The sun will come out tomorrow?????

Upstate New York is soon to have ocean front property, if this rain keeps up. It has poured rain today. We are starting to flood (not us personally) but everywhere else. When I picked the boys up from school we took some pictures of the quickly filling up rivers, streets and parking lots.

This river is generally just a little stream that is usually dry by around June, it's now almost to the steet, and probably will be flowing into the street by tonight.

This street is flooded and closed so we had to zoom in for the picture, but towards the back of this picture is the parking lot for the baseball field's where Ben plays.

Even though we might float away - it's always good to have a sense of humor. I saw this on the front page of one of our news web pages today. "How To Build an Ark"

Rain in March

I heard on the news that if we get just one more inch of rain in the month of March, then this March will go down on record as the rainiest March ever in Boston.

I think it's safe to say that we had that one inch of rain before noon today, and if not, the forecast says that we will get rain today and HEAVY RAIN tomorrow. If today wasn't heavy rain, I'm afraid for tomorrow.

Here is one more interesting thing, there have only been 10 days of rain this month. Which sums up our month as occasional dumpings of rain.

8 is Great!

Today was Josh's "8 is Great" get together at church. They have a little program with some talks about getting baptized, then they show the kids the font, so they can see and understand what happens when they are baptized.
Following is a dinner for them and their families. Josh got an "8" cookie and a book with all sorts of stuff in it to help him get prepared to be baptized. He is so excited. I'm excited for him, along with some denial that my baby is getting baptized.

Yard work

To work

or not to work? That is the question

Surprise

For the past few weeks, Mike's heater in his car has been making a loud noise. Oh great, I thought, how much is that going to cost?

Mike, of course, is the smarter one, and took the fan out of the car and sure enough, just as he had thought there was a little mouse nest with a mouse resting right there with the fan. The poor mouse's great idea of a nest in the fan of the car, ended up not being such a great idea for him.

But I figure, one less mouse in the world, a now working car heater for FREE; today was a good day.

The Rooster

One of Luke's many nick names is Lukester Rooster or just Rooster.

We drive past this rooster just about everyday and everyday we say we are going to take a picture of it. Finally, we stopped talking about it and actually did it. We had high hopes of actually getting him up on the rooster stand, but had no such luck.

What to do with a Coconut?

Over the weekend I went with a friend to Haymarket, to get some produce. I noticed the coconuts for only $1 and the pineapples for $1.50. Immediately, I'm thinking fresh, yummy pina coladas! You can't go wrong with those prices. So last night I made a few phone calls (to the pina colada know it all's) to learn how to make the pina colada, and I find out that to make a good pina colada you use a can of sweetened coconut milk, not the real thing. WHAT!?! That's not right, I was told that's even how the locals do it.
SOOO what do I do with my coconut now? We at the pineapple, no problem. We opened the coconut, the fun we had with that was probably worth $1. We ate what we could and drank the juice. But tell me, what else do you do with a coconut?

Primary Activity

On Saturday our ward had a primary activity, where they put together hygiene kits to be sent to the LDS Humanitarian aid. Along with that they had breakfast and a couple of kids spoke about comparing their service to how Christ served while he was on the earth. Luke was asked to speak. He struggled with what he wanted to talk about and then how to get it on paper. So he decided to draw what he was thinking. He and I sat up in my room for quite awhile as we went over all of the many stories of Christ serving others. He picked a few and drew them. It was such a great couple of hours of time to spend with him. He learned a lot and was able to give a great talk, I think that's what I love the most. He didn't even need to write down what he wanted to say, he was able to speak it from the heart.

This is his picture. After all was said an done, in fact just last night, we noticed that he had written "We must serve him, to serve to love Him" it's supposed to be "We must serve Him, to love Him" He'll have to change it!

Finding Joy in the Journey

A friend of mine is writing a book and asked me to write something about my happiest memory ever and how my religious affiliation has affected that. I thought I'd post my response.

Finding Joy in the Journey

As I have sat and thought about my happiest memory ever, I have realized that what has brought me the most joy in life, is the journey itself. I have reflected a lot about the past and thought of the many highs and lows that are part of that past. I have also noticed, that through all of these highs and lows there has been one constant and that is the foundation that I have built in my religion, which is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I have been taught to have faith, I have been taught to exercise prayer regularly, and also to go to church and to find faith and strength in prayer and scripture study. We also have the privilege of being able to create eternal families to live together forever even beyond our time on earth, by being married in the temple by someone with the proper priesthood authority. I have been taught and have learned for myself, that when you put your trust in the Lord, he will strengthen you, and by so doing some of your greatest lows can become your greatest highs.

