Posts Off the Cutting Room Floor

Here are some of the things that almost made it to my Facebook wall this week:

1. Yes, my front yard looks amazing. Thank you, thank you.

2. Went to Show Low to see a vein surgeon about my leg and he told us there's nothing he can do until I'm done having kids. Olen told him, "We'll be back in ten months!" Um, probably not.

3. Porter picked and juiced all the lemons from our two lemon trees and sold lemonade on the front curb during the Easter Pageant. If he sold lemonade for the week of the Pageant every year till his mission, he would have a quarter of his mission paid for.

4. Only two more weeks of class! I'm more excited about summer break than my kids.

5. London told me her throat was broken. She has a cough.

6. No phones. No computers. No kids. No doorbell. This weekend Olen and I are going on a home staycation for our 10 year wedding anniversary. Shopping, movies, eating and sleeping in is all that's on the agenda this weekend.

7. Porter has been designing, building and painting his first pine wood derby car for weeks with Olen. Last night he raced and won every heat but two. I'm not surprised though, that kid draws car designs and engines in his spare time. I'm so proud of him.

8. London said little sisters "make the worst days worse". Daisy walked through her tea party on the floor like Godzilla and ran away laughing. Oh, little sisters...

9. I do not like Qwest and neither should you.

10. Daisy went to nursery for the first time on Sunday - and stayed! Relief Society, here I come.

11. The Easter Bunny brought Pillow Pets because Santa didn't think they were that big a deal. Easter Bunny - 1, Santa - 0

Now the proof of my front yard improvements. Next up, is the backyard.

Remember December: The month of Christmas 2010

One of my favorite parts of December is the increase of music, especially music from a choir of eight year-olds because they are as much fun to watch as they are to listen to.

Porter's choir concert started the month of Christmas music celebrations.

London doesn't eat "boy colored" M&Ms

If you are a blue or green M&M, you just might survive. 

All other colors, best of luck.

Happy Memories Kept Here

Yesterday the girls and I were eating lunch in front of the television. I was watching a documentary and the girls were eating all my lunch. I stayed and kept watching for a while and the girls went to the back of the house, I thought they were just playing in their room. Then Daisy brings me a picture taken at my wedding reception and London brings me one from Porter's 3rd birthday asking if we still had the game he was unwrapping.

I ran into my room and found two photo boxes worth of pictures spread across my bedroom floor. Negatives in one big pile and all the photo sleeves torn in half in another. I picked Daisy up, changed her diaper, gave her a bottle, and put her down for a nap. Then I knelt down in the mess on my floor and started to cry. How could I ever think it would be fine for me to sit and actually do something I wanted without consequence? London came in and said she was sorry for opening my bedroom door and letting Daisy play in the pictures. She said she would draw me a picture to make me happy again. She drew a snowman standing by a rainbow. It helped.

I tried to put pictures from the right events together in the same pile but there were just so many I gave up. Then I started looking through the envelopes the girls hadn't opened yet. I saw the garden we had at our acre house in Queen Creek and the 4th of July when it was still just Olen, me, and Porter. I saw Olen and Porter, who was barely four, standing in a dirt field that would eventually become our house on Domingo Road. There were pictures of Porter in the hospital after his appendix was removed and our trip to Sea World. What happy memories were scattered from my dresser to the door of my bedroom floor. Some I had forgotten about. I gathered all my pictures and put them back into their boxes on the shelf.

Some days I feel like I'm stuck on repeat doing the same things over and over. But I guess if the memories in those boxes are proof of what I keep doing over and over, then maybe I'm doing something right.

The year, 2003. Just a normal Saturday morning when we had the best neighbors in the world.

Hitting Pause

I'd like to pause the posts about the past for a moment and bring you up to speed on the present. Well, not all of it, but some.

I mentioned a while back that I am the YCL (youth camp leader) Leader for our Stake's Girls Camp this year. (I do have four other women serving with me, thank goodness.) Tonight is our very first meeting with our Stake's young women. I am so nervous that I'm too out of touch with what's cool and the side of me that likes to get business done first and fun done second will show through and the girls will think I'm lame and not come to camp and lose their testimonies and their daughters won't come to camp and their granddaughters won't ever know the gospel. Geesh.

Camp will be on the front burner of my brain for the next three months (please go by fast. please go fast). Here are some things that are getting demoted to the back burners to make room:

My Etsy shop. I mentally checked out of my shop a while ago. I still manage to get a sale every week though. I knew my heart wasn't in it anymore when I would feel stressed out with a sale instead of feeling excited. When sewing and selling become just one more thing on my long "to-do" list, that's a problem. I have so many ideas for new onesies and other things that I've started doing that I would love to add but, well, ya know. I'm just going to put this on the shelf until I can really put my whole self into it. I love sewing and crafting too much to make it feel like something I have to do instead of wanting to do. I'm actually putting my last onesie in the mail today and then putting my shop on vacation mode till I get my life back after girls camp.

Next thing to get shelved; my craft club. This one is hard to let go of. If anyone else would like to spearhead this, please, be my guest. Right now my head lacks the space to squeeze this in. Once camp is over I'll sound my chimes and the Gypsy Ladies will gather again.

I am so happy that my creative writing class will be over in 6ish weeks. I wish I could move this to the back burner, but I want to see it out to the end. I'm not enjoying it as much as last semester. I think it has to do a lot with the new group of students I'm with. It's a younger crowd this time around, in fact, there may be only five people older than I am out of us twenty. We're required to write two short stories each and then we read the stories and edit them as if we were going to publish them in our literary magazine. As a class, we then discuss the stories' strengths and weaknesses. I love the editing/publishing aspect of the assignment but I hate (loathe) the reading part. I was a good sport and read all the stories from the first round, but now in round two, I'm putting my foot down. I'm taking this class for my own enjoyment and reading about graphic details of sex, drugs, and rock and roll is not my idea of fun. I would rather get an "F" than an "A" and the permanent mental images that came with it. Once this class is over  I'll have my Monday nights back and be able to read what I want again. Praises be!

Olen and I will celebrate our 10th Wedding Anniversary on April 20th. Go us! Go us!

Olen made himself a personal fitness goal and has started working out with his brother in the morning and being very aware of what and how much he eats. It's very inspiring and helps me stay excited about my own fitness goals. I don't do as well as he does. He can turn the other cheek to chocolate but I face it head-on with my mouth wide open. I'm getting better though. Baby steps.

I wish I could find one of my favorite quotes from President Monson, but I can't seem to right now so I'll paraphrase, maybe I've already mentioned it. President Monson said that we should always put people above projects.

I find myself having to pause and say "Is this a project or a person?" about twenty times a day. When help is needed on homework, a drink is too high to reach, a shoe needs tied, a bum needs wiped, a hug needs giving or my attention is required, that's when it's time to put down the project and focus on my people.

Here's how I function: This guy.

It was late, the kids were in bed and Olen had already had an eight-hour day. I was busy entering BPOs (broker price opinions - my real estate data entry I do about two or three hours a day from home and like a lot). I hear the water running and dishes clanging. I spied this scene going on in the kitchen and then captured the service with my camera in secret. He heard the shutter and my cover was blown but that was all right because I couldn't have given him a big squeeze in secret anyways. I couldn't make it through one day without him. I'm pretty sure my brain would explode.