Visitors?

So I got a call last night from Randa saying she was on her way. I thought she was leaving today. But I didn't see her until about 1:30. We started tie dying shirts just before she got here. And she was here for our tie dying. Then she said Byron was flying in at 2. Darren was picking him up. She told them to meet at our house. I met Byron for the first time for about 5 minutes. Then they were out the door on the way to Eastern Idaho. I tried to make sure Byron was driving when they left because Randa was REALLY tired even though she was trying to act like she wasn't at that moment. I don't think she got much sleep. I have a picture of Byron getting in Randa's car once I remembered to take the picture before they were gone. That was the briefest visit ever.

Woo Hoo

For the first time in who knows how long, gas hit 3.99! Under 4 dollars! Hooray hooray! I hope it keeps going down. It was sitting at 4.11 for awhile before I left.

wedding pics

The view at my Aunt and Uncles new house


The river and the flag that came home with my cousin from Iraq


Would you jump in the river so these guys can save you? Cute flower girls.

Aren't they cute.

The bouquet

My cousin and his mom the bride With my aunt and uncle

Dancing crazies. My cousins Siena Questa and Tracy someone I don't know

Saying goodbye to the Navy man. Hanging out

Trips are fun but home is nice

So here is the verbage that should precede the pictures but if I get really on the ball this will be behind the pictures.

We wanted to leave around noon on Friday. My mom's health is still not great so she moves at a turtles pace. We sat around ready for the longest time. We left after 3. At least we gain an hour on the way. We stopped a lot for my mom. Amber drove for my mom about a couple hours into the trip. My mom insisted on bringing her car even though we had room for her. We got to our Lodge at about 10 that night. It was a nice place to stay. Saturday was almost a waste. My mom waited to call my aunt, I don't know why and she tried to give me the phone to call. She gets weird sometimes. I told her to call and then she waited even longer and when she did everyone at my aunts was gone and she was going to get us in an hour. It was longer than that and I could have thrown some kids in the pool. And once we made it to the house everyone was working on getting ready for the wedding because it was that close. It was the first time we had seen this house because they just built it. I mean my uncle and aunt built it. But everyone came back from shooting and shopping and I met my Aunt Lynda again who I knew from 12-16 in Alaska and met my grown up cousins I played with back then. Get these different names-Questa, Alita and Siena. They are the sweetest young ladies and my aunt is very irritated with them because none of her 5 children have had any children yet. Her oldest Amanda(who was not there) is close to my age and Questa and Alita are around Melissa's age and their son Barton(not there either) is just days younger than Matt. Siena is in her last year at college. A few brief introductions as their frenzy began and then we had to leave ourselves to get dressed.

The wedding was at a remote lodge in the mountains. It was outdoors next to the river. My cousin that got married is a Navy Seal so he was in uniform and so was 3 of his 4 groomsmen. It was a beautiful setting I got a wonderful seat for picture taking. They had a nice dinner. Needless to say it was not and LDS wedding. There was lots of wine and champagne and beer. So it became quite a party later on but Kylee caught the bouquet. They had a DJ and most of my girls danced and my cousins danced with my girls and they all enjoyed the girls a lot. I have another cousin Brandy that I met a couple of years ago when we went up to Washington the first time. She likes her wine and the more she has the louder and louder she gets. She has the shyest most softspoken husband you would ever meet. It is so funny. She told everyone he was a trained dancer. His mom was a dance teacher and he has had dance lessons from 5 to 21. My cousins wanted him to dance he just chewed the side of his finger and shook his head. It was the most remarkable thing you could learn about him. The wedding was great and then kind of rowdy. We left when it was getting to be enough of it for us. The funniest thing I have ever heard Kelsea say was that she was "comtemplating" "falling" in the river so that the Navy Seals could rescue her. She said "you know it would be good training for them" So that was the running joke for her and Amber for the night. "Are you ready to fall in the river" So there was no falling in the river but we heard Sunday that one of my cousins buddies fell off the roof of the lodge. Now only a drunk person could do that. Sheesh.

Sunday we went back to my Aunt and Uncles house. My cousin and his new wife came back and hung out then packed their bags so they could go to their honeymoon the Bahamas. My uncle was even jealous of sending them there. We were suppose to leave that afternoon. I got really tired about the time to leave. My uncle told me he wanted us to stay and everyone was going to just chill. My mom had work on Monday but she sounded like she wanted to stay so we stayed and since many of the people that were at their house were gone there was room for us. 3 girls and I stayed in their RV. My mom and the 2 oldest stayed in the house. My cousin Tracy gave me swimsuit and we got in their hot tub. That was nice. We had great food and visited more with my cousins and aunts and uncle. We left after breakfast and are finally home this evening. It was interesting because my mom made it sound like I booted her from driving her car-I did not. But after Amber started driving on Friday she drove my mom everywhere her car went. Amber drove her all the way home too. My mom got on my nerves a little bit so I suppose her own car was a good idea because it was not that bad.

