Brighten

Shelby and I have had fun trying our hand at things we've seen on The Great British Baking Show.  We decided to try our hand at Puff Pastry, although we didn't actually make it.  We both love lemon curd, so we tried puff cups.

SO easy, and so good!!  I didn't have it in me to make lemon curd, even though I've made it before and loved it.  Next time, I'll try making them with homemade curd to see if they hold their shape a little bit better.  Delicious!

Shelby has done so well in school this year (she brought her reading level up nearly 2-grade levels!), so I surprised her with highlights and a hair trim.  She came home and walked in as if she was walking on the red carpet.  Oh, how I love this girl.  She is so full of life, you can't help but feel brightened around her.

Hammock

I think it's safe to say that Mira loves this hammock!

 

Breaks

We got a message from our neighbor on Jason Loop that we had a sprinkler issue at 2701 and our renter was out of town.  Randy called the HOA President, since sprinkler stuff was paid for by our HOA, and we moved on with our lives.

A few days had passed, so Randy asked if we should stop by to just check on things.  We hadn't pulled up yet before we noticed that something was seriously wrong with the garage door.  My stomach dropped when Randy came back and said, "It looks like it could be a break-in."

He immediately called our manager.  "It was your renter.  He let me know it happened last night.  I'm driving, so I'll call you back on Monday."  Good to know it wasn't a break-in.

We lived in this house with little kids, then added a dog, then had another family move in for a few weeks and this house NEVER experienced the kind of trauma it's had these last three years with only adults living in it.  The first guy beat the walls in with a bat, let his dogs (that we never sanctioned) pee all over the carpets and on the baseboards, and ruined our tiny backyard by building a firepit directly in the center of the grass (again, not sanctioned).  We had to pay thousands of dollars to get it back to rentable condition.

Enter this guy.  Single.  Works out-of-town often.  Ruins our garage door in a way that will need to be fully replaced.

This house was our safe haven when we'd come home from cancer care.  It means so much to me.  It literally breaks my heart and makes me sick that it's been abused.  I actually feel as if we need to move back into it to give it some tender loving.  I love this house so much.
 

Sew fun

I SERIOUSLY love Jamie's sewing school.  I LOVE sewing, and I feel so confident doing the projects that she puts out because I took her beginner class right alongside my kids.  She is such a good teacher and shows you how to do things in a way that you know you can do.  And her projects are so, so cute.

I'm Primary Activities leader along with Jill Gibb.  After making the crossover messenger bags with my girls, I knew I wanted my "other" girls to make them also.  One activity was spent taking the girls to the fabric store to choose their fabric.  SO fun watching their excitement.  I got the fabric all cut so that we'd be able to finish their bag in the time allotted.  They had never sewn before, but Jamie made them all feel like pros with this project.

I am the luckiest girl in the world being these girls' leader.  Jill made a bag for her little Camilla.  When she got home, her little Easton (my Nursery child that gave me a gift at Christmas) was so jealous, she went back to Jamie's to make one for him.  He came to my door with his on, selling me our eggs.  You can't get cuter!

The girls all commented that they wanted to do more sewing projects.  Scrunchies were mentioned, so I think we'll do those and include a white one that they can wear to the Temple since these girls will go to YW in January.  I sure love Ali, Eden, and Evelyn!  They are GREAT girls.

Sling--shot

As soon as they lowered the age for the vaccination, I set up an appointment for Shelby and Brennon.
 They both said their arm felt dead the second they pulled the needle out.  We walked around Walmart for the mandatory 15-minute wait time, and they both commented on different positions that hurt or didn't hurt their arms the entire time.  I knew exactly what they meant, as mine hurt in just the same way when I got mine.  

However, I wasn't as genius as they were the next day.  I walked in to find them using slings.  Brennon had found the one we got when Caden broke his arm, and Shelby made her own using a shirt, which Caden showed her how to do when he got his second port-a-cath.  The cuties.

