day of the dead

stole these haunting pics of a friends blog ...



happy day of the dead .... or is it happy? i love halloween and i am so glad it finally has arrived! and i am a tincy bit excited for it to end at this point....

here are pics of the kiddles this morning before they headed off to skool





Storie really really wanted to be annie and i refuse to cheez wig the child so we curled and curled and curled that hair. stock reluctantly is indiana jones, really i dont think the kid wanted to dress up at all and he was not to excited about wearing the hat for some reason so he is really just him ... dressed in brown. then their is our little ocean! just in case you dont get it, the hair is WAVED and the dress is waves and the sharks are swimming in it! oh i looooooooooove them! what were your kids? even better what were you?

witch eeee poo!

Every year my mom and i take my kids to gardners village for a scrumptous lunch at archibalds and then through the village to see all the witches on display. we have been doing this about 5 years now. usually it is stock that is bored but he seemed happy and interested this time around, storie seemed a little over it! perhaps she is getting to old? wait i am not too old .... so how can she be? and saylor .... well she has come to love it the most in 5 years, at least this year anyhow. this was the first year that she would even go near the witches. every previous year she would participate ... in her stroller or wheelchair and if you got her to close she would throw a fit. so here she is desperate to snuggle with each and everyone of them and all i hear all day was .... "mom take a picture!"

drum roll please .....

TA DA! saylor cathed herself by herself, completly by herself ... for REAL!

so we thought this day was far away perhaps a year or so ... at the soonest 6 months. we were told to teach her to cath herself one step at a time. so first we had her pull her own catheter out each time we cathed. only two weeks ago we started having her insert the catheter herself after we scrub every one involved down so its sanitary and lube her clean cath for her, set her up with a cup or at the toilet etc... just the other day i contemplated sort of adding another step. then i started to feel like no ... she isnt ready yet to juggle things physically the multiple objects that contribute to the madness. then today happened ...

well first let me say that there was a precurssor milestone to this one. saylor went to a school friends house today, by herself. meaning not one of my friends with a child who is her friend. not someone that she is very used to and is helping me out, meaning her friend and she went over there and i did not stay with her. never really done before. big step for both of us. she did fantastic. i had cathed her right before she went and she was only gone 2 hours so it wasnt quiet time to cath when we arrived home. however i did want her to wash her hands. she can do this on her own! lol. so i sent her to her room to wash up. i guess she thought this meant it was also time to cath. while i was studying in the kitched she quietly took it upon herself to go ahead and cath. then she came into the kitchen and announced loud and proud .... I JUST CATHED MYSELF, i replied loud and confused .... WHAT? so i went into her bathroom with her and sure enough she had washed her hands, gotten a clean cath out of her bucket, put a little lube on a clean paper towell, lubed the cath, inserted it and drained her pee into her pee cup, then pulled it out and proudly left the pee cup full for evidence. i tell you people i am ASTOUNDED! should i be though .... i have always known what a smart cookie she is yet i am baffled by her undertaking of this huge responsibility without even a suggestion from her 'rents!

she never ceases to AMAZE me ... who is this queen of queens in my home? who is this angel? i dare say i dont even understand the magnitude of the gift i have been given. her docs will be in shock that this quickly after surgery and at the age of only 5 she responsibly and sanitarily took this under her own doing. i feel overdrived with a natural high!

girls go to college to get more knowledge

so here it is, i am going to put it out in the world .... i am going to college to get more knowledge.




i am currently dual enrolled at both of these fine universities. does this make me a zoobie? i dont think it does because i am older than the typical college age ... or wait am i? yesterday while at UVU i watched passer by's in the hall for a bit. i am pretty sure i still look young enough to pass for 23-35 years old! lucky me! too bad i cant turn back time so that i actually finish at a reasonably young age. i was planning on starting spring semester but a really good academic advisor got me into some classes at the Y this semester so i am a busy YOUNG lady!

this decision has been long in the making. there have been times in my life i have heavily considered it and upon prayer and meditation have not found timing to be in my favor .... until now. so now is the time. i am working towards a bachelors degree in nursing science. if i stay on schedule i will be a RN in about 2.5 3 years and have a BSN in 4 years. thought you all should know.

timeless gifts & blessings

"you know there are only two worthwhile things to leave behind when you depart this world: children & art" marie

a few unexpected priceless gifts left to me by my grandmother ....


