The Last Post of the Year

Really, what is a Mormon Mommy's Blog without an end of the year wrap up? Here we go!!

The Top 10 Things That I Blogged About and That Made 2008 Special (not like Special Olympics) with some links (not hot ones)

1. I found a note on my desk and it could be the funniest thing I ever see in my lifetime.

2. My oldest become teenagers.

3. I found my first gray hairs (see above).

4. I started a quest to lose weight, I went to the gym for the first time in my life and I lost 40 pounds! I am trying to lose 30 more in 2009.

5. Women's Conference was awesome and it is all I posted about the entire month of May.

6. I got a new bra.

7. We had our 15 year wedding anniversary.

8. We had a great vacation at the cabin.

9. We visited some of our favorite people.

10. I failed the National Blog Posting Month - it was just too hard. I did post 23 times in November, so, I have that going for me.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Joyeaux Noel

I hope everyone has a great Christmas.

Much Love -

Jolene

File Under: Maybe Not the Best Idea

Giving a Talk in Sacrament Meeting Written Under the Influence of Nyquil.

We will see what happens tomorrow as I deliver my "Sunday Before Christmas Talk" in my Katherine Turner voice. I am fighting a nasty cold.

Tomorrow I will attempt to sing with the ward choir for our special program. I will also give, at the conclusion of the program, the previously mentioned, poorly prepared talk. Then, I will serve my first two hours in my new calling as primary chorister.

I am afraid that my low voice will scare the Sunbeams.

This is My Mom

She stayed with me for three days this week while having cataract surgery. Normally she lives with one of my brothers. We had a grand old time while she was here - especially while she was recovering from the anesthesia. Or at least I am going to blame it all on the anesthesia.

My mom is almost 80 years old. She has lived an amazingly healthy life. This cataract surgery is the first time she has had surgery or anesthetic of any kind since she had her appendix out in 1947. I am not kidding - 1947!! She had six babies with no anesthetic and then never really got sick. Every time I take her to an appointment where we have to fill out new paper work - the Dr. is always amazed that she takes no medications.

Before the eye surgery, the put my mom out for about 15 minutes so that they can completely numb the eye. The stick needles directly in to the eye-ball and it is better for patients to be unconscious during that part of the procedure. She woke up fine and then they took her in for the 15 minute procedure. She never went back to sleep - hence, my doubts about blaming the craziness on the drugs.

My mom is typically a little loopy. I think it comes with her age and the fact that she really can't hear anything and now we know that she really wasn't seeing much either. But while she was here she saw tomato plants growing in my living room. She wondered how I watered them without getting the carpet wet and how I got the rows so straight around the furniture. She also feared she grabbed someones purse since her plain black purse had suddenly turned tan with big red flowers. She had a few more doozies - she was convinced the Christmas lights on our neighbors house were turning from plain white bulbs into little colorful trees and she misunderstood one conversation about someone riding a motorcycle to someone wearing adult diapers.

Since my dad died there has been no one to make fun of her when she says and does crazy stuff. My kids encourage it, they think it is hilarious and say things like "yeah, those lights are so cool how they are changing like that" and then they laugh and laugh. Later when I made them be honest with her about the lights she thought it was funny that they were going along with her. I just feel like they are so lucky they get to have her around a lot. She will live a long time yet, all of her sisters are still alive and some of them are well in to their 90s. None of them have had serious medical issues and are all still as active as my mom is. Growing up during the great depression was good for them.

A Picture is Worth a 1000 Words

I'm hoping - because this post is kind of word light and picture heavy. But some fun things happened in the last few days and I actually remembered to take pictures! This is Devon sitting on Spencer W. Kimball's lap. There is a statue in a local park that commemorates President Kimball's growing up in Arizona and his love of the desert. I love that it looks like President Kimball has is hand on Devon's shoulder.

While we were at the same park - Alan gave Courtney a piggy back ride. It cracked me up because her feet were almost dragging the ground.


We had our ward Christmas party and a special guest came. It was obvious to Nicole that he was one of Santa's helpers because his eyebrows were brown. But she saw that I have Santa on my cell phone and she is hooked in for at least another year.

