Hearts Full of Joy

family road trip - installment 4

i'm taking a very leisurely approach to this travelogue of our summer road trip, but i do plan to get it all done.

day 6 - july 30th - quincy, illinois

a beautifully relaxing day spent in quincy with the rodenbergs. the girls went to see 'hairspray' and the guys went golfing. lexi asked gloria for a photo shoot, and got some fun photos in gloria's gorgeous guest room - thanks so much gloria!

that long hair is all gone now, she got it cut off by traci right after we returned home::cute new style.

in the evening the adults, plus gracie, went to dinner and for a tour of street after street of quincy's grand old homes. i didn't get any photos, but they were amazing. imagine the most beautiful and picturesque old 1800s era mansions going on for street, after street, after street. loved it! at dusk, we went down to the mississippi - beautiful!

mike and gloria=mississippi lovin'

love those antiques

i met jenny through antique quilting online. i love her upbeat attitude, how eagerly and enthusiastically she shares her faith, and her sense of decorating style using primitive antiques. she recently sent me a link to her new website, homestead originals. i enjoyed it so much, i want to share it with you. it is all so wonderful: her beautiful children, the 1800's home that was once a stage coach stop - restored to it's glory and filled with simple 1800s farm house furnishings. oh! how i'd love it to be mine! take a peek. be sure to click on 'our home' button.

i have been finding/making the time lately to quilt, craft, embroider, and sew - and loving every minute of it. i will be sharing some of my recent projects with you soon. watch for something coming your way soon gloria! a friend offered to share a booth with me at an upcoming craft fair, and i was tempted, but then thought it was insanity. after more careful thought however, i issued myself this challenge: make fun things for the craft fair booth without feeling stressed, hurried, or pressured, and while maintaining a balance in all areas of my life. if i can accomplish this, it will be a major step forward in my life.

another recent adventure was showing my antique quilt collection at the arts festival. we had a fun weekend with brock's mom, both of my sisters and their families, and one of brock's sisters and her family. it's good that i didn't realize what i was getting myself into when i agreed to do it. i also didn't realize that brock would be in japan that week. my first big surprise was how many antique quilts i actually own (see my posting '18 years'). the second shock was how difficult it was to hang one quilt. (i only hung quilts in good stable condition, and laid the rest on tables). i spent 3 hours on the first  7 quilts! i was blessed with lots of helping  hands, without which it wouldn't have gotten done. none of my photos from the exhibit turned out (i really need a new camera), but here are some my sis micaela took. thanks mic!and thanks to everyone who helped.

these photos show the first three aisles of  the exibit, but not the back row with the oldest quilts - 1850 to 1880s.

lucky me!

i'm feeling like the luckiest of people right now, because i got to have a photo shoot with gloria's sister kelly. see her fabulous and inspiring blog, my happy little life. this is the fun day that i mentioned three postings ago. i originally asked her for a mommy/baby shoot, but then thought it would be fun to mix in brock and noah too. even if we didn't get great photos out of it (which we did, just look and see), it would have been worth it just to get to know kelly better - she's so, so fun, and amazingly talented, in so many ways. here are just a few of the photos. i'm sure i'll be posting them for some time to come. it makes me want to grab my camera and start shooting, but the results wouldn't be like this. maybe if i bought a nicer camera? nope, that wouldn't be enough either....i'm not kelly. but a new camera would be so nice.

run, run as fast as you can!

lexi has joined the cross country track team. perhaps she has the super-dee-duper cross country ability genes from her dad and my sister jill. time will tell. after only a couple of weeks of running (for the first time in her life) she can run 3 miles faster than I ever have  (so not fair). i would love to get out there and run with her, but not until i'm done nursing gracie-poo. i can't do intensive exercise and keep my milk.

at her first meet, she came in 16th out of 19 girls, and was just thrilled to have run the 3 miles without stopping. a week later, she came in 21st out of 38 girls! go, lexi, go!

lexi (on the left - what a cutie!) and some of her team mates, waiting to run. notice that mia can't stay out of the fun - she's got to be at the center of it all!

missing japan?

brock is in japan for 10 days on business, and perhaps that had an impact on this happening. mia and noah were begging for onigiri (japanese rice balls). tashi, being the amazing  older sister that she is, obliged, and did a great job at it too. hopefully brock is bringing us back supplies so we can re-stock and make more.

18 years

wednesday the 29th was our 18th anniversary. brock points out that it was a significant one, because i was 18 when we got married and so now i have been married as long as i was single. he's almost right, but i was pretty close to 19 (so young, I know, but i was halfway through my sophmore year at BYU, and graduated a year and a half later, at 20 - i was always in a hurry, and i haven't ever regretted that youthful decision)), so not quite half of my life has been spent married. but now i'm quibbling over insignificancies, because what is of real importance, is how amazing the last 18 years have been. truly. we spent the day together, just relaxing, and enjoying each other's company. noah and grace spent the day with us too. it was a beautiful day, not because of what we did, but because of what we felt. being back in utah for our anniversary for the first time in 16 years made it more enjoyable, because the weather, the sky, the colors on the mountains, the feeling in the air, was the same as that day at the manti temple in '89. now we are heading into september, possibly my favorite time of year, because it reminds me of being a newlywed and it was also the month, two years later, that lexi joined us. september always takes me back to those two blissful, life-changing times. brock is my perfect man, and all these years later, i love him more than ever. i know the Lord loves me very much, to have given me the blessing of sharing my life with brock, now and forever. he always puts me and our marriage first - always. he's so much more than i deserve - honestly.

