Grandpa Dick's Birthday

Halloween 2008.

This post was originally written and posted on November 19, 2008.

The girls got to wear their costumes to daycare on Halloween, so we got up first thing in the morning and got ready.

 After our obligations of work and daycare we headed to my sister McKell's house and went trick or treating and played with the family.

I just cannot say enough about my family and how much I love them and am so grateful for their love and support to me.

It was a great Halloween just because I got to be with the ones who love me most.

Jasmine Cali:

Witchy Tayler:

Poodle skirt Brynn:

Casidee the dead cheerleader (I knew that old Spirit club uniform would come in handy one day):

My brother Cody, Roya, and Yasi:

 Cody was a walking fortune cookie. "Confucius say, 'When path is narrow tread lightly,'" and "Confucius say,'When path is wide tread lightly.'" When I asked him what my fortune was he put his arm around me and said, "Baby, I see nothing but goodness coming from you, it only gets better from here."

I love my brother!

Bryce (nephew) looked amazing!

The trick or treating group, minus Daniel:

This is what happens when you pick Mom (me) to be your partner in the mummy wrap game:

Deja (niece) did a great job on Casidee:

West showed up with his kids in time for the games:

Sparring with my brother Cody, while the kids tore into candy and the adults were... outside by a toilet paper fire I think.

What was I thinking?! I've never done it before and the man had no mercy on me! He finally took one kick across my back that winded me and I was done. But certainly something I want to learn from him. It was fun to connect with him on something he enjoys so much.

Happy birthday McKell.

Today calls for a picture of this sort:

My sister McKell has taught me a lot in life.

Like: yoga rocks.
Recycling is important.
Organic is always better.
Gardening is cool.
Unconditional love.
Acceptance of other views than just my own.
To not be afraid to try new things. ( I totally thought of her the first time I ate sushi).
And to know my limits.
Garlic is the best seasoning out there.

Just to name a few.

She makes the best guacamole and homemade salsa.

She can rock a dutch oven dinner.

You should see her garden.  I die.

She is my confidant.

A person I know I can turn to for sympathy and empathy and soft, kind words when I feel I've been going too hard in life for a little too long and just need to sit down for a minute.

She is that for so, so many people.

So everyone raise up a drink of choice today and send happy thoughts to my sister McKell on her birthday.

Because she's amazing and she deserves good thoughts sent her way today.

Whirlwind Trip With Brynn and Mom. And the Fillmore Territory State House.

I had a situation where I had to go help a family member in court.

In St. George.

On a Friday morning.

Being that I work where I do, my boss was pretty understanding that this was something I needed to go and do.

It would be a whirlwind trip, drive down Thursday after work, crash with my parentals, hit court in the morning, take my mom out to lunch for mother's day, and be home by dinner on Friday.  A mere 24 hours.

I figured Brynn could use some punishment and invited her to go with me.

I was thinking about how Tay had done the Color Run (here) and General Conference (here) with me, I had spent the day in Jr. High (here) with Cas and a trip to the temple (here and here), and I had just been on Cali's field trip (here).  In my reckoning  it was Brynn's turn for some one on one.

So we loaded up on junk food, grabbed a bag of clothes, made sure we had books to read in case the court process was a long one, and we hit the road.

The sunset driving down was gorgeous.

We hit Grandpa Dick's and Grandma KC's at about 11:00 that night.  Grandpa and Grandma came out of their room, sleepy eyed, and hugged us, gave us blankets, informed us we'd be going out to breakfast the next morning, and shut off the lights.

By the way, they have the best couching for sleeping on.  The Man and I usually take it when we visit, leaving The Circus with the blow up mattresses.

Brynn was excited to be able to sleep on that perfect couch that night.

The next morning we hit The Wagonwheel for breakfast, because frankly, it wouldn't be a trip to St. George without breakfast at the Wagonwheel. We checked out an antique shop and we did our thing at the courthouse.

We combined a celebratory lunch with a Mother's Day lunch at La Frontera with Aunt McKell and Uncle Scott who were also there for the court thing and with happy Mother's Day wishes to my mom, we hit the road to head home.

