Spring. A wonderful time of year. After a long cold winter the flowers are starting to poke out of the ground. The trees are beginning to wake from their winter nap. The starlings are trying to build a nest in Allan's bar-b-q grill, which is very funny i might add. Allan and the starlings have the same little fight every year...Allan wins of course...the starlings eventually give up and find another place to nest. But here at our house the most obvious sign of spring...The jeep parts start coming, the jeeps get torn apart and rebuilt and the boys are stressed about the time they have to get the jeeps ready for moab. Easter in Moab is an Olsen family tradition going back twenty years. This year is going to be bitter sweet. Nate and Elise arent coming...Nicole isnt coming.. hence the bitter part. The sweet though...Derrick will be with us and Courtney, Matt and JJ. are coming down to spend easter with us! I am very excited to introduce Matt to jeep safari, and show off my grandson of course! I hope that next year we can have the whole family with us! Maybe easter 2012 will be the year my dream comes true. I would love to have all of the family with us in a condo and spend easter with us, and even though Nate and Derrick think our big saturday trails are too "lame" for them, (in other words the trails we do are too easy for them) my dream is to have my whole family with us just for one day! We have a family that come on our trail every year and last year they had five generations of the family with them...I totally envy them! This year will be wonderful any way, with just part of the family. I will enjoy it even though part of the gang will be missing. I will take what i can get! So stay tuned next month for awesome pictures of the beautiful Moab desert and tales of wheeling and sight seeing, with pictures to match! Happy Spring time every one! I would love to hear what every one else will be doing this easter, and your easter family traditions. Please share them!

"Oh no! They are going to lock me up! I forgot to turn in my library books! Oh never mind, i live in Wauwatosa Wisconsin!" The penalty in Wauwatosa for over due library books...not fines, not jail time, not even public humiliation. "If a person shall fail to return books he/she has checked out from the library, that person should return, (Not even MUST return, just should return) their library card until the books are returned!" Seriously? Here in Provo, Utah, if you don't return your library books you get hefty fines and if you don't pay the fines or return the books you may end up in small claims court! or possibly even jail! I guess the libraries in Wisconsin are much more forgiving!

Goldfish. How many of us have gotten them for our children thinking that they are easy to care for, and cheap to replace as they tend to die pretty regularly. I myself have had to flush quite a few! I did not however do something as stupid as this...put shampoo in the fishbowl. Now, I think that any idiot would realize that this would not be in the best interest of the fish. But evidently a dog owner somewhere did think that adding dog shampoo to the fishbowl was a good idea. On the bottle of a nameless bottle of dog shampoo is this warning. "Caution!The contents of this bottle should not be fed to fish." Duh! It's dog shampoo! Not fish food! If you are too stupid to know the difference, maybe you should keep only stuffed toy animals for pets!  

2010's highlight! My grandson!

Hello everyone! I can't believe it is 2011. If you believe all the doomsday fanatics we have just one year left until Armageddon! I myself do not believe this is our final year on earth...but if I am wrong...oh well! . What I do believe though is that 2011 is going to be a wonderful year! (Positive thinking...hopefully it will work!) 2010 had some real low points for me...but some very great high points! The highs so fantastic that I didn't mind the lows! I'm sure you all know what the highlight of my year was...OF COURSE I'M TALKING ABOUT THE BIRTH OF MY FIRST GRANDCHILD! Now I have a question for all of you dear friends. If  I continue writing about the silly and stupid laws and signs etc., will any of you actually read it? I probably wont post a new one daily, but if you do enjoy reading it, I will post at least 2 a week. I guess what I'm asking is...will I be wasting my time? Please be honest, I wont be offended in the slightest. I hope all of you have a wonderful, happy, safe, healthy, prosperous 2011! Love you all!

Thanksgiving, Christmas, NewYears. The holiday's are celebrated in as many different ways as there are people in the world. What makes them special and unique to each of us are our traditions. Most of our traditions are passed down from generation to generation, sometimes changing a bit when a couple marries and meshes their family traditions, or even starting their very own new traditions. In some cases traditions are even..."stolen"...from other families. It doesn't matter where yours come from, it just matters that you make them your own. In our own family we have kept some from both Allan's family and mine...and when our kids came along we started some of our own. I've always loved to hear what other families do that make the holiday season special and unique just for them. I will share a few of our traditions and would love it if you would all share one of yours! Some of our traditions are very simple, for example...we always buy a live tree from the same tree vendor, and we always spend no more than 30$ on it. If you have ever bought a live tree you know that trees in that price range are usually pretty sparse. A long standing joke is our Christmas tree is the "Charlie brown" tree.  Charlie's tree was very sad with hardly any branches and even the single little ornament on it was too much for the poor little tree to bear. Our trees aren't that sad, but I usually throw it out on December 26th or 27th anyway! Probably my favorite tradition takes place on Christmas Eve. I'm not sure how old the kids were when we started it, but even though they are adults now we still do it! After the kids are in their new Christmas jammies, the kids drink hot chocolate while dad reads to them the story book,"Polar Express." and then it's off to bed! One year Courtney even asked for a bell from Santa's sleigh like the one from the story. I think she was testing out the whole, "is there or isn't there," a Santa thing. She got her special bell, but it was difficult trying to find a special enough looking bell to fill the request! This year we have been blessed with our very first grandchild! Courtney and Matt have a beautiful baby boy! This year grandma and grandpa are giving Courtney and Matt their own copy of the "polar express",  and little jj is getting a bell. From this Christmas on all of the grandkids will receive a new bell every year from grandpa and grandma to go with the story, and as they get older the bells will become more fragile and delicate all having the date on them. I hope it will be something they will look forward to! When grandchildren come into new households they too will get their own book and a bell a year from grandpa and grandma. The challenge will be finding different bells for each child every year, but I'm looking forward to the adventure!  However you spend your holiday season just remember that its the little usually inexpensive things that make the biggest brightest memories!

