*Monday Memos*

*Monday Memos*

 

dear life, I need a vacay far away on a tropical beach away from it all for about two weeks.

dear mr. cat, you seem to take life as a vacay... tropical beach or not.  I need to learn from you.

dear bryce, I am glad you were able to see your Aunt Julie and cousin Michael while you were in Vegas working.  I'm also very glad a stop to the strip was not part of your job! ;)

dear mckay, I am so excited that you wanted me to help you with your reply to being asked to Morp.  I am always willing and ready, but you always seem to just do it on your own. I know the only reason you accepted my help was because you were buried in homework, but whatever it takes!  ;)  I thought my idea turned out pretty dang cute if I do say so myself.

I miscalculated a bit on the sucker count and so I had you ask Cooper if he wanted me to make one for him since I just knew I would have tons and tons of suckers left over.  I mean a bag of 300 Dum Dum suckers should easily make at least two right? Wrong!  I ended up using all 300 on yours and had to make a mad dash back to the store to get more for Coops.  Oh well, it was fun and they were cute.

dear midweek run, since I felt like crapola on both Monday and Tuesday, I had to fit in a 10 miler on Wednesday.  I decided to run out to Honeyville because for some reason that just seems a lot shorter than my other 10 mile routes even though it's hilly.  Probably because I have to be so focused on the cars to make sure I am not roadkill. But it was worth it today because the peacocks were strutting their stuff.  I love the white ones, they just are so beautiful and appear almost lacey.

When I was about a mile and half from home, I was feeling kinda sad that I hadn't found a penny or any coin for that matter.  Then the weirdest thing happened.  I ran past a book that was laying open and I thought I saw a picture of a penny on the opened page.  I turned around and sure enough the book was opened to a page that had a penny on it!  Are you kidding me?  Oh Tyson, your sense of humor is alive and well!  I was laughing out loud.  So I took a photo and then ripped out the page that had the penny on it.  Seriously.  What. are. the. odds?   The next day on my run, I ran past it again and ripped out pages of a dime, nickel, quarter, and silver dollar.  I am going to cut out the coins and put them in my penny jar. 

dear post run meal, I have been pretty faithful during this training with eating my steel cut oats mixed in with flax, chia, and hemp seeds about once a week.  I know I should eat this after every run, but sometimes all I have time for is a cookie.  I know, I know...

dear peeps, I got you ready for a night out on the town!

dear young women laurels, thank you for asking me to come and teach you how to make an Easter treat.  Anita said it didn't matter what I made because you mainly asked me for the "fun factor" anyway.  Not sure if that took off the pressure or put on more. haha  Either way, I had a lot of "fun" teaching you how to make bunny peeps that are ready for some action.  I also had "fun" showing you how to make the cute little bird nests made out of chow-mien noodles.  I used the rice noodles because they are a bit thinner and they worked out great.

I was greatly rewarded with a bag of my all time favorite mini Cadbury eggs!  Mmm....mmm....good!  I hope the "fun factor" was up to your expectations.

dear utah homemakers home tour, you were once again very inspiring.  I saw so many great ideas and ways that the home owners turned some pretty bleak spaces into near show rooms.  I have to be honest, and say that sometimes I come back home after these tours and feel like I am a total slacker and I really need to get it in gear and get my house in gear as well!  I have so many projects in each room that I really need to get done.  I am dying to rip out my master bathroom and do a complete re-do.  I need to re-paint and re-do so many floors and update things and get some new furniture in a few rooms and the list goes on and on.   Needless to say, I came home feeling completely overwhelmed and like a total slacker.  At times like these Dave always tells me I need to take a drive through the trailer park.  Trailer park, here I come...

How ironic that at the very last house on the tour, just when all my feelings of inadequacy were starting to build, that I saw this sign:

That kind of puts it all into perspective doesn't it?

dear dawn (aka "squats with joy") hehe, thank you so much for letting me come and listen to you speak in North Ogden.  I had been looking forward to it all week and it was so fun to get to meet so many of your friends.  I absolutely loved these two in the photo on the left (Tonya and Amity).  Dawn had me meet up with them at Tonya's house and so we had a fun little chat before heading to the church.  Tonya's daughter Amity was just such a crack up.  I had so much fun chatting with her.

Dawn's talk was wonderful!  She spoke on being prepared and tied it in with the 10 Virgins.  She gave me so much to think about and now I am kicking myself that I didn't take notes.  She was very inspired and did such a great job.  I took away so many things that I really need to be doing better.  I told her that this was her little preparation for coming to my ward to speak about when Jared was lost.  I really want her to come and share that experience.  And I just happen to be on the Relief Society planning board so I can make that happen.  Watch out Dawn if you are reading this!  hehe  She is such a good person and has such a genuine and pure heart.  I feel so blessed that she is my friend.  She teaches me so much whenever I am around her. 

dear spring, I can't even express how much I L O V E you!  I'm so happy you are really here!  I love everything about you! The flowers, the scents, the breeze, the sun, the warmth, the baby animals, and most of all knowing that winter is over!  You have always been my favorite holiday!  Oops, I mean season.  I almost didn't catch that, but decided to leave it in because that is how I really feel about you.  Like you are a holiday after a long an arduous job. How can you not be everyone's favorite?  WELCOME BACK!

dear national sibling day, I had no idea you even existed but when I got home on Thursday after Dawn's talk, I saw that everyone had been posting photos of their siblings on Facebook and I just had to join in.  Even though I only have one sibling, I still am so grateful for him.  He is two years older than me and he is a great guy and we have shared so much of life together.  He was always very protective of me when I was little and we have so much fun when we get together now as we reminisce of all the crazy old times.  I love my brotha Jerry Dean!

