JESSIE'S VEGAS

    It was an epic Christmas celebration filled with lots of wrapping paper and too much food! Later in the day, I found myself alone upstairs with my father-in-law. I'm guessing everyone else was in a food coma from the buffet.  I hated to see him this way. In fact, in the over 34 years I had known him I had seldom seen him look so downcast. His eyes were misty and his voice shook as he spoke. "Some days are better than others", he said. Of course he had a right to be sad! Losing a child at any age is traumatic. It reminded me of the time I had an 80-year old patient in the ICU. I found her crying alone in her room. I sat on her bed and asked her, "What happened? Are you OK?" "Oh, I am sorry", she muttered as I passed her a tissue. "It's not because I'm in the hospital. I am crying because my baby died." "Oh gosh! That is not an easy thing! Even if it happened long ago. Do you want to talk about it?" "Yes, well i...

Turn the other cheek, rise above, look on the bright side. I had done a pretty good job sticking to all these things during my surprise surgery on my esophagus , trigeminal neuralgia and unexpected time off work.  However, when the excruciating pain in my back hit just two weeks later after a night shift and I could not get comfortable, I admit I was not looking at PINTEREST for “feel Good “ quotes. I knew a kidney stone was trying to work it's way out of my body.  That tiny shuriken in my ureter was the last straw in my life’s haystack.  I was pleading with the Lord to have it pass quickly when I received a text from my RS president. She told me she had been thinking about me and wondered how I was. I lied and said I was good. I  wondered  if a lie was not quite as black in text form. I was still trying to be some type of “big" person. Later, after the stone passed ,I was just so grateful. For the relief and for the reach out from an in-tune person. It made m...

I am eating up all the "back to school" pictures on social media. If I could select a x3 LOVE button I would for every single post.  A lot of days  are the same;dishes, laundry, dinner, dishes, kid's homework, prayers, repeat, oh, yeah...throw in one more load of dishes and laundry. However, the first day of school is full of new hopes and dreams.  Forget the chores, hug your kids a little tighter and then send them off into a prequel of adulthood.   Although, is it really? As I look back at some of my school days, I do not think I have ever been in an environment quite like it.  The language in the hallways alone can only be paralleled in the adult world on a chain gang construction crew.  This was over 30 years ago that I graduated from high school and I still remember the adjective that proceeded most nouns was f***.  Now this word has taken the place of Pronouns, verbs, even the lowly predicate.  If this continues, by the time the next generat...

I am not sleeping. Yes, I know it probably has something to do with my return to nightshift and my subsequent napping most of the day. Still, the house seems like a  quiet graveyard, eerily silent except for the rhythmic snoring from Georgia's smashed in snout.  I decide to trade activities and walk by the TV in the bedroom looking for the laptop and I happen to see that at least Chuck Norris is working out on his Total Gym. "I could work out! I have a Total Gym in my garage. I could even do it in my underwear and no one would know," I tell myself.  The fact of the matter, though, is I am tired, but my eyes simply won't stayed closed.  "Too tired to" chuck it" in the garage,  I might as well write", I concede to myself. I tried reading a book called, "House Rules" and I ended up in tears, which is about as far away from sleep as you can get.  It is about a boy with autism and is just a little too close to home.  The isolation of the fa...

Red-hot candy jello, thick turkey gravy and  sweet yams with marsh-mellow topping.  I wish I had kept track of how many Thanksgivings I attended at 559 Birch Drive.  It was always a festive affair with pecan and pumpkin pie to follow along with second helpings of Grandpa Cleo McBride's "jokes". The joke I remember the most was ,"My wife is an absolute angel, she always harps on me".   What a tru . e blessing it was during my teenage years to have had the fortuitous fortune of meeting not only my future husband, but my in-laws as well.   Ours was a busy family with plenty of kids and my parents were often stretched thin.  What a great gift it was to have this second family in my life at such a pivotal juncture.  The Budge's came to track meets, vocal performances, concerts, sometimes events my parents did not have time for. When Dave left on his mission, I dated around. I was fairly serious with one fellow and his parents even came to the Miss Idaho pag...

We are the Budge's and we have been in the ward about 7 years.  We are one of the oldest, non-Cheerio sacrament families in the ward, meaning we no longer have to resort to bribery to get our kids to seat quiet in sacrament meeting.  Don't get me wrong, we had plenty of those kinds of days.  In our first married ward in SLC there was even a big glass partition behind the back row in the chapel.  It was kind of a cool cry room where you could still see and hear the speakers in sacrament meeting.  Inevitably we were in that room every week.  I remember Dave even telling his friend Brett Belliston, "I won't judge you by your baby if you don't judge me by mine."  Needless to say those early years of parenting were some of the toughest of our lives.   One day my husband told me. "I think they are just getting it out of their systems early. I really think we are going to have the world's best teenagers". For some reason I really believed him and you k...