No. 9 & No. 10 Granddaughters Arrive

So Kelsey delivered her twin girls on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 7:20 and 7:28.

All went well, except that the epidural did not work, and Kelsey and girls are doing great. In fact, they were all able to come home today. Not too often that twins are born 5 weeks early and get to come home in less than 48 hours:)

Kelsey looks great and little girls are adorable. Names.....Quinn Gracie and Rian Palmer. Quinn was 5 lbs 3 oz and 18.5 inches and Rian was 5 lbs 7 oz and 18.5 inches. Quinn is the oldest by 8 minutes. However, Kelsey said it was more like only 5 minutes.

Cliff and I are flying to Puerto Rico on October 18th and will stay there til December 1st. Well, we fly into Tampa on the 18th, spend a couple days with Linsey and family and then back to Florida on Nov. 29th for a couple more days with Branson family and then home.

We just returned a month ago from spending three weeks with Linsey in Florida and Kelsey in Puerto Rico. It was so fun being with all of them again. I miss my girls (all of them). We have 14 girls now....4 daughters and 1o granddaughters.

We also spent two weeks at Priest Lake this year with our other two daughters, Katie and Morgan and their families. So it has been a very fun filled summer.

Pictures to come when I have more time:)

Another Change in Our Lives

Last Sunday Cliff was released as the Bishop of the University 10th Ward. The church is making a lot of changes with the Young Single Adults and have dropped the name "University" or "Student" wards, and they dissolved all "Married Student" wards and sent the married students back to the family wards in which they live. All these changes took place last Sunday and in the process of these changes our 1oth Ward was dissolved and our kids were put into 5 different wards. So because our ward was dissolved and Cliff has been bishop almost three years now up there, he was released. So we will be returning to our home ward, Chubbuck 6th, this Sunday. It will be nice to return to the 6th Ward and I'm sure it will take a little adjustment, but we will dearly miss our kids of the University 10th Ward. We have grown to love them all....those there now, and those who have moved on. We have enjoyed so much being with them and learning from them. They will never know how my testimony has grown from being with them, serving with them, and having fun with them. They are great kids with great testimonies. I served as the Temple Prep Teacher up there and enjoyed so much teaching and preparing these young people to go to the temple. Cliff will be lost for a while without having the association of these young people through the ward or the Institute anymore, but we are looking forward, and making new plans. Priest Lake, Florida, and Puerto Rico.......here we come!!

30th Anniversary

So Cliff and I went to Salt Lake to celebrate our 30th Wedding Anniversary, which is March 14th. We had a great time. We went to Temple Square and out to eat at Iggy's. The picture below is taken because this is where Cliff gave me my engagement ring. Someone else was taking the picture for us and it is blurry, but who cares:)
The next day we went through an endowment session in the Salt Lake Temple. This is the first time that I have gone through the Salt Lake temple except for a wedding. Cliff has only gone once before he left on his mission. So it was wonderful. That temple is truly an amazing place. The inside is so beautiful. It amazes me that the pioneers could do all that with so little technology. Anyway, we had the blessing and opportunity of being asked to be the witness couple. It was awesome. Afterwards we ran into the man that asked us to be the witness couple and he showed us some places in the temple that not everybody gets to see. It was a wonderful day and a great experience. A perfect way to celebrate our anniversary.

Looking back on 30 years, we have so very much to be grateful for. Heavenly Father has truly blessed us. We have 4 beautiful, wonderful daughters, 4 great son-in-laws and 8 beautiful little granddaughters. Who could ask for more:) Linsey and Kelsey and their families are now living far away and that is hard for me, I am adjusting, but still miss them so very much.

I don't do very well keeping this blog up, but then I don't have a lot to put on here when alot of my family is not around. It was usually our family events that I posted on here. I will try and still put things, but Cliff and I are kinda boring if all you are reading about is us and the other girls all have their own blogs.

Need To Do Better

I know, I know, I really need to do better in keeping my blog up. However, half of my family has moved far away now and so not sure I will have a lot to report here on the blog. Most of what I have always had dealt with my grandkids. I still have 3 of the 8 here, but that will probably not last long. Katie and Cameron will probably be leaving within the year for places unknown.

So......to bring you up to date.....Morgan and Norman got married on December 11, 2010 and it was a wonderful day. Everything was perfect and we had the entire family together for probably the last time in who knows how long. So it was wonderful having all our girls and their spouses in the temple together. We got a great family picture together.