Away we go

We are leaving for Washington hopefully at noon to go to my cousins wedding. I will get to see more family I haven't seen since we lived in Alaska. It is about 70 degrees where we are going. I plan on taking lots of pictures. Maybe someday you will get to see the pictures I take.

Beautiful day!

So we had the nasty storm early in the day yesterday. No tornadoes are awful damage. My neighbors new gazebo blew over. Mine is in a really protected area so it has never done that. Today is beautiful! It is in the low 90s and will be tomorrow too.

Happy news of the day-3 kids went to dentist. No cavities! And they were told not to brush their teeth so vigorously. That's a switch. On the way home I wanted to go to this new store next to Kohls called Joe's a sporting goods store because I wanted to see if that had some really cute flip flops in my size that were on sale. Coolest thing EVER for me. NEVER happens! They had only 2 pairs left and the first one and only pair I thought they had at first was MY SIZE. Size 11 are really hard to find in shoes that I like. Most of the time I look forlornly at shoes because they are rarely a size I can wear or if they are they don't fit right because my feet are ridiculously wide as well. So that was nearly a retail miracle. That made my day.

What didn't make my day was going to the car shop to fix the retarded blinker and my burned out bulbs in the car. I went late in the day and they want to keep the car overnight. I am carless. I hate being carless. But I realized I would be fine if they got it done early enough tomorrow. I can still get ready for the trip. I will survive and the church is an easy bike ride away for activity days and YW today. It is not the end of the world. I am slow at switching gears though-not car gears ,just rerouting myself to the unexpected.

I finished my first Jane Austen book Persuasion. I liked it. I am going to read Sense and Sensibilty next. I am still plugging at the dejunking the junk piles with my errand running and appointments.

Lee Joe put in an 18 hour day yesterday. Man he is a work-a-holic but he is trying to make his time really worth it down there. It is like 110 degrees with humidity and some nasty big biting horseflies.

My sister is having a little bit of difficulty adjusting to being away from everyone again. She got really sick from the heat when they moved into their new place. David is happy as can be though. He knows the whole town almost.

Stormy day

We are so lucky here that it hardly ever storms in the summer. This summer has been pretty quiet and it gently rained yesterday a little bit. It is super windy right now and dark and gloomy. It was clear and sunny an hour ago. It is trying to thunderstorm so our big dog keeps barking. A storm blew through at about 3 this morning. He told us all about it so I had to go turn the TV on for him so he could sleep.

I am doing better. I am sure some of my issue was anemia and it gets me kind of down easily. I am taking all my vitamins. I exercised yesterday and on Saturday later and so I am coming out of it.

Kylee went to the eye doctor yesterday and needs glasses. She is nearsighted. It will be about 3 weeks before she gets them. I have 3 in glasses now.

Of course it is hard to tell what I have been doing the last few weeks. It is time for regular house cleaning and there are loads of laundry again. But I am tackling all the junk spaces and that is getting better. My niece Ashlee was over yesterday and Hannah's little friend Christopher so there was a lot of playing going on yesterday.

So I still need to get some pictures posted.

the bumpy road

So here is when things get bumpy. I miss my husband. I miss my sister. So I am OK then I am not OK. I couldn't get a hold of Lee Joe until pretty late yesterday and didn't talk to long. And then today he had to cut things short and missed talking to two of the girls and didn't call back. Hannah has been missing her dad and as a result has had 2 meltdowns. The 2nd one was in the middle of night and I already couldn't sleep. I am pretty sure the full moon is doing it's job. And then she was in bed with me and that child is the most restless sleeper and needless to say there was very little sleeping going on and a lot of tossing and turning. My niece went to church with us for first time so there was no getting out of going even though it was a nice idea. I did get a nap to make up for it today and I actually made a real dinner.

My sister got to Texas with all of David''s family out of town at a Purina convention is Boston. And their house they were going to rent was far from ready. But it sounds like it was not a good place to live really so another house in town was on the market. They managed to get out of the lease they signed on the other house and get most of their money back so they can live in the new house but with no utilities turned on over the weekend they have to wait to actually settle in. But they have a nicer house now.

