S & M Leininger Family

I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go!

2008-02-09T12:47:00.000-08:00

So we all made guesses about where Bryce would be called on his mission and I've never posted the final list or announced the winner (who was closest) so here it is. (sorry the map picture is sideways, but I'm not going to try to fix it - i feel lucky it's even on here at all)

The guesses were: Dad - Russia

Spencer - Russia (cuz it is orange on the map, his fav. color)

Luke - Kiev, Ukraine

Danny - Taiwan

Julie - New England States

Lindsay - Ireland and Harlem, NY (2 guesses were allowed)

Mom - Argentina and Florida

Chad - Florida

Christy - Chile

Emily - Chile

Katherine - New Zealand

Clayton - Australia

Conner - Brazil

Lucy - Chicago

Camille - Madagascar

And the call is to - MEXICO, LEON MISSION! Bryce gets to be the first one to learn Spanish! So Romanian, German and Spanish in this family. Wow! (Dad and I have been saying we wanted to learn Spanish for years! Dad ordered a computer program - will we do it now?)

S0000 - the place picked that is closest to Leon Mexico is actually Florida! (Steve's mission field - cool!) Which means Chad is the winner ( Florida was my 2nd choice-can I share?)

The BIG PRIZE will be awarded you at Fentons on Feb.16th. Excited?

I Hope They Call Me . . .!

2008-02-09T11:47:00.000-08:00

It's been far too long that a ? filled water bottle has been my lead blog. And so much has happened in our lives (my excuse for not blogging) that I'll never catch up - so i'll just skip to our most recent exciting news (hoping to catch up on other events later - ha ha!)

We have a missionary son again!! You'd think after having two other sons get mission calls that I'd be used to the nerves, the anticipation, the WAITING for the call to come in the mail. Ha! After the papers go in the butterflies in the stomach begin! And this is our youngest child (oh, no - I can't start with the "my baby" stuff - i'll make myself hurl!) From the time they are Sunbeams a little boy learns to sing "I hope they call me on a mission when I have grown a foot or two!", but not until you put in the papers does the reality set it! I hope they call me on a mission - but WHERE IN THE WORLD will they send me???

Here is that boy - no MAN - Bryce C. Leininger, age 18 3/4, - dressed in missionary garb for the mission paper photo. But taking this picture is the easy part. It's the medical exams, dental exam, wisdom teeth (or tooth in his case) extraction, forms and more forms, Bishop and Stake pres. interviews etc. etc. When the final signature is signed and the final button is pushed (everything on internet now) the wait begins - and compared to when things were all done by snail mail - it's really very fast. (we're just spoiled these days)
Finally the day arrives (and my pics are in reverse order as usual) and the call is in his hand. Bryce loves to torment us if he can. He let us get the envelope out of the mailbox because he was at work - but if we even thought about opening it - well I will not tell you the consequences he threatened us with (they could keep him from going on a mission!) So we waited - patiently? until he came home from work. (holding the envelope up to the light doesn't work by the way)
Yes, his father was at the mailbox when the post man drove up to deliver the mail. Here he is proving that it has arrived and he is following instructions to NOT OPEN IT (feel it, steam it open etc. etc.) (Hurry and get home Bryce!)
Bryce does arrive home and then, as planned and in following a tradition set by his older brothers, Bryce takes the envelope and drives away to open it in private somewhere. This is probably exactly what I would do if I was getting a call - so I could adjust for a minute before telling everyone else - but for us!! It's like payback for the hot-chocolate torture on Christmas morning!(drink all your hot cocoa before you get to see what Santa brought!) Arggg - we can't wait to know!!!!
WELL . . . He comes in the door - he is excited, jumping up and down (good signs!) and loves that he knows where he's going and we don't yet!! Finally he reads us the call which has at the bottom Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley's name - probably one of the last groups of mission calls to carry his signature. It's wonderful!

Here is Steve and Lucy's reaction! Hooray, Bryce is going on a mission to. . . . oh I'll carry on the tradition and make you wait until my next blog to know. (which will be right away and be on top of this so it's no fun!)

