Dec 2010

Hey folks,


Another 2 months have passed since I last posted, sorry.  At this point I feel like I'm treading water...  :)  Just waiting for baby to come.  Baby X is due December 20th (my sister's wedding anniversary), and while sometimes I hope that he or she comes early, I have decided that I would like to attend our currently scheduled Christmas parties, including hubby's on Dec. 15th.  :) Baby X can come on Dec 16th (my Dad's b-day) and I'd be plenty happy if he was born that day... although as much as I hurt & ache all the time (especially after sitting awhile or climbing the basement stairs from my laundry room), I suppose that any day now would be okay too.  I'm in my 37th week, will hit 38 weeks on next Monday December 6th.

A couple of pics of Baby X

So I've promised for some time to put pics of Baby X on here, well I finally got around to doing it this morning, as it seems that my memory just isn't the same as it used to be.  :)  Anyhow, here's one or two from my last Ultrasound; I haven't been able to get the 3-D US yet, they keep canceling on me.

Happy Labor Day

Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Labor Day!

If you are traveling, I wish you all the best, and may no cops pull you over.  If you are at home, I hope you are able to accomplish all you are wanting to complete today.

=) Gayle

So glad it's a new day!

The first part of church was pretty rough yesterday, between a whining Taw & noisy Joe & Cole - I took Taw out once & really scolded him, he got very solemn but no tears.  One of those days when you're absolutely sure that everyone around is staring at you because of the antics of your children & you just want to crawl under the pew and hide.
After Sac. Meeting was over, I sent the other 2 boys off to their Primary classes & with Taw in hand, I was headed out the doors, when I heard someone calling me.  It was my friend, who with her family had moved to central Wyoming about 3 weeks ago; they had come back to work a bit more on things around their house to try to get it sold.  I visited with her for 15 to 20 minutes, before her family started asking, "Mom, when are we going? I'm hungry, etc."  I then invited then to come over last night for ice cream (homemade is the way to go, I can't stand to eat commercially prepared stuff now, it just doesn't taste right).
Now my boys have been asking for Root Beer Floats for a couple of weeks, I had a 2 liter of Root Beer, so I made up some beautiful vanilla ice cream (that clear Mexican vanilla is marvelous), it is pure white! 
We enjoyed our ice cream & root beer & catching up with our friends,though I don't think that their youngest [a boy] was very excited to play with my boys, whom were very happy to see him.  I will miss my friend so very much, but I do have her cell phone #, plus a physical & an email address for her now.  Her 2 youngest daughters are the babysitters we've been relying upon for the past 4 years and we miss them too.
My friend has always had this uncanny ability to cheer me up, and even though they will be about 4 hours drive away, I know that she is still my friend and I can still count on her too.  I love ya Celia!

Muffins

I love muffins!  Especially homemade muffins (my sister-in-law Maren can make some good muffins).

So I thought that I would make muffins for breakfast today, I knew my kids wouldn't complain.  I used my banana bread recipe, but used applesauce instead of bananas and tripled the recipe, though I don't use all the sugar it calls for.  This gave me enough for 12 jumbo muffins and 24 regular muffins; I now have 7 regular muffins left and the jumbo muffins are getting 3 extra minutes in the oven. I use the jumbo muffins for Jackson's breakfasts.

Yum, I will definitely have to make Applesauce Blueberry Oatmeal Sunflower Seed Muffins again; maybe next time I'll add in some wheat germ, use wheat flour (didn't have any ground), and some flax seed.  Hmm.. sounds good, doesn't it?!


Have a great Sunday!  Time for me to bathe a stinky Taw & get us all on our way to church!  :)

I can't believe it's September already!

Where has the summer gone??

I know what I did with part of my summer, I looked at my garden & wondered why it wasn't growing or why nothing was ripening! :(

We did some trips to both the local waterslide and a couple to the Splash Park.  A few of trips to the parks, and working on our yard.

