The Law of the Garbage Truck

One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly.

So I asked, "Why did you just do that? This guy almost caused an accident and sent us to the hopital!" This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, "The Law of the Garbage Truck."

He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, full of disappointment and rage. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you. Don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't pick up their garbage and spread it to other people in your life, whether at work, at home, or to people that you don't even know on the streeets.

Always remember that good people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so..."Love the people who treat you right and forgive and pray for the ones who don't."
Author Unknown

Fun Day

I'm kickin myself because I always forget to bring my camera places. Lat night for activity days we took the girls on a nature walk along a river trail near the church. It was fun and we collected things along the way that we took back and made these nature bags out of wax paper with the things we had collected in them.. I was planning to take picts but of course forgot the camera.i had to take all my kids with me with steve being out of town again so it was a little hectic but they had fun... Logan came down with a cold yesterday so we ended up not being able to go on our movie date that we usually do on weds so I came up with a brilliant idea as I was running this morning. We were supposed to go to the marina after the movie and have a picnic and let the kids play in the park so the kids were all bummed we couldnt go so this morning I ran to blockbusters and got a couple movies. Then went to the store and bought some candy and some subs from subway and then headed to 7-11 and got all the kids a slurpe that they just love and told them to lay a blanket out in front of the tv and that I would have a surprise when I got home.. So we had a picnic lunch in front of the tv while we watched a movie and ate subs and candy.. The kids had a blast. They were so excited.. I figured it gave us our chance to have our mommy kids date but still stay in until logan gets feeling better. Plus these last couple of weeks that I have been trying to have more one on one times and mommy kids dates have made such a diffrence for me and them. It's making us some great memorys. Yesterday I tried to spend 15-30 mins alone with each kid doing something they just wanted to do.. I ended up playing alot of air hockey and going on bike rides and playing operation.. It was pretty fun.. We are planning to watch another one tonight and have some popcorn.. I just wish that steve could be here with us to make it a family thing.. I want them to have some good memorys of him doing things with them too but with work lately he just doesnt seem to have the time. And when he is home we have so many things to try and get done we dont get a chance to stop and go do some of the fun stuff. Owell we will keep trying.. I know on the Saturdays that steve is home he takes Austin to the church with him to play basketball with some of the elders and other men.. Austin just loves doing that.. He wakes up early just so he doesnt miss out going with his dad.. They usually go early while the girls sleep in.. That will be great memorys for him.. Isn't that what its all about???? The memorys we are making here.................................

Bike Ride

Sorry for all the posts today but I wanted to include some pictures of our bike ride tonight.. I went on a one on one ride with my oldest daughter Allie tonight. We rode up to the big park that has alot of walking and biking paths around it and I decided to take the camera with me to catch some pictures of the trail we ride.. I got a picture of the path leading up to the bridge that goes across the river we cross to get to the park. We even got one of a turtle sticking his head out of the water. I hope its clear enough for you to see.. Then we got some of the park. Its way to big to fit it all in one picture so I took a couple to give you an idea but the trails go all the way around to the far back where the thick dark trees run. Its a big park. Its about 2 miles from the turn off to get around then another mile from the house. It's about a 4.25 mile round trip. It was a great ride and gave me some time to be just with her which made her day.. we had a really good sunset tonight but by the time I saw it it was already to low to get a good picture of with all the tall trees. I tried to catch one from my daughters window upstairs but they just didnt turn out very good.

Looking off the bridge.

Turtle sticking his head out of the water. Other side of bridge..

Brazillian Visitors

Hey I just wanted to say hi to my Brazillian visitors.. I'v had a few visits from brazill the last couple of days.. My husband served an LDS Mission in Recife and Sao Paulo Brazill. He loves it over there and says we will go back for a visit some day.. The hammock down below was actually from brazill it is so comfy.. So greetings... Thanks for stopping in.. I love comments so drop me a line....

