November 11th ....Sundays

This is gonna be short, because my "day of rest" is kind of busy today.  

I really do love Sundays.  Even if they aren't very "restful" in the usual sense of the word.  They are different from every other day of the week, and that makes it somewhat restful.  

We go to church every Sunday.  We don't always leave home happily, but we are always grateful when we get home that we went.  It's good to spend time thinking of things other than the usual, day to day junk we have to deal with in the world.  It's good to worship with people you love ( and we LOVE our Ward...awesome people there).  It's good to sing a hymn...or five.  I play the organ, and sometimes I sing while I play.  When we sing a song that the little people are familiar with, I love that I can hear my friend Normandy singing at the top of her six-year-old lungs.  I love the time during the sacrament, even though we have a LOT of babies and it's not so quiet, to reflect on my week and what I can do better.

After church, we have Sunday dinner with our local "family"...the friends that are "family that we choose".  It's usually pretty basic....we start texting each other Sunday morning:  " Ok, I have some chicken, do have some potatoes"  Or, "ummm....I can't think of anything, you have any ideas?"  Today it's a tostada bar.  It started one Sunday when we wanted to hang out together, so they brought their dinner here and we had our dinner and did kind of a potluck.  It's slightly more organized now.  But only slightly.  The few Sundays we don't do this, it feels "off".  

Sundays are good.  The Lord knows what He's doing, that we would need respite from the world's junk and a designated time to think about eternal things.  "Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy."  A commandment for which I am thankful.

November 10 ......My talents...

Like all of Heavenly Father's children, I was blessed with talents.  Some apparent, some I didn't figure out until I was older.  I'm grateful for all of them, but my musical ability has brought me the most joy.

Apparently, at about four years old, I begged and I begged for Mom to teach me piano.  She resisted for a bit, but finally she caved.  We went along until I was about eleven or twelve, when I started complaining about practicing and wanting to quit.  She told me that if I learned every single hymn in the hymnbook, THEN I could quit.  The Lord gave me this talent, and I needed to at least develop it enough to help in church.  By the time I had finished that task, I was enjoying playing again.  I remember being asked by my violinist/best friend to accompany her in 7th grade when she played a concerto for the band/orchestra concert.  Her mom could have done it, but she wanted me too.  I had to work hard, but it was so much fun!  In High School I was accompanist for the concert and show choirs, and after High School I played for the Institute of Religion choir for seven years, which is where I met Sam.  Although he married the wrong girl first, silly man.

I moved to Utah in 1984, kind of on a whim.  There were lots of things I liked about it, and a few things I wasn't crazy about.  I never really got used to driving in snow and ice.  I hated it.  One morning, driving to work in Salt Lake City, I hit a patch of black ice and spun out and ended up smashed up against a light pole.  I was mostly OK, but something was very wrong with my left hand.

They took me to the hospital, where one of my co-workers showed up a few minutes later.  As they x-rayed and examined it, she asked the doctor if it was going to affect my piano-playing.  I was shocked she'd even thought of that, I'm sure she'd never heard me play.  I certainly hadn't thought of that, I was mostly thinking,  "OW!". The doctor said, "Oh, she's a musician?" and before anyone could answer scurried out and came back with another doctor, who looked at it and said to call a hand specialist.  The biggest bone in my middle finger was smashed into several pieces, which required surgery, some wire and couple of tiny screws to fix.

When the surgery was over, I could not straighten that finger at all.  My doctor told me that although I'd get some movement back, the chance that I would get it all back was very slim.  He prescribed some physical therapy to help me.  That night, my awesome home teacher came up and gave me a priesthood blessing.  In it, he assured me that it would be OK.  I worked hard at my physical therapy, and started typing at work and playing piano even before it was fully healed. My friends were very supportive and encouraging.  I think that the blessing's assurance that  it would be OK if I did everything I could, kept me going through the pain of physical therapy and the frustration of trying to play again.  Or it could be just plain stubbornness.  It took close to a year, and my doctor was amazed, but it is completely healed, and other than a long scar down that finger you can't tell there was anything wrong with it.

