Happy 40th Anniversary to us

We celebrated our 40th Anniversary on Tuesday! 

It was one I'm sure we won't forget soon!

I took our Rascal dog to the groomer on Monday and 'surprise' we have....fleas!

So...... we got to buy spray for the dogs, spray for the carpet and furniture and spray for outside and THAT'S what we did for our anniversary! 

sigh...... Good thing we don't get to hung up on celebrating on THE DAY of something! 

But LAST Night......

Kimi came over with a gift from all our girls and their families.  She got elected to deliver because she lives just down the street about a mile or so from us.......

And this is what she delivered!

Heidi had a 'PLAN' and it was super!

40 years  =  4 gift cards (one for each decade)

Each gift card  =  $40 (10 for each decade)

Cool, right?  We are so excited. 

How did they decide what to get us?

Well, Red Lobster aka Crab Lobster to us (Collin has called it this since he was little)

for dinner - our fav place!  hmmmmmm wonder what we will choose?

Gas Light Theatre for a show -

we LOVE LOVE LOVE (did I mention we love??) Melodramas! 

We have seen several in West Yellowstone and in Virginia City. Good good times!

And so stinking much fun to 'get into' the whole thing!

Bed Bath and Beyond - because an anniversary is celebrating a wedding and brides and grooms always register at Bed Bath and Beyond, right?  So of course!  Kimi suggested new towels, Heidi thought about all the kitchen stuff SHE has that need replaced and they have only been married not quite 15 years so my goodness, the shape OURS must be in!  Katie hasn't weighed in on it yet! 

 I'm sure if we have trouble spending it, they will be willing to help!

And Home Depot - ahhhhhh a bit of heaven in our books! 

We love to just wander around there and smell the plants and all that yummy fresh cut wood smell! 

I know, we are weird - but since we are BOTH weird in the same way here, it's all good!

And we need to get paint for bathrooms or the guest room or.......

more plants for the yard?  A neat planter?  oooooo I know, A FOUNTAIN!

(Wonder what Dellas will want to get?  New saw, any new power tool.... hmmmmm)

On Monday, we went to Home Depot (before the lovely gift card) to get the lovely flee spray

and found a beautiful little tree! 

We decided that we needed to buy it for our anniversary gift to each other!  It is really nice and the new growth in the spring comes in red then turns green!  And it is an evergreen (not pine/fir kind but AZ kind of evergreen - it will have leaves year round - new come on old drops off) so it will be pretty year round.

I'll get a picture of it and post it when we (ahem.....Dellas...) gets it planted.

So, all in all, we did have a great Anniversary (ignoring the flee stuff!) and are looking forward to the next 40!

This is what it is ALL about!

Liam learned three new things while I was in Washington!  He learned to clap, to do "Indian" (don't know how else to describe it!  He will make a noise while you gently tap his sweet mouth or run your finger up and down his lips!), AND to drink out of a sippy cup!  Ok, he doesn't have that one nailed yet but he's getting there!  So darned cute! 

And now I am feeling a bit sad, ya know? 

Not so much because he's learning so much and growing up - even though that is a bit sad.

 But that I missed so darned much of the other three kids!  Holy Cow! 

 I got to see bits and pieces and the girls were really REALLY good at keeping me updated with pics and emails and letters but still, it just missed, ya know?

Like Saturday.  Katie and Kim came over with the boys (I was finally well enough to see them and not worry about sharing) .  Liam showed us his new tricks and Collin was snuggly/cuddly with me (I think he missed ME too!)  Then we were watching Liam try to crawl!  He'd get up on his hands and knees then raise up to his feet with bum in the air!  Then he'd rock a bit and boom, he was over on his side with hands and feet in the air!  We'd laugh, he'd laugh and roll over and try it again. Poppa tried to coax him to crawl by putting a toy out of reach but he didn't want it bad enough to go for it! 

 I hear today that last night, Liam wanted a punch ball bad enough that he just crawled over to it! 
And I missed it!  But I will get to see him crawl this weekend and that is awesome to me. 

And then sad sets in. 

