Guess Where We Have Been?

Yep, the happiest place on earth! So that is why not a lot happening on the old blog. For better or worse there will probably be several Disney oriented posts coming up. Maybe it will make you want to go. It wouldn't take much to get me there again.

Especially since we have the very best grandparents on the planet and one set went with us. Why is it everything is more fun with Grandma and Grandpa? I swear my mother never went on the rides with me she goes on with my kids! It really made a great trip even greater!

The Royal Wedding

We have been pretty obsessed with the Royal Wedding around here all week. Brittany has been watching the coverage on the morning shows before school. Last night we watched the 20/20 special together. Brittany is just about the same age I was when Princess Di and Charles got married. I remember being obsessed then too. VCR's weren't very old but I remember setting ours so I could watch it. Last night I did the same thing so Brittany and I could watch William and Kate together. So fun! Who doesn't love a good fairy tale? I sure hope this one has a happy ending. In our world so full of sad, tragic and distressing news it feels marvelous to celebrate with such a lovely couple.

Check it out Mormon girls! That is a lovely, modest wedding dress! With sleeves people! That is a big deal for those of us who marry in the temple. So lovely.

Adding to the fun was the fact that it was the fact that it was our wedding anniversary yesterday. My nice hubby sent flowers.

I suppose this was as close as we got to a balcony shot. Happy to report that our fairy tale is still having a happy ending!

A Walk Down Memory Lane

It was such a beautiful day today, it seemed like Fall was really here. So we went for a walk in William's home town just down the road. We took the trail that runs behind Lagoon, the amusement park but except for the occasional scream from a roller coaster victim, seemed like the woods. We used to go for walks on Sundays with the whole extended family here and through town before his parents moved to "the country".

We even walked by the house William grew up in. So many good memories there. I sort of wish Oma and Opa still lived there.

Our dear friends the Delongs owned this lovely old house. It was actually a hotel in Pioneer times, see the plaque? It was nice to see the old houses were still being taken care of.

William explaining to Brittany that the old rock chapel he grew up attending houses the original mural depicting the organization of the children's organization in the LDS church called Primary.

Who knew there was a Civil War cannon? Well, a replica of one actually.

This was my great-grandparents home. I loved this house as a child. My sister and I would play for hours in the basement that was full of my Great-aunt Gerry's clothes as a young lady of the fifties. The dresses, hats, gloves, jewelry it was all there. My mom saved some but I sure wish I had it all! The backyard seemed like it was magic too. Funny, how houses are just buildings but they sure become part of our lives.

Happy Aniversary

This is what I was doing seventeen years ago today. That seem so bizarre to me, seventeen years. I was seventeen on our first date, we have been married as long as I was old. So weird. I am pretty sure William and I are really still the kids in this picture. This picture really makes me smile, William and I are both oldest children so all of our siblings in this picture are all grown up now and look so different.

It was a perfect day, the perfect beginning of what has been a wonderful life together.

William is still picking me up, actually and figuratively. He still makes me laugh, is patient with me when I am ornery and is absolutely the only person I would want to be with forever.

The Wedding Singer

I took my kids on a trip back to the eighties last night. As a child of the 80's I really enjoyed our local high school's production of The Wedding Singer. They always do such a great job. It was a little surreal sitting there with my kids watching kids that were just the age I was in the late 80's looking just the way I did then. The hair and clothes were perfect, they must have hit the local thrift stores hard. They brought back the mullet in a big way. Even the 80's wedding dresses were pretty familiar. I came home very nostalgic for my youth. I can't believe I am this woman now, I remember the adults telling me back then to enjoy things, it would go so fast. They were so right. At least I have a lovely youth to look back on and I am lucky that the people I cared about then, for the most part are still part of my life. I realized that as much as I loved my teens I really love my life more now. I have so many amazing blessings in my life and even more people to love. I do however really miss the waist I had back then. Don't miss the hair though!

Let's look past the fact that they are brother and sister and just enjoy the cuteness okay?

Raspberries

When I was growing up we had a garden. We grew raspberries, so did my grandparents. I remember so many times sneaking out to the garden to steal a few. I remember picking them at my grandparents and using a chopped off milk jug as the perfect picking bucket. After I was married and had kids of my own my parents moved to a new house, no more raspberries. But Grandma still grew them so fresh raspberries still stayed a wonderful part of my summers. Jello salad with raspberries was her standing assignment for family parties. The thought of the freezer jam she made is making my mouth water.

It has been quite a few years now since Gram was still in her own house and could supply us with the little red gems. So when my in-laws stopped by this last weekend with a big bucket of raspberries I was really excited. Every time I pop one of these in my mouth I feel about ten years old and like my Gram is near by. Thanks Oma and Opa.

1989-When the hair was Big!

Well, the long anticipated 20 year reunion is over! What a weekend! I have a few mixed feelings. Sad it is over, it really was fun. But glad it is over, seriously I have not stressed about what I was going to wear like that in about 20 years! The best part was definitely getting together with my best friends from high school. Can you believe how big our hair was?

