Slice of Life # 10: Friends

Friends!

I have 4  close friends who I have known since 1st and 2nd grade of elementary school.  We have all stayed in touch over the years even though we are all spread out.  Tawyna and I meet in 1st grade at Westmore Elementary.  She lived one block away from my grandparents so it was easy to go over to her house.  Andrea, Elizabeth and Jennie I meet in 2nd grade at Vineyard Elementary.  Between the years of elementary, Jr. High and High School we did things together from time to time, but mostly just ate lunch together and go to some of the school dances, or HS sports together.  But these friends have been there for me.  They never judged me for being hearing impaired and they always seemed to truly care about me.  I have always tried to stop and visit with them when I have lived out of state and have come home.  Now that I am back, I have seen a few of them a couple of times.  And now that some of them live in places that I want to visit, I am going to go see them (when money allows it to happen).  It is so nice to know that you have a few friends that you can lean on.  I keep in touch with most of these friends on Facebook now as we are spreed out from Texas to California, but it sure has been nice to see each one of these friends again this summer.  I know we each of had challenges over the last 15 years since we graduated High School: Dating, marriage, divorce, death of loved ones and children, moves, school, and jobs and many more.  But it is nice to know that there are friends who you can call and visit when you need to.

Thanks Guys for being my Best Friends Forever!  I love you guys and I pray that we can all continue to keep in touch as time goes on!  I think we have done a pretty good job so far!

P.S. The picture is Jennie, Me, Elizabeth and Andrea ~Tawyna was away at school.

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Stitches!

On Sunday as we were getting ready to leave out the door to go to church, we noticed that Ruth had some blood on her, but we didn't find it right away as she walked out the door and down the stairs and to the car.  She never even cried.  Then once in the car she climbed into the front seat as I came up to the van and I saw her upper leg was covered in blood and her tights were soaked.  Dan took her in to clean her up and put a bandage on it while I buckled in the other kids.  He came back out a few minuets later and said that we needed to take her in to Urgent Care as it was worse then he had thought.  So we took the other kids into the house and looked up where our insurance was taken at urgent care and then I took her in.  She cried when they looked at it, and put some numbing gel on it and then she was happy again.  They sent us out to the waiting room to let her leg numb.  She just played with her books and stuff from the diaper bag.  While we were out there Dan and I figured out how she had cut herself.  I had put a garbage bag by the front door to take out and I was unaware of broken glass from a picture frame in the bag.  We figured that she leaned up against the bag while she was waiting for us to open the door and the glass cut her.  She got a total of 7 stitches.  The Dr was baffled at the way she was walking and not crying.  You wouldn't have known that she had stitches from the way she acts.  She has been one happy child!

Slice of Life #9: Bugs

This weeks Slice of life is bugs.  I don't like bugs for the most part.  When I got home from my trip to Minnesota I have found 4 really large spiders in my house.  In Minnesota I would get eaten by the misquotes, but the kids didn't seem affected by them as I didn't find any bites on them during this trip, but I sure had a lot of bites and we didn't have bug spray with us.  But Jennilyn was really cute about not wanting the bugs or flies to touch her.

But from my childhood I remember having to do a bug collection for my 9th grade high school Biology class.  Now school started the end of August and we had to have this done the end of Sept.  By the time school started it was getting harder to find some of the bugs that my teacher wanted us to get.  At the time we had a BYU graduate student living with us whose degree was in Mammalogy and she was studying bears.  She brought home the stuff we would need from school and took me out to find as many bugs as we could.  I kept the project around for a while, but finally decided that it took up too much room and I really didn't care to keep it for my kids or try and keep it from getting smashed so I put it in the dump.

Also when I was about 13 we were at the Hulse Family Reunion in Ririe, ID we went to a water slide park about an hour or so away.  I had come down the water slide and was walking back to go back up for another  time down and I stepped on a bee.  The lifeguard  put mud on my foot to draw out the stinger and take the pain away and it worked.

Bugs, bugs, bugs, not my favorite thing in the world, but they can be useful and fun at times.

