Friday, September 27, 2013

~LOST?~



Old Barn. Midway, Utah.

Feeling a little restless, I wanted to go for a bike ride the other day and enjoy the fall weather and the beautiful mountains turning to Autumn so, I loaded up my equipment (bike and camera) and took off for higher ground.  The plan when I started out was Sundance but as I approached the turn off in Provo Canyon  I thought, I always end  up at Sundance, I should try something different today...I had Park City on my mind but at the Charlston turn off  I spotted this huge old barn in the distance. I had to get a picture.

From Midway I thought that I would take the road up to Gardsman and down into Park City. I have done that one before to but, it is just SO pretty this time of year and it had been a while.  As I started up I thought wow, they finally paved it.  It's about time, I could have brought my rode bike instead of my mountain bike... It turned to dirt after a little while and about 2 hours into my ride I finally realized that I was on the WRONG ROAD!  I was headed over to Cascade Springs and Tibblefork  in American Fork Canyon!
For reasons like that my biking friends
1. Never let me lead
 2.Never let me go off by myself
and
3. Never, ever listen to me when it comes to direction

It was still a beautiful ride, and...I will do it again
someday. (With friends)


Wednesday, August 28, 2013



SOLHEIM 2013
 
I am not a good golfer in fact, I am a very "BAD" golfer!  Nevertheless, I LOVE the game! I think that I have had to learn to love it because of Steve and the boys...If you can't beat 'um join 'um!  There is not a weekend when golf is not part of it for us. You seldom come to our house when the golf channel is not on. That being said, I am a much better "watcher" than I am a "player" so when the LPGA Solheim Cup was so very close to us this year my girlfriends and I decided that we just had to go! ( My girlfriends are actually great glofers). We loaded up the car and spent four days watching the best women golfers in the world play in Colorado. It was so great.  The weather was beautiful, the company was exceptional and I was away from work for five glorious days!
Does it get any better than this?  Well, perhaps is does, the USA could have won...The next Solheim Cup is in Heidelberg, Germany. You have two years...Start saving your $$.

Monday, August 5, 2013

~MY DAD,BROTHER and SISTERS~

Stephanie took this picture at my Uncle Bills funeral.  It is not often that you get this many
of us all together!  I LOVE this picture.  These are my very most favorite people
 in the world.  I know that I look tall in this picture but, I am only 5'6...
I guess that IS tall for my family :)

Saturday, July 13, 2013

~LOVE THIS~


 My sis Chris posted this to FB and I thought it was excellent! Since I also have a menagerie of grand daughters, ( one of which is actually named "Belle" Okay it's "Bella" but it's close...) I read this and couldn't help but hope for them that they will always know how incrediable they are!

Thanks Chris for finding this, it's a keeper!!!

Letter to My Daughter After Watching “The Bachelor”