What's in your Backyard

I decided to take Jen's challenge to heart and see exactly what was in my back yard. Right now it is pretty ugly. The grass is dry and brown because of no sprinkling system here and hot humid temperatures. Most all my trees and flowers that were in bloom in the spring have now died and fallen off except 2 tree like bushes that have just started to bloom. There is alot of ground cover out here so I got some good pictures of that. The people that own this home were crazy gardners I guess because this yard has so many diffrent types of ground cover and flowers and bushes. Most all of them flower.. In the spring my yard was like a flower wonderland. It was gorgeous.. One of my earlier posts have some pictures of the many diffrent types of flowering plants and trees that we have here. It was amazing. It does seem that they planted at least something that will bloom at all parts of the year except winter. Every month we have had at least 1 thing bloom. It's not quite as beautiful as Jens (check it out)yard but i did manage to get some good photos..
The photos dont look as clear and nice as they do on my computer in the file I downloaded them too and I am not sure how to make them look that way.. If anyone has any tips let me know.. I know my camera did a much better job then this but it doest show here..

Our big Pine

I just happened to catch the kids riding home from park while I was snapping away.

My son has decided to take up running and he was going around the block at the same time as well.
Ground cover

Our umbrella like tree
Our swing



My yard buddies

These wern't here yesterday. We got alot of rain and humid cooler temps last night and this is what we woke up too.. The little spiders within are really scarry looking and some are pretty big.. OOOH I HATE SPIDERS!!!!

Some chinese statue thing the owners left here in the front yard.
More yard buddies..
The cutest part of my backyard!!!
Our hideaway under the tree's

These are the skins of some weird bug that we have. We have a tree that has tons of these skins that the insects have shed or molten off. I actually saw one alive on my patio the other night. I'm not sure what they are but they are pretty big.. I think they may be Locusts??


Chillin in the hammock..

I had a great morning. I decided to take my kids and head to the highschool to go running while they played. To read more about that go here.

So now I pass the challenge along....... What's in your back yard?????

Murphey's Law

Well Once again we spent the weekend moving furniture... I swear it's murphy law.. We had been trying to sell that armoir and dresser we moved into our kids room last weekend since Dec and now as soon as we move it some one calls and wants to buy it.. So we had to move the big massive armoir out of our sons room and down the stairs to the back of our Denali and then again from the Denali into the persons home that bought it.. I think Steve about broke his back.. We called a neighbor of ours to help him pick it up and carry it down the stairs and to the car. He is a pretty thick guy so I wasnt to worried about him so he went down the stairs first so steve had the back and it causes you to kinda bend over coming down. Well about half way down I see steve leaning and loosing the armoir so i throw my hands up against the side that our neighbor had to keep all the weight coming down on top of him. They eventually made it down but steve's back had popped and he was hurting pretty bad.. Then he had to deliver it to the guy who bought it and help him carry it into his house. He said the guy started to lean and steve had to take most of the weight to keep it from falling over.. It really is to heavy for just 2 people to lift. Then to top that all off steve and I had to carry Austins old dresser back up from the basement to his room again and it is quite heavy too.. Needless to say I think Steve will be doped up on Ibprofren for a few days poor guy.. He said when we go to move again the dresser is staying here..LOL Besides its pretty old its probably25 years old.. Back then furniture was made out of real wood and sturdy not this particle board stuff. It's lasted along time and has held up good but its on its last leg and its not worth moving again. So for now Austin will have to put up with it for another year. But isnt that how it usually works? We try to sell it forever and when we finally give up then it sales....

