Miss him.....

Listen to this story told by President Hinckley. He's so cute!

when one thing breaks...

It started with my laptop.... now Ashley's car is dead. We think the alternator is out. She called us late Saturday night and said that her battery was dead, so her friend jumped it for her. We told her to come straight home, she was way up north. As she was coming home she called to tell us that it died again at a stop light. So her friend Alex called her uncle and he came to help and we decided to drive up there so John could drive the car home. We got it going again and it made it home, never to start again! We had to call a tow truck... Ashley was so sad. Luckily it's finals this week and school only goes till 11:00 or so. Because this lazy mother can't get up early to drive her to school, I let her take my car. So I am home catching up on my blog reading this morning....

laptop update.... i decided to be smart, save money and just get my laptop fixed. So it is somewhere at an Apple hospital getting all better. Hopefully it will be back in my hands soon. A new one just wasn't in the budget right now.... it killed me tadmit that! Family night was on "Wants and Needs" last night! We all needed a reminder.

Check out this cute picture of Scott & Jenn's dog Duce trying out the pool Saturday. He hated it! He wouldn't get in, they finally got him in and the minute they let go, he was out! pretty funny!

Candace's wedding...

Make a Smilebox slideshow

We spent Memorial Day weekend in Phoenix with most of the Barnes family at our niece's wedding. John's sister Cathi's daughter Candace got married. She married a real nice guy. Cathi did an amazing job with all the decorations! She is super creative!!!! She did almost everything herself! wow! Everything looked great. Unfortunately the weather wasn't the best. Who would have thought that the end of May would be rainy, windy and cold! It was a bummer! But still a great night!

We enjoyed seeing so many members of the Barnes family! The kids all got along great and it was fun to visit with the adults. Everyone played a big game of Mafia... (not my favorite game... a little too loud and crazy for me) But everyone else had a great time playing it. The kids look forward to playing it every time we head to Aunt Cathi's, it's become a tradition!

We stopped at the Mesa Temple on our way home and saw the "Reflections of Christ" exhibit. It was beautiful! (click on Refections of Christ to see their website)

Enjoy the slide show of our weekend! (I didn't like the font in the program so I didn't capitalize all the names, you couldn't read them!)

Congrats Mitchell!!!

Props to Mitchell! He won the "Walter D. Johnson Award" tonight!! This award was given out to 2 girls and 2 boys from the 8th grade. They had to be nominated by a teacher, then they had to fill out 3 pages of questions and then give a speach in front of a panel of judges. Mitchell worked hard on his questions and wrote a great speech. John made him practice it outloud a few times against his will... good thing dad's know something! We are so proud of him!! Way to go Mitchell! (if you notice in the picture he has 2 medalions, he won another one for having a 3.5 or higher grade point for all 3 years... yah!!)

sad sad day!!

Those of you who know me well, know that I have some issues with my apple laptop. I've had it for 4 years now and it lives on my lap or the kitchen counter most of the day... well, it died today. It's been acting up for the last few weeks and today it finally gave up. I took it down to the Apple store and they confirmed that it was dead. I am SO sad. I told the guy that it was my baby! The only good thing is that I had a feeling that it was on it's last leg, so I backed it up last week onto a portable hard drive. So, I only lost the pictures that I took this last week. So now I have to decide if I want to spend $300 to get it fixed or buy a new one. I really don't want to pay for either one, so I might have to use the Family PC for a while! YUCK!! What am I going to do! I'm having withdrawls already!!

Surprise!!

We had 2 surprises this weekend! It was so much fun. My brother Scott graduated from UNLV yesterday and his sweet wife through him a big surprise party last night. So that was surprise number one and the second one is that my Sister Cindy and her daughter Angela and son Spencer came for the party and they brought my MOM! It was so good to see them, especially my mom since we have been so worried about her. Cindy convinced her that she could recover from her surgery here just as well as she could at home. She already had a few days off from Temple Square so why not come?? She's actually not suppose to leave the mission, so don't tell anyone!

