Tell how you feel about water - playing in it, seeing it, using it. Tell about various bodies of water you have seen and an experience or feeling.

When I was a little girl, and like most little children are, I loved to play in water.  What kid doesn't, right?  This picture is of me playing in the irrigation ditch that ran out in front of our house.  I would have so much fun splashing around.  As a kid I loved to play in water, the only drawback is how cold I would get.  I've never liked being cold much.  And over the years my tolerance to playing in the water has changed.

I've not seen many oceans.  I've been to California and seen the oceans there, and of course I can go see the Great Salt Lake any time.

I loved to have dad give me drinks out of the hose.  Who wants to go inside when there's a hose handy, right?

As I've grown up water has lost a lot of interest for me.  I don't like being wet, because that means being cold.  We have a season pass to Raging Waters and I like going in the heat of the day when the water evaporates off quickly and you can stay warm.  I'm really not a fan of cold water.  I enjoy a nice hot shower. I don't even like drinking water but I force myself to do it.  If the water is nice and hot I'm all for it, I'm not a fan of cold water.  Unless it's drinking water and then I prefer it to be ice cold.  I'm silly that way.

Describe the perfect winter day. Tell about an activity you would do on that day.

There is no such thing as the perfect winter day, it does not exist.  I figured for this post I would get a bit creative on what I would consider the perfect winter day.  If I had the money and time, the perfect winter day would be spent basking in the Hawaiian sun or making a trip to Dubai to see my little brother.  Basically spending the entire winter some place bright, warm, happy, and beautiful would be the perfect winter.  And just what would I do on these perfect winter days.  Why I would hang out at the beaches and soak up the sunshine.  I would tour around and take in all of the wonderful sights to see.

But I'm going to now get very creative with my response.  The perfect winter day in my mind and imagination would mean that the temperatures never dropped below 80 degrees.  I'd like the upper 80's and low 90's but to be nice to everyone, I'll go with the lower 80's and upper 70's.  The trees would always stay green and never lose their leaves.  The flowers would always be in bloom.  There would never be a need for coats, jackets, scarves, gloves, or any of that kind of winter gear.  It would still snow but the difference is that this snow would be light and fluffy so not to weight down the trees.  And the big key is this snow would be warm and pleasant to be in, warm and pleasant enough to play in it with shorts, t-shirt, and bear feet.  It would never fall on the roads, sidewalks, or driveways. And they days would be as full as sunshine as a nice summer day. Why, you may ask, would I even want it to snow??  Well, first, I realize there are people who do actually like the white stuff and want to ski and play in it so I don't want to take that away from them.  And second, if snow was warm, I wouldn't mind it.  Now, if this could be my perfect winter day what would I do?  I would actually go out into it and play.  Do some sledding, build a snowman, have a snowball fight, and make snow angels.

Sadly enough my ideas for a perfect winter day are a bit far fetched.  Maybe one day I might be able to spend my winters someplace warm, but for now a winter day consists of a warm blanket, a roaring fire, and counting down the days for summer.

Describe the perfect summer day. What would you do on that day?

Those of you who know me well know that I LIVE for summer.  Besides mosquito's there isn't a single thing about summer that I don't just love.  I love the searing heat, the smell that summer brings; the smell of fresh cut grass, and the smell of the baking grasses from the sun, the smell of the flowers, and the earthy smell of a rainstorm.  I love the bright happy sun blazing down on us, the green trees, and beautiful flowers.  I love the sounds that summer bring; the bee's buzzing, birds singing in the branches, sprinklers watering lawns, the engine of a lawn mower, and the sounds of happy children playing out in the sun.  I love to walk bare foot and feel the grass on my feet, or run my bare feet through the sand, and the feel of the hot pavement.  I love being able to wear shorts and t-shirts and not have to bundle up and bring coats, jackets, boots, and gloves everywhere I go.  I love the summer picnics, Fourth of July parade and fireworks.  I love to see people out at the parks.  I love the trips up the canyons and into the mountains for picnics, hikes, and camping trips.  I love the feel of a summer rainstorm and the flash and crash of a good summer thunder storm.