I was really wanting Sat to be a fun family day for us since steve was leaving early this morning for san diego but we just had so many things to do it just didnt worked out as we had planned. We did however get to go on a family bike ride to the big park that has alot of bike trails around it. Unfortunatly about 2-3 blocks into the ride jessies front tire hit the edge of a driveway which out here all the driveways out here are raised 2-3 inches and have a stoned edge so her tire hit that and caused her to loose control and tip over.. I was leading our family line down the road and steve was last with Jessie in front of him. All I heard was Oh Jessie and a big crash. I stopped and turned around to see her sprawled out across the driveway, so I got off my bike and started running back. steve had Logan in one of those hiking back packs on his back so he couldnt really bend over to pick her up and we had cars stopping and getting out to come help. I got there and picked her up and there was blood all over her knee so I was going to take her back home and clean her up then meet the family down at the park but brave little Jessie said she was ok and wanted to go and she would have it cleaned out when we got back.. she is a tough little cookie. We were able to go on our ride and we came back and cleaned her up.. It wasnt so bad once we got the blood cleaned up but it still looks like it hurt.. She cried all night and her knee was a bit swollen when we put her to bed so we ended up giving her some tylenol to help with the pain. You know how you can be doing something and all of a sudden you will smell something and it takes you back to a childhood memory where you experienced that smell or taste or whatever it is before? That happened to me on our way home from the bike ride yesterday. I was riding along through the trees and I could smell this frangrance and it immediatly brought me back to my childhood when I was about 4 or 5 I had this Bambi scratch and sniff book. One one of the pages it had some tall forrest trees and on the bark it had the scratch and sniff sticker and it kinda smelled like a pine mixed with something else. It would be hard to describe it but it was a sweet pinesy smell.. That was one of my favorite books growing up i would read it over and over and I have never experienced that smell since but as I was riding yesterday I could smell it. It was so weird it actually smelled just like that scratch and sniff page. I probably would have never thought of that book again had I not smelled that yesterday. What a great memory..

Well I think its going to be a long week.. I hope it goes fast..

Pictures of rooms

Ok upon request I took some picts of the rooms I spent last week gutting and rearranging.. Also the picts of the really heavy furniture I pushed around.. Of course it doesnt look as good as the first day I did them with the kids and all but you can kinda get an idea.





Austins Room

Big Armoir

Now if you can imagine my room here with 1 more long dresser and the big armoir in it. Pretty crowded..

Im not sure why I always choose such big pieces of furniture. As you can see the headboard takes up almost all our window..

Jessie and Logans room.. The new (our old) dresser from our room.

The Basement still looks cluttery but I think its just because I'm still trying to get used to fitting my 5,000 sq ft home into this little rental home.. It was a real hard adjustment not having the space I was used to..







Anyways thats it.

Movie Day

We just started doing this movie day once a week for the summer. Someone from the ward told me about it. Every Weds this movie theater shows an older disney movie and in order for the kids to get in free they have to fill out a book report. It's to help keep them reading during the summer and for kids under 6 they can draw a picture from a story you have read to them. Then they allow you in to the movie and put your name in for a drawing they do at the end of the movie. They have a 1st, second and third place prize.. They start with the 3rd which is a sack with a book and a pencil and a marker and maybe some stickers. Then the 2nd place has a little more stuff, then the 1st place has even a little more.. Today they showed Happy Feet and the kids had a blast.. When the show was over they brought out the box that had all the reports and picts. in it and started drawing the names for the prizes. When it got to the last prize which was 1st place they said Logan Hoyt and all my kids started screaming and jumping up and down. It was so funny.. Logan was so proud of herself. In her sack she got a sponge bob operation game, a dora hard cover book. A Blues Clues nursery rhymes book, A kung fu panda magazine, A pencil, A marker, some tatoos.. It was a pretty nice gift. I wish I would have gotten a picture but of course I forgot.. There is about 200 kids there. The cinema is usually full so it was quite the odds of getting your name picked so we were pretty excited.

