So I'm a Sucker for Our Gorgeous Progeny!

Do you think it's okay if I find unexpected pictures of my Vass grandchildren and their gorgeous parents and cyber-lift said pictures to my blog? Oh, I just knew you would understand! Stace and Rich, they say it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission, so with that in mind, forgive me please? I just couldn't help it! Yall are so beautiful! Just had to put these shots out there, kind of bragging to all who read this that you guys belong to me! How cool is that?

The Vass Family at Ashli's 2007 Graduation from Taylorsville HS

Ash and Stace caught being happy!

Happiness is Being Married to Your Best Friend

Our Gang and How They Got Their Names

EDITED: Picture removed due to extreme ugliness!!!!

I really love that Andrea and Liberty have done posts on how they named their children, so I am going to give the official stories on our six. Keep in mind that this is really digging into the past!

Stacey Leigh

When I was a student at Mississippi State College for Women, way back in the sixties, I had a suite-mate whose name was Linda Marie Stacey. All of us on our wing thought it would be really cool to name our first baby girls Stacey Marie. We liked Linda, but we loved her name! So, when I had my little baby girl, I was pleased to be able to name her Stacey. But Jim vetoed Marie as a middle name, wanting to name her after me (my middle name is Leigh). I thought Stacey was an original name, but was very surprised to find many little girls her age named Stacey. When Stacey was just a little thing, I felt so overwhelmed with marriage and motherhood. She seemed to take care of me more than I took care of her. I think she was sent to me for a special purpose, as she is a natural mother and nurturer and has been from the very start. I love you, Stacey.

David Matthew

David has always been my favorite name for a boy. I guess Jim knew that, but right from the start he always said he would never have a son named David. And then he went to flight school and became very good friends with David Dukes, also from Mobile. David asked us if we ever had a son, would we name him David. Yes!!! So, I got my David. I like that David means "beloved." David has always been one of my heart favorites in the Bible. I love the psalms. I am saddened when I think of his first big mistake, Bathsheba, and his second big mistake, Bathsheba's husband. We chose Matthew just because sounds nice with David. I worried when I was pregnant with David that I could never love another child as much as I loved Stacey, but of course I was wrong. I adored that beautiful little blonde boy with the big blue eyes. Now he is 35 and I love him even more. We share so much in our make-up. Jim says my boys take after me and the girls take after him. I think he's right. David, I love you.

Lynne Elizabeth

When I was pregnant with Stacey and David, I knew what the sex would be each time, to such an extent that we didn't pick out alternate sex names. And of course back then we didn't have a way to find out the sex of our baby ahead of time. When I became pregnant with Lynnie, I really thought I was having a boy, so we chose the name Joshua Michael, but just to be safe chose an alternate girl's name. Lynne is the name of Jim's only sister, and my only sister too, actually. We wanted to name our next little girl for Lynne. I just like the way Elizabeth sounded with Lynne, so when our baby turned out to be a little (10 lbs. 2 oz) girl, she was Lynne Elizabeth. Since I have done extensive family history research I have found that my 2d great grandmother was Mary Elizabeth Eells, another was Elizabeth Materne, a great grandmother was Elizabeth Jane, and Jim's 2d great grandmother was Mary Elizabeth Austin. So Lynnie's name has family history significance. We love you, Lynne.

Annie Laurie

When I became pregnant again, I thought that surely this child would be our Joshua Michael, but once again we had a little girl. She was a perfect child - beautiful, the easiest delivery of all my babies, and so sweet and loving. We named her Annie Laurie in honor of Blaine and Clarise Jensen, whose only daughter was Annie Laurie, named after her grandmother. We love Blaine and Clarise. He was our Branch President when we joined the church. He and Clarise are so loved and honored that there are many Annie Laurie's among our friends children, all named in honor of Blaine and Clarise. I am glad we named our little girl Annie Laurie. We called her Laurie instead of both names, but when she started school, teachers called her Annie and she has been Annie ever since! I said once and still am of the opinion that Annie is one of the smartest, funniest and most capable people I know. I wish I were more like her. I love you, Annie.

Joshua Michael

Well, less than two years after Annie was born, we were finally blessed with our Joshua! I always said that he must have needed three older sisters to take care of him, and that's why he took so long to get here. We chose the name Joshua because of the wonderful scripture from the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament - "....As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." We chose the name Michael because that is the name of Jim's brother. Joshua came into this world an athlete, I believe. His greatest moment was when he was old enough to play on a team, and have a coach! I think Josh puzzled the coach, because at age four or so, he was the only child on the team to stand and listen and focus instead of climbing the fence! Joshua has always been a joy to me. He has had my heart since the moment I held him. I love you, Joshua.

