And the winner is...

Ta Da! 4th place at the San Juan County Fair. Actually I didn't expect to win anything after I realized that they sort us out by age groups before they judge anything. Are you kidding me? At my age, I'm in the semi-old lady category and competing against women who stay home and quilt all day. I was hoping to be sorted not by age, but by experience. That would put me up against the twelve-year-olds and maybe I could've won one of those big rosette ribbons with all the pretty colors. Oh well, lesson learned. I'm thinking that next year, I will lie about my age, but instead of saying I'm younger, I will say I'm much, much, older. That way, I can compete against the really old ladies who have all but lost their eyesight. Just my luck, they probably teach braille quilting somewhere. I'm okay with fourth place. I saw some quilts at the fair with a little ribbon attached that said "I participated in the San Juan County Fair." Actually, it was never about the size of the prize, it was about finishing.

Thanks for the naming suggestions. I liked them all, but the winner is....Jolly Green Giant, submitted by Melissa Wells. Missy's "prize" is a potholder made from my one leftover quilt block. I'm throwing in a knitted dishrag just to make it extra special! This was fun for me, so now I'm trying to think of more give-away contests I can do.

This quilting thing was so fun that I've signed up for a quilting class that begins next month. I figure that I will have some extra time on my hands since I won't be attending football games, basketball games, and track meets every weekend. Perhaps my next give away contest will be naming another quilt, but according to my daughter, I'm going to have to take it up a notch on the prize. I'll do my best Martha Stewart!

I've Been BUSY! OKAY?!

My family has complained a little about my lack of blogging, but they should know how busy I am, what with babysitting, gardening, and taking care of the yard! In addition, I've had several time-consuming "projects" this summer. (1) I cleaned my bedroom, closets, drawers, the works! That took a full week and two trips to Goodwill. There is no picture of this, but take my word for it, the bedroom is clean. It would be nice if I could get DoJo to buy-in to the Say No to Clutter philosophy. (2) I painted and recovered the bench in my entryway. I wish I had a "before" pic so

you could appreciate how great this looks. It still needs pillows, but I'm waiting until after I paint the entryway. (3) I helped Megan make a quilt for Sweet Pea's bed. WHY she hasn't shared that on her blog is way beyond me. (4) I helped KK get started on a quilt for her bed. The teal and brown fabrics came out of my 5-year supply of fabrics. She bought the print. This project was supposed to be her contribution to her new household since her handyman husband built a bookcase, but I was anxious to try out my new sewing machine, so I finished her quilt. Don't tell Reed. If he suspects that she has no domestic skills, he might try to return her. And (5), I finished a quilt for my bed. I started it about 5 years ago just by making the Churn Dash blocks from some green fabric I bought at WalMart. Long story short, I put the blocks away and never got back to them. I decided that this was a project that needed to be finished, so I went to work. Actually, I didn't love the green blocks as much as I did 5 years ago, but once I started sewing them together, I loved them again. I'm lucky enough to have a friend with a long arm quilter, so she let me use her machine and I had this monster quilted in about 3 hours! It took me two more days to bind it, but it is finished. Now I know why those quilts you see at the county fair are so expensive. I have about 100 hours into this thing and over $100 in materials.

Amanda took a picture of me holding up the quilt, but I couldn't use it on my blog because my face is so fat that you wouldn't be able to take your eyes off it long enough to be amazed by all my hard work.

Now for the fun part: Help me name this quilt. According to my friend who is the current president of the local quilter's guild, every quilt MUST have a label with the quilt name, the quilter, and the year. (I'm going to make this on my new sewing machine.) As you can see, I'm not all that creative. I mean really...I couldn't even think of another color to work with here! The entire quilt is green. So help me name my quilt and the winner will get a special prize. I will put all the entries in a hat and draw out the winner on August 8th. If you are the winner, I will contact you, get your snail mail address, and mail a special prize to you. (Megan Stewart does not qualify for this giveaway because she thinks the special prize is lame.) To everyone else...GOOD LUCK! I will post the winning label once I figure out how to make my new sewing machine make letters and numbers.

A Green Thumb?

I always look forward to summer, even though it doesn't really hold any promise of vacation for me and DoJo. People like to buy ice in the summer, so DoJo accomodates them as best he can. As for me, I'm the yard and garden man.

This is cabbage, broccoli, or cauliflower...I don't remember which. I've never grown it before, so this is an experiment.

It takes me about 3 days to irrigate the entire yard Thankfully, we have a well, so I'm only paying for the electricity to run the pump and not for the water. Plus the water is great for irrigating my grandkids.

My garden is mostly in raised beds (a.k.a. square foot gardens). Yes, they work, but the stinkin' vine weed loves them too. Yes, I put a weed barrier under the boxes, but vine weed is persistent, so I spend a good amount of time trying to keep my garden weed-free.

