So help me if you touch that TV I will smack you!

So how long has it been since I have written.  Do we really even want to go into that?  What can I say life has been crazy, a whirl wind of a million awesome things!  First of all, my amazing nephew Bryan got married.  The first one of the cousins on either side of the family.  We went to his wife’s bridal shower, my sister in laws and my mom and me.  It was fun having the girls together, just wish that my sisters could have been there too.  Afterward on the way home, Annalee and I took my mother who is in her mid-sixties to get her ears pierced.  All these years and she has never gotten it done.  Can I just say that it was awesome!!  I use that word a lot, awesome, but it was.  And of course I have the pictures to prove it.  The lady doing her ears must have thought us insane at first because the three of us together get a little hyper, always have, but by the time we were done she was giggling right along with us and thrilled to death to be part of the fun and the pictures too.

“So help me if you touch that TV. I will smack you,” just came through the front door right now as my little boy who had been sent outside to pick up his bag of weeds that he left on the back lawn from weeding this morning came in.  Oh, a mother’s life.

Byan’s wedding was sweet and it was at the Salt Lake Temple.  Crazy but Jason and I have never been past the front doors.  We never could make it there together and we had promised each other that we wouldn’t go unless we went together.  Work was crazy and one of the ladies that works under Jason had been gone all week taking care of a divorce that she was sadly going through and it didn’t look like she would be back on Friday for Jason to go.  I didn’t want to break our promise not to go without the other but I couldn’t miss my nephew’s wedding.

God knew this.  Silly little thing but he knew by my prayers how important that was to me.  Long and behold I got really sick the day before and could barely hold myself upright.  Not that you would think that God would work by bringing me illness, but he did and what a wonderful time to be sick.  I was taking my nephew’s wedding pics at the temple the next day.  But that next morning I was completely well, and could go to the wedding but I was like a limp noodle from being so ill the day before.  Jason called the lady at work and told her the dilemma and she being the sweet person that she is said she would be to work so Jason could help me take the pictures.  See, God knew what he was doing when he made me sick and even neater, when we were waiting for Bryan and Karen to come out of the temple afterward, Dallin H. Oaks was there waiting too for his grandson and new granddaughter in law to come out.  Kinda cool, huh?

The Fourth of July came and went.  What fun that always is.  Our little tiny town gets together, the whole of it and half of the world that moved away too, and throw a little carnival for the kids.  The proceeds go to the Scouting program and the Young Women.  It was so much fun seeing people that I only see at the Fourth of July.  It was a nice year having the kids finally old enough to run and play on their own.  Jason does sound for them every year and this year I was busy with our photo booth that they had there.  My ward’s young women were in charge of the rock climbing wall and even though I was busy with photo booth so I couldn’t help my leaders, like the amazing women that they are, just took over and with the cute young women took charge.  Everyone working together makes wonderful things happen.

 

Then this last Saturday, my cute, very serious, little boy Sam got baptized.  It was a very special thing for me to be able to sit in on his interview and watch as Sam answered all the questions to Brother Wright.  I was amazed at how perfectly clear everything seemed to be to him.  He knows who he is, why he is here, and the way to get back home.  Sam has some of the strongest faith that I have ever witnessed in a child.  We tease that if we need our prayers answered to have Sam do the praying because he has a very special connection to God and he always believes, never doubting.  When he walked into those waters, dressed in white, he knew exactly what he was doing and why.

Not that he is a perfect child, obviously not or he would not have been coming into the house yelling that he was going to smack someone if they had unpaused his TV. show while he went outside for a second.  What can I say, he’s still a kid, but I was sure proud of him.

Tomorrow is our family reunion on Jason’s side of the family and I am really looking forward to it and the craziness of it all.  Isn’t that how it always is when big families get together?  I can’t wait to sit around with my sister in laws and talk around the campfire while all the cousins giggle and play.  Life couldn’t be sweeter.  Next week is girl’s camp and chaos to get ready, but I know it will be one of those times when I will be overflowing with gratitude and basking in the light that seems to shine blinding off of my young women.

Summer will fly by before I know it, but hey my memories will be here for me to look back on and school will soon be here with that many more memories to share.

