandma passed away last week. She lived a good long life and it was not unexpected, still his Grandma passed away. We were able to see her over Thanksgiving. She made a surprising connection with our little Ellie that was precious for me to see. The funeral is tomorrow in Utah so he made arrangements to leave with his brother yesterday and drive out returning Sunday. The weather has been horrible and I was so worried they'd be caught in the storm, but they made it ahead of the storm - no stopping for snow at all.
• He was already away on business when he found out so he came home for one night this week and left again the next day. This is the first and last week it hasn't been packed with extracurricular activities for the kids. Although it's busy, it's not so busy I have to pick which place to be, because I can't be two places at once.
• At work he is launching a new medicine soon. What does this mean? It means additional travel, it means study at home, it means tests to take and pass, it means work mode. Not necessarily a bad thing when expected, but all consuming. He planned on taking his last big test before he left so he didn't have to worry about work while he was with family. More on this in a minute.
• We've had incredible weather here until a couple days ago. Again, not unexpected. Before he left yesterday morning he cleaned out the fireplace from the night before and filled our woodpile. Love that man! He dumped the ashes on our burn pile, which was pretty high. It caught fire immediately. I'm talking 4 foot flames. Glad he didn't throw the ashes into the trash! I went out to turn the hose on (just in case) and realize the pipe had a crack in it from the freeze the night before. Not a big one, just a leak. However, Dee was going out of town and wanted to fix it before it got worse. He turned the nozzle and a 4 foot high spout of water shot from the pipe not too far from the flames. Irony. Again, of all pipes to break that was the best one. Not by the house, no risk of flooding. Glad it happened before he left and not after, also. He was able to fix it and the burn pile was no hazard after the initial flames settled down.
• The kicker of the day, however, was when he sat down to prepare for his test. He was checking his email and there was a new one from work. It basically said there would be a conference call tomorrow (this morning) to announce a layoff and who would be affected. Not. Again. Sick. Angry. Frustrated. Scared. Unsure. Numb. Now, we all know what a worrier I am. On the outside I was just fine and on the inside all this was happening. As Bono so simply stated, "Some days are better than others." Dee still had to leave. Time would not go any faster or slower. All we could do - again - was pray. After Dee left, after the fires were out and the floods had stopped I fell to my knees and prayed. I started with counting blessings which took a while because it's hard to do that when you're angry. After a while the pleading came and the hope for understanding until I was through saying what was filling my heart and mind. When I stopped and listened I was filled with peace. I knew it would be okay, whatever "IT" was. God has a plan.

Today we know he was not laid off. He still has a job. A job which, even though it requires him to travel or study late into the night, he enjoys it and it provides for our family. Today is more like a U2 song, and less like a country song. Today is better than yesterday.

Summary of Christmas - JOY and photo dump

To show you all the Christmas glee at our house this one included lots of pictures. I tried to collage them so the post isn't super long, but it is what it is.

The first part of Christmas for us is decorating. I love to hang up Christmas stuff, I love the way it makes my house feel. Only a couple of pictures of it, if you want to see the whole thing you're going to have to join us for a Christmas!

Second: The Christmas parade. The two oldest were on a float this year for their school's performing group. The pictures turned out horrible so imagine yourselves there. Small town parade where you know lots of people IN the parade and lots of people WATCHING the parade. Fun stuff.

Third: School performances. I didn't have a good picture of Mk & Ty's performance because I was at the snack table and couldn't see the kids well. Small picture of all the stuff I made for the fundraiser. Mrs. Santa had nothing on me! Great picture of Ellie and Dee before hers. They had a record turn out for her school, over 200 kids, and you could CLEARLY hear her singing. No surprise if you know my little Ellie with the big voice, but still made me literally laugh out loud.

Fourth: Christmas Eve traditions. We hold our "big fancy dinner" Christmas Eve. I have reasons for that and if you're truly curious you can ask me later. We watch Santa make his way on Santa Tracker. We also read the story of Christ's birth from Luke and open Christmas jammies. This year we were so blessed to have my best friend and her family join us. We played some board games, ate too much, admired the men's fantastic shirts, took pictures and truly enjoyed the day.

