Quotable Quotes

I just thought I would mention a bit about my new quote feature I have added to my blog. My sister invited me to this website called goodreads.com. It is a fun place where you can share about the books you are reading with your family and friends. When I was looking at it, I found this cool thing where you could read through about a billion quotes and pick out ones that you want as your favorites. Then you can put them on your blog. So Saturday morning Trent was at work, Marion and Jared were at a merit badge clinic, and Diana was at a birthday party. I found myself in glorious solitude at my own house. No one was there to ask me annoying questions like "Aren't you done with the computer, yet?"or "What can I eat?" Also I didn't have to go to work. So what did I do with this precious gift whose value seemed priceless? Did I dig into the housework that is piling up around here and muck out my house? No. Instead, I sat at my computer for several hours reading through quotes. I have to say that it was much more fun than dishes. And to be fair the laundry was going during this time, so it wasn't completely unproductive. And now, I myself, love looking at my blog to see what quote will be showing this time. I love quotes, and most of the ones I chose bring a smile to my face. So I hope you all enjoy them as much as I do.

Farewell, O Prophet Dear

When I heard of President Hinckley's death, I felt mixed emotions. Of course I am glad to think of him reuniting with his wife. At the same time I felt a strange sense of sadness. How can something we have been expecting for years, seem so unexpected? Just today we had stake conference, and the visiting authority was talking about how hard it is to beat Pres. Hinkley to work. He said that the Prophet is always there before 7:00 am each day. As I thought about it, I thought of the joyous celebration they must be having on the other side of the veil. I imagine that my own grand parents would be there if possible. Perhaps it would look something like the last scene in Star Wars. You know when Luke, Leia, and Han Solo return from their mission victorious and receive a reward. One doesn't have to stretch to imagine the fond embrace from a loving Father, with the words easily being uttered, "You have fought the fight and finished the race, well done, my son."

I feel a strange connection and even debt to President Hinckley. It can be said that President Kimball was the prophet of my youth, but President Hinckley has been the prophet of my adulthood. It is his positive outlook on life and ever infectious optimism that has given me hope on many a dark day of trial in the past twelve years. I will be forever grateful for this beacon of light in my sometimes dark and dreary life. One occasion of particular remembrance to me was after 9-11. This was such an uncertain time, I wondered what was the world coming to. When I heard about the broadcast that Pres Hinckley would speak at, I was excited to attend. I needed to hear the Prophet of the Lord tell me that everything would be OK. This he did and calmed my trouble heart at this difficult time.

Another especially difficult time in my life was the 10 weeks before we moved to Las Vegas. I would rock Camille to sleep each night while listening to primary songs. Often this would be a time to think about how much in my life seemed to be going wrong. It was so hard being a single parent in California while Marion had started teaching in Las Vegas. As I listened to those primary songs, I would see President Hinkley's smiling face in my mind. It was as if each night we would have a personal interview. And he would encourage me to go on for one more day. I can't even express in words how much this helped me through a time when I didn't think I would make it.

And so dear Prophet, a fond farewell. May God be with you til we meet again.

Best thing since sliced bread!

Let me share some background about this title. When I got my new car, there was one very sad thing called it only had a cassette player. I missed the CD player that was in my old car. Of course this is very easy to fix. You just go to some place like Circuit City and they can take out the cassette player and replace it with a CD one. All it takes is time and money. These are two things that have not come easy to me in the months since the car accident. So I have learned to live without the luxury of listening to my favorite CD's in the past few months.
Just a few weeks ago I was riding in a friend's car. Her daughter asked if she could listen to her ipod on the car radie. My friend then pulled out a gadget that plugs into the ipod and then goes into her cassette player. This is where my mouth dropped to the ground and I jumped up and down inside because you know why? I actually own on of those very things. I had it to play a CD player in my old cassette player, but all our portable CD players are broken and I did not have any idea it would work on a portable music thingy bopper. So yay for discovering new and wonderful things that make life nicer. Now as I drive I can listen to all my CD's that I have put onto my new MP3 that I got for Christmas. It is quite a lot of music. Hip, Hip, Hooray!

