Before there were digital cameras, there was Sears. I remember getting dressed up that day -my sister and I were in coordinating peach dresses and sporting the beautiful turquoise bracelets that my father always made sure we had at least one of.
The boys were in matching bolo ties.
At the time, there were only 5 children. We were all positioned against the studio background and told to smile.
So we did.
The photographer was NOT pleased.
She asked me not to smile too much, so I tried.
“Even less,” she coaxed, so I tried smiling less.
“Even less,” she continued.
What you’re about to see is the results of that. In the first picture I was smiling like my regular self -you can’t see it very well, but my nose is scrunched up. The photographer didn’t like it. She didn’t believe noses SHOULD scrunch, especially not in Sears.
The second picture is me trying my hardest to smile but not scrunch.  You can almost hear a woman’s voice saying, “Even less… even less…”

See my Steve behind me? His smile was fine, I guess.
Lucky jerk.
See my Ju beside me? Wasn’t she just the most adorable little red head you’ve ever seen? I just want to pick her up and smooch her… but she’s too big now. And she’s in Utah.

ANYWAY, I bring this up for one reason only. Check this out:

When first I saw this picture, I noticed my scrunched up nose, and I cheered for the little 8 year old girl who was forced to stifle her scrunch all those years ago in Sears.
We scheduled a photography shoot with my sister-in-law a few months ago. She told us she would be up in this country for a wedding that day, so it would work out perfectly. When it came right down to it, my sister-in-law wasn’t going to be able to do both a wedding and our family pictures, so she sent my brother to take pictures for us.
My brother is awesome at whatever he does. I bet if he took up crocheting, he’d master it. No foolin’.

And thank goodness for digital cameras and professional photographers who don’t tell their clients NOT to smile. I mean, unless serious is what they’re going for:

Which we’re not very good at.
Kissing, though? Kissing is something we are VERY good at.


My brother has a polaroid camera that takes wallet-size polaroids. Isn’t it awesome?!?! I love it! Even better: I got to take two pictures home with me RIGHT away. I think I showed them to just about everyone. I’m working on making a display for them. They’re so great!
We sort of had to rush the polaroid portion of the shoot because the mosquitoes were THICK. It was insane! My brother was bravely snapping pictures while sweat beaded down his forehead and mosquitoes buzzed around his face/lens/legs/everything.
If you look at the girl’s hand in this one, you can see she’s focusing on a mosquito:

Don’t you love her big poofy dress?

We brought two outfits to take pictures in. We tried to coordinate in these:

ALL of these pictures were taken on my grandpa’s land just outside of town. We ventured down to where he keeps his silage. It was empty, obviously.

He uses the tires to hold down the tarp that covers the silage. Something in me wants to end that sentence with “in the house that Jack built” but it’s probably just because I’m crazy.
Mike gave the kids pieces of the corn stalks and told them they were swords. Look how proud the boy is of his sword:

Did I mention that he’s going to be HeMan for Halloween? The Master of the Universe!
I know I don’t say it enough, so I’ll say it.
I LOVE THIS GUY!


I’m so glad he let me have his babies (even though that isn’t exactly what I was saying while I was actually in the process of having them, but still).






Ah, Lacy.

Ahhhh, Trenton. My laid-back boy.

Everything about this picture is great except for my backside. HOWEVER, I’ve yet to meet a woman who looks at a picture of her backside after she’s had two babies and says “I love it!”

We changed into our “regoolar” clothes for a few more pictures. We took this picture by grandpa’s OLD feed truck. I told him we’d used it as a photo prop and he laughed out loud. Then he told me that when my cousin, Sam, was really little he had straight up asked Grandpa if he could have the truck when Grandpa was done with it.
MMmmmmmmmm…

MMMMMMMMMMM…

Awwwwww…

Here we are standing in front of Grandpa’s shed.

Have I ever told you that sunflowers are my very favorite?

