Next year for sure!

Lacey said it best in her comment to Kliss about seeing the lights on Temple Square. "Next year for sure." So here's my list of Next Year for Sure things:
1. Have the tree(s) up ready to light on Thanksgiving night.
2. Decorate 2 trees. One in the addition and a new white one in the front room in front of the window for all the people to see as they drive by and to help me remember it's Christmas because I don't go out in the addition that much.
3. For sure I'll have any gifts that are Christmas-y ready to give early so they can be enjoyed through the weeks before Christmas and not just on Christmas Eve. This means any decorations and/or neighbor gifts.
4. Have all gifts bought and wrapped by Thanksgiving so I can distribute them at Thanksgiving to save mailing them if that turns out to be a plan. If not, I'll still have them bought and wrapped and ready to go so I can sit back and smugly tell people that I have my shopping and wrapping done.
5. Post my list of "ever-so-clever-and-quite-cheesy" neighbor gifts in October so others can have plenty of time to get them ready to give to their neighbors.
6. Come up with a new neighbor gift idea that isn't lame so I don't feel stupid when I receive a bag with a loaf of homemade bread, a bag of Mission tortilla chips, a jar of homemade salsa (ummm---so good!) and chocolate raspberry bars that are wonderful and the recipe is from Weight Watchers. Accompanying that gift was another gift bag containing a mirror with the nativity etched on it. A small easel was included to hold the mirror. This from one neighbor. Another neighbor gift was paper products wrapped up in cellophane giving me a night off from doing dishes. This was accompanied by a big red popcorn bowl filled with a lightly sweetened mix of popcorn and nuts. Or, the huge, oversized bowl heaping with caramel popcorn and wrapped with yards of cellophane to cover all of it. My little $2 bottle of Mayo seemed downright cheap in the trading.
7. Make it to Utah to see the lights on Temple Square and visit our Utah families.
8. Enjoy the month of December instead of wondering if we had a month of December.
9. Get really, really organized for Christmas at the end of September. That means making lists, shopping, and planning. (This year I started my list before Thanksgiving and might as well have not even had one for all that seemed to not get done until the last minute anyway.
10. Next year for sure I will enjoy Christmas!

Shopping on Black Friday--Holy Cow!

I have strategies for getting my Christmas shopping done in the most comfortable environment I can create for myself. I do some of my shopping online, but I still have to venture out for the majority of it. So my strategy is to get up early every Saturday morning and be down south before the masses get there. That means that I am usually there by 8:00 a.m. (no later than 9:00) and most stores I want to shop at are open by then. I don't mind the shopping, but I do mind being in the crowds and standing in long lines.

This Friday, the girls thought it would be "fun" to go to Target early and just watch and do some minor shopping. Since I didn't have much else going on and since I don't mind getting up early, I was game. (I did have to be reminded of why we were thinking this experience would be "fun" a couple of times as my palms started to get sweaty in the bumper-to-bumper traffic.)


























As we were in the turning lane to enter the Target parking lot, Kliss suggested I put my 4-wheel drive vehicle to good use and jump the curb, cross the grass, dodge a tree or two , and get a parking spot. It didn't matter that it was a mile away from the store, it was a parking spot! My what a full parking lot it was. We thought we were getting there as the store was opening but we missed that fiasco. It had already been open an hour when got there at 7 a.m.

We streamed into the store with fellow bargain hunters only to find there were no carts available. How is a person supposed to do serious
shopping without at shopping cart? We should have gotten a clue about the long (read slow) checkout lines when there were not any people giving up their carts as they were leaving the store. As we were deciding what to do about the
dilemma, Matt's cousin, Angie, came through the doors and we gladly invited her to join us in
our adventure. While we were just there to get whatever, Angie had a few items she was looking for.


I couldn't help reminisce about the simple life of Christmas shopping pre-department store days. I remember as a child shopping at Kings and Porters. Kings had aisles of merchandise that were no higher than eye level, unless you were shopping on the outer walls which may have had merchandise higher up. I can't recall that exactly. They had a Toyland downstairs which was the same way. Pretty much what was on the aisles was what you could buy for Christmas. You could do mail order from the Sears and Penneys catalogs which would offer more variety, but that was pretty much it. We were quite limited comparatively speaking. Now it's practically floor to ceiling shelves full of merchandise giving you much more choice, and many more decisions to make.

I think of all the merchandise that just one store like Target carries, then think of the WalMarts, KMarts, Toys R Us's, Sams Clubs, Costcos, ShopKo's, etc., etc., etc. We live in a whole different world from when I was a child and even a young mother with just a couple of kids. It's ironic that even with all the merchandise available, you'll go out shopping and still say, "I wish they'd make ...." or " Why doesn't someone come up with....." or "I've looked all over town and I can't find pink Christmas lights anywhere."

Anyway, cheers to the brave souls who were waiting in lines at 4 and 5 in the morning. May you find peace, goodwill toward men and that $325 laptop you were hoping to buy!

