Getting "Stuff" done

This week has yet again been a very busy one. I keep thinking that my life will slow down eventually, but have finally surrendered to the fact that this IS my life now and the older my kids get, the busier that it will continue to get. I have also decided that it is okay. I read somewhere this week a quote about this and it says in some way that the busier you are the more that you get done. I guess that has proven true for me this week. In some way because I am more booked with my schedule, I have gotten my life a little more in order this week and still managed to get all of my cleaning and laundry done. This week my most covetous wish is to have someone come in and clean my house!!! If I had all the money in the world, I would probably hire my windows and bathrooms out for someone else to do.

I have been working up at Rexburg at the In-Laws apartment complex Tuscany Place and I am loving it! I don't love the commute-but it is a small sacrifice to make to have such an incredible opportunity to make a little extra money while being able to pick my own days and hours and still be able to take Mack with me while I work. I mostly do the bookkeeping part of it when my mother-in-law can't be up there and so I enter checks, go to the bank, take payments from the girls, answer questions that the moms or girls have about their payments, etc. It has been fun working and feeling like I am contributing to the Gross National Product. I have to admit that my favorite part has been remember the time that I spent while there at Ricks College (now BYU IDAHO). The memories I have of there are some of the best that I was able to cram into 1 year! A lot of them include the time that Jeff and I were dating and it's been fun to drive by old places and reminisce of the times we had. I loved that first year of my independence and reaching out to who I was to become. I used to wish that I had gone there one more year before I got married, but now I wouldn't change a thing-but that year was amazing. It's fun to watch those girls come in and see the hopes and dreams that they have for themselves. Some of them are timid and some of them appear that they are going to conquer the world-but I know what they all have in store and as long as they make good choices in their lives the best is yet to be!

I got together with some friends on Thursday to do all of my cooking for a month in that one day. We cooked 20 freezer meals and I am loving the fact that I have them all in there again. We took a hiatus during the summer so it is good to be back to the freezer meal world! I love it! Here are a few pictures my friend took that I stole off her blog. The one of the freezer is mine and I just love the result!!! Don't you all wish that you had a freezer full of food?



Another thing that I got done this week that I have been longing to do is go to the temple with my husband. It was so nice to be able to go and be there and to settle my cares and to feel a little calm even for just a moment.



A good laugh that I had was about my adorable sister. I have to tell you that I just love her to death-not just because she is my only sister, but because her "hair" stories keep me laughing always. My sister is a natural blond-not a typical one-but a natural one. She has beautiful hair, but can never seem to get it the way that she wants it. She colored it not too long ago and it ended up being a strawberry blond/brown, but only after she had it red and then "green witchy" color as she calls it. She really wanted to go back to her natural color and so upon entering the salon this week told the hairstylist what she wanted and promptly had to warn her that if she used ash color in her hair it would turn to a "green witchy" color. The hairstylist being the "expert" didn't listen to her caveat and still used ash in her hair. It turned the witchy green color that my sister warned her about. The hairstylist fixed it, but colored it brown. The picture below was the result. I think it looks adorable still-but the story gave me a good chuckle. SO much for ever being blond again...

Hello good friend....I have missed you!

I feel like Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail when she ran to her computer in the morning after her boyfriend leaves for work and checks her computer for new mail and she sits there looking so cute as usual and repeats with the computer "You've Got Mail". It's as if she has found a long lost friend. That is how I feel today as I sit at my computer and update my blog. I have been having technical difficulties the last week with my computer and I have missed it extremely!!! However, I am back and I have a couple of things to share.



The latest update with our Jeff's Health Saga....



We went and visited with a Neurologist this past week and he confirmed that his EEG came back abnormal because of the medications and a bump that he received on the head a couple of weeks before the seizure happened. He called it a provoked seizure and the abnormalities on the EEG were really not that abnormal. It has been a huge relief and comfort to hear it from the expert. I had no idea how stressed out I was about it until we heard it from him. We have now put that out of our mind and are trying to focus on his prior issues and trying to start all over with that. We have an appointment with a Doctor down at the University of Utah on October 3rd and are both really anxious to get there and pray that we can figure something out. In the meantime, I am so happy that Jeff is my husband and the Father of our children. It just never ceases to amaze me what an incredible man he is and how wonderful he is for me and to me! Here's a picture that I took of Jeff and the kids reading bedtime stories together. He always reads to Mack and inevitably, the big kids come in to read stories like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Harry and the Dirty Dog, Dr. Seuss, etc. whatever Mack picks out for the night. Somehow, moments like this mean more to me these days. I wouldn't have usually thought to take this picture-except it was so precious to see them all together...I found the quote beneath the picture in one of my magazines the other day and it made me think of my dad mostly, but also about us and what we have gone through this past couple of weeks. All of us can relate though right?