A classic non the less! jane eyre, 1943 random house printing with nothing less then the true art of writing within it! a several amazing wood etchings!


this time magazine was actually aquired through a trunk of my fathers being stored at my grandmothers so i suppose its really handed down from my dad. its march 13th, 1972 edition and in case you cant read its cover illustrates uncle sam and the headliner "is the U.S. going broke?" hmmmm. interesting. 36 years later i think its safe to say that we have cycled back to this exact issue. in its pages are articles that describe perfectly the state of our economy today.

in this said trunk i also found writings of my baby blessing. its my understanding that my grandfather blessed me, my mothers father. i suppose of all my grandparents i was closest to him. so its very dear to me to have in my physical hand spiritual words that his priesthood keys offered me. then to have the writings of my own father as he heard the blessing. knowing that he had the faith and tuneness to script these rich blessings. how grateful i am for the fathers in my life, how rich i am! this could not have come at a pertinent time in my life as i seek answers to life changing decisions. my grandmother passed a time that leads me through a new door in life and no doubt my all mighty father had a hand in the timing of it all!

booed

I have been booed ... meaning some sort of spooky halloween tag. one of my most spiritual friends booed me, thanks jen! and though i feel like i have several very important things to blog about (which i cant blog about because i cant muster up the energy to eloquently convey how deep and extravagantly important they are so i just avoid it all together but have the best intentions to blog about them all!) i am going to participate in this tag! the other cool thing ... I actually got tagged, i dont get tagged much. not sure why? maybe because the few times i have i havent really participated, or is it that know one wants to know about my life. either way i am cool with it all. so here it goes .... you know the drill!

What was your favorite costume you wore as a kid?
hmmmmm. well i think it was the year that my mom made the most authentic snow white costume in the whole world. i thought it was better then snow white's herself! its was magical and may actually be when i fell in love with dark hair. not sure of my age on this one somewhere between 7-10. i do remember a really snotty girl in my neighborhood who pretended she was my friend, she got jealous and made her mom make her a snow white costume, of course it wasnt half as good as my moms, but its the principal of the thing. at my house she is she who must not be named ..... spooky!

What is your favorite Halloween candy?
jen i am going to duplicate you on this one, has to be candy corn or those little squeeshy pumkins that are just the same as candy corn in a slightly bigger dose!

Do you have a Halloween tradition?
well i dont know, do i? all i know is this THIS is my fav holiday! cant explain it, but love love love it. better then christmas some days! traditions are that we decor! and we do it together! and we do it fun. then we make cupcakes ... out of anything at all. i cook lost of pumpkin this and that all season long and plan unique non store bought costumes for my kiddos! and most importantly the name of the game .... fun fun fun!

Have you ever played a trick instead of giving a treat?
no not really, but nate on the other hand has, many of them, too many of them. like in highschool when he and his friends put a deer head in the front seat of a girls car on halloween. not nice stuff.

I Boo (at least three people): hmmmmm..... who will do it? and who reads this blog anyhow? hard to say hard to say. perhaps kim, debbie, & tiff K

sometime soon a blog about .... college, lost cabin/4wheeler keys, economic topics, some really amazing quotes, something spiritual, some really great music and amazing movies, and a few others! what do you rare blog readers want to hear about anyhow? give me some dang input! maybe it will motivate me to post like ... every day perhaps?

*for those of you seeking an update on saylor ... you may have noticed our lives have sort of moved on. as they should! we are happy, healthy and functioning. perhaps not entirely how a normal fam functions but it simply comes down to things are as convenient as they inconveniently can be for the time until the time comes for more surgery. you would never know by looking at her that she has undergone so much so recently. she is back to her pretty normal self! cute as a button .... or an angel i think! but its important to me to live life, for her to live life and not to live Spina bifida.

