Our Sharing Time Video

Our eleven year old girls had to do Sharing Time last week. It was about "My Family and I Can Serve Others." We did a "Serving up Service Pie" lesson. Mindi is so creative, she did most of the work. Anyway, she made this video that we played after we were finished with our activity. We have NO idea how blessed we are. It almost makes me feel unworthy for all the blessings I have.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

This Turkey Is Tired

My parents with some of the food.

This is all of our desserts. Not a very good picture though.

Can I just tell you I am soooo tired! I feel like I've been hit by a truck. We had around 50 people over for Thanksgiving dinner. I like having it at my house because it forces me to get things done that need to be done for years, but it really wears me out. I have noticed that the older I get the harder it is to get things done, but at my age I'm lucky to get anything accomplished. We had so much good food and I couldn't believe the pies. As my family were coming in and bringing the food they were assigned, they just kept bringing in pies. I had to take a picture of all the food because it looked so pretty. I really have the best family. The kids, grand kids and the cousins have so much fun and they are getting old enough to just let them play outside. It helped that the weather was 81 degrees. Last year the girls all went and ran the Turkey Trot, the rest of us went and watched. It was in honor of Kamber. This year it was too hard for the girls to train, Ethan had spent two nights in the Emergency Room with bad stomach pains and Candi was feeling sick also. Mindi exercises all the time but with her four kids it is hard for her to run 6 miles. Then there is me, my poor little arthritic hip had a hard time just getting out of the car and walking to the finish line. Anyway, this year Jenn ordered the cutest shirts with Kamber's picture on them and we did our first "Kamber Larsen Turkey Walk" after everyone left. I made it most of the way but I think the kids had fun riding their bikes and rollerblading. I hope by next year I will be walking better. I'm so thankful for the family I was born in to. My parents are such a good example to me and I know they love me no matter what faults I have. I struggle with some of my relationships in my family and I know they are brought on by my personality flaws, but I hope in the end my Heavenly Father will forgive me of my shortcomings and let me be with my family and Kamber in Heaven.

This is the back of the darling shirts.Our first annual "Kamber Walk".

"Endure to the End"

Kamber and Troy about the same age

Last week as I got ready to run errands with Mindi I went down to her house to see how much longer she was going to take getting ready before we would leave. As I got in her family room Troy was sitting stark naked on her couch watching Einsteins. I said, "Troy what are you doing naked?" He just smiled at me with his little "no teeth" grin so I proceeded to grab his clothes off Mindi's bed and dress him. As I went to put his socks on, I looked at his feet and they looked just like Kamber's the day we dressed her at the mortuary. It was such a sweet, but sad memory for me and I had a few tears roll down my cheek. Troy is about the same age and size as Kamber was when she passed away and is just about as "naughty" as she was. It's weird how the grieving process is, some days I do fine but there are days that I just don't seem all there. I was reminded this week by my friend that it takes two full years for the grieving process to be complete, and even then I know we will have hard days. The holidays are the worst. Rich and I were talking the other night before we went to bed and I said, "this will be the second Thanskgiving and Christmas without Kamber." At times it seems like this has all been a bad dream and nothing really happened, that maybe there really wasn't even a Kamber in the first place. But, then I come back into reality and feel all the pain, sorrow, heartache and loss all over again. I know this life is full of trials and pain, and I know that our family isn't the only one going through hard times. I know that Kamber is with our Heavenly Father and that gives me peace. I know she loves her family and that we love her. At this Thanksgiving season I am so grateful for the gospel and the knowledge that we will see her again and be united as a family. Without that it wouldn't be worth it. As my friend told me this week, "we are asked to Endure to the End, but there is no End, so that just means we need to Endure."

Mom Is 80 Years Old

All of us kids with our parents.

My mom and her delicious cake.

Our big group at dinner.

