Santa??

Tomorrow is our family Christmas party. These are the presents that Grandma has for her grandchildren, and a couple for her kids too I guess. I'm afraid it's going to look like Santa has struck twice by the time we get all of those presents plus all the other presents that will be there. We sure are spoiled!!

Icicles

My dad opened the back door to show me where some stuff is I need, and we noticed the icicles hanging on the house. The are at a 45 degree angle. I guess that means the wind is blowing pretty good!

Day 3

Well, we got most of the floor cut out, but we had to stop, because we have to figure out a way to get the floor out away from the toilet pipe. But here's a picture of the no-floor. Good thing the bathroom isn't directly above the downstairs bathroom. That could be interesting for anyone needing to go.

Day 2

A few photos from todays work.
We had to take the sink and cupboards out today. That was a big task. It took us forever!! Dad tried to use is car jack to jack it up.....broke the jack...oops. I'm glad it was him though!! Finally I just lifted up with my buff muscles, and it started to come up, so with dad and I lifting together, we finally got it out! It was so heavy!!!! I think mom has pictures of us lifting the basin out to the truck. So you can check her blog up for future updates. I'm sure she'll put them up at some point.
This is where the sink used to be.
Here is the bathtub tipped over. It's way too heavy to lift, so we have to bring in some reinforcement. Once we get that out of the way we can tear up the floor.
The first hole into the floor. If the lights were on in the basement you would be able to see right through. Little by little we're getting the thing gutted out!!!

Bathroom #2

What would it be like to come home and not have a project to do?? I'm more than happy to help, because if I didn't, I would be bored out of my mind!! So this weeks project while I'm home for the holidays is to help with the remodeling of the upstairs bathroom. One disadvantage of having so many kids is that my parents spent all their money on us, and not on repairs to the house....however now that the kids are gone and they don't have us to spend their money on, they are starting to catch up on some much needed fix-ups!
The bathroom before I started...yes, that is duct tape around the faucet, and yes, the floor is rotting away.
A view from the front. The floor is pretty bad!!
Me doing some destruction. Don't worry, although I did enjoy a bit of chocolate this last weekend, I didn't gain that much weight. My work pants are just a little, okay a lot too big for me.
The bathroom after I got done with it today. My arms will be sore tomorrow. The hardest part was getting the tile off the wall. I almost made it all the way through without cutting myself too. However as soon as I thought about how far I had made it without cutting myself, I did just that. It hurt pretty bad, but my skin is pretty tough, so it didn't cut deep enough for stitches. It did bleed pretty bad though. That's when I went and found dad's gloves.

I still have to finish behind the toilet, but I got most of it done today. I'll post more pictures as we go along. I'm sad to say I won't be here to see it finished.

Crows

This morning dad came up the stairs with a gun in hand. When we asked him what he was doing, he said there were a bunch of crows out in the back yard that needed to be scared away. So he shot out a "bird shot" I think thats what they called it. Basically it was just a blank that makes lots of noise to scare away the birds.

Later on in the afternoon, he came upstairs with a bigger gun, and a real bullet, stood at the back door and shot again. I guess the first time didn't scare them away good enough. The second one sure gave me a scare. I was in the living room working on Ben's quilt, and all of a sudden heard this loud BANG!

It all reminds me of Steel Magnolias when the dad is out shooting the birds from the trees. Yes, my dad is a hillbilly!

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning I woke up at 7:00 am to talk to Andy on the phone. It was good to talk to him. He has a slight accent, but sounds good. The family wouldn' t let me speak spanish with him for very long. He does a pretty good job with the language. Ben told us that if we didn't stop speaking Spanish he would start speaking Spanish too, and the only Spanish he knows is swear words. Then we waited for LaCee to come from Cedar before we opened the presents. We all got spoiled. Santa sure is nice to us!!!
Ryan and Ben wrestling.
Mom yawning!
Dad in "HIS" chair with his computer. He gets angry when I'm here because he has to share his chair.
A self portrait.

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, we had our traditional ham dinner. It was delicious!! Frank and Bonnie came over and ate with us. I came back in from delivering mom's neighborhood gifts, and she had the table set so nice. Good job mom! We ate way too much food and were stuffed. Here are pictures of Ben and Ryan after dinner.

Gingerbread House

So Susan and Darren dropped the kids off the other day to go out to dinner for their anniversary. My roommate had a gingerbread house kit that she had never done, and was leaving the next day to go home for Christmas, so she told the boys they could decorate it for her. It started off great, but as you can see, it came to an end pretty quick as they started fighting.
After a timeout I let them come back to decorating, and they got along great. Jake wasn't much help, and it made Kevin and Ethan mad. Jake just wanted to eat the candy. He got really mad at me when I told him he couldn't eat the candy. He's a little guy, but he knows whats good.
I came back into the kitchen a few min. after the boys had finished, and found Jake up on the table eating the candy off the house. What a cutie!!

