April 2013

Post Priesthood Session Slushies

It was great to start the month off with General Conference!  This was the first time M attended the General Priesthood Session with J-rod. It was neat to see them walk out the door together. I'm grateful for they way they both exercise their priesthood, bless our home, and serve those around us.  It was nice that J-rod could be home with us for most of General Conference weekend as he usually has to work General Conference weekend since that is the same time as the bi-yearly maintenance rotation at work.

Zippy and J-rod at Prom '13

April is Prom month for the high school's in our area. During Prom season, our Tri-Stake area holds their Church Prom as a free and fun alternative to school Prom. This year J-rod and I went as chaperons the night of the youth prom.  The theme this year was, "A Night Among The Stars!" with an old Hollywood feel.  The decorations were of course AMAZING--how they out do themselves each and every year, I don't know!

Upon arrival

Some of the decorations

Bathroom decorations are always a favorite at Prom!

I think one of my favorite decorations this year was the HUGE Hollywood sign mural that was done on canvas and hung from the ceiling, it ran the entire length of one of the long hallways at the stake center.  As you walked beside it, when you looked down on the carpet you were walking on, you noticed you were walking on a recreation of the Hollywood Walk of fame.

Hollywood

Throughout the night as the kids were dancing, contests were held and prizes were given. Also, special guests made dropped in throughout the night: Charlie Chaplin, The Phantom, Rosie the Riveter, James Bond, Zorro, Scarlett O'Hara.

Special guests

The time and effort put into pulling it off each year is absolutely a labor of love.  One of the laurels in our ward (a junior), hadn't ever been to a prom so had nothing to compare this one too.  She asked her date, a nonmember friend who had attended their high school prom the week before, how it compared.  Her date's response was, "This is AMAZING! SO much better than school prom. THIS is what I should have paid $90 for--NOT the lame prom I went to last week!"  I thought that was a good sign that church prom was a success! After church prom was over, I learned that all the decorations are donated to our local high school district for their special needs prom--SO cool!

{The Fun Group}

I spent the afternoon prior to prom photographing a group of youth at a local park.  When they called me the week prior asking if I'd be willing and available to take their pictures, I almost said no. All the photographing I do is on automatic mode, and when I "edit" I use a simple program that is very user friendly and does most of the work for me. While I LOVE taking pictures and being behind the camera and always have, I still have a lot to learn about photographing on manual and don't yet have a lot of confidence in photographing people.  

{Darling C and D}

I was very nervous the day of the shoot and prayed a lot that the timing of the afternoon light would work out well, that my nerves wouldn't get the best of me, and that I'd be able to communicate to the couples (and the parents that were present) what I was looking for when posing them.  Fortunately, my prayers were answered and all went well that afternoon. I had a lot of fun photographing the youth, was grateful for the help of the parents that came along to watch, help with props, and helped posed the group.  I learned that photographing couples that are comfortable with each other and are comfortable in front of the camera are much easier to work with then couples that are on a first or second date together. 

{Cute E and N}

I'm grateful I didn't talk myself out of accepting the invitation to do this shoot, grateful that the pictures and their edits turned out well, and that everyone liked them.  I had fun and it helped me in building my confidence in what I can do.  I hope to learn more, increase my skills, and someday turn it into a little business.

{Beautiful M and R}

The weekend following Prom, J-rod and Zippy got to spend a night with just Li'l J. It was the first time in a long time that this was possible. We had such FUN! M was out playing laser tag with  friends and C-sta was enjoying a Girls Night with her second family. 

C-sta with her "big Sis" A, making personal sized pan pizzas.

Li'l J picked pizza and a Pepsi as his special treat for dinner. Then we allowed him to watch a movie he hadn't every seen before but was SUPER excited to see--Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge of the Sith--before playing a good game of Trouble with him.

Fun night with Li'l J

We ended the month with a visit from my brother R and his family. They came out for a wedding on the other side of town.  After attending the wedding and visiting friends, they spent a couple days with us. It was really good to see them all as the last time we saw them was at our sister J's funeral, over a year and a half ago. It was fun to see that our kids, who didn't really know each other, got along really well. 

Cousins C-sta and C--so cute!

C-sta took to my niece C right away; they quickly became inseparable. It did my heart and soul a lot of good to spend a few days with my brother talking, laughing, and crying as we reminisced, but most of all to see the great man he has become and to see him "in action" as the amazing Dad that he is with his kids. The only part that was a little difficult for me at times was just how much my brother looks like a younger version of our Dad. The resemblance was quite striking. From his face and hands, to the sound of his voice--it made my heart ache for our Dad. In fact, when I "reintroduced" Li'l J to my brother R, I almost cried as I said, "This is your uncle R, my brother, and he looks just like your Grandpa Mijo looked when he was younger."  Sigh.

