Don't Burn Bridges, Cross Them

I have been sent so many wonderful pictures and I have so neglected this gift I have been given. No more! I am going to cross that bridge and get back in line. Here is a great example of Love just hovering waiting to be noticed.

My niece Toni took a trip with friends of hers to New York and while there they crossed this beautiful bridge and had to take a picture. It wasn't until she got home that her children were looking at the pictures and one of then said, "hey Mom, did you notice the heart?" That's love for you!

Cross bridges, don't burn them. I had a really good friend in grade school that I truly admired. She was so pretty and as we got to that awkward stage it hit me head on but not her. She continued to be pretty and feminine. The only problem was our friendship suffered and we went separate ways. Recently I saw her name on Facebook and wanted to make contact with her. I wrote to her and asked if she remembered me to which she replied, "of course." I was so happy to talk to her again and I was so glad that I had not burned that bridge.

I think so fondly of many of the friends that I had in my youth. I wish that I knew where they all were so I could say, "Hi, I hope you are doing well." Friendship and love is just across the bridge, don't be afraid to cross it and for sure, don't burn it. Time will pass and so will hurt feelings and they will be replaced with fond memories.

Happy Birthday Samuel!

It's my sweet little boys birthday! He just turned a "quarter of a century old," as his father announced. Today Samuel was eating an apple and after the first bite and looking at the apple, he made that face that he makes when he questions something in unbelief. He turned the apple and showed it to his sister Charmaine to which she replied, "take a picture." I was actually asleep in the same room and quickly woke up at her words to see what needed picturing. Well, all I can say is, "Samuel Jr. you ARE loved!!!" Happy birthday, 25 is a pretty good number. You are the best son a mother could have.

Canning Apples

It has been weeks since I last blogged and here is one of the reasons why. We have had a wonderful crop this year of apples, plumbs, apricots, citrus and figs. I did take the time to can some apples and they turned out pretty good. I saved the one apple that had a heart shaped bruise on it so I could picture it with the canned apple sauce.

I learned to love doing things like canning from my grandmothers. Pickles and Chow Chow from my Gran Butler, Jelly and fruit from my Grandma Ollerton. I loved learning these skills and I love remembering the times I spent with them.

I love A Clean Kitchen & Dishes

This is a heart that Clarissa sent to me, she found it while she was doing dishes. This heart is soap bubbles on a cookie sheet. When my kids were little I tried an experiment to see if I could get my kids to like doing dishes. I would fill the sink with warm sudsy water and then put my hands in the water and rave on and on about how much fun I was having and how nice the water felt and how much I loved cleaning. Well it seems I was able to brain wash only one or two of my kids but I really do love a clean kitchen and an empty sink. One of my favorite surprises of the day is when I get up in the morning and go to the dishwasher to empty it and I find that my wonderful husband or son has already emptied it. I love that they know that small act will make my day.

My mother used to say that the dishes weren't done until the sink was clean and the counters and table wiped off. I would say the same thing to my kids and love hearing them rehearse the same to their families. Happy Dish Washing Everyone!

Happy Mother's Day

Well I had a wonderful surprise starting on Tuesday. As I was driving to the Temple I was thinking about my kids and how blessed I am to have them. I was thinking of how good they are and kind, hard working, supportive, great mothers, wonderful sons. I was especially thinking about how good they are to me. The girls have always shown great respect and friendship to me. That is not to say Samuel Jr. hasn't because he has -- it is just different with the girls. So anyway as I was driving along I was thinking that I really needed to let them know this Mother's day that as their mother I am so happy with them and the people that they have turned out to be. Well Clarissa beat me to the punch. I have found this situation to be true so often. Whenever I have been thinking a nice thought about someone it seems they too are thinking about me. Good karma I guess.