Finally Christmas morning! The kids' favorite presents were the bike for Carter, Tyler got a box of tricks from Aunt Mo which included the "nail through the finger" which he wore for a couple of days even playing video games, McKenna got a box of rocks :) from Aunt Mo and a signed by the entire cast poster of "Wicked" from Gordon and Kristi and Ellie's favorite was all her art supplies (especially tracing paper. That's right Dollar Store tracing paper. Thanks Santa.) The picture on the bottom left was our living room AFTER the tornado. We had strawberry waffles, took a nap and went to church.

And last, but not least a couple of my favorite pictures. This one is Carter while decorating the tree. He found a stocking - and tried to put it on.

My favorite picture is my little artist Ellie Christmas Eve. <3

1000 Watt Smile

I have lots to post about but I'm going to do a quick one today about Ty. What, you may ask, would make him be celebrating with a huge bowl of carmel corn? (Don't worry, he didn't eat it all himself.)

He got his (first set) of braces off! YAY he's free until High School! Remember the before picture?

Here's the after picture.

Love that 1000 Watt smile!

Thankful

Over the river and through the woods to Heaffy's house we go! We were able to go to Utah for Thanksgiving this year and were so spoiled. Heather and Andy are always wonderful hosts in their beautiful house. We feel so welcomed and loved while we're there. The food is ALWAYS amazing (as you can tell by the pictures) and we're all a good 5-10 pounds heaver when we leave.

(Amber brought stuff for gingerbread houses, that is Ellie with her "Animal Hospital". Greg is next to her with their amazing salad. The last picture on the bottom was all the pies. Heather and Jesica spoiled us all with 18 pies! The food was AMAZING!)

Top L: Andy and Heather Top R: Lee and Carter working on the gingerbread houses.

Bottom L: Gordon and Brandon Bottom R: Grandma Trujillo and Ellie

Brandon returned from his mission from the Philippines exactly 4 days before this trip to Utah. We were all so excited to have all the cousins together for the first time in years. It's amazing to me how quickly time has flown and it's evident seeing them all together. Unfortunately I didn't ever get a group shot of them together but they are all grown up now! (Except my kids and Revis, of course. But now the smallest one is my GRAND NEPHEW AND NIECE! How did I get old enough for that?! I am so proud of them all, though. It is so great to see the adults they have grown into.)

Brian, Ben, Dee, Brandon and Gordon heading out the door skiing.

We had enough snow to play in for one day. Just right for me but I think the kids wanted more. Ah well, at least we had that!

This is my grand-nephew Bert and my grand-niece Marley (with her parents).

I also took some "time off" and went to dinner with some girlfriends. I hadn't seen a couple of them since High School and it was so good to catch up. Laughed a lot!

We were able to go to the Powell's for my dad's birthday (see him plugging his ears? We're great birthday singers!) and to decorate the tree. I also got to meet my new nephew Dax - SOOOOOO cute! He let me hold him a ton and was such a sweet baby. All my siblings came out too and mom had cinnamon bread. Loved it!

I am so thankful for family. I am thankful we are able to see them. I am thankful for a safe car and a safe trip. I am thankful to feel so incredibly loved!

Happy Halloween

Halloween is tomorrow, but we celebrated starting Friday at a party. I know the pictures leave something to be desired. My camera is still broken and all I have is my phone. Use your imagination, these ARE the good pictures...

Tyler wanted to use his Batman costume he got for his birthday. Once he decided that he told Carter, "You should be Robin!" So I pulled together a Robin costume. Turned out pretty darn cute I must say.

Ellie wanted to be a skunk. That's right. Her idea. She's totally into animals right now, and why she chose skunk I don't know, but this one also turned out pretty cute!

Now that McKenna is 12 she no longer gets to trick-or-treat. I have a thing about kids getting to do that and teenagers just being greedy. Since she's in Young Women's now she no longer gets to be a kid at Halloween. However, she get's to decorate and scare people which still sounds pretty fun. She threw this costume together last minute. She said she survived Army after Boot Camp.

