my blessed life

Cleaning Out

2012-02-13T20:00:00.000-07:00

I still feel like I'm trying to catch up from my holidays and busy photo season in that I'm still working on things that I've neglected for ages. Today I put in my new back up battery for my computer system and it prompted me to clean off my desk and a bunch of things that I've been stuffing into the little desk organizers. I found a bunch of random things that I need to scrapbook or something like unto it. But since I haven't scapped in years, I thought at least I could preserve them on this blog.

One of the things I found was an old calendar page from July 2006 that I'd saved. One was something I'd written down on the 5th, it said: Brynn said to me (while I was making peanut butter bars) "When you get done, can I lick the stirrups?"

Pretty cute, and I guess having a horse trainer for a mom had rubbed off on her already. Also on that calendar page, was an innocuous little note saying, "Nick came". Nick was a horse, a very special horse, who came to me on the 23rd of July 2006 and left on the 24th of July 2009. He was a horse that Marty's cousin got in lieu of a bad debt and sent to me because he couldn't handle him. This horse turned out to be my perfect partner and my dream horse and I was devastated - and still am - that his owner showed up with no warning and took him away. (And then took him home and found he didn't want him and later sold him to someone else, when he knew how badly I wanted him.) My photographer friend Molly took a photo of the two of us on a trail ride at work and emailed it to me a few months ago. I used to ride Nicky all over town with no bridle on at all - a previously uncontrollable horse. In this photo, we're just riding in his halter.

Such a pretty boy. Man, I loved that horse.

I also found a poem that Jaxon wrote for me on Mother's Day last year. I scanned it to have a digital copy because it's so great:

Here's a translation since it's a little hard to read:

A MOM Poem.... a Moem :) :) by Jaxon

roses are red
violets are blue
all moms are special
especially uou

you help a lot
you work wonders
but how many moms
are horse trainers/photographers

Mom, you are cool
Mom, you are da-bomb
I have one last thing to say
.... I love you Mom

Jaxon

P.S. you're a great mom, you're always there for us.You're working all day (and half the night) yet you still have time to be a mom. Love you.

Isn't that nice, he's a pretty amazing kid.

I also found a quote that I had hurriedly jotted down while listening to General Conference - I think it was by Elder Holland, but I'm not positive. Still, it was worth recording.

"Apparently, the Gospel is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

All of these things and many more have been stashed in slots on my desk for quite some time. It always feels good to muck things out.

Whew - The Holidays are OVER!

2012-01-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

Fall - September through Christmas - is always the busiest time of year for portrait photographers and this year was my busiest year yet. After last year's craziness, I knew how it would be, so I was bound and determined to stay caught up this year. And I did pretty well at keeping up. But it was a brutal 4 months and I'm so glad to have it over with.

I made quite a few things for people this year. I made a bunch of felt and fabric flowers for friends and nieces. But the funnest thing I made was the little mini album for my neighbor Rachel. This summer, I had one day where I took a break from my photo editing craziness and went on a little macro lens - flower photographing journey. I had so much fun collecting flower photos, it's one of the best times I had with my camera all year. To see a post about it, click here. Anyway, as I was taking the photos, 6 months or so before Christmas, it occurred to me that since Mel and Rachel have put so much work into their flowers and yard, I should make them a book from the photos and give it to them for Christmas. This is what it looked like:

I made the covers out of chipboard covered in scrapbook paper and I used my newly acquired felt flower making skills to make some little mini flowers for the cover. I heart felt!

I love giving photos as gifts, they're so much more meaningful and relevant to the recipient. And this little album was really easy and enjoyable to make. I wish I had the time to do lots more projects like this. One of my new year's resolutions - if I believed in those things - would be to blog more and start making actual scrapbook pages again. Keeping 471 balls in the air at all times can be a bit tricky - I'll just have to do the best I can.

Sharon and Charlie - Hitched at Last!

2011-11-07T17:44:00.001-07:00

This weekend, my baby sister got married. We're so, so happy with the great guy she chose, and we had a lovely couple of days with lots of great family and friends. I took a LOT of pictures and can't imagine ever having time to post them all, but I thought I'd hurry and post a few of my favs.

I really love this one of Mom and Sharon. So sweet.

Yay, the newlyweds!

Brynn and Ally are 7 weeks apart in age - they are like peas and carrots. When I told them that, Brynn said, "I want to be the peas, I only like peas". And then Ally said, "I want to be the peas, I don't like carrots either!" Oh boy.

Sharon was a beautiful bride - this was kind of an impromptu shot while they were greeting their guests, but I love it.

My brother Scott let me take a few fun shots of him.

And this is my other sister Laura with her awesome hubby, Craig - they've been married for 20 years, believe it or not.

Their oldest daughter - beautiful Madison (she's a lot younger than she looks!).

And her big brother Justin, he's 17 - so handsome!

And my big boy, he's so handsome too.

The men.

And the little men. Double trouble: Luke and Nate. They were born 2 days apart. This was taken at the end of the day when these 2 were a little worse for wear. I asked Luke where his boutonniere was and he said he didn't know. And then he said, "But it's okay Mom, you can just copy Nate's flower in Photoshop and put one on my shirt. You'd never know he's the son of someone who spends half her life in the Photo-shop.

One of the best things about weddings is getting to see family and friends that we don't normally get to see. Like one of our very favorite relatives - Aunt Grace.

The cake was made by Mom's good friend Margene. As long as I can remember, we've had flowers in our home that Margene made: framed and dried flower arrangements, toll painted dressers, flower paintings and crafts... it was very fitting that Margene made this cake with all it's handmade flowers on it.

I wonder who first started the tradition of trashing the car? Anybody know? The guys took mercy on the car since it was a rental, but they still had to have their fun.

And here's the couple heading out to catch a plane to Costa Rica - catching their first glimpse of the car.

It was fun, it was busy, it was wonderful, and now, thank goodness, it's OVER. Love you guys! We wish you every single solitary happiness.

Catchin' Up

2011-10-16T12:44:00.000-06:00

I have been a very negligent blogger lately. I used to be a scrapbooker, then I became a digital scrapbooker and then I became a blogger and gave up scrapbooking completely. And now I've been sucked into Facebook - it's where I post daily photos and little snippets about our lives. But the problem with Facebook is that I can't print it and keep it in our home. So I need to either go back to scrapbooking or keep up better on my blog. The disadvantage of the digital age - it is sometimes intangible.

Also, Brynn really likes to read my blog and is always getting after me about my lack of recent blogging. So here's a little catch up post just for you, Sis.

I just realized that I Facebooked about Brynn's birthday, but never blogged about it. We have a tradition in our family that we celebrate birthdays with friends one year and the next year with family. This was our family year and the kids all got to pick something fun to do as a family. One of the things Brynn wanted to do was decorate her own cake.

She picked the colors and decorated it all by herself, I thought it was really pretty.

Something that Brynn's been up to lately is volleyball. Betty has been teaching a volleyball camp to the 5th and 6th grade girls and they had their game on Friday. It was a very short game, but we were proud of her and are excited that she is liking volleyball so much.

Jenna and Dallin came to watch Brynn's game and he made her this poster:

How sweet is that?! He's a good guy, that Dallin.

Fred, the best cat in the world

2011-09-18T23:23:00.000-06:00

For about a year, Fred has had a funny ear. Most of the time it's fine, but every so often, he holds his left ear flat and shakes it and scratches at it. He'll do that for a few hours and then he's totally fine again. I've never taken him to the vet because it never bothers him for long and it's a bit tricky to get a vet appointment, and frankly, it's not all that fun or all that easy to take a cat to the vet. But the other day he was having trouble again and I decided it was time. Fortunately, I am very blessed to work at the nation's largest animal sanctuary and one of the best perks of working there is that we have a great clinic and 4 excellent vets who will see our personal animals. It is a little hard to get appointments though, and the only thing they had for a while was today, a Sunday. I took it rather than waiting for several weeks, I normally wouldn't do something like that on a Sunday. Also, Fred got in a fight a few days ago and has been pretty gimpy and has a puncture wound on his chest that I thought might ought to get looked at.

Well, to make a long story short, we loaded Fred up and took him - complaining a little - down to the sanctuary and saw the new vet, Dr. Brooke. When we got there, she asked his name and I said, "He usually goes by "Fred", but his whole name is "Fred-the-best-cat-in-the-world". She laughed, but after she finished examining him, I think she realized that it was true. She cleaned his ears, shaved around his wound, scoped his ears, palpated his sore leg and examined him all over and he never, ever offered to scratch or bite. He didn't even try to get away! What an extraordinarily good cat!

So it turns out that he does have a bacterial and yeast infection in both ears and has to have drops in them twice a day for a week.

Brynn and Luke came with, they like Fred pretty well. (This is the reason I carry a point and shoot camera in my purse - you just never know when you might want to take a photo.)

Brynn took this photo of Fred the other day and I thought it was cute. What a good boy.

So where do you find good cats like this one? At the dump, of course.

How Pinteresting!

2011-09-05T00:15:00.000-06:00

First there was email, then blogging, then Facebook and Twitter. Now?

Pinterest.

I know I'm probably one of the last people to get on board, but I gotta admit, Pinterest is pretty cool. For anyone who doesn't know about Pinterest, it's a virtual pinboard where you can snag things off the web and keep track of them in collections. I've always collected ideas off the internet, but this way is a whole lot easier. And you can browse the Pinterest boards for amazing ideas and things that other people have already found.

I really need to do some painting, remodeling, and updating around here, but I've been so busy and so overwhelmed that I've just ignored all of the projects that need to be done. But my tolerance level is reaching critical mass and it's time to get in gear. In the search for inspiration, Pinterest is an amazing source. I feel inspired.

(Guess where I found that?)

How do you feel about housework?

2011-08-31T13:08:00.000-06:00

I often blog about a single subject, which is fine. But since this blog is also my own personal journal/family history, I sometimes think I should blog about a typical day and even just what's on my mind. Today is Wednesday which is the day after Tuesday, which means it's the day after the day I work at the Sanctuary. Which means it's a catch up day. Editing, bill paying, mailing, shopping, blogging and HOUSEWORK. Ok, I've never done it before, but I'm gonna ramble on a little about housework.

Ever-present, never-ending housework. I've given a lot of thought to this subject over the 14+ years that I've been married and primarily in charge of keeping the house, and gone through many stages of feelings about it: denial, anger, acceptance, ambivalence, resentment, anger, satisfaction, denial.... etc. I've also come to believe, that while organizational skills and housekeeping skills can be learned and improved upon, being a truly excellent housekeeper is an innate characteristics and you either got it or - as in my case - you don't got it.

I have DEFINITELY learned to be more organized over the years and I really do enjoy a clean house. But it just always seems like there are more worthwhile things to do with my time.

Oh well, I'll keep working on it. And I have a theory - everyone has a different tolerance point for an acceptable level of clean. I can ignore a certain amount of clutter, dishes and dirty floors and then all of a sudden, I've hit my limit. I have friends who can't stand the tiniest bit of clutter, or the minutest amount of dirt, but then I also have friends who can tolerate years worth of clutter piles and weeks worth of food crusted on dirty dishes. I would have to say, on a slob scale from 1 to 10 (1 being OCD Buckingham palace clean and 10 being "Hoarders") I'm somewhere around a 4 - the cleanest my house ever is: 2, the messiest: 6 - 6 is my absolute max tolerance level. The average is somewhere around a 4. Except for the dishes and laundry, which I keep up on pretty well, I would have to say my overall style of housekeeping is "let it build up- while I work, edit, do horse stuff, etc. - until I can't stand it anymore and then go on a big cleaning/purging binge" or, "someone's coming to stay so freak out at the kids and get in a housework bootcamp workout".

As I was typing this, I took a look at my desk and realized that the state of my desk is pretty indicative of the overall state of my life.

A whole bunch of "to-dos" and miscellaneous multi-tasking. Funny.

I'm glad I blogged about this stuff - it's cathartic.

How do you feel about housework? What's your cleaning style?

Captain America and His Girl

2011-08-29T08:06:00.000-06:00

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that

MY BABY SISTER IS GETTING MARRIED.

I'm a little bit excited, can you tell? She is one of my favorite people in the world and she found a GREAT guy and I'm just so happy for her.

In March, she moved to Austin Texas. She had been living pretty close to us and we were sad when she decided to move that far away. We didn't know the reason at the time - heck, I don't even think she knew the reason. But now we know, and that reason looks a little like this:

She met him online soon after she moved out there and they are getting married in November. They came out here a couple of weeks ago and we got to meet him and I got to take their engagement pictures. So fun.

He used to be a captain in the army, so we call him Captain America. And the Marvel Captain America's girlfriend's name is Sharon Carter - which is my sister's name! :)

And they are really great together!

He's a successful business owner, a pilot with his own plane, has multiple degrees, and is a certified journeyman electrician in 16 states. Oh, and he also just won a state-wide wrestling competition.

Marty says, "Oh great, another overachiever", like our other brother-in-law, the FBI director. (who also speaks fluent spanish, has 2 degrees including an MBA and went to BYU on a dual baseball and vocal scholarship.)

But he would have to be pretty great to be good enough for our sister. And the most important thing is that he is a wonderful person, who loves her, and is a faithful member of our church.

Isn't she purty?! That is her natural hair color!

And even though this means she's never moving back, I suppose we can let her go to live with Captain America.

Looking Back - Window Light

2011-08-20T17:52:00.000-06:00

I've been super-duper-whooper busy with photo shoots this summer. Which is great, but along with photo shoots comes a lot of photo editing and it takes up so much of my time that I don't have time for much else that I'd like to do. I co-taught a photography workshop this spring and we set up a Facebook group for our workshop attendees with weekly assignments. Our last assignment was window light and the ladies were struggling with it a little bit so I bribed Brynn to sit for me and did a little window light session with her the other day do demonstrate some techniques for the ladies.