I have had the opportunity to participate in so many amazing things as a pianist/organist.  I love just sitting down and playing for fun, although I don't do it nearly often enough.  It's a great stress reliever.  I enjoy playing the organ for church, I REALLY love when I get to crank it up all the way for Stake Conference.  SO FUN!  I love the hymns, several of them have special meaning for me, and I'm so grateful that the Lord blessed me, multiple times, so that I am able to play them for others.

November 9 ..... Awesome parents.

Like Nephi in the Book of Mormon, I have "goodly parents".

Both of my parents were from Mormon pioneer families, although Dad's grandmother left the church long before he was born.  He was baptized into the Episcopal church, although I have no memory of his mother ever going to church.  Dad's family was fairly well off and weathered the depression fairly easily.  After being homeless during most of the depression, Mom's family bought a tiny house on the "wrong side of the tracks" for $150 and that was where Mom grew up, and where I remember visiting as a little kid.  How they met is a bit fuzzy, but I know Dad was friends with one of Mom's cousins and that Mom was playing the accordian at the Mezona dance hall when she wasn't really even old enough to be there.  Somewhere in there, they met.  Neither mother was happy about it;  Grammie E thought Mom wasn't good enough for Dad, Grandma F was worried because Dad wasn't a Mormon.

This being Mesa, which is kind of "Utah, Jr", Dad had lots of Mormon friends, and he ended up joining the church.  His mother was not happy at all, but his grandmother, who he expected to be the maddest, seemed OK with it.

Dad worked at the phone company,  working his way up to engineering management. They had six kids, although there are 21 years between me and the youngest, so I don't think all six of us ever lived in the house together.  He worked hard and my Mom was a whiz at budgeting and stretching a dollar, so we had it pretty good.  She also gave piano lessons and made wedding cakes to earn money for our vacations.  They took us on all kinds of fun trips, to the beach, to Disneyland, and even on a couple of epic six week road trips across country, both of which we planned as a family, going over maps and writing for info from all the states we would go through.  No internet, you know, we couldn't Google it.  Later Mom used her Cake Money to rent a beach house for a month every summer near San Diego.

They taught us the gospel.  We went to church every week, and many church activities during the week.  We had family prayer, and Family Home Evening. They taught us that family time was fun.  That work came before play.  That piano practicing came before everything else.  We all learned at least some piano, and most of us went on to play other instruments: organ, flute, trumpet, harp.

Dad supported all this music stuff, even though he hadn't participated in music anything since playing trumpet as a kid.  He doesn't sing either, he whistles.  Zip A Dee Doo Dah being the tune I remember the most.  He tried to teach my brothers to be as handy as he was at fixing anything.  He was somewhat successful with one brother, but our best handyman is my sister, Julie.  He took us shooting out in the desert ie "wild can hunting", and most of us camping.  (Mom doesn't camp.  Period.)  He's been active in the Boy Scouting program for his entire life.  Now he helps train scoutmasters.  He loves genealogy and works in the Family History Center in Mesa.

In addition to music, Mom taught us cooking from a very young age, I remember Mikey climbing up and nuking his own hot dog at three years old.  She would prep dinner while we were at school, we were expected to finish it up while she gave piano lessons after school.  That included my brothers.  They had to learn to do laundry, too. They were the only boys I knew who didn't have some sort of laundry snafu the first time they did laundry as missionaries.  I learned to sew early, and was sewing most of my own clothes by the time I was ten or so.  She also taught, and continues to teach us, service to others. Taking meals to people, sewing blankets for shelters and the church humanitarian program.  Taking a blind friend to work every morning.  Playing organ in the temple every Saturday.  She played games with us, although sometimes threatening to ground us if we charged her for landing on Boardwalk.

Our friends were always welcomed and they all loved my Mom.  (They were all kind of scared of Dad, which is just silly!)  When I was in High School, there was a standing invite for non-football Friday nights for my friends.  Some of my friends would just drop by to talk to Mom, even if I wasn't there.  A couple of years ago, my Mom got a call from one of my High School friends who said that she was driving by and just wondered if the phone number was still the same.  They had a great visit and I'm happy that this friend, who has had so many trials, has good memories of Mom's home.

Like Nephi's parents, they have watched their kids make smart choices and not-so-smart choices.  I'm sure we gave them lots of sleepless nights, and probably still do.  One thing I've learned by being a parent is that parenting never ends....you worry and pray over them even when they are starting their own families to worry and pray over. I'm certain that I gave them more than my share of worry.

