Maroon 5 and Counting Crows

September 10, 2008

Maroon 5

Counting Crows

Emily Johnson and Erin

Us Girls having fun

About 2 months ago Emily Johnson, one of the laurels in my class, came into Young Women's a little sad and unhappy. She had found out that Counting Crows was coming to Phoenix in concert but none of her friends wanted to go and her parents understandably didn't want her to go by herself. Then she remembered that I like Counting Crows (we talked bands on the drive back from the Trek) so she said "we should go Sister Bradfield". I am not sure if she was serious but I thought that would be fun so I told her it sounded like a great idea. When I got home I checked on tickets and talked to Erin and texted Emily and just like that we got tickets. It has been fun talking about it and looking forward to it and then it finally came. It was so much fun Emily is a blast to be around so sweet and fun and she and Erin together are even crazier and funner than each of them alone. The music was great Maroon 5 was way better than I expected and Counting Crows was great of course. This is the third time I have seen them in concert and they never disappoint me. I love live music you feel it rather than just hear it. Hmmm who should we see next.

My Gift of Perspective

I have been wallowing a bit lately its not pretty and definitely not something I am proud of but still true. Our ward just got moved to another stake which in and of itself is a good thing. All my girls in YW are now in the stake that most of the kids they go to school with are in. They will be with their seminary friends etc. for stake events. But as I began to hear murmurings and they are just that, murmurings it looks like there is a good chance the ward boundaries in the stake will be changed. We live in a tiny little jut of our ward, right on the border which would easily be split off and put into another ward. If this happens I of course will be released and I will be in a different ward than 90% of the people I have grown to love and be friends with in our ward. I have built my life around the Young Women, and my work there, maybe too much but still true nevertheless. Thinking of my life without my girls AND my friends in Elliot ward was bleak. So I wallow. As I was wallowing I was doing some blog stalking, checking out the blogs of friends of friends etc. I happened onto a Blog by Bethany's brother, Trey and his wife. (Bethany is one of Jessica's really good friends.) As I read I began to cry and then before long I knew I was done wallowing. I had been given the gift of perspective. Sometimes we can get so focused on tiny little things that the big picture becomes unclear. On this blog I read about how Treys wife Amber lost her baby sister, her mom delivered early and the baby was just not strong enough to survive, she lived a very short time and passed away. This baby was only 2 weeks earlier than Emily was and as I read I could see myself in Amber's mothers place and I felt so grateful for our Emily and all she has brought to our lives and so grateful she has been so healthy considering she was more than 9 weeks early and so ashamed I forgot all I have and all the Lord has done for me. If the ward splits it does, I know the Lord will look after me and make it OK or make me strong enough to find a new way. He always does I don't know why I can't hold on to that. I hate how easy it is to forget the big picture and I am grateful for this blogging medium so I could read baby Jades story and be reminded of how much the Lord loves all of us. Reading Amber's testimony through this, the hard questions and the loving acceptance of Gods will. It is amazing and testimony building. I felt the spirit so strongly in her words. There is so much of true importance in this life and it is so easy to get caught up in the unimportant, I am grateful for the Lord and his way and for my gift of perspective.

Emily's Broken Arm

Emily BROKE her arm!!! It was the weirdest thing a totally regular childhood fall, she tripped while she was getting out of a chair. She only fell like 2 feet onto carpeted floor! But it was unfortunately enough. At first I didn't take it totally seriously it just looked like a regular everyday kids fall, brush her off, kiss the owie, and on with the day. She was crying pretty good but Emily can be a little....shall we say whinny at times and Jessica was here so I figured she was putting on a good show for Sister. But then she started to look not right and she got all clammy and cold and sweating profusely at the same time. Well my crack first aid training kicked in (that would be from like a jillion years of girls camp) and it looked to me like she was going into shock. Well in my experience kids don't go into shock for regular everyday falls so I made a call to the doctors office. They thought she should be seen and of course they had no openings so we were off to Urgent care. I was still thinking this was just precautionary she was looking better and I couldn't imagine that fall had actually broken anything. But when the xrays came back I was wrong, she had broken both the radius (the big bone in your forearm) and the ulna, (the little one next to the radius). They are both incomplete breaks which means they were only broken partway through the bone, (about 75% of the radius and about 25% of the ulna). I guess this is fairly common in kids they call it a green stick fracture because it breaks like a green stick off a tree, it just bends and splinters instead of a sharp break. Fortunately it is no where near her growth plate and it should heal really well. They had us go to a pediatric orthopedist to get her cast which she will have to wear for a month and then she will get a brace that she will wear for another 2 months. It sounds like a long time but they said the healing should go really well they just want to protect it so there is no re injury. We have changed things a bit around here because she can't play actively much so we got her some Webkins and have been reading a lot, she is hooked on the Magic Tree house books and I have become well acquainted with Jack and Annie (the main Characters). I guess that is the story of life, something bad happens and then when you look hard, sometimes you have to look really, really hard you can see the good. So far in my life that is always true. Emily and I are really enjoying our time together reading and playing on the computer and just being together. She is such a joy in my life. I will be forever grateful for the Lords intervention on this one. :)

Emliy and her broken arm, just the splint, before she got her cast on. Look at that smile! Thank goodness for pediatriac pain meds!!