Wow it's weird when your parents turn 80. I know how I feel at 56 so they can't feel all that great at 80. I talk to my Mom every morning and if I call her she is always so chipper and happy. I'm not a morning person and Rich has even compared me to a grizzly bear. Anyway, I usually ask her why she's so happy and her reply is always, "well I made it through another night." Isn't that nice that she is excited to live for another day? We had a really nice evening with her for her birthday. My sister Mell and her husband Larry, Rich and I, my brother Len and his wife Julie and my sister-in-law Linda all met at the Temple and did a Sealing Session. The Temple is really hard for me because of my anxiety but I did so good with my family all there together. Dad was a little upset because we came on Wednesday and that is a night that they work in the Temple but we tried to change his attitude about it because it WAS Mom's birthday. After we finished at the Temple we took her to the Landmark for dinner. My brother Ben joined us there, he had been away on business. The food was delicious and we had a good time laughing and visiting. We didn't invite the grand kids and great grand kids because we did that for Dad's birthday in January and it cost a "pretty penny" to feed that crew. Besides we will all be getting together this week for Thanksgiving and that is always hectic and we didn't want to tackle it twice in one week. I feel so blessed to have both my parents still living. I never new either of my Grandfathers so my kids are really lucky to have grandparents both living. They are both such good examples to our families. They have lived a very modest life where we were taught service through example. I am so thankful they are still healthy and able to take care of themselves and work in the Temple. I hope I'm doing that good when I turn 80. My sister and I were wondering if we would even be around when our 80th birthday rolls around. Anyway, if I am I hope my kids will do a birthday extravaganza for me, I'm not holding my breath though.

Thankful For My Problems

This has been a very busy and stressful last couple of weeks. There again, I can't remember when my life hasn't been busy and stressful. Between Halloween, pomegranate picking, juicing, and jelly making, and now getting ready for Thanksgiving I have felt very OVERWHELMED! I also have been fighting the usual symptoms of old age, insomnia, weight gain, hormonal imbalance and a few I'd rather not talk about. Mindi and I run errands everyday. It is rare if we don't have something to do or somewhere to go. Yesterday we were at Hobby Lobby (Mindi's home away from home) and we were looking at all their Fall decorations that were 80% off. As I was pushing the cart I noticed a nice looking woman in a wheelchair with only one leg. She was quite young and I always wonder what happened. Anyway, today we went to JoAnn's to get some paper for our sharing time this Sunday and as I was walking through the store I noticed an older lady in a power chair with feet that were so red and swollen you couldn't really see her sandals. It looked very painful to me but she looked happy just riding around looking at things. As I caught up to Mindi I asked her if she had seen the woman and she said "yes," and just shook her head. We then went on to Higley Feed to get some scratch for our chickens, I was sitting in the car waiting when a woman came out who walked very odd like maybe she had MS or was just crippled. Then as we were in the Walgreen's parking lot another woman came out who looked like she had an artificial leg and had trouble walking. I mentioned to Mindi about how many people I had seen in two days who were struggling. I notice things like that because I too have a hard time walking without a limp. I had a fractured pelvis as a child and because of childbirth I have terrible arthritis in my hip. Sometimes the pain is so bad I want to give up or amputate my leg myself. As I watched all these other people I felt such gratitude that even though my life isn't perfect I will take my trials and try to be happy with my own problems. We are all given trials and challenges to bring us closer to the Savior. There have been times that I didn't think I could walk another step, but somehow I have found the strength to keep on going. As Mindi told me as we were driving off, "You see Mom, it could be a lot worse."

Pomegranate Jelly and Baby Chicks?

All my jelly that we made yesterday.

This week has been crazy busy for me. My Mom came over on Monday and Thursday to help me make pomegranate jelly. It is fun to have her come help and it takes less time than me doing it all by myself. I stood on my feet from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. yesterday and I was so tired I needed a nap. Candi was here with her boys playing with Troy. They decided to leave Major and Troy and take Dally Dog to Hobby Lobby so I went in Mindi's room to watch t.v. while the boys played a shooting game on the Wii. I had been resting comfortably on the bed for about 30 minutes when Troy came in to tell me that he had "hatched two eggs." I said what are you talking about? So he took me in Mindi's kitchen to show me what he had done. We have decided to raise some chickens and so we have a little white hen who has been sitting on two eggs for about a month. Yesterday when we went out to feed them, Mindi noticed that one of the eggs had a hole in it and the baby chick was starting to break out. They had gone out several times during the day to see if the chick was finally out. I guess that is why Troy thought if he broke open some of Mindi's eggs out of the fridge he would "hatch a baby." Anyway, he is so cute and so smart but we did end up with two baby chicks, one hatched yesterday and Mindi just found the other one this morning.We did get rid of all the birds and the rabbits but we thought it would be fun to have fresh eggs and breed three kinds of chickens. We have Silkies, Frizzles and Polish hens and two roosters right now, all the others are babies so we don't know what they will end up being. So between making jelly and hatching babies it has been a fun but busy week!