Found in the Bushes

2008-01-18T10:48:00.001-08:00

My last blog was kinda sappy and made too many people sad so I'm moving on to the here and now. Today Bryce (our 18 year old son home from college and preparing for his mission. He just had his wisdom tooth out and is home recovering. Our idea of recovery is yard work. He can't wait to go to his city job on Monday!) was trimming the huge hedge out front and found this water bottle partially full of a dark yellow unidentified liquid hidden deep inside the bush. Ewwww. After using tongs to extract it I took a this picture.

I have several ideas about what this mysterious liquid might be but my mind tends to go right to the most morose scenario. And I'm way too grossed out to actually unscrew the lid and smell it or anything. It is obviously not just old bottled water.

So maybe like Nancy Drew I'll try to gather information from the many suspects out there. I do have boys and know that often they hate to stop what they're doing to come inside to use the facilities when nature calls - but i doubt a water bottle would have been a necessary receptacle in that instance. So if any of you have any theories, ideas - or confessions - please post them here. Thanks for your help in solving the Mystery of the hidden water bottle containing yellow liquid.

Babyhood

2008-01-13T22:13:00.000-08:00

While I'm thinking about my babies and growing up and all that nostalgic stuff I might as well embarrass myself further and post this little thing I wrote (kind of a poem I guess) about my grandson, Conner. I was lying next to him, trying to help him fall asleep, on the night before his mommy (my daughter, Julie) was going to come home from the hospital with his new baby brother. Conner was innocently unaware of how much his life would change - all for the better - but nonetheless, he would not be the baby anymore. (Sorry Julie and you other young moms if this makes you sad. It's really not that bad. You never miss diapers.)

On the night before

the new baby comes home

your two-year-old fingers cling to mine

as if holding on to something you don't want to lose.

Sleep creeps up and lowers your two-year-old eyelids - you can't

keep it back! Like growing up, you can't stop it, can't keep

it wrapped tightly like two-year-old fingers

now relaxing around mine, and

babyhood drifts away

like a dream.

Growing up or Growing Old Continued

2008-01-13T20:04:00.000-08:00

Luke, 6 months.
Luke, 30 yrs. (i guess i won't be writing his age on the back of his portraits anymore) Here with his wife Emily (forever 19 looking), Spencer (3) and Camille (18mo.)

If you have read my blog in the last few minutes you would realize that I accidentally posted it before getting very far - twice! I am still really struggling with this being over 30 and trying to be techie.

So to continue .... The blogs of those young mothers bring back lots of memories of life when my five children were all shorter than I am and I was the center of the three-ring circus we called home. I loved it, even though I complained too much all the way through those wild years.

My oldest "baby" just turned 30 this month. (yikes!) I can't possibly be old enough to have a 30-year old child even if I was a mere child myself when he was born. His baby picture is a little fuzzy because in those days we had cameras that used film (if you have any, you better save it to show your kids - they will have no idea what you're talking about) and had to wait weeks for the prints to be developed. So I took a picture of his baby picture with my iphone to post on this blog - thus the fuzz.(I love my iphone almost as much as my family - and a lot more than blogger!!)

I think I loved having kids around so much because I could keep pretending I wasn't growing up. My favorite part of the week now is when I help in my friend's Kindergarten classroom. I can do all the things I most love to do with a bunch of friends - fingerpaint, cut things up, glue things on, listen to stories, sing silly songs, build with wooden blocks, wipe my nose on my sleeve and giggle.

Kindergarten reminds me of all the other things I loved about childhood too: pretending, dressing up, playing outside instead of "exercising", tasting something for the first time, building forts, having races (ok, skinned knees, but then someone to kiss it and make it better) climbing trees, swinging, tag, hiding in really small places, watching airplane tracks in the sky while lying in the grass, never worrying about time or schedules (someone will just tell me what to do next) and, of course, TOYS!

I know I have a double standard - I've sometimes told my children (and myself actually) to "grow up" - be responsible, make decisions, think about others, take care of your stuff and lots of other things that I know are important and that we really must do. But my fear is I'll forget what it's like to be a kid and then that would be going too far! That would be growing OLD - my biggest fear of all time - the really big monster under my bed! I don't want to grow old more than I didn't want to eat tomatoes when I was six!