I know this picture doesn't really have anything to do with this post but doesn't it make Jenny's arm look ridiculously huge?  Who knew that my daughter was a body builder!

Miracle of Miracles

I’ve never had my bed call to me more than it did at 3:30 a.m. on Thursday morning and I’ve never had the alarm sound more like a blaring siren then it did three and a half hours later.  That started Youth Conference for me and Jason and my girls.  If you don’t know what Youth Conference is…in the LDS church the youth 14 to 18, boys and girls, from the area get together with their leaders and spend several days doing faith promoting and friendship building experiences.  I’m the Young Women’s President in our Ward so I already was planning on going but Jason got called special for Youth Conference to do sound for them.

Well the day before it all we did sound for Ryan Innes at the Nibley concert for their town celebration.  Nibley is close to Logan which is almost three hours away from our house.  Thus the reason we didn’t go to bed until 3:30 Thursday morning.  Cuss, throw things, yell, oh yes, all those thoughts were going through my head when the alarm went off that morning.  I will admit that I had been dreading Youth Conference all month.  Somehow we were supposed to fit in all of Jason’s crazy town celebration’s and BYU activities that Jason does during the summer and still make this happen.

I wish that I could say that we went into it all at least a little bit excited and that we didn’t murmur at all, but I can’t.    And I really was afraid that we wouldn’t survive, but somehow we did, and quite miraculously, even despite my murmuring, I still managed to feel the Holy Ghost.  I think from the very first reenactment that we did I was drawn right in.  It’s harder to feel the excitement that the crowd feels at anything we do, whether if it’s a concert in the park or a dance with three thousand screaming kids, or even a Youth Conference, because we know all the ins and outs and technical crap that went into it and it kind of takes away the magic of it all, but when President Bailey stood on that ridiculously tall tower in the middle of that field and spoke as if he was King Benjamin from the Book of Mormon I was head and toes prickles.  What a good man who really had spent his whole life serving the Lord standing there playing the part of an ancient king who had served the people and his Savior all of his days.

The Youth were amazing as they always are and watching them play games in the field all 200+ of them getting along and giggling was an amazing sight to behold.  When Captain Moroni rode in on his beautiful horse all decked out in his fighting armor, I barely thought about the time I had spent with him and his wife the hour before teaching them how to hook up his wireless mic, he was just fantastic.  My Young Women spoke later about him and how much they loved that he had written his speech himself and it was directed just to them as if someone from the scriptures knew about their day and their trials and spoke with all his heart for them.  What they didn’t know and what he told me just the hour before was his concern that he could hold his emotions together so that they could feel the spirit.  Sunday at church when we recapped the experience his speech was one of the first things that they mentioned that helped to build their testimony of the gospel and of Jesus Christ.

Friday afternoon Jason left to head back to BYU and I stayed to do that evening’s sound and then spent the time after with my ward around the campfire as our Bishop spoke with the kids.  I crawled into bed sometime after 10:30 but without Jason there I couldn’t go to sleep.  At about 12:00 I heard a truck pull up but when no one came into the trailer I assumed it wasn’t Jason and managed to fall asleep anyways.  Long and behold it was actually him, but before he went to sleep he went back out to that ridiculously tall tower and set up speakers, ten tops and for subs, around the bottom of it for the 4 a.m. morning reenactment.  He wandered into the trailer sometime around 1:30 and then he and I stayed awake for another hour trying to get just the right mix to go with the sound track that the Stake had provided to give it just a little more umph.  We got a whole whopping hour sleep before once again that darn alarm sounded waking us up and pulling us out of bed to that field. 

A full moon was out making it crazy easy to get the generators to run to get the sound up and going and to set the direction of our spotlight at the top of the tower, but it was definitely not the pitch dark that the Stake had envisioned when planning for the reenactment of the Savior’s visit to the Nephites in ancient America after his crucifixion.  4 a.m. hit and it was time to queue the sound of mass destruction on the massive sound that Jason brought but all that we got was a horrible squeaking sound from the generators and the power sending the completely wrong signal through the sound system.  Didn’t matter what cords Jason switched or what knobs he adjusted no hope and still too much moon to make anyone happy. 