“Whimsy Ma” Janice

Barbies
Photo by Jennifer Angus
My sweet Belle,
I sat and watched a show the other night where a roomful of beautiful women competed with one another for the love of a man.  I watched the drama as they quarreled, manipulated, flirted, cried and triumphed, but all I could think about was you.  I saw your fresh face smiling at your baby brother, heard your silly giggle as you told Daddy a joke and felt the weight of your head as you laid it sleepily on my shoulder.
I know your two-year-old mind dismissed everything I told you that night so I wanted to write it down for you.  Because someday, Lord willing, you will be old enough to listen and you will be wading through all the confusion that the world will toss at you about these things.  Things like beauty, strength and love.
So, my precious girl, here are the things I desperately want you to know.
1. The most beautiful women in the world look ugly when they are mean.  
Beauty is complex.  It involves your hair and skin and eyes, but all of those things are just a shell. That shell is transparent and I promise you that whatever you fill it with will be perfectly clear for the world to see.
Your eyes will always be beautiful when they look kindly at someone.  You will have lovely lips whenever they smile a genuine smile.   And your nose?  Well, noses are tough.  You either have a good one or you don’t.  Luckily for you, yours is adorable.
If you cultivate goodness and kindness and wisdom and strength then not only will that beauty shine out of you but you’ll find that you breathe joy and beauty into the lives of those around you.
But if the most beautiful woman on earth lets herself be filled with jealousy and hatred, she will look like a troll.
2. No one, in the history of the world, has done anything out of jealousy and made it look good.
You’ll be jealous a lot, sweetheart.  Trust me.  You’ll be jealous of other girls shoes or hair or elbows. You’ll be jealous of their friends, their boyfriends, their poise, their intelligence, their humor. (Maybe even of their mother, just don’t tell me about it if you are.)  You’ll be jealous of people you’ve never met and people you love dearly.
When you focus on that thing that some other person has you stop caring about them at all and only care about the thing.  Jealousy will make you act like a child because it is an utterly selfish feeling.  Trust me, whatever you do or say when you are driven by jealousy will make you look like an idiot.
So be on your guard against it.  When you see jealousy sneaking around (and you will) take a little time to be grateful for the things you do have.  And if you can’t come up with anything, call me.  Because I can see that you have so much beauty and strength and wonder in you that it makes my heart ache and I’d be happy to tell you all about it.
3. Don’t confuse SELFISHNESS with STRENGTH
Some of these women said terrible things to each other then defended themselves by tossing their pretty hair and saying, “I’m just being honest.  I have to say what I feel.”
Well here’s a little nugget of wisdom for you, sweetie.  Not everything you feel is worth saying.   There will be plenty of times when you will have emotions tumbling around inside of you like a litter of puppies on crack.  Some of them will be worthwhile but some will be stupid and you should do your best to send them packing.
You’ll meet plenty of girls who don’t agree with me.  They’ll claim it is strength of character to blurt out any thought that crosses their mind regardless of who will be devastated by it.  But honey, a woman of strong character has the wisdom to shut her mouth until she’s thought for a moment about what she’s feeling to decide whether it’s an emotion that she wants to own, an emotion that makes her into the woman she wants to be or one of those emotions that she should look square in the eye and say, “Yer outta here.  You and the hormonal horse you rode in on.”
4. Love
This one is a bit complicated, honey.  You’ll spend a lot of time looking for it and thinking about it and being jealous of it.  It doesn’t come in the same way all the time and it often ends up looking different than you thought it would.
But I will tell you one thing.  If your hunt for love begins with manipulation, jealousy and games, it’s going to have a very hard time finding its way to a happy ending.  Real love will start when you find someone, get to know him, and you guys spend time being kind to each other.
And if you do it the right way, with the right kind of boy, it will involve a lot less drama than Hollywood says it should and a lot more happiness.
Oh, and one more thing the show made me want to tell you:  If there is ever a boy who you are – I was going to say “kissing” but the thought of you kissing boys will probably give your dad a stroke, so lets go with – rollerskating with and he is openly rollerskating with several other girls. Like six…or seven…dozen…other girls,  STOP ROLLERSKATING WITH HIM.
This is not the type of boy that makes a good skating partner.  Someone who’s really fun to rollerskate with will like you because he sees what an amazing girl you are.  He’ll never ask you to prove to him that he should pick you over a dozen other girls.  He’ll be smart enough to know you’re the greatest thing he’ll ever find.
The only reason you should ever even go near the guy again is to point him out to your big brother so he can kick his #**.   No, forget getting your big brother.  You do it yourself.  Go straight for his…ankles.  Those two-timin’ rollerskatin’ ankles.
I love you, my darling girl.  Go back to playing with your trains.  We’ll chat again about all this in a decade or so.
Love, Mommy

Reposted with permission from Whimsy-Ma-Blog

Monday, June 24, 2013

~FLOWERS~

I have worked harder than usual in my yard this year for reasons that I can't explain.  Perhaps it is because Steve keeps threatening me that we are going to sell our house and move to a condo where all the yard work is done for us.  He has never caught on to the concept that "you can take the girl out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girl".  I like to dig in the dirt, get my hands dirty and then wait to see what grows! ( or doesn't )

I water, oh how I water.  City boy does not understand why I water so much...He thinks that if you water once every few days " a little" it will be enough.  Not being raised raising things I can sort of see how he would think this but, I think that it is more a $$ thing for him.  He has to pay for my watering  things :)  See for Steve it is never a matter of  "Stop and smell the ROSES" it is all about how much did it cost to get them to bloom!                 ANYWAY...

