If Everyone were like us...

Morgan is a simply fabulous husband. I've thought several times that if every woman had a man like Morgan, all problems would be solved.

But if all men were like Morgan and all women were like me, we would have a few other problems. I've thought about this a few times, actually. What would the world be like if everyone were like me? There would be a few good things and few bad things.

Pros:

1. No more evil TV programs. If TV programs were more worth while then we might even watch TV. I liked Gummy Bears and Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates. I also liked Family Matters, Full House, and good stuff like that as a kid. But now whenever I happen to see what's on TV I am repulsed. It seems like it's mostly teenagers and single people acting stupid.

2. No bars or alcohol or drugs.

3. No more wars. We don't like fighting.

4. Lots of computers and computerized EVERYTHING.

5. Lots of good music.

Cons: (For some reason it's easier to think of cons!)

1. No more sports. Not our thing. I know, this would be a very bad change. Sports are a good thing for many people.

2. Food would suffer. I'm not crazy about cooking and Morgan cooks pretty much only sloppy joes and spaghetti. We like to eat, don't get me wrong. But cooking isn't very exciting for me and I definitely don't enjoy doing the little things like spices and searing your meat before you cook it. I also don't buy expensive stuff. So we'd be eating cheap and easy made meals only. That would be a sad sad day.

3. Only fake flowers everywhere. I like flowers, but I'm not a gardener. That would be sad, wouldn't it?

4. No doctors. Morgan fainted at my blood once and I would get way too grossed out dealing with other people's insides or medical issues.

5. No airplanes. The Wright Brothers spent a LOT of time working on their airplane and never got married. I would not appreciate me or Morgan spending so much time on a project and neglecting family or overlooking it completely. I would get too frustrated and lonely!

So this brings me to thank the people that do things that I'm grateful for, especially those things that I would not enjoy or could not do.

1. Doctors.

2. Cooks. We really appreciate restaurants and good food. We aren't talented in that art.

3. Civil Engineers. I enjoy building things, but I'm glad these guys deal with the water and dirt and roads.

4. Construction workers. I wouldn't last 5 minutes doing the hard work they do. Morgan would last, but he would not enjoy it. He'd rather be building a computer or writing a program for a machine that would do the job instead.

5. Nighttime workers. I enjoy having electricity and water at night. But I'm glad I'm home and my husband is too.

6. Church Leaders. A sister missionary on my mission once said, "I hope my husband is a mission president." No doubt she was admiring our fantastic mission presidents. Her companion responded, "I would never wish that upon the man I love. Or myself." I don't remember who said that. But I say it to myself, too. I'm sure it would be extremely rewarding. But HOPING for it would be like praying for patience. Asking for very rewarding trouble.

House Assessment

Jordan is learning how to climb up this ladder on the swing set. It is terrifying. Morgan or I stand next to him to make sure he doesn't fall. I'm impressed that he's never fallen. It still terrifies me.

Lizzy likes to go down this slide. It's a steep slide, apparently. So it was a challenge for her to get used to it. I haven't seen Jordan go down it yet, but Morgan says he has. I am so happy that this swing set came with our house!! When we looked at houses, a swing set was not a determining factor. The things that we wanted were:

1. Great room - We have a small great room, but a great room nonetheless. It's where we spend a lot of time. It's the kitchen connected to the office.

2. Vaulted ceiling - WONDERFUL! We've seen places where Morgan literally had to duck his head not to be bumped. =( No problem here. We do, however, run into problems when one of the kids is on Morgan's shoulders and he wanders away from the vaulted ceiling area.

3. Master bathroom. - We got spoiled in our last apartment. It is so nice to have a master bathroom!

4. Large yard - I could not believe how tight some houses were. It was claustrophobic. I spent a lot of time as a kid playing in the yard. We wanted that for our kids, too.

