Is anyone still out there?

Does anyone even read this anymore?  Oh my poor little blog.  I've fallen so far behind it's sad.  I know I still like to read blogs so I think I might be selfish.  Reading lots of other people's blogs but not contributing to the blogsphere.  I am terrible.

I guess I need to be better about that.  Sometimes the things I want to write about though, I can't.  How fun would it be to be anonymous amiright?  Oh the things I could say! 

Anywho.  I read my last post and I guess we'll pick up from there.  My feet are still freezing.  I am, at this exact moment, sitting in front of a space heater.   Nothing has changed in a year.  Yes, it's 70 something degrees outside but I am cold.  I have problems okay?  Last year my amazing MIL gave me another foot warming device.  HOT BOOTIES.

You guys.  I love these things.  They look ridiculous and yes, I look ridiculous in them but I DON'T CARE.  My tootsies are happy in them.  I highly recommend them.  And best of all, I can work in them.

Now if only I can find something similar for my poor hands...every time I touch my boys they shrink away like they've been touched by ice.  Because they basically have.  Mommy and her ice hands.  Maybe the movie Frozen was modeled after me?

Yum

I came to work (I work at home remember?) this afternoon to find this on my desk:

My husband loves me.  :)

My toes are finally comfy!

People, I have a problem.  In the winter my feet are icicles.  I am FREEZING.  I'm telling you, I cannot get warm.  EVER.  I have various pairs of wool socks, even a SUPER great pair that an awesome friend sent me (thanks Kem!).  These help but still, my feet are always cold!  As we speak (or you read), I have a space heater aimed at me. 

The biggest problem though is at night.  It seems I was doomed to be cold forever!

The other day I'm cruising along the aisles of Wal-Mart working down my list of random items...you know how you do in Wal-Mart right?  Then suddenly I happen to glance over and I see it.  I swear, I heard angels singing.  It was like this product was MADE FOR ME. 

I could not believe it. 


A heating pad for the foot of your bed?  JUST for the foot of your bed?  JUST for the sole purpose of heating up your feet at night?  Are you freaking kidding me?!?!  I grabbed that thing so fast you would not believe it.  And better yet, the only size they had was a twin.  So it would just fit on my side!  Josh is like a heater and needs no such heating device. 

My toes have never been so happy or so comfy.  I turn this baby on while I'm brushing my teeth and washing my face and when I get into bed at night, if my feet could sing, they would be singing, "HALLELUJAH!!!" 

I would like to thank my SIL Chelsa because her gift card to me for Christmas is what made this purchase possible.  Merry Christmas to me!!

The world continues to turn.

I've been wanting to post for a while but haven't really felt like it.  Honestly I've just been too sad.  I did have two grandpas pass away last year but this is the first loss I've ever experienced where the person was both very close to me, and it was totally unexpected.  It's been very difficult for our family and it has been interesting to see how it has affected different areas of our lives.

For me personally, I've become a bit of a space-case!  Which is weird, because I'm normally not a space-case at all.    I've been described as Type-A, but definitely not someone who lets things go.  But now?  I can't seem to get organized.  I have forgotten to pay bills.  I will just stare off into space during the day.  My daily to-do list frequently does not get done.  The house has not been kept up.  Projects are not getting done.  Basically I've been in survival mode.  Don't worry, you won't come over and see a "Hoarders" type situation, or the cupboards bare and the kids running around dirty and disheveled!  But it's given me a new understanding on grief and the different ways it affects people.  I'd like to think I always had compassion for people but my compassion for those who have suffered a loss has definitely increased.

Anyway, we had a busy summer filled with swimming lessons, the boys attended a summer program, we traveled to Utah to visit family and friends, and we even had an awesome friend take some gorgeous family photos!

https://www.facebook.com/Annamillerphotography

Hopefully I can get back into the blogging groove because my boys continue to say funny things and do funny things, etc.   I'd like to catch up on everything but we'll see if that happens!  Life moves on even if your heart feels stuck.  We all do the best we can right?  :)

To every thing there is a season...

Josh and Dad - 2011

 Sometimes you can just be living your life, going through the routine of everything, stressing over the unimportant details.  And then you receive a phone call that is life changing.  Your husband’s father has passed away in a shocking, unexpected way.  Time seems to stop and speed up in that moment.  You know things will never be the same.   You have to tell your husband the news, the most difficult thing you’ve ever had to do.  You don’t know how your family will ever move past it.  You worry for your husband and your entire in-law family who you love like your own.  You are amazed at the amount of tears a person can cry and wonder if you will ever stop.  You wish you had listened to the prompting you had to write your father-in-law an email those last couple of weeks telling him how much you loved and appreciated him, but kept pushing if off thinking you’d do it later because you were too busy.  Then you cry some more.