Linsey and Jarom moved to Tampa, Florida the week after the wedding. That's when my tears first started. Kelsey and Dan left a week ago tomorrow (on Valentine's Day) for Puerto Rico for 3 or 4 years. That brought more tears. I have to say, the hardest thing for me as a grandma is to get close to my grandchildren and then to have to say good-bye to them and watch them move so very far away. But life brings changes, I just don't always like those changes.

Katie and Cameron are looking into career changes and may be leaving us soon. I will keep you posted on that. Morgan and Norman are presently planning on staying here while they get their education. So we should have them around for a few years anyway.

I guess since I won't have much to blog about right now that this blog will start to be my travel blog. Cliff is on disability from work now and so this is our time to do some things together. We have lots of places that we would like to go and this past summer was really fun. We traveled to Priest Lake for our annual family vacation. Then we went to Nebraska for a family reunion on Cliff's side. While there we decided to be spontaineous again and instead of heading for home....we headed for Milwaukee, Wisconsin. One of my goals or dreams or whatever you want to call it is to visit each state in the United States. However, I will probably not get Alaska. Anyway, so we went to Milwaukee and the saw the broadway musical "Wicked". I had already seen it twice (in Denver and in Omaha) but Cliff had not seen it. It was great....even the third time. We then drove from there to Minneapolis, Minnesota. We toured some of the places that our now new son-in-law (Norman) served his mission in. We even went to the mission home and visited the Sacrament Meeting of the ward he was attending when he left his mission for home. It was fun to meet the people and hear how much they loved Norman.

Then driving home we decided to take the back roads and not the Interstate. It was very fun and we enjoyed it alot.

Then in October we drove to Florida with our daughter, Linsey. She had to move to Florida ahead of the rest of the family to start her new job as a NICU nurse at the hospital there. We did not want her driving across the country alone, so Cliff and I drove with her and then flew home. We had a great time and enjoyed our time with Linsey.

So......I guess now we need to start planning our first trip to Florida (well that won't be our first, but first since Linsey's whole family has moved there) and Puerto Rico:)

I'm Still Alive!!

Can I just say that I am terrible at keeping up this blog. Last time I updated was on Cliff's birthday, which was the beginning of this year and the year is almost over. Wow! You would have better luck looking at my facebook page to find out what's happening in my life. Here is a very brief view of my year.
Cliff has been put on permanent medical disability from work, Linsey and her family are moving to Tampa, Florida. (Linsey next week, and the rest of the family in December). Cliff and I are driving out to Florida with Linsey and then flying home. That should be fun!! Katie just delivered twin girls a week ago. They were 13 weeks early and it was a pretty tramatic delivery. One at home and the other at the hospital, with an ambulance ride in the middle. Katie gets deathly sick for her entire pregnancies, so it has been pretty miserable for her, but she and little girls are doing good. Kelsey's husband got hired for a new job and they will be moving to who knows where. And Morgan is engaged to Norman Reece and will be getting married on December 11th.

So as you can see, this has been and still is a very busy year for our family. Many of them are moving away, far away, and we will miss them terribly and Morgan is starting a new chapter in her life. She has chosen a wonderful young man to be her eternal companion and we are very pleased and excited for them both. Cliff is having to adjust to slowing his pace down and not working anymore. Physically he is ready, but mentally he is not ready to be done teaching and doing that which he loves. But it is giving him time to spend with his little granddaughters that will be moving away soon. I'm just trying to get through each day and each new hurdle:)

Cliff turns 55!!!!

Cliff turned 55 today....January 14, 2010. We had all of our girls and their families here for the evening. We ordered in Chinese, then opened presents and had the cake. One of the girls in our Single's Ward that Cliff is Bishop of made the cake for him. It is a huge Insulin Syringe. With the words "Happy Birthday, Big Shot" on there. We thought it was pretty clever.

Grandpa and Rylie before he opens his presents.

All the granddaughters wanted to help with opening the gifts!

They had fun each getting a turn to help Grandpa open one of the gifts.

Here's the birthday boy with all 6 of his granddaughters.

The Cake

Same picture as above. I didn't know I already had it in here.

Here come's the first bite!!! Not really...he didn't do it.

Kelsey decides to use it on him. HaHA!
He'll need a big shot after tonights meal!!

Wow!! 55!! In all honesty, I don't think Cliff ever thought when he was younger that he would ever see this age. We are very blessed and glad that he has!!

It looks like he still has enough energy to blow out the candles.....that is with a little help. HAHA!

Christmas 2009

UPDATE TO SLEEPOVER WITH GRANDMA AND GRANDPA

I said below that I didn't have any pictures of cookie making with granddaughters. I just found some on Kelsey's blog. so here they are. And if you want to see everything we did for the kids for the 12 days of Christmas go to Kelsey's blog. she posted about each day. It is http://www.rileyfun.blogspot.com/

We gave all the grandkids new Christmas jammies for one of the days and here they are wearing them for our sleepover.