Of course, there's really no preventing the birthday thing - even my 30-year-old son has to accept the fact that he will never again be able to blow out all the candles at once. But do we have to grow old? Thank heavens for grandchildren!!! And thank heavens for their parents who let me hang out with them now and then. With them I can keep pretending!

Growing Up or Growing Old

2008-01-13T20:00:00.000-08:00

Most of the blogs I read are from young mothers. I love seeing the pictures of their babies and kids and reading about their fun/busy lives. I realize I've forgotten just how exhausting and crazy it can get, but I remember enough to be quite impressed that they still find time to blog.

Growing up or

2008-01-13T19:02:00.000-08:00

Blogging Blues

2008-01-08T21:22:00.001-08:00

I sometimes wonder if I will ever truly get up to speed with computers and every other form of technology. If I had a picture of me going cross eyed and pulling out my hair (luckily, I don't) I'd post it (if I could remember how) to illustrate how I feel most of the time when I sit in front of this screen. It has something to do with my age because all my friends (well those who know how to turn on their computers) feel the same way.

But teenagers (or anyone under 30 really) can't understand my frustrations. Their fingers fly over the keys(even if they are microscopic keys). They know short cuts, uploads, downloads, uplinks, weblinks, itunes, youtubes, facebook, myspace, inyourface, insync (oh, i think thats a music group), twitter, jitterbug, subwoofers, - scroll here, click that, hold down the shift/apple/return/delete/F10 key at once - it's so easy!!!!

And they - and all of you consistant bloggers out there - somehow fit all this technological knowhow into your day without even having to figure out how it works first or call the apple support people(over and over), or write post it notes of instructions to yourself, or heaven forbid look at an instruction manual! (do those things still exist?).

So I may never catch up and my blogs may be few and far between. But I do have another site that I can navigate quite easily. It's called myinnerspace. Those brilliant(or not) ideas that aren't making it to this Blog will all be there. If any of you would like to visit my new site and access my unblogged blogs just call me. I do know how to use the phone!

Reflections at Christmas 2007

2007-12-28T21:13:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2007, Conner decorating cookies. Yummy?!

Christmas is a time for counting blessings. Here are mine! (in random order as I'm still a novice at this uploading photos to my blog thing)

Lindsay and Bryce - my two youngest children who were the only ones home this Christmas morning (being the year the marrieds were at the in-laws) and were kind enough to humor us by continuing the hot chocolate torture tradition. (and screaming when they saw what Santa brought even though it wasn't a car or an iphone or anything close to it!)

My husband, Steve. Cyberspace isn't big enough to hold all the things I could say about why I love him. But since my thoughts are mostly all spoken, I hope he has heard them.

Wonderful daughters and daughters-in-laws! Christy was my life-saver with Julie's baby shower and our advisor with nursery decor. She's a great mommy to Lucy and wife to Danny. And she's rocks at Sqeak!

My amazing and favorite (and only so far) son-in-law Chad! I just want to be like him - way cool! So I try to copy everything he does. Now I have an iphone too and thanks to him, I even know how to use it! Chad is more than cool - he's creative, talented, a fantastic dad and FUN!

Clayton! Grandson the eldest grandson. (As he put it, since he is the oldest child in his family and the oldest grandchild on our side, he will be human first.I think he meant a Man, but who knows.) He is very creative, artistic and, of course, brilliant!

It was a blessing to be with the Blodgett family in Utah when Bennett Chad Blodgett arrived on Dec. 16th! It was also a Christmas miracle that he came early enough for me to enjoy being with them for a week after he was born and still make it back for Christmas at home with Dad, Bryce and Lindsay. Thanks Bennett and Julie!

Spencer and Camille! What fun we had with them and Luke and Emily in Dallas at Thanksgiving. It made not being able to see them at Christmas a bit more bearable because we got to hang out with them in their new house in Flower Mound and help them decorate their tree. They are both, of course, brilliant!

My other amazing daughter-in-law Emily! It was so fun to have them here in the summer and I so enjoy going on outings with her. I learn so much from Emily and so does her family! Spencer can sound out so many words now and he's only 3.

