my happy little life

for better or worse, it's how i feel

the six kids in my family are ordered boy-girl-girl and then another set of boy-girl-girl. this is the second set. kenny, or neenee as we called him, then me on the left, then baby coco. side note: nicole, your obsession with high heels began in babyhood; every picture i have you're either wearing or holding some.

anyway, today i am looking at this picture and longing to re-live this moment in 1984. adulthood is so busy and stressful. just for a bit i'd like to be plopped on a couch making faces with nowhere to go and nothing to do. childhood is so short and precious. then reality sets in and it's never the same. i suppose grant's intense work schedule and my intense school schedule is making me wax nostalgic and wish for simpler days...

the good news is, i can give them to cate. i don't ask a lot of her, i just expect her to follow my lead and enjoy her life and littleness. i like to bring her breakfast each morning. i like to scratch her back at night while she's falling asleep. i really believe in letting the stress of life be put on hold for as long as possible. grant and i were just talking about how much we don't believe in getting frustrated or angry over accidents, spills, and other age appropriate mishaps. oh boy, who cares?!

i am confident that when the time comes to be an adult, she will work hard, keep a clean house, be anxiously engaged in good things, and will always be learning, because that's all she's ever seen. i have faith she'll follow our example and remember our teachings because our home was a safe and happy place for her to grow up.

marjorie hinckley is my idol mom. the book glimpses is a favorite. in it is an anecdote i'll never forget that pops into my head and guides my mothering decisions often. she writes: "one day our oldest boy turned up missing. there were lawns to be mowed, irrigation ditches to be cleaned. the hours ticked away. all afternoon i practiced a speech i would give him when he showed up." well, he showed up to say he'd just been doin' nothing, relaxing at the hollow all day. and marjorie, for some reason, chose not to bust him.

years later he came home during finals week in his senior year in college. he was really stressed, trying to do well enough to get into graduate school, and also things weren't going well with his girlfriend. he took a break to come talk to his mom. he said to her nostalgically: "i had a wonderful childhood...those long summer days, when you could lie on your back in the hollow and listen to the birds sing and watch the ants build their castles."

marjorie reflected as an older mother how glad she was she didn't scold him that day. she was grateful that, "the memory of the peace of a summer day sustained him when the pressures of adult life began to crowd in...there are so few empty summer days. it has never been so important that children have a home that is a place of refuge, a place of peace. i tried hard never to say 'no' to my children if i could possibly say 'yes' and i think it worked well because it gave my children the feeling that i trusted them and they were responsible to do the best they could."

i want to be just like that.

eta: sorry for those who want that book, i linked to the wrong thing above, but i like those quotes so i didn't change it! here is the book on amazon. if you live in utah you can probably find it at a thrift store, although it looks like amazon might be cheaper, ha!

coco and kelly's hair, in two parts.

PART I: AWKWARD CHILDREN WITH THICK AND UNTENDED HAIR

though we were loved, nicole, aka coco, and i were the fifth and sixth children in our family. our older siblings were busy teenagers and i think my mom kind of didn't know where we were for a decade. certainly we were not bathing or brushing our hair or getting dressed cute. that's probably not true, but it feels like it. i mean, someone had to have cut my bangs, i guess...

look at her- even at one she can't wait to get her hands in my hair.

this picture is to show you that we really did look like orphans. also, it's funny. also, grant says this picture is very similar to what nicole posts on instagram of herself now, ha!

aaaannnnd...the lion thick hair and super awkward phases have begun. we look super happy about it. look closely, i am monkey pinching nicole's hand. not sure why, a lot of angst started about that age.

scariest picture of all time. obviously i tried to sponge curler my whole head because i never did get that perm i begged my mom the entire 80s for. i really like coco's lion mane bowl cut.

me trying to use kelly kapowski as a hair resource unsuccessfully. nicole still in her lion mane years. which lasted pretty much her whole childhood. sidenote: this gorgeous lake was a favorite family vacation spot. that makes me laugh so hard i am crying right now.

and this is just plain awesome. a headstand at four? a wife beater and prison shorts? all held steady by the trusty lion mane.

PART II: REDEMPTION

when cate was one, my mom had just passed away. grant was a full time student and we were broke. i was also learning of my hormonal infertility and was gaining weight like crazy. i couldn't afford clothes, and definitely couldn't afford a decent hair appointment. i didn't know how worked i looked. it was a hard time, i did my best. but i was emotionally unstable.

one day a little hipster college student friend of ours, single, southern cali rich, with no job and free money from her parents to blow at anthro and urban stopped by our house. she looked at me in my sweats and bunned hair with bad roots, sighed and said "i would so love to give you a make-over." but snotty like, you know.

because of the timing, the hormones, the good desires i was acting on to not be worldly and not spend money we didn't have on things that weren't really important, and because i delusionally thought i was pulling it off ok, it was probably the meanest thing i had ever heard. i am rarely offended by anything, but that night i sobbed.

something had to be done. nicole and i were poor college girls, but we had good genes to work with, dang it! coco took one for the team and went to hair school. thank goodness. turns out she's amazing. she can do everything with the skill of an artist- color, cuts, make up, lash extensions, anything. awkward no more for the little neglected hair sisters...

our too thick hair has been properly layered. our grown up dishwater blondes have been made just the right shade for our respective skin tones. she has mastered straight and beachy waves and big curls all.