They came on Friday morning and we spent the afternoon sitting by the pool. It felt so good to relax and enjoy the sun! Scott and Jenn came over for a while and got a little sun and enjoyed visiting with everyone. We barbecued that night and then went down to Luv It's for dessert and met up with Scott and Jenn again. You've got to love "Luv It's"! I am sure the frozen custard is low fat right??? NOT! That's why it's so good. As we were driving home my mom said, "Do we have time to see the Bellagio fountains?" They are her favorite!! Every-time she comes to visit she want to go visit them. Last time she was here she asked if we could leave her there for a few hours! We weren't sure if it was appropriate to take a set apart missionary down to the strip, but we did. We saw 3 shows. It was beautiful as always!

Saturday morning Mitchell had a soccer game. We will say they tied because the ref's messed up on something that should have been a goal. Mitchell had to play goalie for half the game and he did a great job! Yah Mitchell! Mitchell's coach let Spencer play with them, it was fun.

We spent more time by the pool and then headed over for the big party!! Scott was very surprised! It was cute. Jenn had everything decorated in rebel red! She had UNLV t-shirts placed on the tables as decorations and then all the snacks were red and everyone was asked to wear red! She had all kinds of red fruits, red rice crispy treats, cupcakes, strawberry pie, red candy all over and i made chocolate covered strawberries! so much for the diet this weekend! weekends are so hard!!
Ashley found a new friend at the party! This is Tyson and he was full of energy!! so cute.


My mom is doing good. It was so nice to spend the weekend with her. We found out this week that her cancer is in stage one and she will do 6 weeks of radiation and then be on a pill for the next 5 years and that should be it. We are so grateful that she won't need the chemo! She is so blessed and we are so thankful to our Heavenly Father that she is healing well and that she caught it so early.

Happy Birthday Julie & Mark!

I almost forgot to wish Julie and Mark happy birthdays! Mark is one of my older brothers and his birthday was on Monday. He is in the process of moving his family up to Pocatello Idaho. He's a great Brother and I hope he had a great birthday! My older sister Julie turned 42 today. I am good at remembering birthday's but not ages. Not sure how much older Mark is, but I know Julie is only one year older than me! I think keeping track of all 9 birthdays is pretty good, don't think I am stupid that I don't know ages. I would bet that half of my siblings don't know all the kids birthdays, right Julie?? haha family joke... Julie and I were always close friends because we were so close in age! It was great growing up with a best friend at home!

Love my family!! Wish we all lived closer! Love you all!!!

You win some and loose some...

Tanner had a playoff game for football tonight and they lost. So they are out of the tournament. He was pretty sad and so was John. I had to miss the game because I went to Ashley's award banquet for student council. John said the kids played pretty good, but missed some important passes. John had a fun time coaching them. Not sure he will do it again next season... we will see. Tanner thinks he wants to try basketball next. I don't think he has found "his sport" yet. Tanner has tried soccer and now football, so maybe it will be basketball?? Mitchell loves soccer! He did t-ball and coach pitch in Spokane, but it was a little slow for him and he's not the type of guy who wants to be center stage at bat.... he's more of a big group sport guy.

Ashley got the award for "best listener" at the student council dinner tonight. Not sure how she won that when she is talking all the time! Just kidding, she is a great listener. I hear her friends telling her all their problems all the time. Listening is a good skill to have! Way to go Ashley!!

Happy Mothers Day!!

Happy Mothers day to all the wonderful mothers out there! I love Mothers Day! It's 11:00 and I'm still in my pj's (one of the advantages of 2:00 church), I got breakfast in bed and some wonderful presents from John and the kids. (notice Mitchell's haircut! best present!!) I love being a mother!! When I was a little girl, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I always said "a mother". I am so lucky to have such great kids and a wonderful husband!

I've been thinking a lot about my mother in the last few weeks.... she has a new trial in her life that she is handling so well and I am learning so much watching her. We found out about a month ago that she has breast cancer. Yup, that awful disease has hit our family. So depressing. She had surgery 2 weeks ago to take out the lump and that went good. But a few days after the surgery they were studying the tissues that they took out and they think that they didn't get all the cancer out, so tomorrow she has to go back in for more surgery. A big bummer that she has to go back in, but we are so grateful that the doctors are being careful and want to be 100% sure that they have it all. At this point we don't know what kind of treatment she will have to do after she heals from surgery, but it will be some sort of radiation or chemo. 