I missed Kira doing that, and walking, and her first words, not to mention rolling over or smiling or ANYTHING!  Same with Evan. We missed seeing him with his first trains, but we got to see him with his first BIG BOY trains at Christmas!   I got to see a bit more of Collin's 'stuff' but not brand-new-to-him type stuff..... just because ALL his grandparents lived in Idaho so they came to see us more often than Heidi and her family got to.  And I understand that. 

But I still missed it.

NOW do you understand why we had to move here?  Why we had to leave good jobs in Idaho and friends and memories to move clear to Southern AZ? 

 Yep, it's a no brainer!

Monday Challenge - delayed for family

I'm afraid I'm going to have to delay my Monday Challenge for a bit.....

See, life happens.  My mom has to have an angiogram on the 16th and so I am going to Spokane to spend some time with her before hand.  And to be there when they do the procedure to see if she has blockage that needs to be dealt with.  So, I am going to be goofing off for a while..... hopefully I can get motivated to tackle that closet when I get back....... it really is ugly!  If I mention to Dellas that that is my plan, he may just do HIS part while I am gone so I don't take any more 'his' and 'mine' shots!  That would be nice. 

(Girls, you can hint to him, if you want, since he doesn't read my blog....yea, how's THAT for nice!)

And when I get back, I will have pics of my mom and some of my fam and can post about THAT too!  :) 

Ya know, families are SO darned important in this life! 

We moved here to be closer to OUR girls and their families and that put me further away from MY family and HIS.... If we had stayed in Pocatello, we would have been more centrally located....but look at what we would have missed out on!  And that's what it is all about. 

We keep in touch pretty good with  siblings, via email, texting and phone, and facebook has kept me in touch with THIER kids and all the cousins and etc and etc!  Between both our families, we have LOTS of folks with whom we keep in touch!  I know it's not quite the same but we do what we can, right?

And now I have the chance to see my siblings for 10 days!  Wonder if we can get along OK for that long?!? hehee

Didn't used to so much, especially Denise and I.  Wow, did WE ever have some 'fun' times!  But in highschool we had a big 'ol fight - hair pullin, boob grabbin, girly punchin fight. Yea, it really wasn't pretty!  When it was all over, (and the bruises had healed) we became best friends again!  And we are closer than ever now.  We have had some awesome family adventures - her's and mine - lots of fun memories!  So I guess we needed to get that out of our systems.

Susan and I seemed to have a really good bond when we were younger, and she was always there for me, especially when I had cramps in my legs!  She was always the one to run upstairs and get hot towels to wrap my calves with to eleviate the pain...so sweet!  We had a really fun camping trip with her kids and mine!  We had a really crazy thunderstorm and we were all in tents!  Susan ended up going into the big tent where we had stashed all the kids.  She calmed them and they sang songs and stuff.  Me?  I didn't hear any of it!  I love mountain thunderstorms!  So I honestly don't remember if I knew she was with the kids or not!  hmmm

Leora - wow, she was our dolly!  I was like, 8?? when she was born.  (boy, I can't remember that far back anymore!) but she was so much fun!  And a riot growing up!  She is so stinking talented and creative it makes me sick.  (Susie and Denise got that gene too! - seemed to have skipped right over me!). 

My girls (and granddaughter) love Aunt Leora - she rocks their world, if I may say! 

(Some days, they would make me jealous of my little sister!)

But I got even when I took HER daughter to get her ears pierced!  (Of course I had permission - but I did lean on her a bit,- but Leora couldn't do it so I got to!  SHE couldn't stand the thoughts of things being shot into her darling daughter's ears!  Thanks to my granddaughter having hers pierced, she got hers done!  We took her, Kira and I.  It was lots and lots of fun!)  So then I wasn't so jealous anymore! :)

Robin is the lone boy in our girl-world! He never had a chance with all those sisters!  Poor guy!  But he made up for it!  One of my favorite memories is when they put blacktop on Broadway.  Robbie and his best bud Zach, of course, got tar on their hands!  They came into our house and chased screaming sisters all up and down the stairs and the halls with sticky icky hands!  I don't think we were so much afraid as we were just trying to humor him, but that may be my age coloring my view of things!  I remember when he as a baby, he was so round we had to lay him down or stand him up....if he sat too long he would pass out cuz he couldn't breathe!  I don't think he ever really passed out, either, it just seemed to us that he was GOING to so that's what we said.  Still he was a round little guy!  So cute...... and so many fun memories!

