Grandma's Moves In & Other Random Events

So I guess I can't change my wallpaper to a Christmas theme, if my last post is from Halloween. It's just that I'm finding that I'm much more a blog READER than a blog WRITER. I just can't think of much to report, but here are a few of the random things that have been happening in our lives recently...


This is my darling soon to be 89 year old Grandma--Prudence "Donna" Packard. Even though she goes by Donna,-- Prudence fits her so well. She is the queen of "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."


I think I have a little bit of that in me as well--don't you think I am a bit of an old soul? However, I have also come to realize that I have a long way to go to be up to Grandma's standard. (Main lesson: don't even think about trying to clean out the fridge when she is around.)


We are so happy that she gets to spend part of the winter with us. It has been interesting to learn more about her life from hearing her stories. Also, despite my protests, she is such a big help to me. She takes her morning walk every morning with Isaac on his big wheel leading the way. She rarely lets a dish sit in the sink for more than 3 seconds. Right now she is in San Jose spending the holidays with her son and I am finding it is much harder to keep up with the laundry & kitchen without her! Plus I have no idea what's going on on The Young and the Restless, which she watches everyday at 11:00. :)




As if we don't have enough commotion in our house in the morning. . . here is a scene in front of my house recently at about 5:45 am. We were rudely awoken at that crazy hour by all our fire alarms going off. They are SUPER LOUD! I didn't smell smoke, but I couldn't turn them off either. What could I do? I had to call the fire department. They came (& saw me in my bathrobe--lovely!) and determined... that they had no idea why they went off...dust might have triggered them?



I'm just including this picture because Curt loves it. It's a slice of life in our kitchen. Isaac is just laying on the bar watching Josh make his own egg salad sandwich (which his Grandma Keller taught him how to do-- Thank you very much Carol!)

These would be the eggs that he has just hard boiled & yes they are from our chickens! Hooray! I have stopped buying eggs for the most part.

This would be the sand that finally replaced the weeds as groundcover in our playground. Yeay! Even Ian likes to spend a lot of time out there. I think there must be something therapeutic about sand, or maybe he is just trying to avoid practicing the piano.... But there is definitely something magnetic about the sand that makes it stick to my children & come inside my house (in pockets, shoes, dumptrucks etc.) I do however think it's a worthwhile price to pay to get the kids to play outside. And that water is not a lake, but simply flood irrigation which is how we water our backyard every two weeks. Are you getting the picture? Dogs & kids & sand & water and dirty kitchen floors. But my mom did it somehow & I don't remember her complaining. (Well maybe just occasionally. :)

Well, I'm going back to gearing up for Christmas. I need to get wrapping! Merry Christmas everyone-- chances are you won't hear from me again on the blog until 2009!

Happy Retro Halloween

Do these costumes look familiar anyone? I feel very lucky that I was at Mom's house when she was cleaning out the attic & I got to inherit lots of gems like these from her costume box. I told the kids this year that we weren't buying halloween costumes-- we have so many to choose from already. They did ok I think.

Isaac started out as a dog, but it was a little too small, so he ended up as the clown. Ian didn't want to dress up at all, but I told him if he was too old to dress up, he was too old to trick or treat. He went as Curtis in high school-- notice the mullet. He brought home a mere 11 pounds of candy, that will now serve our family as movie candy for the next year or until it gets stale.

Here is us pumpkin carving. We ate fresh pumpkin for the first time this year (not these). But it isn't too bad-- a little like spagetti squash. I'm also loving butternut squash. I discovered that you can microwave it so easily. Just poke holes in the squash (leave it whole) and microwave it for about 10 minutes. If it isn't really tender, do one minute more at a time. Then cut it in half and scoop out the seeds & discard. Scoop out the flesh & mash it with a little butter, salt & pepper and a couple spoonfuls of cream (or milk). Wow! So easy & yummy.

DC in Election Season

At the FDR Memorial.

Kimberly and her friends are working hard for the cause

Eating chowder at the "Tackle Box" in Georgetown

This is taken from the FDR memorial. Loved the fall colors there.

This is Kimberly's street, Q Street, right in front of her house.

Last weekend I went to visit one of my oldest friends, well she's not old-- in fact she is 10 days younger than me, something she is now very proud of. But our friendship is old. We just turned 37 and we have been friends for at least 23 years. I think having lived apart for many years now, we are still very surprised that we ever became friends, back in Jr. High & High school. Some things were easier then. We just took Ferris days from school & drove around everywhere in her 69 cream VW beetle. Kim knew a lot about the world and good music and good food and good times. I knew a lot about the gospel of Jesus Christ. So we shared what we knew & both ended up the wiser I think. Now Kimberly lives in DC and she knows everything about the world and the government & politics. I'm still just a country girl, living in Gilbert and I am only an expert on a couple things, like changing diapers and Cub scouting. It might be harder to share what we know now. We still go together about as well as oil and water, Obama & McCain.... or should I say gasoline and matches. As usual, we didn't see eye to eye on everything, in fact, maybe only 3 or 4 things, but I am still glad to see the world through the lense of my "most ethnic" friend.