My husband presented me with a bouquet on Saturday. They’re perched on my piana, and they really make my day every time I look at them. I think that’s why I was born on August 16th -so I could come down just as the sunflowers were coming out.

I’m sorry. Are you getting sick of pictures? I just can’t seem to get enough of them because Mike did such a good job! I love the colors and lighting and their faces:


And I love that my children are allowed to have bucket-loads of personality without someone telling them they were ruining the picture:

I am 100% happy with how our shoot went and with how our photos turned out! Brittany sent Mike with a few props (like the “Deets” banner), and we were able to use a few that we brought (like the gold frame that I snagged for $3 at a yard sale).
Mike and Brit work as a TEAM and they always do a great job.
I’ve linked up to their site before, but they’re always adding more pictures… especially lately because they have been BOOKED!
Click HERE for their main page.
Click HERE for their blog. Feel free to get lost in all of the pictures (especially the Laguna beach and Wright House pictures)!
Thanks again, Mike and Brit! We couldn’t be happier!
You guys are the best.

I live in Joseph City.

It’s small, and when I say “small” I mean that I was part of one of the biggest graduating classes of Joseph City Junior/Senior High School and I ranked #3 (or 4? Whatever. I didn’t get a cool title to slap on a resume) of 43.
It’s a sort of joke to people who have passed through, and we chuckle along when they say “Joe City? Don’t blink or you’ll miss it!”
Har, har.

The fact is: our town was built on courage, faith, and devotion. The settlers’ devotion to this dusty area knows NO bounds. Our community was one of four settled in this area, and it is the only one to have survived -thrived, even. We’ve built on their foundations of courage, faith, and devotion. Over the years, we’ve added beams of love, loyalty, and support. Our community is bound by strong threads of friendship, and we can pull together in a matter of hours.

We can count on each other, and you can’t really say that about anything anymore -we know the value of hard work, tears, and hard work. We’ve seen each other through struggles the likes of which we wish we hadn’t seen.
Our children have been known to leave us early.
Our senior citizens have been known to forget us, though we fight to never forget them.
Our mothers have been in accidents.
Our fathers have lost their jobs.
There have been miscarriages, births of twins, divorces, marriages, sorrows and celebrations. Through it all, we’ve all been there.

Word travels fast in a small town -even faster now, thanks to facebook and cell phones. It’s almost true that we don’t have to follow the ambulances that fly through town because we know all we have to do is refresh our facebook homepage until we find out WHERE that ambulance was going and WHY and WHO was going to be the recipient of a casserole that very night.

It’s true.

Word about Austin Bushman traveled faster than the speed of lightening.

One of our high school boys was on his way to the hospital because he was having trouble breathing. Before he could even make it out of town, he had a severe asthma attack.
As a child, my mother had told me several times if ever I was walking on the street and had someone follow me or chase me or make me feel uncomfortable, it was okay to run into the nearest house without knocking.
“Just tell them who your mom is,” she would say.

Everybody knows everybody.
That’s why Austin’s mother was able to take him straight to Dev’s house. Dev was one of the first on-scene when I went unexpectedly into labor a month early with my son. I can say with firm certainty that I felt safer with her than I did with the nurses in the hospital. Dev would have caught my child. The nurses begged me to hold that baby in so they wouldn’t have to.
But I knew my son would be safe with Dev.
Jennifer knew her son, Austin, would be safe with Dev.

Using the training she has worked so tirelessly to obtain, Dev saved Austin’s life. They were able to get him to the hospital in the city in a helicopter, and there he remains today. Since then, Austin has had more close calls than any high school boy should ever have. In the meantime, virtually the entire town has been on bended knee.

We know we are not helpless.

Recent town research has brought to light a simple fact: GREY is the color of asthma awareness. Our children have been wearing grey wherever they might be: in school, at college, at home… and it’s got me thinking we ought to make grey t-shirts for everyone that say:
Austin: the boy who brought an entire town to their knees in just one {asthma} attack.
Wouldn’t it look great printed on top of the silhouette of a ninja? A ninja with a cowboy hat on?

