List of the Happenings of the Tenneys

There has been a lot going on and I cannot even think of everything, but this all has happened during the past week, not in any particular order:

1. Our truck was stolen from Ison's work, which is the hospital off base.
2. We bought a 10 year old minivan that works great and is paid in full.
3. Our fish were sick and dying the same day the truck was stolen.
4. We gave away all of our fancy goldfish.
5. We now have 17 (we had 18, one died) angelfish: koi, marble veil, gold veil, and silver veil).
6. We have our 10 gallon aquarium up and running with live plants and 3 fancy guppies so far.
7. I was sick today and got to watch a couple of our corydora cat fish mate and lay eggs...which the angelfish ate right away.
8. There was a huge storm that dumped a lot of rain on us for 2 days, a rare occurrence here in the desert.
9. Our cat Patch has taken to playing with our bedroom doorknob at 5:30 in the morning...very annoying!
10. Our 1 year wedding anniversary is in 9 days!!! It has gone by so fast! I just love Ison so much and it grows every day!
    

Busy busy

I do not really have any purpose in writing this entry except that I have not written one since April when Ice and I got our table. Since then we have driven to Arizona twice and flown up to Washington state for 2 1/2 weeks. We also planted a garden in our tiny back yard and it is almost time to harvest some of our veggies. I have been told by my orthodontist that next time I go in (end of August) I will be getting my braces off!!!! Hooray! I have started going on long walks a couple of times per week and that makes me feel so good and alert. My cats have been making me crazy by getting on the fridge and eating our granola bars!!!!! I have cooked more meals I believe than I ever have before...one day I made homemade mac-n-cheese, scalloped potatoes, banana bread, and snicker doodles. All was very tasty! Ice and I bought a 2001 Ford F-250 4 door truck and sold his old truck and lovely BMW Dakar motorcycle. Our niece/nephew collection jumped from 7 to 10 with Kayla, Lincoln, and Eva! Yay!

Much has happened and I know I am missing so much. I think I will try for a once a week update, since I know that I don't have the time to do this every day. :) I hope that it works!

A New Tall-Person Table!

Ison and I have been borrowing a dining table from my ex-roommates dad since we moved into our house on the air force base. Not our favorite table at all, but it served its purpose well. Ison is 6' 4'' and I'm 5' 9'' and we both have been wanting a tall table with tall chairs...the borrowed table was short, the chairs were coming apart constantly, and our legs barely fit under the table. Well, Daisy's dad wanted the table and chairs back, so we started shopping around for a nice table that would last us a long time.

In memory of the table that we used for 6 months, a lovely picture of it for you all to see:

One day we went to Furniture Row where they have a store within that sells wooden furniture. There was nothing there that I was impressed by, so we moved onto Mor furniture for less where we found a reasonable table that had 6 chairs and a butterfly leaf and it was tall enough. We decided that if we couldn't find anything else, then this would be our table. The other stores we went to that day were either closed or ridiculously expensive, so we waited until the next day to get a look at what Unpainted Furniture had. We had a winner!!! I fell in love with this table! We were not wanting cushioned seats, due to our cats, but I just loved it with its scalloped edging!

This is what it looks like with the butterfly leaf in place, but it is a little too long to keep that way in our dining area, so we will only make it this way when we have enough people to fill all the seats.



To show the height of the table, and to show off my lovely wonderful amazing husband, here is Ison next to the table. He was thrilled to get his picture taken. ;)


And here is what it looks like currently with the butterfly leaf folded within the table. all 6 of the chairs still fit around it, but it might be just a little too snug to leave this way if we had 5 or 6 people at it. I love it!!


And sneaky Ison got a picture of me sitting at our beautiful new table. I guess he wanted me to have my picture with the table, too.

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A side note: There is a wasp in my house!! Ick! It must have gotten inside yesterday when Ison was grilling our dinner! We had a wasp stuck in our house for 2 months of the winter before it finally died...I hope this one just goes away somehow...wishful thinking...

I'm starting to get on a roll with my blogging! Hooray! Let's see if it keeps up like this now...

A Freezing Spring

Why is it so cold? It is spring and it is the desert, but the temperature seems to be playing some kind of game with me...nice warm days that invite a long walk through the neighborhood to the park, sun shining on my face telling me to get some flowers on the front stoop, and gentle breezes asking to be allowed through the house. This was all done, but then....the frost!!! And the snow!!! The temperature thought it funny that I got flowers and before I had time to plant them all safely in pots with warm soil, I had to cover them with plastic and pray that they would not die. Tragedy happened...all my sweet little impatiens died and were sent to the dump by way the garbage truck this week...

Fortunately, all my alyssum, violas and snapdragons survived this horrible joke the weather played on me and they are doing the best they can through the still cold days that have followed. I only hope that the sunlight lingers on them long enough for them to grow and bloom and thrive...these are the thoughts of a gardener who has a porch the faces the wrong direction...north-east...if they do not grow and I do not have a May with flowers, they might just find themselves in the back of the house to be enjoyed only by me and my husband...

:)

My Mini Art Studio :)

So I am actually updating my blog...is everyone in shock? Well, I certainly am. I am off work for a couple of weeks (one of the perks of working at a year round school) and have decided that it was time to post some updates. I have a lot of pictures, so it will take a few days to get everything on here, especially since I don't want to do more than one post in one day. I have other things to do.

So I love art, as you may or may not be aware of. I have grown up drawing. When I was in elementary school I used to go to a sister's house in our ward and do an art class with a few other girls and boys my age. I loved it! In high school I took several art classes and after I finished my degrees in college, I took an art class at a community college and plan on taking one this fall. I just love to do art! I love being able to create a picture with my own hands and learn different ways of drawing! I am on this website called DeviantART and have an account to be able to post my artwork. The link is to the right of the post, but it is www.enchanting84molly.blogspot.com and I would love for you to check it out sometime.

