Happy Mother's Day

Oh, my dear friends and fellow moms...I hope you've had the beautiful day you deserve!

That's me with my three darlin's at Multnomah Falls this afternoon.

Awww, kisses for mom!

***

My kids have been "on one" today, and my mommy was only semi-conscious, but it has been a beautiful day anyway! Look what I got to do:

After a delicious breakfast burrito, cute cards, church, and a grrrreat nap, we went on a drive down the Columbia River Gorge. Our first stop was at the Vista House--loved it!
Our next stop was Multnomah Falls (Abby took this photo--cute, huh?)
The girls LOVED it! We hiked up to that bridge you see above them...
Abby, Sydnie, and Addie ran up ahead of us on the gorgeous trail...
James and I had fun watching the water up close and scaring ourselves by looking over the bridge!
On our way back to the car, James caught one last sight of the falls and I thought his wonderment was adorable! This truly is a beautiful place to be!

***

My hubby topped off the wonderful gift of this trip by sending me to get my very first pedicure (and a manicure, too) yesterday. He took the girls and went with Mark to Abby's baseball game while I stayed here with James, per mom's request. When it became apparent that she was not going to be able to get up, I put James down for a nap and told her I was leaving for an hour or two, and I had the best time sitting in a nice massage chair with the foot bath, waiting for my "mani-pedi." (James woke up about 2 minutes after I got back--perfect!) Wow, that's good stuff. It could get addictive! So I am enjoying my rosy, cuticle-less nails today, trying not to spoil them with TOO much housework! ;)

***

Mom has been mostly sleeping off her surgery and pain meds the past two days. She was actually asleep and incoherent more today than she was Friday or Saturday. I keep wanting to extend my trip to spend coherent time with her, but I don't know now if she'll be any better Tuesday than she is now...hm. I do kinda want to be here for her diagnosis so I can go home knowing what to do next, and to assure her that she'll have all the care & help she needs, but we'll have to see how tomorrow goes. I am having terribly mixed emotions and I feel very much torn between these two generations that I am here to nurture and care for. In many ways I feel like my time with my mom might be limited, so I want to give her all my attention, but of course life goes on and I have children and a husband whom I want to cherish and love, too. On the surface I have been busy working hard, trying to do the things mom would do if she were up and around, and it has been fun to do it. But I found myself inexplicably irritable and frustrated a few times today (when it really has been quite a nice day). I finally realized in the quiet of late night that I am feeling pretty angry, or at least "mad." I am mad that the world wont' stop and let me lay by my mom so we can talk and laugh. I am mad that, chances are, this is as good as it gets with mom---meaning all the fun times I have been looking forward to aren't going to happen, that I will continue to feel torn, possibly for years, as long as she is here with us, trying to make the most of what's left. I feel like taking care of her and spending time with her are most urgent, yet we all know from sad experience that I don't necessarily have unlimited time to be with my kids and hubby either--I can't put off time and attention with them just because it seems like I'll have them longer than mom. That saying form Marvin J. Ashton, "Make every encounter a kindly one," rings so true because, really, any encounter can be your last, with ANYONE, and shouldn't it reflect the whole of your relationship and all of your love? I'm trying to juggle it all. It's almost MORE frustrating being here and feeling mostly helpless, working really hard all day to do something, anything, that might in some way ease mom's burden, to take away some of the weight of what's to come. Today she couldn't wake up, so I washed all the bathroom rugs and shower curtain liners because that's something she probably won't get to anytime soon. She complained about her craft room being a disaster, so I just spent three hours organizing it, hoping against hope that she'll even get to use it. It sucks.

But I do feel so grateful for all the blessings that have been poured out upon me and upon our little family over the past 7 years. I am so grateful to be a mother and have three brilliant and healthy children. I am so thankful that the restored gospel of Christ is part of my life and brings such joy and direction in such a dark world. I am grateful to know that every poopy, snotty, whiny, giggly, mundane, creative, unique, loving moment of my day as a mother MATTERS. In a big way. All of my thoughts are captured so well this week at NieNie's blog, so go have a look when you have a minute and know that you matter, too. I am almost excited to see how the Lord will bless us and teach us over the coming months...buckle your seatbelts because I think it's going to be quite the ride.
***

I Love My Mama!

Trip PIx

Here is a picture of the kids leaving Bozeman at 8:20pm on Thursday night...
...they were watching "Ratatouille" and soon fell asleep.
Abby playing softball on Saturday
James stayed home Saturday and played with Sydney...
He even drank some of her water!

