More simple pleasures

Blossoms on my plum trees...

My bleeding hearts blooming...

Flip-Flops and TOE RINGS!

Jazz Bear!

We had a really fun anti-drug assembly for the kids today and had a surprise visit from the Jazz Bear. Very good message and tons of fun for the kids!

Say No To Drugs...

Or Say No To Bear Hunting Season! :)

Simple things make me happy

Today at lunch recess some fighter planes were making fun jet lines in the sky and it made me smile... :)

Playing catch up

We enjoyed spring break...even though it was too short!

We had fun bowling...

Swimming...

Easter...

Visit to Dad's...

Happy 11th Bri!

Yesterday was Bri's birthday. We do a friend party for her every other year so this year she was stuck with just us. We had fun and took her out to Red Robin for dinner. She loves to go there and get a smoothie with her dinner. I made her a cake and she absolutely loved it. She is really into Garfield lately and I didn't let her see her cake while I was making it, she was very excited! We got home from dinner and had cake and icecream and watched movies. It is basically what we do every weekend (dinner and a movie) but we love being together so it was a lot of fun.

I can't believe she is 11...that she is growing up so fast...but she will ALWAYS be my baby girl!

Happy 4th Yeager!

My furry child had a birthday too... :)

We gave him a stuffed toy to chew up...

This is why we only give him rope toys, he shreds anything with a squeeker and fluff! (This was five minutes later!)

Another new obsession...

I have decided that I have a lot of little obsessions, and recently I have apparently developed another one. I love a good sharp pencil, and in my classroom I have a box of colored pencils that the students have been using a lot lately. It also doesn't help that I have a really cool pencil shapener that is very fun to use.

Every time a class has used the pencils I pick through and sharpen all the ones that are not sharp anymore. I think I am going to go crazy soon!

If I had a flower...

"If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk forever in my garden."

It has now been 10 years since my passed away. It seems like forever ago, yet it seems like yesterday. There is so much I miss about my mom. She was a wonderful mom and a great example of patience. She had me when she was 43 years old, and when I was a year old she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. The disease crippled her very quickly and she was having joints replaced by the time I was five years old. She spent the last 28 years of her life dealing with this horrible disease. We used to call her "bionic mom" because she had so many artificial parts! She NEVER complained about her trials and always had such a positive attitude. I was the youngest and was her private nurse. When I moved away to college it really caused me stress because I didn't know if dad would be able to take care of her without me, but he did a wonderful job.

She was so willing to serve, yet her crippled body confined her. She wanted to be able to serve a mission and got permission from her doctors, if she were to serve in a warm climate. Her and dad received their mission call to Fayette, New York. It was far from a warm climate and she endured a very cold winter and pneumonia several times while on her mission, but she did it willingly and enjoyed being able to serve a mission. I will be eternally grateful for my parents serving their mission because it was there that they met my future husband.

Mom enjoyed having fun and being silly. She loved to play games, watch her favorite shows on the TV (The Price is Right and Wheel of Fortune), she loved to cross stitch and sew. She had many friends and it seems like anywhere we traveled there was someone to stop and visit with that they had met years before while dad served in the Air Force.

Mom always took pride in her appearance. Unless she was having a particularly bad day, she would be up and dressed, with her hair styled and lipstick on. (She loved bright pink lipstick!) One of my lifelong chores for mom was to keep her fingernails trimmed. Even after I was married I would clip her nails for her at every opportunity. I learned to keep a pair of clippers in my purse because they would travel to Salt Lake to see her doctor and stop at my work to visit...and get a manicure!

She loved to have a clean house but was not able to keep it up on her own. Dad was good to do much of the work, but when I would come to visit she liked to have me dust on top of the book shelves. She would sit in her chair and be totally bugged because she KNEW no one had dusted up there for months so it must be dusty!

African violets, hot bubble baths, chair lifts up the stairs, her silly laugh (which she passed on to her daughters), running down the mall pushing mom in her wheelchair : ) , alfalfa, pink roses, cross stitch, pearl earrings, recipes written on envelopes, road trips in the motor home, photos she took (She was a TERRIBLE photographer!), Dixie cups full of pills or cherry pits, carrot and celery juice, charcoal "black" balls, being able to squeeze her as hard as I could around her waist because it didn't hurt her there, seeing her hold my daughter...

I love you mom...(and I know you love me best!)

Mother/daughter "Switch" party

Mom and Bri

This is what happens when you squeeze dish soap in the bathtub, turn on her bubble blower and walk out of ear shot!

This picture amazes me, I never saw her sit on the floor

Mom on a bowling team (2nd from left)

The chicken laid an egg in her lap!

She always taught us about modesty...it was fun giving her a hard time when we found a picture of her in a bikini!

Mom and Dad before leaving on their mission

A fun week, and it is only Tuesday!

I usually miss out on scrap day. For the past 10 years I have been scrapping once a week with my sister, niece and friend. But when I started working during the day that got knocked off of the schedule...sadly. This week we were out of school on Monday and I was able to go play with them all day. It was fun getting some scrapping done and spending time with friends.

At school I am in charge of the student council. Today we had a fire drill and the student council got to block the main entrances that the students usually exit during a drill. We put up orange butcher paper cut with flame shapes on the top edge, and spread "caution" tape across the doors. They had a lot of fun being able to help out, and I loved being able to help get them organized. I think I have a great job...except last week I was outside at recess without even a jacket and this week I am bundled up again!

Today I went out to lunch with roomies again, and this time we were able to have Mindy join us! It was great to hang out for a little while, even though I had to rush back to work for the fire drill.

Still wondering...

Bri has been having stomach aches for about three years. About once a month she will be really sick and in pain. She has missed about 5 or 6 days in the past month because of severe stomach pains. We have had her to a gastroenterologist for the past two years and finally got him to do an upper and lower EGD on her. We did this last Thursday and he said that everything looks fine, so we are still in the dark about what is bothering her so much. They took several biopsies and we are still waiting to hear back on that. She was a trooper and I was even able to get a photo of her smiling! The thing she worried about the most was the IV and the pediatric sedation nurses that took care of her were AMAZING and made her feel comfortable about everything before they put it in.

I am proud of her for being so brave, even when she was scared and uncomfortable.