Home Sweet Home

The weather is BEAUTIFUL! The azaleas are stunning..there is a ball game on and I am loving the opportunity to spend an evening at home after a week gone and then busy-ness that needed to be attended to. Trip to Utah accomplished and cute Liam and parents visited and now back to seminary and dog and chauffering and funerals and laundry and paperwork and grocery shopping and dentist appointment and much more fun stuff! Not much to say so let's watch Jimmer! (Charles Barkley an idiot!!!!)

Grateful Hearts

February is heart month according to something I read recently (I think they were referring to cardiac concerns) but my grandkids think of cupids and arrows and all things pink and chocolate and rosy (maybe not so much Johnny) I am once again not a big fan of Valentine's Day-ish kinds of silliness except for of course cutsie stuff for the littles (yes I know, I have holiday issues) but this is what I have been thinking about recently. [Bet ya can't wait.] More than just about anything you can do to show someone you appreciate them and care about them and love them is to express gratitude. We think of gratitude at Thanksgiving time but it is an appropriate expression at Valentine's time as well. I have glimpsed what Father in Heaven means when he tells us there is none against whom his wrath is kindled or 'in nothing doth man ^aoffend God,... save those who ^dconfess not his hand in all things...' I think it is a very real part of an expression of love and even though some of those lessons come hard, I hope that I have had that principle sink deeper into my heart these last few weeks and that I can remember the importance of expressing gratitude to those I love. I am kind of lousy at it and being 'not dead yet' I guess I can still work in that direction. So here is a verse I love and haven't ever put in the context of hearts and roses but what is more loving than a Father who delights to shower his children with glory and 'things'....that will bless them?!
And he who receiveth all things with ^athankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an ^bhundred fold, yea, more. Happy Heart Month!

Family Photos 2010

My favorite people on the planet!

My Fam

• Can I just tell ya how much I adore my fam? Since I am not worried that anyone is going to spend much time reading this, I am just going to be obnoxious and say that I have the world's cutest grandchildren and that I really can't imagine that anything else that one might do in life would be any better than kids and grandkids. I remember that it was hard. I remember that there were days. But the joys of knowing and spending time with such really great people just can't be beat. Liam is a darling little cherub with a happy smile and a silly belly laugh. Coleton is a peaceful little angel with the bluest eyes and the cutest superman stance I ever saw; Cavin says the funniest things and is the funniest kid that looks at you sideways and melts your heart; Caden is mature for his age and clever and full of surprises and quietly always plotting something fun; Ella twirls and skips and runs with grace and ease and flashes her dimples at you; Madi has beautiful hair and a lovely complexion and loves to spend time in the land of make believe and makes you wish you were there with her....ooolala (that's french); and John will forever be my Johnny; sober, careful, obedient, brilliant and curious with a love for books, video games, dinosaurs, Lego's and who manifests a deep concern and care for his sister and his mom and dad. Then there are two darling sons who I am crazy proud of and three lovely daughters who all do hard things and do them with faith and with determination and who nurture and care for the people around them and who are capable and solid and reliable and committed to the task(s) at hand; they have all five of them stuck to hard things and mastered them and held the faith and worked and struggled and persevered knowing that there is much more of that ahead. I am grateful that they honor their marriages (Nan not yet) and that their spouses have sustained them and blessed their lives.I am past grateful that they are faithful and that their spouses have been faithful and support gospel principles and righteous living. So on this 18th day of January, 2011, that is what I am thinking about and what I am grateful for. An entry to begin the year and to record my sense of gratitude for the blessing these kids are to me. Smiles and happy New Year!
  

2010

As the year closes out I thought I would note a few of the years hi-lites for the sake of posterity and record keeping and all things 'memorable'. I am going to skip the whole chronology because that would really tax my brain.


















































Coleton Younes Speers was born January 28th, 2010. He weighed 5 lbs 1 oz.
Liam Ethan Scharman was born June 30th, 2010. He weighed 8 lbs 12 oz.
Corey graduated from Baylor College of Medicine.
Chris changed assignments at work and is now working in 'Lubes' (whatever that means)
Cavin learned how to wear big boy undies very easily; a blessing to his mother.
John and Madi started a new school that they like alot.
Corey and Steph sold their home in Humble.
Missa went to work in Idaho Falls, her first paid teaching job.
We held a Haws family reunion in July in Vernal. Chris and Chira and family attended.
My 35th Uintah High School Class Reunion was held in August. Me and Becky and Laurie went.
Mom had her hip replaced a year ago and did better for a while.
Visited with Lois and David Powers and Don and Lynette Taylor and Scott Lewis and Fran and Art Ericson; all dear old friends.
Went to Hawaii with Lisa and Ragnar and Natalie.
Mabel turned 85.
Dad turned 81.
I won't tell you what I turned.
Randy returned home from Iraq and then moved to Kentucky.
We took Johnny up to Randy's Change of Command ceremony
I was called to teach seminary.
Kerry has been working in the Stake Presidency since the end of last year.
We had car trouble on our road trip to Utah which fuels Kerry's "i hate road trips' fire.
The car trouble fueled my 'Father in Heaven watches over us' fire as we had the real brake trouble at exactly the necessary spot to access help.
We went to DC to bless Coleton. Lisa and the kids came with us. We had a great trip.
I went to DC just to see Coleton when he was few weeks old.
Went to Idaho when Liam was born for 10 days.
Had Corey and Steph and fam and Lisa and Rags and fam for Thanksgiving.
Had all the kids home for Christmas this year. A wonderful way to end the year and start the new one.


