The RS Broadcast

So the broadcast was fantastic and I enjoyed the speakers so much I decided to share my favorite things each of them had to say (I promise to keep it short).

Sis. Beck (RS Pres)
RS was created way back then because God knew we would need it so bad now and we had to have everything established well in advance so it could fullfill it's potential now.

Sis. Allred (1st councillor)
Reinspired me to attend the temple and do many ordinances often.

Sis. Thompson (2nd councillor)
Described us as a righteous army armed with: love, compassion, service and faith.
(And its odd to think of those as weapons but just try to resist someone who truely loves you and serves you and you'll realize thats a formidable force.)

Pres. Uchtdorf
Aknowledges that our trials are trying and gave 2 ways to survive them: 1) creating beauty and helpfulness brings satisfaction and 2) giving compassion bouys us up and helps others.
(I loved his talk so much I want to post it somewhere to read every day, maybe on the barthroom mirror. I was going to post a link but its not on LDS.org yet.)

If you missed the broadcast I hope you can find it online, it was wonderful.

Autum leaves

So we've been driving past these beautiful fall leaves in the canyon all week and then I read some blog posts about how Phoenix has no fall and so for all of you who are missing fall this is for you.

We decided to go hiking and took a picnic lunch (I am planning a whole blog about picnics so watch for it)

Little John and the dog were so excited. All the pics are of Little john 'cuz I took the dog to run through the hills (we were at a campground)

He dragged John all over exploring and getting messy

and eating as much nature as he could get his hands on

And while I was off with the dog I collected a sack full of leaves which I'm going to laminate (thanks H.) and for a limited time special offer: if you leave me a comment asking, I will mail you some. I still have my PP RS directory and I will share the wealth. And because kids love to get mail I can address it to them if you want. You can link to this if you think someone reads your blog and not mine and might want some.

Happy Fall!!!!

More Photos!

We made Little John a sand box and Gr'ma and Gr'pa got him a bull dozer to play in it with.

He loves to be out in the yard

Him and John wrestling

He loves the camera

This is the dog, she's so small I call her a puppy even though she isn't any more

And this is what that cute dog can do to an unattended baby bottle.

Photos!

You will all be amazed that I actually got around to posting these pics. Sadly I can't find my mom's camera that I took some others with but when we figure out where it went I'll post those too. So we have:
Pics of Hizer castle (the watch tower,

the turret,

and the entry arch),

my Johns sleeping in the car,

me hanging out with Clerie before she was deployed,

Little John being cute,

the giant piece of glass he put in his mouth,

a really neat leaf bug on our porch,

and Little John walking over to grab the camera.

Yeah I'm behind again

So I have been so busy I haven't had time to write on my blog. Here are the highlights:

Little John walks now!!! All by himself. He's pretty wobbly and he falls alot but he just gets back up. He puts his arms out like Frankenstien for balance. Its so cute.

We've spent a lot of time visiting John's family lately, partly because they're centraly located for a lot of the errands we've been doing lately.

We spent the evening with my really great friend's family so we could hang out before she was deployed for Iraq on Wednesday. Lots of prayers for her. Her son is about a year older than Litlle John and they had a lot of fun playing together.

I got the wedding dress back from the State fair- it placed second. Woohoo!

I had an ingrown (and infected) toenail removed and when the infection clears (I'm on antibiotics) I'll go back and they'll kill that part of the nail. I will NOT be posting pictures of any of this horrific gore.

My mom has a kidney infection, a sinus infection, and walking pnumonia. So she's pretty miserable and while they've been denying her problem (they said it was just bronchitus the first time) and saying it hasn't been 10 days since you were here before don't come back yet (yeah that made me mad!) she's been dragging her self to school because teachers only have a very few sick days. Then she is just dead tired and goes to bed except for dinner. BUT now she is on better pills and is feeling better.

John went to a job fair and put out a bunch of resumes so we're hoping for good things.

So I doubt I'll be this busy again soon so maybe I'll stay caught up on my blog (yeah right).