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Until Next week!

Family Vacation July 2010

This last week we went on vacation to Minnesota and Wisconsin.  We got to see many family and friends while we were there.  Sorry to those who we didn't get to see, maybe next time.

We started off by getting up at 4:30am and getting the kids up at 5am to get dressed and head to the airport.  We parked in an off sight parking lot and took a shuttle bus over to the airport.   Our flight was at 7:55am.  We got breakfest at the airport and boarded our plane to Denver, CO.  Once there we had a little time waiting for our next flight but not much, just enough to get the wiggles out.  We then boarded our plane to Minnesota.  Ruth was out for a nap before we even left the gate.  Dillon and Jennilyn fell asleep before the plane took off, and Irene wasn't far behind them.  Dillon and Jennilyn slept the whole way.  Ruth and Irene slept about an hour.  When we landed we went and got lunch and then rode a tram to the car rentals.   It took us an hour to get  our two small cars and get everyone loaded up.  Then we had a 15 min drive to Dan's Grandma Burke's house.  Once we were there Grandma got to meet the twins for the first time.  Irene is named after Grandma Burke and Grandma Bolstad so I am glad that she got to see them.  After Seeing Grandma Burke we went to Maplewood, MN to see our friend Marie Hunt who was in the hospital after just having surgery.  She had asked us to stop by and see her, and it was good to visit with her for a few minutes.  Then we went to Denny's for dinner before we made the 3 hour drive up to Duluth, MN.  At Denny's the kids got these cool soccer ball cups.  They had fun drinking out of them and making a mess.

The next day we went to the beautiful Lake Superior were we had family pictures taken.  When I get copies I will post them.  It was a beautiful site that Jennifer picked out.  I hope we got some good one.  Later I went to see the movie Eclipse with my sisters-in- laws (Sarah, Marsha, Annette, and family friend Katie)  It was good and I enjoyed it better then the first two movies.

After the movie we hurried to Floodwood, MN which is an hour away for the wedding rehearsal that Jennilyn was a part of.  We spent the next few days in Floodwood, which was busy was it was the Floodwood Catfish days celebration which ended with a parade on Sunday, which made it feel like it wasn't Sunday with a parade right out your window.  On Saturday was the Wedding and it was beautiful!  Jennilyn did a great job being a flower girl, but didn't want to do pictures later.  At least she walked down the isles throwing fistfuls of flowers on the ground.  She was so funny that at the end she threw her basket up in the air.

Sunday was the Tvit Family Reuioun and it was good to get to mingle and visit with everyone.  Dan missed this as he had to go back to the cities to catch his flight back to Salt Lake City.  The kids and I as well as my mother in law Nova drove back to the cities that night and we stayed with Brian and Sarah.

On Monday we took the kids to Como Zoo and Como Town which has rides.  They had fun and at the end of the last ride that involved race cars Jennilyn told me she couldn't get off until she finished the race, but we were out of tickets so it was time to go.

On Tuesday we meet up with Jackie and Ryan Mayer and played and visited.  It was good to see them again. And then we went to Uncle Tom's house were we enjoyed swimming and good food and company.  It was good to see Aunt Val, Uncle Larry, Aunt Kaje, Uncle Tom and Aunt Linda there.  Then we went to Grandma Burke's house for dinner and Aunt Kathy and Uncle Steve as well as Aunt Linda.  It was good to see everyone again.  I left the twins at Grandma Burke's so that Grandma Nova could take them with her to the airport the next morning and I took Dillon and Jennilyn back to Brian and Sarah's house.  Dillon and Jennilyn went to bed right away and when Brian got back he had brought Uncle David back with him so the 4 of us played Cash Flow 202.  Thanks for playing with us David, it was fun.

Wed we got up and got repacked and played outside until it started to rain.  Then we loaded up and followed my in-laws back to the airport were Grandma Nova and I loaded with all 4 kids to go back to Salt Lake City.  I had bought a couple of items in a gift shop and we lost them on the trip home.  I was so bumped.  We got to SLC and one of our car seats didn't make it on the plane.  Luckily the airline had extra's and gave me a loaner.  The delivered my car seat back and took their loaner yesterday.  Now we are in recovery mode.  It was a great trip and we had fun.   Thanks to our our family and friends for having us stay we enjoyed it!