Lee Joe will be getting more hours this next week making the trip down there a little more worth it. He was concerned this week that he wasn't getting enough hours but I guess that changes with their location this next week.

I am done kidsitting. I have super cleaned our living room on Saturday. The oldest 2 went and saw the 2nd Chronicles of Narnia movie. They really liked it. I think Kelsea loved it. She wants to see it again and now she finally wants to read the books which I have from when I was a teenager.

We are going to Washington for a wedding next weekend and I just found out tonight that I have a parking light out on one side of the car and a headlight out on the other. And the blinker that is tempermental when it decides to work is hyperactive. I guess I need to get that fixed before Friday. At least I will be busy this week so maybe I won't be to bothered by everything. We have appointments and a trip to get ready for. I am going with my mom but I am hoping she doesn't back out at the last minute and I am hoping if she goes she won't be difficult. I wish I had something funny to say but I am still a little to down to be funny.

A breather and then

So after 6 straight days of nonstop cleaning and moving and moving and cleaning. I needed a rest. So Weds would have been my day of rest but I still had running around to do since I didn't get to that stuff for those 6 days. But I was hammered still. Something was wrong with my right hand and wrist along with the aches and pains. Thursday I did not do much. I watched 2 movies-Miss Potter(I loved that one) and August Rush-it was very good and the girls have wanted to watch that one over and over which surprises me. Friday I was down in the dumps most of the day and then around 4 I rebounded and folded laundry then super cleaned my room. It needed it! I got rid of a pile magazines and all the stuff that does not belong in there but has found it's way there and I even repaired some clothes and stuffed animals that have been in there as well for awhile. I am still kid-sitting for my friend until tonight or tomorrow and House sitting ended Tuesday night. We went to the pool Tuesday night and Kelsea took the 4 girls to the pool yesterday. Amber had friends over to watch Enchanted yesterday afternoon. Kelsea went to her friends house this week so it has felt a little more like summer for everyone. Then one of them had to bring up that summer is half over. One of the girls said seeing the school supplies at Wal-mart made her ill.

I will post pictures again soon. I will hopefully continue my quest to purge the dirt and disorder from my home. And when the office gets tackled again and it is a presentable space it will be a job well done. Of course I plan on finishing the unfinished projects around here as well and that hasn't started yet. Anyways purge purge purge!

the pics

Over 100 drum majors from the northwest. Can you see Amber?

They were a lot of fun to watch in that big group.

A clean bedroom floor and new play area-Look you can walk through these two spaces. Of course they don't look quite like that today.

Our hung up bikes-more for Lee Joe to see. The well packed moving van. A lot of the high stuff like the chairs got a rope tied around them. Just enough room left for bikes and a lawn mower. David padded the aquarium before they left. I inherited all their fish-minus the two that jumped the bucket and committed suicide. I need to take some to the fish store because our tank has too many fish with theirs. I lost my giant snail yesterday. How do you know when a giant snail is sick? It is just dead now. That was before the new fish arrived.

Today I went to the piano teacher's house with all the kids and we swept their walk way and back patio. Cleaned up all the pine cones under their 4 pine trees and I trimmed the trees some. Lee Joe was suppose to do that someday but he is not here to do it so I did what I could and with a bunch of complaining and squealing girls(at spiders and ear wigs) we filled up about 8 bags I have some small logs for firewood I guess. Ice cream cones when we were done was their reward. I am still very very tired.

And Lee Joe's update is he is working almost 10 hours a day. He is sharing a room with 3 other guys-maybe 4 now. He is in Westmorland Ca. It is mostly desert and palm trees. He is looking into a gold mine there. He went to a ward there and someone told him something about it and is going to get him an application so he can find out if it is worth trying for. He is going to see what kind of opportunity that might be but he doesn't like it there and if he were to work there it would have to be great pay so he can come home and visit. We are having a hard time keeping in touch by phone. It is a very complicated situation but I have set him up with an e-mail account and he can access our blogs so that might ease some pressure off our phone usage at least until we can get a better thing going.

OWWWW

My body hurts, I am VERY tired. We were all up to 1am so we could say goodbye to Melissa, David and Kailyn. Dylan is already in Texas. The trash truck came early today and we missed it. That is so bad for us! I think it could be time for some rest.

busy busy busy

I have found ways to fill my time in Lee Joe's absence. I have not stopped since he left. I do have pictures to post and Lee Joe is now a reader of my blog. So this will be a good way to keep him up to date.