Cole celebrated his 6th birthday on August 17th, just in time to start school.  This year in school, Joseph is in 2nd grade & Cole is in Pre-1st -- it is a class our school district offers for those children who did okay & passed Kindergarten but just aren't ready to continue to 1st grade.  It's a nice alternative for parents; I like it because he goes to school all day and isn't just repeating Kindergarten. 
Cole's teacher is one of our new neighbors, she lives about a block down the street; she has told me that they will go over everything he learned in Kindergarten then will go over what he will learn in the first 2 or 3 months of 1st grade so he will be very well prepared to go on.  Cole's only worry about this class was that he wouldn't be able to see his friends from Kindergarten, but Pre-1st is actually classified with 1st grade, so he'll eat lunch & have recess at the same time as his friends.

As for me & Jackson, we just keep plugging along.  I've had 2 Ultrasounds with this pregnancy so far; we've already planned not to try to find out baby's gender this time (we really want a girl, but I have told myself I'm just getting another boy - we have 3).  It was funny at 2nd US that baby was folded in half, even had we wanted to know gender, we couldn't have known.

I have started going on Facebook a lot lately, you can find me on there (if you want) under Gayle Peel Jackson.  I recently posted a bunch of fairly new pics, including one or two of our new house.  If I get time this week, I will post some pics here (if I can remember how to do it).

Ya'll have a good Sunday.  My muffins just beeped so I'd better go feed my hungry horde of boys, Jackson had to go to work today, so today will be a day at Church without him (lucky me:(  ).

=) Gayle

I HATE tomato worms

I've killed four of these nasty creatures so far this summer.  This is the first year I've ever had tomato worms, and I'm as disgusted by them now as I was when I was a kid and helping my Mom in her garden.  I refused to touch them then, and I'm certainly not about to touch them now, gloves or no gloves.  Instead, I scrape them off the tomato vines with a stick & smash them between 2 rocks (I have plenty of rocks).  I'm hoping these 4 are the sum total I get this year.  Hmm.... does anyone know if Sevin Dust works against tomato worms?

Well, I'm off to do my Visiting Teaching.  Ya'll have a fine day today, and may you beat the heat.

=) Gayle

My how time flies

My brother-in-law told me last weekend that I need to post something again.  So, Mike, here's my post, though you may not learn anything new from this one!

I think that I posted that we bought & moved into our first home back in Feb & March.  I still feel like I am in limbo as our garage is full of boxes and the basement has little in it, other than the laundry room.  Jackson did get the basement all framed in while I was at the BYU LDS Women's Conference (thanks for asking me to come with you, by the way Amelia & Sylvia) in April.

Something that many of you may not know is that I am currently expecting my 4th baby.  This is very expected and wanted child though the early week of pg weren't easy and I began to experience many health problems that I'd not had in that combination before.

I will have to continue this at a later date.  My husband and children jsut came home & the middle boy is mad because he didn't get what he wanted for dinner.

We moved!!

So we finally got moved into our new house, but I still have soem things to get from the old place.  Our view to the north has changed somewhat too, instead of seeing a cow herd & a cemetary, we now see a mule pasture and mountains.

I do have pictures of our new house (and of us doing the paint job) but until I find the cords to hook up the camera to download the pics... well you get the idea.  Our garage is about half full of boxes, the living room & kitchen are also both piled high as are the couches and along the walls in the entry way.

This morning I finished hooking up the computer; I had to have a man from the phone company come out here yesterday to figure out what was going on with my phone line and internet... everything works great now.  He said he wasn't going to charge me for the extra services needed because he totally spaced off the appointment I had made with him for last Saturday -- that was awfully nice to hear.

Well, it's time for me to get some food into Cole so he can get onto the Kindergarten bus; I think that I will microwave a couple of potatoes for Taw & I -- my Visiting Teaching companion/Relief Society President brought us over dinner on Monday night and also gave me a HUGE bag of potatoes (red skinned, yellow fleshed sweet-tasting potatoes when baked).

