Sweet Sleep

We got a new mattress, and it seems to have been designed for giants to sleep on.  It's about 6 inches higher than our last box spring and mattress set. Because it's so high it dwarfs the lamps that used to appear perfectly in proportion, the store said if it was too high we could call & exchange the box springs for the "low profile" set.  I'm thinking that's a good idea.  The top of the mattress hits the top of my waist-and while I may be short, it's slightly ridiculous!

We chalked my husband's sleeping issues and back pain up to getting old and some prior injuries, until he started working on the road and slept on a fabulous Marriott Hotel mattress for 6 months.  Surprise, surprise---no back pain in the morning, and he didn't need meds to sleep every night!  And so the husband declared the soft and admittedly somewhat saggy mattress that had graced our bedroom for 14 (!) years was not making the move with us, and the hunt began for a new mattress.

Did you know you can buy anything you use at a Marriott Hotel at www.shopmarriott.com ?  Anything from the soap to the sheets to the bathrobes to the mattresses!  So cool!  Alas, we could not buy the exact model he had been sleeping on, so we searched until we found one almost identically made.

We've only had it a few nights, but so far, sweet dreams and pain free mornings have been our pleasure to enjoy! Plus it's much prettier than our old floral one.  Of course you can't tell when it's all made up, but I'm sure my sleep is sweeter because of it, and my dreams are dreamier.

This post inspired by the letter S and Miss Jenny's Alphabe-Thursday Class!

Love Letters

My 11 year old just brought this art project home, I love it! 

Happy Valentines Day!

I turned on the Today Show this morning to catch a weather report and instead caught a few minutes of an interview with Jenna Bush- (forgot her married name), about love letters her Grandfather President Bush and his wife Barbara Bush had written to each other through the years.  

They talked about how love letters are a dying art, and with all the additions of technology to today's world-emails, texts, skype, IM's, etc...  nobody sits down to hand write a letter expressing their love and appreciation anymore.  

This triggered a flood of warm memories for me.  I have two shoeboxes full of letters my husband and I wrote to each other while he served his mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for two years, and then while I was away at college.  I treasure them.  I tried to quickly locate the box they're in-but it's waaaay back in the storage room, so no pictures.  They are a very real timeline of our relationship, how we grew from friends to best friends and how we fell in love.  I love that we wrote every week, and that I have them all.  Someday our children will read them and know we were once two young kids in love.  They will witness how we grew and matured and became the people who are their parents.

I have written a few more through the years, but not nearly enough.  Thinking this over made me desire to write more, the legacy of a hand written testament of your love for your spouse or child is unmatched.  Writing an email is nice, a text that says I Love You is fun,  but a handwritten note expressing our heart is more, it's somehow more real, and more permanent.  

I'm going to go write my husband of 17 years a Love Letter, and maybe my kids too!  I hope you will too.

Random Things

This is the view from my Kitchen Sink, I'm a little late to the party, but Pam over at Views From My Kitchen Sink is celebrating her first blogoversary, and asked for people to share the view from their kitchen sink.  Technically mine looks directly into the family room, but it also looks out at this:

Thanks for the idea, Pam! Loved seeing all those views.

And, for another totally random thing...Every once in a while I get a notice on Facebook to join in some random exercise or challenge, I usually ignore them.  For the most part they drive me crazy, but for some reason I decided to do this one, way back in February of 2009.  I just ran across it again today and thought it would be fun to post, for the most part it's the same.  A couple of tweaks would be needed to update it, but I left it just the way I wrote in back then.


You might try coming up with a list of 25 random things about yourself, it's kind of tricky!

25 Random Things about Me

by Jamie Giguiere on Friday, February 6, 2009 at 8:19am

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. 

1. My favorite color is periwinke, mostly becuase I love the word "periwinkle" -it's much better than blue or green or any other color word
2. In the first 7 years of our marriage we moved 18 times--Over the last 8 years we've only moved 3 times
3. Sometimes my feet get itchy to move again, but mostly I've gotten past it
4. I love a good list, life is always better when you have a list in hand (or on the fridge)
5. Organization is a beautiful thing, nothing makes me quite as giddy as a beautifully organized closet/cupboard/drawer.
6. Nothing frustrates me more than my inability to keep those closets/cupboards/drawers in that beautiful state, I'm sure having 5 children who fail to recognize the beauty has nothing to do with it
7. I have a black thumb, I won't even have a living plant in my home, it's just too cruel
8. I started dating my husband when I was 16
9. I've been best friends with my husband for more years than I lived before I knew him, that's an odd reality to wrap my brain around. Thank goodness he loves me despite all he knows about me.
10. When I was 7 months pregnant with my 3rd I was in a horrible car accident and had to be cut out of the car with the jaws of life. Miraculously my 2 little boys didn't have a scratch, and I only had faint bruising and a few cuts.
11. I'm completely neurotic about seat belts and safety in cars-and was before the accident
12. I miss my mom
13. Dallas is my favorite big City to live in
14. I am a lazy and uninterested cook
15. I love scary movies, but not gory ones.
16. I really enjoy a good, fast, loopy, stomach twisting roller coaster
17. I am terrified of speaking in public, however I have been working on this one and might be able to downgrade it to horrified at the the thought of, and strongly opposed to
18. I hate shopping
19. I am perfectly happy with man made gems-who needs a blood diamond?
20. I long to be one of those stylish, cool moms
21. I love to read-almost any genre as long as it is well written
22. I am thrilled I am the mom of 4 boys and 1 girl, and not the opposite
23. I couldn't be happier to have my 1 girl-she is my sunshine
24. I adore my friends, I can't believe my good fortune!
25. I am thankful to know what really matters in this life. Nothing is more important than my family, and what we are building together. I am thankful for the knowledge that not even death can sever our link. My faith sustains me when all else fails.

