Gardner Village

Just got back from our springtime trip to Gardner Village with Erin, Aidan, Madelyn. I love going there, and I did my best to help the economy (even if it wasn't my own city's).


Aidan by the Water Wheel


Madelyn rides a horse!


Aidan rides the BIG horse!




Aidan talked the entire time about wanting to go to the candy shop--and he finally made it.


Aidan rings the bell (it was missing in October when we visited)


And Madelyn gets her first chance at it.

Shifting Rooms--AGAIN!

With Ed's decision to start doing massages again part time, he decided he couldn't use the small room on the main floor but needed his old room again (used to be a single car garage). So, there's been all kinds of shifting people and stuff around--and it all has to be done before Monday. We have to move Adam and his stuff upstairs by us, move the bookcases and books into the grandkids former playroom, move Robert and Michelle downstairs to the room Adam was in, and get Ed's stuff all set up in Robert and Michelle's old room.

In the process of moving Adam's dresser, it was discovered that the carpet was wet in corner--that same corner that was where the terrible flooding came from last October.

Go ahead. Kick me while I'm down! *sigh*

Wedding Reception

Well, Robert and Michelle's reception was last night. Here are a few pictures:

The Wedding Cakes


Okay, this is just sick and wrong! ; )


Michelle dancing with her father.


Robert and Michelle dancing (Robert hates to dance).


Shannon and Tyson dancing.

Funny Stories

My dad sent an email today that had a bunch of cute stories (supposedly) about grandchildren. A couple of them were really cute:

"She was in the bathroom, putting on her makeup, under the watchful eyes of her young granddaughter, as she'd done many times before. After she applied her lipstick and started to leave, the little one said, "But Gramma, you forgot to kiss the toilet paper good-bye!"

I will probably never put lipstick on again without thinking about kissing the toilet paper good-bye..."


and another:

"After putting her grandchildren to bed, a grandmother changed into old slacks and a droopy blouse and proceeded to wash her hair.. As she heard the children getting more and more rambunctious, her patience grew thin. Finally, she threw a towel around her head and stormed into their room, putting them back to bed with stern warnings.

As she left the room, she heard the three-year-old say with a trembling voice,
"Who was THAT?"

Another Career Shift

Ed's finally decided what to do for the next couple of years until he can retire--he's going to start doing massage therapy again. He's an incredible therapist, and even after two years of not doing massages he's still getting calls from people begging him to do it again.

He decided the heavy-duty handyman projects requiring more than one person are now just too hard on his body. So he's going to keep doing the smaller projects but just ones he can do by himself. He's hoping to do a couple of days of massages and three days of handyman projects. That doesn't usually quite work out because while he'd prefer to do massages during the day, most people have jobs or other responsibilities and need to come at night. But that's definitely easier on him than the hard physical labor.

Some of Ed's challenges come from the blood thinner. Ed's had Fibromyalgia for nearly 20 years now, and while he's been able to do a lot of things to improve his situation, it's certainly never been cleared. Making these hard demands on his body really aggravates the pain, but Ibuprofen was able to make it bearable. Unfortunately, Ibuprofen is a blood thinner, so he can't take it while he's taking Coumadin for the blood clots. So, they're giving him Lortab for the Fibromyalgia pain. Not good.

He's struggled with seasonal allergies for years, but now he has asthma all the time. And of course right now is the worst of the allergy season. Poor guy. He talks about wishing he could just die and be free of the pain, and sometimes I can sympathize with him. But most of the time I'm selfish and tell him he has to stay. He just thinks I'm unfeeling. =D

Cedar City Trip

April 18, 2009
I had a conference this week. I'm on the board of directors, and we put it together. Ed and I left on Tuesday and returned on Friday. It was a very long week, but I think the conference went well. Our education committee did a great job, and the classes were very good. I'm so fortunate to work with such a great group of women on the board, who worked so very hard running around and doing everything that needed to be done. They are fabulous!!

