Thoughts....

Every once in awhile, when life gets stressful, my family has a "we're thankful for...." discussion. It's been a busy week for me and a stressful one for Sam, so it's time. This is my list, it may reflect Sam's feelings, too, but I didn't consult him on this one. :0)

Big things I'm thankful for:
1. Our HUGE extended family. My niece Melissa commented on this blog that I have a lot of nieces and nephews. I do....AND a lot of brothers and sisters and in-laws, etc. I love them all, even when they sometimes make me crazy. I'm especially thankful for my sister who calls me almost daily, talks me over the rough spots, and tells me her funny stories. Mostly her "rough spots" are worse than my "rough spots" and it helps me keep things in perspective as she faces them all with determination and humor.

2. Our home. Even if it was in Barstow, I'd be thankful for that. Although, then I'm sure we wouldn't see as many of you as often. I cooked and served dinner (with Susan and a couple of friends) for some homeless women at a shelter this week. It made me extremely grateful to have a roof over my head, and a husband who is willing to work to provide it for us.

3. The gospel and the church. I love that we know The Plan, and what our purpose is here. I love that we have the church organization for guidance and friendship, etc.

4. Great, amazing friends who are examples of what I hope to be when/if I grow up.

5. That the temple is not TOO far away. I do miss having one five minutes away, but at least it's not days away. This is a blessing that we probably don't take enough advantage of.

Little things I'm thankful for:

1. Ry's Susan. OK, maybe that's a big thing. But I love that Ry found such a great girl to add to our family and be a big sister for Meg.

2. Chocolate (Ok, that's a given) (And maybe that's a big thing, too!)

3. That the sun is shining today.

4. For the internet that keeps me to connected to my amazing friends and family wherever they are.

5. That Meg is out of school today and we can hang out together, even if it's to do laundry, dishes and making dinner together.

Ok, that's enough for now, I really do have a ton of things to do today, we're going to the temple tomorrow so Saturday stuff has to get done, too.

Cars, ugh!

So, we're four car family. Stupid, actually, as only two of us drive. We have a Daewoo that was over 100,000 miles when we saw one just like it on the side of the road a couple of years ago for $3K. We bought it and about two months later the first Daewoo blew a head gasket. Sam's going to fix it someday (in all his spare time...at 10 mins a week, it may take awhile), so we still have it. We have a truck that is a 1988 beat up Ford with 180K miles on it, but it starts every time, and we use it haul feed from the mill and take the trash down to the curb. Last week, the bearings on the front went out. Hmm, better take care of that someday, we said. Yesterday, as Sam was coming home from work in the 2nd Daewoo, the transmission kind of freaked out. So, now we have three undriveable cars. My Intrepid has 130K miles on it, and it better not die for at least another year.

We're going to take the two Daewoos to a mechanic and get the engine from the new one put in the old one. (Actually, they're the same year car) We bought a not-quite-as-beat-up-as-our-current-Ford-pickup today for $1K. So now we can get feed and take the trash to the curb again. And this one has a radio that works. Bonus. Oh, and a heater. Which is nicer than having to wipe down the inside windshield every five minutes.

So, for a few days, we're a five car family. Six, if you count the little car we rented for a week so Sam could get to work. Six cars, three trailers. We now fit right in here in Prunetucky.

Maybe I'll take pics of our "fleet" tomorrow to post.

And, I did survive the 5th grade campout. Barely. Boy, did my bed feel good last night.

Nothing much happening here...

It's been a pretty crazy week. I only have a few minutes, so I'll just list the highlights.

1. I finished the wedding pics and FINALLY got a haircut. So I won't be a grey long-haired Prunetucky woman anymore, now I'm a grey short-haired Prunetucky woman, but I'll fix the grey thing in the next day or two. Jess was a beautiful bride...it always makes our job easier when the couple is good looking. :0)

2. The turkey that visited my deck a few posts ago showed up again a couple of days ago, and she has a little brood of chicks. They're awfully cute, but we have to be careful going up and down our road. She likes to parade them across the road, and has impeccable timing...usually when I'm in a hurry.

