Surprise!!!

Last night we had two special visitors walk into the house and surprise us.

Kara & Hallie are in town!

I was so excited to see them. We knew they were planning on being here on Tuesday to go to the temple with Jennifer - but Kara and Hallie decided to fly to Vegas early to visit with family for a few days. We're glad they did.

Welcome to town!

Check out my Slide Show!

Happy Birthday, Mom

Friday, October 19th was mom's birthday. Here are a few things I've learned from my mom, and maybe some facts you didn't know:

1. "Don't walk across the grass - "they" spend a lot of time and money to make it look that nice. Use the sidewalk." this is for neighbor's houses, public parks, grass, I guess, is not to be walked on.

2. The greatest cassarole ever: HOTDISH

3. How to make roast, mashed potatoes, and peas. Not to mention gravy from scratch. You can not serve roast any other way, only with mashed potatoes and peas

4. Her singing voice is incredible

5. She can paint her nails better than any nail shop anywhere. And she never smudges them...

6. Spend the money for a good pair of shoes. "If your feet aren't happy, you won't be happy."

7. She has RARELY shampooed and fixed her hair herself. She has a standing appointment at the Beauty Palor every week. When I was at home it was on Wednesdays. But for over 15 years it's been on Thursdays. I have known by name most of her hair dressers and I'm sure her hair dresser knows way too much about me & my family.

8. Mom keeps a SPOTLESS house. In the whole house there are only two spots that would be remotely considered 'cluttered'. There's a small stack of mail and important papers she needs next to the kitchen table. And another sea shell full of odds and ends on her nightstand. This is the kind of house where you dust weekly undusty furniture. And it's not called dusting it's called "polishing the furniture."

9. She totally believed in her kids and thought we could do anything we put our minds to.

10. She's really smart.

11. Every morning she "puts her face on"

12. Every night she "takes her face off."

13. Four children; 11 grandchildren; 6 great-granchildren

14. Mom kept detailed baby books for each of us.

15. I think she is flawless in remembering holidays and especially birthdays. Everyone gets a card and a present in the mail.

16. Don't leave her a voice message on her cell phone, she doesn't know how to retrieve her messages. (she is not alone in this handicap, I could name several - and my own daughters don't even LISTEN to their messages)

17. She reads a lot.

18. She does crossword puzzles.

19. I pretty much consider her Emily Post in disguise.

20. She's creative

21. She taught me not to run in the house, not to yell in the house, don't bounce the ball in the house, and stay out of grandma's livingroom

22. She watches the news every night - used to watch Johnny Carson. I guess I don't know her well enough, because I don't know if she's a Jay or a Dave watcher now.

23. She's beautiful.

24. All the way from Texas she keeps close tabs on what all my kids are doing, their activities, how they're doing in school, work, who they're dating.

25. I think it totally rocks that she's 70 and still has red hair. (does she dye it? only her hairdresser knows for sure...)

I did not inherit her birthday gene (see #15). As you can tell, the Birthday Blog is two days late, and the CD I was really excited to buy her is still in the front seat of my car, unmailed. UGGGHHHHH. I know it's so rude (see #19), I'd say I'll improve as a new year's resolution or something like that (BTW - thanks to my mom I know that you're supposed to eat black-eyed peas on new years day for good luck that year), but I keep trying to be better at mailing and fail miserably each year. Maybe it's because I'm not combining the resolution with the eating of the peas.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you.

Hallie's Blessing

On a sad note

I guess to be an honest blogger, you must include the sad with the good. Kaia, the 4-month old infant of our niece Zan is in the hospital in critical condition. These emergency situations are always difficult but it is compounded by the fact that Zan's husband, Jason, is stationed in the military in Germany. We are so sorry we could not be closer. Our thoughts and prayers are with you guys in Kaiserslautern.

Happy Birthday, David

We'll sing a song that we all know - Happy Birthday, to you!! Congrats on the new job, nice birthday present. It's great to have you in our family.

Driving Frustrations

I try not to be a complainer, to go with the flow, to accept and embrace change in my life.....but whomever redesigned the speghetti bowl (how long ago, 6 years? and I'm still griping about this?) I'm upset with.

Basically the problem is we lived on the southwest side of town for over 15 years. That meant for years I drove north on I-15 and the vast majority of the time I went west on: 1. The Expressway, then it was called 2. 95 westbound, now it's referred to as 3. 515 (already see my confusion on this?). Sometimes I needed to go downtown or towards Henderson so I would take the east exit. Life was so simple - wanted to go downtown or Henderson and you're going north on I-15 - those areas are to your right, and so was the exit, far right lane. Want to go to the west, which was your left, be in the 2nd right hand land. No brainer.

This was great until someone decided the speghetti bowl couldn't handle our traffic and needed to be redesigned and obviously this important task was turned over to an engineer in some office on the east coast who doesn't even say 'Nevada' correctly. His/her bright idea was to reverse the ramps. And take one lane and expand it to two.

Now, switching freeways comes with a lot of brain power on my part. What once used to be done in my sleep, becomes a private conversation of lightening fast silent questions all asked to myself while I'm wizzing down the freeway trying to merge. Where am I going? Oh, yeah, I need to go left -- but the sign doesn't say 95 Left or 95 Right, it says West or East. So then my brain has to picture a map to so I can visualize left is .....west. O.k. I'm going west, which lane is that....geez I can't see around that truck.....holla hannah, if you're going to live in the United States, you should drive the speed limit on the freeway....o.k. Here I am ready to go left-uh, west. wait - does this lane go west, does it expand for two lane for the other direction?

From Charleston in the space of 3/4 of a mile my brain is going crazy trying to figure out where I need to be. I can't answer my phone, listen to the radio....good thing I don't cart kids around anymore to distract me.

So then it happened yesterday. I was at LVBS between Sahara and Flamingo. Needed to go to Henderson city complex, stop off at the printers on Sunset. A no brainer drive, get on I-15 at Flaming-O, north on I-15, loop around the city on 95 exit Sunset, printers, then follow Boulder Hwy to Lake Mead. Fun drive, start some good music.

But at Flamingo on-ramp my phone rang, another no brainer - I've entered at this point for the same above-mentioned two decades. I'm driving along trying to answer Jenn's questions about how to blog, how to make a new post, "click on the B at the top, you're looking for the dashboard, you know, I haven't done this in two years, if I could look at the screen I could answer these questions and help you better....can this wait until I get home...?" Then it happened, I came back into driving reality just as I was in the far-right lane, which my brain on auto-pilot still thinks will take me to Henderson, only to find myself on the flyover heading left...uh, west.

Dang engineers, why did they have to mess with tradition?

Sunday Birthday Dinner

This year we celebrated Jordan's earlier, so Drew got the whole night to himself. I'm really glad everyone could be here. Some brought quieter gifts than others...thanks Jordan & Jenn...

Watching Drew get so excited was very entertaining. He's at a great age.

Ashley thought the drum set would be a great new toy for Grandma's house....Drew wouldn't hear of it. Ashely even had quite a conversation explaining the drums were going to stay at Grandma's until they moved into their new house, then you can bring the drums to your new room. When all was said and done, Drew personally carried the drums out to the car "My house." He's a funny kid. Charlie just sat around observing all night. It would be interesting to know what's going on behind those big blue eyes of hers.