Superpaige's Pad

The Trials of a Busy Mom

Category: Friends (Page 3 of 7)

The more the merrier

August 15, 2012 / / 3 Comments

Things are busy around here. Beds moving, closets getting cleaned out, school supplies being purchased. It’s not your average back to school time. You see, we’ve got Cole leaving for college next week, and that involves a lot of organizing, purchasing, and getting ready. Since he will be living at BYU for most of the year, he won’t be using his room quite so much, so we are moving John into that room. Poor Cole now needs to clean out his closet full of STUFF that he’s been collecting for the past 10 years. Sadly, he doesn’t have any of those nice purging genes (messy parents, both of us), and sorting and organizing are NOT high on his list of talents.

On the other end of the house, we need to vacate John from Jenna’s room. When a girl reaches a certain age, you see, it’s no longer cool to room with your brother. I’m amazed at the amount of legos, star wars figures, stuffed animals, etc, that I have pulled out of that closet.

My trash can is uberfull, and we just took a truckload of bags full of stuff to DI.

Why the rush, you may ask. Well, we are expecting a new addition in the Erickson household. Calm down, calm down. It’s not a baby. We are hosting an exchange student for the school year. Her name is Larissa and she is from Germany. She arrives on Saturday.

You might say we’ve been working up to this decision for a long time, with our short term exchange students from all over. We had a host family coordinator contact us about a year ago, to ask if we would like to host a student. While it wasn’t possible then, when she called again last winter, we thought that we might have the basement finished, and with Cole leaving, that might be a possibility. We chose our top three choices from the profiles we were given, and then didn’t hear much. In April, we found out that our school district only accepts a certain number of students, and they really have to be in the top of their class to come, and none of our picks made the cut. No problem, I thought. WE don’t really NEED that extra stress in our lives. But our coordinator was persistent, and eventually got slots transferred from other schools who were not using them. We picked from a short list again, and eventually we found out that our pick had been accepted, and we would actually be host families for a German girl.

Yes, I did have a little say in her nationality. If I’m going to have someone in my home for that long, I want someone I can actually communicate with, even if it means dusting off my rusty German. We’ve spoken on the phone, and she seems like a really sweet girl. Her English is also very good, so that’s a plus.

She comes in on Saturday. School starts on Tuesday, but we’ll have to try and register her on Monday and hope we can get some classes for her that she likes.

Besides all the cleaning and organizing, which we aren’t loving, we are excited to have her here. Since she’s here for school, not just a ‘vacation’, we won’t feel like we need to entertain her all the time. Hopefully she will be making friend and meeting people, and it will all be a great experience for all of us.

In the meantime, wish me luck. I still have the rest of the closet to clean out, beds to move, carpets to clean, and bathrooms to organize. In addition to that, I kind of promised one little boy I would take him to Seven Peaks SOME time before school starts.

17 Miracles

February 12, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Today was a hard day.

We found out that a dear friend has cancer, and it really shook us hard. They don’t know what kind of cancer it is, or what the treatment plan is yet, but they know from the MRI that it’s in a lot of his body. This man is one of the happiest, friendliest, most helpful, most energetic, generous people I know. Not only is he our neighbor and friend, but he’s our doctor. He’s EVERYONE’s doctor. He makes house calls, answers our medical questions in or out of the office, and he’s a GREAT man. He’s also young and strong (he ran a marathon last year for heaven’s sake!), but he’s been having unexplained back pain for the last 5-6 weeks. His wife, sick of his grumbling, finally said, “Go and get an MRI, for heaven’s sake!” and thank goodness she did. Hopefully now they can figure out what this cancer is and how to treat it.

At church, nobody knew. I don’t know if they just weren’t going to tell people until they knew what they were dealing with, but his wife was there in primary just as happy as ever, conducting junior primary. The Stake Primary was there to do sharing time, as it was ward conference today. Once the Stake Primary presidency started doing their thing, I stepped out into the hall for some reason, and there she was in the hall, with the Relief Society president and another friend, crying. What’s going on? I stepped closer, and one of our friends whispered, “It’s JB. He’s got cancer.” Oh. MY. Goodness. WHAT?

