Vingt-deux.

Happy Birthday to this beautiful girl!

(Sorry, Lex, I had to pull from the pics I could somehow access on Lolo's laptop! Oh, I remember this day pert near a year ago. Reminder here. This was pre-engagement, pre-marriage, pre-Texas. Wow, it's been a year chock-full of changes for you!)

My advice for you:

Source

and

Source

I have learned that a happy life is not somewhere down the road... when you get a new car, when you purchase a home, when you have a house full of perfectly mannered and well-dressed children, when you get a new job, when everything goes exactly as you have planned... it is here and now, amid the stress and challenges of everyday life! Enjoy it! You will never be the age you are at this moment again. 

You are an amazing, talented, and beautiful woman! I love you!

Hope.

Confession time:

I still have a heart wreath on my front door from February.

I still have the letters for "Happy Father's Day" on my magnet board.

(I'll admit I mixed them up just a few days ago due to embarrassment)

I have not walked {for exercise} once this week.

I ate an entire bag of tropical Hi-Chews yesterday on my way from work to the post office to home, even though it was chock full of my least favorite flavor, banana. In my defense, it was 4pm and I hadn't eaten since 6:30am.

Things continue to go non-stop. I suppose that is how life is (which, funny enough, I am constantly reminding my lone child at home that life is work so get used to it...).

I am hopeful, however, about many things:

I've been on a brief organizing binge, getting some junk together that has needed it for a long, long time. There is hope that on some distant day, everything will be in its place.

(And I like to think it counts towards exercise, since I've sweated my booty off doing it, haha)

I'm getting good at countdowns... keeping up with Lolo's days on the mish (the weeks do seem to fly), counting down the days of a child in braces (FOUR), the days until General Conference (NINE), and counting down to my trip to UT to chill with Wonderful Sweet Scarlett (THIRTEEN). I am hopeful that my beloved granddaughter will quickly be endeared to her doting grandma Gigi (so I can hold her, hug her, kiss her), and that I'll have the chance to visit with lots of family while I'm there.

My sister Jana continues to battle cancer. She found out this week that it has spread, but sent a hopeful text of treatment information after meeting with her doctor. Her hope gives me hope. She has maintained an amazing attitude throughout and keeps a smile on her face and a positive outlook. I so admire her.

I love this quote by Elder Scott:

I'm going to miss him.

Here are a few quick, fun pics NOT from Big Mac's defunct iPhoto library:

This is the photo I used for my conference luncheon evites. Sometimes I just crack myself up. We've been gone the past TWO conferences, so I am glad to be able to resume this fun Syddall Family tradition.

I love love love getting snaps from my kids, and I'm getting better at screen-shotting (Big Mac says that is NOT a word - if he knows so much, why can't he open iPhoto?) to save for later.

 Scarlett opening a package from Gigi and Little Billy... decorated in her fave, Daniel Tiger. Britt sent us a video of her playing in the box that was sooooo adorable - totally worth the time to print those out!

Britt and Austin are moving! They are in the exciting process of building a house, and because they sold their townhome in ONE DAY, they will be spending the next 6 months or so living with Grandma and Grandpa Anderson (I'm soooooo jealous).

Yep, this fun little daily update on that sweet girl makes me so so happy.


We've convinced Tay to play along and it's been so great to get some of his fun snaps!

And Lex keeps us updated on her and Jason's furniture additions and dinners.

And even though Mar is around, I love getting snaps from her too:

(from a recent field trip to an authentic Chinese restaurant for her Ancient Civ class - the homework the previous week was to eat at Panda Express for comparison purposes... why didn't I ever have a class like that??)

They all make me smile and can make any day exponentially brighter. Thanks, guys!


Last night I went to a Relief Society activity... I took pics for the Ward History.
I'm so grateful to be among these great sisters.

Those two cute sister missionaries in the front-and-center moved in with us on Tuesday night (part of the reason for my organization + reorganization projects). I hope our service to them will be returned in kind for Lolo in London... the missionaries don't live with members there (Shi said it would be really difficult because everything is sooooooo small), but I know there are wonderful members who go out of their way to serve her and her fellow missionaries. I am so grateful for them!

Still Keeping On.

Oh, it's been a long loooonnnng time since I've updated. But not as long as others I know {wink}.

Big Mac's photo capabilities are still corrupted, and I hope to get him fixed asap, but I managed to download my most recent photos on baby Mac (Shi's laptop that Mar and I have commandeered until January 2017), so I can at least post SOMETHING. I'm not a good enough writer (or deep thinker with a gift of expression) to post sans photos. You know my theory... a picture paints a thousand words. Now the trick is to see if I can figure out how to get the pics in the post. IF you are reading this, I was successful... YAY!

I'll start with Labor Day, which didn't start all that great. 