Here they are watchin' for bad guys. There really is nothing cuter than my boy and a tiny dog!

On The Ball

(This is just a random thought)

While I was driving the other morning at 3am, I was listening to BBC News international on the radio and they kept reporting on Relief (or refual thereof) in Myanmar.

When I got to Vancouver I checked lds.org to see how things were going for the church there, and I saw THIS.

Reason #4,867 That I Love Being LDS: I always know that when disasters happen and relief is needed, my money and donations are already there. The church almost always uses charities and rescue workers that are already on the ground when the disasters happen, (like the Bishops Storehouse in Metairie, LA during Katrina) so the help comes almost instantly. It's just a matter of distribution (which I know is a challenge in Myanmar, but still...)I LOVE that.

King of the Road

HA! Guess where I am?

I'm in Vancouver with my Mom! We met her and Mark at the hospital after her surgical biopsy today. It was a really fun surprise and my husband deserves a medal for (a) coming up with idea to make this trip and (b) driving all night long! He got off work at 5pm yesterday and we left home at 6pm. We did some errands in Bozeman and left there a little after 8pm. We had potty breaks in Missoula and Spokane. I tried to drive for a few hours from Spokane, but only drove an hour (3am-4am) before my eyes just kept rolling back in my head (I think I took too much allergy medicine). Poor Rich drove 11 hours by himself! He gave both me and my mom a great mother's day gift, though!

We are trying to let Nana and Daddy sleep, but the kids are a little loud and a little whiny. They probably need naps, too, but I don't really have a way to divide and conquer them by myself, so I am letting them run wild in the back yard with Sydney while it's sunny (!!!) outside.

The drive was beautiful (the gorge is breath-taking--if I'd been born here, I could never live elsewhere) and mom is doing great. Everything is still up in the air, but she is really doing so well. I know she doesn't feel good (that isn't unusual), but she's still fun to be around, she looks good, etc. She is grateful to finally be finding out what wrong. It may get worse before it gets any better, but she and we are up for the challenge, it seems.

Aunt Marti and Sam & Kristen--the flowers you sent are proudly displayed and they are so beautiful! There is a lot of love here and that's the bet medicine of all!

We'll update with pictures soon, and mom plans to update her blog, too. We love and miss y'all!
***

PS: The Civic rode like buttah! We love it (esp. getting 40+ mpg!) and the kids were all nice and snuggly. Everyone seemed to enjoy the trip, so yay that.

CUTE KIDS

Last Sunday, May 4th, our spunky niece, Summer (who lives in Florida) turned 4 and our nephew Jared (who lives in Texas) turned 1! (Those are pix of Summer in her Easter Dress, Summer with her brothers at Disney World, and Jared loading the dishwasher). We reeeally miss those Melin kids and hope they had great birthdays...Jared gets a new house for HIS birthday, so that's pretty cool...

***
Today at lunchtime James was VERY tired (I held back his 10/11 am nap til we picked up HEidi at 12:30 today) and he fell asleep in his highchair with his chin on his fists. It was so cute, I ran to get the camera , but he heard it come on and lifted his head...

...but he didn't open his eyes!

He even tried to smile for me with his eyes still closed...

...but he was just TOO TIRED!

OUR NEW BABY...

Today we sold "Kiki" Car (Heidi named it when she was about 16 months old) and bought this beautiful baby Civic Hybrid... YAY!


Here's our "family of vehicles"
Yeah, baby--50mpg!

Bring on the roadtrips! We can all fit comfortably in the Civic (for now), so imagine the gas money we will save!!!
We asked the girls what we should name the new car--Addie liked "Ladybug" and Heidi said, "Miley Cyrus!" (She doesn't even really know who that is--she just likes the sound of it!) FUNNY! We haven't chosen yet...maybe we'll christen it on our first roadtrip.

Dedicated to My Mommy

(in reference to THIS)

Fiesta...and not-so-great news

Here are some photos of our Cinco de Mayo FHE last night. We had Grandpa & Grandma Melin and the Grays over for a Mexi-feast. Heidi stole the camera for a minute to take a picture of Cousin Rosalie and the "Elephant Store" they made. Enjoy!

***

I am reeling a little bit after learning a few minutes ago that my mom probably has lymphoma.
Just trying to wrap my brain around that...

