Are you ready for some mud football?

There's nothing like some good clean fun. LOL! Welcome to our 2nd annual mud football event. Once again we went out to U of A farms where they were kind enough to till up and flood a field for us. Now that Mark is a High Counselor one of his duties is being over stake activities. This is the first one for him and he had a great time helping plan and see it through. The Maricopa Stake consists of 7 wards and 3 branches (too small to be a ward yet) We were not sure how many people would come to this one since it was on a holiday weekend and lots of people go out of town. We still have several hundred, so it was fun. Towards the end of the "big guys" football game Chad got hurt pretty bad. Someones head nailed him in the throat with his head and his larynx popped back and down and stuck there. He fell to his knees and couldn't breathe. He grabbed on to his larynx trying to pull it back out. After a minute or so he could breathe again. He came and showed me his neck and he could wiggle his larynx back and forth really far. Scary far...like your neck shouldn't be able to do that far. Ick! He couldn't eat last night and hasn't eaten much today because it hurts too much. He's a trooper though. He is giving a talk tonight at Stake Priesthood meeting. I know it's for the guys, but since I'm his mom I plan to go and stay long enough to listen to him. ***edited to add*** I just got home. Chad did an awesome job on his talk. I was so proud of him and I knew he talk was enjoyed by all who attended. They also had Hunter go up to the pulpit and tell his conversion story and share his testimony. I know he was nervous because he had no warning, but he did such a wonderful job. We were proud of him too. When I walked in the Stake President greeted me with a hug and told me how nice it was to see me at Priesthood meeting and asked if I was there to hear Chad talk. I told him yes and that I was going to try to blend in by putting on one of Mark suits but I thought the pink purse would be a dead give away that I wasn't a man. LOL! Gotta admit that I'm glad to not be able to pass for a man....shudder! :o)

Check out this next sequence of pictures. The pretty blond woman in the nice clothes standing on the berm is Brother Malan's wife. (the seminary teacher I did his classroom for)Cole is walking towards her. He wanted Cole to go push her in. He didn't want to until Mark said he'd pay him $10 bucks to do it, so of course what kid wouldn't do that for money. LOL! Watch as he takes her down. She puts up a real good fight and gets him back in the end. We laughed so hard I almost peed my pants. I'm so glad I got it all in pictures. It was just too funny! She's a great sport.

After everyone rinsed off in a water retention pond we had a big BBQ Picnic. They had been smoking pork roast for several days. It made the BEST pulled pork sandwiches I've ever had. Mark had each ward bring different food assignments. I made pasta salad and pink fluff. There was so much food. It was awesome. They has some extra roasts and we got one. I shredded it up today and reheated it in my crock pot and we just ate that for dinner. So good! My hands still smell like smoked meat even after washing them several times. It was such a great day full of fun memories with good friends and family. I love those kinds of days.

Braces and painting...

This week Cody got new braces. He is so happy! He is a kid that has a lot of self confidence, but is very insecure about his teeth and I can't really blame him for that. We don't have any medical insurance, but we did find Dr. Coles here in Maricopa. He is an excellent Orthodontist. We were able to put down $500 and make monthly payments to him for the next 2 years while Cody is in treatment. Braces are SO expensive, but Cody is worth it. I did take a not very flattering picture of him with the jaws of life keeping his mouth open, but I decided to be a nice mom and not share it, but don't think I won't use it against him if need be, for blackmail purposes. :o)


Okay...so yesterday I started painting my house. I just couldn't take the gross flat builders white paint with fingerprints that you can't wash off anymore. I painted for 8 long hours. All of my muscles and bones hurt and I don't have much to show for it. I PLAN to paint the living room, family room, formal dining room, kitchen, eat in dining room, both big halls down stairs up the stair way, the loft and the huge walk around hall upstairs. The boys want their bedrooms painted too, but I can't even think about that right now.

