Simple Pleasures...

I never thought I would ever LOVE having someone touch my feet,

I am very ticklish, and very squeamish about stuff like this.

But I LOVE getting a good pedicure,

it is truly one of Life's Simple Pleasures for me!!!

Happy Anniversary ~

Happy Anniversary!

October 9, 2004; 4 years ago today

At the Boise, Idaho Temple we were Sealed as husband and wife

for Time and All Eternity!

It was a wonderful day, and a very special time for our family!

The talk... roles reversed!

Last night after family prayer, the teenager looked at me all serious and said

"Mom, there was a funny smell in the house when I got home from school today" ... (pause)... "it smelled like cigarettes"!!!

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I thought I had the smell out of the house pretty good, but I guess there was still too much residual. I was busted! I had to confess to the teenager I had been smoking... the oven!

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He looked so relieved when I told him! Poor kid, I asked him if he was kind of stressed out thinking all afternoon that I might have been smoking... he said "yes, very stressed, I was afraid to bring it up, and afraid not to bring it up".

I said that's how a parent feels about their kids!

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My first clue should have been my burning eyes when I went to bed, and my next clue might have been the dog puking all night. So today I will be airing out the house again... but my biggest problem now is that it is 34 degrees outside! It's supposed to snow this weekend.

I am not quite ready for fall to be gone yet... my leaves haven't even all dropped. YIKES!

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But at least my oven is clean!!!!

Oven Cleaning/Smoke Detector checks...

I had been so on the ball this weekend... my freezer group exchange was coming up on Thursday. I had bought some pork roasts on a great sale last week. And put them in to slow cook in the oven over the weekend, since I knew I would be home to watch them.

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The recipe I was using was for apple shredded pork roast sandwiches, and it required the roasts to be smothered in worchestershire sauce an brown sugar. So I got all 4 roasts going and in the middle of the process I noticed the pans I put them in were over flowing and all that gooky sticky sugar was pouring into the bottom of my oven. It was low enough temperature that it didn't smoke, and run us out of the house luckily!

(Note to self, buy a real roasting pan for the next oven roast fest... I usually use my crockpot!)

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Anyway, I tried to get some paper towels to wipe out the puddles of goo... and it was a huge sticky mess!

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I have learned lots of life lessons from reading blogs and remembered my SIL's smoke detector testing day last spring; and knew I better pick a good time when I could get everyone out of the house for my cleaning, and leave plenty of time for the smoke to clear... and be prepared to have a path for all the smoke, as not to cause any damage to my home. I got it!

So I made all necessary preparations... and even had the air flowing and ready to head out a small crack in the garage. And then began the process!

It was way more smoke than I had anticipated... my plan was working but, more fans would have to be brought in and the garage would have to go all the way up for this!!

I hope the neighbors don't call the fire dept when they see all this smoke pouring out of my house!

After about 45 min. the smoking stopped and the rest of the oven cleaning is going well.

Me and the dogs are all piled up in the other end of the house with the door closed... the rest of the house doesn't even smell so far, and no smoke detectors have been triggered. However, it is a much colder day outside and I have now dropped the temperature in the rest of my house down below 40 degrees, so we will be in blankets until it finishes and I can close up all the windows and doors. Hopefully it will be worth it to have a shiny clean oven!

Family Night...

I was counceling with my Strong Silent Mysterious Man about what we should address at Family Night. He said "Why don't we review the conference talks from this weekend"?

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Okay that would have been a great idea, except my plan this conference weekend was to listen and feel the spirit of the messages, work on my card making, and wait until the church magazine came out to read all the talk over and study them more at that time.

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So I did not take any notes! Not one! Not all weekend, did I have any notes!!!

I am horrible at remembering talks unless I take notes.

How would I hold an entire Family Lesson on something I couldn't remember?

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I was checking my email yesterday and opened the weekly letter from our Nephew the Missionary in Chile... and he had watched all the sessions of conference and his entire letter summarized some of his favorite talks.

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What a blessing! I was so grateful to have his notes to be able to review some of the talks with my family!!! One of his favorite talks, was on Unity! I read his words, and remembered some of my thoughts and feelings during that talk. So we had a lesson on Family Unity, and what ways we could be more united in our Family.

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For an activity I told the boys that we would be unified in a basket of white clothes that didn't get folded earlier in the day! They laughed at first and when I didn't they murmerrd and then I used that as an object lesson on how we could be better unified by coming together not only in the fun things, but in chores and household duties too!

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Then we were trying to come up with a fun game to play together... I suggested a friendly competition of Guitar Hero, the teenager wanted to play Last Word, and my Strong Silent Mysterious Man wanted to play Rook.

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So much for Unity!

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We finally decided to play Rook, the cards were dealt, I had an almost perfect hand and began to bid on it, the teenager raises the bid up so high, I figured he must have had the cards I was missing in my hand to make it perfect, so I let him have the bid. During the course of the hand, it became evident, he did not have a good hand, but was only keeping me from getting the bid.

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Okay, I can play that game. So the next hand, the cards were dealt, my hand wasn't as good as the last one, but still bid worthy... so I began bidding, my strong silent man was bidding really strong, so I backed out. And the teenager ran the bid up and took it again.

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As the cards began to play, it was very evident that the teenager was just throwing cards down willy nilly, and not really trying to be competitive and play the game right.

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My strong silent mysterious man put his cards on the table, walked away. I followed suite, explaining to the teenager, how unfair and selfish that was of him. And we left him sitting at the table.

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Everyone got their treat and went to watch football. Nobody was mad. But it sure wasn't the Unity I dream of for Family Night. I went in my bedroom and watch girly tv, and folded the laundry. Before too long, it was time for family scriptures and prayer and off to bed. Everyone had forgotten by that time, and all was well. There was not any aggression or tension.

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I am not sure how I could have done things differently. maybe not making a big deal when the teenager is ornery is the best way... just walk away (I almost never do that, I am always up for duking it out). Maybe I could use all of this for another lesson for another time. Not really thinking I want to re-live it again though. Maybe it was just something I needed to learn. How to walk away and be quiet.

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I guess some Family Nights just go better than others. I am not sure what to really think of this one, but I am glad it is over. I think I will give the lesson to someone else next week, and see how they do with it. I can't wait til next week! Oh Boy!

Conference Weekend...

I really really loved conference weekend.

Something I finally learned after failing at it over the past 8 years, was to plan out a menu for the entire weekend, have the right foods in the house, and write the menu on the white board on the refrigerator complete with available snacks; so food would be a no brainer all weekend and I wouldn't have to rush out and grab anything and try and get back in time for the next session.

It worked marvelously! The only problem, I ate way too much trying to stay on schedule!

(I have to learn to go with the flow better).

I got some really good ideas last month while I was out visiting teaching, that I didn't have to be totally non-productive all weekend either. So I lined out some quiet projects I could work on while watching conference (maybe too many, because I got all hung up on just one and didn't get around to anything else).

This was my card making station... all layed out over the table in front of the tv.

I had so much fun, and got lots of cards made up! I had some sewing projects too, but those are harder, so I was dreading them, and this was just fun and once I got going I didn't have to use my brain power too much.

My only worries was trying to keep the puppy tails from knocking everything off into the floor (note to self, next year do this on the big table away from the doggies).

Finally, the rowdy puppy (Taylor) settled in for her conference nap... all wrapped around the teenagers legs of course, so if he happened to move, she could wake up and get him to go play with her. It was a fabulous weekend; and very uplifting. I love, love, loved Sister Daltons message to the youth! She is awesome!

A good time was had by all!