Shelby ran a fever, which got up to 101.9, poor thing.  Brennon's arm hurt pretty bad the second day, but that was it.  They both get their shot on June 9th.  I sure hope they don't have any other symptoms.

Eye to Eye

 When Shelby puts her mind toward something, she doesn't waver.  In fact, we have often had to tell her that she shouldn't sound so "knowledgable" when she's totally just guessing.  When she mispronounces a word and I correct her, "That's just how I say it.  I don't care if people think I am ignorant."  Those words have passed her lips.  So it shouldn't come as a surprise, the conversation we had today at the optometrist.

"I need to remember that you're farsighted."

"No, I'm nearsighted."

"Shelby, the doctor just told us that you're farsighted!"

"My teacher told me I was nearsighted."

Flabbergasted: "Shelby, are you telling me that you trust your teacher more than the specially-trained eye doctor we just saw?"

Defiantly: "When I told her (her teacher) the times I can see fine and the times things are blurry, she told me I was nearsighted."

She got this look on her face that I have seen many times, the "I am not going to budge" face.

Seconds later, she chooses the second pair of frames she's tried on while standing in front of hundreds.  This girl knows what she wants, knows what she knows, and is happy with her choices.  Love her, even if we don't see... eye-to-eye.  See what I did there?! (cough and a cheeky grin) I couldn't help myself.

Disarm

 Before prayer tonight, we started to talk about arms being sore.  For Shelby and Brennon, their arms are sore from the vaccine they received yesterday.  For Randy, his arms are sore from two days of arm work at the gym.

Randy made the joke that he needed a conceal permit for his guns while flexing.

Tyson:  "Can you take those guns on a plane, or do they have to disarm you?"

The kid made that up on the fly!  I love whit like that!

Battered

 Shelby got her braces tightened today.  Like really tightened.  Homestretch!

Shelby and Brennon got the Covid vaccination today at 4:20pm.  They asked me to set it up so they don't have to wear masks anymore.  They could barely move their arms as we walked through the store for the 15-minute wait-time to see if they had a reaction.

After Mutual tonight, there was an incident where they were driving through the parking lot slowly.  Shelby thought it would be a good idea to stand at the open door of the van.  She fell out, landing on her backside and right arm.  Super, super sore when she got home.

By my count, that's teeth, left arm, right arm, and backside.  These "injuries" are in addition to her already sore body from Orange Theory the day before.  Let's just say-- she feels battered tonight as she crawls upstairs for bed.

Update:

I woke to this text from Shelby, "Can we go to the hospital?"  Needless to say, she's in a world of pain.

Official

 It's official:

If all looks good on June 23rd, Shelby will get her braces off in July.  This has been a LONG time coming.  Covid pushed it back from April to July.  We're just excited!!!  I cannot wait to make some sort of countdown once we know exactly when they'll come off.  Hard to believe that orthodontia for all of my kiddos is almost at its end!

I am getting OLD!

BUZZ

 While on a walk with Jamie, I heard something that I couldn't quite put my finger on, but the hairs started standing on end.  I had to actually stop and listen, I was so perplexed.  The next thing I realized was a dark shadow over our heads.  Serious confusion set in as I realized that I hadn't figure out the sound while also looking at the sun pin-pricks through the dark shadow that seemed to be directly over our heads, but nowhere else.  And then it clicked.  It was a swarm of bees!!!  I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing!!  We turned tail and got the heck away.  I'm not sure where they were going, but thousands of bees were making an exodus somewhere.  

It was enough bees to truly cast a shadow above us, enough to actually be loud enough for me to hear as they approached.  I've obviously heard a bee's buzz before, but the sheer volume of the buzzing was not something I'd ever heard, so it confounded me for a second.  Surreal.  And FREAKY!!!  It took me literally rubbing my skin to have the hairs go down.  It was just weird!

Business

 We asked the kids if they wanted a chance to earn money by mowing the lawn this year.  All of them said, "No thanks."  Then Randy brought home a new-to-us toy, and they ALL begged to mow.

