A year in review!

Its been over a year since I last posted. So much has happen and its hard to know where to start but I can sum up. I left on the of March to Washington to go and help take care of my mother. I didn't know at the time how long I wold be gone but knew that there was a possibility it could be longer or shorter depending on the situation. Not long after arriving, my mother passed, in fact it was Sunday in between General conferences. By the time I arrived she was pretty much unresponsive, so I don;t know for sure if she really knew if I was there, but she did look at me once and a tear came to her eye so I'm hoping that she knew. It was pretty much a long, slow process of seeing her go. Each day trying to take care of her needs and keeping her comfortable. My sister-in-law Gail was wonderful with her and so were the rest of the family. She was surrounded by family when she took her final breath.

Once she passed we then took to taking care of funeral arrangements. Jimmy had decided he wanted to drive Mom to Arizona in the back on his truck, but his truck wasn't capable of doing it so we instead asked Monica to use her truck and she agreed. On Wednesday we loaded her casket into the back of Monica's GMC and decided we should head to AZ that night. It was a good thing because the weather was just horrible. We drove through blizzards, snow showers and rain all the way down. We stopped a couple night in the way down, once outside Boise and then another night in Provo. We also picked up Jori on the way and she was able to come to the funeral with us. It was a long drive, but we were able to do it in 3 days.

Sheldon along with Kai and DJ flew out and met us in Tucson. He was able to get in the day before we got there and get everyone who was going a room at Davis Monthan AFB. We ended up parking Mom at an old friend of Shel's for the night and meet everyone at the base. Thank goodness for some wonderful people who helped us when we needed them. I can never thank them enough and am eternally in their debt. I hope they know that I will always be there if they ever need anything.

The day of the funeral ended up being one of the coldest days of that year;) Go figure Mom wouldn't make this any easier. We huddled around under the canopy that was provided at the grave site and with the turnout that showed I am so grateful for those who came to share the love of my mother. We ended up with family who lived in the area and old family friends from the old 3rd ward. Even some of our old friends came to support us for the day. We decided to meet up later that evening at a Golden Corral for dinner and talked the night away. An interest thing happened that week. A few days after Mom passed my Dad's youngest sister passed away too. So the family was waiting to be able to bury their Mom, a brother who lives in North Carolina couldn't come out for medical reasons so they were postponing her services until Alex could fly out. I think being there for Mom was good for them as well. Even though they weren't there for their mother, they were able to talk about her and share things about her with us.

Shel and the boys stayed for about another week in Tucson. During the week we ate out at our favorite restaurants and shopped and ate out more:) We took a trip to Mesa to meet up with Shel's family for an evening and it was great seeing everyone. Once the boys flew back to the Netherlands I headed up to Provo to get Jori all moved out of her apartment and get her stuff squared away so she could fly out to the Netherlands for the summer. I spent the week with her, helping pack and clean up her room and parts of the apartment. I moved her to Ivan and Lori's to wait out her flight to Europe then I headed back to Washington to get ready for my flight home.

I was able to spend a couple more days in Washington, making sure I had everything I needed before flying back and headed home at the end of April.

In May we headed North to Copenhagen, Denmark with Monica and Jon and took a 7 day cruise on the Baltic sea. We went to Tallin Estonia, St Petersburg Russia, Helsinki Finland and Copenhagen Sweden. It was so great seeing everything and being on a relaxed vacation:) We were able to get some really great souvenirs, a Russian nesting doll, neat ski hats for the boy's that are long enough to be a scarf from Estonia and a cute troll doll and other small things to put in my curio one day. It was fun to just relax between ports and look out the balcony to look at the country side when we did leave Port. Gotta say, Sweden is gorgeous!! I spend almost 2 hours sitting out watching at we left Stockholm.

After the cruise we then had Christians graduation. He had his ceremony at the end of May then headed back to the states so that he could see his friends graduate in CA. He has been staying with Kathy Troub, working at a meat packing plant and has decided to move back with us once we go back to the states this summer. His mission plans are on hold right now, and there's more to that, but I won't get into it here now.

