Perfect

Yesterday they packed up most of our house. 

I am completely cried out

. If I have any tears left, I am just too tired to shed them right now, and I consider that a tender mercy from the Lord. 

As we get ready for this step and figure out how to wrap up the remaining loose ends, Matt and I talked for awhile about possible solutions to one problem. Everything we came up with seemed to be just fine and I told him that we needed to just choose one path, go with that and take the matter from our minds. We realized the actual  RIGHT answer was to bring it before the Lord and put it at his feet and focus on peace over the issue.

Funny how no matter how many times you map out your plans and ideas, the right answer is always to make sure your Father in Heaven is leading the cause. You realize that you don't have to do it all yourself and you don't have to know the outcome to a problem in order to move forward. When you've done the right things, when you've prepared yourself and when you know that whatever the outcome is, as long as you feel peace you will be okay-- all of those big problems don't seem so scary.

After we prayed, I stood out on my back doorway and looked out onto my yard. The sun was shining, birds chirping and the leaves of those quakey aspen (?) trees that everyone hates so much were making the most soothing noise as the gentle wind ran through the branches of our overgrown trees.

I looked out into my yard and I could see them, the shadows of the memories we have had in that yard.

I saw Matt and the boys, throwing the football to each other while Matt talked to Parker about music and got Zane laughing over what a bad catch he was, Grey and Emma playing tether ball and laughing as one of them would get an advantage and wrap the rope around the pole as the other one jokingly shouted accusations of "cheater! cheater!" and they both were laughing their heads off, Romy and Jane on the new swing set, so excited and going up and down the crummy plastic slide over and over again.

I saw the old husky dog our neighbors in back use to own, who died a few years ago, as she paced the back fence watching over the kids with a look of "I wish I were back there with you" and how the kids felt she was protecting them. I saw Kate and Zane on the trampoline cracking each other with jokes back when they were younger and they use to be so close. I saw The Mitchells and the kids in our pool, splashing each other and squealing in happiness to in the water with their very best friends on such a hot summer day. 

I saw Marcus Holmgren, (we miss him so much) through the fence working in his garden and stopping to talk to Romy and give her advice for all of her very important 7 year old problems, Karen asking the kids if they want apples or tomatoes  and Jane running from the furthest corners of the yard to tell her "no we did NOT want tomatoes!" Jane does not like tomatoes and she was sick of tomatoes, but she loved apples because "Mom would cut them up and put them in the pancakes she made every Sunday."  

I looked out at the memories of our life in this house and all of a sudden I started to sob.

Matt rushed over to see how he could comfort me and I stood there with him holding me and shared with him all I could see and I said to him "Oh Matt, I see it now so clearly. We have the perfect life."

"Do you really think that?" he asked.

"I think that all of the time, I thought you knew that. I think that every time I ride the white roller coaster at Lagoon. I think it every time we light fireworks in the front yard. I think it every time I hear the kids laugh when they play with their little cousins. I think we have the perfect life all of the time, I thought you knew."

"I think that a lot, too. Sometimes when everything starts to pile up, I worry that you think we have a terrible life."

"We have some terrible things that have happened, we've had to deal with some terrible people, but that's not our life. THIS is our life, and it's perfect. Our life is going to change a lot and I know it is going to have some serious challenges and rough days, but we are so blessed. We have such a wonderful life. We'll just forget that sometimes when it's really hard. I hope you know that I am so thankful for you, for all of this and our life in this house has been a miracle."

Then my sweet husband squeezed me tight and we just sat there on our back stair, listening to the sounds of almost summer and soaked our souls in the memories. 

I really do have the perfect life. 

The next time I'm having a really crummy day, I hope I remember that.

However,  if I don't, it's probably not a good idea for anyone to remind me that I said this because I might stab you in the eye. 

Fair warning.

Notice!

I woke up this morning and found this:

Before reading it, I glanced out into the yard and saw this:

 "Oh no, what has happened?" I thought.

Does the city need to fix whatever is wrong with the street RIGHT NOW as we are about to load the giant semi truck in our front yard?