brock found this wonderful old wash basin and pitcher for my present. this is something i've wanted ever since the one we found in japan was broken in our first move back.

the stack of quilts in the photo are some of the antique quilts i will be displaying at the Arts Festival this coming friday and saturday. i have 78 antique quilts, and here's where it gets weird.....39 are from 1850 to 1900, and 39 are from 1901 to 1950. also, 39 are quilts and 39 are tops. this is odd, because i collected randomly, without a plan, and this is how it ended up. i don't think i will have room to display them all, but most....fun fun!

brock and i went on a little day trip on friday and spent more time together for our anniversary. gracie joined us, and noah played with cousin andy. but before dropping noah off, we treated ourselves to a photo shoot with gloria's sister kelly, of kelly's blog. YAY! we finally got to meet her! and we are so looking forward to seeing the photos. i will share them in an upcoming post.

late summer skies & a kitten tale

  one of the things i have most enjoyed this summer is views of mountains and expansive skies, so here are a few more pics of views from our yard

an evening in late august....that golden locust tree might be my favorite tree ever.

september 1st

and for the kitten 'tale'...

before my parents left on their mission, a friendly young black cat who lived down the street decided to move to their home. and he wanted to stay with us, even after they left. they had been gone less than a week, when he moved a cute young girlfriend in, also a solid black cat. she was delicate and dainty, and he followed her an doted on her every move, for months. she was a wild and frightened little thing, but has gradually warmed up to us, and surprise! had kittens in lexi's window well. i have never seen two cats so much in love, and they still romp and and play every day, even after the kittens have been born.

gandolf & galadriel, named in our family tradition of giving lord of the rings names to our cats. it should be noted that this tradition was started by my dad,  back in 1995 when he named their cat 'precious' (before the big lord of the rings comeback), and unwittingly carried on by us when we named our last cat pippin. my parents have also had a golum and a rosie, and a dog named lady eowyn, and my sister has had a sam.

cute baby kitty

i find it interesting that we have had three cats decide to adopt us, while living in this house, starting with mimi in '97, and all three have been solid black.

i have enjoyed watching galadriel with her kittens, while i have been taking care of my gracie. it amazes me that cats (and other animals) have the inborn ability to give birth to and care for their babies, without help or instruction.

mia & kitten

it looks like the responsibility will fall on us to get these cats fixed, but how fun for our kids to get to have baby kitties. I swear that they were more excited when they found the kittens than when i had gracie!

family road trip - installment 3

july 28th,  day 4,   nauvoo

a perfect day! we got out the door as quickly as we could in the morning with our five kids, plus Gloria's youngest two, dallen & landon. mike was in china on business, kennedy was in phoenix visiting cousins, and austin & brady were in utah for EFY and other fun stuff, and spent the day in nauvoo. so lucky to have gloria as our tour guide! not only is she the funnest, (as her sister kelly recently told me, they are "all about the fun") but knew everything about nauvoo and what we wanted to see, so that everything went really smoothly and we didn't waste time trying to figure out where things were. what a blessing! but then, the rodenbergs have alwys been a blessing in our lives. it was also their stake day (the nauvoo stake) at the pageant, and so we got some special perks like front & center seating for the pageant, and watching a special performance of a vignette based on the letters of joseph & emma, played by the actors who played joseph & emma in the pageant, who are a married couple, and excellent actors. so good! the pageant was better than i could have imagined, and i was thrilled to notice that it touched lexi and tashi deeply. mia had quite the conversation with teh actress who played emma, after the pageant. dallen also was able to talk to the actor who played jospeh, whose name is also dallen. the expressions on their little faces were so sweet, but neither gloria or i had our cameras with us. so we will have to commit that sweetness to permanent memory. we also enjoyed a horse and wagon tour of old nauvoo, finding where some of our ancestors lived in nauvoo at the "land & records office",  shopping, and eating a yummy buffet dinner.

dallen, mia, and landon playing  with an unknown boy in blue.

so beautiful to see the temple! i have been looking forward to that since it was dedicated five years ago. my mom's three brothers, who are excellent carpenters and specialize in restoration and spiral staircases, all worked on the temples, building the staircases and doing other work.

nauvoo: the city of joseph

this is the quilt i made, all with antique fabrics, to commemorate the re-building of the nauvoo temple, and joseph smith's 200s birthday.

day 5,   july 29th,   carthage

the photos i took here, at carthage jail, are my favorites from our entire trip. we spent a beautiful afternoon here, after church in quincy. lexi bore her testimony today in fast and testimony meeting about the spirit she felt in the jail and the testimony she gained of joseph smith. brock's dad was a tour guide here on his mission. and brock and i have both been here before, but it was a first for our kids, and an uplifting experience for our family.

tashi & noah in the visitor's center

 

tashi & lexi in the window where joseph was martyred.

gloria & kids on the lawn