Bishops and Brigadoon

 On their way home from The Grove of the Patriarchs, Russ got a call from their Stake President, asking if they could meet.  Ashlee immediately felt that Russ was going to be called to Bishop.  She was right.  Friday after school, we packed up to head to Mount Vernon.  On the way, we stopped off for a surprise of our own-- Brigadoon had another puppy (9-months old) that was being placed out of service.  It wasn't that she wasn't going to be a good dog for service, but because she has an injury.

Mira thought we were going to leave her, so she started to put on the skids immediately when we arrived.  Once she realized that we weren't leaving her, she was a little more open to being there.  Deja was SO excited to have someone to play with, but Mira quickly let her know that her excitement was too much.  Deja quickly corrected her enthusiasm and Mira started to pounce and play.  We told them that we'd take Deja home with us on our way home from Mount Vernon on Sunday.

It was so strange being in a near-empty chapel with everyone wearing masks!

These two pictures sum up so much about Ashlee.  Her hands, like the Savior's, offer so much love and support, and they offer up the best tickles.

It was special hearing my Dad confirm Russ a member of the High Priesthood, and see Randy in the circle.  We missed the Johnsons and Burrell/Buehler families, but it was neat knowing they could watch via Zoom.  It was a beautiful meeting, filled with a sweet spirit.

After a Sacrament service at home, we did a quick lunch and then Randy and I got on the road, while my parents and Brennon stayed back for a little extra visit time.

I wish I could say this was the start of a beautiful relationship, but this was just seconds before the most stressful week began.  Mira snarled and growled and barked nearly the entire 3-hours home if Deja got even remotely close to her.

The kids were instantly in love, but Mira...

literally turned her head as far away as possible.

We considered another dog as a sort of comfort and a live-in playdate for Mira, not because we wanted another dog.  We didn't want it to change Mira, didn't want things to change unless it was fun for all.  Every time Mira rejected her was a heartbreak.  Every morning Mira snarled at her the second Deja came up to her was hard.  Anyone could clearly see that all Deja wants is to love.  She craved attention from Mira most, and Mira just wouldn't give it.  In fact, there were times Deja would come lay near her and Mira would quickly stand and walk away.  Or Deja would army crawl and tentatively touch Mira and she'd rip herself away as if she'd been burned.  This was not what we expected, especially after the relationship she's had with both of Ashlee's dogs.  It breaks my heart.

The snarling has gotten better, as well as Mira's reaction to Deja, but we've made the decision that it would be better for Deja to go to live with Danielle.  We prepared Danielle for the possibility, and it's a relief to know that Deja will get as much love and attention she craves from every single person living in her home.  Our humans love her so much, but we love her enough to realize that she deserves so much more than Mira is giving her.  We truly hope that when they visit, they'll be better friends than they are "sisters."

She's scheduled for surgery on October 14th.  She'll have a follow-up a week after.  If the follow-up shows that she's healing well, Danielle and Taylor will travel up and take her home on the 24th where she'll then become Hannah.  She'll need a follow-up x-ray in six to eight weeks, so we're hoping he can do it around Thanksgiving.

We got Deja for free from Brigadoon because of the price of the surgery.  Danielle and Taylor are going to pitch in, and Randy looks at the rest of the cost as a donation to an amazing cause: The people that gave us Mira, Brigadoon Service Dog School.

The very night we got everything finalized with Danielle and Taylor, we caught Mira allowing Deja to snuggle.  It does give me hope that someday they can be good friends.

It's been interesting to see the changes in Deja from learned behaviors from Mira.  We've noticed a calming in her, especially in the morning, when she was always most hyper.  She still has puppy tendencies, but like Mira, she's a good, well-trained dog.  She's so soft, loves to snuggle, and snores like a pig when she sniffs and sleeps.  She is a joy to be with.  I can't wait to watch her become as much of a blessing to Danielle's family as Mira is to ours.

The Home Edit

 I love to organize.  Like a lot.  There is something so calming about the work it takes to organize.  I just feel better having things clean and put away in a place that is appropriate and easily accessible.  I love knowing where everything is, how much I have of everything and being able to see it displayed in beautiful ways.