Afterwards I decided to take them out to mcdonalds for a happy meal and let them play on the big slide for a while... This was quite a treat for them because steve and I hate Mcdonalds food so we never go there and the kids always beg us to take them but we never do. We went with another lady from our ward and her 2 sons and they always do the mcdonalds lunch after the movie so last week i promised them that this time I would let them go.. Of course the food was gross as always and the service was just as bad, but they had a wonderful time...Plus it gives me some good quality time to spend with them that I just dont do very often. It felt so good when Austin and Jessie came up to me and gave me a hug and genuinly said thanks mom this has been the best day.. It about made me cry.. Its so easy to forget that its the little things like this and just spending a little time with them that means the most to them.. Last night I took them to the park for a couple hours and I played catch with my son and I pushed the girls on the swing and we went on a walk by the lake to look at the fish. It was alot of fun... I'm trying hard to at least take 2-3 days a week now to just spend some time with them doing something fun whether its playing some games or going to the park or this movie thing or even going on some bike rides. They always used to say all mom does is work on her computer and that made me feel bad but it was true and to an extent it still is.. With my die cut store on ebay I tend to get pretty busy and I spend the majority of my days down in my computer room doing cuts and working on the computer when I'm not running my kids around to their activitys, so my kids are left to themselves to find things to do and play.. Im trying to turn over a new leaf.. My family is what is most important so i'm trying to make an effort to do something with them everyday even if its only for a few mins... Its hard and will take some getting used to but it is so worth it.. Hopefully I will get to a place where I can start finding some time to take each one of them and do something with them on a one to one without the other kids.. Exspecially with steve gone as much as he is that wont probably happen for a while but its a goal I'm shooting for.. I want to be a cool mom that my kids are proud of and want to be around not a grouchy mom that never spends any time with them and they dont want to spend time with me.. As they get older it will be harder and harder so now is the time to start.. It's sad that it takes until we become grandparents to finally slow down and enjoy lifes every precious moment and take the time to smell the flowers. And by then its to late for our kids..

So here's to my new goals.. I'd love to hear other peoples storys on how they do it and balance their family time. Any tips, tricks, ideas would be great!!

Summer Cleaning

I have been meaning to get on and blog over the last few days but I have been so busy I just kept forgetting.. I spent all day thursday and friday doing some summer cleaning instead of spring cleaning.. I started with my girls room (jessie and Logan) and gutted their room and rearranged beds and dressers.. When we first moved out here the movers broke me and steve's bed so we had to go get a new one so we decided to get matching night stands and dressers as well.. We have never in the 13 years we have been married had matching bedroom furniture so it was about time.. We had a huge dresser with the trifold mirrors and a huge heavy armoir that we needed to get rid of so we have been trying to sell them ever since but have had no luck in selling them.. The bad thing is they are really pricy pieces of furniture and they are really big pieces of furniture oh and did i mention really heavy so we dont want to just give them away!!!!!!! Anyways so we have had our huge king size bed our huge 2 chest dressers, this big armoir and another big dresser and 2 nightstands all in our bedroom. As you can guess it was a little crowded.. So thursday I decided to move the old big oak dresser in my girls room and take their old dresser down stairs. So I spent all of thursday rearranging beds to make room for this dresser that of course being the big buff chic that I am (NOT) moved everything all by myself pushing with my back and using my legs. It looks really good in their room but didnt have quite the space as the other dresser so we had to go through all their clothes and do some downsizing. So by the end of the day I was pretty exhausted and pretty soar. Then because I didnt learn from the first time I decided to do it all over again on Friday.. This time I decided to move my sons bed around, move his dresser downstairs and give him the big armoir for his little tv and video games and his clothes..
we had to get creative because the armoir only has 2 drawers in it for clothes so we had to get rid of 3/4 of his toys in his closet drawer so we could fit some clothes in it.. I tell you this armoir probably weighs several hundred pounds.. I know when we moved it took 4 men to carry the dumb thing. And once again I used my back and legs and pushed this beast from our room across the hall and into my sons room. It was so heavy I think I about blew my knees out pushing so hard and as if I didnt have enough problems with my knees already. DUH!!!

