Embrace and move on.

My hair has been a source of frustration for the last few years. Three years ago when I was pregnant with Katie I discovered I had a thyroid problem, a sign of which is loosing your hair. I lost a TON of hair prior to my doctor placing me on medication. Then I began to enjoy the benefits of pregnancy hair, where none of it fell out, and it grew think and healthy again, only to experience post-pregnancy where it all fell out. I have been working hard on growing it back, needless to say I don't need layers in my hair, they are naturally there. Over the last six months I have began to loose my hair again. I assumed my thyroid was out of whack, and recently when I visited with my doctor I asked that she check my thyroid because of my hair loss. She said she would be happy to check it, but my hair loss was probably a result of the stress in my life, oh yeah that stress.... I said "Great I am going to be single and bald, what could be better!"

In addition to significant hair loss, my hair has decided that after 40 years of being straight it now wants to be curly. (The good thing about that is, curly looks like I have more volume than I actually do) It has taken me a while to accept the new texture of my hair. After all most of my life I have been a straight hair sort of a girl. So what did I do with my curly hair, straighten it of course.

With three children I still like to straighten it, but find myself lacking in time. So recently I decided to embrace my curls. What is really interesting and frustrating to me is that some days my curls are really cute, and other days they seem flat. I have tried all sorts of products trying to produce cute curls on a consistent basis, but no luck.

On Thursday I decided to mess around with my curling iron. I put product in my hair, let it air dry and then placed a few curls in with the curling iron. It took much less time than straightening, and I was happy with the results.


I have decided to embrace my curls and move on. Now if I could only do something about my thinning hair....

Happy Thanksgiving

School was out for Thanksgiving break and we were looking for something to do....In other words, I needed to occupy my children's time so Lauren would stop "bossing" Mark around and Mark would stop reminding her NO ONE bosses him around.

Grandma had left over ingredients from Wednesday's night Mutual activity where they made Thanksgiving turkeys out of Oreo's and Pilgrim hats out of Reeses and shortbread cookies, so that was our afternoon project.

I figured adding Katie to the mix would only complicate things so I sat her on the floor with gum drops and a cup of water. Good news she did not realize she was missing chocolate fun, bad news, sticky baby and sticky floor. (Please note she had two "plugs" attached. Lately she had decided one plug is not enough, she needs to carry around a spare)

Mark and his mommy, aren't we cute???

The glue holding the parts together was frosting, but you had to hold it for a minute to get it to set up.

The finished product, and happy faces.

Future Predictions

The other day I was driving in the car with Lauren, Mark and Katie. Lauren announced that she was going to have four children, three girls and one boy. Her girls would be named, Lilly, Elizabeth, and Erin. Her boy would be Samuel, but she would call him Sam.

Never one to let his sister get the best of him, Mark piped up and said "I am going to have five kids, and I am going to have TWINS!"

Lauren tried explaining to Mark that boys don't have babies, but I think the message was lost in translation.

More cute cards.

Our latest creations

Its Showtime!!!!

Peter and the Wolf was the show, Lauren was the STAR!!!

She auditioned for, and got one of the lead roles. She was the bird.

Doesn't she look lovely sitting in a tree?
The good news for mommy about this production, total show time 25 minutes, now that is my idea of a dance performance!

Fall Pictures

With the craziness in our lives this fall we did not get up the canyon for our annual fall picture taking expedition. But I had already purchased matching outfits which I could not let go to waste, so we settled for the back yard for a few colorful pictures. Good news for us, both the fall colors and the temperature cooperated for a lovely afternoon of picture taking, now if I could have only gotten the 18 month old to cooperate....you will notice there are no pictures of her with either Mark or Lauren, she refused. I was thankful to be able to even get a single picture of her.

As a birthday surprise for Rick I had several of the pictures enlarged and framed so he could have a collage of pictures of the kids at his new house.

Christmas Tags

Clearly I am spending WAY too much time crafting with my friends.....

But we are having fun!

Harassing Courtney

It was a Saturday night, we were bored, and looking for some action. Now we do live in Provo, so "action" is not a word that immediately comes to mind. So we headed to Springville, where real action can be found. Where is the action in Springville found? Charlie Boy's restaurant of course. Owned by my good friends and employer of aunt Courtney. Plus delicious food to boot.

We are quite familiar with the American Fork Charlie Boy's location, but we had yet to visit the new Springville site. We found Courtney hard a work, taking orders through the drive thru (its really cool, she gets to see a video of whose in the drive thru and then talk to them over the speaker) and using the cash register. We were hoping for ice cream, but sadly discovered that ice cream is only sold in the American Fork location, so we settled for cookies. After leaving I was hijacked by my children into going to Sonic for that promised ice cream.

Now you want real action in Provo, its at the Sonic on a Saturday night, not an empty parking stall to be found.

The apple does not fall far from the tree

These cards were made my Lauren and are exclusively her design, so yes it is true the apple does not fall far from the tree. My mother would be SO proud!