=) Gayle

New tires

Yeeehaw!!!  I got new tires on my suburban today, and boy did it need them.  I think that the ones that were on it must have been the original tires...  anyhow the tires were cracked down in the treads and while there was stilll some tread on teh tires, there wasn't much.  In the snowstorm of this morning, I was sliding all over the road... but the snow has moved East, the sun is out & the sky is blue.  The snow is melting too, thank goodness.

I've been taking pics of our new house, I didn't do any before pics but I got some in-between & after shots.  However these won't be posted today as I'm jsut taking a short break from packing to check email & rest my[ sore & aching] feet (especially the left foot).  So the house is all painted inside except for the bathrooms, and it looks so big, bright & cheery -- if any of you come to visit, don't look too close or you might see our drips & spills.

Well, back to the packing... it sure is going slowly.  We've lived here for nearly 9 years, long enough to accumulate quite the collection of stuff!

=) Gayle

Be it known unto all peoples,

Andrew & Gayle Jackson now own their 1st home ever!!!

So if you want to see a slideshow of the place, go here: http://premier1.utah.remax.com/PropertySearch/ListingDetail.aspx?view=photos&lid=76134672 and check it out!  Happily, we won't be keeping that hideous gray interior flat paint but will painting it a lovely pale yellow color.

You are all invited to come visit us, though we'll have more room available after we get the basement finished & the garage emptied out.  I think it will take us about a month (hopefully less though) to clean & paint the new house, then pack up and clean the old place.  We will really miss our current neighborhood but we won't miss the thefts & vandalism not occuring here, not to mention the drug deals that happen in the cemetary behind us -- looking out my kitchen window at our [new] neighbor's mules will be a good change.

Jackson is thrilled that the house comes with a garage & a fridge with an ice maker; I'm very happy I get to paint it yellow, there's a pantry & a basement, and that the laundry room is big enough that I can also use it as my sewing room.

I went to Ace Hardware's website and found this color swatch thing where you can pick a living room, then color the walls to your liking (http://ace.swatchbox.com/colorsforyourlife/main.asp) -- I picked Sunkissed as the main wall "body" color and the effect of it with white trim is so lovely, so if you go check out this website thingy you can get an idea of what our walls will look like.

And now, I'm going to go drag those boxes [I collected this morning] out of my Suburban and start stuffing them full, because I plan to start hauling things over to the new house tomorrow.

=) Gayle

The Joys of being sick

Actually I have yet to discover any joy from being sick, although...

Some people might say:

• At least you get to stay home with your kids for once -- but I get to stay at home with my kids all the time.
• It gives you a chance to ignore the housework -- I frequently ignore my housework, any recent visitor here can testify to that.
• You can wear your pajamas all day if you want -- I do that too sometimes, so that's nothing new here either.
• People will forgive you for typos -- true enough.

I'm feeling just sick enough that my mind isn't functioning very well (okay, when does my mind function properly anyhow? It's just a fact of life of being a SAHM!) and I can't seem to remember to do things that I need to... and why I'm even posting right now is a mystery to me too when I could me emailing Holley & writing that paper out for Deputy Chase.  Maybe if I listen to the KSL 5 Noon News, my brain will wake up.
An hour ago, I started cooking supper... it's a 2 hour Vegetable Beef Stew -- supper is at 5 pm... oh well at least the beef stew meat chunks will be well cooked.

Anyhow, tiem to go...  life calls...  Just because you're a sick Mommy doesn't mean that you can really not do the work to take care of your family, if you do skip it then your house will start looking like mine.

=) Gayle

I do regret that I won't be able to attend my Quilting Guild meeting tonight but I'd prefer not to make any of them sick and besides I think my bed sounds better today.