This was us then.

This is us now. I think we are aging quite nicely thank you! We were like sisters back then. It has been probably at least 10 years since we were all together, maybe more. These girls mean so much to me. They loved me when I was very shy, not comfortable with myself or my own talents. They helped shape me into the person I would become and protected me from bad choices. I love them dearly.

We had a lot of fun too, this is one of the dances we went to together, it was a Halloween dance and we had dinner in my friend Kim's barn. I am the saloon hall dancer. I loved that costume. It was so great to be together again. Then there are the rest of the folks I went to school with . I have to say I think they all grew up to be really nice folks. So many people I enjoyed back then but haven't seen in awhile. So much fun to see them all. We all have grown up, to say the least. It was fun to compare careers and families. I little sad to see the effect of life choices on a few.

The whole thing made me value even more the friends I have from that time that I see more often than every twenty years. Some of them are in this photo from a youth conference we went to. I am lucky that there are probably a dozen or so I see or am in contact with frequently.

I stole this photo from my friend Circe, I couldn't find any with her in it she is always the one taking the pictures. It is a few of us at her baby shower. This weekend made me want to hang onto them even tighter. There is just something special about people that have known you since you were a kid. And it goes without saying that we are going to have a great time talking over the weekend's events! Now I have to go back to being my grown-up responsible mother-person but it sure was fun revisiting the 17 year old me!

Hey, if you happen to be one of my friends from way back you can read more about the reunion on Circe's blog and here and here.

Throwback Thursday Returns!

Don't you think this little guy Looks like this little guy?
It is my Uncle Bobby. While we were in Utah this summer my mom was telling me how she and my aunt had decided that they thought my Joshua looks like their older brother Bob. So that got me looking at old photos.
Here is Uncle Bob while he was in the service in the sixties. Isn't he handsome?
My mom's family, including my Uncle Bob and his family lived in Minnesota so lots of summers were spent driving to Minnesota to visit. This is my Uncle Bobby at the bottom of the pile of cousins. I am the one in the back with the blond mane.
This is Uncle Bob not too long before he lost the battle he waged off and on for years with leukemia, lung cancer and finally skin cancer. I am not sure why but the men on this side of my family don't smile for pictures. Ever. These are his handsome sons. So I guess the comparison between Joshua and My Uncle Bobby got me to thinking about Uncle Bob. He died about 6 years ago, I can't believe it. He was such a great influence in my life even though he lived so far away. He was fun, and smart and such a loving uncle. See that shirt he is wearing? It is from the 2002 Winter Olympics he and my Aunt Diane came out to visit us for. I am so glad they came, really a good memory. So I guess what I ended up thinking was that if the comparison between Joshua and my Uncle Bob should turn out to be more than skin deep, well that would be really okay with me!

Throw-back Thursday!

I am sooooo sad today. It is the last day of school. I know, it should be a day of great celebration. It always has been, but not today. I don't know if it is because my little family has survived so much change this year that both my kids finishing such a great school year feel like a wonderful accoplisment or the fact that my kids are growing up so fast I have to mourn the lose of one more year of having "little kids".




Here they are this morning in the parking lot on the last day of school. That Matthew always closes his eyes!




The end of the year business has got me all nostalgic so for Throw-back Thursday I have been thinking of my own public school career. Here is how it started. My Kindergarten class in 1976. I am on the front row on the right hand side on the end. Miss Loveboxes herself is right behind me in the green dress and The Motherboard is on the other end of the front row. See when I say they are childhood friends I really mean it!




Here is how it ended. Sorry about the photo quality, it was a shinLook at all that big hair! So funny, this group of some of my closest friends drove to the school together and of course we had to primp in the bathroom before the ceremony started. All of a sudden we realized we would have to split up to line up for the proceessional and then turn in our gowns right after the ceremony. So this was our only chance to take pictures in our gowns together. Thus we have the graduates standing together in the bathroom picture!

I am sooooo grateful today for wonderful teachers. The ones who have blessed my children's lives this year with their kindness and patience. They have given them wonderful gifts this year, gifts of knowledge, self esteem, friendship and stability. There is no way I could ever thank them enough. Then there are the teachers who have shaped me. I am so grateful to them, again there is no way to thank them enough.

So now we need to break out the otter pops and swim suits and start the business of summer fun. The mother will try and stop her blubbeing now!

Throwback Thursday!

Well, this is going to be a birthday edition of Throwback Thursday. My sister's birthday was last week and my Dad's is tomorrow. I missed my sister's so I am going to combine the two here and it gets kind of long so bear with me!

My dad is the cutest dad ever!

How many dads do you know that would let their baby sleep on his head! I love this picture.

Here is a similar one with Dad me and my little sister Tiffany.

I have always adored my little sister. It has been so fun being her big sister and I take that title very seriously, whether she wanted me too or not! I still love her this much!

My Mom always made us the cutest matching dresses growing up. There were matching purses to go along with the gloves too. I always loved dressing in matching outfits. I don't even remember why we stopped. It wasn't at my suggestion I am sure, we would probably still be doing it today if she would let me!

