All Together Again

 Can you tell it's been a bit of a whirlwind since Ellie got home in June?   I keep trying to get back into a good routine with blogging, but now the new school year has begun and our heads are spinning again!  Before I just throw in the towel on the neglected summer happenings, though,  I'm committed to do a little catch-up  before diving into the new life happenings.  After all, the main purpose of this blog is to capture the family memories.  

We had a very brief  window shortly after Ellie got home from her mission that all of our kiddos were able to gather here in Utah.   It wasn't long, but  it was magical.   

We went to the temple together...only missing Spence and the littles.  💕

We also got professional family photos taken (in the studio because the air quality was very poor at the time and we had a very short window everyone was in town).

In my happy place....

The professional photographer actually canceled our originally scheduled shoot for a ton of smoke in the air, after which we panicked that we wouldn't be able to find time to reschedule her in the brief window we were all together, so we had Heather do a quick photo shoot of us at a park near our home.  I actually really love both shoots for different reasons.... 

The girls (including Tia--Adam's girlfriend 💗)...

   

The boys...

Another shot with the kiddos...

A shot with Adam and Tia, whom we really like...

During this time, I also had all my sisters in town.  AnnaLisa lives in Virginia and Kristina lives in California, so it's not super often we all get to be together!   I loved having them all here, along with all of our kiddos, but it meant life was on turbocharge crazy for a while! 

We are really really happy to have our sweet girl back home again...

And I'm already looking forward to the next time we can all be together again.  

Stay tuned for more summer adventures coming soon (hopefully).

The Conference Weekend and Easter Stretch

 Anyone who knows me in person or has been following along here on the blog for very long, knows that I'm a bit disorganized and pretty much the opposite of fancy.   I host a lot these days (between book group and YSA events), but I am definitely not someone who can host something and make it look put-together and effortless.  People come to our house and get a sense that it was a stretch for me to make it happen!   This Conference / Easter weekend was a case in point, with the struggle made  a bit worse than usual because Glen was in Denver visiting his parents all weekend long.  

On Saturday, Adam invited up a bunch of friends to watch Conference in our theater room and to eat all 3 meals at our home.  I had it all planned in advance and thought I was good to go, but somehow struggled even getting breakfast on the table.    I served cheddar cheese pancakes with fruit syrup, bacon (most of which I burned to an absolute char), scrambled eggs, and some fruit.   Besides the bacon, it actually turned out pretty well, but I ended not serving it until 10ish minutes before the first session began, so it felt rushed.  Conference was awesome (of course), and the other meals came together okay (croissant sandwiches for lunch and taco salad for dinner), with only minor omissions and mess-ups.   Most of the day we had about a dozen people there, with some trading places that happened along the way.   

On Conference Sunday, I very spontaneously opened up our theater room to our YSA ward for watching conference.   Over the course of the day we generally had 4-6 visitors there (not including Adam and Tia).  I fed lunch (croissant sandwiches again) to about 10-12 people.      

After all that came the hard part--trying to cook Easter dinner  by myself.  Normally Glen, Heather, and my Mom would make part of the meal as well, but, as previously mentioned, Glen was gone, Heather is still completely non-weightbearing on her broken ankle, and my Mom is struggling with stuff, so it was me.  Adam and Tia helped with some of it, but I was making things that other people normally make (like the potatoes, ham, and meat), so it was all only okay.   My Mom did set the table beautifully, which made me smile.  Neither Heather nor Spence felt up for joining us for dinner, so it just ended up being me, Adam, Tia, Mom, and my nephew, Andrew, so it felt very small.  

Here's a closer look at  what we ate:   Ham, roasted beef, glazed brussels sprouts, roasted potatoes, and Brazi bites.   I had also made some carrot cake (not shown) and a purchased Oreo ice cream cake was served for Andrew's birthday (which was also on Easter Sunday).  

We also got to talk to our missionary on Easter and on Monday!   She's finally doing a bit better after struggling with an increase in seizures over the last couple weeks.  It's been a rough couple weeks for our sweet girl and she still isn't 100%, but we are happy that there is some improvement at least!  I am getting so excited for her to come home in June!  

Also on Easter Monday, I got to go to Ashton Gardens for a YSA stake FHE night.  The weather was lovely that day and it was delightful to spend the evening with ward and stake members enjoying the beautiful flowers and amazing sculptures of Christ.  

I'll be honest...I was a bit exhausted after it was all over, but taking into account that I fed about 30 people five separate full meals (though never that many people all at once), I think I did okay.  It's fun living somewhere that we can host that many people and close enough that people actually come, even if it is a stretch for me!  