Halloween Fun

Alright, alright, I know it is November 17, 2008 and I still have not posted pictures of our Halloween fun....but trust me there was fun!

The theme for the year was "black" after all it is the new hot color in decorating, clothing, and just about everything else. I of course have been a fan of black for years, it makes you look slim and hides all the dirt, what's not to love about that????

Katie and Lauren elected to be witches and we found costumes that were not matching, but were quite similar.


Katie refused to wear the hat and the belt, however the "plug" was a necessary accessory.

Mark chose the black spider man costume. And I helped him "con" daddy into wearing one too. When I took Mark to the Halloween store, I happened to see a black spider man in Rick's size. I showed it to Mark and told him that he needed to "bug" daddy into wearing a matching costume. Well Mark is a man of determination, and it took about two weeks of Mark's constant nagging until Rick finally told me to go buy the costume in order to appease Mark and for Rick to have some peace. (p.s. Rick does not know I had a hand in this deception... to this day he thinks it was all Mark, little does he know....)

Look at those muscular men!

In order to fit in with my girls, of course I had to have a black which costume. I really wanted the "plug" accessory, but Katie would not share.

Look at their haul????? Seriously, I would have died as a kid if I got that much candy.

They will be working on this until Easter!

Memo: Tell Santa to skip candy this year or recycle the Halloween candy in the stockings......

Happy Birthday to MEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Yippee, its my birthday!!! And I got the best present EVER!!! I admit I am a difficult person to buy for, after all I really don't need anything other than more time and more sleep, as those are a little difficult to gift wrap. But Arianne found the perfect gift. She designed 8 different cards, made a sample of each card, and sent me the supplies to make five more cards of each style. I was instructed to invite my friends over and she even supplied the chocolate.

On Friday afternoon I had Sherry and Sue come over, they both brought a granddaughter, and we let the kids run wild in the basement while we made cards. It was the best birthday present and a lot cheaper than therapy.


This is what arrived in my package in the mail. The little flower pot has the words "Faith, Hope, Charity" painted on the bottom to remind me of President's Uchtdorf's talk from conference.

Below are the cards Arianne designed.

I have had a very happy birthday indeed!

Katie got a hair cut!

I could not take Katie's straggly, uneven, hard to manage, hair any longer. She had not had a cut or trim since birth, and it was time. Now mind you, cutting her hair was like trying to shoot a moving target, only worse, scissors were involved.

It was a Saturday and Katie was fresh from the bath tub. Wet hair is always so much easier to cut. On a whim I grabbed a pair of scissors I keep in my closet, that are fairly sharp and started "hacking" away at the back of her hair. She of course kept moving her pretty little head, and I was afraid of accidentally sticking her with the scissors, and how I would explain that to the doctor, the police, a judge etc.... After all what mother, who is not a trained stylist would attempt to cut the hair of a 17 month old baby.

(This is the problem with lawyers, a little knowledge is dangerous, and then they think they can do anything, plumbing, electrical work, programing the DVR player, cutting hair. After all if you can pass a state bar examine what can you not accomplish? The state bar really needs to have a post bar class on just because we gave you a license to practice law does not make you capable in all fields, to the contrary, stick to the law and leave the rest to the professionals.)

That being said, my greatest fear was her moving her head as I was cutting and ending up with a jagged cut, and then it just would not look right.

You can see from my pile I was successful in removing a significant amount of hair. I distracted her with enough toys and treats to make the initial cut. Then as the day wore on I followed her throughout the house and evened it up here and there.

The final result was a cute "bob" that looks better and is so much easier to manage. She has gotten lots of compliments on her new "do" and she looks very grown up and sophisticated.

Who says a lawyer can't cut hair???????

We haunted the outside too...

In addition to "haunting" the inside of our house we also haunted the outside. The kids always look forward to putting up our decorations and making our scary grave yard. Mark was a fan of the skeleton coming out of the ground.

Mark has been making up scary stories ever since Halloween. I believe it is going to be his favorite holiday.

On a funny note, on Halloween Rick turned the fog machine on about 4:30 in the afternoon, when it was still light outside in order to ensure that we completely fogged up the neighborhood by the evening. I was returning home and the UPS man was driving by our house. The smoke had just started coming out of the machine, and it honestly looked like something was burning. The UPS man drove very slowly and I could see he was trying to determine what exactly was going on. Trust me this is the slowest he had ever gone in our neighborhood.

Its been a while....

The one thing that we can always be assured of is that life will change. Right now our family is experiencing some of those changes, hence my absence from blogging for a period of time. I have needed to focus my energy on defining a "new normal" for me, for Rick and for the kids. In this challenging time I have never doubted the love my Father in Heaven has for me, and the power of prayer. My favorite talk from conference was President Uchtdorf "The Infinite Power of Hope." It reassures me challenges can be faced and we are never alone.