Guess I'll stop here because I know this will get too long so I will do the catching up in small spurts. Hoping to add picture too:)

Whew.............. What a Week!

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you've had a foreboding feeling that there's something coming on the horizon? Well, I've been experiencing that feeling for a few weeks now, and I had gotten really good at pushing those feelings aside. Well, this week I got the answer. On Wednesday I got an email from my sil Gail telling me that they had to admit Mom to the hospital:( I guess she was having a lot of pain earlier in the week and then late Tuesday they noticed swelling in her feet. With her COPD that's never good so they took her to the emergency room. The Dr's spent hours trying to find a cause for her severe pain and taking x-rays of her chest and other things to try and figure out what was going on. The chest x-ray came back with what they thought looked like fluid in her lungs but I guess it wasn't a great picture because there was some question's later on that is could be lung cancer:/ Of course when that was brought up, we were stunned, but figuring the fact that she's 96 years old that there could always be that possibility. They figured that if is was cancer, that the cancer had spread to her bones so that was causing the pain in her shoulder and hip. Eventually the cancer diagnoses was eventually discarded after another set of x-rays and looking at everything else going on with her. The original diagnosis of heart failure was put back on the table along with the prognoses that she probably has about 4 months left. She has since been released from the hospital with good pain medication and with the start of getting her into "Hospice" care for the remainder of her time. Gail has a meeting with the hospice team on Monday their time, so I should be getting a whole bucket full of answers to a lot of questions we all still have late Monday or Tuesday Morning.

Now I'm in the process of making decisions of what I need to do and prepare for next. I'm thinking that I would like to fly over to the states to see her while she is still a bit well enough to hopefully remember me. With her dementia she doesn't always remember anyone in the family anymore. Most times she hasn't put together that Gail is Bruce's wife and thinks that she is "the help". So, I'm hoping that if I can at least have one more chance to see her and have her remember me just once that will be wonderful, but mostly maybe I can go over and just be able to help a bit with her care since Gail, Bruce and their family have taken care of it all. So once I get all the info and looking at everything I have going here we will talk about taking care of my travel plans. I'm grateful that my church calling will be taken care of and that I have people here willing to help with the family. The kids should be good with having the taxi taking them to and from school. The two older boys can take the bus to any of their extra activities such as tutoring and with Sheldon being here he can take care of Christian getting to the Vennerholms for his Thursday night tutoring. I will work hard with Christian to get him working on his seminary and have him keep a journal while I'm gone.

Life can change in a blink of an eye. We see it whenever there is a natural disaster that grips the whole world within a few minutes of total destruction. Granted I am not having to deal with the struggles as like those in Japan, but I have felt that I need to get my house in order lately, and have been fighting that urge and now with the prospects of having to leave for a few weeks wish I was farther along than I am. I know that no matter what everything will be fine, but I could be leaving with a little less stress if I just would have applied myself a little more;)

So now I will bid au-due and get a load of laundry in the washer so I can be that much closer to getting things a little more organized. I will also be making my list of things I wish I had here so that I can take care of that while I'm back in the states. Things that I want to work on for the rest of my time here in Europe and some of the things I wish I had on hand. I know there was a reason I was a pack rat and now I'm wishing I didn't get rid of a lot of things that the hubby said we'd never need again;) I don't have a Wal-Mart around the corner to get what I need:/ So................ I'm thinking my trip home might become very expensive?

So..........

