Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

I feel terrible. I made that comment about people writing in their blogs and then I don't go and write for a whole month. But, I do have lots of excuses. Lots of good excuses none of this "My dog ate my homework" stuff.

Excuse #1 I was just having way too much fun to blog!

The week after my first blog we went to Phoenix for spring break. Our drive there was pretty uneventful until Vicente decided to stop in Juarez. He visited with a friend a tried to see about fixing our alignment on our van. We decided against that as it would take 3 hours and we had 5 children and a puppy to keep entertained. We only spent 15 minutes on the bridge but when we got the US side we almost didn't get to come back in. The officer had to look up Vicente's naturalization papers because we didn't have our passports with us. He found them and let us through after giving us a lecture about our impulsiveness. It was wonderful to get to visit with everyone. My sister Susie and Micah, her husband were SUPER HEROES! They had all the nieces over one night (eight girls) and all the nephews (5 boys) another night and then all the big kids (8 preteen and teens) another night! (Did I mention they live in a one bedroom apartment.) The kiddos had a blast, I hope Susie and Micah were able to get a little sleep. We also celebrated Isabelle's sixteenth birthday while we were there. She is turning into such a beautiful young woman and we are so proud of her! When I think that we only have her at home for two more years I feel a little sad. I am excited for all of the opportunities and experiences she will have, we will just really miss her. My sister Monica had us over and we made black and white cupcakes from the Hello, Cupcake! book. Super cute and fun! To see photos go to her blog at http://www.ohellimeanhello.blogspot.com/pot.com/ The kids went swimming, (it was to cold for grownups) and we grilled hot dogs. Thanks Monica, YOU ROCK! My mom is also pretty TERRIFIC. Because we were there for St Patrick's Day and not for Easter, my mom had the kiddos search for Leprechaun's Gold . We went to several different parks and the kids threw pennies and found candy. The men went Frisbee golfing while we hauled the kids around. Afterwards, we had a soccer game in the park with all of the kids and the grownups who were not cooking dinner. It was a blast. We had so much fun that we stayed an extra day and had to drive straight home 18+ hours. Yuck!!

Excuse #2 I was sick. ( No, I do not have a doctor's excuse.)

We got home on Saturday at about 3 in the morning. So I slept in until noon and then stayed home doing laundry and preparing sharing time. I had planned to blog all about our trip on Sunday after church, but, excuse number two, I got sick. You can ask my sister Aimee. I am not lying. All during spring break, Aimee was sick with a horrible cold and cough. On our last day in Phoenix I accidentally took a drink from her cup. Needless to say I just was not up to blogging or anything else for that matter (except for buying a "new to us" van) which leads my to my excuse for week three....

Excuse #3 If you don't do anything for a week the next week you have tons of stuff to do.

In addition to all the regular stuff like laundry, I also had to finish the scouting recharters for our ward's pack, troop, team, and crew. If you have never done this you are soooooo lucky. Don't ever volunteer as it is a total pain. We also had a Court of Honor that week and I had to get all the awards for that. Did I mention that I have no cub scout leaders so I also had to plan and carry out our pack's pinewood derby that week. Good thing we only have 5 cubs right now. Saturday was General Conference (it was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!!) so we cleaned the house before, did yard work in between, and cleaned out the garage after. Sunday we went to Aimee's to celebrate Julie's birthday. It was tons of fun we love our little Julie! Now, for my final excuse. It is pretty good too.

Excuse #4 When you have to do something you haven't done for ten years you can't even think about anything else!

When we got home from Julie's birthday party, I had a message on my machine to call the bishop. Now I don't know what I was thinking but, I called him back. Did he say to me "Danelle, we are going to release you" or "Danelle, we called you three new teachers, two cub scout leaders and a chorister", no it went something like this.

Bishop "So, Danelle, did you watch conference?"

Me "Well, Bishop, I did except for Sunday afternoon because we were celebrating my niece's birthday, but we recorded it and are going to watch it for family home evening tomorrow. "

I didn't want him to think I was slacking.

Bishop "Are you going to be at church next Sunday or are you going out of town?"

Here I show a total lack of perception. This could be due to the fact that my brain is dead from filling out forms all week and a lack of sleep due to staying up all night trying to finish cleaning the garage. (It was a huge mess and I knew if I didn't finish it then the urge to finish would probably not strike for another six months.)

