games

No More Games until MIDNIGHT.  K.

Joys in Life

A Hot Tub!!

There is nothing better in life than a fresh, hot tub.  You climb in and soak away all of your troubles. 

Believe it or not, this morning I took a fresh, hot bath.  It was wonderful.  I used a bath fizzy that my niece, Katrina, had made for me.  It was wonderful.  I may do it again tomorrow.

Dear, dear Dell:

God saw you getting tired and a cure was not to be,

so he put his arms around you and whispered "Come With Me".

With tearful eyes we watched as we saw you pass away,

Although we love you dearly, we could not make you stay.

A golden heart stopped beating, hard working hands at rest.

God broke our hearts to prove to us He only takes the BEST.

Baby, It's Cold Outside.

I typed this a few weeks ago when I had to go to the doctor and it was so so soooooo cold.

It is 3 degrees outside and I have to go to the doctor. Life is not so good. The cough is still here, and Bear is still trying to beat me up constantly. Actually, I am not considered a risk in daylight hours, just at night. Oh well, it could be worse. It could be getting better instead of worse.

BUT…. I have a smile on my face so life could not be better today.

Now I just wish I had scraped the car yesterday when it was not frozen. Just could not face the cold. Should have... should have.

Have a great day. Do something that makes you grin!

Life, the more the merrier.

What I want to do with my life:  It is 7:30 at night.  All I want to do is get in bed and watch TV.  But that is not part of my goal from yesterday.  Yesterday I set the goal of putting together 3 books.  And I did not succeed.  So, I am going to get in the tub and take a hot bath with a good book, get into bed before midnight, and sleep the night away.  When I awake in the morning, I am going to get up and start the day.  and accomplish something.
I am not going to say wish me luck, cause luck is not what I need.  Please grant me the energy to accomplish the goals I have set forth for myself.  Then, life can be good.

Alarm Clocks

I hate alarm clocks.   You set an alarm.  Then when it goes off, it interrupts what you are doing that, at the time, seems much, much more important that the reason for the alarm.