Holy Cow! What a Job!

In preparation for Thanksgiving, I am doing some housecleaning. All ambitious last Saturday, I had a long list of To-Do's. The first thing I did was clean the oven. I wiped out the inside of all extra drippings (time: 5 minutes) so it wouldn't smoke up the house when I turned the oven on to the 1000 degree self-cleaning. It took 3 hours for the oven to clean itself.

For some reason I had to get something out of the freezer and I decided that it was now or never to defrost the freezer since there was quite a bit of frost buildup and it was a pretty decent day outside. This wasn't even on my list of To-Do's but it had to be done so I budgeted 2 hours for it. (The reason it didn't get done this summer was because there was so much meat in it and the heat of summer wouldn't be the best for frozen meat.)

I unloaded the contents into a large picnic cooler, a small cooler, a blue IKEA bag, and the empty fridge next to the freezer. The last time I cleaned the freezer, there was water all over the floor of the garage even though I had placed pans to catch the dripping thawing ice. This time I wanted to avoid that so I got quite inventive. Pampered Chef has a tool that has several tines on it to hold meat and such while you cut it. It was the perfect thing to use with the meat tenderizer to chisel away the ice which would then fall into the cookie sheet to be emptied on the lawn outside. It really did work quite well, but when you have 5 shelves of frosty ice buildup to chisel, you soon start to relate to Michaelangelo (sp?) as he carved statues out of marble. My budget of 2 hours turned into 4 hours and 45 minutes of chiseling ice.

The other smart thing I did was to lay used bath towels at the very bottom of the freezer to soak up the inevitable water I couldn't catch as ice. Then I just put them in the washer and I didn't have to worry about the water all over the garage floor. The not-so-smart thing I did was to have Brandon move the fridge out so I could unplug the freezer while I defrosted it. I was really bugged at having to do this. When Dad got home and asked about the fridge being out of place, I complained about how inconvenient it was. He took me out in the garage and showed me the knob on the inside of the freezer that rotates to the Off position. I was so busy whacking away at ice, that I didn't even see it.

Once all the ice was chipped away, I reloaded the freezer. We have at least 120 pounds of holy hamburger in there. I was so tired by the time I got done, that the rest of my To-Do's have been postponed until another day. Holy Cow, will someone please invent a self-cleaning freezer?!!!

The Blessed Time Change

Fall has been beautiful this year. I have probably enjoyed it as much as I ever have. But every Fall I have to have a talkin' to myself to be able to handle the coming months of Winter. If it weren't for Winter coming, I would really enjoy the Fall. One thing that I do look forward to in Fall is the end of daylight savings time. I get my hour back. I have to play a game with myself with daylight savings time. In the spring, I have to keep telling myself that I only lost one hour so getting up an hour earlier just happens one day and then you just get up at the same time every morning after that. However, when Fall comes, I tell myself I have an extra hour everyday. Then, when I get up at the usual time of 5 a.m. from daylight savings time, I am really getting up at 4 a.m. but I don't even feel it. So now I have an extra hour to cram whatever I want into it. (If this doesn't make sense, forget it, I can't explain it any better.)

Last year I crammed usually about 80 minutes of exercise every morning, scripture study, books, and some cleaning or ironing. I was really bummed that for all the exercise I did, I had little (or should I say a lot) to show for it. So here I am again this Fall, getting up at 4:00 in the morning and starting once again with the exercise, scriptures, bookwork, etc. Even though I didn't see much weight loss, I felt so much better so I am going for that good feeling of accomplishment and we'll see what kind of results I'll get weight wise. I'm not expecting much, so maybe I won't be disappointed.

Anyway, welcome back Standard Daylight Time. You bring nightfall earlier which is a bummer but I forgive you because I love my extra hour in the morning!

Nag Sandwiches

I had to document this! Logan has an assignment in his foods class to cook a meal. I have had to nag, nag, nag to get him to get it done so he finally broke down and fixed steak sandwiches.
Here he is pounding the meat to tenderize it.














Here's the meat on the grill.













Here he's trying not to gag as he spreads
mayo on Dad's sandwich.













And finally, the Nag Sandwich is ready to serve!













Now this is documented so his teacher (our cousin Robyn Eastin) will believe he did the assignment. I printed off pictures for him to take to class. Now I will probably have to nag to get him to turn them in.

Talent in the family

Gail, Katie, Jacob and I travelled to Pocatello to Mark's senior recital which he has to do in order to graduate. He had a duo recital with another girl. Mark is a baritone. Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Doug were there and they were bursting buttons. It was pretty impressive to hear songs sung in Italian, French, and German. The first song is in German.

Shaylee Mae's shower and such

Shower for Kelli and Shaylee was given Sept. 1
(Brandon's birthday). Shaylee was born almost
3 weeks later.

I thought I'd share some pictures of the shower
Kliss gave Kelli and other things pertaining to
this precious new arrival.