So anyway Clarissa gave me a 3 mile long heart attack, and this is how it went... Wednesday morning,Cindy Lines, my walking buddy called to get me going on the day's walk. As I was leaving the house Samuel told me to take my camera and take pictures of nice things for him. I said no I don't want to take my camera which I really didn't want to do and so I didn't. Anyway as Cindy and I started walking we got to the green belt just south of my house and there in the grass was a set of hearts that said, "I hope you enjoy your walk today." I thought that was very sweet and that someone had done something nice for someone, not even thinking it could be for me. Then a few steps later there was another set of hearts. These were just pretty plain ones in pastel colors and then it struck me that Samuel had been trying to get me to take my camera and that this may have been done by him but he couldn't have because he had just had surgery on Monday and he wouldn't have been up to getting out and doing all this. I just thought that someone else had a sweet child that was giving them a great day. I bemoaned my not bringing my camera to Cindy and before I even knew it she whipped out her camera saying that she grabbed her fanny pack this morning and that her camera just happened to be in it. She played the part so well, I totally believed her so I took her camera and went back to take pictures. Little did I know that I would be taking pictures for the full 3 mile walk that we take each day. About half way through Cindy said well I guess it is about time to give you this to which she handed me a card that Clarissa had taken to her to give to me. It was a very sweet card with an even sweeter sentiment written by her to me. Then I knew the hearts were from Clarissa and her family.

Some of the sayings that she wrote along the way are, "Motherhood is closer to divinity." "Mother Dear I love you so, your happy smiling face." "Roses are red, violets are blue, you are my mother and I love you." "A mother is a mother still the holiest thing alive." "A mother is the truest friend we have." "Of all the rights of women the greatest is to be a mother." "If at first I don't succeed, I do what my mother told me to do." "Mother's are real super heroes dressed as women." "You are beautiful." "You are talented." "Have a wonderful day." "Happy Mother's Day." "I love you." and my favorite, "When I grow up I want to be just like you!"

Those of you who follow my blog know that I find hearts everywhere I go but these hearts are among the sweetest because they were placed there on purpose. We may find love along our way and that is great, a good outlook at life but when someone goes out of there way to make sure you know you are loved that is when love really pays off. I love my children, all of them, boys too, but to my girls I want them to know I that I want to be just like them and that I think they are the greatest women and mothers that I know. I thank my Heavenly Father for them each and every day and pray for their happiness and success. I love them more than I can adequately express. And ofcourse to Clarissa, Thank you for the sweet expression of love from you and your sweet husband and Bou. I love you. Happy Mother's Day to all of the woderful women in my life.

Was That Love?

The other day I went to the Zoo with 3 of my daughters. Chantal was going with her daughter Katie's class and she invited Jenny, Clarissa and myself to go also. It was an absolutely beautiful day. We had a great time, only stayed until about noon, didn't loose anyone and avoided any major accidents. Sounds like success to me. As we were entering the Zoo there were tons of people going in the school entrance and so we went through the usual run of warnings to the kids to stay close to us. Each of the adults were to watch out for one of the kids so no one would get lost. All of the little cousins that live here in the area were there except Brian Jr. who should have been in school but stayed home sick. Anyway as we were walking into the zoo with tons of people around, Lacy shots out, "where is Brian?" She said it like she was really worried, suddenly she realized that he wasn't there and she wanted us to find him. It really touched me, I hope that when the cousins are older and they see one going astray or "not there" that they will worry and want to find them and bring them back. Now that is love.

(Picture taken at the Phoenix Zoo by Clarissa Baxter Feb. 25th 2010, we think it is a duck.)

Sweet Fruits of Love

This is one of those great pictures that a friend sent to me. Her name is Lisa. Lisa was preparing dinner for her family one evening and while cutting a cantaloupe in half she found this perfect heart. I love it! I can think of so many implications for where and how she found this heart but the strongest one I think of is all of is the Sweet Fruit of Love that we harvest when as a family we sit at the dinner table and eat together. I do not find preparing dinner to be fun, but I do it because I want to have a healthy meal together with my family, I do love having that time that we all rely on to be together, I do love that that is when we can talk about our day and what we are doing, what has made us happy or what has made us sad. The preparation of dinner, the setting of the table, and the time around it truly yields bountiful harvests of Sweet Love.

Loves Perspective

Love really is all about Perspective. How you look at things is how you will ultimately feel about life in the end. A sweet friend of mine while vacationing in Hawaii found this heart shape in what looked like to me, a huge cliff. You can see the ocean through the whole and it seems that the heart is huge and that you can really view life from it in a wonderful light. Then the next picture she sent shows her kneeling down behind the hole and it is only about the size of her face, the cliff is really just a rock and the ocean is very far away. It is just amazing to me how the angle of the camera and the positioning of the people made all the difference and that really is how life is. I have found that if I look at my husband with the thought on my mind that he is wonderful that I love him and that I want him close to me, well then that is exactly how I feel. But on the other hand if when he enters the room I think, here comes trouble, that is what I would get. I know that I am the happy person that I am because I am loved but also because I want to see love all around me were ever I can.
Loves Perspective is a way of life.