I'm thankful for their guidance, their support, and for all the things they taught me.  Mostly I'm grateful for their patience when I went through brain-dead periods of my life.  I came around because they taught me well.

November 8 ...Indoor Plumbing

This is serious.  Really.  I hate outhouses and "doing my business" in the outdoors.  I would have been a cranky, terrible pioneer woman.  I know my great grandmother didn't have indoor plumbing at her ranch in Strawberry, Arizona until my mom was practically a grown up.  Mom says she hated going up there, because going potty in the middle of the night was terrifying.  She said she could see a few bugs/spiders in the outhouse, but what she couldn't see scared her more.  Not only do I have flush toilets, I have FOUR of them.  Although the fourth one I had to be talked into, it's in the garage and whether it's clean or not is Sam's problem.  It's handy when we come home from the movies, having sucked down whatever giant soda we bought, being able to scatter and all three of us have a bathroom.

And, of course, there is the pumping and/or hauling of water for other stuff;  cooking, cleaning, laundry, bathing...I tell you, I would be one seriously cranky woman (no comments, please).  Even though I don't have a fancy frontload washer to do my laundry, I'm not beating it in a tub of water that I carried from the creek or something.   I even have a spigot over my stove so I don't have to strain anything filling a pot with water and carrying it from the sink to the stove.  I'm spoiled.

So my undying gratitude to whoever the Lord inspired to invent flush toilets and indoor spigots.

This toilet is a model we found when researching toilets for our house. You can read details about it here. Yes, we researched.  As much as we love indoor plumbing, Sam HATES HATES dealing with plumbing issues.  So we did serious shopping when picking out toilets.  We ordered our Totos from New Jersey.  And it paid off, in almost ten years, only TWICE have we had clogged toilets.  For which Sam is grateful.  And me too.

November 7th.....Prophets

An eternal perspective is always nice when things don't go the way you want them to.  "In the vast, eternal scheme of things, is this going to matter?".  When the answer is "no", then we just have to "get on with getting on." (Dunno who said that first, but I like it.) And, this is true, even when elections don't go the way you want them to.  The Lord has His plan for mankind and it will all play out the way He wills it.  So, the best we can do is to try and do His will, and be kind to everyone, even if they didn't vote your way.  I think I will have to stay off of Facebook today.  Too much gloating, or doomsday stuff.  I'm not sure either are called for.

I"m thankful for a knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I'm especially thankful that we have a prophet and apostles who guide us and help us remember the things that are truly, eternally, important.  Some favorite quotes from modern prophets and apostles:

"We shouldn’t wait to be happy until we reach some future point, only to discover that happiness was already available—all the time! Life is not meant to be appreciated only in retrospect. “This is the day which the Lord hath made … ,” the Psalmist wrote. “Rejoice and be glad in it.”6
Brothers and sisters, no matter our circumstances, no matter our challenges or trials, there is something in each day to embrace and cherish. There is something in each day that can bring gratitude and joy if only we will see and appreciate it." President Dieter F Uchtdorf

" We live in a unique time in the world’s history. We are blessed with so very much. And yet it is sometimes difficult to view the problems and permissiveness around us and not become discouraged. I have found that, rather than dwelling on the negative, if we will take a step back and consider the blessings in our lives, including seemingly small, sometimes overlooked blessings, we can find greater happiness." President Thomas S Monson

“Be respectful of the opinions and feelings of other people. Recognize their virtues; don’t look for their faults. Look for their strengths and their virtues, and you will find strength and virtues which will be helpful in your own life.  We ought to live together as sons and daughters of God. We have a common Father. That means that we are brothers and sisters and we ought to live together in that way. "  President Gordon B Hinckley, interview with Phil Riesen, Channel 2 News, Salt Lake City, Utah, 12 May 1995


And a last one from President Monson:

‎"It would be easy to become discouraged and cynical about the future—or even fearful of what might come—if we allowed ourselves to dwell only on that which is wrong in the world and in our lives. Today, however, I’d like us to turn our thoughts and our attitudes away from the troubles around us and to focus instead on our blessings...My beloved brothers and sisters, fear not. Be of good cheer. The future is as bright as your faith." - President Thomas S. Monson 

(The links are to the entire address that the quote was taken from)

November 6....the best kids!