Do you want to know what 8 hours gets you when you paint by yourself? Half the stairway and not even all of my 2 big halls downstairs with their threshold beams. THAT'S IT and that's just with the roller. I haven't even started cutting in the trim yet and I can't do that until I wash all the baseboards. Even the thought of moving furniture away from the walls and taking the enormous amount of decorations off the walls is overwhelming. If you look on the floorplan from my moving sheet, if you walk in the front door there is the living room/formal dining room. The first hallway on the right goes to the kitchen. From the front door you look straight back into my scrapbook room. The hall back there is HUGE! (Ignore the colored scribbles. That was to color code boxes for each room) All day yesterday I was singing little made up songs to myself having to do with I really hate painting but I sure do love this color. Speaking of color. There are SO MANY neutral colors to choose from. Most of which looks great on the little swatch, but not so great on the wall. My good friend Stacie shared with me her paint color that I LOVE, which is Ralph Lauren's "linen", but mixed in the Behr interior eggshell enamel. It has such a nice sheen to it and it has superior scrubability. Perfect! This paint is not something I would have picked off the swatch, but it is by far my favorite neutral color I've seen. I really LOOOOVE it. If there was a better word than love I would use it. It's just so clean and pretty. ahhhh... (Not my house, the paint...hee..hee...house is a mess.)
At the pace I'm going, I hope to be done by Christmas, because not only do I have a lot of square feel to cover, but I have my normal busy life to keep up with too.
Time to jump in the shower. Cole wants me to come to school to talk to his counselor about changing his schedule. They gave him performing arts instead of PE and he hates that kind of stuff. He feels stupid doing drama but loves anything athletic. We'll see if the counselor will let him change.
I can't believe it's Friday already, can you?!

***Edited***

I took off my floor plan picture just in case there are creepy people reading.

Olympic Party...

Saturday night our ward had a party honoring the Olympics. It was so much fun, from the food, the games and the decor. Don't you just love the cupcakes in the shape of the Olympic rings? CUTE! Each table had to pick a country. Most of them were make believe countries. We had to draw and color our country flag and we as a table had to decide who would represent us in each event. Chad signed me up for the javelin....which turned out to be a peacock feather. There are no pictures of that, but I did have a stylish approach. There was the 50 foot dash where they literally has to walk 50 feet heel toe heel toe. They had a relay that you carried a hard boiled egg on a spoon. Jumping exercise, which was jump rope, and for the gymnastics it was the ever popular ribbon dancing. Mark represented us on that event. Let me just say that I never laughed so hard while watching him ribbon dance. I had tears streaming down my face. He cart wheeled all the way down. I didn't know he could even do a cart wheel. I don't think he knew he could. He danced and twirled with such style....such grace...with an attempt at a knee slide finale. Only problem is he didn't slide. He hit the ground and stuck...hard. LOL! They made the top 3 do a dance off to the song dancing queen and Mark won the gold! It was hysterical! Everyone had such a great time and I appreciate the activities committee for all their hard work. We did bring lots of food to share and came 2 hours early to help set up, but there was SO MUCH work that they put into it before hand and that's what made it a successful party.

Crafty(ish) things...

Our ward is doing a Super Saturday craft day in October. We had to have the sign up display table done this past Sunday to give a few weeks to sign up as well as a few weeks to prepare kits for that day. I was asked to make and teach one of the crafts. They wanted a magnet board so I created one that is 12" X 24". I painted the wood black, sanded and stained the edges. Glued on the custom cut piece of sheet metal and attached bazzill flowers to the top with upholstery nails and put a saw tooth hanger on the back. Easy peasy! The cost for making this craft is $9.00. Pretty cheap I think and WAY CUTE! I'm really looking forward to Super Saturday. We are doing lots of cute and easy crafts. It's sure to be a fun day.

