Bella

Singing in the rain
When it rains, it pours.
I am sitting in the hospital with my dad right now.
He’s been here for 5 days.
He’s on the upswing and I am so grateful.
I am extremely grateful for my wonderful husband
who tells me
“Go, I’ll take care of everything.”
A few weeks ago,
our family lost
my nephew Braxton.
He’s dancing in heaven now,
where I imagine 
he can choose the weather.
Sitting down to my laptop this morning
I am happy to find these old photos.
What a great reminder that
sometimes
the best time to dance and sing
is when it rains.
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Wondrous
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We are in the land of snow.
This photo was taken a few weeks back.
It would be a whole lot better
with my old broken camera,
but I take what I can get.

I was having a bad day
and when I opened up this file
it made me smile from ear to ear.

I am so blessed to be a mother
even if sometimes I want to quit the job.

My husband and my girls
are my greatest treasures.
Period.
Nothing else is relative
if I don’t have them first.

They make everything enjoyable.
Even the stuff I don’t like.
Snow
for instance.
Not a huge fan.
I did grow up in San Diego
after all.
But, my family makes snow
wondrous.
Wondrous to behold.

Thank you God
for giving me an eternal family
and this mortal life
with earthly experiences
to savor
with the ones I love most.

Giveaway – Halftees
I have a special post for you
in honor of my 38th birthday.

Happy birthday to me.

I’m giving away a halftee.
It’s the layering piece for everyone.
Cute little tees for all purposes.
They have new styles up on their site today
so go and pick your favorite
and leave me a comment
with your name, e-mail, and desired style/color
(we’ll save your size for private)
and I will give a halftee
to one lucky reader
at the end of my favorite month:
November.

Why halftee you ask?
Well let me tell you.
As you know
at our house
modest is always hottest.
That’s why we loved trying out Halftees.

The other day I walked outside
to find this message written on the sidewalk.

Be still my heart.



It looks like we are getting through to our girls.
Modesty is a principle of protection.
And our girls do it well.

One time my mother-in-law took them shopping.
She came home praising my name.
Our girls, on their own accord,
did all the tests before
deciding whether or not they should buy something.

Bend over.
Reach your arms up.
Slouch down.

No shoulder shots.
No butt shots.
No boob shots.
No belly shots.
No thigh shots.

O.k. grammy. Can we get this?
No hoochy mamas around here.

Halftees, a Utah based company,
are a great way to compensate

for the lack of covering in clothes on today’s store racks.

And guess what my wonderful readers? 

You can get 20% off of all of your orders
until November 9th by using the code IMSOFUNNY.
(I would use the discount now, you know,
before you forget and
just in case you don’t win the giveaway)
Halftees come in a bunch of colors and styles.
As you can see we prefer the white ones.
Go and check them out.
I’ll be picking up some more for Christmas.
Even winter dresses are all sleeveless nowadays.
I am thinking about buying some
for some of the girls at church
When they wear sleeveless,
my kids don’t understand.
I thought it was a church-wide standard
to cover our shoulders?

I will leave you with Sophia’s part
for the upcoming Primary program.
She wrote it by herself.
LG and I love the part about “the fronts”.
Notice the plural fronts.
Hilarious.
Dressing modestly shows respect 
for Heavenly Father and myself.
We should never wear anything that is
tight or short shorts or miniskirts that reveal
our shoulders or your back and fronts.
When you dress modestly 
you show Heavenly Father that you love Him.
 Dressing modestly is important to you
and everyone around you.

Oh and one more:

More Than a Hero: Muhammad Ali’s Life Lessons Presented Through His Daughter’s Eyes by Hana Ali

When we finally arrived, the chauffeur escorted my younger sister, Laila, and me up to my father’s suite. As usual, he was hiding behind the door waiting to scare us. We exchanged many hugs and kisses as we could possibly give in one day.

My father took a good look at us. Then he sat me down on his lap and said something that I will never forget. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Hana, everything that God made valuable in the world is covered and hard to get to. Where do you find diamonds? Deep down in the ground, covered and protected. Where do you find pearls? Deep down at the bottom of the ocean, covered up and protected in a beautiful shell. Where do you find gold? Way down in the mine, covered over with layers and layers of rock. You’ve got to work hard to get to them.”

He looked at me with serious eyes. “Your body is sacred. You’re far more precious than diamonds and pearls, and you should be covered too.”

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The thrill of Halloween
Thank you to Laurel for providing the Thriller photos.
Her daughter Sylvia threw an awesome
zombie party a while back.

We were the lucky neighbors
who opened our door to the zombie apocalypse.
Pretty dang freaky.
It’s no wonder somebody called the cops.

The other day, I was driving to the grocery store
with my 8 year old Bella.
Thriller came on the radio.
I turned it up and rocked out.