Daily Glimpses

The traffic I have to contend with on my morning commute. Ha!:

Beep, beep! Tumbleweed coming through.
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Memorable moments--

1. Woke up one morning to C-sta & Li'l J sleeping 

sweetly side-by-side...on my bed. When did they sneak in? 

2. M's band picture--so handsome!

3. Just because she's happy and so stinkin' CUTE!

4. Playing Monopoly Junior: Toy Story and Beyond edition.

This is a fun game that C-sta loves to play.

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Game night with some fun friends:

C-sta, friend L, and Li'l J being goofy.

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C-sta loves Rapunzel and the Disney movie Tangled. One afternoon she drew a lovely picture of the long-haired princess standing next to her tower:

C-sta loves to wear dresses and leggings right now. After preschool one day, C-sta asked me to take

pictures of her with her baby doll C.

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C-sta modeling a favorite outfit.

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Pool fun

Sometimes after preschool, before it's time to pick-up the big kids, C-sta and I go out and enjoy the pool. We have so much fun together! One of my favorite recent pictures of C-sta is the one of her floating on her back with her arms outstretched. I love it so much, I even made it the wallpaper on my cellphone.

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Cute piggies!

My friend J and I have a tradition of getting pedicures once every 2-3 months. When I come home, C-sta always wants me to paint her little piggies to match mine. This time around, C-sta was so relaxed by the process that by the time I was done painting her tootsies, she had fallen asleep and was out for the night.

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Our Sunday Best.

C-sta likes to have her hair curled. Unfortunately C-sta's hair is so fine that it doesn't hold the curl for very long. One Sunday morning before church, we documented how quickly the curl dies out. There is less than one hour between when I took the first picture (where you can see the curl) and the second one where the curl was already beginning to die out. 

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A mighty big blaze.

One day while I was driving the afternoon pick up from school, we noticed a fire was blazing to the south of town and wondered what had caused it. After church activities and Scouts that night, the kids and I drove towards the flames for a closer look. There were a lot of people from town that also stopped to watch the flames. It was burning brush that was able to be contained to the river bottoms so that no structures were damaged. 

Beautiful in green and yellow!

These are snapshots I took around town to capture the beautiful colors that have bloomed all around us this Spring. While our eyes have been dazzled by the beauty of it all, our allergies have not!

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Surprise! 

One Saturday morning I came downstairs to find this cheerful surprise from my sweetheart. I'm truly grateful for him! There is no doubt that I am blessed to have him in my life. 

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March 2013

Zippy and dear friend S

Early in March of 2013 J-rod and I got to visit with a dear friend and her family as they drove cross-country from WA to VA (her husband is in the Navy and they were on their way to their latest assignment). We met them for breakfast at a restaurant in downtown and got to meet their two youngest for the first time. What a darling family! I really enjoyed our little reunion!

C-sta strikes a pose with G'ma S.

The kids loved the fancy rental car G'ma & G'pa got! 

During our Spring Break J-rod's mom and dad came to town for a veterinary conference. We didn't see them until the weekend though as M and C-sta ended up with the flu that week.  By the weekend when Mom and Dad came to stay with us, both kids were well again and we were able to enjoy our time together AND we didn't send them home with our ickiness.

That face. Those eyes. I LOVE my li'l baker man!

After Mom and Dad S returned home and the kids went back to school, it was time to help set-up for our pack Blue and Gold dinner and help Li'l J bake his cake for the dessert portion of the evening. When I look back at how far our pack has come from where it was when we first moved here, I am so impressed with the dedication of our leaders and all that they do for these boys! I can honestly say that this Blue and Gold was THE best one I've attended since the beginning of my involvement with the program. Perhaps I'm now able to see everything through "rose colored glasses" as I'm participating just as a parent and no longer a parent-leader, and the stress of getting everything to go off without a hitch isn't there for me and I can just enjoy things more.

Blue and Gold fun!

Creative cakes from our Cub Scouts

The theme for our Blue and Gold was "Knights of the Round Table" (with a little bit of "The Armour of God" thrown in there too). We did our best to give it a "Medieval Times" feel with the decorations and food that was served. We set up the tables in a big U with the middle open for some tournament style jousting. The boys stood on the teeter boards our pack made and used for the Scout-o-Rama last month, and then used pool noodles to try and knock each other off of the boards. For dinner the YM/Scouts and YW served us baked drum sticks, small red potatoes, corn on the cob, and bread sticks. It was all delicious! We used metal pie plates and no utensils to eat the meal with. We drank water out of "metal cups" (paper cups in washed out soup cans). The table center pieces were the appetizers: grapes, cheese cubes, and crackers (also served on metal plates). The table with all the amazing cakes that the boys and families brought was labeled with a banner that read, "Ye Olde Bakery" (in old script). Two of our den leaders built a medieval stock and painted a background for the kids to stand in and have their picture taken--it was AMAZING! Everyone had such fun. Our stake president even got in on the act at the end of the night showing us how to properly balance on the teeter boards--so cool! 

