Keys to Happiness

On the radio yesterday the talk show host was asking the question...

"If you could go back and give your 15 year old SELF advice, NOW, knowing what you know, what would you tell him or her?"

I have thought a lot about this question. We try to tell our children what we have learned through our life's lesson, but do they listen? Most of them, at least mine, have to experience it on their own, and by all rights should. But how much heartache and pain might be avoided if we and they would listen to our parents and the wisdom that comes with age.

So I pose this question to any blog readers that might stumble upon my blog and read it. I would be interested to hear what you would tell yourself, if you had the opportunity to give yourself advice. Don't be afraid, leave your thoughts. I hope to learn from you. In advance I thank you for sharing.

Early morning riser

I love the morning. It is quiet, cooler than the rest of the day, and so peaceful. I have been getting up, occasionally, and going to a 5:15 am class at the gym and in doing so have witnesses some pretty amazing sunrises. I thought I would share. Here is just one good reason to be an early riser......

Behold:










I'm thinking that 2 of these pictures might be sunset shots, but still beautiful! I am so grateful for the beauties of the earth and ALL that Heavenly Father tickles our senses with.

A Moment in Time

True friends.....now that is a treasure. Jeff and I recently had visitors from Florida, long time, treasured friends that don't come around too often in a persons life. We love this family.......and just as important, our kids love them too.

You see the story is long and short. Jack, Deanne and I all grew up in the same stake. Jack and I, in the same ward; we "hung out" together, we went on our missions together (at the same time), we came home together, we got married about the same time. It would seem that our lives moved in tandem.

After Jack and Deanne were married, Jack's job eventually took them out of state. They have lived in several different places, ending up in Orlando, Florida. Our kids haven't grown up together, in fact, have hardly even seen each other. Yet when we get together, it's like old times. There is a chemistry between our families that is hard to explain. We fit!!

We were so happy that they were able to make Grantsville a stop on their Utah vacation. Here are pictures of us as they were preparing to leave this morning.



It was a windy morning....what else would we expect in Grantsville?


"A good friend is hard to find, hard to lose, and impossible to forget..."

Abi's home

Ok, so here is another late post.

This story begins on June 9th, at 7:00 am. Jeff and I flew from Salt Lake to Minneapolis to Cleveland, Ohio in preparations to pick Abi up at the conclusion of her mission. We were so excited. We arrived in Cleveland around 4:30pm and had to wait until 8:30 the NEXT morning before getting to see her.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I will let the pictures do the talking.......

On our way to pick her up

I'm getting excited!



Dad gets first greetings!

Then me!!!!!

Different from how my mission was, Abi's mission home is the same as her Mission President's home, so we were blessed to be able to have a short visit with President and Sister Sorenson and hear wonderful things said about Abi. As my sister says, this was definitely a "parental paycheck day". Truly grateful for the blessings that Heavenly Father has blessed me with and allowed me to enjoy. We didn't stay too long, after some wise council from her Mission President, we were off....to see Ohio and the people that Abi loves so much.



First stop.....KIRTLAND.

The Temple

Newell K. Whitney Store

"School of the Prophets" & other Historic sights


the Erie Canal

Downtown Cleveland

The Columbus Temple with Brother and Sister Houghton and Sister Titera

We met many wonderful people that Abi had the chance to teach and testify of Jesus Christ to. They love her and she certainly loves them. It was a wonderful experience.

The finals days of our trip tomorrow.

The best weekend ever!

This past Saturday was May 8th, my 50th birthday! I decided that to celebrate and honor my mom I would walk in Salt Lake City's "Race for a Cure". It was one of the neatest experiences I have had the privilege of participating in in a very long time. Thank you to Emalee for covering the store for me so that I could do this with many loved family members. Our "group" was walking in remembrance of Lona Topham, Kerstin's daughters mother who passed away from breast cancer, but I wanted to walk in honor of my mom as well.

Thank you Kerstin for planting the idea and giving me the motivation to act!

I was lucky, my "big" sister came from Idaho to help celebrate my surprise birthday party (more on that later), and because she came, she and I were able walk together in honor of mom. She reminded me of my mom's own battle with breast cancer, a story that I had forgotten about. My mom was incredible! A woman that I took for granted and didn't learn to appreciate until after her passing. She was amazing! She was a strong woman! You see my mom was in her early 30's when she went in for a gall bladder operation. After mom had been "knocked out" and during the preparations for her surgery the "nurse" found a lump on mom's breast, they determined that it was serious enough that something needed to be done immediately, and my dad was asked to sign papers giving permission for the doctors to "investigate" the lump and do whatever would be necessary. To keep the story short, mom went in for gall bladder surgery and came out without a breast. She had been given mastectomy. It was hard for her to accept and deal with. Can you imagine?