Jacob Andrew

When I became pregnant with Jacob, Jim and I knew that if we had a boy, we wanted to have his name go with Joshua. We had Lynnie and Laurie, so we thought it would be nice to have Joshua and _______. We really liked the name Jeremy, but just couldn't imagine a grown man with that name. One day I was reading a story in the Friend magazine to Joshua, and came across the name Jacob. I knew that was the perfect name for our baby! Jim agreed, and the other children agreed. Well, all except Josh, who really wanted us to name our baby Coach. We chose Andrew for his middle name for no other reason than that it sounded nice with Jacob. I really wanted my baby to be a girl, because after five other babies, I was just tired. My girls had all been perfect babies, and my boys had both been little pistols. When I delivered a boy, I was kind of sad at first, but that changed very soon, as little Jacob was the sweetest and best baby any mother could ask for. We all loved him so much, and still do! I love you, Jacob.

More Adventures in Mimi and Opa's Unfinished Basement Home or "Can We Build It? Yes We Can!"

No, this is not the winner of a pie-eating contest! Just Ricky after a marathon spray-painting of our basement home! He did the whole thing in one evening, practically by candle light. Okay, by shop lights..... Thanks, Ricky AND Lynne who did the majority of the primer coat. Yall rock!

We picked up our IKEA kitchen from the warehouse on Wednesday or Thursday. It took both our truck and Lynne's Expedition to accomplish the deed, and we are ever grateful to her for giving us her afternoon to make this happen. And then, boxes boxes everywhere! So we enlisted Dave's help with moving the boxes down to the basement. Again, a major task! What would we do without our children who give of their time and physical labor to help their parents? Our Vasses left for a week at Disney World and graciously offered us their home while they were gone.

We had asked our contractor Carl to give us a price for him and his team to assemble and install our IKEA kitchen. We were excited for that to happen, but unfortunately Carl had a crew member quit, so he was behind on his other jobs and had to hire some new guys who were to do our kitchen. We stopped by the second day to have a look at what we hoped would be our almost finished kitchen and found our workers surrounded by some put together cabinets and in quite a quandary with the IKEA products. They had been working for more than 10 hours already, and had gotten not very far. At an hourly rate, it didn't take us very long to realize that we could not afford to employ these nice men any longer.

The picture above is of the very nice Brent and Chris, who took longer than we could afford to pay. I had a few minutes of mild panic, realizing that the Corian people were scheduled to come the next morning to measure our countertops. Do you see any countertops in the picture above? Does anyone have a little brown bag? I think I am hyperventilating........

So that evening, Jim phoned Carl and said we would finish the kitchen cabinets ourselves. Can we build it? Yes We Can! So I went on You Tube looking for some videos of maybe cabinets being assembled, and what a surprise! There are a bizillion videos on You Tube which come up when you type in IKEA. Some of them are very nice. Some of them use the naughty words in the their titles. But Jim read all the literature we received from IKEA, and the explanations really are easy to understand, so as Bob the Builder (I mean Mimi and Opa) say, Yes We Can!

Yesterday the laminate (Pergo) was installed in our kitchen and water closet. That's pretty neat. We enjoyed looking at it for about five minutes before we started moving all the cabinets, boxes, table saw, wheelbarrow, etc. into the kitchen, because Monday our carpeting will be installed. Today Opa and I enjoyed (?) our fourth time to install tile! We did three rooms in our home in Mobile (which still hasn't sold) . It really was pretty fun, and I even got some pictures! Check out these next two, which are of our adventures tiling. I did the mudding, Opa did the laying, and we finished it in record time, considering that Opa had to go back to Home Depot for more mud.

So what happens next? As I said, Monday the carpet will be installed, and Brother Peterson will come and put in our Toilet!!!!! Tuesday our appliances will be delivered (after us changing the date three times), and sometime during that time, we hope to finish doing our kitchen. And our closet, also IKEA components. Oh yes, and our bathroom vanity. And Wednesday, we will finally be measured for countertops. Add to that trying to go through our boxes to decide what we will put in a yard sale, and being in charge of the Ward Ice Cream Social and Family Talent Show on Friday evening, which is also our Tyler's birthday, and me leaving for Mobile the following Tuesday, which is also Dave's birthday, and so I'm still sort of hyperventilating. Wish us luck!

addendum: Opa suggests that next time I get Chelsea to write my blog entry for me. Looks like I'm not the only one impressed with Chelsea's writing style!
see http://theparkesfamily.blogspot.com

