December

Never did I imagine that I would have a kid who was excited for snow and it has surprised me even more that it is Levi. I'm so glad he has found a way to enjoy the gloomy winter months and avoid seasonal blues.

I cope with the winter gloom by searching around me for beauty in the clouds and ice and snow and cold.

However, though the blue skies may appear, they also bring with them a cold inversion which puts an invisible cap on the atmosphere which holds down all exhaust from vehicles, furnaces, fire places and any other place possible. This is a perfect migraine concoction. This picture is the first time I have actually seen the inversion as it held down all the burn-off from the local plant.

In happier notes, Nathan's holiday orchestra concert was festive and impressive.

Jeff and Nathan have been good friends since they were about four. It is fun to watch them grow up and develop talents together. They have also been blessed with a wonderful primary teacher who surprised them (including Taylor, from the primary class) by coming to their concert. We followed up the night with our traditional Kiwi Loco stop.

The kids continued sharing their talents as sang andplayed the bells at the ward Christmas party. We are so blessed to have a close community to share our beliefs and celebrations.

As Christmas drew near, I boxed up and sent gifts to our Fullmer and Edwards grandparents. Oliver and Charlie were quite helpful!

As the Eve of Christmas drew near, Erika and LeRoy set up a wrapping station in our room. The holidays did not slow down this year like in previous years so LeRoy was busy right up to the last minute. It was wonderful to hear him put on Christmas music and sing his heart out in relaxation.

Holiday Projects

When Justin moved out, he left a pile of washed and folded Madison and Airbound t-shirts in the bottom of his closet. There sat a pile of memories from four years of gymnastics, orchestra and cheer. Our  red, white and gray Madison Bobcat was moving on to be a purple and black Weber Wildcat. 

I awkwardly folded the shirts the best I could to show the main graphic so that I could arrange a pattern. I figured out a size to cut them and had a tentative plan but by the time I got them all cut, no matter how I rearranged the squares, I could not get the columns to match up without odd spacing. After nearly two hours, I was starting to go a bit cross-eyed and get a little frustrated. I realized that I needed another shirt but I had already used up all that he had, including one of his actual cheer uniform tops (big "CATS" and the pawprint). 

The answer finally came when I decided to walk away for a bit and went to take a shower. As I went to undress, I realized that I was wearing a Madison shirt that was not a duplicate graphic to any of Justin's other shirts. It was my fan shirt that was given to all the moms of the cheer team. It was one of my favorite comfy shirts that I wore every single week. I considered it throughout my shower and decided that the best  addition to the quilt would be my shirt because I am his number one fan! 

Though the idea was wonderful, it still took a good pause before I cut it up.

With a soft flannel backing, I tried a new quilting method using my sewing machine and had it bound and ready to go for Christmas. 

Justin loved it (measured by the tears he tried to hide) and sent me a couple of Snaps of it in gratitude.

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Daymia inherited a Christmas village set from her parents and wanted to be able to display it in her apartment without it feeling crowded so she researched (thank you Pinterest) and found a wooden display tree. 

Derek to the rescue. A couple of hours on CAD to design it and come up with measurements, a trip to the hardware store, an afternoon full of cutting, drilling, whistling and singing and it was complete. He literally makes dreams come true!

Perhaps a little taller than she had expected, but it worked beautifully!

And will be an annual decoration in her home.

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After having the idea in mind and the fabric in the closet for a good two years, I finally put together a Christmas runner.

As with most of my sewing projects, I tried new techniques and it has it's own "personality" woven into it. 

I love the vibrant colors! It turned out better than I had imagined.

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There was a time when my home was full of kids and my mantle full of stockings lovingly cross stitched by Great Grandma June Hawkins and Grandma Trudy Fullmer. 

Five of the seven kids moved away and took their stockings, leaving only Nathan and Hyrum to fill a big house and a big mantle. Our four mismatched, differently angled stockings left our mantle looking a bit like a cartoon block from Charlie Brown's Christmas, so it was time for a makeover.

No worries, our hand-crafted Grandma stocking were placed over on the staircase where they could still be adored but also hang their individual direction without hurting my OCD.

