Random Thanksgiving Shots

Just loaded my pictures onto my computer and thought I would share a few. Hope you enjoy!


Ethan enjoying Thanksgiving dinner.
Mary Ann taking pictures.
Cute little Jenna.
Andy Getting ready for the girls.
Andy waiting around for the right girl to come knocking at his door.
Jeff and I looking for crossword puzzles for the ride home.
Susan checking out the deals in the JC Penny Catalog
Jake and Andy playing with the teapot that Jake likes to carry around everywhere.
I knew we were getting two new babies in the family, but I thought it was Mary Ann and Rose, not Ryan.
some of the crew eating dinner. Jeff, Dave, Rose, Luke, Darren, Jake

Welcome Home!

Welcome Home Andy!!

Unfortunadamente Andy se hizo daño a su rodillo y tuvo que regresar a casa un mez antes del termino de su mision para tener un operacion! Aun cuando es bueno tenerlo aqui para los festivos, será muy dificil para el. Hubiera sido muy dificil para mi salir de mi misión asi, es como no tiene un oportunidad de despedirse del pais y de la gente alli! Por suerte ya tenemos una vacación planeado para diciembre para ir a Costa Rica...espero que su rodilla este bastante bien para que él tambien puede disfrutar de la vacación.


For those of you poor souls that don´t speak Spanish...

Unfortunately Andy hurt his knee and had to return home from his mission one month early for surgery. Even though it will be nice to have him home for the holidays it is going to be hard for him. It would have been really hard for me to leave my mission like that...without really being able to say goodbye to the people and the country. Luckily we already have a trip planned to Costa Rica in December so he will be able to go back. Hopefully his knee will be healed enough that he will be able to enjoy the vacation!

Soundtrack of my life...

I saw this on Gina's blog. I thought it was pretty funny so I wanted to post my own soundtrack. Here Goes!

If your life was a movie, what would the soundtrack be?

How to do it:
1. Open your music library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc).
2. Put it on Shuffle.
3. Press Play.
4. For every question, type the song that's playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.
6. Be honest.

This is fun stuff!

OPENING CREDITS
Strong Enough by Sheryl Crow

WAKING UP
The Prayer by some church singer

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
"Tiny Dancer" by Tim McGraw

FALLING IN LOVE
"Una Voz" by Janice Kapp Perry

FIGHT SONG
"It's your song" by Garth Brooks

BREAKING UP
"Books in the Book of Mormon" by Inside Out

PROM
"Gabriella's Song" by Kurt Bestor

LIFE IS GOOD
"My Brother, My Savior, My Friend" by Hilary Weeks

DRIVING
"So Complicated" by Carolyn Dawn Johnson

MENTAL BREAKDOWN
"Feeling Good" by Michael Buble

FLASHBACK
"Then I did" by Rascal Flatts

GETTING BACK TOGETHER
"I Want Candy" Bow Wow Wow (HA HA HA That one's funny!)

WEDDING
"Piano Concerto No. 20 (Romance) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

FINAL BATTLE
"Strawberry Fields" by Ben Harper

DEATH SCENE
"We Can Work it Out" by Heather Nova

FUNERAL SONG
"I'm Your Lady" by Macy Grey

END CREDITS
"Here for the Party" by Gretchen Wilson

V-V-I-V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!!

I Win!!! After a long battle of the biggest looser, we weighed in, and I came in as "The Biggest Looser" As a winner of the competition I won an MP3 player. I love it!! It took us a while to figure out how to get the music onto it but we did it! I'm going to be one happy person at the gym now!!



A picture of the player!A self portrait of me listening to the player.

Corn Maze

This week for family home evening we went to a nearby corn maze. It's the first time I had ever been to one. At first I was really confused as to what the point was. I thought you had to get from one side to the other without getting lost. But in this corn maze the entrance was also the exit. I was getting really bored walking around in a corn field with no real goals. However, my friend Matthew, shown below, showed me the ropes of a corn maze. He's from the mid-west where there are plenty of corn mazes. He showed me that there are specific stations that you have to go through and find. We didn't have time to find them all because I wasted most of the time wandering around in the field, but we did manage to find a few. It was a lot more fun, when I found out the purpose of the maze.

