No news is good news... right?

Yesterday morning, we awoke to find our mailbox completely missing! How random is that? No other mailboxes appear to have gone missing on our street and I'm just curious how this happened and why? The good news is, I didn't get any bills in the mail yesterday. lol

The old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be.

I feel pretty clueless right now! lol

I've been really bummed because my dvd making software is on the fritz, so my "annual dvd" that we usually give our parents/grandparents for Christmas is STILL delayed. And nothing has changed regarding this. One day, in Ryan's "free time" *hysterical laughter at the thought of Ryan EVER having "free time"*, he's gonna help me wipe the computer clean and reinstall everything, including our dvd making software and hopefully that will do the trick. If it doesn't, I'll be a bit upset. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Until then, I've been making sure to not tape over any home movies that we haven't burned to dvd yet. I knew we had burned everything up to Rori being born (except DisneyWorld... that project is going to have to wait until I'm otherwise caught up).

Just for fun, I thought it would be fun to put a home movie on for Rori today. I was thinking to myself, "Too bad I don't have her videos on dvd yet." And what do I find? A dvd that has our home movies up through January 2007! What?!? When did I do that? How did I do that? How do I have NO remembrance of this? But there it is - with titles and menu pages, too. WEIRD! But I'm grateful. :) I'm still a year behind and I still can't make my now way late annual dvd. But I do have slightly more accomplished than I originally thought. That's something. :)

Wacky Weather

Once school got out today, Spring Break began!  But you wouldn't have thought that by looking at our weather today...

7:00am:  I get up, wake Cadi up to get ready for school, go to let the dog out and see that it's snowing!  At first I think, "Cool, flurries!  That'll last for a whole 5 minutes."

8:00am: Still snowing... and by 8:30am it looks like this:









They didn't cancel school because even though the flakes were sticking to BBQs and picnic tables, it wasn't sticking to streets or sidewalks.  So, Cadi went off to school. :)

After awhile, it stops snowing and soon it's all melted away.  There are periods of beautiful blue sky with brilliant sun and periods of grey clouds with rain.  After lunch, I went out to visit a sister in our ward.  On my way to pick up one of my counselors, it begins to hail!  And immediately following, the sun was so bright that I needed to put on my sunglasses!  It's been going back and forth like that all day. 

Just a few minutes ago, I was cleaning up after dinner and heard hail against the kitchen window.  I went to look out the sliding door and watched as a wave of hail passed from our house out across the park.  Then it hovered at the end of the park for awhile and started to come back!  I grabbed my camera and took the following pics:





And this video:


And again, just a few moments later, this was the same view:









When I zoomed in on the playground, you can easily see the hail still on the ground with the sun shining... plus, I just really thought this pic was nice. ;)



Really wacky weather today... but fun and interesting! :)

Oops!

I am certain that I'm about to be named "the worst mother in the world" by a certain 8 year-old.

Cadi is taking an after school magic class for just a few days. I totally forgot and told the Visiting Teaching Coordinator to come over today so we can work on the routes which need to be done this week. That means I can't go pick Cadi up from magic class so I had to call the school to give her the message to come home on the bus like normal since I can't go pick her up later.

She's not gonna be happy.

And I feel especially bad because last night I had a small pile of clothes for her to put away but had forgotten to mention it to her, but I noticed today that she had put them away without me even asking her to. It totally had made my day to realize that she had seen her clothes folded and was proactive enough to just go put them away without prompting.

And this is how I reward her. I'm very unimpressed with myself right now.

Easter in an Egg Shell

We had a really nice weekend.  The Easter Bunny made his visit Friday night, so we started Saturday morning looking through our baskets, hunting for eggs, and eating chocolate. :)





Rori got this little toy cell phone in her basket, it is by far her favorite thing from Easter, she won't put it down! lol  She held it and "made calls" all during her egg hunt.  It's a Disney Princess phone and so some of the princesses say "hi" on it, including one that says, "Hi, it's me, Aurora!"  So it's perfect! :)





After our egg hunt at home, we headed over to the church where there was a brunch and another egg hunt for the kids.  Rori had gotten the hang of finding Easter Eggs and had also realized that there was candy inside of them, so she was eager to get her basket filled!  There was a limit of 12 eggs per child but after all the little kids had their 12, there were more, so they were let loose to grab as many as they wanted.  She got away with 17 eggs! 