I also posted this photo of my boys because they are the best siblings ever! They have always got along so well and have so much fun together.  Even though each one is so unique they really do have a very strong bond.  They have always been such great examples of brotherly love.  They do like to wrestle and rough house, as all boys do, but they are sure good to each other as well.  Words cannot express how much we all miss Tyson, and the hole he left leaves a void that will never be filled, but words also cannot express how happy we are that we had his companionship for the 17 years that we did.  I realized that McKay really got gypped because he only got to have him around for 8 years of his life.  The best bros around!

dear long run, oh I am so glad I was able to do you on Saturday instead of on Friday like originally planned.  Had I done you on Friday, you would've kicked my trash.  I was not feeling up to running 20 miles on Friday and I am sure I would have had a melt down at some point.  My 20 mile runs ALWAYS scare me because I am never sure how things will turn out, but when I am already not feeling well, then I really get nervous.  Luckily things went well on Saturday. Actually things started off being very profitable.

You just never know what you are going to find on a long run. As soon as Dave dropped me and Jen off at the top of Sardine Canyon, I found a $10 bill!  I was SO ecstatic!  Then Jen found a $5 bill just behind it!  Holy!  That's not a common thing.  We were pretty excited. I kept the 10 and she kept the 5.  After all there was no one around that we could ask if it belonged to besides cars that were blazing past us at 65 mph.  Not a bad way to start a 20 miler! 

You just never know what you are going to eat on a long run.  As part of our run we had to go around Mantua Dam...TWICE.  After the first time around and getting attacked by a swarm of bugs that were thicker than tar, we debated about going around it again.  But we did and were able to get the rest of our protein quota for the day.  We didn't even need to take any gels because we were pretty filled up on the bugs.  They were so bad.  We were even inhaling them up our noses.  Fun stuff.  We definitely lived up to the quote "eat what bugs you" today. 

Those are not birds, they are bugs! ↑

You just never know what you are going to see on a run!  No explanation necessary.

We ended up going 19 instead of 20.  Jen was only supposed to go 18 and so we compromised at 19.  I was so ready to be done at that point.  Once again I was so happy because our time was great!  We were at 2:05 at mile 13 and that is with a few stops for water, etc.  I am so happy that this marathon training has not been even close to being as awful as the last two.  Either I am getting stronger or the Garmin is malfunctioning.  That is my reoccurring nightmare...that on marathon day, I will think I am going fast but I will cross the finish line in last place because the Garmin was totally off.


dear sugar panoramic eggs, I was excited to go to my sister in law Karen's house and teach my nieces how to make you!  I made the shell of you the day before so you could be hard and ready to decorate by Saturday.  I also made a million and a half icing flowers the day before as well so they could be hard and ready.  I forgot to take a photo of that process.  I was a little worried about teaching them because I thought that I might be pretty sore after running my 20 miler, but happily I wasn't hardly sore at all.  Just a little chaffing, but nothing that some bag balm wouldn't take care off.  How nice to have the word bag balm and sugar eggs in the same paragraph.  But I was fine and able to teach them young-uns how to decorate a panoramic egg they were proud of.  

-

It was a lot of fun.  Karen had the day well planned.  First they colored eggs and then did an Easter egg hunt outside and then decorated the panoramic eggs.  I have to say I was pleasantly surprised how well they turned out.  They were all very determined to do them on their own without much help from me...especially Emily who is only 8 years old.  I was not egg-specting that.  I thought they would want me to basically do it for them.  I loved watching them come up with some of the unique ideas they had.  Everyone's was completely different and very creative.  Gregg came up with the idea of making one into a football.  Luckily we had a darker orange egg so he could do that. 

So very unique and so fun!  They all did an egg-cellent job!

Emily's is the one with LOTS of decorations on it.  It's a good thing I made a million and a half icing flowers.  If I had stopped at just a million, there wouldn't have been enough for Emily's egg.

Peek a boo!

These are the ones I made. ↑  I am going to give them away to a couple of my friends.

All in all, I think everyone's eggs turned out egg-ceptionally well!

dear cute beehives, I am so glad I won the bid on the silent auction for your treats!  You even made them unique to me!  Purple cupcakes!  I'm not just talking about the frosting, but also the cake.  And they were so yummy too!  Thanks girls!

dear taylor (aka elder wilding), I am happy to hear that you are loving your new area in Barcarena.  But I never questioned that you would.  You have the most amazing positive attitude about all things on your mission. It has been so awesome to see that about you.  You are always upbeat and never complain about anything.  I am so proud of you for that.  You have really learned that you can do hard things and do them with a smile on your face and gratitude in your heart.  Thank you for being the example you are to us all.  And I'm really glad you finally got the package with the LifeSavers in it!  It only took SIX months to get there!

dear monday memos, even though you do take a long time to do, I am so glad I thought of you otherwise I am positive most of my weekly happenings would never make it to the blog.  This way I can do what I have the time for on each happening. I realize some are much longer than others, but I figure that since you are usually (not always) my only post on my weekly happenings, I can get away with the length.  You are the reason that I am able to keep up right now.  So, thank you....