Fragile Love or Spicy Love

I find heart shaped chips quite often. It seems that I am usually with members of my family eating lunch and someone will find one. This chip is no exception, I think Clarissa found it. (It's a spicy bbq chip.) As I was looking through my pictures thinking about Charmaine and her upcoming 30th birthday I hoped to find one to convey the feelings that I am having at this time. I miss her so much and wish that we could all be together to celebrate this mile stone. I hope that she is able to realize just how much I love her and miss her, Randal and their boys. I hope that her heart isn't fragile and that she has a spicy good time. Charmaine you are Amazing and Wonderful, my heart is so blessed because of you. Happy Birthday, I love you!!!

You light up my life heart

Can you blame me? I haven't blogged in 20 days. December is the craziest month for doing anything let alone blogging. My family has been so patient, I hate shopping and they don't make me feel too guilty about not going all out in the gift department. I spent almost every waking moment at the Temple Visitors Center for 1 week and then only half a day for the second week while I set up nativities with 3 other women. We eat take out a lot during that time. It just seems like no matter what I plan I have to be willing to go with the flow. I'm so glad that I can do that and that my family does that too. This heart shaped light is a little trick that Samuel Jr. performed. He took a light that was one ridged shape and waved it in the air making a heart. Being able to go with the flow is really an act of love when it means that you flow with your family and friends and their needs.

Well Adjusted Heart

This morning as I was walking I found that the orthotic in my shoe was hurting my foot and that I really need to find a place to sit down and take care of it. As I was looking for a bench to sit on I also found this cute heart shaped leaf, it was from an olive tree that was very near the bench I found to sit on. I looked at the tree's other leaves and I could not find another heart shaped leaf. Something made it grow this way. As I took off my shoe to make the very slight adjustment I thought about that leaf. I made and adjustment to my orthotic, put my shoe back on and off I went. Everything was fine after that. It is just amazing how far just a little adjustment can go. It was just a little adjustment just a slight influence on the development of that leaf that turned it to love. We can be the same way, when any influence affects our existence for good or bad let it turn our hearts to love and everyone around us will benefit from the experience.Doesn't the thougth just make you happier!

Do You See What I See

Sometimes I wonder if people see the same things I see. I see hearts everywhere and now I am seeing happy faces. The other day I was walking with my friend Shelly as she gave me a ride to the Temple. We were walking up to the gate of the Temple when on the ground I saw this heart in the sidewalk. Shelly said oh that is a really good one so I knew that she too could see it clearly. The words in the title of this blog where used as a title to a song about the star that was the sign given in the heavens of the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. Being able to have a spiritual eye or witness of him is more important to me than anything else that I could observe in life. I love seeing hearts but I believe that all things testify of Heavenly Father and of Jesus Christ and the love they have for us. Every little heart reminds me of this.

I lost my Grandma Heart

This is my cute little granddaughter Lacy Jo. The Jo part of her name she gets from me, proud grandma. My daughter Jenny sent me these pictures several days ago but I was having a hard time thinking of a message to go with the heart shaped stain on her shirt. Then just last Saturday Jenny and I went to a boutique to do some Christmas shopping along with her 3 children. I took Lacy by the hand and told her that she needed to stay with me so she wouldn't get lost and that I would be responsible for her. Well you know how things like that go. After entering the very crowded boutique Lacy quickly disappeared. It turns out that she went into each of the vender's rooms to ask if they had seen her Grandma because she was lost. When Jenny and I realized that Lacy was not with us we split up and went in different directions looking for her. I went outside and Jenny stayed in. After a while of not finding her I went back inside to find Lacy and a woman standing with Jenny but the extremely helpful women was not going to give Lacy up to Jenny. Jenny said you've go to hear this. The kind lady was calling out for Lacy's grandma when Jenny found them. Jenny said, "I am her mother" to which Lacy replied, "she's not my grandma." It cracked me up. In Lacy's mind she was not the problem she was not lost, her grandma was lost and Jenny was not the find she was looking for. When I finally showed up the helpful lady turned Lacy over to me and all was well. So how does that heart shaped stain fit into all of this? Well, I guess it really doesn't, I'm just glad that Jenny's reputation wasn't stained by her having to whip out her phone and show the lady pictures of Lacy to prove her ownership and then have the lady think Jenny was some crazy stalker taking pictures of random children claiming them to be her own. All's well that end well. Phew!