After Blue and Gold I came down with the stomach flu--it was horrible, especially since J-rod was working nights and was not able to help us out.  Once again I am so grateful for the wonderful people in our neighborhood and ward who stepped up and helped out with our kids when I could hardly get out of bed! I'm so glad to be well again and hope we all stay that way for a long time!

More fun adventures from March 2013--

He's just a blur now!

*Li'l J learned how to ride his bike without training wheels!  Woo-hoo!!!

Great little speakers

*C-sta gave her very first talk in Junior Primary.  We're not sure how she got missed during her year in Sunbeams, but she did well and was SO excited to FINALLY get to give a talk!  It will be quite memorable for her as Li'l J also gave a talk that day in Senior Primary.  They were given the same topic so they worked side by side preparing their talks.

Li'l J's 10 pics for Cub Scouts:

*Interests

1. Wolf book

2. Li'l J is currently reading Percy Jackson & The Olympians: 

The Lightning Thief

3. Penguin collection: 

it's an ever GROWING collection 

4. Angry Birds poster--LOVES the game!

*Family

5. J-rod just coming back from a church meeting

6. M on his way out the door for a Scout camp out

7. C-sta striking a pose

*Pets

8. Copper getting ready to be taken on a walk

9. Jeffrey tolerates having his picture taken 

since we let him in the house for a bit

*Scenery

10. A GORGEOUS desert sunset (no filter used)

*M and Li'l J continue to be excited about scouts and have been busy working on and earning more advancements, belt loops, and merit badges. While working on the photography belt loop, one of the tasks Li'l J had to complete was to take ten pictures including family, pets, and scenery. He added the category of his interests. 

The kids brave the chilly water, 

while J-rod & Z cheered them on from the side deck.

*Even though we continued to have bipolar winter weather through March, there were days were it was warm enough to swim.  Our swim season officially began March 16--CRAZY!

*After serving in the Nursery for a little bit over a year, I was released and called to serve as the Laurel Advisor in our YW's. It was a bittersweet change because I came to SO love our little nursery kiddos, but I'm very excited to work with the YW. I haven't serve in YW's before so I've got a lot to learn as the program is very different from when I was in YW's (uh, almost 20 years ago! Yikes!). Now I get to do and go to all the fun activities associated with YW's--I've also been asked to go to Girls Camp as a Cabin Mom.  Oh boy, this will be an adventure for sure! I'm excited, but a bit nervous as we all know that I'm not big on camping...especially where there are BIG bugs and other critters!  Wish me luck.

Enjoying the Easter Pageant with our youth.

*Good Friday we took our family and helped drive our youth out to the Temple Easter Pageant. We love going to the Pageant whenever we can. This was the fourth time we were able to go. While driving there and chatting with the second counselor in our YW's, I learned that she has lived out here for about forty years and this was her very first time going to the Pageant--I was so grateful she was able to go with us! What a great way to start of the Easter weekend!  

Easter fun

Happy Easter!

*Easter the five of us enjoyed a nice day together. The kids had fun with the goodies in their baskets and we all enjoyed a yummy dinner of Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo and steamed fresh green beans.

Daily glimpses: 

An class demo for the parents.

An after school fashion show for mom.

Beautiful storm clouds.

J-rod & I came home from a date night to find all three kiddos asleep in our bed: so CUTE!

C-sta LOVES to have her nails painted!

Team work = a great big train track and lots of fun!

Sometimes after picking C-sta up from school, along the road we travel we have to wait for a train to cross. C-sta loves to watch the trains ride past, in fact, the longer the train, the better!

September 2012

When Fall arrives everywhere else in the country, it just barely begins to dip below the 100 degree mark here.  It's during this time of year where I feel like we'll NEVER cool off, and I really begin to miss the beauty of the Fall in New York.  The silver lining is that this is when the pool cools off from temps in the high 90's to the low 80's--perfect for swimming and cooling off!

AZ: the land of eternal summer.

Alright, September 2012.  What is there to report?  Not as much as usual.  Everyone settled right into the school routine, including me.  Once a week while C-sta attended preschool I spent the morning helping in in Li'l J's and M's classrooms.  The other mornings I would spent getting caught up on things at home and sometimes would even sneak in a craft or two, which of course I LOVE!

One special occasion that J-rod, myself, and our ward choir director prepared for for months finally took place this month.  For the first time ever, I sang a duet in Sacrament Meeting (with our ward choir director).  I'm still not sure what possessed me to say "yes" when she asked me I would, but now I'm glad I did and that I didn't give up when I was struggling to learn the song.  It was a good learning and growth experience for me, and I'm not just talking about the physical learning of piece.  

