Spring Break

Spring Break was last week but things have been so hectic I just haven't had a chance to post about it. I went to Texas/Mississippi to visit family and Jake went to Germany, Austria, Lichtenstein, and Switzerland. He had a great time and experienced the old and majestic places of these countries.

The first picture(above) is in Vienna, Austria and is the palace of Marie Theresa. The 2nd picture is the students in Munich in front of one of Hitler's favorite speech making places, You can see Jake's smiling face in the center of the group to the left of the red haired girl. The 3rd picture is a sculpture in the Dachau concentration camp, representing the way the Nazis stacked the bodies. Jake said this was a very solemn place and everyone whispered. The 4th picture is the famous Glockenspeil in Munich. The last picture is Neuschwanstein Castle (taken through a bus window).

This next group of pictures are some of Jake's favorites. The lion sculpture is the Dying Lion of Lucerne and Jake said it was really cool. It is a monument to Swiss soldiers who died in the French revolution. The next two pictures are of the Alps, which I think are magnificent. This last picture is of the McDonald's in Vienna. Jake was impressed with how upscale it seemed to be.

I went off to Mississippi and didn't bring a camera. But I had a great time. My sister Faye, picked me up at the Houston airport and then we drove to Mississippi. We talked and sang Beatles songs and ate pita chips. We met up with Mama at about 7:30pm at the Hollywood casino where Mom had us a room. The wind was blowing so hard that our hair was standing straight up as we got out of the car. We had some dinner and then Faye and I watched "No Country for Old Men" while Mom tried her luck at the games. The movie was really good, but quite chilling. Javier Bardem definitely deserved his Oscar for his performance. The next day we went to the Island View in Gulfport, where we stayed two nights. My sister, Diana, came over and spent time with us and we went to her house for a while. Diana has the most serene and peaceful porch and it is so nice to sit there and rock and look at the water. We sang some hymns and had some good visits. We went back to the Island View and ate. I had some really good fried green tomatoes - yum. The food was really good there. Faye and I watched movies both nights - Charlie Wilson's War (I enjoyed Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance in that one) and Atonement. Faye liked that one better than I did because she had read the book. We also got to watch the first two installments of John Adams on HBO. I don't have HBO, so I will have to wait until it comes out on DVD to watch the rest of it, but what we saw was really good. Faye and I went back to Texas on Thursday. We got to Denham Springs and ran into stalled traffic because of a wreck, so we pulled off and found an antique village where Faye hit bank on some bells and owls. When we got to Houston, Joey was there. Joey is Faye's son and the first nephew and is just the sweetest and best guy you could ever want to know. We had some dinner from Lupe Tortilla's, and visited with Bob when he came home and then we crashed. We were both tired out. On Friday, Faye treated us to a massage that was awesome. Then we visited with Louise, Layla and Joey at their house. I also got to meet Louise's Mom, Sally, and her sister Michelle and Michelle's daughter Alex and a nephew, Andrew. This was my first meeting with Layla, my great niece, who is two. She is a cutie and we had a lot of fun getting her to tell us things and playing with her toys. This is a picture of the five of us. (If I had only had my curling iron, I wouldn't be quite so scary in this picture). We went home that night and had left overs and Faye and I watched "The Painted Veil" which Diana had recommended. It was a good movie, but we couldn't figure out where the name came from. The next morning, very early, Faye took me to the airport and I was home and walking in my door by noon, at which time I put on my pajamas and went to bed. lol It was a great time away, but as always, it is nice to be home.

Happy Birthday Nate!

My baby boy is 27 years old today. I hope he has the best day ever and knows how much I love him. I am just so very proud of him.

I can't figure out how to make these pictures go where I want them to in this blog so it looks kinda goofy. But that is Nate when he was 4 months old. He was such a chunk. And then that is Nate when he was 25 years old and just graduated from POST. He is the best police officer in Twin Falls and I am not just saying that because I am his Mom.

On Turning 50

I have been 50 years old for over a week now and it's not so bad. I think I had a harder time adjusting to being 40. But 50 has been easy. My family made it very easy by treating me so specially.