I mean, really, does it get cuter than this?

This was taken the night before Ryan left for his mission in 1999.  We wanted to have individual pictures of both of them, then one of all of us.  But, Meg was NOT interested in sitting on that table, and was very adamant about it.  Ryan hopped up on the table and attempted to convince her that it was all OK.  Fortunately, the photographer was on the ball and caught this.  It's one of my favorite pictures of them together.

I got Ryan with Sam.  A package deal!  He was fifteen at the time.  I was a little worried about instantly becoming a stepmom to a teenager.  But, he was mostly an easy kid.  We had a few battles, but nothing huge.  He always wanted to do the right thing, and I never ever worried about him doing anything REALLY stupid.  Slightly stupid was expected.  After all, he was a teenager.  

When Meghan was born, he got his very first sibling.  He was almost seventeen and  ecstatic to have a little sister.  He loved her from the very first minute and has been a phenomenal big brother.  She adores him right back.  She was two when he left on his mission and he was really worried that she would forget him. Two years is a long time for a toddler.  But, while he was gone, she talked about him constantly.  She'd get on a phone and pretend to call him and chatter away.  She sent him drawings, he sent her drawings and cute letters back.  She decorated the outside of all the packages we sent.  One time, I took pictures of her trying to wrap his Christmas gifts, printed them out and decorated the outside of the package with them.  Ryan said that the lady at the post office thought it was so cute and funny that she was showing everyone else there.

When we went to the airport to welcome him home, she was so excited we could barely hang on to her.  When she saw him come through the door, she ducked under everyone else and got to him first in a giant attack hug.  For weeks, she worried that he was going to leave again.  He did, eventually, to go to Arizona for school.  Even though they only lived in the same house for a total of not quite three years, they've stayed close.  He makes an effort, and I really appreciate that.

I can't believe Meghan is now almost sixteen.  Time flies.  She's a fun kid most of the time, with a funky little sense of humor. She loves art, anime, K-pop music, any music her brother sends her, the beach and her big brother.  She wants to be a graphic artist or an animator.  She tries to do the right thing most of the time and is good to her friends.  I love taking her and her friends places, although the volume is usually pretty high as they all talk and laugh at once.

Ryan is now a law student at BYU, so he and Sue live in Utah.  They got to spend the summer with us this year, as he got an internship here in Monterey County.  They are fun to have around and we miss them when they go.  He's a self-described "music geek" who loves finding new bands no one's heard of.  He sends his sister all kinds of music, which he screens to make sure it's clean.  I love that if Meg wants to listen to someone and asks me, that I can tell her to go ask her brother.

I guess if you count Susan, I have three lovely kids.  We're proud of all of them and grateful God sent them to us.

November 5th.....a house big enough to share.

No, I don't have a huge house.  It's big enough, though... I wouldn't wanna clean one any bigger.  It holds most of our junk, gives us room for our several thousand hobbies, and allows us to help out a friend here and there.

When we found out our San Jose landlord was selling, we decided it was time to find our own place.  Prices in Silicon Valley were insane, so we started looking outside the immediate Bay Area, and eventually stumbled on a lovely 10 acre lot on a hill, with a view of Monterey Bay.  It was zoned for a house per 5 acres, so I called Dad and asked how serious he was when he joked about building a summer house out here.  He came out, loved it, and we split the cost. We moved down to an apartment in Salinas, and started trying to get a permit to build.

When we finally got a permit, Dad moved out from Arizona for a year and played General Contractor. Sam worked on it before work, after work and on weekends.  I helped out with what I could.  Even Meg, age 5, was recruited to go around with the magnet and pick up all the dropped nails.  However, we were building two houses at once, and as the money got tighter and tighter, we doing more things ourselves than we had originally planned on.  Which, of course, took even more time.  We got closer and closer to our deadline, and we were going to have pay a hefty fee if we didn't get our occupancy permit on time.