What cute girls!

Nice that those sitting on the couch
color-coordinated their pants.

Letters on wall above Shaylee's crib.

Is this baby going to be a born worrier?

Ghost riders

Can you find the cowboys who look like ghosts in this picture? We went for a ride Saturday afternoon to listen to conference and to see how the cows were faring in the snow. Here are pictures of what it looks like on "the hill". On our way home, we saw some cows who had escaped and were on their way home so Jeremy and Dad and I came back. They luckily found them again in the fog, and they trailed the cows to Luthy's corral (probably about 3+ miles) while I brought the trailer.
I took pictures of how pretty it is on "The Hill" where the cattle stay during the summer. These pictures are of the Lyman Creek grazing area we have. We got more snow in the valley than we got on the hill.













There were several other pictures but I'm spending my whole day trying to figure out how to arrange these pictures and I'd really like to know how to put a caption on a picture (help, Kliss!) so I can really express myself.

This was a very relaxing day compared to a week ago Friday when I got brave enough to go ride on "The Hill" with Dad to get a bull. I figured there'd be more to it than just sitting on a horse. I rode the horse up the road with Dad for a little bit and then he went after the bull telling me to get in the trees and out of the way. I did so and Dad promptly left me to get the bull. I sat there for a little bit, not knowing really what to do. My horse was getting "yantsy" (Uncle Theron's version of the word antsy) so I decided to go back to the trailer so I wouldn't be in the way when Dad brought the bull to the corral up there. Not too long after I got off the horse, a boy from the old ward who was 4-wheeling came to tell me to take the trailer up the road cuz Dad had roped the bull. The kid, Jonathan, took the horse and off I went. Luckily he rode the horse up to where we were cuz we needed his help. Being the cowgirl I am, I was very handy at backing the trailer around to just the right spot it needed to be.....not!!! It was pretty embarassing. Dad was yelling at me with every turn of the steering wheel and I just wasn't getting it. Poor dad had the bull choked down and luckily it wasn't too feisty or we'd have really been in trouble. Jonathan helped Dad when we finally got the trailer where it needed to be. Dad had him go in the trailer to take the rope in--with the bull still attached---and the bull followed right behind trapping Jonathan inside. His vocabulary showed how scared he was and all Dad could do was coach him to "Don't move". As soon as he could, Dad opened the side door on the trailer and Jonathan bailed out. He was one shaking, traumatized kid!

Now that the mission was successful, Dad calmly told me he wasn't really yelling "at" me, he was "yelling" so I could hear him. I was instructed that I didn't need to turn the wheel as much as I had been in order to get the trailer to go where it was supposed to go. All I know is that I could hear very well and I had no sense of how to back that damn thing up. What really saved the day was being able to laugh at Jonathan's plight trapped in the back of the trailer with a huge bull. I was really grateful for Jonathan's help. I called Dad a stupid cowboy for trying to take on that kind of a job without more help than that. I haven't heard that last of that comment either.

On "Holy Cow"

Holy Cow! How many times do you hear people say that when they hear or see or do something out of the ordinary? While I don't think to say "Holy Cow" very often, it tickles me when I hear others say it. Holy Cow has its own, very literal, meaning to me. Being married to a farmer/rancher, Holy Cow means Holy Cow. While it doesn't apply to my dearly beloved husband as much as it does to other members of his family, the definition of Holy Cow in their vocabulary is: 1. you gotta have a herd of these in order to be considered anybody of importance 2. you gotta have a herd of these in order to be considered a true, real, living and breathing cowboy 3. you gotta have a herd of these to make an honest living 4. you gotta have a herd of these to be an upstanding member of the Roy McGarry family. With that definition out in the open, I have to say that my husband has moved on to bigger and better ways of thinking as have other family members, but it was pretty much the way he and his 3 brothers were raised. When we were first married, cows were pretty important. But as we entered a partnership with his oldest brother and his responsibilities went more to farm work than ranch work, he got diversified. I am glad he did because he is much more well-rounded and realizes that there's more to life than holy cows. We are on our own now, and we have close to 300 holy cows which have kept him and Jeremy (Michelle's husband) busy, busy, busy. But, Holy Cow! he enjoys what he's doing! So, keep those "Holy Cows" in your vocabularies, use them regularly, and EAT BEEF!

Granparents again!

Friday, September 21, we welcomed grandchild #10 into the family. Welcoming cousins include (from oldest to youngest) Wacy, Noah, Branson, Ashtyn, Ben, Haylee, Zackary, Brigham, and Brock. Shaylee Mae Frost is the first child of Shane and Kelli who have been anxiously awaiting her arrival. She is granddaughter # 3. Shaylee weighed 6 lbs. 7 oz. and was 20" long. She arrived via C-section. My first thought when I saw her was that she is a very tiny version of her dad,except she has hair and he doesn't! I am looking forward to helping them the next couple of days and getting to know this new little spirit fresh from Heavenly Father.