Dee found a Blue's Brother's mask and I, of course, threw together this costume last minute.

Trying to get 4 kids in a picture with a slow camera before a party when they're super excited is no easy task, hence the faces and motion blurs.

Tyler did the Angry Bird and I did the pig king. Both turned out awesome I might add!

Happy Halloween!

Surprise and we love Fall

My mom had a birthday. It was a big one (but she will forever remain 29), definatly one worth celebrating. The trouble is she is about 700 miles away from where I am. My other siblings were all getting together to celebrate and with a healthy dose of celebrating mom and I'll admit a little bit of homesickness and jealousy I flew out. All by myself. (This is where I throw in a huge thank you to my wonderful husband who convinced me I should and made it possible with the kids et. al. to do so. THANKS BABE!)

Being by myself is not something I get to do very often. With kids this age it means day and night I am on duty. Even getting a shower without a little one saying, "Mom! 5 minutes!" or "Mom! Carter has no pants on and is outside!" or "Mom! Tyler won't stop chasing me with his Light Saber!" you get the idea. It was awesome!

I flew out Thursday night and Suzanne picked me up at the airport. She was the only one who knew for sure I was flying in. I got to see her beautiful new house and play with her boys. Being the fun Aunt instead of the mean mom was such a fun break! Aisea loves food. A lot. So cute!
Back to the birthday, mom was surprised to see me and I had a great time hanging out with the adults and not chasing kids around the whole time. James and Amber were staying at my parent's so once the kids went to bed we got to hang out and philosophies the issues of the world, or at least debate the smaller things of life.

**Another side note, Amber was very pregnant when I saw her and am proud to say I have a new nephew as of two days ago! Congrats guys!**

We had a birthday get together with all the siblings at Suzanne's and had an amazing cake she had made. Happy birthday mom!

The next day was Conference Sunday. We headed up the hills to see some fall foilage and I am so glad we did. I had forgotten just how much I miss seeing ALL the leaves turn. We have trees that change here but not like that. WOW!

My nephew Enos had his 4th birthday. Did I mention Zan makes awesome cakes?!

I loved being there. I loved seeing my family. I loved getting the much needed time-off. I loved playing with the kids and talking with the adults. I loved coming home and seeing these cute faces again.

My Garden

I hope this one doesn't bore you. I thought I'd give a shout-out to my garden. First: the background. I've tried gardens on and off through out the years. I learned with my first one I am great at planting and picking, but stinky at the maintaining part. That means pretty much the weeds always took over. Talk about joy-kill.

Then a couple years ago a man in our ward (who is a Master Gardner for fun) started a class. It was the basics and just some things he's learned over the years. I learned SO much! It gave me the hope and encouragement to try again. The last two gardens have been successes! So here we are now...

First, we have awesome soil. We are on a prior river bed so we have rock, but I credit great soil for most of the success. This is Dee plowing our garden to get it started. We also have lots of space, which also helps.

This year we built some seed shelves to try and grow everything by seed. Again, the Master Gardner's suggestion and idea. I'll admit I became a major geek this year with plant starts. I loved doing it and was so excited to see them all come up! Next year I'm going to start even earlier, and more. This is a shot of Ellie in front of the new shelves. To the right is with the lights and plastic covering on.

This is the first seedling that came up for me. Like a proud parent, I tell ya. The picture on the right is when we went to plant them outside and the roots were 2 feet long! Amazing!

The thing I had the most success with were sunflowers. I planted them around our pool, in the garden, across the fence. I planted a variety of colors and sizes and they all were amazing! The one Ellie is in front of were 12 feet high, but my tallest one was 13 1/2 feet!

So the moral of the story is don't give up. Have fun. Don't get discouraged. My tomatoes were pretty pathetic this year, but I had strawberries, onions, garlic, cukes, pumpkins and zucchini. I'm getting ready to plant my fall garden (first time for me). Apparently here you can grown an over-winter garden which was pretty mind blowing to a gal from colder climates. Broccoli, garlic, onions, califlower, basil, cilantro... we'll have to see how it goes.

Oh, and don't forget to water...