When Senior Primary started, the bishop came in and asked all the kids to please pray for him, and that we would have a special fast in his behalf. By that time, she was in no shape to conduct the meeting, and I stepped in. It’s just so unbelievable.

I feel so helpless to help my friend. I offered, no TOLD her that I would be bringing over dinner one night this week, and we asked what she needed. I think she doesn’t know what she needs, but they are scared. Scared of the unknown, of the worst, of the coming months.

After church we had to get the place straightened up and dinner ready, as we had invited another family over for dinner. We had a delicious dinner of glazed pork chops.

Which, by the way, is a really yummy and easy way to cook pork, and you can find the recipe here.

Later, I decided I wanted to watch the movie 17 miracles.

Bad idea. I knew it was going to be sad. Why did I think that watching a sad movie was a “good idea”?

Cried through the whole thing.

Sigh.

A good cry is some times a good thing, but some days it’s just too much. Right now I need optimism, not melancholy. We all need hope and happiness and helpfulness to support this family. They could use one of those miracles.

Happy Birthday, Jenna!

January 30, 2012 / / 4 Comments

Big party here over the weekend. It’s not every day your little girl turns 11, after all. She wanted a “late night” movie party, so we decided to go with a pajamas and popcorn themed party.

Aren’t those cupcakes SO cute? Love them.

All of her friends came in their pajamas (well, I guess only 10 of them came), and they played a game while I got dinner ready. I had suggested that we have pancakes instead of the traditional pizza, and I think it was a big hit (and cheap, by the way).

I just put out a bunch of toppings, syrups, whipped cream, and fruit, and then kept the pancakes coming. Man, can those girls eat. I couldn’t believe how many pancakes they were putting down. And loud! You get a bunch of normally mild mannered, sweet girls together in a room, and they are transformed into a gaggle of giggling girls.

When they were sufficiently stuffed and the table was similarly syrupy, they adjourned to the family room to pick a movie while Megan and I cleaned up.

We had to pop the popcorn, but didn’t want to be all loud with the air popper, so I just brought out a few microwave popcorn bags.

I kid you not, as soon as those girls smelled popcorn, they wanted some. Seriously? How can you even think about eating another morsel? Oh well, there’s always room for popcorn. They were eating it as fast as we got it popped, and we went through quite a bit of popcorn. Of course, a lot of it ended up on the floor, I’m sure.

They had decided to watch Soul Surfer, and after the girl lost her arm to the shark, all of the girls were going around with only one arm. I looked at them and thought, now that’s weird, why would she have her arm in her sleeve? And she’s doing it too.
Even John was one armed!

Jenna even opened her presents with one arm! They were taking this one armed thing pretty far!

What a hoot!

Thankfully, their arms did grow back for the eating of the cupcakes.

I had actually planned on ice cream with the cupcakes, but by then I couldn’t believe they were still eating anything at all, and the dishwasher was already full and I didn’t want to dirty more dishes (lame Mom excuse, I know, but it’s the truth). I don’t think anyone noticed the lack of ice cream.

Then they went back to watching their movie, and then playing with the new presents and anything else that looked like fun.

At about 9:30, I thought, Why, oh WHY did I let her put 6:00-10:00 on the invitations? But the time passed pretty quickly, and soon I was saying goodbye to girls and sweeping up popcorn and marshmallows and telling my kids to go to bed.

Not the most elaborate or fancy party, but quite a FUN party for one sweet little girl.
Happy Birthday, Jenna! I hope every birthday is as much fun as this one was, and I hope you always have this many fun friends.

The spirit of giving

December 21, 2011 / / 4 Comments

At this wonderful Christmas season, a lot of people are looking for ways to help others. Have you heard about the new “lay-away” pay it forward wonderful people who are going into stores like K-Mart and paying for random people’s lay-away purchases? That is SO wonderful and selfless! I wish I had thought of doing that!

We usually try to do some anonymous giving and help as many people as we can. We had a great experience with our sub-for-Santa families last year , but weren’t doing that as an extended family this year. Instead we took a name off of an ‘angel tree’ that Ryan’s company was sponsoring at work and bought fun presents for a little girl. But I still wished I could do more.

I decided to nominate a couple of families for the B-98.7 Christmas wish

To tell you the truth, I have written to them for about the past three years hoping to get some help for certain families I know, but nothing has come of it. I don’t know if my letters weren’t compelling enough, if the stories weren’t sad enough, or if there were just SO many people submitting stories that there was no way they could help all of them.