What do you do at this point?  I did what I always do when I know so much is riding on us, I folded my arms and offered a silent prayer and so did so many others from the stake who were out there that morning in that field I am certain.  And of course what did I find upon saying amen???  That’s right, the speakers went silent and Jason pushed play and horrible music blared and sounds of destruction rumbled up the hill to those 200+ plus sleeping kids to wake them to the reality of what they had only ever read in the scriptures.  Upon asking Jason what he had done to make it work he said, “I don’t know.  It just did.”

It wasn’t long until ward after ward wandered in, kids tired and startled, wrapped in jackets and thick blankets, their camp chairs in hand to stumble into that lazy field, the moon lighting their way, when Jason came up and wrapped his arms around me and said, “look at the moon.”  It was starting to dip low and in front of my very eyes I saw in response to the Stake’s prayer that morning, the moon set in lightening speed before my eyes.

Pleasant story, you say?  Sweet.  Sure and if that were all that it was it would be good enough for me to tell it, but I know differently.  When Christ stood that morning, the actor portraying him lit from head to toe with the spot light and the lift that he was in towering forever above the trees hid because the moon had set so swiftly, I knew then that it was a miracle and if I didn’t bare testimony of it I would be most hard and inconsiderate.  If those kids don’t know now that God loves them and is mindful of them than I don’t know what further witness could give them that knowledge.  He loved them enough that even though there are billions of people in this world God sent 200+ kids that miracle and that witness of him in the very wee hours of that morning in the most humble and insignificant little field tucked in that tiny little valley beneath the Red Cliffs.

Miracle of Miracles, God never forgets his children, we just have to seek him.

 

Horrible Monster the Stomach Flu

That moment when you wake up from your dreams having dreamt that you had died, some horrible stomach tumor or appendix rupture only to realize that you are in horrible, mind blowing, earth shattering pain, which after a few moments of foggy realization you run lickety split to the bathroom.  And that is how the debilitating bite of the horrible monster the stomach flu starts.

 

Yup.  Need I say more?  I guess lots of fluids, plenty of down time and tomorrow I will start back into things.  I did however, even in the wet noodle like state that my body feels like it is in, mow my section of the lawn that I don’t let the kids do.  The front of course.  That needs my kind of perfection for every car to see on the Sunday afternoon parade route that is my street.  This week most likely they will be highly disappointed, because I don’t care how badly the flowerbeds need edging I am much too weak to give a flying rats bum-cheek and if it wasn’t for the fact that we (both Jason and I and our two oldest girls) have youth conference next week and will miss mow day, no matter how sick I am I cannot let my lawn go that long.  I know, ocd, but we all need something other than ourselves to be obsessed with.

I guess I could look at the pins and needles, or rather swords and cemetars, being jabbed into my tummy right now as something to feel horribly sorry for myself about.  In fact a few minutes ago when I told my daughter Suzy, “Thank you so much for giving me your plague,” I was in reality expecting an, “I’m so sorry, Mom,” but in truth only got, “I told you it was horrible.  Now do you believe me?” kind of reply when I wanted to pout a little.

I’m going to choose however to look at the glorious gift this is beyond the awfulness, I get to spend a whole day in bed, reading a book or writing on my laptop and I don’t even have to feel guilty about it like I normally do all those other days.  In fact I will probably, out of concern for my family’s wellbeing of course, let my beautiful daughters trouble themselves with making dinner so that I don’t contaminate the rest of the family.

You see?  Everything has andupside!  Well time to go, the shining throne in my bathroom is calling me.

Twenty Freakin Years!

I’ve been told that you can’t write about something that you don’t know.  The one thing that I  know completely is love. Almost twenty years ago, just ten more days in fact, I will have been married to Jason, the most amazing compassionate teddy bear of a great big man that I have ever met.  Sometimes I look back on our life and I smile other times I admit I cry a little, because you see, when you have something as amazing as I have part of you is always afraid of losing it.  I just finished reading a book, something that I used to always do but haven’t taken the time to do in quite a while.  It was ridiculously long and endlessly slow but something about it was so beautiful that I couldn’t put it down.  “The Shoemaker’s Wife,” is all about love and loss and part of me when it ended at her husband’s death knew that I would feel just as she did if my Jason every passed away, completely happy in the world and desperately lonely in her big bed at night.