A couple of weeks ago, Ison and I ordered an art table off of the internet and I was so excited when it arrived! Art tables are so nice to have because they have a lot more surface area than a regular table and they are smooth, which dining tables generally are not. They also can tilt so you have a better perspective look at what you are drawing. Here is a picture of my table...excuse the mess...that room is a work in progress right now.


So I have a nice little table and little stool to sit at as I come up with my amazing artwork! ;) Here is a close up of what an amazing artist's work space looks like:

Impressive, isn't it? I don't have a picture of it, but my art table is close to Ison's desktop computer, so when he is working on homework or just on the computer, I get to be close by...isn't that sappy and sweet? ;) I love it!!!

There is a junior at the high school I work at who does art with markers and my old roommates sister does amazing grey-scale art with markers, so I decided that I should give it a try. I went online and found the cheapest ones I could find, Blick. Mind you, they still were more than I realized they would be, but they are the cheapest ones.


When you go onto my DeviantART account, you will see that my most recent entries are anime...I have always liked the style of anime and have been practicing a lot. I even got a "how to" book that I love and am going through page by page...also practicing my marker coloring skills while I do it. Here is my most recent anime drawing that I am working on shading at the moment. What do you think?


On DeviantART I get to look at many different people's art and decide if I want to try their style. There is a lot of retro-looking art that I really like, but the way they do it is with a computer program that I'm not sure if I want to see how much it is...so I am coming up with my own version of it with pen and my blick markers. These turned out to look more like regular cartoons, but I really like them! The one on the left is called "Curiousity" because she's getting a little too close to a jellyfish. ;) The one on the right is "Gotcha!" ...she was able to catch a mouse! Yes, I come up with silly little scenarios for my artwork sometimes...


Well, I hope you enjoyed this little show of my art. Please look at my DeviantART account, link on the right, to see more. I probably won't be putting anymore art on my blog because they look so much better on DeviantART than on here and you can see a large version of them.

Elder Russell M. Nelson

We had Stake Conference today and Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presided over it. It was so nice to be able to have an apostle come for our stake conference! Apparently the stake that we're in, the Albuquerque East New Mexico Stake, has not had an apostle visit since 1980! Everyone was very happy to be able to listen to what he had to say.

When he stood up and started to speak, I just felt the spirit so strongly and my heart felt so happy! The other speakers (who included the stake president (President Kerns), the temple matron and president (President Wattups married me and Ison), and Elder Web of the Seventy) mostly spoke about the importance of going to the temple and the blessings that we would recieve from going. Elder Nelson spoke about many things, more or less what parents should be remembering to teach to their children.

Here are some of the main points:

• teach on the importance of prophets
• teach the restoration of the priesthood
• parents, help your children love you (he specificly said not to spank or publicly punich your children)
• teach your young men of the sacred responsibility of serving a mission
• priorities are first and formost on being worthy to meet the Lord, even during the hard times today

Obviously I took notes...it helps me to get so much more out of talks, otherwise I would not be able to focus as well. There are also doodles that I did...some are related to what people talked about, but others were just doodles I was thinking about. Becaouse I was able to take notes, I wrote down a few quotes from Elder Nelson to the T. Here is one of them everyone enjoyed regarding how he has been able to know many prophets:

"I've operated on some of them. I know them inside and out." :)

I am so greatful for having prophets and apostles here on the earth today to lead and guide us, especially during this day when so many things seem to be going wrong. I know that Elder Nelson is an apostle called of God and that what he says is truth.

A Nice Surprise

I am back at work this week after a 2 week long vacation, but there is not much to do because the kids are not back until next Monday...that means long, boring days at work. The good thing is that we can leave early if there are not meetings that we need to attend. I left a little after 1:00pm yesterday because I was tired of staring at my computer screen...and there was some cleaning I wanted to get done before Ison got home from work. There were dishes to put away (we actually did the dishes the night before...so proud of ourselves), kitchen counters to be cleaned throughly, clothes needed to be put away in the bedroom and the bed to be made, and there were several things that just needed to be put away in the living room.

I drove home and then when I arrived on my street, I saw Ison's ugly (yes, it really is ugly, he says so himself) truck in front of the house and realized that he was home! Why was he home? He should have been back at work by 12:45... I opened the garage, which I knew he would hear, pulled in and went into the house and looked for him. He came down the stairs and said, "You're not supposed to be home yet!" I told him that I decided to come home early because my eyes hurt from staring at the computer. He told me that he decided to take a free half-day off that he earned at work to come home and clean, but he wanted to go get me a surprise as well. He took the car to go get it.

I had no clue what the surprise was going to be and he was gone about 2 hours (while I cleaned downstairs and ate some lunch) when he texted me saying that he could not find it. When he came home he just told me what he wanted to get me because he wanted to make sure I would like it. This is what it is:
I am so excited!! I want one of these jewelry armoires so bad because I hate having all my necklaces tangled up...makes me just not want to wear them. He got the idea for it today because he noticed that nearly all of my jewelry was laying all over my dresser and he wanted me to be able to put it all up. :) Since he couldn't find it at either of the Targets he went to, we went online and found it on clearance and ordered it. I don't know when it will get here, but I am so ready for it! I even have a place for it to go!

This may sound silly and such a small thing, but I just love being surprised by Ison! It's the little things that he does for me that show me how much he loves me. And what is the funnest part of all this is that I was actually wanting to surprise him with the cleaning myself...