It's almost August!

This summer has flown by....an I'm not ready for it to be over yet. Chelsea got a letter from her senate adviser with all sorts of activities she will be involved in, and Alyssa got her registration from Taylorsville high school. I can't believe our daughter is old enough to attend high school! The registration packet also included a notice about drivers education that said she could get her learners permit right away. Run for your lives. I mean it.

We are finishing up the month of July with a bang. Carlos' office downtown is right along the Days of 47 parade route, and so we went down and slept over night to watch the parade. The only problem is that in order to save your spot along the curb someone has to "sleep" outside. I put sleep in quotation marks because it is so noisy that no-one is able to sleep! I'm still recovering, but it was a lot of fun and we had a lot of family and friends show up to watch the parade with us.

Paige and I both had birthdays this last week. We had a rockin' party at my parents' house in highland, but right before leaving, Christian was playing out front and decided to open the back of a utility trailer. It was a lot heavier than he thought and it fell and squashed him between the gate and the road. We spent three hours in the emergency room where he was x-rayed and received 13 stitches behind his ear. This past week his arm has continued to hurt and yesterday Carlos felt really strongly that he should be x-rayed again, a little higher up on his arm. Sure enough, he had a fracture in is upper arm. Christian feels pretty cool wearing his snoopy arm sling, and is enjoying all the attention!

This next week I have jury duty. I tried to complain to Carlos about it, mostly because I had to cancel my appointment with Brandon (my nutritionist), but he said it is my civic duty to go and that I should be happy to do it. Yes dear.

I am really excited for August 4. Carlos and I will be attending the James Taylor concert at Usana amphitheater, and then I head up to girls camp. We get to go back up to the Heber Valley girls camp again, which is a blast. We had a bear in our camp last year, which tried to eat my ice chest, but it is a really great camp. Sleeping in cabins is so much better than tents! I have some new pictures to post and maybe even a video of the kids body-surfing at Newport, but I won't get them posted till tomorrow.

Diet Update-Just for you, Candi!

Today is day 16 of my diet. When I went to see Brandon (my nutritionist) a few weeks ago I thought my life was over. He weighed me and took my body-fat percentage and it was devastating! Granted, I'm still 30 pounds down from my top weight, but with my family history of diabetes, I think I was scared straight, so to speak.

The first four days were pretty difficult, but after that it got a lot easier. I also had a visit with Dr. Bagley, who gave me lots of supplements to give my body a good detail cleaning, and I started to feel better pretty quickly. I've been to see several doctors for the digestive issues and what I've learned is that many other health problems can be the result of what I'm eating.

The thing I'm finding that works for me is to make my meals very boring. Brandon gave me a list of foods I could eat, and limited it to two or three choices per meal. It was hard at first, but now that I'm not craving all kinds of sugary stuff, I actually have to remind myself to eat sometimes. My goal is to get to the point where I eat healthy 95% of the time and have a little treat once in awhile.

So far I've lost 11 pounds, and my metabolism has gone up about 50%. That is a true blessing. I walk 45 minutes every day and I'm able to have Jon Bon Jovi all to myself for just a little while! I have found that I quite enjoy my walks:> Monday is my birthday and dangit I am having a piece of cheesecake!

Candi, thanks for your interest, and for reading my silly blog! Love ya!

TTFN!

The Big Vacation!

We had a great trip to California last week. The first three days were spent at Disneyland, and the kids had a blast! (me too.. I love Disneyland) We went on every ride you can think of and then went on them again! Christian and Paige loved the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and Alyssa Chelsea and Carlos' favorite was the Tower of Terror. Alyssa has learned to love roller coasters of every kind, so she and Chelsea buddied up a lot. My favorite was the Grizzly River Run, because we went as a family!

California was hotter than ever. It was over 91 degrees at the beach, which if you know California, is pretty darn hot. After Disneyland we spent a few days in Newport beach, where we saw the temple, did a little shopping and went to the beach and the pier on Balboa Peninsula. I would move to Newport Beach in a second. It's a beautiful place. I even asked Carlos how hard it would be to take the Bar Exam in California. We won't be moving any time soon, though!