Okay, so maybe my ideas aren’t the greatest which is why I have a great husband who DOES have amazing ideas. He texted me a few days ago asking if we might be able to put on a benefit dinner for Austin. I texted some of Austin’s family (see? cell phones!), and we now have it in the works.

A few phone calls later, I had a date and place fixed. AS I WAS TYPING THE INFORMATION about the benefit into my facebook status, my cell phone rang.
It was someone in town calling to offer up a donation for the dinner they’d heard rumor of.
It turns out word still travels faster than the speed of lightening in small towns even WITHOUT the help of facebook. It made me grin from ear to ear.

At this point, I should be posting the copy of a cool-looking flyer, embellished with pictures, dates, times, and all manner of merriment. But you all know how “awesome” I am at cool-looking anything.
So, um, flyer to come.
Just as soon as I find someone with photoshop skills. And photoshop, for that matter.

Austin’s Auction and Benefit Dinner will be held at the firehouse from 4-7 pm on the second Saturday in November -the 12th.
Any help or donations you can contribute will be put to use! Pull out your sewing machines! Your crochet hooks! Your wood working skills! Your gift certificates! Your skills! Your pocketbooks!
I’m going to be stitching up a handmade sock monkey for your auctioning pleasure.
Austin needs our help, and as I said before: We know we are not helpless.

Please spread the word any way you can, whether you know Austin or not. Feel free to link up to this post.

I’m ready for the world to end. I’m tired of natural disasters and addictions and murders and innocent people getting hurt.  I’m ready for everything to burn and I’m ready to be done with it all, rising gas, home, and food prices included.

“On the other hand…”

I want time to stop right where it is.  Right now.

Wouldn’t you?

I’m no artist. I live with a budding one, and she’s constantly leaving papers and art supplies strewn all over that house, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
The point is: I can’t paint pictures with paint which is why I’m going to attempt to paint one with words.

I spent all of last week praising my new routine like it was the best thing since Club Crackers (you all know they’re the best). Having my cleaning day on Monday rather than Saturday has revolutionized my life. The house stays clean(ish) for the rest of the week, and it makes everything flow much mo’ bettah. I worked hard everyday to pick up and straighten up so that my Monday work wouldn’t be for naught. The bigger things: like the gunk on the lid of the trash can and the facial hair mounting in the bathroom sink, I pushed aside knowing I’d get to them on Monday.
Remember my post yesterday about how crazy the weekend was?
It was.
CRAZY.
I didn’t get a chance to clean at all Saturday night or Sunday morning.
Hear that? That means I actually DID clean on Saturday morning. To be precise, I reorganized my pantry and a few other shelves in the laundry room.
I hopped all weekend.
And on Sunday, I hopped in high heels. Apparently, I got up at 6 am on Sunday and shut my alarm off. I don’t remember doing it. All I remember is going to bed with my alarm ON and waking up at 7:22 am. This only gave me one hour to get me and the family out the door dressed, pressed, and ready for church. It ended up taking an hour and a half. We were THIRTY minutes late to church.
I should have liked to have died.
But because we were attending an extra hour of church later in the day (to listen to Ju talk, sniffle) I didn’t worry too much about it. During Primary, I was hopping from one end of the church to the other. After Primary, I hopped into my car and drove home to slice tomatoes for 100 people as fast as I could. Then I drove back to the church and listened to my sister speak.
Then I helped serve hamburgers and hot dogs to 100 people. Then I drove to the church and bawled like a baby while my sister was set apart as a missionary. I came home that night and crashed. I absolutely crashed.
Monday morning, I knew I needed to clean the house. I had my family coming over for dinner (a Greek dish Ju and I had our eyes on), and I needed to clean up before I could even THINK of cooking.

