Saturday was such a beautiful day!! Cool, refreshing, breezy, we reveled in it. We opened the doors and windows and turned off the air conditioner. That afternoon we went to a park so Charity (and her friend Tatum), and Grace and Jonathan Robert could play and we could just enjoy the weather. Here is few pictures taken there. There was a water feature there for the kids to play in and despite the cool breeze the kids all got wet and played until their teeth chattering got too bad. It reminded me of swimming in Idaho as kids--blue lips were expected.

The Giver

I just finished The Giver by Lois Lawry. It is definately a book that I will have to ponder and think about. I'm certain that there are lots of gospel parallels especially in regards to the plan that Satan put forth. But also to God's plan specifically that there must be opposition in all things. To know joy there must be sorrow, to know comfort there must be pain etc. and how can we learn from experience if 1st there is none and second, there is no memory of pain/guilt/remorse etc. and for the reciever once he had those memories and experiences, there was no going back. As we mature and become adults, we can't go back and be the naive, carefree children we used to be--we are changed by the memories etched in our minds and by the choices we made because of our experiences.

the following is a response to a prompt I pulled from my journal jar.

"Describe your first home or apartment--as a young couple"
Marvin and I first lived in his parent's house, out on the family farm. His parents had not had much success for a number of years and were finally forced to give up the farm so they sold it for a dollar to Marvin's older brother Elden (to avoid foreclosure) and moved to Phoenix Arizona where there were good paying jobs for dad. It was a small rectangular pink brick house with two bedrooms and one bath on the main floor. The house faced west but all the activity was through the back door. There was also an unfinished (but framed out) basement. The living room was small, a fairly narrow rectangle with a couch across the north wall (which pretty much filled the whole width of the room, there was enough room for an end table I believe). The front door (west side) was rarely ever used because all of the parking and the rest of the farm (the garden, sheds, chicken coop, barnyard etc) was out back. The house sat on a "hill" which elevated it a little from the surrounding irrigated acres. It sat back away from the paved county road at least three or four hundred feet (a half a block or so) The narrow hard packed dirt lane that lead back to and circled the house mound was rendered impassable each spring when the rains fell and the snow melted and the ground thawed. It was easy to get stuck up the the doors of car in the mud. During those times the tractor was the only way in and out. Marvin moved to this farm when he was five years old. His father had been awarded the land in a homesteading give-away/drawing to veterans to open the north side of Rupert to farming. A great irrigation project/experiment was put in place and the land divided and distributed. It was nothing but desert, they cleared the sage brush, rocks, rabbits and coyotes off the land and spent the next fourteen years scratching out a living. The house was slow in coming but well appreciated when it was done. The basement held shelves filled with hundreds of jars of canned goods preserved by the sweat of the brow. One section held the freezers and the meat processing equiptment because hunting and butchering livestock that was raise to sustain the family was part of everyday life on a farm. The boys slept in the unheated basement as the bedrooms upstairs were for their parents and little sister. After we were married, Elden let Marvin and I take the master bedroom and he slept in the smaller one. We lived there until our daughter Danelle was born at which time Elden had found the girl he was going to marry and with his wedding coming soon, Marvin and I started looking at apartments. In a small town there wasn't a lot to look at, but we were very lucky to find a nice two bedroom duplex. (Believe me after one of the other apartments I looked at, it was the fabulous.) But that is another story.

I really enjoyed conference and I'm looking forward to re-listening to some of the talks. I want to listen again to Elder Corbridge's talk on Sat. afternoon about how living any other way than Christ's way was maddness.



I have been reading more and while I haven't read any great books I read some that I have enjoyed and that are thought promoting. I read a lot of "self help" books trying to figure myself out and trying to find those magic formulas to make me love to exercise and eat right and to be more productive. The most recent one I read was called "Loving What Is" by Byron Katie. It is a non religious book that helps us realize that what ever is going on in our life is "what is" and how we can accept and trust that God is in control and release our negative thinking and align ourselves with the truth in our lives and learn to live in peace. I have developed some insights from this book. I am starting an LDS preceptive book "Forgiving Ourselves" by Wendy Ulrich but haven't got too far yet. I just read the first two Harry Potter books (I know I'm behind the times) and just started "The Giver" by Lois Lowry. I am rereading "Running with Angels" which is by an LDS mom and how she lost 100lbs and ran a marathon. I read a chapter or two of Persusion by Jane Austen and will be returning to that soon.