If I could have my perfect summer day, the temperatures would be in the high 90's.  It would be a bright day without a cloud in the sky.  The blue sky stretching on forever with the bright sun blazing down from above.  I would start out my day by being able to sleep in, not all morning long, but at least a bit longer than I get to when school is in.  It would be a pleasant and leisure morning waiting and biding my time for the day to warm up.  We would pack a lunch and something for dinner and get it all loaded up in the car, ready for our short trip up the road to Farmington......where Lagoon is.  We would play at Lagoon-a-beach for several hours and have lunch.   After lunch we would hit the rest of the park, riding as many of the rides as possible, only stopping for a quick dinner.  After dinner it would be back to the rides to ride as many as possible before the park closes.  At the close of the day and as the park closes and we head back to the car I would want to be as worn out and "happy go pukey" as I possibly could be.  A short car ride home to my waiting and inviting comfy bed.  That would be my perfect summer day.

Describe getting a Christmas Tree with your family as a child. How did you decorate it? When did you put it up?

We had a sixteen foot vaulted ceiling and naturally couldn't have any kind of small tree, we always had to have a twelve foot or more tree.  The first Saturday after Thanksgiving, dad would hook on the trailer to our Blazer and we would head into the little town of Tooele.  We had our favorite Christmas Tree lots that usually would have some decent sized trees.  Dad always brought his tape measure so we could measure and get the tallest tree we could find.  Now mind you, dad got into the whole hunting for the tallest tree just as much as us kids did.  We would spend half the morning going around to the lots and measuring the trees until we found the tallest one.  Us kids and dad would quickly go from tree to tree so excited to see if it was the one for us.  It was almost as fun as opening up the presents on Christmas Morning.  Once we found the perfect tree, dad would load it up in the trailer and we would head for home.  We lived way out in the country in a little Township called Pine Canyon and once we hit Erickson road, dad would pull over and let us kids hop out and go ride with the tree in the trailer.  Now days, that would be highly frowned upon, but oh it was so much fun to hang on the back of the trailer and feel the excitement of the wind blowing in our faces.  Funny enough, I didn't mind the cold as much back then as I do now.  When we got home, dad would prepare the tree to go in the stand and be brought in the house.  Meanwhile us kids would be in the house helping mom get out all of the decorations.  We had a hodge podge of home made decorations, and the ones I loved the most were the ones my mom had made in Relief Society back when her and my dad first got married.  They are made out of egg cartons, glued together, and brightly colored.  Mom, every year would tell us the story of how she made them and I would always notice the care she used with them, almost as if they were the most expensive and delicate ornaments of them all.  We had very little in the way of store bought ornaments as my mom is a very creative and crafty person.  I loved all of the homemade ornaments that she had made over the years. Once dad had brought the tree in, mom would put on the Christmas music and we would all sing and laugh as we put up the decorations and trimmed the tree.  Mom would always worry as me and my brothers would climb like monkeys on the railings and banisters just to be able to reach the top of the tree to decorate it.  Going to pick out the tree and decorate it was always and all day event, but it was so much fun and probably some of my favorite memories.

Now my parents have a twelve foot fake tree.  It's still a tradition to put up the tree on the first Saturday after Thanksgiving.  My parents have been married for some 45 years now and we still lovingly put the egg carton decorations on the tree and every year mom tells the story about them.  I love to see the look on her face as she talks about it.  Now there are the grandkids that get to help grandpa build the tree.  We use ladders and hooks to reach the top, but the kids all like to climb on the railing and banister to put the ornaments at the top, and grandma still gets nervous every time.  It's still an all day event to decorate grandma's house and it is always filled with Christmas music and laughter.  The ornaments are still all homemade and I love them.   As a matter of fact, I decorate my Christmas Tree all in the homemade ornaments that my mother has made.  And I love to tell the kids the stories.

What was your most embarrassing moment?

I've had plenty of embarrassing moments in my life.  I remember some and some I'm sure I've blocked out.  The one I'm thinking about happened when I was in high school.  I was at a church activity, for the activity several of us were chosen to write down our most embarrassing moments.  Then we went up on stage, the embarrassing moment was read off and the audience had to guess who's embarrassing moment it was.  Well I wrote down a moment from my child hood.