And I'll end with a quote from General Conference from Elder Bednar that really stuck with me: 

Enduring to the end is linked inextricably to the spiritual gift of charity. Enduring to the end is not merely a relentless determination to grit our teeth, hold on to the limits of our physical strength and mental capacity, and push through the challenges and adversities of mortal life; it is so much more than that.

Enduring to the end is the joyous quest of a lifetime—a pressing forward with faith in Jesus Christ in a gradual process of trusting in and receiving help from our Savior to become more like Him. As our love for Him grows ever stronger and deeper, we can be blessed to receive spiritual perspective, the Lord’s empowering grace, and exceedingly great and indescribable joy.


Life has felt a little heavy and hard lately and I needed this reminder about what enduring to the end is really all about.  I may not be crossing as many things off my own to-do list right now, but He's helping me to focus on what's most important.   💓

Looking Back...

Alright, I interrupt the regularly scheduled updates of how intensely crazy life currently is (with a new stress about one of my kids thrown into the mix), to share these old photos we recently came across at my Mom's house.   My Mom has a new diagnosis that I'm not ready to talk about on here yet, but it's a doozy that requires a lot more testing and will severely affect her life in the future.  We are all still trying to process.    In the meantime, she's been trying to go through boxes and I thought it would be fun to share some of the treasures we came across.   

Here's a couple of me from when I was a baby...

I see glimpses of my kids in these....

And this one was with me and my Mom taken on the day before my younger brother was born. It was May 1974 in Germany and I was 13 months old....so basically still a baby myself!      

I love this sweet family photo from around 1977.  

This one was taken around 1979 or so in Oklahoma City, and includes my Uncle Mike (in back), Kristina, my cousin, Ashley, Pete, Nate, my cousin, Aaron, and me (in the front row).

This one is 1988 with me holding my brother, Tim.   My hair was clearly in fine form in the 1980's.  

These were taken around 1999...

Look at my sweet Littles, who are now almost 31 and 29!   

These pics are on display at my Mom's house...

Look at those cute little smiles...

I thought this old drawing of mine was cute and kind of funny.   I'm guessing that the teacher had written the writing prompt up on the chalkboard and I very obediently even added the blanks to show that I filled it in!   Haha!   And the fact that I was excited to "play around the house" for Spring Break is also kind of funny.   

Here is an old letter Cami had written to her Great- Grandma Hepworth.   She passed away in 2009, so it was sometime before then...

 My Mom has a very hard time parting with items like these, so taking pictures of them and sharing them here on the blog is a good way to preserve them for future posterity.   Perhaps I'll have to start posting these flashback posts more regularly again...


 

All in One Weird Week

Life has been a little weird lately and I'm tired.    

No, I didn't say I'm weird,  though some would argue that that's also a true statement.   I'm referring to the fact that in amidst our normal busy life stuff, there has been a whole lot of really weird stuff making life even busier than usual and maxing out my mental bandwidth!     This blogpost shows a glimpse at one single week.  

Let's take a look at the somewhat normal stuff first.   

 It started off with dinner for the masses.  Yes, somehow hosting dinner for big groups has become a normal thing in our lives.   Glen smoked brisket and we had a ton of food:  

We had a decent turnout of people (about 30 all together)...

We love having our ward members in our home and feeding them home-cooked food...

And the food was definitely a hit, though I made too much corn and too many lemon bars...

I did a postcard challenge with some of them (everyone in this picture) and that was fun.  What is a postcard challenge, you ask?   It's when I challenge them to give me a word/theme and I go through my stash and send it to them in the mail.  It's a really fun way to share my postcards with them and to challenge myself to dig into the depths of my postcard stash.  Some words that challenged me this round were rutabaga, carrots, and garnishment.   

We have an awesome ward!   

It's been a very warm and dry winter overall, but we've had a little more rain lately.   One of the days we went on a wet walk...

This is what I looked like after...

I found these  cute photos taken by Emma in the camera roll that made me smile...

I hosted book group one night, then went to see Bella M. perform in Romeo and Juliet in the BYU ballet the next night, then went to a Valentine's dinner with a bunch of Kristina's friends that have relocated to Utah.   I do have to say that talking about books, seeing old friends at the ballet, and hanging out with new friends was all good for my psyche with all the other weird stuff going on.   I made these heart-shaped O-Henry bars for the Valentines dinner, then served the rest at our family dinner the next night.  