While they won't earn as much money as they would have on a push-behind, they don't care one bit.  It didn't come with a bagging system, and we found out later that it will never have a bagging system, so we've had to improvise.  We mow a specific way to have only one line to rake up.  It's not too bad, actually.  Not as nice as one that has a bagger, but not too bad.  We love the way it makes the grass look.

Randy came home from the fishing trip yesterday and wanted to get it mowed before the sun went down.  Shelby may have balked a touch since it was Caden's birthday and we wanted to party, but once he reminded her that it wouldn't take long with the new mower, she was all for it.  The boys and I raked, it was a family affair.  Well, sort of, since Keilie was on her way home from work.

Who knows, we may start a neighborhood family business once we get the hang of driving The Beast.

TWENTY!!!

 HAPPY 20th BIRTHDAY, CADEN!!!

Oh, how you are loved and missed.  Happy Birthday, Boy in the Bed!!!

Swap

 While in Utah last year, Randy and my Dad were invited to go fishing with one of my Dad's friends from high school.  He must have liked Randy because he invited Randy on a fishing trip to the mouth of the Columbia River to fish for salmon.  So, on May 12th, Monty, Rich, Wayne, and Rachelle left bright and early for our neck of the woods.  When they were about 40-minutes outside of the meeting place, we left, too.  They dropped off my Mom, I dropped off my Mister.  We were ALL ready for a few days of fun!

Sadly, they were just a bit early for the salmon, and the waves further out to sea were a little too intense for their boat.  Their trip turned into Crabbing.  Randy had a blast learning something new.

Between their times of checking their crab pots, they'd explore the coast and find good places to eat.

While they were cold, wet, and loving every minute...

My Mom and I enjoyed walks, especially when we come to benches with breathtaking views!

We watched shows, talked, had good food made at home and at some of my favorite local shops, went shopping, laughed, and just had a blast, just the two of us.

While we were walking along the river, these kiddos practiced their rock skipping skills.  They're getting pretty good, too!

Saturday morning, before we made the swap, we visited Caden's grave for his birthday.  I cannot believe I have a kid that is TWENTY YEARS OLD!!!

It was so much fun to spend one-on-one time with my Mom.  I love that we have so many memories with Grandparents, even though we live states away.

Senior Perks

 Like a normal teenager, Keilie ate a few before I could snap a picture.  Krispy Kreme gave out free donuts to all Seniors!  I just think that's awesome!  I was 19 the first time I tried a KK.  Uncle Jerry introduced them to Randy and me a few weeks after we moved down to Houston.  Life. Altering.  My kids don't even know how lucky they are to have grown up with such goodness.  Now I want a warm donut of cloud-like heavenly perfection...

Stumps

 Randy has plans to build a shed in the backyard, but needed to have a stump removed to start preparing the space.  We'd tried to remove the stump when we removed this tree in July 2017...

Yeah, didn't work out so well.  We covered the stump with a fake rock and worked with it.  With work needing to be done on the stump out back, we got all of the stumps ground at the same time.  Seeing the work involved, the machinery, I think, "Bless our hearts for thinking we could have done it on our own without specialized tools."

He did in 20-minutes what we barely touched in 12-hours (no joke).  See the fake rock tucked back in that corner?  It moved from 2701 to 1401 to here.  Wonder what we'll do with it now...

We were pleasantly surprised to see these two specimens after he left.  It was a massive tree back there, huh?!  He told us he'd found a beetle snuggled up, fat and happy.  He asked if we'd watched the tree die.  Not sure what we'll do with these, but Randy's thinking maybe outdoor side tables for our fire pit.  For now, I'm just glad to have the stumps gone and look forward to more outdoor projects that make this house our home.