As I was looking through the photos, I was reminded of the very first time I attempted to do window light portraits. And, of course, Brynn was my model back then too.

She was so stinkin' cute! It was fun to look back at these and reminisce a little. That first window light session was a real landmark for me. It was the first time I'd ever taken photos that I was really happy with and it started me on my photography journey. Somedays I feel as though photography has taken over my life - it has become the tail wagging the dog. But mostly I'm so grateful to have beautiful pictures of my children and able to give other people beautiful pictures of theirs.

This little beauty is Jenna's little Allison - growing up and so much fun. She posed for me for mini marshmallows while I was tending her the other day.

I do love window light, I love all the curves and shadows and highlights. Most of all I love how it puts such pretty catchlights in the eyes. And I really do love my camera.

My Little County Fair Participants

2011-08-14T19:18:00.000-06:00

We live in a little bitty town and our whole entire county only has about 6000 people living in it. That means, of course, that our county fair is very home-towney, accessible and lots of fun. Every year we enter something that the kids have made and I always enter some of my own photos.

I actually remembered to take photos of some of their entries this year:

(Brynn won a sweepstakes ribbon for her cool watercolor painting.)

Luke came up with the idea to put in a helicopter on his own, made it all by himself and then painted it with a little help from his big brother. The rotors twirl really well!

A couple of years ago, Jaxon came up with his own comic strip in which the characters are all insects. It's called The Buggy Backyard. I'm continually amazed at the ideas he is able to come up with. He can sit down and come up with cartoon after cartoon and most of them are really funny. He usually just draws them in pencil - we have them all over the place. I talked him into putting one down in ink for the fair and it won a blue ribbon.

Isn't that great?!

He's so good at expressions and body language.

In other news.... My lovely little sister Sharon is getting married! I will put up another post about her and her fiance, but for now I'll show this one photo that I entered in the fair.

I love small town living, I grew up in cities, but always knew I was a small town girl. I love the parades, the town dinners and the county fair. We're so blessed.

The New Toy in Town

2011-07-29T00:51:00.000-06:00

We've been thinking about getting a 4-wheeler for several years now, but have been holding out for a really good deal. And a KILLER deal just sort of fell in our lap the other day and we couldn't pass it up. It's was really meant to be a toy for Marty, but I have to admit, I've driven it a lot more than he has this week. And my mom-cool factor has gone through the roof since I drive fast over the whoop-dee-doo part of the trail with the kids on back.

I taught Jaxon how to drive it last night, but he wasn't around for this little impromptu photoshoot tonight. We'll have to catch him another time - in action.

But for now....

Luke wants to drive it so badly he can't stand it. I don't know if his legs are quite long enough yet, but if will counts for anything, he will find a way.

In the meantime, he just spends a lot of time sitting on it. And this morning, he told me had a sudden urge to go visit Bo, one of our horses who lives a couple of blocks away. I've been driving the 4-wheeler over there all week to feed, and, coincidentally, after sitting on the 4-wheeler all morning, Luke REALLY needed to see Bo. Interesting.

Luke's Baptism

2011-07-25T00:11:00.000-06:00

Another thing that's happened since I got behind on my blogging is Luke's baptism. He was really excited to be baptized, and I couldn't believe my baby was already 8 years old.

I complained a while back that Luke was hard to take pictures of, but when I took him out for a commemorative photo shoot, I finally figured out the secret. I've tried telling him jokes --- no luck. But when I asked him to tell ME jokes, then I got amazing stuff out of him. BINGO!

How stinkin' cute is that kid? I'm tellin' ya. He's killin' me, Smalls. That' little suit and "future missionary" pin were Jaxon's from when he was baptized. The tie is new, hip, happenin'.

This was probably the best shoot I've had with him in ages, there were a dozen cute, natural shots. Yay.

Anyway, one of the nicest things about Luke's baptism was that my mom was able to be here for it. She even went out to California the week before for my sister's little boy's baptism - he was born 2 days before Luke. Those are the kinds of things she's able to do now that Dad's gone. We were so glad to have her here and she gave a talk about the Holy Ghost.

Our good friend Molly came along to the baptism and took pictures, which was a big load off me. We had some great friends who came, and Jenna especially, helped out.

Our kids are so lucky to have such a great dad. He's such a great example to them.

It was a wonderful day, and we're really proud of our boy for choosing to be baptized.

Our New Bishop

2011-07-24T18:15:00.000-06:00

There has been so much happening that last few months and we've been so stinkin' busy that I haven't had time to blog about hardly any of it. I've been starting to feel a little panicky that I've gotten so behind. I print my blog every year and it's my own family history - I can't tell you how many times I've referred back to my blog to check a date or help me with my Christmas letter. So I need to catch up a bit today. One of the BIGGEST things that happened to our family since the birth of our last baby, happened on Easter Sunday this year. (That's how behind I am.)

The big news: Marty was called to be the bishop of our ward. For anyone out there who isn't familiar with what that means, in our church, the ward is our local congregation and the bishop is like the pastor, or leader of that congregation. We have non-paid clergy in our church, so we all serve in our wards to keep things running along and to share the load. But the bishop is the go-to guy for sure. In other words, nobody in their right mind would ever want the job. But we're trying to have a good attitude about it, I'm sure there's a reason he's there. And I'm proud of him. He's a good man - he's a hard worker and has an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, which is a great quality in a bishop. And I know he's going to learn A LOT and have a lot of growing pains along the way.

One of the cool things that he's able to do as a bishop is perform marriages. He got to do his first one last Saturday. It was someone we didn't know, they were visitors to our area. He had to get special permission to marry them because the weren't in our ward.

I've photographed some weddings over the last year or so that were performed by bishops who, well... didn't do such a great job, in my opinion. So I took Marty aside the night before the wedding and asked him what he was planning to say. He wasn't too nervous about it, I was kinda nervous for him and wanted him to do a good job. I shouldn't have worried - he totally nailed it. He gave great advice, but kept it short. He was warm but didn't make stupid jokes. He was articulate and confident. And he looked great while he was doing it. :o)

He wore one of my dad's nice ties.

Another kind of cool thing about being at that wedding, I met a relative. The couple was actually from New Mexico and their branch president and his wife came up for the wedding. As we got visiting with them, we realized that he was from the same hometown as my mom's family and turned out to be a distant relative of ours. They were lovely people and he gave me a big "cousin kiss" on the cheek when we said goodbye. This is them with the newlyweds.

Whew, I'm glad to have blogged about that, I feel a lot better now. I can move on and try to get caught up on a couple more posts while it's Sunday and I'm not working.

Wish us luck with this bishop thing.

Home Sweet Home

2011-07-20T10:14:00.000-06:00

I've actually been back from Parelliland for over 2 weeks now, but I still keep thinking how nice it is to be home. I had such an amazing experience at my horsemanship course in CO. I learned so, SO much and enjoyed - almost - every minute of it, but HOME..... there's just no place like it.

My home isn't big or fancy, but it"s comfortable and functional. It has all my own stuff in all the right places and - really important - a fantastic shower. And of course, it has the people who are most important to me.

But here are a few photo highlights from my stay in the MECCA OF HORSEMANSHIP. (I heard that in my head with an echo...echo...echo.)

This is our class on the last day. It was such a great group - from all reports, the best group EVER - and I was pretty sad to leave them all. Our lead instructor, Ryan Rose, is on the bottom on the right. Our other three coaches: Jeanne and Luce on the outside corners on the back row and Dancin' Pete on the bottom left.

Dancin' Pete always lives up to his name. There was usually music playing in the background when we weren't in a lesson. In these pictures we were waiting for something to start when "I Love Rock 'n Roll" came on and Pete led an impromptu conga line around the lodge classroom. What a fun group!

The Ranch is a beautiful place - green and peaceful and at the top of it's own little canyon facing Pagosa Peak. Every time I walked up the hill on my way home in the evening I stopped every so often to take a photo in my mind, and a couple with my little point-and-shoot. It's not just beautiful, it's special - there's just an amazing feeling there.

This is Pat's Personal Playground and HIS personal ropes. :)

A little cool and unexpected bonus at the ranch - the wildlife, especially the chipmunks. They were so cheeky and funny and bold. They turned over our glasses of juice and walked under our horse's feet. They even ran into my roommate Holly's leg one time. They had the run of the place, with their own subway system of drainage pipes.

Here's Pam from my class, communing with a Parelli chipmunk.

One of the coolest things about the whole experience, was meeting so many new Parelli friends. We spent all day every day together and then went out a couple of times in the evening as well. They were all SO GREAT. They were from all over the world: lovely Linda from England (who reminds me of my friend Stephanie), Lisa from New Zealand (who has truffle hunting dogs at home), Mary from New York (a 30 year veteran of the NYCFD paramedics and a 9-11 survivor), and Aurelie from Belgium - only 19 years old. Also Pattie (who lives in Pagosa and is now going to adopt a donkey from BF), Bonnie and Pam from Utah, marvelous Margaux (who is going to be a vet), Jo (my amazing roomie who has only had horses 5 years and already passed her Level 4), sweet Phyllis from Reno, and my funny and driven and super-smart roommate Holly. There was also Wendy (with the cutest, half Morgan pony) from the East Coast, Bill and Doni (married couple who were 77 and 68 and very cool, accomplished people) and Wendy P (who was a great carrot stick thrower) and Katrin from Germany (who was so brave to come to America by herself and lease a strange horse and struggle with the language), and Mary Anna (who was super fun and told me that she loves Mormons).

Another cool thing about the town of Pagosa Springs is the hot springs the town is named for. The accepted definition for Pagosa is "healing waters", and there is a resort there on the banks of the San Juan river where you can go and enjoy the spring water. There are at least a dozen different pools at different levels on the hillside where you can soak 'till your heart's content. The pools are different temperatures and you can even walk down some steps and dip in the river if you'd like. I got to go there twice - once with my two cool rommies, Jo and Holly, and once on local's night with a bunch of the Parelli externs. So fun! I came away from there feeling boneless and smelling a little like eggs.

This is a view of the springs resort from a restaurant balcony across the river where the girls and I had dinner one night. Such a pretty place.

I have so much to share about what I learned and the people I met. Hopefully one of these days I can get the chance to write more about it. It was an amazing experience and I can't wait to go back next year. Parelli ROCKS.

Parelliland

2011-06-26T18:40:00.000-06:00

The reason I haven't posted lately is because I am away from home - or I was frantically preparing to leave home. As we speak, I'm in Colorado at a Parelli Natural Horsemanship course called the Flex Track which is a preparatory course for their instructor program. It has always been a dream of mine to come to the Parelli campus and take a course here and I'm learning things I didn't know I didn't know. Our instructors are excellent and the camaraderie with other Parelli-folk is wonderful.

And it's really beautiful here - gorgeous weather and breathtaking scenery. I was walking up to the parking lot to my truck the other night and snapped this photo with my point and shoot.

This is just a small portion of this beautiful place and I feel very blessed to be here.

Our Pioneer Town Cemetery

2011-06-02T11:57:00.000-06:00

The other day when I was on my flower photo gathering walk with my camera, I ended up in our lovely little cemetery which is only a couple of blocks from my house. When I was in high school, we had a student teacher who took our English class to the great big Provo City Cemetery. We all had a many paged worksheet which was really a cemetery scavenger hunt - we had to walk all around the cemetery finding things like "a child's grave with an angel monument on top". Ever since then, I've had a whole new appreciation for cemeteries and how interesting they are. (And I also got over my squeamishness about stepping on graves.)

But I digress.

I've always loved our little pioneer cemetery and it's old sandstone headstones. They're so beautiful, but it's also sad that they are made of local sandstone and have gotten so weathered. Some of them are completely unreadable.

Some of them are actually just a little lump of blond stone.

A few have had a newer, granite stone added, by their progeny, I assume.

There really are some lovely carvings on these old pioneer stones - I wonder about the people who carved them.

This one didn't have a pretty carving, but it was adorned with the most beautiful lichen.

There are several graves in our cemetery belonging to Mormon pioneers who came across the plains.

This lady is one of my hubby's ancestor's and she was born in the Mormon settlement of Kirtland, Ohio. Pretty cool.

The irises were what drew me into the cemetery in the fist place, so I thought I'd better include one. I love the little crenelated edges.

This post is a little late for memorial day, but better late than never. When I was at my dad's funeral, one of my cousins told me that he wanted to be cremated because he'd never lived anywhere that he was attached to enough to want to be buried there. I thought that was kinda sad. I'm not from this little pioneer community, but it is definitely home. And this is where I will be buried someday. Kinda comforting, actually.

Dad

2011-05-29T22:49:00.000-06:00

My dad died on Monday. He'd been very ill with diabetes related illness for a long time and his poor body just finally wore out. He was 65.

I went up last Sunday afternoon to be with him and my mom. I don't know that I realized how soon he would go, that this was the last hospitalization in a long line of them, but I got home from church and was sitting at my computer thinking about what was happening for the rest of the day, and just had a feeling - a BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) - that I needed to get in the car and go. Not Marty and the kids, just me.

I called Mom to tell her I was coming and she said she thought that was a good idea. She put Dad on the phone and he was able to say "hello" and that he loved me, but he was pretty out of it. By the time I drove the 4 hours to Provo, he could no longer respond and he acted like he was in some pain and was quite agitated. Along with the liver abscess, he had a whole laundry list of other issues including the fact that his blood pressure would not stay up without a drug being constantly administered through one of the 6 IV lines going into a central line in his heart. He also had pneumonia for the first time in his life and hadn't been able to really keep any food down for about 2 weeks. He'd been on dialysis for almost 7 years and even though his kidneys were being supported artificially, it's not possible to support the liver that way. Mom told me that she figured that he was finally at a bridge he couldn't cross.

