Quick update

We have a realtor friend coming over to look at our house so it can go up on the market. He says he MAY have investors interested in buying it. My house is so NOT ready for him to look at...huge mess! Been working on it all afternoon and evening, still not even close to done. He will be here at 1:30 in the afternoon so I have a few hours in the morning to work on it. Wish me luck! We also picked up some boxes so we can get busy packing. I see that the size of the new house surprises a lot of you. To be honest it surprises me too. My house now is 2600 square feet and it's the biggest one I've ever had. We've lived here for 4 years and have really loved it. I have a feeling I'll be cleaning the new house all the time just to keep up, but it will be fun to decorate. I'm not loving the flat white builders paint, but it's not my house so I'll have to live with them. Hopefully cute stuff on the walls will make them look better.

Before we knew that we were moving we signed Cody and Cole up for baseball. Cole got a call tonight and he made the majors. He was SO excited...Until he realized that he wouldn't be here to play. He cried the rest of the night and was in a horrible mood. I feel so bad for him. It was such a big deal to him that he made the majors, since most boys on majors are a little older than him. Poor kid!

Chad called me this morning. He was sent to the hospital with bronchitis. I knew he was getting sick. They gave him some meds and an inhaler to help him breathe better. He's on light duty for now. Please keep him in your prayers so that he may have a speedy recovery. He also found out he will be going to a town called Farah, It's on the west side of Afghanistan, close to the border of Iran. He will be stationed there with the air force and the 82nd airborne. Sounds scary to me.

It's 12:30 and I'm headed to bed so I can get up early, shower and finish cleaning up endless messes before the realtor gets here..
Okay...so that update was not so quick....I miss not having a picture in this post. :o)

We found a home

We have weighed many options and have decided on renting the house out in Maricopa. I feel at peace with that decision even though change is very hard for me. I forgot that I took a few pictures the first night we drove out there. Here is the kitchen and the loft, which would be my new scraproom. This one is big enough for me to share it with Mark's office and even have a TV up there for the boys to play video games or watch sports. Plus I can have people over to scrap. In my room now I only have room for 1 guest, so it will be fun to have a few at a time over. Here is a link to the floorplan so you can see the layout of the house. Here is also a link to a virtual tour. It doesn't show 2 of the bathrooms, the laundry room, the large pantry or the garage but you can see where they are on the floorplan link. This house is almost $1000 less a month than my house now. Wev'e discovered that it's much cheaper to live out of town. This will be a huge blessing to us. It's going to be strange living in a town that doesn't even have a Wal-Mart, but it does have 2 grocery stores and plenty of fast food places. Brek, Brittany and the babies were going to live with us again, but tonight they decided to live with her parents for 2 more months then get an apartment. I can't blame them for wanting a place of their own. So now the 3 boys will each have their own bedroom. They have never had this before so let me just say that they were SO excited at the thought of this. It was pretty cute!

Now to start packing. This is move #32 for me. It never gets any easier. In fact I think it gets harder because we have way more stuff. It's a bit overwhelming!

Happy mail

In the midst of all my sadness and turmoil, I received the sweetest package in the mail from Briana. She made these adorable taggie blankets for baby Mark and his little brother or sister, and she made the cute little container filled with strawberry kisses, that I had never tried, but discovered that they are quite good, plus a beautiful handmade card. When I gave one of the blankets to baby Mark his eyes lit up and he started kicking and smiling. He loves it and so do I! I am truly touched and more appreciative than one could possible know. Thank you so much Briana! Brek and Brittany wanted me to pass on big thank you's from them too. :o)

I wish I had good news on the home front. Right now all I know for sure is that we have to move and soon, but to where is a whole other issue. We have a realtor friend that has a nice house we could rent, but the problem is that it's out in the town of Maricopa so Mark would have to commute in everyday. 45 minutes with good traffic and between 1 -1 1/2 hour in bad traffic. I understand that people commute all the time, but when you run a business like ours that has emergency calls all the time, that could be a lot of driving to and from town day or night and our only employee just quit and went back to school so we have no one in town to cover for Mark, so he has the whole burden on his shoulders. He already puts 150 miles a day on his van. Plus we would keep Kyle at his school so he can graduate, but that would mean that Mark would have to leave the house at 6:00 to get him to school on time. We still have that house option available to us, but been looking at houses here too, but haven't found anything that is big enough, in our price range, or isn't out of town the other direction. I'm still waiting on a clear answer to my prayers. I just want to feel some peace to know what is right. It's the worst feeling not knowing where home will be. I love my friends and my ward here. I love the schools and the boys have great friends. It's all just so hard.