I love organizing so much, I even watch shows about organizing.  I love seeing the end result, getting a few tips, but mostly realizing that I already do what they try and teach their clients.  I already organized like Marie Kondi, before her craze hit, and found I already did a lot of what Joanna and Clea do on The Home Edit, on Netflix right now.  Today I tackled a project that I've been wanting to do for more than a year.  I already had it started, but I wanted to finalize everything and just get it 100% complete.  It was a FUN day!!

Cutting boards are stacked in the cupboard below.  Can opener is near our canned goods.  Apple cutter is new our fruit bowl.  Silverware is in the drawer next to the dishwasher.  It just makes sense to me.

Utility drawer under my spice/baking cupboards.  Like items are next to each other, all within reach when I'm cooking or baking.

Baking cupboard.  I used to have the flour and sugar in #10 tin cans, but got the OXO containers after seeing how much they love them on The Home Edit.  I've had them for my cereal, chocolate chips, and rice for years, so it just fits nice to have them for my flour and sugar.  I'd like to think Joanna and Clea would be proud of me.

While at Target today looking for cleaning supplies that Walmart has been out of for like 5 months and three weeks of the last six months, I found some cute drawer dividers for my bathroom.  $9.00 dollars has the ability to make me giddy!!

I'd love to work for a company that goes around organizing people's homes.  I know it can be stressful, but there is something so fun to me about the challenge of making things work in the space provided.  I love making order out of chaos.  I seriously just love to organize!

Puzzle maker

 I love watching Keilie create.  She's drawing a puzzle on graph paper, freehand.  Each little square has identical tiny drawings that you'd think she was tracing, they're so uniform and perfect.  She has so much talent!

Pinned

 See the Drip Painting Pumpkin Tutorial on the center-right of the picture?  Well, that's one of the posts for Momdot, the website we're part-owner in.  See the person that pinned it: Thrifty Decor Chick?  She's one of my favorite bloggers!  I've been following her for more than 10-years now!  It was cool to see, even if I'm not the one that came up with the post.

Perfect Fit

 While down in St. George in June/July, we were able to stop by a friend from Casper's house.  Racquel was one of my best friends while we lived in Bar Nunn, but it felt like we'd been friends for much longer.  While we chatted about anything and everything as if we'd hadn't been apart for 7 years, our husband's talked shop.  Mike ended up giving Randy some of the excess product from their now-closed Wood Creations Dixie shop.  Randy knew just what he wanted to do with them!

I didn't see the wall that was his inspiration, so when we ordered the vinyl from the girl that made us one of our all-time favorite signs (commissioned for us by a friend that was struck by some of Caden's last words, "I won."), I didn't realize that there could be miscommunication.  She'd put a border around the letter-- I thought the border she was showing me on the sample picture was to show us what it would look like on a square block, not the actual border that measured the size we wanted the letter.  As soon as Randy saw the large sheet of letters, he told me he hated it.  We decided to try it out just to be sure.

We couldn't quite tell with just the C that I did, so we tried an entire name.  We placed it up against the wall we wanted it on and walked past it for an entire evening.  Randy said multiple times that he hated it, so in one last-ditch effort before asking the girl to do it again, we decided to take off the border and see if the smaller-than-we-envisioned letter would work.  I was beyond relieved that it totally did, maybe even better than had we gotten what we originally wanted!

You know us, once we get it into our head that we want to do a project, we get right on it.  The kids were heading to bed when I cleared off the kitchen table and we got to work.  You know we can't stop there, simply because it was past our own bedtime, I had to see it all laid out!

You understand us again when you realize that after seeing it all laid out on the ground like this that there was no way we were going to go to bed.  Out come the measuring tape, levels, and command strips.

It was about this point where I got super giddy.  We both knew we were going to LOVE it!!

We didn't get to bed until after Midnight, but only because we sat around and admired our handiwork.  We are so in love.  The couch still needs to be moved to the left to fully center it, and we have a few things we'd like to add to the wall (nothing too much because we both don't want it to become a gallery wall, thus keeping the focus on this), but other than that, this wall turned out exactly how Randy wanted it to.  I love that this was his "baby."

A few Sundays ago, we sat down as a family and put together our own ideas for how we should cross the words.  Paper after paper, we handed in our ideas, giving 1st, 2nd, 3rd placements for our favorites.  We thought we had a clear winner until Brennon brought us his.  We knew the second we saw it that none of the others mattered-- this was the one.  It may have been Randy's idea, but the entire family had a part in it coming together.  It makes it that much more special!

