The Best in Music!!

This evening Kodi came downstairs to have Stephen and I watch and listen to some YouTube music videos by The Piano Guys.  Talk about fun and fantastic music that speaks to the soul!!  I LOVED it!!  Had to go on iTunes to buy some of the piano pieces.  And of course the more I heard the more I wanted.

In listening to Jon Schmidt play I got to thinking about my cousin Ryan Reilley.  Jon and Ryan kind of compose and play the same kind of music.  In fact, Jon's "All of Me" reminded me very strongly of Ryan's music.  Ryan's music is soooooo beautiful.  Some of his pieces just speak to my heart and it makes me cry as I listen to them.  I need to find out how to get in touch with him so I can purchase more of his CDs.  He has a beautiful gift where music is concerned.

I started putting Christmas things away today.  Makes me sad that the holidays are over.  I also finished reading "The Christmas List" by Richard Paul Evans today.  I started it about midnight last night and read until 4:30 this morning.  Couldn't put it down.  After sleeping for a while and then doing my chores I read until I finished the book about 10 PM.  A whole book in less than 24 hours!  Wow!!  It's a super good story for those of you who love to read!  I'm now going to read his book "The Last Promise".  We'll see if it keeps me up all night!

We made sweet rolls on Saturday.  Kodi mixed them up, I rolled them out and Stephen baked them.  That's what you call a family effort.  They turned out really good, too!  The recipe is one of my Grandpa's recipes.  He was a chef who really knew his stuff!  Everyone loved his sweet rolls.  When he and Grandma would come to visit us out in California, they always spent a day making lots of them for us.  I remember coming home from school and watching them make them.  Grandma carried on the tradition after Grandpa died.  And she always made a whole bunch of them at Christmas time to give to all of us.  I always looked forward to getting our share for my little family.  My family wishes that I would make it a for sure Christmas tradition in our home.  It's kind of hit and miss for us.  I really should be more diligent about making them.  Traditions are so important.  And making sweet rolls is a huge job.  About 6 hours worth of work from start to finish.  

Well, that's about it for now.  Take a minute to enjoy a simple pleasure today.  There are so many of them out there for us to enjoy if we will just look for them!  See Ya!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Happy New Year, Everyone!

We had a quiet New Year just Stephen, Kodi and I.  Watched TV and movies.  Had a nice dinner.  Just took things slow and easy.  There were a lot of fireworks going off in our neighborhood.  A couple families were setting some off by our retention area and I stepped out to watch them for a minute.  Looked like fun.

Kodi is sick.  Our first illness for this season.  Cold and flu like symptoms.  I'm hoping Stephen and I don't get it from her.  But we shall see.

Our Frankie would have been 9 years old yesterday.  My heart still aches that we had to put him to sleep.

And Teddi Bear has been so barky today!  A lot of noises going on outside and next door and she has responded loudly to them!

We had a lovely Christmas.  We went to I Hop for Christmas Eve breakfast and had pancakes.  YUM!!  Christmas Eve was especially fun with Stephen R. and Karma and the kids here.  We had a nice ham dinner and lots of goodies to snack on.  Watched a movie, played the gift exchange game, played Puerto Rico, and then we headed over to see the lights in the Temple Garden and we also saw the Nativity display.  

Stephen made this really neat whistle out of metal that was the hit of the gift exchange game.  Both Michael and Stevie wanted it bad.  So Grandpa has to make another one so they both have one.

Christmas Day was quiet.  We went to church that morning.  The Ward choir did the program and it was very nice.  Lots of good music.  Then we can home and opened gifts and had dinner.  Watched TV.

Stephen had the whole week off from work and I so loved having him home.  We just had a very lazy week doing whatever we felt like doing.  

Shane and Sherri and their kids came on Sunday.  We went out to Queen Creek to Stephen R. and Karma's for visiting, dinner and games.  And then Tuesday night Kaleb was ordained to be a Priest and we went to that.  I can't believe how TALL he has grown!!  And that was all we got to see them.  But we are grateful for even that little bit of time with them.  Shane went home Saturday and Sherri and the kids drive home this week.  

I so miss having my children and their families here near us.  The grandchildren are growing up without us.  And we have three or four who don't really know us at all.  One that we have never met in person yet.  It's hard and sometimes my heart just aches because I miss all of them so.