Cross section of a Heart

When you look at the cross section of something you can really view it carefully. When I look at this heart, cut from the branch of a tree, I can tell, how old it is by the number of rings in it and that it has a small crack in it. My husband and I are like this slice right now. Our years together are in the numbers and we have a few cracks to prove it. Despite the gray hair and the wrinkles we really are not that bad off. I think of the book, “The Enchanted Cottage” and how the couple that lived there saw each other. They were far from perfect, but they saw each other as beautiful and perfect for each other. When the world looked at them they did not see them that way. I had a friend that said he had received some criticism for his relationship with his wife. His response was, “too bad, it works for us.” That is how I feel too, sometime no one else understand why and relationship might work just as long as it works, it's good.

Onion Heart

Personally, I love onions. Growing up I don't think I had a single meal without onions somewhere in the meal. My grandmother told me once, "It just wasn't dinner without onions." My mother was absolutely meticulous about cutting onions. When she would put them in potato salad she cut them so fine that every bite of salad was assured a wonderful, even, and generous amount of onion flavor. As a young single women it was so important to me to marry a man that liked onions that one time I made an entire meal with onions in every dish for a boy I was dating just to see how he would react. He was so polite but needless to say, I'm glad that I married the onion lover that I did. I had a friend once say if you are too busy doing other things and have neglected dinner, before your family gets home just cut up an onion and quickly get it frying, then when they walk in the door and smell the onion cooking they will think dinner is on it's way.

Olive Tree Hearts

It seems that the olive tree is the best at creating this phenomenon. Today it struck me, the Savior suffered for us in the Garden of Gethsemane. The garden was one of Olive trees. The greatest love and offering ever made for us was given in a Olive garden. So each time I see an Olive tree with the symbol of a heart I think I will always think of that great sacrifice.

Consumed Heart

This heart is just almost being consumed by it's surroundings. It is deep in the soil around it, it has little rocks on it's top and sides and even on one side they are creeping up to the point of almost over taking that side. I find that sometimes my life is the same way. I absolutely love my family and grand kids and I want them around me and hugging me and loving all over me. I want to do the same to them, but everyone once in a while I feel like I am being consumed. I guess we just have to be as solid as rock but also be willing to yield to the forces around us too. Being a parent and a grandparent "isn't easy but it is worth it." And that is what I said!

Paint Heart

So I'm painting my office. I am so excited! I just love it. My desire started a while back when Samuel kept turning his computer monitor away from the sun so he could see his screen. I knew it needed to be fixed but I wasn't sure what to do exactly. Well to make a long story short (it involves the need for new desks that could go onto a different wall, blah blah, blah) I won a beautiful painting on a cruise and I decided to use it as my color pallet to go with the new desk. The colors of the painting are very similar to my Latin Guest room and so our home office is now on it's way to becoming our second Latin room. I began painting today and as I was doing so I found that I had painted myself a heart in a corner. It was quite by accident and so I quickly located my camera and captured it. I love the deep slate blue color that we chose to paint the room. I love being creative and expressing my love for fun intense colors. I love that Samuel supports and trusts me and wants me to express myself. I love that we have been able to find such great deals to accomplish the things that we want to do. So today I would say that "Love" equals Thankful!

Thankful Heart

Thankfully it is only a small spot of a heart in this potato. I took this picture a couple of years ago while visiting Chantal's family for Thanksgiving. Our whole family packed up and went to San Diego so that we could all be together for Thanksgiving. Chantal was expecting Susan and was way too pregnant to travel. I loved that we were able to make the trip, I loved the weather, I loved the fantastic food, I loved the visit, I loved the extended family company, I love the little spot of love that that Thanksgiving experience has left in my heart. I look forward to this years Thanksgiving season and I am happy to give thanks again to my Heavenly Father who has made it all possible.

Scary Halloween Heart

Every year at Halloween I find something new that is Halloween scary. Each year we make potato soup for Halloween dinner and one year I made it with leaks, sweet potatoes and ham and it was a little scary. Another year Chamaine had to have surgery on her foot and it left a ghost shaped scar. I thought it was only fitting that this heart be posted today being that it looks like it has eyes and a nose and is coming out of the ground. Happy Halloween everyone! Gotta love a stumpy heart.