So mid week last week, amid all the chaos of concert week, I got a phone call from someone from Toyota Bountiful telling me that they would like to answer not one, but TWO of my letters. But they would like some information. Hmm, I had about an hour before I had to leave for the conference center, but I would do my darndest to find out the kids’ names, ages and sizes, and if they needed coats and/or shoes.

One family has so many ongoing medical bills, there just doesn’t seem to be any left over for fun things like Christmas presents or special Christmas meals. I knew that they wouldn’t be able to help with the real problem–the medical bills–but if they could help with things like groceries and a few gifts for the kids, that would go a long way to saving Christmas for this family.

The other family hasn’t had any huge medical tragedy or horrible event, they just haven’t had enough work to keep up with the bills and they were going through their savings trying to pay for regular things.

My hope was that both families (as well as so many other families I could think of. I could probably write 10 such letters and nominate equally deserving families) would appreciate the surprise and not be embarrassed or ashamed to have some help. So, I set about finding out shoe sizes, clothing sizes, if their kids needed coats or not, and what the kids might be interested in for presents. I enlisted a couple of people to help me without giving anything away.

I got another call the next day from one of the ladies in charge and she said they were going to deliver to family A on Friday, and that Of course she wanted me to be there when they delivered the goodies. I was a little bit worried about this because I seriously don’t know the family very well. I know the dad, but I’ve only met Mom maybe once in person. I called another friend who knew of their situation and who knew them about as well as I do, and asked if she would be willing to get up early on Friday morning and go with me. Bless her heart, she worked it out so she could go.

So Friday morning at 6:20-ish, after quite a late night on Thursday night (both of us were at the conference center for the Tab Choir concert that night, by the way), the two of us met with Shawn Stevens from B98.7, Santa, Mrs. Clause, and a bunch of elves from Toyota Bountiful in the parking lot of the grocery store to pow wow. Then we all drove over to the house. We parked a few houses away, and waited while Erin called the house. We hit a slight snafu when they didn’t answer the phone. I know that not everyone answers their phone before 7 am, so we had to do what we could do make sure they answered. I had my friend Brittany call from her phone. It went straight to voice mail. Darn. She called right back and Mom did answer. “Someone is trying to get a hold of you. We need you to answer your phone.” Not terribly subtle, I know, but you do what you have to do. So, Erin called back and talked to Mom on air about the difficulties of having so many medical bills. You can actually listen to that conversation here, if you want.

As they were talking, Dad walked out the front door to start up his car, and the whole bunch of us were gathered outside the door.
“Whoa!” he said in surprise, “I was just going to go start my car.
Shawn was cool as a cucumber and said, “You’re going to want to go back inside for a few minutes.” And he did.
Soon they got to the part where Erin says, “I think there’s someone at the door,” and there we were at the door, knocking. Teen daughter let us in, and Mom was reluctant to come out of her bedroom because she was in her pajamas (as MOST of us are at this time of morning). But she was assured that this was radio, and no one would see her. It was touching to see Santa and Mrs. Clause give them the presents. I don’t know what was in the bags, but they brought three bags full of groceries and a gift certificate for a free turkey, as well as three large garbage bags full of presents for the kids. They were very surprised and appreciative.

I didn’t take any pictures, but I REALLY wish I had gotten at least a picture of me with Santa and Mrs. Claus.

I got a message from Mom later that day telling me how appreciate she was and how excited her kids were (and how even the teens were kind of mad at her that she didn’t wake them all up to see the guests).

Family B didn’t receive their gifts on the air, but someone came by and delivered groceries, gift cards and presents for the kids and even cozy blankets for Mom and Dad. Mom was SO thrilled. She somehow knew it was me that nominated them, and called me later to thank me for helping them. I told her that honestly, I hadn’t done anything but write a letter,and I am so thankful and thrilled that there were wonderful and generous people who would help them.

I honestly feel so privileged and grateful to have been a part of bringing Christmas to these two families. I wish I could have done more. So much more. But I am thankful and honored that these two families were chosen and that generosity abounds at this Christmas season.

