Conference Camping

So I have been slacking a little keeping up on my posts!

Our semi annual camping trip was everything it should be and more this time. I'm not sure if the prospect of maybe not being able to go made us not take it for granted, or the time out from daily life and the challenges we've been facing, but we were so thrilled to be in the mountains with our closest friends (family) listening to the words of our beloved prophet, and other leaders, enjoying the cooler weather, GREAT food, and most of all each others company. When I think about how blessed we are to be able to have this tradition I get choked up. Our kids have it so dang good I really hope they get that! We were so fortunate to ALL be able to travel in safety (NO flat tires or anything), the weather was awesome even despite getting dumped on, on Saturday (NOT a fan of the mud!!) The kids all get along (for the most part) and have a great time playing together, the boys enjoyed shooting 22's and driving Rhinos the girls hiked to the "bed and breakfast" a few times, Michelle brought clipboards for the girls to decorate and they really enjoyed it! One of my personal favorites when we all camp together is sitting around the fire, talking, laughing, RELAXING, and when we do our big dinner on Saturday you can always find most of the guys circled around the cooking source (grill box, spit, whatever?) it just makes me laugh!
Conference was awesome!! I was especially touched by Elder Holland's talk on Angels among us
and Elder Wirthlin's "Come what may and Love it". Almost all of them were words of comfort, and encouragement, I think we all felt recharged by the end of the weekend! I was impressed by how many of the kids actively listened and took notes. We are already looking forward to next time and Novembers Ensign.

O.G.T.

If I could survive on reading entertaining and uplifting books rather than food I would do it in a heart beat!! The latest book I devoured is called

Recovering Charles
by Jason F Wright
It was such an inspiring book with a great message of second chances. In the book the main character refers to his youth frequently. In his home they had their O.G.T.= One good thing. His parents would ask what was your one good thing today? I love this concept, we ask our kids daily on the way home from school or at the dinner table "how was your day" and we get the most basic and generic answer most of the time. What a clever way of making them really think and consider the positives in their lives and of giving thanks and looking on the bright side if you had a horrible day! So we may just have to have random O.G.T. posts. Mine today was just being outside on such a gorgeous day and enjoying the cooler weather. It makes me happy!!

Back to the books. I have been plugging this book (Mending Broken Things) for weeks so if I have already been on my soap box to you about it then forgive me. I think this will be an all time favorite because of the messages it holds and the hope and faith it brings into your life by reading it!! I had originally bought it with the intentions of giving it to someone I really thought could benefit from it's message but thought I should read it myself real quick before I passed it on just to make sure. Little did I know how much I would benefit from it's messages. I have now marked it all up and have read and reread several parts to make sure it all sinks in!! So needless to say I will have to purchase a new one. If you get a chance READ IT!!!!!

Bringing home the bacon..

K its' official I start back to work in 2 weeks!

I had been giving A LOT of thought to what I might want to do with all my "free time" (ha!!!) after the kids started back to school. With all four of them in school all day I knew I wanted to do something but wasn't sure what that was. I loved working as a nurse, no question but wasn't 100% sure that's what I wanted. I kept an open mind and prayed about. More time passed with no ideas. When Kiley's appendix ruptured and she was hospitalized on the floor I had worked on and had a lot of the nurses that I had worked with (who are excellent nurses) it made me realize how much I had really missed it. They were all so kind and said repeatedly we would love to have you back anytime . I gave it some more thought and Eric and I discussed it quite a few times. I still hadn't really acted on it yet. I then got a call from one of my old bosses basically saying I could have a job if I wanted it and her timing was perfect. With the current state of our economy and the uncertainty of what the future may hold it made perfect sense to take this job and help relieve some of that anxiety.
It has been kind of a slow process but I finished my new employee stuff yesterday and have orientation in a couple of weeks and I am really excited (and a little nervous). I love people and nursing (especially in peds) is a very gratifying way of serving people. I am thankful for the flexibility it offers and I am thankful for a loving and supportive family.

Keaton, this ones for you buddy!

You have the LUCKY privilege of being THE baby of our family! With that privilege came the added blessing of being moms personal buddy the longest! The older kids have been in school pretty much most of your life so there has been a lot of one on one time with mom that they did not get the advantage of!! I have THOROUGHLY enjoyed our time! You are so easy going, happy go lucky, it really doesn't matter what we do, you are almost always content and I can always count on you to behave!
This year should have probably been really hard sending you to kindergarten, being THE baby and all but truthfully I was so excited for you, it was hard to be sad. You have waited a long time to go to school with the big kids and were more than ready!! Your teacher tells me all the time what a good student you are and what a nice boy! (THANKS). We still get our one on one time from 2 to 3 and when the others are busy with activities. You have always made us laugh and make our hearts smile with all the sweet and funny things you say. I have never heard a little 5 year old boy give such thoughtful and sincere compliments. I love it!!!

Just for posterity's sake I want to record just a couple of my favorites lately.

1. ( you were born with the funniest double cowlick which unfortunately if your hair gets very long forces it to stand straight up in a mow hawk like fashion!!)
So we were all in moms bathroom getting ready for school and while I was doing the girls hair you say
K-" I kind of want to take scissors and cut this off"
M- "what? your hair?"
K- " ya, but the kids kind of think I'm cute"
M- what kids?
K -the girls friends
M- oh because of your hair?
K- ya kind of (in your shy I am to cute for words voice and that cute twinkle in your eye that tells me I am in for big trouble in a few years!!!
M-Thats because you are so cute!!
K- MOM!!!

I love how your little mind works!!