Then I took a closer look and realized we'd been pranked by some of our besties in the ward.

The note on our door read:

And I smiled and started to cry.

Our cars were roped in so we couldn't move and it was the sweetest thing I've ever seen.

The house is packed up, we're squished into this crappy hotel and we've got a day of deep cleaning and then we flap our wings and fly away.

This blog is going to fly away, too.

This blog is going to be published.

And I think when one ends a chapter, they need to start a new one, not keep tacking on footnotes at the end of the old one.

I've still got graphics to work out, but it's coming.

A whole mess of new.

Those who want to follow will be just as bored at the new blog and I'm happy to share the new address when it's ready...privately.

This blog is lovely but I have some trolls who read my posts and then tell themselves that they have active relationships wih me.

Active and toxic, apparently.
I want the peace of knowing these people are not looking at pictures of my children and reading the inane things I do and using it as a reason to do ugly things.

SO, I'm saying goodbye to Salt Lake City Utah and I'm saying goodbye to the three women that can't seem to quit coming here and using my words like kindling .

Baby, You're A Firework

Yeah, we did it again.

Summer stripey hair.

She loves it and every year it's kind of our thing that we kick off summer with ridiculous rainbow hair.

She asked me last night why I let her do this every year, knowing most moms would kill their child for doing this same thing.

I told her it's just hair, it grows back and everything eventually washes out. It's important to follow the rules and dress codes at school and if you want to do more wild things, summer is the time to do it.

I also told her one of my regrets in life was that I always wanted pink hair. 

(No I did not actually leave the house like this, but sometimes I really wanted to)

I guess that's part of the mindset you have growing up in the early Cyndi Lauper years, wild hair colors always were something that I was drawn to and I wanted a head full of pink hair so badly.

I never did it, my parents always told me they'd rather shave my head bald than allow me any sort of rainbow color on my hair. Words like "freak" and "delinquent" were used and it just wasn't worth the stress. 

By the time I stopped seeking their approval, I was just too old. 

(unless it was Halloween)

Pink hair at (almost) 40 is kind of stupid. 

If you are 40 and you have pink hair, I am sorry if this offends you, but I can't imagine you are reading my boring mom blog if you can still pull off pink hair. You are probably too busy not giving a crap what the mainstream thinks and more power to you.

I am painfully mainstream in this season of my life, and I'm good with that.

I do wish I'd had the courage when I was younger to just have the hairdo I wanted. It's not like my boring and conventional styles saved me from trouble.

 It was always just hair, it didn't actually have the power to ruin any one's life. 

My sprite of a child however, has no reason on earth to be burdened with the concerns of mainstream and she is free to spend the summer with sparkling fairy wings leaping through the tall trees of Central Park and scaling the walls of the skyscrapers as she flies across the Brooklyn Bridge.

With magical blue hair.

If you don't approve, don't let your kid do it, it's just a summer hairdo. 

Four trips to the pool and it will be gone.

Getting Ready for the City

No, the Tahoe didn't get repossessed.....it's just going to be the first to arrive at the house in New Jersey.

When we fly in, it will be waiting at a lot in Newark for us.

I found a new skirt....

It's just a blue jersey maxi skirt from Ross.

 It's cuter than it looks on the hanger.

I also got this top to wear with it, I'll pair it with a lightweight cardigan.

 Romy is adorable, but very picky when we went looking for a summer skirt to wear while we explore Central Park.

We had to go to four stores, but she finally settled on this one from Target.

It's also cuter when it's not on a hanger, and will also be worn with a cardigan, because Modest is Hottest and that's how we Morms roll, Yo.

Little Old Roe

Last night was the school play.

Romy got one of the speaking parts, she played the role of the little old woman who didn't have time to help the white spider. She crouched over her cane and stayed in character the whole time, I was really proud of her.

She sewed the patches on her dress all by herself. (That was partly because she came to me at 9pm the other night and said "I need an old lady costume by tomorrow!!"  )

She makes for an adorable old lady, but I'm glad that won't be for a great many years,my  Little Lottieloo.

