Desperate Measures!

DSC05239This is an Ice Cream Roller.

If you’d like one, I don’t know for sure where you could get one. I don’t think they make them anymore. We got it from a family we lived by years ago. We have used it off and on. The Ice Cream Roller has two containers, an inner container and the outer one you see. What you do is put the ingredients to make ice cream in the inner container. Then you put that container inside the outer container, and in the space between them you put ice and salt. Then you roll it back and forth between two or more people. It is a fun thing to do as a family. After a while, you open it up and eat the tasty treat. Yum!

Now for the “Desperate Measures” part of the story. Sometimes you just need some yummy ice cream a little faster. Sometimes you’re desperate for it, but you just don’t have the strength to work for it. My cute little darlin came up with a great idea. He decided to use the treadmill to make the ice cream. I bet you’ve never heard that before. He put the roller on the treadmill, started it up and put something at the back end of the treadmill to stop the Ice Cream Roller from rolling off the treadmill. There it was just rolling and rolling while we did other things. After a short time our delicious treat was ready and our taste buds were in heaven.

Desperate times call for desperate measures!

 

4th Blogiversary!!

Today is my 4th Blogiversary!! 

I have had so much fun sharing myself, my life experiences, my family and my loves with each of you. I hope “our joyful nest” continues to be a happy place to be, for those who visit. Thank you so much for the visiting and supporting me.

I hope you will continue to visit.

I wouldn’t mind if you left a comment too! (hint, hint)

Here’s some stats!

Top Five blog posts:

1-Love the Candy Bar Poster!

2-My Cold Hot Water Bottle! (If you can believe it. I am so surprised)

3-Family History Friday: Inventory Sheet!

4-Family History Friday: Immigration!

5-My Favorite Planner!

Top Four People who read my blog: 

1-My Momma!

2-My Daddy! 

3-Janet!

4-All the wonderful others!

Top five states who have visited my blog:

1-Utah

2-California

3-Arizona

4-Texas

5-Washington

Top Five countries who have visited my blog:

1-USA

2-Canada

3-United Kingdom

4-India

5-South Africa

Happy Blogiversary…happy blogiversary…happy blogiversary, happy blogiversary!!

Grant is Great!!

 

This is my little brother Grant, and his sweet wife, Kammy.

Grant had a birthday a few days ago.

I was thinking about what a cute little brother he was. When he was a little guy, maybe 1 1/2 to 2 years old, he tried to run away from home. We lived in the little white house that I call my second home.

I really don’t think he was running away, I don’t know where he was going, neither did he. He must have had places to discover.

One night in the middle of the night he climbed out of his crib, and walked out the door. It was winter time. We lived in the country with very few homes nearby. He started walking down the road in his little footed pajamas. He had walked about a quarter mile down the road when one of the neighbor girls drove up the street coming home from a date. At about that same time little Grant was tottling down the street, it started to snow. So in the middle of the night my parents get a call from the neighbors saying they found a little boy wandering down the road, and wondered if they were missing a child.

They checked Grant’s crib and sure enough, he was missing. Our family had been blessed with a miracle. Our little brother and my parents baby had been rescued from certain death. If our neighbor had not come up the street at that moment, Grant would have continued to walk on with no idea where home was. If he walked and the snow kept falling his little footprints would have disappeared in the night and we might not be have been able to find him, when we discovered him missing.

I am sure that my mom and dad held him close when they got him home, and said a prayer of thanksgiving.

I am so glad my cute little brother Grant is a great son, brother, husband and daddy to his four wonderful kids. Grant is really great! I love him.

Sunday Best!

 “The Sabbath is a holy day in which to do worthy and holy things. Abstinence from work and recreation is important, but insufficient. The Sabbath calls for constructive thoughts and acts, and if one merely lounges about doing nothing on the Sabbath, he is breaking it. To observe it, one will be on his knees in prayer, preparing lessons, studying the gospel, meditating, visiting the ill and distressed, writing letters to missionaries, taking a nap, reading wholesome material, and attending all the meetings of that day at which he is expected”  (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball, p. 170).

Hope your Sunday was the Best! Love, Joy

Multiple Personalities and These Girls of Mine

I have multiple personalities.

Only two.

What does this have to do with these beautiful and darling girls?

Well, all of my life I have struggled with these two sides to me. My two personalities.

First of all, I am silly, fun, happy, energetic, and I giggle at inappropriate times. In fact, I laugh a lot more than your average person.

Second, I am very serious, ready to learn, responsible, and I love to be alone.

At certain times my serious side gets so frustrated with my silly and fun side. I have thoughts come to my mind like, “Why do you do that? You’re so annoying!” after I just had a blast and maybe had a little too much fun (like that’s possible). Then my silly side gets after my serious side, with thoughts like, “You need to lighten up! You take things way too serious!” It was a constant battle; that is, until I figured it out.

Now I just smile and love all of me. It’s ok to have two sides to yourself.

