We (as a family) have always had the problem of word vomit. It happens when we get stressed or mad. We have tried time and time again to stop saying negative derogatory and vulgar words but they just come out. We have tried the quarter jar, we have tried the rubber band bracelet in the end we resort to making up stuff.

So this past week I guess has been a bit stressful for Stephanie so when she sent me this email:

and some one told the translation to the book of ruth in portuguese is pronounced literally hooch… no joke!!”

All I could do was pick myself up off the floor, after almost peeing myself with laughter.

So sorry to have to show you all a bit of our RedNeck side. I hope you love us anyways, we really are trying.

~Sonia

It took me another whole night to find them again, she moved them to one of the other closets where my son had his Army bag and boots there wasn’t any floor space for Marley to lay down that is why she wasn’t in there with them, but I guess she believed they were safer there than where they had been. I moved all the boots out of the way and she jumped in between the duffle and the vacuum and laid down with her kitties.

They are about 3 weeks now, and whenever I turn on the light and open the closet door they start moving around, doing an army crawl still. I guess I’ll just leave them in there and Marley will eventually let them out I hope. Whenever we pick one up and then put it back down, Marley hugs it close and licks it to death. I guess we smell funny and she doesn’t want her kittens smelling funny.

I can’t seem to get a picture with her and her kittens every time I open the door she jumps up:

Hey where did mom go we were eating.

Black one and grey tiger stripe one.

Garfield smelling the light grey one for the first time.

Black one is so cute.

They really do need out of this corner soon.

Light grey one eating the black ones tail.

This one has a cute split lip. It has grown together some since he was born.

I keep saying he for all of them – I have no clue what they are. They tell me I can start feeding them and pick them all up and take them to the vet at about 6 weeks. Our poor Marley kitty is so skinny I hope she makes it that long. I had to buy her some special food and some calorie supplement stuff to get some weight back on her. She hasn’t let me take a picture of her.

Does anyone have any kitty advice?

~Sonia

It comes with a Plastic (no longer a cardboard cutout) template.

A very cool rubber dodad, that you place the fabric on first.

Then you place the metal button part on the fabric.

And then, and then you can push the fabric in and the rubber dodad holds the fabric down!!!!

You put the metal button back on the pushed down fabric.

Then another great plastic dodad that helps you push the metal button back to snap it in place.

Perfect covered button every time!!!!

No more guessing on the shape of the fabric piece, no more trying to keep the fabric in place while you fiddle with the button back, no more killing your fingers while you try to snap the button back in place. I don’t know who the genius is that came up with these three amazing pieces of dodad’s (because I don’t know what else to call them), but I am very very grateful!

This was one kit I didn’t want to loose so I put it all in a ziplock plastic bag.

Don’t you love it when you discover a new easy way of doing things?

~Sonia

She is now in the last half of her mission, so there has been a thinking shift and we are back to trying to figure out what school is best for her to finish up her BA and what she wants to do. Her focus has always been all over the place, that might have been inherited, hehehehe. So I told her to just apply to a couple of schools and then go back to focus on what she is currently doing, whatever happens we’ll plan for it then.

So her pics show that she is still all over the place:

My (Sonia) favorite flower I can never get to grown. She (Steph) says there are open fields of them in Washington State.

I’m going to assume this flower never wants to be pollinated.

She (Steph) is thinking she might survive going to school in a cold weather state (she would have never even considered it before her mission).

She (Steph) says find the frog? I don’t see a frog! I think she’s messing with me.

We are very grateful for the opportunity she has had to go on a mission.

~Sonia

I even learned that while it looks like the bundles above you take a pair of scissors and your cut off the tops and eat them. Then I didn’t cut the tops off and they started to grown straight up:

That just didn’t look right to me, so I decided to do some research. Yes, I’m stubborn and figured I knew how to grow lettuce, well I didn’t. I found this great video that tells you everything then you need to know about lettuce growing:

Like you should plant them in intervals, so that you always have bundles to cut from. Lettuce does turn into that stalk looking thing after a while that means it’s a mature plant and it’s getting ready to give you seed, so that you can plant next season. The key thing to know is that when it is seeding, the lettuce is bitter! So big big lesson bundles of lettuce have short lives, so plant many and plant often.

