Robert Redford.

I must have fallen in love with Robert Redford during "The Way We Were." Gosh he was beautiful in that movie. Still is, if you ask me. And he has always been one of those elusive stars which makes him even a little more appealing.

I have had some friends and family members say that they have seen him at different times up at the restaurant in Sundance, but I have never been so lucky. And even though I did see him briefly as I quickly drove by him once (I posted about it here), that isn't really the same thing.

I do have a little bit of a connection though. I was hoping it would someday serve me and eventually segway, somehow, to an eventual meeting - but I think that chance has, sadly, passed me by.

Here is the connection (it's a little bit of a 6 degrees of separation story): Robert Redford married Lola Van Wagenen in 1958. Lola's brother, Richard, moved to the town I lived in when I was a little girl, and my parents became good friends with he and his wife. Once they had asked my mother if I could go with them on their trip to Utah to help tend their children while they were visiting his sister and her family .... I'm not quite sure why that didn't work out back then - darn it.

And now, over 35 years later, as luck would have it, my parents' home in Sundance is right next door to the Van Wagenen's vacation home. And even though Lola and Robert divorced a long time ago, it would still put me up in his vicinity ... and maybe I could somehow run into him ... and I'm divorced now too ... and he's old, so I don't need to be someone famous ... well, you see where my mind sometimes goes. Can I help that I travel to La La Land every once in a while?

Sigh.

I recently read where Robert Redford wed his long time girlfriend, Sibylle Szaggars, a German artist (or something like that), back in July.

Sigh again.

But I do like his holiday message: I wish you all love, peace, tolerance, and compassion.

Magazines.

I just LOVE magazines! I always have. I can remember having Seventeen and Glamour magazines on my bedroom shelf as a teenager when my father announced that we were moving to Connecticut. My dad told me that I couldn't take them with us because they would weigh too much.

Oh no. That was going to be hard. So I went through (all of) them and ripped out my favorite pages and put them into files. Then I put the files into a box and labeled it "Model Files." I still have it.

I haven't looked at them for quite some time, but one of my files is for Christy Brinkley. And what I do remember having in her file, is a layout of her and her husband when she was just breaking into modeling. And the interesting thing to me now is that no one ever mentions that husband. Hmmm?

After I got married, my magazine focus switched to home magazines. My favorites are House Beautiful and Traditional Home. I have subscribed to just about all of them at one time or another.

At one point several years ago, I found that I didn't even have enough time to look through them as they arrived so I cancelled all of my subscriptions ... but then I would come across the little pull out cards as they fell out in the check out line and they seemed to speak to me, "Only $12.00 a year - over 80% savings off the newstand price."

And that would get me thinking ... It's only a dollar a month. Even if I just glance through it quickly, it's like entertainment. And I really do enjoy them. I could use that kind of entertainment for a few minutes in a month.

So I would re-subscribe.

Here is what I have learned about magazines though ... they can REALLY pile up. So the next time I decided to rip up my magazines and keep my favorite pages, it was not because of my father's promptings. It was because I had my own home and they seemed to be over taking it!

I took a weekend to really dig into my sorting. I went to the store and bought white notebooks and clear page covers. I sat on the family room floor and had piles all around me.

One pile was for bedrooms. Another for pretty yards. One was for bathrooms, and kitchens, and windows. Another for paint ideas, and craft ideas, and pretty fabrics.

I have one notebook that I call "Whole Houses" ... where you just wish you could move in and stay. Every once in a while, I get that one down off of the shelf and look through it. It's like a big fat favorite magazine that I continue to love over and over and over.


(Side note: I love catalogs too. And I think a big reason for that is because I love photography so much. They can be so creative in catalogs. But do they really need to send you one every other week? Because my catalogs really are over taking my house, room by room.

I had to come to the conclusion - realization, actually - that if I am not going to pick up the phone right that minute and place an order from that catalog, I need to just throw it right in the trash can. I'll miss them.)

Maximum refreshment.

So I just noticed what was written on the side of my McDonald's cup. No wonder they have the best diet coke in town ... it has been mixed precisely for maximum refreshment.

So here's to YOU Mickey D's ... i'm lovin' it!

Creative Artisans.

