The Stairway

The ugly as sin make it go away stairway project is finished!!

New boring paint on the walls, holes patched up and we put a trim on the side of those ugly stairs.

The stairs were "refinished" with a faux treatment I found online. I'll get some pictures of that and blog about it another day. Since we couldn't afford new treads, this was a really good fix that was within our budget.

Matt did the gorgeous white trim and it hides all of the drywall flaws. It turned out even better than I imagined. Thanks for all the hard work you put into this, Babe.

We got the floating shelves at Ikea for ten bucks each and it came with all of the hardware except the screws.

I love love love it.

Now....I need to see what I can do to get Matt to put in that toilet we need in the basement.....

Oh Scrappy Day

Yeah, I'm keeping the cheesy title.

Deal with it.

Yesterday morning we girls all loaded up the truck and headed to Sandy to go to the Scrapbook Expo.

Emma is gone on an orchestra trip, so it was just Mom and the three younger girls.

(I craft, therefore I am..)

We had such a fun day.

(MMM! Lunchables! Just like the pioneers use to enjoy.....)

I expected to be there an hour or two, but the girls all were having such a great time, we stayed until an hour before the event closed.

(Taken just before Jane was buried alive by acid free paper)

The girls were each given ten dollars to spend and managed to beg out a little more to buy themselves some new supplies, but it was worth it. I got some great deal on some cute crap I don't need and we all had so much fun together, making pages, participating in some of the events and looking at all of the fun booths.

(I'll say "cheese" but I'm not going to actually smile)

Roe and Jane did a make and take and all three girls participated in a dance contest. Jane was one of the finalists and won a pair of sunglasses and a t-shirt.

(Rock on with Yo bad self, Jane)

I'm exhausted, but this will be a day we all remember for a long time.

More Remodeling Boringness

Today kicks off Spring Break for the older boys.

Seven kids, three different Spring Break schedules. That's what happens when you have seven kids in six different schools, three different districts. Welcome to yet another quirk of blended family bliss. :)

we all started off in the same place when Matt and I got married, but sometimes you have to do what works, not what you planned and that's okay.

It does make it impossible to really plan any sort of vacation during the break, thankfully my kids are just as content to lounge around and embrace the sloth within.

So, next week will be spent playing video games, eating Hot Pockets and helping me around the house while the little ones are at school.

They were not thrilled when I announced we were going to repaint the living room.

Dreams of days spent playing Call of Duty & living on Mountain Dew flew out the window.

I'm sure they will still manage to invest a ridiculous amount of time doing nothing, but today they are going to help me paint the ceiling.

I have been working all week on my stairway project, trying to get those ugly stairs to look decent on a budget and we came up with this:

We've done a faux treatment on the stairs and now need to get about 10 layers of polyurethane on them and have trimmed out the edge of the stairs to hide the shoddy job they did with the wall there. It's not fancy new stair treads, but it is a huge improvement.

The back wall looks dirty because I painted behind the railing with the new paint color...yet another shade of taupe. I do love my taupe walls.

I also came up with this cheap door fix.

I didn't think to take a before picture, but it was just your standard 1970'2 cheap-o hollow core door and the owner of this house before us had a dog that loved to eat doors. The paneling on the outside was torn up , revealing nice ugly long strips of lighter fake wood and it has been an eyesore for years.

Since it's not a standard size door though, replacing it was going to be a pain.

When I was filling up cracks in the stairs, I decided to fill the places where the paneling was gone in the door. I then picked up some strips of 1X1/2 wood trim and we cut it with the miter saw and I put the two squares on the outside of the door, as trim to help make the repair job less obvious and I gave it three good coats of white paint.

It looks a million times better and looks like a decent door now.

The whole fix took a couple of hours- to let paint dry- and cost me about four dollars. A new door would have run us at least a hundred. Matt wants to do this to all of our old ugly doors, it's such a big improvement.

I'm loving this whole budget remodeling phase we're going through right now, the house is looking so much better and I don't have to feel guilty spending a bunch of money on my latest decorating whim.

But ohhh...the wheels have been turning about the kitchen.

I have a new idea and Matt is dreading me attacking those cabinets yet again with a paintbrush.

He's deciding if he's going to let me do it, or if we're just going to bite the bullet, hit the Ikeas and gut the kitchen. If we go that route we need to decide if we do more of a traditional farmhouse style- butcher block and white cabinets or we go for something more modern. I'd choose the butcher block, but I worry that my teenagers will destroy it.

The Walk Back

Sometimes, the Spirit tells us to do things and we don't really know why we are being told to do it at the time. You have to make a decision, heed or ignore. The moment then passes and you are left wondering why you felt so prompted to do that thing and you may even start to wonder if it was the spirit, or if you just have an active imagination.

