Birthday Angel

Happy Birthday Michelle.  The prettiest angel in heaven.  We miss and love you!!!!!

Tagged by Wendy

8 Things I am Passionate About:

1. Trying to be a good mom
2. my family (including extended)
3. getting ubber fit
4. music
5. good books
6. the ocean
7. family history (I'm no expert)
8. The restored gospel of Jesus Christ
9.  Traveling (bonus round!)

8 Books I Have Read and Enjoyed:

1. The book of Mormon
2. The glass castle
3. The Twilight Series

4. Gone with the Wind

5. A knight in Shining Armor (I know it sounds pretty lame, it's the only 'romance' novel I've ever read)

6. The Pillars of the Earth

7. The Potter and the Clay

8. Letters from a Nut (SO funny!!!)

8 Words/Phrases I Say Often:

1. You're so cute
2. I love you
3. turn off the tv
4. you've got a stinky diaper
5. where's the phone?!
6. fifi!
7. I'm gonna get you!!!!
8. thank you

8 Things I Want to Do Before I Die (In no particular order):

1.  Run a marathon 
2.  Go on a church history vacay with my family
3.  Go back to school
4.  Be in the temple with John and all of our children

5.  Learn to play the violin
6.  Become a family History expert
7. Paint something amazing
8. Get all my pictures organized and into albums

8 Things I Learned in this Past Year:

1. Life is short and precious
2. I love my nieces and nephews A LOT
3. Our finances are not in order
4. My niece Katherine and I have a lot in common
5. Cruises are Awesome!
6. Sophie looks a lot like John too
7. The book of Revelation is awesome!
8. There's a lot of vocal Communists in democratic countries like France

Life is Good

I'm just gonna do it.  My posts are getting more boring by the day.  The problem?  I left my camera charger at Wendys house in calif. so I don't have any current pictures to add.  A somewhat boring post.  Nothing terribly exciting happening on the homefront.   I've been shopping with kids getting school clothes.  Tomorrow I'll tackle school supplies.  Branson is starting at a new school that was built over the summer right by our house.  It'll be nice to have it so close.  Emily is starting her second year in middle school (seventh grade) and Christopher will be a sophomore.  It's so hard and crazy having a kid in every school.  I know lots of you have had that and more, I'm just sayin...  

Last week I attended Education Week at BYU.  It was SO awesome.  I hadn't been in a few years and I had forgotten how much I loved it.  It will be a definate priority next summer and the summers to come.  I feel like a sponge soaking up all this knowledge when I'm there.  I LOVE IT.  It's like taking classes that you really WANT to take and not having any tests or grades.  Those are good things for me.  It was also a blast having my mom, all four of my sisters, my sister-in-law Amanda, my aunt Joyce and my cousin Jaylene there!  We laugh a LOT.  Wendy and Jaylene are I think the two funniest people that I know.  The highlight though had to be my aunt Joyce trying to get up on the bed for pictures of her and my mom jumping on the bed.  Aunt Joyce has two bad knees and a bad hip.  We were trying all kinds of creative ways to get her up on that bed standing.  One idea was to use the trash can in the room by turning it upside down so she could use it as a stepping stool.  MY mom said with much intensity "oh Joyce it's plastic it's gonna go!!!"  You prolly had to be there but I laughed SOOO hard that my back hurt and I was crying.  You can't buy that kind of therapy (and I'd know).  Another highlight was looking at all the art that they had in the book store on campus.  They had a large art show with artists there to sign pictures and what not.  It was fun and interesting to meet the artists.  Anyone that knows me knows how much I love art.  There was one artist in particular that was simply amazing.  Her name is Liz Lemon Swindle.  Her paintings of the savior had So much emotion in them it's hard to put into words.  After a few minutes of looking at her work my sisters and I were all crying (A LOT).  Then we would look at eachother and laugh lol.  We're not really the emotional type.  I've never had visual art move me like that before.  She really captured the savior and I felt like I knew him better after looking at her work.  That's the best I can describe it.  I wanted to buy EVERYTHING. lol

The Prince of peace

Let the Children Come

The worth of a soul

This painting just kills me.  Two stories for this one.  First I'll try the best I can to tell the artists story.  Her son told it to me.  She went to Africa to do the photo shoot for the picture (she paints from her photos) taking her Jesus model with her.  There is some organization there that cares for orphans and they arranged to have a group of the children from it to meet them for the photo shoot.  When they got there all the children were shy and apprehensive about going over to this unknown white man.  The only child that would go to him (at first) was this little baby boy he's holding.  Just days before that baby was rescued from a garbage can with his brother.  They were literally living in the trash can while their 9 year old sister was out prostituting herself to feed them.  In the large painting you can see the soul of this beautiful child in the eyes.  I don't know how she paints that, but she just does.  Next story.  My sister Wendy has  good friend that is on a mission in South Africa.  This friend had lots of small copies of this painting to hand out to people in South Africa.  When she gave the picture to one woman the woman looked at it and said with emotion "you mean Jesus loves black babies too?"  Kleenex time.....

   

This and that...

So I'm getting ready to leave for Education week.  Mom, Amanda and I are leaving at about 6 am tomorrow.  I have a lot to get done tonight but no worries cuz I'm not driving.  I can sleep all day if I feel so inclined.  It's been a hectic week.  Emily had a friend from Texas come visit.  She moved away from here a few years ago.  She flew into Portland and then flew home from Portland about 5 days later.  So I got to drive to POrtland twice this past week.  That's about 12 hours of driving just for Emilys little visit...  I also took Emily shopping while we were in Portland on friday.  We shopped for 11 hours.... NOT fun.  Then I had to drive home that night.  It was nice to spend a lot of time with Emily though.  Even if she does in fact know that I haven't a clue about style, fashion and the proper fit of clothes.  Apparently I'm completely clueless... who knew?!   Well I better go get some things done...  

California Dreaming

Jack woke up this morning and said "I wanna doe da beach today".   He hasn't come to terms with the fact that Bend has no beach.  I tried to explain to him that we can't go to the beach in bend.  He seemed to except that for the time being, thought a minute and then said "I wanna doe Didney Wand today".  Poor guys got california in his blood...

goodnight

I FINISHED THE BOOK and it's not even 2 am yet!

moms get spanked too...

This book is kicking my butt!!!  I can't stop reading and when I'm NOT reading I'm thinking about it.  My whole brain is consumed with the book!  I knew this would happen.  I HAVE to finish it asap!  I'm enslaved to it!

changes

I know my new title is a little weird.... I can't come up with anything.  So whoever has a better one, tell me!  I'm trying to make my blog more secure for our family without having to make it totally private.  So, I will be also changing the address of my blog.  I don't know if you'll be automatically redirected to my new blog address or not,  So let me know if you can't get to me in the next few days.

conflicted

So I've bought it.  Now I'm scared to open it.  When I do my nose will be in it till I've read every page.  What's a mom to do?...