pirates of the caribean style halloween

oh i have mucho lot to write about! but before its toooo late i wanted to squeeze in a last halloween decor installment. this actually was our favorite project and the one that gets the most attention from residents and visitors alike. so i bought a small "bag o bones" at michaels for about $10. it came with all that you see as far as quantity. i am sure they are readily available anywhere that has hallo deco. and perhaps is even cheaper right now. buy a craft bag o sand and a little glitter courtesy of martha! make sure if its not martha kind that its very fine in texture. we bought the greenish like glitter. mix a couple of bowls of sand/glitter with varying ratios, get out the good old modge podge and start painting those bones and then just pour what mix you so choose over it and then replenish extras back into the bowl. now you have a carribean style bone. a wealthy one for sure. cake platters, and old boxes with lids make good display items, we put craft sand at the base of our cake stand and also a little moss to earthify it. like i said, this was our fave we give it *****

loneta mangus murphy

May 30, 1924 --- October 2, 2008
Loneta Mangus Murphy left us on October 2, 2008.
She was born in Cowley, Wyoming on May 30, 1924; the fourth daughter of Agness Berthelson Mangus and Elbert Roy Mangus. After she graduated from Lovell High School, she went to Salt Lake City to work at Remington Arms Plant. Later, after attending Brigham Young University, she moved to Long Beach, California where she was employed at the Los Angeles Port of Embarkation.
Loneta met a marine, Joseph Robison Murphy at church. They married in 1946 and five children were born to their union. Joe became a seasonal Ranger Naturalist in Yellowstone National Park where they spent many summers, while they wintered in Lincoln, Nebraska where Joe worked on his doctorate degree. With an offer from Brigham Young University in 1960, they moved to Provo, Utah, where Loneta attended classes in English Literature, Geology, Sociology and Political Science.
In 1972 she, with other women in the area, formed a Utah County League of Women Voters. An historical event, the 1848 Women's Convention held at Seneca Falls, New York inspired her to actively support Equal Rights for Women. The Equality Statement in Utah's Constitution of 1896 gave her reason to work for a national amendment from 1972 to 1982. Utah failed to ratify the E.R.A.
After participating in local forums, Loneta withdrew from community activism. For health reasons in recent years, she wintered in Palm Springs, California, where she felt very much at home.
A Memorial service will be held from 1:00 to 2:00 PM on Monday, October 13, 2008, at the Orem Senior Friendship Center located at 93 North 400 East Orem, Utah. An informal gathering of family and friends will follow from 2:00 to 4:00 PM.
Friends are welcome to visit with her daughter Gayle Cornaby, (husband Kaye), her sons Joel Murphy, (wife Sharon), Robert Murphy, James David Murphy, (partner Glenn Texeira), and Philip Murphy, (wife Miriam) and their children and grandchildren. She has one living sister Jewel Hepworth, and two brothers, LeRoy and Wallace Mangus.
The family wishes to express deep gratitude to doctors and staff in Palm Springs, California and Provo, Utah, as well as the attentive staff of Harmony Hospice in Utah County. Additional heart-felt thanks goes to the many close friends and neighbors who have been supportive during her recent illness.
Life for Loneta was a great experience. She made it creative and loving to the end.

who was grandma to me? the color purple, a rose, a leopard, a horseback rider, a liberalist, an activist, educated, smart, elegant, and one more thing ... hollywood! to name just a few!

davina fear

Davina Fear has posted another post on saylor on her blog. so check it out here.

i thought this may be a good moment to express my thoughts about davina. Davina, she is the most uniquely beautiful person i have ever met. admiration runs deep and even deeper runs much gratitude for her generosity in our lives. she is uniquely beautiful physically and you only have to meet her, no wait even seeing a picture shows how she embraces herself physically and how self worth emenates from her ... let me honor you with a pic now!


next davina uses the word love in most if not all of her blog posts .... love is something that does not scare her! she wears it on the outside, you can see it, you can feel it, she uses it to her maximum potential, this is uniquely lovely.

Davina has a unique taste of style in about everything you can have style in, its inspiring and eccentric. it makes me want to be her, to think like her for just a moment so that my creative mind can be filled to capacity with ingenious thoughts!

something apparantly obviously unique, her name! its speaks every uniqueness that she is in the breath it takes to say it!