On my birthday, February 28th, I went off to work as it was a Thursday, thinking "just one more day and the kids will be here and I will get to see everyone." My students found out it was my birthday so throughout the day I got sincere birthday wishes and some smart aleck 8th grade remarks about how ancient I was. My friends and colleagues brought me gifts which are always fun. Arlinda gave me lottery tickets and I won $25.00. Still, it was a long day and I looked forward to going home. Since the kids were coming home, I had a bit of tidying up to do. I get home and see Laura's car in the driveway. "Oh goody" I think to myself, "She came a day earlier". I walk in and not only Laura but Casey as well yell "Surprise!" They had sneaked into town the night before and stayed with Nate and Megan. After I left for work, they came over, Megan, too and cleaned my house from top to bottom. I was so surprised and so grateful. My girls are just the best. If I had not received another gift, I would have been well pleased to have such a great birthday gift. But, the fun was just beginning!

Curt and I went out to eat that night with the Danzie's. They are good friends from our ward and Jeanette has her birthday on February 29th, so we go out to eat around our birthdays. the girls were exhausted from cleaning the house and then recleaning it after Halle and Carter got through with it, so I got them chinese food from Peking. After Curt and I got home we visited for a while before we all were ready for bed.

Friday, Cody and Josh came and I think they got there about the same time as I got home from work. Curt cooked us all dinner and we had some good visits. We played guitar hero and sat on the couches in the front room. I had to give in a go to bed around 10pm.

Saturday I woke up to the sound of Carter telling the names of everyone in the family picture I have. It is a very sweet way to wake up, he has such a cute voice. We did various things until around 5pm when we all met up at Jaker's. We made the hostess mad at us right off thebat, but after that it was good. :)

After we had ordered, Laura requested some help in the corner of the room and asked me not to look. So, Cody and I chatted while the others helped with the project. When they were done, they asked me to pop some balloons.

So, I did and everytime I popped a balloon, 20 dollar bills fell out! I was stunned! After I got them all popped, I had about $800 dollars! Then Laura tells me that all of my family had pitched it to contribute to "Get Munge a Big Screen TV Fund" I was stunned! I couldn't believe it. So, we ate dinner and then went TV hunting. The girls part was done and the guys stepped up. I have two incredible sons-in-law plus two great sons. Curt and I kinda wandered around, but these guys knew about TVs. Megan too, she knew what kind of resolution to look for and something else that I had no clue about. She had been looking around already so she knew where to go. We tried Walmart first because, after all, they do have the lowest prices. (but I really hate Walmart) and naturally, they didn't have the TV I wanted in stock. So, we went to Best Buy and found a really nice 50 inch TV that everyone agreed was a good buy. Josh told me about getting a HD dvd player to go with it. Nate and Curt and Josh got the manager to knock the price down a bit. The guys loaded it up, took it home , set it up and we all watched it. It is awesome and every time I look at it, I think of all the special people who made it happen and feel so totally undeserving and very grateful for people who love me. I have the best Mama and best sisters and brothers and especially the very best sons and daughters, whether they are born to me or by marriage. So, being 50 has started off great and it will be a birthday I will always remember. :)) And, I must say, I have the most wonderful grandchildren that ever walked the earth. Just look at this picture and dare to tell me I am wrong.

Uniqueness...hmmmm

Well, there isn't a lot about me that is really unique, other than the fact that there is no one exactly like me anywhere. I do remind people of someone they know, so I must look like a lot of other people. Let's see...

I was born in France, which makes me unique among family and friends, but not particularly to the French.

I like raw oysters. The best oysters I have ever eaten was the summer of 06 in Virginia.

I have been in the very top part of Monticello, which most of the public isn't allowed to view.

I went to 6 different colleges before I finally got my bachelors degree....in 3 different states.

That's about all I can think of.

Go Braves!!

If you know me at all, you know that I love baseball, particularly the Atlanta Braves. I am so excited for the season to start this year because my favorite player, Javy Lopez, is back with Atlanta. Woohoo!

5 Memories

These memories are supposed to be from before I got married, right? That was a long time ago, but OK.

One: My father was stationed at Kindley AFB in Bermuda, and I went to school there from 1st grade to 3rd grade. Before I started school, I chatted with my friends about who our teachers would be and we were all excited to go to school like our older siblings. My Mom walked me down to the bus stop, but the bus took a long time to get there, so she went back to check on my little brother and sister. In the meantime, the bus came and I got on, hoping it was the right bus. My mother came back to make sure I got on the bus and when she saw I was gone, she called my Dad and asked him to check and make sure I got to school ok. When I got to school, a lady read my name tag and told me to get in line "over there". So I got in the line she indicated. My friend was in the line next to me and we knew we were supposed to be in the same class. I thought she was in the wrong line and she thought I was in the wrong line. We got to class and did some preliminaries and then the teacher took roll. She asked if there was anyone who's name she didn't call and I raised my hand. As she was trying to figure out where I was supposed to be, my Dad and the base commander (I think) walked in the classroom door. When they hadn't been able to find me in my class they were afraid something awful had happened. I was happy to see my Dad and didn't realize that they had panicked somewhat until Mom told me "the rest of the story" Anyway, that was my first day of school.

