At my funeral

I just got a call to play the organ at a funeral.  It prompted me to think of the Hymns I would want sung at my own funeral.  "Come Follow Me"  Ha!  If anyone cries at my own funeral I'll ask permission to come back as an angel and smack them.  Is that blasphemous?

What's on your potholder?

After 5 years of service this potholder has had it and to be honest I'm tired of looking at it.  Nicole Para mailed this to us in Bakersfield... we didn't vote for her.

Nor have we given her a bath.

Farewell Nicole.  Hello solid red!

My new fav

I loved this book!  It's the story of Mary and Joseph's life before, during and after the birth of Jesus and through the death of Joseph.  Mary is strong-willed and in Joseph's face... and after thinking about it she would have to be!  In her world they weren't even supposed to walk over the alloted steps on Sunday for fear of "breaking the Sabbath".  Next thing you know she's carrying a baby out of wed lock?!  And then tells her fiancé about it when she's already starting to show?  Come on.  Heavenly Father HAD to find a woman with a backbone.  Fantastic book, you have to read it!

mackenzie dancin

That girl can shake it!

The party!

Getting Bigger

It's birthday week around here and MacKenzie's turning 3! She loves "lips" (code for chapstick or gloss) and make-up. I've never seen anyone re-apply so much in one day.



Kennedy has become Grayson's mom. This morning I rejoiced as she pulled him out of his crib by herself and poured him some milk in a sippy cup! Sweet. She's hired. Her and her "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" nose. (She made it herself out of a fruit roll up).


And Grayson... he is one high maintenance child. The girls went to Grandma Carla's last week and I was all alone with him while Justin worked. The whole week I could hear the words, "having one child is the hardest thing you will ever do." I can't tell you how many times I heard that after I gave birth to Kennedy. At the time I thought everyone was CRAZY! They're not.


I mean look at this sweet face accessorized with a pink head band. He's so cute, but there's no way I'm holding that 30lbs of wiggle all day.

Cabinet painting... again!

It's so refreshing to have a little peek back at move in condition. Makes me not feel so bad for the 1/2 done makeovers. But can you see the carpet in this pic!? It was by the toilet too, yuck! I'm surprised they didn't roll out carpet in the shower.



Here's the new shower minus the new glass shower door. (Thanks Mariann and Mark for the curtain, rod and shower hooks! They totally surprised me with a happy-new-tile-job-in-the-bathroom gift and I love it.) And the cabinets after my 2 second sanding job.

Justin wanted white, but I just had to do black because... it looks SO GOOD!


So when I'm takin' a shower in here... it's awesome. H-U-G-E! Almost a little too big and dare I say, drafty? But I love it. There is nothing worse than touching the side of a shower while in the process of scrubbing, eww.
And the floor! The tile boy had to cut almost every single piece. I felt so bad for him, but LOVE to outcome. We never would've done the diamond thing on our own.

And now back to the kids bath. I went out and bought hooks, but Justin wouldn't let me hang them directly on the wall, "they're just gonna get ripped off." So he routed a piece of wood, slapped that up there and THEN put the hooks up. I love them! Thanks for the ideas. Still looks a little bare, huh.

Facebook quizes!

You can't tell me you've NEVER taken a facebook quiz. I have. Sometimes I just need to know which Jane Austen heroin I am. Well today I needed to know what kind of storm I am and here's the outcome. (I love the part about dogs and small children, HA!)



Your Result: Thunderstorm

You are a thunderstorm, you like the power of your rumble but have a comforting quality about you. Some find you romantic and can cuddle up when you roll in, and others are terrified of you - especially dogs and small children.

Baby you can drive my car

How cute is this little Highway Patrol car? Our friends have the coolest toys and I had to borrow their camera to take some pics. We totally need one of these.

But I think this one is a little easier to find. Grayson didn't realize that if he stole some platform shoes from MacKenzie, he could've drivin' this one.

Master bath is gettin a facelift!

