A beautiful day in May

My day started out a little bit early, for two days in a row now I've woken up at 4 AM. I don't like 4 AM and for a while I didn't think 4 AM liked me. I don't know about you, but when I wake up and can't get back to sleep it's usually because I'm thinking about things that need to get done, things that I've been procrastinating. And that's what I was doing. Laying in bed thinking all about how I dropped the ball and hadn't yet found an accompanist for a special musical number that I had scheduled for this coming Sunday's church meeting, among other things. After about a half an hour I decided to go fold laundry and an hour later I had 4 loads of laundry folded and I felt accomplished! At 6, I decided to reach out to the family who was scheduled to sing our special musical number on Sunday and apologize for dropping the ball. I felt good sending that message and I felt AMAZING when just a few minutes later I received a reply from them stating that they had found an accompanist and had practiced and everything was going to turn out well. I was overjoyed, who cares about being awake way too early, I felt amazingly blessed and happy and I knew it was going to be a wonderful day!

And it continued to be great. No one showed up at my door with a giant check for $5,000 dollars a week for the rest of my life, (what? it could happen!), BUT My two youngest and I ran errands this morning and everything was awesome! We got shoes for the baby- more on that in another post. We picked up some produce, purchased some more food for our long term food storage, picked up books at the library AND even remembered to return the book on CD that we finished on Memorial day.

After lunch, my B boy and I made cookies, then we played outside with friends for a while. On my way to the park behind our house I saw this beautiful red rose. I love roses!

 After my sweet girl woke up from her nap she snacked on a banana and milk. It must not have been enough because about 10 minutes later she walked into the front room holding this bag of cereal (which is almost as big as her), looked me in the eyes and said "Want!" with great gusto. Minutes later she was the proud owner of a cup full of Tootie Frooties. She's got cuteness and she knows how to use it.

 It was about that same time of day that I started feeling like I wanted/needed to go to the temple. I messaged Ken to make sure it wouldn't mess up any plans if I wasn't around for a couple of hours. I am so glad I was able to go today. Usually I plan a lot more, a day or two in advance at least, but today it kind of felt like I needed to run, (well, drive really), as fast as I could to the temple. I needed to get there before anything could stop me, and I did, and it was wonderful. Why did I need to be there? I don't know. Maybe I just needed an extra measure of peace today.

I took this picture as I left the temple this afternoon. Pretty good picture I think, considering I took it with my phone. So, when I woke up this morning I really didn't have much hope that it was going to be a good day. But it was a good day, it was a wonderful day, it was a blessed day.

And here's a little bit of extra information. I'm learning new skills! Skills that hopefully will help me update the blog much more often. This is my first post created using our new "chromebook". Our Laptop died last year, and for some reason, it's hard for me to sit down at the desktop and "work". I know, it's odd. But a few days ago, Ken got a notice from CamelCamelCamel that the chromebook he had been interested in was below the price he was willing to spend and today it came! Using this new computer is a little different, it has no hard drive so I am learning how to use "Google Drive" AND, get ready for this, I was able to learn how to upload pictures from our phone to my Google drive and then upload them to the blog from there. The most amazing part- I figured it out on my own! Now children/teenagers were needed to teach me! Yep, the greatness of today just keeps going!  See you soon!

Memorial Day 2015

This was the 3rd year of continuing our tradition of visiting a grave of one set of our Grandparents, the kids Great Grandparents. I believe that families can be together forever and as such I have a hope that someday we will be able to be with our loved ones again. My children love their grandparents with all their hearts, and it's my hope that by taking them to the graves of my grandparents and Ken's grandparents and by telling them stories from the lives of these amazing people, they will love them too, and someday when they meet them, they will know them. 

This year we went to Ogden to visit the grave of Ken's Wheeler Grandparents. It was about an hour drive. The "are we there yet" barrage started about 5 minutes into the trip, 4 year old boys are awesome! 

 We brought our painted stones, this year even the baby painted one. We need to get more information, more stories, about Grandma and Grandpa Wheeler. This year we told the kids about Grandpa's ruptured appendix and Ken told the kids some of his memories of his Grandmother. When we parked our car J and I noticed that there were many people who were edging around the headstones of their loved ones. We hadn't brought any tools, but be did our best to remove the grass that had grown over the corners. Next year we may add to our tradition by bringing some tools with us so we can do a better job.

After about an hour there at the cemetery, we headed to a nearby park, we had a picnic  and let the kids run burn some energy off before headed home. 

 Later that same day we went to Heber City for an Adventure! the Heber Valley Railroad was having "Wild West Days". Ken, the amazing bargain shopper that he is, was able to get us half price tickets for a train ride that included a band of outlaws robbing the train! As you can see, our little B was very excited.

 We enjoyed some live music and a magic show and then we went and waited to board the train. The boys were so excited to board the train, AND get the best seats ever- in the very first coach- that they decided not to go watch the shootout. It was probably for the best- those guns were loud.

 The boys were hoping that a steam engine would be pulling the train. They got over their disappointment very quickly. They both agreed that they want to be engineers when they grow up.

 We had lots of fun on the train, it was a 30-40 minute ride, I decided that the train was traveling about the same speed as I run- so 5-6 miles per hour. We went from Heber to Charlston where we were ROBBED! Don't worry, they were nice robbers and they shared their gold with us! It was the best kind of gold- the chocolate kind.

 It was a wonderful day! Next year we head up to Logan to visit the graves of my Paternal Grandparents and then in 2017 we start all over again. I love our Memorial Day Tradition!