Happy New Year!

This isn't what the GOVERN....meant!

My to do list has included getting my passport renewed for quite some time (a year). I determined that today was the day. I was going to take my 3 month old passport photos and my $110 bucks and get this job done. The paperwork said you could mail the renewal in but my mind works weird and I kept worrying that I may have misunderstood something because I would see people waiting to get their passports at post offices. I called the State Dept to see if I could just mail it and got lots of music to listen to but no person or information; I almost called the post office but decided to just go in and get it over with. I prefer the Tomball post office because in the past they have been much more efficient than the Louetta facility (of course, two year olds can put a fully functional nuclear attack sub in the water faster than the Louetta facility people can sell you a book of stamps) I had the paperwork filled out, my checkbook in hand and, as I walked in the door, two little girls about cut me in half as they zipped by, unattended, by the woman sitting in the passport application area who was chatting about some trip the passport processor was wanting to take someday. Another little boy went screaming out the door on a leash followed by a highly exasperated father who apparently was the spouse of the other woman in the passport application line who was on the phone loudly trying to get someone to dig through some paperwork at home so she could complete passport papers with a five week old baby in a car seat purched precariously on a table. The two little girls of the first applicant continued to catapult through the place without much concern for seniors (not me!) babies or unsuspecting patrons coming in the door; and so, we had two out of control little girls with a clueless mom (a third little girl would enter later with an equally unqualified care giver)and two harrowed parents who had only been there five minutes and had already lost control of their two year old. They had checked in for passports 12 and 5 minutes before me. Now, I will never be able paint a picture of the passport processor that any of you will ever believe but I have to try; She was somewhere between 45 and 65 years of age (it would be difficult to pinpoint her age exactly as some clearly hard living had been indulged in) hair that was half kinda blond and half very gray was held in place by a claw thing and it seemed as if she had never been formally introduced to hair care products of any kind (shampoo, conditioner, frizz control products) other than the occasional bottle of blond hair color; on her feet were house slipppers that I guess she might have thought were moccassins; she wore jean shorts and a plaid sleeveless top that had had the sleeves cut out and tattoo's encircling both ankles and her arm [now her arms made any Relief Society arm you have EVER seen look toned and chisseled]. She not only did not have ANY semblance of a professional, 'I am an employee of the US State Department' demeanor in her dress or her mannerisms, she could have easily passed as an inmate out on parole or a hillbilly from Kentucky (or East Texas). I am being mean but I was shocked. I honestly looked around to see if she was a baglady that had decided that she wanted to be a passport processor for a minute while the real processor was away from her desk. Sooooooo, I waited for one hour and seven minutes for the two families to conclude their business with my clearly blue application in hand while they filled out clearly beige applications (for new passports I was assuming) and with the children racing and screaming and crawling and bumping and getting their fingers caught (almost smashed once) while their parents just sat there and shouted at them. This doesn't count the very cute (they were all cute) little two year old girl that came in and knocked my purse off the chair and ran into a little man with a cane while waiting for her grandmother to get finished in the very long (18 minutes) postal line. Yes, I had time to track the timing on the line. The conversations between the processor and the second family consisted of comparing notes on the annoyance of finding they were pregnant with their first borns after only having dated the fathers for a couple of months and the process they went through to try to 'hook' the father or decide if they were even worth the effort of 'hooking' them and the decision after extended periods of time of living with the fathers to go ahead and put up with the
''$%*&*^' sons of ......uhhhh....guns" and how much 'fun' they had before they got saddled with brats. Oh my gosh!
She finally concluded with the little families (whom, by the way, I could have been in line AHEAD of if I had been 5 minutes earlier and she called me over. In 1.2 seconds (I hadn't even really gotten seated yet) the processor/bag lady looked at my CLEARLY blue application and said "I don't need to process blue aps, you can just put it in a envelope and mail it off!!!!!!"

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

My New Gig

It has been a busy summer and in Houston it is still VERY summer-like outside. We are in the high 90's and have high humidity and we're kind of tired of it; no more tired, I am sure, than the northerners get of snow and ice in April.

On my way home from a trip to Utah in August, I got a phone call from a member of the stake presidency (the one I am married to!) calling me to teach seminary and so all of my family history plans have gotten shuffled off to the side while I try to get up to speed on seminary. My poor little ancestors must have been SO excited only to have their hopes and dreams dashed yet again (they have heard me speak of getting going before) I hope that they can endure me. And I hope that the kids in seminary can endure me as well. We are into this three weeks now and the fatigue is already a tiny bit better and we are working out how to get this job done. Experience goes a long way and I don't have any. The first week I thought to myself, what in the heck have I gotten myself into. Second week better and this week better still. The kids are a delight and I adore them already. 16 seniors; mostly boys four girls and an eclectic group that is very sharp and who has some marvelous future missionaries in it. I am grateful for the opportunity and the blessings that I can see flowing into my life. Increased capacity on a couple of levels and I am hoping for some more because I really need it.