These two cute girls are Jeni and Sara ... they are sisters. My own sister, Spring and I, had just had baby girls and were shopping at a darling boutique in Salt Lake City, about 14 years ago. Jeni, (the sister with the hat on) had painted a plate with a baby's face on it and birth information: name, height, weight, date - and Spring and I fell in love with it! We wanted one for our babies!

That was when we were introduced to the mega-talented Jeni Gouchner. Just visiting her house, seeing her creativity all around us was a treat.

It has been fun for us to see her "evolve" over all these years and come up with new ways to use her artistry. A few years ago, she started to paint these gourds. For every holiday. She makes bunnies and chicks and lambs for Easter. She paints pumpkins and witches and ghosts for Halloween. Turkeys and pilgrims and indians for Thanksgiving. And SO many cute things for Christmas!

What is so fun about going to Jeni's boutiques each year, is that she usually comes up with something new and it just keeps getting better! I remember the first year she came up with dracula ... and then a mummy! And the first year she started to make gourd nativities and then elfs ... and this year, penguins! Oh my word - the PENGUINS! :)

Some people just OOZE creative talent, and Jeni really does. She has become part of each holiday tradition for my sisters and I. We just love her creations and maybe even more importantly, we just love HER. She is as sweet and pleasant as she is talented ... and so is Sara ... and I don't think moms get much cuter than theirs!

My 15 minutes.

I was one of the crazy shoppers out on Black Friday ... Not at 3:00 or 4:00 am though. It was at a very reasonable hour like 5:00 pm. (Okay, truth be told, Sophie and I did go out to the mall at about 11:00 pm on Thanksgiving day, but we were home in bed by about 2 am. The real crazies actually come out during the wee morning hours and are usually after electronic items like t.v.s, dvd players or X-Box items. We just wanted deals on clothes. Of course most of what we ended up getting was NOT on sale - but hey, we did check some items off of the Christmas wish list.)

Later on that day, Sophie, McCall, baby Libby, and I decided we needed another mall outing to get out of the house and go visit Chloe who was working at a little boutique called "Aerie." They are the equivalent of Gap Body to Gap for American Eagle, if that makes any sense. They sell "unmentionables" for girls and Sophie needed some "unmentionables", so there we were.

I noticed a really cute gal in the store who seemed to be watching us and I thought maybe she thought she knew me.

She eventually did come over and approach me and said, "This is going to sound really strange, but I stumbled upon your blog awhile ago ....."

Say WHAT? Someone is recognizing me from my BLOG? Could this be my 15 minutes of fame that I have longed for since I was but a girl who wanted to be an actress and then a talk show host and then a writer?????

Her name is Jenny, a fellow single mom and blogger. She was absolutely darling and totally made my day! Maybe my month ... or maybe even a longer period of time than that.

So this post is my SHOUT OUT to Jenny - to let her know that I thought that was really, really cool.

She recognized me ... really. What?

Wow. Fun. Especially for me.

HUH, Delanie?

To Gather.

The Sundance catalog has a big red metal sign that says "gather". I wanted to get it for my parents to hang on the wall up at their house in Sundance, but my sister beat me to it. She had the same idea and probably for the same reason that I did.

My mother often uses the word gather and it conjures up warm and fuzzy feelings of family for me. This Thanksgiving, we all gathered up at Sundance for a day full of food, family, and ... not much else. And that is exactly what I was looking forward to. Lots of yummy food, down time, and chatter with the people I love the most.

There are five of us siblings all living here in Utah. There are 29 first cousins, four new "married in" cousins, and now five little second generation cousins joining our group. We are a lot of people to gather together. And what makes it so nice, is that we all genuinely love being together.

My siblings are (some) of my most favorite people in the world to be with - and I know that that is more of a rarity than the norm, and I consider it a blessing in my life. It was nice to be with a house full of family and to like each and every one of them!

Having my hair played with.

Sometimes when I am sitting at the computer blogging, Sophie will come up behind me and start playing with my hair. I LOVE that.

She will immediately start putting it in a braid and I always tell her, "You can braid my hair if you brush it first." That way, I get what I like (the brushing part), and she gets what she wants (the styling part). I think that's fair.

And then Sophie will say, "Okay, but just let me finish this braid first." And then sometimes she goes and gets the brush, and sometimes she doesn't.

After this particular braid - she was really proud of the results and wanted me to see it, so she took this picture. It's a fishtail braid ... I was impressed.