We have worn ourselves out

August 4, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Some of our activities with the Chinese students have been…

We went to the rodeo, ate at Glade’s in Spanish Fork.
They went to youth activities where they sculpted out of ice cream.

Go carts, video games and miniature golfing.

Went to see Music and the Spoken word at the conference center

spent some time at the Church history museum

where the kids enjoyed dressing up and dancing. We couldn’t get our Chinese girls, Phoebe and Coco, to dress up, but they enjoyed laughing at us.

We made bracelets

We ate out

We made our own pizzas.
We played in the backyard with the chickens.


We worked on puzzles.
We went to a family barbeque and swimming party.
We went bowling.


We made them watch the best movie ever–Dispicable me.
We’ve driven through POURING rain, watched fireworks, and went swimming.

We took them to Walmart (they WANTED to go there.)

They have also hiked Timp caves, gone to the Dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving point, visited a farm, gone to Temple Square and this is the place state park, done a ropes course day, gone to the Utah Olympic Park, 7 peaks, and other adventures.

Yes, it has been a LOT of driving. I won’t even try to sugar coat it there. From our house to the school where they are going in Provo, google maps tells me it’s 17 miles. ONLY 17 FREAKING miles? Are you kidding me? Well, with construction (ARGGGH!!!!) and traffic, it’s about a 35 minute drive. A 35 minute drive that I’ve made once, sometimes twice a day for almost 3 weeks. I don’t even want to calculate it. The thing that’s saved me was that my two girls, who are acting as “buddies” have only had to go twice a week. Last year, they went every day, only they are supposed to arrive two hours after the students arrive in the am. That’s THREE trips to Provo on some days. And carpools have been scarce this time around, due to an A and B schedule, and most everyone else who is in North Utah County is on a different schedule. If I’d had to get them there every single day, I would have truly gone insane.

We still have a baseball game to go to tonight, and they have a closing social tomorrow. Then it’s a weekend full of activities for our Highland Fling. We have the 5K, breakfast, parade, activities in the park, art show, dance contest, and fireworks to attend. Then Sunday morning we will say goodbye. (and have a nap) It’s been a good experience. A fun experience, but a tiring experience.

Summer-Week 2

June 19, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Is it the end of the week already?

What have we done?

Friday’s concert was wonderful.


It was sad to say goodbye to our retiring director, Tom Waldron. There’s a great article about the bells and Tom in the church news HERE.

Lagoon!–Saturday was Ryan’s company party at Lagoon, and we had a fun time there. I, of course, do not ride vomit inducing rides such as the ones that are plentiful at Lagoon. Instead, I took John around to the kiddie rides, and enjoyed visiting with my good friend Kimberly, who also avoids those icky rides. Ryan and the other kids had a fantastic time being turned upside down, thrown around in circles, and generally being bumped and jostled. And it’s SO much easier now that everyone has cell phones. I could just text them, ask them where they were and when they were coming to meet, and I didn’t feel abandoned when they went off for hours riding the sick rides and I was stuck waiting for them. The best part was that it was FREE.

Barbeque with friends– Cole had requested that we could have a get together with his old friends David and Sam. When they were little, we used to get them together a lot. Mostly because MY friends, Melinda and Michelle and Tina, wanted to get together. Those kids played so happily together! Well, time moves on and kids grow up. Schedules get packed, and it’s harder to get families together. But the stars aligned to get Melinda’s family and Michelle’s family together for a barbeque. It was lots of fun to get those boys together. David just graduated and is going to BYU in the fall, Cole and Sam will be seniors. Sam and Jesse stayed over that night and it was fun to have them here the next day.

Tennis lessons–Natalie finished up her tennis lessons, and she really enjoyed it. I don’t know if she mastered the sport, but she had a good time and learned some new skills and got some exercise.

Piano lessons–The kids are continuing piano over the summer, and since John is now reading like a champ, we decided it was time for him to start piano lessons. He was SO excited about starting his lessons, he got up early (well, let’s face it, he always gets up early) on the day of the lesson. After his lesson, he came home and PRACTICED his simple tunes. He is practicing EVERY day! I’m so thrilled that he’s thrilled.. Another 10 years of this and he’ll be a musician playing John Schmidt songs like his brother.

