Introducing Cell Snapshots AND Round 1: The House

Introducing: a new series in my blogging.

Yeah, I'm hip and ambitious like that.
I felt it would be a worthy endeavor to artfully arrange the moments and masterpieces caught on my trusty cell phone in the last couple of years and share them with all those who seek enlightenment and charming mementos of life's experiences.
(translation - JC finally made me empty out my phone's photo album onto the computer, leaving me with an entire two year's worth of pictures that I have to go through and either delete or integrate into the picture folders on our desktop...and while I'm going through them, I am giving into my self-indulgent nature and bringing them to the blog. Because I can't help myself. End translation.)

So, in between my regular blogging about life in the present moment, I will be jumping back to glimpses of the last year via my cell phone folder that sits with 'my pictures.'
You are excited.

(It's okay, I'm not even that excited, I am just a slave to the blog....it wants these picture to not go to waste...)


To start off, I grabbed all the pictures pertaining to housework. To the house being a mess, being clean, being broken, being fixed up...
I tend to send pictures to JC when I finally get to something I have been wanting to get to. (or something he has been quietly hoping I would get to.)
I tend to send pictures to my sister or mom when I have completely neglected something and it's so messy it is funny, or when I am decorating (that one time) or needing an opinion on something.
So, anyway, I take pictures of things around here...

"Look, honey...remember how the laundry room floor was so crowded with towels and blankets and clean/dirty clothes that we couldn't walk in? I finally got to it. We can get in there again."

This one has actually occurred a gazillion times. Somehow this got started...whenever I wash our griddle, I scrub I heart U into it and send JC a picture. I am pretty sure I have been doing this ever since we have been married. But...slacking off now because my phone won't send pictures lately. Ah well.

"Look, Mom, we're going to paint our bedroom!...and we're going to take a year to do it..."

Oh but look, there is partway through the project...getting started (remember, this used to be the blue, yellow, and red playroom)

"Look, KatieSister, I have festive fall pillows!" (We love us a good autumn.)

"Look, honey, the cabinet door came off when I touched it."

"Look, honey, I cleaned out 'the craft closet in the playroom' so it can become 'your closet.' Congratulations."

"Also, your son likes to climb."

A closer to being done wall in our bedroom!

James helping Papa move the bed upstairs during the playroom/master bedroom switchback.

"Look how awesomely filthy my kitchen floor was after not sweeping it for a week or so!"
(I never actually got to send this to my sister...this was when I discovered my phone wouldn't send pictures anymore...)
But now you can ALL see it.
I call this Kitchen Floor Trail Mix.
Call it impressive, call it gross...I call it life's reality sometimes.
(I put my foot in the picture for a reference point, so you could tell how big the pile was. When JC saw this picture, he asked if I put my foot in because it was as filthy as the floor. Thanks for that.)

(...my feet happen to get very tan during the summer, thankyouverymuch.)
(...and dirty. It happens when you refuse to wear shoes in your own backyard.)

"Look, honey, I finally put away all your clean clothes. Now the pile no longer reaches to the laundry room ceiling."

"Look honey, you can see our countertop! See that black thing under the counter with the glowing lights? It's called a dishwasher and I am using it."

"Look honey, our bathroom counter is free from any sign of makeup, hair tools, clothes, and old deodorant containers."
(My husband goes through deodorant like nobody's business. I state this as a neutral fact...not necessarily a bad or good thing...but in our five and a half years of marriage, I can honestly say that I have never ceased to be amazed at his ability to go through deodorant. I wear it as often as he does, the container I buy mine in is smaller than his, and though our armpit sizes do vary, the fact that he goes through 5-6 for every 1 I go through intrigues me greatly. And that is all I have to say about either of our armpits and their habits. Probably forever.)
So yes, clean and clear bathroom counter. With ugly tile. Not about that right now.

SO, there you have the first installment of my Cell Snapshots.
Yes, it gets its own name.

I chose this particular category because getting the house clean has been of particular interest lately. It always is, yes, yes, but in less than 48 hours, a dream of mine in the making since potty training began and the era of the smoothies for breakfast (and carried around the house) every day came about will be coming true.
We are getting our carpet and upholstery steam cleaned.
I may or may not cry.
I am so excited.
So, in preparation, I have been trying to get things nice and picked up, out of the way, presentable, and happy so that our guy can clean the carpets and afterwards we can BASK IN THE GLORY.
I may or may not cry.
Did I mention that?