Family Fun

Here are some pictures from this last weekend in Utah. It was good to see everyone again.

Cute Kids!!
Look Comfortable? The kids played hard all weekend. We went for a short drive to see Rose's new house and before we had gotten a block away from her current house the boys were out!
Jake's position looks a bit more comfy. Dad blushing. There's a first for everything! He's good at embarrassing everyone else it's about time he had his turn.

Conference

I spent my weekend watching General conference in Island park in a cabin. One of the guys in my branch has a family cabin there, so they were nice enough to let us all come and invade. It was nice and cozy.

However, this is what we woke up to Saturday morning. It was snowing a little bit on our way up Friday night, but we did not expect this much. Of course there were a few snow fights and such...you know, it's the only way boys know how to flirt. As we were watching conference, emergency warnings flashed across the bottom of the screen saying "STAY INSIDE. BRANCHES FALLING FROM TREES ALL OVER THE AREA. ROADS DANGEROUS AND SOME CLOSURES" We happened to need one of the closed roads to get home, so we started to prepare ourselves to stay another night. However by the end of the Saturday Afternoon session, it had warmed up a lot and the roads were clear to drive home on. Snow in October is not fun!!


This is a picture of the beautiful colors we saw on the way home.
This is a picture of the corner near my house when I got home. Branches all over up and down the street. It looked like a tornado had come through...but only got the trees.

The Answer

Most of you got it right....probably because it looks so good! It tasted good too. The limes did take second place though.

Here's what I think we added:

Canned Chicken
mayo
mandarin oranges
roasted almonds
sunflower seeds
dash of chili powder
dash garlic powder
dash black pepper
crasins
maybe 1/4 tsp curry powder

I just kind of threw in whatever I had in my house. We only had about 45 min. to do it, so we didn't have time to run to the store.

Iron Chef

For family home evening last night we did our own rendition of Iron Chef. They divided us into groups, and then each group chose a number which corresponded with a "secret ingredient".
It was a lot of fun. My group won!! That made it even more fun. Everyone said it's because I was on the team - a home ec. teacher. However, my group was a great help...especially with the presentation of it. They judged us on three things, creativity, presentation and taste.Instead of telling you which was mine, I want you to all vote and decide which one you like best, based on looks alone. If you were there, please don't ruin it for the rest who will play the game.Secret ingredient: Curry
Secret ingredient: Plantains
Secret ingredient: Root beer flavoring
Secret ingredient: Root Beer flavoring
Secret ingredient: Ketchup

Secret ingredient: Shrimp

Secret ingredient: Lime

despiertate!

I'd imagine that before we came here
Our father said "Wake up, have no fear."
So it was our turn to come down here.
We start over, clean slate, w/o knowledge, we might fear.
Throughout life, the Lord is speaking. Can we hear?
"Wake up & follow me, ye shall not fear"
"Satan don't kick no dead dogs," don't you hear?
The evil one is out there, he wants you to fear.
Our father will support us in trials here.
He loves us and says "Wake up, I am here, have no fear!"
-27

Job Perks

One of my favorite things to do as a teacher is intercept notes the kids send back and forth to each other. I've had some pretty good ones, and some pretty scary ones that I've had to turn into the office.

I just thought I would share a couple of them with you.

Letter #1 (written in red ink)

Hay,

Don't mind the blood. I'm realy upset.

I'm sory. I'm crying and the tears, I just smuged the tears and I am so sad my dog died and she was a sister to me that I broke up with you. You probably hate me so I'm so mad at myself taht I coped the notes you sent me and burned the copy of them.
I probibly won't tack for a whyle I'm so diprest my mom put her to sleep and so I'm sorry.
You are probibly having more fun with your new g/f so good-by!!!

me!!!

P.S. You will probible get a real kiss from your g/f!!!!!!
GOOD-BY!!!
P.S. Your g/f will get mad if she sees us together.

Letter #2

Alex are you mad at me? If you are I don't know what I did to you. I wonder if you still want to go out with me. Do you still want to go out with me? Because I do and I will never break-up with you. I also think you like someone else. If you like somebody else just tell me. Well you can give me your answer about you being mad at me after school.

Love you and need you!!
Love,
Lisa

Love you and hope you love me back.