Swim–I have a certain child who is constantly asking if we can go swimming. Seriously. The first day temperatures crept above 65 degrees, she was bouncing home from school, asking if we could go swimming. I’ll admit it, I’m not a HUGE fan of the public pool, but since I don’t have a pool in my backyard, and I’m sadly not best friends with someone who does have a pool in their backyard, so the public pool it is. We had a fun time there on Wednesday, and then Natalie went with a friend on Saturday.

Visit the farm–I’m going to try to visit some aspect of Thanksgiving Point once a week, since we have the pass and all. This week we picked a not too hot day to visit the farm.

I only took the two youngest, since the other three were busy with youth activities. It was fun to see the grown up chickens and all the cute fluffy animals. Jenna and John enjoyed riding the ponies, and we had a carriage ride.

Youth Conference–Megan and Cole had Youth Conference Thursday, Friday and Saturday. They had a great time going down to Ephraim and attending the Manti pageant, among other fun things. I was just happy to have one half of the amazing duo of fighting, arguing sisters GONE for a couple of days. It’s kind of fun to only have three kids at home, and for that middle child to be the oldest. While they were gone, we went out to dinner (two kids cheaper!) at Mimi’s cafe and I took them out garage saleing on Saturday morning.

Ice Cream social–As it gets closer to Cinderella time, we had our annual Alpine Community Theater ice cream social. (Don’t you love the way this sticker adds a little class to the rusted old tailgate?)
All the ice cream you want to eat for only $1 per person, free entertainment, and the opportunity to buy tickets to the show for $2 less. It was a perfect night for it, too! Overcast, but not cold, and while the rain clouds threatened, there was no rain.

Father’s Day!–And today is Father’s day! Happy Father’s day, everyone! We made Ryan a scrumptious breakfast of scrambled eggs and waffles, and gave him the oh-so-extravagant gifts of new socks and a nice watch. We will have my parents and my sister’s family over for dinner tonight, so that will be fun.

That’s the week in review. Gosh, it’s no wonder I’m tired. I’ll have to have the kids read here when they inevitably complain or whine that we haven’t done anything fun all summer.

What a weekend!

May 2, 2011 / / 2 Comments

Women’s Conference. The two words that conjure up images of thousands of women swarming the BYU bookstore, hundreds of pounds of BYU mint brownies, a silly skit my Mary Ellen Edmunds reminding us to turn our phones off, traipsing around campus with hundreds of other women hoping to get a seat in the JSB auditorium, and rain.

Robin came into town Wednesday night, and I picked her up at the airport after bells rehearsal. We got home by about 11:30. Thursday dawned bright and early, and we were out of here by 8:00 to make the trek to Provo and the hike to the Marriott Center. And for once it wasn’t raining or freezing. In fact, it turned out to be a beautiful day! Shock, I know!

I went to a wonderful class on parenting, and then hustled over to the HFAC for a class on patience, only to be greeted by a line that went out the building, down the sidewalk, made a turn, went in front of the Wilkinson Center, and up the ramp. Seriously. Perhaps this line IS the class, we joked in the line. I wish I had a picture, because it was QUITE the line. The class was supposed to start at 12:30, and at 12:25, I hadn’t moved forward all that much in line, and pretty much knew that I wouldn’t be attending this particular class on patience, unless they had an overflow room or were broadcasting it somewhere else. I guess all those ladies at women’s conference need to learn patience. Or at least they think they do. I was pleased that there were no impatient riots or shoving, especially when most of us were turned away.

Knowing that any class I wanted to get into had already started and was therefore full, I wandered over to the bookstore to do some browsing. I eventually ended up in the MARB where they have service and listening stations. I decided to sew “courage capes” while listening to a wonderful talk on being women of God. It’s fun to do something productive while listening, but then I have no notes. I stayed for the next class and finished two more capes. Such fun.

By the last session of the day, my brain is pretty much dead tired. But we sat through the talks on courageous and wonderful examples of early Relief Society sisters.