I love these kids. :)

On today's agenda:

One final appointment with the back doctor (I'm bummed to admit that the procedure really doesn't seem to be helping at this point, but I'm still a little bit in denial about that.)

Also, I'm picking up Roe early so I can make said appointment and then we're hitting some stores with her afterwards to find the perfect summer skirts for touring NYC this summer.

She wants a short denim skirt, I told her it wasn't 1985 and I will never buy her a short skirt. 

She's not a Jersey girl yet.

I'm looking for something along these lines:

Saltair

Today is a hard day.

Last week I felt ready to roll and this week, I'm clinging to the ground trying to prevent time from taking me away from those I love here in Utah.

Even though today is a tough day, the weekend was really good. 

We spoke in Sacrament meeting on Sunday and my Parker and my sweet in-laws all surprised us by attending. I spoke about service, Matt spoke about being your best self. I read from my pages and tried to not look up at all those I loved looking back at me, Matt played a lot of it by ear and it always amazes me when I look at him in his element. he's an amazing husband, the best. He is an incredible father and even though we have our share of hardships. I still have to pinch myself all of the time to make sure I'm not dreaming and I really get to spend eternity with this guy. When he speaks in public, the guy is a superstar. 

I'm a good public speaker, I even enjoy it, but I have to stick to my script. Matt can jot down 3 or 4 concepts on a page and he gets up there and just blows me away. He is truly a gifted speaker and I love hearing his share his thoughts and testimony with others. I am so proud of all that he has accomplished since we met, the things he's accomplished at work, with local charities, in the Young Men's program and mostly- with our family. 

We also went out to Saltair with Brian and Paige for a picnic. 

Lilly was not a fan of the muddy water and James was not a fan of getting hit in the face with the sprinkler, but oh, those kids fill my heart with happy.

That flash of red hair with the backdrop of the water makes me almost forget how much the place smells like a toilet.

We also did one last Mentos and Diet Coke mess-fest in the front yard and hit Pie Pizzeria before the girls left. They will be out in a few weeks, so it wasn't bad saying 'goodbye' for us. We will see them soon and boy are we going to take New York City by storm.

These women, I will see again on Thursday, that's going to be a tough one, but I guess it's the good kind of tough. I do not know how to say goodbye this time. I'm not willing to let this page turn, even though I know the chapter is ending.

I also know that I should come up with better analogies than these stupid literary ones, but I've been catching up on Glee episodes all day so my brain is garbage.

I did love this and had to download the Gotye album right away. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cay2dnuhcs

Gosh Darn Tired

I have been completely exhausted for the past two days- like can't get out of bed exhausted.

I toss and turn all night and I have nightmares that I can't go to sleep and when I wake, it feels like those nightmares have come true.

I'm so tired.

I have so much to do though.

Two more weeks.

Two weeks and we will hop on a plane and fly so very far away, and far away is where we will stay.

And I am excited and I know this is going to work out, but gosh darn it, I'm just so dang tired.

(How was that for some good old Mormon swears?)

Today I was watching Dylan and Cora for a few hours and I actually fell asleep while we were watching an Iron Man cartoon. They were snuggled up on the couch with me eating M & M's, but I never fall asleep in the middle of the day.

When they left, I went to the couch and fell asleep again.

Matt worked from home and has made two trips to the dump, cleaned up the garage, hit Lowe's and bought a new oven that matches the other appliances and had the old washer and dryer hauled off.

And I slept.

I don't know if I'm coming down with something or it's just my body digging in it's heels resisting change but I'm so pooped.

In other news, even more interesting than the fact that I'm sleepy-- our irises finally started to bloom.

Every other home with irises in the neighborhood has been showing off blooms for a month now and today, after the kids went to school our first flower finally opened.

It's actually good that they were delayed because now there will be a big blooming garden out front that gives us curb appeal and may mask the fact that our hedges are actually weeds we have watered and pruned because we think they are pretty.

Last year we had only purple blooms.

