Mike's New Favorite Site

Car and truck accessories make life so much nicer. We were even excited this past Christmas to receive a steering wheel cover as an elephant gift at our annual family Christmas party. Who would have thought we would not only LOVE the gift, but get a ton of use out of it.

My husband Mike found a site that is your one-stop shopping store for all and any car, truck, SUV, or van auto performance parts accessory needs or wants. Want to hitch up your recreational vehicle and go? Well, you can buy the hitch here too.

No Hot Flashes For Me

I wrote several months ago about how hormones are vital to our health! And anyone who reads my blog knows how I love talking about health issues.

I am old enough to have been through most symptoms that are associated with hormones and the need for progesterone creams.

The odd thing is that I have never had a hot-flash in my life! I wonder if it is because I had a hysterectomy at age 28 and the doctor told me that I had just gone through early menopause. I did still have to take hormones though to avoid vaginal dryness. Which I think is a second possible reason for not having hot-flashes, and the other symptoms that are related to needing hormones and progesterone cream. I was talking hormones and one of those hormones was progesterone cream.

Swimming Parties

Our granddaughter Emily's birthday is today. Mike and I will be going to her party in about an hour. The celebration is in her (very beautiful) backyard, where swimming will take place and lots of other fun.

They don't have a large pool in their yard, I suspect a child's pool is where we'll find them when we get there. So pool floats won't be necessary. I love that when you live in Arizona, you can sit around a pool nearly year round. It certainly makes little girl birthday parties pretty easy!

I won't join in any swimming, (not that they want me to) but I do intend to raid the garden while I'm there! Amy has the most beautiful garden, filled with great food and all kinds of herbs. Healthy stuff, I like to eat!

My Bad

I was just going to enter a picture on the previous post, but then I remembered that all of the photo's are on various compact flash cards upstairs, and I decided that I will sit down next week after everyone has left and add all of the pictures. That way you can see the house, and the fun we had with family and friends over the coming days! So look for me next week, and I'll fill you in!

We Are In

I was sitting up in my room earlier working on the laptop when my legs started to throb. This isn't anything abnormal, it just means I needed to get up and walk around a bit. So I walked myself on down the stairs and decided to have a seat at the desktop to surf the net, how odd!

We are finally all settled into our beautiful new home, and have a line up of guests coming around in the next week to stay and visit with us, so it was a rush to get the house unpacked and put away. What an exhausting job! I always vow I'll never do it again, and then find myself doing it 18 months later. Not this time I hope!

Our Last Trip

Mike and I have certainly tried to make all the rounds while we were in Utah. We spent time with Riverdale friends Friday night. Saturday night we had dinner with Chris and David, and then went to the Salt Lake Production, Savior Of The World. Sunday and Monday we spend with all our children. Tuesday we spent with my brother Mike, Cari, Joey and Brandi, and baby Austin, and Lisa's family. Wednesday we went to Brigham City, and visited with Kim's family, and that evening we went to Mike's brother Ray's church where about 50 of his family members meet for an after Christmas party. Whew! I'm getting tired telling about our travels.

Thursday and Friday were spent in Rexburg Idaho with Mike and Susan and the kids. We had a wonderful visit. I'm grateful for their hospitality, and especially grateful that Mike was able to take my hubby Mike and me through the Rexburg Temple on a personal tour.

The Rexburg Temple open house is going on right now for the whole month, for people to go through the temple who are not LDS, and of course many members will be taking advantage of taking their children through.

If you are not LDS and wonder what the temples are like inside, just watch for a new one that is under construction. As soon as it's completed there will be an open house and you will have an opportunity to go inside.

It was a wonderful experience, and made our trip complete.

Technicals Of Technology

I sent my husband up to the drug store this afternoon for a couple of items that we were out of. We just moved and not quite all of my boxes are unpacked. Because of this, I find myself missing some important items while some "not so important" items are flourishing!

So he heads off to pick up a couple of items, and when I say a couple of items I really do mean TWO. He was gone for over an hour and we live around the corner from the store. I made a joke about forgetting that we moved and going back to our old house--turns out POS system wasn't working, and they were having to look everything up manually to get the price.

We are definitely spoiled by technology!!

Apples To Apples

My sister has been looking into a franchise opportunity this past year. For some reason, she is thinking Carmel Apples are the way to go! I'm not sure what movement she's made on her venture--it seems the economy slowed down quite a bit right before she needed to decide. We don't live in the same state, and we don't talk all that often.

