The rest of the Fall Break story.

I am just going to quickly recap the rest of Fall Break.

Hah. I say that every time. I'm just not quick.

Sunday we made the trip up to Bountiful to see Grandma and Grandpa G.
The day could NOT have been more beautiful. Seriously. I love Fall.

The Scarlett overload begins right now.
(This trip was the first time she LOVED me!! Ahhh, I've been waiting for this moment.
She actually chose me over Little Billy Grandpa when we showed up at her house.
Happy dance time.)

That evening Lynnea needed to take a little walk to lower her blood sugar levels, so most of us joined her on a stroll around the church parking lot. The point-and-shoot caught these two gems:

Mar and Mer were happy to spend some time together, too. (The point-and-shoot did not fare so well here. The good news is I GOT MY NEW PHONE. On Monday, so I didn't have it for these pics, but all pictures after these, are courtesy of my phone. Yes, my PHONE. So so happy!)

Bill headed back to Utah early Monday morning to conduct a funeral service of a member of our ward. He drove the car that Lex has been borrowing while Lo is serving a mission. We needed to get it back to CO to get it tuned up and registered before Shi returns home anyway, so our initial plan was to just drive two cars back at the end of the break... but it worked out even better, since Bill needed a way home AND I found a $24 one-way flight back to UT Tuesday night for him. So perfect.

Monday night (after Mar and I had received our new phones via UPS -- happy dance EXCEPT for when I tried to activate and assimilate mine, which may have resulted in a few moments of inner rage), we headed off to the park to have dinner from some food trucks. 

I have never eaten from a food truck, people... until now. 

Check that off the bucket list.

This park, a stone's throw (if you have a really really good arm) away from Britt and Austin's house, is amazing!

(More food truck pics... so I won't forget I've been there, done that haha)

We got some fresh donuts, which Scarlett thoroughly enjoyed...

...while Britt, Aust, and Mar enjoyed the park.

Tuesday morning, Mar and I attended Wonderful Sweet Scarlett's dance class.

I loved watching this adorable girl bust some moves.

There's something super sweet about a dance class full of 18mo-to-3yr-olds.

On Wednesday we drove back out to Bountiful to visit J's grave. It's hard to believe it's been a year since she passed away. In some ways it feels like forever, in other ways like it was yesterday.

 I reflected on the time I was blessed to spend with her last year, especially the few precious hours I was with her the day she died, not knowing that was going to be the day. Bill, Mar and I talked about how life is so uncertain... how we need to treat everyone with more love and understanding... and especially how important it is to cherish your family. We have definitely learned some valuable lessons this year.

Have I mentioned I love Fall?

Afterwards we met up with some Parkerite-now-Loganite friends (remember our choir concert buddies?) at Nielson's Frozen Custard for dinner and some catch up. I didn't know places still exist that don't take debit or credit cards, only cash or check! Now I do.


On Friday we went to the Provo City Center Temple. Bill and I didn't make it out for the open house, but had attended the dedication with Mar over Spring Break. We had some fun trying to find parking (i.e. it was a Friday and there were a lot o' weddings going on), but enjoyed going with two of our beautiful daughters!

Saturday evening we met everyone at Red Robin in The District... kind of a final family hurrah before we headed back home early Sunday morning (so we could catch the dedication of the Fort Collins Temple). We had to wait a bit, but had a great time chatting, enjoying the beautiful weather, and adoring Wonderful Sweet Scarlett.

Afterwards we shopped a bit (Hobby Lobby with the menfolk, then we sent them home with Scarlett so we could peruse Downeast Home). Then we all met back up at Britt and Austin's and just chatted. Seriously, those times are the BEST.

The drive home was... beautiful (have I mentioned I love Fall?) This was a rest stop, for goodness sake.

Since Mar wanted to drive for a bit, I sat in the back seat and enjoyed watching Pollyanna (I haven't seen it for decades) because it was one of J's faves (if you haven't seen it for a while, you need to watch it), then the new Saturday's Warrior. Mar has never seen ANY version of Saturday's Warrior (and has never listened over and over and over to the soundtrack... or LP... like I did back in my early youth), so when we got home (and after the temple dedication) we watched it again. She said it was a little different than she had envisioned as she listened to it on the drive home {haha}. We youtubed a few of the numbers they left out of the new version, and had some fun discussion on WHY.

That's a wrap, peeps.

(I didn't take any pictures of our painting projects... which took a lot of mine and Britt's time during the week... a coffee table and end table of Tay and Nae's, and an end table and kitchen table of Aust and Britt's... it was quite a big undertaking, but we did it. Hopefully everyone is satisfied with the results, as they were still drying as we drove away.)

Fall Break begins + a baby shower for Nae and E.

I've been gone from the blog for too long. I've come to the conclusion that blogs are no longer the social media outlet of choice these days... probably because it takes so gosh darn long to bang out a post, select pictures, upload and modify-to-beautify them (I rarely modify due to lack of time AND a slow-running outdated BigMac), and proof to find errors (which I often miss the errors with a quick proofing anyway). But this blog is really for me and a few of my old friends (who no longer blog) and close family (who also rarely blog).