We were pretty stressed, and VERY tired, but friends from church found out our situation and for a couple of weeks, we had all kinds of volunteer help.  It was amazing and humbling and I'll never forget it.  A couple of  retired guys came every day and helped Dad and Sam (who'd taken a week off of work) drywall both houses.  My good friends came over one night to help me finish staining all the pine paneling, and after I went home to put Meg to bed, stayed until well past midnight helping Sam put in bathroom cabinets.  Our Bishop came with his wife and tiled a couple of the bathroom floors.  Another friend, a contractor, brought some workers and helped finish putting up all that pine paneling.  Someone else put up most of the lighting fixtures.  And all this time, people were bringing dinner for EVERYONE nearly every day.  It was amazing and I'll always be grateful to all of those people.  We got our occupancy in the nick of time.

So, how to pay it forward?  I was the Relief Society (women's auxiliary) President at church and one Sunday in Bishops Council, the Bishop told us about a call he'd gotten from a family in Mississippi.  They were moving to the area, but his job was starting two weeks before his housing was to be available.  He wanted to know if someone could rent them a place to stay for a couple of weeks; he had six kids, ranging from 18 down to 3.  I told him that the upstairs was empty, REALLY empty, and if they didn't mind all sharing that room and sleeping on the floor, they were welcome to stay with us.  I was a little worried, as I didn't know them at all, but after talking to the mom on the phone, I was sure it'd be fine.

And it was, and they are some of our favorite people. Since then, we've hosted lots of people, including our Bishop when he retired from the military.  His wife and kids went three months before he did to get settled, he stayed upstairs.  Boy, was that an eye-opener.  I hope Sam is never the Bishop.  Some of the people that have stayed with us have been friends transitioning either between military posts or jobs.  And, we've had some complete strangers, usually friends of friends, stay with us while they look for housing here.  By the time they leave us, we consider them family.   Sometimes, they pay us a bit if they can, enough to cover groceries and the increase in utilities.

I love that we're in a position to help out in these circumstances.  Our friends jokingly call it The Bailey Halfway House, or the Bailey B&B.   None of our huge extended family lives close, so it's also nice to have the space to have family come visit.  Ryan and Susan can come spend the summers when they can.  We can have meteor shower parties and have everyone just sleep over.  It's always a little crazy when the house is full, but it's a good crazy, we love it, and are grateful.

November 4th.....Happy Birthday, Sue!

Today is my daughter in law, Susan's, birthday.  Easy subject to pick for today, because we love the heck out of her.

We met Sue shortly after we moved into this house.  Ryan called from Arizona, where he was going to school.  He wanted to come for the 4th of July, and was it OK if he brought some friends with him.  I told him to bring sleeping bags, we didn't have extra beds.  He showed up with five girls; the girl he was dating, Susan, and three others.  All of them were lovely, fun, talented, helpful girls.  We probably would have been happy with any of them.

One day, a few months later, we were in Arizona for something...can't remember what.  We wanted to go to the temple, but we needed someone to sit with Meghan, who was only six at the time.  It must have been a wedding we were there for, because family members weren't an option, they were either going with us, or watching their own siblings.  Ryan came over, and we were kind of giving him a hard time,  "wow, if we only knew someone who knew some single girls who like to babysit".  We suggested Susan, but he initially nixed it, saying that he thought she had a "thing" for him, so she'd surely babysit for him, but he didn't want to take advantage of that because he wasn't interested.  We had a long discussion about that, I remember.  We couldn't figure it out, she was beautiful, she was fun, she was smart....

A few months later, we found out through the grapevine that they were an "item".  We were pleased and hoped it would work out.  It took them awhile, Susan was only 19 or 20 and Ryan was pretty cautious, as he really didn't want to make his Dad's mistake of marrying in a rush and then spending years trying, unsuccessfully, to make it work.  Meggie was ecstatic when they finally announced their engagement, she finally had a sister!

As we worked getting the wedding together, I was impressed with how practical and creative she was, putting this wedding together on a shoestring.  Her parents really weren't in a situation to help much, so we chipped in.  She found the designer dress she wanted, then shopped on eBay until she found it in her size for about a tenth the original price.  They were married in the spring, so they had the reception in the beautiful back yard of a friend.  We didn't have a dinner, just a finger food buffet that my friend catered for us for a much-too-low price.  She ordered gorgeous roses from Safeway, and one of her friends did beautiful centerpiece arrangements.  Ryan's uncle was the DJ.  All in all, I think between us all, we threw a beautiful wedding for $2500.    Ryan said later that he can't imagine what more money would have got him;  he had all the people he loved, good food, good music on a beautiful evening.  What else did he need?  Do we have smart kids or what?

