I know it's hot, but how do you "really" feel?

I'm just wondering, once it gets to 97 degrees and 94% humidity, why they have to make it worse by telling you it feels like 110? I don't remember in all my days growing up ever ONCE hearing the words "heat index". For heaven's sake, it's not like you have to tell me it feels hotter, anything over 80 in this kind of humidity not only feels HOT, it REALLY IS HOT! Good Grief, if I can't tell could you please just let me be blissfully ignorant?!

I don't know, I just found it odd (and somewhat irritating) this morning when the weathermen kept saying "Well folks, the high today is going to be 99 but it's going to feel like 109!" Maybe they were just talking to the "old" people so they know not to jog out to get the paper this morning, or the "very young" people so they know not to expect a walk at the park with mommy, or the "infirm" so they know that if they die of heatstroke it will be perfectly understandable. Sorry, it's just that 97 degrees makes me cranky, and with the "heat index" I feel downright evil!

When I was pondering the overused term "heat index" it made me think of all the words and phrases that are so common today that I'd never heard of as a child.

For instance I was oblivious to the title "drama queen" although a sibling who shall remain nameless was most certainly an early prototype.

If I'd ever heard the term couch potato I would have thought it was like a TV dinner (which came in an aluminum tray covered with foil and we only got to eat once a year when "The Wizard of Oz" came on), and the other day I heard mouse potato which, thank the good heavens, has NOTHING to do with food but is just a more tech savvy kind of couch potato.....one referring to spending one's days in front of a computer (blogging?) instead of exercising.

Bird Flu would have been something we made up when the parakeet died suddenly, rather than the newest version of impending doom (back then impending doom was communism and the moral decline of children.....wierd huh?)

I played my summers away on swingsets, skates, bicycles and pogo sticks never dreaming of anything like water parks, wave pools, X-Box, or DVD's.

Big-Box was the coveted packaging from the neighbor's new refrigerator, and mall was something a bear did to you if you weren't careful in the woods.

We didn't have fast food so supersizing hadn't been invented (in food or in people), the closest we came to supersizing was getting seconds if mom thought our "eyes weren't bigger than our belly".




Ringtones, caller-id, and 1411 were unnecessary because the operator could tell you anything you wanted to know. (Added benefit, if you got bored after school and she wasn't busy she'd talk to you ..... if you were really lucky you had a "party-line" you could listen to if you covered the mouthpiece so they couldn't hear you breathing).




Now that you know I'm older that dirt at least you can understand why the heat makes me cranky!

Sure Love Ya!

I need some help ....

I know many of you who read my blog are LDS and I'm hoping maybe you can help me in a quest.....

We (my Bishop and I) are looking for a picture that shows a young .... perhaps deacon aged boy....who is dressed in a white shirt and putting on a tie. He is looking into a mirror and his reflection shows him putting on armor .....as in "the whole armor of God". It's a wonderful picture but we only have a photo copy and can't even make out the artist although it might be Christensen. He got this copy as a handout at scout camp last week but doesn't know who gave it out.

If any of you have seen a picture like this and know where I can get an originalcopy could you let me know. I'd offer money but, well, I don't have any!

Thanks for any help you can give me and please forgive the unimaginative use of blog space!

Sure Love Ya!

Things I love Thursday!

I'm always anxious to get to Thursday so I can share ..... SO here are a few of my favorite things (are you singing along with Julie Andrews in your head...?)



Magnetic spice tins....I LOVE these things. They hang right on the side of my refrigerator next to the stove. They actually come with a little countertop rack but half the reason I REALLY loved them was because they didn't have to take up countertop space. The lids twist on and off AND have a sift or pour feature so you don't have to take the lid off at all except to refill. An added bonus?....they're beautiful! (I got mine at Lowe's but you can find them on-line too, be sure to check the lids for the sift and pour feature as some don't have it).

How about an zero-gravity chair for total relaxation?
I have seen these around for years but the prices were ridiculous. I'm glad I waited (I just got two on sale at Target for an unbelievable price!). Besides, I kept telling myself they weren't that much different from the lounge chairs I already had on the deck. Boy was I wrong! My dad got one for Father's Day and when I tried it I was IN HEAVEN. Mine are a beige mesh which is great because water dries quickly (I think the picture here is a canvas type) Two great things about them......one, the adjustable pillow....this chair is comfortable for everyone! Two, unlike lounge chairs, these sit high up, you don't have to crawl into them, they feel just like a recliner....LOVE them! (P.S. This, unfortunately, is NOT my pool...I don't have a pool, but if I did my chairs would look great next to it!)

