Anchor

I just had a chance to see Mindy's music video for Anchor yesterday and fell in love. This is the title track of her lastest album which came out last month. The wings they used throughout the video are gorgeous and the illustrations by April Meeker give it a dreamy surrealism that makes you want to float away.

Week in Review 9/9/10

OK - this one requires just a smidge of explaining. I've been working the heck out of my new scanner. It's an Epson Perfection V600 Photo scanner that my uber-awesome hubby got me for my birthday and it ROCKS! It will scan photos, documents, slides and even negatives! This baby is amazing!

So I spent a couple weeks scanning a box of slides from my mum-in-law's basement and I've gotta tell you, they are priceless. The images make me want to cry. Aside from that, the beginning of September was all about Homecoming and trying to find a dress that didn't look like it came from the red light district. Ugh.

Cheater Pants

Yes, I'm totally taking a shortcut here. I just haven't had any extra time to put into the bloggity blog these days. I've been pretty good about at least photographing part of my weeks ... though there's been a major shortage of fun projects and good food. (sad days) Lately it's been all I can do to get the kids through their homework and to school on-time the next day ... with homework in tow, still not sure why this is such a difficult concept for them to grasp onto. Grrrr ...

But with Halloween around the corner and Christmas right behind that, there will HAVE to be a few projects in the works. We also have a new baby in our extended family and one more coming next week, so gifties for the wee ones is also in order. Please hang in there with me. One of these days I'll be able to sink my teeth back into Blogger.

Week in Review 9/2/10

Week in Review 8/26/10

Week in Review 8/19/10

Week in Review 8/12/10

Wow! This was a while ago, but I'm so glad I have the pictures as a reminder. I took the girls and #5on a mini fieldtrip to Red Butte Gardens one morning for a sort of photo safari. The girls and I are all click-happy and we LOVED walking around the garden picking out cool shots. We also had a Scout Court of Honor with the boys in our ward. I'm so proud of #2 and his accomplishments. We're just a few requirements and an Eagle project away ... Yay!

Because we're such mean parents, we've made the Eagle rank a pre-requisite for his driver's license.

That's how we roll.

Shoot the Kids? I'd Love To

Just wanted to throw out a brag-rag post with a few shots from this fun photo shoot. Hubby's ex had a birthday in August and she'd requested new pix of the kidlets. I jumped at the opportunity to have a mini-adventure, threw the kids in the car and drove out to Salt Air.It was a great night and a fun adventure for all of us. We laughed so hard we nearly wet our pants ... literally, but I love how these turned out! We'll have to plan another mini-trip soon and take all the kids.

I know ... I know ....

Time flies and my bloggity-blog has been left behind in the dust. Oy. I really suck at this, don't I? Six plus weeks behind now in my weekly updates? Ouch. I have so many pictures, I promise. We've had all kinds of fun days ... and not so fun admittedly, but that's to be expected with 3 teenagers in the house, right? What else can I do?

I swear I'm editing photos this weekend so I can at least attempt to get caught up, but how about in the meantime I share a recipe today as a lame sort of apology? I found this while putting a lesson together for church. It was about cooking on a budget ... and I found a load of great tips and tricks at allrecipes.com. This recipe sounded too easy and too delish to pass up, and I was right. I got thumbs up from all 5 munsters and hubby too. You should definitely give it a try.Sesame Noodles

Ingredients:

1 (16 ounce) package linguine pasta
6 cloves garlic, minced
6 tablespoons sugar
6 tablespoons safflower oil
6 tablespoons rice vinegar
6 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons chili sauce
6 green onions, sliced
1 teaspoon sesame seeds, toasted

Directions:

1. Bring a pot of lightly salted water to boil. Add pasta, and cook until al dente, about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain, and transfer to a serving bowl.

2. Meanwhile, place a saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir in garlic, sugar, oil, vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and chili sauce. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, until sugar dissolves. Pour sauce over linguine, and toss to coat. Garnish with green onions and sesame seeds.

You may want to read the reviews here to see how you'd like to adjust the recipe to your own tastes. I made it as is and threw in a couple handfuls of chopped fresh brocolli to cook with the pasta, but could've easily reduce the oil by half. Play around with it and see what works for you.

Week in Review 8/5/10

Getting behind again??? I swear I don't know where the time goes. Here's our first week of August though - finally.OY! Another busy week ... but soooo much fun! We celebrated #2's birthday, for starters. He's 15 now - crazy. We started off the day with Monkey Bread, as per his request, and had a super mellow day. I felt horrible, because we didn't have everyone here. This means no presents. :( Lucky for him though, hubby and I were crazy ready to go actually find a little brother puppy for Izzy. We've been searching the ads for the last couple of months and couldn't wait any more. So Murphy was adopted and brought home on his birthday. This, of course, means that we had to send oodles of pix to the other chitlins in Colorado so they didn't feel left out. Murphy is the sweetest little puppy and has a great personality too.

