It's a....

After four sweet little girls, Erin and Brian are having....another girl! They'll have their own girls' basketball team. Or if they invite their mother to play, they can field their own volleyball team! What a lucky family! We couldn't be happier. We look forward to October!

Pictures From This Week

Here are some pictures from this week's (and maybe some of last week's) posts.

Matthew playing baseball

Blackberry freezer jam

pretzel making

Scripture Journal (visiting teaching handout)

Camp Lo Mia clean-up supplies (Mark's project on Saturday)

This Saturday is National Scrapbooking Day, so I'll be spending a couple of days at a crop. Hopefully, I'll get a lot accomplished!!

Pins and Needles

Today is another pins and needles day. Yesterday it was waiting for Makenzie's surgery to be over. She did well. The tumor looked "nasty" according to her Dr. It bled as soon as he touched it and he had quite a time keeping up with the bleeding. He said the initial pathology report came back as a "low-grade" cancer, but he's thinking it's more than that. It will take a few days for a more detailed report. But he thinks he got it all. She will have to undergo more chemotherapy. She was awake enough this morning to have a bite of breakfast. They're keeping her well sedated to take care of the pain as well as keeping her quiet so she doesn't accidently tear the lining of her brain where they were working. But so far, it looks like the only slight problem might be a little weakness on one side, but they can take care of that with physical therapy. Thank goodness.
Today's pins and needles is waiting for Erin to have her ultrasound to see what the gender of their new baby is. After four sweet girls, Erin feels a definite need to know so she can be "prepared" either way. But here's hoping for outdoor plumbing this time around! I'll post as soon as we know.

Busy, busy, busy!

I'll try and catch up with the past several days' events. Thursday I spent grading papers and returning them to Brian. I also helped take in a meal to a sister that I visit teach. We had a baby girl last week. Friday Jan and I spent from 10 am until midnight at Scrap Happy working on various projects...finishing up a couple and starting another one. Then on Saturday, Mark and I picked up our Bountiful Basket and I went to teach a class at Scrap Happy. Mark donated blood at the stake humanitarian service day. He picked me up and we went to Erin's. Erin and I then bottled 28 jars of blackberry jam. Yummy stuff! Today Erin and I had a bread session. She was out and I was almost out. Thankfully, Brian took two loaves off our hands since I didn't have any more room left in the freezer! Tonight I've been formatting photos for a Mother's Day project I'm working on. But I must go back to this morning. We were supposed to bake bread about 9:30 this morning. However, her neighbor needed someone to watch her two boys at 11:15, so we ran an errand that Erin needed to do, which we had originally planned to do while the bread was cooling, but we had to be back to watch the boys. So we started off at 9 am and headed to Phoenix Children's Hospital. A friend of ours has a daughter who is having a brain tumor (her second one) removed on Wednesday. The first one is inoperable because of its location on her brain. They've managed to keep it at bay for almost three years with chemotherapy. But last month they'd been watching what they thought was a cyst...and is not considered a tumor. They'll operate and remove it tomorrow in a rather lengthy surgery. She's only 10 years old. And such a trooper. She has one of the best dispositions and attitudes of any child I've ever met. We pray that they'll be able to get it all with no complications and that it will indeed be a cyst rather than a malignancy. Anyway, Erin was picking up some vouchers that they can use in the hospital cafeteria. The people in the three adjoining wards near them have all rallied together to support this family. They've collected a myriad of items to be taken to the hospital tomorrow to help Terri pass the time as she spends the next ten days in the hospital with Makenzie. Anyway, that was first on our agenda today.
After we got home from that errand, the boys soon came over. They were only supposed to be there for about an hour, so we decided to wait until they left to start our bread session. When that was done, we delivered the items for Terri and Makenzie. Then it was time for Erin's older girls to come home from school. About that time, the school called and their ride forgot to pick them up. So we headed to the school to get the girls. Erin and I didn't sit down all day! Whew!
Then I came home and got things ready for tomorrow.....Erin and I are going to attempt to make soft pretzels. I know...call us crazy! Then I spent the rest of the evening grading some papers and getting the pictures formatted and sent to Costco. It's been a busy day....and I don't see any relief in sight!
But like Erin and I keep reminding ourselves....we got a lot accomplished!

Yummy and Easy!

Today Erin and I tried our hand at making Strawberry Freezer Jam. Can I say....Yummy! We set out to make about 25 jars of jam, but ended up with 49 jars! The recipe we used made more than it said it would, and we were very pleased. It's so simple to do. Messy, but simple! I'm getting some blackberries in my Bountiful Basket order on Saturday, so I'm thinking I see some blackberry jam in our future!
And it didn't take nearly as long as we'd originally thought. Except for the two hour outing midway through the project to get more jars, pectin and lunch, it only took about two hours from start to cleaned-up finished. Erin's girls had fun helping and especially enjoyed the Sonic run for sodas and Wacky Packs.




I've also been working on a couple of class projects that Jan and I will be teaching at Scrap Happy Sisters in the coming months....an accordian book, a chipbaord flip book using summertime papers and a purse book that is designed for younger girls as a fun summertime project.

Weekend Events

I'm catching up on the events of this past weekend. Saturday we had three soccer games; one at 8, one at 9 and one at 10! Then we went to Matthew's cub scout pinewood derby. Matt had a sweet car that he and his dad built. While he didn't win a medal, he did well in all of his races and had a nice looking car. Also, he was a great sport and didn't get down when he didn't "win". He and Dan are already looking at things they'll do differently next year and are already planning something "better". After the races, they wanted to come up to the valley to do a bit of shopping. We went to Deseret Book in Chandler. Mark and I had Matt and Emma with us, so we made a quick stop for a photo shoot. It went well, but the sun was in a bad spot at that time of day and it was hard to not get a lot of shadows. Oh, well. Then we all went to Mimi's together for dinner. It was a good day.

Happy Birthday, Mark!

Today is Mark's birthday. He's 57....much older than me! He got to go to Glendale Airport today and watch some vintage WWII aircraft land. Then we met for lunch. I had picked Abby up after school today and after we dropped her off at Kamille's work, we went to Claim Jumper for dinner. Yum! Then I left him home hulling strawberries while I went to book group. Erin and I are making strawberry freezer jam tomorrow and Mark did the washing and hulling! What a way to spend your birthday!!
Book group was good tonight. We read Sheri Dew's book, The Life Were Easy, It Wouldn't Be So Hard. It's a good book and we had a wonderful discussion. We talked a lot about things going on in our world today....financially, politically, socially, etc. and one point that Sister Dew makes in her book is that no matter how bad things seem all around us, if we are righteous and united, we can withstand anything. That's my fervent hope and prayer.