PS: There is NO SUCH THING as a WONDER DRUG!

Teacher Appreciation Week

I got roped into helping out on the Teacher Appreciation Week Committee at Addie's school (the committee is mostly church friends, so they already knew my skill set and schedule so I couldn't pretend I'm clueless! ;)). I found suprisingly little on the internet as far as ideas go, so I thought I would share our ideas via the blog for future reference.

First of all, this is the itinerary the committee came up with for the week:

Monday: Decorated Doors plus Muffins & Juice
Tuesday: Mailbox Treats
Wednesday: Luncheon
Thursday: Wish Tree Gift Bags & Sharpening Service

Friday: Dessert Bar

***

So Saturday, as I mentioned, we got together and decorated all the teachers' and staff doors. Here are some of them:

In L-R order: "We're blowing the WHISTLEbon the two best playground aids ever", "You are the HEART of our school", "We love our teacher", "You're out of this world"(outer space theme), "Thanks You for giving us the building blocks for a great future", A huge blue ribbon for Best Librarian, "You're the KEYS to our success", "Here's the SCOOP: You're the best!", "You're SUMbody Special (w/ calculator)", "HATS off to an Awesome Teacher", Handprints with quotes from the kids that can be taken down and bound into a scrapbook, "We're LUCKY to have you for our teacher", "You rise above the rest" (balloons), "Recipe for two great Kitchen Aids/ Lunch workers", "P.E. is a BALL", "Thanks for Helping us Bloom and Grow" (flowers), "Teacher, teacher, what do YOU see? I see GRATEFUL students looking at me!" (scanned from the ever-popular Brown Bear, Brown Bear book), "You Deserve a Standing Ovation (hands clappping)" and "We're glad you're part of our STAFF" (for music teacher), "You're a FROGtastic Teacher" (a frog for each student), and the skinny one you can barely see shows caterpillars that say "You're the kind of teacher that TRANSFORMS her students" surrounded by butterflies with students' names on them.
Today I was in charge of the Mailbox treats. We bought boxes of candy bars at Costco, them tied on cute tags with the week's theme: A Teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, touches a heart, and shapes the future. James and I just got home from delivering them. The only thing I have yet to do is help bag and tag all the items that were brought in from the Wish Tree so we can give them to the teachers on Thursday. We tried to think of some kind of helpful service gift we could give them (like massage gift certificates or something), and we came up with Knife and scissor sharpening (our committee chairwoman's hubby has a mobile knife-sharpening service). The teachers will also receive gift certificates to the legendary drive-in, Mark's In-n-Out (donated at cost by the owner). That will be way-fun for them--there's nothing like a malt at Mark's on a summer day in Livingston!

For the Wish Tree we used a little plywood tree (about 40" tall) that Rich made for me to use as Primary chorister. It has little velcro dots on it and I have little numbered apples, leaves, and flowers (to use seasonally) that correspond to songs--the kids choose a leaf and we sing the song with that number. Anyway, we made paper leaves and told the teachers to write down some items they would like for their classrooms that were under $5. Then we put velcro dots on the back of the leaves and placed the tree in the school lobby with a collection box and instructions. Today was the last collection day and all but 5 of the nearly 60 leaves had been taken. I hope the teachers are pleasantly surprsied!

Our Week in Photos (& some text)

Last Sunday we celebrated Uncle Davey's birthday with a barbecue at his house. The kids had a great time playing in the sunshine...James, Addie, Rosalie, and Heidi sitting in camp chairs
Uncle Mike pulled the kids in a red wagon
Weee! Addie and Heidi hitch a ride with Uncle Mike
Addie tried pulling James around, but he kept jumping out!
It was a fun, sunny day!

***
Tuesday I went down the valley early in the morning to visit teach in Emigrant. It was so beautiful I was converted to living out of town (maybe someday we'll relocate to the ranch and live off solar and wind). I kept singing the "Oklahoma" song, "Oh, what a beautiful morning" in my head..."All the cattle are standing like statues/ they turn their heads as they see me ride by/ but a little brown maverick is winkin' her eye/ Oh, what a beautiful mornin'/ Oh what a beautiful day/ I got a beautiful feelin' everything's goin' my way." It was a great start to great day, but I really got worn out. Rich went home teaching that night and I fell asleep with the kids before 8pm!
Wednesday my visiting teachers came over, and Steph brought baby Kimberly. She is soo cute! Her Aunt Kim just left on a mission to Brazil, and I promised to take pix of Baby Kimberly each month for her (she said her family is bad at picture-taking & sending), so here is the first:

Smile, tiny princess!