Our Future Together

I went onto the Brave Girls Club blog  today, the topic was A Month of Miracles – Day 1.  Melody’s Miracle she was thankful for is The Power of Writing Things Down.  I took the liberty of pulling a few of her thoughts for my blog.  To read her entire post, go here: http://bravegirlsclub.com/blog/.
“The end of the year is a crazy, busy and often stressful time. It is a hard time for lots of us. I remember well my own  long string of difficult years….where each of them ended with the holidays, and all of the mixed emotions attached to them. Something that has always always always been wonderful…year after year, no matter how hard the year had been….was to really and truly look the last year over. Look it over, up and down, side to side, in and out. Look for the miracles that made it so that I was and am still breathing in and out…still having the opportunity of another day. Still learning, still growing, still here. Sometimes we forget all of crazy things that happened to help us along….all of the “coincidences”, all of the things that just somehow worked out, all of the people who showed up just in time. All of the friendships made and the changes made and the progress made. Our days are filled with these kinds of miracles. The end of the year is a great time to reflect on all of that. I would like to share some of mine with you, and I hope you will share too. Our stories are so much more healing to each other than we could ever know….so please open your heart, your mind and your memory bank in the coming month as we seek out and share the each other’s miracles…….
Here’s the miracle I’m thankful for today:….THE POWER OF WRITING THINGS DOWN.
I am constantly in awe at the power of putting ink to paper and having faith in what we’ve written down. It is as if an army of miracle makers is sitting on each of our shoulders, waiting to put circumstances together that bring our deepest goals and desires to fruition. We are suddenly called to action by the deepest voices of our gut…and when we keep the faith in the words that we wrote…miracles happen. Miracles don’t always happen fast…..but they always happen exactly when they are supposed to, and always just in time. I just found a journal that is a few years old….and it reminded me that I really need to know what I want out of life or life will just keep happening. We’ve got to write stuff down. I typed out an entry at the end of this post.
An example? I’m sharing this because I want you to know that I know what it feels like to be in a place where you just want to be ok. I have been there….so much of the reason we started BGC. Because I know what it’s like to be there…I know I needed to know that I could get out of that state of mind. I felt so lost…felt so much like my best years were over….Here’s an excerpt from one of my journals not so long ago….while trying to work my way out of a very difficult years-long funk…..trying to figure out how to clean up all of my life’s messes, how to be happy again, how to dream again, how to hope again, how to trust again…..it all started with I WANT TO MAKE ROOM FOR:…and guess what? Over the months…it has happened. I got there. I wrote it down first.
I want to make room for happiness, bliss, joy, light. – I want all of that to take up so much rom that there is room for nothing else. I want to make room for fun & adventure & new experiences & friends. I want to make room for forgiveness & trust & healing. I want to make room for more goodness, which means I must de-clutter, remove and eliminate everything…every feeling everything limitation that is no longer necessary or constructive in my life. I want to make room for new ideas & beauty & appreciation & creativity. I want to make room for fun outings & projects. I want to make room for making my home beautiful & homey. I want to make room for security, and trust that the security is real and not fleeting. I want to make room for love, absolute unconditional love. I want to make SO much room to be able to give love to others, especially my children. I want to make huge amounts of room for the truth, so that nothing but the truth fits. I want to make room for God, a room that is always open, a special room where nothing else can come in, a room where He dwells, always, where I can always find Him and He can always find me. I want to make room for writing, and understanding why it has been so very difficult and scary to write. I want to make room for carefree, happy days, for happiness, for fun and for new memories. Yes, I want to make room for NEW memories instead of holding on to the old memories. I want to make room for serving others, and sharing what I know and have with others – and I want to make room for letting others teach, share & even serve me. I want to make room for new definitions of success, happiness and wealth. I want to make room for new opportunities that I never thought existed, or maybe never even knew existed. I want to make room to see the miracles and blessings all around me. I want ot make room for peace – safety. I want to choose solitude out of choice rather than fear and desperations. I want to make room for whatever I was born on this earth to do or be. I want to make room for experiencing more foods, more art, more places – but even more, I want to make room for doing this every day at home with the people that I love. I want to make room for my spirit, every hour of every day.
(typed out from a handwritten journal, 2 years ago.)”
This message touched my soul.  So much that I HAD to leave a message, which I have added below.  What made me want to add this to my blog is the fact that, even though nearly every message hits a part of my life, this is just what I had been telling myself all week.  That I needed to reevaluate my life and my choices and where I was headed.  These ladies are truly inspired.  We are truly fortunate to count these inspired ladies as our biggest cheerleaders.
When I was at Brave Girls I was “the one writing in the journal”. Journal writing has always been important to me. When I went to Brave Girls I had 2 journals at home that were long lost, actually 3. We stopped at Wal-Mart to get photos and the composition books were on sale for 25 cents. So off the deep end I went. I probably bought 30 extra because I could not go to camp without a journal.(Plus, I tend to get carried away sometimes.)I even passed on a few to ladies in our vehicle who liked the idea. Little did I know what was in store and what a beautiful new Journal I would be given. I am not even sure what happened to that original book.
I have always blamed my lack of journal writing on someone else. Well, now I don’t have that excuse. And I am still no better at it. For some reason, the desire has not overridden the “do it later”!
Melody, this past week when I missed going home for Thanksgiving because of the weather, I took stock in my life, what I like and what I don’t like. This past year I have been existing. Finding joy only when I was with another person, like I cannot be happy by myself.
Today I took a drive all by myself. I stopped at MickyD’s and got a Happy Meal and Coke, then just drove. I have not done that in about a year. This time last year we were not even certain I was going to survive for the new year, as I was scheduled for surgery. Then one day I decided that I had to survive cause there were too many people who would not make it without me. Funny how some choices change a lot of lives.
I am getting off track. I love that you are able to go back and see how you were doing a year ago. It is one of the things that I admire about you.
This past week when I re-evaluated my choices I made some definite plans. I am looking forward to a wonderful life with the daughter, my sisters, my brothers, and my Mom, plus all of the nieces and nephews. We are again planning a future together, places to see and wonderful things to do.
Most of all, I am once again setting up a craft room. I once had a wonderful room to craft. I had a big house with a big room with nothing in it. I could set something up and never move it. It was wonderful.
Life is good. The future is better. Find the thing that makes you **giggle** and go for it.