One of the YW, who is also our neighbor and friend, helped Rori so that I could take the pics.  Thanks! :)

Cadi was harder to capture on film.  To start, I was holding onto Rori so that she wouldn't 1) eat all the candy out of her eggs, 2) run into the "big kid field" and try to grab more eggs, or 3) run off into the parking lot and become a scrambled egg!  Also, it was a large area and of course Cadi decided to do most of her looking on the FAR SIDE of the field!  And when she was close, she was running pretty quick to get her eggs!  So, here is one decent pic of her... do you love the lollipop stick hanging out of her mouth? lol



Having gotten all the eggs and candy out of our system, we were ready to truly celebrate Easter on Sunday by dressing up, attending church, singing hymns, talking about our Savior, and spending time with family.

This was the first time I had the girls and I "matching".  We're all going with the black/white daisy theme.  The girls had cute pink accents so I had my nails painted to match... not that you can see that though. ;)









Did you notice that Rori was still holding onto that phone? lol 

After church, we headed up to my aunt's house and had dinner with them.  It's always fun to visit with them.  Here's a pic I took of my cousin with her hubby and their sweet little girl. :)



It was a wonderful weekend!  I hope you had a great Easter as well! :)

Good Friday

Today was a good day. :)


First, Rori and I did some shopping and got some incredible deals. That's always a great way to start a day. lol Then I learned that Beckie's doing well enough that we can actually go out for lunch. Yay! I've had a few calls - just to let me hear my cool new ringtones. Thanks! Cadi had a birthday party to go to and while she did that, Rori and I attended a baptism. What better weekend for a baptism?

Yep, today was a good day. :)

"Keep breathing. That's the key. Breathe." - Gimli (LOTR)

For the first time in my life, I have actually felt a desire for my life to be shorter. I was reading in Alma 12 & 13 and it was talking about how we will one day stand before God and be accountable for our life. In Chapter 13 we are told to not procrastinate the day of our repentance and then to continue to pray always, endure to the end, you know - all that jazz. ;) Anyhow, it got me to thinking that I feel like for the most part, right now I'm doing okay. At least, I'm doing the best I can. I can always do better but I'm really trying to. But I wonder, how long can I keep this up? Somedays are just tiring! Yesterday was one of them. I didn't want the responsibility yesterday. I didn't want to be RS president, I didn't want to have the weight of raising my children with EVERYTHING they'll need in order to be successfull (especially spiritually), I didn't want to have to work hard to take care of my body or my house... I was just tired and wanted to give up!


Thankfully, today I feel better. But as I read last night, I just thought, how long can I keep going before I get too tired (spiritually)? I hope it never happens, that I'm always able to at least give it my best and sincerely try my hardest. I do have a firm testimony of the Gospel and I know that the only thing that could weaken it would be my own choices to be disobedient. And for a moment, I thought, "Gee, I hope I'm taken before I start to to slip."

I have thought MANY times before, that I would like the Second Coming to happen soon. Mostly because of all the awfulness in the world. Whenever I hear about children being abused in any way, I just wish it would end, that the Savior would come and all the evil and wickedness would go away - so no other innocent children would ever be hurt, if nothing else! But this was the first time I actually thought that dying earlier would be better/easier than later. (*Disclaimer: these are nowhere near suicidal thoughts. I simply thought if my natural life ended up being shorter instead of having to endure for another 50-60 years or so, that would be nice! lol)
But don't worry, I'm not desiring that anymore. It was a short thought just because I had been so tired that day and didn't feel quite up to "enduring to the end". Usually, I feel like I'm up for the long haul and I want to just prove that I can do it. For someone who has no desire to run an actual marathon, it's funny that I view it that way. I see this life as a marathon. I want to reach that finish line knowing that I didn't ever give up and that I had earned the reward. And it sure does feel like a marathon some days! lol I guess yesterday I was just on a "Heartbreak Hill", but thankfully not all days are like that and today I feel more like I'm running on level ground. :)