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For an early December Family Home Evening we decorated ginger bread houses. With just the four of us, our ginger village census was down from previous years.

November: Family Pictures

Mike was gracious enough to fit in a photo session for our family during the Thanksgiving festivities taking place.

Family photo sessions are always a comical event for us and the photographer makes all the difference. Mike was perfect!

I love this crew!

Levi and Daymia are a photogenic match made in heaven. Their Sunday visits are the highlight of our week. I admire their commitment to one another, their work ethic, and their ability to love life and see the good in nearly every situation.

Bret and Erika have an amazing family with so much personality keeping life interesting. They are wonderful parents with a smart, determined, loving little girl in Miss Kailee Jo.
P.S. Erika is expecting Lilly Rae and had just announced it to the family prior to these pictures being taken.

Ah, Derek. My pensive, creative, thoughtful, budding enterpreneur. I admire his courageous spontaneity and careful career risk taking. He going places for sure!

GQ Justin so full of skill, talent, tenacity, and humor. Though the other had a few shots taken for their individual profile, Justin had exactly one shot. Nailed it!

Nathan, my budding tweenager. He is kind, thoughtful, fun, spiritually sensitive, and his pun skills are improving daily. His care and thoughtfulness of his Momma fill my heart with joy.

Baby Hyrum is no longer a baby, but a growing young man with a creative mind and sensitive heart. His vivid imagination is impressive and leads to many backyard adventures. He has grown exponentially in wisdom, stature, emotions, and spirit.

The mid-life survivors.

Twenty-seven years has taught us much and blessed us beyond our greatest hopes. 

Through Walgreens I was able to use our new photos to design a Christmas card.

It truly IS a Wonderful Life!

November: The Everyday

Another piano festival is in the books. This was Hyrum's first festival. He was anxiously excited and did a great job. Per our new tradition, we went to Cocoa Bean afterward for some fabulous drinks that perfectly complimented my fabulous musicians.

As an LDS Young Women leader, I was blessed to celebrate the girls accomplishments and talents in our Night of Excellence Talent Show. I also gained a new talent as I learned how to decorate 75 cupcakes with thick, swirly, frosted tops complete with golden sprinkles. Our girls choreographed a delightful synchronized swimming routine sans water. Those 12 girls have been a joy to work with!

A visit to see our grand baby Kailee is always a treat! As she goes about her ordinary day, she is pure entertainment for the rest of us! She was especially interested in helping Grandpa install a switch, a circular fan, and bathroom fan in their house. When the fan was all finished she exclaimed in awe, "Wow! So pretty!" which I found rather observant for a 20 month old.

I adore watching my boys with their niece. What a blessing that as the youngest in our family, they still get to be big brothers . . . as uncles. She sure loves them!


A couple of new fur babies joined the family.

Justin adopted Gus and Belle from a local shelter. Life is just better with a fur baby to relax with.


November 27th brought a new feeling that we had never experienced before. We were ready for Christmas! We didn't fight the feeling at all, just pulled out the decorations from the basement and started unpacking. We didn't go all out and put up the tree but it certainly started to look festive.

Taking our first family selfie with Charlie found us using baby talk as we tried to get Charlie to look at the camera.

November: Big Dates

Erika and I celebrated our birthday's together in Utah.

At 11:17 on 11/17 my Erika Jo is now 24 years old. On Friday evening we went to Zupa's for dinner, then spent the night chatting in our over-sized hotel suite, slept in Saturday morning, and went to see Grandma Fullmer to surprise her for her belated birthday.

Also on Saturday morning we went to the Smith Marketplace near Oquirrh mountain. They gave us the largest (and free) birthday ice cream sundae served up by the sweetest gentleman manager we've ever met.

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Kimberly Edwards is with Graford LeRoy Edwards.

November 23, 2017 · 

LeRoy, our marriage is 27 years young! Eternity, here we come.

"What does tamed mean?"
"To create ties. If you tame me, we'll need each other. You'll be the only boy in the world for me. I'll be the only fox in the world for you . . ."