Melinda came next and she was so precious!  I had received a doll cradle or bassinet? for my birthday (in September) and she was born in October so of course I had to put her in there!  She fit so nicely!  And it was fun to have a real baby in there.  Mom wasn't real sure that was a safe idea, if I remember correctly, so I had to take her out...... oh well!  Mindy was always one to have trouble making up her mind (sorry Mindy, it's true!) about stuff - especially GOOD stuff!  Like, "You can have a candy bar, which do you want?"  Even then, when there weren't as many choices now, it would take her For EVER to decide!  We used to tell her to choose between this one and that one so we weren't there all day!  We couldn't pay and eat ours until she had decided!  So of course we would rush her every chance we got!  But what a cute little sister and a real cuddle-bug! And an awesome grown up little sister.

After we moved to Spokane, we got one more baby sister....Teresa.  I remember mom saying that her name was Teresa - NOT Terry!  That was drilled into us on a daily basis at first!  In fact, if memory serves (and again, it might not so much) I think Denise was holding her and called her Terry and mom took her away and said she had to call her Teresa or she couldn't hold her!  That might not be totally accurate but it's my memory of it - so there!  When she got a bit older (like 2ish) there was a cartoon on called Top Cat and he went by his initials TC which also happened to be Teresa's initials!  So, yep, you got it!  TC she became!  I remember Teresa being all bubbly and fun - mom would put her hair and Mindy's in puppytails with ringlets and Teresa would bounce her's out in fast order!  And I remember feeding Teresa when she was little.  Mom used to joke that she couldn't swallow if her legs were held down.  OF COURSE we tried!  And you know what?  She choked!  Yep, she did!  It may have been because we were stuffing food in her mouth while she was crying  because we were holding her down, but hey, she choked!  Mom made us stop holding her legs still after that!  I wonder if she still has to at least wiggle her foot while she is eating? hmmm

Last but not least, Mom and Dad.
My parents helped to form me into who I am today - good and bad, I guess, or maybe I took the good and wasted some of it.  They divorced when I was 16 and mom raised the seven of us alone after that.  Daddy worked two jobs to help support his families and lived in another town most of the time so it was rough.  He passed when my youngest was 5 months old..... miss him still.

But mom is still kicking and kicking strong!  She mows her lawn (unless one of the grandkids or kids gets there first), does her own housework, pampers her cat, even shovels snow if it doesn't get too bad.  She says, if it's deep, it will be melted by July! I love that kind of attitude.  She had a hard time dealing with all of us alone but we felt the love and she saw to it we didn't go without.  Sure, we didn't have the fancy new styles but what we had she made sure was clean and in good repair.  And when we ABSOLUTELY had to have..... she figured out how to make it happen.  And she taught us so much about how to stretch a dollar and still have good things.....even Heidi has inherited THAT gene!  And she instilled in us a love of a nice yard and beautiful flowers and taking care of what we have.  And she was good to all of our friends.  Our basement family room was unfinished for years....daddy got the wallboards up but that was as far as it got.  Mom let me and all my friends (and then my sisters and THEIR friends) sign on the walls and ceilings!  We could put whatever we wanted on there as long as it was clean and appropriate!  I even had one friend who was so tall that he didn't even have to use a ladder, he just wrote on the ceiling!  The rest would have to stretch out or grab a stepstool!  I guess when Denise and Dan decided to paint those walls, it was a real nightmare!  Apparently, paint doesn't cover crayon so good.  Hmmmm who knew?  I hated that they did that - covered up all those memories!  Who knows, maybe someone who signed that wall is famous now and they painted over their signatures!  humph

So you see, I'm missing my family and it's good that I get to go home for 10 days.

 (Thanks Dellas, for realizing this and encouraging me - even if you DON'T read my blog.) 