Oh I jsut remembered why I feel extra tired & sick...  Taw (boy#3) cried most of the night because he was so constipated -- I got to give him an enema at 11 pm and he'd passed most of the blockage [I think] by midnight but he still woke up & cried whenever he was asleep and I put him in his crib.  I spent hte night in my rocker recliner holding him except for: when I was changing his diaper or when he was throwing up on the floor from crying so much -- I finally gave him some Benadryl around 4 am to stop him from throwing up (did you know that Benadryl stops vomiting & nausea?) and I was able to put him into his crib at 5 am and I crawled into my bed a few minutes later.  Dh woke me up around 6:30 am to talk to me, then I was able to go back to sleep until 8:30-ish am when Taw woke me up (he was hanging over the end of his crib talking at me, he has quite the chatty personality at times).
After I finish that witness paper for Deputy Chase, I plan to sleep as much as I can until my boys (1 & 2) get home from school.

ciao....

Pioneer Woman Cooks

So recently I found this website called The Pioneer Woman; it is about her life & loves.  One of which is cooking, so I went to see what kinds of recipes she has, and discovered this recipe for Chicken Spaghetti (see it here: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/06/chicken_spaghet/).  Next week when I feel more like myself & less like death warmed over, I'm going to make this.  If it's as yummy as it looks & sounds like, then I'm going to make an extra for my freezer.

She also posted a delicious-looking pound cake recipe the day after my birthday.  I love pound cakes with their moist buttery flavors, eaten alone warm with milk, or with sliced strawberries & cream, or homemade ice cream (which reminds me, I found a recipe for Meyer Lemon & Strawberry ice cream at Tasty Kitchen and I plan to try it soon too).

Anyhow, now it's time to go get boy #2 ready to go to school.  May you all enjoy a fine day!  Hopefully ya'll aren't sick like me either.

=) Gayle

So I've been crocheting a lot lately, and not just the everyday humdrum stuff.  No indeed, I've been making flowers, both roses & big cosmos-type kind (well actually like the kind we all learned how to draw first as a child).  Yesterday, I also made a hair scrunchie & was working on attaching flowers to a thin plastic headband.  Anyhow, so while Crochet Pattern Central remains my favorite source for all things crocheted, here are a few links to some of the above things I've been working on (I did find them all through Crochet Pattern Central though).
http://amysodyssey.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/sweet-spring-flowers-crochet-tutorial/
http://naidascrochet.tripod.com/patterns/scrunchies.html
http://naidascrochet.tripod.com/patterns/1.html
http://nezumiworld.blogspot.com/2009/02/rose-brooch.html
http://www.planetjune.com/blog/free-crochet-patterns/basic-rose/

So go get out your hooks & have some fun!!
=) Gayle

one of my favorite websites

I just visited another of my favorite websites, Crochet Pattern Central (www.crochetpatterncentral.com) where you can find another any kind of crochet-realted pattern you desire.  This morning I was looking for a super easy  mini-heart pattern.  Sure enough I found one too.  I have been thinkign about making heart pins for all the little girls in both my sons' school classes; at any rate I'd better get cracking, because there's about 20-24 girls total (+ the teachers).

Now if I could just get my elbow to stop hurting so much....

a belated update on MIL

So here's how it goes:  On Monday Jan 25 (my dh's b-day), MIL had a stroke which blinded her & made her heart race uncontrollably, by Friday she'd recovered enough that she recognized her children and had a pacemaker installed.  Also on Friday afternoon, she was released from the hospital because her only medical insurance comes from Medicare and our illustrious President has decreed that the elderly are not top priority when it comes to hospital stays & medical care.  MIL is now recovering at her daughter Pam's house in NE Oregon; Dh talked to her yesterday and she's doing as well as can be expected.