I have three little green sprouts coming up in my flower pot where I had my violets.  The third leaf on each one is coming out at the moment.  I'm anxiously waiting to see if they are violets and am hoping they are not just a friendly little weed or something like that.  I have been so afraid that the violets were done in.  So we shall see in a few more days what is happening here.  I hope I haven't lost them.  These are the violets I brought from our house on 7th Avenue.  When Mom and Dad moved in with us over there, Dad dug a bunch of them up from their home and planted them at ours for Mom.  And I dug some up to bring here when we moved to our condo in 1997.

Dad planted some of the violets just outside my laundry room window over on 7th Avenue.  Some days I would go in there to do laundry and I could smell the scent of them so strong.  It would come up through the dryer vent into the room.  I loved that.

Well, gotta go change the laundry loads.  And fix dinner.  Take care!  Say "Hi" if you come by to visit here.  Would love to know if anyone is reading my posts.  Thanks!  : )

I'm Back!!

Well, here I am again!  Just a quickie note though.  I finished our puzzle up last night.  I'm so glad to have it done!  Now Stephen and Kodi want to leave it on the table a few more days just to look at it and admire our hard work.  It was a VERY hard puzzle.  I call it a nightmare puzzle.  Everything was so swirly and the colors were all so mixed up in it.  Very difficult to put together.   Here it is:

Close up so you can see the detail of the swirling colors, but the flash kind of messed up that one part.  Click on the photo so you can see it even bigger.

Further away so you can see the overall picture better.

And here is our beautiful Christmas tree!  I love how it turned out this year.  There is no gold on it.  The ornaments are blue and silver and the lights are blue and clear twinkle lights.  But I love the golden glow this photo caught.

Close up of the ornaments.

We got a little bit of rain this evening.  We didn't even know it was raining!  But it did.  Just enough to get things wet and let us know it had happened.

Take care, Everyone!!

Cold, Rainy Sunday!

Hi, Everybody!  It's a cold, rainy Sunday here in my neighborhood!  And I'm loving every minute of it!!  The sky is all gloomy and the wind comes and goes.  A perfect wintery day!  Except for no snow.  I do so wish it would snow here.  We NEED SNOW!!  And icicles hanging from all the eaves of the houses.  A pond to go ice skating on.  Sleigh rides.  Christmas caroling.  And fires in fireplaces.  And hot chocolate.  And Christmas music playing while we read good books...... You know....one of those perfect picture postcard Christmases!!  The kind that are ONLY on postcards, in stories, in movies and on greeting cards.  I've heard those kinds of Christmases aren't real life though.  But I think if a person tried, it could be very real!  And I'd like to have one of them.  

Well, Christmas is only a few more days away.  I'm already feeling a little sad that it's almost over again.  At least it didn't rush by and leave me in the dust this year!!  We baked up a big batch of chocolate chip cookies yesterday.  I still need to make sweet rolls and fudge.  I'll make more banana bread, too.  And I have three more presents to wrap and a stocking to stuff and then that's all done.  Then it will just be Christmas Eve dinner to make on Saturday and the traditions that go along with that.  We are having Christmas Eve at our house this year.

One of our traditions is to put a puzzle together as a family during the month of December.  One of those 1,000 piece kind.  This year Kodi picked the puzzle out - a fairy blowing bubbles and several of the bubbles have scenes in them.  Her wings are multicolored/patterned and very different.  It's one of the hardest puzzles I've ever done!  We have a big board we put the puzzle together on because the only place we have to do it is on the dining room table.  Having it on a board allows us to easily move it when we need the table.  Anyway, we started it right after Thanksgiving and we are still painstakingly working on it!!  But we are slowly getting there.  

Kodi got straight A's for her final grades this semester!  Yay, Kodi!!!  Not an easy thing when one of those classes is Latin.  Her other class was beginner graphics.  We are proud of her.

And that's about it for this time.  I hope all my readers have a wonderful Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!  In case I don't get to write again before then.  

And that brings up another thing...Do I have any readers here?????  If I do, will you please stop in at the comments right below here and say a quick hi?  I'm just curious as to whether I'm sharing things with anyone out there or if I'm just talking to myself!  It would be pretty sad if I'm just talking to myself.  Thanks!

  

Okay.  Writing two days in a row here!!  Shock-ed and amaze-ed!!  But what can I say?  I downloaded all the photos from my camera this evening and had to share these of our Teddi Bear going for a ride down to MCC with Kodi and I the other morning.  She LOVES going for rides with us!  And she especially loves having the windows down just enough to get some good air going on her little face.  She goes from one side of the car to the other looking out the windows and pit stops between the front seats to look out the windshield.  It's so fun.  In these photos we have that back window down just three or four inches.  And she is loving it.

