Past Time

Here is what I have been doing lately. Amber's room is the blue and white. Ella's room is the yellow, red and blue (with the crib in it, in case you have any question). The yellow isn't the true color. It's much more of a bright lemony sunshine yellow. The camera makes it look more florescent.

If you look very closely at Ella'a room, you will see that there is a narrow flat border on the yellow edge of the red stripe and a wide ridged border on the blue edge of the red stripe. I managed to put these up all by myself. It isn't perfect by any means. By the time I cut that last piece, I had finally figured out how to make the edges match better. It's amazing what a little caulking will do to hide the imperfections. Either way, it is fun to have it done and I feel okay about how it turned out -- imperfections and all.

Now that Ella's room is finished, I had a brief moment to finish some mending and ironing. Most of my piled up chores are caught up. I still want to paint the kitchen and hall, but it will have to wait a month. By then it will be time to start the yardwork, so I don't know if the painting will get finished for a while. Amber and Kylene are doing "scoring" in Vale through the month of March. The go Friday afternoon and then all day Saturdays. We have it worked out so that one of us takes off work Friday afternoon to tend Ella and then we team up on Saturdays. Still, it doesn't leave time to get much done in the house. Hence the delay in painting. This past weekend was out first run. We did fairly well. She didn't like not having Mom around, but she didn't have any huge meltdowns. She just fussed at nap time, when she usually nurses. The bottle only worked once. She wasn't as accepting the second time. Go figure.

I finished listening to the Secret on CD. I listened driving into and home from work. Now I am listening to the conference talks from October. I like having them on CD because driving is open time and I have so little time to just sit and read. The CD's make it easy for me to "read" what I won't take the time to do at night. There always seems to be other things to occupy my time in the evenings.

This is why I don't blog very often. It took Kylee and half hour to figure out my mess in trying to log on and get these photos published. So enjoy them. Who knows when I'll get more. Bye.

Practical Painting

Yes, I am painting AGAIN! Amber and Ella are babysitting Amber's friend's three kids while they are on a cruise, so I am taking advantage of Ella being gone to paint her room. Saturday I emptied the room as much as possible; then painted the closet and one coat of the blue section. Amber wanted to do three sections of color. Blue on the bottom, a wide red stripe in the middle and yellow on top. The curtain material she picked has primary colored dots on a off-white background. It will be very bright. I have a week to get it done. My plan is: Monday, finish the second coat of blue and the 1st coat of yellow. Tuesday, the second coat of yellow and the 1st coat of red. I can't paint Wednesday because it is Young Womens night. Thursday, the 2nd coat of red and the trim. Friday I can touch up anything I missed and move everything back in. Saturday Amber and Ella come home and Ella can move into a freshly painted room.

I finished Amber's room two weeks ago. We did it in a grey/blue with white trim. Her bedding is white with a little blue on it. It is very pretty. If I can stand to do it, I'll paint the hall and kitchen walls before the end of February. Then I'll have painted the whole upstairs.

My bonus it supposed to be paid this week. I'm going to get new windows with it and am so very excited about it. If there is anything left over, I'd like new kitchen counters, too. We'll just have to see how the cost works out. Anyway, it will be very fun to be able to have windows that I can actually see through again. The seals have broken on all of them and they have moisture foggy up in between the two panes. I'm curious to see how it affects the heating and aircondition bill after getting the new windows in. We most likely lose a great deal of heat/cool air through the windows.

Anyway, I'll try to get pictures of the two bedrooms when I finish the painting.

I am sitting at work feeling paralyzed because my computer drives are gone. Every project that I on which I have been working is on my drive, so I am looking for things to do that do NOT involve the computer. As you can see, there is not much. The computer is a marvelous creation, but it frightens me when I think how immobile the country would be should something happen to our computers. Ugh! I hate not having enough to keep me busy - it makes me want to go home because I have plenty there to do. Actually, I have enough to keep me busy here at work, I just can't access any of it. Most frustrating.

Clay and Kylene are mostly moved out. They are renting an incredibly cute house only a couple of miles from our house. Kylene's furniture from their other house fits into this new one perfectly. It has just enough room for them (for now) and "feels" just like home when you walk in. Ky has been busy getting everything put away. We went over the other night and Kresimir was laughing and having the best time playing on the floor. He must like it, too.

Amber and I are making plans to get her moved into the bedroom Clay and Ky just vacated. We are going to paint it and have been looking at paint samples. When Amber gets her room done and all her stuff moved in, then we are going to paint Ella's room. Amber has bright primary colors picked out, so it should be should be cheerful and nice for Ella.

Ella has been sick this week. She ran a temperature of 103 and was very lethargic (for her). Her fever finally broke last night and she has started to feel and act better. Kresimir was sick the week before with a fever also, so they must have caught a bug. Thankfully, it didn't last long. It's not fun having a sick baby.

Denny took off for the Sundance Film Festival last weekend. I think he had a good time. Then Tuesday he headed to Southern Utah to meet up with his friend, Jim, for a photo trip. He will be home sometime this weekend.

Well, I guess I should see if I can get onto the computer again. Think positively! Later.

FAREWELL 2006

As the hours creep tenaciously onward toward 2007, it boggles my mind that we have experienced yet another full year. The hub-bub of the turn of the century is still vividly in my mind and we are over half a decade past it already. The speed at which time passes is often overwheming to me. There is so much to be done and truly so little time. One resolution is striving for wisdom in determining the worthy projects from all the purely time consuming ones.