We had a conference call with all my siblings and we all concurred - even though it was really Mom's decision - that it was time to let Dad go. We had the nurse - who was so excellent, by the way - remove his feeding tube and give him some pain and anti-anxiety medication even though he was pretty much non-responsive by this time. We asked them to discontinue the medicine keeping his blood pressure up and as soon as it was removed, his blood pressure immediately began to drop. Mom and I waited with him all night and he died about 4:15 on Monday morning. He went very peacefully which was such a blessing. Mom and I were sad, but we also felt peaceful and knew that it was his time.

I stayed most of the day and helped Mom with funeral arrangements. She had wisely, years before, purchased a funeral plan, picked out a casket, arranged for a burial plot and she and Dad had written his funeral program, so there wasn't too terribly much to do. We gathered up photos, sent in his obituary, took his clothing to the mortuary and met with them about the arrangements and final details. We were pretty worn out by the end of that day, but I was so glad I'd felt impressed to come and Mom was glad to have me there.

The funeral was on Friday, the 27th. I was really nice with so many friends and family traveling from very long distances to be there. Sharon and the Atkinsons flew in from Texas, Laura and Craig from San Diego and 5 of Mom's sisters and her brother from Phoenix area. A bunch of our Baldwin cousins even drove all night from Phoenix - about an 11 hour drive to be there for the funeral. What a wonderful family.

So here are a few fun photo of Dad when he was young and hale and hearty and had both his legs. These make me smile - photos are SO IMPORTANT.

Newly married - I believe - sporting a moooo-stash and some kind of police uniform. (He was a policeman for about 12 years.)

This was taken in Boulder at my grandparent's ranch - Mom and Dad were either newly married or engaged. I love this photo because Mom is so pretty and it has "Bitsy" the horse in it. (A few years later, she was the first horse I ever rode by myself.)

This was the photo we put on the front of the program - I think this was taken in Oregon, the only time that all of us ever traveled up there to see Dad's family. About 1984.

Guess which decade this one was taken - I'll give you a hint: big hair was HUGE back then.

(also featuring our first cat, Gator - I can't believe he ever stood for that ribbon! He was a pretty fierce cat - the bane of the neighborhood dogs.)

Taken at an air show - probably somewhere around the late 80s or early 90s. Dad was a really good photographer back in the day before this digital business made is so much easier. (This goofy mouth thing was a photo trademark of his.)

I didn't always have the best relationship with my dad, but I am grateful that it was so much better over the last decade or so. I will surely miss him.

I love you Dad, and I'm glad you can run and throw 90 MPH fastballs again.

Adventures in Luke Photography

2011-05-22T00:31:00.000-06:00

I realize that kids go through stages. They also go through stages of not knowing quite how to be in front of a camera. Luke's been in one of those for a while now. It looks a little something like this:

I don't know if he's just messing with me or if he really is feeling like he doesn't know what to do when I point the camera in his direction. The more I try to encourage him to "act natural", the worse it gets.

Oh, wait! I just figured it out - this is his natural!

Oh dear.

Well, I guess I'll just go with the flow and hope for some, from time to time, that are slightly less freaky than the rest.

(Oh boy, oh boy, how I love this boy!)

Baby Eric

2011-05-20T00:39:00.000-06:00

A few months ago, this cute little sleepy baby:

was this cute little sleepy baby:

Awwww!

He is my friend Emily's little Eric who was born in November. He's SUCH a good baby, and so cuddly and happy and squishy and sweet - I hold him and kiss him every chance I get. And he hugs me back because I'm cuddly and squishy too and he can tell how much I like him.

On Wednesday this week, I had 8 of my friends and their 13 preschool aged kids, over for lunch for Rachel's birthday and honey lime enchiladas. Yes, the key words in that sentence: 13 preschoolers. On a rainy day in my 1500 square foot house. And yes, it was noisy. Wow.

But we had a great time and baby Eric was the quietest person in the house. When it was time to go home, as his mom was gathering up his two brothers, she set Eric on the couch - he can already sit up by himself. I looked over and he was falling asleep sitting up.

I grabbed my camera, even though I had on the wrong lens, and snapped a few quickies from across the room so as not to disturb him.

He would start to drift off and it would make him fall forward, when he was almost on his face, he'd startle himself awake and sit back up and then immediately close his eyes and start to fall forward again.

CUTE!

Going, going, gon....

No wait!

Awake!

Well, sort of.

This baby makes me want to have one of my own. If I could somehow be guaranteed this EXACT baby, I might even do it.

Horses in the Background

2011-05-05T14:27:00.000-06:00

I was born with an affinity for horses. They were the all-consuming obsession of my childhood and have been the abiding passion of my adulthood. My recent life has been such that horses have sometimes taken a backseat to everything else. Sometimes they're a little more prominent, sometimes less.

I took this photo last night and as I was looking at it this morning, I was struck that this image is a metaphor for the last decade of my life. No matter what new, distracting, interesting or more urgent things are in the foreground of my days, there are always horses in the background.

Raw Milk: My Hero

2011-04-30T22:30:00.000-06:00

My mom is a really smart lady. She's very savvy about nutrition, herbs, supplements, and things of that nature. She recently had a BioMeridian test which tested the function of all the systems in her body. When she went in to get her results, the doctor reading them to her had never met her and he was very surprised when he saw her in person. My mom is 68, and from the results of her test, the doctor was expecting someone in their early 30s.

Growing up, we didn't have anything processed in our house: no white flour, white rice, white sugar. And we almost always had raw milk. We moved around a lot, but Mom would always find someone with raw milk. At one point, she had to drive almost an hour each way to get it and we went every Saturday and got 8 gallons.

A lot of people are misinformed about raw milk, they think it will make you sick. I've been drinking it literally all my life and never been sick from it. In the 1920s, a lot of people got sick from unpasteurized milk, but it was factory produced milk from sickly cows kept in filthy facilities. Pasteurization was a solution to that problem. But when milk is pasteurized, the good enzymes and bacteria necessary for digesting the milk are killed, making it very difficult for our bodies to break it down properly. Can you say lactose intolerance? Lactose intolerance isn't milk's fault, it's pasteurization's fault.

And what about homogenization? Homogenization changes the molecular structure of milk so that the cream cannot rise to the top. It also changes it into a food that our bodies cannot properly utilize. It subjects the milk to intense pressure and heats it yet again. Bleck.

The are an extremely impressive amount of health benefits from drinking raw milk. I don't want to take up too much space with talking about them, but I found a great resource (YAY INTERNET) HERE, if you are interested.

Anyhooo.... When Marty first told me that he wanted to marry me and take me to Orderville, I asked him if he knew someone with a milk cow. We've been able to get raw milk most of our marriage until just this last year. And I've been having a hard time. I've had digestion problems I've never had before, I've had canker sores, which is pretty unusual for me, and gotten more colds than I've ever gotten in my life. I really think it has something to do with not having raw milk anymore.

But happy day on Monday - Marty called and told me that someone in our valley was selling raw milk. We went up and got some earlier this week and I feel like dancing with joy. The cow is a Brown Swiss. I haven't met her yet, but they pretty much always look something like this:

She gives so much milk that she's feeding several calves, her own family and our family with lots left over. I'm planning to meet her soon, give her a big apple and tell her how much I appreciate her wonderful milk.

We needed some containers to hold all our newly acquired milk, so we went down to Marty's dad's house and found some half gallon bottles. They contained tomato juice and prunes and rice (respectively) that were bottled in 1976. We washed them out and sterilized them and now they're holding milk in my fridge. Look at this great old bottle:

It's an ATLAS strong shoulder Mason Jar. And it's blue.

How cool is that?! A couple of the other jars are kinda square with vertical ribs on them. I love old junk.

And...

I LOVE RAW MILK!

About Horses for a Change

2011-04-23T17:57:00.001-06:00

I don't often blog about horses even though they're such a big part of our lives. I guess that's because this blog has been more of a way to chronicle the adventures of my kids and family. But once in a while, I really should blog about my horse kids as well.

About a year ago, we got a new horse. Her name is Lady. For the record, that name is one of my all time LEAST favorite horse names - it's right up there with Princess and Midnight. Bleh! Totally cliche and unoriginal. But I didn't change it because I'd known Lady before we got her and had been calling her that for a long time so she was already Lady to me.

She'd belonged to a gal who lives in Kanab and was a farrier client of my good friend/boss, Jen. Every time Jen went over to trim Lady and her buddy Splashy's feet, the owner would tell Jen horror stories about Lady and all the times she'd been dumped and scared and how many problems she'd had with the mares, especially Lady because that was who she'd ridden the most. Jen, who could tell that Lady wasn't much of renegade, kept telling this owner that she needed to get me to come out and help her and her horse. She finally called me and I went out to meet them.

When I showed up, the mares were tied to the hitching rail looking very innocent - not at all like evil, calculating monsters. The owner immediately pointed at Lady and said, "That horse is stupid!"

Hmmmm. I've never met a horse yet that was stupid, but I thought to myself, "This outta be good." and I said, "What makes you say that?"

And the owner said, "Every time I want to catch her I have to chase her for an hour - then she'll finally stop and let me approach, but I have to crawl the last 15 feet."

And I said, "Huh! I've never met a horse who was smart enough to teach a human to crawl before."

Well, needless to say, that shocked the owner a bit (and I have to admit I was pretty proud of myself coming up with that one right on the spot like that). People so badly want to blame the horse. Ray Hunt, one of the fathers of the modern natural horsemanship movement and one of my mentor's mentors said, "I'll be the horse's lawyer 90% of the time."

So I proceeded to try to help Lady with her people problem, but the biggest problem was that her people didn't really want to change. It didn't take me long to realize that Lady was actually a very good girl who had put up with A LOT from this person for a very long time. It was a testament to her good nature that she hadn't just offed this lady and had done with it. Anyway, after the gal realized that I didn't have a magic pill to "fix" her horse - translate: make her horse instantly capable of putting up with all kinds or rude and ignorant behavior while at the same time forgetting she was a horse altogether, she decided she could no longer "afford" the horses and asked me if I could take them. (To be fair, this was a very nice lady who loved her horses and took very good care of their physical needs, but was completely clueless about horse psychology and didn't want to put a lot of effort into learning why her horses didn't want a thing to do with her.)

We really couldn't afford another horse, but I worked out a lease arrangement with my good friend and photography mentor, Molly. She grew up riding and had wanted a horse for years, but because of her hectic travel schedule, needed someone else to have primary care of the horse. So we took Lady, Molly pays her bills and everybody is happy. I also arranged for my good friend Linda, who is also a Parelli student, to take the other mare. That mare, Splashy, has turned out to be Linda's dream horse.

Here's Molly riding Lady after a few days of us getting her home.

Within a week of living here, Lady was coming up and meeting us at the gate like all the rest of our horses. The first time I put her in a pasture, she whinnied and trotted to me when I came back to check on them. She beat all the other horses to the gate to greet me. Gee, it turns out that there wasn't a thing wrong with Lady after all. Molly rides her bareback in a halter all over heck and gone. She's learned the Parelli 7 games and is teaching them to Molly.

In related news:

Marty's brother Ed has a horse. He's had her for years, and honestly thinks she is the best horse in the world, but he's a truck driver and has a hard time caring for her during the week. He's been keeping her with a gal from his riding club, but he hasn't been happy with how she's been looking lately and he decided to bring her to us. Again, we didn't need another horse, but Ed is going to pay her way. So the mare showed up at our house about a month ago - 300 pounds underweight and with long, distorted feet and nasty saddle marks up by her withers. Ed told us to fix her up and ride her, and he made sure to leave us her gag bit/german martingale contraption for us to ride her in. (Yeah. Uh huh.)

Well first of all, we needed to fatten her up, take care of her feet and let her back heal a little. We've worked on her feet and fed her A LOT, and played with her a little, but we've mostly just left her alone for the last month. Today we decided we'd (and by we, I mean Marty) would try to ride her for the first time.

In Parelli, we have a saying that I love, "Does that horse look rideable?" In other words, we don't ever climb on a horse who is hyped up on adrenaline, worried and tense, or afraid of us. We want our horses in a rideable state of mind: calm, relaxed, and feeling safe with us as their partner. So we played with Ed's mare for a while this morning and she really settled down and got looking rideable. Marty usually rides in a halter, but this mare's usually been ridden in a very nasty mechanical contraption. He wanted to try, though, and she was giving us all the green lights, so he got on and rode her around the arena. She was trying really hard to do everything he asked her to do and she was light in the halter, so we decided to go on a little trail ride and then ride her and Lady over to the pasture. She did SO GREAT. We could tell that she's used to being ridden full speed ahead, but whenever she'd start to think about getting high headed and frantic, Marty would just bend her, wait for her to relax and then head off on a loose rein again.

What's that you say? It's possible to ride a "hot" horse without a bit?! Through town?! (I had to take along my little point and shoot camera to document the occasion - I was afraid Ed wouldn't believe us without proof.)

I love this one - we're waiting for a break in traffic to cross the highway and she's looking at the horses across the street. But she's able to keep her feet still on a loose rein. Cool!

(She's still a little thin, but is looking so much better.)

We took Ed's mare and Lady to a pasture a few blocks away and they thought they'd died and gone to a field full of chocolate.

And here's another cool thing - Ed's mare looks A LOT like Lady.

A LOT.

Is that an uncanny resemblance or what? That, my friends, is a picture of absolute bliss.

