Fridays fabulous five

I am borrowing my neice's idea of Fabulous Five. I am not sure of the prerequisite to this other than she posts five fabulous things from the week on Fridays. I think it is a great idea and it keeps you on the thought of gratitude
So here goes
#1- Monday- For family home evening we did Fathers Blessings for each of the kids. We usually do this right before school starts. I am not sure why we didn't do this then, but 2 weeks late is better than never at all. I am amazed, as always, at the love Heavenly Father has for each of my children. He knows them so personally and they were each given counsel that was specific for them and in line with the school year they are facing and the decisions they are making. It is a great opportunity for service on behalf of Kris who is always willing to give a fathers blessing. I am grateful to him for this and I love sitting and listening and feeling of the spirit as this happens. We had the opportunity to talk with Nate after and he was able to begin to get some answers he has been seeking.
#2- I love my kids. Each of them is unique to this family, they each have their strengths and weaknesses and each of them contribute in a way that cannot be replaced by another. We have a very peaceful home. Each of my kids has a way to show respect to their siblings and to their parents. Do we have arguments? yep, do we raise voices? sometimes. I am glad to say those are not frequent experiences here. I appreciate each of them and what they contribute.
#3This week I got a very part time job....I mean, I could probably do 2 other jobs and still do this one, but it will be fun and will get me out of the house for a couple of hours a week. I am going to be a greeting card merchandiser for American Greetings. I have 5 stores I will be over and I will just have to maintain them and then make sure they are ready for each season and stock cards as needed. A pretty stress free job and very flexible and yet I can contribute a little to the family fun fund!
#4 I am think it is fabulous to have a husband who is always coming up with new ideas. He has planted that seed in me and now I find my brain working that way. Coming up with ideas for businesses. I just came up with a new one this morning that could be a blast, more on that one to come.....but it is so fun to go through the creative process with him and to bounce ideas off of him and to feel inspiration coming! I love it!
#5. This past sunday Kris, Caitlyn and I were asked to speak. Our topic was the song "a poor wayfaring man of grief" I love this hymn. I was so excited to delve into it even further and to go through the process of writing a talk. I love the inspiration that comes and the lessons I recall and the ones I learn. We had lots of feedback from ward members and we were able to invite the spirit and hopefully others were taught by the spirit!
Thats it for my friday fabulous five. I think this is pretty addicting!
Thanks Sara for being such a great example!!

oh what do you do in the summertime, ah, autumn time, well, Winter time...maybe spring time???

If you have followed me on facebook you know that I put a comment out there about what is the point of being a stay at home mom when there is no one to stay at home with. This was a pretty selfish comment on my part. I admit, I am at a bit of a loss right now in my life. For the past 10 years, all I have talked about is staying at home. "Wouldnt it be nice if I could just stay at home all day and take care of the house and be caught up on things?" Sometimes I would say this because I thought that was the appropriate thing for an LDS mom to say. Shouldn't our desire be to stay home and raise the kids and do those domestic things we are taught? But I must confess that deep down I longed for some kind of fulfillment outside of being a mom. I am not sure why. Perhaps it is because I was not filling my cup with the things that were really important, like prayer, scriptures, temple attendance etc. Or learning new skills etc. So I was looking for that gratification outside the home. I think when I began to teach music I awakened two dormant passions that I didn't really realize I had. One was that of teaching. I love to teach. Maybe not in a classroom at a school, but I love to teach. I love to get up in front of people and instruct them. It is like a high to me. I have a secret desire to be a public speaker one day, but I have much to learn and discover about myself before that can come to fruition. The second is that I have a deep passion for music. I genuinely loved to work with my school choir. It was the combination of them learning the music and seeing them excel and pulling off a decent performance that I really enjoyed about my job. It was fun to have classes come through and teach each grade level, but the bigger desire was to work with the choir kids and see them shine. I loved that and I will miss that.
So as I come to this point in my life, many have asked "what are you going to do"? I feel like a high school senior again. I am trying to figure out what I am going to do. I keep telling myself that going back to school is what I should do, but everytime I look at schools and classes, it is like it almost leaves my mind. I can't focus on it and I am very undecided. I refuse to go back and spend money on classes when I don't know what direction I should take. But then again, maybe that is just what I need to do, enroll, and start back with some generals and get a feel for what I want to do?? Feel free to step in and make suggestions here....
I have thought about teaching children's music in my home, like a small theater or chorus and then have like 2 performances during the year. I have thought about getting into wall art and selling that up here. I have thought about many many many crafty things that are SO prevelant in Utah, but are NOT here yet. I feel like I have an empty palette before me but I am scared to put color on the canvass and get going!
So I will keep you posted. Maybe as you read my thoughts, take a moment to leave a comment about what you think my strengths are and what you see me doing just because you know me. Sometimes outward perpectives are VERY helpful!!

Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park

We had the opportunity to go down by Bangor, Me this weekend to Acadia National park and Bar Harbor. It was so beautiful and the weather was awesome! I would love to live near this area of Maine. I love where we are, but wow, nothing beats the ocean when you are a water girl like me.
I told my kids there are varying degrees of water that fill my need to be near it. # 5 would be a fountain or some sort of water feature in my home #4, a hot tub or jetted tub #3 a lake
#2 a swimming pool and #1 is the ocean!
Below is a picture of our tent home away from home. This was a really pretty campground about 20 min from the ocean


Crossing the bridge on to Bar harbor!
One of the mammoth hotels there. I guess there are 2 men that are buying up and building all the hotels down there, they are in competition with one another. Crazy!
One of the funship boats that cruises around with tourists
Now, this is a yaught!! It was crazy big. It even has its own "smaller" boat on the back of this one
Beautiful sail boat near sandy beach
Nick and Caitlyn playing in the tide pools as the tide was going out. Nate and Kris and the dogs were hiking around but they didnt have a camera. I should have had Kris take pics with his phone to upload. Next time I will
Getting ready to face the very cold water. It was about 55-60 degrees but we did all get in and got in up to our necks!
Who needs Ariel?? We have Caitlyn the little mermaid!

I have always wanted to write that in the sand on a beach! :) How corny
This was part of the shoreline that wrapped around sandy beach. It was truly breathtaking!
These rocks had been under water when we arrived at the beach. The tide went out and these huge things emerged!
back at camp. Cooking hotdogs around the fire
Ah...I am truly happy near the water with my fam!
Ok, so Kris HATES marshmellows. Hates them with a passion. In fact one time when I was really mad at him I sat and ate marshmellows right by him just to make him mad and he was so disgusted that he got up and left, so here he is eating a s'more, just to say "I told you I could do it" I hope this doesn't mean he expects me to try something gross like octopus or oysters or some other form of slimey food!
Another of the big hotels, this one sits right down by the harbor
Gorgeous picture of the harbor!
Nick, Cheryl, Caitlyn and Nate by the fountain in the park near the harbor
I love these tall sailing ships. I believe this is one that you can take a cruise on around the islands

More harbor
I thought this was a cool picture of the sailing ship in black and white
And the harbor!
So there were kids catching crabs on the boat launch ramp. We walked down there earlier to let the dogs have a closer look at the water and zoe just walked right in to the ocean over her head. Luckily she had her leash on and we fished her out. I think she would have made it to the shore, but she was a smelly salty dog after!!
At the end of the trip we drove around downtown bangor (the older section) and saw this sign in front of a little Tai restaurant! We thought it was pretty funny and were bummed we didnt have time to stay and try "drunken noodles"

botanical gardens

we found this beautiful botanical garden by word of mouth from our neighbor and ward member.
This is a persons home, they live on about 4 acres and have developed the property into this amazing retreat for others to come to!
Above are some gorgeous lillies
A bigger view of the gardens
The most fragrant lily! Yum!
Fountain in the middle of the center garden

I loved these little flowers!! So beautiful and dainty!
Nate, Cailtyn and Nick sittling on a wrought iron swing before we went into the pine trees
Glass mushrooms in the pine tree pathways
oops, Kris sideways, but on one of the cool swings in the woods
Apparently Nate forgot how to stand straight
another place in the woods to just sit and relax.
a great hammock in the woods.

Kris and Cheryl
one of the many fountains on the property

Caitlyn by one of the bubbling fountains in the woods
spectacular beginning of the sunset
more sunset

more of the lanterns in the woods.
Caitlyn posing on the bench under the pergola
Nick posing on the same bench!!
All in all, this is one of the most relaxing places we have been here. I cant wait until next week to go again! :)

Going Blue

Going Blue
You may have heard about going green, but here in Maine, we go BLUE! Maine Blueberry season is upon us and we thought we would go try our hand at picking them. As you can see above, Caitlyn picked a prime blueberry. They are HUGE up here and they taste so good. So much better than what you can find in the stores. YUM. My hope is that we can continue to pick through the month of August and have an ample stock of blueberries for the winter. I feel like I am going to be a hibernating bear or an ant colony stocking up for the harsh months ahead.
This is Caitlyn, Isak Walker and Helena Walker (our friends from Idaho) out picking blueberries. Helena is from Sweden and their family spent 2 years living there. They used to go into the woods and pick blueberries in the wild. She said they never saw plants this big or blueberries that big either.


I often wondered what a blueberry plant looked like. Now I know and so do you!
This is the field of blueberry plants. The owner of this field takes you to a section of plants marked by a flag. You can start picking there and go down the rows on both sides of the plants. You must get all the ripe blueberries off the plant before moving on. Then when you are done, you simply move the flag down to mark where you stopped so the next picker can come along and start with a plant that is ready and waiting. A pretty good idea I think!!
We decided to pick 2 quarts of berries, so Caitlyn is showing off our haul! Not bad for $7.50
The "Circle B" blueberry farm logo! Nice place, Yummy Blueberries