Ok, I'm over it. Mostly. :0)

So, I'm in the dentist office this morning, waiting for yet another crown ($$$!!!), reading my new Ensign. There's an article called "The Lord Can Ease Our Burdens." I didn't look for it, it was just the next article in the magazine while I waited and waited and waited. Anyway, here's a clip:

We need to trust the Lord. The Lord’s view is much broader than ours, and He has promised that He will not try us beyond our ability to withstand. Elder Scott said, “To exercise faith is to trust that the Lord knows what He is doing with you and that He can accomplish it for your eternal good even though you cannot understand how He can possibly do it.”

We should not murmur. . . How easy it is for us to murmur when things do not go our way! Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught: “Murmuring can … be noisy enough that it drowns out the various spiritual signals to us, signals which tell us in some cases to quit soaking ourselves indulgently in the hot tubs of self-pity! Murmuring over the weight of our crosses not only takes energy otherwise needed to carry them but might cause another to put down his cross altogether.” Elder Maxwell offered this alternative to murmuring: “Being of good cheer is what is needed, and being of good [cheer] is equally contagious. We have clear obligations to so strengthen each other by doing things ‘with cheerful hearts and countenances’"

So, I'll shut up now.

Besides, Sam took me to the beach after dinner to watch the seals and otters and pelicans, etc. We're very blessed to live here at all, and sometimes I just have to be reminded.

Thanks for all the support while I was being a whiner, though. :0)

Aargh!

Ok, I'm stressed. Too many people wanting too many things and I just can't do them all. Most of them I can't say "no" to, even though I want to. I usually call my sister to vent, but she's not available, so you guys get it. Bummer for you. You can skip the rest if you don't want to hear it.

We're working on the Prop 8 stuff, but it's really hard to get support from anyone in our area of the ward. Everyone has all kinds of excuses, but we're zip code supervisors and it usually works out that we're out knocking doors on our own, or with maybe two other people, and I feel like we're not making enough progress. If everyone in our ward spent one or two hours, we'd could get through it. But, with only about 1/4 of our ward actually working on it, it's very frustrating. I'm sure the other zip code supervisors in our ward are having the same frustration.

I hate the sixth grade, this ADD girl of mine has way too much homework and I just don't have time or energy to keep her poor tired brain focused for three or four hours every day when she's already tired after school. I'm starting to think that home schooling would be easier. I've been thinking about it next year for junior high, because she will just get eaten for lunch at our scary junior high. But, now I'm wishing we'd started this year. We have a big homeschooling group in Marina, it wouldn't be horrible, but she would really miss her friends. But, today she came home with a "group" project that they don't have done, her "group" is nowhere to be found and now I'm supposed to help her write a story. I need Jenny here.

I hate that Sam has to work at a job he hates and comes home unhappy most days. Dunno what to do about it, though, we can't make enough money doing anything else unless we move and it took us so long to get this silly house, I'm not ready to leave yet. Even if we could get a decent price for it, which I'm sure we can't. I'm stressed because high tech takes a big hit when the economy sucks and I'm worried we'll get laid off.

OK, I need to get off my butt and off my computer and make stupid dinner because I can't afford to take us out to eat today.

I love conference...

I LOVE conference. The women's broadcast was GREAT! Sister Beck was awesome (always is, although I know some people aren't crazy about her). President Uchtdorf was even awesome-er.

No time to elaborate, just wanted to say that.

I have to "visit" two wards today (Stake RS responsibilities). Not sure who picked fast Sunday to do that...I wasn't at the last meeting. :0(

Washington Beach...

This isn't LaPush, because we didn't drive out there. But, we did do several Washington Beaches that aren't far from there. This is Ruby Beach, probably 60 miles down the coast from LaPush. Most of the Washington and Oregon beaches look kind of like this so I figure it's close.

We stayed in Port Townshend and I have pictures, but no more time today. Meg's school is having a parents lunch day and I promised cookies, so Anya and I are off to bake.

For the girls...

Taken in the rain forest near Forks, Washington in the spring of 2007. We have a horizontal version of this that we had enlarged to hang over our fireplace.

Random notes

This link is for Jenny E and The Bloggettes (and yes, I mean you too, Mark).

Conversations overheard in my house lately:

Anya:(from upstairs) Mom! Zerin is poopy!
Lysa: Tell him that he's not allowed to poop until Dad gets home.
Anya: (overheard from upstairs) Zerin! No pooping 'til Dad gets home!


Normandy: Mashel, wanna poo nak.
Michelle: Whaaat??
Normandy: Poo nak!! Poo nak!!
Lysa: She wants a fruit snack.

(We're sitting outside on the lawn...or our excuse for one...and we hear a motorcycle going down the highway.)

Normandy: (all excited) Sammy!
Michelle: Sammy? Sammy's at work.
Anya: It sounds like Brother Bailey's motorcycle. But, it's going away now.
Normandy: (calling) Sammy! Come back! Saaammmy! Cooome baaack!

Ok, gotta go Visiting Teaching now.

Geez, I love you guys....

Just a quickie shout out because you girls make me LAUGH! You know who you are and I have to say that catching up on your blogs is the highlight of my day! (Including Landee, who I don't know, but I love her comments) I love that you are all such good, supportive friends to each other. And, that you're danged funny. My current houseguest thinks I'm nuts for sure, as I sit here reading the "news" while I laugh, wheeze and occasionally snort. Someday, you should have a bloggers reunion at my house instead of rainy Forks.