I think this is my all-time favorite family portrait. Beats everything we have had since! Aren't we just the cutest family ever?! I think it is my dad's too. I understand that now I am a parent. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just freeze snatches of our lives and hope back in. I think this would be one of those for our little family. I think we would all hop back in this picture for a day or two. My parents created such a fun, safe, loving place for my sister and I to grow up and we had a great time doing it together!

See the dolls we are got this Christmas morning? Well there would be looooots of time spent playing with them and the dishes. I had lots of friends growing up but they were sort of an extra the way I saw it. I played pretty much every single day, especially in the summer with my built in best friend Tiffany. The poor little thing was always game for whatever imaginary thing I cooked up, and really she was very good at imagining too!

Because this is a birthday post it only seems right to put a birthday cake in here. It just happens to be mine but I will share it with my sister today. I am entering the ugly stage in this one but my sister is still super cute!

Here we are with my dad on a long awaited trip to Disneyland(mom is taking the picture not that weird woman walking behind my dad). See how happy my dad looks there in the middle of girls? He always seemed that way. Always swore he was happy to have to girls and be the only man in the house. Some men might have wished to have the odds evened out a bit but not my dad. He always made it seem he was so lucky to have two girls.

I am so grateful for the family that I come from. I would not be able to raise the family I have now without them. My mom and dad both taught me how to raise children. My dad showed me the kind of man I should look for to marry. My sister helped me discover how much fun growing up can be, something I try to remember with my kids. Happy Birthday Dad and Tiff!

Throw-back Thursday, Me and Barbie

This is the little family that started it all for me! I adored Barbies! From the time this picture was taken, probably around five, until I was an embarrassingly old teenager.

Actually I guess it never really ended, William gave me a bride Barbie for Christmas the first year we were married. I would have paid good money to see him wandering down that pink Barbie aisle too!

Anyway, the Sunshine Family started it all for me. I remember them so clearly too. The Dad and the baby had such curly hair. And the mom was shaped more like a preteen than the mother of a child. I loved them! I have been thinking about my Barbies a lot as I have been working on miniatures. That became a huge part of the appeal for me. I had a cousin who taught me how to cut out the tiny little images of product that were in the paper on adds and coupons, then make little boxes and glue them to the front. Presto, Barbie could have a full pantry! Believe it or not most of them have survived and are still in residence at my mom's house. When we go to visit this summer I am taking pictures! So does Brittany love Barbies as much as her mother? Not really, but it is okay, I think I got it all out of my system when I was a kid!

Throw-back Thursday!

I am a very sentimental soul! I am the person in our family who always wanted all my grandmothers' old stuff. So when my childhood friend The Motherboard started Throw-back Thursday on her blog I thought it was great and that I would steal her idea. So welcome to my first Throw-back Thursday! As I was looking through my old pictures I was thinking about the wonderful friends I have had through the years. I have been really lucky, so many of the friends I made in elementary school are my dear friends still. The wacky thing about that is no kid thinks to herself, "I had better choose good friends because I could have them for life". How silly, but for me it is true.



This is me with my friend Kim and The Motherboard on the steps on our first day of kindergarten. Do you see my little hands? See how they are reaching out to grab my little friends hands? I think that is the story of my friendship right there. Once Michelle gets her hands on you she does not let go!





There will probably be lots of birthday pictures on Throw-back Thursday. It seems to be one time my mom could be counted on to pull out the camera. My birthday is at the end of October so the Wear-your-costume theme is a recurring one. Our very own adorable Tif from Loveboxes is there in the front row. Isn't she the cutest little ballerina? I am wearing the kimono my Uncle Ron brought back from Japan for me. My sister is the little one in yellow, not sure what she is supposed to be. Oh yeah, that costume had bunny ears but I guess she didn't like them! I am still good friends with four of the girls, plus my sister of course, in this picture?

Then we all grew up, well we thought we were anyway. There are four of these same girls from the kindergarten picture and the birthday picture that are in this one. (Motherboard on the far right with her arm on my shoulder, and Tif on the far left in her signature hot pink!) Lots of big hair in this one! We are all at a youth conference at BYU. My friend Circe is mysteriously missing from these. She has a hysterical blog you should visit. But where is her picture growing up? I don't know, she was there! I swear we have been friends since we shared potato chips in 3rd grade! I was tempted to post a picture of a bunch of these girls last summer at the going away party they had for me but I was afraid I might finally jeopardize that friendship if I did it without permission! But when I see them this summer I will get one and warn them I am posting it!

Blogging has saved me during our move last year. It has made it possible to keep these friends, reconnect with some I had lost touch with and talk to them almost daily if I want. I have a couple of my close friends who have them now and I just am so grateful. Then there are the new blog-land friends I have made that have just been so much fun. So I guess the point of this silly Throw-back Thursday post is that I am so grateful for the friends who have gotten me to this point and the ones I keep making. And if you and I are friends, sorry you are stuck with me now!