We stayed with Aunt McKell and Uncle Scott through Beaver

where we found Brynn the most giant sucker ever,

and then Brynn and I split off and stopped in Fillmore to see the Territory State House.

I had no idea that Fillmore used to be Utah's capitol.  Apparently it was chosen due to being geographically the center of Utah.  They held one legislative session there and then after that it was voted to be moved to Salt Lake where most everyone was living anyway.

Because of moving the capitol to Salt Lake the building in Fillmore was never finished.  Below shows what it was planned to be, the colored wing being all that there actually is of it.

Apparently traveling across the state and back in a 24 hour time span, with your mom, is exhausting.

 Thanks B for being my travel companion in this.

I hope to be able to spend more one on one time with my kids, and I hope they all know how much the mean to me.

Also, we need more family trips out and about, because that's what we do, we travel.  I foresee a family camping trip in our near future.  Anyone want to go with us? :)

Easter 2013. The One Where We Hang Bryce Off a Cliff.

Aside from the fact that the fish had a high adventure and barely escaped with his life (here), and aside from the fact that we had to rescue my nephew Ayden from the wet, muddy "quick" sand (here), I would say this was one of the best Easters.

Also aside from the fact that we didn't actually do anything on Easter Sunday.  Except I went to church but I do that every Sunday.  We didn't hide eggs or even have a fancy ham dinner.  We grilled steaks for the two of us and watched movies.  You wouldn't have even known it was Easter at our house.

But just because we didn't do much on the actual Easter Sunday didn't mean we weren't celebrating it up from Tuesday to Saturday before hand.

And we did hide chocolate eggs for The Circus the weekend before (here) so aside from the actual Easter Sunday, we had a great Easter. :)

It started out when we busted out of work early on Tuesday and hit the road.

The One Where I Save My Nephew From Quicksand.

Have you ever seen the Mythbusters where they test Pirate tricks?  The one in particular where they talked about how Pirates would bury people up to their necks on the waterline so they would drown come high tide?

Did you see it?

I saw it.  And I happened to remember it because I just knew at some point that was going to be pertinent information in my life.

Okay, not really.  I have no idea why I remembered that episode.  Probably because it had to do with pirates, and since my high school mascot was a pirate I find myself loyal to all things pirate.

"Cyprus pride.  You are deep in Pirate territory."

The Mythbusters built a large box contraption filled with sand and buried Grant into the sand up to his chin.  They found that he was able to dig himself out again.  But they found when they added water to the sand, to simulate being on the water's edge, the situation changed.  When Grant made movements to wiggle out of the sand, the space he made in the sand around him would immediately fill with wet sand, unlike the dry sand which stayed where it was.  The Mythbusters realized that the Pirates were pretty clever to bury their victims at the water's edge.  Wet sand meant it wasn't possible to dig yourself out. (Check it out on the Mythbusters site here.)

Seeing this Mythbusters episode solidified my place as favorite Aunt for a lifetime.

At least for one nephew anyway.

Fish Goes on a High Adventure

I once saw, in a magazine picture, a decorated bathroom with a fancy vase on the counter.  Inside the fancy vase was a goldfish, and I immediately fell in love with the idea of having a goldfish in a fancy vase on my bathroom counter.  It was a crazy idea for me to contemplate since I'm a known fish killer; I can't keep them alive for anything, but I found myself determined to try it.

I waited for over a year as we slowly put together the bathroom we had ripped out (here and here) and finally, finally it was "finished."  Finally it was time for me to work on the fluff.  The decorations.

I made a visit to Hobby Lobby and found a sturdy vase (it is the kids' bathroom after all, we can't have some flimsy thing that will be easily knocked over) and some rocks and then made my way to Wal-Mart for a couple of 30 cent fish.

I was fascinated by them.

I immediately named the fish with the white tail Wiley.

But I couldn't find a name I wanted to settle on for the orange fish.

Two weeks later West found Wiley belly up in the vase.

I determined then and there that the way to not kill a fish, is to not give it a name.

