Grace's baptism

Grace was baptized on Saturday by Ryan and is now a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was a fabulous day all around. The weather was great and it was nice to see so many family and friends together. Grace really is amazing and I'm proud of her for wanting to do this.

Waiting with Ryan.

We go there a bit early so Grace played the piano to pass time.

Sporting the baptism jumpsuit. Ryan said he's going to wear jumpsuits all the time now.

Grace and her friend Holly, who was also being baptized, sang "I'm a Child of God" together. Grace surprised me with how well she sang. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to hear her. Wish I had it on tape.

I thought she looked really happy here. Post baptism glow.

Me and my baby, who is almost as tall as me. wah.

The fam.

I didn't think I had enough pictures of the dress without the cardigan on so I made Grace take more on Sunday morning. I thought she looked really cute here. That's what parents do, think their kids are cute.

That's a freebie

Our church ward split the Sunday we were driving home from Canada and I'm very pleased with the results. I don't want to get into it here but I was very happy our new ward came with a new bishop. When I heard about the change from Karen I thought, "That's a freebie." Speaking of church, I went with my mom in Magrath and in Relief Society they have a "good news minute" where the women can tell about something good that has happened to them. My mom raised her hand and her good news was that her entire family was home for Christmas. Then an obnoxious neighbor lady raised her hand and said, "She only has two children! All my children (she has six) except so and so were home with us." I wanted to jump across the isle and rip her tongue out but I was able to resist by telling myself, "She's an idiot."

I have returned to exercise with a renewed vigor after gaining what will remain an unnamed number of pounds over the holiday. Apparently sitting in a chair and eating multiple bags of dill pickle chips for two weeks will cause you to gain weight. I thought I was told this wouldn't happen but Grace isn't always right. I'm back doing spin three times a week with Shar (Grace's school teacher also) and have started going to the school gym two mornings a week to do circuit training with a few other neighborhood women. I was doing this last year but they failed to tell me it had started up again after the summer break. I could take this badly but I'm chalking it up to people being super self-involved and am letting it go. This morning was my first morning back and I was hoping for more weight training and less cardio, since I get enough cardio from spin class. It's free and it's exercise so I'm not going to complain...too much. So yeah, this is the year of Shea. The year I'm finally going to be 100% happy with my body. The year I'm going to get over my food issues and be able to have an ounce of willpower. I think being 35 won't seem so horrible if I feel like I am somewhat "hot" for my age. "She's 35? I can't believe it! I hope I look like that when I'm 35." That kind of thing.

My parents gave me a clock when I was home that they had laying around. I like the clock and think it will look good in my "summer house" entry way but it has the loudest ticking sound ever. I feel like I'm the narrator in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart". The first night we got home I had it in our bedroom and I told Ryan, "This has to go!" I then put it out in the hall and the next day moved it into the living room by the top of the stairs as I was intending to store it in the basement. That evening I could hear it ticking while watching TV so I moved it to the bottom of the stairs. Tonight I was in the living room after everyone had gone to bed and I start to hear the ticking again. "That's it clock!" I put it in the basement and shut the door. If I can still hear it ticking, I'm going to start thinking I've murdered an old man with a "vulture eye" and hid him in my floor.

The "summer house" is moving along at an alarming speed. While I try to tell my brain that, "It's all going to work out." My brain tells me back "YOU ARE SCREWED, SISTER!" I hate brain. Ryan took pictures on his way home from work Monday and we are both getting excited about the prospect of living in this home. I'm starting to grasp that we are moving away from Santaquin and it's sad. I have some great friends here, I love the school and my connections there and I love having Nana next door. Change is good though and I'm pretty good at keeping relationships going. Still I'm not going to be able to pop over to Karen's and have her put tags back on clothes I want to return with her magic gun. That might have to be spirited away when I move.

They found E.T. in our house! No, it has a tent over it so they can stucco in this weather.

A three car garage so Ryan can have a home for his scooter.

The great room/kitchen.

Maybe this is why Ryan doesn't send me flowers

One of my favourite Cheers moments.

I'm going to LOOOOSE it!

I don't know if it's anxiety over selling/buying a house but I'm so ready for my kids to be out of the house and at school. I think it's 98% anxiety and 2% kids bugging me. I know it's not a very "good mom" thing to say about your own kids but I've spent every day all summer with them so it's not like I'm neglectful. The thing that is driving me today is Grace's cough. She's had allergies and the drainage has given her a cough. What's annoying is that every cough sounds like a forced, fake cough. I have a thing where repetitive noises sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to me and this cough is just like that. I just told them both they have to go outside because secretly if I hear that cough one more time I think my head might implode. Ahh that's the stuff, silence.