Hopefully I will get to see MOST of them (Susan, Robin and Teresa don't live in the Spokane area) and will get to rehash old memories, which is what you like to do when you get older, so there!

Bottom line?  Love your families.  They are all you have between the cold hard world and yourself. 

You don't want to be in this alone...............

Monday Challenge Results - early! :)

Ok, I know it isn't Monday but I wanted to post this now!  Who knows if it will look the same on Monday!  After all, we ALL KNOW that dryers don't like to be naked!

To complicate matters, my dear hubby said "You might as well clean up THIS mess while you are at it!  Then you will have somewhere to put all the crap off the dryer!"

This would be the mess he was talking about:

 These are the two cupboards and the top of them....HEY!  I DO have a big pot!  I thought so..... sigh

Now, since he got onery with me, I decided to do an experiment:  All the stuff off the dryer and washer got moved to the diningroom table:  His on one side, Mine on the other.  Now, admitedly this COULD have backfired but luckily for me, it didn't!  hehee

His side (except for the brown basket at the back - that's doggy stuff)

And MY side!  And you'll be proud of me....I threw out the hat!  Dang it, I LOVED that hat.  But a grandson kept pulling it down further and further on his head until his head poked out the top!  It was funny! Kinda.....

Everyone was really interested (ok, you all need a life!) in what was in the Easter Basket. 

Here you go!  Easter eggs, a cup holder thingy, paperplates and a little plastic bag of different sizes of rocks to I can decide what size rocks I want in my yard!  Oh, and that rag that is on the side....

See, perfectly good 'stuff'!

I'm going to let you go to the previous post about the Monday Challenge

so you can see what the before was for the top of the washer/dryer. 

I don't want to embarass myself by posting them again.)

Here are the cupboards now:

What the heck!  Look at all this space!

(On this page, that is)

I moved the shelf on the right and got all the doggy stuff on one shelf.  Now we know where THAT all is instead of digging for it....hey, this may have been a good idea after all!

And finally, the BIG reveal:

Introducing my Washer and Dryer!  As it looks right now!

See the lovely green?  That was Heidi's pick too!

Of interest also is this next shot.  We are always looking for flashlights - where the HECK do they keep going?  Apparently on the dryer:

Pretty sad, huh?  And only a couple of them had batteries that worked (or even batteries at all!)

So the functioning ones are on the shelf above the dryer and the others?  They are still in the kitchen, waiting to see if they will work when we get more bulbs to test them. 

So, I hope you enjoyed my misery!  It sure is fun to see that I'm not the only one!  One of my neices said that HER dryer grabs things out of her hands when she goes past!  I wish I had that excuse!  I use my front door!  So I really have no GOOD excuse...... except it is in my genes!

I haven't decided on my next challenge yet.  DELLAS has!  He wants me to do the closet next.  But I think that HE should have to help because 1/2 .... errr.....1/4 of the mess is his!  And I seriously hate to get rid of clothes.....I MIGHT loose ....... I might need...... I...... ugh.

Old Friends - fun to remember!

Ya know, I think I love facebook.  Why? 

 Because it helped me hook up with my three best buds from highschool!  Brothers, if you will.....who were always there for me.  They were who cheered me when a boy broke my heart, they were there to give me a ride to visit friends in another town when mom said I could go if I could get a ride, they were there when I just needed to get away from home for awhile.  They were just there always for me!  Kenny, Max and Bill,... Bill, Max and Kenny,... Max, Kenny, and Bill...sometimes one wasn't able to help me but there were nearly always two!  I have such fond memories!  Like the trip from Spokane to Lewiston after a football game!  I was missing my girlfriend and they were going hunting!  So, they packed in a pesky 'sister' and away we went - three guys and me in an old pickup truck that barely fit 3 - THAT was cozy as it was!  Me?  I sat on laps....."move over Marlene, my leg is going to sleep!"  So I'd switch to the other non-driver until I heard "Move over Marlene" and I'd switch again.  Aww the memories!  And when they'd have to stop because.........well, I had to, OK? They were good about it, even if they did rib me some! 

