My Love For Grass

Mother: "Erik, it is your turn to mow the lawn today."

Erik: "gggggrrrr."

Varoom! Varoom! ..putt...putt...putt...Varoom! Varoom! ....choke....choke...choke... Varoom! Finally!!!!!!!

The lawn mower finally started but now I need to go ice my shoulder down. After a quick ice break I am off to mow the lawn. This time it is different because I am not in the mood. Our lawn isn't really large and honestly it isn't all that difficult to mow. But today there are two things I don't want to do; mow the lawn and shovel the dog poop off the lawn before mowing it.

The grumpy gene is boiling within me and my stubbornness is becoming more visible. I quickly map my plan out in my head and begin my artwork. I gently position the lawn mower in position, but in order to do so the lawn mower can't be on. Fearing the lawn mower won't start again, I take the chance and shut it down. With the mower in position, it miraculously starts on the first pull. Slowly I walk the mower in a straight line and with care I lower the handle to the grass while lifting the mower away from the lawn turning on a 335 degree turn so that it doesn't cut the grass. I quickly eye my line and start in a straight line again. When I have reached my point, I once again lower the handle toward the grass lifting the mower away from the lawn and make the necessary turn on the proper angle without cutting the grass. The mower is then lowered and I continue in a straight line. I have reached my ending point and now have to turn off the mower again to reposition.

A few feet away from my previous cuts, I eyeball my position and start the mower. Today must be my day because it starts again with ease. This time I gently move the mower at a slow and steady rate as if I am walking around an oval track. I return to my starting point and with a grin on my face I shut the mower down. I am done! I empty the mower bag and return the mower to its resting place in the garage.

The shoes are left at the sliding glass door and I cheerfully inform my mother that the task has been completed. At the moment she responds with a sense of gratitude but what she doesn't know is that I just gracefully mowed the letters "N" and "O" in the lawn.

...total time to completion = I don't remember but I do know it took longer than it would have if I had just mowed the lawn like normal.

Thankfully mother has a wonderful sense of humor!

P.S. I didn't shovel the poop before mowing. I learned quickly that it either gets sucked up into the bag or chopped up like and onion and spit out the sides of the mower.

The Chore That Never Ended

I know I could tell you all about the horrors of the chores of childhood such as cleaning the base-boards of the walls with a toothbrush, or picking raspberries off of their vines while getting mercilessly scratched by the tiny thorns so my mother could turn the raspberries into yummy jam, but those are honestly not the chores I dreaded the most!!

The chore I dreaded the most was weeding the retaining wall in our backyard in Antioch! And I dreaded dragging my four children into the never-ending job, but I so needed your help. It was not a one person job! Every year the weeds would come back in full force. Every year Dad and I would talk about doing something with that retaining wall so we wouldn't have to worry about it any more and every year, somehow, nothing would get done.

The weeds seemed to grow stronger and multiply each year. I had many a little talk with Adam under my breath that maybe being sent out of the Garden of Eden to "till the land" was not such a great idea (but I knew otherwise.)

Not only were the weeds the problem, the Antioch dirt or clay, I should say, made it even worse. The clay was so hard you couldn't weed unless the ground was wet, but once it was wet, it stuck to your shoes, so by the time you were done weeding you stood six to eight inches taller!! Then you had to wait for the mud to dry and spend another hour with the kitchen knife scraping all the lovely Antioch dirt off of your shoes. Yep, I hated that job!!

I hereby apologize profusely to my four cohorts for making them suffer along with me.

Love, Mom

The Chore I Abhorred

So, growing up, I had many chores I did grumblingly. But the one I hated the most was vacuuming. And it wasn't so much the actual vacuuming I hated, it was just that, for some reason, whenever it was my turn to do it, it seemed Dad was on one of his Kadafi kicks, and he was in charge of making sure we did our work. Right! Yes Sir!

And Dad was never satisfied when you vacuumed, unless he could see the vacuum lines in our nice plushy carpet. I'd have him check, and he'd see a spot that didn't have the lines, so I'd have to do it over.

So, after a short time, I figured out that if I got the dustpan out, when no one was looking, I could "scrape" those lines into the carpet, and it looked great. So that's what I did. I'd vacuum the major parts of the room. Then under the tables, near the chairs, etc., I'd scrape lines into the carpet with the dustpan.