Ryan and I have a meeting tonight with a realtor for Ivory Homes. We found a lot we both really liked in east Lehi and we're hoping that the horrible economy will be on our side when it comes to a building price. I know we haven't sold our existing house yet but I'm hoping that my excitement to build will fill the universe with house selling positive energy. Also we've lowered the price. We drove out to the lot yesterday evening so Ryan could see it for the first time and were immediately approached by a couple of neighborhood women. I have a hard time with people in Utah assuming everyone is Mormon or if they aren't Mormons, then they are somehow less desirable. The women were very friendly but immediately started talking about the ward (church for those who aren't familiar with Mormon culture) and how great the bishop was. They then asked "You're LDS aren't you?" I guess it's a good thing we are. I asked them about the people living in the house to the east of us and they said they were a very nice Asian (at least they didn't say oriental) couple who owned a Chinese restaurant in American Fork. "Oh, but they aren't LDS." SAY WHAA?! There it was, the thing I was hoping they wouldn't say. Maybe this is an unfair comparison but what if they had said "Oh, but they aren't white."

Letting The Onion Write My Blog

This made me chuckle. Click on headline and see if you can figure out what made me laugh. It's really tricky.

Pentacle Allowed On Veterans' Tombstones

It's Almost Thursday and Nothing That Exciting Has Happened

I didn't have a lot to blog about this week. Nothing that remarkable happened to me or anyone else I know. I got my hair cut on Tuesday with Chad. He's our stylist in Sugarhouse who is quite the character. He gives a good haircut but I thought mine was a tad short this time. Karen and Diane said it looks fine but what else are they going to say? Today I went to a new spin class at the Gold's in Orem and I thought it was tough. Some days the whole exercise thing seems harder than others.


I was thinking today about where I grew up and thought I'd share it with you. I grew up in the small town of Magrath, Alberta Canada. The two websites I found Town of Magrath & Magrath, AB were both equally horrible but you will at least get an idea of what it is like. The population when I lived there was around 1500. I think it's grown a bit since then but nothing dramatic. There is a K-12 school, two Mormon churches, a United church,library, 2 banks, post office, general store, convienience store, a couple of semi-decent places to eat, golf course, cemetary, fish pond, ball parks, ice arena, dump, town offices, gas station, buffalo sloped grain elevator, other grain elevators, RCMP station/house and that's about it. No traffic lights either. I thought it was a good place to grow up in. There was a lot of open space and we pretty much went and did whatever we wanted to. I sometimes look back and wonder if my parents really knew where I was 90% of the time. We played in ditches filled with water a lot and I'm amazed that no one ever drowned. A little fact is: I worked for the Town of Magrath for 3 years and one of my duties was the cemetary which was also a place we played in a lot as kids. As a teenager we did some stupid things and the cops usually were nice to us. I remember one night getting caught driving on the mainstreet sidewalk with a friend riding on the roof of the car. They just told us to stop. We also got caught at the fish pond one night driving while trying to fit as many people as possible into a friends car. Notice how none of these stories involve alchohol or drugs. That's because Magrath is about 99.9% mormon which meant my friends were mormon which meant we didn't drink or do drugs. I'm not saying it never went on but I just wasn't a part of that group. Those kids were "skids", "headbangers", or heaven forbid, "sluts'! You know a town is odd when it's cool to be in the marching band. My parents still live in Magrath and I love visiting every summer. There is something calming about that town and I want my kids to experience that. That being said, I don't want to live in Magrath though. Two reasons are: it's windy pretty much all the time and it's freakin cold in the winter. I also like to think that I'm cooler and more wordly than people who stayed. I know this isn't true because look where I'm living Santaquin but it makes me feel better about my situation. I guess I wish my kids had the freedom I did growing up but times have changed and I'm not about to let them go play in ditches.

The Not So Fascinating Girl

A)"When does Beverly Hills 90201 start?"
B)"Does Jed in Book of Mormon 100 think I'm fascinating?"
C)"Why can't everything be made out of stonewashed denim?"
D)"Should we stay up until 3 or 4 am making prank phone calls to the boys dorms tonight?"

My sophomore year at BYU I lived on condo row in the infamous Wellington #9. That's me above in the very stylish black head band sporting the "freshman 15" and super dorky matching outfit. WHAT WERE WE THINKING?!I had originally signed on to room with 3 other good friends but two of them bailed (you know who you are) in the summer and so we ended up living with two strangers. Strange being the key word with these two. One was a "cowgirl" named Mindy from "the south" who did acrobatics on horses backs. While there are many a Mindy story to tell I am going to focus on her connection to a book called "The Fascinating Girl" by Helen Andelin. My friend Noelle had actually found this book the year before at the second hand book store... The Fascinating Girl
and we had many a late night reading this horrible horrible book. Pretty much it was the antithesis of us which made it a lot of fun to read. Basically if you want to win and keep a man by acting like a brainless maid servant, it's the book for you. Apparently this was a big hit with young Mormon women in the 60's and 70's. So back to Mindy. We didn't like Mindy at all and we, being 19 and too cool for school, weren't afraid of showing it. One day we were rummaging through her dresser and happened to find this book tucked away inside. We opened it up and found it had been lovingly highlighted throughout. This explained a lot to us about Mindy. We came up with a plan to ask her about the book later and long story short, found out that her grandmother was none other than Helen Andelin! Poor, sweet Mindy never had a chance. Mindy moved out in December and I think later that year we received her wedding invitation. She was a fascinating girl after all. The reason I brought this up is because last night in a state of insomnia I thought about naming my blog "The Fascinating Girl" or "The not so Fascinating Girl". What do you think?