I love Junior High kids. They make my job fun!!

New Table

I have been wanting a kitchen table for a long time now. The other day a friend called me to tell me that he found a table for sale in the nickel ads. So I called the lady, and now I have a table. It also came with two chairs, and a bench. The table has a butterfly leaf in it as well. Thank goodness. I don't know where I would store a regular leaf. I love it. It's a little beat up, but I can refinish it.

It looks great with the place mats I got from Ryan and LaCee last year.

Bravest Girl Ever

Well, I did it! I danced in the branch talent show. I was so scared I was shaking. Fortunately I was second on the program, so I got to enjoy the rest of the program. It went alright, but at the beginning of my dance the cd skipped, so I was way off with the music. I just kind of fumbled around for a few min. until I knew were to pick up and finish of the dance. But I'm glad that part of my life is over!! If you would like to see a briefing of the talent show, you can go here.

State Fair

Two weeks ago the Idaho State Fair was going on. There were lots of fun activities, and I was lucky enough to participate in two of the coolest of them all! First of all, the Josh Turner/Wreckers concert. For those of you that don't know (mom) they are country singers. It was really good. I have to admit though, I liked Josh's stage performance a LOT more than the Wreckers.
Jeremy, Brooke, Jeremy, Tracie, Chris Waiting in line for the concert
The Wreckers
Josh Turner
You can't go to the fair without going to see the animals. We stumbled upon this Ginormous Pig. He (it's definitely a HE) was only 2 years old, but weighed 770 lbs. He's a monster!!

The next fun activity I got to go to was the demolition derby. I haven't been to one in a really long time, and it was awesome. My favorite round was the powderpuff round. It was awesome. Those girls were vicious.

One the side of one of the cars it said "Nacho Derbre". At the end of his round, the guy got out of his car, and he was wearing the Nacho Libre suit. It was pretty funny!

I do have a pretty gross story from this night too...When we were at the fair the night before for the concert, one of the guys we were with bought a gyro. It looked really good, so I decided that's what I was going to have when I came down for the derby. Well, I got my gyro, and was eating along telling the guy I was with about how I hated onions when all of a sudden I bit into a huge onion. I open up my gyro to dig out all the onions to find a HUGE fly right in the middle. It was so gross. It made me feel really sick that I had already eaten half of it. (half of the gyro, not half of the fly! Thank goodness!!) So I took it back and they gave me a new one (without onions) I was sure to check it out before I ate any of it though! Oh the joys of fair food! But I'm grateful for my hatred of onions...it saved me from eating a fly.



Some Smashed up cars
Nacho DerbreThis picture is mostly for Suzette and some of my friends here in Idaho. We have a running joke that my wedding colors (I'm not making an announcement, just speaking of the future) are going to be brown and green. My bridesmaids are going to wear brown dresses with a strip of green down the front to look like thin mints. My refreshments are going to be brownies with mint chocolate chip ice cream on top.....and at the fair, I found the perfect cake for the occasion!!

Stupid Squirrels Part 2

I had to bring my swing pad in the house because the squirrels wouldn't leave it alone. Here's what it looks like now! I'm ticked!

Branch Talent Show

So in a couple of weeks my branch is having a talent show. I was thinking of being brave and doing a little clogging performance. I haven't told them that yet, I figured I would put on my shoes and see if I still even remember how. Well, while looking for my shoes, I found all my old clogging uniforms. I decided that if I was going to dance, I needed a uniform, so I decided to try them on and see if they still fit. And amazingly enough....or sadly enough they do...more or less.

So I decided to take pictures and let you all decide which one I should wear. Not that your vote is really going to count, but I thought you would all like to see what happens when I'm bored. :)
So here they are! They're a little matted and wrinkled from being shoved in a bag for 10 years, but not bad.


This is the oldest one! It's a little short!

This one has a reversible vest! It's actually a bit big for me. I think this was from our Texas tour.

Hot pink AND puffy sleeves. I'm not sure if you can beat this one! I think this is from the Tennessee Tour.

This was the latest outfit. This was from the Florida/Bahamas tour.

I decided to dance around in this one for a while. I don't know how I ever survived Florida and the Bahamas in it. I was dying of heat today!

I was talking to Katie in all of these pictures.

