Thursday, September 24, 2009

Grateful!

My days are at times overwhelming and exhausting. I start off great! Kids up, a healthy homemade breakfast, scripture study, teeth brushed, lunches packed, hair brushed, family prayer, and big kisses and hugs as I send them out the door.

14 hours later we end with... a rushed dinner that nobody will eat, a little bit of raised voices there, dishes done by a protesting son, a little bit of raised voices there, calling everyone to family prayer, voices even louder, teeth brushed with lots of loud encouragement, reading time which falls apart quickly to a lot of boys wrestling and me raising my voice. loudly. It all ends with someone coming out of their room to ask to go to the bathroom or get a drink and I completely lose it! You would think that they were coming out to ask me if they could shave their head and tattoo a girls name on their skinny little bicep by the way I overreact.

For the last several nights I have had a little light of peace in this chaos that gives me so much joy I can hardly contain myself. It is this...
You see for this little boys lifetime I have helped him say his prayers. Well he is getting older and a few days ago he told me he could say it all alone so I let him, and folks, I will never help him again. Here is the prayer. Keep in mind I did not help him at all.


"Heavenly Father. Grateful for my blessings. Grateful that I love Mom. Grateful she is my love. Grateful she is my princess. Grateful she is my sweetie. Grateful she loves me. Grateful I love Heavenly Father. Grateful I love Jesus. Jesus Christ Amen."

Grateful indeed.

The question is this is it strange that I have him say his prayers several times a day?

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Creepy Park People.

So I have to tell you about one thing that happened at the park during my party. We are sitting there eating dinner and waiting for the rest of the family to arrive and some creepy guy on a Harley pulls up in the parking lot and starts revving his engine SO LOUDLY (why do they do that? does anyone know?) My first thought was where are the rest of them, because they seem to travel in packs. My second thought as I looked at him with his long straggly grey hair pulled back in a pony tail (I'm sorry but NASTY) was he really shouldn't be at a park with kids around. It is just creepy.
He got off his bike and started sauntering towards the pavilion. Ewwww. Why is he coming this direction. He is going to scare the girls. Another question. What is up with tattoos and chains. Can you not own a bike and dress normal? Do you have to try to scare people? Is that part of the contract you sign when you buy a Harley? I mean look at how ridiculous the tattoo looks on that farmer tan arm?

Wait a minute? Farmer tan? What is up with that?
That is no creepy Harley park dude. (debatable I know) It is B. Rad. My nutso brother.
Is Mom terrified or what? Do you like his chain and official Harley belt buckle? They were on sale.

The stick on tattoos were fantastic and really stood out on the haven't-seen-sun-since-the-90's farmer tan arms!
Here he is looking Harleyish on his new toy. He came just to give some old lady a thrill ride on her birthday! Thanks for the ride B. Rad and more than that thanks for the huge laugh!
PS It was a total shock to most of us. (Mitch, Haley and Alli knew) Andrew was the first to recognize him as soon as he got off the bike. Andrew yelled "I know those arms! That is Brad." Mom's response "I hope not!" Classic.

Monday, September 21, 2009

As the Oldest and Wisest....

I am the oldest of my siblings and apparently turning 40 is a big deal! My sister-in-law, Jenn, put together a great birthday bash for me! She rented a park for goodness sakes. My other sister-in-law made this massive beautiful sign!
She also made this not so cool sign!

As well as this one. They decorated the tables with black balloons and table cloths and black napkins that leave a black stain on your blue shirt if you try to wipe off food that spilled on you which is apparently what happens a lot when you get OLD!
Haley isn't funny. She is a very beautiful, talented and mean girl and I no longer like her.
Here she is feeding Ben. I do like him. Jenn put together a fantastic meal for us all. I do like her and all the good food.
Here she is putting the last touches on one of the games we played. Water Kickball! It was great fun.
Here is how it works. You kick the ball. Run to the "bases" which are swimming pools that you have to jump in and hope that you don't slip and fall in. Then when you get to home plate you slide into home on the slip and slide. Some people don't slide very well apparently and have to crawl on the slip and slide. Not very graceful but still effective if the goal is to get very wet. Very refreshing on a hot summers day. Which this was. My team won this game!
Next we played a cool game where we had to fill up a pole with water. One cupful at a time. Not very difficult sounding. The catch is the pole has holes. So the rest of the team has to plug the holes or the water just spills out. Most used their fingers to plug the holes. Some had more interesting methods. My team lost this game. I blame Mitch. Next we did a water balloon toss where we lined up with a partner and tossed a balloon back and forth until it broke. Mitch and Haley won this one. This game, of course, digressed into a massive water balloon fight... which in turn lead to the uncles just turning the hoses on the kids. The natural result of this turned in to a foot race with uncles because some of the kids are getting pretty hard to catch and squirt with a hose and some uncles had to make sure they were still fastest man in the family. He was. Barely.
It was a delightful party and fun was had by us all. I had my cupcake and turned in early with my Depends! Thanks Jenn for a great day!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Swimsuit ready?

