The agony and the ecstacy!

So for my birthday I wanted two things. My laptop fixed and a grill. Well, my wonderful parents tried fixing my laptop over many hours and we thought it was fixed. It ran great for about 16 hours and then went kaput, so we are sending it out to be fixed and hopefully somehow, someway it will be repaired and I don't have to sit at James' computer and blog anymore. The second thing I wanted was a grill. I have been looking at grills all summer, coveting and dreaming about the grill I wanted. Finally the grill I wanted was on sale this week. It's normally
$300, and was marked down to $200. Still more than I could afford with my birthday money from Dirk and his parents. Then I earned some money from making some cards and I was finally up to $150. Still less than $200, but I decided to go to the store and try and talk the manager into letting me buy the floor model for less. Well, I get there yesterday morning and overnight they had dropped the price to $150!!!! Exactly what I had. The only model they had left was the floor model, so we loaded it into the car. I mean this is the grill of my dreams. Stainless steel, four burner, 52,000btu, side burner for corn on the cob, and cupboards out front. We loaded it into my van, I took it home and grabbed my neighbor to help me get it out of my van. We had had to tip in it to load it and as we were pulling it out, the lid (that heavy stainless steel beautiful lid), slammed on my wedding ring and dug the ring into my finger about 1/4 an inch. I ran inside and promptly passed out while rinsing it. Next thing I know, my neighbor is kneeling over me. Three stitches later, swollen and bruised knuckles, and great pain (yes I am a big baby), I am home again. I insisted that we grill last night to teach that grill who's the boss. So to sum up my great experience: grill - $150, Dr. visit - $25, taking the ring to jeweler (unknown - some of the ring bent and doesn't fit together anymore), eating hamburgers from the grill in my backyard with a family I love for my birthday - priceless.

It's a party, yah, yah, yah!!

So it's official!! The kids are back in school!!!! They love it and so do I!! James started his 8th grade year at Central Davis Jr High, and Jenni is in 5th at King Elementary and Emma is in 1st also at King Elementary! James didn't have his schedule until two days before school because he had to try out for Central Singers (the elite choir) at the Jr High. He made it!! The teacher asked him to do some scales and match a pitch and said - you're in! As an 8th grader, this is a huge honor, it's mostly only for 9th graders. As it is, there are only 8 tenors. Anyway, I had to embarrass Jenni, she ran into her class before I could get her picture at school, so I had to knock on her door and take a picture in front of all her classmates (sorry Jenni - when you make junior high, I don't come in the school). Emma is officially all day now. What fun for me!!

As of right now, I am a stay at home mom with no kids at home - what oh what will I do? Oh, yeah, party, party, party. On my first day I got me a Subway sandwich and didn't have to share with anyone!! Then I rented a movie and watched it all the way through - without having to answer questions or be bothered by anyone!! Then I got on my computer and surfed the net, without having to let others on to 'play their games'. It was a glorious day. What rejuvenation to have some alone time (and yes, I was able to enjoy it because Friday we cleaned the house top to bottom, so all the work was done). But reality sets in now and I will be starting my classes on 9-2, so my days of luxury are over, I'll be studying when I'm not cleaning, volunteering, painting, and a myriad of other things. It was fun while it lasted and I'm sure I'll sneak in other pamper-mom days.

Happy Birthday Emma

So last Saturday was Emma's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! She is getting a party in a few weeks (after we get to know some of the girls in her class). For her birthday dinner she chose Ham and peas and potatoes. My kind of girl. She got lots of fun things and had lots of fun on her special day.

I couldn't get the pony tail out mom

So my youngest daughter Emma just loves hair. Last year she got a treat and went to the hairdressers where they shampooed her hair and cut and styled it and she loved it, so weeks after that, she had to "cut and style" her and her friend's hair. Oops big time. Much yelling and crying later and a full year of her hair growing out and we are beyond that mistake. I thought. She is always putting clips in her hair, putting it in pony tails, whatever, she loves to "pretty herself". So the day before the family reunion and she comes to me saying "mom, I couldn't get my pony tail out, so I cut it out." W W W H H H A A A T T T?!?!?!? It was perfect to braid, put curlers in, the bangs had finally grown out and she had to do this???? Many more tears ensued, mostly from me, but we did our best to fix it. It is not super pretty, but Emma has to live with it. Luckily our next door neighbor is a hair stylist and fixed it best she could. Needless to say, mom does her hair every day now for school. Ugh.