Two: This one also has to do with school in Bermuda. My older sister, Faye, was learning how to use quotation marks in school. She was a fourth grader and I was in first grade. I thought quotation marks were really cool, so the next day as we were doing adding and subtracting, I put quotation marks around all of my numbers. I was so happy to be able to use quotation marks! When I got my paper back, graded, there was a big, red F on the paper and all of those quotation marks were circled. The teacher, (whose name was Mrs. Sherman and she must have been old and ready to retire, with no sense of humor left) was disgusted that I had put those on my paper. Well, it was the first F I ever received and I just knew I was going to fail first grade because of that, so I cried for the rest of the day. When I got home and showed the paper to my Mom, she laughed and told me not to use quotation marks anymore and Faye told me I was stupid.

Three: I have a lot of memories from Bermuda. We lived at one time, in a two story yellow house. We occupied only the top story. The bottom story was some kind of storage place. There was a balcony that we could play on. It was a cool house. There was a banana grove across the street, which I was deathly afraid of because my brother told me there were spiders as big as your hand in there. Anyway, when our parents would go out of an evening and leave us kids at home, my older brother and sisters came up with cool games, which I only got to be involved in because I threatened to "tell" if they didn't let me play. We played "Murder in the Dark" and other scary games. Then my brother devised a really fun game. We took a white sock and fashioned it into a kind of ghost effigy thing. We put some twine around its neck. Our house was close to the street and we had a window overlooking the street. My job was to watch for cars that turned down our street and say "Victim!" Then my brother and sister would fling this ghost thing out of the window at hopefully the right time to land in front of the windshield of the driver and scare the pants off of them. Did we think we might be doing something dangerous? NO. We just thought it was fun to scare people. We made a couple of cars swerve and had great fun. We play the game a few times until we threw the ghost out in front of my Dad. He was really mad, we all got spanked and that was the end of the ghost game.

Four: The summer after 7th grade in Houston, Texas was probably one of the funnest. I had a new best friend, Frances Campbell. I still keep in touch with her. One time, we went bike riding round to see who we could see. Frances wanted to take a shortcut, so she took me over to a catwalk that spanned a canal. Well, I am afraid of heights, always have been. The catwalk was only about three feet wide. Frances just rode her bike right across it, turned around and said "Well, come on." I told her no way. She called me a scaredy cat and I agreed. There were other kids there too that we didn't know and they were running back and forth on that catwalk, not at all concerned that if they fell, they would fall about 30 feet.. There was no water in the canal. So, Frances left her bike on the other side, walked back across the catwalk and rode my bike across and I crawled on my hands and knees across. That was really scary. The summer after 7th grade was when we saw the Osmonds in concert there in Houston. Frances and I would talk for hours and hours about all sorts of things.

Five: The summer after 10th grade, I went to Houston to visit Frances. We had moved to Mississippi. Frances and her Mom were going to Mexico to visit relatives and they invited me to come along. My first trip that I can remember to a foreign country. We drove to Monterrey, where her relatives live. They were all so very nice and she had a cute cousin. Frances' Mom decided she wanted to go to Guadalajara. The three of us, plus two of her cousins made the trip. To get from Monterrey to Gudalajara, you have to drive over the mountains. We were beginning to come down the other side of the mountains when the car broke down. This was a road less traveled and there was not much traffic. And this was way before the days of cell phones. A truck came by and he gave us a lift back to the nearest town and we were going to stay the night there, but there were only two motels and they were both full. Frances's Mom had us get on a bus that was heading back toward the car and the bus dropped us back at the car and we stayed the night in the car. It was raining and we could hear rocks falling. When lightening would flash, we could see this huge boulder and we just knew it was going to come tumbling down that mountain and smash us. Well, we made it through the night and when dawn broke, we saw that the huge boulder was actually a big bush, so we felt a bit foolish. A truck came by and I think Frances's Mom rode with him to get a tow truck. We stayed with the car and amused ourselves by clearing the road of all of the rocks that had fallen down during the night. We finally got the car fixed and the mechanic's wife made us something to eat. That was one of the best meals I ever ate.

The First One

This blogging stuff looks like fun so I thought I would try it too. Right now, it looks a bit more complicated that I thought, so it may be a while before it looks like something you might want to read.