I have a special gift about me.  Somehow I can most often find happiness.  Sometimes the world is hard and I want to cry but somewhere happiness always seems to hold me.  Tomorrow if my perfect little piece of heaven ended I would still find happiness, but I know part of me would be looking through the world in a big bubble, enjoying my time, my children, my God, but always holding on to the time that our eternity would begin.

You see, this is why I don’t read sad books or watch sad movies.  If a character that I will love in them is going to die I cannot read them or watch them because they haunt me for weeks and as my Jenny would say put me into a little bit of a depression.  I think perhaps this is the writer side of me, I imagine everything the whole world as it may be as if it were happening to me.  So if you kill off a beloved character most certainly something of the same sort will happen to my own life.  Hence, the pining away I have for Jason right at this moment who happens to be away at Graduation for the college that he works for.

Last Saturday Jason and I left for California for a few days of alone time.  Youth Conference which we both are going to would interrupt our Anniversary week and the rest of the summer just gets busier so we took the time at the beginning of the month.  It was glorious and well earned.  Twenty years after all is definitely something to celebrate.

Let me paint you a sweet little picture of my married life.  Imagine a girl, now of course she has to be beautiful because that’s how all stories should be, who grew up her whole life dreaming about fairy tales.  Now imagine if everything that little girl could possibly dream could actually come true, because you see one of the best things about that girl is that she can imagine anything into reality.  That little girl was me.  Now, I’m not so sure if I was beautiful, but in my memories I make certain that I am and Jason, well you see he is that prince that shows up in every fairy tale to tell the little girl just how beautiful that she is.  And his arms really are stronger than anyone else’s and he really does protect me and fill my world with wonderful amazing things and bring me more joy than anyone should ever be allowed to have and could ever possible contain.  Every time that he looks at me I am Cinderella, or Belle, or Sleeping Beauty and I really am the most amazing person that anyone has ever seen because even after twenty years he still looks at me that way and somehow, despite the ancient thirty eight years that my kids think I carry I still feel young and light and like anything is possible because I have him, and our California trip only reminded me of that even more.

Our two oldest daughters, Jenny and Nan, have a cute little tradition that they started a few years ago.  Every time that they go anywhere and they see a statue of a big animal we have to stop the car and let them get out to take a picture of it with them next to it and of course every trip they are hoping to top the last one in what animal they might find.  So imagine our delight when just a few miles away we found a metal statue of a great big dinosaur.  Ha!  Top that Jenny and Nan.  Of course the next day we found a few more and had to send them some awesome pictures of just how brilliant their parents were, because we are.

 

 

 

 

 

Ah…California was…well…freaking awesome, and twenty years really is freakin amazing and I am looking forward to another freakin ridiculous twenty years more.

 

 

So of course Jason, the av/computer/d.j. guy that he is had is go pro camera on his head at absolutely the most perfect time on our vacation and got a glorious shot of my bodacious wipeout.  The waves were amazing that day and my body a little battered and bruised for it all, but heck, it was righteous dude!!

 

The Ridiculous Game of Life

It’s blog time.  It’s blog time.  My children tease me that I take pictures of everything.  It used to be that I was some crazy tourist, now however, it is because I must be putting it on my blog.  How can they complain?  They will have a complete journal of their lives because their mother found it fun to blog.  Blogging has got me thinking every week of what I might write here next which has kept my mind open to the simple things that bring me joy and the simple things that remind me of my Savior’s love for me.

For mother’s day my absolutely awesome husband got me a smoker/grill combo.  I watch this show, it has become a wicked addiction, called Dinners Drive Ins and Dives.  How can you not watch something that shows week in and week out all the glorious creations made in a smoker and not want to have one yourself?  And for someone like me who adores cooking, it was a definite must have.  Last weekend as I was struggling to get the coals started and the wood caught in my impatience I poured lighter fluid on coals that I did not realize had started a small blaze brewing in one corner.  What happened?  That’s right…cabloosh!  Let’s just say that I will be growing the hair back on my arm for the next month or so and that I couldn’t get enough cold water on my hand for several hours after without feeling like I was going to go up in flames.  My fingers never blistered and my skin only looked sunburned for a few days but it got me thinking of all of my clumsiness.  In fact my family teases me that I should never handle a cheese grater because perhaps I would grate more skin than cheese.