Notice the fur plastered back on her face!  So funny and sooooo cute!!

And.....we went to see the lights at the Temple this evening.  They are always soooo beautiful!  This year they have put the stage out in front of the Visitor's Center and have chairs set up on the front lawn for the evening performances.  I really like that!  They should have done that years ago.  Now the main pool area is free for just walking around and enjoying the main part of the gardens.  It's so much nicer this way.  Anyway, here are some of the pictures I took with my little camera.  Hope you enjoy them.  This first one is of the main pool area in the garden.

I loved how all the palm trees looked against the dark sky tonight.  

I didn't realize there were autumn colored leaves on this plant until my camera flash lit it up.

Soooooo pretty!!

This area was just glowing with green, purple, blue and a few whitish colored lights.  The color combination was so pretty.  The flash from the camera kind of took the glow away.  But I still love the colors here.

And yes, those are oranges on that tree!  

The Wise Men and their camels on the front lawn of the Temple Grounds.

The star above the Nativity Scene on the east side of the garden area.  White lights this year and so pretty.

And that's it for tonight!  Everyone take care.

Wow!  I can't believe it has been over a year since I last wrote.  Now here it is Christmas 2011!  Didn't we just have Christmas a few weeks ago??????  I think time flies faster when you get older.  Sure seems that way.

I have mixed emotions as we get ready to say goodbye to 2011.  There have been exciting things happening in our family.  But there have also been some pretty tough things, too.  Like saying goodbye to a new little Grandbaby who would have joined our family in time for this Christmas but didn't quite make it.  We love him though, and know that a loving Heavenly Father took him back home because for some reason he just couldn't have survived and been healthy and strong at this time.  And we are looking forward to another new Grandbaby due to arrive around June sometime.  I call that "joy to temper the sorrow".

We also had to make the difficult decision to put our Frankie to sleep in July.  The decision to do so still haunts my heart.  But he had cancer in his leg and we managed his pain until the medications quit helping and then we let him go.  We miss him.     

Among the good things:  Kodi has finished her first semester of college.  She has loved her graphics class and was chosen to be a participant in the 2012 Art Show this coming spring.  It is quite an honor to be able to do this as only a few are chosen from each teacher's classes.  She was one of four chosen by her teacher and will be entering as an emerging artist.  We need to get her art piece professionally printed up and matted but we have until April to do that.  We are excited and very proud of her.  She also LOVED her Latin class and has done very well in it.  She takes her finals for that this next week and then she will be out of school until January.  YAY!!

It has been nice and COLD here the past couple weeks or so.  We've had some rain.  And snow in the north end of the Valley and on the mountains.  More rain is coming next week.  I just hope we really get it.

We are pretty much ready for Christmas.  Kodi and I decorated our tree with blue and silver ornaments and it looks beautiful.  We've never done a blue theme.  We used blue and white twinkle lights and I'm loving it.

And on that happy note I will end this entry.  I hope you all have a wonderful Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

OH, YES!! PLEASE LET THE RAIN COME DOWN!!

Good Evening!! So much to show you tonight!! First.....Stephen found this HUGE Wheaties flake in his Wheaties! It's DOUBLED over. So it's actually twice the size you see here if it were all layed out flat and not doubled. So we had to get a few pics of this gigantic piece of cereal for the record.

And this is a normal size flake next to the huge one! Remember...the big one is doubled over!

And yesterday, the wind started to blow and we found faces in the clouds over our neighborhood! So I just had to take some pics of that.

Then the rain came. But the big story of this storm was the wind. We had a whirlwind in our entry way by our front door just swirling away in that little corner. It went way up to the second story of our building.


And after the rain...the beautiful sunset and the gorgeous clouds.

All of these photos, by the way, were taken with my little bitty camera! Neat, huh?

And then about noon today, the rain came again. And what a whopper of a storm we got!! They said we would only get about .25 to .50 inches of rain around the state. Well, Mesa...by 3 PM had gotten 1.18 inches and it was still coming in waves. I'll be very surprised if we didn't get 2 inches plus before the storm ended.

The beginning of the storm.

And it just kept on coming down!!

After the first wave of the storm ended, this is how our parking lot looked.

It has been an awesome but kind of scary day. We got about three waves of this storm and there were some pretty mean looking clouds out there. Some had rotation in them and there has been a lot of damage done because of the winds. We had a little bit of hail here at our house. I was hoping to take pics of it, but we didn't get enough to take pics of it. Kodi and I went outside during the storm to get our photos and we both got drenched. But it was worth it.

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Hope you are all having a great evening!!