Thirteen Already

2011-04-18T09:17:00.000-06:00

My last post was about our wedding anniversary and since our first child was born a year and 4 days after we were married, that means that yesterday was Jaxon's 13th birthday. I'm officially the mother of a teenager. Whew. I'd be scared, but Jaxon is such a good kid that I just can't bring myself to be. When he was a colicky baby, my mom used to tell me, "This is front end loaded, he'll be an easy teenager". I suspect that she was right.

Anyway. We had a fun day yesterday, we had a family birthday party. We went to see the new movie, Rio and went to the Pizza Factory for dinner. Jaxon kept telling me "thank you" and that he'd had a great day. I also made his favorite birthday "cake", banana bread, and he put the candles on.

A couple of years ago we took a picture like this with his birthday banana bread and he wanted to take another one.

He's pretty easy to please.

And this movie was fun:

I'm so thankful for my big boy and that he doesn't seem to mind being my parenting guinea pig. I'm looking forward to life with a teenager.

Happy birthday, Bud. We love you.

Fourteen Amazing Years

2011-04-12T23:44:00.000-06:00

Back when I looked like this:

I met the perfect guy and we did this:

And now, exactly 14 years later there are three more people who live in our house. They look an awful lot like this:

And I wish I still looked like this:

But I'm still married to that handsome man and we've had a really, really good 14 years. I wouldn't trade him for anyone in the world.

Moo-staaash-ez!

2011-04-04T22:32:00.000-06:00

So it started with this birthday boy:

And this party plannin' Mom:

And it turned into an epidemic! :

Miss Alison didn't wear the mooo-stash, but her face did not go unadorned.

Happy 5th Birthday to my good friend Jenna's big boy Dallin. It was a lovely party.

Napoleon Bonaparte in 5th Grade

2011-03-20T21:22:00.000-06:00

Brynn is in 5th grade and they always do a play about history. This year their play was about Lewis and Clark (Clark and LEWIS) and Brynn played Napoleon Bonaparte. She was given a solo to sing about the Louisiana Purchase. She has a really nice voice, but I was concerned about her extreme shyness impeding her ability to sing in front of all those people. But between the months of practicing it in front of her class and some voice (and confidence) lessons from our good friend Jenna, she did GREAT. So here's Brynn's Napoleon solo:

Meet Me in Montana

2011-03-14T17:06:00.003-06:00

I have the very best job in the world.

No really, I do.

I get paid to do what I love, and not only that, but my job sends me to saddle fit seminars, Parelli events, and hoof clinics - to name a few. This month, through my job, I got to do something kinda special, my colleague Linda and I were able to go to Montana to help with a rescue situation.

A large animal sanctuary in Montana lost their funding last year and the hundreds of animals in residence there have had to find places elsewhere. They had over a hundred horses and most of them have already found homes, but there were about 15 still left that had been dubbed "the wild bunch" that needed some extra help. Our boss sent Linda and me to see if we could handle these horses and get them able to be caught, trailered, examined by a vet and have their feet trimmed. We had one week to get 15 wild horses tamed.

We contacted the Parelli Foundation - the charitable branch of the Parelli organization - and asked them if they could give us some help. They not only offered to send equipment, but they put us in touch with two of their licensed instructors who lived within about 4 miles of where the horses were being kept ~ Ethan Zimmerman and Lorri Roy. These instructors - husband and wife - offered to put us up in their lovely home and we ended up making some great new friends. Not only did Lorri and Ethan house us and feed us really well, but they helped us with the horses quite a bit the week that we were there.

This wild bunch was living in a big pasture together in a foster facility in Hamilton. The ladies who were taking care of all the horses had been going out to their pasture everyday with a pink bucket full of grain and "chumming" them. Most of the wild bunch wouldn't come up to the pink bucket, but several would, so we started with those.

This cute little Arab mare on the right was pretty friendly and right away I was able to get my string around her neck. There was one other mare who catchable in the pasture, but the rest - - not so much. We ended up bringing them all out of the pasture and into some smaller pens where we would have a chance of catching them.

Once we had them in the pens, we were able to separate them. About half of the horses eventually let us ease up to them and catch them, but the other half were absolutely wild and we had to throw a loop over their heads and teach them to lead with a rope around their necks before we could halter them.

Ethan and the mare he played with on the first day - she got right in the horse trailer the first time we asked her to.

Lorri with the big mare she played with all week. This mare was NOT going to let a human touch her when we started. By the end of the week we could catch her easily, pick up her feet and she climbed in the trailer without even being asked. (In this photo, Lorri and the mare are demonstrating the mare's new "drop my head" skill.)

This sorrel mare in the foreground on the right was my proudest accomplishment. She was a pretty calm horse, but was bound and determined that no on would EVER touch her face. She wouldn't look at us, wouldn't sniff our hands and definitely wouldn't let us put a halter on her. I spent a while teaching her to love horse cookies by putting them in the end of my stick. Pretty soon she would take them out of my hand and soon after that I was able to halter her and politely touch her face. I was pretty excited.

This cute little guy was a pony/Norwegian Fjord cross who was probably born at the sanctuary and never handled. He was pretty dang wild. Linda spent a lot of time with him and made a lot of progress. He's a very cool horse and will have to problem getting a home.

(He and Linda are the same color.)

Here are few more of our formerly feral horses:

(My big palomino gelding that came a really long way in a week, too.)

This is another mare who'd never been able to be haltered before we got there. This is Sharlee, a gal who's been taking care of these horses, demonstrating the way that all horses should OFFER to be haltered.

We had great success and felt like it was a really good week. I'm so thankful for Parelli and the understanding of horse psychology that I've gotten from them. Especially for the mantra, "put the relationship first".

I'm also thankful for new friends and good people all over this world who are trying to make a difference and be good stewards to all of God's creatures.

Be Mine

2011-02-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

Last week I took this photo of my live-in model. It's my big effort for Valentine's Day.

We're kinda boring and don't make too big a fuss about holidays around here, but my honey is really good at taking care of me everyday. He came home yesterday and gave me a very long hug and told me, in a heartfelt way, how much he loves and appreciates me and what a good woman I am. He tells me he loves me about 12 times a day. He folds most of the laundry. He chops wood, hauls hay and takes care of the cars, yard and fences. He fixes breakfast on Saturdays and gets the kids to school - while I sleep in - on Fridays. So most days feel like Valentines Day for me. I'm married to one of the most affectionate, demonstrative and helpful guys I know.

And he's cute, too.

Happy V-day everybody.

Cool Tidings

2011-02-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

I have some fun news, but you'll have to head over to my photography blog to get it.

Click HERE to see one of my highs this week.

Here's a hint:

Brynn and Her Bread

2011-02-05T20:31:00.000-07:00

For the last few months, Brynn has been desperately wanting two things. Actually, she desperately wants dozens of things at any given time, but the last little while it seems like she has mostly been obsessed with baking a small loaf of bread and with appearing on my blog.

So a while back, we finally made her tiny loaf of bread and she immediately jumped on the fact that this could qualify as a blog entry and that we needed to take pictures.

We inherited this little loaf pan from Marty's mother who died when he was 17. She was a great bread maker and had lots of nice old loaf pans which I commandeered from her kitchen soon after I got married. Any good bread maker knows that old vintage pans make the best bread.

I know how to make pretty good white bread, but I like to feed my family wheat bread, which I definitely can't make, so I don't usually make bread at all. So once a year or so when I do make it, my family thinks it's as good as cookies or something. And I usually have to give some of it away so we don't end up gorging ourselves on it.

And since we were already taking pictures, I whipped out my lovely macro lens and took a little bread detail. Yum, huh.

And for a few minutes anyway, my girl was satisfied.

Playing Othello with Batman

2011-01-23T21:12:00.000-07:00

My boy wants to be Batman

all the live long day

He has this nifty costume

and in it, he doth play

He runs outside

he leaps off stuff

he can even kinda glide

He has a really awesome cape

that sweeps out long and wide

And sometimes,

on the Day of Rest

(as you can plainly see)

we play our favorite board game.

My little bat and me.

~ 1/12/2011

Ann Hepworth

Year in Review Slideshow - 2010

2011-01-10T21:26:00.000-07:00

I did one of these last year and was glad I did.

I showed it to the fam tonight and they loved it - "Let's watch it again!" Kids so love to see themselves in pictures. I wonder.... at what point in life does that change? 13? 15? 33?

Thanks to all our friends and family who helped to make 2010 a really great year for us. We love you!

(And thanks to Molly and _______ (prefers to remain nameless) for some of the photos.)

2011: so far - - LAZY

2011-01-02T23:52:00.000-07:00

If I had to use one word to describe my 2010 it would be:

OVERTHETOPINCREDIBLYOVERBOOKEDCRAZYBUSY!

It's good to be busy, but last year was a little much. It culminated in the busiest fall season of my photographic career (such as that is) and then a crazy-as-usual Christmas Season. So last week? The kids were out of school, it seriously snowed and was colder than it's ever been before. And what did I do?

Nuthin'

Well, relatively nuthin'. I cooked some meals, fed 6 horses, broke their ice, did laundry, did dishes, put away Christmas, moved furniture, played games with the kids, cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed, swept, cleaned the kitchen, went to work, took the kids to two movies, went to a wedding, did some young women projects, babysat Emily's new baby, hung out with Marty for a change, made cookies, visited with friends, went to Zumba, read 5 books.....

But compared to what I usually do? That's nuthin'.

And I'm not gonna lie, it felt real good. It hit me in the middle of my fall photo rush that I might have lost the ability to just chill. But I'm happy to report that that isn't the case. My Kindle and I can apparently chill for several hours in a day when I don't have photos to edit. I usually get quite sick this time of year, but I didn't (except for a little upset tummy on NYE). I took a vacation this time instead of my body forcing one on me. Wow, what a concept. And I completely avoided my computer. Ah...

Anyhooo.... We took the kids - and Molly - to see Tangled on Sat night. Probably everybody has seen Tangled already, but if you haven't, YOU GOTTA SEE IT. It was AWESOME. Disney at it's best. So clever, so heartwarming, so charming....

And of course the horse, Maximus, was my very favorite character. Brilliant. He's what we would call in Parelli, a Left Brain Extrovert. My favorite Horsenality. Toooooo funny.

And another great clip:

Okay, sorry, enough with the Tangled. Oh, I can't resist: one more...

HA! And then he says, "You broke my smolder." Insanely brilliant.

So I hope everybody is having a relaxing, LAZY, 2011 so far. I've sure been enjoying mine.

Christmas Morning 2010

2010-12-26T00:33:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of a Grinch - I just don't love the commercial side of Christmas, but I have to admit, we had a really nice morning. The reason it was nice was because the kids were so sweet with each other and happy and appreciative of what they were given. We've never spoiled the kids much at Christmas, but this year we decided to go with President Monson's adage: Something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read - and it worked out great.

The kids were also very motivated to get presents for each other this year. I didn't encourage them at all. Jaxon was especially conscientious about choosing gifts for people and especially gracious about what he was given. It did my heart good to see the kids showing so much love to each other.

Luke wanted to know if he could use my "real" name. Too cute. He wrapped this himself and even dug up a beautiful bow.

All Fred wants for Christmas is for us to keep the tree up forever. He has spent A LOT of time under there in the last few weeks.

For a special Christmas breakfast, we broke out the long lost waffle maker. I literally haven't made homemade waffles in like 12 years. I found a great recipe online for buttermilk waffles and they were definitely a hit.

My theory on cooking: If you hardly ever do it, people really appreciate it when you do.

We had our good friend Molly up for the day and had a super yummy turkey dinner. We went on a walk, played the new Wii games and had just a nice day. Whew, I'm always so glad when it's over. Merry Christmas!

Countdown of Craziness

2010-12-18T13:41:00.000-07:00

I am in the zone - the Christmas Zone. Approximately 162 hours to go until the kids start to open presents. Approximately 150 hours left to go before it's too late to make, deliver or think of any more neighbor/friend/relative/teacher gifts or goodies. Pretty much every moment of my waking hours until now and then are spoken for - making, creating, baking, delivering, shopping, mailing, wrapping, printing....

But as I sat here this morning working on an album for my sister, I felt my blog calling to me - or more accurately hanging over my head. I've been so swamped with photography the last few months I haven't kept up with my blog very well, but I still try to touch base with it without letting too much time go by.

So here's a photo out of the album I'm making for my sister as we speak. I can safely share it with you all because my sister never reads my blog. This is her youngest daughter, my niece: Ally-cakes.

She looks almost exactly like my sister did at this age, which means she looks absolutely nothing like me. But I love her anyway.

So Merry Christmas to everybody out there - perhaps you're also in The Zone and don't have time to read my blog. But best wishes to you anyway.

Thansksgiving Trip to Temple Square

2010-12-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

My mom and dad live in Utah County and we spent Thanksgiving with them this year. Two years ago, we went up for Thanksgiving and then went to Salt Lake to Temple Square the day after. Temple Square is famous for it's beautiful Christmas lights (among other things, of course) and they always turn them on for the first time on the day after Thanksgiving. We had such a good time last time that we decided to do it again this year.

We made kind of a quick trip this time because it was pretty cold, but here are some of the highlights. I really love these historic old buildings on temple square - and the new Conference Center is a marvelous work and a wonder!

All of the buildings on Temple Square are a different style, architecturally, and I think they're all fascinating. The Assembly Hall, which was begun in 1877, is built in the Victorian Gothic style which was popular at the time. It's built of quartz monzonite from the same quarry as the stone used for the temple. (Trivia: a lot of people think the temple is built of granite, but it's not.) The Assembly Hall was built after the Tabernacle - I read an article that says that part of the reason it was built was that the Tabernacle, with it's huge domed roof, was impossible to heat in the winter and they needed a building in which the the saints wouldn't freeze. Interesting. Something that I never really noticed about the Assembly Hall before this trip - the Star of David above the door. This symbolizes the regathering of the 12 tribes of Israel. Isn't this a nifty building?