Emily getting her cast. (Thats Brownie in the backgroung getting her cast too)

Emily and her doggie, Brownie, Emily adopted this sad pup the day she broke her arm. Brownie broke her arm the very same day, imagine that! So these two are going through all this broken arm business together.

Weekend in Forks

Considering I told everyone I would be spending this weekend in Forks visiting with Bella, Edward and Jacob I figure I should report. I will give no spoilers I would hate to ruin this fantastic book for anyone but I just have to tell you I had a great weekend!! Breaking Dawn is sooooo good it is better than Twilight, definitely better than New Moon, and even better than Eclipse, my favorite up until now. I got the book Saturday at 10AM but couldn't start reading in earnest till 3pm and I finished up it's 754 pages this morning (Monday) if that gives you any idea how good it is. Everything I had hopped would happen happened but I never would have dreamed HOW it happened. Now those of you who aren't weird about books like me may wonder about my sanity right about now but we bookies are happy in our fantasy worlds. Don't knock what you don't understand, it's nice in here. Unfortunately the laundry and the dishes and the rest of my responsibilities have patiently awaited my return from Forks so I guess I better get back to my real life. But I will be searching for the next great adventure in the pages of a fantastic book.

My New Office

I really love my kids and I am not in any huge hurry to get them out of our house. I love having them around and am not looking forward to having an empty nest. (Now that we have Emily the nest won't be totally empty for awhile.) But there is one perk, lets call it compensation for missing them, and that is space!! Our house is not tiny, no one needs to feel sorry for us but with 4 kids and a dog our 2000 Sq ft were feeling a little cramped. When Jessica moved out it wasn't so cramped but there really was no extra, now..... Jason has moved out (he found a place with several friends) and we have an EXTRA room. Woo Hoo!! Ok honestly, I will miss the kid but he is 20 after all and I am just trying to look at the bright side here. So very quickly before anyone got any ideas I claimed his room and moved in. Now I have a place for my computer, all my Young Women stuff and for scrapbooking! Yea! I put a bed in there for guests, (I can share) and the random nap which you can see Buddy has already claimed. I have a litttle tv, my computer, and a place to sit and read, what more could a mom want. Oh guess what? It has DOORS too! that CLOSE! and LOCK! oh boy I think this may just be too much!

Breaking Dawn

OK while I am on a the subject of books and sharing my "addiction" with all of you I have to mention 'Breaking Dawn' the new book by Stephanie Meyer. Yea!! Hooray!! It is coming out in 2 weeks it is the 4th and supposedly final book in the Twilight series.

So I am planning to reread the first 3 this week and next so everything is fresh. I did that when the 7th Harry Potter came out and it made it soo much better. (I told you its an addiction fortunately there are no rehab centers for psycho readers because I am not interested in any kind of recovery.) This is a series I started reluctantly, very reluctantly! It is basically about vampires and a girl that is in love with one. I hate vampires, I won't watch vampire movies, and of all the mythical creatures out there the idea of a creature that thirsts for blood really freaks me out. But after enough pressure from all my YW, Pam and Megan, Kristi and a slew of others (yes peer pressure still is a problem for grownups) I gave in just to... well shut them up. It is a testament to the writing ability of the author that I got hooked. I had to find out what happened to Bella, and Edward and Jacob too (yes I am one of the weird ones who really like Jacob). I have shared the obsession with many, it is one of those books you have to tell people about just so you have another person to talk "Twilight" with. Jason's girlfriend Kelsie is my newest convert and she is totally hooked!! As you can probably guess Saturday after next I will be at Costco when they open, buying my copy of Breaking Dawn, and I probably won't get much of anything done that weekend but I will have a wonderful visit to Forks, Washington.

FABLEHAVEN

I have a new favorite book series!! I know I have said this many times before so I think the position is not a permanent one. The book series is Fablehaven and they are sooooo good. I have been in a bit of a reading frenzy this summer, I have read like 18 books since school got out, (some of them I listened to on my Ipod). I really don't know why I have been reading so much more than normal, maybe its the heat, or I am trying to keep my mind off of everything I can't eat (I am trying to lose a few pounds but that's another post) or maybe its the looser schedule because school is out. But I have immersed myself in these characters worlds, a family of Penderwicks, a crazy funny bounty hunter, a dead girl watching her family recover, a school shooter, a few couples in love, a kidney transplant patient figuring out how to live again, a ranger studying wolves and solving murders, and a author revealing her real past. In this company you would think it would be pretty hard to stand out but my new favorite really shines. There are 3 books so far in the Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull so I am a little late to this bandwagon. Several of the girls in my ward had read them and raved so I took the first one with me to girls camp thinking I could read at bedtime, big mistake, I read all the way on the bus there and was so hooked by the time we got to camp that it was all I could do to do my job there and not sneak off and read. So this week I have finished book 1, read book 2 and 3 and am now so sad to be done. (book 4 doesn't come out till spring) The books are about a preserve for magical creatures, the caretakers of this preserve and the adventures and trouble they find trying to keep the preserve safe. It is the perfect mix of fantasy and reality to grab your imagination and make you want to escape to the world they live in. I know I am a huge book nerd but I have come to accept that and love it anyway. Join me!! It's fun! Drink the milk!! (Fablehaven reference)