Mom recovered from her breast cancer; but she suffered with cancer for most of her life. She had ovarian cancer, breast cancer and eventually died from lung cancer. During one of her lung cancer surgeries, the doctors found dead tumors adhered to her chest cavity that had died many years earlier because of the cobalt treatments she had to have to kill the cancer. Had my dad not signed those papers, I would have lost my mom much sooner than 1985. He helped prolong her life and we were blessed to have her for many more years.

(I started this post a long time ago. Thought that I finally ought to post it.... I guess the story of the birthday will just have to wait.)

Trying to change

It has been a long time since my last post. I have wanted to put a new post up for so long, but of what? My days seem boring and mundane!

Well I finally thought of something that I want to share......

It is really hard to be IN shape when for so many years you have allowed yourself to be OUT of shape.

I have been going to Gold's Gym now for 13 1/2 months, 5 days a week, and yet I see no visible signs of improvement. Yes, I can see some toning, and strengthening, but where I want to see improvement (on the scale), nothing is happening. Hopefully until NOW.......

I am putting this up on my blog to enlist ALL of your help. The experts in the health and fitness industry say that for my height and bone structure I should weigh about 145lbs. I haven't weighed that since I was in Jr. High. I don't want to be that tiny, but I would love to shed 40-50 pounds. In an obsession of this quest, I even thought about going to the auditions in Salt Lake a week or so ago for the show, "The Biggest Loser", but chickened out. (Maybe I'm not that big).

Recently a good friend told me about a web site that helped her SIL loose some weight. The website counts my calories, all I have to do is set my desired caloric intake, plug in what I ate and what I do for exercise, and the computer does the rest. Maybe this is just too easy, but I think that I can do this. Nothing complicated about it. No counting pts, reading labels, or figuring required. If I want to loose weight all I have to do is be honest and plug in the information and stay below the allowed calorie intake. I then will be told if I am eating too much, or the wrong things.

I don't know if I should be sharing so much information about my deepest struggle, am I setting myself up for disappointment by telling you all this? I feel good, I feel healthy, but I know that I need to loose some weight. I weighed myself this morning and I am down 2 pounds this week using this program. I am excited and so far I love it.

Many of you might be wondering what it is.......Well I got to it through livestrong.com/myplate. I hope to be able to report good things and share with others my experiences in this healthy eating journey. Old habits die hard, but this one needs to die!

Building nightmare!!!

this is a building that is currently (has been for the past 3 years) being built in Las Vegas, right across the street from the Retail Furniture Market buildings. It houses a brain institute. I think the architect might need his brain look at. What do you think? Pretty crazy huh?

26th Anniversary & Las Vegas

You all have such cute and cleaver posts that I am feeling inadequate! So to update what we have done in the last month.

Feb. 1st:

Jeff and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. I was going to put up an old wedding photo, but haven't looked for my wedding album, hence, no old picture.

To celebrate Jeff and I went to Las Vegas a day ahead of our scheduled trip there for furniture market. We were able to go see Lance Burton, a magician for free.!!! (Thanks Steve and Emily!!!!) He was pretty amazing, even made a car disappear and levitate.















We shopped until we about dropped. You would never believe that there are that many different manufacturer's/distributors of furniture.

The best part of this annual trip is being with family. My nephew, Steve and his family live in Vegas and my dad and his wife always meet us there. Here are a few pictures of our adventures.

Emily, Easton and Steve

My Dad and Nita

We took Easton up to Grandpa's room to see the lights of Las Vegas and this is all of us in an elevator, obviously trying to take a picture and I had the camera and short arms, hence I am in front. I know, I look really scary! Too bad Grandpa got cut out of the picture.















Thanks for your help, Grandpa from Arizona. That's how Easton was able to relate to my dad. You see, he has Grandparents in both Oregon and Idaho too. It was really cute to watch him try and understand it all.

He grew up to be a cowboy!

I am so excited to actually have something to blog about and that I get to put up a new post. Saturday night, Jeff, my MIL, and I all went to Ogden to watch Ethan ride in his most recent Rodeo. It was the Rocky Mountain Professional Rodeo Associations (RMPRA) Winter Series rodeo. It was a 2 night event, each night had 7-8 different bareback riders. Ethan was "up" on Saturday night's performance, 85 was the leading score from Friday.

So here is a little rodeo judging information:

There are 2 arena judges, each judge has a total of 50 pts to award. The horse can get a max. of 25 pts, and the cowboy gets 25 pts. The judges are on opposite sides of the arena, watching how the cowboy spurs the horse, moves his legs and maintains control of his body; and also watching how well the horse bucks. Lots to watch! Well Ethan scored a 42 on each side, that's a score of 84! Pretty good, and because of that score, won first place in his performance and 2nd place overall. It proved to be a nice payday for him.

Here is a video of his ride, see what you think.





Watch the horse's timing, he actually kicks Ethan's hat.