Overall, it was a wonderful trip, and it was so fun to get away with the family. I love making great memories with the kids. I'm realizing more and more that they will be gone all too soon! I am going to try and post some pictures of our trip, so hopefully you'll get a little taste of our fun week!

The Diet Woe's

Today is day # 1 of my new diet..er..I mean, lifestyle change. It is still early in the day and I have stomped, cried,pouted, and screamed at my kids. Chelsea thinks I hate her.

In despair I took a big bite of a brownie, which I then spit out. (It doesn't count if you spit it out, does it?) It sure tasted good though. My nutritionist, Brandon (that's right, I have my very own nutritionist) says that after a week of this new way of eating, I should be able to jump out of bed with all kinds of vigor and energy and hit the ground running. Could that really be true? I am determined to find out! By next Tuesday I fully expect to be feeling great and for all the crappy sugary food cravings to be gone...We'll see.

So if anyone reading this happens upon my children, please give them the TLC that they need. I'm not sure how long this trollish behavior will go on, but until I get a handle on it I am going to duct tape my mouth shut. Love to you all.

...And the Livin' is Easy!

Happy summer vacation everyone! Are things slowing down for you? I remember when I was young and the summer months seemed to pass slowly. Every day was filled with lots of playing, family vacations and outdoor excursions. Now the months pass quickly for me...way too quickly!

Alyssa had her 9th grade promotion dance last week, and now claims she has been released from the imprisonment of Jr. High. Moving on to high school will be a big step for her and she is very excited. She will be attending a week-long harp camp this summer as well as girls camp,and will be celebrating her 15th birthday in a few weeks. She has a new short hair cut that is attracting way too many boys if you ask me. Instead of looking 15,she now looks 17,or 18, or in her dad's opinions 19. Yikes!

I dropped Chelsea off at the airport on Monday for her tour to Seattle. She has been texting me...keeping me informed about all her daily activities. She is having a blast. They performed at a Senior Citizens facility yesterday and the people loved the singing and dancing. Her performance at a park was canceled this morning due to rain, but she has another this afternoon and will also be taking the underground tour of Seattle. Fun! One of the most exciting things for her group is that they will be singing the national anthem at a WNBA game tomorrow night.

Paige and Christian are enjoying the longer summer days, as they should be. They are pretty good to get up and get their chores done, so that they can play outside with each other (they play really cute together..usually) or with their cousins Mckenna, Emily and Dietrich. They had a lot of fun at Aunt Candi's last weekend. We went for Justin's birthday party and the four kids (Christian, Paige, Jessica and Justin) played and had a great time!

Paige is attending Sylvan to help out with her math skills a little. She will be going back to public school in the fall and we want to make sure she is ready. She loves it there.

Christian graduated from Kindergarten last week and is really excited about eating lunch at school next year. I helped with his class's field day, where we played lots of fun games outside, and I was also able to go on his field trip to Tracy Aviary as a chaperone. It was lots of fun! He got to play with another cousin, Madsen, the next day and they both kept me laughing the whole day. Thank goodness for cousins, by the way. There aren't many kids around here to play with.

So on Saturday Carlos and I will be celebrating our 17th wedding anniversary. The time has gone so fast. When I look at my kids and see how big they are, I am amazed sometimes at where the time has gone. I will be giving a talk in sacrament meeting,for fathers day, on attributes of a father, and it's easy for me to come up with those attributes because Carlos is a great father to our kids,and a wonderful husband to me.

After church on Sunday, Carlos and I and the kids will be flying to California to spend a few days at Disneyland and then a few more at Newport Beach. Christian did the thing the other night where he got out of bed to come to our room and tell us he was too excited about going to Disneyland to go to sleep. I can see where they got the idea for the commercial!

Crazy Lady on the Warpath

Blue spray paint is much more difficult to remove from a fence than Black. That is the lesson I learned today.