They've been married for going on six years now, and are still the mushiest couple we know.  He could not have picked a better girl to be his wife and life-partner.  She's easy going, fun to be around, very creative, always up for trying new things, very smart and deals with any kind of stressful situation pretty well.  A good quality to have, as they have four sets of parents to deal with.  They've already had some tough times, and she's a trooper.  They work together well, getting through everything, making tough decisions, etc. They have a lot of fun, too...she LOVES costumes and dressing up and spends the entire year planning their annual Halloween party.  She's not afraid of much as you can see here and here (both of those links, you'll have to scroll down to the end of the post).   She's a wonderful big sister to my teenager, taking her shopping and giving her clothes/makeup/hair/ boys advice. We love the heck out of her, and we're grateful Ryan found her.  

November 3.....Modern Communications

I had a plan for these posts, I was gonna start with the big stuff, the "Sunday School Answers".   But, as I'm looking at pictures posted by my college roomie who lives in Singapore, I'm grateful for modern communication technology that helps us stay in touch.  I dunno, maybe this is a big one, too.

I moved to Utah in 1984 when I was 25.  I had several friends moving there to go to school, and while I wasn't interested in that (because I was stupid) it sounded like an adventure to move to another state.  So I went.  Back then...which really wasn't all that long ago....for keeping in touch with my mama, there was expensive long distance telephone and there was snail mail.  For several months, we wrote each other once a week.  Maybe once a month, she would call me.  I kept most of the letters, because my mom was not a journal keeper and I thought they'd be nice to have one day.

She always typed her letters, she's a superfast typist and hates writing longhand.  One day, I got a letter where she's telling me a story about one of my great-uncles and how they had this big shindig for his 90th birthday.  Who was there, where it was, what they ate, how her uncles played the fiddle (but don't play like they used to, ha!) They had a dance and during the dance....   Here the typing stopped, and she hand writes: "the typewriter ribbon broke, I guess I'll tell you the rest later".    WHAT?!  Turns out that my great uncle had a heart attack and died on the dance floor, dancing with his daughter (I think) at his big birthday bash.  What a way to go!  But, I didn't find out the rest of the story for almost a week, when she called me.  I couldn't afford to call her, so I just had to be frustrated.

(This is an old Underwood Electric typewriter, similar to mom's.  It weighed approximately 2200 lbs.  Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I couldn't lift it.)

Now, I could have texted her, tweeted her, facebooked her, or emailed her.  OK, not really, my mom hates technology.  BUT, I could have called her on my cheap, unlimited long distance service.  And I do, fairly regularly.  I kind of miss the letters, but it's nice to just call her whenever I want cooking instructions....you can't really call them recipes when they come from mom.  "A little of this, some of that".

But, everyone else, including my Dad, I can tweet, text, Facebook or email.  This is especially great for us, because we have a HUGE family.  Sam has eight sibs, I have five.  Between us we have about sixty nieces and nephews, ranging from about a year old to 40-something.  We have nearly 100 great nieces and nephews, with our first great-great due in January.  They live all over the country, most of them not in California.  We have most of the adults in that big gang on Facebook. In fact, more than half of my facebook "friends" are family.  I love that we see each new baby within hours, sometimes minutes, of it being born.  I love that we can send birthday greetings without breaking the bank buying cards.  I love that they can share their everyday victories, pleas for prayers, school pictures of kids, requests for advice, latest book they read, UFO sightings, or WHATEVER with the rest of us.  My daughter actually knows most of her cousins, has enough online interaction with them that she actually enjoys extended family functions, because she doesn't feel like we're hanging out with strangers.

I've also been able to reconnect with old, loved friends that I hadn't seen in years because of geographical circumstances.  (Is that a thing??)  Those friends live all over the world, and it's awesome to be able to be in touch again with them.  Sometimes, I've found that they live pretty darn close and I never knew!  Best weekend ever was with two friends that I loved spending time with when I lived in Provo.  I'd sort of kept in touch with one, and she lived pretty close.  But one day we discovered the third one lived only about five hours away.  So we planned a reunion weekend.  And found out, that even after twenty years, we still love to spend time together.

