A "soothing mom"

Listening to one of President Nelson's talks last night, from 
1987....he said something about his wife (mother of their 10 
children) that reminded me of my own mother: 

"I’m glad Sister Nelson has not tried to be a 
“supermom.” But she has been a “soothing” mom. This 
she has done simply by being herself.
When priorities are in place, one can more patiently 
tolerate unfinished business."
Then President Nelson went on to quote a line from the 
hymn, Improve the Shining Moments:
“Time flies on wings of lightning; We cannot call it back” 

Dennis and I have been watching one talk by President 
Nelson most every evening while we eat dinner. It has been 
so fun getting to know him better, and learning from him. 
There are 75 of them, and a website now that has all the 
links in order. 

The first talk start on April 1, 1984 when he was first ordained 
an apostle. McKay was just 3 weeks old and I was in the 
hospital with him that weekend. With each of his talks, I like 
following along and compare what I was doing at that time in 
my life.

I keep thinking how President Nelson said, "When priorities 
are in place, one can more patiently tolerate unfinished 
business." 

That kind of explains my childhood. 



A dirty window I have to keep!

Tonight about 7pm I walked into our bedroom 
just as the sun was beginning to go down. 


That sun was shining so very brightly,
that I saw something I hadn't noticed before....


You probably can't see what I saw, so I will make it bigger in that 
one spot on the left part of the sliding glass door....


Those are Rich, Leo, and Juliet's handprints...
left there from last December!

My mind immediately went back to this one day in December...
I had just woke up from a nap, 
and opened up the drapes like I always do.

I had no idea the 3 grands were waiting for me. 
But there they were!


I ran and grabbed my camera.

All huddled together waiting for me. 
I felt so loved.



If I was ever thinking of washing that slider, 
It's definitely not going to happen now. 



Favorites for March

Keeping with Gretchen Rubin's suggestion of: 
"Keep a running list of your favorites." 

Here are mine from March:

1.  We don't use pencils much in this house, but when we do we 
really need one and can't find it. 

Or we keep finding the same one pencil in this house but it needs a 
sharpener and we don't have one...and we don't want to buy a 
sharpener for just one pencil.

So walking around Office Max one night in March, 
Den saw these....

38 pencils ALL sharpened. Perfect for us. 
This pack may be the last one we will ever need to buy.  


2. I love my Blendtec blender Den gave me for Christmas. I was 
excited to find out they have a mini jar which is easier to clean
Works perfect for me, and it's so cute. 

Not cheap, either one of these, 
but I use them at least once every single day. 


3.  I'd been eyeing this Green Goddess Dressing for months at 
Trader Joes. And finally tried it in March.



Love the flavor and look what's in it: 
 



4. My sister Robin recently sent me this recipe from my Mom on 
how to cook chicken quickly for salads or casseroles when you 
need cut up ready to go chicken. I tried it last week (in March) and 
it worked perfectly.

(I actually had forgotten about this method 
but I used it often years ago.) 

And it's written just like my Mom lived her life. 
("just throw it all in and make it work")

Right during the chicken covering process I remember we were to 
pick up Elora from school that day. So the chicken was in there an 
extra 10 minutes but it was perfectly fine. 


And while I'm at it, here's Mom's chicken salad that we all love in this family:



5. And I so love this blogpost on how to make your home 
more lovely for $0. 
The last 2 suggestions of that post are the best!



A hard week for Dennis

I'd never seen Dennis as sick as he has been this week.

Fever, joint pains, cough, headache, dizziness, no appetite....but the 
hardest was his inability to communicate at times. 

That was scary. 

After a 4 hour visit to Kaiser, an IV, and antibiotics....he was 
doing better last night. 

He still has no memory of the blood work and X-rays. But 
surprisingly, he can tell me the ages of the doctor's children: 11, 14, 
and 16. He had asked her, and that part of his visit he remembers! 

Later last evening before we were getting ready to go to bed, 
we heard the door bell ring and there stood our sweet sister 
missionaries who came by "just to check on the Shelleys." 