THe last day that I wrote on this blog was the 28th of February:o Talk about getting off track:( Well, things here have been a little interesting and really, there are just some days that I don't feel like there's much to write about. I guess I should take a picture though to commemorate the day? We shall see;)

The first week of March I pretty much spent that whole week learning a primary song in Dutch. I really need to take more time every day to learnt he songs, or at least be a little more familiar with them. After thinking I had the song down I was practicing in front of Shel when he informed me that I had a lot of the words wrong:( I listened to the CD and wrote everything down the way they pronounced everything but he informed me that the CD had singers from different area than the area we live in:/ So Friday night he helped me re-learn the words I had wrong and that gave me one whole day to be ready for the moment of truth:( Thing is, I will probably never get the words completely right, but that isn't the most important. It's getting the children excited about learning the song's and being prepared for the program at the end of the year. THank goodness they are patient with me and i have another adult in there pronouncing the words the right way when we sing;) So my job now is to look for a few more songs besides the one's for the program, work on as many as I can then be familiar with them. I figure if I can sing the primary program songs with the children without any cheat sheets in front of me then I have come away with more than I can ever expect. I truly love being in primary. THe children are so much fun and they want to learn and be taught. They always have a smile for you and you can't help but enjoy your Sunday!

The second week of March we decided at the last minute to drive down to Ramstein and get a few days of shopping in:) The boys had Carnival off for the week and I know that they appreciated getting out of the Netherlands for a couple of days and getting to eat American food. We were lucky enough to get a room at Ramstein so to be close to the mall and other things, but there's always a part of me that doesn't like staying there at the TLF's. The beds there are some of the most uncomfortable I've stayed in and we always end up roasting even if the windows are open:/ No one really sleeps very well there. We are thinking from now on that we'll stay at Spang and drive the hour to Ramstein. It was nice to be able to just take our time to get up and enjoy the day not having to worry about a drive, but if you can't sleep well, the day is just horrible:/ Maybe we should look at other places to stay while down there. If it comes out to the same price, if you factor in the gas then it might be something we would like better.

Anyway, enough of the complaining. Like I said we bought the boys some shirts, and games and other thing, enjoyed the food court and Macaroni Grill and the boys even took in a movie at the theater. This was the first time we have been able to do that since they actually had something we hadn't seen yet;) I spent the time grocery shopping since I had to be back by 6 pm for a Presidency meeting, but that was ok. I would much rather spend that time walking through the Ramstein Commissary than watch a movie I wasn't really interested in. I love seeing the different things they have there and stock up on the things I know we can't get here.

We got home Friday evening at 5:30 pm. We rushed to get the car unpacked, packed up Renata's things and then she and I headed out. I dropped her off at her place and was only 15 minutes late for my meeting:/ Thank goodness they understood and we had a great meeting.

We ended up not doing too much Saturday and Sunday because everyone was tired from the trip down. The men in the house did wash and vacuum my car:) They did an awesome job! I spent the day trying to figure out a lesson for Jr primary, since I looked at my schedule wrong and thought i was teaching Sr primary:/ I eventually came up with a plan and we were good to go.

Now I need to be getting some work done around the house. The boys will be getting out of school early today. Actually in 40 minutes:( I still need to pay bills, get some more laundry going and just general cleaning. There's always something that needs to be done. I should also be working on a song for Sunday. We'll see how that goes once everyone comes home.

The sun is out:) It's a beautiful afternoon and I think I'll try and enjoy some of that today too! These kind of days are so few and far between here in the Netherlands;/ You usually drop everything you have planned because you don't want to miss out on a nice day here. The summer will be better, but I am so ready for Spring and want to take advantage of it while it's dry;) Tootles......

4 days later.....................

So I'm not doing too bad:/ I haven't been on but that's ok, I didn't really have much to say and with still not feeling good, I hate getting on trying to think of something to write.

Yesterday I finally went to church:) It has been a month since I've gone, been dealing with the boys and mine illness. I still wasn't feeling totally better but thought that this gunk will probably last and if I'm not coughing I don't have a real reason not to go anymore. I can take motrin to kill the pain in my head.