Me "Yes Bishop I will be at church."

Now if I was paying any sort of attention the correct answer would have been no, I think we are flying to Hawaii for Easter.

Bishop "Good, good, I need you to speak on Sunday on the conference talk from Kevin W Pearson."

Me "Okay"

What did I just say? Okay? What am I thinking? Well actually I am thinking about the teacher improvement meeting and the den meeting that I am in charge of and are also happening this week. And I am thinking why didn't I say I'm really feeling busy and stressed this week how but how about next Sunday. And I am also thinking about last week when my friend was talking about speaking in church and I thought "Wow, it has almost been ten years since I spoke in sacrament meeting." I was just about to say that to my friend when I thought "If I tell that to Gloria, she might mention that fact to her husband (who is the first counselor in the bishopric) and then I would have to give a talk in church." So I kept quiet. Very quite. But the Lord knows our thoughts and sometimes I think he does things just so we can be reminded of that. So, I got through my first two assignments and then I started on my talk. It was about teaching our children to have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and Easter. I'll tell you my mind was not working. I like to have a couple of weeks so that I can do a lot of reading and pondering and then go and write down the things I feel inspired to speak about and the text of conference was talk was not even available until Thursday! Finally Sunday morning it came together. It turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to strengthen my testimony and be led by the spirit. However, I am glad that it is over. I was singing Hallelujah all during primary. Aimee and Dennis and their family came to support Isabelle and me. She was speaking on what Easter meant to her. She decided to change her topic to "What the atonement, death and Resurrection of the Savior meant to her". She did wonderful. She was able to start the meeting with the spirit. I am always amazed at her ability to speak publicly. After church we went home and ate the worst Easter dinner I have ever had. **This includes the time we had Easter at Lake Pleasant and all of our chocolates were melted and we (Monica and I) got in trouble for reading Black Beauty with a flashlight at night because we screamed when we saw a vinegaroon in our tent and thought we were going to get bit by some radioactive scorpion and my dad took away our flashlight and left us in the dark without making sure the vinegarron was out of the tent.**

Isabelle wanted me to include a picture of a vinegaroon. Wouldn't you scream too?

Vicente had bought a "country ham" from Cracker Barrel. He told me that this was the best kind of ham E-V-E-R. Have you every prepared country ham? It is salted and smoked and it does not need refrigeration. Think of the movie Old Yeller and the smoke house. On Saturday, I unwrapped it and almost went a bought a nice spiral cut ham from Sam's Club. It looked like a mummy. It was as hard as a rock and had MOLD on it. The instructions said "This is perfectly normal and is like the mold on fine cheese" however, you have to scrub it all off with a scrub brush and white vinegar. I didn't have white vinegar or a clean scrub brush, so I had to go to the store on the day before Easter. YUCK! Let me tell you it is just so much fun to scrub a mummified pig leg. The kids were grossing out. I was grossing out, and if the crowds were not so horrible at the store, I would have left and bought that beautiful ham from Sam's. However, my husband who would not be eating with us because he was working assured me that it was going to be delicious. I soaked it overnight in sugar water concoction per instructions. The next morning only the skin looked a little re-hydrated. Gag. I placed it in a roasting pan filled with water and covered it and put it in the oven at 260 degrees per instructions. Filled with doubt as to the edibility of this ham, I left for church. Six hours later we began to slice the ham. Did I say "slice" what I meant to say was hack up the ham. It was still mummified. It was not a ham it was pork jerky. Dennis broke my chunks out of my lovely 9" santoku chef's knife trying to cut that ham. I am not kidding! Dennis and Aimee put on a brave face and told me it was not that bad. Francisca, my mother in law, tried a piece and would not eat any more because she was afraid she would break her teeth! When Vicente got home he went straight to bed but the next morning he had me warm up some "ham" for his breakfast. I had hash browns and eggs. He gave half of the porky jerky to the dog and decided we could just use the rest for beans. That night he came home and had me throw the rest away. He gets terrible headaches from some types of preservatives and that ham must have been full of them. Did I mention that he had already bought another country ham. It is sitting by the front door waiting to be given to first person who will take it. Anybody game?

Thank you for your cooperation. This now concludes the excuse section of my blog.