Robin and I had decided to stay the night in Provo instead of driving home. Then we could go to the evening of service and the fun concert put on at Women’s conference on Thursday night. But first we had to check into our hotel and ditch some of our stuff. We ended up sidetracked at the Spaghetti factory enjoying a FABULOUS meal. I sent a text to Ryan, who did not appreciate the fact that I was stuffing my face on Matzithra cheese pasta while he was attending the elementary school band concert. Sorry, honey. After our pasta binge, we checked in to our comfort inn, and flopped on the couch. We had every intention of getting right back up and going to the evening of service. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it. We did make it in time for the evening performance by the Shadow Mountain artists. But by the time that was over, we were SO tired, we wanted nothing more than for our heads to hit the pillows.

Unfortunately, no sooner had we snuggled into our beds, then our raucous neighbors decided it was time to run, shout, and slam doors. What the heck, people? It’s 11:30! Go to sleep. It took more than one call to the front desk and some asking to please be quiet before they calmed down. Some people!

In the morning, I woke up so dizzy I could barely turn my head. I made it to the bathroom, but felt like I might throw up from the nausea. I came quickly back to bed, and told Robin that I didn’t think I was going to be going to classes right away. I fell quickly into a nap. We worked it out so that Robin took the car and went to the conference, and my sweet hubby came and picked me up and took me back home, where I spent the rest of the day napping. I felt bad that I was missing a day of wonderful talks, and also that I hadn’t yet gotten my BYU brownie! But I was so wiped out and needed sleep to help me feel better. By evening I was feeling mostly put back together so I felt like I could possibly function.

Saturday morning dawned with 3 or 4 inches of snow. Seriously? I guess that kills our garage sale possibilities. But Robin came with me to go and get my bountiful basket, and then we drove around with hope in our hearts. Maybe, just Maybe, there would be some brave souls hosting garage sales. We did indeed find two garage sales and scored some cheap scores. My favorite–a mask/cape combination that looks pretty much like Megamind but with a green head.

John thought that was fun.

Later in the day we attended a cousin’s baptism and family party while Robin went to the temple, and then later we spoiled ourselves with our annual “women’s conference pedicures”.

Sunday we all attended church, and then had a nice dinner. We invited Julene and Italo to join us, and it was all delicious! Later, as we were watching Joe verses the Volcano (can you believe Robin had NEVER seen that movie?), I checked facebook and saw the Bin Laden news. We couldn’t believe that after all this time, they had finally gotten him.

It was quite a memorable weekend!

Concert week

November 20, 2010 / / 1 Comment

It’s concert week this week.


That means a lot of rehearsal, a lot of time away from home, and a lot of stress. If you could heard the thoughts running through my head, most of them would be music. I go to bed with songs in my head, and I wake up to songs in my head. Or I wake up to counting those songs in my head. “One and two and three and four, five, six…” One of my bell choir friends said that she dreamed that her life was in 6/8 time and her daughter refused to come in on four. I know that makes no sense to most of you, but I thought it was funny and I totally understood where she was coming from.

We only have one performance this year, and that means one time to get everything right. Add to that pressure that we have people recording parts or all of the concert, and our director expects each song to be perfect. I know that I have the ability to play all the songs perfectly. While I may not have played every song perfectly without mistake, I have played every part of each song correctly at one time. If I could just edit together all of my BEST run throughs of each song, I’d have it all done perfectly. And it’s not just me, there are 29 of us all attempting our very best performances. Oh, and many of the songs we will be playing have been arranged by our director. No pressure or anything.

But I know that I have done everything I can do to prepare. We have rehearsed and rehearsed and I have put in my time. Now it’s a matter of being THERE, in the music, and not getting distracted during the performance. And praying. Lots of praying.

I LOVE playing bells, and the experience is absolutely wonderful. I treasure my association with my fellow choir members, and we work together to make the best music we can. But the pressure. It’s still there.

If you want a sample of one of the songs we will be playing, you can take a listen to this one right here. This song, Holiday for Strings, has given us our share of headaches and stress, that’s for sure. (Click on the link, then click on “listen”. Or, if you want to see the sheet music, you can click on “View”)

We will also be playing the Overture from the Nutcracker Suite. I just searched on you tube and found this absolutely AMAZING performance by a bell choir playing this song.

The choregraphy! 6 ringers all sharing and playing all those notes! WOW! Now I’m feeling like I can TOTALLY play our version of the song. At least I don’t have to do that!