Okay, it's just for me haha.

Anyway, it's been too long. I have a lot o' catch up, so I'm going to try and hit the high points. I may post about the low points (mainly my issue of late with what is apparently a midlife crisis) another day... but only if things slow down a bit. Which I'm pretty sure they won't, so you will just have to imagine my anxiety-and-stress-mixed-with-the-natural-aging-process (wrinkles anyone? gray hair? dry skin? unsightly spider veins? poor vision? aches and pains?) with a little I'm-just-plain-tired thrown in.

Back to my oh-so-quick post to kick off my catch up.

We made the long scenic drive to UT for Fall Break.

 I love Glenwood Canyon, and that I-70 CO drive in the Fall cannot be beat.

We spotted some cow-herders in Price Canyon, which made for a little scenery excitement on the UT side.

After attending a baby shower for Dayna, my cute SIL-to-be (no pics, bummer), we took a little drive to Provo to check out Tay and his band, Lost in Bourbon (I like to pretend it's more like "Lost on Bourbon STREET" hahahahaha).

 This was our first time hearing them live, and lemme tell ya, I think I'm a fan of rock music.

I loved it.

I didn't get great pictures -- only a few on my OLD cracked phone -- and the lighting wasn't great for photo ops anyway, but I head-nodded, toe-tapped, and swayed with the best of them. I may have looked a bit ridiculous, but I was feeling it. And the music was awesome.

The next day we had a baby shower for Nae and baby E.

Of course Britt and I ran into a few hiccups that morning, so we were all working madly (including all the menfolk -- thanks, guys!) to get everything together in time.

The adorable mom-to-be...

Grace refused to smile for a picture because she had just lost both of her front teeth :-D

No shortage of babies on the Syddall side... my SIL Angela is expecting, too! Dayna and Ange are both having boys... so baby E. is the balance in the force haha.

 Britt and I literally got ready in 7 minutes due to our last-minute scrambling, which was due to some indecision (on the part of the old gal in crisis haha) during a not-so-quick shopping run.

It was so fun to celebrate the not-too-distant arrival of sweet baby E.

The two Syddall mamas... aren't they cute??

And a couple of great grandmas... they're cute too!

It was so fun to party it up and play some awesome shower games with our amazing family. A huge thank you to Britt for hosting, and everyone who came!

Next up... more Fall Break and a whole lotta Scarlett.

In the middle of the ride.

I love the song "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World.

(I am in no way recommending you view the music video for this song, however... I just looked it up this morning and found it to have nothing to do with my interpretation of the song, not to mention it was a tad... disturbing.)

My favorite lines from the song:

It just takes some time

Little girl, you're in the middle of the ride

Everything, everything will be just fine

Everything, everything will be all right, all right.

Bill had attended a church meeting a year or two ago with {Elder Holland, I think... I will have to double check my facts}.

He came home with the perspective that we are ALL currently "in the middle."

The middle of the plan of salvation/happiness,

in between our pre-existence and paradise (or prison).

This middle part, although long, tiring, full of ups and downs, good and bad, joy and pain,

is so so important.

I'm just trying to keep on keepin' on... to endure well... among the crazy business of life.

Anyway, here is what I've been in the middle of the past week:

It was Homecoming week for Legend.

This year Bill was able to come promote himself at the parade... Yay! 

Mar and Cass helped pass out candy and cards. Those girls rock.

 

After all the work Bill has put into promoting his company locally, he has recently found out that he will have to change the name due to some technical legal issues. He is in search of a new name that has NO POSSIBLE problems (trademarks, etc).  I think he needs it THIS WEEK. Ugh. Such a discouraging turn of events. But, to quote my favorite missionary, we will survive.

Thursday night was the Homecoming football game. It was fun to meet up with friends and ward members to cheer on LHS.

Friday night (also the evening of the Homecoming dance), our ward had a special youth temple baptism trip planned. I'm pretty sure that was a bit of a calendaring snafu, but the youth who were NOT attending the dance, spent the evening at the temple doing baptisms.

 We actually had 4 or 5 more youth show up after this picture was taken, so a pretty good turnout considering the scheduling conflict.

On Saturday morning, Mar, Bill and I went to the Parker Road clean-up.

After all the years we've lived here, with our family participating in this event too many times to count, I have to embarrassingly admit that this was my first time.

It went well. It was a lot o' work, and it got pretty darn hot by the time we were finishing up, but we were able to finish with a sense of service to our community and a job well done.

I think I mentioned that I decided to antique/glaze my cabinets. I actually worked on them ALL DAY two Fridays ago, and didn't quite get finished but was literally so sick of working on them that I took all of last week off (not to mention we were just so darn BUSY all week). Here's a shot of a few of the finished ones:

I like them much better antiqued, so it was definitely worth the effort. I have set a goal to totally complete them this week... in the middle of all the other regular busy-ness going on.