This modern technology, social media, etc can take over your life.  But, I think it's a God-send for helping to keep family and friends close.  I love it, and I"m very thankful for it.

November 2,....My Country

Yep, even with all it's polarized, back-stabbing, heated political arguing, I'm grateful that I live in the United States.  I love that I can agree or disagree publicly with anyone I like and no one is going to throw me in jail for it.  I'm worried that as it becomes more and more common to stick to "politically correct" that eventually, no one will be brave enough to say that the Emperor has no clothes, however.  Not for fear of retaliation from the government, though, just verbal retaliation from the "politically correct".  People who complain loudly of "intolerance" are sometimes the most intolerant.

In this great nation, I live in the state with the stupidist politics.  I'm pretty convinced that all the delegates to the state legislature, from any party, are either crooks or idiots.  But, we choose to live here for several reasons.  The biggest is that this is where Sam has endless opportunities for work (funny, since we're currently unemployed, but something will come up).  Before he took his first job here, he moved at least once a year.  I hate moving.  The next biggest reason?  Have you ever been here?

This gorgeous spot of God's earth has practically perfect weather.  The beach is five minutes from my house.  I can see the Bay on non-foggy days from my living room.  This is a place where millions come to vacation, and we get to live here.  Yay for us!  So, I'll gripe about the ridiculous cost of living, the stupidly high taxes, the state gov't that mismanages all those taxes, so they always wanna raise more, and keep wasting my conservative vote here because we LOVE it here.  As long as we're employed, so we can pay all those things, anyway.  But, God has blessed us so far, so we'll stay and help the five other conservatives keep California from falling into the ocean.  Ha!  

Going along with being grateful to be an American, is gratitude for the men and women in our all-voluntary military that help us to stay free. It's something that I never thought of much until we moved here and gained the privilege of having so many military friends.  The Defense Language Institute is here and the Naval Postgraduate Academy, so lots of military folks.  When I hear about deployments, and moving all over the world, and putting up with sometimes crappy (at least here) military housing, etc, I have a lot of respect for the people who choose that lifestyle.  We nearly always have at least one friend in harm's way somewhere:  Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria.

With that goes gratitude to the spouses of that military, who hold down the family fort while worrying about the safety of their soldier.  Yesterday, my dear friend Tori posted about what it's like to be the one at home with the kids while her Special Forces husband is off doing his job.  I'll end with a bit from her post:

"As a military wife I cannot tell you how many sleepless nights I have had, how many "not quite daddy" hugs I have tried to give, or how many tears I have cried for both myself and others whose loved ones have lost so much and made the ultimate sacrifice.

How many days, nights, weeks, months and years of my life I have spent wondering, wondering if we will be next and even if we are one of the"lucky" ones, how much time we will never get back, how many memories never get to be made, how many family dinners, birthday parties, weddings, reunions, funerals, holidays, births ( I was lucky enough to have Oz with me for 3 out of 4 ) will be missed...

Very few people will ever understand truly what those in my family and all military families prior or current have sacrificed for the freedom of our fellow man, even those who do not recognize us as such. I ,for the most part, happily and willingly chose this life and would not change it.! And whether or not my "Framily" and I agree, I will continue to support my soldier as he defends my right to my opinions and your right to yours, with his life!"

It's November???!!!

Really?!  Wasn't it just Christmas last week?

Haven't posted in awhile.  I had all kinds of things I wanted to write about, but I didn't have time and now I can't remember what most of them were. They weren't "newsy" things, just stuff I was thinking about at the time.  But, my brain has a short attention span and they are gone for now.

So, now it's November (egads) and it's Thanksgiving month.  I'm gonna make a goal to post every day about something I'm grateful for.  Think I can remember to keep it up?  I guess we'll find out.  It won't be in any particular order.  Just as I think of them.