I wore a dark wig to our last family Halloween party and everyone had to do a double-take when I walked in. My sister, Leslie, took a look at me and said, "You look just like me." My mom was in New York, so she missed the party, but sent me an email afterward saying that she hoped I wasn't going to dye my blond hair dark and then asked, "Do you have any idea what your natural color is now?"

I actually got a kick out of that. My mother has really dark brown hair and has never had to color her hair. No grey. Her mother died a few years ago at age 90 with dark brown hair as well. No grey. So Mom, if you look at the braid, you will notice a really dark shade of blonde. That's my natural color! And that is why I like the help of a bottle! ;)

A few years ago I had my hair done and it was much more blonde than I normally wear it. I asked one of my guy friends if he thought it was too blonde. He said, "You color your hair?"

Kudos to my hair dresser, but I had to say, "Yes I color my hair. And I can pretty much guarantee that every blonde you know colors her hair." He wasn't much help.

So I asked a girlfriend of mine if she thought I was too blonde. She said, "Can you be too blonde?????"

Well, alrighty then.

Little things today.

1 - This is my sister, Leslie, and most of her cute family ... I couldn't resist grabbing this photo from her daughter's blog - I LOVE it! (The first brunette is Leslie, then Taylor, Taryn, Tate, Brooks, Jordan, Caden, Paige, Jenson, Brynne, Brigham, Crew, Lindsay, and Kenny. The "daddy" was out on the football field reffing the BYU/UNLV game!)



2 - This is an update on the crazy goodness of In-N-Out ... Yesterday on my way home from work, the drive-thru line was out the driveway and down the street about three blocks - but two cars deep! One whole side of the road was packed with two rows of cars, WAITING to turn into the driveway.

There were three police cars at the end of that string of cars and I recognized one of them, so I stopped to say HI! He said the wait at that point was about 2 hours ... and then another cop said, "It's JUST a burger!!!!! Is it worth it? Let the novelty wear off and come back in a month!!!"

I think it might be a little more than a novelty though. There are some people who do think that it's "just a burger" but there is something about the way In-N-Out fixes it up - the cheese is always melted all over your burger ... the tomatoes are SO fresh ... they put tons of really fresh lettuce on it too ... it's just way YUM!!!!

I drove by today at lunch time ... same scene! It'll be busy for awhile. :)



3 - I saw four license plates that jumped out at me today: POWROF1 ... HELLLO ... PDW (twice - my initials) ... and then ZIPITY.

Hmmm. I wonder if that is a message sent for me - Carry on, Polly. YOU can do this!

'Cause I kinda needed to hear that message today.

Opening day ...

This morning I was getting my diet coke at the drive-thru window at McDonald's, when it suddenly occured to me that TODAY was the opening day of In-N-Out Burger just a hop skip and a jump away!!!! Although it was only 9:55 in the morning, I had heard that they were opening at 10:00 am so I raced over there!!!!!

I got in the drive-thru line right at 10:00 behind approximately 20 other cars ... and then the line kept growing ... and growing ... and growing.

They had actually opened at around 9:30 to start accomodating all of the people who were there waiting - some of whom had spent the night. (I had mentioned to a few people that it would be "cool" to be the first customer at the new In-N-Out, but I think it was only 30ish out last night, so that was NOT going to happen for me!)

There was a radio station there, a couple of t.v. stations, two police cars, LOTS of orange cones trying to keep some assemblance through the parking lot, signs directing people from the main road to the waiting line, and lots of really, REALLY nice new employees out in the parking lot!

No one can deny that In-N-Out hires exceptional employees. Every one of the six that I spoke with prior to my departure with my burger in hand, was absolutely as friendly as they could be! And isn't customer appreciation a dying art, if you will? Especially at fast food places?

I think everyone knew that it was going to be pretty much mass chaos, so they were very well prepared. Part of that might be because there are so many transplants from California in Utah now who love their In-N-Out, and part of that is because Utah folks in general just LOVE food! It's kind of sad, but it's a "safe" vice. (Okay, not if we want to talk about the obesity problem, which we know exsists, and I have heard that Utah is pretty high on the list for that ... but, hey, we also rank #1 happiest state in the country too right???? I guess food can make people happy.) Back to the subject at hand now ...

I sent a text message to my oldest daughter telling her where I was and she replied with, "What?? Bring me one!!!! I'll be your best friend!"

When I told her I was already past the order guy and almost to the window to pay, she said, "NOOOOO! Add it! They won't care!"