Monday the rest of the fam showed up to spread birthday cheer and give loves to the new puppy. That night the girls and I drove down to Provo for Mindy Gledhill's CD release party ... followed by a quick stop at BYU to see #1's new beau and have a double scoop at the BYU Creamery. Yum. We finally celebrated the birthday in full on Thursday, complete with birthday dinner ... pancakes and sausages, strangely enough. The presents this year were kind of funny too since all he had requested was cash. Oh well. He finally got to celebrate and that made us both happy. :)

Blast from the Past

Well, isn't this just too funny? I took a few minutes to answer some questions about my first year of college at BYU in 1990 ... and they quoted me in the Summer 2010 issue of the BYU Magazine. The article is titled "The First Year - Four Generations" It's an interesting feature about how much things have changed (or stayed the same) for incoming freshman between 1950 and 2010. My lovely little nugget of insight is under the heading "Lost in the Crowd". I know. I'm such a nerd.

Meet Murphy

I couldn't wait to show you all the latest addition to our not-so-little family. This is Murphy. So cute. Yes. Enjoy!

Week in Review 7/29/10

Hmm, this week had a rough start with #1 in hot water for ... not knowing how to be 16 yet. She lost her phone and driving privileges and was pretty much under lock-down except for work hours - needless to say, she pulled a double shift on Saturday to stay off my radar. ;) Sunday was the youth sacrament meeting and we got to listen to the youth tell us all about the different summer camps and youth conference. We also found out Sunday night that there was no way on Earth that #2 and Chandler were going to make it back from California anytime soon traveling standby into Salt Lake, so we had to adjust our plans.

Turns out the best fix was for #1 and I to roadtrip down to Vegas and pick the boys up from a flight there. Six hours in the car with my own daughter when we're barely speaking to each other ... let's just say neither of us were sure how we felt about it. I finished up my jetBlue shift, we each packed a bag, gave Izzy a quick bath and finished up the laundry and dishes and we were off. We topped off the tank and zipped through a carwash, grabbed some gross fast food and spent the next 40 minutes or so in awkward silence. Somehow ... thanks to my prodding, we were able to have cleared up most things between us by the time we pulled up to the Red Barn in Santaquin. We peeked around the shop and decided there wasn't anything we wanted so jumped back on the freeway. I have to say that being trapped in a car together without any other distractions and plenty of snack food isn't a bad way to work through some of these things and have a productive conversation with a teenager. (I'll have to remember that for future issues)

Anywho! We pulled into Vegas, checked into the hotel, grabbed dinner at Chili's and very quietly made fun of the couple who were sitting on the same side of their table. Next came the tricky airport business, luckily the boys were able to find us without a hitch. Back to the hotel ... kids texting and on iPods until who knows how late while I passed out. The next morning brought breakfast and the lovely drive home. Oy! Exhausting.

And believe it or not ... Wednesday was even more tiresome! I took the 3 bigs to a "Discover Scuba" class at Dive Utah and redeemed the groupons I'd purchased in June. It was a riot! The kids had a blast, but we were pretty worn out by the time we had to lug our gear back to the storage room. That night we had plans to go boating too. Scuba and boating all in the same day? Yup. Can I tell you I slept like the dead that night? Thursday we tried to keep the schedule more mellow .... it was dreamy.

Embrace Book

OK, I couldn't wait anymore! Here's the inside of #3's Embrace book. Everything in the book came from the young women in our ward and our fabulous leaders. They each wrote cards and letters and quoted different songs and scriptures that would help her get through some dark days. I pulled different pieces from each of the letters into picture frames and such to emphasize them. The letters are all tucked into their own envelopes so she can physically pull them out and read them. McKenna's letter included a list of 15 songs that help her feel better when she's down - so I indulged myself a little and took the opportunity to burn those songs to a CD to add into the book as well. I did the same with the other songs people gave her and put a separate playlist on a different CD in the back of the book. It was fun to see the project keep evolving along the way.

The book itself was a brainstorm I came up with on my own for once. It's 12 inches tall and the pages alternate between 7" and 5" wide to give it a great layered affect. All the coordinating double-sided paper was from a nifty little package I bought from Scrapbook Steals last year. The picture frames and alphabet letters came from the same kit and were a dream to work with. #1 was my design consultant, as usual, and she even added in all the doodles to help dress it up and fill in the empty spaces. I'm so completely thrilled with how it turned out! I had the whole thing spiral bound at Office Max and I hope it's something she will treasure always. She even took it to her mom's house so M could read it too. Love that!

I know the images here are small. You can see them better here.