Go Gina!!

This post is for Gina. It will be a nice surprise for her when she gets back from her travels to Scotland.

Stupid Squirrels

I was out talking to my neighbor across the fence the other day and happened to look over at my swing. The stupid squirrels scratched it all up. I'm so ticked!! Now I'm going to have to find some way to fix it, and then get rid of the squirrels. I told my neighbor if he sees them in my yard he has my permission to shoot them....as long as he doesn't leave dead squirrels on my lawn. Anyone have any ideas how to fix it and/or keep the squirrels away from it?

This Weekend

To see what I did this weekend, see here! It was lots of fun! I can't wait to do the kitchen. Let me know!!

Costa Rica Here I Come!!

Today is a great day! I just booked my flight to Costa Rica for only $560. We will be there for Christmas. That should be fun!! I'm pretty happy about that price, especially since that's the same price I would be paying to go anywhere in the US.
I've been looking on the internet for things to do. Here's a list of some things I found.
Birding (Sorry Darren, probably won't do much of that)
Wildlife watching
Surfing
Hiking
Snorkeling
Chocolate Tours
Caving
Canyoneering
Coffee tours
Turtle tours
Bungee Jumping
Canopy tours
Hot Air balloons
Parasailing
Dolphins and Whales
Fishing
Volcanos

Festivals going on while we will be there.
Festejos Populares (Year-end Festivals)
-Zapote, San José, Dec 25-31 ( Last week of December )

Bullfights, carnival rides, games and local food vendors are located on the Zapote fairgrounds.

El Tope and Carnival
-San José, Dec. 26

The tope is a Costa Rican tradition, and San José's parade of horses is the country's largest and most popular. With both horses and riders elaborately decorated, the parade moves along the Paseo Colon to Avenida 2. A lively celebration follows with music, food, costume contests and dancing.

Carnival
-San José, Dec 27

Downtown San Jose hosts a huge parade with incredible music, dancing and floats.

Nationwide Christmas Celebrations

Costa Ricans begin Christmas celebrations in early December. This holiday is a family affair, with gift giving and prayers at home. Families and local businesses put up Portales, or nativity scenes and traditional foods, such as Tamales and Rompope (eggnog) are enjoyed.

Las Posadas
-Nationwide, Begins December 15 Christmas carolers travel from home to home in a re-enactment of Joseph and Mary's search for a place to stay.

Lots of bugs there!
And much more. To see more info, go to:

http://www.costarica.com

Here's some pictures for you to enjoy!

1 Year!

No pictures for this entry, but just wanted to announce that today is my one year anniversary of living in my house. The year has gone by fast!!!

One last Summer Party

I decided to let the boys sleep over at my house one last time before school starts. We had a lot of fun. I just had the two older boys this time which was nice. I would have taken Jake too, but he wasn't packed so I had to leave him behind. :)

We spent Wed. night at the park. They didn't want to leave at all, but I finally made them when it started to get dark. Then my friend Lisa brought her dog over to the house and showed the boys tricks like, sit, roll over, give me 5, etc. The boys thought that was way cool. They even got to tell him to do tricks and then give him his treat when he did it.

We were going to watch TMNT after that but they didn't have any left at the store. For those that don't know, TMNT stands for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We ended up watching Ant Bully instead. I thought for sure the boys would fall asleep during the movie, but they didn't so they were up until midnight...and of course up early the next morning.

I'm sure Susan hated me all day on Thursday because they were GRUMPY even before they left my house!

Here are some pictures of the boys at the park.

Excitement

The other day at work we had a little excitement. We had been working for about 2 1/2 hours when someone walked through the front store and said "Um there's a bat hanging from the ceiling over there." We all freaked out, of course. Especially Suzette who had been standing under is all morning re-stocking cards.
So we called HR and of of those brave boys came with a handful of towels, fought to get the bat to unlock it's grip on the ceiling and took it outside. I hid in the back room because I didn't want the bat to start flying around when they went to grab it. I'm sure you can imagine the excitement with 5 girls and a bat overhead.

Corn on the Cob

I ate my first ear of corn the other day! It was delicious!! I wish I would have planted more corn now. I'm going to eat all that I have and not have any to freeze. :( Oh well, I know for next year.