Arizona "Rain" Storm . . . and oh so pretty party decorations.

Here is a picture of our rain storm the other night. Lots of wind and dust, even a rainbow, but only a few drops of rain. Ahhh, life in the desert. :-)


And in other news . . .

Last night was the party at my house I have been working on the past several days. I had a vision of everything in gold but was worried it might look boring. I think it turned out beautifully though!! I got the table cloths from http://www.efavormart.com/ and at first didn't like them, as I thought they looked a bit dull. But then I put them on the table and when the light would shine on them they would glisten!! I loved it!!


My friend Susan helped set everything up and made the beautiful center pieces. They were so simple yet so elegant!

The party was so much fun. The food was delicious (everyone brought something--15 couples) and we played the most simple but fun game--Christmas Carol Pictionary.

We first divided into four teams. Each person was given one of four different song titles and at the same time everyone started singing their song until all members of their team were identified. Then each team was given a dry erase board and a marker. One person from each team was selected as the artist. I gave the four artists the name of a Christmas carol (I wrote them out ahead of time on slips of paper and drew them from a basket). Each person then went back to their team and at the same time all four started drawing. The team that named the carol first, won that round. Each round a different person was selected to draw.

It was so much fun and got very crazy!!

Thanks Jenny and Suzy for all your party planning help and all your hard work to make everything turn out so well!!

And in case anyone was wondering . . . only 16 more days until all my kids are home!!!

Time's A Wasting!! A Challenge.

I got this idea from Shannon . Ever since I read her post I have been thinking about it. What can you do in 15 minutes?

I consider myself a busy person and yet when I thought about it, I realized I waste a lot of time during the day. Often I will have small increments of time I think isn’t enough to do a large project, and so I fill up those few minutes with fairly meaningless activities instead.

Then I read Shannon’s post about all the things she could do in just fifteen minutes and decided I needed to rethink my day. Instead of saying, “Oh, I just have 10/15/20 minutes, I can’t do anything in that time so I will sit at the computer and catch up on Facebook, (or something similar) I decided to put my spare minutes to good use.

And this is what I discovered I could do in 15 minutes:

1. Fold laundry. I detest laundry but doing it in 15 minute increments is much more enjoyable for me—and it is better than ignoring it all week because I don’t want to do it.
2. Iron a few shirts or a couple pair of pants.
3. Pay bills
4. Clean the kitchen/do dishes
5. Touch up cleaning in a bathroom
6. Write a couple thank you notes
7. Take a power nap. (Not a waste of time when you never get more than six hours of sleep a night:-)
8. Prepare dinner menus for the week
9. Vacuum the upstairs. (I love vacuuming; I feel it covers a multitude of sins:-)
10. Walk a mile. (This is usually more helpful in the afternoon than taking the nap)
11. Read a couple Ensign articles
12. Write a few lines in my journal. I find it hard to keep a journal on top of everything else because I always think I need to write long entries, but I have started writing less, which has helped me to write more often.
13. Make a telephone call to check on a ward member. (You know the ones who aren’t at church on Sunday or you haven’t seen in a while.)
14. Catch up on emails. I need more time if I am going to respond to them all, but in 15 minutes I can usually read everything I have been sent and then prioritize my responses.

Thank you Shannon for the advice to use my time more wisely!! Now to the rest of you out there . . . what can you do in 15 minutes??

And just a side note . . . I am in party planning mode again. (Definitely NOT a 15 minute activity!:-) On December 1 we are having a Christmas dinner party at our house for about 36 people. Thankfully for this one I have two of my favorite party planners helping me—Jenny and Suzy!! I love those women!!

Oh, So Sweet! And Now Sixteen!!

Kathryn, Michelle, Kristen

Today is my daughter Michelle’s sixteenth birthday. You know what that means—driver’s licenses and dating. Personally, I find both rather terrifying. Although I did offer to make her a t-shirt to wear to school that said, “Michelle can now date.” And then write her phone number below, but she nixed that idea . . . for some reason.

Instead of regular gifts, she opted to have us use the money we would have spent on her for a party. I am including pictures of that on the bottom of this post, but first . . .

I want to tell you about Michelle.

She is my tender hearted, nurturer. One day when she was just under two, I received some bad news that made me cry. I remember sitting on the couch crying and Michelle was on the floor playing with her toys. When she saw my grief she immediately got up on the arm of the couch next to me and pulled my head towards her chest and held it there until I quit. She then got back on the floor and continued playing with her toys, never saying a word.