Peach Days

So they have a great festival here in Brigham called Peach Days. There's all sorts of stuff: classic car show, parade, library book sale, teen community dance, bandstand, raffles, booths, and of course carnival games and rides. We took Little John to his first parade. He liked the horses and the throwing candy. He did NOT like the fire engine sirens, but he wouldn't let me plug his ears either. We toured the booths in the stroller but he was only interested in touching things I didn't want to have to buy so he and John played in the grass while I looked through the book sale. I got a bunch of things but I'm probably most excited to read the collection of Poe stories. (The other books are children's books) I'm not sure why but when I saw the Poe book I was like"Oooh!" Maybe its because I've only read 2 of his stories, isn't he sopposed to be morbid in his horror? I'm not sure if I like morbid, but I know I don't like horror- at least not how Steven King does it. But we'll see how well I like Poe. But I was telling about Peach Days wasn't I? Umm, oh yes- the homemade peach ice cream was fantastic and because we didn't have the usual turn out :( there was more to go around :D. There have been some new babies and more people off to collage and post college jobs, so fewer people were able to make the trip this year. But that's ok we'll see them at Thanksgiving and Christmas for sure.

I need more baby and dog proofing!

So the dog ate 2 of the baby bottles. Just chomped big holes in them. So I had to go get some more. She digs through the garbage to find the grossest smelliest things and then shreds them all over the floor. She runs off if I open the door. She eats Little Johns snacks and his toys. And she stops to mark every couple yards when we go on a walk. I am not a dog person!!!
Ok I think I feel better now. I like the dog but she is driving me nuts with the chewing plastic thing. I really am more of a cat person. Or even better goldfish. They can't bite or sratch or mark territory. I am open to suggestions on puppy proofing.
I don't think I need suggestions for baby proofing (well except how to keep him out of the dog's food and water) , I just need to try harder. I moved the dog's dishes because we couldn't keep him out of them and aside from that he was playing happily on the floor while we played scrabble on the kitchen table. Well now that the dog food was gone he decided to explore the cupboard it sits in front of. (I only baby-locked the one under the sink where the chemicals are) He plays in all the cupboards. He loves pulling out the grocery sacks, rubbermaid, pot lids, dish towels and then playing with them. So was trying to find a place to put my excellent z word (zebu- an african ox thing) when there's this big crash sound and we all look and rush over and the baby has a big shard of glass IN HIS MOUTH! John takes it away and takes the baby away, Ben takes away the dog, and I clean up all the little glass splinters. Its all fine and we're relaxing from the shock when Little John starts srceaming instead of just crying and I look over and theres blood all over his mouth. We hold him down and pry it open and I kept thinking "he's swallowing glass and I'm not sure where the ER is and we don't have insurance right now!"
But we look all around in there and figure out that he only cut his mouth at the corner with the giant shard and like any head wound it bled more than necessary. And that fact that when he starts screaming like that and turning blue and purple didn't help my panic at all. But we gave him an ice pop to eat so it wouldn't keep bleeding and he was fine in less than 5 minutes. Of course I took half an hour and a mug of cocoa to calm down from the adrenalin rush of "my baby's gonna die!"

Destruction

So there was this fantastic rain and wind storm. Lots of thunder and lightning. Microbursts that blow sideways against the windows so loud it sounds like hail. (My favorite kind of weather for a walk honestly, but my Mom thinks thats suicdal) So John and Ben took the legs off the trampoline so it wouldn't blow away and we all setteled in to enjoy that cozy feeling of being warm and dry when its miserable outside. And the next day we had just the usual mess to clean up of garbage that blows around and stuff. (No palm tree debris, hahahaha)
But we took the dog and the baby for a walk down to the church and back and WHOA! We lost 2 huge cottonwood trees and they fell righ on the bowery! I have some great pictures of the devestation but I din't get any of them chopping up the trees to haul them way.

Hizer Castle

So we built Little John the most fun cardboard box castle since we have all these empty cardboard boxes as we unpack. He loves it! He loves being chased in and out by us and the dog. He loves hiding in the turret and peaking out the windows. He loves playing peakaboo from the watch towers. And he loves to knock over the entry way arch. And we had a ton of fun reliving our childhoods building and desinging it. He likes it so much we're thinking of adding a west wing or a hippo stable when we get a few more boxes.

Blah Blog

So I decided I need to do a lot better at this blogging thing. I read all of you people's interesting blogs and mine doesn't quite compare. And you guys do so much better at blogging often. I figured out part of my problem though. I go through the day and we do stuff and sometimes I take pictures and say to myself "I need to post this picture on my blog!" And then I loose the camera or don't have time to download the pics off it. Well then I'm checking my email and think "I should blog" and then I remember I don't have the pictures on the computer so I tell myself "I'll get to it later" and then for whatever reason I never do. So even though I think my blog is so much better with pics I decided I will just blog and then when I get around to it I'll do a photo blog of all the pics I should have uploaded earlier. So now I need to update eveything I haven't blogged but meant to. But I'm gonna do it in small chunks 'cuz this will be way to long otherwise.