The Assembly Hall after the lights came on:

The Tabernacle is famous for being the home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It isn't a very fancy building from the outside, it just looks like an oval dome, but it is an architectural marvel for the fact that the roof is just one big arch. Some visitors around the beginning of the 20th century criticized it as "a prodigious tortoise that has lost its way" or "the Church of the Holy Turtle," but Frank Lloyd Wright dubbed the tabernacle "one of the architectural masterpieces of the country and perhaps the world". It was completed in 1867, in a time before electronic sound systems, and it was built this way so that everyone attending meetings in the Tabernacle could hear the speaker no matter where they were seated. The acoustics are so good in this building that while sitting in the back seats, you can literally hear a pin dropped up by the pulpit! It has a international reputation as being a nearly perfect building, acoustically. And of course, listening to a musical performance in this building is an incredible experience.

The organ in the Tabernacle is one of the largest in the world. Originally, it had about 700 pipes, but it has been refurbished over the years and updated and now has 11,623 pipes! Wow. The Tabernacle, including the choir seating, holds 7000 people, which used to seem like a lot to me.

The new Conference Center was completed in the spring of 2000 and holds 21,000 people! Not only is the meeting hall part of the building huge, but there are several large galleries and foyers inside the building as well - large enough to hold this tree:

The meeting hall really is immense.

There is a gallery in the Conference Center of 12 original paintings by Arnold Friberg. He was commissioned by the General Primary President of the Church in the 1950s to do a series of paintings of favorite Book of Mormon stories. They're very well known paintings within the church, so it was cool to see the originals hanging all here together in their own gallery.

Abinadi prophesying to King Noah:

Lehi and his family sailing to the new world:

Mormon and his son, Moroni bidding farewell to a once great nation:

And then of course, there's the Temple. What an amazing building! It took almost exactly 40 years to build, which just boggles my mind. The temple is very photogenic and looks good from about any angle. I wanted to just stand around and photograph it all night. While I had my camera to my eye, I didn't feel the cold at all, but my family were starting to turn into familycicles, so I only took a handful of pictures.

In't it so purty?!

Seagulls are a fairly common sight around the Great Salt Lake, but I never expected to see them on top of the Trax station near Temple Square in sub-freezing temperatures....

When we go to Temple Square, we always ride the Trax train from Sandy. I think it's the kid's favorite part of the trip. Especially Luke. He loves the train so much, he kept trying to put his mouth on it.

And some more happy riders: Brynn, my sister Sharon and Sharon's friend Justin.

And Jaxon and my silly brother, Scott.

Fun trip. We like Temple Square so much that we're planning to go back in April at Conference time when it's not so flippin' frigid!

One of the Neatest Things I've Ever Seen!

2010-11-29T19:40:00.000-07:00

I ran across this video on the blog, Christ Centered Christmas.

I loved it so much, that even though I've been posting an awful lot of videos lately, I just had to share. That is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written - bar none!

"And He shall reign forever and ever!"

Amen.

Happy Christmas Season, everybody.

Come Take a Ride....

2010-11-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

A horse can lend its rider the speed and strength he or she lacks, but the rider who is wise remembers it is no more than a loan. ~Pam Brown

I've ridden other horses bridleless before, but I guess I never imagined I'd ever dare ride THIS one without a bridle. We've just been following along our little Parelli pathway and one day, I just knew we were ready.

"If your horse says no, you either asked the wrong question, or asked the question wrong." ~Pat Parelli

2010-11-14T00:05:00.000-07:00

Amazing. Inspiring. This gave me good chills.

Happy Sabath - may we keep it holy.

Freestyle Riding - Parelli Style

2010-11-05T23:58:00.000-06:00

I took these photos a while back of my friend Linda. She is my fellow horse trainer at the nation's largest no-kill animal sanctuary. We are both Parelli Level 3/4 students which basically means we know how to have FUN with horses!

I don't know why horses like stickery tumble weeds, but they really do. And I've heard they're pretty nutritious. I love Hanky's Billy-Bob tooth in this picture.

Look Mom, no reins!

Costume Craziness

2010-11-02T19:48:00.000-06:00

I've said it before, but I hate yucky, scary, evil Halloween costumes. When my kids were little and I had ultimate creative control, they were always cute, fuzzy, cuddly little creatures - chickies, froggies, skunkies - you get the idea. Now that they're a little bit older, they seem to want to have an opinion about what they'll be for Halloween. And then I have to have a little talk with myself about how I need to pick my battles. For instance, Brynn wanted to be an "evil goth vampire princess". Well, I'm not gonna lie, that doesn't thrill me. I would hope she'd never want to be an "evil" anything, even for Halloween. But I took a step back and realized that mainly, she wanted to wear a wig and makeup. Her friend gave her a long dress with fishnet sleeves and a velvet skirt. So I decided it wasn't worth it to fight with her about it - I hope that was the right decision.

I put some makeup on her - exactly how she told me to:

I even put some mascara on her for the first time ever - she has such ridiculously long eyelashes, I've never wanted to. But she insisted on mascara and it made her lashes about 2 inches long. RIDICULOUS!

And here she is with her wig, ready to go trick-or-treating.

The boys, thank goodness, collaborated on a super hero theme this year. And the cute thing was that Jaxon decided to be Robin to Luke's Batman.

"TO THE BATMOBILE!"

Jaxon's costume was actually a men's size - he's getting so stinkin' big! And my, what big muscles he has these days!

And Luke. Seeing him in this little mask just makes me happy.

He asked me, the day after Halloween, if he could keep his costume out as a dress up suit and wear it everyday. I thought for a minute and said, "Why not!" He's the baby and no one is coming along after him to need the costume. And it brings me back to the time when he was 3 and I couldn't pry him out of his Superman pajamas. And frankly, I'm not ready for him to grow up - if he wants to be Batman everyday for 5 more years, fine by me!

I also had to include this photo:

This is one of Brynn's best friends and we let them go trick-or-treating together for a little while before we went as a family. This kid LOVES the movie, Avatar, so I wasn't surprised to see her dressed this way. But I was impressed by how great she looked - and boy, is that blue makeup fun to photograph!

I'm really trying to enjoy Halloween because the kids do and be a good sport about it. It seems like I'm getting better about it and Marty's getting worse. He was really a Halloween scrooge this year. But I figure it won't be very many more years before they will be too old, and then I'll miss it. Surely.

Forty-Two and FIERCE.

2010-10-24T19:06:00.000-06:00

My hubby turned 42 yesterday. He wasn't feeling too well, and it was raining all day, so we pretty much stayed home and had a day in. It was a nice day, though.

For about a year he's been searching for a CD by The Cars. Apparently, The Cars are no longer in high demand - - don't these stores know that some of us are still living in the 80s? Musically speaking, of course. Well thank goodness for the internet. I got him The Cars Greatest Hits on Amazon and a little portable speaker system to play his Ipod on.

We also made Chicken Cordon Bleu and baked potatoes for dinner and my mom's oatmeal cinnamon nutmeg cake w/ brown sugar coconut frosting for dinner. So even though we didn't do anything too exciting, it was still a good birthday for homebodies like us.

And I know it's kind of yicky to say so, but I think my man is the sexiest 42 year old I've ever seen. He's still totally hot. Case in point:

Not to mention, he's an exceptional human being. Fierce, I'm telling ya.

Luke-isms

2010-10-22T21:15:00.000-06:00

Luke says the funniest things, and I really should write them down more often. He said something the other day that totally CRACKED. ME. UP.

As Marty was heading out the door to help chaperon a church young women's activity, Luke wanted to know where he was going.

Luke: DAD! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?! (he shouts about 73% of everything he says.)

Dad: I'm going to Young Women's.

Luke: Why are you going to young wimins? You're not young OR a wimin!

Dad: Because I need to go with Bishop.

Luke: Well Bishop's not young or a wimin either!

I don't know how you can argue with that logic, frankly.

Dallin and the Bubbles

2010-10-20T15:21:00.000-06:00

My good friend and best photo client, Jenna, has two cute little kids. Her baby just turned 18 months and we had a fun photo session with her the other day:

....but Allison wasn't too sure she wanted to cooperate. At one point, her older brother Dallin stepped into the picture and was being so cute that I took a bunch of photos of him - I think, because the shoot wasn't about him and there was absolutely no pressure, he really turned on the charm.

We borrowed a bubble machine for Allison's shoot, but my favorite bubble pic is this one:

I wish I could have gotten one a half second sooner, too. That bubble was HUGE. I'm sure it didn't taste too good, but Dallin didn't care. He was in the moment, being a child, having a great time.

It's so fun to watch Jenna's kids grow, and having them around - they're like family.

Smell Like a Monster

2010-10-13T20:21:00.000-06:00

HA!

and the original - so great.

A Little Bit of (strange) Nostalgia

2010-10-13T17:32:00.001-06:00

I probably saw this clip on Sesame Street during the mid to late 70s and have never forgotten it. I give lessons to a gal who has alpacas and every time I see her alpacas, I sing this little song in my head. The other day I decided to look it up on YouTube and see if I could find it - and sure enough, there it was!

So here are the questions that come to mind as I watch this again after 30 years have gone by:

How did this girl come to have a pet llama in the city of Manhattan?
Why wasn't she accompanied by a parent?
Why do she and the llama have the same teeth?
Why, being Sesame Street, did they compose the song with incorrect grammar: "Me and My LLama"?

I'm tellin' ya, you just never know what's going to show up on my blog.

Sometimes, I Just Don't Understand Her

2010-10-11T22:48:00.000-06:00

This girl of mine, she's a caution. She came in yesterday and told me that she wanted me to cut off most of her hair. Now, the last time I cut her hair, she told me that she never wanted to cut it again and that she was going to grow it down to her waist. At least! But that was so many months ago and of course, she's completely changed her mind by now.

She wanted it "this short", she told me as she held it between her fingers. And the length kept getting shorter every time I told her how much I didn't want her to cut it. That's what I get. Always before - we've done this about three times before - I haven't said a thing, I've just cut it. But this time I was really feeling strongly about her keeping it long. And then I get, "But Mom, it's my hair!" And I figure, there might come a time when she want it purple, or heaven forbid, blond, and that's when I'll really have to make my stand.

So for now, I just gave in and cut it - and it's SO SHORT. Shorter than it's ever been before.

But even though I'm not too happy about it, I still had to take pictures to document. And of course, with a face like this, she's not exactly hideous.

But man, sometimes I just don't understand her. And I'm sure the feeling's mutual. Good thing we kinda like each other. Our mantra: We're the only girls in the whole family.

(This last photo was a special request by Brynn - don't mind the grubby crocs, she wanted to wear her Sunday shoes, but I told her they wouldn't show in hair photos.)

The Most BEAUTIFUL Photos I've Ever Seen

2010-10-07T22:03:00.003-06:00

'nuff said.

Back in the Day

2010-10-03T16:33:00.006-06:00

Before digital photography, before I even had a decent film camera, I took lots of snapshots of my kids that were um... of less than stellar quality.

Nowadays, I am able to take pictures that look like this:

But today, while I was watching Conference, I started going through a bunch of old family photos to put them in albums, and I found pictures like this:

And my heart melted......

How sweet! My two little munchkins tormenting our new - already half-feral kitty, Taffy.

I love the jammies and the rumpled bed, and even the Vaseline jar sitting by the ancient clock radio that I bought with my babysitting money when I was 10 and used until I was about 34. (Back in the days before I knew that petroleum jelly was pure evil.)

And then I found the next one in the series:

That HAIR! And those blue jammies that were once her big brother's - soft little terry cloth sleepers with snaps up the leg. I can practically feel how snuggly she was in those. And my cute Jaxon with his perpetually red cheeks and sweet smile.

I love these! I'm so glad I have them and that I took so many crappy pictures. And I realized that photos don't have to be perfectly lit and properly exposed to be heirlooms, and in fact, usually the everyday-messy hair-moments are the most treasured.

So here's to all our crappy photos and the beautiful memories they keep.

In Memory of Brian...

2010-09-27T01:48:00.004-06:00

A few weeks ago, a terrible tragedy occurred in our community. Deputy Brian Harris was killed in the line of duty. Still, almost a month later, I don't have the words to express my feelings about what a great loss this is for all of us, and especially for his family. I was privileged to get to photograph his funeral and graveside service and wanted to share just a few of those photos.

First, there was the candlelight vigil the Sunday night after he was killed. We went to express our love to the family and to be united in our support for them and in our feelings of loss.

I don't know how many came to the viewing - both the night before the funeral and the morning of, but it was an incredible amount of people. We stood in line about an hour and a half. There were tables all along the line with pictures of Brian and his family and pages for people to write on. There was also a slide show playing in several places along the way.

I never get rid of any photos that I take for people and this is why: This family portrait is one I took of the Harris family last year.

(That little pillow in front of the photo is also one I made and sold at a school fundraiser a few years ago - kind of surprised to see it again.)

I also took the photo of Brian and his parents and brothers and sister here in the left of the frame - I was so glad that I had these.

Officers came from every police agency in the state and there were many from all around the country.

The wives of the sheriff's department made this amazing quilt:

The slide show had several of my photos included in it - of the whole family and some of Brian with his girls at the daddy/daughter dances from the last two years.

I tried to take photos of the different patches from the arms of the officers who were there. I didn't get nearly as many as I would have liked, but here are a few:

I had a chance to visit with two members of the Honor Guard from Ada County, Idaho. I was impressed by how impeccably turned out they were in their dress uniforms and I asked if I could take their photo. They had traveled a long way and I felt very appreciative to them - and all the visiting law enforcement - for coming to honor Brian.

