My Favorite Things

I was thinking this weekend about some of my favorite things, of which I just so happened to enjoy this weekend - so I thought I would share them with you:

* Basking in the sun. Now that the sun has finally made an appearance in Utah land after all that rain, I sat, and sat, and sat some more on my back deck just drinking in the sweet, sweet feel of sunshine.

* Waking up to my hubby in bed with me. After many long weeks of business travel, he is finally home again - sadly, he has a couple more small trips before the month's out, but I am cherishing my time with him. I am luxuriating in his nearness and feel like all is as it should be with my other half finally paired back up with me.

I also enjoyed, well perhaps enjoyed isn't the best term, but... listened to the kids bickering downstairs knowing he was within earshot and could remedy the situation rather than knowing that I, yet again, had to deal with the situation by myself. I even ran off yesterday afternoon for ...wait for it...3 HOURS to go clothes shopping with Kimberly with nary a worry about getting home anytime soon! It was deliciously wonderful.

* Watermelon. It is my ultimate favorite fruit. I have changed up my eating routines a little bit and replaced my evening bowl of popcorn - slathered in butter, oh-how I miss you - with watermelon, and it is delicious.

* That part of night when all the kids are asleep, all the lights are out, the phone is quiet, the street noises outside dimmed, and the type of weather where I can open my window and just lie in bed before going to sleep, basking in the sounds of nothingness and listening to the luscious night noises while relishing the days events and thanking my Father in Heaven for the gift of life and my many sweet blessings. My absolute favorite time of day. May you all relish in your favorite things too.

The Apple of My Eye, Quite Literally

So, for mother's day, I was thinking how my kids are definitely the apple of my eye, only this particular mother's day, I do believe the apple left behind one of its apple seeds, leaving a nice little crater in my eye.

Thinking it was just a painful scratch in my eye last night, turned into a massively painful, red, and swollen eye this morning. I desperately called my optometrist, who thankfully had an emergency phone number and graciously met me over at his office early Sunday morning. It was definitely an emergency indeed, because I could barely open my eye this morning due to a cornea ulcer. Who knew such thing even existed? Apparently for contact wearers, it happens on occasion.

Well, thanks to some lovely, and rather expensive prescription drops, my eye feels a titch better and on the road to recovery.

I know, happy mother's day to me, huh :) I am extremely thankful though for good doctors and good medicine. I'm glad I wasn't a pioneer mother.

Blah, Blah, Blah...

I have the blahs right now - nothing fabulously interesting has been going on here of late at the Rimington household, but I noticed it's been over a week since my last post, and since I usually try to post at least once a week, I'll share a few pictures with you of Megan.


Natalie keeps commenting on how Megan's hair is like "sand" and my hair is "dark, dark, dark." So then I ask her what color her hair is, and she says, "brown." We definitely have a mix of brownish hair in the family.

Isn't she just so dang cute? She loves giving out kisses. I absolutely adore this age - 18 months really is one of the most perfect ages. So cute, sleeping through the night, eating with the family instead of nursing every 2 hours, and it's right before they start throwing massive two-year-old tantrums, so I'll enjoy this stage while it lasts.

Okay, so I shouldn't say the week has been entirely blah because I've gotten to do a few of these too - for those who have been asking how to access my stories, here it is...

http://www.standard.net/authors/dana-rimington

Due Time

We have a couch. An old, flowery, comfy kind of couch.

Purchased in the year of 1997, just days after we returned home from our honeymoon so we would have something to sit on in the living room of our rat's nest apartment (which now that I think about it, is a whole separate blog entry).

Trust me, floral patterns and bright colors were the in-thing back then. I promise.

I was thinking it was due time to get a new couch to get with the new style. The thing is, it really is a perfectly good couch in perfectly good condition. Not, however, like our family room couch. That is in dire need of replacing, but that will have to wait for another year.

Anyway, for my birthday I found this couch cover that looks fantabulous! I think it definitely looks better, don't you think?

We bought a cover for the bright green chair, but it needs a few modifications, so until then, here is a picture with the very outdated bright green chair -

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On a whole separate note, for those of you who aren't facebookers (if you are, disregard below pics), here are the pink fluff skirts I made for the girls:


It was a gloriously beautiful Easter Day.

And now I have a gloriously beautiful couch to go with it.

Now You See It, Now You Don't

The timing of this incident is just impeccable, given the last post about swapping clothes with the girls.

So I bought myself a fabulous new dress a week ago. Even wore it to church feeling oh-so-cute, with even my girls commenting on the dress's cuteness. Definitely a winner for my wardrobe.

Today, I hucked the cute-new dress into the washer, then pulled it out of the dryer, and found a MINI-cute dress. I was speechless. As I went to put it in the basket, I noticed instantly that the dang dress was several inches shorter than it was 60 minutes prior to its fateful soaking.