My remaining fish was simply called, the fish.  Not even with capital letters like The Man or The Circus.  Capitals imply names.  Just no capitals, the fish.

He's now been alive in my vase for two months.  When West decided he needed to head south to Sand Hollow for the week of Easter I asked my go-to neighbor friend to watch my fish.  She balked.

"I kill fish."

"I do too.  I have complete faith in you."

And I did.  Because the fish had no name, so he wouldn't be dying.  I was convinced this was key.  She watched the fish for the weekend that we took The Circus to Sand Hollow to ditch our trailers and stake out prime lake front property for the upcoming Easter week.  (here) (and more to come on that Easter week at Sand Hollow tomorrow.)

We came home Sunday and I ran the girls to their step-mom so they could drive with her to South Dakota and visit their dad and Mt. Rushmore.  Monday after work we dropped Jay and Sean off to their mom's and we were ready to head out Tuesday after work.  Except... my cute neighbor friend decided to leave town for Easter too.

What was I going to do with the fish?

I saw no other alternative than to take him with me.  Someone had to feed him.

Happy one year! Spring get into my life! And Netflix isn't updating.

Ladies and Gentlemen.

 Welcome to another Monday.

Happy Anniversary to my twin and my newest sister.  One year down and a lifetime to go.

I love them.

Over the weekend I got to have dinner with a dad and a sister, a niece and a nephew. It was one of those things that just comes together last minute. I might have the best family ever.

 Ever.

 And while I'm on the subject I love the growing relationship I have with my sister McKell who is Amazing with a capital A.

I wrote my last paper on Obamacare.  Can I get a hallelujah on that?

Hallelujah.

Spit. Chocolate Caramel Bundt Cake. Fire in the Oven.

This weekend I had to admit to the employee at the Fed Ex store that I was shipping spit.

Our oven caught fire.  Except not fire, fire.  More... welding wand fire like a sparkler.

And I made a pretty good chocolate caramel bundt cake and I'm going to share the recipe because it's too good to keep to myself.

Oh, and I studied for my midterm which is today.

Biology is going to be the death of me.

Speaking of biology. I have history of breast cancer in my family.  There's a post on it here, but even better a very recent post here that I just did for my English class.  They explain the history of this but it's a concern for my doctor that I might have the breast cancer gene (brca gene) based on the fact that my mom had breast cancer at the young age of 38.  I guess that's a red flag for it.

We've been trying to convince my insurance to cover the test for the gene since without insurance it's a lovely $3,000.  But my insurance denied the request claiming they needed two generations of evidence of the gene where we only had one.  

The catch is that my mom is adopted so we really have no way of knowing about that second generation.  

Our concern isn't breast cancer so much as it is ovarian cancer.  I guess, according to my doctor, that once ovarian cancer is far along enough to detect, it's too late to do much of anything about it.

So I would like to know one way or the other.  Because if it turns out that I do have this gene, we can just do some preventative surgery to remove my ovaries and not worry about  it.  I'm done having kids anyway.

With my new job I have new insurance so we're trying it again.  

Normally my doctor, who is amazing, would have just sent the test off for me, but it's a matter of spitting into a tube and I, not anticipating that before I went to my appointment, had gum in my mouth.  So he sent everything home with me to do myself.

Saturday morning, a whole week later, I finally brought myself to pull that test kit out.  It came with a small bottle of mouthwash.  Fill the little cup full of mouthwash, swish for 30 seconds, and spit the whole lot of it into the specimen tube.  Twice.

Seal it up in all sorts of different levels of plastic, slap the mailing label on it, and drop it off at your nearest Fed Ex store.  

Except Fed Ex, seeing that it was a medical specimen package, wanted to know, in front of everyone else who was milling around the counter, what was in it?

"We can't always handle these.  You might have to drop it in the box.  What's in it?"  He asks, as he's holding it in the air.  Obviously worried about "not handling it" as he has it in his hand at eye level, peering at it.

All eyes are on me.

"Spit," I announced loudly.  I guess if you can't crawl under a rug you may as well just own it.  Yes, thank you for asking, I am indeed mailing spit.