This is after we made the cookies. everyone was hungry and we had pizza.

Getting ready to eat pizza after hard work of making christmas cookies.

Jenna rolling out her cookie dough to cut the cookies.

This was so fun to do with the girls.

It was fun to watch their creativity in frosting their cookies

Here is the end result.

We had a great Christmas this year with loved ones and family and friends. I love Christmas time and I'm always a little sad when it is over. Here is a recap of our Christmas festivities.

SLEEPOVER WITH GRANDPA AND GRANDMA

Cliff and I did the 12 days of Christmas for our kids and their families this year and one of the days was a sleepover for the older 4 granddaughters with us. I didn't get pictures on my camera of us making our Christmas cookies, which was very fun, but I think we got it on the movie camera or someone elses camera. I hope so. But here are a few pictures from the rest of the evening.
Here is Grandpa reading a christmas story to the girls. Amanda is at the right hiding or something.

They all wanted to sit on Grandpa's lap at the same time to watch a movie. It's ok. It didn't last too long.

We all slept out on the floor together in the family room. Of course, they wanted grandma in the middle. Mine is the blue bag in the middle. It was a lot of fun! We watched the movie "Frosty the Snowman"

Don't know why this picture came up sideways, but this is what we had for breakfast. The girls loved it!

Breakfast time!

Grandpa looks a little tired here don't ya think? He had to have eye surgery the day before. We had this planned with the girls before we knew they would do surgery that day. I was a little worried about it, but Grandpa wanted to do it anyway.

Every year our granddaughters love to lay under my christmas tree upstairs and play with the little ice skating pond. The skaters go around while "Away in a Manger" plays. They love it! They do pretty good at leaving the rest of the Christmas Village alone, but the real little ones still have a hard time with that.

DECEMBER 19TH - OUR SINGLE'S UNIVERSITY WARD GOES TO SALT LAKE CITY TO SEE THE TEMPLE SQUARE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!

We rented a bus (school bus...wasn't too bad though) to all travel down together in. It wasn't too bad until it broke down. We could tell something was wrong and tried to make it to the Plymouth, UT exit (which is out in the middle of no where) and just as we were exiting the interstate, all power went out on the bus. We glided to a stop on the ramp and then had to hike all the kids over to the gas station. Luckily it wasn't too far.

We then had to camp out in the Subway that was attached to the gas station while we waited for another bus to come and get us. We were there about 1 1/2 hours. The kids bought cards and played while we waited. They were all really good sports about it and we didn't hear any complaining.

This is just Morgan and I chillin at Subway while waiting for the bus.

It was worth the wait. Temple square was beautiful, as always. We were going to go and see the Joseph Smith movie at the JS Memorial Building, but because of the bus breakdown that is what we had to cut out. I wish we could have because we had some who had never seen it before.

We all had a great time. I always enjoy walking around temple square, especially at christmas time. We were glad Morgan was home from BYU-I so that she could go with us.

This is Morgan and two of the girls from our ward, Kirsten and Abby.

The three of us again. We also took the kids to Chuck-a-rama for dinner. Our home stake, Chubbuck Stake, also brought their single's ward down the same day and would you believe that both of our buses showed up at Chuck-a-Rama at the very same time. So we had a pretty long wait for them to fit about 90 of us in there to eat. But we enjoyed visiting and having fun while waiting. It was a great trip. We love the young people of the University 10th Ward and so grateful that Cliff has the opportunity of being their bishop and being their with them.



CHRISTMAS FAMILY CANDLELIGHT DINNER AND FHE


It is a tradition of ours every Christmas to have a candlelight dinner and a Christmas FHE together. While our girls were growing up, we had a candlelight dinner for every holiday during the year and would decorate the table to that holiday. But since they are all married now and Morgan is away at school, we only continue to do the Christmas candlelight dinner and then we have our Christmas FHE lesson. This year Cliff had the lesson and he did a wonderful Christmas message and then gave each of our daughters and their family a large bronze statue of the Savior. (I didn't even know about that one.) I know it will be a treasure to all of them.

Dinner came first before the lesson. Here is Rylie, Jenna, and Savannah.

Here is most everybody. Amanda is over in the corner to the right. Morgan and Cliff were over getting their food and the two babies were there somewhere. And of course, I was taking the picture. We invited my Dad to come and spend the evening with us.

Cliff did a little christmas lesson for the grandkids before we went on to the other lesson. He also bought each of the granddaughters a little crystal ornament of the nativity scene. They were beautiful and I'm sure their parents will keep those safe for them so they won't break. It will be a wonderful keepsake for them from their grandfather.