Apartment Update - Tuesday Morning

Well, folks, it seems that all of a sudden things are happening FAST! Yesterday Lynne and Ricky finished the primer coat of paint in our basement apartment. I cannot believe just have fast those two can paint! We have had some problems with our painting equipment since making the decision to paint the apartment ourselves, rather than hire the job out. We did great the first day with our Wagner Paint Crew Machine. Then day 2 the machine pretty much crashed, leaving us with a big job to do and no way to do it. Yesterday we purchased another Wagner machine, this one an automatic paint roller apparatus, and Lynne went to town with it. I received three phone calls yesterday letting us know that things are moving along quickly: 1) Our bank of lights for over the vanity are ready for pick-up, 2) Our tub surround and shower are ready for installation, and the installers will be here this morning to do that job! and 3) Our kitchen cabinets, etc, are waiting for pickup from the IKEA warehouse in Salt Lake. Also, our Utah contractor, whom we refer to as "Little Carl" (to differentiate him from Carl our Mobile contractor) emailed us yesterday that he and his crew will install our kitchen next Tuesday or Wednesday, which is a giant load of our shoulders. The people from Aspen Co. called to set up a time to come and measure for the countertops. Our flooring is ready for installation..... I will finish priming the wood trim around the doors, then Jim and I will go pick up a rental paint machine from Home Depot as well as our paint, and then this evening or tomorrow we will paint. Here are some

pictures of the apartment, primed and ready for paint.

Our Cups Runneth Over

This past weekend was General Conference, and as many of you, Jim and I feel so blessed to have been able to partake of the spirit of those meetings. Sunday morning session was especially wonderful, particularly hearing our beloved prophet give his address, and witness the mantle of the prophet on this great man. We love, honor, and sustain President Thomas S. Monson, as well as the other members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It was interesting to see Elder Christofferson be sustained as the newest member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, remembering that he was the general authority assigned to Mobile Alabama Stake to reorganize the Stake Presidency in 1998 when Jim was released as president of that stake. Lynne and I served lunch to Elder Christofferson and enjoyed sharing that meal with him. I don't remember what we served, but I do know that the meal ended with Lynne's famous Key Lime Pie, which was delicious as always! I reminded Jim of that occasion, and remembered that many years ago we had the opportunity to have Elder Richard G. Scott in our home for a meal. He was a Regional Representative at the time, just passing through, and we enjoyed his sweet spirit that evening. I remember that he spent time with little Davy, drawing some pictures for him.

I digress, as usual! My intention in this post was to mention something President Monson said in his address Sunday morning that really hit home with me. The texts of the conference addresses are not online as of yet, so I will try to paraphrase as best I can. He mentioned that "our Father in Heaven loves us, each one. Mortality is a period of testing. In order to be tested, we must sometimes face challanges and difficulties. At times there appears to be no light at the tunnels end. No dawn to break the night's darkness. We feel surrounded by disappointment... Is there no balm in Gilead? We are inclined to view our own personal misfortunes through the distorted prism of pessimism. We feel abandoned, heartbroken, alone. Turn to Heavenly Father in faith. He will lift you and guide you. He will not always take our afflictions from us, but he will comfort and lead us with love through whatever storm we face." I thought of our challanges and difficulties we have faced over the last few months. Our home in Mobile has been on the market for over a year now. While renovating our home, we placed our trust in a contractor who did not live up to that trust. We have had some setbacks as we try to finish our basement apartment. We have had some health issues. Listening to President Monson, the Spirit bore witness to me of the personal application of President Monson's prophetic message. I know that as we face challanges, Heavenly Father will lift us and guide us.

Jim and I have so many blessings, so much for which to be thankful. The natural man in me sometimes tends to forget all we have been given and to dwell on our problems. I hope that by reflecting on the prophetic messages of conference, I will continue to be lifted up and to always remember that stumbling blocks are only small things. Our blessings so greatly outweigh them. Truly our cups runneth over.

Creative Camera Work!

I am proud to say that our children are some good photographers! Case in point? Check out their blogs... (see sidebar). I decided to change the photo on our title, and when Opa saw me hard at work, he asked for me to use a beautiful photograph that Lynne took on the occasion of a Benham family trip up Provo Canyon last fall. I hope that she doesn't mind, but I went ahead and uploaded the picture and it certainly is lovely. Lynne, we hope you don't mind our borrowing your camera work to enhance our blog..... For other examples of great pictures, check out those featured on the sidebar. Dave took all of the shots of our beautiful Utah scenery, with the exception of the last scenic shot, of a rainbow at Josh and Amanda's wedding. That one was taken by Jacob's sweetheart, Sheree, who is studying photography at University of South Alabama. Opa and I are appreciative of all our children, official and unofficial who share their talents to enhance our blog. We love yall!