At least I didn't pee all over it I suppose.

And just for the record, they're allowed to handle spit so it's all good.  

We had a pretty fun get together on Saturday with a few friends and my sister McKell and her man, Scott, who just so happened to be having a birthday so at their request, I made this cake:

I was going to post the recipe but I think I might wait and do that tomorrow since I just had a lovely introduction that included talk about spit.

Tomorrow I'll post the recipe for this cake, caramel and all.

And pictures of what it looks like with 43 candles on it.  Happy birthday Scott. :)

To finish the weekend off our oven caught on fire.

Sort of.  It wasn't the up in flames everyone out of the house type of fire.  It was more of a welding rod, looks like a sparkler type of fire.

Excuse the mess on the bottom of my oven.  Of all the things I take on in my life, cleaning the oven is obviously not one of them.

I might lose good mother/wife points for this, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make right now.  

Brynn wanted to make brownies.  Mom (that's me) was buried in studying for her midterm and dinner was leftover lasagna.  Heat it up when you're ready for it. A far cry from our usual level of Sunday dinner expectations so Brynn decided, if nothing else, they were having hot brownies for dessert.

(Not that anyone was actually complaining about it.  My family has been crazy supportive of my having to do homework and studying.)

She mixed it up and poured the batter into a 9x13 and put it into the pre-heated oven.  A minute later the girls start calling out in panicked shouts, "Mom! The oven is... lighting up!"

So I check it out.  Sure enough.

"Hey babe?  There's something going on with the element."

It was cracked and sparking and even though the oven had been turned off, the sparking wouldn't stop.  This wasn't something either of us had ever encountered before and we didn't know what to do.  West tried to douse it out with a wet paper towel.  

That didn't work.

After several more failed attempts to douse out the sparks, West thought if he cut it we could just pull the burning piece out.  But cutting it made it burn at the new broken end, even worse than it had been.  

I'm not going to lie, we were panicking.  He starts telling me to call 9-1-1 because he can't get it to stop and in that instant he yanks the stove away from the wall and unplugs it to throw the whole appliance out into the yard to avoid starting our house on fire.

And with that it went out.

So.

If the element ever breaks and starts sparking on you, just hit the breaker.  I kind of feel silly about how frantic we felt about the whole situation but I guess if it's not something you've ever seen before and you can't get it to stop after five minutes of effort and suddenly it gets worse...  I suppose we were validated. But now I'm sharing the information.

It's normal.  And it still feeds off the electricity even if it's not on.

Luckily we don't have to buy a whole new oven, just a new element.  I can handle that.

in the summer heat of the desert

In the morning heat of the desert I ate my breakfast on a condo patio.
I could get used to this view.

I could get used to this view too.
He's a good looking man to be sure.

What's up with the velociraptors?

In the summer heat of the desert our family gathered.

In the summer heat of the desert we listened to our respective dads, or uncles, play their cowboy guitar songs. 
No one can play a cowboy ballad quite like they do.

Those grandpas are growing quite the following.

In the summer heat of the desert I got to see cousins I haven't seen in forever.

In the summer heat of the desert the kids tried to cool off in the splash park.
Some crazy forgetter mom forgot to put her kids in swim suits.  She was too distracted with buying a new car and still making it to the park on time.

The Circus didn't mind.  Cooling off in their clothes was just as effective.

In the summer heat of the desert The Man starting feeling a little bored.

To be very clear on this matter, when The Man starts to feel a little bored he'll hatch a plan to un-bored himself.
This plan usually involves me.

In the summer heat of the desert I ended up with a wet butt.

In the summer heat of the desert we cousins continued our play at the condo's pool.
I think it baffled my kids when I told them that every person in the pool on that afternoon was a cousin of theirs.

After the summer heat of the desert, we decided to join some the cousins at a buffet for dinner where I got to watch Cali and Tayler be this child as they wiggled outside while we adults continued on as adults do inside.

In the summer heat of the desert I got to reconnect with my family. 
And I can't wait to do it again next year.