I have been watching the news a lot lately, and there are a couple of industries that seem to be holding steady, even with the economic uncertainty. The cheaper "fast food" type places are doing better because people still don't want to cook--and they think it's more fiscally sound to go out to a less expensive dinner. Sounds good to me---I just wonder if she'll be open to the idea of changing her plan!

Baby Fun

After all of the grandbabies this summer, I am all shopped out! I don't have to set foot in a baby store until the birthday's start rolling around again this year. I make it sound like I'm really put out, huh! The reality is, there is nothing I would rather do than shop for wholesale clothing at the cute little baby shops. It's the one thing I miss from my own kids.

Anyway, we got each grandbaby a couple of cute outfits and a fun toy to grow into. I hope their parents like the selections we picked out, I personally think they'll love them!

My Year

I have started a new weight loss pill! I know, it's the standard New Years resolution, but hey, when it's a good one-why drop it!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again-this is a year for getting myself healthy. Thin isn't too bad of a consequence either, but really what's the point of getting thin if you are sick afterward.

There is a chance that if I drop weight too quickly I could wind up with a serious case of aspartame poisoning, so I have to do it slow and carefully. But hey, like I said--this year!

Genetic Problems

Do you know anyone with cerebral palsy? It can be a devastating disease that can be avoided so many times. When I was growing up there was a couple just up the street from us who both had this. Because they knew they could most likely pass it on to their children, they made the choice to adopt. They adopted two really sweet kids from Colombia and you know, handicapped or not, they did a really great job with them.

I have always worried about some of the genetic disorders we could have passed on to our kids. So far, we've been pretty lucky. Genetic testing...it's just not something you think of when you are planning a wedding!

Immigration Reform

Living in Arizona, one of the key items we'd like to see addressed with this new presidency is the need for immigration reform. Every year you hear of many illegals that get disoriented in the dessert on their hike to freedom and they end up dying. As much as I am for securing our borders, I do feel for these people and their plight. Arizona is definitely a place where an immigration attorney can make a difference.

I know we have a pretty wonderful country. I've thought that my whole life. I understand why people are dying to get here. It just breaks my heart how often it actually happens!

Lovin' Technology

I wrote in an earlier post, that I was looking for notebook computer memory. I finally found some online that is pretty inexpensive, and I'm hoping we'll soon be back to normal where computer speed is concerned. These let you download images and documents to these cute little sticks. Since I'm not too experienced with them, I want to make sure you can't damage them. I would hate to put all of my photo's on them, delete the photo's off of my hard drive, only to have something go wrong with my stick! Anyone else notice any problems??

Getting Some Rest

I don't know if you would really call it resting after we got back from Idaho, but we at least made an attempt to slow down.

The weather has been cold! In fact, friget cold! It has snowed a few days while we've been here, but for the most part, we were able to get right back inside and get warm going from home to home. Today the sun is shining and even though it's cold outside, it's very pretty, and the blue sky and sun shining through our windows makes it feel toasty and nice in our condo.

Mike has done some running around today, looking for cheap car insurance but for the most part I have stayed inside and have gotten some closets and drawers cleaned out. We cleaned our a storage shed last far just before we left and even though we put things away, I felt we needed to concentrate on some better organization. It looks very nice!

Grand Children Sleep Over

What were we thinking?????? No, actually it was very fun! We had seven little grandchildren under the age of 8 in our small 1000 sq. ft. condo over night! Whew!

We normally have them over in smaller groups, but that couldn't be arranged this time. We just didn't have enough days.

They ate pizza for dinner, but really was not interested in eating. They wanted to get right to the part of playing games or watching videos. The girls: Emily, Anna, Gwynny, Ashley and Leah all decided on watching Shrek The Third. They had all seen the movie, but it was the choice of all since it was the latest movie out.

The two boys: Quincy and JJ stayed in the den and played something. I never did go in and find out what they were up to. They came in to check on the girls every so often, and invited them to join them in their games, but I put a stop to that. We had five little girls content and happy, and I didn't want that messed up.

The girls slept on the floor wrapped up with blankets and the boys were on the spare bed in the den. They didn't go to sleep as quickly as Mike and I did, but at least they didn't cause any trouble, nor keep us awake.

