THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving commemorates the feast held by the Pilgrim Colonists. On this day people express gratitude to God for his blessings and give thanks to dear ones for their love and support. Feasting with family is an integral and most delightful part of thanksgiving celebrations.

This year we had a wonderful turkey prepared by my friend Laura. Along with the turkey we had about six different vegetables and a salad. To top it off we had, trifle, chocolate cream pie, cranberry cake and pavlova.

We had a wonderful, peaceful day and enjoyed each others company and of course, all the food. After the meal we went around the table and one by one expressed our gratitude for the blessings we enjoy. Number one on everyones list was FAMILY. I couldn't really say all that I wanted to say for fear of raining tears all over the table but I hope all my children know how much I love them and are grateful for their love. Graeme is an amazing husband. He has worked so hard all his life to support his family. I can remember times when he would be working up to 18 hours a day, 6 days a week. Other times holding down 2 jobs at the same time. I was at home with the kids and being frustrated at times but he was always there for me. During one period of time he was in the bishopric and working long hours. I had a particularly hard time trying to get the kids to sit and behave in church and after the Sacrament meeting he came up to me and all I could do was cry and say "I'm going home", and I did. I wasn't home but a few minutes when Graeme walked in the door and gave me a big hug and told me he would do anything to make it easier on me. Boy did I feel silly. He was the one with the stress, long hours, and commitments yet he cared and wanted to make ME feel better.

He has always been like that. He has always treated me like a queen and he has taught all our children to respect me and treat me like a queen. How do I deserve this man?

One of he most important things he does is bring humor into the home. He is always saying funny things. Sometimes in the company of others he will say a joke and only I, or those in our family will laugh. Sometimes I don't even get the joke but I laugh and he appreciates it. Then we laugh even harder when I tell him I didn't get the joke in the first place.

So today especially, I am thankful for a wonderful husband. I am thankful for great kids. I am thankful for our health which we pray we will always have. I am thankful to have the necessities of life plus MORE. I am thankful to have the gospel in my life. My life has been blessed beyond belief because of the gospel. I am thankful for a loving Heavenly Father and the relationship I have with Him.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING DAY EVERYONE.

Duel Citizenship

With November being a huge political month over here in America, I thought it was about time I did my duty and vote. But before I could do that I had to take out citizenship. So in June I sent in my papers to get the process started. I thought it would take quite a long time to get any reply back and I might not make it in time for the November elections but to my surprise within a couple of weeks I had received notification of where and when I needed to get my finger prints taken. From then on it all went quickly. On September 22nd I became an American citizen.  I now hold duel citizenship. I dressed up in my red, white and blue clothes and thought the taking of the oath would be a big deal, but it wasn't, in fact I was quite disappointed.  Then on November 4th I dressed up to brave the cold and snow and prepared myself to stand in a long line to vote. There was no line where I went and it was a very easy process. I actually had a few tears well up in my eyes as I cast my vote. This was the first time in my life that I had ever voted and it felt good. I proudly displayed my "I Voted" sticker all day. 

Over the past few months we also managed to get Kelsey and Emily duel citizenship too. They are now Australian citizens as well as Americans. 

So let's see where this new president takes us. It is a scary economic time for most people and he has a lot of work to do to try to bring America back to where we have faith in the government, where people can feel secure in their jobs and can trust that things will get better before too long and before too much damage has been done.

I still call Australia home but America has been very good to us over the past 22 years. Luckily my red, white and blue clothes work for both countries.

My Children

So as the title of my blog says, this is me and my aussie family. This was taken almost a year ago at our annual buffet night up in Deer Valley.

Jason, Michael, Me, Graeme, Steven, Damien. Front row, Kelsey, Crystal and Emily. I hope we can get together again next January. 

It amazes me that I have been a mother for over 38 years now. I love my kids so much. They give me so much joy and my chest swells with pride when I see them all together which is not often enough.

With Thanksgiving approaching I count my blessings that we have had such good health over the years, that we have wonderful daughters in law and a son in law and 7 grand children. Crystal is expecting our 8th in March. This will be Crystal's first baby and everyone is thrilled and extremely happy for her. It's a boy by the way. I feel we are a close knit family but how else can that be when the 4 boys all work with their dad.  Even though the majority of the kids were born in the USA and Canada, we all feel like fairdinkum Aussies. My own family in Australia keep in touch by a family newsletter that gets sent out 3 times a year and lately there are a lot of family members contacting each other via facebook on the internet. I am most grateful for a loving husband who treats me like a queen. We have been married nearly 39 years and he is my best friend. I love spending precious times with him because he is humorous, loving, gentle, generous, kind and sensitive and I love him with all my heart.

The Crucible

On Friday night the limo arrived, on time and picked up Crystal and Kyle, Kelsey and her friend, James, Emily and her friend, Natalie, and Graeme and I and drove us down to Springville, to see our son Steven perform in the local community theater production of The Crucible. Steven played the amazing part of John Proctor. He did a wonderful job of portraying this main character. The play went for over 2 hours and Steve was in every scene. I sat in amazement as I watched him perform. He loves acting, you can tell by his passion in his character. We all arrived early so that we could sit in the front row and not miss a thing. At the end of the play I had tears in my eyes after a very emotional last scene. 