Happy Halloween

I initially made this Pumpkin for the Mod Podge challenge, but when Life ran over me, i asked my sister, Christine (http://changeofheart56.blogspot.com/), to find another place where I could share this cute little fella.  He is just too cute to resist.  I am so excited that she found this Halloween Extravaganza in which I could participate.  Click here to see many, many other talented crafters and what they have to share.



Now, for what I did…. First of all, I probably cheated because I purchased the plastic pumpkin at the thrift store for a buck.


Initially I had thought to use the back side painted with chalkboard paint because I had seen that on web sites and it sounded like so much fun.  Then, Christine and I sat down to paint our pumpkins and the chalkboard paint was not so handy, so I went with orange.  Here he is:



Since the pumpkin is plastic and craft paint would probably not stick, I Mod podged (yes, that is a verb) the entire pumpkin.  Since I did not have any orange paint and did not want to leave the house, I mixed red and yellow.  This was great because it gave the paint that shaded look.  While in Disneyland a few weeks ago my daughter purchased a Mickey Hat for me to wear at Boo at the Zoo at Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City next weekend and I plopped it onto the guy, not realizing it would match so well.
It is so wonderful, that I plan to carry him when we attend Boo At The Zoo next weekend.

Hamlet

Today was quite the day. First I was out of bed before 8:30 in the morning today, which is quite unusual for me.  Then I took Bear to Logan for a sleep-over and drove semi-frantically back home.  You see, it was 10:15 when I dropped Bear off and I needed to be in Park City to pick up Trish at 12:00 then we needed to be back to the U of U campus for the play at 2:00.

We saw Hamlet.

It was wonderful, although I must admit to falling asleep, I don’t think I missed much because the story still made sense to me.  Anyway, it is full of marrying the brother-in-law (can you say ick), shipping off the son, son is certain father was murdered by Brother-in-law and returns, accuses mother of marrying husband’s murderer, son murder’s mother’s advisor thinking it is brother-in-law, mother’s advisor is son’s girlfriend’s father, son is shipped off because of the murder, son’s girlfriend goes insane over death of father and falls into stream and drowns, brother of girlfriend returns only to find her dead, son returns to call out brother-in-law, instead girlfriend’s brother calls out son, son and girlfriend’s brother have sword fight, brother-in-law (now married to mother) offers son a large pearl if he draws the first blood, boys fight, son draws first blood, brother-in-law drops pearl into wine and tries to get son to drink but he refuses, the boys continue to fight, son skewers brother of girlfriend, mother drinks wine in which brother-in-law dropped pearl except it was poison, mother dies of poison, son skewers brother-in-law… and it think that was the end.

Now are you appropriately confused.  So was I.  To make matters worse, every young man had dark hair and wore a dark suit.  They could at least have different colored wigs or different colored clothing.  Or maybe they could wear name tags.

I did enjoy the play.  I will go again if given the chance.  And I encourage you go attend if you can.  The only thing I would do different is that I would read the cliff notes before attending the play.  That way I would be a lot less confused.

Flood….

It is flooding again at my house. And before you ask….

No, the Mantua dam has not broken…

No, a pipe has not broken.

No, we did not have a huge rainstorm.

The neighbor let the water run too long and it has flooded me again. Thankfully Bear wanted to go outside so the basement got no water.

This is between the two garages. It is a river running downhill.

Here is the puddle next to the basement. It is over an inch deep. I cannot get into the back yard without stepping into water.

Bear wanted to walk with me into the back yard, but stopped when he saw the puddle. Bear hates water. A lot. If you spray him with a hose, he will run away.

This is the start of the river between the two garages. This is where I plan to build a dam. Thanks Grandpa. I would not understand the theory about a dam.

And here is my waterfall at the end of the river between the two garages. This is at the front of the garage.

This has been going on periodically most of the summer. It was not so concerning before because it did not get into the basement. Over the past three weeks I have gotten flooded 3 times. It flooded while I was on vacation and I came home to musty, sour laundry on the floor and lots of wet rugs. Thankfully it did not get as far as the family room.

The clothes are now washed and the room no longer smells of mold. I am so thankful that the carpet did not need to be pulled up because it is glued down.

I guess my Truth Teller is here for me today. Because there was noone else home to turn the water off. And I don't want to clean up another mess.