The funeral was held in our new high school gym to accommodate everyone. It was also piped in to several different locations where people could attend through live broadcast.

The roads around the school were closed off and there was a line of motorcycles parked from the school almost clear to the highway.

After the funeral, Brian's brothers took him from the building, down a corridor of saluting officers to the waiting hearse and the procession headed to Glendale to the graveside service.

The motorcycle portion of the procession:

Very impressive.

I love our community - all along the procession route, there were folks holding flags and signs:

I was able to ride to the cemetery with some family members and I was very touched the by the outpouring of support along the way.

This huge flag was hung from cranes across the road leading to the Glendale Cemetery
.

And above the school, some local boys had placed a flag on "the V", our local Valley landmark, standing for Valley High School where Brian had graduated in 1987.

At the graveside, it took a while for all the officers to get there and to form a double line from the cemetery entrance to the gravesite.

Brian was taken from the hearse and placed in his own County Sheriff's truck for the last leg of his journey.

After the dedication of the grave, the color guard folded the flags and presented them to the family.

It was a very sober and touching ceremony, one I won't soon forget.

There was also an honor guard which gave a 21 gun salute and played the bugle.

The pallbearers - Brian's brothers, brother-in-law, and nephews, placed their boutonnieres on the casket, and Brian's second family - the member's of the sheriff's department - each added a rose.

Brian was the first officer to ever be killed in the line of duty in Kane County. He was an indispensable member of the Sheriff's Department and will be greatly missed by his brothers there.

There was also a fly-over:

...and a last call by dispatch. I'm sure there wasn't a dry eye in attendance when we heard them calling for Brian over the radio.

He loved his job and did it well. And even more than that, he loved his family.

I took a lot of pictures of the family, but didn't feel like I should include them here. They are so personal and I feel like they are for the family alone.

I stood there with his grieving family and felt my heart breaking for them. There is something, though, that makes this family more fortunate than most - they have each other. Brian's parents and 5 brothers and their wives all live right here. And as I watched his oldest brother holding Brian's youngest daughter on his lap and comforting her and whispering in her ear, I knew that though Kristina's lost her dad, she has 5 uncles who are never going to let her down.

What a privilege it was to be there. Our prayers will continue to be with Brian's family - we love them and hope to be of some help and support to them.

Brian, we'll sure miss you!

Candids in the Window

2010-09-19T11:11:00.004-06:00

Because I do so many 'portrait's' for people, I kind of get stuck in portrait mode. Even with my own kids sometimes - too much posing and not enough spontaneity.

I was organizing some of my family photos this morning and came across this little bunch of three - and they were so refreshing to me. Unstaged, unposed, and unaware that I was even taking them. They were taken from my office chair. I'd just swiveled around, saw my kids playing together in the window light, grabbed my camera off my desk and snapped these three shots.

And seeing these photos reminded me of three things:

That I need to take more candid photos of my kids and family - and more candid moments in my portrait photography, even.
That I so appreciate how cute my kids are together and how well they get along almost all of the time. I LOVE that they're such good buddies!
How much I love window light. These photos are completely uncropped, unedited and untouched, but they are beautiful with that light from my kitchen window coming in on their little faces (and I don't even mind that the first one is a little blurry.)

And in the spirit of candidness, here's one from the bridal shoot I did last night. And even though we got lots of beautiful posed shots, this is my favorite.

Random Cuteness

2010-09-14T22:56:00.003-06:00

The queen of blogging, my beloved Pioneer Woman, says that you should post on your blog everyday. I'm not sure how in the world - while homeschooling 4 kids and living on a working cattle ranch - she has time to do this, but if she has time, I need to try a little harder. I do love blogging, after all.

Today, I worked all day out in the sun, and while it was a mere 94 degrees this afternoon in the rest of the countryside, it was at least 104 degrees inside of my arena. (Good thing I LOVE my job.) I then came back home and played with two of my own horses until after dark and fed all the animals - equine, canine, feline and human. I went to the grocery store, doctored Brynn's cut finger, followed up on homework, checked my email, said prayers, got the kids to bed - FINALLY - and am now doing my bloggin' duty.

I wanted to put up a big, important blog post tonight, but I'm absolutely exhausted. I was up too late last night editing and I really need more than a few hours sleep tonight. So I'm just posting a video of my baby that I took a couple of months ago and never got around to blogging.

This little "skit" is something my mom used to do when we were kids - don't know where it came from. Mom used to do it with a napkin or folded up piece of paper shaped like a bow-tie. Luke chose to do it with his grilled cheese sandwich.

And he couldn't remember the last line, so I wrote it down for him on a prompt card - which is why he pauses and his eyes keep shifting to the side of the screen. But he's toooo cute! With his fuzzy haircut and his crazy growing in teeth, his greasy skin from putting a sandwich on it.

MAN, I love this child!

So here it is, "Pay the Rent".....

I'm OUTTA here!

2010-09-08T19:07:00.004-06:00

I'm headed off to Colorado tomorrow for four days to a Parelli Performance Summit - doesn't that sound exciting?!

What is a Parelli Performance Summit, you might ask? It's going to be a little bit like this:

Only on a smaller scale, geared toward Parelli's more advanced students, and at their place in Pagosa Springs, CO, which is gorgeous in September.

It's a place to be instructed, inspired and motivated in my horsemanship journey - they're going to be teaching and demonstrating some advanced stuff and there's sure to be fabulous horse/human teams galore. I CAN'T WAIT!

And not only am I going to be learning how to up my horsemanship ante, but I'm going with two good friends who are not only great traveling companions, but a barrel of laughs, and as passionate as I am about natural horsemanship.

Can you say, ROAD TRIP?!

The 7 hours of travel each way (and eating out) is half the fun when I'm goin' with my girls.

So expect some mediocre photos (I'm not taking my good camera) and video and a blog post upon my return.

And enjoy this little clip of an extremely extroverted little punk with his Parelli Play Ball. This is a Parelli horse through and through!

Don't you hate it when you get bucked off of a big green ball? The nerve!

Disneyland, bay-beeee!

2010-08-28T11:45:00.012-06:00

I talked before about how my family goes to California to visit my sister Laura's family every other year and that this was our year. We always go do something "touristy" like Sea World (my favorite!) or the Midway Museum (Grandpa Carter's favorite), but we've never been to Disneyland. My sister had yearly passes for her family that expired on the 23rd of August, so even though Marty was ADAMANTLY opposed to going across the deserts of Nevada and Eastern California in August, we decided we'd better bite the bullet and do it when we could go with my sister's fam - since that's the real reason we trek to CA in the first place.

We could have opted to go later in the year when the desert wouldn't be as hot and the park wouldn't be so crowded and go by ourselves, but besides wanting to spend time there with our cousins, we wanted to take advantage of my sister's rockin' Disneyland guiding skills. Seriously, this girl could hire herself out as a professional DL guide! She's super organized anyway, but she's also been to Disney a lot and has really figured out how to minimize line time and where to go when.

I didn't want to take my big new camera into the park, for one thing it's worth more than my car. I also didn't want to lug it around. So I took in my new little waterproof point and shoot - a Fuji Z33 that I got for a killer deal. I was expecting the photos to be pretty poor quality, but I figured they'd be better than nothing. I was actually pleasantly surprised, they were better than I'd expected them to be.

I didn't do a super great job of documenting everything I should have - looking back at the pictures I took, I'm kind of surprised by what I did and didn't capture. I guess I was a little bit overwhelmed by the whole Disney experience myself, and kind of lost my d*@n mind. (In the words of one of my good friends. :0)

So here they are, such as they are - - our day in the happiest place on earth:

(And for some reason, because these are from my point and shoot, I felt no need whatsoever to edit them - so here they are in their uncut, undedited glory.)

My sister is a pro at working the fast passes - - she sends her 16 year old with everyone's ticket stubs to the ride we want fast passes for. In the meantime, the rest of the herd goes and gets in line for "Pirates" or one of the other rides that she knows doesn't have much of a line.

Since the last time I went to DL, in about '95, they've added Johnny Depp to the ride - in three different places. He completely belongs there - Captain Jack Sparrow was the most brilliant pirate ever!

I had no idea how my kids would handle the rides, they've never been on any kind of roller coasters before. They all liked "Pirates", but only two out of the three were very impressed with the Big Thunder Mountain.

(Marty w/ his Cat hat - of course - checking to see if Jaxon was alright.)

Jaxon didn't end up liking the roller coasters much at all, but Luke thought they were "AWESOME".

My brother in law, Craig:

his primary objective in all the craziness was: Keep track of the little boys. He also wouldn't let them ride the roller coasters together, they always had to have an adult in the seat next to them. He was afraid their lightweight little hieneys would just fly right out if there weren't a big person there to hold them down.

Byrnn liked the roller coasters too, but cried all the way through the Indiana Jones ride - - TWICE. (I tried to talk her out of going the second time around, but she insisted on doing it anyway - maybe she thought it would be different somehow.) Jaxon loved "Indie", he thought the special effects were AWESOME, we ended up going that second time just for him.

Luke also loved the "Indie" ride and he was just barely tall enough to make it in. But we knew he would be tall enough because he and Laura's Nate are exactly the same height and Nate had already been 3 times in the last year. That was another reason we decided to go this year - thanks to his cousin Nate, we knew he'd made the cut.

There were a couple of attractions that weren't on my sister's approved DL agenda, but we did them anyway because our kids are newbies and they are Disneyland institutions: Small World (I know, the song just popped into your head) and the Teacups.

Small World was one of the only rides we stood in line for for any length of time - they don't offer fast passes for that one. It was also one of the only rides that moved slowly (translate: boring) enough for me to take very many pictures of.

We had a big enough group that we usually took up a whole car, or boat, or whathaveyou.

Front left: my sister Sharon - to her right: Craig's sister Marin, who just happened to be in DL with her friends that day - behind Marin: my sister Laura, and behind Laura: her oldest, Justin.

I was fascinated by the cool sculpted shrubbery in front of the Small World, and I had to get a shot of this horse, of course.

The little people from all nations inside of the Small World were quite precious - I'd forgotten just how precious:

And on the Teacups: Justin's girlfriend, Haley who rode the commuter train and caught up with us at the park, Marin, and Madison (Laura's 12 year old daughter).

And Laura with her two youngest: Nathan and Allyson.

We ate lunch ($48.00 worth) in the Pizza Port in Tomorrowland. We also went on Spacemountain twice, which is my favorite. Luke and Brynn also loved Spacemountain, but Jaxon wouldn't even try it. Which is kind of interesting because he's so into Star Wars, but the Big Thunder really put him off on roller coasters so he wasn't game to try another one.

We also went to the revival of Michael Jackson's Captain Eo, also located in Tomorrowland, but to me it felt very nostalgic like it should have been in Yesterdayland. Or Eightiesland.

The kids dug the 3-D glasses - only kids can pull these off.

We also hung out for a bit in the Innoventions building. We got to see a picture of how we'd look in 20 years. Yippy, good times.

It also struck me as funny how we came all the way to Disneyland and my boys, instead of enjoying all the miraculous wonders, got sucked into a video game. Anybody else recognize this look?

Yeah. Nice.

We really didn't buy anything in the way of souvenirs, I'm kind of a mean mom that way. But Madi used her own money to get this personalized bracelet, and I actually thought it was really cute.

Laura knows, that when the day is getting long and we're a few hours past lunch, it's time to go into the Golden Horseshoe Theatre and have a little treat:

and rest in the air conditioning and watch the show. The show was one of my favorite parts of the day, I thought it was brilliant and hillarious. I was too far from the stage and it was to dark to get decent video, but I took some anyway.

I missed some of the funniest stuff - it was hard to tell when it was coming.

Craig and Ally - I just love me a good Daddy. Laura's and my kids are soooo lucky in their dads. And they'll probably never truly appreciate what exceptionally good dads they have.

The longest line we stood in the whole day was for Autopia - another ride with no fastpass.

Jaxon really liked it for some reason and ended up doing it twice. I only did it once, thank goodness. Not my favorite at all. It was getting quite dark by the time we did it the second time.

And then as we were leaving, I got this shot of Walt and Mickey together. What is it about this place that makes it so special? I don't exactly know, but there's not doubt that it is.

What Sandcrabs Do

2010-08-24T22:55:00.002-06:00

... and what little boys do with them.

Poor sandcrabs. We did release them soon after this.

A Day at the Beach

2010-08-22T01:06:00.009-06:00

My sister, Laura, lives in Southern California and every other year we go to visit them. We've never been to Disneyland with our kids, so we decided to go this year. And of course, a big highlight of going to California is getting to go to the beach. We went twice while we were there - the first time it was quite overcast and everyone was saying how sorry they were that the sun wasn't out, but not me. Overcast skies make for soft, diffused light and beautiful photos and I had a heyday with my new camera.

So here is a very small percentage of the photos I took that first day at the beach.

The water was VERY, very cold, and it caused a little bit of fear and trepidation among some of the children. Can you tell which of these kids is from California?

Yes, she embraced the cold water, reveled in it even!

Have you ever seen a sandcrab? Interesting little creatures - they sure can burrow. The kids spent half their time hunting for them and playing with them. I think the sandcrabs were pretty relieved when we went home that day.

Laura has a lovely 16 year old boy:

I wish I'd gotten a better picture of him, this was the only one I was able to grab.

Then, she has a 12 year old girl who is 4 months older than my Jaxon. She had a little nap on the sand:

Then, she had a girl 7 weeks after my Brynn and they are quite a pair - two fun little girlie-girl cousins who have a ball together.

And then my sister gave birth to a boy 2 days before my Luke was born. And they're also quite the little pair - they're like peas and carrots. They're the vanilla and chocolate version of the same kid, practically. They're the same exact same height and too much fun together.