Our two baby chicks

"The Mighty Change"

Rich left this morning at 5:00 a.m. for Denver to watch Spencer play on Monday Night Football. It's always exciting for him to go but it always puts me in the toilet. I get the old "life isn't fair" attitude. I could go if I wanted to fly to Denver, spend the day and go to the game, then get up early and fly home at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. That just doesn't sound fun to me. It sounds exhausting and I'm already tired and I just got up. When Rich left he woke me up and I couldn't go back to sleep. I was having anxiety about everything. I started thinking about all that I need to do today and I started feeling overwhelmed. I decided to go read my scriptures and try to settle down. When my Mom came over last week to juice pomegranates she brought me a book that a friend had given my Dad in 1982. It is call "The Mighty Change." I started reading it on Saturday. It basically talks about how we need to have that mighty change so we can overcome our problems and shortcomings in this life and try to become more like Christ. WOW! That's asking a lot for me to change enough to become like Him. Yesterday in Primary we were teaching the girls about how hard it was when the Saints got in to Utah. They had nothing; no food, no shelter, but they were so happy to be in a place where they felt safe. Crossing the plains had to be hell but they were so joyful to have a place to settle in and start building. The lesson was a combination of gratitude and keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. I definitely have a long way to go in both of those areas. Anyway, I know the mighty change is going to be a slow process for me but hopefully I still have a little bit of time left. I'm going to try and be happy today and show gratitude for all that I have been given.

"Doing Things That Are Hard"

I think we might have gotten a little "over our heads" on this pomegranate pick. In the past, Mindi and I have driven through the streets of Gilbert asking people if they cared if we picked their trees. This year we had a couple of nice neighbors offer their fruit so between those and my friend Sandy's two trees, and my three trees, we got a huge crop. We started juicing our little red "apples" (that's what Troy calls them, ) at 9:00 a.m. yesterday morning. We started out with Julie and her Mother Maxine, Me, Mindi and my parents. My sister Mell showed up a little while later and we had four Bosch's juicing. It took us about an hour to get our first 2 gallon container filled with beautiful red juice. We then had other family members come to help and it started going faster. Ethan's wife Jenn and my nieces Victoria and Alisha also came and helped. It was fun to sit and visit and work together. We only do this once a year, so when we do it we try to get as many pomegranates and helpers as we can. By the afternoon the young mothers all started to leave to go pick up children from school and Julie and her Mom were long gone, she had to go to Pine for Stake Youth Conference. We still had wheel barrels full of fruit to juice and I started getting discouraged. It seemed like we would never get done. Then Mindi's kids got home from school, Dave got home from work, Jenn brought her kids back and Rich even pitched in. Anyway, after we broke for dinner and went back outside, Rich put a light up so we could work in the dark and we finished juicing at around 9:00 p.m. My parents are such troopers. They were so tired but kept on working. After we were finished cleaning up my Dad commented on how by all of us working together as a family it builds relationships and it was special for him. Who knows how many more years they will be physically able to do this, but it was nice to all be together doing something. In Primary a few weeks ago they were talking to the kids about "doing things that are HARD". As I crawled into bed last night I definately thought that we had accomplished that goal of doing something hard. Now next week we will start making all our jelly. Now that's another thing that is hard, but I guess everything that is worth anything is hard.

Pomegranate Picking

My dear friend Sandy and me after picking for three hours. I know I look HOT!

Okay, I just might not make it through the night. We started a family tradition many years ago of making pomegranate jelly to give to family and friends for Christmas. It makes a beautiful red color jelly and it is quite tasty. The only thing wrong is that it is a he#* of a lot of work to get the juice to make it. Mindi, Julie Greer and I spent all morning picking the fruit in our neighborhood. Then this afternoon we went to one of my best friends Sandy Nichols' house down in Lehi and picked her two trees. I am so tired and sore I think I could crawl into bed and not wake up. We lived for twelve years down in the orange groves in North Mesa which we called Lehi. There are a lot of good memories of raising our family there. Rich came down for the last 45 minutes to help pick the really high ones and haul all the fruit home. Up until a few years ago my parents were still picking from trees in Mesa. They are both 80 this year and I can not believe that they could still pick these pesky little fruit. Tomorrow will be another day of picking and then the real fun starts when we start juicing the fruit. As we drove home I was thinking how doing pomegranates is like having another baby, you forget how much work it is until you start doing it again. It isn't all bad, there is a sense of accomplishment knowing that we are harvesting fruit that usually just falls off and rots. Being out in the fresh air and doing something you hope will make others happy is satisfying. Someone suggested that we sell our jelly. I don't think anyone would be willing to pay the price it would cost for how much work is involved. It truly is a labor of love, just like my baby blankets.

Rich getting all of the one's that we could not reach.

Mindi and the kids. They were so much help.