Fashion Update

My friends continue to help educate me in the fashion world. It's a good thing too, otherwise I'd be stuck back in my old rut of t-shirts and mommy jeans.

I have updated my shirts in the past year, but had yet to update my jeans, mostly because after searching high and low years ago to find a pair of jeans that adequately fit my rather long legs and waist, I didn't think I would ever find another comfortable pair (by the way, my jean of choice? old navy. for the last 8 years or so)

Here's my new pair of jeans:


For a mere $20 at Kim's Fashions in Clearfield, the new, updated Dana jean-look. They are deliciously comfy - and long enough! and yes, these are my first pair of straight jeans in 8 years. I never thought I would return to that look.

If you have any other fashion questions, I'll direct them to my fashion gurus. they only charge a small fee.

This 'n' That 'o' Fun

Finally, a post with lots of pictures!!!

Here's what we've been up to of late:

Megan had her birthday on Thursday and turned TWO!!

Umm, I think she likes cake.

I tried an idea I got off pinterest - a rainbow cake. I had just frosted the top when Kimberly decided it was too boring, so she and her friend 'livened' up the top and sides a bit.

It was really easy - just whip up a batch of white or yellow cake, divide it out into six bowls, color each a different color, pour into cake pan one at a time creating the colorful layers, cook, and then wa-la! Rainbow cake. The girls have all put in their requests for rainbow cake on their birthdays. Done!

The basement is progressing along. The bedroom and den are completely framed up, and all of the electrical wires and lights are put in. Thanks to John's dad's help, the electrical box has also been replaced. That was an all-day task with no power.

Now John is working on putting in the heat registers and rerouting the heat ducting. It can sure get a little loud around here when he's drilling into the heat exchange (I think that's what it is called). It's cute to see Megan and Natalie quickly covering their ears when it starts.

We found out Alicia is far-sighted and needs glasses to read. So far, so good in the headache department. She was getting them far too regularly. P.S. Don't always trust the school vision screenings. They did not catch her eye problems. In fact, I should probably take Kimberly in for that matter. Our kids are doomed in the glasses department with both John and I having glasses.

With all the warm weather of late, John has been able to finish the front part of the walkway on the side of the house - you know, that part of the yard that gets constantly trampled and the grass has no hope for staying alive - yah, that part of the lawn. It looks so much better now, and we'll hopefully be able to finish back behind the gate if the weather continues to stay nice into this week.

Don't worry, John has put us all to work too. We have gotten very good at hauling the pavers around and unloading the dirt from the trailer at the dump site.

We also made it out for our annual pumpkin patch trip to retrieve pumpkins. We always hop on board for the hay ride and even better, it was a beautiful day for it yesterday.

I think that's it for now. You are officially caught up on our lives. Well, most of it anyway.
Until next time - adieu!

Interview of a Lifetime

Over the course of my career as a freelance journalist for a couple of local newspapers, I've done hundreds of interviews. Out of those, I have a handful of truly memorable ones. Just recently though, I had the interview of a lifetime.

My hour and a half-long chat with a dainty and sweet 76-year-old will forever be imprinted in my mind. I heard about her story over a year ago from my sister in Oregon. I finally have the time to delve into such a fascinating story, so my sister asked permission from her friend to give me her phone number so I could chat with her mother, who just so happens to live in Utah of all places! Just an hour south of where I live!

Let me share with you my experience and a fraction of the enthralling interview:

As we sat down, we delved back into a time in history when I, as an American, was the enemy, while she, as a young school girl living in Eastern Germany during WWII, was fighting for her life.

Quite literally, she would run home from school screaming whenever a plane flew too low as she raced for a nearby bush to hide in. She even wondered why she bothered going to school since she knew she would probably end up dying during the war anyway. For someone experiencing air raids regularly at night, this doesn't sound surprising.

Sometimes the air raids would go off several times at night, which made it especially difficult for my interviewee's mom to get seven young kids dressed by herself and over to the bomb shelter in time, as her husband had been drafted by the Nazis. Eventually, they just started going to bed fully dressed with their shoes on so they could run out immediately to the bomb shelter located across the street when they heard the sirens.

Here was a woman who grew up in a communist life where a sole piece of bread was handed out in the morning, and she knew it was all she would receive for sustenance until the next morning.

She was quick to inform me that everyone's story is different - but for those who lived during the time of WWII in Eastern Germany and later those living in the oppression of the Russian rule in the aftermath, and then later when the Berlin Wall was erected, they all knew what it meant to live a life with no laughter. She told me that to this day, she doesn't laugh very often because for so much of her life, there wasn't anything to laugh about, so she grew into a woman who is very private about her life.