The past decade has presented some great challenges for my family. My sister, at 22 years of age, being newly married with a 2 year old and a 2 month old little boy and girl. Suffered from a heart attack, she had a very slim chance of survival, but ended up beating the odds, after finally awakening from her coma she had developed short term memory loss. She didn’t remember she was married or that she had kids. She also had to be retaught ALL of her day to day living functions. Her husband could not do this alone, my parents still had kids and home, I was living several states away, and another brother living in Russia for a couple of years, and thus the juggling and the beginning of our uphill battle began. Trying to balance our own lives, and helping with my sisters needs and those two young children, was a lot of work and a strain for everyone. Our family did a lot of fasting and prayer and working together. My sister is still not better, but with my family still working together physically and spiritually, we have a love for each other that most families don’t have. As we all have continued to have our own challenges that strength has been a continued blessing. Over the course of the years, my husband has lost his job twice, my 3^rd son was born with some major complications and had less then a 25% chance of survival and mom developed cancer and passed away leaving a big hole in all of our lives.

I look back at these experiences and am so thankful, that we could rely on the Lord for help and strength. I am so thankful for the knowledge of an eternal family. When my son was sick I was able to put my faith and trust in the Lords hands and know that if he didn’t make it during our time on earth, I knew that I would have “forever” to spend with him and would be able to raise him someday, I know that I will see my mom again, and I know that if my sister does not completely heal on this earth that she will at some point. Because of this testimony that I have, I (and my family) have been able to find joy in the journey. These challenges have been some of the hardest that I personally have ever gone through. But as I look back we have had the best times, we’ve grown together and are now an extremely close family that knows how to laugh together, play together and work together. We have had to rebuild, with each challenge and although it’s been hard, there has been a lot of joy and laughter as well. Each time I look at my son, I’m filled with joy and gratitude. I have an even greater appreciation for all of my children and for families, and that has helped me to cherish those simple times and also the crazy times that come with raising small children. By relying on the Lord through these hard times, I have learned to have joy in the journey, which has given me a greater joy then I could ever imagine.

Snowboarding

Mike, Ben and Luke went snowboarding a couple of weeks ago, while they were there they bumped into our neighbor who is photographer and just happened to be taking photos that day. He took some great pictures of Mike. I thought I'd post them.

St. Patrick's Day

I think it's safe to say that we all love St. Patricks day at our house. It's a simple but fun holiday. The leprechaun came and left us all sorts of little goodies. We got a lot of coins, leprechaun hats, shamrock glasses and pots of gold. The leprechaun also sent us on a little scavenger hunt looking for some "Irish candy" (green cotton candy). He set off our traps several times. We caught his hat once and a pot of gold as well, but we never caught the leprechaun. The gold coins seemed to fall out of the sky as we were walking by. We don't know how it happend, our neighbor Max said it was nothing short of a miracle.

Our milk, toilet water, and food was turned green. We had green 4 leaf clover pretzels dipped in a pot or gold (or velveeta cheese) for lunch, fettuccini, green breadsticks and a green salad for dinner and the highlight was our pot of gold cake with green ice cream.

With a rainbow and gold coins in the center.

We loved the day. I will be so sad when they grow out of the Leprechaun. I think Luke and Josh know (actually I know Luke does) but they enjoy the game so much that they just don't care. This year Ben helped me hide things and "drop the coins from the sky" etc. We had a blast.

St. Patrick's Day

Leprechaun traps are made and set.

This year, we're going to catch the Leprechaun.
Happy St. Patty's Day!

California

For Ben's birthday we surprised him with a little "Mom and Ben" get away to California for a visit. I love it when my husband has points that we can use :-)! We waited until Ben's winter break which was in Feb. to go. It was so nice to just have this one on one time with him. I hope I can do this with each one of my kids. We got to see all of our old friends (we think of them as extended family). We also spent time with all of our ward friends as well, it was so good to see everyone. As for what we did in CA we just had a blast. We played games, went to the movies, Ben went 4 wheeling, I went to lunch, shopping (Angie and Lori, said I've had my purse for way to long and I needed a new one, I have so much to learn), and we got manicures too! I walked every morning with the Ramos's, we went to see our old neighbors, and some of Ben's old teachers, and along with that we

ATE A LOT! I think I took more pictures of our food then the people. When Ben and I were planning this trip besides seeing everyone, the other thing we really wanted to do was eat at all of our favorite places.

SO we did! We at Scott's famous tacos (with ketchup), we had lunch at McD's. Ok, so McD's isn't necessarily our favorite place but the crowd that was their at lunch that day was, so that's where we ate.