5. Close to Morgan's work - his commute is 5 minutes.

That's pretty much the list. We looked at dozens of houses and found a few perfect ones. I'm so pleased, though, that we got this one. There are so many beautiful things that I'd like to list:

1. Full Finished basement - I feel like we live in a mansion because we have so much room! Yet it's a rambler, and BELOW the Utah average house value. I remember when I was a kid that my dad mentioned to me that some people have houses that have so many rooms that they don't even go into all the rooms every day! I could hardly comprehend that. My parent's house in California is on a circle layout - you pass through every room to get to another part of the house. Julie's room and my parent's room were the only private rooms, but we would go in there plenty of times. So it was beyond me to think of having a house where you wouldn't go into all the rooms in a day!! But sure enough - I don't even go downstairs every day. I do more often now because we have our playroom and tv set up downstairs. And since the missionaries moved out I now have a sewing room downstairs where I work on my Etsy store. I love my sewing room. Sometimes I call it my studio. And the laundry is downstairs, also. I try to do a load a day - FLY Lady taught me that "a load a day keeps CHAOS away." (CHAOS = can't have anyone over syndrome.)

2. Sewing room/Studio

3. Swing set

4. Cross breeze possible because the front and back doors are close to each other.

5. New air conditioner. Thank heaven above!

6. Linoleum Floor in the entire great room - easy to clean.

7. Attached 2 car garage - sooo convenient. I've never had to carry groceries such a short distance!! I LOVE it. And we decided to clean our garage last week. I swept. (Who ever heard of sweeping a garage? Honestly, I never have.) And now it looks so wonderful.

8. Place for a 3rd car - it was an RV pad that the previous owners had put down. So Julie parks there. We need to teach Emmie to park there instead of in front of the garage =)

9. Little traffic - The only traffic that comes by our house is that of people that are in our ward boundaries because there are no through streets once you pass our house.

10. Morgan's commute doesn't cross the new freeway they are building just a few minutes away RIGHT next to the last apartment we live in.

There are some cons, however. (I notice that people like it if I post bad stuff as well as good stuff. It assures them that my life is not perfect. I think that's silly, though. I DO NOT HAVE A PERFECT LIFE. There. Does that make anyone feel better? Just obvious to me.)

1. Our city water. OH. MY. GOODNESS. It is terrible. Smelly and yucky. A water-softener sales man told us that 0-1 water is "soft." 2-3 is "slightly hard." 4-5 is "very hard water." Our city water is at 37. haha. So we have to have a large water softener to get the job done. This is important because pipes will corrode. We have lots of rusted pipes, actually. Morgan just replaced a bunch of things in our bathroom. So we only drink filtered water. But you know what, I can hardly complain about this because I used to live in BOLIVIA. And spent time in CHINA. You can't even wash your produce in the tap water. So now that we have a softener it is not an issue. In Sacrament Meeting, however… =) … sometimes they use tap water for the Sacrament. It is yucky and smelly. But still this is a small thing that I don't want to complain about it too much.

2. Airplanes go right over us. Not a big deal. I don't even notice them anymore. Lizzy used to be scared of them.

3. Washer and dryer are downstairs and right under Lizzy's room. So we don't do laundry when she is sleeping. But again, this is a dumb thing to complain about because we HAVE a washer and dryer!!!! Remember when we didn't have those? Quality of life increases exponentially with a washer and dryer. And an air conditioner.

Piano Lessons

One time we were driving by Aimee's house and we saw her two little boys looking out the window. They had stuck their little heads behind the blinds in their bedroom and were watching the neighborhood wake up. It was very cute! Our kids like to do that, too.

I have about 15 pictures with adorable happy faces from Jordan. Here are two that I thought I would share! Look at him holding onto the couch - he is STILL refusing to walk. He takes a step or two when he thinks we aren't looking or he FORGETS to hide the ability from us. He doesn't like practicing, either. He gets really mad when we get in "practice mode" of holding his hands so he can walk. So we don't do that much.

Jordan is my little heart melter. My heart is like butter in the microwave when he smiles or laughs. =)

We are having "piano lessons." The kids love the keyboard. It's funny how they will dart over to the keyboard as soon as I turn it on. Then they start crawling and dancing on it.