Special thanks to my sister, Laura, for her unwavering dedication in helping me clean much of my downstairs today. Even though we saw a bug.
Okay, two bugs.
(but one was dead.)

Until next time.
(Real blog post to come...sometime. Perhaps this week, perhaps next. There really is no telling. I have a house to clean. And then glory to bask in. GLORY, I SAY!)

What June Brings . . .

I have a spattering of summer-y photos (not to be confused with 'summary photos'...though a spattering of photos does end up being kind of like a summary...).
They loaded onto blogger in strange orders and I am too lazy/distracted tonight to fix it!
So, behold...a spattering.

June brings happy kids in sunny backyards.

Eating plums.

Eating plums they picked from here.

Mmmm.

June brings the slip 'n' slide.

Random non-water-play picture.
Still good.

Back to water play.

June brings pool playtime!

Random dead cucumber plants picture.
Not happy about this.

June brings baking time.
Even though the oven heats up the house.
I still have the urge.
Homemade wheat thins. New favorite.

Back to water play.

But not for long. Because...
June brings popsicles.
This week was blueberries and cream.
New flavor every week!

Approved.
Though he doesn't like the white part.

June brings Fathers' Day! More on this later, but since the picture is here...
I made a cake. It was good. Thanks to Jenn for the recipe. :)

Back to popsicles.
Triple approved.

And...wow, that's the end.
Things end pretty suddenly when there is no flow due to random picture loading.
So anyway...

As you can see, June brings good things.
I just noticed most of it had to do with food...or water...ah, food and water.
Back to the basics of life.


So, Father's Day was great! The kids and I attempted to surprise JC with a game he had been wanting. It is of the Monopoly persuasion. Whitetailopoly. Hunting plus monopoly. Whee. Anyway, I went looking for it earlier this week and could not find it! We had seen it a thousand times at Sportsman's Warehouse and yet somehow it was gone. The guy tried to pretend it had never been there but...it was, guy. It was. My dad saved the day, though, when he found it at Bass Pro for me. Yesss. The story gets good when JC got a gift card from his mom to Sportsman's Warehouse and tells me he wants to go that night to buy that particular game. It would have been awkward had I needed to dissuade him from taking the trip to buy it...if there were any chance he would find it. I knew it wasn't there, so I let him go look for it and be all bummed when they didn't have it. It was awesome. The story gets even better when Scout decides to poke around in my closet, acting maniacal, causing JC to go in there ("come get your punishment" style), and find the unwrapped game. The night before Fathers' Day.
Of course, the kids don't know that. They had much fun surprising him the next day. He had much fun being surprised. :)
Someday when they read this, they will know.
We are bad at surprises around here.
I know that story isn't near as cool if you're not one of us that were involved. But I figured it was pretty funny to us, so I'd better write it down.
I don't think I'm quite "on" tonight.

But that's okay.

It's June.
June brings laziness of the mind, yes?

Celebrating, Remembering, and Learning...

With the beginning of June comes a day that the kids look forward to every year - - Daddy Mason's birthday. It's a little different than the rest of the birthdays we celebrate throughout the year...since he no longer resides on this earth, but in spirit in the world beyond this one, we send the celebration upwards. Balloons ascend through the clouds, with three little ones watching and imagining their Daddy Mason receiving the colorful presents with joy.

This year was no different.
We went to purchase balloons, then the kids colored pictures to attach to them.
It was great fun for them.

Ben drew a picture of our family celebrating the special day. The big one is me, apparently. He even wrote my name there, to the left. I think it technically says 'WOW' but I know he meant 'MOM.'
After all, they pretty much mean the same thing.
He just barely started drawing people recently and I love it.
(By the way, now that he is drawing more, and even starting to write letters, it is solidified - - he's a lefty!)

Bethany's picture - - she drew the earth, with her and Daddy Mason in the middle.
She asks a lot about when Christ comes again and how it will be to live and be with Daddy Mason again. I think she looks forward to getting to know this guy she has heard so much about. :)

Close up.
So sweet.
(I love how she made his hair big and floppy. The picture she has in her room of him is one of his senior pictures...back in his Matt Damon days...floppy hair and all!)