When I was about two years old, we lived in Colorado.  We also lived in a cul-de-sac and we had one of those small gutters that ran along side of the sidewalk.  I had this awesome friend that I played with every day.  One day we went out and played in the gutter and were caught.  Both of our parents told us that we were not allowed to play in the water with our clothes on.  A few days later, a neighbor saw my friend and I out in the gutter just in our diapers playing in the water.  We had set our clothes over on the grass where they wouldn't get wet.  We had been told that we couldn't play in the water with our clothes on.  We thought we were being very obedient by taking them off.  And our parents really couldn't argue with our two-year-old logic and we had things explained further to us.

Well, I chose this story to be my most embarrassing story to share.  However it didn't end up being my most embarrassing moment.  I neglected to add the ages my friend and I were at.  So it left the interpretation of our age wide open.  And when I realized that up on stage in front of this group of my peers and not only that, people that I go to church with, I wanted to curl up in a bawl and die.  Everyone thought it was hilarious and the best embarrassing moment.  Meanwhile I'm now trying to explain that this happened to me when I was two.

I have another embarrassing moment I could share and luckily I can laugh over it now.  My ex-husband has a previous ex-wife and they had a daughter together.  When it came time for the daughter to be baptized I was pregnant with our third child.  We made the trip up to Washington to attend the baptism.  Now I am really good friends with the first ex wife.  She is a fantastic woman, great person, and a dear friend, however, at that point in time, things were a bit on the awkward side.  I had been asked to give either the opening or closing prayer at the baptism service (I don't remember which one off the top of my head now).  I gave the prayer and was heading back to my seat when someone kindly lady told me that the entire back of my skirt had a huge rip down the seam showing off my lovely hind end.  Luckily I had a slip on at the time.  But oh, I just wanted to die of embarrassment.  Of all places to have something like that happen.  But all is well that ends well.  Mandi and I get along great now and we can both sit and laugh about the whole incident.  And I am very blessed to have Mandi as my friend.

Describe your first job

My first job was when I was in college down at what is now Utah Valley University.  Back then, it was called Utah Valley Community College.  But that was many moons ago.  I got my first job at the Wirthlin Group.  It was an interesting job to say the least.  We did telephone surveys.  I quickly realized I didn't like calling people and interrupting their day like that.  And I also realized I could never be a telemarketer, door to door sales person or anything of the sort.

My second job was at Arctic Circle.  I didn't stay there long as I had one co-worker who was rude and mean.  I later learned it was because she was jealous that one of the cooks had a crush on me and she had a crush on him.  And I had no clue that the cook even liked me as he never spoke to me.  Kind of funny to think back and laugh about it.

I went from Arctic Circle to working at Pizza Hut.  I loved that job.  I, with two of my friends, made the early morning school lunch pizza's.  It was a blast.  We would have to get to work by 4:30 a.m. to get started on the dough for the school lunch and also to get the place a head start on dough for the day.  Once we got the dough well in hand, one of us would stay back to continue the dough while the other two would go up front to start topping and cooking the pizza's.  We would have a lot of fun jamming out to music and just plain being goofy while we worked.  Our boss was awesome, he would show up about 6:00 a.m. to help us finish off making the pizza's.  He would joke and goof around with us.  When the school year came to an end, we were let go as there was no more need for the school lunch pizza's and our boss already had a full staff for the regular part of the business.  But we had been given the promise to be able to come back at the beginning of the school year to do the pizza's again if we wanted.  I also have to say one of the perks of the job was the free bread sticks and personal pan pizza every day.

From Pizza Hut, I went to work in Yellowstone National Park.  I also loved that job, well, not so much the job as I loved being up in Yellowstone.  Yellowstone is one of the most beautiful places on earth as far as I'm concerned.  I started out cleaning the cabins but found the work to be quite hard on my back.  My back wasn't as bad as it is now, but I did have the scoliosis back then.  They were able to transfer me over to cashiering in the cafeteria.  That was a lot of fun.  I loved being able to chat with all the visitors to the park and hearing about where they live and what brought them to visit Yellowstone.  I wore a name tag with my name and the state I was from.  I found it fun to tell visitors the fun and neat places to go see in Utah.  I loved my days off when my friends and I would go explore the wonders around us.  Watching Old Faithful shoot off under a full moon.  Going down to Hayden Valley to watch a meteor shower.  Watching nature scamper about.  It was an amazing experience.