Sometimes things don't change, Yay!

While we were in Utah in December, we took advantage of some free time to eat at some of our favorite restaurants. The first stop we made was to "La Dolce Vita". This is a great Italian place we discovered while living in Provo. We used to eat there about one a week, when I was working and we had quite a lot of disposable income. I love the spinach calzone, and it was still just as good. Marion got the pasta and gnocchi. Tragically, I forgot my purse with my camera so I don't have a picture of this outing. Dang. I will try to get over the disappointment.

The other place we were able to visit was the "Brick Oven". They specialize in pizza and have great root beer. They would have free root beer on Mondays, and we used to order in often to eat while we watched Monday night football. This is us with my two brothers and their wives. The food was still just as yummy. It is very comforting when some things in this life stay the same. And it was enjoyable taking a walk down memory lane. For some reason it was very cold at this pizzeria and hence we are wearing our coats. Ah, good times.

Dog Pile

When the little girl cousins in my family got together in December, the first thing they did was chase their bigger cousin Susan. They finally dragged her down and this was the result. I couldn't decided which picture I liked best, so I put in both of them. It is quite interesting because Susan and her sister were the only girl cousins in our family for a long time. The boys outnumbered them 5 to 2. Then all these little girls came along and tipped the scale in favor of the females. I think Diana is so lucky to have so many girl cousins to play with, when we get together. There is even one more girl in this age group who did not make it to this get together in December. Interestingly enough, right now the cousin count is even with 9 boys and 9 girls. This other picture was taken at my sister Amie's wedding in March of 2000. In this picture Susan in closer to the top of the dog pile. You can see how the boys outnumber the girls. It just goes to show that as life goes on, you go from being the "pilee" to being the one piled upon. Yes, that is Trent on the bottom. Ah, the cycle of life!

A Joke for the Day

Don't judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes, that way you are a mile away and you have his shoes.

Scattergories

A friend of mine sent this to me in an e-mail. I thought it might be fun, we'll see. It is like scattergories, which is one of my favorite games, by the way. You have to use the first letter of your name to fill in the rest of the questions. Double letters get double points.

1. What is your name? Pat
2. 4 letter word: Pain
3. Vehicle: Porsche
4. City: Palm Springs
5. Boy Name: Paul
6. Girl Name: Pamela
7. Occupation: Parole Officer
8. Something you wear: Pretty Pink Pants
9. Celebrity: Paul Simon
10. Food: Potato Pearls
11. Something found in a bathroom: Pain Pills
12. Reason for Being Late: Procrastination
13. Cartoon Character: Peter Pan
14 .Something You Shout: Put your brother down!
15 .Animal: Panda
16. Body part: Patella
17.Word to describe you: Practically Perfect :) lol

Working Girl

So one of the reasons that I am not posting very much this month is that it is time for my twice a year temporary job. I work very occasionally for a company called Global Views. They have a showroom here in Vegas, but they live in Dallas. Twice a year there are big trade shows, where people who own stores come and buy things at wholesale that they then sell in their stores. Global Views sales home accessories like vases, lamps, and small furniture.My job is to help in the set up for the show and then to work during the show helping to write orders for customers. Sometimes the showroom changes more than other times. This time there is a ton of new products and so we have spent a lot of time taking old samples out of the showroom and having a sample sale. Then there were 34 pallets of new product that was delivered last Thursday. This has been a monumental job to get it all unpacked. Luckily Jared got out of school early on Friday, due to finals. He worked with me Friday, Saturday, and Monday. I had my next door neighbor come and help as well. By yesterday afternoon it was all unpacked. Here are some pictures of what a pallet of merchandise looks like. This was a lot of stuff. It filled a 53 ft trailer and a 12 ft trailer. Happily I did not have to move it all up to my fourth floor. The dock workers did that. I just had to open all the boxes and take off the wrapping. So I will be working for the rest of the week, helping to get the showroom ready for the show next week. I really don't know if I will have any energy to post anything so don't be disappointed if there is nothing new until after the show. I usually am so tired after being on my feet doing manual labor all day, that I can barely walk from my car to my bed. I will get a nice paycheck by the end of it all and hopefully that will make it all worth it.