One of the things I did a couple of months ago was to buy a new computer. It sure is nice not to have all the glitches that my old one had developed. I believe that the old one just needs to be wiped and reloaded and everyone asks me where my restore discs are and I tell them the computer didn't come with any. I need to contact the company this month because I bought an extended warranty and even though I think it is a software problem, maybe they will provide the restore discs. Anyway with this new computer I learned something that was so easy but just didn't know how to do and that was how to "rip" my cd's to the computer. How simple was that!! Just open your windows media player, put your cd in the drive and click on rip! Sometimes if it was the first one I had to click on rip again and tell it to "rip the cd in drive E" but after that, every cd I put in was ripped automatically. I bought some head phones ('cause I was jealous of Holly wearing their big ol' headphones). I listened for a couple of minutes, enjoying the bass, then went to nap because I had to work that night. In the morning when I got home from work, I came to the computer and found that someone (a little big brown-eyed curly top girl) had taken the scissors I had used to open that extremely theft-proof packaging on the head phones and had snipped the wires into about nine or eight pieces!! Good thing I went for the $10.00 pair from Ross (a discount store) rather than the $80 ones I was thinking about at Sam's Club!! :) Not a big deal, just a reminder about being mindful of a child's curiosity and desire to try out their SKILLS.

This girl has "scissor" SKILLS!

Jonathan Robert with his new toy, taken yesterday. 10/4/08

Here is Grace on 10/04/08, she is such a cutie and Oh those Eyes!!

This is Charity last month on her first day to school. 9/2/08.

Gosh! It's been a while! I'm not sure why I haven't been posting, part of it is a sense of perfectionism in that I guess I want what I write to be poetic, or moving, or at least not to waste your time. I also haven't been taking any pictures so even if I thought I should post, then I think, I don't have any pictures to post with it. So blah, blah, blah, so much for excuses.

In the last two months since I blogged, lots of things have stayed the same but of course in other ways my life has changed. First, Holly, Jonathan, Charity, Grace and Jonathan Robert have moved in with us and have brighted up our lives. We all love having them here with us. Marvin especially likes the little ones and this chance to get to bond with them. Speaking of Marvin--He quit smoking 2 months ago and just this week finally said, "It's still hard but I'm going to make it." Every other time if I checked in on how he was doing he would just moan and lament on the desire that constantly pressured him. He has used alcohol to help but he says, "now, I'm going to stop drinking. I don't know when yet, I've used the beer as a crutch while I quit smoking, but once I know I'm free of the cigarrettes, I'm going to do it. It will be easier than the cigarrettes." I was so moved by this hopeful statement. I truly hope he can be successful. My concern is that unless he replaces these habits with something, he will just slip back into them. He currently does nothing except watch tv.

I haven't changed, I still think about and plan to diet and exercise but haven't started yet. One of the speakers this morning in General Conference quoted a marathon winner as saying "the commitment to win is nothing with out the commitment to prepare" I think I keep focusing on the winning and not on the daily, hourly, moment to moment preparation needed for the goal to be realized. It makes me marvel at Marvin's will power to quit smoking, when I can't quit eating the wrong things.

Christmas is rushing towards me and I haven't done any planning, or any made any handicrafts to give away. I do like to sew, cross stich, crochet etc. and would like to give something of myself this Christmas but it won't happen if I don't get busy. I had started some "red-work" embroidered dish towels last year after visiting my brother and his wife. She is from Scandinavian descent and is deeply involved in their culture. I thought that this form of embellishing the dish towels was cute and not too time consuming, but even so, I haven't completed any yet, but have all the materials to make a set or two.

Well, I least this is a start and hope to return to posting regularly. Thanks Marilyn for the sweet reminder. Love you all.