We moved in with the intention of changing the master bath into a master gigantic shower! I've seen it done by my in-laws out in Derby Acres and thought, "what the heck... we could TOTALLY do that!"

Well after the kids bath, we decided to pay someone else to do it and I'm SO glad we did. It's not done, but here's the progress so far. Should set tonight and grout will come in the morning.

Now for your opinions. I wanted this sea blue look, but now that the shower looks awesome, I kind of don't want anything to distract from it so I'm back to brown again. What color for the cabinets? Black just looks SO good, but I don't know. Cream? Let me know.

Tabby for ransom

Kennedy forgot Tabby the Cat @ Jared & Kami's house last week. And then we got this:


If you ever want to see your precious kitty again you need to meet our demands. We need 1 or more of the following:

1 million dollars
Passes to Disneyland
A visit at 4th of July
A cruise to wherever
A house
A new car
10 lbs of sugar
10 lbs of flour
5 bags of chocolate chips
pack of butter from Costco
Vanilla
2 dozen eggs

You have 24 hours to meet our demands.

The kidnappers

The DL

I haven't done a WHOLE DAY @ Disneyland in a while, but we survived... and it was awesome. I mean they only have 3 days to get everything in and it's always more fun with more people. Here's a little slide show of day 1.

My other sister

Well though she would never admit it, I am my SIL Katelyn's favorite SIL. Katelyn is Justin's little sister. She's young, single, dating... remember how exciting that was? Not that I'm old now, but the dating part. I would ALWAYS be wondering, "Hmmm, what if I marry that guy? Or that one? What if it's this other guy I've known my whole life, but never thought twice about?"

About a month ago I invited her to live with us for the millionth time, and she finally agreed. It was a conditional offer on my side... no nanny business unless I paid her. She and I both know, I can't afford her. So she moved in.





And maybe it's because I'm dang nosy, but pretty much every morning consists of me knocking on her door (after waiting a good 20 minutes after I've gotten out of bed myself... you know to be considerate and let her "sleep in") to proceed to curl up on the bed next to her while quizzing her on everything. I HAVE to know specific details of the previous night. Now I don't always get everything, but I get enough to be satisfied and let me tell you... she needs a blog for some of these stories! Everything from getting smashed in the face with a soccer ball to falling asleep in the middle of the street in front of her new boyfriends family. Hysterical and I love hearing about it!

Now if I could just get Justin to make enough money to support his sister... that nanny business would be pretty awesome, but then what would I do with my time? Hmmm... take a nap I think.

Just Ridin' My Pony

My brother had a purple and pink bike, pink snow boots and pink panties...
ok I'm kidding about the underwear.
Grayson has a pink and purple unicorn rocking horse and loves it!


He's secure in his manhood!

Was it really a good idea, that telephone? And who came up with voicemail?

This is a conspiracy to ruin my life.

All day, every day it rings. Ring, ring, ring, ring , ring (well in reality it has a little Bach song playing) but it still makes noise. I have MANY noise makers in my house:

Apollos
Kennedy
MacKenzie
Grayson
Ping (the bird)

Do I really need a phone to add to the list? No I don't. But because sometimes it's my husband calling from his job, I must have one. If it weren't for that, I'd be phone-less and happier.

If you're really my friend, if you really love me you will email me! ESPECIALLY if you have some sort of instruction or planning idea that requires me to get some paper to write it down anyway. Just email it.

What's even MORE annoying? We don't have answering machines when you're on the plan we have... it's voice mail! So then people will call and talk to the voice mail like I can here them, "hey... are you there? can you hear me?" NO!

Occasionally I will check the messages left on the voice mail. Average # of messages 12-15. Even if there were 2 you know what I do? Delete, delete without listening to a word you said. Because if you really wanted to say something, you would've emailed it.

And if you think, "Oh I'll just call her cell phone". No... I don't check that either. In fact maybe once a month will I check those messages. The last time I checked there were unheard messages dating back to February. I'll do the math for you, that's 3 months ago! Do not leave a message on my cell phone either. I will not listen to it.