We had a nice little chat and then Sister Dixon said she had a 
scripture to share with us:

"Lift up your hearts and be glad, for I am in your midst, and 
I am your advocate with your Father; and it is his good will 
to give you the kingdom."  Doctrine and Covenants 29:5

I love it so much that I asked her to read it twice more. 

It's beautiful,
and I've been looking for a way to have it framed 
and put on our wall. 

I keep picturing the smile on that sister missionary's face after she 
read it to us those 3 times. She loves it too! 

And their visit came at just the right time. 


Favorites from February. Yes, February

I need to show February's Favorites before I move onto March...

1. The day after Valentine's Day I found this little sign at 
Home Goods for $3.00. It makes me laugh, but I love it. 

So consequently, I had to extend Valentine's day till the end 
of February so I could look at it for 2 weeks before putting it 
away for next year. 

2. Story Corps. I never knew about this until it was mentioned in a 
book I read through one of my bookclubs. 

So there are booths set up in 4 main cities in the US where anyone 
can just go in and tell their story. The best ones are played on NPR 
once a week on Friday mornings, or is it Monday mornings? I read 
they are "wildly popular" but I have yet to listen to any! 
I will. I will. 

They also have a portable booth that travels 1000s of miles each year. 


3. I saw this in a laundry room of a model home....

(boring colors but I like the sign)

And in this same model home, I thought this was a cute way to 
decorate with plants and books.




4.  I never had much use for this cupboard above our oven in the 
18 months we had lived here because it had no shelf in itSo one 
day I just casually mentioned this to Den. 

He took off to Lowes within 10 minutes and had this shelf installed before 90 minutes were up. 


Suddenly I had a place for my disposable give away containers. 


5. I found this in one of my Mom's scrapbooks. I thought it was a 
sure thing she was named from a story in Good Housekeeping. But 
since reading this I realize it could have been any of the women's 
magazines of that day....probably the year 1929, since she was born 
the end of that year. 

Now I know to broaden my horizons 
in looking for a story about a girl named Gaynor. 


6. Vegetable Broth. I love making this from leftover fresh 
vegetables in my crock pot, and then putting the broth in individual 
little paper cups and freezing them. 


That way we can heat some up whenever we like....to add to soup, 

or to just drink when we feel we need a few more nutrients. I love 
the way it tastes, heated up of course. I use THIS RECIPE, sort of. 

7. And this.... 



....the greatest power we have!

Next up, March. Gotta get that in before April flies by, too!

Our first experience with grocery pickup

Just to see what it would be like, Dennis and I tried Walmart 
grocery pick up last week.

It was so simple, and so easy! 

I enjoyed choosing online what we wanted, and checking off boxes. 

The prices were cheaper than where we usually shop (Vons) and 
there was no service fee. They just require a minimum order of $30.


So I selected 11am-noon as our time slot. We just drove up to one 
of these pick up stalls and called the number on that sign. 



4 minutes later, out comes this man with our order. 
He was friendly and even helped Den load it all in our car. 


He brought all the groceries out in those blue crates. We had the 
option of paying 10cents for each bag, or we could just not have 
bags and transfer the food into our car directly from the crates.


The down side is I had ordered 4 lbs of organic chicken thighs and 
they were out. He brought out 4 lbs of regular chicken as a possible 
substitute, but I declined. 


He took off the price of the organic chicken I had originally ordered 
and said they will email me an updated receipt. 
(since I had already paid the total online)

But he did give us the 3 organic chicken thighs they had left, 
at no charge. 


Also, they were out of the 6 oz of organic raspberries I wanted and 
instead he asked if I would like 12 oz of "regular" raspberries 
for the same price. 

I went along with that, thinking we would just wash them well, 
which we did. 

I kept thinking...wow, how much easier shopping would have been 
if I had had this option when my boys were small!

I don't know that we will have the need to do this often, 
but it sure is nice to know it's available.

Afterall, we always have the grands to help us out...

Has anyone else tried the grocery pickup? 

Did you like it??


My creative kids

Yesterday marked TEN YEARS from my very first blog post.