It is now Kimberly's cute-new dress. To say she is excited is a mere understatement. She did tell me she felt bad that I had only gotten to wear it once. Cheers to thoughtful daughter!

Can I also just add that my sadness extends to this simple fact -- that she is old enough for a women's size large dress (granted, a shrunken large, but you get the idea). P.s. She is only 2 women's sizes smaller than me in shoe size. ...and she is already just shy of 5 feet tall.

I heard someone say once that time goes really slow when you have little ones because the days seem to just drag on. and on. and on. But once they start school, it goes by really fast. I can certainly testify to that.

Now I am in the market for a new-cute dress.

Freaky Friday

On Friday, Kimberly and Alicia had a mother/daughter achievement day activity where we had to dress up like the other, you know, like the Freaky Friday movie.

I gave the girls free reign to any and all of my clothes and I tried to squeeze into some of their clothes. No such luck. Next best idea was trying to find something somewhat teenybopper in my closet. Success! The girls approved of my outfit, and I did eventually find one of Alicia's vests that fit me (sort of).

Kind of funny seeing my clothes on a curve-less version of me.

Also of note this week was Natalie's 4th birthday.

John was pleased to find out Natalie insisted on Blue frosting. Even after her older sisters tried to talk her into fabulous pink frosting, she was not deterred. And she wanted the castle cake, which Kimberly so kindly helped me with.

I have spent my free time whipping up this fort for Natalie. Isn't it cute? I remember having one when I was little and we played in it all the time (it's just one of those forts that goes over a card table), so when I got a sewing machine and found a cute tutorial online, I knew I had to make one.

It's a hit, thank goodness.

Spring Break, New Mexico Style

I love long road trips.

What other way can one go from mountainous desert, to rolling hills, desert nothingness with tumbleweeds, and back up into the mountain terrain with beautiful trees all in one day?

So, when John found out he needed to be down in New Mexico for another business trip, and it just so happened to coincide with our Spring Break, I hopped on the traveling bandwagon.

I love the fact that Utah is surrounded by so many amazing states and places to see and do within just a days' drive, of which we have been to many, but surprisingly, New Mexico has never been on my list of places to visit, probably just because I didn't know very much about the state.

Now that I know what a fabulous place it is, let me try and entice you to this great deserty place with the following spiel.

It helped that we were staying up in the mountains as the southern part of the state is a tad on the dry, flat, and tumble-weedy side of things, as evidenced below -

- as seen from the canyon drive up to our pad. Yup, definitely desertish,


especially when compared to this luscious area right next to our condo.

However, amidst the desert land is this national park - full of white sand dunes you can sled down. In fact, scroll back up the the picture of my girls in the canyon two pictures above - see that strip of white in the very top of the picture? That is White Sands National Park.

Can you believe that?

We had so much fun that we went back for a second time in the evening after John got off work.


We had 3 days to play together as a family before John had to be to work, so on one of the days, we hiked on some of the trails near our condo, which led us to these old railroad trestles, one a little more crumbled than the other.


We were looking for a geocache amidst this trestle rubble, which is why we are climbing all over it.

While hiking into town, we ran into a few houses like this one with very interesting versions of foundation set on the hillside.

Anyone interested in purchasing this baby?

The song How Firm a Foundation comes to mind right about now.

Back in desertville, we encountered some really fascinating petroglyphs dating way back - there were literally hundreds of them along the hiking trail, so the girls were in heaven. It was like a huge scavenger hunt.

I of course got a sunburn that day because I left the sunscreen back at the condo. oops.

Here is just one of the 40 pictures John took of various cool carvings in the rocks. Aren't you glad I'm not making you look at all of them? You are just going to have to trek down there and see them for yourself.

The highlight of the trip though was down in a little spot out in the middle of nowhere just north of the Texas border -

Carlsbad Caverns.


We drove nearly 3 hours to get there, then spent four hours down below in the caves just wandering around in pure wonderment of the beauty and hugeness of a world completely hidden from sunlight.

Here is the entrance. Funny story, as we started walking down into the dark unknown territory, Natalie started walking slower and slower until she finally quit walking altogether, made an abrupt about-face and informed us she was going home! John luckily worked his magic on her and convinced her otherwise, especially when she started seeing all of the cool things inside.

None of our pictures even do the caverns justice, so I won't even bother posting any, other than this one of us standing in the caves.

Suffice it to say, it truly was a most amazing place.

Alas, when the week ended, we had to leave John and the sunshine so he could finish out his business trip and the girls could return to school. We commenced the 15-hour drive back, this time breaking it up into 2 days and with the help of one of my neighbors who happened to spend the week visiting her sister in Albuquerque and was looking for a cheap ride home. Win-win for both of us!

Back to Utah and reality, just in time for the snowy weekend. Sunny New Mexico, I miss you!!