Halloween 2009

Jeff and I were invited to a Halloween party this year....yes, they even made a background for pictures. We all had flashbacks of high school. I posted some pics of some of the great couple costume ideas that were at the party. The only couple I actually know is the cop and lil' John.

Nurse and Dr. Love, sex instructor

Thing 1 and Thing 2

80's rockers

A pregnant nun and a priest

Peter Pan and Wendy

Newlyweds

Hillbillies

Football player, referee and a football

Batman and Joker

An angel and a devil

Lil' John and a cop

The whole group!

Another Poll

Be sure to place your vote on the side panel.

Option 1
This option has more texture....it looks much better than how it uploaded.
Use your imagination.

Option 2
For some reason, this changed to blue and gray when it uploaded to Blogger.
It is red and black in the original design.

Playing with Photoshop

I have been watching tutorial videos on the internet to learn some new techniques for photo shop. This is something I came up with tonight.....and one from yesterday.

Before

After
I added a tooth, made fangs, changed his eye color and made him have pointy ears. :)

Before

After
My Gangsta Husband

Polls

If you visit my blog, be sure to vote in my polls in the right panel. :)

Junk??

Jeff's dad was de-junking his house, so we were happy to take this off his hands. It looks so good in our kitchen.

The Harvest

This time of year always means lots of work for me. It's when the garden is ready to harvest, and school starts. Both very time consuming. Here are some pictures of how I have spent my last couple of weekends.


Last weekend: Peach jam. I also made some raspberry peach jam. I haven't tasted it yet, but it sounded good. (you can also see what my new counter tops look like) :) I promise I'll post pictures some day.

The weekend before that: Corn

Stage one: freshly picked, husked, and washed
stage 2: cutting it off the cobs
Stage 3: Bagging it. I used my new vacuum sealer my in-laws gave me for Christmas last year. It worked great!

The Garden

We started the summer off building a garden in our yard. It was a lot of work digging out all the grass, but Jeff was perusing the thrifty nickle at work and found some free dirt for us from a horse ranch all we had to do was go pick it up. So we rented a dump trailer and then thanks to Jeff and his skills backing up the trailer through a small space we just raised the trailer with hydrolics and filled in the hole. It was really good dirt. You'll be able to see the difference in the pictures below between the new dirt section and the old dirt section.


Jeff working hard to clear out the grass to make the garden.



We planted a pumpkin (in the new dirt) and it took over the entire garden.
We are getting some huge pumpkins from it too. (Although it doesn't look that big in this picture)
We accidentally bought pole beans this year, so we decided to try and copy my dad's system but we were a little late getting it set up and most of the beans were so tangled it was impossible to make it neat and organized, so we just hung some twine string down and the beans climbed up by themselves. As you can see, we should have put another pole in the middle of the row too to prevent the sagging. It turns out bean plants are heavy. :)


This is what my arms looked like after picking the beans. One of these years you would think I would learn my lesson and wear long sleeves when picking. We have gotten a LOT of beans. I only canned 21 pints, and have been giving the rest away.


The corn (in the new dirt) grew a dark green color and really tall, you can see it is taller than the fence. It was also really yummy. I did my first batch of corn this weekend. I'll have pictures of that on here soon. You can also see the pumpkin growing through the corn. We have had to keep a close eye on it because a couple times we've gone out to the garden we have found vines that climbed up the corn with pumpkins forming on the top. I don't think the corn would be strong enough for that.

This is the corn that grew in the old dirt. You can see it did not do too well. We haven't eaten any of the corn from this batch yet. Maybe in the next week it will be ready.

Chukars Game

Because I was just going to turn around and drive back through Utah in a couple days, on my way home from Nashville I stopped and picked Jared up and brought him to Rexburg to play with Kevin for a few days.

On Monday, for family home evening, the Clarks came down to a Chukars game. It was good fun....for most of us. I don't think Darren was in the mood for baseball that night..but he was a trooper and made it through it. Here's some pics from the night.

I'm not sure what Ethan is doing in this picture

7th inning stretch.... "1....2.....3....strikes your out!!"

Ethan showing me his batting skills


The crew....Jake even tried peanuts....and LIKED them.

I'm not sure why Jake is sad in this picture.

San Diego

I just realized that I never posted pictures from our San Diego trip. Right after I got back from Nashville, we packed up and drove down to San Diego stopping to pick up Mom and Ben on the way. It was tons of fun. I had never been there before so it was nice to have the opportunity. Jeff was our main photographer, but I did manage to take a few on my camera.


The San Diego horizon. I love all the boats on the water.


SEA WORLD

This is an ice wall at the Arctic exhibit. It was so cold, I could only touch it for a few seconds, but Jeff left his hand there long enough to melt his hand print into the wall.
Here is one of the Polar Bears in the Arctic exhibit


I don't think I had ever seen a walrus before. They are HUGE!!!! It was cool just to watch it move in the water and see it's blubber wiggle all around.

I swear I took some of us waiting for the Shamu show, but I must have used someone else's camera.

SAN DIEGO ZOO

Here we are in front of the famous San Diego Zoo. It was a really nice zoo. Most of it is in shade, and the zoo is so big they have buses to take you around.
Mom and Jeff on the bus at the zoo.


cute couple!!

SAN DIEGO TEMPLE

We didn't get to attend the temple while we were there, but it was AMAZING even from the outside. They had missionaries walking around outside showing people pictures of the inside. Next time I go to San Diego....I'm going inside.

DODGERS GAME

On the way home, we decided to stop in LA and watch a baseball game since the San Diego Padres were on the road while we were there.

Jeff and I in front of the field. We had some pretty good seats thanks to Ben and his Military discount!

Ben and Jeff from the top of the stadium. It was SUPER HOT that day. We had to keep going up to the refreshment area just to get out of the heat.

Nashville

Right after the funeral I packed up my car and drove down to Salt Lake to catch a flight to Nashville for the National FCCLA convention. I had a group of students take first place at the state competition so I HAD to take them to Nashville. :) It was a lot of fun.

My students did really well in their competition. I was a little disappointed that they didn't award first second and third place at the competition. They said it wasn't about winning.....
My kids did earn a gold medal though, which is the highest you could get.

We got to eat at a really cool restaurant call The Aquarium. The walls of the restaurant are aquariums.
Erin in the restaurant

And we also ate at the Rainforest Cafe...where there was a zebra head sticking out of the wall right above our tableOur hotel was AMAZING! We stayed at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel.
There is a river with boat rides in the middle of the hotel.

This was the view from our hotel room
another view from my room.....yes, that's a waterfall. We slept with our balcony door open so we could listen to the water while we slept.
It is just like a city inside of a building. These buildings are all of the different shops.We also got to spend some time at the beach. They have a big lake close by with a water park on the shore of the lake. It was fun. We got to take canoes out on the lake and row around for a while. This is Erin, the other advisor, after the beach.
Our last night there, we attended a huge gala where there was a huge dance. There were about 5,000 people there. The floor was bouncing up and down while everyone danced.
Me showing the kids my moves.

Of course Elvis was there as well........he's gained some weight over the years.