Easter 2012

This Easter we went to my parent's home. Most of my brothers and sisters and their children and spouses were able to be there. Saturday we had an Easter egg hunt. We candy filled so many eggs that everyone was able to collect eggs until their baskets were full.

This is a picture of all the grandchildren. Wow! Okay, there are 3 missing, but that's still a lot.

Easter Sunday 2012 & the Importance of Journaling.

Here is my gorgeous children on Easter Sunday. We were at my parent's home.

But here is also the thing. I didn't journal about it until three months later. It is now July. This happened in April. And I remember we had good times, but I can't for the life of me remember the details. Or even the not so much details. Crazy how our memories fade so quickly.

 I read an article in the Ensign about how to get back to the basics. Not sure which month it was, I know it appeared in the 2011-2012 school year. But the message I extracted from the article is that we need to slow things down. Not be so busy. If we are too crowded with even good things, but none the less too crowded, we don't have time for the spirit to speak to us. It suggested stripping everything away and adding in scripture reading, prayer, and journaling. Then begin adding in small things. I wish I knew the article so I could read it again. The one thing that stands out to me in the commandment we have to write in our journal.

 I was always so good at writing in my journal until I got married. Not sure what changed or why I quit. But I did. Then I started super scrapbooking and did a lot of journaling in there. The problem with that was that you had to scrapbook a page and at the rate I was adding children, I didn't have much time to scrapbook. Blogging was a blessing sent from heaven to help me with my journaling. I know journaling is important and I do want to do it. I really enjoy writing. And I enjoy reading what I wrote later on.

 Although this post has nothing to do with Easter Sunday 2012, only the pictures correlate to that, it is a firm reminder why journaling is so important. At least for me. My brain cannot remember. Memories fade so quickly.

 Now to just get this blog slurped into a book so I can have these memories if anything ever happened to the Internet or electricity or whatever.

TEE Test

I think I am done with testing. At least for this year. Had that down- my- throat ultrasound done. Don't remember it because I got to sleep through it. Yay!

 I do remember the results.

My regurgitation is moderate. They don't really need to do anything until it becomes severe. So that is really good news. However, because it is moderate, it will become severe. And that means open heart surgery in my future. The type surgery where they crack your chest open, pull out your heart, detach it from your body, fix it, put it back in, and everything is better. Well, better after 2 months of no lifting. 2 months of not being able to take care of my family. But that's just details, right?

I'm almost at peace with where this is at. I know what will happen and I am fortunate it will not be this year.

I can still exercise. I can still walk my kids to and from school. I can still do almost everything I was doing before. I need to take some fun meds to slow the progress of this. I don't like the idea of having to take medications. But I also need to take care of my body so I can be around to take care of my family.

I have a follow-up appointment this week. Hopefully I don't find out anything I don't already know. Shouldn't.

So really, I'm doing good. Everything is okay. It was a bit of a shocker and a little hard to digest the information at first. And obviously my last few posts reflect that. Probably should have deleted them because of how much emotion I expressed in them. But I am resisting. This is my life and it's what's happening. It is very real. And at times very scary. But it will all be okay.

April Fools Day 2012

Happy April Fool's Day! We celebrated it again this year, although it wasn't such a shocker this year. The kids weren't surprised and ate EVERYTHING with hesitation. Imagine that.We started the morning with a breakfast of eggs (yogurt with a peach half.) Lunch was the usual cinnamon rolls for conference weekend, only they weren't cinnamon. they had sausage and cheese in them topped with country gravy to look like frosting. They were super tasty. However, Spencer and Nathan wouldn't even try them. I went back for 3rds! I think I may keep that recipe and try it for a normal breakfast.

 For supper we had ice cream sundaes with caramel sauce and a cherry on top. We also had Kool-Aide and cupcakes with blue frosting. And carrots. But really what was for supper disguised as these tasty treats was mashed potatoes and grave with a cherry tomato, shepherds pie with tinted mashed potatoes, and jello for the drink that was seriously undrinkable.

Can you tell the kids were excited? They really were and had a lot of fun. Well, not Spencer. He kept asking why I was making the food look different. He didn't understand. It kind of made me chuckle. Maybe I will have to take a break from it next year so I can have the surprise factor.