Mother's Day

 Keilie may have chosen to be gone all day long, but Shelby, Brennon, Tyson, and Randy spoiled me perfectly!  Not only did they get me a flowering bush I can plant in my yard, but they also cleaned my house while I was out for a run yesterday.  Cleaned it as in scrubbing baseboards and mopping all tile!  The entire day I heard nothing but, "I love you, Mom."  It was a wonderful day.

The kids in the Butler family sang, "Mother, I love you," in Sacrament meeting.  The boys sang the first verse, girls sang the second, with one of my little Nursery kids, Quincy singing the closing words, "Mother, I love you. I love you, I do."  We all had the song in our heads the entire day.  The next day, Brennon sent me a video while I was out running errands.  He and Tyson had made a video for me of the two of them singing the song.  Can you get any more precious?!  

I didn't have Mother's Day, but Mother's Weekend.  It was beautiful.

I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

Rue

 Keilie screamed at me that she shouldn't have to do her Saturday chores because Shelby didn't do hers.  I'm not sure why I tried to explain to her that there's a difference between giving Shelby a freebie because she spent 4 hours at a day of service with the Stake and then came home to help Randy in the yard for another hour, and Keilie sleeping in, going to work, and then immediately going for the rest of the day with friends, but I did.  She continued to scream and tell me it wasn't fair, that I always care only about her doing her chores, no one else.

So when Randy asked Keilie to clean her room so we could move her bed a touch to install an air conditioner unit, she FREAKED.  "IF YOU WANT THE ROOM CLEANED, DO IT YOURSELF," and walked out the door.  Let me just say, you'll rue the day you talk to your dad like that!!  That is MY Mister!

Her closet is always a mess, but I made it even more full.  You want your bedsheets?  They're at the bottom of that mountain.  You want your makeup?  It's scattered in many different nooks and crannies.  You want your work clothes?  I purposely placed it at different intervals of my cleaning session.  Good luck with that.  It would have been better for you to just do your chores!

Her first reaction was the thank us for cleaning her room, the way it should have been done on Saturday.  That is the only thing we ask of her these days: clean and vacuum your room once a week.

But then she realized that I had cleaned things that didn't necessarily need cleaning.  When she asked why I'd done it, I simply told her that she shouldn't have talked to her Dad like that.  Seriously, the bed basically didn't need to be moved.  Who freaks out about getting an A/C unit when you reside in the hottest room in the house?  And WHO thinks they can tell their Dad off in the first place?!  Hopefully she learned her lesson.  You NEVER talk to my Mister like that!

Strength

 May 1st was our Stake's Day of Service.  The youth were asked to meet at a nearby nature preserve near the Yakima River known as Chamna.  As soon as I heard where it was going to be held, I felt a jolt of nerves and knew my Brennon felt it, too.  The last time Brennon went to Chamna with his Deacon's quorum, we found something like 12 ticks on him.  When he got home, he asked me to check him.  While standing on our back patio, arms raised, shirt off, his entire body shook as if with seizure, he was so filled with adrenaline.  Brennon does not like bugs.  Brennon does not like Chamna.

For days leading up to the activity, Brennon would tell Tyson about his fears of going back each night before bed.  Tyson, realizing just how nervous Brennon truly was, told me first thing when I woke up one morning.

"Mom, Brennon is really struggling thinking about going to Chamna.  He's told me every night for the last few nights."

You know, there is one thing that I really admire about Brennon.  He's always had this quality.

He was going to go to that activity because he is currently the Deacon's quorum President.  He wanted to do his duty to lead.  He hated it with everything in him, dreaded it with something akin to PTSD, but he never once asked us not to go.  He was fully intending to go.  He does things because they are right, not because they are easy.

But I knew that he'd suffer with nerves the entire time.  His intent in the face of his fears was enough for me, as I am sure it was to his Heavenly Father.  While Shelby and Tyson were laying down bark chips on the paths down by the river, Brennon was using his muscle to help Randy move a brother out of his home.  There weren't many men to help, and some may look at my skinny Brennon and not think him balanced muscle compared to a full-grown man, but what Brennon lacks in actual muscle, he makes up for in his mental strength.  He is determined to do his best, no matter the challenges that lay in front of him.

