Happy first week of Summer! These super long days are my favorite. It isn't dark until 9:30 pm around here.  Isn't it the best time of year?

Since we're halfway to Christmas, I thought I'd celebrate by letting you read a story I wrote when I was 9. I was in 4th grade and we had to write a Christmas story, and then our teacher would compile them into a class book.

At this point in my life I was obviously deep into my crack addiction. You'll see just how bad it was after reading the story.  I was always one of the smarter kids in my classes, how on earth is THIS the story I wrote?

 What the???

So, Utah is in a bit of a drought and several cities are restricting water usage to prevent from drying up the wells.

Well, this morning as I watched the below video, I think I cried enough tears to fill them back up. This video has been circulating through the Mormon boards on Pinterest. I have been meaning to watch it since Jeffrey R. Holland always knows the right things to say. I am so glad I made time for it this morning. I needed this message more than I can say. I hope that you take the 45 minutes to hear the full message. God loves us, and will help us triumph over our adversities. Life is hard sometimes. Sometimes it's not just hard, it's miserable or scary or agonizing or terrible. I am thankful to know I have help when those times come.

When my mom was about to have her brain surgery in March, I was a bit of a mess. I sought refuge in the scriptures because I have found they calm me down when I feel anxious. During this time, I stumbled upon this scripture:

D&C 121:7-8 "My son [or daughter], peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; and then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes."

I have read and reread this scripture many nights since I found it. It has become one of my favorites through the hardships that come and go. I know that we are never left alone to rot in our own "liberty jails", and that God is with us and will help us triumph over our foes that life brings up. If you have any extra time, please watch the video. I promise you won't regret it.

So, good things are happening. Justin got home from Military duty, which means I no longer have to sleep with all the lights on in the house, a hammer and pepper spray on my nightstand, and I no longer hear the noises our neighbors make when walking through their house (which sounds like they're walking through MY HOUSE... not fun).

My mom keeps getting healthier! Her followup MRI was last week the day before her birthday, and we were all praying it was a good birthday present...

AND IT WAS!!!!! BRAIN SCAN WAS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!! 

At a family get together right before her birthday. She looks so beautiful and healthy!

Can I get like 5,000 hallelujah shouts from you guys for this? Now we can all breathe for half the summer until her next one. She is seriously a fighter. I am grateful everyday that she is my mother, and that for her 58th birthday she was given great news! Now she can enjoy her summer, even with a little chemo now and then, and continue to get stronger. She's eating more and more solid food, and using the feeding tube less and less. She even managed to do some housework yesterday. It wasn't easy but it was possible. BIG STEPS people, these big steps are awesome!
You know my post on faith from 2 weeks ago? I can assure you I am still learning what faith can do. I don't know if my prayers were the healing magic for her. I just know that faith is necessary for our survival as people. How on earth would we get through tragedy if we didn't have faith that WE would be ok in the end? Seeing my mom's unwavering faith through this whole mess, and through her whole life has proved to me that we must have faith, there is no other option that will help us.

Thank you for all your help for our family. People are feeding my stepdad and my younger siblings that are at home almost everyday. Our neighbor has taken over the yard work for my parents. My mom usually had an amazing garden and took care of the yard as her hobby, and our kind neighbors have taken over this duty, voluntarily.

Everyone helped me make a "Why Mary is awesome" book for her birthday. She told me yesterday she has read, and reread the book several times and just loves it. So thank you for helping me make that possible for her.

I am grateful right now, for the relief from the stress that has come. For the past 3 months we've all been on edge wondering what would happen. And now I feel sweet relief from the worry. Even if the hard times will come again, I am thankful for this calm time now.

It allows me to stop and enjoy the peaceful sounds of the birds in the trees out my window, the purring of my over-cuddly cat next to me, and the sunshine shining in from my bedroom window onto my bed.

Such a lovely morning.

http://www.dazzlejunction.com/awareness/brain-cancer/brain-cancer-ribbon.png

So, I've heard a billion times that marriage is rough because of the ability to miscommunicate or do or say the wrong thing.