My girls are so lucky to have great friends in our ward - Devon has good friends here too - he just wont pose for pictures with them. This is Morgan and her adorable friend Saedra.

Courtney and Sarah.

Nicole and Kristen.

Alan and baby Kate. Kate is the most adorable baby! Every time we see her at church or some ward function - we crawl over each other to get to hold her! She reminds us so much of Morgan when she was a baby. Those of you who didn't know us back then - it is true - little tiny Morgan was the fattest baby!

I wonder who lines their m&m's up by color before she eats them?

Devon - wishing it was his picture on the cover of Golf Digest. Or Devon wishing Tiger Woods was in our living room.

Nicole saw a play called the Snow Queen a couple of weeks ago. The Snow Queen wore a white dress and she had white hair - so Nicole decided to dress up like her. It cracked me up how creative she was with her hair - that is a tank top of Morgans bobby pinned to her hair.

Nicole gave an oral report on France in her class last week. We also served a Buche de Noel. She was adorable in her beret and she did a great job talking about France. She was only a little embarrassed when she was talking about French Artists and held up a book of Renoir paintings and it opened a little to reveal a painting of a nekkid lady. Then she sang all afternoon "There is a place in France where the naked ladies dance but the men don't care because they wear no underwear." She is the youngest - I don't know where she learns these things.

The Weeks Between Thanksgiving and Christmas

I have been struggling with my blog. I totally failed the National Blog Posting Month challenge of a post a day for the month of November. I was discussing this with a fellow blogger and came to the conclusion that no one really cares. Why do I even blog? Who is even reading this and cares about the minutiae of my life. I am getting over the guilt that I feel for not blogging and the incredible blogging block that follows it. I keep getting great ideas for random posts but feel like I can't do it until I get this thing caught up. So here it goes.

Thanksgiving was nice. The food was eh... but the company was wonderful. We went to one of my brother's homes in North Scottsdale, the weather was chilly/rainy but it was great to visit with the family that was able to make it. My brothers and sisters are all so spread out (in age and by miles) and busy with their own families that we have not all been together since my Dads funeral in July of 2006. To all be together for an occasion soon (other than a funeral) is on the top of my grown-up Christmas list.

Black Friday was great. I am a die-hard Black Friday shopper. I went through the ads Thursday night, made a plan and tried to get a few hours of sleep. I left my house at 3:45 a.m., shopped in 8 stores and I was home at 7:45 a.m. with everything on my list. I went back to bed and got a nap - it was great. We got the Christmas tree up later in the morning.

Devon took this picture while we were getting the tree up. I am the double-wide in the white sweater.

We went out riding and also went to an old friend's house to reminisce. I grew up with a great group of friends. We all lived there and went to church and school together from kindergarten to graduation. A few of us visited and told stories that some of our spouses were surprised to hear. I was really the only girl on the block - and I was definitely a tom-girl - there were always shenanigans involving fire, dumpster diving and long distance bike rides. It was great fun to see them again.

That weekend we went out to dinner and to a Phoenix Coyotes game with some good friends. We kind of happened upon a newer fro-yo place called Ocean Blue. It is great - I can't wait to go there again.

During these last few weeks I have cleaned and decorated. The honest truth is that Courtney did almost all of the decorating - she was in a better mood than me in the week after Thanksgiving.
This entire bag of trash came out of the cushions in our chair and a half. It is mostly candy wrappers from Halloween. Gross!

I have shopped (almost done!) and crafted. I have hand addressed 65 Christmas cards and written a personal note on each one of them. We have attended orchestra and choir concerts and a wonderful Enrichment meeting. There are three three parties this week to attend! We had a very nice visit with Alan's dad and his wife DeAnn. They were here for DeAnn's daughter's son's blessing. Is that confusing enough? We love all of them. DeAnn's daughter Kelly and her husband Travis are special people and we enjoy having them in our extended family. During their short weekend visit we made a trip over to see the temple lights. It was gorgeous as always - visit that linked web site and get excited about taking your family and friends to go see them. It was pretty cold - but you would have thought it was a lot colder by looking at how we were dressed!

That is my update. I feel a weight lifted off of my shoulders just by putting this out there. Now, I feel I can return to my regularly scheduled blogging.