The girls are both so much like me, except that Kelsey is like my serious side and Emily is like my silly side. (Or at least as of the moment that I’m writing this post.) Which means that Kelsey is always getting after Emily for being too silly. And Emily is annoyed at Kelsey for being too serious.

Now we mostly just laugh about it! Both personalities are needed in this world of ours.

They are both beautiful, loving, wonderful, responsible, happy and amazing girls, and I feel so blessed to have them in my life. I am so grateful for the things I learn from them.

My Second Home!

When I was five our family moved from my first home. My mom and dad wanted to build a home in a neighboring town. Because it would take some time to build the home, we lived in a little house that had actually been abandoned, or at least it wasn’t lived in at the time we moved in.

It was empty and a bit run down.

The yard was overgrown, and the paint on the house was peeling and worn out.

 It had one bedroom, a family room, a kitchen, one bathroom, and a little room behind the kitchen where my mom’s washer and dryer were.

My dad got to work. He mowed the yard, it sort of worked for grass. He painted the wood.

The house looked like a cute little home by the time he was done, and we moved in, all 7 of us. We were very cozy to say the least. In the one bedroom, my three older brothers slept in a big bed. I slept on an old army cot, or at least that’s what my dad referred to it as. And my baby brother slept in his crib. My mom and dad slept in the family room on a hide-a-bed couch.

My dad spent most of his time working full time, working on his Phd, and building the new home. He built it mostly by himself. My mom was a wonderful homemaker. We lived there for a year or so and then we moved to the new home. It is amazing to me how I have so many memories of that house and living there, and I was only there for such a short time.

It was a good home. I loved living there.

Hand and Foot!

The girls, Kelsey, Melissa and Emily, are having a ball playing “Hand and Foot”! It is such a fun game. Our friends from southern Utah taught us how to play it, and it is one of our favorite things to do when they visit. These are the rules (or at least the way we play):

You will need about 5 decks of cards, all shuffled together.

Before play begins, you draw a small stack from one of the two discard piles. While counting you lay down the cards making two piles in front of yourself. If you get 22 cards (11 in each pile) then you get a bonus 100 points. If not you just make sure you have 11 cards in each pile, you may have to draw a few more cards, or put a few back. One of your piles is your “Hand” and one is your “Foot”. Set your “Foot” aside for later, and start looking at your cards in your “Hand”.

At this point you are trying to build books. The books are called “Perfect” or “Imperfect”. A Perfect is when all of the cards are the same thing, all Kings, all Aces, etc. An Imperfect is when you use the wild cards to complete the book. And example is 4 King’s and 3 wild’s. A complete book is 7 cards total. When the book is complete, you stack them and set them aside. If the book is Perfect then make sure a red card is on top, if it is Imperfect the top card should be black.

The game is played in rounds. At the beginning of your turn, you draw two cards. When you have at least 3 cards that will eventually become a book, you can start putting them down and begin building them in front of you on the table. In order to put them down though, you’ll need to have enough points to put them down. In round 1, you need at least 50 points to put your cards down, round 2=90 points, round 3=120 points, round 4=150 points. The person who puts their cards down first gets a 100 point bonus.

In each round you will need to build 2-4 books. Round 1 you need to build- 1 Perfect and 1 Imperfect, round 2- 1 Perfect and 2 Imperfects, round 3- 2 Perfects and 1 Imperfect, and round 4- 2 Perfects and 2 Imperfects.

You can pick up the cards in the discard pile if you have at least 3 cards matching the card on top of the pile, then you get 7 additional cards off the pile, a total of 8. One thing about taking the cards from the discard pile, is that you have to be able to play the card on top. Which means also having enough points to lay down for each round. Also, you may end up with a bunch of bad cards, it is the discard pile after all.

Wild cards are: Jacks and 2’s.

Red 3’s count against you 500 points.

Black 3’s are 0 points.

Ace’s=20 points, 2’s=20 points,

Jack’s=50 points,

7 & up=10 points, 6 & down=5 points.

After you have played all of the cards in your “Hand” you can go into your “Foot”, and start playing them. Of course you want to get rid of any red 3’s as quickly as you get them. Note: you cannot make a book out of red 3’s or black 3’s.

The person who gets the required books for the round and is able to discard their last card, wins that round and also gets a bonus 100 points.

When someone discards their last card for that round, everyone counts the books they have made: Perfects are worth=500 points, and Imperfects are worth=300 points, count them first. Then count all of the cards you have, including the books you have already counted, using the point system above. If you weren’t the one who went out and you still have cards in your hand, those count against you. Hopefully, you won’t have a red 3 (or more). Total the cards and minus that off what you laid down.

The object of the game is to get the most points. So, fun!! I think that’s all, if it doesn’t make sense leave me a message and I explain it better. We have had so much fun playing with friends and also with family!! Try playing a game of “Hand and Foot”, I know you’ll love it!