Odds and Ends

I haven’t been blogging lately, and I know that’s not unusual for me, but I have a really good excuse this time. No, really, I do!

--Let me start by referring you to an earlier post about chicken farming. Remember that? Well, the chicken business got uglier. And through circumstances that were totally out of my control, even though they should have been, I am now nursing a very banged up middle finger on my right hand. Do you know how much use that finger gets? Let me tell you, you can’t move your hand and keep that finger still. Believe me, I’ve tried.

--There have been no new pictures on the blog lately, and I have a good excuse for that, too. My camera is not working. Argh!! I just looked at Joe and Monkey this morning in their rubber boots and shorts and wanted to snap a photo, but alas, it will have to live on in my memory.

--Softball (for Natalia) and baseball (for Joe) season is in full swing. Refer to above paragraph for my excuse of no pictures.

--Brian spent all of last week at Boy Scout camp and had a great time. Our ward has a great group of boys in the 12-14 year old age range, and they all get along really well. Andy picked him up on Saturday, then, since Grandpa’s youngest sister Aunt Myra and Uncle Jeff, along with friends of the family Kim and Joel were visiting, we had dinner at Grammie and Grandpa’s. Brian and I sat alone at a little table, so I quizzed him about his camp experience. I asked about:
swimming (yes, they had a pool and swam every day)
canoeing (no, nowhere to do it)
merit badge class (got to skip one day because they were just working with the Tenderfoots)
bug bites – since last year he had chigger bites and scars for months after camp (none, except a tick that he had to pull off with tweezers)
where was it? (oh, I must have picked it up somewhere)
I meant, was it under your arm, on your leg, where? At this point, he looked a little embarrassed and said, “Well, it was on my third leg.” I couldn’t help but laugh. It was just so funny the way he said it! Like, “how am I gonna explain this?”

Win a book!

Author Anne Bradshaw is sponsoring a contest on her blog, and the prize is an Advance Reader’s Copy of J. Scott Savage’s new book, Water Keep. It’s the first book in his new five book Young Adult fantasy series called Farworld.

The published hardback version of Water Keep appears in stores this September 2008. This paperback ARC is a collector's item of which only a few are given away.

If you have a blog and would like a chance to win this ARC, just (1) mention this contest on your blog, then (2) link over to Anne Bradshaw and leave a comment letting her know about your post. To quote Rachel Ray, “Easy Peasy!”

Contest runs through the end of June. Winner will be drawn at random from the comments on Anne’s post. Prize will be sent directly from the publisher, Deseret Book’s Shadow Mountain.

*I must say that I love YA Fantasy. And by an author who is also LDS? Cool!*

Sunday Morning

I just acquired this print of a painting titled Sunday Morning from my sister Emily. (Don't you like how I used the word "acquire"? Makes me sound like some sort of art aficionado or something!) It's about 2ftx3ft, nicely framed, and painted by well-known American landscape painter Asher Brown Durand.

The more I look at this painting, the more I love it! It shows people making their way toward the church in the background on the right hand side.

Let me tell you, this peaceful scene looks nothing like our Sunday mornings around here! A typical Sunday morning finds me up at 6:30 to take a shower and dress, then I start to wake everyone else up by either yelling a "wake-up" at the top of my lungs, then doing it over and over again until my bleary-eyed children are out of bed. Andy usually ignores me and sleeps right through it all.

I rush around barking orders, getting clothes together, arguing with Joe (who never wants to go to church) and ironing above mentioned clothes. When we finally get to church, we squeak in right before the opening hymn, if we're lucky.

Once in a while I get it together enough to have all of the clothes out the night before, and tonight is going to be one of those nights. I hope. That's my new goal: Peaceful Sunday Morning. Maybe not quite like the painting, since I really don't want to walk to church, but peaceful nonetheless.

Life...

Forrest Gump’s mama always said, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”

I’ve decided that life is like a yo-yo. It’s up and down, up and down. And sometimes it stays there at the bottom, and you have to shake it, roll it, and then finally wind it back up yourself.

So, when life is like a yo-yo, you have my permission to make some of these cookies. My mama made these when my brothers and sisters and I were growing up, and we love them still.

Yo-Yo’s

½ cup shortening                  
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup margarine or butter     
2 eggs
1/3 cup honey                      
1 tsp. Vanilla
3 ¼ cup flour
2 tsp. Baking soda

Your favorite jam for the middle

Mix shortening, butter, sugar and eggs. Stir in honey and vanilla. Add flour and soda. Chill dough for 1 hour. Roll small pieces of dough into balls and bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Put two together with a dab of strawberry or raspberry jam so they look like a Yo-Yo.

Heaven...

We all plopped around our bed tonight for family prayer. After the other kids had gone up to bed, Mario stayed in our bed and said, “I don’t know where Heavenly Father lives.”


“Where do you think he lives?” I asked him.


“I think he lives at the ocean.”


“Heavenly father lives in Heaven, but we can’t see Him there,” I said.


“I think he lives at the beach in a boat that transforms, kind of like Bumblebee.”


“What’s Bumblebee?” Andy asked.


“You know, Bumblebee, the Chevrolet.”


“That would be really cool.” I told him.

The beach is the most wonderful place in the world to Mario. He wants to go there - and asks to go there – all the time. He’s four, and in his frame of reference Heaven equals the beach.