On Friday night I went to town for scrapbooking night with the Ladies of Star. I got 2 easy layouts done. It's hard to be too creative when you're at someone elses house and don't have all your own things. Done is good in my book. It really was a fun night with my friends. In total there were 10 of us. Mindy is the one who hosts. She cooks us all a fabulous dinner and dessert and she sets up tables and lights in her living room and raffles off fun things. 10 people can work perfectly in there. I sure appreciate all the effort she puts into our monthly scrap night.Seminary started today for the kids in our church who are high school age. (9th-12th grades) We have 3 seminary teachers that teach every morning here in Maricopa before school starts. Brother Malan is one of them, but he had foot surgery and had been in so much pain. Obviously he was unable to get his classroom ready. I had brought Chad and Hunter to the church to set up his tables and chairs and I was talking to him about his class. The other two teachers classrooms look so cute. He told me "I can teach the class, but I have no idea how or the ability to decorate a room". I told him "this is your lucky day, because I CAN'T teach a class, but I CAN decorate a room". LOL! He was thrilled! I spent a day and a half setting up his room. They are studying the New Testament this year. I printed upthe names of all the books in the New Testament and tore the edges and inked them for an aged look. I had Hunter and Chad put them up high on the wood beams in order. The kids have to memorize the books in order. They look really good, I think.


I also got all his students binders with their name labels on them and included a pencil pouch with a black pen, blue pen, pencil, red scripture marking pencil and a scripture mastery card. The each have a composition book with their name label as well as this years manual.


His classroom doesn't have big bulletin boards so I utilized the back of the double doors. The girly side of me had to cute it up a bit. He wanted something to do with knowing the Shepherd, so I found a really nice picture of Christ as the Shepherd and found sheep in my clip art. They were facing left, but I thought they should be looking towards Christ so I flipped them and then put the students names on them. The quote I used says..
"We should each ask,
Am I loving enough, am I studying enough,
am I serving enough to know the Shepherd?
May we all come to know the Savior through
obeying his commandments, so that when we
meet him face to face, we each can say,
I know thee, thou art my Shepherd."
I can't tell you how much I love that quote. If you really ponder on it, there is so much power in it. I hope the students this year really strive to know the Shepherd.
I'm getting ready to head to town to get a few things. I'm not quite done with his room yet, plus Mark forgot his wallet and needs it.
Happy Monday Everyone!

1st birthday and spaghetti sauce...

We all met Brek, Brittany and the boys in town for a birthday dinner celebration for John. The birthday boy slept through most of it. He woke up in time to eat a little bit and to get his presents from us. We got him a big boy car seat so he can sit facing forward like baby Mark does, a couple of outfits and the cute little cars. I got them because they came in a two pack knowing full well the boys are too young to really grasp the whole sharing and wait your turn to play concept. Less fighting that way. It was really fun to spend time with them.

On Tuesday morning I volunteered to work at the church cannery. It was spaghetti sauce day.The sauce itself was made earlier that morning. When the volunteers arrived we all sat through a quick safety orientation, scrubbed our hands and arms, put on gloves and a lovely hairnet to make us all look fabulous and got set up on different stations. Some would load of the clean empty jars. Then they would go through the tunnel that filled 4 jars at a time. When they came out people would put the lids on as they passed by.
This is where they enter to be processed. This person had to wear special heat gloves because the water is very hot.They would come out the other end and be placed back on the conveyor belt.Sent through the hole where the jars got their labels. We would take them off quickly and put them in boxes. Sometimes it was so fast it reminding me of that I love Lucy episode in the chocolate factory. If it was a chocolate factory you can bet that I would have eaten my share of them. I traded off between 3 jobs. One was filling the boxes and testing the lids to make sure they were sealed properly, one was folding down the top flaps and having boxes always ready for the filler then shoving it down to be taped. Then we were running low on boxes so I had to make them up and put their divider inserts in as quick as I could to keep up with demand. It was feverishly fast work.
This is the tape machine that tapes the top and bottom and the same time after the boxes have been filled with the jars.



Then they were stacked on pallets and fork lifted out and we'd start a new pallet. In all we bottled up 12,000 jars of spaghetti sauce for the church welfare system. The whole process was so interesting and I really enjoyed the work even if my arms felt like limp noodles by the end of my shift. I feel good about serving in any and all areas of this church. It's good and important work.

I found out Tuesday night that I had to go to court on Wednesday morning to testify in a child support lawsuit for one our family members. They have been divorced for 12 years. It was very difficult because I've been friends with both of them for almost 23 years. It's just so sad that it has come to this. I did what I was called to do. I told the truth of what I knew. They ran out of time in court to present their whole case so they have another court date in December to finish it up. It's pretty much in the hands of the judge and our Heavenly Father on the outcome. All I pray is that the truth prevails, whatever that may be and that all parties can move on with their lives because even though the kids are now grown, it's still very hard on them to have their parents going through this. I feel so bad for them.