Often, we never know why we were prompted to do something, but sometimes we do.

About twelve years ago, I was out shopping and I walked past a store that sold fine art, in the front was a picture, numbered and signed by the artist, that caused me to stop and catch my breath. It was a picture of Christ, pulling Peter from the water, after his faith had faltered and he had begun to sink into the stormy seas. Christ reached down, pulled him back onto his feet and together they walked on water and returned to the ship.

The painting wasn't by and LDS painter, but it touched my soul and I had to purchase it.

However, I am not a person who can typically afford expensive signed by the artist prints.

I went into the shop and admired the picture, telling myself that I had nowhere to hang it, it would be a fortune to have framed and I could not afford it.

The owner came up and told me that soon, he would be going out of business and if I wanted it, I could have the print half off. It was still out of my budget, but Ifelt, no...I  knew I needed to purchase it, so I did.

I loved that print, and over the years it has had very special place in all of my homes.......

Right behind the couch so it doesn't get damaged.

One of my most beloved and favorite possessions, has been hidden behind the sofa for a good 12 years.

I've thought about framing it, and when I priced frames for it, I staggered at the cost.

I also have have nowhere to hang it- ever.

My "place of honor" in my living room has a gorgeous canvas print of my favorite painting that hangs in the LDS history museum, and it was a gift from Matt.  I love it and cherish it so much and I don't want it to compete with anything else.

This picture of the Savior was so beautiful, it deserved a place of honor and I haven't had that place yet.

Saturday, as we had our Relief Society event, I was positioned on a stepladder, on the stage so that I could look out at the "garden" of women from our ward. Right in front of me stood Jeff and Corrine Kendall, playing the role of Joseph and Emma Smith.

As I stood there watching this couple look into each other's eyes I thought of how much these two people mean to our family. I thought of times we have been in the temple with them, for Ward temple Night and for our Sealing last year. I thought of the role Jeff has served, as our Bishop (recently released) and the presence of them both at  baptisms of three of our children, at interviews for our family, and at various blessings, ordinations and milestones in our family.

How we love this family.

How they have touched us and changed us in so many ways.

As I stood there looking at them on Saturday, the Spirit touched me and I suddenly realized something I hadn't even been wondering about. The picture came into my mind and I felt the strongest feeling that I had never found a place for it, because it wasn't my picture. I hadn't purchased it for myself, I had purchased it for Bishop Kendall. It never was my picture, it was his.

I went home and told Matt this impression I had and as we talked about it, it became very clear it was the right choice.

When we were preparing to get sealed in the temple we met with Bishop Kendall regularly. I learned so much about my Savior and Heavenly father through his teaching and counsel. One evening I was distressed having struggled with what seemed to be a constant fight just to keep going when there were so many challenges. Never in my life have I known the adversary was so real than I did in that season as we prepared to be sealed as husband and wife for all eternity. I knew it was real, but in that season, it was a tangible, solid thing. Satan would inspire people so openly and clearly that it felt like we were at war keeping him out every day. I was so weary. I was not going to give up and quit, but I felt so tired, and so small in the face of so much opposition to our following what we knew was the Lord's path.

I came to my Bishop in tears, unsure of how I was going to carry on, but determined to do so. I didn't have the answers, but I knew the Lord would inspire him to help me get through to the next step.

Bishop Kendall read to me the story of Peter and we talked about how the walking on water was a great miracle, but to him, the greater miracle, the one that gets overlooked was that after he doubted, after he fell and Christ came and lifted him up out of the sea, he walked back. He walked on water not once, but twice, one with faith, Looking to the Savior and one with an even stronger faith, having recovered from a fall and being rescued by Jesus Christ. The storms still waged on around them, and Peter and the Savior returned to the ship, even after he had doubted.

I felt so much comfort.

Throughout the process, I continued to turn to that story, to those passages in the scriptures for strength as I reminded myself that the walking back to the boat was a miracle in itself. We were also walking back to something more solid and safer, and we were doing miraculous things because my Savior had rescued me. Bishop Jeff Kendall was the person who helped deliver that message and who also helped our family, return to the place it needed to be.

So today, I took my print and went in search of a frame and found one that was the perfect fit and in my budget at the first store I went to.  It was like it was meant to be.

I framed my beloved picture and called Matt and told him it was ready and we delivered it to Jeff & Corrine that evening and I rambled off my little feeling about how I had never been able to find a frame or a place for this picture because it was supposed to belong to their family. I probably sounded mental, but I was trying not to start bawling.

