A simple life?

I have really been feeling the need for a more simple life. I am not a big city girl, but I have also never really had the desire to live out in the woods, either. Lately, though, I can really see myself out on a big piece of land (or at least not 5 feet away from our neighbors) where my children can get out and play in the yard. Here we have a lake just a house away, with alligators, of course, so I never let the kids just go out and play without me.

I envy the women who have nothing more to do than play with their kids and clean their house. (I guess I am assuming that those women are out there - maybe I am wrong). I feel like I am always running....from home.. to the office.. to the store to buy supplies for the office.....I can't ever catch up. I am sure that the "craziness" of my life is my fault. I am task oriented and rarely do I count laying around the house with the kids as a task.

I am just tired of all the extra stuff.....tv....house clutter.....cell phones.....email.....shopping...and even the computer....

Am I making any sense? Maybe in my mind the solution to getting rid of all these "extras" is to live on a farm with my own chickens and a garden so I don't have to "go and do" anything, but then I would probably feel like my list of things to do at the farm was never done either.

This really sounds like I am not grateful for my life. I am soooo grateful for my life. I would probably go crazy without all of the "comforts" that I enjoy. I know I am so blessed with a great husband, good kids, the gospel, a beautiful home, a beautiful place to live, reliable cars to drive (and the money to buy the gas), health, and even an amazing business. I don't know how I could be more blessed than I already am.......I just wish I could simplify things a little. Does that make any sense?

Well, thanks for listening to me ramble. I think I will ignore my "lists" today and see if I can't simplify my life - if even for a day.

I had to do this...I hope you all share a memory!!! Pretty please???

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you.

It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll leave my memory of you in my comments.

Happy Remembering!

Lexy's last day of Kindergarten

Here are a couple of pictures from Lexy's last day of class. The first one is with her teacher, Mrs. Nesbit and the next one is with one of her best friends, Madeline.

Mom's Surprise 60th Birthday Party

May 31st - As I had previously noted in my blog we threw a surprise 60th birthday party for my mom. Her actual birthday was the 14th of May, but we wanted to wait until Julia was home from her mission. It was the perfect time because we also had Jonathan and Val here and some friends from Colorado (the Whitesides) that are partially responsible for my parents being members of the church. The best part of the surprise was that we had flown in one of my mom's best friends named Gail. It had been over 10 years since they had seen each other.

We had the party at our clubhouse. The plan was that we were all (our family and and the Whitesides) going to meet at my house so that we could go watch a movie. My dad called my cell phone just as my parents were leaving the house so that I would know that we had 20 minutes before they arrive. About 15 minutes later I called them and asked them if they could stop by the clubhouse to "pick up some papers for me from the association". This was the decoy to get mom into the clubhouse. Dad told her it was a box and it might be heavy so he should go in with her. When she came into the room we were all waiting and yelled "Surprise"

She was confused at first and then realized that this was all for her. She went around and hugged everyone in the room.

You can see in the first picture that we had a slide show ready to go. At this point her best friend Gail was hiding behind the door in the kitchen. We didn't want to make her stand there all day so we tried to have my mom sit down to watch the video as quickly as we could. The video was of pictures throughout her life. At the end we had pictures of friends including some of Gail from the 70's. One of the last slides contained a current picture of Gail waving with the caption, "I had really wanted to come for your surprise party............" - the next slide said, "so I did, turn around!" During the slide show we snuck Gail in so that she was standing behind mom. When my mom read the last slide she turned around and screamed "No, no way!" There wasn't a dry eye (at least from the women) in the room. It was awesome!

It is hard to see in this picture but Gail is standing on the left and my mom is bent over on the right.

Gail and my mom hugging.

We really had a great time. I have to thank all the people who kept this quiet so that it could actually be a surprise. Thanks everyone!

Welcome Home #2

Here are a couple of pictures from the "welcome home" in the Ft. Myers airport. We had actually talked to a few families on Tuesday and told them that we were going down to get her in Miami, but the Browne's and Patty Johnson still showed up to greet Julia.

Julia's Home from Argentina!