I love my strong, determined, valiant Brennon.

Bronco

 Drew got this "truck" for his birthday.  I LOVE that it is a Bronco.  He's propped it up, "to make sure it's ok under."  The cute mechanic!!!

Wedding Getaway

 Two weeks ago, my cousin, Kami, personally called to invite me to her wedding!  I asked Randy if we could take a little getaway together, but he had meetings in-town that he couldn't miss.  So he bought me a ticket, rented me a car, and sent me on a whirlwind, amazing getaway vacation!

I grew up in Utah, but I didn't know just how vast the salt flats are!  I've never flown above them like I did this time, and was astounded by just how massive the Great Salt Lake truly is!  I was also thrown off by the colors of the water.  I couldn't get the colors just right through the airplane window panes, but you can sort of see that there is pink, blue, lime green, and a sliver of the forest green.  It was weird to see so many colors that are not quite natural for water.

I got off the plane, drove straight to Layton High to give my cousin, Jamie, a hug and chat for seriously like 5-minutes, then get stuck in Utah traffic as I made my way to Danielle's house to drop off the water bottle holders I made for her family, then head back into traffic as I continued North to my parent's home.  I was so exhausted from all of that, I got straight into my jammies when I arrived.  But my night was not over!!  My cousin Lindsey happened to stop by.  She, too, was on a sort of whirlwind getaway vacation!  I love being able to see more family without planning it!

I woke, grabbed some breakfast, and then went to Keilie's grave before heading to Kimberly's.  I grew up coming to see my sister, so I felt confident in my endeavors.  But as soon as I drove up and saw how much the cemetery has changed, I started to panic.  There were SO MANY new headstones, I got all turned around and confused.

And then I spotted her.  I never truly understood how beautiful Caden's cemetery is until I came back here.  It may be hard to find gravesites if you don't know the general area because none of the headstones stand up, but it truly is a beautiful garden there.  They take care of the grounds so well.  I have never seen dandelions and weeds overtaking headstones like they are here.  It's overwhelming seeing it look so disheveled after three and a half years of going to see Caden.

Keilie would have turned 36 on May 2nd.  I still wonder every once in a while what her husband would have been like, how many kids she would have had.  I'll always miss her.

After Kimberly's, I was able to go down and visit with Brooke and meet her sweet Navie, who will be 1 at the end of the month.  I HATE that I don't live closer to family when it means that I don't meet my nieces and nephews until they are almost a year old.

From the second Brooke opened the door, this little cutie was ALL smiles.  She came to me willingly, smilingly, and just was the cutest little thing ever.  SUCH a happy baby!

After chatting with Brooke for a few hours, I headed over to Danielle's house to get ready for the wedding reception.  Danielle and Taylor had a different wedding they were going to, so my parents and I got to take Audrey and Drew with us.  They were my dates.

They wanted to go in "my car," but they also wanted me to sit right next to them.  Glad the drive was only 30-minutes, crammed back in the back seat.  If I'm honest, I wouldn't have had it any other way.  They make me so happy.

While on the way home, Drew was telling me a story, and just stopped mid-sentence.  "Aunt Steph, you are just so pretty."  And then he continued his previous thoughts.  When I got home and changed, once again, into my jammies for the night, Audrey gasped when I walked down.  "Oh, Aunt Steph, you look so pretty!!"  They make me feel so special!

My mom and I slept in and then went for a walk together.

It wasn't planned this way, but it was hour-chunks of time split up between family members, my entire trip.  Uninterrupted time with those that I love most.  It was a whirlwind trip, one that actually gave me a headache as I came home, but it was also one of the most relaxing, too.  I love spending time with my family!  I cannot wait for July, when we'll be able to spend a whole week together, laughing, boating, sightseeing, playing games, and just making memories together.  Being a Burrell is the BEST!!