We feel so blessed that she and dad were called to the Temple Square mission, because if she was in Africa or something, she would have probably waited to have her lump tested when she got home and that could have been too late. She has had many cysts, so she thought that it was just another one. Unfortunately it wasn't. My mom is being so positive about everything, I am so thankful for her positive outlook on life. I am sure she has her down moments and scared times, but she doesn't let us see those. My mom is a very strong lady! I know it wasn't easy for her to raise 9 kids, but she did it so well! 

I thought I would share with you a few things that I have learned from my mom:

1. How to be positive and happy 

2. How support and love my husband. ( I never saw my parents argue... not once. The only thing they fought over (in public) was when my mom put an onion on the Sunday roast. My dad hated onions)

3. How to love unconditionally

4. How to be a good mom... 

5. How to serve others.

6. How to live the Gospel.

7. To understand the Plan of Salvation. When my 2 brothers died, my mom reassured us that Families are Forever!

8. To fulfill a calling, no matter what it is and to support a husband in his calling. (she had 9 kids with a husband sitting on the stand in the bishopric for Many of those years!)

9. How to play games with the kids. I remember playing Boggle and many other board games as a family.

10. How to love the outdoors. We took many trips to the beach and the mountains and i know that wasn't easy... road trips with 3 kids and a tv in the car are hard... she had 9 kids with only a tape player. I do remember listening to the dramatized church history tapes and learning a lot from them.

11. I learned how to cook

12. I learned too love cookie dough : ) Some of my friends mom's wouldn't let us touch the dough, but my mom would let us eat it and would even freeze it for us! YUMMY!! I remember running to the kitchen to be able to lick a beater... only 2 beaters and 9 kids, you had to run fast!

I could go on and on... I love my mom so much and appreciate all that she has taught me! Happy Mothers Day Mom!!

My "rocker" boy! (updated)

Mitchell has played the electric bass in jazz band for the last 3 years. He loves it and he has gotten really good! We are so lucky that we have the best band teacher in the state of Nevada at our Junior high! He truly is amazing. I won't go on about the teacher because i want to talk about Mitchell! Lucky for us, the jazz band has like 6 concerts this spring! I'm not being sarcastic... i really do enjoy going to his concerts. His teacher says that Mitchell is very talented and if he continued on playing through high school he could possibly get a college scholarship... but for some reason Mitch thinks that the band program at the high school stinks, so he doesn't want to play there! So we are trying to convince him otherwise, because a scholarship would sure be nice!!

edited: I figured out how to post the video. I think the file was too big, so I uploaded it to Youtube and linked it to this page! You can hear the bass in this song the best. I was sitting down and couldn't move my camera around very well... I will try to take better video at Wednesday nights concert!  enjoy...

Keep playing Mitchell, you are awesome!!

All I want for Mothers day is for him to get a hair cut!! 

One more YW event done!

When I wrote 2 weeks ago that I was going to cut back my time on the computer I didn't really think I would only read blogs once this week.... I just thought I would maybe only read them every other day instead of  every day. But this week has been crazy and I haven't even looked at them and I miss it so much! Thanks for your comments on that by the way... I do have to remember that blogging is a great family record for us and it's not just wasting time!! I went to bed at night this week wondering how my blog friends were doing and if anything exciting had happened to them. So tomorrow is going to be catch up day! This week was crazy getting ready for our YW recognition night tonight. My counselors and I spent hours making these really cute frames for the girls. I will take a picture tomorrow and post it. They turned out great. Then we covered the little Book of Mormons with the cutest fabric! I loved how they turned out! But it was a bit of a challenge getting them all done! But we did it...

We had a nice simple program tonight. We had each Bishop introduce their girls who had received their medallions this year and then the girls each told about one of their projects or bore their testimonies. They are amazing girls with strong testimonies. It was a great night!

So girls camp is next on the list! Good thing I have a great camp director!

Dream come true!!!!!