It was dark outside and we were waiting at the red light. Next to us was a big silver truck. In the passenger seat was a young man between 18 and 20. Driving looked to be his old man. They wore hunting garb. I wouldn’t have noticed them at all if it wasn’t for a silly exchange. They must have been listening to the same radio station because as I turned my monstrous arms towards my driver’s side window in a classic Thriller dance move, the boy stared straight at me and started cracking up. He turned to his old man and said something. The old man veered over and smiled as I sheepishly put my hands back on the wheel.

Bella was instantly mortified. “Man, mom, you even got his dad looking at you!” I laughed and kept enjoying the music, with just a little less subtle dance moves. It was two weeks from Halloween. It was dark outside. The moon was almost full. I had just one of my kids in the car, and Thriller was playing on the radio. What’s not to love? I just had to dance. And sing.

As my daughter’s face was bright red and I continually fought off her attempts at turning off the radio while simultaneously putting forth my subtle Thriller moves, I thought to myself, “These are the mothering moments that I love the most.” The ones that are so easily forgotten unless I write them down.

Yes, it’s moments like these that are the thrill of being a mother. The Thriller moments happen so few and far between. The moments when as a mother I know I am just one big grown-up kid and I am cool! All it took was a mortified 8 year old daughter and two grown hunters to seal the deal.

It’s just the Thriller…..(c’mon you know you want to sing along)

Happy Halloween y’all.
I hope yours is just as thrilling
as I am sure ours will be.
We started the day
with a before dawn wake up call
for costumes, make-up, hot cocoa, and orange eggs.

Don’t forget.
Today is your last day to leave a comment 
for a chance to win my copy of the book
Lunch Wars.
Please eat all your Halloween candy in honor of Amy Kafala.
She will love it.

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So long summer.
Good-bye summer.
I am going to tell you good-bye
before it gets too cold
and I am cursing you for leaving me.
I know this amazing weather can’t last.
I feel like I still live in San Diego.

One of my least favorite memories of this summer
was Bella’s kool-aid stand.
Maybe we will have better luck with an apple cider stand.
Yeah right, we are never selling beverage again.
When you get to Bella’s sad face, you’ll understand why.

Here she is.
This was at the beginning of the stand.
She is counting all of her hopeful profits.
She has something coming to her.
We set up down our street on the super busy State street.

We even made three flavors of kool-aid.
Tropical, blue, and orange.
Funny that we sold more Crystal Lite than anything.
It could have been because we only sold
three glasses.
Two glasses were bought by my health-conscience visiting teacher
that just happened to walk by.
God must have been watching out for Bella a little bit
to send her by in the very moment when she was needed most.

If I ever get suckered into this again,
we will call it a Crystal Lite stand.
Maybe that will actually make anyone stop
beyond the visiting teacher.
And Amy Kafala will cringe
because she thinks we should have an ice-water stand.

Memorize this face.
It’s the face of defeat.
It’s an important life lesson.
Even if it’s heartbreaking for the mama.
I am proud of my Bella,
she didn’t give up.

In the three hour commitment,
she ended up with $4 profit.
$1 from the visiting teacher.
$1 from the only lady who actually pulled her car over
and told us to keep the change
(and that was in our second location)
and $2 from mama when she bought the missionaries two glasses each.

She also suckered mom into
paying for the kool-aid, sugar, cups, and ice.

She may still have a future in business,
but has decided to stick with babysitting and doing extra chores.
They earn a better profit.

Did I mention it was like 90 degree outside?
You would think more people would be thirsty.

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Your love is better than ice-cream
I am so excited to present my original idea.
It’s gonna put me in a higher realm
with my oh so crafty friends.
Trust me when I say you don’t want
to miss out on hitting the read more button.

My mom brought me these great frames from the thriftstore.
They are black with red matting.
They match my kitchen-aid.
Remember this post about me and red.
There was one problem with the frames,
they had safari animal prints.
They hung with the original prints
for the past 4 months
until I got sick of explaining my
fake love for Africa.
I took some photos a while back,
that I intended to use.
And I finally found the time
to edit them and put them to good use.
I present the best dining area framed photos
of all time.
I know you are all going to copy me.
Can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Lay off the ice-cream shots.
They are mine.
All mine.
As is LG’s favorite song.
Your love is better than ice-cream.

I love how the added text
combines the love LG and I have for each other
with the love we also have for and from our kids.

I would show you the photo of how cute they are on the wall, 
but I am too lazy to get my camera back out. 
I guess you’ll just have to come over and see it for yourself. 
Definitely do come over.
 It’s just too bad you weren’t here the first time Caroline 
discovered the photos on the my wall 
and bubbily exclaimed, 
“Look mom, it’s my Caroline.” 
Sometimes two year olds are too cute.
I am pretty sure God intended it to be that way,
so we don’t kill them when they go and sling dog poop
And LG, your love is better than ice-cream,
and chocolate molten cakes,
and Olive garden,
and Cafe Rio,
and rootbeer floats,
and chocolate covered strawberries
combined.

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