Prayer

Emery said the cutest, longest prayer all by herself tonight for Family Home Evening. Here's the gist of it:

"Heavenly Father, thank Thee for this day. Thank Thee that we could exercise. Help us to have fun. Bless Mom to be patient. Bless Dad and Jane. Bless everbody and my friends. Name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

I guess I really need some extra help when my 2 year old can tell I need to be patient...

Budgerigar

Two Christmases ago my mom bought Emery some really cool big picture books that she has read and read. They are titled "First 100 Words" and "First 100 Animals"


In this book, on the first page there are animals like dog, cat, hamster, goldfish and BUDGERIGAR:

I've never heard that name in my life! We've just always thought it funny that Budgerigar was supposed to be one of babies first animals...

8 or maybe 10...

So last Saturday Sonia and I drove to the Jordan River Parkway parking lot at 7800 S in West Jordan and got out to run our 8 miles for the day. We ran and ran and ran clear to 4500 S and back. Towards the end of our "8" miles we started feeling really tired and almost dead so we walked about the last half a mile. We had run 6 1/2 before and couldn't believe how much harder 8 felt...

Later that night Sonia called and said she had miscalculated. I thought, "Oh, great. We didn't even go 8?!" No. We went 10. 10 MILES! The last time I ever walked 10 miles was on the Pioneer Trek and that took all day! I'm so glad to say that we weren't sore for nothing - 10 miles is really a long way. So glad we had each other;)

You Know It's Spring when...

-Your husband actually notices that the snowmen from Christmas are still on top of the book shelf.

-Your "Twisted Peppermint" soap has all run out.

-The Crocus' in your front flower bed are blooming.

-It's time to go out and weed that flower bed.

-Emery decides to pick those hardy little Crocus'. But they're not that hardy in-doors.

-You can run outside. Sometimes.

-You get the urge to make a spring bouquet for your kitchen.

-You think it's fun to clean your laundry room.

-It still snows every once in a while.

Cook Books

I've done something that hopefully will inspire me to be a more adventurous cook. I try to plan out my meals for 3 or 4 weeks or so simply because I HATE deciding what to have. I hate it so much it inspires me to sit down once a month and write down what our family will be eating for the following weeks. I often look back at past calendars and steal ideas from past days. We eat the same things a lot. So, I've put up a couple shelves in my kitchen on which to display my novelty cookbooks - ones I have hardly ever looked in. Hopefully this will encourage me to take a peek at them every once in a while and make something completely new and exotic - o.k., maybe not too exotic, Kevin says I'm a picky eater.

Anyway - here's how the shelves turned out:

You'll never guess what I used for the shelves...

Any guesses?

Well now this getting to be one of those annoying emails that you have to "scroll down for the answer"...

And it's going to be a little more anti-climatic than I planned...

I'll just tell you :) - When we bought our new "over the range" microwave a couple weeks ago it came packed with some really thick cardboard pieces in an elbow/shelf shape and I asked Kevin to save them for me - I just knew I could use them somehow! And then I saw this idea on the TV and destiny was born.

Cardboard packing material, dusty cookbooks and a little paint = a FREE kitchen improvement!