And finally, I think I remember establishing the fact that favorite things could include food.....well THIS is my favorite. I have been known to fly to Wyoming and bring back tubs of this in my luggage! Cox's Creamed Honey. It's the best honey in the world.....really!

I now buy it on-line (because it's cheaper than buying an airplane ticket) but I'd drive out there if I had to. Try it if you can find it, if you can't check it out on-line here and remember it's the creamed honey you want!

Enjoy! (P.S. Share with me some of your favorites!)

Vacation Leftovers...

I didn't say much about my vacation, it was three weeks long so by the time I'd returned home I'd forgotten what I did the first two weeks (I'm sure you know me by now and that's not only completely normal, but also completely predictable).

The first week I spent three days with "Tiny" in her apartment in Orem, Utah.....

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Tiny in her apartment actually I spent three days in the apartment, unfortunately being a struggling college student she had to work 16 out of every 24 hours, but I loved seeing where she lived,
The place Tiny calls homegetting acquainted with her roommates, and meeting the unauthorized "Stinky"...
"Stinky" and Daughter #3
When she initially told me about "Stinky" becoming a part of their little apartment family I warned her that his name may be portentious.....I wasn't wrong. However in spite of his stinkiness Daughter #3 and I learned to like him. It was funny to see the lengths to which these 4 girls would go to keep Stinky hidden from management. Being a "purse dog" has it's advantages!

After spending some time with Tiny we traveled north to Star Valley Wyoming where my mom lives .... we had a family reunion for her side of the family and three of her brothers and one sister were able to come along with much of their families. It was nice to see everyone under these circumstances (the last few times it's been to attend one funeral or another).


My nephew, Daughter #3, me, my mom, my aunt, my middle sister and her boyfriend.....hey where's my youngest sister?......holding the camera!


Me, my youngest sister, my middle sister, and my mom!
Star Valley is just my favorite place on the planet (I probably should even mention it as the multitudes of the world have already started decending upon the place). I was born there, as were both my mother and father.


Daughter #3 riding horses in Star Valley at grandma and grandpa's ranch.

It has the most beautiful scenery, a wide green valley flanked on the East and West by mountains. The days can get quite hot but the nights are always cool....even in July when I was there it was only 40 degrees some mornings yet got as warm as 87 during the day. If there were some way to transport our business there, and some way to cut their nine-month long frigid, snowbound winter to something reasonable like 4 months then I'd be there! Come to think of it so would everyone else! Until just a few years ago the population was still 90 percent LDS, the streets were quite and quaint, and there wasn't a fast food place to be seen. As nearby Jackson Hole has grown and become impossible to afford the population has almost doubled and horror of horrors (and against the best efforts of the townfolk) they now have a Burger King.....my mom swears Wal-Mart is looming on the horizon and it'll be all downhill from there.

From Star Valley I went to spend a few days with my Dad in Cody, just outside the east entrance to Yellowstone Park.


A grizzly in Yellowstone Park -- rare sight!


Daughter #3 with Grandma and Grandpa in Cody
Next to Star Valley I think Cody is probably my favorite Wyoming town. There is lots of tourist trade there as you can imagine, what with it being Buffalo Bill's homeland and all. I love the shopping there and we manage to be there around the 4th of July every year because the parade is just wonderful.






Love those miniature horses!!!

I can remember back when I was in High School (yeah, I know...that's a long time ago) Cody was frequently honored by the presence of famous people. John Wayne was the Grand Marshall of the parade one year. Robert Redford showed up to announce the relocation of Jeremiah Johnson's grave, and Candice Bergen came to dine at "Irma's". Cody has grown too though and I hardly recognize it as the same town ..... my dad says it's being overtaken by "Californians". This has driven property values through the roof just like Star Valley so I probably won't be retiring there either.

After leaving Cody I went back through Star Valley and stopped long enough to drop off Daughter #3 at Grandma's for 10 days then went on to Florida to see Nutella and her hubby in Jacksonville.


Nutella and Jonathan in Florida
This was my first trip to Jacksonville though we've spend innumerable vacations in Florida. It is a HUGE city. I was thankful to have Nutella and her husband as guides. It was extremely hot and humid there but being from Indiana I felt right at home. I did end up with an "altitude adjustment headache" from spending the previous two weeks in the Rockies but it didn't slow me down much. Nutella lives in a very nice condo that's more like a resort than anything. I loved it. They also have a beach house in Flagler Beach where we spent one day, Nutella and I bobbing around on our boogie boards in the waves while watching her husband surf.