I have found a place to hang all the bikes for the summer. I have created a playroom for the girls-that was a big job. You couldn't walk through that part of the garage a little over a month ago. We have cleaned Autumn and Hannah's room and put away clothes that we had in laundry baskets in my room for way to long. I have super cleaned the family room. Washed all the base boards, windowsills and floors and shampooed the carpet and put all toys in there in the playroom.

I spent the better part of the past two days loading Melissa's moving truck, directing the guys and cleaning her house. I have very good spatial skills when it comes to packing a truck. It was like playing tetris with boxes. Since I am an oldest child I am really good at being bossy and taking charge around my people that are related to me. They were really OK with my bossiness. And since all our men around here are afflicted with a form of ADD-my brother and David were medicated as children. I used my experience of keeping them focused "we need the washer and dryer" mentioned 10 times. "We need the sofa" 15 times "now we need the freezer" 8 times. It got done and mostly loaded before I left. The next day there is still little stuff all over. I pulled all the little stuff out of the garage. I showed David we can put stuff in the rabbit hutch and we get real creative getting all the little odds and ends in the truck. It couldn't have fit their stuff more perfectly. My kids helped clean until one by one they hid in the closet under the stairs either to avoid work(Amber and Kelsea) or just because it is a cool closet(the rest of them). I buffered the conflict between my mom and David. My mom can create conflict for no reason. She was annoyed with him and it was all very silly. I came and she felt she could leave once I got there I guess. So now I am realizing how tired and rambly I am but needless to say by tomorrow I will probably feel really lonely because my sister will be gone and we are so comfortable around each other and I will feel pretty alone at that point. My mom is to off her rocker to compensate. Now she has more fuel to her fire to complain about David for a long time. I am the only one that will be here to hear it besides my brother and he doesn't listen to it. I got some fantastically large and colorful bruises on one of my legs for all my hardwork.

When I picked up the little girl we have been taking turns watching from my friend last night, she offered her piano music to Amber to borrow. Amber came home with tons of music and has been playing piano when she gets near it and some of the pieces are just beautiful. Amber loves to play church music and there is this gigantic binder full of different arrangements of hymns and they are beautiful. She is having her first week of summer this week.

He is out of here

So Portland didn't work out. We were both disappointed in that because it was alot of things positive. He left for Southern California this afternoon. He was suppose to leave Weds night but there was too much left to do. He left today very stressed and so was I. He has already had few car issues once he has hit Ely. Mostly overheating and a messed up tire. Very fixable. Hopefully he gets down South in good shape. He will be there 6-8 weeks. He was driving me nuts before he left with all sorts of running around. Even after he left he called and asked me to get some money for gas for this guy that is helping him out. I was about ready to pull my hair out. With him gone in the red car it leaves Amber carless. We are both kind of mourning the absence of the car already.

When Lee Joe leaves I usually get all motivated. I don't know if it is because I can just keep doing what I am doing late into the night or if I just like surprising him when I get home, I don't know. It is probably both. I am working on turning the back half of the garage into a playroom for the girls. I have been watching the daughter of a friend of mine this week. She is the same age as Autumn but is a little less mature. But she has played and played and played with the girls nonstop for 3 days now. A friend of ours is taking her for a few days and then we get her back so I kind of feel like I can super clean the family room in her absence. When she is here all the girls get really sloppy even with all the toys in the garage. Now I need to get motivated to lose some weight.

I am not really belly aching here. I am just stating the statistics of this week and coming weekend then I will make my point-So I am pet/house sitting for our piano teacher who lives about 3 miles away until Tuesday next week(our piano lessons are free because he likes that we pet sit for him in the summer in return). It isn't far but with the stupid stop lights on the way there and the traffic it can 15 to 20 minutes to get there. A daily visit is required. I am babysitting again here shortly until Thursday. And my husband just left for a long time and my sister is leaving around Monday. I have to teach on Sunday. I was trying to tell a friend of mine that was asking me for a favor to teach on Sunday(She knows I am already teaching last hour) that I wasn't sure I could help her out. And she wasn't quite getting it. I am trying to learn still how to say "no I can't" with no explanation. Just trying to say"that doesn't work for me" and leaving it at that. I haven't quite done it yet. There are a lot of times I can be supermom but it is OK sometimes not to be.

I get to go watch what Amber learned at Drum Major camp in the morning. One of the head director people was impressed with how loud she is. She is REALLY loud. Kind of hard to miss. Hopefully I show up before the show starts. Last year we were told the wrong time and it was almost over when I got there. I never saw what Amber learned. I might get some pictures this time too. I am sitting here and it is late. I am rambling because Lee Joe is not here to hear me ramble. I ramble to the vacuum of the bloggissphere. Invented word. Before I invent a whole new dictionary of words, I should go to bed.