A funny thing about these pictures is that you cannot hear how NOISY it is when they do this. One of the more interesting buttons is the power button. Every time you turn on the keyboard, though, the volume is up so high! So either I have to turn down the volume every time they push that button or I have to live with very high volume piano "practice."

Several times in Bolivia us Bermejoan missionaries road a flota (big long-distance bus) to the city Tarija for zone conferences. One time in particular the driver had the typical Bolivian-party song that you hear at every bar on every block. But it was SO LOUD! "Volumen" is not an easy word for me to say in Spanish, either, but it bothered me so much that I asked the driver to turn down the volume. Honestly I'm not sure I remember how to form that sentence, either. I must have sounded ridiculous. Silly gringa.

Freckle Free

I had a plate of brownies on the counter. Jordan found it. But he couldn't reach it! (Good thing!)

We went to Jared and Amy Hepworth's wedding reception. We saw Lois, Marjorie, and Jack! Julie came from Provo and Susan came with her whole family except Kendrick who has gone back for her 2nd year of school. She's a genius. So are her brothers. I especially enjoyed conversing with Bryant because he was so excited about my store! Susan's boys are quite the handsome men!

Lizzy had an especially fun time with the other kids running around. Have you ever been to a wedding reception with a play ground? IN.GENIUS. Lizzy was so exhausted by the end, too. She said, "I want to go to bed." Morgan caught this adorable moment. Lizzy is sitting with Troya's boy, Jason. I edited out the chocolate that was on her face. Pretty slick, huh!? Check out my new Facebook picture, too. I edited out freckles, a few stray eye brow hairs, and Jordan's boo-boo on his forehead. Does it look like I'm wearing eye liner? That's what you are SUPPOSE to think!

This is a new binder in my store. Paisley is really popular it seems.

I went to JoAnn's today and it was TERRIBLE because it was SO CROWDED! I should have got the hint when I saw a lady on the non-fabric side of the store with about 8 bolts of fabric in her cart. I thought I would be a good customer and wait to get my ticket number until after I was done shopping. I shopped while they went from number 70 to 99 and to number 5. Then I was done selecting my bargains and I got my ticket number. SIXTY THREE!!!! Holy cow. So I walked around a LOT more and looked at a LOT of things. And you know I was able to SIT DOWN! What stores do you know that have chairs? Just so nice and convenient. I read a book about turning your creativity into a career and how to make metal clay jewelry (WOW). I waited for over an hour to get my fabric cut. I didn't feel as bad, though, when I saw that number 62 was a very old lady with very white angelic hair with only 3 bolts to cut. There have been many times when I've wished I could get the scissors and cut the fabric myself.

MormonChannel.org

I have to tell you about this fantastic gospel study Morgan and I have been doing! We have been listening to audio programs made by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We listened to 90 minutes of an interview with Elder Bednar and his wife. It was FANTASTIC! They ask great questions about his experience being an Apostle, growing up, his marriage, and other experiences. You can find it here:

http://mormonchannel.org/programs/conversations-episode-1?lang=eng

We also heard interviews of Elder Ballard and his wife, Elder Oaks and his wife (did you know his first wife died and he is remarried?), Julie Beck and her 2 daughters, and a few more. One of my favorites was from Elder and Sister Costa. They talked a lot about their marriage. It reminded me of my sweet latin missionary companions living in South America.

To get to these programs you go to mormonchannel.org and look down. Click "programs" and then "conversations." There are plenty of other links to try out, as you can see on the website. There are also movies and clips to watch.

This is a great Sunday activity. Morgan and I like to listen after the kids go to sleep. Sometimes we listen only for 30 minutes and then continue the program later. Morgan LOVES his new work cell phone android that lets him do cool things like this. =)

Morgan works as a programmer for the Church. One of his projects is actually mormonchannel.org! He programmed all the things you see on the webpage!

I have loved listening to these interviews because I feel like I know the Church leaders better! I feel the Spirit and I feel edified and my testimony strengthened by hearing theirs. All the talk of families and marriage make me feel closer to Morgan, too. =) LOVE. IT.