Week in Review 7/22/10

We're desperately trying to get back on track here. For the most part we're back to a normal summer schedule, with plenty of play time. This particular week was a great one too. I was able to take #1 to go get her driver's license and she had her first few outings ALL ON HER OWN. (yikes) We took the littles out for a spin on the lake Friday night and went back again Saturday with all the boys + Chandler. East Canyon was definitely more crowded than we like ... and plan to go back to our mid-week boating schedule. Church on Sunday was awesome and we delivered a 'heart attack' to M that afternoon, to remind her that we love her.

Monday I took #2 + Chandler to the airport in hopes of getting them on a flight to Long Beach to visit Pops. There were 23 seats still available on the flight ... they were numbers 25 and 26 on the standby list. Tight - but somehow they made it on the first try. Yay jetBlue! Tuesday brought hiking with the Scouts. Wednesday I was finally able to finish up #3's book and give it to her. #1 chose the title "Embrace" ... because the whole book is like a big hug. :D I loved watching her reactions as she read through the book. She was really touched by how thoughtful her peers had been - it even made her cry. Twice. That's big. I count it as a huge success and will post more detailed pictures of the pages for you later. The week wrapped up with multiple trips to Top It to redeem our Groupons. Yum.

Family Props to Cam

Check out how cool my nephew is! This is Cameron Wood coming off that 6 foot jump. He's seriously the coolest kid I know. Love you Cam!!

Tough Love

Friday was ... TOUGH.

There was a knot in my stomach roughly the size of Texas. I knew it. I knew I was being lied to. I finished my shift with jetBlue and called my sweet Hubby. "Hon, I've got to bust her today. How should I do it?" This is never a good way to start a conversation, but it was unavoidable. I was seing red and was risking a full-fledged transformation into Psycho-Mom.

My sweet little new-driver's-license-holding-thinks-she's-so-much-smarter-than-mom of a daughter tried to pull the wool way, WAY down over my oh-so-wise-x-ray-vision-mother eyes and I just couldn't pretend to be that dumb, not for anyone. I've been trying really hard the last couple of weeks to - to loosen my grip a little and give her more freedom. She's sixteen after all and if I'm supposed to be able to let go, so to speak, when she's 18 and graduated ... it's reasonable to bend a little more here and there right now.

HOWEVER ... in light of all my recent efforts to give her those little, and sometimes not so little, bits of extra freedom, it hurt that much more when she took advantage in every way possible.

She really hurt me.

She broke my heart.

And now, I'm tagged the meanest mom on the block ... for what? For calling her on her lies? For expecting her to be where she says with whom she told me, obeying the very clearly stated driving restrictions quoted to us by very creepy man at DMV 4 times in the last 2 months?

Yeah. I know. I have huge expectations, don't I?

Week in Review 7/15/10

It was about time for some downright happy moments! After what seemed like FOREVER ... we finally got had all the kidlets under one roof again, well almost. (#2 was still in Wyoming) Hubby and I had been really anxious about how the youngest 3 were, emotionally speaking. We hadn't seen them since D's service and had no idea how they were coping with everything. It was a relief to finally have them walk in the door and know we were going to have them for a whole week.

They were ... just fine. A little tender around the edges, but that was all. We planned an afternoon at the library ... a favorite for everyone. We love the Salt Lake City Main Library. It really is a place you could spend the whole day in. The architecture is amazing and there is always something fun going on there. We split up and each went to find our own treasure trove of books to take home. Saturday was a real treat too! We got to spend the morning at the Jordan River Temple where our niece was sealed to her husband and beautiful wee baby. It was a really emotional day for everyone - but very uplifting. #2 met us at home just after we finished for the day and a smidge after that, #1 left us to go to the Justin Beiber concert. Oy.

It felt so good to get everyone back on track. We played and laughed and ate loads of watermelon. I was also able to make some great headway on a book I was putting together for #3. Since she had suffered two losses so close together, I had all the young women from our ward send me letters, lyrics, scriptures or quotes that would help her find some peace. The leaders all contributed as well and before you knew it I had a whole pile of 'pick-me-ups' for her. I scrounged through all my stashes of paper to get inspired for layout options and finally came up with something that was truly beautiful. I'll post pics of the completed projects in my next week in review. I love how it all turned out!

Ooh-la-la-de-da!!! A CD Release Concert

I'm buying my tickets for this today! I've loved Mindy's songs based on faith and the gospel and am thrilled that she's exploring a new sound that is still completely appropriate for my whole family to listen to. She seems like she'd be so much fun and she even came and danced in the aisle with us at the last concert we went to. If you're in the area and want to have a fun night out with the girls ... go get your tickets here. It looks like there's still plenty of space left, but it won't last much longer.

All About Your Heart

I almost get sick from watching this sweet little girl spin around so much, but I love the song and am dying to make a tribute video for my daughter with it - something I can give her when she graduates from high school or something. Enjoy.