After The Storms...

...the frozen breath of Winter...

We Thank Thee, Oh God, For a Prophet...

Beloved Prophet
President Gordon B. Hinckley

June 23, 1910 - January 27, 2008


"God Be With You 'til We Meet Again..."

...As Time Goes By...

I have two wonderful nieces, both of whom have birthdays this weekend. I have loved them both as if they were mine; since they were born. This weekend kind of marks milestones in both their lives.

Tomorrow, my niece, Stephanie, will celebrate her 18th birthday.

This June, she'll graduate from High School!!

She's changed quite a bit in the last 18 years. See for yourself.

This was her FIRST Birthday.

Just look at her, now!!!

Sunday, my niece, Chelsea, will celebrate her 21st Birthday.

Chelsea's done some changing, too. Take a look...

In these pictures she's 3 and 1, I think.

This past year, Chelsea got married.

She made a beautiful, VERY HAPPY, bride.

This summer will mark another milestone in Chelsea's life.

Chel is expecting her first baby.

Happy Birthday to both "my" girls! I love you both, with all my heart!

...and may all your Birthday-Wishes come true!

Goin' to the dogs...

Maybe they can sense an animal-lover. Maybe it's just having a new person from whom to get attention. Either way, whenever Marc and Debra come up to visit, they get visited by every animal in our house. Poor Marc got dog-piled, yesterday.

I say "Poor-Marc", but in reality, he held his own fairly well. He was sitting on the floor talking to me while I folded laundry, when Jake and Milo decided to honor him with their presence.

For Jake, that meant getting all the love and snuggles he could.

For Milo, that meant being as hyper and playful as he could. (Being a terrier, that was quite a bit!!)

Being needy and jealous, it soon degenerated into a free-for-all, with BOTH dogs piling all over Marc for attention. He was a good sport about it and gave as good as he got.

On laundry-day at our house, you never know what might turn up in the wash...
Sassy decided to take refuge from the doggy-chaos by hiding in my laundry basket. Thank goodness it was empty of all the clean clothes.

Being an avid proponent of fair-play, Marc decided that Sassy needed some attention. Kind of like the spin cycle on the washer...

Needless to say, once she got over being dizzy, Her Royal-Highness, Miss Sassy, was NOT amused. The REST of us were laughing hysterically, but Sassy was not.

I guess you could call this a "Dog (and cat) day-afternoon".

Winter Wonder...

...Land-sakes, where did all this snow come from????
Our MLK day-off turned into a SNOW-DAY!!

Everyone got into the act, even the hounds - who turned into real snow-dogs!

It was hard to say who was keeping the other one warmer, Amanda or Jake?

In this case, Jackie was definitely keeping Milo warmer!

Nobody else came outside to play, so Jackie made a new friend. His name is Bob.

Jake wasn't the only one "diggin'" the snow...

Uncle Marc was "digging" it, too!

Maybe we'll make our own snow-dog movie and call it "Four-Below"

BBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm going in for some hot chocolate...

Rites of passage...

Just this afternoon, Kevin and I were commenting that we were coming up on our 20th wedding anniversary, this year. Both of us decided that it didn't feel like 20 years had passed. Then we took a close look at our kids...that made things seem a bit farther along.

Amanda spent the afternoon at a Youth activity, today. They went to a homeless shelter in Salt Lake. Our Ward provided a whole bunch of casseroles and the kids took them to the shelter and served dinner to the people there. It was a great experience.

When Manda got home, she ate a quick dinner and hurried off to get ready for the dance. This is where the "rite of passage" comes in. This is Amanda's FIRST official youth dance. You know, the kind where your mom or dad drops you and your friends off at the Stake Center and you stay for three hours and hopefully some cute guy asks you to dance at least once. *sigh*



We blinked, and our "baby" is old enough to go to a dance and hope that a boy will ask her to dance. Gee, the last 14 years have just flown by. Now us having our 20th anniversary is more understandable. *BIGGER sigh*

PS: Not just one cute boy, but THREE cute boys asked her to dance. I guess this one goes in the books as a success!

AAANNNNNDDDD We're BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey, it's us - and we're back online and blogging again. Woo-Hoo!!!!!!

Our Christmas was lovely, and white! Pretty fun for us to have a white Christmas.

We had a great time playing and baking in our nice, new, BIG kitchen. We even recruited a couple of new chefs, who spent almost as much time baking as they did horsing around. But HEY, they had fun, so it was great!



We tried some new recipes. These are chocolate-dipped melt-away cookies. They are really light and fragile(which made dipping them very interesting), and they do really melt in your mouth. YUM!



Santa managed to find us again this year, and brought everyone what they wanted for Christmas...

Jackie got a train-set and Mandy got make-up. Can you tell there's three years difference in their ages just by what they wanted for Christmas? I can!



We still managed to generate our share of Christmas debris, but clean-up went quicker this year.



Some traditions never change...no matter where we live. The Christmas dinner table always gets dressed in its best finery, and looks so festive. Looks great, let's eat!



Even our Christmas sunset showed its best colors. It was a great Christmas. So, to quote Santa: "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES...

Due to circumstances beyond our control...our internet is not working at home. So, further blogs and pictures will have to wait until we resolve our technical difficulties...

When we're up and running, I'll have some fun pictures of Christmas and the girls' activities.

I'll let you know when we're back on line. 'Til then, stay tuned...we'll be back...maybe.