This year, it looks like we will have a glorious rainbow of my favorite flower. Right now we have two white flowers and an amber colored flower, I can see a burgundy color about to burst and more white ones coming through. I am so thrilled about that. I assumed they were all purple when we got a big box of bulbs a couple of years ago from Brian and Paige. Now I see that they gave us bulbs in every color, the other colors just took 2 years to bloom.

It's going to be stunning.

I'm taking bulbs with me to New Jersey, so we can have a little part of Brian and Paige's garden with us on the East Coast.

My flowers burst and bloom and I am going back to bed.

PS

Safe travels to Sarah and family as they close the door on their adventures living back East and return to Utah. The valley welcomes you back home with so much love and joy. Be safe and don't let the kids eat Nerds in the car during the long drive back.

Music To My Ears

Son, I love you so much.

But the cello is not your friend.

I tried to get you to practice.

 I begged, bribed and threatened.

You just couldn't handle how fast the teacher moved and nothing I said or did would convince you to work on it all year.

We met with the teacher and decided the experience was more important than the playing.

You hated playing, but if you showed up every day and didn't have a meltdown, that had to be enough for us.

At the semester you asked to quit.

Your teacher said you needed to stick it out for the full year and for you, success would come in making it through class every day even though it was noisy, sometimes chaotic and every day you would be asked to do something that you didn't like.

Tough for a kid with Asperger's.

Our goals weren't about playing music, they were about navigating the environment.

You had some rough days, but for the most part, you muddled through.

And I love you with all of my heart, sweet Greyson, but I'm glad orchestra is almost over.

I know you won't shed any tears when we turn that four stringed beast back into the rental place.

You never learned to play even one song but you made it through a class that had so many challenges for you and that's huge for you.

That's the win, because Lord knows you can't play for squat, Son.

Some of My Loves

To those of you who think I will be doing a new project in that new house in no time, I can only say that I hope and pray you are all wrong. 

If I start talking about sledgehammers and paint in Jersey- please shoot me in the neck with a tranquilizer until I start talking sense again.

And if those kids of mine wreck anything in the first year, I'm going to sell them on Ebay

I'm hitting the point with this place that I just want to throw everything into boxes, write "MISC" on them and call it finished, but I know that's partly why I have so much junk in the first place, I did that with my last two moves and told myself I'd sort it out when I was in the new place. I never want to sort it out in the new place- ever. 

---

In other news, the O Fam did family pictures this weekend. 

I have to say, my nieces and nephews are absolutely the cutest kids on Earth. 

I know you all think you know some cute kids, but mine are the best. each one has such a unique personality and they are an absolute delight to me. I love everything about these kids and everything they do is adorable to me, because I'm not the one who has to go home and put them to bed after Auntie Christmas has sugared them up and given them money.

When I get the files from Brian, I'll post some with our family in them, but for now, these are my much loved nieces and nephews....

Nathan said "Take my picture. Like this."

Anything for you, Sweet Boy.

Lilly is hilarious and she knows it.

Rocco wasn't feeling good and he was such a trooper with the pictures. 

When they were done he squealed with happiness to be free. 

His tender heart is such a joy, he is such a wonderful boy.

Abs is the big girl of the group and she takes such delight in playing with her cousins.

She tells jokes and reminds us all that she thinks we are silly and she likes it.

She is such a good natured girl.

Darling Maddie was blessed on Sunday. 

She's looks more like her Mommy to me, and I could kiss her little feet until they turn into prunes. 

Maddie's feet, not Marshell's. 

I guess that's a weird thing to say either way.

Enough with the paparazzi.

James rolls his tongue. 

So cute.

He is just this bright eyed sweetheart who is always watching his sister spin about the room as if she were his favorite show. 

Caz is such a sweet and loving little guy. 

He looks at you with his intense and beautiful eyes and if you act really silly to try and get him to laugh, he looks at you like "Auntie, Please.  You'd better bring your A game with me. I KNOW funny."

Unless it's Romy- and just the sight of her tend to make him laugh.

She has that effect on people.