I've joined the Democratic process!

This morning I went to the Republican caucus in my area. It was a learning experience for me. I'm not quite sure why, but I have never been to one before. Jared needed to go to it as part of his Citizenship in the Nation merit badge. So not really knowing what to expect, we went to the meeting at the High School. It was actually very interesting. All of the people from my precinct met in one room. Although there are 315 registered voters in my precinct, only 27 of us showed up. Many of those who came were from my ward and my neighbor across the street. It was nice to know so many of the people there. First we had to nominate and vote for 6 people to go to the county caucus. Each person who wanted to go had to give a short speech and say who they would vote for. Then we voted. These people are pretty important, because it is actually their vote that will really count. Next we had to choose 6 alternates. I ended up volunteering to be one of those, because I think it would be very interesting to attend the next level of the caucus. I am actually alternate number 2, so if two of the regular delegates don't show up, I will get to vote. Then we voted for the candidate we would want. Out of the 27 people in our room, 23 votes went to Mitt Romney. All in all, I am glad I was there because I learned much more about the process.

Way yummy recipe!

We had an enrichment activity where we made some freezer meals last Saturday. This is one of the recipes that we made. I cooked them on Sunday morning and boy were they delicious. I loved the fact that they were all ready to be baked when I got out of bed in the morning.

Carmel Sticky Buns
22 Rhodes white frozen rolls
3 oz pkg. Butterscotch pudding mix (not instant)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup butter, melted

Grease a Bundt pan. Line bottom of pan with chopped pecans (optional). Add frozen rolls. Combine pudding, brown sugar, white sugar, and cinnamon. Sprinkle over rolls. Put in freezer. When ready to eat, drizzle with melted butter. Let rise over night. Next morning, bake @ 350 for 30 minutes. Cool 5 minutes and turn out and serve on a large plate. Best when served hot.

Hair scrunchies for India.

In the month of December, our Relief Society did a humanitarian aid project for some kids in a ward in India. The Relief Society asked the young women to make hair scrunchies to put in with the things they made. The young women had a lot of fun cutting, sewing and turning the scrunchies. I thought these pictures were so cute of the girls in India modeling the finished product. One of the girls even wrote a thank you note saying how touched she was that other members of the church would think of her. I know that these pictures are a bit grainy, but you can get the idea. It is very cool to think of being a global church.

CATS

Ok, the title of this post is not a reference to the musical with cute cats dancing and singing around the stage. Instead, think of this like the Alfred Hitchcock movie birds, only with cats instead of birds. That would give an accurate description of my backyard last week. So I think I have heard it said that seven is a lucky number, but I seriously doubt that it is lucky to have seven cats trying to reproduce in your backyard. That is what was took place for several days last week at my house. One day I looked out my window and saw not just two but seven cats prowling and sitting in my backyard. This was strange to me as it had not happened before. So do I get sticks and stones to throw at them? Or maybe a cage to catch some and take them away from here? No that would be the sensible thing to do, I instead get my camera and take some pictures for my blog. I could never get them to all be together in one picture, but here are several different pictures and I think you can get the idea. The picture to the right actually has five cats, but you can't quite see the orange one that is under the table. All this activity was really inspiring me to actually take some cats away, but now it has died down and I am not feeling as pressured to do something now. Dang.

What is the world coming to?

Jared is playing lacrosse this spring at his middle school. In signing him up, I was asked to sign this waiver. What do you all think about it? And I have to say that after reading it, I wondered if I should reconsider letting him play. I guess in this world of litigation, all contingencies must be covered. So here is the first paragraph of the waiver:

I am aware that playing or practicing to play/participate in any sport/activity can be dangerous in nature involving many risks of injury. I understand that the dangers and risks of playing or practicing to play/participate in lacrosse include, complete or partial paralysis, brain damage, serious injury to virtually all bones, joints, ligaments, muscles, tendons, and other aspects of the muscular skeletal system, serious injury to virtually all internal organs, and serious injury or impairment to other aspects of my body, general health, and well being. I understand that the dangers and risks of playing or practicing to play/participate in lacrosse may result not only in serious injury, but in a serious impairment of my future abilities to earn a living, to engage in other business, social and recreational activities, and generally to enjoy life.