I had thought about going to see the Dr on Friday when I found blood in my ear late Thursday night, but I thought I'd wait because I just got off of the other antibiotics and wanted to see how things would go. Well, my ears started feeling the pressure again and when I told Shel he let me know that he never finished all his meds and had about 7 days worth so I started on his that is left over. It was the actual medication that I wanted in the first place that he got from the Dr so I will see how this will do. It's already been 2 days and I can actually tell a difference with my right ear. So here's hoping that this last round of medication will do the trick and I will start to feel better. I'm sure there is some other things I still need to have looked at, but if I can get this sinus thing licked then I would be a little happier!

So, next Sunday will be my first day of teaching a Primary song in a language I don't speak:/ Time will tell how this will go, but I will give it my best shot! Need to come up with some creative ways to get the kids excited about learning the songs.

So, after coming home from church yesterday Sheldon told me that one of the sister's in our ward pulled him aside to show him something that I posted on fb and she felt was offensive:0 Now I have to laugh at this because this sister is always on fb talking about how much she hates the sisters in our ward or "Mormons" for that matter whenever she doesn't get what she want's from the church. I never realized that calling sick people "sickos" was "offensive";) Sheldon tried to tell her that the word was all in jest but she felt that I needed to to be careful not to offend the members in our ward. Again this makes me giggle because this sister after a Stake Conference wrote on fb how when a new high council member was sustained and was going to be over the single adult program for the stake she professed publicly how much she "disliked" (she used the "H" word) this man and how she would never like him and blah, blah, blah.............. so you see how this can make me laugh. She is one of the sister's in our ward who expects people to jump when she throws her tantrums and unfortunately, some of the ward members let her get away with some of it. I think it's sad because I believe she uses the church as her personal banker:/ She has more worldly possessions in her home than most of the hard working and struggling ward members do and they give so much more and help so much more than she does. She has learned to manipulate the system here. It's such a shame really.

Oh well, I guess you can see that this is another one of my pet peeves. It's mostly about people who want to be offended! I believe that you cannot offend someone unless they want to be. You hear so much about how someone in the church was "offended" by someone, and most of the time the comment was not meant to be mean spirited or directed at the person who took offense! You can only be offended if you chose to be! There have been many times that things were said to me about how the ward here was catering to the "English speaking" sisters here and I could have taken offense to it. THey didn't want to go to a class because it would be given by someone who speaks "English" and they wouldn't get as much out of it. I just laughed it off because I know that the sisters who were complaining were just upset that I was trying to do something a little bit different and they weren't happy about it. The way things were said, I could have thought they were "attacking me" and that would give me the excuse to stop going to church here, but I didn't.

So............. with that being said, if I have ever said anything to "offend" any of you........ I'm sorry that you felt you needed to take the comment that way! It was not my intent on making you feel that you needed to be "offended";)

365 to 50

I decided that since next year will be a milestone birth year for me I am going to post something every day until my next birthday. I know I still have things to update from what's been going on here lately, but I can add those as I go. I've had other friends who've are very good at keeping up on their blogs and thought this could be fun. So we shall see..............

Today ended up being the day after my Birthday. I awoke to a counter covered in ants, those little buggers will not go away:( They are coming up from under the stove top and it's hard to keep them out. I am still trying to figure out a plan of attack but nothing so far has come to mind. Just doing the usual, spraying and wiping everything down. Last night someone forgot to rinse the ice cream scooper after the Bday celebration so they were all over the scoop and looking for more:/ I should have taken a picture then but didn't think about it at the time. Last year it only took two times and I had them licked! So, this will be my nemesis for the next little while:(

We had Parent-Teacher conferences tonight for the boys. We are trying to figure out what we need to do to help Christian with a couple of his classes that are worrying him, and after talking with his teacher's we have some good ideas. We found a couple tutors that will be helping out out for the next couple months, one for math and the other for Spanish. We decided that Kai will also go for spanish since he's missed so much the last few weeks because of illness and it could only help him. Now if we can just get Kai to work harder on writing neater and taking the time to be a little more in-depth in his writing then he should do well. DJ is doing pretty well and his teacher's are pleased with his work. So all in all not a bad night, but there's always room for improvement;)

So today has been foggy and tonight it still hasn't let up. I posted a picture above of one of the roads I drive almost everyday and what it looks like to drive at night:/ This road has BIG trees right next to the street so there's really not a lot of room for error. You should see what happens when a big truck or oversize vehicle is on the road and I have to try and miss it.................... Not fun!