Jaxon was kind enough to let them bury him.

But then he was stuck in the sand when the waves came in:

And my Marty..... I'm sure he was the only guy on the entire California coastline with a Caterpillar T-shirt on.

The kids were kind enough to humor me for this final photo - I love it, all these little sandy feet
represent all of my parent's grandchildren.

We had such a great time. It's a good thing we don't live in California because I'd spend all my time at the beach.

The Story of Bo

2010-08-08T20:26:00.009-06:00

Horse lovers are born, not made. I'm convinced this is true. I was wild about horses from before I could talk, or so my mother tells me. When I was a kid, and begging to have my own horse, my dad told me, "Forget about it, you will NEVER have a horse."

Well, thanks to my perseverance, and a lot of help from my Grandpa, I did own my own horse - which of course, turned into horses. Not only that, but I've made my living with horses since I was 18. I don't blog about my horses very much, as it seems more important to record the goings on of my family while my kids are little, but the horses are such a big part of our lives that I really ought to mention them more.

Not only was I born a horse lover, but my daughter was also. She is obsessed, just like I was (and still am). She draws horses, reads about them, bought a horse Wii game w/ her birthday money and wants to ride all the time.

Her first horse was Penny, who was truly the perfect first horse for a little kid. We lost Penny last spring and were devastated. My good friend Linda, and fellow trainer at the Sanctuary, let us borrow her horse, Bo, last summer for Brynn to ride. Bo is a really good boy and Brynn trail rode him all summer and had a great time on him at our local youth county fair horse show:

She hit it off really well with Bo and was sad when it was time to send him back to Linda. But this spring, Linda decided that she wanted to give Bo to Brynn. We kept it a surprise and when the day came, our friend Molly, who is a staff photographer at the Sanctuary and a fellow horse lover, came with her camera (and a length or red tinsel by way of gift wrapping) to take pictures of the event.

We had him tinseled up and standing in the yard when Brynn got home from school:

(Thanks, Molly, for the great pictures!)

So now Bo is a part of our family and we feel very blessed and lucky to have him - THANK YOU LINDA!

Brynn plays with him and rides him every chance she gets. She also had another great county fair horse show this year, even though her feet still don't reach the stirrups.

(In't he purty?!)

A girl and her horse - it's a beautiful thing.

The List

2010-07-31T16:45:00.006-06:00

We keep a notepad on the fridge and every time Marty or I think of something we're going to need on our next Walmart trip, we write it down on "the list".

The other day, as I was headed to go shopping, and about to take the list off the fridge, I noticed something... a little extra item had been added to the list.

By this person:

(to see more photos from this photo shoot with my new camera, check out the latest entry in my photography blog)

Anway, she'd never said anything to me about wanting a hamster, she just casually added it to the list.

Wouldn't it be great if getting things in life were just that easy?

So when I came home she said, "So Mom, did you get my hamster?"

And I said, "Nope".

And she said, "Well, did you at least get string cheese?"

Over the Moon!

2010-07-25T18:11:00.005-06:00

Last week I posted this picture that I'd taken for Brynn's birthday party invitations.

This week, Pioneer Woman is holding one of her famous photography contests and the theme is "water".

I'm never entered one of her contests, or any photography contest for that matter - the photos that are entered always blow my mind, they are just so gorgeous and interesting and incredible.

But I thought, "This photo of Brynn is kind of unusual and dramatically lit and her eyelashes look amazing with all the minuscule drops of water on them, and she's even wearing blue... perhaps I'll enter it - just for fun."

Well, you'll never guess - go ahead, try to guess. Oh, you'll never guess, I'm just going to have to tell you.....

MY PHOTO GOT PICKED IN THE FIRST GROUP!

Can you believe it? I still can't. I'm so psyched, I can't wipe the silly grin off my face!

And there several people in the comments who said mine was their favorite. So nice, what a totally fun thing.

So there will be 5 groups and then she'll pick the finalists. Now wouldn't that be fun?

So check out the contest and all the amazing water photos: PW "water" photography contest.

Because it's Been So Bleedin' HOT!

2010-07-22T00:11:00.006-06:00

I don't do well with heat, I really don't. I handle cold a lot better than the extreme heat we've been having around here the last couple of weeks.

Our valiant little swamp cooler that we installed when I was pregnant with Brynn is just a pluggin' away trying to keep ahead of the heat, but when it gets to be over 100 degrees outside, it has a pretty hard time. And it doesn't help with my heat issues that I have horses who insist on being fed and cared for even in the dead of summer, and also a part-time job working outside with the horses during the hottest part of day.

But tonight as I was organizing my picture files, I ran across these pics that made me feel a little cooler.

We live near a verra big mountain, and on the other side of this gigantic mountain is the closest Walmart. So once every three weeks or so, I set out across this mountain to do my major shopping. It's quite a drive - steep and curvy with deer and elk, sheer drop offs and the occasional raging forest fire to keep things interesting. But I like it, it's so pretty up there, and I know the road like the back of my hand.

Anyway. About 5 weeks ago, around the middle of June, I went across the mountain in a snow storm. Now, I have driven over that road about 49 times in blizzards, but never before in the middle of June. And is was so pretty and stormy and cool that I snapped a few shots with my little point and shoot camera.

There was actually snow sticking on the ground at one point.

So tonight, when I was filing these pictures, I thought it might be nice to post them and take my mind off how Africa-hot it's been around here lately.

Anyone else feel like they're living in Africa too?

wanna get wet?

2010-07-17T12:30:00.005-06:00

She wanted to make her invitation with blue construction paper and a sharpie pen and I almost let her. But I just don't roll that way! And this one literally took me 15 minutes - from taking the photos to printing them out.

And she loves them.

I say, if you have the technology, why not?

I want to marry Photoshop.

I'm letting her use my sharpie on the envelopes.

And she did a fine job.

"I love my dadgum camera!" - Pioneer Woman

Well, it's finally happened....

2010-07-08T16:03:00.010-06:00

My husband is a hunk.

He seriously is.

He's 41, has worked hard all of his life and between his work ethic, the everyday kinds of things that he does (like running a grader, welding, hauling hay and shoeing horses), and his genetics, he's just physically tough. He has good balance, great reflexes and he's super-duper strong. He's kind of a freak, actually.

Well, no, that's not true. He's not a freak. But it makes me feel better about my own lack of physical prowess to thinks so.

Anyway.

The other day when his brother's family was visiting, one of their 16 year old twins was showing off his ripped biceps. Now this kid is also really athletic and can run a 4:40 mile, but his biceps are not especially large. Not that they don't look lean and mean and very impressive, mind you, but when you're married to the kind of biceps I'm married to.... well, it's all relative.

So when Justin was showing off his biceps, I turned to Marty and said, "Show him yours, honey." And Justin's "old" uncle raised his arm and popped up a Popeye muscle that was about 3 times the size of Justin's.

Justin took one look, said, "I think I'm going to cry," and then wandered dejectedly away.

I almost felt bad for him for a minute, but then I decided that all cute, ripped, cocky 16 year old boys ought to have an uncle or a dad or a grandpa who can show them up once in a while. It's good for their character.

For years I've been trying to get my hubba-hubba-hubby to flex for a photo for me, and he's been absolutely unwilling and completely unsympathetic to my cause. But the other day, as I was complimenting him on the handsome cowboy shirt he was wearing (that I bought for him at a thrift store, of course) and he was feeling charitable toward me for telling him how hunky and manly he looked, he finally agreed to flex for the camera. IF he didn't have to hold his arm up and have his face in the picture. I also had to do a little extra bargaining, but I jumped at the chance even though his muscle looks bigger when he holds his arm up.

As soon as I finished taking the photo he said, "Are you going to put that picture on your blog?" And I said, "You BETCHA baby! We made a deal!"

So much to his chagrin, it is now on my blog. He should have thought of that before he let me take the shot.

Here he is in all his freaky glory.

In a pink shirt, no less.

Notice the bulging muscle in his HAND as well. And let me tell you, that hand is heck on jar lids!

Take THAT Marlboro Man! (You have to be a follower of Pioneer Woman to appreciate that reference.)

And then, as if the muscles weren't enough, he went right out and cooked us dinner in a dutch oven.

Be still my heart.

(Just a photographic side note: It was very interesting to me to notice the difference in the color of his shirt in the house - 1st picture - and outside under the awning. Hmmm. But they're both PINK. :O) Did I mention that he's also a little bit color blind? I think he thinks this shirt is red. Shhh, don't tell him.)

I Love My Country!

2010-07-04T23:09:00.005-06:00

This is the view looking up the street in my little town. Flags line both sides of our main street on all federal holidays (courtesy of the boy scouts) but, for me, they are especially gorgeous and striking and amazing on the 4th of July.

I love the 4th, it is my favorite holiday. I am a patriot every day, but I really love the 4th and all it means.

I'm grateful to live in a very patriotic part of the country, our little community is full of patriots and it's good to be surrounded by like minded people.

And I belong to a very patriotic church. I found these great songs by our Mormon Tabernacle Choir - on YouTube, of course. I couldn't decide which ones to post, I could have included a dozen patriotic songs by the Mo-Tab, but I restrained myself and only posted 3.

Happy Independence Day!

Saving the Flag

2010-07-03T20:49:00.002-06:00

When I was at girl's camp a couple of weeks ago, there was a story told during the closing devotional about Rick Monday saving the American Flag. I'd never heard this story before and it really touched me. I promptly went home and found it on YouTube (dang, you gotta love YouTube!) and have been saving it for an Independence Day post.

You may have already heard this story before, but even so, it bears repeating.

Jaxon's 6th Grade Play Extraordinaire

2010-06-28T22:42:00.007-06:00

I promised several posts about Jaxon and what he's been up to, but it's taken me a while to get this one posted because I knew it would take me a long time to upload all the photos and video.

The last week of school, his 6th grade class put on a play - The Pirates of Penzance. It was directed by a mother of one of the 6th graders who has had A LOT of theater experience and she did a truly amazing job with these kids. The costumes were great, the music was so fun and the acting was even pretty good. She approached me before casting and told me that she wanted to cast Jaxon in the part of the Major General and wanted to know if I thought he was up to a lot of memorizing and a solo. I told her he would be all over that and not have a bit of problem with the memorization.

He did so well, it was really a delight to watch. This acting business is really his thing, and I have no idea where he got that from. (I'd rather stick a fork in my eye than be in a play - and I'd rather light myself on fire than sing a solo on stage.) But nevertheless, we were very proud of him, and all the class - they were amazing.

As we were getting the costumes together, Mindy, the director told me that he needed red knee high socks for his uniform. I didn't know where in the world I was going to find red knee highs, so I asked if they could be another color and she said, "Nope! they have to be red!"

Well, she was right. Red made the costume.

Here's Jaxon's big solo:

They had two performances - in the first one, he didn't wear much makeup:

and it was almost easier to see his great facial expressions.

In the evening performance, he had on a big mustache, which was pretty cute:

Here he is getting his makeup done (he was a pirate for the first scene):

When you have such a small class, sometimes you have to double up on parts, and sometimes you have to recruit kindergarten and first grade kids to play the cops:

Yep, that's my other boy in the middle, he got to be a cop. They had a really cute little dance number and we had almost as fun watching Mindy, the director, down in front coaching the little cops on their dance as we did watching them do it. Too cute.

I literally took 700 photos and about 2 hours worth of video between the two performances. But I couldn't include them all, here are a few of my favorites.

It really was a great play. I put a whole bunch more pics up on Flikr for the kids to use, if you'd like to see or download more play pics, go to:

6th grade play - Pirates of Penzance

Terrified and Speechless...

2010-06-27T01:37:00.000-06:00

Intriguing blog post title, huh.

Here's the thing: the thing is, I am often (99% of the time) up way too late at night editing photos, shopping, paying bills, emailing, blogging and generally stealing a little bit of time for myself. And sometimes while I'm online or working in Photoshop, I surf YouTube and listen to music, and sometimes I run across some unexpectedly delightful little musical tidbits. I don't really have radio in this little teenieweenieville oasis where I live, so I don't hear the latest songs as quickly or as often as most of the world. But that's almost a good thing as I used to get sick to death of my favorite songs after they've been overplayed by radio stations for a few months. Now, when I find a song I love, I can play it for myself - just the right amount.

Here's one of my latest favorites by Kara DioGuardi (from American Idol) and Jason Reeves (who co-wrote Bubbly for Colbie Caillat):

And I like this version even better:

It's fun to hear Kara sing and know that when she's critiquing Idol contestants, she herself is the real deal, not just a singer in her own right, but an amazing songwriter as well.

Katherine McFee also did this song (and I love her version too) and so did Didi Benami for an Idol audition.

And isn't that just a gorgeous song?!! And it's a "nice" song too - no raunchy lyrics, no creepy innuendo, no cussin'.

And on that note... Jaxon came home a while back and asked us who Lady GaGa was - - his friends had been talking about her at school. Well, I'm kinda glad he doesn't know. Wow, that girl is a little bit out there for me. But I did happen upon this video the other day and actually really loved this song and, giving credit where it's due, found out that this crazy GaGa is quite a talent. She can really croon, that GaGa, and play the piano too.

Check out Speechless:

Wow. I'm speechless.

But I'm still not showing her videos to my boy anytime soon. Call me old fashioned, but she scares me a little. Okay, a lot. But she sure can sing.

Fabulous Fred Friday

2010-06-25T23:10:00.003-06:00

Aside from horses, which are far and away the most amazing animals on the planet, I've always kind of considered myself a bit more of a dog than cat person. Not much more, mind you, just like .8% more.... but this cat has changed my mind. He is the coolest, grooviest, mellowest, friendliest, and all around nicest cat I've ever known.