I went out last night at just the right light and took some pictures of a few of my flowers.  For all of you that love them as much as I do I think you will enjoy the pictures.  I even got the Spanish Lavender to bloom twice this year!  I am working now on my hydrangea .  If I can get them to make it through the winter I will be SO excited!!!  My neighbor has one that made it so I know that I can too. I have been wanting to grow those for SO long.   It is in the ground now and it takes two years for it to establish and bloom. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!












Saturday, April 27, 2013

~IT MUST BY SPRING~

Sorry, my pictures didn't stay.  I will post them again soon.  I really did have a picture of my bench and the garage floor. They just disappeared!
 I saw my first yellow butterfly yesterday!  Spring IS really here.  I immediately started thinking about all the things I wanted to do when the weather was warm enough ( is 46 degrees warm enough).  Today it is supposed to be in the seventies!  AMAZING. I may play outside all day.


I started off the warm weather "get 'er done" phase by painting my poor 'ol bench.  It has been purple for the last couple of years so, I changed it to yellow this year.  I think that butterfly had something to do with my color choice.


Last night when I got home from work I looked at my garage and knew that it was time to do a little cleaning in there too.  I filled up a five gallon bucket of soapy water and threw it all over the floor and scrubbed.  Steve and I could have eaten dinner on the garage floor last night!  I didn't want to pull the cars in...No, we didn't eat dinner out there and yes, I did pull the cars in. The cars did leave some tire marks on the floor ( breath Joey breath) but, I did wipe them up with some cleaning wipes after they were both in :)
Today I am not sure what my choices will be.  The day promises to be gorgeous so the possibilities are endless. If I can stay focused I may try and do some much needed yard work, if not, well I'll take pictures and post my adventures!

Monday, April 22, 2013

~ :) ~


Sunday, April 14, 2013

~HAWAII 2013~

I think that the thing I love the most about Hawaii ( besides the ocean) are the flowers.  I am pretty sure that it is mostly because we go over when the snow covers the ground here and we haven't seen anything colorful for months.  It still amazes me that even the weeds are beautiful there. That everything grows bigger, brighter and better. My dad would go nuts over the soil! Such a rich brown, no worries of frost and NO irrigating! The Lord takes care of that at about 4:00 everyday.

We decided to ditch our comfort zones and try the new Zip lines up near Hilo one of the days that we were there. I have always LOVED jumping off stuff so this was right up my alley. It was great fun. Ann was SO brave. Jumping off stuff is NOT something that she loves, in fact,  she doesn't even LIKE it but, she did it, 9 times, over gorges,  waterfalls, treetops and cliffs! What a trooper! When we were done she even admitted that it was fun and that she would do it again!

The rest of our vacation was spent soaking up the sunshine at all of our favorite beaches. We were lucky to get into some of them before they closed them to work on the roads...The roads to them are four wheel drive roads but, usually you can make it in with a "rental" :)



Sure do wish we could have stayed longer but, real life tends to tap us all on the shoulder at some point and makes us return to reality so, tomorrow it is back to the OR for me and back to work for Steve.  All good things must come to an end.  Hopefully, we can return again next year and add to our list entitled "Out of our comfort zone" because not only does it make life interesting, it makes us "feel" young again and gives us great memories to talk about for a long, long time!