2 Weeks................

So maybe this is progress;)

We had a great time on our "Honeymoon Weekend"! Just to clarify things, we had intended to go to Bruges, but the rain just poured and poured:/ Since we had to go to Schinnen for supplies and mail run, we headed that way after saying goodbye to the boys. On the drive down Sheldon and I started talking about how much money we would be spending for a room where we would most likely spend most of our time with all the rain that Bruges was to get, and thought for a fraction of the cost we could just go to Ramstein and stay in a nice "cheap" room and shop:) Well, once we got our mail, it was like Christmas all over again because of everything that hadn't arrived by that time, and once we talked more we abandoned our Bruges plan and headed south instead. Of course we were given the ole, "we have no rooms available at this time" speech but felt that things would work out so we pushed on. The drive down was a little intimating since we had fog for more than half o the trip, but once at Ramstein we checked in at the Inn, got a suit, and proceeded to the anniversary dinner. Macaroni Grill:) It was nice not trying to figure out what to get and have something yummy. We then stopped for some snacks and breakfast and headed to the room. It was a nice suite with a comfortable bed, small fridge and microwave. We had left overs so it was great to pop it into the fridge. We had a nice, low keyed weekend with lot's of shopping, sleeping in and just doing whatever we felt like doing:) We signed up for massages and I even got my hair trimmed. It's been since CA, and I can't remember the last time there I got my hair trimmed:/ I was able to find things that both I and the boys have been needing, and looked at bed mattresses and other things that we are wanting to get. I just love that area!!!

Monday after our massages we bought the boys dinner at MAcaroni Grill and headed for home. The traffic wasn't too bad and we made good time. We were home in time for everyone to have their dinner then scoot off to bed.

Tuesday as I was surveying the bags I needed to go through and food stuffs that needed to be put away, I got a message forma family that is here TDY for a couple months asking if I was ready for their kids to come spend the night:o I had talked to them in December about watching three of their four kids while they flew over to London to go see the musical "Wicked". I was glad she reminded me;) We only had the kids here for just a little over a day, but the days they were here was pouring rain and yucky and I have to toys to speak of so we watched a LOT of Disney movies:/ I know it wasn't as much fun for them, but we got through it and they were so happy to see mommy and daddy:)

Sunday was my first day in Primary and boys do I have my work cut out for me:( The president wants me to start teaching the music his Sunday so we shall see how this goes. Teaching I have a translator, but it's hard to translate while trying to sing. I hope that I will be at a point where I will be able to "mimic" the words from the cd that I have. I really need to get working on that but I have also been trying to get organized for other things pertaining to to my calling. Well, i=we'll see how this goes;)

Ok, need to get some things done and get some rest tonight. I have not slept well for the past few nights and really need to get my act together and get things organized! It's a dream I have, so no one take that away from me;)

Welcome 2011

So by the look of things, I have not done very well with my blogging in 2010:/ So one of my New Year Resolutions will be to do better with informing other's of what we've been doing. Granted, not every day or week is an adventure, but living here in Europe has proved to be very "enlightening"? Enlightening about me, my family and how to really view our little "world" we are living right now;) I had served a mission in Australia so felt like I "knew" what living in a foreign country would be like, but I had forgotten that every foreign country is different, just like every state in the states is different and has it's own way of doing things. With that being said, there has beeeen ........ how to say this........... much GROWING..... living in a different country and dealing with the culture and attitude differences. I'm not saying that it's good or bad............ just saying it's different. I, on the other hand have to remember that I have a tendency to "pull inward" when I am feeling "out of sorts" and these the last few months, that is what I have been doing. With doing that, I don't communicate well with......... well.............. anyone. My family, my friends and just about any other associates. So with that being said, that is another thing I want to change for this new year.