And he lets the kids tie stuff to him. Can you guess what this little yellow ribbon could possibly be leading to?

Anyone, anyone???

Yep, you guessed it ~

(disclaimer: No Freds were maimed, killed or traumatized in the making of this blog post.)

My Baby's 7th Birthday

2010-06-24T20:17:00.009-06:00

The other day I was reading a post on my favorite blog, The Pioneer Woman, and she was talking about how she never calls her baby by his actual name, she just calls him, "Baby". Man can I relate! And my baby is now 7 YEARS OLD!

Right before he turned 6 - about 3 1/2 months ago - he asked me, "Mama, when I'm 6, will I still be your baby?"

And of course I answered, "Yes, and when you're 26 you'll still be my baby, and when your 56 and 86....".

The other day after he'd been 7 for a couple of weeks (his birthday is the 1st of June) he told me, "Mom, I don't like being an odd number."

And I said, "Is that why you've been acting so odd?"

And he said, "Yep. I want to be an even number again."

And I said, "Don't rush it, Baby."

Anyhoo....

We only do friend birthday parties every other year and this is the year for his friend party, but he had a heckuva time trying to decide what he wanted to do for his birthday. I finally suggested we go the Kanab pool which we'd never been to before. He jumped at that (finally! a decision) and we gathered his friends into the good ol' Suburban, picked up some pizza and headed to the park and pool. I was so rushed and hassled and crazy that I forgot a few things like extra plates, napkins, matches, drinks..... and to take photos of a lot of our good friends and family that were there. Darn it!

But I did manage to get a couple. He wanted a Superman cake.

...to go with the photo we took to go on his invitation:

In't my baby handsome?

This next photo, unfortunately, is not his "I'm so excited about my birthday presents"smile , it's his "Mom's pointing the camera at me and I'm 7 and I'm odd" smile:

Lovely.

Thanks to all his friends who brought such nice gifts!

The pool is really neat, it has a lazy river and several slides and a bunch of big water spouting toys.

We stayed about 2 1/2 hours, which was about 4 hours too short for the kids, and then made our waterlogged way home, where I finally remembered to take a shot or two of our remaining guests.

It was a fun party, but the best part (for me) is having gotten it done.

Luke's 7th birthday party..... check!

I'm officially middle aged....

2010-06-15T23:40:00.006-06:00

I've been looking toward (notice I didn't say "forward to") my 40th birthday for a couple of years now. I've been "crowding 40" since I was like, 38 and now it's actually here. It's a totally cliche thing to say, but I really can't believe how fast this first 40 years of my life has gone. Crazy!

Anyway, my lovely friend Jenna - the party planner extraordinaire - threw me a surprise party on Friday. I shoulda seen it coming, knowing Jenna like I do, but for some reason, I totally didn't.

She had been planning it for several weeks and was in cahoots with my hubby (who wasn't exactly what you'd call, um....helpful). She also recruited some of my other good friends (some of whom prefer to remain nameless - you know who you are) to come and to help with the food and the cakes. It turned out so nice and I was so utterly and completely surprised.

In fact, kind of a funny story about that: I'd been at girl's camp for 3 days and while I was gone, our microwave (that we got for our wedding) died. I felt like I needed to run to the big city and get a new one that night because we had other stuff going on the next day and then the weekend. Anyway - when I told Marty I was going, he said, "NO! You can't go! You are NOT going tonight."

Well!

He has never said anything like that to me before and I went instantly on the defensive. I was like, "Don't you dare tell me 'no' mister! You are not the boss of me!" And then I, of course, was even more determined to go.

So he was calling Jenna in a panic and they finally figured out the only way to get me to the party was to talk me into waiting and taking Marty and the kids (who were supposed to be at Jenna's having their piano lessons) with me shopping. So when they were done with their "piano lessons" (translate: hanging at Jenna's while she was in a pre-party panic) we went to Jenna's to pick them up and take them Cedar with us, and there were a bunch of decorated tables and whaddayouknow, Jenna with a camera, and a bunch of my friends!

Surprise!

You coulda knocked me over with a feather!

So here are a few shots from the party: I wish I had taken more, I think I was in a little bit of shock, frankly.

The gorgeous invitation (with the pertinent info on how to get to Jenna's house brushed out) that Jenna made and distributed. Love it!

That's one of my all-time favorite pictures - - Jenna swiped it off my blog.

And then another really good friend - who prefers to remain nameless - put that same photo on a great big yummy CAKE!

The absolute coolest cake I've ever seen! It almost broke my heart to cut into it.

A few friends at the party:

Molly, who kindly lent me her camera for the occasion and took some pics for me too.

(notice in the background that there are THREE white minivans - looks like a Mormon Mom convention!)

My lovely oldest child gave me a whole stack of housework coupons - does he know me well or what? I've already used one, and some are reusable! (notice the 3 "punches" on the bottom - this one's good three times!)

*no "wining". that's the best part!

And, finally, a picture of me on my own blog - I know, I know, you thought this day would never come. And I just realized something... In the old pic of me, I'm trying to feed a baby horse some grain that he doesn't really want - in this picture, I'm trying to feed a baby human some cake that she doesn't really want.

Hmmmm.

Food for thought.

Thanks so much to all my friends and family who came to my party and have called and sent Facebook messages. I feel very loved today. :)

You have made turning 40 a lot less painful. Now on to living with being 40....

All Jaxon, All the Time - 12th Bday Party

2010-06-13T18:19:00.006-06:00

I've been so behind on my blogging that I haven't had time to record some really important events like my big boy turning 12 years old!

(There's also been a couple of other important events in Jaxon's life lately so I will be posting several posts about him this week - all Jaxon, all the time - and see if I can't get caught up with what he's been up to the last few months.)

He decided that he wanted to go to the big city and see the movie, How to Train Your Dragon, so we took three of his best friends over to Cedar and took them to lunch and went to the movie. We had cake and opened presents at the Arctic Circle around the corner from the theaters and Jaxon received the latest book in the Fablehaven series, which he had really been looking forward to.

There was a lady sitting across the isle watching the festivities, and when she got up to leave she came over and told Jaxon that any boy who was such a big fan of Fablehaven ought to have a $5 bill for his birthday.

And so she gave him one....

(I just love this picture!)

Nice, huh. There are lots of nice people still left in the world.

We had a heckuva good time and the movie was great, and I kind of like these boys.

Especially this one:

He's a dang good kid. I can't believe he's already 12, he's growing up on me, and I'm not too sure how I feel about that.

Love you, bud. My big boy.

Remembering....

2010-06-01T22:12:00.005-06:00

We had such a lovely Memorial Day weekend. On Saturday, there was a family reunion for Marty's mom's side of the family. Marty's brother Ryan brought his wife and 5 of their 8 kids down for the reunion and stayed through Memorial Day. We LOVE having them - in fact, we wish they'd bring the whole family - all 10 of them - and just move in for good.

On Saturday morning, we all walked over to the cemetery and put flowers on Marty's mom and dad's graves. Marty's mom died when he was 17. They were very close and it breaks my heart a little every time I think about it. His dad died 3 years ago at the age of 87 and we miss him.

Marty's dad's nickname was Bruin and he was a veteran of WWII. In our very small community, we actually have a whole lot of WWII vets. Every holiday, our town puts up flags in the cemetery for them.

I love the flags.

But when I look out across the cemetery and see them all, it makes me wonder why so many young men were drafted from such a small community. But the cool thing is, almost all of them came back. In fact, I think (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) that they all came back except one, who died of disease instead of in battle.

We also have a military commemorative plaque for Marty's dad at the foot of his grave. He served as a forward reconnaissance scout for the artillery and he was wounded and received the purple heart.

(isn't he handsome?)

Ryan also served in the military - the National Guard - for quite a few years. Both he and Marty are such good men. It warms my heart to see them honoring their parents in this way.

There are also a lot of their grandparents and great-grandparents buried in this cemetery. Most of their family goes back to the original founding fathers of this community.

Their grandpa was a blacksmith and has blacksmithing tools and an anvil on his grave site.

I think it's a wonderful thing to have a day set aside to remember and honor our loved ones who have passed on. We love them and hope that we are living up to their legacy.

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom!

2010-05-19T22:17:00.003-06:00

Don't get me wrong, I love my Suburban, my old GMC pickup, and my sexy Dodge Cummins, but they all get pretty lousy gas mileage - some worse than others. For a while now, I've been wanting a little car to run around in. But not just any car - a car that gets KILLER gas mileage. I've been shopping online for months and found one that was the size I wanted, the price range we could afford, and best of all - a 4 cylinder with a standard transmission.

I prefer to drive a standard, but they're getting kind of hard to find. Most of them are Hondas, Toyotas, Nissans, etc. Which is fine by me since those are all good cars. Well, this one I found is a Mazda. It's really clean and well maintained.

We had to go to Pleasant Grove to get it so we made a trip of it to see Grandma for Mother's Day and buy the car at the same time.

Just before we left my mom's, I filled the gas tank. We went 207 miles to the next time we gassed up, and I put 5 gallons back in it. That's

40 miles to the gallon, people!!

And it's a blast to drive - zippy and sporty and handy in the turns. I'm totally lovin' it.

Zoom Zoom ZOOM!

Compartmentalizing My Life

2010-05-17T14:31:00.007-06:00

Organizational skills do not come naturally to me. In fact, being slovenly and chaotic comes VERY naturally to me - it's so much more fun to be creating than cleaning! But even though being organized isn't my forte, I do have a strong desire to be organized and I have made an effort to work at it throughout my life. Being organized helps me to feel peaceful and in control of my craziness.

A few months ago, I took apart my 75% of the closet and organized it according to color, and within colors - short sleeves to long. It's felt so GOOD! I sent about half of all that mess to the thrift store and have really enjoyed how easy it is to keep organized. Every time I look in there, I smile.

And my hubby now knows where to hang my things as he's folding and putting away the laundry!

So! On that note, I've been so busy with photography lately that I finally decided to take the plunge and get an official photography website. I've also decided to add a photography blog that is separate from this, my personal blog.

So, from now on, photo client sneak peaks will be on my photography blog, and only personal and family stuff will be on this one. I don't know exactly how well it will work, but I'm going to give it a try.

Both the new site and my new photo blog are still under construction, but here are the links if you want to check them out.

So drop a comment and let me know what you think. And wish me luck in my efforts to be organized - it's always an uphill battle around here.

A Flower for You....

2010-05-10T08:30:00.003-06:00

Happy Mother's Day to all my wonderful friends who are mothers.

Whether you know it or not, you inspire me and I can't think of a single one of you who doesn't do something as a mother that I wish I did better.

Thanks for your friendship and your examples. This flower's for you!

My Beautiful Mother

2010-05-10T00:25:00.000-06:00

This weekend we went up to see my mom - - aka, Grandma.

My folks live about 4 hours away, but we don't get up to see them more than 2 or 3 times a year. So it was nice to be able to go up on Mother's Day.

I've bragged about my mom on my blog before, so I'm not going to go on and on today, but suffice it to say, mothers just don't come any better than mine.

I realized that I needed to take some photos of her and my kids together - I've never really done that before.

The kids were acting pretty silly, but I love this anyway.

Thanks Mom, for being such a great mother. I'm thankful everyday for your example and support in my life.

I love you!

Mitch and Lydia - Engagement Session

2010-04-30T20:42:00.000-06:00

Ah, young love!

I remember so well what it was like to be newly in love and engaged. I had a blast photographing these two and it totally brought it all back for me.

And what a gorgeous couple!

I can't decide who is better looking....

Him:

or her:

Yep, I figured it out - - both!

I just realized that everywhere we took photos was old - old cars:

old tractors:

And an old, old house:

You gotta love old stuff and new love together - a great combination.

And my favorite shot of the day - fun with an old phone:

Is that cute, or what?

Brothers are the Best

2010-04-29T22:10:00.001-06:00

My friend Alice has the cutest little boys - they don't look alike, (at least I don't think they do) act alike, or like the same kinds of things - but they are glad to have each other.

And they are both adorable!

And lots of fun!

We've been talking for a while about doing this, and I was excited to get my lens on these two. We finally made it happen a few weeks ago, but I've been so swamped lately that I just haven't gotten them up on the blog until now.

We took them down to an old barn on a friend's property - great backdrop for boy portraits

Chandler has amazing blue eyes...

And his little brother, Bryson's are hazeley brown - so pretty.

We had some fun by a HUGE old cottonwood tree....

And down by the creek....

And then Mom made them get into their Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes. What a mean mom!

Someday, they'll look back on these and realize how handsome they were all duded up. Don't you think? Maybe they'll never appreciate it, but someday their wives will. :)

Thanks, Alice, for letting me hang out with you guys for the afternoon. Let's do it again sometime!

Have you ever spilt a jar of molasses on your countertop?

2010-04-26T17:04:00.003-06:00

well, I have...

waaaaa!

13 Lucky Years

2010-04-13T23:10:00.003-06:00

Yesterday was my 13th wedding anniversary. And I still like him soooooooooooo much. And I still think he's very, very cute. Thank goodness.

I saw a poem on Pioneer Woman once that she'd written about her husband. I'm going to try to write one like it for my sweetheart here:

Him:

the father of my children
the keeper of my heart
the stealer of my La-Z-Boy
the appreciator of my cooking
the grabber of my heiney
the folder of my laundry
the hauler of my hay
the driver of my crazy
the kisser of my lips
the snorer in my bed
the igniter of my passions
the shoer of my horses
the builder of my fires
the companion of my eternities
the love of my life

Amen.

I think one of the best things about him is that he is someone I respect, admire, and want to be more like. And thankfully, after 13 years, apparently, he still likes me too.