We had a fun bike ride on the Mount Vernon trail, but it was cut short by the rain, and perhaps partly by my inexperience :) We really got poured on several times on Saturday. We did some driving/walking tours, and some shopping. We ate at Potbelly's-- which I have dearly missed since our chicago days. I loved going to her ward on Sunday and meeting some of her friends. What an amazing place to live. I also loved seeing Kimberly's new fabulous house! She has done a terrific job & has a great garden in back as well. She also introduced me to my favorite new breakfast-- plain yogurt, grape nuts, frozen berries & maple syrup-- delish! Thanks again Kimberly.

Sedona Trip

The kids have fall break this week.  We talked Curtis into taking Columbus Day off  for our 2nd annual hike up the West Fork Trail of Oak Creek Canyon in Sedona.  This is one of my favorite hikes ever.  It was a beautiful fall day & we really had a wonderful time.  Isaac spent most of the time in the pack on Curt's back, but he was fearless when we turned him loose.   We are a hiking family!  

We crossed Oak Creek about 15 times on the trail.  

My 10 Rules

Do Mom's have rules? Unstructured people like me (unlike people like Clark Kent) sometimes try to make rules for themselves, in some kind of desperate attempt to obtain more order in their lives. (Thinking, if it's a RULE then maybe I will actually DO it?)

I was just trying to clean off my desk & wading through my mounds of paperwork. (And if you know me, you already know how much I HATE PAPERWORK and therefore you can see how I would jump at the chance to blog my way out of this job.) (By the way we DO have a rule in our house that we never say we HATE anything, but I DO HATE paperwork, so there goes that rule-- out the window.)

Anyway, as I was throwing away papers, I found a list of Rules (that I made for myself) that I had scribled on the back cardboard part of my trusty yellow legal pad which contains all my to-do lists--(thank you Ward). I know I was thinking that the cardboard part was a "safe" place to put these rules. :)

RULES

1) Exercise 3x's a week (I am doing ok on this right now, but I must have made this a rule because of my tendency at times to take a short break from exercise-- like 6 months off)

2) Do jobs on the right day before 3pm
This means that Monday is laundry, Tues is house cleaning, Wed. is shopping & Thursday is paperwork & Friday is catch up. Now I confess, I'm not sure if those are the right days, because

a. I can't find the notebook that tells me what day is what and

b. I change them everyweek anyway, and

c. no matter what I never, ever seem to fit in the day for paperwork. I have actually managed to skip it for like a month now. (The before 3pm is because after my kids get home from school nothing gets done, since I am just in "putting out fires" & "driving my taxi" mode.)

3) Prepare dinner (or as much as I can) in the morning. I like this rule & try to keep to it if possible. But a new rule, or maybe a byline of this is "Just eat leftovers as often as we can" which also makes me eat less because I don't really care about leftovers.

4) Read Ensign or scriptures every day.

5) Clean Kitchen and Family Room before going to bed, so I can start fresh tomorrow. (This one comes from my wonderful mother who was always so good at this. I am improving in this area, but still need work.)

6) Bathe my children (at least) on Tues. Thurs & Sat. nights. Noel taught me this. Thanks Noel! That way, I don't fall into that confusion over "How long has it been since you last had a bath?" and the kids are at least pretty clean for church on Sunday. (By the way, in the summer, a late afternoon swim counts as a bath! Bonus!)

7) Monthly Food Calendar-- (I confess I don't even know what this is? What was I thinking? Let's just change it to weekly menu, shall we? That is even a stretch, but more doable.)

8) Paperwork and Budget Report every Tuesday-- Oh! I guess Tuesday was supposed to be my paperwork day-- but I had to change that all around so I would go to aerobics. At any rate, I AM trying to do this, but like I said, that is what I am supposed to be doing right at this moment.... so I guess this still needs improvement.

9) Fast Sunday-- make it a day of rest, prayer, reading & journal writing. This is my excuse for not having anyone to dinner on that one Sunday a month, which Curtis, being born of goodly parents, would like us to do at least 4 nights a week.

10) Read with Eliza every day. (I had to make that a rule, because unlike with Ian & Josh, I just keep letting it slip through the cracks & she needs to catch up. I was relieved when I found out that her teacher requires her to read 10 minutes for homework every night so we are doing just fine now.)

I think I might have to add one more: No blogging until my paperwork is done!

Do you have any good rules to share? :)