So it happened. We had the Chunky Challenge weigh in. It was a STRESSFUL day. So if you don't remember, the rules were this... everyone set a goal (except new mom Haley), if you don't make your goal someone else has to make up for your failure. If we make our family goal we go on a cruise together. If we don't we get to be highlighted on this here blog as being failures. If you need more details go to the above link.
Needless to say that the day of the weigh in everyone was worried about making their goal. Some were hoping that B. Rad's computer would crash and all the stats would be lost forever. Others were hoping B. Rad would hit his head and would never remember he had started this ordeal. Dave and I were so worried that we fasted that day (I don't know if we fasted for the blessing of making our goals or hoping that we would lose weight by not eating that day) Just teasing. Fasting was unrelated to the Chunky Challenge. We arrived at Mom's and Dave and I were convinced that we had gained weight that week! Mom was also fasting and had been weighing herself every hour and was actually gaining weight as the day went on. She was worried. Baby Ben was supposed to gain 8 lbs and Haley actually put weights in his pants to make sure he made his goal. (He did! Even without the weights.) Well B. Rad arrived (darn) and started demanding numbers from people. Mitch arrived and took a laxative! Talk about desperation! Well someone finally decided that they were taking the official scale into the bathroom because they were stripping down to their birthday suit so they could make weight. GREAT IDEA! So everyone started weighing in NAKED (in the privacy of the bathroom of course!) B. Rad was recording the weights and also making signs for us to hold up saying how much we had lost during the Chunky Challenge. There were some who barely made their goal. Some who missed by a few pounds (hello to sisters and sisters-in law who never should have set such high goals when the only possible way to lose that much was remove a leg) and others who lost more than their goal. So really the most important number would be the total pounds lost by us all. The family goal was 191 pounds. That was the number we were working towards. So here is me. Horrible picture I know but my goal was 20lbs and as you can read I made my goal plus some. Great start although a lot more must be done. I was the 3rd biggest loser.
Here is my darling brother who was the second biggest loser. He looks so great. So much younger after losing over 35 lbs. He surpassed his goals of 30 lbs as well.

Here we have the Biggest Loser I am proud to say. Dave lost over 50 lbs. His goal was 32 so he rocked his goal and also saved the skinny girls who didn't quite make their goals. He looks great although now I complain that his clothes look horrible. He still wants to lose more before we go clothes shopping. But now we had to see the big total...

222
We did it! Swimsuit ready or not the Rencher family is going on a cruise!

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Oh what do you do in the summertime...beside stop blogging!

I would like to officially apologize to my loyal readers for my long extended absence from my blog. Sorry Grandma! I have been very very bad but for very fun reasons. I have been busy.

Busy just lazing about on my hot summer days without a care in the world. Lying by the imaginary pool that is. Soaking in the healthy sun with my 5 well behaved and happy children fanning me and bringing me ice cold lemonade from lemons that I grew in my fabulous garden!

Bah hah hah! That is so not my life. After all lemons don't grow here in my neck of the woods!

Here is a snapshot or two of what I have actually been doing. I will write more about them when I finish getting my tan perfected.

Little Cottonwood Canyon
Youth Conference at Paradise Lake All-Star Baseball Games 5K races Watching Parades Bear LakeSwimming Lessons
Girls Camp Heber Valley
Scout Camp @ Bear LakeMarching in Parades
Watching Mom in Concert at the Tabernacle
Fireworks at Grandma Rollins
Family Swim Parties
Reunions with wonderful friends!
Ditto!
Lagoon rides with cousins and uncles
Go Kart Racing!
A major milestone
A HUGE Surprise planned by my amazing husband.First day of school!Playing Rockband with my cowboy relations!
Labor day weekend at the Homestead

So there, in a nutshell, are my last several weeks.
The summer just flew by with delightful memories and tired boys the happy result.
I look forward to discovering the joys of blogging once again as soon as I finish my YW lesson and the PTA Room rep volunteer tea invitations!
Which is what I should have been doing instead of writing this post!