Jonathan going out to catch a wave......


Nutella Sunbathing


Me sunbathing!
It's a beautiful little beach and the house there is so cute. My only regret was that dear HH, Tiny and D3 couldn't be there too. AND of course that I had to leave.

I came home with so many treasures, none of them purchased at stores. I have two boxes of pictures from my mother's family that I'm going to scan to CD's, loads of memories of the time spent with Mom, Dad, Tiny,Nutella, my sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and that good feeling you get when you are privileged to witness the happiness of your extended family.

Glad to be home but missing all of my loved ones!

Babies, sweet, all sorts....

For over two months we've been watching a small wren patiently build and rebuild her next, then finally settle in among the leaves and flowers of my Martha Washington Geranium (beautiful setting if I do say so). For the longest time there were only 4 tiny white eggs, today we got a surprise....three have hatched!



The eggs are only the size of my thumbnail and the babies are so small!! They don't have any feathers yet as you can see ....just all naked pink baby bird with oversized beaks. They don't make any sound yet but hold their little mouths wide just in case mom's bringing dinner.

I'm surprised that this little wren would make a nest in a plant that hangs right there on our porch at just about 4 feet....it doesn't seem like she'd feel safe there but she must trust us and now maybe we'll get to see the little birds learn to fly.....I hope the raccoons don't get to them first.

Nature is just miraculous you know? And of course seeing these tiny little babies so dependent upon their mom reminded me of sweet Nutella who is bound to be the best mom EVER and her little egg.....yup, we have a picture of that too!





(top 1/4 of picture head to the right, feet to the left!....as if you couldn't tell : )

Oh what a beautiful morning!!!.....Oh, what a .....nevermind!

I should have known it would be "one of those days" when I got up this morning....

I, and daughter #3, decided last night we would have a little "sleep over" at my place (which means she slept with me in my bed after we watched a movie that scared us both) AND that we would "sleep in" which to her means waking at noon and for me means getting up after my internal alarm goes off and I hit the snooze button 6 or 7 times (don’t ask).

ANYWAY, I’d made it from 5:45 (when I first woke up and looked at the clock) to 7:00 (the last time I remember looking at the clock) when I heard someone knocking on the door. In any normal neighborhood this would be no cause for alarm....the neighbor might want sugar for their coffee, or the paperboy might want paid for the paper he sometimes delivers on time.

In my neighborhood, however, a knock on the door at 7:00 a.m. can only mean one thing...... well, maybe two things....either someone is lost, (I live in the country and have a 1/4 mile long driveway through dense woods ..... sometimes mistaken for Lover’s Lane by college students) OR it’s a burglar checking to see if we’re home before he breaks in.

Since I’m in my nightgown, my hair is a mess, and I have no makeup on I figure I’ll take my chances on scaring the burglar as bad as he’s scared me and I head downstairs.

I was only half right.....the burglar turns out to be the telephone company (I do, at times, feel they are crooks!) who are doing their duty and coming "promptly" to bury the new phone line they put in TWO months ago after the original model was chewed by some woodland creature who was apparently NOT a particularly picky eater. I did succeed in scaring the poor man half to death (you’d think he’d never seen a woman in an oversized blue t-shirt, black socks and flip flops before!)

After trapsing around the "slightly" overgrown yard, .....what’s that saying about knee high by the fourth of July?.....Oh, I think that may be for corn.....anyhooooo.......he tells me the message he got says he’s to follow the paint lines to trench in the new phone line. Well, why didn't you just say so?..................................Funny......there’s all of a sudden more paint in that yard than you can shake a stick at. We find blue lines, red dots, flourescent orange arrows and something that could either be brown paint or.......something we don’t want to imagine.

I finally resort to telling a "white lie" and go inside to "consult" with my husband (who, as it happens is not upstairs, but is in Montana right now on a forest fire). Thank goodness he had his cell phone and the two hour time difference didn’t seem to bother him.......thanks honey,......oh, it’s the BLUE line we follow.

The dear little men finish their appointed task and leave so I take advantage of the still relatively cool temperature of 77 (this is July in Indiana! oh, I guess it's probably July where you live too huh? Tee Hee Hee) to go to the garage and exercise. I manage to work up a good sweat in only 15 minutes and am halfway through an episode of "Small Spaces, Big Style" when the electricity goes off.....(bummer 45 minutes to go and no treadmill......also no TV).