Happy?!? Holidays!

Common sense. Most people have it , but there are other people out there in this big wide world of ours  that have never even heard of it! For this special group of ...well "Special" people, warning labels were created. Case in point, the motorcycle helmet mounted with a rear view mirror. "Remember objects in mirror are behind you." WoW! I would never have guessed that images in my REAR VIEW mirror were BEHIND me!So."" rear view" mirrors are for seeing things behind you! What a concept! Now we know that it is possible to see things BEHIND us, we should  take a good look and see what the poor souls following us are seeing. There are some "Rear views" that just should never be seen!

There are some very special moments we have in our lives. Your first words, your first 2wheeler bike, your drivers license, your first love....your first heartbreak, getting married to the man of your dreams, the births of your children, and now i am very blessed to add becoming a grandma to the list. This morning, November 18,2010 at 3:40am cute, adorable, sweet, smart, etc-etc, my grandson was born. Courtney was so brave and awesome!She dilated from 2cm to 10cm in about 2hours,and then pushed for about 30min and he was here! James John Cheshire. That is his very special family legacy name!James comes from his dads legacy and he will be the 5th generation to have the first name James. John is another legacy name. It comes from my side(Johnson side)of the family. My grandfathers name was John Lamar Johnson.Its a big proud name! Too big of a name for such a little guy so we call him jj! It is very cute and fits him well. I have gotten to hold him a couple times, NOT ENOUGH!,and its heaven! I love the way he smells and the way he crinkles up his little face! I have so much love i want to shower This little guy, and Courtney you cant stop me! Little jj looks a lot like his uncle Nate, and Courtney...in other words...GORGEOUS! And I'm not saying that just because he is my grandson! I am looking forward to doing a whole bunch of spoiling! This grandma thing is going to be the most wonderful thing I've done!EVER! Courtney and Matt are wonderful parents and make cute kids, so i hope they have a bunch more! One of my dreams is to have a house full of grand kids on Christmas eve,wearing the new pj grandma made or bought, Matt singing Christmas carols and ua joining in, then grandpa Allan reading the "Polar Express" while the kids eat sugar cookies and drink hot chocolate. I hope my dream comes true very soon. Well back to the subject...Courtney and Matt and jj are all cuddled up on Courtney's bed sleeping. It is a wonderful picture. Such a sweet little family! I just love them all so much. Courtney and Matt are looking forward to showing the handsome little guy off! But with flu season here they may just have to keep him away from people, but I'm sure they will post lots of pictures on facebook! i am still so extremely thrilled to be a grandma and I'm looking forward to my dreams to come true!

This law comes from the beautiful country of Switzerland.The Swiss have been famous for storing stolen money, art and gold in their bank vaults, NO QUESTIONS ASKED! But they also have a law stating what the bank owners Cannot refuse to store! In Switzerland it is illegal for bank owners to refuse vault owners to store dead relatives in their vaults, provided the period of storage does not exceed 7 months. I suppose after that amount of time the body is pretty ripe and ready for planting....all i can say is...ewwwwww. I hope they are stored in urns! 

It is getting to be that time of year when dads and moms are furiously buying all the fun electronic gifts for christmas, and double checking that the correct amount of batteries for each one has been purchased. There is nothing more upsetting than giving that electronic gadget so dear to a childs heart and not having enough power to make it go! All parents have become to hate this simple phrase..."Batteries not included!". But be sure as you buy those batteries that you read the package, you see on one brand of batteries the package actually says, you guessed it..."BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED!". It is a package of BATTERIES! Are they seriously saying that there are no batteries contained within this package of BATTERIES?

"Who the hell carries cash anymore?"

The mighty dollar. For so long that little green piece of paper was our main currency. Enter the computer age, now no body carries cash anymore. The mighty dollar has been replaced by the debit or credit card. Some places even refuse to take cash anymore!But if you live in the state of Illinois, you better carry at least one of those greenbacks or you may land in jail! An Illinois law reads, "Any person walking on any public street or  sidewalk or visiting any public park must have at least one dollar on their person or they will be arrested for vagrancy and placed in jail." How many of you have a dollar bill on you right now...i don't, but i have a debit card a credit card and even a Walmart gift card worth about 50$. If I were in Chicago I would be arrested for vagrancy! I wonder if some of Chicago's very rich residents, such as Oprah carries a dollar, my guess is if this law were actually in forced the jails would be full of very angry people paying their bail with their debit cards!

The monthly visit from "aunt flow". The Annoying thing we women have to put up with!  The use of tampons and such are just a fact of life for us. But I guess some women are not that adept at using them. The instructions for tampon use found inside every box is pretty funny, unless of course you are stupid and dont comprehend what you are supposed to do. But the last instruction really makes me crack up, the final step of tampon use instruction...."Pull up underwear". Whew I'm soo glad they tell you that...I would hate to walk around with my pants down!