They were at our home until after noon the following day, and they were good and found some quiet activities to play. We only had one problem and that was that we didn't take good enough care of our new wood kitchen table. One or two little girls had spilled water and the finish is ruined in two places. I hope we can figure out how to fix it when we get back there in the spring.

Mike's brother Darrell who lives in Washington came by to visit. He brought his trombone, and let all the kids have a turn blowing into it. It was a nice day.

The Last Three Days!!

The last three days of our trip were spent visiting friends we hadn't had a chance to see.

We had a nice visit with Dubby and Carolyn at their home, and hurried off to have dinner with Jesse. Jesse is our late son Brian's best friend. We will stay friends with him for the rest of our lives. He is like a son to us.

We ate a wonderful dinner at The Texas Roadhouse, Mike and Jesse had steak & ribs, and I had salmon as always. Delicious!

Earlier that day we visited Mike's sister Eleanor, along with our daughters Chris and Amy. Eleanor was happy to see us, and we have a wonderful visit. I'm looking forward to seeing her as soon as we return to Utah.

That last three days was busy with finishing up shopping we needed to do, and taking down the Christmas decorations.

We have loved our vacation and are looking forward to getting back to Arizona in the nice warm weather and getting back to normal.

The Beginning of Our Holidays

It started off well with Sherri picking us up to take us to the airport to begin our two- week Christmas vacation in Utah and Idaho. We were only about 15 minutes away from the airport when we got a call from Delta that our flight was delayed. We heard that message about every 20 minutes after we had gotten to the airport.

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 12:20 and arrive in Utah at 1:30 or so. Instead, we arrived at 5:00.

Things didn't improve much in the Salt Lake Airport either. We were there over an hour looking for our luggage which had been placed somewhere different than we were told.

Lisa, bless her heart was already helping us by being at our home seeing to it that the Comcast technician could get in to re-connect our TV cable, which was on vacation mode. Now was needed at the airport to pick up up. Chris was planning to do that but couldn't because we were late. She and David had a family party that evening several hours from where they live.

Lisa was already feeling stressed because of the Cable guy, then got stuck in traffic due to a car accident on the freeway. She could only go 5 miles an hour for about 15 miles. She and Mike had many cell phone calls to each other, and she let him know that she would be late. It didn't take long for him to let her know that we were running late because he couldn't find our luggage.

We were ready about the same time and were finally on our way home.

Next problem was the cold, but that was already expected. Not fun though.

I was late for a friend party with my Riverdale girls. The party was scheduled at 6 and it was already going on 7. More on that later. I'm on Mike's lap-top, and the battery is low.

A Dinner Out

Have you ever been to a buffet? You know, the Old Country Buffet, or Golden Corral...heck even the chinese buffets have the same customers. Now, honestly, I'm not unhappy with people eating where or what they want, I'm just amazed that every time we are in a buffet the majority of people should seriously look into some weight loss products! We were at the Golden Corral for a family dinner tonight, and I have to say--I LOVE this place. The salad bar is second to none, and the hot from the oven dinner rolls are to die for. But if you are looking for a slice of meat...be prepared to stand in a mile long line behind people coming up for thirds or fourths! I was NOT happy about that part!

Christmas Ideas!

I was over at my in laws this evening, and as the conversation lulled I started asking them what kind of things they would like for Christmas. I'm always at a loss for anyone, let alone them. They LOVE coffee, so I was thinking a nice shiny new capresso coffee maker would be nice, turns out...they already have a new one. In fact, they just purchase 3 new appliances--2 of which won't be used any time soon. Why not save the cash, hold off for Christmas and give them out as ideas!! I would so totally have been happy to get them a slow cooker for Christmas---but NOPE, they just had to have one today, to sit on their shelf until mid-January!

So I guess I could think of something a bit more personal--but honestly, who in their right mind gives their in laws something personal??? Or is it just me?

Security/Snooping/Stopping

Have you ever watched the real life crime shows on TV? It seems like they always have access to security cameras after robberies, but the picture is so grainy, or the assailant is wearing a mask. Are they really that helpful? So we get to see what happened, but do they lead to crime solving? Are they a deterent?

We live in a really quite area, and most of the people in our complex are retired. None of us live high on the hog, and many have sufficient for their needs without being flashy. The other night our neighbor on the next block over installed a camera. What crimes are being committed over there we asked--none! He's got a neighborhood dog pooping on his yard, and he wants to catch it in the act and take the video to the owners.

What a great idea! I never would have thought of that!