On top of that I talked to Chad and he doesn't get the 2 week pass before leaving for Afghanistan. He will only get a 96 hour pass, but they really don't want the soldiers flying home. Last night I started bawling as soon as I found out he wasn't coming home. As it stands right now, Sandy will be flying out to Fort Bragg to see him. How on earth can I handle not seeing my boy for such a long time. I just don't know how much more I can take. I have cried for most of today too...still am in fact. I'm all for being tested with trials, but not so much into this whole bombarded with them. I feel like I keep getting knocked down before I even get a chance to stand all the way back up again. Not much of a fair fight in my eyes. I do know after I get through all of these trials, there must be some pretty big blessings at the end. Looking forward to sharing those with you. Your loving support and words of encouragement have meant the world to me. Thank you all!

Home.....

I wasn't going to blog tonight...in fact I was already in bed, but felt guilty for not blogging last night either, so here I sit at 11:35 p.m...so tired, but my mind is racing. There is a lot going on here. A lot of stress and a lot of emotions. We have decisions that have to be made, one of which is the possibility of moving from the home that I love. I know in my head that it's just a house, but as you all know, I very much think with my heart, so I'm really struggling with all the sacrifices that each member of my family will have to make if we decide that this is what's right for us. Right now I pray for comfort to know in my heart what to do and for peace and strength to be able to handle it, because my stomach is such a mess. I will fill you in more when I have a better idea myself. Just know I never stop thinking about my dear blogging buddies. Please don't be upset if I can't get around to everyones blogs right now. I'll do what I can. (((hugs)))

Another tag and 911

This picture has nothing to do with this post, but I didn't get to talk to Chad and I'm missing my boy, so I wanted to see his cute face. :o)

I was tagged by Pam and I'm suppose to tell you 5 surprising or secret things about me. I've done one of these before so I'll try not to repeat any of those answers. I'm still not exactly sure what I'm going to tell you because just like Pam, my life is an open book since I became a blogger, so here's hoping things come to me as I type....but more than likely the really good things will hit me while I'm sleeping

• I have a real and genuine fear of death. I don't want to die. The mere thought of it gives me anxiety. I know things on the other side are wonderful, but I'm not done with this life yet and I don't want to miss any of it. I want to be the one to raise my boys, see my grandkids grow up, and grow old with Mark. It's not just me...I don't want any of my loved ones to die either. It's just to painful and my heart can't take it.
• I consider myself a good safe driver, but with a few driving phobias of things like bridges, high freeway overpasses, being boxed in by semi trucks, construction zones where the cones are so close and I'm sure my big old suburban is going to knock out every sign. Mountain passes with cliffs next to me totally freak me out and I'm sure if I lived in the snow I would never drive in the winter.
• When I got married almost 21 years ago, 1 week before I turned 18 I weighed a mere 105 pounds. Now 5 kids later, by body rebelled and I'm a whopping 175 pounds...down from 180 since I "released" those 5 pounds. Yes...I admit my true weight...every stinking pound. I never want to be the stick I was, but to be under the 150 would be great..I don't care if it's 149, just so when I go to the doctor I don't have to flick the thingie over on the scale to the next level. I hate that so much!
• I have zero musical talent. I so wish I could sing and play piano. I use to sing in the car when my kids were little, but they would request that I not do that. I'm sure I'd be one of the rejects on American Idol with Simon saying "Jolene, you really didn't think you could sing did you because that was just awful" I envy those with beautiful singing voices...I know, I know...thou shalt not covet...so I will rephrase and say I really admire those who are musically gifted.
• The first thing I think about every morning is my blog. I'm seriously addicted. After I go to the bathroom, wash my face and brush my teeth I have to come read comments and read the blogs of my buddies before I can do anything else. It will eat away at me if I have to leave the house early and I didn't have time to read....and to think I had to be talked into starting my blog almost a year ago by Amy and September. I get so much pleasure from it. It's emotional to me and I can't imagine not having this outlet and so many dear new friends. It's just a wonderful thing.

I'm tagging anyone who wants to share things about themselves on their blogs.

Now to the 911 part of the title...After I picked up Kyle from school today I took him to the new subway to turn in a job application in the grocery store plaza a mile from my house. Just before I was to where I needed to turn in I saw a white tahoe hit a boy on his bike and launch him into the main road. Thank heavens there were no cars coming at the time or he would have been run over too. The car was coming out of where I was going to be pulling in. The guy that hit him got out and pulled the bike out from under his car, patted the boy on the back as if to say are you okay...walk it off kind of attitude, then got back in his car and drove away. I couldn't believe it. I got his license plate number before he got out of sight. I pulled in and asked the boy if he was okay. He had a friend with him and he was walking his bike because it was not able to be ridden and he was clearly shaken up. He said he was fine and kept walking. I think that was the adrenalin talking and he is probably hurting pretty bad tonight. I called 911 and reported it because it's NOT okay to hit someone and leave...this is coming from a mother who has had 3 of her 5 boys hit by cars who also left the scene. Makes me so mad! I feel good about getting the plate number and I hope they find him and press charges. It scared the heck out of me!