Also last week:

I grocery shopped. 5 stores... I'm a bit of a tightwad and always trying to get the best deal. It's so exhausting!

I gave the Sisters a haircut

A family that was renting their home in our ward was given 24 hours to move out of their house, so I spent some hours helping them pack and load up

Celebrated 2 friends' birthdays by going to lunch with them. One of the birthdays was at the end of May... I'm a little behind, don't you think?

I took a dinner + a freezer meal to my neighbor (with the 7 kids)

Went visiting teaching

Spent most of the day on Friday at the temple (4 sessions total)

Just trying to document why I'm so darn busy all the time. For my own memory's sake. Today I am working on a sweet little baby quilt for my newest little granny-daughter, then we are having some investigators over for a lesson with the missionaries tonight, which means a little house tidying is in order.

Gotta run.

Labor Day + a baby sprinkle.

Labor Day 2016.

Bill worked tirelessly on his {little} patio project, which he started way back at the beginning of the summer.

The past few years we've had issues with minor flooding in our crawl space when it would downpour towards the north. We discovered that our patio had oh-so-slightly SUNK over the years, and that rain would pool right next to the house, then drizzle down the vent on the side of the house into the crawl space. For the past several years we have discussed the need to correct this {little} problem, and talked about solutions, most of which cost mucho dinero. Finally this year we made the commitment to git 'er done in the most cost effective way possible, which meant to remove all the flagstone, piece by piece, build up the base, then reassemble and re-grout. Bill finished the puzzle on Labor Day... in the 90 degree heat. Now we just have to re-grout (which I hope goes smoothly). 

Wish us luck.

I cleaned a bit in the house, but spent much of the day preparing for our BBQ and baby sprinkle we had planned with the neighbors that evening.

(Our neighbor Macey did the lettering for the chalkboard signs... she and Britt have similar skills in that area.) 

Then it was time for the party to begin.

In the middle of it I had to run pick up Mar from work, but after it was all said and done, everyone agreed that we should get together more often. We have great neighbors, and we all have such busy lives, it's nice to get together and chat it up sometimes.

And my neighbor who we had the baby sprinkle for? She made it over, too. It was her first day out of bed after delivering her 7th baby less than a week prior. There were some complications with her delivery, so her recovery has been slow. Hopefully she did not overdo.

Things I've learned:

Always have chips on hand. Since Mist and I did the dawgs, the drinks, and the dessert, neither of us made an extra side dish. The neighbors all contributed a side, but they were similar in nature (pasta salad), and on the small{ish} side. I ran over and grabbed the two bags of chips I had in my pantry, and at the end of the day they were gone, baby gone. I was also tempted to purchase a watermelon earlier that day, but talked myself out of it. Should a, would a, could a, didn't. Wished I did.

I've decided to glaze the corners of my cabinets, I'm just working up the gumption to actually begin. I hope I can manage it without removing the doors, but I can't even try until I purchase some more gloves, so as not to antique my hands any more than they already are (I spied some age spots on them the other day).

I am really really tired. Especially of kitchen cabinets. Needing an extra day or two of rest {wink}.

Mission Accomplished {I think}.

It's been another grueling week of cabinet painting.

Ugh. I'm over it already.

The good news is...

(Focus on the cabinets here, not the crock pots -- including that nice blue one we got for our wedding. Just cooking up some Costco-sized pork roasts. And imagine those golden oak floors a dark brown... somewhere down the road.)

...they are pretty much done.

I'm debating... to antique or not to antique.

I've decided I'll live with them a week or two, then make that call.

They are not perfect, but they are DONE. (Unless I decide to antique.)

A huge shout out to my main man, who, after a long day of work, would come home and help attach drawers, doors, and pulls.

I plan on doing the three upstairs bathroom cabinets next, followed by the laundry room, but think I'll give myself a little breaksie for a weeksie haha.

On Thursday we made another trip up to Ft. Collins for the temple open house. This time Bill had invited a couple of his co-workers, and Denise and her daughter Autumn (along with Cory - they are the couple that just got baptized) met us there. I also met up with Sarah - our friend who grew up in Parker, now attending CSU, and whose parents just moved to Arizona.

Again, it was beautiful, and a great opportunity for Bill to share some of our beliefs with some ladies he works with. I am, however, not fond of the drive... especially during pm rush hour traffic. We may have the blessing to go several more times with others we have invited to attend -- I just hope we can avoid that crazy 5-6:30pm travel time.

I whipped up these little invitations in the middle of my cabinet madness:

My neighbor just had her 7th baby, and we decided it would be the perfect time for a neighborhood get together. I'm hoping for good weather tomorrow and looking forward to mingling with my awesome neighbors.

Bill got to see the BYU game last night (we don't have cable, so I assisted in helping him find a locale at which to view it -- thanks, Batemans!!), and Mar attended a Rockies game for a friend's birthday. AND they got on the jumbo-tron TWICE.

I stayed home and decompressed. And folded laundry.

Happy Labor Day!