Later Wednesday night, I went to Kiwanis Club Charter Night at St. Mary's school (Rich and his Dad are charter members of the new club). We had a lovely dinner and learned lots about the club and its Montana chapters, and things they are doing internationally. After dinner the mountains (SE of town--Absaroka-Beartooths) looked so beautiful from the parking lot!

***

Thursday in Helena

Thurday morning at 9am, James, Heidi, and I headed to Helena to take Aunt Laura out to lunch and see Postums. We went to Chili's at about 11:30am and had fun eating and keeping Heidi occupied.

James loved sitting by Aunt Laura...
SMILE! We love Aunt Rola!
After lunch we went to JoAnne's to get some crafting supplies (clips for home made hairbows and flowers, scrap paper, ribbon, stickers, etc.) and then hung out at Laura's for a bit. Matt came by with his boys--he was trying to keep them busy and give Aunt Amie a rest because she was sick. Matt and Nana bought this pink elephant for Heidi off ebay--she LOVED it! She was very excited to see her buddy, Jake. We had a lovely visit with Laura, Darrin, and Matt, but I was wiped out with my cold/sinus thing by 3pm, so we headed home. Rich had already left for Stake meetings in Bozo, so we picked up Addie from Grandma's, had snadwiches for dinner, and we all fell asleep at 7:30pm. I got up at 8:30 and watched The Office and Scrubs, then crashed again.

***

Friday, Heidi and I had a "flare-up" with our coughs, so we just stayed home and got things ready to decorate teachers' doors at Addie's school. We waited anxiously for mom to call about the results from her CT scan and found out she has some lymph nodes that will be biopsied on Tuesday morning. It was not good news, but we still have to wait to find out the results of the biopsy before we know how bad it really is. We had a fun family movie night watching Alvin and the Chipmunks (Jason Lee is so cute without his Earl mustache). I ended up making two of each set of decorations for the teachers' doors because I had a sinking feeling that we wouldn't have many volunteers show up to decorate Saturday. Rich helped me and we snuggled up to enjoy and full hour of my BELOVED Ben Stein on Glenn Beck.

***

Saturday morning and I got up and did some chores (like washing out the greasy Olay body wash that Rich washed the girls' hair with Friday night--it will take a few more washes, but boy, they smell great). Then Rich went to help his mom with her computer and I took Addie to the school to decorate doors. She was excited because her friends Gracie and Kelli and George were ther and they had a great time. It took us three and a half hours to get every door for the teachers and staff decorated, but it was pretty fun and the school looks really festive. I ended up doing 9 doors instead of 4, so it was a good thing that I made double decorations. I think I will go take some pictures tomorrow so I have a data base of ideas if I ever have to do this sort of thing again (and I probably will, with three kids going to that school over the next 10 years). We took a nap and then we put all of our flower starts from the window sill into our little flower bed in the backyard. Now we are starting vegetables and hoping that our flowers won't freeze!

***

And that brings us to NOW, a sunny Sunday, post-nap, post-church, hangin' with the family, having smoothies for dinner. My raspberry smoothie smells exactly like roses! Are roses and raspberries related? It's yummy. We may go out and play Norwegian Golf in a bit. At any rate, it's a beautiful day and we're thankful for another great week. Our prayers are with Nana, hoping her doctors will make her better with simple interventions, that she won't be in so much pain, and that we can spend lots more time with her! Have a great week, y'all!...

Hi

Still Alive
Still sick with sinus/cough thing
Still busy prep 4 teacher appreciation week
It was warm for three days and then it started snowing again Wednesday
The kids are great
Heidi getting over fever/cough
James cut new tooth
Addie well and excited for summer vacation
Rough spring--
seems like everybody is sick and it's lingering!
Rich has a purple toe from dropping huge hammer on it
Learned lots of interesting (or alarming, depending on your situation) at Stake Preparedness Committee meeting last night.
The next four years are gonna be a fun ride, y'all!

More later when I feel better
and Teacher Appreciation Week is under control...

Lots of pix to post, too...

PS: Anybody fasting this weekend, please include my mama and her abdominal pain and numb leg in your prayers! She had a CT scan yesterday looking for lympohoma or colon invaders...pray it's something easily treatable!