Yesterday morning, as part of Paige's school lessons, she and I decided to learn how to clean up graffiti. There is fence at the entrance to our neighborhood that seems to be a target for the local gangsters, and I refuse to let the punks own my street. The city is supposed to have a task force to remove graffiti, but I believe the longer a tag stays up, the person who painted it gets to bask in the glory of their feat. Stupid jerks. I have fumed about this for weeks and finally decided to try and clean it up. Carlos suggested we try Goo-Gone to remove it, and with some scrubbing, we got all of the black paint off. The fence looked as good as new. I showed it to Alyssa this morning as we drove to her orthodontist appointment and we marveled at it's glorious whiteness.

I came home this afternoon to find that the same fence had once again been tagged with the same name. Can you believe someone actually thinks they own my neighborhood? And that they can go around spray painting wherever they want to? They painted in broad daylight! (Stupid stinking jerks) Blue was their color of choice this time, and even though I had a crew with me (Paige, Christian, McKenna, Emily Dietrich, and Archer) It still took more time and a lot more scrubbing than did the black paint we cleaned yesterday.

So as I sit here typing with blue paint-stained fingers, I am planning my revenge against these creepy teenagers. This is going to be war. I am going to the store tonight and I'm going to buy the biggest dang bottle of Goo Gone anyone has ever seen. I will clean the graffiti every single day if I have to. These creeps will not claim ownership on my street. I'm even thinking about setting up survielance equipment or hiring a private detective or hmmm....maybe a hit man? This is war. I'm smearing on the war paint right now. (not really)

School is coming to a close, summer is here.

It seems that our blog has been a bit neglected lately. No worries, I already had my ice cream fix for the night, so I am ready to write. School is fast coming to an end for the year, and the kids (meaning children, not young goats) are quite excited about it. Christian went with Grandpa Rigby last night to a BEES minor league baseball game, and loved it. He came home with a silver baseball. Kennedy is studying math at Sylvan. That's costly, but for the first time ever, she is liking math and accelerating at it. I good investment, I believe. Alyssa got her hair chopped off today. I really like her haircut, but it makes her look old enough to pass as a legal adult, so my feelings on her haircut and new style are mixed. I will be posting a photograph. Chelsea is getting ready to head off on her tour with her singing and dancing group. She has to share a suitcase with one of her classmates, since Delta Airlines now only allows a single checked suitcase, as the students also have to "check" a piece of sound equipment for the trip (shame on the airlines, especially United, with its no-bag without extra cash policy). I am sure she will like Seattle. I know I would.

We are also getting ready for our trip to SoCal and Disney Land parks, where we plan on tromping around from ride to ride until we get sick, or until we have spent three days straight at the parks. Crazy? Yes, without a doubt. The ride I most look forward to is the airplane ride; especially the take off (I don't care much for the landing) I mostly want to go to the beach. I love the ocean, and really love to see when really big waves come thundering into the shore.

Last week, Christian, Kennedy and I went camping. It was fun. The kids liked the hiking around, and liked seeing how many lizards the could see. I lost track of how many lizards I saw. (FYI: the word for lizard in Spanish is lagartija. This is also the work in Mexico for push-ups. If you have ever watched a lizard, you will see it doing push-ups) We also hid a geocache on top of a hill, which I need to get listed before I forget about it. We found some old mines: I would sure like to know what it was they used to mine out of them thar hills. We were at Five Mile Pass, which is either in West Utah county or East Tooele County, amongst a bunch of off-road vehicles, but we didn't mind them. We also were able to leave the hills a little bit cleaner from trash than what we found them. That was a good lesson for the young ones. Most of the things we picked up where beer cans and beer bottles. I am not sure why, but soda pop drinkers almost never leave their cans, whereas beer drinkers seem to leave their cans and bottles all over the place. Obviously there is correlation (or maybe a coorelation) with alcohol, but I am not sure of the actual cause and effect. Is it that people who sit in the juniper trees drinking beer get stupid because of the alcohol and then leave their garbage? Or is it that stupid people who always leave their garbage about, like to go sit amongst the juniper trees to drink their beer? Anyway, we helped what we could in cleaning up some of the cans, hopefully making the place better than before we where there.