Here's my corn field. It's far from weed-free, but I work at it. I've not had much luck in the past with my corn, so I'm feeling good that these plants are actually growning. I was only going to plant 3 rows, but DoJo thought we needed more, so I fired up the rototiller and planted 3 more. I hope it grows because I'm really looking forward to some grilled corn!

Now for those of you who, like me, don't have a REAL green thumb...there's hope! Read on...

My 87-year-old mother lives with us. Grandma is physically healthy but she has dementia. Most of the time she just can't remember things and she repeats the same conversations over and over. Occasionally, she makes things up and really believes them. One family favorite is the time she imagined that DoJo was stealing all her money and she wanted to call the sheriff. Anyway, the real story this time is Grandma's green thumb. A few days ago, she took all her potted plants outside to water them. Among the plants she watered was this pretty little basket of flowers.

As you can see, this pretty little basket of flowers is silk. When I pointed this out to Grandma, she was more than a little miffed at me. She told me that the flowers in the basket were wilted until she watered them. Once watered, they "perked right up." I pointed out the plastic stems and the texture of the flowers, but to no avail. She just stuck her finger down in the wet florist foam and told me she knew they were real because there was soil in the bottom of the pot. It very well may be soil by now. Does florist foam decompose? Not one to let me have the last word, Grandma marched the basket of flowers back to her bedroom with a parting shot of "I don't care what YOU say, I KNOW what I'm talking about!" (That parting shot is more effective if you can imagine hearing it said in a Texan accent.) Okay then. I've decided to put Grandma in charge of the corn and keep her away from the vine weed.

It's Here!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Wesley's mission call came yesterday. (Good ol' USPS didn't let us down!) Mark Farnsworth nailed the mission lottery. His guess was Washington, and yes, Wes is going the the Washington Everett mission. Wesley was my slave labor yesterday, so he was the one to check the mail. And what did he do when he found his call in the mail box? Run in the house and tell his mother? NO! He called his big sister, Amanda. It's okay...I'm way past feeling like I need to be the first to know. (Actually, being married to DoJo pretty much guarantees that I will be the LAST to know anything!) We made Wes wait until most of his siblings and friends could be present for the opening. I thought I took a picture of the event, but in all the excitement, I became technologically challenged. Thanks to Amanda for the video and the pics. Wesley enters the MTC on September 16th. Looking forward to that curbside dropoff. Here are a few more pics of the moment.

Wes and buddies, from left to right: Preston, Kyle, Todd, Wes, Derek, and Ryder.

Mission Update

As previously posted, the stake president (hereafter known only as SP) submitted Wesley's mission papers on Tuesday afternoon. For those of you who haven't had a missionary in awhile, filling out the papers and submitting them is all done electronically nowadays. A cool use of technology! Anywhooo, once submitted, the SP can actually "track" their progress. The SP was more than willing to keep the family in-the-know, so on Tuesday afternoon, the tracking message from Salt Lake said "In progress". By Wednesday, the message read "Ready for assignment". The missionary committee meets on Thursdays. Yesterday while the girls and I were working furiously at transforming a basketball court into reception wonderland, the SP called to say that the tracking message had changed to "Call letter sent." Yeah, I started to freak a little, but Meg was quick to the rescue. She grabbed my face, looked me square in the eye and said, "Mom, focus! We have reception wonderland to finish. You can freak out later." Then she handed me a bolt of tulle and a staple gun and told me to get busy. That Meg! If it weren't for her, I would probably be curled up in the corner of the church kitchen stuffing my face with chocolate cake donuts (yesterday was National Donut Day) while planning ways to hack into the church computer system. No really...I'll be okay. This is a good thing to freak out about. But here's the real rub...the call letter is sent snail-mail! Can't the missionary department just text me and let me know what's going on? I have to wait a week to find out whether my baby will have to take meds for tape worms? All this technology, and we are pinning our future on a 44-cent stamp?! What about Skype or Twitter? Anything but USPS! Ooops, I'm startin' to freak again...sorry.

If you would like to weigh in on the

Where Will Wesley Serve "lottery", let me know and I will put your pin on the map. DoJo is planning a winner's prize, but I say the winner gets bragging rights. Who doesn't just love to say "I KNEW IT!" or "I TOLD YOU SO!"?

Irrigation Day

What do kids love most? Those expensive toys we spend months looking for? NO! They love dirt, water, and fire...not necessarily in that order. I'm happy to the provide dirt and water for my grandkids. Luckily most of them live just around the corner, so when the kiddos really enjoy Grandma's yard a little too much, they can just go home and change clothes. (Desi knows to pack an extra set of duds when they come to Kirtland.) Yesterday was irrigation day, and the grandkids have radar for water, so here's the results:

Liv demonstrates the fine art of drinking from the irrigation pipe. No worries...it's well water.

Bottoms up!