My interviewee was eventually able to escape from Eastern Germany with her family in a harrowing trip by train to some refugee camps before they eventually made their way to the United States.

Hers is a story of true and utter triumph. At the end of our chat, when I asked her what she has taken away from such a harrowing experience, she became teary for the first time in the interview and said this in her thick German accent:

"My surroundings have made my character. I would never want to trade my life because I learned to get by with little and I learned to just make do and to appreciate things in a way that no one else can ever understand, unless you've been there."

Here was a woman who is quiet, shy, and humble, as she told me repeatedly before we met that her story wasn't very interesting and that she didn't have much to share. As I sat dumbfounded listening to story after story of her experiences growing up, I knew she was not giving herself nearly enough credit.

In fact, she is intensely private about her story, and requested I not use her name. She has even turned down BYU, who has wanted to interview her countless times. I was honored she trusted me enough to share her priceless story, one I will most certainly never forget.

You are probably wondering what I am going to do now with my notes from such an incredible interview. Frankly, so am I. I am not a book-writer, nor have I ever wanted to write one. That is until now, when I have such an incredible story to share. I may do just that. Just not anytime soon. Ask me about it in a couple of years.

Until then, I will hold in my memory the interview of someone who suffered so much and came out on the other side a better person. May I learn from her example and remember her when I suffer my own trials.

Our Journey Into the World of ODD

Here is my sweet, kind-hearted, generous, and loving second daughter, Alicia, who is nine-years-old. She is always the first one with a hug, a compliment, or a sweet note.

Starting last January though, our frustrations with her were beginning to mount. There were ever-increasing moments of strained parenting and I would lie awake at night wondering what I was doing wrong.

My emotional energy was being sapped as I tried to pin-point what could possibly be causing the countless tantrums, emotional melt-downs, and endless arguments, and wondering why what had worked with our oldest daughter wasn't working with Alicia.

Even more pressing was the concern we had about Alicia's school work. She was falling further and further behind in school and we were getting worried. They put her in some special reading and math groups at school, which helped, but she was still falling way behind with her testing. We tried scouting around for specialized reading and tutor programs to try and help her, but nothing felt right.

We were out of options. The only problem was, we didn't know what the problem was in the first place, so we didn't know how to go about fixing such an elusive problem. At this point, I went back to Alicia's teacher and told her we had been unsuccessful in finding a program that would work for her, at which point she suggested Alicia have the school do one of their all-around testing things.

We readily agreed and before we knew it, I was filling out packets of paperwork, and she was being tested by the school psychologist, the resource teacher, the reading specialist, and her own teacher. Finally, after a long month wait, the school was done and we received the results. It was such a relief to finally have some answers and some further guidance and direction.

We found out she didn't have any learning disorders and she had an average IQ, which meant she shouldn't be having so much trouble in school. The only thing that cropped up was the possibility for ADHD and/or ODD, at which point we were directed to her pediatrician and a child-psychologist, who did some testing and discovered she did not have ADHD, but did have Oppositional Defiance Disorder, or ODD for short.

I had no idea what it was, or what it meant, so I checked out a bunch of books at the library. For so long I had thought Alicia would simply 'grow-out' of her mood issues and temper tantrums. I learned something valuable from the books I read - children with ODD don't simply 'grow-out' of it - you have to learn how to work with it, things that I was doing completely wrong.

Basically, ODD is a mood-disorder where people have a hard time controlling their moods and especially have difficulty managing their temper when they are frustrated or angry. Every page I read in the first book I read about ODD fit Alicia perfectly, and for the first time in many, many months, Alicia's behaviors made sense to me and even more importantly - I had answers on how to change the way we were parenting so we could decrease the number of tantrums and emotional outbursts.

I continued reading more books, and we started seeing a child-psychologist who works up at McKay Dee Hospital. He has been incredibly helpful in opening our eyes to this disorder and how best to go about helping Alicia learn to deal with her emotions.

After a particularly rough day of emotional outbursts and extensive arguing from her, she made this for me:

I was touched that she had noticed we were doing our best to try and help her. Each time I look at this, I remember what this is all about - continuing to love and take care of that kind, sweet, loving child I am proud to call My Daughter.

My New Favorite Place

I have a new favorite place - it's this cool bike/walking/running/rollerblading/or whatever trail in West Layton that follows an old railway line and continues all the way down to Gateway in Salt Lake City. They just barely finished it during the summer.

We discovered it as a family about a month ago when we set out on a family bike ride down the trail. Then John and I went by ourselves last week for a date, even biking in the dark with some headlamps - now that is a fun adventure and a very fun cheap date idea. We rode all the way down to Farmington and took the train home. One of these days we'd like to ride all the way down to Salt Lake.