I guess I really got off on a tangent there. I am going to finish up and go read myself to sleep. I am currently re-reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" Dumas is definitely a romantic, but I like his writings (I have also read many of the d'Artagnan adventures (The Three Musketeers, et al.) which make history much more colorful that it really was). If you ever read this book, please make sure it says "unabridged." The first time I read it, I starting reading the unabridged version, then lost it, so I bought a new book. It did not say "abridged" but after I read it, I realized that it was. It simply didn't make much sense, leaving many unanswered questions. The abridged version was published by Scholastic, and they abridged it by simply cutting out whole chapters and sections. After I discovered the deceit, I wrote a scathing letter to Scholastic, and they offered to refund me my money. Any way, I highly recommend the book. It is much different from the latest movie under the same name, but he movie, nevertheless, is also on my recommended movie list.

Ok, and going to publish this now, typos and all.

Ice Cream

OK, so here I am, taking the time to write a bit instead of eating ice cream. Oh what a tragedy, indeed! It really is a sad statement of affairs when I put other things before ice cream. I mean, really, what is life coming to? Well, I guess that's all I have time to write now, as I just got back from Macey's grocery store with some Dryer's vanilla mixed with orange sherbet.

Updates!!!

Hey, everyone. Um . . . apparently, I'm supposed to post something. ;) Okay! I posted. Bye!

. . . Just kidding . . . :P

Let's see, what to write? Ah! I just went to one of my very good friends' benefit concert to raise money for her exchange trip to Italy. (Elise.) I played the harp for her there. I was told it went quite well, but I should have practiced more, because I messed up about a gazillion times. That's alright, though. Practice makes perfect, right? *says sheepishly* I also made a card for another good friend's birthday. (Wyatt.) It was the first time I had made my own card (well, the first time that it looked good at least.) and I'm also planning on sending him a CD mix of some of my favorite church songs.

School is almost over, and I'm VERY excited for the last week - especially for my Geometry class to be over. I'm also quite anxious for high school, as my Junior High holds seventh through ninth instead of the usual. So I'm a freshman . . . kind of . . . I guess I'm alright with it though. On our last week of school, we have promotion, yearbook day, and most importantly: Lagoon day! On Lagoon day, for those of you who don't know, the ninth graders get to go to the amusement park Lagoon and stay there basically all day with all of our friends.

Well, I'll have to say "See you later," for now. I've got a harp lesson today, and Chelsea has dance pictures, so . . . may God be with you 'till we meet again! :)
Luv, Liss (I'll post this after everything - it's my sign off on everything I post anywhere.)

My Girls Are Growing Up (Dangit!)

So tonight Alyssa played the harp at her friend's benefit concert and she did an amazing job. For some reason, when she began playing the harp, as well as the piano, her skills on both instruments really increased. I will post a pic. later but I have to ask Carlos how to get the photo's out of my camera. I am learning one device at a time, and I think by the time I get to programing the VCR there won't be such a thing anymore. (I Hope)

After the concert, Alyssa and Chelsea were hungry so we stopped at Apollo Burger to get something to scarf down. When I ordered at the drive-thru, the guy asked me in a kind of gruff tone how many fry sauces I wanted, because they would be an additional 25 cents each. (Who in the Heck charges for fry sauce, especially in Utah...it ought to be a crime!) So I told him two would be enough. When I pulled up to the window, I saw something I have been dreading since the day the girls were born.....He gawked at them...and smiled a very suspicious smile. The kind of smile that says "that girl's hot". Darn creepy if you ask me! Anyway, he gave us our box of food and we went on our way. When we opened the box, we noticed that there was not only an extra order of fries thrown in, but six (count 'em) six fry sauces!

We brought our bounteous supply of fry sauce home, and I sent the girls off to do their homework. Now I am left here with the image of the drive thru attendant smirking and gawking. I am totally creeped out. I think I will have a nightmare tonight.