 

There...have I made you hungry with all my pictures? 

                    Now you want a smoker too!

                         You know that you do!

 

 All my life I have been clumsy and when I was a kid I used to think of that as one more major defect about me, but now I kinda find it enduring.  Strange I know, but it has taught me how to laugh and never take life too seriously and I really like that about myself.  Clumsiness seems to run in my family.  I won’t point out which siblings of mine are clumsy like me, but they know who they are and let’s just say that there is more of us than not.  My mother…the ultimate klutz and I laugh about it a lot.  Her father, my grandpa Hoklas was the king of them all and something about that makes me love him more, because you see, that makes me like him and I loved him so very much and he loved all of us so very much too.

All of us have things about us that perhaps are impossible to change.  Does that make us defective?  Should we be returned for an upgrade?  Absolutely not!  That’s what makes you unique and that’s what helps you see others with kinder eyes.  If earth life was perfection than those that were not would have absolutely no hope and the greatest gift that Christ has given us is hope.

Luke broke his collar bone this week and got a concussion in an accident with his motorcycle.  It kept him asking the same questions over and over only seconds apart for a good five plus hours and the next day it was every ten minutes or so. I worried that maybe his brain would never be right and I tried to laugh at the repetition instead of cry like I wanted to do.  His brain is back to the brilliance that is him but his happiness not so much.  Sometimes I feel like the choices that he makes seems to lead from one negative to another and part of me worries that he’ll have a hard time remembering that we love him and that God does too.  It’s never fun to be the parent when a child is hurting and you have to remind him the consequences that come.  Summer spent without a dirt bike or his skateboard as he gives his head time to heal and his mind time to grow up and become the awesome man that I know someday he will become.  I wish there was a way to let him in my head for one little moment so that he could see just exactly how much I love him and how much I worry about him.  I wish he could feel the love that I feel.  I guess maybe that is what God is thinking when we forget him, or trials come, or he has to remind us to take the better course.  Maybe he wishes that we could see inside his heart and understand how much he loves us.  Maybe he wishes that we could feel what he feels towards us.

My niece Molly had her first birthday party yesterday.  She was all smiles and cheers as she opened her presents and ate her cake and all I could help think was that I was so lucky to have her in my life.  I want my family home…all of them and Cullen, Annalee, Connor, Dallin, and sweet little Molly are finally home.  Oh how I have missed them when they were living in Texas.  The other day Cullen was talking with me on the phone and mentioned that he was having a guy’s night with my brother Brad and I teasingly said, “That’s not fair.  I have no sisters here for a girl’s night.  I should get to come too!”  Of course I was teasing and of course I was so happy that he was spending some quality time with one of my brothers but part of me was really sad too.  I never really got the chance to know my sisters very well.  Kari is much older than me and Jill so much younger and they live so very far away and part of me knows that Heavenly Father doesn’t want us to lose those relationships that maybe we never really had in the first place. 

Well, Jill is at this very second on her way here for a visit.  It has been two years since I have seen her and I haven’t even met my nephew Liam except in pictures and I guess I should just thank Heavenly Father that he is giving us this chance to connect, one of his many tender mercies, but part of me is sad too because I know that it will come to an end.  Time to find a way to get my Jilly Bean home for good.  I miss the chances that she and I have yet to have.

Saturday the girls and I and Sam finished weeding the lawn and mowing it and planting the garden.  Jason spent the night in Price playing a gig and didn’t come home until late morning.  Then we ran up north and got Suzy a new swimsuit for her pool party at school tomorrow and Nan a new dress for promotional from eighth grade on Thursday and ran some other errands.  When we came home I went in the house to get dinner ready and the kids played outside.  When I came out they were all laughing and giggling in the front yard, Jason included, as they took the bat and a plastic ball and played a completely crazy game of baseball with the ball going all lopsided in the air.  Safe from killing a car window, a house window, or a flower bed, and making the game utterly ridiculous and I couldn’t help but think that that was what life is all about.  Old and new, klutzy and happy, hurting and learning, new relationships and cementing old ones, and family all tied up into one crazy lopsided game of life with home base leading back to our Heavenly Father.  It’s a ridiculous game at times, and sometimes very painful too, but it’s worth every strike if in the end we hit a home run.