I tried to use "flank" in that paragraph and was unsuccessful. Oh well. I need Amy to tutor me.

Signs of aging and other stuff...

We've been crazy busy, so I haven't had time to write. We still have a houseful, but probably only for the rest of the week. The Filceks finally got a place to live, they just have to have the Pod people drop their stuff off. We're having a house-warming party tonight; a "Bring Your Own Chair" party at the empty house. With all the friends we invited, there'll be about a dozen kids, and we figure they can have a great game of hide and seek while all the cupboards and closets are still empty.

It's been an easy stay...we seem to work together pretty well, tag teaming dinner, cleanup and kid watching. I can totally see polygamy, except for the sharing my husband part. Maybe what I need is a slave...hmmm. Anyway, last night Sam told Dan that he's going to miss having two wives. So far, only one of us has been cranky at a time, which is a good thing, or he might not feel that way. It's been good for Meg to have to share and help with younger kids. We did pass around a couple of sets of germies, first the 24 hour bug, then a nasty cold. But, we all survived.

We told Lysa last night that she can only take away one kid per day, so that we can taper off. Sam's really enjoyed having little kids around, especially the babies. Normandy (he calls her Norm) attacks him when he gets home and they have a great game that involves lots of chasing and jumping out and yelling and giggling. Meghan hasn't played that game with him in years. I think I'll miss Anya the most, she's the sweetest, most obedient, cheerful, helpful seven year old on the planet. Not that we won't still see them, I just won't get a daily fix.

Last night we taught Dan and Lysa to play Pitch (Bailey family game). We don't really have anyone to play with here, so it was fun to teach someone else. We got a serious case of the sillies, though. You know how stuff is hysterical at midnight that would barely get a smile during the day? Well, it was all hysterical last night at like 9:30. That must be a sign of age. Eventually it will all be funny at four in the afternoon, and when we start waking up giggling in the morning, they'll just commit us.

A houseful...

Our friends are back from spending the summer in Utah and staying with us for a couple of weeks while they figure out where they are going to live. No easy task in this neck of the woods, as everything is stupid-expensive. We're campaigning for living close to us, of course, but that would double or triple their gasoline bill, so it doesn't seem likely. But, at any rate, they won't be too far off and we're glad they're back.

So, my usually pretty quiet house is full of kids! Which I love. Lysa is worried that they'll drive us crazy. But, I always thought I'd have a lot of kids, or at least 3 or 4, and a big noisy house. Meghan can be pretty noisy (especially if she's mad, lol), but it's not the same. So, I'm enjoying it. Her kids are 9,7,2 and 9 months. They're very sweet and I've always gotten a huge kick out of them. So, we're not in a big hurry for them to find a place, although I'm sure they're anxious to get settled. We had to get a few baby gates to keep everyone from killing themselves on my stairs or in my laundry/sewing/pantry/disaster area room (which doesn't have a door), so I'm getting extra flexibility training hopping over things. Bonus!

Pt Reyes, second attempt...

Ok, I tried a different program this time and added a couple of other pictures.

I guess I could do without all the "advertising" stuff... but no time to do anything about it now. I'll play with it again some other day when I don't have a houseful of people on their way to my not-so-clean house :0)

Pt Reyes

We managed to save most of the pics on Sam's chip. I don't have time to go through them all yet, but here are a handful. We stopped on the way up and took night shots in San Francisco, because it was clear. It's never clear in San Francisco at night. I'm glad we were able to save those, especially, because it just doesn't happen often. The rest of them were taken at Pt Reyes, of the lighthouse and the beach there. There's one pic of one of Sam's old friends, and a new friend that we saw at sunset.

Weekend trip...

We couldn't take the entire weekend to go anywhere. We didn't have time...had to help someone move, play the piano for a baptism, and go to all three Salinas wards with the Stake RS. We didn't really have the money either, but that's no surprise. But, we decided to leave Sunday night and just go up to Point Reyes, north of San Francisco. It's only a couple of hours away, not a lot different than here, but enough different to feel like a short vacation.

It was a lovely trip, the weather was perfect....we're just getting into our sunny fall. This is really the nicest time of year here, sunny but not too hot. A welcome change from our foggy summers. We took several hikes, poked around a couple of cute little towns: Petaluma, Tomales, Point Reyes Station, Inverness, etc. We drove out to the Point Reyes lighthouse at sundown. It was a spectacular sunset, but it meant we didn't get home last night until about 11 pm. So, I'm really dragging today.

I would post pictures, because Sam took about 800 of them. (Seriously, no exaggeration). However, when we got home, he plugged in his brand new 16GB flash card that had been in his camera and found that we could only access the first 78 pictures. The baptism and the night shots he took in San Francisco on the way up were the only files that were readable. The file names are all there, just can't open any of them. So, we're working on a data recovery strategy that doesn't entail forking out $500 (the apparent going rate). At that rate, it would be cheaper to just take the trip again. Not that I would mind that, but who knows when we'll have time again. I'm just glad it's not a wedding or something that someone would hate our guts for....

I've argued with him that the bigger the flash card you get, the bigger chance you have that you'll lose ALL the pics. If he'd been swapping out his 4GB chips, we'd probably have at least 3/4 of them. We've never had a flash card fail before, but there's always a first time. Hopefully, there won't be a second time. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can recover at least some of them.