3. Our friends Monica and Trevor Cook came for the weekend and we had a small party for them, ate too much, went on a picture-taking day (Monica had a new camera and wanted lessons). Their kids sure are cute:

4. Last week several police officers followed some guys in a stolen pickup in a high-speed chase through our neighborhood. The pickup drivers saw my brand new wrought iron gate open (I was coming home from taking Meg to school) and tried to make the gate. They sort of made it...they got through but they totaled the gate, and headed off road up our hill, and eventually took out part of our east fence and headed up into the Strawberry field north of us. I was still standing outside when the pickup and three cops went flying by. They caught the guys eventually, but now my gate looks like this:

5. I get to go camping with approximately 60 5th graders on Thursday night. I'll let you know if I survive.

6. Hmm....I coulda sworn I had six, but now I can't think of it. Oh well, chalk it up to old age.

I'll just end with a picture of Pacific Grove we took Saturday. All the ice plant is blooming and the shoreline is bright purple. Very cool.

Uh oh!

Well, I was right. Sue and Chad both pulled ahead of us. Sue's at 14%, Chad's at 13%, I'm trailing with 12% and Sam's between 10 and 11%.

Sue's going to run out of pounds to lose, soon, though. Chad will run out before I do, but I'm not sure if it'll be before the July 2nd deadline.

Mark suggested lipo...Sam says we have a great shop-vac....

Meghan's Piano Recital

I know you were all dying to come to Meghan's piano recital, so here's a video of her performance. Unfortunately, the silly camera was not cooperating, so by the time I got it going, my finger was in front of the lens for a sec, and she was already into her first song. Oh well. We only video'd it so her Dad could see it, as he wasn't home from work in time. Not that he hadn't heard each song 1124 times over the past couple of weeks.

Elsberry Biggest Loser Update

So, Friday was official weigh in date.

I've lost 36 lbs, Sam's lost 32 lbs, Susan's lost 29 lbs, Ry's lost 20 lbs. Don't know about the rest of the Elsberry Famdamly, but Sue and my brother in law Chad were neck and neck right behind me last month.


Since the winner is determined by percentage of starting body weight, and Sue had less to lose than me.....she's gonna kick my fat butt if I'm not careful. She was trailing just behind me on the April 2nd weigh in, I think she's probably passed me now.


Eek! I already have the $1K spent!! Good thing the missionaries are coming for dinner today so I can feed them the rest of the cheesecake I inherited from the Women's Conference last weekend.

Portrait of Sam

A couple of weeks ago, we went down to the California Poppy Reserve near Lancaster where my sister Kathryne lives. It was so windy that I didn't get any great pictures. But I did get a great picture of Sam trying to get a great picture. When I get a minute, I'll look through the pics he got and see if he got any good ones.

The night before we left, Meg's school had a dance recital. They have a guy that comes in and teaches each grade one ballroom and one hip hop dance. They had third graders tango-ing and fourth graders jitterbugging (or whatever you call that). Meg's class did a "Salsa". Here's a pic of Meghan with her partner, Christian.

Whew! That's over!

The house is still a mess and I have new bifocals that I'm trying to get used to, so the wedding pics are still not done yet. This girl's mom is the lady who cuts my hair, so I may be a long grey-haired hippie if I don't get them done. I refuse to call her until I can take her the pictures.

But, the taxes are done, and the Stake Women's Conference was this morning. My hands are permanently red from cutting up four flats of strawberries for cheesecake, then stirring up chicken and fruit with raspberry viniagrette dressing with my hands because the kitchen in our stake center NEVER has any utensils. It's not like we don't know this, and you'd think we'd remember to bring some. But, we never do. We have a whole list of stuff today that we're going to remember next year. Now that we've actually thought to do that (this is our fourth Women's Conference), we'll get released before we have to do it again.

It was a great conference (what I heard of it, spent a lot of time in the kitchen). Our keynote speaker talked about being "still". This seems to be a recurring theme this week. A scripture we read in Relief Society last week was in D&C 5:34 ..."Stop and stand still until I command thee, and I will provide means whereby thou mayest accomplish the thing which I have commanded thee." Our keynote speaker read the words to "Be Still My Soul", which is one of favorite hymns. There's a story with that....