When she was five she was telling me about her three grandmothers. I explained that one of them was actually a great-grandmother and in reality she had four of them. I then added that she also had eight great-grandmothers. Her eyes got wide and she asked incredulously, “Are they really all mine?” When I said yes, she exclaimed, “I am such a lucky girl!” And she is.

A couple years ago my husband and I had to be out of town at the same time my son scheduled knee surgery. I felt so bad being gone when he needed someone to care for him. But Michelle stepped up and took care of the job, even better than I would have done. For two nights straight she stayed up all night taking care of his every need. He was totally immobilized and in a LOT of pain so his needs were great--and constant. But she never complained. She just lovingly took care of him. I was so impressed with that.

Michelle loves reading, dance, basketball and doing hair. She is smart, and cute, and kind and fun and can out eat her 15 year old male cousin in a pizza eating contest—an honor we aren’t exactly proud of.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHELLE!!

WE LOVE YOU!!

Just some of the cute girls who came to celebrate with Michelle



We learned you can never have enough games at a party for teenagers, as they blew through everything rather quickly. But here is proof you are never too old for musical chairs!!


For one of the games we had a pedestrian road rally. As part of that, they had to get everyone on their team on a twister map and take a picture.

They also had to shoot ten baskets with a basketball, sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" to the neighbors down the street, chew gum and all blow a bubble at the same time, spell out Michelle's name on the front lawn and . . .


Take a "family picture" using the costumes provided.

Here is one of the 'families".

Now wouldn't you want to have them as relatives? :-)

I think everyone had a great time. We had fun doing it.

And we didn't have too many casualties just . . .
1 bent chair
1 torn shirt
1 cut foot
1 broken phone

Special thanks to my helpers, Amy and Wendy. We could never have done it without you!

Also thanks to Amy's husband, Michael, who after driving in a car for two days came straight to our house and stayed until midnight helping clean up.

You are all the best!!

Our Version of Battle of the Sexes. Who Won????

Last Friday we had a birthday party at our house and played our own version of "Battle of the Sexes." There were seven couples in attendance, so each team had seven players.

Following a very yummy dinner, we competed in the following events:

1. Food Presentation
2. Fashion Design
3. Marksmanship (Nerf guns)
4. General Knowledge (10 questions taken from Cranium)
5. Communication Skills (played four rounds of Pictionary and one of "telephone".)
6. Home Building/Shelter
7. Romance

And who won??? Well, let me show you some of the pictures and let you judge for yourselves! :-)

First was food presentation. Both teams were given five cans of play dough and 15 minutes to make an attractive looking meal. The women very cleverly and artistically made a steak, asparagus, carrots, mashed potatoes with a slice of butter, corn on the cob, a garnish, and a biscuit. And the men . . . . ?

A banana split!!

Not very nutritious, but definitely eye pleasing. (In case you are wondering, they did not make the strawberries or grapes. They stole those from the refrigerator.)

Next came fashion design. Each team was given a roll of paper towels, a roll of toilet paper, a bandanna, scissors, and some orange curling ribbon and challenged to use the items in making an "outfit" for a member of their team. These all came in a Target sack. The women busily went to work "sewing" a dress, and even used the orange ribbon to make gathers in the skirt. I think it turned out pretty cute.

But I have to admit the men were pretty clever in their design. They said theirs was Pharaoh and even used the Target sack for his breastplate!

When it came to shelter, the women were better at turning our dwelling into a home than we were at making a good livable structure. We used blankets over chairs but then taped up pictures we drew of the temple, a portrait of my daughter who was the judge, (a little flattery) and drew fake windows.

And the men?????

They "built" the Parthenon!! And they themselves were the pillars. Inside stood one of their team members, wrapped in a "Toga" and carrying a book about Greece. Pretty hilarious actually, although I think their creativity was sparked a bit by laziness. :-) (None of them read my blog so I can say that.)

Our last event was romance. Each team was given a copy of a primary song and had to turn it into a song about romance. The men were very cute as they sang to us on bended knee (my husband even brought me the bouquet of silk flowers from the entry table). Their song was very sweet and we all appreciated their kind words.

Our song, however, was not only very flattering to our husbands, but also ended with a kiss and so they willingly gave us the win. :-) That put us one point over the top---in a very biased judging system---and we were declared the winners. Here we are wearing our medals (gold sparkly wooden stars) and humbly and graciously singing, "We Are the Champions."