Except for this one, I think the number one thing I'm thankful for is Sam.  Our 17th anniversary was a few weeks ago.  Time is a funny thing.  Sometimes it seems like just yesterday that we were getting married, other times I can barely remember life before Sam....like it was in some far distant past.  I'm a lucky girl, though, they don't come any better. He spoils me rotten, tells me I'm beautiful (he needs glasses), works hard even though he hates it, is an awesome dad to our kids, and is an all around good guy.  Everyone loves Sam, especially little people.  I'm sure he thinks I"m certifiable most of the time, but he puts up with me and I love him.  This is an old pic of him....he's the cutie on the right.....taken in Italy when he was a missionary.

We didn't get to do much for our anniversary.  Partly because we're still unemployed.  But, also,  it was on a Sunday and we got a visit from my niece Melissa and her family that weekend.  Which was a lot of fun.  She lives in Florida, so I don't get to see her often enough, and she has such a sweet little family. When Melissa was a little girl, I was single and only had 3 or 4 nieces and nephews, so she's one I really remember as a little kid.  Her Avry (6?) is a clone of her mom at that age, and it just makes me smile to watch her.  She has an adorable older brother and baby sister, too.  They had some great friends with them, and it made for an enjoyable day.

Busy-ness

I haven't posted anything for awhile.  Partly because we're very busy these days, and partly because all that busy-ness isn't all that exciting.

Meghan has started 10th grade, which is taking over our lives.  She is still homeschooling through the charter school we've been with, but has added classes at Monterey Peninsula College.  She is still swimming on the swim team, although a bit reluctantly.  She's never been much for competing, she mostly joined because her friends did.  But, the exercise is good for her and I promised to not harass her about how much sugar she eats if she swims at least three times a week.

Of course, everything is in Monterey, 30 minutes away.  She has seminary at Heather's in Marina (about halfway to Monterey)  from 6 to 7 am.  Then she's at the college from 9am to noon, Monday thru Thursday. She swims from 4 to 5:30 pm three days a week, at a pool about ten minutes from the church.  So we go to the Marina library (or somewhere) after MPC to do the rest of her schoolwork before swim practice. On Wednesday she goes directly from the pool to the church for Mutual.  Oh, and piano lessons are Wednesday mornings from 8 to 8:30 am.  Crazy.  Heather and Lysa both have kids going to either MPC or in the swim team.  So we've tried to work it out so that no one has to spend their day driving.  But trying to figure it out is like a complicated math problem:  If you have nine kids in three schools, on two different swim teams, two sedans and a van, how do you get everyone where they need to go and still have someone home to get the preschooler on and off the bus.  Throw in assorted doctor and therapists appointments for special needs kids, and you really see the problem.  But, we're managing.

Sam is still working at the temporary job.  He finished the board that they hired him for in about a week, but they contracted him for six weeks, so they gave him a few more projects.  He's finishing up the biggest one this week, and he hasn't heard if they have more to do.  In the meantime, we're still kind of hoping to hear from Cisco about the job he interviewed for.  He's also been getting calls from a guy he used to work for that we call Slimy Dave.  He's not exactly trustworthy, so we've been kind of putting him off.  We're praying we don't have to resort to working for him.  Today I have to decide if I'm going to pony up the $1300 a month to continue our health care coverage, or just give it up and hope we all stay healthy.  We've always paid it before, but Sam was getting a lot of contract work at the time.

The Stake Christmas started practices a couple of weeks ago.  The director picked some challenging music, so I've been putting in more piano bench time than usual.  The Elderhostel choir that I play for every year starts next week.  That's a crazy schedule on it's own and how I'm gonna integrate it into the school schedule is a mystery so far.  I suspect the sisterwives will help pick up the slack, because they are awesome and I don't know what I'd do without them. The extra cash will be nice, especially if Sam is unemployed again next week.

A couple of weekends ago, we took a quicky weekend trip to Carson City to get apples.  Really, we went to see the Halls, the apples were a bonus.  It was short, but it was nice to see them, as always.  We got our game of butthead in, ate awesome meatball sandwiches and sweet and sour Hawaiian haystacks, saw the Reno temple, had a lovely drive home on Hwy 4 through the Sierras and came home with enough apples to make twelve pints of strawberry applesauce and two pints of apple butter.  Yum.  Just because I don't believe in posts without pics, here is one that Sam took on the drive home.

OK, two.  I feel like this tree most of the time these days.