Labor Day 2020

 Since going to The Grove of the Patriarchs with Jamie and Cameron many years ago, I've wanted to go back with Ashlee and Russ.  We finally got to go yesterday.  We planned to drive up early, explore the beauty after a picnic lunch, and then go our separate ways home.  

Randy searched the web to 1) make sure it was open, 2) make sure the roads weren't closed between here and there, and 3) see if we could take our dogs.  The park was open, the roads were open, and no one said anything about not allowing dogs.  After parking, we noticed many people walking their dogs down, so we thought all was well.  Not so.  There was a ranger stopping everyone at the entrance.  Russ took Cooper back, put him in his crate with a frozen waterbottle to keep him cool, opened the windows, and hoped for the best.  That was the only thing that dampened our fun time.

I still need to get a picture from Ashlee.  We had all of the kids hold hands and surround one of the trees to see if they could encircle it completely.  Even with 9 kids, there was no way they could have, stretched out as they were.  In fact, after we dispersed away from the tree, a family came out from behind the tree that we didn't know was there.  It made us giggle, and put the size of the tree into perspective.  They're beautiful, majestic, and incredible to be amongst.

It was sad to see the smoke coming in to a view that had been clear.  We'd begun getting smoke in Richland that morning after warnings that we needed to prepare.  As we drove there, the blue skies were a welcome sight.  By the time we were heading home, the haze kept getting thicker and thicker...

Until it became this.

It would actually be like this in Richland, with air quality measurements off the charts, for the next 16 days.

I love having family to explore our new state with.  In a way I feel we're getting to know Washington more in the last 8 years than we did our entire youth in Utah.  Honestly, maybe it's because I'm able to remember more memories as an adult than I did as a child.  I'll never forget this day, that's for sure.  Someday we'll go back with the same kids and fully encircle that tree with our love.

Outdoor Fun

 This is the third time Russ has set us up with a fun movie night on Friday Saturday night.  The first was at the Ensign Ranch cabins a few winters ago (the time where we forgot the most important aspect of camping in the winter-- sleeping bags), the second was last month when he set up Trolls 2 for Shelby and me, and this one where he packed and set up everything for us to watch the newly released Mulan.

It was so much fun, and such a beautiful night for it!  We've now learned that the pergola is a perfect placement for an outdoor screen, so we're thinking we need to get our own setup.  With the fireplace so near, we could host some pretty fun movie nights.  Maybe some day we will!

Favorites

 Ashlee and Russ arrived with their girls last night.  Mira loves when the visit.  Everly is her current favorite and has been for years now-- honestly since her birth.  She's such a good girl not to snatch things out of their hands, but you better believe she's poised and ready if something falls on the floor.

The Shirt

 I'm not sure if Randy was afraid to hope or if he was truly not able to see how much he'd slimmed down, but when I told him he wasn't a Large (let alone the X-Large he started out in) any longer, he didn't believe me.  So when I found one of Caden's shirts in Keilie's laundry, I sneaked it into Randy's closet.  And just like that, Randy is a Medium.

Just like the last two Septembers, my mind and heart go out to Caden more than usual.  I still think of him multiple times a day, still tell him in my mind, heart, and out loud that I love him, but September and its countdown always have him in the forefront of my mind.  It feels like I actually remember more of the horrors in September, whereas the rest of the months are more of the happy memories, and they always seem to pop into my mind whenever I am not focused on something else, which really, really hurts in its shock factor.  Seeing Randy in his shirt was so, so special.  It made Caden feel closer.  I miss him so much.

*Randy has been able to maintain his goal weight for the last few months, even after adding in ice cream.  His last six workouts have all been a distance of 10 miles.  He's doing amazing!!  I'm am seriously proud of him!

Pics of Pickle Ball

When your son tells you that he wants to get pictures of himself playing Pickle Ball for an All About Me project, you get some pictures...

 Randy: "Don't you think you've taken enough?" after 15-minutes of snapping.  He should know better-- I always want more.

Online Start

 Online school started today.  I didn't get a picture of Keilie at her desk because her zoom meetings do not start until 12:15pm!  This year is going to be interesting!

New Tool

 We finally got a new vacuum.  I love that Randy was as excited about it as I was.  I vacuumed all surface area in the home and he came behind me and did all edges.  I am the luckiest girl in the world!