James and his picture!
He drew a picture of Jesus and a dog.
Considering James' understanding that both Jesus and Reggie, our neighbor dog who passed away, live in heaven, he must have wanted to draw a picture of those among whom Mason is currently residing. I like it.

To celebrate their Daddy Mason's birthday, the kids went ahead and gave him the gift of looking down on their wide range of mortal moods and behaviors.
Fighting.

Laughing.

Ready to go.

It is always so darn hot on his birthday! Haha...his mom is reading this thinking, "You're telling me." I have never had a baby in the middle of summer (the end of August is already starting to let up a little) and I have all the respect in the world for those who do!
Out we went into the bright sun!

Thanks to our Sissou tree out front, we did find one shady spot in which to take a picture before liftoff!

Scout was there too.
He liked Mason pretty well.
He celebrates too.

Bethany was the first to send her balloon up! Because the pictures weighed them down, we had to cut the balloons off their strings so they would fly!

And there goes hers!

Next was James!

And Ben!
Up, up, and away!

We watched the balloons until they disappeared, with our messages attached.
Happy birthday, Daddy Mason!

We enjoy having a day to especially recognize Mason, his life, his continuing mission, and his place in our family. I like talking with the kids about him. The experiences that surround the beginning years of our family are ones filled with opportunity for acknowledgment of Heavenly Father's plan for us, for strengthening of testimonies centered on the love He has for us, and very little room for doubt about all that the teachings of His gospel entail.
For that, I am so grateful. I think of the stripling warriors, how they spoke of their mothers' testimonies. How "they did not doubt their mothers knew it.." While I am a far cry in my progression from where many of the faithful women of the past were as mothers, I cannot deny that the experiences I have had in my life leave me with so little room for doubt, I surely hope my children could say that they do not doubt that I know what I teach them of Christ and his restored gospel to be true. Every day I have room for improvement...every minute of every day...and I pray that someday I can live up to my knowledge.

I have been thinking about Mason and his earthly life lately.
As I endeavor to have faith in Christ, hope in all things, and charity for all children of our Heavenly Father, I find myself looking to his example.
Hope has been particularly on my mind as of late. There are hard and scary things happening in this world, on many levels. People struggle with difficulties, fight with each other, our earth rages against us, and so few look to Christ for solutions. It can all feel very bleak. I do my best to see the good in all, to banish fear, but too often, I feel discouragement try to sneak in. There is much to mourn for in the current state of our earthly home, in our society.
We have come far from the God who created us from dust.
Occasionally, it does feel like a hard thing to stay focused on the hope we have. It is so huge and glorious but somehow it gets stuck in the back of our minds. But I think about Mason. He was no stranger to hard times. He was no stranger to opposition. He was not immune to the trials that befall all of us here on earth. Much of his life was spent dealing with challenges that I wouldn't begin to know how to handle. And yet I can think of so few times when he was anything but cheerful, eager, and hopeful. A boundless and optimistic energy is so much a part of who he is that there are probably very few people who ever knew him that didn't have to tell him to TONE IT DOWN every once in a while. :) As one that acted as his buffer for many years, I saw that energy as something that provided amusement, something I sometimes envied, and something that sometimes put me a little too close to the center of attention! I knew it was a good part of who he was. But not until recently did I recognize that part of it was his hope in action. It was optimism given motion and made audible. It was his declaration that life is good. Despite hard things, despite stumbling blocks, and even despite an earthly life shorter than any expected...it lives on in his spirit, in his children, and I hope...in me.
Looking back on his boundless energy for good, I feel motivated to honor him and my family by keeping that energy in motion, teaching that hope to our children. I feel motivated to banish my fears, assume the best, try my hardest, and praise the opportunity given me to be on this earth every day.

We are blessed to have Mason as part of our family. As I now experience, we will all continue to learn from him for the rest of our lives.
And, as Bethany reminds us, someday Christ will come. We will experience the fulfillment of all we are meant to be. And we will see Mason again.
Floppy hair, boundless energy, and all.



P.S. The balloons were only the beginning. That evening, JC and I, plus my sister, Katie, went to see the new X-Men movie which had, all too appropriately, just come out that day. It doesn't get much more right on than that. :)