Honestly, I thought everyone just needed to try harder (before I got married). Now I realize there are 2 sides to every story. Watch this video, then proceed.



Sometimes, I feel sorry for men because they have to marry women, and we are bonkers crazy. But I also feel sorry for women because we have to marry men, and we can't go to them like we can our girlfriends. If you go to a guy, you need to know they'll just give you a solution, and women are the queens of not needing a solution, just needing to get their feelings out so they can move on from emotional outburst land.

Case in point - I vented to a guy I was dating once about a girl I was friends with that was being a royal pain in the butt... his response was "So stop hanging out with her." My expected response from him was, "WHAT A B-WORD HOW DARE SHE SAY THAT ABOUT YOU!" So naturally, he and I got in a fight...because who cares if he's right, RIGHT? It's hard to remember though when I talk to Justin about things that he is rarely ever going to say, "I'm sorry that must be hard for you." His usual response is, "Want me to punch them out for you?"(Solution oriented.)

Although, in this particular Youtube example, I can't think of one of my girlfriends who wouldn't be like, "Yeah that must be really painful and annoying, day in and day out, with those headaches. But here, let me pull out that nail and it should go away. There all better, let's get some ice cream and do our nails. Also you're hotter than any other girls, and you have better style, and are funnier." (Validation of my feelings first, solution next, followed by a pick me up activity and a major compliment fest to finish the deal.) Yeah, it takes a lot of work, and women just naturally know how to do this.

So I guess the moral of the story is, girls need girlfriends so they can vent properly, and guys need to fix things. It's just the way we all are.

The other moral of the story is, women are, in fact, crazy. And I live in Womanland, so I know... but guys wouldn't be alive if we weren't here, so I'm sorry guys, you have to deal with us.

The End.

I'm no connoisseur of woman's beauty products, and I wouldn't even call myself that experienced. I kind of suck at remembering to even put on lotion until my skin looks cracked or it itches. So, naturally I don't spend a lot on finding the right beauty products. I heard about a company called Birchbox through a friend's blog and I decided to give it a try. You can sign up for the random sampling box that comes once a month and it's only $10. A lot of it is beauty product samples, with some cool things thrown in here and there. So I thought hey, a bunch of cool products to test out for only $10 a month? I can spare $10.

The first box that came was only so so, but it was still cool. I got some tea samples from a new tea company, some black eye liner, some sunscreen for my face, a hair conditioning mask sample, and a couple other things.

This time I loved ALL of the items I got.

Here's a picture of the box and all it's contents.

2 nautical hair ties, a small tub of facial cleanser, a tube of hot pink lipstick, a bright minty nail polish, perfume sample, another hair product, and a pack of postcards that are lovely.

I am loving this box this time. The pink lipstick is super bright but I'm pretty sure I could rock it if I had on the right outfit. The nail polish color is super cute, and the perfume smells like pretty flowers. I am loving the postcards too. This particular box for June was designed with summer in mind.

They also have men's boxes that have really cool men's products in them. I can't wait to test all this stuff out, and see what comes in July!

You can also order anything you want from their website, and order full size versions of the samples they send too.

Check 'em out at http://www.birchbox.com/!

So, because I had a whole night to myself after work last night, I decided to redo the flowers patch that had recently been cleared by the lovely yard guys.

No more bare dirt!  $20 bucks at home depot can go pretty far if you go at the right time. Also, these FOR SURE look like flowers and not weeds so I am positive they won't rip them out this time. I'm loving my little flower patch. Maybe I should've done things the easy way the first time instead of trying to grow wildflowers from seed?


What do you think?

I finished my day at work, ran home to pick up a few things, water my precious wildflower patch to keep it from cooking in the 90 degree mountain sun, and then I was going to rush off to a fun family barbecue/picnic... and came home to this:


Yesterday it was this:

WHY YARD PEOPLE, WHY?!!!!?!?!?