If you were one of those who had been praying for her, we greatly appreciate you and your prayers.
=) Gayle

About Jackson's Mom + one other thing

So this morning Jackson (my Dh) called me to say that he'd talked to both of his brothers in the know about his mom.  She was sitting up and was coherent, had enough vision back that she could recognize her sons & daughter with her, she could recite the names of her grandchildren & their ages - though she was still in the ICU.  According to the MRI (of which she got to have 2 of yesterday because during the first time, the MRI techs discovered they'd left part of the machine back in Boise, ID - a 3 hour drive away), she definitely had a stroke, and she was discovered to have some serious heart problems too.  This morning she was to be flown to Kennewick, WA to a heart & stroke specialist (hospital) where she would have a pace maker installed, then she would be moved to a hospital in Walla Walla, WA; apparently Jackson's sister Pam lives not too far from there.

So she's doing much better, but she will still be hospitalized for an undetermined amount of time.  Thanks to those of you who are praying for her.  I called the Vernal LDS Temple yesterday and had her name put on the prayer roll; I think that I might take a few minutes to call a few of the other temples for the same reason.

Oh one other thing, last night when Jackson called his sister Cindy to tell her how their Mom was doing,  she told him that her daughter Alicia had just given birth to a baby boy about half an hour previously.  Just one other reason to keep January 26th in our minds.

=) Gayle

Birthdays & other stuff

So yesterday was my hubby's birthday, and what a day it was... but more about that later!  He got his requested dinner:  "shake & bake" (the homemade kind) pork chops, rice, peas & carrots + German chocolate cake with Coconut Pecan frosting, yum yum!!  It's been a while since I made a German chocolate cake, but it turned out marvelously delicious (even with my sweetened chocolate substitutes) and it's even better today, though I think that I should have cooked the frosting a bit longer.

Now today is my Mom's birthday, she would have been 78.  I find that I really really miss her today, and well much more so over the past few weeks than I have in the last couple of years.  For those who didn't already know, Mom died over 5 years ago (Thanksgiving-time 2004).
Today is also the day Dh's nephew got married, so Happy Anniversary to Jon & Heather MacLee!

So for the other stuff:  well yesterday morning, Dh got a call from one of his siblings telling him that his Mom 'had one of her spells' and was being taken to the hospital in Baker City (MIL & Dh's 3 Db's live in eastern OR).  There were various other phone calls throughout the day but the news we received late last night is that the doctors think that Ila must have had a stroke but they are puzzled because she is blind and quite aggressive (she keeps ripping out her IV's and won't let the nurses help her); also that she kept asking where her Mom and sister were (both of whom are many years ago dead), and she didn't recognize any of her children.  There was a MRI scheduled for today to see if they could figure out what is going on. My theory is that she had a stroke.
*I just got off the phone with Dh, he said that he called his brother about an hour ago, she was having the MRI right then, and had earlier recognized [her daughter] Pam, so that is a bit of good news.
I would ask any of you who are LDS and have a temple near, would you please call to put "Ila Jackson and family" on the prayer roll? Thanks.

Now it's well past time for me to get some lunch, and feed Taw as well.  Cole has gone off to school an hour ago (his first day back since he became sick), and there's so much I need to do thi afternoon.

=) Gayle

Monday Jan 18

It's snowing a bit outside, really nothing too heavy, but just enough to make the roads & sidewalks slick.  It is nice to see a fresh coat of white over the dingy gray left from the last snow storm, though.

My brother Chris called last night to wish me a belated 'Happy Birthday,' which reminds me that this is my brother-in-law William's birthday today (he's 36), and a week from today will be my husband's birthday; he will be 34 (& I'm 35).  William & I joke sometimes about how we're the same age for a week.

So all of my boys are sick now, Cole seems to have caught the cold from Joseph.  However, I'm not surprised by that as Joseph refuses to cough directly into the crook of his elbow, instead he coughs over his elbow; I fully expect to get his cold soemtime this week as he coughed & sneezed all over me last night at dinner.  I just hope that if I get sick, it's after Thursday as I really want to go to my Quilting Guild on Thursday evening.