Love at first sight

Chad's birthday is March 25th so I am making him an 8X8 album to send to him....mostly containing pictures of him and Sandy with some family ones too. Here is the first page. I scanned it a little crooked...sorry. It's pretty and simple, but I didn't want to take attention away from the picture. I know he loves this picture and so do I. Plus there's not a lot you can do on small pages. We got to talk to him tonight, during that time they brought in his care package from Sue and set it on his cot. It was neat to be on the phone with him while he opened it. He loved everything and wanted me to express his gratitude to Sue and to Brooke who sent him a package last week.

They are now sleeping in large tents instead of the barracks and has no way to send mail right now otherwise he would mail you both a thank you letter. They have him busy with different trainings. He's been doing night firings, learning how to do IV's on each other. The guy that did Chad's was not good and poked the needle all the way through his vein. It's just scary to me that they hand these guys needles and say poke each other till you do it right. Hello...that's just crazy! Today he sank in the swamp up to his head 3 times. He was freezing and was so glad to get back to camp tonight so he could shower and put on some warm clothes. He's been sounding stuffy. I sure hope he doesn't get full blown sick. Happy mail really cheered him up, so thank you ladies for being kind enough to set this up for him. We all appreciate it!
I got some happy mail today too. Lara, a very nice blog reader sent this for baby Mark. As soon as it even remotely fits him, I'll be doing a photo shoot with him and grampy Mark on the motorcycle. Can't you just picture it...cute outfit, sunglasses, bandana on his head...so cute! Thank you so much Lara. Big Mark thought it was very cool too! I don't know why the small version of this picture is so blurry when I attached it in here, but you get the idea.

Soup recipe...hmmmm...I'll be honest and tell you there is no measured recipe. It's more of a dump it in kind of thing, but here's how I do it....

Cheesy potato corn chowder

You can either peel and dice up potatoes into teeny pieces and boil them until tender and drain or cook up a bag of cubed hash browns. Yesterday I used the hashbrowns because we were hungry and didn't want to take the time to peel and dice. I put them in my soup pot with some oil and butter. Seasoned them with salt, pepper and onion powder and cooked them until they were hot and tender and a starting to brown. Dump in a can of corn-drained, a can of cream corn, about a cup of velveeta cheese, cubed up (it melts best) whisk together 1/2 gallon of milk with1/3 to 1/2 cup flour and pour in. Stir together until hot and cheese is melted. Can season more to taste. At the end add cooked crumbled bacon. (optional, but good...everything's better with bacon, right?!)

My weekend

Here's my weekend update....Mark and I went for our normal Saturday morning breakfast. I was foolish and let Mark talk me into taking the motorcycle. It was FREEZING! I'm so dumb! While waiting to get a table we made new friends with everyone around us who were also waiting for their tables. For those of you that know Mark, you know he talks to EVERYONE! I think it's a George thing. We had a great breakfast with yummy hot chocolate to thaw me out. We came home and worked around the house. Went to Sam's for groceries and got my nails filled. Saturday night Mark asked me to pick up Chinese while I was out. I don't love it but he begged. Kids were happy and fed, and I didn't have to cook. sounds like a win win for me. When I got home I started working on our primary lesson. I made these cute handouts for the kids in our class. A "chewsing" the right bubble gum theme. :o) They loved them...I'm so glad! We came out of church to it pouring rain. Had to run to by suburban with my arms full of stuff. I was sure that I would slip in the parking lot and end up laid out in a puddle wearing a dress. I really wish I had parked closer. Mark took a separate vehicle to church and raced me home, ran in the house and locked the door. He stood there at the window teasing and doing some funky in your face kind of dance until he finally let me in the house...he's such a dork!

Sunday after church I made cheesy potato corn chowder for lunch because it was cold outside then Mark and I took a short nap...mine was shorter than his. I learned my lesson from last weeks too long of a nap. :o) Tonight Brek, Brittany, baby Mark, Sandy, Brittany's mom, brother and niece came over for dinner. We grilled flank steaks, made baked potatoes, green beans and rolls with cheesecake for desert. Everything was so delicious! Flank steak is known for not being so tender, but if it's seasoned, cooked and sliced correctly it's tender and juicy. We love it! Let me just say that it was so fun having 2 cute babies in the house...too darn cute! Tonight we got very strange weather...it really wan't snow or hail. I guess you would call it sleet...very cool for Mesa anyways. The kids were so excited about it. As you can see I haven't had much computer time, but I hope you all had a wonderful weekend with your families.