With each new year, I like to feel as though I'm starting fresh. One way I do this is to "spring" clean the house. Although the Christmas decorations have been delightful, putting them away and starting the new year with the floor space reclaimed is rewarding for me. This year I went one step further by not only putting the decorations away, but sorting through them and disposing of broken or unused items, thus condensing the storage boxes. We took advantage of the clearance sales and already purchases enough wrapping paper to meet next years needs. That has also been cleaned up and put neatly away.

Over the past three days, I have managed to go through nearly each room and, to one degree or another, decluttered. One major room remains -- the junk room. We will be starting that project tomorrow. Not long ago I did an overhaul in there, but have a new vision. We are going to try to organize Denny's stored photographs better and make room for a table that Amber and Kylene can use for their scrapbooking. A space on which they can leave their projects and return to them when they can without forfeiting sit down dinners. It will be very nice to have the cleaning finished when I return to work on Tuesday.

Being home for five days in a row has been heaven. It worked out perfectly. After three days of hard work, having Sunday to relax and recooperate before the BIG project room was a timely break. I must admit that I was quite completely worn out last night. I went to bed early and slept nearly 12 hours and still made it to church on time. Of course, church started at 11:00 a.m. Next Sunday we begin the 9:00 a.m. schedule. That is going to make for a very interesting schedule for Amber and Kylene. Ella isn't an early morning person and isn't used to getting up very early. It will be an adjustment for her.

We had a wonderful holiday. In fact, as I reminise about the past year, I must say it has been a very good year--two grandbabies born, and a wedding. Of course, we had problems along the way, but I cannot complain because we have enjoyed and experienced great, great blessings. Our family has truly been watched over, for which I am extremely grateful.

I hope this New Year brings joy, peace and blessings to each of you in all you do.

Okay, I have tried a couple of times to update my blog, but either someone else is on the computer or I get interruptions or possibly, just possibly, I get too lazy to make the effort. This will be short, but short is better than never.

Last night I babysat Ella. She was very cute. Although she slept most of the time, she did wake up to eat once. She was quite cooperative that I had to heat up a bottle. After eating, she snuggled down in my arms, smiled contentedly and finally went back to sleep. Amber went to a movie with her friend, Susan. They saw Flicka and thought it was pretty good.

Work has been busy all week. I've accomplished a lot, but what gets done just gets replaced with something else. Kind of like laundry.

For Young Women's this week, we had a home-made soup dinner and then tied 5 baby quilts to donate to the women's shelter. I'm not sure the girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves, but they did it, anyway.

It has been raining a little this week with a 70% chance of rain on Saturday, which complicates my plans to work on finishing up the yard winterization. Last night when I came out of the building to go home from work, the eastern horizon was so incredibly beautiful it took my breath away. A dark, blue-black band of storm clouds lay very low over the foothills, with huge billowy clouds rising high into the sky above that were illuminated with the colors of the sunset on the western horizon. Tucked into the shallow where two mountains crossed each other was a small triangle of blue sky and white clouds. It was such a contrast to the storm clouds that it looked to be alien. In just seconds the sun had set enough that the entire horizon scene was changed and the moment gone. Still, it was such a beautiful moment. I was so glad I got to see it.

Painting's Done

After two vacation days completely filled with painting, the livingroom painting project is completed. Actually, it was finished a couple of weeks ago. I just have not updated my blog for a while. We failed to take a before picture, but I believe most of you remember what the room looked like--white walls, maroon floralish sofa and loveseat. This is what it looks like now.

When I painted, I took down the drapes and took them to be cleaned. On the appointed day, I went to pick them up and they were not there. Basically, they lost them. Saturday they telephone and had found them. AFter work today I stopped and got them and rehung them. The room is officially finished now.

Denny got home from his photo trip. He had fun. A huge storm the week prior to their trip washed out many of the roads into places they wanted to visit, so they had to be flexible on what they did. Still they had a good time and saw a lot of cool things. I haven't seen his photos yet. He just brought them home tonight.

Saturday I worked very hard in the garden clearing out the spent plants. I picked the remaining tomatoes, squash, carrots and onions. Then I put up the boxes and roto-tilled the whole plot. The tilled earth smelled so nice. Now it looks clean and ready for winter. There is still much to do in the yard, but the rest will be for another Saturday.

I also swept out the garage. Caitlin and Ryan had been sanding their dresser out there and I had been cutting wood so there was sawdust and dust everywhere. It looks better, but still needs a good vacumming. The patio was swept, too. I cleaned up the sand that Codus had scattered about in his attempts to help me in the backyard. He pushes a rock around (and hence sand) each time I go out there to work. Anyway, the patio looked clean for a day. This morning it was covered with more leaves--the hazzard of fall.

The ground was wet when we woke this morning. I love an autumn rain. The colors are so vibrant after a rain. Especially so when the leaves are every shade of yellow, gold and red. It was still cloudy when the work day was over, but no additional rain...yet.

Happy Birthday

We had such a nice time at dinner celebrating Mother's 85th birthday. For those of you who were able to come, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Our trip was rather quick, but before we left we took some photos of Mother and Dad with El and with me. These are my favorites.



It rained today. Fall is really coming on quickly now. It was cool enough that I could wear a sweater to work and not get "too" hot. Admittedly, I did have to turn on my fan once. All in all, however, it was a lovely day.

Denny, Mark and Danny went on a photo trip this week. We might have some photos to post when they get home.