I felt impressed to buy that picture 12 years ago and today I had the privilege of seeing why I felt I needed to buy that picture. I've been holding on to it until this specific season so that I could give it to the person it was meant for, Bishop Jeff and Corrinne Kendall. It was always their picture, I just got to be lucky enough to be part of bringing it into their home.

I am so very blessed.

The gospel is true and the Lord sees us and works with us from the beginning to the end and he has a plan for each of us. Sometimes, we get a peek into that plan, sometimes we just have to act on faith. I am so thankful for this experience where I got to see the fruits of what I thought was just a random prompting, twelve long years ago. I am thankful to have a Bishop like Bishop Kendall in my life and his righteous influence in our home.

Thank you for helping me see the miracle in the walk back to the ship, Bishop Kendall.

Eleven

This past weekend we celebrated Jane's 11th Birthday since it is the only weekend we will have all the kids together for awhile.

As we do with all of the kids, Jane was totally spoiled.

I wasn't able to get a cake baked, so we picked one up at the grocery store and let Jane pick out a few quarts of ice cream..

She was given a ton of candy that she doesn't have to share as well as some vampire girl books and fashion design books.

She also got a DS game that she always borrows from the other kids, some cute clothes from Rue21 and something I knew she secretly was wanting......

It's a pillow.

It's a pet.

It's a Pillow Pet.

She never would admit she wanted one, but I know her pretty well and noticed the way she looked at Romy who got FOUR of them from her dad this Christmas.

She was so happy, she snuggled it and could not stop smiling.

Superhuman Mom Intuition  gets it right every time.

Well, not every time, but it did this time.

And with that, Jane is eleven-- the same age Emma was when I first met Matt. I was just the new girlfriend then. As a nice gesture, I got Emma a cd that her mother promptly took for herself.

As Bob is my witness, she's not getting her hands on that Pillow Pet.

Monument to Women

Yesterday we had a Relief Society luncheon.

This year, the focus is turning towards the history of Relief Society in the church.

For those non LDS people who read the blog, The Relief Society is the women's organization in our church. We meet on Sunday and have various activities during the month that focus on developing ourselves as women in Zion through education, compassionate service and good works.

I LOVE being a member of the Relief Society. I meet so many wonderful women who inspire me and nurture me and it means so much to me.

In Nauvoo, Illinois there is a garden dedicated to the Relief Society and women, The Monument to Women. There are 12 statues throughout the garden that represent women during various season of life.

Yesterday at the luncheon, we recreated this garden. A few women in the ward were called and asked to stand and re-create the statue the presidency felt a special connection between that woman and all it represented. I was asked to be a part of this.

I was humbled when Lisa asked me to represent the central statue titled "Woman" because she felt I was a person who worked towards representing so many seasons of the life of a woman.

I told her I think I just had the right hairdo. :)

Anyway, I was very humbled and very honored to even participate, let alone to get to represent the main statue.  My back hurt and I had to stand on a stepladder, but I was so moved by the entire production and event that I got through it. I was touched by the women they chose to participate and found myself standing there with tears streaming down my face as the testimonies of each woman was read as they featured her little representation of the statue.

What a beautiful event, I will never forget.

Below are the pictures of the women, along with the virtue they represented and whee I was able to find one- the statue they were recreating. I am also going to include my testimony of womanhood that was shared yesterday with the ward.

I love being a woman.

 I love being a woman in this day and age and I love how I feel being a woman in the church.

And yeah, I look super cheesy, but I'm just glad I didn't fall.

"Woman"

All sculptures by Dennis Smith unless otherwise noted

 

Joseph and Emma Smith

Sculpture by Florence Peterson Hansen

"Woman in Prayer"

                                                               "Woman Learning"

                                                            "Compassionate Woman"

"Woman and Her Talents"

                                                            "Courtship for Eternity"

                                                                  "In the Family Circle"

                                                              "In Her Mother's Footsteps"

                                                                   "Preparing Her Son"

                                                                       "Teaching With Love"

                                                                        "Fulfillment"

"Joyful Moment" scooted out before I could snap a picture, which was too bad because Shelly sure looked cute with her girls.

My testimony of womanhood:

As a youth, I remember when the Young Women's program changed and the Values we teach the girls now were established. I remember it having a profound impact on how I viewed myself as a Daughter of God. I remember feeling so inspired. The path was clear and bright with so many open doors for women in the church.

I was a part of the rising generation and we would be the generation that welcomed so much change into this world.

I knew then that we women were of supreme value to the Lord. I knew that being a woman was a wonderful thing.

