Happy Father's Day

I'm so glad when Daddy comes home, glad as I can be!

Clap my hands and shout for joy and climb upon his knee.

Put my arms around his neck, hug him tight like this.

Pat his cheeks and give him what?

A Great Big Kiss!

Dedicated to the Father of My Children

Today at church, the speaker asked for any father who is perfect to please stand up. Brooke kept nudging John to stand up! He is pretty near perfect in our eyes. Incidentally, nobody stood up! The girls were so adorable singing this favorite Father's Day Primary song today and what was even more adorable was their father tearing up! This is dedicated to John, on Father's Day, who is a dedicated father, husband, priesthood holder - and an all around great guy!

He loves to cuddle with his babies and they all have fallen asleep so easily on him.

His son looks up to him and cherishes the fact that he is his "champ".


Loves to be with his kids - even if it's an impromptu sushi picnic on the front lawn.

Is very patient with the little ones when they have to go out to the foyer

An adventurer with the family. Here we hiked to a waterfall near our home.

Yeah! Finally!!!!

My sister Andrea is engaged! Yahoo! They are planning on being sealed on August 18th. We are all so excited!

This is pretty bad that I can't find any good pictures of them. My kids are overjoyed to have Adam as an uncle. As you can tell, he's a load of fun!

One Fabulous Weekend

On Saturday, we had a Stake Day in the Temple commemorating the 50th anniversary of the L.A. Temple. We got to meet in the Assembly Room (most have never seen it before, nor knew of its existence). The room is massive and seats about 2,300. It's as big as a football field.











It was a wonderful, spiritual meeting with messages from the Stake President, and the Temple President, and a beautiful choir directed by our internationally reknown choir director, who also directs the So Cal Mormon Choir.

Just as the Temple President was closing the meeting, and turning the time over to the choir for the closing hymn, a man sitting in the congregation gets up and walks all the way up to the pulpit and puts his arm around the President. What a shock to everyone, including the President, to have Elder Uchtdorf show up!

Most people initially wondered who that extremely handsome, dapper man was walking up to the front before realizing who it was. Once he started to speak, all were well aware. His accent is undeniable.

We were blessed to hear directly from an Apostle of God and receive his apostolic blessings. He's pretty funny, too. He joked that he loves California, even with its Governor (they share a common accent) and said we are in such a beautiful area that we need to start paying 20% tithing.

The moral of the story is to always attend your meetings as you never know who will show up! :-) Reminds me of the time when my friend Kim was on vacation and wanted to attend church, but decided not to since it was Stake Conference, not really wanting to go to someone else's stake meeting. Instead, they went on a nice family picnic, keeping the Sabbath in mind, thinking that was OK in lieu of attending a meeting. It wasn't until after the fact that they heard President Hinckley showed up at that Stake Conference!

Psycho Cycling

My local gym just added a 1/2 hour noon-time spin class so today a couple of friends and I thought we'd give it a try. We brought 6 of our littles along with us, dropped them off at the kids club, then proceeded to work our little (or not-so-little) tails off. What a great, quick work-out.

The people in this picture look like they're having way too much fun. Our room was dark, hot, and we all were drenched with I'm sure a very pained expression.
Because I'm having shoulder problems, I had to give up my boxing classes - hopefully only temporarily - so spinning will have to do!

Power Nap

My little guy is at the age where he still really needs an afternoon nap, but resists. This day, he was so tired, but didn't want to get out of the car to go in the house (because he knew it was naptime). I unbuckled him and brought the baby in, and thought he was coming in behind me, like he usually does. After I put the baby down, I went out to look for him and found him on the floor of the back row completely sacked out. He looks like he's having a very relaxing nap! I couldn't resist and had to capture this Kodak Moment. Three-year-olds are so funny!

More Notes on Gratitude

THANKFULNESS
By Oprah Winfrey

I live in the space of thankfulness - and I have been rewarded a million times over for it. I started out giving thanks for small things, and the more thankful I became, the more my bounty increased. That's because what you focus on expands, and when you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it. Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life.

"Say thank you!" Those words from my friend and mentor Maya Angelou turned my life around. One day about ten years ago, I was sitting in my bathroom with the door closed and the toilet lid down, booing and hooing on the phone so uncontrollably that I was incoherent. "Stop it! Stop it right now and say thank you!" Maya chided. "But - you don't understand," I sobbed. To this day, I can't remember what it was that had me so far gone, which only proves the point Maya was trying to make. "I do understand," she told me. "I want to hear you say it now. Out loud 'Thank you'." Tentatively, I repeated it: "Thank you - but what am I saying thank you for?" "You're saying thank you," Maya said, "because your faith is so strong that you don't doubt that whatever the problem, you'll get through it. You're saying thank you because you know that even in the eye of the storm, God has put a rainbow in the clouds. You're saying thank you because you know there's no problem created that can compare to the Creator of all things. Say thank you!" So I did - and still do. Only now I do it every day. I kept a gratitude journal! As Sarah Ban Breathnach suggests in SimpleAbundance, list at least five things that I'm grateful for. My list includes small pleasures: the feel of Kentucky bluegrass under my feet (like damp silk); a walk in the woods with all nine of my dogs and my cocker spaniel Sophie trying to keep up; cooking fried green tomatoes with Stedman and eating them while they're hot; reading a good book and knowing another awaits. My thank-you list also includes things too important to take for granted: an "okay" mammogram, friends who love me, 25 years at the same job (and loving it more than the first day I started), a chance to share my vision for a better life, staying centered, having financial security. I won't kid you, having money for all the things I want is a blessing. But as I look back over my journals, which I've kept since I was 15 years old, 99 per cent of what brought me real joy had nothing to do with money. (It had a lot to do with food, however.) It's not easy being grateful all the time. But it's when you feel least thankful that you are most in need of what gratitude can give you: PERSPECTIVE. Just knowing you have that daily list to complete allows you to look at your day differently, with an awareness of every sweet gesture and kind thought passed your way. When you learn to say thank you, you see the world anew.

Eight is Great

Mirror Mirror on the wall Tell me how to slow it all . . .

Tell me how to slow it all. . .

She is growing up way too fast! Does anyone know how to stop it? We keep threatening to put bricks on her head and we forbade her to have another birthday, but it happened anyway.

Brooke is already making plans for her 6-year-old birthday party (we do parties every other year), which isn't until Sept. I told her she's not allowed to turn six and she very matter-of-factly informed me that it was going to happen and there was absolutely nothing that I could do to stop it. Remember those days of looking forward to birthdays and getting older? Now it seems they come every few weeks rather than yearly. I'm OK with it slowing down just a little bit.