We had donuts at the Donut Wheel. YUMMMM made fresh everyday. In Boston we have Dunkin Donuts, the fail(even that's an understatement) in comparison to the Donut Wheel.

Cheesecake Factory
And of course the delicious and completely unforgetable In-N-Out. Bob and Jeri took us there the minute we got off the plane (it was so good) and we managed to go again just before we left. I've decided it's probably good I live 3,000 miles away from the closest In-N-Out, that would be a dangerous thing!

It was a great weekend, most of all we just enjoyed the time we got to spend with everyone. The weekend ended with a different sort of bang. I'm allergic to cats, the only real side affect I have when I'm around cats is my asthma flairs up. It hasn't ever been a real problem in the past, I just take my inhaler, and although I sometimes struggle to breath, I'm generally fine. So when we stayed at the Tolands, although they had a cat, I wasn't too worried about it. What I didn't take into affect was that CA is in full spring right now. So, I think between the two, I struggled all weekend with my breathing and by Monday night, my body had had enough. I couldn't breath and nothing was helping. We tried the inhaler and that didn't work, Angie had a nebulizer and gave me ad treatment and that helped but I was still not well, plus by that point my legs were just shaking and my chest and arms hurt. She gave me the final dose of medicine with the nebulizer and shortly into that I almost passed out so off we went to the ER. There I was given another treatment and medication and finally I could breath. Although, the doctor told me not to fly for a few days, I needed to get home. So we got home from the ER and 2 hours later (at 5am) were loading up the car to go to the airport. Poor Ben, we were both so sad to leave but I think he was a little traumatized to be the only one to help out his sick mother.
After several delays we finally made it home. My breathing was ok but I was still needing to use the inhaler every few hours. It took another trip to the doctor when I got home to finally help stabilize me. I could not believe how much that took out of me. I was SOOOO weak, my entire body just ached. It really did take a full week before I felt like myself again.
I learned a lot about that experience and am so thankful that everything turned out ok. I'm also so thankful to everyone in CA for all of their help and also for a wonderful weekend!

Snowboarding

A couple of weeks ago, Mike and Ben took Luke snowboarding for the first time. They have been trying to do that all winter and haven't had a chance, with the snow starting to melt, Luke was starting to panic that he wasn't going to get his chance to learn. Thankfully, the boys had a day off of school, so off they went.

Luke loved it and did a great job. By the end of
the day, he was making it down the hill pretty good. The 3 of them had a blast. Since Josh and I weren't boarding, we had our own date. We just ran errands and went to lunch, but it was probably one of the funnest days I've had with one of my kids in a long time. Thankfully, this ski hill is just around the corner from our house, so we were able to stop in meet the other boys for hot chocolate and see how they were doing during the day.

Temple trip

On a freezing, cold and windy 14th of Feb., Mike and I were able to take Ben to the temple for the first time. Their are pros and cons about having your kids get older but a definate pro is being able to share these kind of special moments with them. Ben has a solid testimony that for me, is inspiring. He knows that the church is true, and that Joseph Smith is and was a true prophet of God. As we left the temple and went to dinner, we had a long conversation about some of his feelings on those two topics and was really touched by his insight. I'm thankful that he is my son, and that I could share this special day with him.

Ice skating

Mike has become quite the little craigslist shopper lately and has got us some really good deals on a few things, one being ice skates for the family - 6 pairs for $20 (even got a bonus pair). We have been ice skating the last 3 weekends in a row.
The first time we spent a lot of time on the ground and at the wall. But they catch on so fast. This past weekend we spent most of the time racing, of course in perfect Apolo Ohno form. At least that's what they call it.

Josh is my favorite, he jogs instead of skates, with a little bit of gliding in between. It's so funny to watch but he's pretty good at it and can hold his own in a race.

Basketball

Since the beginning of December, Ben and Luke have been playing basketball. It was Ben's second season and Luke's first. They both really enjoyed it. It helps to be on a winning team and to have excellent coaches. Both Ben and Luke, really came out of their shells this season and played so well.
Ben is a tower on his team (that always helps in basketball). He and the other boy Ben is standing next to, are nick named "the twin towers" for the team. They generally tower over everyone on every team and would often times catch all of the rebounds, pass the ball to each other and off they go. This season Ben really learned to be more aggressive.

Luke had to learn everything this year. He didn't know a lot about the sport. His first game, he was kind of all over the place. By the end of the season he was probably one of the best hustler's on the team. I know I've said this before, but I am continually amazed by his determination to learn how to do something and not give up with frustration. He learned a lot and has really grown to love the game. He's wishing he could play on a team year around. There aren't any year around teams, so for now, our hoop in the front yard is going to have to do.