And they didn't. How could I not take her a burger after she said she'd be my best friend? :)

Utah ranks #1.

I read an article this week on MSN that ranked Utah as the "happiest" state in the country. Well ... what do you know? How could that not be one of my own happy little things then? :)

Here is a little bit of that article:

Happiest U.S. States are Wealthy and Tolerant

Utah Tops the list, followed by Washington and Minnesota

by Jenna Bryner

Though you might not be able to run away from your problems, moving to another state could be good for your soul. New research suggests U.S. states with wealthier, better educated and more tolerant residents are also happier on average.

The reasoning is that wealthy states can provide infrastructure and so it's easier for residents to get their needs met. In addition, states with a greater proportion of artists and gays would also be places where residents are also happier on average.

On average, well-being was highest in the Mountain states and West Coast states, followed by the Eastern Seaboard and then the Midwest and Southern states.

The researchers note that because a state scores high or low doesn't mean you could pluck out a resident and expect that person to be appropriately cheery or depressed. And not every state in the union sits exactly where you might expect on the list.

"We can only make generalizations about groups of people," said study researcher Jason Rentfrow of the University of Cambridge in England. "These results don't say wealthy people are happier than unwealthy people, (or that) people who live in areas where people are wealthy are happier."

Rentfrow and his colleagues came to their conclusions by analyzing data collected from more than 350,000 individuals who were interviewed between Jan.2 and Dec. 30, 2008 as part of the Gallup Organization's Well-Being Index. The index includes six types of well-being: overall evaluation of their lives, emotional health, physical health, healthy behaviors (such as whether a person smokes or exercises), and job satisfaction.

Here are the top 10 states and their average well-being scores (out of a possible 100 points):

• Utah: 69.2
• Hawaii: 68.2
• Wyoming: 68
• Colorado: 67.3
• Minnesota: 67.3
• Maryland: 67.1
• Washington: 67.1
• Massachusetts: 67
• California: 67
• Arizona: 66.8

Here are a few more points brought out in the article about Utah that were interesting:

Of the personality factors, neuroticism took a toll on a state's cheery count, suggesting people living in the happiest states are more relaxed than their gloomy counterparts. For instance, West Virginia, Mississippi and Kentucky were ranked as highly neurotic and showed lower well-being scores. Utah, on the other hand, had a significantly lower level of neurotiscism than other states.

And ... Ed Diener (a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who studies well-being) points out that Utah is conservative, and research has suggested such right-leaning individuals are a bit happier than others. Hawaii's ranking could be due to a relaxed culture, he said, adding that the three top states may just have strong families and social relationships.

Cold cereal sales.

Cold cereal is definitely considered a kitchen staple, right? Like sugar, flour, salt and pepper? I don't think my kids would survive without a pantry full of these boxes. It's an "anytime" snack in our household.

When I was growing up, my mom would buy good for you cereals. You know, like granola, cheerios (because there was no visable sugar on the O's), shredded wheat, grape nuts, raisin bran ... I do remember a time when there was a new cereal called KABOOM. The box was yellow with a picture of a clown on it.

My siblings and I couldn't imagine why our mother would have bought it since it tasted good - but I guess there must have been less sugar in that particular kind or it wouldn't have made it to our cupboard shelf.

I remember that we would go through the box so quickly and complain that we hadn't gotten our fair share before it was gone, so my mom decided that to keep the peace, she would buy 5 boxes of it and put our names on them. NO ONE was supposed to touch anyone else's cereal!!!!! I know I never did, but my boxes always emptied sooner than I thought they should, so ... I don't know - ?

Now, although I do sometimes hear that same complaint about ice cream at my house, I don't hear it about cereal. There is almost always an abundance of cold cereal ... the good kinds! :)

My poor mom! She really did raise her children in a home filled with consciousness about nutrition. I'm not quite sure what happened, but I just don't share the same enthousiasm for healthy food choices. (Really, Polly? We couldn't gather that on our own from reading your blog.)

As a little side note - I do remember when my rebellion of all things nutritious went a little south. It was when I first left home and went to college. I was able to eat whatever I wanted, and whenever I wanted to. It made me feel like I had finally reached adulthood, it really did. Because if I wanted to eat a hostess lemon pie from the 7-11 across the street from my dorm at 11:00 pm, I could. And if I wanted to eat two quarter pounders with cheese and then walk across the street to go to 31 Flavors, I could. (I would deny that except there were witnesses - you've heard about the "freshman fifteen?" Me too.)