I am seriously pissed. I spent 2 months trying to grow those wildflowers and they kind of looked like a big pile of weeds but they were all covered in buds and in the next few days would've looked like this:

http://www.hamptons.com/gallery/article/16907c.jpg

I have been waiting 2 whole months. Patiently watering everyday, checking their growth from the tiny little seeds I dumped gently into the dirt, to teeny tiny seedlings, to the 14 inch tall plants they had become. I was a proud gardener yesterday. Happily posting the above collage to Instagram, just knowing I was going to brag about my amazing green thumb in a few days when all those pretty purple, orange and red blooms opened up. Yeah... NO.

Happy Monday yard people. Happy Monday everyone.

HAPPY.
FREAKING.
MONDAY.

GRRRRRR!

I feel like a combination of these two things now (tough to achieve, I know! It only happens when you uproot my precious flower beds while I'm at work!):

http://community.mom365.com/group/crybabyphotocontest2011

http://churchfun.com/images/wp/bear.jpg

So, I rarely complain about businesses because I feel like if I take my business elsewhere then I am victorious and they are not, but over the past few months Justin and I were getting screwed big time and I'd like to tell the world about it! I'd like to help you from making a grave mistake by working with CHASE BANK for anything at all.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/ 400x/31183668.jpg

We're trying to buy a house and were very excited to find out the type of loan we qualified for was the best one on the market and allowed a lot of freedom when buying a house with minimal up front costs. Well, our lender was an idiot and didn't actually make sure we qualified for that specific type of loan. It's a hard one to get and so you have to make sure all the hoops are jumped through.

But he never told us. So we went house hunting, and happily put offers on homes we fell in love with hoping someone would accept our offer. SOMEONE DID! And the house was perfect!

Three weeks before we were supposed to close on the home we fell in love with, we found out he hadn't done his job, and our only option was to come up with a lot more money every month AND upfront, and that we didn't even qualify for that loan (despite the fact he'd sent loan approval letters to our seller). You can imagine our severe disappointment in having to walk away from our dream house.

What's even worse is, the first house we offered on wouldn't accept our type of loan because it requires an extra appraisal, and had we known we didn't even qualify for that type of loan, we'd have gotten the first house which was super cheap and nice, or waited several months to come up with a huge downpayment.

Then when we walked away from the house BEFORE the deadline to cancel our offer, the guy tried to tell us the fee he said was for the APPRAISAL was actually for a non-refundable application fee. Yeah, I don't fall for that. We have been fighting for over a week now to get our money back. I filed a complaint with his boss, and on their company's website.  Justin talked to his boss about the whole thing, and he said he'd give us our money back. The guy we were working with didn't even apologize for not doing his job, making us lose our favorite house, or for lying to us. All he said was "I told you already, can't refund you, take it up with my boss".

GRRRRRRRRRRR! Chase bank you suck balls. I hate you.

His manager told Justin we'd be getting our $500 bucks back... let's hope this really happens. It's been 5 days now.

NEVER WORK WITH CHASE BANK UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!!!!!

Well, for those of you looking for an update on my mom, I have excellent news!

SHE IS OUT OF THE HOSPITAL!

Huntsman Cancer Center really knows how to take care of people. After 10 days in hospitals (and only 2 at the Huntsman center) she has been released and is slowly getting stronger with the help of home health nurses.

Thank you for all of your prayers, positive thoughts, and help. There are so many people who helped and spent time with my mom while she was there and during all of this crazy cancer stuff. You are angels that live on Earth and you have done so much for my mom and our family. I am so grateful for you.

If you are able, please continue your prayers and positive thoughts! She still has a long road to recovery back to normal but she is out of the woods for now.

I love simple victories in life!!! I am happy.

And exhausted.

This is my recuperate-from-stress weekend. I might work on my chair that I'm fixing up, or I might just lie here like a zombie and watch tv until my body decides it has recovered. The possibilities are endless!

Oh and today I bought this cute little succulent garden in a pot! It looks good with my paintings doesn't it? (Don't mind the long overdue need to dust. Dusting is not my hobby.)