We were excited this year to ring in the New Year with our good friends Monica and Jon Thiessen and they were accompanied with Monica's brother Kelly and his Wife Marlene Bird. They had gone on a Mediterranean cruise for Christmas and used our place as a "home base" of sorts as they flew to their "port of call" city Barcelona, Spain. Since we have Ryan Air that flies into the Eindhoven Airport and from here fly to Barcelona, they flew out and back from here after picking up the Bird's at the Frankfurt Airport in Germany. This also gave them the excuse to spend the New Years with us since we couldn't go on the cruise with them:/ It was a nice time having them here, Marlene quietly doing my laundry and washing my dishes every time someone ate, and I told her that she was always welcomed to come and stay with me for the year;) We played domino's, ate junk food along with some "good food" and rang in the new year with a BANG:) On the evening of New Year's Eve we also had the Van Eijk family Rob, Megan, Chris and Collin and Renanta and her daughter Angelique. Between all those who bought fireworks to "blow up", the men figured the total to be around 400-500 Euros, it was fun to be a part of the city celebration! Last year we didn't know anything about how European's celebrate the New Year and was pleasantly surprised by the "light show", so we told the boys that we would be a part of it and "blow things up" as they put it:) The night ended up being foggy so instead of seeing the city "all aglow" with the "light show" we were only privy to the neighborhood shows. It ended up that a neighborhood down the street had a pretty good show for the evening so it was a great night all in all. The boys enjoyed lighting their boxes and rockets and no one got hurt!

On Sunday I was released from the RS Presidency and put into the Primary Presidency. I could feel it was time for a change for me. I loved working with the sister's in the RS, but I guess the most frustrating thing was feeling like no matter what changes we tried, nobody here is really interested in doing anything:/ I did initiate a "book club" that some of the older sisters have really enjoyed and taken a liking too, but trying to get the RS evening activities (COSI) meetings going the way they should has really been hard, and a lot of the sisters don't seem really interested in helping others, just complaining that there's no one to help them. Some of the unrealistic "ideas" and how they expect the RS president or Bishop to change things is interesting. I'm not saying the whole ward is that way, we have a lot of people who go on their merry way never asking for help and keep within their own families or friends, but you know if you have a handful of people that are that way, they can can really put a strain on a ward:( It also gets frustrating because most of the "its always been done this way" and trying to change thing that thinking now and help them realize that it's not the ward's problem, well, they just don't seem to get it. I'm the kind of person that can only take so much before I just tell it like it is, and sometimes that can cause hard feelings. I don't want to be "mean" about it, but really, when do you become an adult and take charge of your life? So, I felt like broken record, counseling that if you allow people to continue they won't change, and you can only do that for so long before you just feel........... ineffective. Nancy, the RS president in this ward is an angel, and when people are rude and mean to her, she just loves them more. I hope to grow up to be like one day;) Alas, I'm not yet and might not ever be, but at least I have a role model to try and pattern myself after.

The new adventure will now be trying to work with children with no way to communicate:/ The Primary President is willing to try it so we will see how it goes;) I hope that I will be able to learn from her as well. We have a meeting on Thursday so it will be interesting to start this new adventure.

On Friday it will be Sheldon and mine's 22nd anniversary. We are going to spend 3 days in Bruges, Belgium. I have always wanted to see the place so we will go by ourselves because I don't think the boys are really interested about the lace shops and chocolate stores. We will hopefully take a canal cruise and other things while we are there too. It looks like the weather will be rainy, but we have umbrellas so we are good:) It'll be nice to get away. We want to do that more, and now that we only have about 18 more months before we are to leave here. The time will fly by! If we don't get order's to Germany then this might be our last time over here for a bit so we want to see as much as we can!