Life with a Lay

Do you ever feel upon occasion that you might be tumbling inside a dryer? When it comes to income and my husband's manner of making decisions and info from people he knows well and other little journeys. We are in something on the inside of a dryer. He was going to go to Seattle to help my uncle with his driveway for a week and then the California job showed up. And then there was an ad in town for an Excavating Supervisor in town. He talked to the guy months ago about the same position. He is set to go to Southern California for a really great paying job offered to him and today he got information on a job in Portland (6 hours away) that pays twice as much as the California job. It was info passed on from one person to another to another. So NOW he is waiting to hear from the guy with the Portland job to see if he can get that. If not the California job is still set to go. I am in dysfunction sitting here trying to get his laundry done so he can leave who knows what day and in what direction but I suppose this is a nice problem to have if it means being able to provide well for us for at least a few months because that is as long as these jobs last but maybe they will bring more opportunities. That is what living with my husband has been like for years and years now. It is not good for me though because I prefer consistency and he is consistently inconsistent. Now I can't say that word anymore because it just sounds wrong in my head. So anyway we tumble on.

So funny

Comment of the week. At the water park we are all sitting together on a little grass hill. One of the older girls is laying on her stomach with her arms under her head. Youngest daughter tells older daughter "Ewww, you have whiskers in your armpit!" We start LAUGHING and youngest daughter asks what's so funny.

Everyone is leaving

More sorrow for me. My sister and her family is leaving next week. And now Lee Joe is leaving for far southern California(the guy called it Mexico). He will be gone Weds night and it is suppose to be 6weeks long.

Well

We got wet on Thursday. I think it hit 103. It was nice to be someplace wet. My sister and I visited all day while the kids did their thing all together. I love that my kids get along so well when we do these things. We sunscreened everyone so well we had some really minor sunburn spots on some if us. Nothing painful. One year I sunscreened the kids not so well. One of the girls had bad sunburn under their eyes and on the sides of their nose. We also didn't do it often enough. But we did great this year.

The 4th was uneventful for the most part for me. But Lee Joe and Amber and 2 of her friends "rafted" the Boise river on a giant inner tube. They had 5 people on the tube. They had a nice float. We cleaned some house and recovered from our long day at the waterpark. Later Lee Joe took the 5 girls and my niece down the greenbelt on bikes to the park where they were launching fireworks. My sister and her husband and I dropped off the 2 youngest and their bikes at the greenbelt and then watched the fireworks at a less busy location-at the mall. One other truck was there and he even remembers the Boise River Festival days of watching there. So we had a great far away view and didn't hit any traffic on the way out. We picked up the two youngest once they got back to where we dropped them off and after that was a little firework launching since it was already midnight. Nobody got to bed until after one. My niece stayed the night and the 4 little girls have played together all day long. I have not done anything worthwhile today. Tonight the rest of the fireworks are getting lit off. Tomorrow we are having our big guy birthday party get together. So there is our rundown of the past few days. I did not take one picture. Shame on me.

The weather the last two days has been perfect summer weather but it won't last. It was only a high of 90 today.

We are getting in a monster batch of raspberries right now. Everyone can envy us.
But don't envy me for being the mom of teenagers. We had a little teenage drama yesterday as well.

Too hot

I had hoped it wouldn't happen with the slow warm up but it is HOT! I don't like really hot at all. Yesterday it was hot with humid. I like humid with hot less. Today is Hot I don't want to go anywhere. Tomorrow is suppose to be 102. I think our plan is to go to roaring springs water park tomorrow with my sister and my niece. The girls get out of summer school early tomorrow. It sounds like the perfect day to get wet all day.

Finally

When I read a book, all is lost. I read until 2am last night. I still had 50 pages to go. There was a thunderstorm at 6am so Buddy, our big dog, was barking at the thunder. He woke everyone but Kelsea. I had to be somewhere at 9am so I did it to myself. I was a tad grumpy today and here I sit after 11 blogging. Silly me. Anyways. I did finish the book with endless interruptions and was disappointed that the book ended the way it did. The author died before she finished the book and the "editor remarks" at the end were unsatisfactory. I sound like someone from the book now. But reading at the end of the book it said there was a movie done of it and how they ended the movie was satisfactory. So now I need to rent Wives and Daughters from Netflix. It was a Masterpiece Theatre mini series so it would be like getting 3 separate movies. I love the internet though for finding out these things! I might read more of her books. Most of the other stuff she has written is much shorter. So that is my book analysis. Goodnight.

Feeding the Jane Austen fad-

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