On Sunday morning, our bell choir will also be performing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on the Music and the Spoken Word broadcast. We will be playing two songs with the Choir and one song on our own. None of those songs are songs from the concert, by the way. Tune in if you can! My sister’s artwork will also be featured during the spoken word!

Amid this week of rehearsals and stress, last night was another BRIGHT spot of fun. My book club was meeting for their holiday dinner, and I had hoped that I could stop by after rehearsal and say hi and maybe sneak some yummy dessert. We were excused from rehearsal at about 8:30, and I hurried as fast as I could to my friend Melinda’s house, and made it there by 9. I was SO delighted that many of my book club friends were still there. I haven’t been able to attend our monthly book club meeting in several months, and I really missed my connection with these friends. Even though it was late, they fed me dinner, and it was FABULOUS! Butternut squash lasagna! Can you say Yummy? I knew I shouldn’t be snarfing dinner so late and so quickly, but it was all so yummy (and I really was hungry. I had only eaten a granola bar before rehearsal in anticipation of at least a yummy dessert later), and I was so happy to be with these friends. I am so lucky to have such wonderful and talented people in my life, and I bathed in the bright smiles and conversation with my friends.

I am truly blessed.

Goodbye. Or shall we say Sayonara?

November 2, 2010 / / 1 Comment

Hosting an exchange student for a week is a whirlwind experience. On the one hand, you only have a week to show him or her all that you can of your home town. On the other hand, it’s only a week.

This is our second time hosting a Japanese student, and it’s been a good experience both times. Although last year our student ended up getting sick with the swine flu right after he left us. The poor kid was sick for their Disneyland trip, and our family had a few people down from sickness as well. Out of 240 boys, I think 70 of them got sick. This year we didn’t have those annoying swine flu issues, which was nice.

Kazuki came on a Tuesday, which was also the night of our ward Halloween party, so Ryan ended up picking him up alone. By the time everyone got home, it was bedtime, so we basically said hello, here’s your room, welcome to our home. The next day we sent him off to BYU. Even though it had snowed that night, they took the kids to a farm for some farm type activities. He said he rode a horse, but that’ about all I know about that day. I had to take John to a basketball game and then go to rehearsal myself, so the rest of the family had dinner with him, and then played that great ice breaker, the Wii. He started to warm up to the kids and had a good time.

Thursday he was done with school earlier, since he didn’t have to go all the way to BYU. That day our students went to a local junior high and went to classes there. They had buddies who spent the day with them, and he said it was fun. We decided to go to Gardner Village for dinner that night. The place was all decked out for Halloween, and we thought it would be fun.

The whole concept of Halloween is strange to him, since they have no such holiday in Japan, but Kazuki was a good sport, and I think he enjoyed dinner, at least. He ordered pasta and finished it all.

Friday morning I drove the carpool of 7 boys to BYU, and it was fun to listen to them chatter in Japanese. I felt like a taxi driver. By the time he got home, we were just getting home from our Halloween activities for the day, so we had a dinner of pizza, and then got down to the business of carving our pumpkins. Again, a new thing for him, and he must wonder what in the world we are doing, but we want to show all the aspects of American life at Halloween time, so we dived right in.

Saturday we had a fun day. We all went to John’s basketball game in the morning, and then had McDonald’s for lunch. Kazuki had written in his letter to us that he wanted to eat a really big hamburger at McDonald’s, so we wanted to grant his request. Then we went off to have some serious fun. The weather, while not raining, was overcast and cloudy, but still warm enough for outdoor activities. We went to Trafalga in Lehi and spent a few hour in the pursuit of having fun.


We played mini golf, rode go carts, rode the merry go round and even the bumper boats. Well, I didn’t ride the bumper boats, because someone had to take pictures, right? And I couldn’t get my family to promise not to squirt each other. They did not promise, and they ended up doing quite a lot of squirting.

So you can see why I didn’t want to be involved in all THAT, right?

We timed it just right so that we were leaving in the afternoon just as it started to rain.
After dinner, we dressed Kazuki in a “costume”, or actually, he just put on a cape, and we geared up to go trick-or-treating. Unfortunately, it was POURING rain about then.