Just a tip...never be the last one in line for a shower on a Sunday morning...especially with a less than cooperative water heater. My shower was seriously fridgid today. I don't get those people who willingly go do that polar bear swim...their just crazy!

My poor trees!

This weather has been so crazy. We had a hard freeze a few nights ago and every tree and plant we have are severely damaged. You can see the before and after in the color of my 2 big trees. They WERE a beautiful bright green, now they are black and brown....so ugly! The tree lover that I am is soooo sad about this. It's never happened before, so I don't know if they will come back or not, but they look just terrible...makes me sick!Back in February of 2005 we had a huge amount of rain, which is really unusual for Arizona. My next door neighbor's cactus had taken on more than it could handle and fell over in the night. We herd the big thump. The next morning I had to take pictures. I had Chad stand next to it so you could get a better idea of just how huge this cactus was. I'm always amazed by the effects weather has on our life's. Some people lose their homes to weather, so I really shouldn't complain about trees, but I do love them so much!

Susie Q posted pictures of Chad's care package on her blog. It's packed FULL of wonderful things he is sure to love. You'll have to scroll down a bit on her blog because she is a very busy blogger. :o) Then you'll HAVE to go check out Andi's M&M's! I can honestly say that this is the first time M&M's have brought me to tears....seriously...just so sweet! I really do have the dearest friends! Thanks you ladies!

I was reading Heidi Swapps blog this morning and had to giggle when I discovered that she is pregnant again with her 5th child. The reason I giggled is because Capri and baby Mark are only a few weeks apart in age and Heidi is due July 15th...Brittany is due July 18th. They are both having VERY close in age babies. I'm happy for her growing family. Stop by and congratulate her.

This feels so strange blogging in the afternoon instead of late at night, but I've got work to do then we're going out on a date with Mark's brother Rodney, his wife Cam, Brek and Brittany. Should be a fun night. I LOVE date night!

I just wrote this whole thing and blogger ate it and went down for a while...sheesh! Crossing my fingers this goes through when I click publish.

phone repair and salt & pepper

I went to Michaels today to pick up some jewel-it glue because my friends daughter dropped my phone a few times, so I had to do some repair work and glue back on more swarovski crystals. Now looking at the picture I see that I still have a couple more to do. Mainly the corners were really messed up. It should be dry and ready to use tomorrow.While looking for glue I found this way cute salt and pepper shaker set that was 30% off, so of course I had to get them...so cute and cheap...plus it's a nice addition to my collection. I seriously love salt and pepper shakers.
Here is a little better picture of my wall. I re-took the picture in the day time. Still dark, but better. I sure love it!

Mark called me up today to tell me that him and the guys (biker friends) were going to Tia Rosa's for dinner. He did it just to rub it in and get to me. He's such a stinker! I showed him and took Cody and Cole a half an hour before they went. It was fun to visit and eat with my little boys. Kyle was at a basketball game, so he didn't go with us.

What does one watch on TV when American Idol isn't on? I watched Reba....yep, I like it...just a cute show! Now I'm headed to bed to with the remote to watch the food network. If I can't eat this late at least I can watch people making good food. I'm down a total of 5 pounds...slow progress, but still progress. It would help if I'd stop eating these candy cane kisses. I have quite a nice stash of them....so good!

I'm not sure why exactly, but I've been in a good mood today. I just chose to be happy and had a smile all day. Mark did fix my toilet today, so now I don't have to stick my hand in the tank all the time...so glad about that. Blessings come in strange ways. :o)

It's done :o)

I finally finished my altered family picture wall. I ran out of printer ink and had to run to Wal-Mart to get more so I could print the pictures. I never leave the house without makeup, but I thought I could run in and out quick and no one would see me, but NOPE! I ran into a girl I haven't seen in a long time...perfect! ...sigh...oh well...

Anyways, I printed and matted the pictures in red, white and blue then cut them down to size so they would fit in the window panes. (11X11) I also decided to flip the whole thing upside down because it's hanging in a spot right off the stairs and I was tired of Mark saying

"someone's going to put an eye out on that thing"

So we removed and flipped the hardware and re-hung it. Now you can walk downstairs with out the fear of losing an eye. I know it looks crooked in the picture, but it's straight, I swear! I also don't know why the pictures are so dark. It really looks so much better in person. In the first pane it's me and Mark, then Brek, Brittany and baby Mark, then the whole family, then Kyle, Cody and Cole, then Chad and Sandy. I also hung 2 rustic stars on each side that I got on clearance the day after Christmas....so dang cute! I love it!

Now about American Idol....Oh my crud! It's both hilarious and painful to watch. I laughed so hard the past 2 nights that my face hurts. I don't know about you, but I wish I could do that cowardly lion thing that girl did on Tuesday night....it was just too funny!