Kourtney, of course, drinks with flare. This is the red-neck version of extending your pinkie when sipping a cup of cocoa.

THEN, the adults had an idea! Baby pool. Nolan stopped at Walmart on his way home (bless his heart...Walmart at 5 pm...now there's a REAL MAN for you!)

Everyone is enjoying the water...

Kinda...

Drew & Liv are a little confused about diving.

"Wow! Would you look at that!"

It's all really fun until someone gets hosed. For Andrew, even the 44oz. Big Gulp was no comfort.
So much for irrigating the grandkids. They'll be back for more next week! I'm the luckiest Grandma in the world.

Where Does My Time Go?

I've been a little busy lately, and just realized that I've not posted anything since the middle of May. I know my peeps must be starved for info, so here's a run-down of what my life has been like since the middle of May:
On the same weekend as Kaitlin's bridal shower (May 2nd),

Wesley went to his senior prom with a friend from St. George, Utah. How he convinced this girl (and her mother!) to drive 7 hours to go out with him is beyond me. Nonetheless, he did. The young lady is Chelsea, daughter of Connie & Dexter Irvin, who once were Kirtland residents. Wes and Chelsea were kindergarden sweethearts, so this was a fitting end to their high school years.

The excitement continued...on May 15th & 16th, Wesley participated at the state track meet. He had injured his shoulder the previous weekend (May 8th & 9th) at the district meet, so we were not sure if he would be able to throw the javelin. After a week of rehab, we woke up to a blustery, cold Saturday morning in Albuquerque...miserable weather for throwing. In previous years, Wes took 5th place as a sophomore and 3rd place as a junior, so he had his sights set on 1st. Had it not been for the injury, he most likely could have taken it. As it turned out, he took second place. DoJo and I were just happy that he could end his high school track career with a good finish.

My 49th birthday was on Monday, May 18th (When did I get so old?), but that wasn't nearly as momentous as was Wesley's high school graduation on the 23rd! I didn't cry, but I felt like it. It seems like just yesterday that Wesley was the sweet little boy you see here with his best bud, Kyle.

And now look at him, a high school graduate with his Grandma Owens on the left and Grandma Whipple on the right.

Wes is just slightly spoiled, but it isn't ALL my fault. He has his "other mothers" to take up where I leave off. Here's the evidence of their adoration:

Perhaps the adoration thing is not quite universal?!

THEN, last weekend, we made the trek to Monticello, Utah for Kaitlin & Reed's wedding. Monticello is a two-hour drive from our house. The Monticello Temple is one of the church's smaller temples, but it is beautiful. Kaitlin and Reed had a beautiful morning for a wedding. Here is how they looked greeting each other on the morning of their wedding day:

And this is how they looked coming out of the temple:

How cute is this couple?! I did not cry until the photo montage of these two kids growing up was shown at the luncheon after the ceremony. Thank goodness it was dark! I'm not sad...no, I'm really happy that she made such a good choice. I'm just a little taken aback that she is grown and married.

As for adoration, well...it depends on the day.

If you are wondering where Jared was in all this, well, he saves his appearances for only the best photos. Yes, he's getting an electric razor for Father's Day!

NOW, we are in the countdown week for the wedding reception. Just to make things interesting, Wesley had his wisdom teeth taken out yesterday. Yes, the wisdom teeth came out in preparation for a mission. Wesley has had his mission papers filled out for weeks, met with the bishop, met with the stake president, and now the teeth. I admit, I've cried a few times. But it is really random what sets me off. The cereal aisle at Walmart, watching him bless the sacrament, watching him eat jello. It's bizarre. Most people think I'm just having some sort of mid-life crisis. No, it's just having both my babies leave home practically simultaneously. The double-whammy for the empty-nest syndrome. DoJo assures me this is all part of the BIG PLAN.

I stayed by his side yesterday, armed with pain killers, ice bags, and jello. My reputation as a nurse isn't a good one, but I enjoyed spending the day with my boy. We watched Marley & Me and Bedtime Stories. (Hooray for Pay-Per-View!) Beware! Marley & Me is emotionally manipulative. I cried, and I don't even like dogs! In the middle of the afternoon, DoJo called to tell me that I had gotten my wish: the MTC is now using curbside dropoff for entering missionaries. I had previously mentioned that I didn't know if I could "handle" the MTC departure experience with Wesley and hoped that he would go foreign and straight to an MTC in a foreign country. This announcement was an answer to my prayers. In addition to telling me about curbside dropoff, DoJo called to let me know that the stake president had submitted Wesley's mission papers. I didn't cry because I had just finished watching Marley & Me and had nothin' left.

So there it is. My life for the past month. Whew! I'm exhausted just reading about it. More to come on transforming the cultural hall into reception wonderland. Just think, tulle, spraypaint, twinkly lights, and cupcakes and you've got the mental picture.