The men took it well and we all had a great time. The only thing I would do differently were I to do it again, is to eliminate one or two of the activities--such as the shooting and general knowledge. It took much longer than I anticipated and started to get a bit long in the end.

Still it was a lot of fun and spending the evening with friends definitely brought . . . joy to my journey.

So what has your week been like?

It has been another bad week for blogging, but a good week for life!! I am not sure where all the time went, but it seemed like I rarely had time to sit and write. I spent a lot of time preparing seminary lessons, (the story of my life!) attended the freshman football game, made dinner for a friend, got my hair cut and colored, have been walking in the morning with my friend Susan and then again later with the dog, cleaned my house, and spent 45 minutes sitting out in the sun with the dog, after I accidentally locked myself out of my house! Lucky for me, my husband was willing to be my knight in shining armor and hurry home on his white horse (or black car) and rescue a damsel in distress.

But our biggest news is that our temperatures have finally fallen under a hundred for the day and 70 at night!! It almost felt cold at 5:30 this morning!! We may even have gotten down to around 68. My daughter told me many of her friends wore long sleeves or sweaters and one friend stopped at the gas station on the way to school to buy hot chocolate. No matter that it still was around 95 later in the day!

Tomorrow night (Friday) we are hosting a birthday party for a friend. We are having a barbecue and our own version of "Battle of the Sexes." I have spent a lot of time working on that, and am excited for how it will turn out. Hopefully it will be a lot of fun. I plan on taking pictures so unless I am threatened not to, I will post those over the weekend.

In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great day, and a wonderful conference weekend!

If I Could Have My Dream Job . . .

I would be a party/event planner. I love to plan parties! I love planning the decorations, the food, the entertainment. Everything. The last big neighborhood party I had was during the Olympics last fall and we had a mini Olympics at my house. We had a javelin throw with swimming pool noodles, a discus throw with paper plates, bowling with pineapples and Nerf gun shooting plus several other activities. And then there was the Christmas party . . .

More recently I have helped plan two other parties. The first was a semi-formal garden party held last month in my friend Suzy's backyard. Suzy is a ton of fun and a hard worker, so the perfect person to plan a party with. She is also the very best at making very cute place cards. She made the clever and beautiful place cards below. Each of the little tangerines had a name written on a miniature piece of paper glued to a toothpick and stuck in the fruit.

Since purple is my favorite color, I wanted to use it for the table cloths. We also tied purple bows to the chairs and decorated the table with orange and yellow flowers. On each plate we had chocolate truffles wrapped in purple cellophane and tied with a yellow bow. My good friend Jenny also planned the party with us. Jenny is another great person to work with. She has great ideas, and she keeps track of everyone's assignments.

For dinner we served chicken breasts stuffed with spinach, sun dried tomatoes and three different cheeses, fresh green beans with butter and lemon, seasoned rice, a green salad and homemade rolls.

Today was another party. I have been working on this one for over a month now and loved how it came together--thanks to many people who helped out. It was for my friend Sonia's 40th birthday. Her favorite color is red so we wanted to use that without making it look like Valentines, so we added black in polka dots and gingham.

We gathered pictures from Sonia's past and another friend, Amy, put them together in this very cute display. The blank one in the center was signed by everyone at the party (28 people) and the red paper will be replaced with a group picture.

Around the room, on the walls we placed enlarged news articles covering the top ten stories of 1969. That was the year Sesame Street made its debut, Woodstock was held, the Internet began, the draft was reinstated, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and of course, Sonia was born! My daughter Kristen--who did all the news research--made up a fake edition of the Los Angeles Times--special evening edition--and wrote several articles about Sonia's birth, which included things like a message from then President Nixon, congratulations from recently elected Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, and astronaut Neil Armstrong.

For entertainment we played Family Feud Sonia Style--where everyone had to guess her top answers to categories like "Favorite Musical Group of the 80's" and "Top Vacation Spots". We filled up on Mexican food, brownie bites, miniature cheese cakes and cherry bars, (her favorite foods) and watched her open some very thoughtful gifts. No gag gifts were given but one card came close. It said, "Well, wasn't it fun being young and skinny? But now that is all over . . . " Ouch.

And now I am ready to take a break from partying and start focusing on other areas of my life. Like next Thursday night I am speaking at our stake youth conference. I only have to speak for 15 minutes, so it shouldn't be too hard to prepare, but so far I have not given it a thought. Any suggestions???