This is the second year that Steve has perform with Springville Playhouse. Last year he performed in "Sherlock Holmes and the West End Horror" where he played several different characters, including Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Sullivan and H.G.Wells.

He has to devote hours to practice and his wife Tara is very supportive of him and helps him to practice his lines. The play started on October 31st and plays every Friday, Saturday and Monday nights until November 22nd. So it is very time consuming for him.

I am so proud of Steve's hobby and talent in acting. I wish him lots of success and enjoyment from it. We all had a fabulous evening as well as a fun ride in the limo.

Big Night Out

So several months ago Graeme and I went to a charity auction. We were the top bidders on several items, one of them being the use of a Limo with driver for a night. Over the past week I arranged for several friends to come and enjoy the ride with us up to park City for dinner. The Limo was supposed to arrive at 6 pm tonight. By 6.30, it hadn't arrived! When I called I was told that the driver's son had been taken to the hospital at noon that day and he was still there. HELLO! We all have access to a telephone these days. Wouldn't you think he would have called someone to tell us? NO, he didn't. So Graeme ended up picking up our friends in our SUV and doing the driving. He then felt bad about them being disappointed so he paid for everyones dinner. We went to Grappas, an Italian restaurant. We had good food and the company was great, so the night wasn't a total loss. The good news is that the Limo company also felt bad that we were not contacted and have given us the use of a limo and driver for another TWO events. So we will try again later this year when the christmas lights are up and the snow is everywhere up in Park City, and then take the long way home.

Organization?

For the past 2 days I have been trying to clean out my craft room. Most of the stuff in there are scrap booking supplies  that I have collected over the past 13 years. So you can imagine that some things are very outdated. I have been doing digital scrap books on the computer for the past 2 years and decided to get rid of a lot of "stuff" that I have never used and will probably never use. How easy does that sound? Well I found out that it was not easy at all. After 2 days I ended up with ONE bag of garbage to throw out! I just re arranged everything! I thought to myself, "maybe I will get back into this scrap booking thing" or " maybe the girls will want to do it someday" or "maybe I'll just finish that idea I had for a layout years ago"!!  Like, Get Real! I never was very creative and I don't think I have even made a page in the past 2 1/2 years.  I just enjoyed thinking I was creative and I enjoyed buying supplies for "when" my creative juices would start to flow.  All these supplies are in a spare bedroom, mostly in boxes in the closet but also on tables. My original idea was to clear it out so that I can use the closet to store out of season clothes or to actually turn the room into a "real" bedroom for guests, but alas, it remains a storage room and closet full of "stuff" that I probably will never use. I need someone to help me go through it all again and help me LET GO!

The Arizona kids

I had a peaceful 4 days down in Arizona this past week. Kelsey and Emily had a few days off school and so we flew down there to see the grandkids and of course the big kids. I am amazed at how fast the little ones grow when you are not around them very often. We all met at Peter Piper Pizza for lunch on Saturday and then Jaxon and Ryker came out to the mountain house for the afternoon. We then went to Jason and Lara's for dinner that night. It was also good to see Mike. He is such a good looking boy or should I say man. Some girl will be very lucky to get him one day.......soon, I hope. It is always hard to leave our home down there because it is in such a beautiful location and so peaceful and quiet. I just love it. But we are now back in Utah and getting ready for another week of school for the girls and a hectic week of appointments here and there.

Pilates

So another pilates class this morning. I hate looking around the room and seeing older, heavier women twisting and rolling around doing things I cant do. Like today......we were supposed to be holding our knees and rocking all the way onto our backs and then up to a sitting position without putting our feet on the floor! Well I got the rolling onto the back part ok but try as I would, I couldn't get back up to a sitting position. Here I was just rocking back and forth on my back while everyone else was pausing in a sitting position!! There is an 88 year old lady in the class who can do this! I have decided to continue going to classes in the hopes that one day I can do the things she can, I just hope I don't have to wait until I am 88.

So this is my first time at writing on my very own blog. I love the idea that I can use it as a journal. Hopefully as time goes on I can be more artistic and improve on it. So I guess I will just start writing.

Well as I am getting up in years I thought that I had better do things to get my body looking and feeling healthy and fit. So 2 weeks ago I started going to pilates classes. At first it was stretching and bending and a lot of sucking in of my stomach. But last night the instructor had us all using one of those big bouncy exercise balls for the entire hour! It was a "little" difficult for me at times and I felt all eyes must be looking at me struggling to stay on top of the ball. My friend was beside me and we laughed at my awkwardness at times but the worse time was when I was supposed to be lying on my stomach on the ball and gradually moving forward so the ball was under my thighs and my hands on the floor. I don't know what happened but the next thing I knew, I was sliding forward at a fast pace, I totally lost control and ended up with my face hitting the ball in between the legs of the "man" beside me! You can imagine how mortified I was but I just laughed until tears came. All the others beside me were laughing as well and the man asked if I was alright. For the rest of the class my friend and I couldn't even look at each other without laughing. When the hour was up I was exhausted. I still don't know whether it was from exercising or laughing. I had to apologize to the gentleman and those around me but I think everyone had a good workout session one way or another. Hopefully next Wednesday will be better, it can ONLY get better!