It was April 3, 2008, and my first one without my Mom. 

I was feeling kind of sad about that, and I just thought I'd do a post 
on my birthday that year. 

And then I kept of thinking of more things I wanted to say. 
So here we are 10 years later. 


Thank you to so many who wished me a Happy Birthday yesterday. 
I felt so loved!

My kids all checked in, they always do. And they each have their 
very own way of doing things for me....

Brock and Erin.....
So, they had taken a family trip up to Oakhurst about 2 weeks ago 
and they found a little shop up there....Erin spotted this canvas 
picture that made her think of me...


 because she knows how much I love bunnies.


After they got home, Erin kept thinking about this picture. So 6 
days after their trip Brock decided to drive all the way back up 
there to buy it for my birthday!

They gave this gift to me a few days before my birthday so I could 
enjoy it for Easter, before I put it away till next year.


But I love it so much, 
so we found the perfect year round spot for it!

(Since I was born so close to Easter, my Mom would usually decorate with bunnies for my 
birthday...so that's why I still love them all these decades later.)

Logan and Amy


They brought over these very sunshiny flowers!


And I had the perfect place to put them!
We even used the Yosemite Ranch gift card they gave us last 
Christmas, to go out to dinner last night. 

McKay and McKenna


I love that this is not only pretty, but it's huge!



The wreath on our door is VERY oversized too.
(So the banner may not look so large next to it, but it is!)

After April we will hang it in our bedroom. 
Den does not like anything heavy hung in our bedroom due to earthquakes...which we have never had 
any earthquakes take pictures off the wall, 
but he's from southern Calif and that's how they think there.
So this banner will be perfect. It can fall on us in the middle of the night, and not knock us out.

Often on my birthday 
McKay will write me memories of his childhood....
I have no memory of the story he told at the end of this, 
but it made me laugh!


Tyler and Karen

Oh and how fun it was to get birthday wishes from Vancouver!

Karen was able to capture each one saying Happy Birthday to me.
It sure looks like that's what they are saying.

Rich


Leo


Juliet


Only another Grandma would understand 
what those happy little faces do to me!

So it's onward and upward to another year that has passed. 
Thank YOU for being a part of my life. 


This was not a good surprise.

A week ago Saturday after our Easter Party, I was tired and I didn't 
want to go in the kitchen and cook again.... so we decided to go to 
our comfort restaurant, El Matador.



The workers know us there, it's quiet and comfy, the food is good 
and always the same, and it's kind of like going to someone's home. 


I've been going there for 28 years. We even ate there the very first 
week we moved to our Filbert house in 1990.



So as we pulled up to this restaurant last Saturday there were no 
cars in front of it. I thought at first, oh, they must have taken off 
Easter weekend. But then I remembered, it wasn't Easter weekend.



Then we saw a dreaded sign on the door. This does not look good. 
Den got out of the car to read it. And I followed him.



Sorry if that sounds a bit dramatic talking about a restaurant, but we 
have many memories there. Take a look what I mean...

Some of my grand babies grew up in this restaurant...





Lots of family happenings....Like the day my niece Natalie came 
with my Dad...I'll never forget that real little dog in her purse. 
Seriously. 

Juliet had her very first food there...tortilla chips!


We went here LOTS and LOTS of times with my Dad and Susan...
and there was even that time with Grandma Nellie 
(my sister's mother in law who we all LOVE)


Granddaughters, Elora and Kylie and my niece Kaidy.


Den's Mom loved El Matador too!



Too many fun memories and way more pictures 
than you would want to see or I can find today!


Then poof, it's over. 

I'm sad we didn't get to say goodbye. 



Happy Easter!



Since it's been 7 years since I posted this video from Easter 
weekend 1985, I think it's okay to post it again....
since I love it so much.

As I watch that video again today, and see my Mom, and my niece 
Robin who have both been gone a decade now, I am SO thankful for 
Easter and the promise of life after life. 

Look what happened last night

  Just a little pre-graduating gathering for our DIL Amy.... Not everyday a Mom of 7 and a Grandma of 7, graduates from college. It was not ...