I was given the opportunity to stay and work the winter in Yellowstone and almost did.  The big deciding factor for me...... TOO MUCH SNOW AND TOO COLD!!!!  So I left when the season was over and went back home to Utah.  I had enjoyed working with the public in Yellowstone and thought I might have the same fun working with the public in any setting, and so I got a job out at the airport working in the exit plaza's.  It was there I realized just how much I do not like working with the public.  I met good people who were pleasant and nice.  But for the most part I met people who had either had a horrible trip, a terrible flight, the airline lost their luggage, or were plain tired from their trip and wanted to get home.  I was the last person they saw as they left the airport and so I would catch the brunt of all of their frustrations.  Especially if it was busy and the lines were long.  And I wasn't the only one who would receive this kind of treatment from the public.  No one I knew there like the job at all.  I found that I didn't like the way I felt about the job.  I dreaded going into work and I would usually leave work in a pretty bad mood.  I didn't stay there very long and I had decided that never again would I ever work with the public.

I found a job working at UPS on the graveyard shift.  I worked on what they called the "Brown" belt.  I was a loader.  I had the fun job of loading all of the boxes that went to Utah Valley.  It was a very hard job and physically demanding.  One would think I would have learned my lesson with trying to clean the cabins in Yellowstone.  But it was a job and I didn't have to work with the public.  It soon became clear to me that I couldn't take the heavy loads and quit.

I went to Super Target from there again working the graveyard shift stocking shelves.  It was an okay place to work.  Not my favorite job in the world.  I realized that I didn't like working retail as I would have to work on the holidays.

I found myself back out at the airport but this time working for the company that cleaned the airlines, specifically Delta.  Still on the graveyard shift, we would be the ones to go in and deep clean the airplanes over night and have them all spotless for the morning flights.  I enjoyed this job until we got a new supervisor who was a task master, people were quitting left and right because of her.  We soon found we didn't have enough people to get the airplanes done all in one night.  We were expected to work long hours and for little pay with a woman who was just horrible.

And that's when I found ACS.  I was able to get off the graveyard shift and have a normal job that gave me weekends and holidays.  I worked a regular Monday through Friday job.  I liked the people, I liked the hours, the pay was okay, and I liked the normalcy it gave me.  I started out as a scanner, sitting at a machine all day scanning bank loan applications.  I moved from that to doing data entry after the scanning had been completed.  From there I was given the responsibility of being a lead supervisor.  I really enjoyed what I did, I liked the people I worked with.  Several things happened all around the same time; I got married and was expecting my first child.  The nice thing about ACS is that they sent a lot of their work to be done "in home". I decided that I really wanted to be home with my children.  So I switched departments and did in home data entry for Regence Blue Cross/Blue Shield.  I loved the freedom it gave me.  I was able to stay at home with the kids, but also still earn money.  I was able to make my own hours and as long as I had my work done by midnight, no one cared.  This job was a very nice thing to have when I had all of my surgeries.  I was able to stay and home and heal but at the same time work.  However, during the last surgery on my back, I was placed on the operating room table wrong and was left with a Brachial Plexus stretch injury to my arms and shoulders.  My left arm and hand have never healed properly.  I was not able to go back to my work doing data entry, something I enjoyed and was really good at.  I have been blessed with the ability to fight for and win my disability case and now I have a great husband who makes enough for me to be a full time mommy.

Journal Jar

I'm bad at keeping up on my journal.  I've realized that I need to do better.  I've found some fun "journal jar" questions.  I've decided that I'm going to do some of these on this blog.  I'm am going to be very picky and choosy with the things I share.  But I thought this could be a good way to share some fun memories.  So over the next little while, I will post a journal jar question and then answer it.