I am so excited to have a cool bike trail near us that is so smooth and flat!! I absolutely adore riding bikes. Sadly, I didn't have my camera for any of our biking adventures, and John and I looked incredibly dorky with our head lamps under our bike helmets, so suffice it so say, I will have to wait for another time to take pictures.

Today I went back to the trail with just my two young 'uns. While I pushed Megan in the stroller, Natalie could ride her bike to her heart's content and I didn't have to worry about any cars, weird turns, crazy drivers, etc. - we basically had the trail to ourselves and spent 60 luxurious minutes soaking in the warm fall air, feeling the light breeze, and counting the katrillion grasshoppers along the trail (some not so alive and thoroughly squished. nasty).

Oh, and getting some exercise too while we were at it.

I Have a Problem

Yes that's right, and I am here to make it bloggingly public.

Let me begin by telling you about a recent outing our family had to visit some friends in Clinton this past Sunday evening. About 10 minutes into the 20 minute drive, I discovered something most disturbing. I had forgotten to grab my purse on the way out the door because I had been holding a bowl of salad in one arm, and Megan in the other. Yes I know, to an average woman, this wouldn't normally be a problem as John was driving, I didn't need my wallet and keys. But sadly, I am not the average-joe, because in my purse lay two very important must-have items I need to have on hand at all times: my chapstick and lotion.

I wasn't as worried about the lotion as I was the chapstick. I was pretty sure my friend would have lotion on hand, which she did in her bathroom, but not everyone uses chapstick like I do. I buy chapstick in bulk...monthly. I have a friend who told me once that she doesn't think she has ever finished a tube of chapstick...ever.

I on the other hand start to get desperate when my chapstick gets down to its final layer if I don't have a backup tube on hand. In fact, as we left Oregon this summer on our way home from a reunion, I applied my chapstick only to discover that it was nearly gone. Since I knew I couldn't make it the rest of the 9-hour trip with such a rinky-dink amount, I picked up a new tube at the very next gas station.

Yes, I know I have a problem. It all started when I moved down to Utah 17 years ago. My lips were used to the moist, ever-rainy weather conditions of the northwest. My lips (and hands) went into rebellion mode when they encountered the vast dryness of Utah. I compensated with chapstick (and lotion for the hands). And since then, it has never left my side.

I am teased mercilessly by family and friends. You would think this would change my habits.

No.

I am still sadly addicted to the addicting stuff. As another friend stated once, I must have the smoothest lips and hands in the neighborhood.

I am not worried. It is probably OCD, but as I have researched the disorder, it is only a mild form. In fact, I'll take my chapstick OCD over any of the other options out there.

That being said, I give you my full permission to chuckle, snicker, or even tease me if you see me apply yet again, more chapstick. Just know that my lips are sealed. Literally.

Do The Puyallup

Whenever I think of the state fair, I can't help but remember while growing up all of the commercials for the Washington State Fair with the catchy jingle singing about "...Do the Puyallup." Please tell me you fellow Seattlites remember those? Heck, maybe they're even still singing it up there?

So, the Utah State Fair may not have a catchy tune, but it's a tradition for us to go down every year. Last Saturday was our day of choice for the fair, which was a first for us as we have usually gone during the work week in the past, picking John up from work on the way. Now that he works in Clearfield, we attempted a Saturday. Next year we will go back to middle of the week.

Reason? Ever try finding a parking spot near the fairgrounds on a late Saturday afternoon? And tack on the fact that North Temple is down to just one lane each as they add in the trax lines. 30 minutes of seeing sign after sign of 'parking lot full,' we were about ready to give up when we saw one lot with a few spots open. We found out real quick why they still had spots. They were double the price of everywhere else. But, when the supply is down, demand does have a tendency to increase. After our harrowing experience, we were willing to pay the increased price.

We spent 4 hours at the fair, so it was well worth the parking hassles (well, almost.)

We saw kangaroos and wallabies, spent some time in the science area, did a treasure hunt in one of the buildings, visited every building with displays of some sort, saw the animals, and caught a couple of rides.

The older girls even enjoyed petting a goose.

Megan, not so much.

Got to see the loomer in action. In fact, the girls quite enjoyed themselves and spent quite a bit of time asking her questions and watching her at work.

John, not so much.

We always ride the Ferris Wheel.

Though, we did learn that Kimberly is not so keen about heights.
Not a problem for Megan though!

Too bad our garden didn't produce one of these babies.

The state fair always signals the end of summer and the start of fall. I love fall, but it is never long enough! We'll see what this fall has in store for us.