As a woman in the church, I know that I have the ability to enjoy and participate in Holy Ordinaces and recive all of the blessings my Father in Heaven has to offer. Honestly, I think we as women often have the better deal because we also have the special ability to literally draw closer to our Father in Heaven when times are hard, to lean on him and have him take us in his arms and carry us, as any father would do his daughter. As women, we especially can come to know a closeness to our Father in Heaven and our Savior as we embrace the divine qualities of womanhood. We can learn to cleave to our Heavenly Father and rely on him in that special way a daughter relies on a good father and he will always be there, to guide and protect us and help us continue on our journey.

I knew when I was a young girl that I was a Daughter of God and would one day be a Mother in Zion, that I would witness miracles and changes no other generation had seen before. I knew I was called to come to this Earth in that very season. I knew that I would be a part of it, if I remembered to enjoy being a woman and all of the beauty it encompasses. I am so thankful to come to this Earth and to be counted among such inspiring and loving women.

From you Sisters I learn so much about the things my Father in heaven blesses me with and wants me to learn.

Some days we bake cookies with the kids and build blanket forts, and some days, at the side of our beds we fall to our knees and cry to our Father in Heaven asking him to help us just make it through the day and all of these days help make us the women that we are and bring about his Divine purpose.

I am thankful for the blessings I have been given and the life experiences I have had that help confirm what I knew when I was a 13 year old girl, on a Young Women's trip to the new Boise temple when all the young women of the church released ballons into the sky and celebrated the new values we were to learn about as women and to start down a path that I know is the right path for me for the rest of my life.

I am so thankful to learn of those things which honor my nature, the woman I was before I came to this Earth, the woman I am now and the woman I will yet become one day.

Restart

My laptop is an endless source of annoyance for me.

It's not very old, but at some point, it has picked up a few ticks and bugs here and there and it seems to poop out at the worst moments.

Lately, it has been even more irritating It  gets stuck right before it loads up the final track of any Cd I'm trying to add to itunes. It stopped recognizing many of the windows functions I use every day. It's getting slower and slower and last night Matt was able to help look into it while I was at knitting night.

The diagnosis?

My laptop was too messed up to fix, we needed to restore the factory settings and start over.

Everything was backed up in another location and now it is gone Daddy gone.

No photoshop.

No scrapbooking software.

No familysearch.org.

No itunes.

No long confusing list of favorites.

He'll restore my programs tonight, but it's weird not having all of my crap on my laptop. Weird, but good. It is running so much better and faster.

I wonder if I can convince the tall guy to empty our house this way and we can get rid of all the crap we have here that slows us down.

I wonder if I can make any other annoying philosophical parallels to a simple computer repair and the meaning of life?

Thankfully, the answer to that is "no."

Prom and Other Headaches

What a day yesterday.

Monday night Romy got one of the worst migraines yet and she was puking because of it. Nothing is helping and she is having such a hard time. She gets 2-4 headaches a week and a bad migraine about every other week. We spent yesterday in the offices of doctors and at Primary Children's getting a CT scan.

 She giggled the whole time.

After a day of being worried about a possible constricted blood vessel, we got the call in the evening that her scan was normal and she needs to keep a headache diary, take her new prescribed medicine every day and I need to have her drink a Coke or a Mountain Dew every day to help.

Hopefully this will help. Her headaches seem to increase every spring and stay bad until mid summer. That makes no sense to me, but it seems to be a pretty established pattern.

When school got out for the rest of the kids, I took Parker out and we got everything he needed for Prom.

We had a nice debate over shoes. he wanted to wear sneakers, and I considered that and decided to make him rent some nice shoes.

I remember one year my sister, Lisa, was living with us and she went to a formal dance with a guy who was too cool to wear dress shoes with his outfit  and when we got the pictures back, I was pretty annoyed with him because they really looked shabby in the pictures and we'd spent so much time and effort into helping Lisa look like a princess, and he looked like a hobo because he was trying to be cool.

I told Parker even if his date didn't care, which i am sure she wouldn't, he owed it to her mother to have the Senior Prom pictures look as perfect and fairy tale as possible for her daughter. Her mother was going to put her heart into that dress, the hair and seeing her daughter off, he needed to wear the shiny shoes.

Parker was shocked at how many little details mattered and how much little wristlets of flowers can cost.

Welcome to the show, Son.

A girl worth having will expect you to spend some money on her, but not all of your money on her. You gotta find the girls who won't settle, but weed out those who are divas.

Parker's current girl is great. She's really good for him and she has good boundaries and a healthy life of her own so they don't need to spend 24/7 telling each other how awesome they are- although you wouldn't know it by the nauseating facebook posts.

"You're awesome..."

"YOU'RE Awesome."

" I loooooove yooooooooo"

"I loooooveee yoooou tooooo"

"You make me smile...."

"YOU do......"

Barf.

Oh wait, Matt and I do the same thing.

Okay but when we do it, it's cool.