CHRISTMAS EVE

Our Christmas Eve tradition is to get together with my side of the family for dinner and some kind of a christmas message. We rotate homes between our house and my brother's house. This year it was at my brother's in Idaho Falls. It has also been a tradition for the past 31 years to go out to the cemetery on Christmas Eve (we go a different night when christmas eve is at my house) and put a little Christmas tree on my brother's grave and sing a few Christmas carols. We love this tradition because it helps us remember those we love, who have passed on, at this special time of year. It is so quiet and peaceful out there and our voices in the night sound great. We now have my mother and a little grandson out their with my brother, David, as well. My mother loved this tradition and so I know that she still loves having us come and sing.

Everyone singing

My mother's grave is the one on the left and my brother's is the one with the lit Christmas tree. My sister-in-law bought some blinking lights this year to put on David's grave. They worked so well that Dad is going to get some next year for Mother's. We were surprised to find that when my sister-in-law went back out to pick up the tree and take it home for the year (which was about a week after Christmas) that the lights were still blinking. They had not run out of battery. That is awesome.

Here is Katie, Cameron, and Amanda in front of little Cameron Clifford's grave.


After the cemetery, we went back to Ken and Ray's home to eat dinner. After dinner, Ray had a very nice Christmas message for us about the light of the star and how we should let that light shine in our lives each and every day. It was a wonderful message.

These two pictures are actually out of place. This took place on Christmas Day when we were back at my brother's house for gift opening and a fun gift game. Another tradition that we have done since I was a little girl. During the game Ray had a competition of teams where you had to race to make deer antlers out of balloons and nylons. Then someone on the team had to put the antlers on their head before you could win. This is Morgan with her team's antlers on. A little droopy. She was suppose to tie the ribbon around the end of the antlers on each side and she has it tied around her neck. HAHA!

Here are the representatives from each team. By the way.....my team won. Michael, second from the right, was our team leader. So starting from the left....Cheryl (my sister), Cindy(my brother's sister-in-law), Morgan, Michael (who is my cousin on the Simpson side, but married my brother's neice from his wife, Ray's, side....figure that one out. haha) and then Cameron(my son-in-law). It was quite humorous.

After Ray gave her Christmas message about the light, we all went outside with lit candles and listened to a song about the star. It was great. My picture didn't turn out too great. This is Morgan and Mekelle (my sister's daughter)

I have Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in my front yard. My little granddaughter, Amanda, always runs over to it first thing every time she comes to the house. Well, this is Christmas Eve after we had arrived back home from Idaho Falls and she wanted to go say good night to baby Jesus before she went home. So cute

Here is Morgan with her Christmas Eve pajamas and a new DVD to watch. Another tradition of ours for years has been on Christmas Eve all the girls would sleep together in Mom and Dad's bed and watch a movie. So the tradition started with four sisters together in one bed. Now it is down to only Morgan. She has had the bed to herself for three years now. Then Cliff and I sleep downstairs in the hide-a-bed by the Christmas Tree.

The three of us before bedtime!

One by the Christmas tree!

CHRISTMAS MORNING!

Had to actually wake her up this year.

This is Morgan's reaction to her gift from Santa. She was a little nervous about it this year because she usually gives us a list of things she would like and so kinda knows what she will probably get, but this year she didn't give us a list and had no idea. We had over heard her in passing during the year say that she would like a new mountain bike. The bike she had was a smaller frame that she got about 11 years ago and so she doesn't ride it anymore. She wants to try mountain biking a little. Anyway, she was very surprised and I don't think she was even expecting it a little bit.

She actually received gifts for three of the sports that she enjoys doing. Here she is with her new helmet for mountain biking. Got to have one of those if you are going to bike in the mountains.

Here she is with her new goggles for snowboarding

Here she is with her new life vest for waterskiing.

This picture snuck in before I put the last picture of Morgan. Cliff has wanted a cane to help him on days when his legs hurt and he needs help, but he wanted a cool cane and not an old man looking one. I found this one online and it is awesome. It has a double horse head on the handle.

Ok. Here is Morgan with all three. bike, helmet, goggles, and lifevest. She got a little spoiled this year. I commented to her that who knows, maybe she will have a different Santa in her life next year, and she said......"I kinda like the Santa I have now". We got a chuckle out of that.

IT WAS A GREAT CHRISTMAS AND A GOOD NEW YEAR!! We are eternally grateful to Heavenly Father for the many blessings that He gives us. Even amidst trials and challenges we still recognize the blessings.