I spent a lot of time looking at pictures of my sweet father-in-law and remembering his life before we traveled to California for the funeral.  The boys and I remembered fun times.  I'm going to let them pick whatever pictures they like and make them each their own photo albums to keep.  I'm glad I insisted on taking a lot of photos even though he hated having his picture taken!

Papa Big Dog and Samuel - 2007

Papa Big Dog and J.J. - 2011

Papa Big Dog and Trey - 2006

Bruce and JoAnn

There's something healing about attending the funeral of a loved one with all of your family and friends.  I don't think I really understood that until now.  

 

It was kind of like attending a big family reunion with one very important family member missing.  

My amazing MIL and her 8 children - May 9th, 2012

The Larsen Family - May 9th, 2012

Still though, we had some fun times together.  Trey actually celebrated his 7th birthday while we were there, and all of the cousins had a lot of fun together.  

Trey opening presents (yes, that's a Christmas gift bag!)

Larsen grandchildren - May 11th, 2012

We talked, ate, laughed, and wished we all lived closer to one another.  I just love this family.  They are amazing.  I couldn't ask for better in-laws.

I hope I can teach my boys to be the kind of man their "Papa Big Dog" was.  Kind, generous almost to a fault, with a true love of the scriptures and the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He didn't just talk the talk, he truly tried to help other people and never sought recognition for it.  I will truly miss him and I am so grateful for the knowledge that families can be together forever.   For now, I know that he is being taken care of. 

Are you there readers? It's me. Christy.

I haven't blogged in a really long time.  I don't even recognize blogger anymore.  Everything looks different and weird.  It's not that I don't have anything to blog about, I do.  I keep meaning to blog but it just doesn't happen.  Maybe I should do something about that...

Maybe I will.  We'll see. 

A Man's Man

Yesterday I volunteered in J.J.'s class and was filing these short stories in a filing cabinet that his class had written.  The topic was something like "What I would do if I went to a ball" or something to that effect.  The girls all had these elaborate stories including what color their dresses would be, how a prince would come pick them up, take them out to dinner, they would dance all night, etc.  A few of the boys even had details like being picked up in a limo, and having a fancy dinner or whatnot.  It was actually quite impressive!

The majority of the boys however had stories like my boy.  And when I got to his, I had to take a picture.  If I was smart and knew how to operate my dumb phone (and it is literally a dumb phone) I could post this pic.  Instead I will write his story out for your reading pleasure.  Don't worry, it won't take me long.

"First I would get a suit and throw it on me.  Next I would go to the party.  Then I would eat dinner and go to bed."

Yup, definitely a man's man.

The funny thing was that the next story I had to file was a Halloween story and he filled the entire page with details about bloody zombies and graves and skeletons and the like.  At least I know he has writing skills when the subject interests him!

Honesty...it's such a lonely word.

Wow.  It's been so long since I posted that I didn't even recognize the new look that blogger has and it took me a minute to figure out how to write a new post!  Oops.  I don't even have time to write a full update.  I've increased my workload for my work-at-home job, at the most inconvenient time ever:  right before Fall Break when my kids are out of school for a week.  Yup, I'm an idiot.  But hey, when you need more money you gotta do what you gotta do.

I'm on here because Trey always says and does some really funny/weird stuff and I decided I need to start writing these things down so I don't forget them.

At 6:30 this morning I hear running feet down the hallway.  Not unusual at my house because my children awaken at the crack of dawn.  I do not understand this and never will.  But we do have a rule at my house, and that is that they don't come out of their room until 7:00 A.M.  This rule is ALWAYS being broken.  Anyway, I go to investigate the sound of running feet in the hall at 6:30 A.M. and I find Trey fully dressed in jeans, T-shirt, socks and shoes.  What the what?

me - "Trey, what are you doing?"
Trey - "Oh!  Me and Bubba had an idea.  We're going to sneak out of the house, and go steal stuff."

And...another day begins in the Larsen household.

Am I Insane?

Maybe. In 2 days my oldest child will turn 8 years old. Yes yes, I can't believe it either. But what I can't believe EVEN MORE is that I was crazy enough to convince him to have his very first "friend" birthday party. Yes, you read that right. He's never had a friend birthday party, and I had to CONVINCE him to have one. He didn't want to do it and I made him do it. Of course now he's excited, the invited have been sent out, the RSVP's (sort of ) RSVP-ed, and there's no backing out! I am stressed to the max! The party is tomorrow.

I just have to keep reminding myself:

1. I have planned for every possible scenario (seriously, every possible one. It's a little ridiculous.)

2. It's only 1 1/2 hours long.

3. It WILL be fun.

4. I'm doing this for my son, so he can have fun with his friends.

5. And lastly, I have my supply of migraine meds waiting for me at home when the party is over.

Bye Sari!