I'm just one of those people that once I get an idea in my head to do something I dont have patience to wait so I thought I'll just get it done and that way my husband wont try and talk me out of it or tell me no.. It will already be done LOL...The only thing I couldnt do was move my sons dresser down to the basement by myself.. It is one of those old heavy oak armoirs that used to be my moms that probably weighs almost a ton as well. So I had to wait for steve to help me with that one and even with the 2 of us it was really scarry because i chose to be on the bottom end and we have 2 flights of stairs to go down to get to the basement and on the first set every time steve took a step down I felt like it was going to push me right over and it really scared me.. At one point I knew I was gonna loose it and steve had to put his end down slide around it as I held the weight with my chest and face until he could come help grab the end and we just had to slide it down the rest of the way until we could get it turned up on its side. Whew!!! Then I spent the rest of friday moving our 2 big dressers around and the nightstands so we could actually have them up by our bed... Our room looks so much bigger now with half the furniture gone its amazing and it looks so clean and not so cluttery..
and the kids rooms look really great too. Then On Sat we spent the afternoon cleaning the basement. We store all our kids toys down there in toy boxes to help save room in their bedrooms and help them keep it a little cleaner. The toy boxes were starting to overflow so we went through and gutted them as well and chucked half of the toys and categorized all the toys to certain drawers in the dressers we moved down there so it looked really good down there... I have no idea how long it will last but for now it looks pretty awesome.. There is just something about deep cleaning the house and organizing and making everything nice and neat. It really makes you feel good inside and tidy.. Of course with 4 kids it wont last long and I feel like all I do is go after them and constantly pick up after them so that the house will stay that way but I know pretty soon I'll cave and say forget it and it will get messy again. But for now it looks nice.....
Come saturday though I was so wiped out and could barely move I was so sore. My lower back had bruises all across it where I had pushed the furniture with it. Its still pretty sore today... The weekend was so hot here.. It was 98 and with the humidity the weathermen said it feels like 106. We had heat wave warnings for a couple of days on the news.. It was one of those weekends where you just stay inside with the AC and dont go out.. We got to talking how this time last year we were up at Flaming Gorge in utah camping and boating and fishing and waterskiing. Man I miss that so bad. What I wouldnt give to be doing that right now... I miss our boat and 4 wheeler. Owell hopefully next year we will be back and doing it again....

Anyways that is how we spent our wonderful weekend. Steve leaves this weekend for 3 weeks so it will be some hard long weeks for me. Not looking forward to it. It would be so much easier if we had some family near by to go see to help pass the time. Owell trying to stay positive.. It could always be worse.. I dont know how the wifes of the men serving our country do it. What brave couragous women, and what great examples they are to me..

Well thats it folks.. Sorry for such the long post today.. I was trying to fit the weekend in 1 blog.

Tag Your It...

This is my first tag. I wasn't officially tagged, but I found this on a friends blog and thought it was a cute idea. Here are the directions:
1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!
2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you.
It's actually pretty funny to see the responses...

On To The Rest of Our Vacation

Grand Cayman Island



Wow it was paradise.. When we stepped off the plane it was so hot and muggy.. I thought N.J was bad but this was worst. I was dying of heat.. We had to go through customs which was a whole new experience for me but not bad.. By the time we got to the baggage claims all our luggage was alrady off the turn table sitting over to the side.. Wow fast.. It's a small airport so they really keep things hopping over there. Next it was over to the rental car center to get us a car.. Oh how I wish I would have gotten a picture of the car we got.. It was this little white square box. Really small!! Barely put together but hey it ran.. It had a 6 gallon tank, and we were able to go the whole week on thos 6 gallons.. The weirdest thing about it was the steering wheel was on the wrong side and same with the shifter and signal stick. And we had to drive on the left hand side of the road. It was so scarry!!! It really took some time getting used to..Every time steve tried to turn on the signal the windshield wipers would come on.. There were several times we forgot and reverted to habit and ended up on the wrong side of the road but people were so nice out there they just laughed and were shaking their heads at us just silently saying to themselves "those dumb americans driving on the wrong side again".. Honestly the locals there were the nicest people I'v ever met.