Not sure if it really saved me much time and effort, but for some odd reason, it made me feel better! I'm sure Mom is possibly grossing out at the image though.....guess it's a good thing we moved.....

Karissa

An Amazing 40 Years!

So, we celebrated a bit Sunday evening with Mom and Dad. Their 40th anniversary was Saturday, and we all were stinkin' impressed. In fact, I even got them a sappy card, instead of a funny one, because I figured 40 years deserved some major sap!

So, I asked them to give us some nuggets o' wisdom from their long and arduous :) journey of married life. Here's what I got:

Mom: "The most important thing to remember is that the marriage and the family are more important than the desires of one individual."

Dad, in his usual low rumble, with a sigh: "Just hang in there."

These 2 are my heroes because they have not had an easy married life, but they have been committed to each other, even when they wanted to "commit" each other (Mom maybe wanted that part more than Dad....)

They have shown quiet courage throughout many trials, they have been quietly supportive of each other, even in the really hard times. Plus, they have brought us some pretty dang good times, and tons of times with lots of laughter.

So, here's to many good years for all of us, too!!!!

-Karissa

FINALLY

a tooth finally came out!

The Texas Molls

Hi everybody,

Sorry it took me a while to respond but here I am! We've had a busy few weeks dealing with the fantastic cedar allergies, strep throat/kidney issues, 10yrs anniversary (WOOHOO!), a new YW president (I stayed as secretary) and now I'm finally here :)

Our Christmas was lovely. We went to CA for a week to see my family. The Taylor clan (my mom's fam) had the annual Christmas party and all us Texans were able to make it. It was great to see my grandparents as their health is deteriorating quickly. But, come on, my grandpa turns 89 today!!! My parents and brothers went south to Disneyland while we were there so we had the house to ourselves and had a fantastic time in San Francisco, the Jelly Belly Factory and visiting with the Smeds. It was a great trip :)

Once we got home, we had three days till Christmas and it was a whirlwind. Friday we went to SA to visit the family. It was good to see them all; we really love being near them. On Saturday, we had 40 people over for Christmas Eve Brunch and it was SO fun. There were about 20 kiddos in the house and it didn't feel like it at all. PHEW! We really enjoyed our brunch and hope to make it an annual event. Christmas day was really calm and quiet. We had Church and just kind of hung out. It was really nice.

Now, for our anniversary, I just have to tell you what we did. Erik took the day off of work (*gasp*) and we went to breakfast at a local breakfast cafe - we love eating out for breakfast and never do it anymore so this was a real treat. Then we went to the school and surprised Kyson during his lunch. Then we left him and headed to the bowling ally! Erik won both games of course ;) We then got home when Kyson got out of school and got ready for our evening. We got a babysitter, went to Outback and saw WICKED. It was phenomenal. What a great evening! The show was so well done and beautiful. It was really a nice day.

Real Quick Like

Thanks Karissa for doing this. I think it’s a great idea. It’s kind of a cross between emailing and calling. I’m willing to give it a try.

Our Christmas was uneventful as far as our Christmases go. The usual nonstop insanity that comes with Cameron being in the bishopric and I in the YWs presidency. Throw in some Secret Santa-ing, cookies for the neighbors, Christmas preparations and a parakeet in a cast, well that should give you a taste of what our Christmas involved.

We had Christmas Day dinner at my brother Mike’s, he built an out of this world huge tree fort for his kids. I mean we all could have had Christmas dinner up there. The boys loved it. We had a relaxing afternoon with lots of good food, family and fun including a White Elephant exchange. What a hoot! Squirrel underwear and all.

We did 12 Peoples of Christmas. Where we picked 12 people/families to reach out to leading up to Christmas. Not that we didn’t already have enough to do, but we wanted to do something as a family. I think we’ll try it again next year too.

To match your music note Karissa, the boys have been into Weird Al Yankovic, Taio Cruz, Michael Jackson (in light of Weird Al), oh and a bunch of others I can’t think of. Cameron made a couple mixes of their favorite dance tunes and we get the strobe light out every so often and dance it up.

They are all taking piano lessons and doing really well. Hudson just memorized Yankee Doodle and is learning “I’ve Gotta a Feeling” he's so proud. Edison is learning some of Cameron’s compositions. Everest and Isaac know some Taio Cruz. They all know a bit of Journey.... It’s soooooooooooooo good to have music in the house.

Well that was more time than I should’ve taken. But there you have it. I’m off to the races!

Love you all!