Davina obviously has talent, but she is not just a great photog, she is a unique photog. there are non like her, very wide gaps in fact. she is art, she is expression, she is emotion captured in a shutter, she is raw real amazing unique talent. enjoy a few from her posts here ...

a picture speaks how many words?

picture courtesy of audrey obrien and her magical photography talent but the real magic came from dustin a good friend who edited/photshoped this puppy and some others for me!

so this was nate's b-day present. in staying with the budget it cost about $1.50 for the enlargement and used a frame i already had to frame it. its pretty special actually but first look at it like a piece of art ... the depth the size of nate and the size of saylor, the hands, the symbolism. make of it what you will all that stuff for ourselves we will keep to ourselves.

so a few years back nate just once mentioned to me how rare it was that he was in any pics with saylor. how most of the photojournalism has more to do with mom and daughter. we get most of the attention it is so true! this made me sad because we do this together ... all of us. not just me, not just nate & i, but all 5 of us! i got this amazing picture that says with no words what i cant even begin to eloquently enough speak about what nate is to us, as a family, as a special family if that is what we are, i havent found a good explanation yet, but i know we are different ....this was a prime gift!

this other pic really melted my heart as well


Saylor has had many many visitors this last go around. it was really nice it really did get us through a long stay at PCMC. a few days after surgery she really wanted storie and stock so we called my mom to bring them to us, she did of course. and they came. this pic says it all about my kids. here are my two strengths so willingly giving their lives and service to their sister, sacraficing their parents much of the time! what amazing kids i have. so balanced, so strong, so spiritual, so faithful, so smart, so wise. so many things! here they are supporting her in yet another priceless moment caught in shutter. people came and went but when it was time for the kids to leave saylor lost it, she wanted them to stay, she begged, she pleaded, and she cried. i will never forget the thickness of love in the air that night!

while we are on the topic ... an update i suppose. saylor continues to do well we are adjusting to all the changes. things are going a little more smooth every day not to say we dont have our off days, we do! it looks like we are now just waiting until spring/summer to finish up this bladder thing, what may happen in between really only the almighty knows! she has outgrown her braces, this set has lasted 9 months! longest ever. not cause she outgrows them but because she wears them out. she still wears a baby/toddler size 5! so a visit to shriners will occure next week, should be adventurous!

32

So much to blog about ... so little time. a lot seems to happen in short amountS of time and then i get a pile up ... what is that about? in short a few of the things going on ...

1. my last remaining grandparent my grandma murph died on oct 2 in the evening*
2. i have been spiritually fed over a long weekend of words from the leaders of the faith i believe in
3. our family visited the cabin for this long weekend where it rained non stop and we played in the mud!
4. i know your waiting for another halloween craft installment and it will be my last for this spooktacular year! when it finally does come that is!*
5. a saylor update as always*
6. oh the woes of amazon and its relation to blog advertising that i usually do not believe in but will explain at a later date*
7. a follow up on gifts that are oh so cool for this blog post*

*anything with a star you will eventually hear about but for now this post is about this man & his favorite number and this long anticipated year!


for those of you who dont know who this is .... nate ... the hub in shining armor ... ok not armor Y parafanela and napoleon glasses.

so the big man turns 32 tomorrow. 32 is his number, lucky & sport related number of all time. if it could be retired it would and perhaps when he turns 33 we will have a retirement party at our home. so this is his year right? the year he has waited for all his life? his number, his luck. what does he want? not much he is a pretty simple dude. what i know is that i am so in love with him, he makes me so happy and is just so genuinly a good guy! over the last few months i have really come to realize as i see some other relationships of married folk in my life become clearer how grateful i am that nate loves me, that he wants to be with me, that he is faithful, that he loves our children, that he will work harder than anyone i know to keep us kept, that he will support me and all that comes with me, that he holds the priesthood and honors it, that he still lives like a boy most of the time, that he still plays football, that he is so passionate about the important things in life and that those things are really what should be important in life.

so i know you all want me to finish up the glasses story and so since this was his birthday post he has honored you all with a pic of these said glasses, his gift to you for his birthday!