I've never really had the confidence to do something like that, but after having done it and survived (I was fully expecting for my nerves to take over once I got in front of everyone and that my voice wouldn't work, plus I was sick that week), I think I could do it again. We sang a beautifully arranged "paraphrase of the 23rd Psalm" (as it says on the music) by Henry Smart called simply, "The Lord is My Shepard".  I sang the soprano part and learned that, even after all these far removed years since the basic vocal "training" I was lucky to enough to receive through my middle school and high school choirs, I have a pretty high range.  I went home after Sacrament Meeting because the kids and I were all sick, but J-rod reported that throughout the block of meetings ward members kept coming to him and asking where I was so they could congratulate me.  One sister that has PERFECT pitch (our Primary chorister) even told him I should be singing in the opera--wow! What a nice compliment! I'm very grateful that J-rod worked so hard with me at home to prepare for it and that we could perform together.

Early on in the month M got his first rank advancement in Scouts so we got to attended our first Court of Honor.  A few weeks later he and all the Scouts in our ward (and two other wards) got to spend a Saturday out at the power plant that J-rod and a few other Scout leaders work at, learning all about how it works in order to earn there Nuclear Engineering Merit Badge--it was such a neat experience for them!

Such good YM!

While out hiking with some friends one weekend, Li'l J lost another tooth and now looks like a cute Jack-O-Lantern, just in time for Halloween. : )  

Probably the biggest news is that towards the end of the month, C-sta and I had our hair chopped off!  C-sta had been begging since June to have her hair cut to her shoulders.  We kept asking her to wait until I cut mine in November for my biennial cut for donation.  C-sta just couldn't wait that much longer! Then I found out that with highlights I wouldn't be able to donate my hair until the highlights had grown out, so we made it happen in September.  Even though the cut had to be above C-sta's shoulders to get the required 10 inches for donation, it looked absolutely darling on her and we were all very happy with it.  It sure makes her look so grown up though, I guess that isn't too bad since she has been acting grown up for quite some time now. : )  

Before: Just like Rapunzel.

During: Excited, but a little nervous too!

After: We LOVE it!

August 2012: Sacramento and San Jose

While in Sacramento our first stop was the beautiful Sacramento Temple--it was our first visit to this temple. Driving up the long driveway to the temple, we saw a jack rabbit with HUGE ears and a flock of wild turkeys roaming around.  As we enjoyed walking around the temple grounds we were able to visit for a little bit with two of J-rod's cousins that were attending a singles conference at the stake center next door to the temple. It was so fun to see cousins M & K!

The Sacramento Temple

After our stop at the temple, we found the house J-rod's mom grew up in and took a couple pictures of what it looks like now.

Memory Lane!

From the old family house we drove to J-rod's Aunt G's house. When we first walked in, the "gamer" in our family immediately sniffed out that this house was set-up with a Wii.  How on earth did Li'l J figure it out? I have NO idea as it was not out in plain sight! Fortunately for Li'l J, loving Aunt G indulged him and let him play the Wii while we visited with her and her kids R & N before R dashed off to work.

While visiting Aunt G she gave us a tour of her beautiful backyard and very productive garden. Our desert raised kids didn't quite know what to make of the squirrels visiting the yard. One of them thought the squirrels were bunnies. It hadn't occurred to me until that moment that our kiddos wouldn't know what a squirrel looked like since we have NONE in the part of AZ that we live in. It actually made me a little sad since once of the things I remember well from my childhood was the enjoyment of watching the squirrels when they'd come around.

After coming back inside, we ate many delicious fresh veggies from Aunt G's garden and then got to tour Aunt G's workshop where she makes amazing custom ordered draperies and high end home decor for local home designer's (some of the fabric she had waiting for her to work on was absolutely luxurious! Oh to have her talent!).  Later in the evening we went out to dinner with Aunt G's oldest, son--Cousin B and his darling family--and Aunt G's youngest.

Dinner with family

'Hadn't seen these guys in FOREVER!

The next stop after Sacramento was San Jose where we spent a couple of fun days with my dear friend S from high school, her husband D, and their beautiful 3 month old daughter, A.  

S, her sweet baby girl A, and Zippy.

Baby A

We enjoyed swimming in their beautiful (and refreshing pool) that not only had a rock slide, but an cozy little cave hidden under a waterfall--my dream pool! 

The slide was such FUN!

While in San Jose, S and D took us to an indoor trampoline activity center.  While everyone else had a lot of fun jumping, flipping, and playing dodge ball, I got my baby fix and cuddled with Baby A...until she got hungry, at which point I had to surrender her to S so she could nurse.  

Jumping at Sky High

Li'l J and C-sta were also absolutely taken with A and spent every waking moment doting on her--it was so cute!  At the end of our stay Li'l J melted my heart when he asked if we could please bring  Baby A home with us. Oh little man, I wish we could have!

Look at us all grown up with kids of our own!