Ryan's Announcement

Ryan couldn't wait until Christmas to share his news with us. He's expecting!!! I can't remember when he said he was due. That's an awesome husband to take on that load for the wife.

Stilts

I feel bad for tall girls. It seems like all the tall guys end up with short girls. I was once talking with my friend Gina who happens to be rather tall about dating. She was telling me about all the blind dates she had been set up on with guys who were at least a foot shorter than her. So for Christmas, I made her some stilts for her dates, so they can be taller than her. It was pretty funny!
Before she realized what they were.

After she realized what they were.
Trying them out! They work like a charm.

White Elephant

Brock, one of the guys in my branch wins the award for best White Elephant gift! He took a self portrait of himself and autographed it. It was awesome. Jamie, pictured here with Brock, was the receiver of the photo. Someone else brought a wedding cake topper....pretty appropriate for a singles branch!

Christmas Fun

For family home evening a couple weeks ago we went and put up Christmas lights at one of the old folks homes here in IF. It was fun, but freezing cold. Above is a picture of me with some of my good friends here in IF, Back: Gina, Me Front: Lisa, Janel, Brooke
Janel and I pretending to put up lights. We just felt cool being on the ladder.
It's true, I do have a roommate. No one believes me because she's never home when they come over, but here is a picture of her. She's great!
Our Branch Christmas party was a formal event. It was lots of fun. Here's a picture of Me, Brooke, Gina, and Lisa.

Friday Night Fun!

So what do I do for fun on Friday nights? Well, I call all my friends, and we put on a quilt!! It barely fit into my living room. As you can see, there wasn't much room to even stand around the quilt. It didn't take us long to finish it though. Now I just have to bind it! Anyone feel like a service project???! :)

Classroom

I just thought It would be fun for all of you to see my classroom. And the cool sign that hangs above my classroom door. It's true, I'm an official teacher! And I love it!

Christmas Candy

While I was living with the Clarks it was always fun to help Susan make Christmas candy every year to hand out to the neighbors. I didn't want the tradition to die, so I spent the day in Rexburg today making candy. It was a lot of fun...but a lot of work. We didn't finish, because by 8:00 p.m. I had had enough of it....and my back was starting to really hurt, and Susan was feeling a little queasy! But we divided up the goods, and each have some to finish wrapping tomorrow....or whenever we get around to doing it! Here are some pictures of the day!

Friday Night Fun

This last Friday my friends and I went down to one of the neighboring towns for a joint YSA activity. It was pretty interesting. The food was good.....but we didn't stay for the party after. We decided to go home and party there. We were going to go to a movie, but the next show didn't start until 10:30, and we're too old to be going to shows at that time of night...so we watched Elf at my friends' apartment. We all slept through most of the movie. Oops. I guess it's a good thing we didn't pay $8 to have a nap at the theater. Here are some pictures of my friends. I'm sure they won't mind if I post them :)Gina
Jefe
Brooke
Me

Thanksgiving

This year we had a small Thanksgiving. The married siblings all alternate years in coming to our house. This was the off year. So there was just Mom, Dad, me, Ben, and Mary Ann and Jared (Jared's family lives too far away) I also invited my friend Liz from Connecticut to join in the festivities. It was a yummy dinner, and there was lot's left over. I was in charge of the rolls, and I'll admit, I was a little nervous. I'm a foods teacher, and I know how to cook a lot of things, but bread is my weakness. One of my co-workers gave me a new recipe to try, and it's magic!! I made my best rolls yet. They were soft and fluffy and tasty. Usually my rolls are hard and solid. These pictures don't do them justice, but I was sure proud of them. Dad and Mary Ann couldn't stay out of them before dinner. There were lots left over, but you wouldn't know it. Ben took a whole bag of them with him to Cedar, and when we got back from shopping on Friday, dad had finished off the rest. Oh well, I guess I'll have to make them again.

Black Friday

For some reason, my family has a tradition for the girls to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving. The stores are packed, and we get up SUPER early to be sure and hit ALL of the good sales. We each usually find a few Christmas gifts, but normally end up spending more money on ourselves than anyone else. We used to go together with my mom and all of her sisters, but our party was getting way too big, so we decided to go our own ways and then just meet up for lunch. We ran into the the other half of the party at Shopko. As you can see in the picture, we don't get much done when we're all together.
It was a VERY LONG day. The kids we had with us were troopers. They were so good. However, by the end of the day they were tuckered out. If I'm being totally honest, so was I, I just couldn't get away with napping like they did. I don't fit into the shopping carts.

I was carrying Heather around and she fell asleep. It didn't take long before I had to put her down becuase she got too heavy. I didn't have anywhere to put her, so I just dropped her in the cart. She didn't budge. She slept with her feet up in the air for a good 30 min.I turned around after putting Heather down, and found Luke sleeping in the cart as well.
Cousin Jim (he didn't come shopping with us, just met up for lunch. He's smarter than us girls) and Mary Ann at lunch. You can see most of the rest of the party in the background.


More of the party at lunch.