I try to plod along on the old fashioned eliptical machine which requires no electricity (only batteries for the display) but find it somewhat inconvenient to not be able to see my hand in front of my face, or do anything but listen to my own panting for diversion. I make it 15 minutes and give up to go outside and walk the driveway for 30 minutes.

During the first 5 minutes I’m attacked by a mother bird who mistakes me for some kind of threat so I end up jogging, ...though not fast enough to elude the deerflies, which of course I’m allergic to (one manages to bite me right behind my left ear ....I now look like I have a case of the mumps), but plenty fast enough to miss seeing tree roots which I swear seem to jump up out of nowhere ...... a 50 year old woman can break a hip with a fall like that!!! I give up and decide to go home.....

After a boring hour and a half in the dark (did I mention we live in a dense woods....it won’t be light in our house until roughly 1:00 p.m. when the sun is directly overhead) I’ve managed to cook two eggs for myself on the barbecue (another don’t ask) , read the remaining 60 pages of my book club book by half light while sitting on the floor by the patio doors, knitted two rows of Afton’s project (I hope she doesn’t notice....she hates it when I do that), and used up all the ice we had trying to reduce the baseball now looming from the left side of my head.

In total frustration I decide to call the electric company to see when the electricity will be back on, it’s been off since just after 8:00 and I’m dying here! Luckily I have a cell phone as obviously the phone won’t work without electricity (Drat!) Unluckily, we get poor reception in our "little cabin the dense woods" (we have a signal booster in the house but guess what......it works on electricity).

I find I can almost get a signal upstairs, so I rightly assume higher is better, and climb on the file cabinet in the loft to make my call.....Miss Helpful at the electric company tells me the electricity will soon be restored, it’s only a temporary outage while they install a traffic light . In her sweetest voice she tells me it should be restored by ll:30 a.m. and asks if there is anything else she can do for me......(probably sensing my distress when I start sobbing).....it’s only 9:10!

I'm going back to bed and when I wake up it had better be tomorrow!!!!

(Oh, and a side note....I STILL CAN'T UPLOAD PICTURES TO BLOGGER!!!!! AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!)

Oh my goodness it's been a long time!....

Well, I'm back from my many, and varied, family escapades. I had a wonderful trip with lots of .....ummmmm.....interesting happenings.....you probably thought nothing could be more interesting than a traveling porta-potty but check out my dumpster adventure! (Please click here to read Tiny's description of the event......why use up space and brain power needlessly?)

While spending time with "Tiny" I attended her award ceremony where she was presented with lst place (AND a $1000 check!) in the Intermountain Design Awareness Event for her original area rug design. She won lst place!!! It was wonderful, I was so glad I could be there with her. I called to tell HH the news and he immediately told me to find out how to buy one.....

"In fact, we might want to buy two of them so we can give one to her"

(he's so generous!) I told him I thought it might be as much as $500......he still thought it was worth it.

After all the press pictures were taken of her standing before the rug (they sent her design to Nepal to have it reproduced in 100% wool and silk) I snuck up and looked at the label on the back.....it just so happened to also include the retail price for the 4' X 6' rug...... to make a long story short I called HH right back and asked how he would feel about buying 1/2 a rug! Obviously I shop in an entirely different world (Target, Bed/Bath/Beyond, etc) because they nearly had to sweep me from the floor when I saw the $1400+ price tag. I hope some wealthy families enjoy it immensely!.......you can purchase Hannah's rug from "Artifacts" in Salt Lake City...(please call me to come visit!)

Also spent a wonderful week in Jacksonville, FL with Nutella and her sweet husband, I felt like I was at a resort. Their condo is beautiful, they have a gorgeous pool and a gym so I could work off all the calories from SIL's "real" italian cooking. We got to see a picture of the baby too....Nutella had her first sonogram ..... didn't find out whether it's a boy or a girl but it's definitely got all the necessary and expected parts otherwise!

We (Daughter #3) and I came home to an empty house (HH got called to a forest fire in Montana 4 days before we got back...: ( , lots of mail, a lawn that needs mowed, an extremely fat cat (I thought she was normal till I saw regular cats!), and an assignment from the Bishop to talk on the 27th of August so I have plenty to keep me busy.

I have missed reading all your blogs and plan to catch up on that ASAP in my "spare" time.

Sure Love Ya!