Every day around dinner time I have already lost my mind (whatever it's gone as I wake up to crying), so when the phone rings I want to do this...

So I'll say it again... just email me.

Smoochie pic!

I was inspired by my new friends blog. She has only a few pics, but they're all of her and her hubby kissin'. I thought to myself, "Dang! I need a smoochie pic." So Mother's Day brought me such an opportunity. My hair was lookin' awesome and we were all there taking the big family shot anyway, why not heat things up a little.



What a good lookin' family. Everyone else looked good too. This is the Pollock side (plus grandma DeAnna) and it is quickly growing.


Of course, as fate would have it, this was the best family pic I could get. What's with that?


And this one REALLY shows off Justin's red eyes. He's a closet druggie and decided to dump the news on his mom earlier that day. Lucky for him the bruises she gave him were on his be-hind and not his face. Okay but really... wouldn't it be funny if grandma was holdin' a cigarette in the back ground. HA!!! I need photoshop!


For more pics check out my SIL's blog here.

Trek

Our stake youth went on a pioneer trek. Now some of you may think.... ummm yeah, but the real pioneers walked from the east to Utah. Yes, they did but later some groups also walked from Utah to Southern California right through our stake. Pretty awesome huh.

It was just a 24 hour trek, nothing too crazy. We went up Friday night the kids treked in a mile I drove and set up the tent with some lovely assistants. The evening was beau-ti-ful! Awesome purple-blue sky and a full moon. I just love living in the desert. We had a live band isn't the lady playing guitar Khristie in a few years? and dancing. Some of the teenage girls taught the whole group some time appropriate group dances, TOTALLY Pride and Prejudice style! Where were my sisters?!

The next day the "family" groups took off in their companies and here's the part where I came in because you know... it's all about me, right? There were 4 or 5 stops along the trail where the Mormon Battalion came and took ALL the men, leaving the women on their own. Then I held the women for a minute talking about one of the young girls and her mother and how they made it across the plains. totally made me cry There were Indians screaming from on top of the mountains later on and at the end of the trail (where they turned around the come back to camp) it was straight up! They had to push their hand cart straight up and when you got to the top it looked out onto and HUGE valley. What perspective! Just when you think it's the hardest part... you've got 1,000s of miles yet to go! While on top of the hill young pioneer couple acted out their trials as they buried their teeny baby! So realistic.

So fun. There was a reporter there walkin' right along with the families. I couldn't believe how far she went before she decided to go on back home. Here's her article.

Circus Act

My name is Grayson and I can stand on anything, I'm 18 months old... and I still can't walk!! What's with that? He stood completely up a few times, but I wasn't fast enough with the camera.

When will enough ever be enough?

Justin and I have been married for 6 years this summer. Cra-zy! One thing we do not share in common after all this time is the love of animals. I've deicded that when Heavenly Father was getting around the creating animals I was busy doing something else... on purpose! Justin, however, was right there with Jesus asking if he could play with all those creatures, just for a few minutes before they had to come to earth.

So far our married life has brought these creations to our home(s):

6 dogs
7 birds
10+ fish
1 hermit crab
1 iguana
1 rabbit

Currently we have 1 dog, 1 parrot and 2 hands full of fish not counting the 4 poly wogs on the front porch only because the kitchen counter top was getting a little gross. Nothing like cooking dinner while looking at almost frogs swim around watching you.

Today I was gone at the park all morning and look who joined the Pollock Zoo while I was gone:




A Pug! He doesn't have a name yet for sure, Katelyn told me it might be Bigley? or something like that. But I have to admit I was not entirely surprised.


Look how happy Apollos is to have a buddy though. I have to admit the new little Pug is cute even though I DON'T do dogs.

It's not 80's, it's retro

We were trying to take a good shot of all 3... didn't happen, but check out the pic Katelyn took of MacKenzie. LOVE the bangs, ha! (It's windy today so we didn't even have to bust out the fans)