Since it was spring break for our oldest granddaughter, we brought Sienna with us. She and Ed spent a lot of time at the swimming pool--her being a little fish in the main pool and Ed in the spa. I, of course, was in classes all day.



We visited the Iron Mission State Park Museum where Sienna got to sit in a mock up of a stage coach. For some reason we weren't allowed to sit in the real ones! ;o) There was even a cowboy poet! I've never heard one and wasn't looking forward to this part of the evening, since I'm not really into country/western stuff, but he did a great job and the stories he told with his poetry were wonderful!! I would definitely go hear cowboy poetry again.



We had an improv group as the entertainment at our banquet on Thursday night, and Sienna got a chance to participate in one of the skits.



It was pretty cold while we were there, and we had a little snow, but it was nothing compared to the snow Orem got in our absence! I guess they had about 8 inches here, and it did a real job on a lot of the trees around town that were beginning to blossom. The purple plum tree in the front yard that was full of pink blossoms couldn't handle all that wet snow, and several branches broke off.



Ed and Robert got out there and started trimming them off and found many others that had split but not broken off. Unfortunately the tree has to go. *sob* Adam and his friend Colby help out in the picture below. The front of my house looks naked!

Women's Annual Ritual

It's time for some levity.

The Annual Ritual of Women

I have just been through the annual pilgrimage of torture and humiliation known as buying a bathing suit. When I was a child in the 1950's the bathing costume for a woman with a mature figure was designed for a woman with a mature figure -- boned, trussed and reinforced, not so much sewn as engineered. They were built to hold back and uplift and they did a darn good job.



Today's stretch fabrics are designed for the pre-pubescent girl with a figure chipped from marble. The mature woman has a choice - she can either front up at the maternity department and try on a floral costume with a skirt, coming away looking like a hippopotamus escaped from Disney's Fantasia - or; she can wander around every run of the mill department store trying to make a sensible choice from what amounts to a designer range of fluoro rubber bands. What choice did I have?

I wandered around, made my sensible choice and entered the chamber of horrors known as the fitting room. The first thing I noticed was the extra ordinary tensile strength of the stretch material. The Lycra used in bathing suits was developed, I believe, by NASA to launch small rockets from a slingshot, which give the added bonus that if you manage to actually lever yourself into one, you are protected from shark attacks. The reason for this is that a shark taking a swipe at your passing midriff would immediately suffer whiplash.

I fought my way into the bathing costume, but as I twanged the shoulder strap into place I gasped in horror - my bosom had disappeared. Eventually I found one bosom cowering under my left armpit. It took a while to find the other. At last I located it flattened beside my seventh rib.

The problem is that modern bathing suits have no bra cups. The mature woman is meant to wear her bosom spread across her chest like a speed bump. I re-aligned my speed bump and lurched toward the mirror to take a full view assessment.

The bathing suit fit all right, but unfortunately it only fit those bits of me willing to stay inside it. The rest of me oozed out rebelliously from top, bottom and sides. I looked like a lump of play dough wearing undersize cling wrap.

As I tried to work out where all those extra bits had come from, the pre-pubescent salesgirl popped her head through the curtains. "Oh, it is YOU!" she said, admiring the suit. I replied that I wasn't so sure.

I tried on a cream crinkled one that made me look like a lump of masking tape, and a floral two piece which gave the appearance of an oversize napkin in a serviette ring. I struggled into leopard skin suit with a ragged frill and came out looking like Tarzan's Jane on a bad day. I tried a black number with a midriff and looked like a jellyfish in mourning. I tried on a bright pink pair with such a high cut leg I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to wear it.

Finally I found a suit that fit. A two piece affair with shorts-style bottoms and a halter top. It was cheap, comfortable and bulge-friendly, so I bought it.

When I got home I read the label which said 'Material may become transparent in water", but I'm determined to wear it anyway. I just have to learn to breaststroke in the sand.

--Author Unknown (but she's got a great sense of humor!)