Love

Love…love has been the word on my mind a lot lately.  How can I love my house so much that I would be happy never to leave it, how can I love the lilacs on my bushes so much that it makes me smile, how can I love my kids so much that even when one of them may drive me insane I still only want them to be happy, how can my husband love me so much that all he thinks about is me?  And of course how can the Savior love me so much that he would give his very life for me and how can I ever show him how much I love him in everything that I do?

The kids got a new addition to our home yesterday.  He (or quite possibly she) is the tiniest little turtle about the size of two quarters and yes my kids, and I have to admit perhaps me, are already completely in love with him.  Popeye as he has come to be called doesn’t do much of anything all day long but walk back and forth in his cage and sleep but I can’t stop watching him.  Ridiculous but true.

My green house is full of tomatoes going to flower and other veggies and flowers all waiting to be planted and I can’t seem to get enough of going out into its warm walls and just staring at all the green things shining back at me.  We’ve had cold weather and the orchards in Santaquin are worried that they may have lost up to 60% of their crops this year.  My little peach tree, come what may made it through this hard winter and somehow has made it yet another year through the frosts and on inspecting the buds yesterday winking back at me were little fuzzy starts of peaches as if to say, “see, I held out just for you.”

This morning I made some crafts for the demonstration for Young Women’s tonight.  Gotta make sure the project works out before you try to teach it to a group of girls.  One of the crafts was a princess crown to be sold at the country store at our stake’s 4^th of July celebrations.  Each ward’s Young Men and Young Women are required to donate.  I couldn’t help but smiling when I got done with the princess crown.  So simple but so cute and all I could think of was that every little girl needed one of those, even my Young Women.  Perhaps if we walked around with a crown on our heads all day we wouldn’t forget who we were and how we should behave and most of all…just how much that we are loved.

You see, it doesn’t take much to see the love all around you.  It’s in everything if you take a moment to look.  I know I focus on this a lot but I would be very unappreciative if I didn’t.  God has blessed me with a very special gift that took a whole lot of years to get and one that everyone really should have.  He has softened my heart enough that I can’t seem to go without feeling all of his love all around me.  I can be in the deepest despair and somehow I can still feel it above all else.  Every year I am amazed when I look back and see the silliest simplest little things that I felt his love in and I am grateful for the joy that I have felt.  How can I not share that when it’s what drives me?

I’m not this great pillar of really anything…just a very simple woman really, but somehow God has been able to fill me with joy that seems to leak out from everywhere.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still just as human as ever, just ask my sister in law Annalee who saw me loose it yesterday with Luke over a stupid little setting on my IPad that he had changed, but despite my gazillion weakness Heavenly Father has given me one constant that seems to run my life and bring grace to a rather average mundane day.  If this was all the joy that I would ever receive in this life or the next it would be more than enough, but the great thing is, is that it doesn’t even come close to what will come.

What a great blessing we have in knowing that God lives and that his son lives and in everything they can’t wait for us to come back to them.  Christ’s whole purpose on this earth was for us.  Heck, he suffered and then died a death that no one else could have endured for us.  We must be pretty darn important to him, even if some of us hide it under layers of hardness and heartache, he still loves us enough to take care of it all.

Okay.  Enough of my rambles.  I’ve got a whole day of finding joy in stupid little insignificant things that warm my heart.  Maybe I will go stare at Popeye a little more while he takes one of his million naps.  Why not?  It makes me happy and I’ve already cleaned most of the house and mopped the floor, washed dishes, did crafts, got kids off to school, organized for Young Women’s tonight, planned dinner, oh and got a grown boy off too work.  Who cares that my face and hair aren’t done, heck I haven’t even gotten into the shower yet and it’s after 10:00.  Popeye’s waiting for me and I can’t wait to see the joy in all of it.