Yep, that's a policeman out the back window writing up a nice traffic citation for Billy-my-hero, who was driving a tad fast because he was just so gosh darn excited to have Jason and Lex visiting and to be heading to the Manitou incline near Co. Springs. Oops.

After the short pit stop, we were once again on our way.
It was my great idea to do the incline. I thought it would only take an hour or two (our initial intention was to also visit the Manitou cliff dwellings)... that it was about 200 steps... I had seen several fb friends post about this awesome accomplishment, and I was wondering why I have lived here for pert near 14 years and never heard of it. My neighbor posted this:

"Ready to climb 200 stairs"
and in the comments... "It was fun... we did it twice."

See that incline behind them? Yep, that's what I thought we were climbing.
That is the Castle Rock incline (never heard of that one either!) Oops.
I told the whole fam it would be fun. Quick. Easy.

Here's the Manitou incline... 

It was a little comical when Jason stopped at 200 stairs and said, "This is 200..." We had hardly even started. We discovered after our incline climb that it was actually 2744 steps to the top, and there is a 2000 foot rise in elevation in just over 3/4 mile. Oops, my facts were a bit off, haha.

Poor Lex and Jason had just come from 4 months living in Austin, TX (around 500 ft. in elevation), to Parker (elevation 5900) to Manitou Springs (elevation 6320) to the top of the incline (elevation 8590). Sorry, peeps, my bad!

We took a few breaks on the way up.

A nice family offered Lex and Jason some water from their extra canteen because WE WERE SO UNPREPARED and the Babes had only brought one water bottle to share. Luckily it was predominantly overcast that day, with only an occasional slow burn of a cloudless sun. I'm not proud - I'll admit I crawled part of the way. Some of those steps were steep!

I told everyone it would be an accomplishment we could brag about be proud of if we just kept going. It seemed like an eternity, but we finally made it to the top.

Hallelujah!

Then we had to make the trek back down the mountain (thankfully mostly stair-less).

We followed this shirtless guy and his bra-wearing, underwear-less girlfriend (you could tell, unfortunately) the entire way down. Ugh. Three hours into our adventure, parched, hungry, aching feet, and tired, we were pretty much DONE and feeling pretty ornery. It was joyous to finally finally see the parking lot.

We downed the sandwiches we brought as soon as we got to the car, nixed the idea of going to see the cliff dwellings, and stopped by the nearest Sonic to get something cool and refreshing.

After we got home, rested and showered, we played some ladder golf.

While Lex and Jason were here visiting, they told us how their favorite treat they had made in TX was homemade peanut butter cups. I gave them a try... and they are super simple and way better than the store-bought kind. It will probably be my new favorite I-need-something-sweet-right-now treat. Yum!

The following Wednesday was the Homecoming parade. Another exercise in under-preparedness at the Syddall house {wink}. I think it was the evening of Monday/Labor Day when I reminded Billy-my-hero that the parade was two days away. Oops. He had a class that went Wednesday through Friday that he absolutely couldn't miss. As a sports sponsor this year, he was planning to have something in the parade for advertisement (the purpose of sponsoring, right?). So we (Bill and I) stayed up until midnight on Tuesday stapling, Bill rounded up some people to help,

borrowed our neighbor's vehicle, we threw up some signs and Legend-blue decor, and prepared to pass out flyers (with candy) and toss more candy out the window. Jason and Lex so kindly offered to drive.

Finally the parade got underway. You know I love the marching band.

Mar was walking with the swim team float (so small that only upperclassmen rode). The theme of Homecoming was "Once upon a Homecoming..." {Disney}... everyone except for the freshmen were princesses... the freshmen were {Disney} animals.

Mar and I had a brilliant last-minute idea for a bunny tail... a bath poof. Desperate creativity, haha.

My view from inside the car (maybe I was hiding):

Oh yeah, the parade was great fun.

I discovered the best place to sit to get the most candy... now that I don't need to know that anymore!

Friday morning at 5am Jason and Lex headed back to Idaho.

It was so fun to have them here for a week, and a little sad to see them go!

Friday night we headed to the Homecoming game:

It was so fun to hang out with friends and neighbors, even if Legend lost handily.

The dance was Saturday. This cute freshman girl, like her sisters that preceded her, went with a group of girlfriends.

Her friend Tori's dad made them dinner.

I'm pretty sure these girls had the fanciest dinner of anyone at the dance that night - five courses.

After their dinner, I dropped them off at the dance.
Mar arrived home around 11:30pm - she had had a good time, but said she didn't need to attend another Homecoming dance until her senior year. (Hah, we'll see, I say.) She concurred with her sisters... the dances are kind of yucky because of all the bumping and grinding going on. You have to actively work at avoiding much of it, but don't get away with it completely. Mar mentioned that she has a few friends that she will never look at the same again due to their participation in aforementioned activities. Ewwwwww.

So, that's it for now. This week has been a bit of a bore compared to last. But boring can be good. More time for naps and blogging.
Still keeping on.