My missionary son.

Johnny sent a few new pictures by email this week. Just wanted to share with you. He's getting transferred today so he'll have a new address soon.
Here he is on his bike,












spilling gas while filling the car (rookie),


















with a member's great dane,





















and at the zoo with his companion.




Oh I love my boy!
What a goofball!

There's a difference between ORGANIZED and OCD

One of my summer projects was to clean the shop. It's attached to the garage and full of everything and all out of order. Since Johnny's on his mission, there's no one to blame for not putting tools away etc. So I figured I'd get everything in order, find all the tools to the tool sets, organize all the screws, nails, thingybobbers, and whatchamacalits and label everything so it can be found easily. This hasn't been easy for my husband because he knows where he has 'thrown' things and now he has to check the labeling before he can find something. It's all good. We'll get used to being able to actually find something without having to hunt for 30 minutes. It brought back a lot of memories from my days of working at Allied hardware. Their motto was "If we don't have it, you don't need it". That's pretty much how things are at our house in the shop. We are where the neighbors come to borrow or have things fixed because my hubby is so talented. He's the only person I know who buys sprinkler parts in bulk! We considered writing a song about everything we found while cleaning out the shop. Imagine this to the tune of 'The 12 days of Christmas'
72-hour kits
20 tons of nails
19 thousand fish lures
18 pairs of gloves
17 unused suitcases
16 auto light bulbs
15 empty quart jars
14 butcher blocks
13 bungee chords
12 garden tools
11 old deer antlers
10 folding camp chairs
9 fishing poles
8 jars of car wax
7 tennis rackets
6 pounds of screws
5 sets of drill bits
4 sleeping bags
3 hundred sprinkler parts
2 spotting scopes
And a shell for a '93 Dodge!
No, I'm not OCD.

Mr. Wilson

Our cute neighbor Vern was given the nickname 'Mr. Wilson' when we moved in 15+ years ago. He was the nicest old dude in the neighborhood and his wife is the nicest old gal on the block. Mr. Wilson nicknamed all the boys in the neighborhood 'Dennis' and all the girls 'Denise'. I think Johnny was the first Dennis because he was the most mischievous. He and his wife both fought cancer. This is a picture of them last summer when we all went on a camping trip as neighbors.

Mr. Wilson passed away in January. We have a lot of good memories with him. Whenever you'd drive by his house, he'd be sitting on the front porch and wave at you as you went by. We miss him. His sweet wife and kids had this beautiful monument made and put in the front yard. It's beautiful!

4th of July Fun

We had a terrific 4th of July weekend. My husband had 4 days off because he doesn't work on Fridays and he got Monday off, too. We got to go to a fun family barbecue, light fireworks in the street, play in the yard in perfect weather, and just enjoy being together. Good times!

Happy Birthday, Candice!

Summer fun

Cute nephew sleeps over.











Went golfing with brother and sister in law.
















Johnny's first pix came from Indiana!

Do NOT try this at home!

Two summers ago, my cute nephew helped me to prepare some fresh eggs for food storage. We put vaseline all over them and packed them away in their cartons. The theory was that if you restored the protective coating on the eggs, you could store them for up to TWO YEARS and still be able to use them. Well...
This is what they looked like when I opened them yesterday.
EWWW! Many had split open and all that dark stuff is mold and ca ca!
I cleaned off one of the whitest ones just for the sake of science.

I put it in a bowl of water. If it sank it was supposed to be OK because no air got into it.
It sank.

So I cracked it open.

It looked cloudy and smelled funny.

So I chucked 'em all! Needless to say, you can't store fresh eggs for two years. HOWEVER, my cute friend Lois says that she stores her eggs like this all the time but she rotates them so they're never stored for over two months. Hmmm.
OK, so maybe two months, but NOT two years!

I think I'll just buy the can of powdered eggs for my food storage.

Disneyland Dad

Happy Father's day to my darling husband. The kids call him 'Disneyland Dad' because he's always so much fun to be around. (my nickname is 'Drill Sergeant Mom', opposites attract, you know)
Michal calls him 'Batman' because he can do anything. I always tell him he's charmed. Anything new that he tries, he can do it. Any game that we play, he wins. Any project he works on turns out perfect. He's the best! We love you, Jason!