May 2008 - Julia was set to arrive in the Ft. Myers airport at 11 am on Wednesday, May 28th. We were so excited to have her home. We had told everyone in the ward so that they could be at the airport to greet her if the wanted to. On the Monday before, my parents got a call from Julia. She said that she was going to be arriving in the Miami airport at 5am and wanted to know if we could pick her up there so that she didn't have to wait 5 hours before flying to Ft. Myers. They called me and we all talked about it. We decided that we had no way of knowing who in the ward was planning on coming to the airport in Ft. Myers to greet her so we should just keep things the way they were. Aaron had patients scheduled in the morning so he couldn't go to Miami and my mom was scheduled to work in the morning also. So we hung up with Julia being really disappointed.

As soon as we got off the phone and I started thinking about it, I realized that we had made a huge mistake. She is our family and we hadn't seen her for a year and a half - how could we not go get her? All day on Tuesday we worked out plans to go down and get her in Miami. We weren't sure how we were going to find her since they don't let you enter the gates without a ticket, but were determined to make it happen. At 3 am my mom, dad, Jonathan, Val, Lexy and I headed down to Miami. We got there right at 5:oo to discover that her plane had been delayed an hour. We went into the building that said "Customs" and hoped that somehow we could find her. When we started asking around we realized that she would have to go through customs before she could go to her connecting flight. So we sat and waited and waited and waited until finally we saw her. She was too busy trying to figure out which way she was suppose to go so we just stood behind the big glass wall waving and smiling until she looked at us.

It was great to be there to surprise her. On our way home we stopped and had breakfast at Denny's and made it back about an hour before we had to go to the Ft. Myers airport for her second "Welcome Home".

"Lost" Tooth - Literally

May 26th - Today the girls (Lexy, myself, my mom and Aunt Val) and Nathan went to the water park that is in Naples. It was a really nice day. The boys had all gone fishing so we decided to go have some fun of our own. Nathan was really cold and didn't enjoy himself that much. Lexy had a blast until a little mishap. She and aunt Val had gone down the big slides a couple of times and then had decided to go down the lazy river (or crazy river as Lexy calls it). Some how at one point Lexy hit her face against the inner tube and knocked her front tooth out. When they came back over to us she was crying because her tooth was at the bottom of the "crazy" river. She was afraid that since she had really lost her tooth that the tooth fairy would not come. We assured her that the tooth fairy knows and we could even leave her a note explaining what happened. She decided that would be okay.

Later when we got home and had baths and showers I was in my bathroom drying my hair when Nathan walked in saying, "I found Lessy's (Lexy's) tooth". I thought that may he found something small and white that he had mistaken for her tooth. When he put it in my hand though, I discovered that he was telling the truth. I couldn't believe that he had the tooth that we thought was at the bottom of the lazy river. The only explanation is that it went down Lexy's bathing suit and traveled home with us. Thank goodness for little toddlers who notice everything on the floor! This will be a memorable story for a long time.

May 17th 2008- Today was Lexy's ballet recital. All of the girls looked so beautiful. Gran (my dad's mother) came with us to watch the show. We really enjoyed it. Afterwards Lexy, Gran and I went out for a special dinner .

A few cute lines

I have a lot more to post before I am caught up, but Nathan said a couple of things that were so adorable, I just had to post them.

The other night as we were getting ready to have dinner Nathan said, "I want a juice box". I replied with, "I'm not sure that we have any, but I will check." Then he said, "Heavenly Father said I can have a juice box". Well, who can argue with that?

Then Monday morning I wake up to Nathan standing next to our bed. He says mommy I have to go pee pee. (He just recently decided that he wanted to be potty trained and did it in a day, by the way). I didn't want to push my luck by making him wait so I got up (still not really awake) and took him to the bathroom. As I got up my head started pounding so when he said that he was hungry I told him that I was going to have to lay down for a little longer because I had a "head-ache". I invited him to get his blanky and come lay down with me, so he did. Within minutes Lexy was standing by the bed. Nathan started talking to her about random things and then he said, "Mommy......mommy has........mommy has a 'egg-head' ". I started laughing so hard! He was trying to say head-egg(ache), but got it switched around. He has become very sensitive lately and when we all started laughing he burst into tears. I felt so bad I immediately scooped him up and tried to explain that we were only laughing becuase what he said was really cute. It took him a while, but he finally calmed down. I just love the stage that he is in now. It is so fun!