2. A couple weeks ago I took you with me to the laundry mat to wash all our big camping quilts. Again in some cases this could have been a total nightmare but with you, I hardly knew you were there. You brought a few of your cars and just played quietly in the chairs. You talked to your cars while you played (which I think is so dang cute) and helped me load and unload.
When we were about to leave, we had the most RANDOM conversation ever and my description will not do it justice without your sweet innocent voice and hand gestures, but its funny just the same!
You said to me "mom, there's something I really want to do. I want to go to a place with a whole bunch of water kind of like a lake (insert hand gestures), and a big bridge over it (more hand gestures) and I want to have dinner there like a picnic. But only if it's not hot!"
Where that came from I have no idea?
A few minutes later it got even MORE random, you said" the other day I was watching this thing about brain freezes. I'm not sure, I think they said if you wiggle your teeth it will make it go away? Not sure how we went from picnics at the lake to brain freezes but I was laughing!!

3. This one is funny to me because you were to little to have any memory of me working at the hospital. You have said to be a few times "mommy I really want you to be a nurse again" with no explanation. This was even before we had even started discussing me possibly going back! Guess you knew more than me?
When I finally made the decision that I wanted to go back to working as a nurse I thought it would be fun to see what you would have to say about it.
I said to you "Keaton, moms going to work at the hospital again but I REALLY need to practice starting IV's and giving shots. Can I practice on you?" With out even hesitating you enthusiastically said SURE!! A few minutes later you ran down stairs and announced to everyone that mom was going to practice IV and shots on you!!


We love you so much, you have been such a blessing to our family I can't even put it into words.
While sometimes I am sad that you have grown so fast, I get so excited to see what kind of man you will turn into. There is no doubt in our minds, you WILL be extraordinary!

Mr. P

Because I pray that someday our girls will marry someone as awesome as their dad, and our boys will be the kind of husband and father he is....

This is not an everyday occurrence nor is it totally rare, but after being gone the entire day for Super Saturday I arrived home to find my house cleaner than I left it (I just cleaned yesterday!!)
Dad dusted off the tops of all our cabinets (including all the nick-nacks on top of them and the shelves inside), polished the outsides, washed all the dishes, cleaned the garage, washed the car, resealed the kids shower, took Keaton to McDonalds for lunch, he had done the yard and seeded the grass this morning before I left and when I walked in the door I got a cheerful greeting! Thanks babe you just made my whole week. To even make it better Keaton was his shadow all day and was so proud to tell me all the things they had accomplished. (Priceless)

One of my greatest wishes is for the 4 of you to learn from this awesome example, love to work hard and take care of the things you have and serve others just because you can!! Your dad is one of the hardest working, loving, kind and PATIENT people I have ever met and I don't want you to take any of it for granted. YOU are so blessed!!!


I love ya FOREVER.....

Spiritually fed.

I'm not sure if it's just me or if others suffer from this syndrome? It's the "I know it's good for me so I fight it syndrome". Pretty much anything that is good for me physically or spiritually I find some way to turn it in to an inner battle of wills. I really do love working out but if I get of my routine even briefly then it's a power struggle to get it together again. Worse yet, I often do this with church meetings. WHY?? I know from experience it's always worth the sacrifice of going. I had been looking forward to the relief society broadcast for weeks. The closer it got, the more I started to talk myself out of going, making up silly excuses. So Saturday night comes and I had almost resolved myself to not going (I'm pretty sure I broke my toe like an hour before it was time to leave)! About 10 minutes till the time I should be leaving, I pried myself off the couch, put on a dress and headed out not necessarily in the right frame of mind.

What a huge payoff!! Every talk was exactly what I needed to hear. Sister Beck's talk and testimony really touched me. It was a great reminder of our responsibility and duty as women to step up our game and do all that we can to increase our faith and righteousness, strengthen our home and family, and serve the lord and his children.
I could truly listen to President Uchtdorf speak every day. He taught us that the anecdote for discouragement, inadequecy, and weariness is creating and compassion. He reminded us that we are treasured daughters of our Heavenly Father with infinite worth. While listening to his words I honestly felt this. I felt the love of my Heavenly Father through President Uchtdorf's words and am so thankful I took the time to listen. I am thankful for a living prophet that loves us , and teaches us, who through Heavenly Father is teaching us what we need to do to have ETERNAL happiness. I cannot wait to hear their words next weekend during General Conference.

Dinner Blahs!!

It is no secret, I do not LOVE to cook (bake yes, cook no!!!) I strongly dislike the whole process.
Thinking of something that 6 people will all like, thinking ahead and shopping for all items to make such meal, spending an extended period of time in the kitchen trying to make such dish hoping it will turn out ( while helping with homework, breaking up arguments, yadayada!) Get everyone rounded up to to the table to eat this delicious meal only to find out at least a couple of them would rather die than eat it (mind you they were dying of starvation just 10 minutes prior to dinner!) Then the fun task of cleaning up!! Then repeat x's infinity, the joy.

Today I had no brilliant dinner plans so I enlisted the help of the youngest.

Mom: Keat what do you think we should have for dinner today?
Keat: Pizza
Mom: I don't think so
Keat: macaroni and cheese
Mom: no try again
Keat: soup?
Mom: No sorry
Keat: I KNOW, ice cream!!
Mom: thats a great idea, do you want cookies or cake with it?
Keat: Cake!!
Mom: all right you got it!!
A few minutes later...
Keat: Mom are you being serious?
Mom: sure why not?
Keat: YES!!! then we can have dinner for dessert.
Mom: works for me, don't tell anybody it will be our secret!

Hey you only live once and its always good to change it up a little right? The funniest thing is 1 of the kids actually didn't want their Ice cream. Seriously!! Cant win?