first days of school (mom not again)

Here is a montage of the monkeys.  My favorite part about this year...Brady asked me for the kissing hand and gave me one back. Love this one.

7th and 3rd minus a shoe

Too cool for 6th and 2nd notice the bandaid on T.

5th and 1st grade

notice the puppy in the door 4th and kinder

My favorite pic of my kindergartener

A longer book review

Post by Nicole Hardy.

This is the Australian Cover that I think is so fun I wanted to include it here.

Book Review

Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin  Author Nicole Hardy

            Living in Salt Lake City Utah, is an experience when you are not LDS.  You are in the minority in everything that you do.  I have found juxtaposition however.  I grew up in a town in another State where there was a fair amount of Mormons and it should be said I liked to hang out with them.  I liked their ideals their way of doing things and the lack of pressure to have sex, do drugs, or drink alcohol. I did still have to worry about if I had the right clothes, watched the right shows said the right thing. I knew when I hung out with those kids I could be myself. But what I felt would hurt me I didn’t need to worry about.

            When you are a Mormon in high school in Redmond Washington you go to Seminary at 6 am Monday through Friday.  Then you continue and go to class like the entire rest of the school.  When you go to Seminary in Utah it is a regular class, during the regular school day it is just in the Seminary building that is on the school grounds.  I understand the reasoning for this but I also am aware there is more than one way to skin a cat.

            One of the friends that I had in Junior High and High School has written a book and I have been very aware of the procedure via Facebook.  She was one of my Mormon friends, and I also thought her brother was very cute and I enjoyed both of their companies.  The book that she wrote is called Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin. It is a memoir of her life and how being a latter day saint molded her life and some of the decisions that she needed to make.  It explains how these decisions did not come quickly they took many years.  There were many people involved (whether they were aware of it or not) in the decisions that she made and she explains this, the positives and negatives of it all.  I need to clarify she does not place blame she explains the details and why things are the way that they are. 

I LOVED THIS BOOK.

            I admit I started reading it hoping to get gossip, read a name that I knew but it ended up being so much more than that.  I could put myself in the situations learn from her experiences.  I was able to see that not everyone NEEDS to get married.  They can be happy living, they don’t need to have a partner and not all families consist of 2.5 children and a dog and a mortgage.  This book taught me that not all decisions have to be made in my model.  People have their reasons for doing things I don’t need to feel sorry for them, berate why they are doing something, and assume that what they are doing is wrong.  My way may not be the best way.  I am also able to realize it is not polite to ask so when are you going to have kids who have you been dating.  I should ask people about themselves, have interests in them and not whom they are with.

            I am really hoping that the Latter Day Saints will be able to read this book and see that their way may not be the best way.  Like Nicole’s mother sees.  The system is faulted and may not need to go so black and white.  There is a gray area and many fall into that.  I do believe that the LDS church has many positives.  I also see many negatives I can hope that this book will open peoples eyes so they are aware their way isn’t the only highway there are many roads and they are not all wrong.

Excellent job Nicole Hardy I am proud to say I know you.

Goodreads review

Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin: A Memoir by Nicole Hardy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin: A Memoir
I have just finished reading this interesting, thought provoking, memoir.  There are so many people that I think need and should read this book.  But will they? They would realize that they are not alone and they are not struggling with something no one else understands.  It is a memoir in one woman’s life but it crosses so many lines that you can make it work for your story, but it is hers, and it is beautiful and heart warming.  Thank you Nicole for writing something so close to the heart.  It is out there and now everyone knows why you do what you do and made the decisions that you did.  I am proud of this writing and can’t wait to read what else you have.


View all my reviews

ken griffey, jr.

This was a player that I watched grow up.  It was fun to watch him play I was not happy when he left.  I have to say I started to hate him.  He redeemed himself at his retirement that my parents and brother were lucky enough to go to.  Thank you Ken Griffey, Jr for being a class act.

Mr. Griffey's speech

fun times that almost didn't happen

So today my husband saved the day.

I volunteered to go down to The Harmon's Store at City Creek to help Bob and Randy deliver their check to the MS Society.  Last night I wasn't feeling up to it.  I realized that we couldn't take the train like I wanted it would have cost us $36 since the group pass is not sold until 10 am and we needed to be downtown at 9:30 am.

I had the shirts all divvied up last week.  I was wearing the "I have MS shirt", Clark was in a "Heidi's heroes" T-shirt, Tom was in the 'MS bike ride' t-shirt, and brady had on the "spokes jersey" Since his lemonade stand made some donations to my team.

We were all dressed and waiting for Clark to get home from some of his errands.  I had wanted to leave at 8:15am, Clark knew this.  It is 7:45am, I go out to get the car ready.  I get the rack on no problem and then go to pull out my bike.  Flat tire, crap.  I had gone for a ride with Clark Wednesday and ridden over one weed that I shouldn't have.  I was able to get the goat head out of my front tire, apparently I missed the back tire.  I tried to pump it up and it went flat again.  Double crap.  Karma was trying to tell me something. It is now 8:30.

Clark comes home and I am fuming to say the least.  I proceed to tell him I don't want to go.  Maybe we can go without the bikes.  He looks at me after a ten minute rant, and says
       "we are going to go, we are going to bring the bikes, you are doing this wearing that shirt for all the people that can't ride their bikes and be out there, you are there to support them like they supported you during the ride, we are going."

With tears in my eyes I shake my head yes and watch him as he takes my tire off my bike and fixes it.

The car gets loaded the boys get seated and we make it to Harmon's at 9:25am.

I am very glad that we went even if we weren't on the Harmon's team and we had our Mountain bikes. It felt good.

Thank You Honey.

You are my IronMan

It is a knitting day today

So today is a knitting day I have so many projects that I want to finish and I am slowly running out of Summer.  I would love to finish this bag before I start tutoring for the year.  It does feel a little daunting though I have to knit 74 inches of 33 stitches so it goes fast but it is going to take some time...
The boys are off at their friends houses and I am watching Dr. Who and blogging of course.  I hope you are having a fun day as well.

Oh and I wanted to share, I found from a friend on FB a webpage that allows kids to do some programming for computers.  It is really fun I will try to figure out how to share some on here. The webpage is called scratch I even made my own to get the kids interested.  Enjoy if you want to. :)