so a few years back nate's glasses broke. we have not gotten another pair since, he is blind as a bat. so you may be wondering how we could have possibly gone on this long without glasses? well ... he doesnt really wear them. he wears contacts 90% of the time or at least until the glasses broke then he wore them 99% of the time. he takes them out late at night if at all (most of the time i have to play mom and kick him out of bed to get it done so he wont be kicking himself in the morning.) so he is only blind as a bat in the night and what does that matter because he is not a bat so he has no need to be nocturnal. it simply has just been an inconvenience to remidy the problem. well when the demand of saylor's cathing schedule came crashing down i realized i couldnt nor wouldnt do this on my own. it took a few weeks to find time in his busy schedule to get this inconvenience taken care of. well this really did come at at a financially inconvenient time, seeing that medical bills or raining down us, the economy is crashing and both of our incomes have decreased a bit. we are working hard on a strict budget that allows us a safety net and conserves much more then we have been as well as pays of debt (a much needed thing for us to do and mostly medical) so the exam itself is a bit pricey in my opinion even at good old wallyworld so nate decided he didnt want to for any reason pick out frames on his own. i was ticked off! i just wanted this thing done so i could get some night time help. so a few days later we meandered back as i forced a window of time in our schedules, we realized that frames are darn $$$ too! even at wallyworld! at least they are right now in our current financial state. so the kind young man working the area suggested we get the $18 pair and we tried them on and they seemed fitting given the circumstances ... comical in every way. so these are them. all i can say is takes a strong man to be confident in himself to not care what he looks like, to laugh at himself with himself, to wear these buggers to church on sunday, to enjoy every last $18 worth of them! is he strong enough to be my man? yes and then some!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

economic bail out

this is dave ramsey a financial guru giant! i trust nearly every financial word that comes from his mouth or finger tips. i highly recommend his book total money makeover he has an economic bail out plan of his own .... sounds the best to me so far! i really like it. now i can only pray that our government will come up with a solution remotely close to this because after all it makes sense.

The Common Sense Fix

Years of bad decisions and stupid mistakes have created an economic nightmare in this country,

but $700 billion in new debt is not the answer. As a tax-paying American citizen, I will not support

any congressperson who votes to implement such a policy. Instead, I submit the following threestep

Common Sense Plan.

I. INSURANCE

a. Insure the subprime bonds/mortgages with an underlying FHA-type insurance.

Government-insured and backed loans would have an instant market all over the

world, creating immediate and needed liquidity.

b. In order for a company to accept the government-backed insurance, they must do two

things:

1. Rewrite any mortgage that is more than three months delinquent to a

6% fixed-rate mortgage.

a. Roll all back payments with no late fees or legal costs into the

balance. This brings homeowners current and allows them a

chance to keep their homes.

b. Cancel all prepayment penalties to encourage refinancing or

the sale of the property to pay off the bad loan. In the event of

foreclosure or short sale, the borrower will not be held liable

for any deficit balance. FHA does this now, and that

encourages mortgage companies to go the extra mile while

working with the borrower—again limiting foreclosures and

ruined lives.

2. Cancel ALL golden parachutes of EXISTING and FUTURE CEOs and

executive team members as long as the company holds these

government-insured bonds/mortgages. This keeps underperforming

executives from being paid when they don’t do their jobs.

c. This backstop will cost less than $50 billion—a small fraction of the current proposal.

II. MARK TO MARKET

a. Remove mark to market accounting rules for two years on only subprime Tier III

bonds/mortgages. This keeps companies from being forced to artificially mark down

bonds/mortgages below the value of the underlying mortgages and real estate.

b. This move creates patience in the market and has an immediate stabilizing effect on

failing and ailing banks—and it costs the taxpayer nothing.

III. CAPITAL GAINS TAX

a. Remove the capital gains tax completely. Investors will flood the real estate and stock

market in search of tax-free profits, creating tremendous—and immediate—liquidity in

the markets. Again, this costs the taxpayer nothing.

b. This move will be seen as a lightning rod politically because many will say it is helping

the rich. The truth is the rich will benefit, but it will be their money that stimulates the

economy. This will enable all Americans to have more stable jobs and retirement

investments that go up instead of down.

This is not a time for envy, and it’s not a time for politics. It’s time for all of us, as Americans, to

stand up, speak out, and fix this mess.