And the Wind blew

So a few weeks ago, I told Dirk that we needed to get some firewood for our house. We've got two fireplaces and it would be a good idea to get some wood to stock up just in case we lose power and need to heat the house. Well, the East Winds must have been listening, because that night while we were watching a movie, the wind blew and we heard this loud noise. No big deal, we live near an Air Force Base and hear jets occasionally fly overhead. The next morning I looked in the backyard and 1/3 of one of our apple trees was lying on the ground. Luckily it fell south. If it had fallen east, it would have hit the house (the tree is about 25-30 feet high). Now we have some firewood. We went to work with the chainsaw and clippers and many moans and groans from the kids. But it is finally off the fence and lawn and we are no worse for wear.

The Queen!

So, our little Emma is a little spoiled. She seems to get what she wants, or she whines for it until someone gives in and we are trying really hard to break her of it. So one day, I was fed up with her "I deserve this" attitude, I made a smart aleck comment that she is not a princess and she does not get everything handed to her on a silver platter. She looked me dead serious and said "Yes I am a princess, Aunt DD said we are yelated to kings and queens, so that makes me a princess". Thanks alot Diana. Now I had to explain that we were related through the history to the kings and queens back in the time of Robin Hood - not the current monarchy, although I guess that distantly we might be. So fast forward a month, and I made a sarcastic comment about someone (no names mentioned) having a specific chore and if they got that chore done on time, then I'm the Queen of England. And once again, Emma pops up and says "You're not the Queen of England mommy, you're just yelated to her"..........time elapses........then she says quietly "maybe".

Our family reunion

So we went to Idaho for a family reunion. We were planning on going for just the day, but Ed and Beth surprised us with a hotel room for that evening, so we surprised the kids by spending the weekend up in Burley. The family reunion was a blast. We got to visit with cousins from Boise and relax at the family homestead in Oakley. My aunts and uncles did their own histories for the occasion and it was great to read about those who were still alive, not just those who had passed. One interesting thing from those histories was when my Uncle Carl mentioned how one of his favorite memories growing up was when his big brother Ed (my dad) let him drive his car and he couldn't even reach the pedals yet. What's funny is I remember my dad doing the same thing - letting me sit on his lap and steer the car as we drove home. It was such a priviledge. Now if you even think about doing that with your kids it's a danger and you could be ticketed and everybody would be horrified. I want to know if anybody else remembers driving as a young kid and your opinions on it.


So the reunion was great. I don't see my Dayley family very often because we all are scattered, but it all felt like no time had passed and we got along great. (Looking back - the last time we had done this, Jenni was a newborn - 10 years ago). Boy time flies. The kids loved the reunion, but also loved swimming in the hotel pool after the reunion and also the morning after. They swam from the time they got up until 30 minutes before we had to check out. I just loved the hot tub. So thanks Ed and Beth for that special treat!!!

On our way home, we stopped at Promontory Point - a historical site where the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific railroad met up a hundred or so years ago as they were building the road across the country. The two railroads met up Utah and they nailed a golden spike into the tracks to commemorate it. The golden spike is now in some museum, but the two trains that met that day are still there and we had a good time reliving the history of the Old West.

Where to start?

Where to start after a month and a half? Well, the summer is almost gone. We've had an awesome one at that. We have gone up to the cabin three weeks this summer. The first trip Jenni had the biggest fish, the second trip Ed had the biggest fish and the third trip, Athena had the biggest fish. We saw more bears in Yellowstone. We haven't been to yellowstone yet without seeing at least one bear. This one was munching on the carcas of an elk. Unfortunately, we didn't get close enough for a good picture. We also went to Burley/Oakley Idaho for a family reunion (that's for another post). We moved into our house. We just have to put pictures on the walls. I tried to put the drapes up in the living room and failed miserably (in my defense, I was by myself, didn't have the right drill bit, the anchors were too small, and I wasn't feeling good). They went up and looked fine to me, but Dirk was unhappy with it and redid it all. We went swimming at Surf and Swim (a pool here in Layton that has real waves and no sand, yay!). Unfortunately, we all got sunburned, James worst of all - he got blisters on his shoulders and back and arms. OUch. Oh, James finally saved enough money to buy a Wii, um, yeah. Another fun post for that one. I think that about sums it all up. The summer flew by, but it was a great one. I'll try to post pictures soon as well. Oh, and yeah, my laptop died and our main computer also blew out big time. We bought the replacement part for our main computer, now at least we have one main computer. Now we just have to figure out how to live without my laptop.