if you have ever once been upset after a hair appointment, don't have a stylist you love and have complete confidence in, or one that doesn't entertain and make you laugh while workin fast, or you just don't want rich hipster girls telling you you need a make over, it's time to go to coco.

she's relocated permanently to utah county. she hasn't chosen a salon yet because she's been traveling so much, but she is doing hair in her (adorably vintage decorated) home this thursday, friday, and saturday. then next month she will announce where she will have a booth. the thing is you'll want to get in this weekend if you can/ need your hair done. wherever she's lived she immediately gets a full clientele and has to turn appointments away. to book for this weekend, email:

nicolereneer[at]hotmail[dot]com.

you will not regret it. plus she can teach you how to do beachy waves on yourself. or give you a brazilian blowout. it'll change your life.

october 1977

this is my mom, six months pregnant with me. i saw this picture for the first time yesterday and i can't stop looking at it. it's fascinating. it has an awesome macrame plant holder. oh, and i am inside that woman's womb. i am having a serious diane keaton/ rachel mcadams family stone moment. that's you and me, kid. (if you know what i mean).

she was 34. i am 34.

i am her fifth child. then she had one more. i got her face, but not her fertility. so with just the face to work with, i'll take these notes: love the make-up palate and bronze glow. big hair works, and so does pink. and i need to wax my eyebrows, her's look super.

mother's day weekend post #3- my mom's strengths

my mom passed away suddenly seven years ago. since then, my dad has moved out of our house in tahoe and so all of our growing up "stuff" has now been returned to us- it's the circle of life. this meant: boxes of all your schoolwork, a million pictures, and especially things with my mom's handwriting on them.

i have a very tall stack of receipts, grocery lists, church flyers, etc. with little notes written on the back of something funny or cute or naughty or smart i had just said. i have an equally tall stack of every little note or drawing that i did that must've made her smile for some reason during my childhood.

my mom had six kids, no time or money to scrapbook or write the stuff in fancy albums, but it was important to her to record the everyday. and when i look at this stuff i feel really loved. she thought everything i did was amazing. and she was a recorder. she wrote down her life. many journals, day books, and letters were left for us to remember her by and piece together the memories of our lives with.

i have some church books of hers (oh boy did she love learning doctrine and finding comfort in the scriptures) and her notes in the margins are priceless. and they say this a lot: "read this to [insert one of her children's names]". she wrote down spiritual promptings and impressions. then she would write what happened because of them.

she kept learning material that she felt was important for children organized into manilla folders and was always teaching whoever would listen. we learned to never be cornered with her- or worse, trapped in the car for a long time! but now i love all of those things she taught me and the lectures we numbered. as in, "oh no, here she goes, lecture #274". all that stuff she was always talking about- the gospel, organization, health- all stuck in that teenage numbskull of mine. those are the things that are important to me now that i'm a mom.

her strength was in correctly prioritizing her life. she knew childhood was fleeting and she wasn't going to be distracted or miss ours. she knew that we were children of god and her time was dedicated to helping us develop our talents and teaching us the right way to live. she knew that this life was a small moment, a time to prepare for a better world, and she threw herself into that pursuit.

life was hard for her too- i know because i am just like her. people who write down every thought they have are typically unable to stop. always thinking, never relaxing, highly over-reactive. she did give me those weaknesses of hers, but it's a fair deal because she gave me her strengths, too. and i'm ok with being anxious if it means that cate will one day cherish all my journals, notes about her, gospel teaching, lectures on health, and yes, even this blog. because those are my priorities, too.

an explanation of a childhood mystery

children in our church sing lots of songs during their sunday meetings. some somgs are for reverence, some teach gospel principles, some are silly to get wiggles out, and some are about the world around us, and the beauty of nature. some have hand actions or sign language or a game that goes along with it.

one of the songs the kids most oft request and sing the loudest is called "popcorn popping". i learned it myself when i was about three, actions and all. it goes a little something like this:

i looked out the window and what did i see?

popcorn popping on the apricot tree.

spring has brought me such a nice surprise,

popcorn popping right before my eyes.

i can take an armful and make a treat,

a popcorn ball that would smell so sweet.

it wasn't really so...but it seemed to me,

popcorn popping on the apricot tree.

i spent my orange county childhood thinking: what the crap does that mean? but here in utah they have these trees, and they look like popcorn when they blossom in spring. i didn't know this till i was, like, 23. someone really should've showed our primary this picture, cause i'm pretty sure we all had no clue. i'm sure we were all thinking like: palm trees and eucalyptus trees and citrus trees and avocado trees do not look like popcorn.

so if you don't live where the popcorn trees are, would you take a second and show this pic to your kids who know the song? i bet they'll go "ooooohhhhhhhhh! so that's what the crap that means" (or something more polite). i know i sure would've appreciated it when i was just a little ctr.

a good song + randomness

my husband loves this song. it is beautiful, and i love it too, but he doesn't let me listen to it with him because i can't stop myself from changing the words and adding a few "doo-langs" much to his great annoyance... i am helpless though. you see, this commercial has been stuck in my head since 1988. stuck! i just have to go low and sing "real fruit juice with vitamin c" every time the music plays. boy, don't you miss saturday morning cartoons? i want one more morning with coco, laying end to end on our burnt orange patchwork couch, watching gummi bears. (all the while praying that mom doesn't wake up so we don't have to turn off the tv and start chores). those were the days.