Saturday was a very exciting day for me! One of my dreams came true... I got to go to a taping of the Oprah show. She was in Las Vegas filming a show that will air on May 8th, with Cher and Tina Turner. Cher just started a show in Vegas, so Oprah interviewed her about her new show and they performed one of the numbers from her new show. So just how did I get the ticket?? John got a call from his add rep from channel 8 a week ago and she invited him to the show. They invited their top 5 advertisers during the Oprah show hour, and Sunburst Shutters is in the top 5. They said he was the only one that could go, since he buys the adds and he couldn't give it to anyone! They were very strict about it. John called them everyday begging and pleading with them to let me go instead. They wouldn't budge until all of the other top advertisers said they didn't really want to go, but their wives were dyeing to go. So they got special permission from the Harpo people to switch the tickets. 

I was a little nervous to go all by myself, but knew I would survive! I was invited to a brunch before with all the add people and a bunch of channel 8 people. I sat across from the lady who does the morning news. She was very nice, I can't remember her name at the moment. She was very excited because she was going to be interviewing Oprah after the show! Only she and Entertainment tonight were given permission to interview her. After the brunch we headed over to the show at the coliseum in Caesars Palace. We were told over and over not to bring camera's or cell phones. It was a bummer... oh well. they let us in at 12:30 and the show didn't start until 2:00. I was so excited!! 

Oprah was great! She talked with the audience during commercial breaks. She told us all about her interview the day before at Tom Cruise's place in Colorado the day before. She joked about her cleansing diet she just finished, it was pretty funny. I can't say I'm a huge Cher and Tina fan, but they were great. After seeing the one scene from Cher's new show, I am actually interested in going to it. It looks like a lot of fun. It was interesting to watch Oprah with her staff and the audience during the breaks. One of her eyelashes was falling off, so her makeup people had to come out and fix it and it was funny to watch. Tina and Cher said a few things that Oprah didn't like, so during a break, Oprah said "the beauty of television is that I can tell them to cut out those comments and no one will ever see it on tv." Tina had said something about Oprah being a different person while she was in Switzerland visiting her. I didn't think it was bad, but I guess she didn't like it. It will be interesting to see what they cut out. 

I'd still love to meet her up close and have a conversation with her, but this was pretty close! So watch Oprah on May 8th. Our seats were about 20 rows back in the center. It was great. A day that I will always remember!!

to top the day off, John and I went to our favorite restaurant in town called China grill in Mandalay Bay and then we went to the Goo Goo Dolls concert. It was a lot of fun. But, we realized we are getting old because the concert didn't start until 9:00 and there were two warm up bands... so it didn't get over until after midnight. Were very sleepy by the end! 

great weekend!

This weekend was so wonderful. (especially compared to last!) I enjoyed our Stake Conference so much! Saturday night session was all about the importance of family dinner time, family home evening and going to the temple. The stake presidency made these fun home movies that showed how difficult it is to do these things. We saw how hard it is to set aside time for these things and how our lives are way too busy. Then on Sunday the talks were on "how we bring the gospel into our homes". All of the talks were great and made me really think about our home and how we can improve things. Keri had to talk and she did an amazing job! Yah Keri! 

President Schlauder asked us to look at our lives and figure out what our "distractions" were and to really work hard for the next two weeks to remove them from our homes and lives. We had a great talk with the kids after lunch yesterday and talked about our schedules and our distractions and made a game plan to simplify our lives and get the important things done. We do a pretty good job at having family dinners, but we can improve. We made a dinner calendar for the next 3 weeks! That will help me tons. I hate deciding what to have for dinner every night. And we made a family home evening lesson schedule for the next 2 months. So those should be better too. 

We decided that the kids needed to limit their time on "Guitar Hero"... personally I would like to hide it for a month! We will see how they do. I am so tired of the loud music! We also talked about playing more games as a family and things like that. Me personally....I decided that my laptop can be a distraction for me. Hard to admit, but I do have some addiction problems with it. I say I am going to sit down to send some emails for YW's and I end up reading blogs for an hour and fiddling around on web sites and none of my YW stuff gets done. So, I have decided I need to limit my time on my computer... so you might not see as many blog posts and comments from me. I don't want to give it up completely, because I know I need time for me, but I just need to manage my time a little better. I have been ignoring house work and other things for quite some time now. Tanner wrote his name in the dust on my lamp the other day! A good sign that dusting isn't getting done!

I know our family and home will be blessed if we work harder to have family dinners, FHE and temple attendance! Thank you to a wonderful stake presidency for reminding us of the blessings that we need! 

6 miles....