Door to Door Sales Man Season

It’s that time of year again…yep, that’s right, Door to Door Sales Man time.  Could I say that as much as I love spring, which is oodles and oodles I assure you, I hate door to door sales men just as much!  Now where we live in this little town in a little area or community of this town the houses have big back yards, long and skinny, which means that the houses side by side are fairly close.  Ideal for the door to door sales man, and the blocks in our area are on longer than normal blocks.  That’s right when you think trick or treating in Nephi you think our area, or door to door sales in this case. 

                Last year my sweet giggly, everything is always rosy, daughter Nan came running into my room in tears.  She had been outside when a door to door sales man had approached her and she had explained our no soliciting sign on our door and he wouldn’t go away and Nan, who was only thirteen at the time, gave up and ran made dash scarred to death to my bedroom to tell me.  And worse yet the man had the nerve to, after causing my daughter to cry, wait at the door for me and try to push his product on me.

                Well in the hours that followed that first encounter I put up a vinyl sign beside our door, hand made by me in our vinyl machine since I have easy access to it, that read…”No Soliciting at our house and we won’t go target shooting at yours.”  Not very nice I know and completely out of my character, but it was funny and cute and somewhat to the point.  My children should feel safe in their own yard. 

                Well two days ago a certain company, I won’t name names because I am sure they have no idea that their sale’s men are this rauncho and I don’t want to get sued for slander down the road, came to my door.  I opened it and pointed to the sign and he very politely apologized and left.  The very next day someone else from that same company came and I pointed to the sign.  He apologized and said he didn’t notice the sign until he had already rang the doorbell, but since I had already answered the door…I very politely said I wasn’t interested as I shut the door.  Annoying two days in a row but not the end of the world.

                But today was different.  Same company but this time two sales men.  Sam was sick and passed out cold with a fever on the coach and Suzy was in the chair reading a book or something.  I answered the door, pointed to the sign, and went to shut the door but he put himself in my door way.  I politely explained that we were not interested and this was the third time this week that someone had visited here.  He exclaimed, “Impossible.  Did he have the uniform and the orange symbol.”  I assured him that they both did and that I wasn’t interested.  He then said to me, “Why do you have a No Soliciting sign?  Do you hate people?  Don’t you like the world?”  At this point I was surprised and yes, a little angry.  I informed him that without it I can get 10 to 15 sales men a week.  “Impossible,” came again, “You must hate people.”  Then, this is where Suzy laughed later after I had shut the door but I was only angry, he made a crazy face rolling his eyes and putting his face into mine shaking his head he said, “DDDDDUUUUHHH,” in a perfect 12 year old manner(think tongue sticking out eyes rolling like he was having a seizure sort of way).  “Impossible,” was my thought.  Did I really see a grown man do and act in the very way that he did?

                Now in defense of the other guy who was standing behind him I could see the shock on his face and embarrassment and he most definitely wanted to run and hide because it was the most unreal thing that either of us was seeing.  I shut the door in his face and he walked off cussing me and the whole time I was thinking of how mad I was and how afraid at the same time that he was going to smash the glass on my door that I had just shut in his face in.  I called the police.  Yes this very determined Mommy stood her ground and refused to be intimidated.  The nice officer on the phone upon learning that I could no longer see them instructed me to call the company and if they came back to call the police immediately before the opposers left my doorstep.  He also informed me that his wife that very week was having problems with that very same company and was also frustrated that her No Soliciting sign was not working.

                The company upon my call was very polite and took down my information so that they could find out who the man was.  They also instructed me in the future to get the man’s badge number before the conversation started so that they could keep track when the complaint comes in.  They were wonderful on the phone and documented everything.

                Few…Moral of the story?  Don’t really know yet but I know that I will find one.  To the good side of all of this, Door to Door Sales Man weather also means bike weather and soon to be sprinkler weather and camping weather and neighborhood kids riding bikes and eating snowies  in our front yard and playing ball in our back yard all together weather and there isn’t anything better than that…well accept maybe all the beautiful things that are right now growing in my greenhouse weather just waiting for another few weeks to be planted.  Despite it all Spring really is the best time of the year even if it is Door to Door Sales Man season too!