My little sis Sari is headed off to the big bad world of college! So we decided to have one last sisters' night before she left. You know, a farewell to Mesa since she won't be back until...next weekend. Let's face it, she has a car and she's only 2.5 hours away so she will be back frequently! But still, it won't be the same. She's a grown up (kind of) now!

We started off by going out to dinner. We forced her to pick the place. And by forced, I literally mean forced. She is so indecisive! It was baby steps with this girl.

Me - "Sari, where do you want to eat?"

Sari - "I don't know, wherever."

Me - "No Sari, you have to pick! It's YOUR night! You have to pick your favorite place!"

Sari - "I don't have a favorite place."

Me - "Okay well where is a place you like then?"

Sari - "I don't know, wherever."

Me - "OH MY HECK! Okay...what kind of food do you like?"

Sari - "Um...Mexican?"

Me - "Okay! Mexican! Are we talking Taco Bell? Filiberto's? On the Border? Chili's? Serrano's?"

Sari - "I don't know..."

Me - "AUGH!"

Sari - "Okay okay...Costa Vida?"

And that is how we finally had a place to go! Here we are all ready to go. Correction, here we are where I am all ready to go and my sisters are making fun of me for being too overdressed compared to them. I can't help it, I don't get out much so when I do get a chance to go out in public, I actually do my hair (kind of) and makeup and put on jeans and a shirt without stains on it. :)

My boys wanted in on a picture too. Well, they all did until the last second and then Samuel tried to bolt but I forced him and then we got this:

Then since she had actually been up in Flagstaff the previous week getting to know her roommates and the "lay of the land", we made her dish up the details. Here she is ready to dish it up:

And here Nikki is ready to hear the good stuff:

And here I am with my giant scary eyeballs totally enraptured by tales of having to write your name on laundry detergent and food, splitting the cost of toilet paper, and weird roommate decoration choices:

We ate our delicious food and then left, and my crazy little sisters got in the fountain outside.

I didn't because I'm old and they said it was cold. Also I was wearing jeans and someone had to take the picture right? And then I saw a cricket almost crawl into my bag and I freaked out. I made Nikki carry my bag and empty the whole thing and make sure there were no other crickets that snuck in there. Have I mentioned my irrational fear of bugs?

Anyway, we got ice cream, came back to my place and watched a movie, talked, and had a grand ole time. I hope Sari has as much fun at college as I did! They really were some of the best years of my life. As I recently read in an awesome book I'm reading, Sari has "started a journey from which she will never really return."

Aw yeah...

You know what this pictures means right?

It means BACK TO SCHOOL! Today was the day I have been counting down for all summer long. Trey had his first day of full day Kindergarten and J.J. started 2nd grade. They were VERY excited to finally be in the same school together and ride the bus together! Usually I take them to school on the first day but they weren't having any of that. They waited long enough for this day and wanted to ride the bus NOW! So I decided to follow in my car and let them have their fun. Aren't they just adorable?

Trey can hardly contain himself.

The difference in personalities between J.J. and Trey sometimes cracks me up. Remember J.J.'s first day of school? Yeah, this was nothing like that. Trey literally ran off the bus.

He was the first one in his classroom.

After "Meet The Teacher" yesterday all Trey could talk about was how he gets his very own desk! Here he is, sitting at the famed desk!

J.J. was such a sweetheart, he didn't even want to run off and play with his friends he's missed all summer. He wanted to be with Trey on his first morning of Kindergarten! Here they are, still not embarrassed to be seen together. How long will this last I wonder? I hope it never ends!

And before I left I had to snap a quick picture of the big 2nd grader going into class for the day. Luckily he's not too cool to wave bye to Mom.

Well...here's hoping we have a great school year! Samuel starts preschool next week. Then I'll FINALLY get to clean this house! And trust me, it needs it.

Goodbye Grandpa

Last Friday my Grandpa Black passed away. I had been expecting the news. Still though, when I got the phone call and heard the words it felt like a punch to the stomach. Luckily I was able to go visit him 2 weeks ago. I heard he had been admitted to the hospital and things were not looking good. I felt very strongly that if I wanted to see him one more time in this life, NOW was the time. So even though we were leaving for a family wedding in a couple of days, I packed up, took J.J., and the two of us left for Utah that very same day. We had some adventures along the way that I'll blog about another time but we made it to Utah in one piece and were able to spend a couple of hours with Grandpa and some other family members. It was a great visit and I'm SO glad we were able to make it!

Here's me, J.J., and my Grandpa:

Grandma Susan was ordering Grandpa's dinner so we had to take another picture with her in it! I love her so much. I've been thinking about her a lot this last week, the two of them were always together. They were such a great team and supported each other so well. I love this article about them.

Today is my Grandpa's funeral and I was not able to attend. I had decided early on that if I could make a trip to Utah I'd rather make it to visit him, not to attend his funeral. And I later heard that he had made the comment, "I'd rather be seen, not viewed." That makes me feel better about the fact I'm not there today! I'm posting his Obituary just for my own references.