Slice of Life # 8~ "The Good-bye"

The Good-bye, hmm, there are lots of good byes.  I had many this weekend while visiting my husbands family including both of his grandmothers, not knowing when or if we would ever see them again.  But I think my most memorable good bye would have to be the day I went into the mission field.  I was the only granddaughter amongst all the grandson's of my Grandma and Grandpa Dillon's 26 grandchildren to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  I know they were proud of me and that they supported me going.  This was before 9-11 so your family could walk you up to the gate and such.  Grandma and Grandpa got up early with my parents and meet me at the airport to send me off.  Grandpa tried to give me money to take with me.  I remember hugging them and walking onto the plane and knowing that was the last time I was going to see them alive.  A year later, my sweet Grandfather passed away and 7 weeks after that Grandma passed away.  It was so hard to be the only grandchild who didn't get a chance to say good bye, but I was were they wanted me to be.  But at times, I feel them close to me.  I still miss them and it has been almost 10 years since they have gone.  Thanks for teaching me Grandma and Grandpa Dillon!  I love you and miss you!


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Slice of Life # 6~ Storms

Storms, this was slice of life's prompt from last week, and I just got around to posting about it.

I do remember some storms being really bad, some really good lighting storms, even storms that tore out trees in our yard, but none of them were memorable.

When we lived in Wisconsin we had a lot of tornado warnings, and when my parents came to visit during the Summer of 2007 we were woke up by the sirens and all went to the basement.  My parents bought us a weather radio/tv so that when the power was out we could still get updates and such.  This thing had a warning on it so if a weather alert was issued it would go off to warn us sometimes before the county warnings went off.  But we were never in a tornado, just close to some.

Since storms can be natural disasters, I think the natural disaster I can remember the most was almost 11 years ago while I was on a mission for my church in Southern California.  I was sleeping on the top bunk and all of a sudden my bed was shacking.  I woke up looked at my companion below me think she was shacking the bed, and then I realized it was an earthquake told my companion it was an earthquake and rolled over and went back to sleep.  Not very bright, but it the center point was in the middle of the desert about 50 miles away and there was no damage.  I heard from other missionaries later, how they were really scared and stuff.  But now I can say I have been in an earthquake.

Well until next week.  I hope you all have a great week!

Slice of life #7: Fireworks

                    

This weeks slice of life entry is about fireworks.

Growing up I remember doing fireworks in front of our house or grandma and grandpa's house, and having fun.  I can remember going some place to watch fireworks only a few times.  I did go to Stadium of Fire once about 17 years ago and I remember it being fun.  I also remember sitting on the roof of our home in Pleasant Grove watching some of the Stadium of Fire fire works, but also watching the American Fork and Lehi fireworks.

Yesterday Dan and I got a babysitter and we went to the 2010 Stadium of Fire which was the 30th anniversary of doing the fireworks at Brigham Young University football stadium.  We got to here the Brown 5, Jenny Oaks Baker, Osmond 2nd Generations and Carrie Underwood.  I was talking with my sister last night as we walked back to our car to head home and we both remembered seeing the Osmond 2nd Generation perform the last time we went to the Stadium of fire.  Last night  was also the largest Eagle Scout Court of Honor held were 260 young men received their Eagle Scout award.  They even had a Life Scout shoot a flaming arrow to light the Freedom torch.  My father helped design the the flaming arrow and how it was to be shot.  The fireworks were great, but they did have one of the shooters malfunction and it shot into some of the crowd and there were some people burned, but since this was a big event of course there was medical personal  on hand to help.  I told Dan that I would like to take our kids to see this in the near future, give them a few years so they will enjoy all the loud noise, because were we sat we were right by a lot of the fireworks being shot off.  But it was great!

I Hope all of you had a great holiday weekend!   

Until Next time!