Crazy Huh? And once again I am wondering if such a waiver should be signed before becoming a parent. I think since becoming a mother my ability to function in life has been impaired.:) You know all the sleep deprivation that comes with the territory. And when you have babies it is often difficult to get a shower every day, that could impair your ability to engage in social situations successfully. Just a thought.

Family Fiesta

Here are probably too many picture of our recent trip to Utah. For those of you who are not family, you will probably just want to skip this. This will probably only appeal to people who are related to the kids in these pictures. It was great to renew friendships with relatives we don't see each day. Even though we have come home with a bit of a cold, we are glad we went.

Snowflake Skills

While we were in Utah, we had burritos for dinner. Diana took her tortilla and by biting it managed to make a lovely snowflake. Here she is showing off her artistry. Others in the group were commenting on it and she said "Yea, I've got snowflake skills!" Well yes she does. Nice job on creating art from food. Very creative.

Things you won't see in Vegas.

On our recent trip to Utah we saw several things we don't usually see in Vegas:

1. A coat rack at the church building. We went into the building at the back and I said to my kids "Hey, hang up your coats." They looked at me like I was crazy. You know that "What you talkin' bout Willis?" kind of look on their faces. I then pointed out that there was indeed a rack over laden with coats. Somehow they squished their coats into the masses. How exciting, a new experience. Yes there are no coat racks in buildings located in warmer climates.

2. Pikachu Popsicle, well here is a picture of the ice that accumulated on our windshield during church. We realized that we no longer own an ice scraper. That is kind of a happy thought, that we don't even ever need one of those things. The guy in the car next to us was using a metal pancake turner. I wonder if he knows some secret or is just desperate. Marion and I both agree that we don't miss the days of scraping windows in the morning.

3. Snow - Yes you won't see that cold stuff in Vegas very often. It has snowed several times since we have lived here. One of the times we were out of town. If it ever does snow, it never lasts like the snow in this picture. Snow is very pretty to look out the window at when you are nice and warm. I do not enjoy going outside in it very much.

4. Icicles- My sister in law brought this long ice spear into the house so the kids could see it up close. Diana and her cousins had fun licking it and then broke it up into tiny pieces. There is no danger of being speared by an ice javelin in Vegas.
5. I don't have a picture of it, but we saw a tractor driving down the street, University Avenue no less in Provo. You don't see sights like that in Vegas. Sadly it was going so slow that we passed before I could think fast enough to get my camera out and get a picture of it.

Christmas Morning

We had a very nice and relaxing Christmas. Much to Jared and Diana's dismay we made them wait to open presents until 6:00. This still seemed to early to me, but it is only once a year right? Diana was excited with her new scooter and her pixel chick. Santa was good to me and Jared also. We both got a 4 GB mp3 player. I had lots of fun putting all my music on it for the rest of the day. That is probably why I am behind on my posting. Diana and I both got new pajamas. Well actually everyone got some, but the boys were not as excited to wear theirs for Christmas morning. Here is a picture of Diana and I in our snazzy sleepwear. One of my favorite presents would have to be a new heating pad. My old one broke over a year ago. I don't know how I have lived without one for so long. Also I did get my longed for Mary Englbreight calender. Now I just need to get writing things down on it. :) All in all we had a great Christmas so we can't complain.

Kindred Cousins - Then and Now

Jared has a cousin named Susan. Their birthdays are just 3 weeks apart. Here is an adorable picture of the two of them at a family reunion way back in 1994 when they were just babies. The two of them have shared all the family events together for their whole lives. Now they are practically grown up teenagers. Here is a picture of the two of them thirteen years later. We made them sit together in a chair, just like the first picture. Darn, I couldn't remember which sides they were on, so it doesn't match perfectly. It is fun to see them growing up to be rather nice people. They had a lot of fun on this past trip to Utah playing Guitar Hero and Foosball. How lucky they are to have someone their own age to relate to and hang out with at family reunions.