"In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways."

Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance

I love that!!!! Don't you???

Our Crazy Busy Week

This week was another crazy week for our family!!! It started out with Mack starting preschool on Monday. We had to wait all of the way until 12:00 to go and I about pulled my hair out listening to him ask me when we could go to school! It is horrible to wait for the afternoon, but he went right in and didn't even flinch when we told him goodbye. He is so excited and I was so excited for him and for me too. His teacher is really cute. Her name is Miss April and Mack asked her on the first day if she was a mean teacher or a nice teacher. What a silly boy. He even has his own locker outside his classroom. He HAS to hang his back-pack up and he won't let me help him at all, but that it part of this whole thing of new independence.

Quentin had his Birthday on Wednesday and we had a fun night. I was supposed to make him rice and meatballs for dinner, but when I went to the freezer to pull out some hamburger, I didn't have any so we went to Pizza Hut and Grandma and Grandpa met us there on her way home from work. The night before, he had purchased (with our help) the last Wii in Idaho Falls. We looked all over and called everywhere to get one and no one had one. It was quite the adventure when Jeff and Quentin went into Toys R Us and they found that there was one there that they were saving for someone, but ended up giving it to Q because the guy had never come back to claim it. He had saved really hard all summer for that with working, mowing lawns, and allowance. We were so proud of him for saving that much. He and Calli have played it all week and have gotten some good exercise from it. I have been tempted to try it out sometimes because they get such a good workout.

Calli's end of the week activity tops off our week for sure. Calli turned eight in June and decided that she wanted to be baptized. She had a really beautiful service yesterday and was just glowing all day. Her grandma had made her a beautiful white dress that she just loves!!!! She looked amazing. She didn't even mind being the center of attention. We had a lot of family there which was so much fun for us. I just kept looking around being so grateful that we lived by our family and that we had some family that traveled to be there for it. It was such a fun day. Both grandparents were there, Jon and Kyla and their children, Michael and Rachel and their three boys, Joe and Bethany and their two children, Kylee Nelson & Becky and kids were there. It was great! I love surrounding us with our families especially on such an occasion. Jeff baptized and confirmed her and gave her a really nice confirmation blessing. She was the only one from the stake that got baptized yesterday so it was really special that way. I of coarse was teary all through because I am just a horrible milestone mom. I am so proud and I guess a little sad that they are growing up, but mostly just so proud of their decisions and the steps they are taking in their lives. What a beautiful day!!!

Later that night, grandma and grandpa got a sitter for all of the grand kids and "Just adults" had a night out on the town. We went out to dinner and had some fun being able to discuss topics without children there to interrupt us and then we headed off to a Shakespeare Play that was being put on by the local community theatre. It was soooo much fun. They had three men who comically put on an act depicting all the Shakespeare plays in a condensed version and it was so much fun. We sat right in the front row and got used a lot throughout the play. Jeff even had his own solo version of part of Ophelia's ultra ego. He was so embarrassed, but it was fun for the rest of us. Afterword I took this picture of my brother's in some of the props that were thrown out into the audience. I just loved the whole night!

What a busy week for us. I even started helping out at Nelson's apartments up in Rexburg. I have really enjoyed doing that. It has been a good experience to get out there and start doing a little more than just being home all day with kids. Mack gets to come with me and he doesn't do too bad. He gets a little impatient, but I just need to be a little more creative with what I take up there for him to do.

I hate to end the entry with Jeff, it hasn't been all sunshine for him lately, but we keep venturing on with the next doctor's visit. He had his EEG this week and it came back abnormal which neither one of us were expecting. Therefore he still can't drive which he is starting to hate me driving him all over. We now have an appointment with a neurologist this week. We are grateful up until this point that we haven't found anything too serious, but are praying and hoping that we are lead in the right direction for us to find out what is wrong and what we need to do to get him back to "normal".