Trick-or-treating was less than fun. I’m afraid he didn’t get the whole FUN idea of it. We made it around 1/2 of our neighborhood, then stopped in for donuts at our neighbors, and came back home. Just as we got home, the raining subsided. Ugh. The girls, after changing shoes, wanted to go back out, but Kazuki and John were done. They decided to stay home and hand out candy and watch tv instead.

On Sunday, we got up nice and early to attend the live broadcast of Music and the Spoken Word.

We did a little Temple Square sightseeing while we were there. We couldn’t stay long, though, because we had to make sure we were back in time for primary. So, it was a long day for all of us. The afternoon was spent in naps, playing games, and doing puzzles. We had a nice steak dinner and the kids even played outside.

Monday the boys went to BYU for more activities/lessons, and then we met them there at 5:30 for a closing social. The banquet was yummy, the program was too long. When we came back home, we gave Kazuki some American gifts.

Tuesday we had an early morning, waking everyone up by 5:45 to say goodbye. Thankfully Ryan drove him to Provo, so I could get the kids ready for school.

It was a good experience! The kids are already sad that he’s gone, but hopefully they will have a pen-pal in Japan, and some fond memories.

Better than one post, it’s a bunch of mini-posts!

October 28, 2010 / / 3 Comments

Busy, Busy.

I’ve got a BUNCH of pictures that I meant to do blog posts around, but instead, I’m going to just lump them all together and tell you a little bit about them. Think of it of a bunch of mini-posts!

My good friend Lisa just posted about our fun time at Witches Night out last weekend. Since she used my pictures, I feel perfectly justified in sending you over to her blog to read about it. So, go HERE for the fun details.

Natalie finished up her volleyball season. They even had a tournament this year.

This is my favorite picture. She’s the one ducking away from the ball. Love it! But in her defense, that was just one time. She’s actually pretty good, and she’s got a wicked serve.

This one is a little dark and kind of blurry, but she JUST bumped it. Can you see that blur that is the ball there?


The girls and I went to see Thriller by the Odyssey Dance Theater. It was, as usual, AMAZING! I enjoy it more every time I see it!


I spent a day with my parents making and bottling applesauce. They have the apples, the know-how, and all the proper equipment, so it was much easier to go to their house and do the work with them, than to bring the apples here and do it myself.

They’ve got the operation down to a science, and it’s all set up outside! Which keeps your kitchen from getting totally stickified from apple juice and sauce. Jenna was home from school that day, so she even helped. Here she is with my dad.

I ended up with 26 quarts of applesauce and about 13 quarts of apple juice. Yum!

Every where you drive in Utah County, there is construction.

And every road that gets to my house is torn up. My friend Tammy wrote about the ongoing headache or the construction on her blog HERE.

My kids have been working on entries for their schools’ reflections contests. “Together we can” is the theme.

I’m relieved to NOT be in charge of our school’s reflections program this year. I have scrounged around and gotten prizes, but I’m not in charge. Happy Dance!!! But the kids are still entering, and since they are due today, we got 6 entry forms, 6 media release forms, and 6 entries ready last night (and this morning. Who am I kidding?)

We picked up our Japanese exchange student, Kuzuki, on Tuesday night.
(Sorry about the sideways picture-erg. — Fixed)
He seems like a nice kid. Yesterday he went to a farm with his school group, then had sloppy joes (we want to give him the American Experience, right?) and then played Wii with the kids. Tonight we plan on taking him out to dinner. We’ve also got carving pumpkins and trick-or-treating on the agenda. He won’t be here long, so we’re trying to make his stay enjoyable. Too bad it got so flippin COLD here all of a sudden! He and the other boys were playing in the snow yesterday, so I guess they don’t mind.


This picture just does my heart good. For any of you who have had little boys who hate reading, you’ll understand my frustration. All of my other kids are very advanced readers, and were reading well by the end of kindergarten. Two of them were reading before Kindergarten, actually. Then, my youngest is all boy, with no interest in reading or any of that school stuff. But he’s finally getting it. He can actually put words together and he told me the other day “I love reading, Mom!” Thank you Mrs. Barker!


Do you ever feel like you are “up to your neck”? Well, here’s John in the sand.
He let his sister and some random boy bury him while at Thanksgiving Point’s Dino museum the other day.

So, there you have it. A bunch of random mini posts! Stay tuned for pictures and the run down of all of our fun Halloween activities!

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