We never dated, that would have been too weird! I mean, really?  Ewwww!  I loved them all three dearly...and have such a tender spot in my heart for them.

So, one found me....sorry guys, I don't remember for sure....but I think it was Kenny!  Then in short order, I had my three 'brothers' back!  It's been great!  We send something - once in a while - not often.  Or we just know that if we need someone, we were there! And we can see how each is doing - if they keep up on Facebook!  Sometimes they aren't so good!

Last Sunday, I get a message from Ken on FB "Max is in Tucson....call him!" and his phone number (They, like true brothers, lost my phone number!)  I didn't get the message until late Sunday so didn't call.  Then Monday and Tuesday were all crazy and Wednesday got worse and I didn't get him called.  Wednesday night, I find messages from Ken again AND now from Bill that I needed to call Max!  Ok, already!  So Thursday I called him.  He was leaving Friday AM (darn it) so we made arrangements to meet. 

My dear hubby had a procedure Thursday AM and wasn't feeling up to going anywhere so I went alone.  Max looked so good!  Haven't seen him since my dad passed away - wow, has it really been 26 years? He really wanted to meet my family and felt bad that he couldn't meet my husband.  I told him that my girls were here and I was sure we could find them. So I called Kim...yep, no big surprise here, she and Katie were at Target!  We decided to meet them at a restaurant close by for dinner.  It was so fun to show off two of my three beautiful girls and two of my four wonderful grandkids! Liam, my almost 7mo grandson, couldn't figure out who that guy was with grammy and where the heck was poppa?!?!  But Collin took to Max right away.  I felt bad that Heidi and her kids and Dellas couldn't be there but life happens, ya know? 

The evening ended too soon, Max had other plans with family, so I delivered him back to his son-in-law and went home.

I did take my camera (so there Heidi) but we were so busy visiting I didn't get any pics except this one:

 I'm not exactly sure who these 'old folks' are!  I'm pretty sure Max and I aren't that old!  But this is what was on my camera so here ya go!

I wish we had pictures from highschool.  We never took pictures back then!  We just lived our lives and had fun and figured our memories would hold us!  Yea, well, I don't know about Max, but I'd like to have pics from when we were young - the four of us..............

Instead we have to rely on our memories...and you know how that goes!

So those of you who complain because someone is always taking pictures.....thank them.  One day, YOUR memories will fade and pictures will help you remember!

Thanks, Kenny and Bill, for making sure I called Max before it was too late and he left town.  And if you get a chance to come this way, PLEASE don't loose my phone number! 

Friends are too precious.

Nagging kids = Monday Challenge

The Monday Challenge - on a Tuesday!

(Only because I'm being nagged!)

Katie says her dryer mess is genetic - I have absolutely NO IDEA what she is talking about!

Seriously!

well.....ok......may I do just a bit......

sigh

CRAP!  Doesn't look any better from a different angle! 

Actually, I think it looks worse!

Must be all Dellas' stuff - except maybe, the Easter basket?  What the heck is THAT doing there!  I don't even have kids at home!  ..... I checked, it has ummmm 'stuff' in it!  That I might need some day.

(Oh dear, that sounds like my daddy!  We actually threw out radio tubes from his barn stash when he passed away!  That was only 25 yrs ago - and they hadn't used radio tubes for years before that! Maybe there IS something to this genetics thing!)

Well, I think this may be more than I wanted to tackle this week.......

Is it too late to choose something else???

OK, guess I'll give it a go. 

 (Hubby says 'Do the DRYER!'  I say, stop channeling Terry!)

Wish me luck.

And if you don't hear from me in a week or so, ya might want to send someone out to find me.....

I may be fighting with the Easter bunny over the basket!

Thanks a bunch Katie........................ this is all your fault!

Christmas gift crafty!

This is the gift we got from Heidi and family.  These are glass coasters and are supposed to have family pictures in them.  However, health issues got in the way of getting pictures done so Heidi and the kids DRAW family pictures for us and for Poppa and Noni (Shawn's dad and step-mom)

We love them!(Kira drew her and mom on ours and Evan drew himself and dad - they did the opposite on Poppa and Noni's)  Pretty darn clever, I think!