Sunday, March 31, 2013

~FLOWERS and DRESS-UPS~



Steve had flowers delivered to my work for our anniversary.  He does it every year. It is the only time I will let him give me flowers because, I just HATE to watch the week long process of them shriveling up. I always feel like I should be doing something more to try and save them... There is this flower shop in The Riverwoods called the Veranda that does the most unique and beautiful arrangements and they actually last a pretty long time compared to most!  He is so thoughtful to always send them and I really do love them. I just wish I could keep them from dying.

Mostly, I love that he remembers every year! It is getting harder and harder for both of us :)


I threw in a couple pictures of Charly because she came to visit while my camera was out. She loves to play with the dress-ups.  Not so much the dresses but all the accessories. She will put on every bracelet, crown, and necklace she can find.  

I remember dressing up when I was little.  I remember dressing my little brothers up too. Bruce was always a fairly willing victim, Shane, not so much. So many times Bruce turned into my little "sister"
I still love him for that. There were just times that I needed a little "sister"!


















Saturday, March 30, 2013

~REMEMBERING IS HARD WORK~

So, I decided that I would try out that supplement everyone has been talking about that helps you focus and stay "clued in" better.  I thought that it might give me a slight chance of keeping myself from going completely crazy... I read the directions carefully to make sure that I would reap the full benefits of this AMAZING "natural" substance and took the first bullet sized tablet. I then laid the other three out for me to take to work so that I could take them during the day as the instructions had indicated.  I continued to get ready for work thinking that as the day went by I would surely feel like a new woman. What a relief knowing that I wasn't going to be so forgetful and scatter brained  anymore. Every one that I have talked to love the stuff and say that it has really helped them.  I am really excited...Except:

A.  I forgot to take the other three with me to work...

B.  For the last three days... and

C.  So far,  it is not working on only one, tablet a day :) 

Truly pathetic!

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

~LIFE IN THE OR~

Every now and again things happen in the OR that truly are worth mentioning. Today was one of those days.  There are not a lot of times when I sing the praises of a doctor because of the way he conducts himself with his crew. Usually, he is the "king" and we are his mere servants...Weigh this, weigh that, why did it take so long to prep that patient? I need a 4.0 Vicryl, a 2.0 PDS oh and a 6.0 Prolene...Turn the bovi up to 70, why isn't the suction working? Change the station, I'm not listening to that $#!* all day...Turn the lights on, turn the lights off,  turn the heat down, turn the heat down some more...Open the doors, it TOO HOT.   Hey Joey, I made a mess over here...Catch my drift...So, when one actually is kind it does not go unnoticed by any of  us! The surgeon that I worked with today not only helps us clean and dress the patient when the surgery is done but, helps us get her onto the gurney. He then helps tidy's up the room with the scrub and today while we were taking our lunch break...(a whole 15 minutes), I saw him fill up the fork bin because we were out of forks. He didn't just get one for him, he grabbed enough for everyone and FILLED the fork bin! DOCTORS DON'T DO THAT!!!  You could have blown me over with a feather.  I just had to write it down. I think sometimes I complain too much about how demanding they can be and forget to say anything nice.  There are plenty of nice things I promise.

Just for the fun of it, which Doc do you think that I worked with today? (I narrowed it down to just the plastic Doc's...Just to make it easier :)

Clayton
Pledger
Stewart
Rose
Crofts
Bishop

Sunday, March 10, 2013

~ESTHER SHARON ROBERTSON~

ESTHER SHARON ROBERTSON (Essie)
(and her adoring Grandma Shauna)

Yesterday we blessed Essie. She is such a sweet little baby. 
I borrowed these pictures from her Grandma Shauna because she is our very own professional photographer...And Stephanie forgot hers!


Oh, they grow so fast. Seems like that old song the "Kinfolk" used to sing keeps tapping me on the shoulder to remind me just how important it is to enjoy and cherish each and every day with the ones you love!

"Turn around and they'er two, turn around and they'er four,
turn around and they are  young girls walking out of the door..."