Luke - my first born! I'm grateful for his keep mind and love the discussions we have. Here he is probably figuring out the statistical probabilities of how long the star will remain on top of the tree. His mind is sharp, his heart is big!!

My daughter Julie - and my domestic associate! I love re-living my child-raising days through her experiences, and watching her do such a better job. I feel so blessed that she shares with me those big and little moments of motherhood. What a joy it is to see how much she loves being a mom. And she's a great organizer too!

Daniel-son! The Jason Bourne of dads! His mission: get Lucy to take a nap, learn to crawl and be a tie-chi champion. Nothing can stop him. I am blessed indeed to have Danny near by. He can beautify my yard and straighten out my mind in a single day.

Lindsay is a blessing and a joy! She lets us tease her and still loves us. She made us such personal and heart-felt gifts for Christmas this year. She loves with all her heart and someday she'll find someone who truly deserves her. All that sweet goodness inside comes out in her beautiful songs. Listen and be inspired.

Bryce, our almost missionary man! He's got it all wrapped up in a good looking package. But luckily, even having a cute girl-friend, hasn't gone to his head. A super successful first semester of college and filling out his mission papers. Can parents ask for greater blessings?

More pictures of the ones I love:

Grandpa walking Clayton to preschool, Sept. 2007.

In Florence celebrating our 30th Anniversary (Jan. 2007)

Luke, Emily, Spencer and Camille - HBS grad May 2007

Chad, Julie, Clayton and Conner - welcome to the Blodgett's happy home Bennett! Pleasant Grove, Dec. 2007.

Christy, Danny and Lucy - a Merry Christmas in Concord because we can "decorate" Lucy in so many cute outfits! - Dec. 2007.

Bennett - the littlest angle - and his biggest brother.

Lucy! How much happiness can one little body express!

Camille! Loves her babies, loves her stroller, loves her shoes! Could she be any more feminine?

Spencer! To Infinity and Beyond!! I can fly -with or without my cape!

Go back to the top to check out Conner (pronounced Connah the cuddlebug)- who's picture just deleted, which makes me mad at blogger.com.

First Blog

2007-12-26T21:39:00.001-08:00

I'm so nervous. I promised myself and all the rest of my family that I'd blog today. That was several months ago. It's strange that I should be so worried about this written form of communication because I love to write and I seem to have no problem communicating in every other way. In fact, the title of my blog is a direct quote from my husband who claims that I have no unspoken thoughts.

I think I'm nervous about blogging because when my thoughts cross my brain and immediately come out of my mouth I know that they will just disappear into the air and, hopefully, quickly be forgotten by those who may have heard them. And when I "write" stuff for a class or something I can spend hours analyzing, editing, deleting and re-writing before I let anyone read it. (This is a picture of me letting my thoughts out into the ocean where not even my husband could hear them above the wind and the waves. That was before i was a blogger)

But blogging is supposed to be like talking - like a quick everyday conversation with - who?? That's what I want to know. Anyone in the whole world could read my thoughts and they might . . . what? Laugh at me or something? Well, since the only ones who will probably ever read this are my family members I shouldn't care because they already laugh at me.

My husband bugs me to blog a review after we every movie we see. I don't know why, but he thinks I should be a movie critic. Probably just because he wishes I would stop talking so much and just write it down. I can get very opinionated about a movie - as if I really know good acting, editing or screen plays whatever. But I know if a show is inspiring, thrilling, thought-provoking or if I'm just worried about how much longer I can wait before going to the ladies room.

Tonight we saw "The Great Debators" with Denzel Washington. Can Denzel ever be anything but great? One would expect a show about a debate team would be thought-provoking and it was. It was also surprisingly somewhat action packed - the kind of action that I'm dreadfully afraid will result in the death of a main character. But when a movie has me caring that much about the characters then I know it's a pretty good one.

This movie is really too much to cover appropriately in my first blog. So I'll just say that even though I felt a bit manipulated and I could have told you it was produced by Oprah even without Harpo Productions in the credits - I was inspired. The acting was amazing. The points were well taken and I love to see there are still many stories from American History yet to be told - even if they are embellished a bit. I give it an A.