The last time Sam was laid off, a couple of years ago, was when I was the ward RS President. Our Bishop at the time was a close friend of ours, and he kept asking if we were OK. I kept assuring him that we were, mostly because we had so many people in the ward who were much worse off than we were. But, I was worried for several reasons, which I won't go into. Suffice it to say, I wasn't getting much sleep, which just made my anxiety worse. In the middle of all this, we had a Stake RS training meeting and I was asked to provide prelude, etc. I was working as an accompanist for a children's choir at the time, and I had to rush straight to the church after that. I had forgotten my prelude books, so I was just playing hymns. I just opened the hymnal and started somewhere a couple of pages before "Be Still My Soul". As I turned the page to that hymn and started playing, I was kind of reading the words when I had this overwhelming sense of peace:

"Be still my soul: The Lord is on thy side. With patience bear thy cross of grief or pain. Leave to thy God to order and provide; in ev'ry change He faithful will remain."

So then, I was sitting there playing the piano in tears. Had everyone there pretty worried about me, which was ironic since I finally was OK. Layoffs are always hard for me, but I think I handled this last one much better. I think that I've finally learned that if we do all we can do, the Lord will come through. Took me dang close to fifty years to learn that. I'm a little dense sometimes. Hopefully, some of you are smarter and will learn younger.

Spring!!!!

I haven't posted in awhile. Taxes, a wedding we photographed, Stake Women's Conference, trying to get my house organized (really probably a lost cause...three ADD people should never live in one house without an OCD person, lol).

In the meantime, the lupine is blooming,
my iris are blooming, the swallows are back in their nests above my big windows,
my corn is just pushing up through the dirt, we have sunny warm weather, the croquet set out in the yard so Meg can beg daily to play.....just WAY too nice to be indoors. This is my favorite time of year here.




You should come before the June gloom of fog and cold sets in. Yes, I mean YOU!



(A visitor that was on my deck the other day....)

Sam, The Cow Whisperer

So....we're driving down this highway in the middle of nowhere....somewhere on a back road between Murphys, California and Fresno. It was a beautiful day, we had cool sky and nice green hills (only happens in the spring here) and lovely black cows doing their "cow" thing. Sam decided to pull over and take a couple of pictures. Because, that is what Sam does. Not that anyone who knows us very well needs to be told that, of course.

Mom and I were sitting in the car and the first thing we noticed is that when Sam crossed the road, all the cows looked up and were watching his every move. Every single cow within a few hundred yards stopped chewing their cud and stared at Sam. I'm not sure Sam noticed, but we did and got a bit of a chuckle out of it.

Then we started noticing that the cows near the road were kind of congregating right in front of Sam. All, about three feet from the fence line, all still staring at him. THEN, we saw cows from further away moving in, and kind of jostling for position there. We got a bigger chuckle. I think this is when Sam finally noticed that something weird was going on.

I decided to get a picture, because it made me laugh. I got out of the car with my camera and as I stood up, I noticed that the cows WAY out in the field (easily a quarter of a mile off) were all running towards the fence, full speed ahead. Soon, EVERY SINGLE COW in the entire field was (or were?) huddled, shoulder to shoulder, lined up in an imaginary line on the other side of the fence.

Sam decided that they clearly were expecting something, so he sang them a little opera. Mom and I laughed ourselves into an asthma attack, but I did get a few pictures. I sure wish I'd had a video camera, though.

Sam, the Cow Whisperer.

Gold Country Highway

We came home for a day to shoot a wedding and for Mom to rest up a bit. The next morning, we headed out on our way to Highway 49 in the Sierra foothills. It's beautiful country, lots of little gold rush towns, everything was blooming and the trees were that bright spring green. The first day we took our time, figuring we'd get up to Murphys in time for the last Mercer Caverns tour. We made it in time, but the tour was booked, so we found a hotel in Murphys and spent the night.



We went Saturday night and Sunday afternoon to Columbia State Park, which is a restored mining town with period shops and people dressed in costume. Meghan panned for gold and we ate a wonderful lunch in the old Columbia Hotel dining room. They were having a Birthday Ball on Saturday night, so there were lots more people dressed in period costumes then. We talked to a couple of interesting characters.



Sunday morning we went back to Mercer Caverns. They warned us that there were 230 steps up and about the same going down, but Mom said she was up to it. It was pretty cool, but they didn't tell you that those steps were more like climbing a ladder. We all made it, but I think Mom had some sore muscles. I was impressed though, she's tough!

Sequoia and Yosemite

I thought I'd post a few pics from our trip. This first slideshow is more Sequoia pics.



We went to Yosemite the next day. We hiked up to Bridal Veil Falls and Lower Yosemite Falls.