The outlook was disheartening. There were papers, crayons, markers, and TORN bits of paper just… everywhere. There were dried out markers on the table… sticker books and stickers lying out… shoes… an empty bag of tortilla chips… dishes… I half-heartedly rolled up my sleeves and went to work.
I put crayons away.
I turned around.
The crayons were back out.

Somewhere between the mounting stack of dishes and the shoes all over the floor, I started to believe that my family’s ability to PUT THINGS AWAY and their LOVE FOR ME were directly related.
Now, I say that in all seriousness, so please laugh. It’s ridiculous, but what mother hasn’t felt that way?
My mood darkened, and then -in the midst of my hormones, dark cloud, and heavy loaded shoulders… I smelled poop.
I called my son to me and sat down on the floor to change him.
We had our futon laid down and a blanket covering it so that my brother-in-law (who I LOVE!) could sleep on it the night before.
I sat just in front of the futon, pinning down the blanket covering it. I pulled my son’s socks off. I pulled my son’s PJ pants off. I looked at the clock to see exactly how many hours I had left until 12 people were coming through my door to eat dinner.
And then I looked to the right.
And I saw poop.
On my floor.
Just… sitting there.

“Who pooped on the floor?!” I called out, hardly excited that even had to SAY those words.
“Oh, Trent!” My daughter chimed in, cheerily, “I think it dropped out.”
Dropped out? I looked back at my son and saw STRONG evidence that poop had, indeed, fallen from his diaper to my floor.
I tried cleaning it up.
It only resulted in me getting covered and him getting covered and the blanket getting even more covered… and so I sent him directly to the tub.
Do not pass Go.

I peeled off my awesome sweats and t-shirt cleaning outfit, threw them in the washer, threw my son’s clothes in the washer… stressed about how I didn’t really have TIME for this because I still had to run to the store and WHERE was I going to get the MONEY to run to the store…
I grabbed a corner of the soiled blanket and jerked it off the futon. When I did, a pile of laundry I couldn’t see (yeah, it was THAT cluttered) fell onto the futon as well.
A clean pile of laundry.
That needed folded.
That needed ME to fold it.

And I lost it.
I LOST IT.

I stood over my sink full of dirty dishes and I scrubbed and cried, scrubbed and cried. I realize this is silly -I even realized it at the time. I realize other people would give anything to have a dirty house be their Everest rather than, oh, say… cancer…
But yesterday I was emotional with the thought of my sister leaving, the dinner that had to fixed, the shopping that had to be done, and here in my own house that I’d spent the ENTIRE week cleaning… I couldn’t make even an inch of progress.
I was defeated.
And I was bawling.

A few hours before, I had updated my facebook status to “I need hired help today, no lie.”
We ALL need hired help, so I didn’t think anything of it.
But as I stood over my sudsy sink in my second pair of awesome sweats and a t-shirt, scrubbing and trying to will away the scent of poop while wiping my snotty, bawling face… there was a knock at the door.
I was past the point of keeping up appearances, and when I opened the door to see my neighbor from down the road standing there saying, “I have an hour, what do you need done?”
I wrapped my arms around her and I bawled.
In general, I don’t like to admit defeat. I don’t like others cleaning my house, and I don’t like the fact that I NEED help.
But yesterday, I welcomed her with open arms and was so grateful for the help that I didn’t even hardly notice she was seeing my at my absolute worst.
Together we had the house very nearly spotless in just one short hour. Then she took my kids for an hour and I was able to completely clean both bathrooms, dust the house, rehang my clock that my husband promised to hang a week ago, and put finishing touches on everything.
The kids came back through the door, and I thanked my neighbor profusely again.
Then I started cooking.
Then I went shopping.
Then I put together a meal and we all enjoyed our last dinner with Julianne.

I couldn’t have done it without Vicky. I absolutely could not have.

All I could think about while she was vacuuming my house and I was shoving my husband’s tools in the closet was:
You find out who your friends are.
Somebody’s gonna drop everything
Run out and crank up their car
Hit the gas, get there fast
Never stop to think ‘what’s in it for me?’ or ‘it’s way too far’
They just show on up with their big old heart
You find out who your friends are.