Is how far I jogged this morning! Yah me!! I know some of you are marathon runners, and 6 miles is a warm up.... but for me, this is a long ways! For a year I have been real comfortable with 3 miles. About 2 months ago i decided I needed to step it up a notch and work harder to get some of this extra poundage off me that I have gained back. I thought that since I can't seem to control my eating, that some harder exercise would help. No such luck! I have been working my tail off and have lost like one pound! I guess you have to do both! I hate that. (I put out of my mind all that I learned in Weight Watchers and tried to do my own thing) I am SO TIRED of watching what I eat. Why can't I be one of those natural skinny people and eat whatever I want!!!

I guess I better go to my Weight Watchers meeting next week and face reality! depressing.... 

After a long winters nap....

One of the turtles finally woke up today. Our two turtles have been in hibernation all winter and the big one moved around and ate some lunch! (I forget his name, how sad) I think Tanner named him long neck??? I was beginning to worry that maybe they were dead and not hibernating.... I miss watching them out my kitchen window. They are funny little creatures and little things entertain me! It's our first winter with them, so I haven't experienced this hibernating thing yet and I don't know what to expect... I had no idea they would sleep this long! They snuggled down for their nap in like November, that's along time to sleep. I wonder how long a bear sleeps?? Anyway he only woke up for like an hour and ate some lettuce and then went back to his favorite spot and went back to sleep. I hope the other little guy isn't dead... he's still out. I wish I could nap like them!!

Look at his cute little tongue in the second picture. Love my turtles!! Oh, my hummingbirds are back too. I think there are some new little babies too! They are so cute!

3 Tickets in 1 day!

This is John. You know, Allison and I are pretty safe drivers. We're not very ticket prone. But today, Allison and I got 3 of them--all in 1 day! It started this morning around 7:30 as I was riding by bike, going for what I had hoped was a long bike ride. About 1 mile into my ride I was approaching an intersection. I slowed down but did not fully stop at the stop sign. I saw a lady in a car pulling up to the intersection as I was entering it. If she stopped, she stopped quickly and started even quicker. She hit me and knocked me off my bike, sending me flying about 10 feet into the other lane of traffic. It took the wind out of me, cut my knee, arm, hand and bruised my shoulder. I laid on the ground in pain. A doctor stopped at the site and told me to stay in that spot. He called Fire Dept. paramedics, an ambulance and the police. They also called Allison.

The paramedics cleaned me up and I was feeling better. I canceled the ambulance because I didn't feel like I had broken anything. The police came and decided I was at fault because I admitted that I only slowed down at the intersection and did not stop completely. I don't think the lady who hit me admitted to a rolling stop or she would have been cited. So I got a ticket for hitting a car with my bike. Really. The scratch on her car was nothing compared to my messed up bike and body. Aren't cars supposed to yield for pedestrians on foot or on bike? That's how I always drive.

What made it worse (for Allison, not for me) was that she forgot her camera, so she couldn't get a photo for her blog. I could have been badly hurt, but the only pain Allison had was that she wished she had her camera.

Allison has never had a ticket. In 24+ years of driving, she's had 0 tickets. None. Perfect record. Until today.... Ticket Day!

This afternoon, Allison was driving up Westcliff Dr. and thought the speed limit was 45, when it was really 35. She says my car makes her go faster. Hmmm. She was trying to call me in the process. The cop clocked her at 49 in a 35 and gave her one ticket for speeding and another for talking on her cell phone while speeding. Really. He was the type of cop that did not give her a chance to defend herself--just wrote out the ticket and handed it to her. Westcliff Dr. is wide enough to be a 6 lane highway. The wider a road is the faster most cars go.

What a memorable day this was. We felt like victims of wide roads and unwise cops. We may need to cancel our kids' college funds to pay for these 3 tickets. Anyone know a good lawyer?

JB

growing too fast....

I've been meaning to write about what happened on Sunday. Ashley received her patriarchal blessing. What a neat experience that was. I can't believe my little girl is old enough and mature enough to get this special gift. It was such a neat thing. What a special patriarch we have in our stake. He was so sweet and you could feel the spirit so strong as you walked into his home.

