A crazy summer.

Wow has this summer been a crazy one. I never thought I could get even busier but I did.
First Eric was off to Especially For Youth (EFY) then we had house guests in July for 11 days. Then Eric was off to Scout camp and before he got back I was o ff to Salt lake for 11 days for a woman's camp and wedding planning with Mariah. Before I got back Eric was off again to a high adventure for scouting and our 2nd. round of house guests had arrived. they were here for 7 days.
Inn amongst everything were work at the resteraunt, yard work, house work, hostessing and my visits to dad (except the 11 days I was gone. but Nichole went to see him a several times while I was gone.) What a good grand daughter.

So School started August 21st. And Eric started his Senior year.He is also very busy getting his Eagle Project finished.Yes Eric will be an eagle scout. Mom would be proud she loved scouting.

Mariah is Getting married November 28th. In the Las Vegas Temple. Her fiance' is a great young man his name is Kyle Stewart. His Family lives in Vegas and so we will have have a reception there on the day of the wedding and one here at our house in Carthage on December 12th.

Diana will be moving home when Mariah gets Married and live with us a few months while she gathers some money to get an apartment here. She is planning on taking some classes when she gets here.

Nichole is doing well I hope you are all fallowing her blog. she does an excellent job keeping it up.

As for Don and I the restaurant is doing ok. Just barley paying the bills but that is good for a new restaurant we are told.

Here are a few recent pictures (Aug. 27,2009) of Dad Taken by Jon.This was the best smile we could get out of Dad. All the pictures on this post today were done by Jon he does a good job.


I hope this finds all of you well. All my Love Jo Ellen

new post soon

sorry August was a crazy month I will post again in a few days.

Update 11 August 2009

As some of you already know, I finished my first college course in Computer Science and got 100%. After all the stress of not knowing what I was doing and no one to help, I finally found an 18 year old girl who was able to teach me a lot about excel and a little about power point. I am going to miss the teacher I had - Mr. Fisher from Texas was incredible. Now as of yesterday I began 2 new classes. One is on general science and the other on health care programs. My major is Hospital Administration and medical billing. I will graduate hopefully the end of November 2010.
Also, we have finished the paperwork to become foster parents again for the purpose of Adopting Isaiah. We had him in our home from the time he was 2 months old until 22 months, when the judge gave him to his mother while finishing drug rehab. She had him for 3 years and then he went back into the system. We were not informed of this and moved out of the area for a while. Heavenly Father put things in motion to get us back here to Imperial, Ca. and now in less than 2 weeks, he will be living with us again! Hopefully to be adopted and be ours for eternity.
David is working 3 days for free for the state of California and Mr. Arnold Swartzenegger wants him to work another 1 to 2 days for free. He said that unless we are losing our homes we are not suffering! Unbelievable! I'd like to see him try to live on less than $4,000 a month!
Anyway, David is losing weight and even though he has water on the knee, he is running 6 days a week on his treadmill. He is running 5 or more miles a day and the pounds are really coming off. Pretty soon, he will be able to stop taking the medication for his type 2 diabetes. What a great blessing that will be. We will however, keep eating the way we have adjusted because of the diabetes - it's just healthy. I also continue to lose weight although slower than David at this point.
We are extremely busy with school, work, church callings (David is the Young Men's President) in the ward and I am the ward activities chairman. Now with an almost 12 year old too, we will be even busier. We are really feeling the blessings of the Lord in our lives and hope that as we try to better our lives, we will become who we are meant to be.

A sunny day today

Today it was a beautiful 88 degrees outside. So when I got to the Veterans Home I Decided to take Dad outside . We sat for a while just enjoying the birds chirping and the cool shade with the gentile breeze. The grounds at the Veterans Home are Beautiful.
Dad sure loves it when we go outside. After being outside for a little while Dad all of the sudden went ouch and tightly closed his eyes. I asked him if he hurt somewhere and he said yes. so I started the guessing game as to what hurt. then he rubbed his chest right at the sternum and I asked him if that is where it hurt he said yes. about 30 seconds later it stopped hurting. not long enough for me to get him to a nurse. any ways he seemed tired but ok after wards. I took him to get lunch in the little coffee shop they have there he lived it and ate every bite as well as drank a whole root beer by himself. this chest pain happened again 2 more times while we were eating but did not seem to last but 10-15 seconds.




















After we ate Nichole and Peter came to show Dad his Newest Great Grand Son Beck. I think they look alike.




He enjoyed seeing him and holding him. When back messed in his diaper I asked Dad if he wanted to change him he just laughed.












Before I left his chest thing happened once more. I let the nurses know and I have called Hospice to make them aware of it. I told them to keep him out of pain.


I do not know what will happen and when but I do know that dad told me Mom has been visiting him. asking him to go with her. he told me this today.









I love you all and hope all is well with you. Jo Ellen

just a reminder

I just want to remind al of you this is a family blog and anyone can post comments and create posts. I hope this finds all of you well.

I love you all Jo Ellen

I just wanted to say thank you for your diligence in visiting with Dad and keeping us posted on how he is doing. I really miss being there and seeing him like I did now over a year ago.
I am so glad that Bethany is better and that Nichole and the baby are well.
Good also to see pictures of Jon and Terri visiting as well as Betsy and Bill. Betsy sure looks a lot like grandma!

On the homefront, David is again taking a paycut thanks to the governor of California. That will be 20% in less than 6 months! Luckily when he leaves office 15% will come back to us. In the mean time, I am going to school online for medical billing but won't get any pay from that for 17 months!
We are also working on doing paperwork to adopt Isaiah - the first foster baby we had nearly 12 years ago. We got to visit with him nearly 2 weeks ago and it went well. We are hoping to be able to spend more time with him as our paperwork progesses. He is still a sweet and happy child. He is nearly as tall as I am and wears 1 size shoe smaller than I do! He is definately going to be a tall one.
It has gotten very hot here and have lost 7 tomato plants and 3 strawberry plants and all my bean plants but the zuchinni is doing well as are my beef tomatoes that are in those topsy turvy containers that you might have seen on t.v. We will do more gardening in the fall. Our pink grapefruit tree is doing good too. It has lots of buds on it now.

Thank you