 

The sister of one of our ward members came to town for the long weekend.  After talking with her, we learned that she had just returned from serving in Ellie's mission.  What did I do?   I started blubbering and crying, because she'd seen our missionary more recently than me, which made me extra excited for June.  I am not a big crier, but I've been missing our missionary extra ever since she went past the year mark in December!  

Here's a glimpse at the Sunday dinner that week...we had burger bowls, which were extremely delicious and enjoyed by all at our full table!   This is where we enjoyed the rest of the heart shaped O-Henry bars.  

So that's mostly all the normal stuff. 

Let's get on to the weird stuff (definitely no pictures of this craziness).

1.  I have somehow become the assistant for helping an elderly relative evict an adverse tenant who has overstayed his welcome.   It's been a LONG, exhausting process which involves talking to attorneys, calling the suicide hotline multiple times, and trying to protect my relative from being taken advantage of.  We are going to great lengths to try to do this in a way that's a win-win for everyone, but it's hard when one of the parties is not a reasonable person.   I am ready for this process to be over.  

2. I left a negative review for a place on Google and the owner PICKED A FIGHT with me!    It was actually pretty bad and we ended up deleting our review, because we are chickens and they totally called us out by name.  We did absolutely nothing wrong, but they said a lot of inflammatory, gaslighting, threatening things (something we noticed they do with all of their negative reviews).  I still get very angry about it every time I think about it, and I really wanted to leave it up, because we did nothing wrong, but Glen was concerned because his name got dragged into the whole thing.  Seriously evil.   Please let me know if you ever want to go to a therapist office in Provo and I would love to tell you which one to run the other way from.  The way they attack any critique on them whatsoever tells you all you need to know about the way they do business and does not reflect well on a business that has to do with mental health.  We deal with a lot of  therapist offices with Glen's calling and every single interaction we had with them was an exercise in extreme frustration.   The owner of this office is clearly not mentally well himself, because mentally well people do not treat other people {even those that disagree with the way they do things} the way that he does.     I  started listening to "Let it Go" on repeat and did some hard exercises trying to burn off some negative energy and get my brain to a more positive place. 🙄

 <deep breath>  

And lest you think that's all of the weird stuff...it's not. That's just all that happened in that one week. I'll blog more about the rest of it later, but the weirdness definitely did not subside after that week was over. Some things to look forward to in  upcoming blogposts: an out of town funeral, a serious injury on the way home from said funeral, an apocalyptic snowstorm for some of my kids, an unexpected trip, and a sacrament talk ...plus more eviction drama.   yay.



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My Least Favorite Month

 January is not my favorite month of the year.   It's cold.  It's dark.  The holidays are over.  Spencer was diagnosed with leukemia in January, so there's a bit of PTSD I still deal with every year.  And, in general, I experience all sorts of restless feelings this time each year.  So I donate blood every January.  It's definitely become an annual tradition now and it gives me a sense of purpose/giving back in amongst all the angsty feelings.  

I also try to stay very busy.  That also helps.

All in one week in January,  I cleaned out the pantry, put away the Christmas stuff, hosted book group, donated blood, cleaned the house, made a menu, and started going ham on creating the Come Follow Me activity sheets for the upcoming year.  Staying busy is good for my mental state.  

I also finally got all the Christmas Eve pajama photos compiled into one collage, which made me super happy.   When you've got kids all over the country, these kinds of things can take a while!   

So I mentioned above that   I've started creating the Come, Follow Me activity sheets again for this upcoming year.  I discovered the use of AI for creating coloring sheets and it's been a fun resource for me. I'd been using CHATGPT for creating them and they would turn out like this.   Pretty good.   Sometimes with some weird stuff in it, because it's AI, but not terrible in my opinion.   

Then Spencer told me about a new AI platform that he'd heard was really good.  I decided to test it out and I put in the exact same prompt that I'd used on Chat to create the above coloring sheet of Abraham and Sarah from the bible.  This is what it came up with.... 

HAHAHA!  We may have laughed for a very long time about this.   I looked it up and apparently Claude is better for words than images and  I'd have to say that is a massive understatement.  Ha! 

January has also been quite the adventure for getting to know the new members of our BYU ward.   It's a little harder than we expected, because while it was only a fraction of the people than it was in September, it seems like the expectation is higher to learn the names more quickly.  I am still working hard to get there, but  I'm realizing that my brain still needs to meet people a few times before names/faces are really stuck in my brain well!  

And how did we finish my least favorite month off?   

WITH A TRIP TO RHODE ISLAND TO VISIT SOME OF  MY FAVORITE PEEPS!!!! 

Stay tuned for that blogpost coming soon....