Lots of lessons learned! Hope this helps.

~Sonia

I guess with her new short haircut and the wind blowing it all over the place, she feels like a Lion! She has always dreamed big, King of the Jungle. I know that she knows that I’m putting these pics on the website so sometimes I wonder why she would send me pics like these:

I’m guess this one she doesn’t care because she looks fine in this pic.

Here I will assume the wind blowing the hair pic again. but to be honest it looks like a cow lick

Well at least her pictures prove that she is out having fun. Her email discussions of the gospel and what she is teaching show her growing. What a wonderful experience we are all having as we watch.

~Sonia

I love the art of creating a unique article of clothing for someone. From asking for their input on inspiration:

To shopping for fabric. This sometimes gets tricky especially if the customer isn’t sure how they want the garment to feel ie heavy, stiff, light, loose. My perfect customer and her mom and I drove to Los Angeles Garment District to go fabric shopping. She had a color in mind and we actually had a color swatch we picked up at our local JoAnn’s. I buy all my fabric from one place. This place didn’t have what she liked, so I ask the clerk if she could get me some inexpensive silk in that color, it wasn’t in the store so my customer couldn’t see it, I turned to her and asked her “Do you trust me?” she said yes. Off went the clerk and came back with the most perfect shade of peach silk fabric!

Now I’m all fired up, Who needs a Dress??

The animals always come when I call their names, so I called her and out she came. She was skinny, I yelled at Randy “where are her babies?” He said what babies? She’s skinny can’t you tell the difference? “no” he replied. Help me find her babies!

We ripped the entire house apart, pulled everything out from under beds, pulled everything out of closets, turned all chairs and couches upside down, and nothing. Like any normal person I sat at my computer and had to post it to facebook, right because everyone needs to know that I can’t find the kittens.

As I sat at my computer desk in my office I start to here crying, little squeels. Where could they be I have 3 desks and a counter high table, in my closet? My fabric?

Yup, that’s where I found her, in one of my tubs of fabric:

Last year I had organized my fabric, by size and by color. She chose the bucket of WHITE fabric to lay in. Because of the fact that I do formal wear, that WHITE fabric is nothing but silks, organza and some damasks. I didn’t even want to pull it out to see what was under her. I just left it and let it be…

The kids love the kitties:

It looks like we have one (there are 4) with a cleft lip.

I’m actually glad that Marley was able to have her kitties all on her own, I was worried about how this was all going to go down, because I have never been around animals that had babies. We have always had our animals fixed, Marley didn’t give the chance to get her to the vet and fixed before she escaped one night and was out all night and got herself pregnant. Plus I’ve always had male animals, Garfield, Santana and Bo are all Male.

Does anyone have some baby animal advice??

“I give up, You must come get your zoo…Bo has gone crazy and keeps trying to eat Marley, Santana ate something probably chocolate and has walked in from outside with hershy squirts all over his furr I’ve had to bathe him 3 days in a row. Then I finally realized why Bo wants to eat Marley She is PREGNANT!!!! And all this excitement is really pissing Garfield off!”

Just in case you don’t know. Bo is the 7 year old German Shepherd, Marley is the 2 year old kitty (which I guess is not a kitten because she can now have babies) , Santana is the 2 year old Shih Tzu and Garfield is the 18 year old old tabby which we have had for 17 years.

I have always wondered why Stephanie didn’t choose to go to Veterinary school, she picks up every animal that crosses her path, it would really save my wallet. And it turns out in the emails back and forth that she has decided that if BYU Hawaii doesn’t accept her, so that she could finish her Marine Biology that she is going to apply to BYU Utah and pursue a Biology degree and be a Vet. It all sounds very logical so we shall see what happens.

Meanwhile I’m still stuck with her zoo, while she is out painting large Book of Mormon’s. hahahaha

It is now finished and has been picked up. I must say it turned out great! But me being me forgot to take pictures. I’m not sure why I always do that. The young lady is going to wear it on the 20th and she promised to tag me in the facebook photos if any good ones show up I’ll do an updated post.

For now I’m just glad it was done and finished because on tuesday I leave for Mexico for 4 days, to sleep in the tiny house where I lived for the first 5 years of my life. Every time I go back it seems smaller and smaller.