For now though, it's time to put together a late lunch (and maybe a crockpot stew for dinner with some home-made dinner rolls or bread) then go do something productive as I just feel like having a nap while sitting here.

=) Gayle

Life with the Jackson crowd

My hubby will get home today fter being gone for 3 days - his employers sent him (& another guy) to New Mexico with an "emergency" load of sand.  I'm so happy, I really hate it when he's gone overnight or longer; plus our children always act out more when he's gone.

Speaking of things that children do, this morning my oldest son came in my room demanding that he should get some "Adivel."  When I asked him why he thought he needed Advil, he said, "For my cough Mommy!"  I laughed & sent him on his way; then later on he came & told me that he was sure that he had a cancer and "You'd better give me that Adivel or I might die!"  (He's very dramatic.)  I just laughed at him again, and told him that he just has a cold and he'd be better in a few days.  In the meantime, the other 2 boys seem to have gotten the cold from their brother, and I have this feeling that I might be next to get sick... and I don't want it! Waaaaaahh!

I celebrated my 35th birthday on Jan 12; actually it wasn't much of a celebration because my older boys fought almost continually from the time they got home from school until dinner-time and my Dh showed up 2 hours after he called to say he was on his way home- I finally gave up on making my cake because if I was measuring something and one screeched, I would do the wrong measurement; I didn't make the ice cream either.  Truth be told, I wasn't feeling like celebrating anyways, and it wasn't because I was now 35 instead of 34, I just didn't want to -- plus I kept thinking about my 16th birthday & what a disaster that day was.
However, I got a lovely visit the day before (Jan 11) from the Relief Society Presidency, my friend Rinty in England mailed me a package with some lovely gifts, my sister Amelia called me that day, and I received a nice birthday card from my Dad & step-Mom the day after my birthday -- so it wasn't all a loss.

I think I'll go sew for awhile now.  May you all enjoy the remainder of your Saturday afternoon on this the 16th day of January!

=) Gayle

How time flies when we're not paying attention!!

I can't believe that it's been a month already since I last posted on here, but it has.  It seemed like Christmas would never come and now not only is it past, but we're 2 days into the new year -- Hello 2010! -- not to mention a new decade.  Oh my, only 10 days to my burthday too, hmm... I never thought turnign 35 would come so quickly, it was just a few days ago (seems like) that I was turning 25 and getting married in March!

I suppose that if I hadn't needed a phone number for a fellow Quilt Guild member, I might not have come on Blogger for more days yet.  Oh well, at least I'm visiting once a month or so, which is more than I can say for my MySpace account (don't have anything on Facebook yet).

Part of my reason for not having visited here more often is because I have recently begun selling my hand-crafted goodies at a shop in downtown Vernal (Over The Picket Fence), and certain of those items are selling almost faster than I can make them.  One of the pictures I posted recently (a flag with hearts instead of stars) is one of the items I put up for sale.

I am extremely happy to report that we seem to have eradicated our mouse problem though for a couple of weeks there, I didn't think we were going to ever get rid of those stinky little beasties!

Perhaps I shouldn't say so, but I'm so happy to have Christmas over with this year, my boys [older] have been acting up so badly.  Monday they go back to school and I hope they settle down & behave much better for their teachers.

Well, my stomach aches (I think I may have gotten food poisoning from the Chinese buffet place Jackson & I ate lunch at earlier today while out on our "date"), so I think that I shall 'call' it a day & go lay down, besides my littlest guy is doing his lay-on-the-floor-while-playing-with-a-truck routine that he typically only does when he's very tired.  The other two boys having been sent to bed half an hour ago, and my dear hubby retired closer to an hour ago, he's not feeling so well of the belly either (it's kinda strange really, as I usually don't get food poisoning from places we eat at, or if I do, well never before today have I gotten sick before my husband). So...

Good night ya'll and may ye of you enjoy a good year during 2010!
=) Gayle