Monday Musings

Today I went for a long, quiet walk.  Lots of time to think and soak in the different kind of beauty that surrounds me here in this new place.  I discovered a hidden gem my new town has to offer, one that's not broadcast on billboards or touted by the relators-but it should be.  It's this path shown above.  It winds for miles all through my town.  Just for biking, jogging and walking.  It's amazing.  I took some snapshots so I could share my walk with you today.

A storm is coming in, but hasn't quite arrived-it's due tonight.  Temperatures should drop 10 degrees by tomorrow morning, and we'll have snow on the ground again.  But for today I just enjoyed the stormy winter sky.

Our new town is still growing and changing, it been around for decades, but has plenty of room to grow.  This was my view to the west-farm fields and a great old barn.

This was my view to the East-new growth subdivisions.  I think the town is trying to make room for both as it redefines iteself.

My old town, Mesa, had a great canal system with paths running alongside them that were filled with runners, bikers, and walkers.  This was my version of the canal today.  Different, but beautiful in it's own way.

And here I discovered where some children made a secret hideaway from the world.  I love places like this, places where you can be whatever you want, where time has no meaning, and your world is as big-or as small - as you want it to be.  Can you see how perfect it would be in the summer when the leaves are all filled in, and this spot is a hidden clubhouse?

Quirky

Everyone's a little quirky-that's what makes us great! I've found that everywhere I live is a little quirky as well.  I thought I'd share a few quirks from our new home that I love & a couple that make me batty!

Can you tell what this one is?  It's just a little thing, something I never would have thought of, but have come to LOVE!   It's one of the light switches in our master bathroom.  It glows in the dark.  I love it.
I realized its worth was golden the first night we lived here and it was a  beacon guiding me across the darkness.



This is our shower head in the master bathroom, we thought it was odd when we moved in, we really weren't so sure we'd like it.  It doesn't quite have the power we're used to, but it's great for rinsing off.  The jury is still out on this little quirk.

This one had me stumped when we first moved in, I wasn't sure what it was even for, but once the light bulb switched on it was like I heard a chorus of angels singing.  Being from Arizona we are used to drinking gallons of water-literally.  We made regular runs to our local "Water & Ice" shop for refills.  This handy little line coming from the wall makes those trips a thing of the past (a good thing-I haven't seen a "Water & Ice" anywhere!).  It's a water line that fills up our water dispenser without any trips to the store, or even any hassle from me-at all!  And, there is a double filtration system built into the house so our water tastes great!


This is another one that had us stumped when we first moved in.  We found it in a kitchen drawer, and I couldn't quite figure it out.  Then came the handy light bulb & I realized it's a remote for the sprinkler system.  Brillant!  Why have I never even heard of this before?  Oh, the times I could have used this in the heat of the Arizona summer-or in the midst of a Monsoon season downpour!



 Need one light switch? How about two?  Double switches in nearly every room in the house-one for the light, one for the fan.  So handy-especially for Sage who was constantly asking her big brothers (or me) to come and turn off or on her fan.

 This is the fireplace in our basement.  It's gas, and is the heat source for the basement family room and kitchen area  (yes, the basement has it's own kitchen-another quirk common to newer Utah homes).  I love a good fireplace, makes everything seem cozy.  This one has a fabulous blower that really warms up the space in no time.

 For the most part the paint in our new home is very easy to live with-neutral and goes with anything.  I loved that for the most part, no need to invest a lot of time and energy making a temporary home feel livable.  In two of the bedrooms the former residents decided to add some flair of their own.  This is Kiefer's Room:

This is Quinn's:

Can you guess which one I've been nailing down paint colors to repaint?

 This post inspired by the letter "Q"  and Miss Jenny's AlphabeThursday Link Party
Click here to read more posts inspired by the letter "Q"

I Spy...

...something that's beautiful?  What?  That's the assignment my friend Jen over at Denton Sanatorium gave us for today's Linky Party.  To take a good look at ourselves with a freshly scrubbed face and look past the flaws, wrinkles, and imperfections we usually fixate on.  To see something within ourselves that is unique, and makes us who we are.

Finding the good wasn't that hard for me, I'm aware of what about my features people have complimented me for over the years, it was looking past the imperfections and finding joy in the unique that was troublesome.  I've never been one to obsess over my looks or makeup or hair, they are what they are.  But I've also never tried to see beyond them into the beauty we each possess.  That was hard.  To be honest I'm still working on it.

First-the easy part-the good.  I have good, I mean really good hair.  Does that count as a feature?  I have always loved my hair, it's thick, is really healthy, grows super fast, and takes orders pretty well-straight? okay it says, curled today?  not a problem!  The color is nothing unusual or striking, it's just brown with red highlights but getting darker as the years go by.  The nice part about my color? It's all brown-not a gray hair to be found so far & while my friends bemoan those coarse little hairs sticking out & schedule appointments to cover their gray I am thankful for my mother's gift of great hair.  (still having problems uploading from my camera, so you get cell phone pictures-sorry!)

The other thing I like? My eyes, my driver's license says they are BLUE, but today they are GREEN.  That's what I love about them, they are different, and changeable.  When I was little they were mostly blue and I really wished they were always green.  As I've gotten older they are more and more often green, I have yet to figure out what makes them change color.  But I love it when they do.

My daughter inherited my eyes, but hers are mostly green, and sometimes blue.  She wishes they were always blue.   

I think that says a lot about us as women.  Always wishing for something other than what we have, sure we'd be better off if only...


This has been interesting to think and ponder on, I'm going to work on being at PEACE with what I see in the mirror (that's my *word* for 2011).  I hadn't really applied it in this context, but now I will.  Thanks, Jen.  I needed that.