It just added to the spirit that we felt all weekend watching conference. I loved conference and felt such a wonderful spirit as I sustained our new Prophet. What a great man. I have always loved listening to President Monson speak and this time it was different. I knew without a doubt that he was a prophet of God and he now carries that mantel. How lucky we are to be able to receive that confirmation.

Funny blog...

While I was in Seattle, my sister told me about this silly blog. It's about a puddle in New York City. If you start at the beginning it's pretty funny. I know, I need to get a life....

Our Saturdays are now busy again with Mitchell playing soccer and Tanner playing flag football. Can you believe I forgot to bring my camera to their first game of the season??? oh well. They both played great. Mitchell's game ended in a tie, they should have won, the other team cheated by putting boys in the game who weren't really on the team. This club team has and A & B team and the b team was playing and at half time they had a few boys change jerseys from the A team and they went in and scored.... not fair.

Tanner's football league has been very unorganized this season... they didn't put him on the same team he was on last season and the new team they put him on doesn't have a coach, so the league organizer has been coaching them this week. I think John and a few other dads are going to take over the coaching. The good news is that there are only 5 kids on the team so they will get lots of playing time. His old team had like 15 kids, so not much time on the field. But we do need to recruit a few more kids so they can have a break. Tanner played quarterback today and did a great job! They won 30-23. Go Colts! I think John is reliving his childhood. His mom didn't let him play football until his senior year and I think that still bugs him. So now is his chance to play through Tanner!

check this out..

Check out this website. It is absolutely beautiful. I sure hope that when we go to Mesa in May that this event will still be on display. Be sure to look at all the tabs on the website... the blog has some neat stories about how they found different sites for the photographs and stuff... very spiritual...

A few random things....

While I was in Utah, I got scans of all of my Grandma Verhaaren's old pictures.... they are so COOL! Here are a few of them. This first one was taken at a picnic in South Africa where my Great Grandmother is from. She is the one in the middle without a hat on. It was taken in about 1913.
This next one is my Great Great Grandparents wedding in South Africa in about 1885!
I think this one is my Great Great Grandparents in South Africa in the late 1800's. I was so excited about getting these scans. Thanks Julie & Cindy for doing all the scanning!

I learned how to make these really cool chocolate covered marshmallow eggs at an enrichment activity. They were so yummy that I came home and made more with Ashley. Would you believe that I forgot to take a picture of the finished product!!! Crazy. I will post the recipe at easter time next year!
The night before I left for Seattle, John won tickets on to see the band Chicago at the MGM. It was amazing concert! Things are always better when they are free....

Here are a few photo's from my Seattle trip....

I got a little teary eyed flying over Mt. Rainier. Oh how I miss the mountains and tree's and lakes. It was breathtaking!  It was a little cloudy out, but I could still see Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams all in a row. Seattle will always have a special place in my heart!! I had to remind myself that I love my family, home and friends in vegas when it was time to go home! otherwise I would have stayed.
Dad, my brother David and his daughter Tiffany picked up Scott and I at the airport and we headed straight to Dick's. This is the "boys" favorite place to eat in Seattle. Nothing like a good greasy burger! 
Saturday night we went to my favorite teriyaki restaurant. So good! We need a good in Vegas! 

2 nights in a row we played some serious hearts! Fun times!

Happy Birthday Johnny! It was my Brother John's birthday on March 24th. He died almost 11 years ago. So I think he would have been 36. It was nice to be together as a family on his birthday. We tried to get out to the cemetery to put flowers on his grave, but we couldn't fit it in. But, we did take a picture in front of the Johnny tree at the Seattle Temple. (when he died, some friends of our family gave my parents a little tree for us to plant in his memory and we got permission to plant on the grounds of the Seattle temple.) So we took a family picture in front of it. (Dad, I'm still waiting to get your pictures) I will post it when I get it. Here is a picture of Johnny as a baby. I'm sure he loved being in my pink doll seat!

Now I am home and my cousin Craig is here with his wife Mauri and 4 kids. Mauri was one of my high school friends and college roommates and she married on of my favorite cousins! So we've had a fun few days. Our kids all get along and have a great time together! We had the Taylor's over last night for dinner because Rene'e, Mauri and I were all high school friends and roommates. It's so weird that we are all in our 40's now with kids that are almost in college!! Freaky...

The kids have had a great time swimming!