I never used to look at the prices of cereal though. If it was the kind we liked, I bought it. But then I became friends with "Miss Coupon Queen USA" and she told me that I should never pay more than $2 a box for cereal. I thought she was nuts - I was paying $4 and $5 for some of the big boxes! But she assured me, even if you don't cut coupons, cereal is always on sale somewhere and I should never pay more than $2 a box.

Boy, you can learn something new everyday - because I started paying attention, and sure enough! I buy cereal for $2 a box. Sometimes just a little more for the biggest boxes, but often times, even less. The biggest cereal jackpot I ever hit was about a year ago when a new Smith's Marketplace opened up, and tons of cereal was just a BUCK a box ... I went a little crazy.

My kids were in heaven. :)

Crushes.

This is Josh Adamson ... Josh is my most recent crush. Adorable, or what?!?!?!

I tried to look up the word crush in the dictionary and it isn't even listed ... at least not in the context that I am referring to here. Online, they referred me to the "slang" dictionary. I was just wondering where the term originated - I still don't know.

But for me, the word crush means someone you like to look at. Someone you see and they bring a smile to your face. Someone who you just like to be near ... and just because. You think they are cute, you think they are someone you want to know or be with, but not really - yeah?

See, for me, when I have a crush on someone, I know that they aren't really someone that I could, in reality be with. And for different reasons too. Like the crush on the guy in high school, who, for me, was Chip Diggins. (I know, what a name ... Chip Diggins ... it's like I seriously made it up just to make this story sound better - but I didn't.)

Chip was my biggest crush of all time. He took on celebrity status for me. He was tall, had an athletic build, had long dark curly hair, a really cute smile ... I went speechless in his presence. (Hard to believe for those of you who know me, but it was true.) And I think that was because he took my breath away ... I would see him from a distance in the cooridoor at school and go still inside, in anticipation of him passing by me.

I would watch him but then not look at him when he got close - you know, in case he happened to glance at me, and then if I was looking at him, he might wonder why I was looking at him.

There might have been a time or two when I was bold enough to keep looking, and he did smile and say hi ... my heart was always pounding so hard, I wondered if he might have heard it.

I should not even admit this, but I was walking in the school parking lot during lunch one day with my friend, Delanie. I saw his car and said, "I just want to sit in it." She dared me, as she often did, and I decided to do it. I walked up to the car, opened the door and got in. I even took a little something - and I won't tell what it was, I will just say it was something paper.

Oh, I was a crazy teenager - but in a good, innocent kind of way. (C'mon, getting in his car was about as wild and crazy as I got!) I just wish I had gotten his autograph and my picture with him ... just kidding. Sort of.

I have a crush on President Dieter F. Uchtdorf too, who is in the first presidency of our church. I saw him a few years ago at The Festival of Trees. He was there with his wife and I just had to say hello. He took my hand, introduced me to his wife, said how pleased he was to meet me, and asked me about my family. (Now he really did look like a movie star. Terribly handsome, and so sweet.)

But I need to tell you who Josh is, don't I? Josh was in the plays down at the Tuacahn Theater in St. George this past summer. Chloe was in them too, so after we saw Footloose, I went up to him and introduced myself and talked to him for quite a while about Chloe and her plan, and what he had done as he pursued his career in the musical theater world. He gave me his opinions about which direction he thought would be good for Chloe ... he was just darling, and Australian -PLEASE!!!!!

I got a little crush on him. (Josh was the male lead in AIDA a few weeks later. Chloe's friend, Trevor, said, "Your mom is really going to like Josh in this show! He has his shirt off most of the time." Trevor was right.)

I started referring to him as my boyfriend. Whenever I would talk to Chloe, I would ask how my boyfriend was and she would say, "Good. He loves you! He always asks about you and wonders when you are coming back down."

I showed McCall his picture on our camera and she said, "Wow, no wonder you like him! He has long hair and an Australian accent?!?! Which one of the guys is he?" I had to clarify that he wasn't one of the guys I was actually dating - he was in the show. I just called him my boyfriend. Then she said, "Oh, darn it."


But that's what makes it a CRUSH! And crushes are so fun to have. They just give you an extra little happy thing in your life!