How did she see the line of truth in a silly facebook status that most everyone brushed aside and thought “who doesn’t?”
People like her make me want to pay it forward.
And now it’s time to clean up and say goodbye to my little sister. Remind me again how short 18 months are?

Okay.

I just spent a ridiculous amount of money at the store today. I’ve had to cut out a few household staples lately, and I fully hoped to temporarily reinstate them today. BUT… no such luck.
This means I came home without mopping solution (I’ve been using vinegar and water, and though it works, my husband pretty much hates the smell).
It also means I came home without cold cereal (we always have a TON of oatmeal on hand, and it works as a healthy [albeit bland and mascot-less] substitution).

Since I’ve instituted my new routine, I’m running out of cleaning supplies left and right. I’m also realizing how much cleaning I wasn’t doing. Still, as I wandered the store aisles, I had to put back the cleaning supplies I had stuffed in my cart.
Really: at the end of the day, I had $30 left to spend and one last stop to make. On that last stop, I had OVER $100 worth of stuff in my cart… MOST of which I needed! I put back what I didn’t absolutely need -and most of what I put back was cleaning supplies.
I sorta winced, but I knew it would all be okay because I have a pinterest account, and this week I discovered something that has given me more joy than Mr. Clean and his radiance ever could.

I won’t wax rhapsodic about vinegar, as I have done in the past. I will rhapsodic about peroxide and baking soda.
Thanks to pinterest, I was guided to a blog that hailed peroxide and baking soda much in the same manner I did vinegar. No, really. She even made references to the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding AND used the same picture I did.
So we’re pretty much twinsies.
You can read her post HERE, and I highly recommend that you do.

When I went shopping today, a HONKING bag of baking soda was almost at the top of my list. At the tip-tip-top (where the Grinch took his bag to dump it) was peroxide.
Mira:

We got home around 10 pm. I put some of the groceries away (the delicate ones that need my now mold-free fridge) (you know you liked that visual. you’re welcome), and then I took my soda and peroxide and made a paste.
It is literally the same consistency as the paste you swear you didn’t eat in Kindergarten.
Using my fingers, I applied the paste to my muffin tin.

Side note (and please stay with me): have you ever met my sewing machine? My husband gave it to me a few years ago for mother’s day. I am a hands-on learner, and that poor machine has taken the beating of a lifetime. It’s slowly giving out, one function at a time. If I were a SMART person, I would watch the DVD and carefully learn how to sew. Given that I’m not smart… I just started hacking away at whatever fabric I could get my hands on.
I jammed that machine so many times.
So very many.
Just thinking about it makes my blood pressure eek up a bit.

Anyway, my poor kitchen pans have been treated thus. I have learned how to cook on them, yes I have. They’re been adorably fastidious about the whole thing -the dears.
Seven years later, despite their fastidiousness, they look a’fright.
A.
Fright.

Most all of my pans are wedding gifts.
I have tried EVERYTHING to get these pans clean. I finally chalked their fate up to doom and chastised them for being so vain about it.
And then.
AND THEN.
I made a pinterest account and read a blog post that made me stand over my sink at 10 pm and scrub paste onto a filthy pan and scrub and scrub and scrub and cackle with joy despite the fact that I’d spent the entire day wrangling children who shout “JESUS!” in the middle of Sam’s Club when I ask them where they got their big muscles AND spending so much money that it made me a little sick.
Serious joy.

Note: It was 10 pm.  This job was pretty half-arsed, and the results are amazing.  Never have I obtained such satisfactory results with half-arsery.

As of now: I’m instating monthly beauty treatments for my pans. Vanity, Ho!
(Also: this mixture has really done a number on all sorts of crud of my kitchen counters. And my husband was SO impressed with the muffin tin when I was done with it that he actually went SO FAR AS TO SAY that it looked 2 years old rather than 7. You should have seen that pan blush.)