We got lost trying to find our condo so steve was a little frustrated. I told hime to pull over and ask directions. Honestly I dont know what it is about men and pulling over to ask for directions. I think they would rather be lost... We however eventually made it there. My first impressions were not great. The condominium kinda stunk of mildew. Im sure they have some problems with that due to being right on the ocean as well as being totally wiped out from the hurricane 4 years ago. But everything was freshly painted and the furniture was new.. It really wasnt to bad. It backed right up to a nice golfcourse which in the mornings and at night people gather from all over to run, or walk the paths. It was quite the fitness area. The beach we were on and the side of the ocean was really windy all the time so the water was always rough. But it was an awesome view from our balcony. As far as islands go we have only been to Hawaii so we were kinda comparing this to it.. We soon came to realize that if we drove to the other side of the ocean which was basically across the main street it was alot calmer and alot less wind and the water was calm and great... They have whats called the 7 mile beach which is 7 miles of just beautiful white sand beach for public access. It was so beautiful. This is definently the place where everyone goes to do their swimming and relaxing.

It's alot diffrent from hawaii but just as wonderful. Its more quaint and quiet.



The first day we took a free scuba diving course offered in the pool and loved it so we went out on several diving tours throughout the week. It was absolutely amazing. There were so many diffrent tropical fish that we saw. We also saw 2 huge turtles swimming right under us that were as wide as 2 of me side by side. They were mating and it was really beautiful. they just glided through the water surfacing every so often for a breath then going back down. We also saw an octopus, so many diffrent sea life. It was awesome... Sadly I ruptured on of my ear drums during one of the dives and had a little trouble with that but i survived. I also during one of our snorkeling days was stung by some baby jellyfish across my arms but I again survived..

We took some jetskiis across the ocean about 4 miles to a big sand bar which is called stingray city. Its where there are just hundreds of stingrays that gather there to be fed by tourist. They have dives and snorkeling cruises out there.



At first I was scared to death. We got off the jet skii and all of a sudden I was being mauled by several big stingrays. They were crawling up my legs and back. I thought I was being attacked and I started squeeling help they are attacking me. Come to find out they are pretty harmless and very gentle. They are just used to people feeding them so they swarm around you waiting for food. Our tour guy had some little baby squids for us to feed them so you hold them in your fist and tuck your thumb in because they come by and suck it up and if you have your thumb out they can suck it up. It was really cool. We got to hold them their skin is so soft. It was great.. They have a tourist town called georgetown where all the cruise ships port and we made the mistake of going shopping there right when 2 cruise lines were there and it was crazy but we had fun. It was so nice. We had more time this vacation to just relax and enjoy it and do more of the things we wanted to do versus Hawaii we were rushed to do all the activitys we had signed up to do because steve's work was catering everything. So it was wonderful. I would have to say it was a tie between the 2 islands.. They both are wonderful in their own diffrent ways. I highly reccomend this place... Plus we actually have a room reserved next year that we will be selling during the peak season there which i will be advertising shortly if anyone would be interested. The kids had a blast with us gone and having alone time with just grandma and grandpa. They put makeip on grandpa and painted his toes and fingernails, which i threaten to go hang up in the city buildings where everyone can see since practically everyone in Brigham City where he lives knows him because he served as a police officer there for many years. They went on bike rides and had water balloon fights. They had a wonderful time. Now they are so bored since grandma and grandpa left.



Our final day before mom and dad left we headed to belmar beach to play in the ocean.. The kids had a blast. It was kinda stinky. The ocean was putting off kinda a yucky smell.. It was really crowded exspecially for a middle of the week day. It was overcasted and really windy. So with being on the ocean it was 20 degrees cooler then back home so it was kinda cold. The water was cold as well. It was so not like the cayman island ocean I was so used to the nice 81 degree temps of the water. However it didnt slow the kids down one bit, but after 3 hrs it started to rain on us so we decided to pack up and head home. The kids had a great time. They spent the whole time collecting seashells and running from the waves.. The waves were so strong that they would literally knock the legs right out from under them and throw them up onto the beach.. Jessie is not afraid of anything so i was a little concerned with her.. One wave hit her and knocked her over and pulled her out then threw her back up on the beach but she couldnt get up before another wave was crashing down on her.. I think that one scarred her a little bit but she ran up to me wiped her eyes on my shirt, laughed and ran back out their squeeling. Crazy kid!!!



And thus concludes Our awesome 3 week vacation. I'm so ready to go on another one. It was hard to come back to reality.