After I was done at court Mark had finished up with his schedule early so he took me to lunch at the Olive Garden and to a movie and we went and bought baby Mark some birthday presents. He will be 2 on September 2nd. Then we met up with the star riders for dinner. It was such a long day and I was in a dress and heels for all of it. My feet still hurt this morning. I'm so glad to finally have a day at home! I think I'll get some cleaning done then relax for a bit.

Back to school and baptism...

Back to school checklist for the youngest George boys...

• Immunizations - check
• haircuts - check
• lunch with mom - check
• clothes shopping - check
• school supplies - check
• registration - check
• sports physicals - not yet
• bus schedules - check
• father's blessings - check
• boys dropped off for their first day of school - check

It's hard to believe school as started. It feels strange. I have yet to decide if it's strange good or strange bad. I don't like the fact that Middle school/junior high starts in 6th grade instead of 7th like I'm use to. It feels like my baby has been robbed of his last year of elementary school. He's excited. Why can't I be?

A bunch of us mom's are going together to have a back to school lunch in town one day this week. I'm really looking forward to it. I have some great friends out here that I love.

By the way...I included a picture of me and Cole at his last basketball game so you can see that over the summer he went and out grew me....dang kid! It happened so fast. I'm now the shortest one in the family. Cody is the tallest in the family.

Hunter was baptized by Mark on Saturday. It was such a special day. You could feel the spirit so strong. A while back the missionaries had stopped by our house to refill their water bottles and Hunter told them he would like to start taking the discussions. The missionaries started coming over to see him twice a week and he had prayed about it and decided he wanted to become a member of the church. He has been attending every Sunday with our family since he moved in here. We have watched his testimony grow. He has made good friends who are great examples to him. The Turley family in our ward have been so good to him. They've had him over for family home evening several times and truly befriended him. We love that family. Actually we love so many families out here. The ward mission leader gave Hunter a new set of scriptures that have his name engraved on them. He loves them! We know this is where we are suppose to be. Sadly Hunter's parents are very upset about his decision to be baptized. They disowned him, changed their locks and told him not to contact them or his brothers as well as several other hurtful comments. it broke my heart that they treated him so bad over a choice of religion. They hate Mormon's, yet their only knowledge of our religion comes from Mormon bashers who don't believe in telling the truth. It's so sad. We pray that their hearts will soften over time as they see how much he's grown through making positive choices to live a good life. He knows in his heart he's doing what's right. I'm so proud of how strong his testimony is. He is a great boy.

The ick update.

I had gotten BAD sick Monday night and spend the next 4 solid days in bed. I finally managed to get up on Saturday, but it wasn't easy. I knew I had to be there for Hunter as well as take the boys school shopping and to get refreshments for after the baptism. For the first time, nothing was homemade. I just didn't have it in me. It was a really difficult day physically. It's a dang good thing boys are fast shoppers. I don't have any of the protruding ick, but I still don't have my strength and my stomach has a lingering, yet constant dull ache. Sometimes sharp pains. My appetite is half of what it was and every single thing I eat makes me feel sick. I dread eating now and only eat out of necessity.I just want to be 100% again. Not that my 100% is awesome, but I'll take it at this point. I'm telling you right now, that I'd rather go through labor and delivery that go through this crud. It's been horrible! I am so grateful for a couple of the young women who came over during the week and helped clean up my downstairs for me when they knew I couldn't and it had to be done before everyone came over Saturday for refreshments. I love those girls!

got the ick...

Just poking my head in so you wouldn't worry and to let you all know I'm so so so sick! Real bad stomach bug and all the creep and crud associated with it. I've been down for days. My whole body hurts more than I ever thought was possible and I have no strength. Hoping to attempt a shower this morning, but have yet to be successful with that. I look and feel gross. Only good thing is I'm down 4 pounds, but that is sure to come back when I can eat solid food again. Be back on when I can walk standing straight up and free of this darn bug.