This last week I've been looking at a lot of pictures of my Grandpa, and reading this awesome book that he and Grandma Susan wrote together a couple years ago about his life. I'm so grateful they thought to do that! My kids, especially J.J., have LOVED looking through it and learning all about him.

I thought I'd just post some pictures I found too.

1980

1998

2008

2010

I love you Grandpa! Thank you for your awesome example to me and I will see you again someday!

Camping!

Sometime in May we went camping. It was fun. I really need to be better about blogging because 2 months after the fact, the details of the trip become very hazy. Luckily I took a lot of pictures and can recap the trip based on those! We didn't really have a particular site we were going to, which really made me nervous. I am a planner by nature and like to have things mapped out beforehand. I don't do "spontaneous" things. I don't like surprises. I don't like figuring things out as I go along. I like lists. I like maps. I like plans, backup plans, and backup backup plans. So...I tried to do my research as best as I could but the fact of the matter was that free camping is a first come, first serve situation and needless to say, I was stressed out about getting a good spot!

So we left on Friday evening after the boys got out of school and drove up just past Payson. We picked up a pizza in town for dinner because we were going to get there just before it got dark, too late to try to cook up some grub and set up camp! And just as I feared...we drove and drove and drove trying to find a decent unoccupied spot. We finally found an open spot at dusk and quickly set up our tent, unloaded what we needed for the night, and went to sleep. We were WAY too close to the "Rim" (Mogollon Rim for those familiar with Arizona) for my comfort level. I have 3 very curious boys who are...let's just say...NOT the best at listening to their mom. I was afraid one of them was just going to fall right off this massive cliff drop and die. The drop was literally 30 feet from our camping spot. So in the morning, we debated what to do. Should we move? Stay? We decided to eat some breakfast and think about it. First things first, we needed to start a fire. What's camping without a camp fire right? We put the boys to work finding some wood.

Then we poured some lighter fluid on it and lit it up. J.J. was in heaven!

Trey...not so much. He HATED the smoke and demanded that he sit in the van until the "fire was over". He looked pretty cute though. Don't you agree?

That is, until he set the car alarm off. Did I mention it was only 6:30 in the morning at this point? I'm sure our camping neighbors LOVED us. However, I did not feel very bad about it. Because said neighbors had themselves a grand old time drinking and loudly partying until 3:30 A.M. Let's just say I had myself a little bit of passive aggressive enjoyment at my son setting the alarm off and imagining their hangover headaches pounding at the sound of it.

Samuel was just being plain adorable. And I was being plain scary with no makeup.

After breakfast we went for a SUPER long walk around our camp area looking for a better spot. It was a longer walk than we thought it was going to be. See Samuel's face? This is how we all felt:

But the walk was worth it because we found a better spot. Still a bit close but not as close to the Rim. The kids and I stayed there and Josh ran back to go get some stuff to stake our claim on the spot. J.J. was not happy about it. He liked our old spot.

Don't worry, he got in big trouble for sticking his tongue out at me. He's actually sitting on that stump in timeout.

The other two kids were happy about moving.

Samuel was so happy he hugged every tree in our new spot.

Right after Josh got back, a fellow camper saw us and gave us a tip, to check out a better campsite down the road and across the highway. So we decided to have Josh drive over, check it out, and come back for us if he saw it looked good. By this time I was thinking how ridiculous it was that we were essentially spending our entire day trying to find a better camp spot but also thinking it was kind of funny and would make for a good story later. So Josh took Samuel (who by this time desperately needed a nap) and J.J. (who was insanely grumpy) for the car ride to go check it out, and left me and Trey to wait. And we waited...and waited...and waited.

Trey started to get worried they were never coming back! In the end it was all worth it though. Josh found the BEST camping spot EVER!

It had this huge open field next to it, plenty of shade, and no campers next to us. PERFECT. My sister and her hubby joined us (and brought a portable potty seat, HALLELUJAH!) and from then on, we had a perfect camp trip!

We played some baseball in the field:

Samuel got some loves from his Aunt Nikki:

We had a little rough patch when Trey realized there was no TV when we were camping...

He still wasn't over it when we tried to take a family picture.

The next day on the way out of town we stopped to check out Christopher Creek for a few minutes. The boys loved it and now they want to go fishing. I'm gonna have to leave that up to Josh. I hate fish.

But all in all, we had a great trip! I didn't sleep very well because I'm the lightest sleeper on the face of the planet, and camping with kids = no staying up late to play fun games...but the kids did better than I expected! And unlike this camping trip, there was NO putting flashlights in the fire, sticking hands in the fire, or picking up hot coals. So that was nice.

I kind of forgot about taking pictures the rest of the time. My sis did a great recap, complete with video, on her blog. Check it out here!