As I recently re-read The Little Prince, I thought of this taming that we call marriage. It takes patience and persistence (just as the fox taught) but is so worth it! For truly, "one sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

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Our second annual Thankful Tree filled the pantry door with heart shaped leaves labeled with our gratitude for a variety of blessings in our lives: spiritual, physical, emotional, friends, family, stuff, struggles, and the simplest of things that all make up a big beautiful life!

Hyrum had a school assignment to disguise a turkey so that he wouldn't get eaten for Thanksgiving Dinner. With a bit of scrapbook paper, scissors and glue, his baseball playing turkey was created. No one would eat a sports legend!

Thanksgiving happened to fall on our Anniversary. It worked out perfect so that LeRoy and I could stop by "our temple" on our way to Thanksgiving Lunch at Kate and Mike's house.

Also on the way there we passed our boys while they were joy-riding in Derek's fancy new car. 

What a handsome crew!

A highlight for the kids was playing Nine Square in the back yard with Grandpa Fullmer. 

He is such a wonderful grandpa to all these hooligans!

Evan and Trudy Fullmer with nine of their eleven children.

Cami, Josh, Kimber, John, Kara, James, Joe, Jake, Jared 

Mom and Dad

HaPpY Halloween

It's good to have Levi, Daymia, and Brooke to take our Jedi and Cowboy trick-or-treating. Charlie and I manned our own front door.

But a couple of weeks before Halloween, we carved pumpkins.

In Edwards' fashion, LeRoy pulled out the serious tools. Most of us stuck with our puny, flimsy, "knives".

They could pull out all the tough tools in the world but the guts of a pumpkin weaken these boys to the core.

Weakened stomachs or not, the concentration is real and these boys look like twins!

When I drew up my extra large kitchen on the floor plans of this house, these were the moments I imagined. All of us together; making messes; making memories.

This is the stuff that memories are made of.

Halloween BooBoos '17

 Our annual Ghoul Fest of Confection transformed the kitchen into an assembly line of fingers, faces, dirt, and worms.

In the name of friendly service we plated chopped fingers for a nutty crunch of delicious grossness.

With frosting and sprinkles, cake and gummy worms, we crafted our best Halloween creations to begin the sharing of holiday Boo's . . . not to be confused with holiday booze. Though, once we went out, we did get some looks from strangers wondering if we had been boozing.

Under the cover of darkness, tradition came alive as our self-named BooBoos secretly placed our plated goodies on doorsteps, knocked and ran. {Daymia and I went along as drivers and plate protectors.}

As we were driving into town to doorbell ditch some friends, we saw a couple of cars at the entrance of Maverik that looked to be in trouble. We weren't sure if it had been an accident or just had a dead vehicle. Against LeRoy's complaining to stick with our initial plan of going to our friends house, the boys voted to take our treats to those who seemed to be having a rough night.

We pulled up next to the two vehicles and Levi hopped out of the van, complete with face mask and dark hooded hat, and proceeded to gangster walk over to the families. They initially looked shocked and immediately on guard as he approached and the first words out of his mouth were, "I'm not here to rob you".

The others jumped out of the van, except LeRoy who was at this point pouting and ornery that his troop went against his wishes, and I watched my boys hand over goodies, make the kids smile, and brighten two families lives with a bit of silliness. Later, I learned that it was the best Booing experience they've ever had. I was so proud of them for seeing a need (not that the families needed sugar but they needed a lift) and not hesitating to change their plans to fill that need.

It might seem that I'm giving LeRoy a hard time but he also learned a lesson. He can tell all of us as many times as he wants (and he does!) that "life is all about being flexible" but he was not happy when his children quoted it right back to him. Later that evening we talked and he realized that they are great at being flexible and at serving. We were both proud of them and taught by them.

We've been Booing with our kids for at least 15 years. I look at this couple and suddenly see us as the grandparents that we are. We are no longer those young chickens with chicks following behind. We are the old hen and rooster who have been in a few scraps. Though we don't leave our position as parents, we do tend to stand back and watch our own chicks spread their wings. Fly my little ones. You've got this!