Recapping May and June

So May was a good month because school got out.

Ben went to his first ever fancy dance on a date. He took Amanda Wendel from down the street, they look so good!

My grandma Earl (she is actually my Great-Grandma) had her ninetieth birthday so we celebrated with a great huge part with all the reletives from out of state that we don't get to see very often. Someone found out that you can get amazingly good deals on huge orders from Maddox so we got the food from there. YUM!!! Two different flavors of cake. After the lunch we had an open house so that all of her friends and neighbors could come and see her.

We made and frosted donuts, chocolate and vanilla frosting!

Little John decided the sand box is more fun with water.

We started buildingLittle John a playhouse in the backyard, we modified some plans off the internet. John's parents came over and helped a lot. The weather was hot not foggy, the fog in the pictures is Little John's fingerprints on the camera lens but no one noticed until too late.

We enjoyed a nice picnic up the canyon.

We made jam and our sticky helper is so cute!

We went to the zoo and Little John was mezmerized by the elephants, they are deffinately his favorite animal.

We ran the Race For the Cure 5k with my Aunt Juli and her daughter Kate. It was awesome! I hope to do it again next year. Maybe next year I'll jog part of it with the stroller instaed of just power walking with the stroller.

My brother Ben graduated from Box Elder High School and Seminary. At the high school graduation things were getting boring since the speakers just go on and on and on. Then all of a sudden, at the back of the students there was a great commotion with everyone looking all over and looking under their chairs. It turns out that someone had let loose a mouse. Ben appreciated the break from the monotony. After a while they caught it. Then there was some more commotion because they had let loose more than one mouse. It kept the audience very well entertained. It also kept the sutdents awake. Oh, and some guy wore a kilt, it was cool.

We spent a lot of time working on the playhouse.

We took Ben for a ritual "last meal" before shipping him out to boot camp.

We spent a weekend with my sister Heather in Loa, UT (near Capitol Reef Ntl Park), for her baby shower.

We made arricot, pinapple apricot, and apricot plum jam

Little John ride his trike a lot.

For Father's day I helped Little John collect stuff and we put it in plaster to make Daddy a paper weight (I gave it a few coats of sealer to protect it).

We are loving your year pass to the Jensen Historical Farm (where we went to Baby animal days) We saw lots of chickens and washed clothes.

Little John loves bubbles!

My Mom entered an online contest and won a Pizza Party! So we had a bunch of friends and family over. The kids loved the backyard.

We took Little John to the pool.He lasted about 10 minutes because once the wind picked up it got cold.

Nana (my mom) lets Little John get away with things sometimes. Like making the backyard a nudist camp. He decided sitting naked was a mistake, but had fun doing everything else.

Typed by Sarah Snow the cooliest ever!!!! ('Cuz I don't type, I chicken peck:D)

John got a Job!

So we got the best present for Christmas! John got a job! He interviewed last week and they loved him. He says his knowledge of Revit (an engineering program) is what hooked their intrest. The company is in Salt Lake City (cottonwood heights really) so he is going to take the commuter train and then a bus for the last little bit. The train doesn't come all the way to Brigham yet but the nearest station is only 15-20 minutes away (depending on traffic and weather). (To all the Phonecians- the trains and street cars system here is way better done than the "PHART" and is a reasonable way to get around) The commute will take about an hour all together, but since he doesn't have to do any of the driving he's excited to read or stuff (the train has wi-fi but we Ebayed the laptop). The company that hired him is called River consulting http://www.riverconsulting.com/ and they do big industrial buildings mostly out of concrete. He is so excited because he gets to do plates and shells analysis (figuring out if concrete ceilings will crack (plates) or concrete domes will collapse (shells)), which he learned to do in collage but didn't get to use at his other job. He starts on Jan. 5th and we're going to do a dry run of the commute before then to be sure he won't be late. He says he'll be the bottom man on the totem pole (well they hired 6 bottom men), but he thinks thats good because then he has room to work up. Even though he's bottom ranked, he still gets his nice benifits: health, dental, and eyes. And this might be what I'm most excited about, because we haven't had any real health problems (colds, ear infections), but the worry that something could go wrong and we don't have health insurance (especially for Little John) has been eating away at me. But no more worries! So Merry Christmas to everybody and ours will deffinatly be a happy one!
PS. please pass this info on to anyone who knows us- that John now has a job and thank you everyone for your prayers.

Thanksgiving part 2

So this is my abreviated list of things I'm Thankful for. It's abreviated because it would be so long otherwise that no one would want to read it.

My list:

John, Little John, Mom, Sarah, Ben, Heather, Rick, the rest of my family (this is part of the abreviating), my in-laws, my friends, the church, the military, my savior, lots of good food, laughing, a warm dry house, books, crafts, email, blogging, relief society, that John got over the flu in time for Thanksgiving, and lots, lots more things I won't try to fit here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving part 1

Well its all over now and most of the leftovers have been eaten. Yesterday I disected the rest of the turkeys (we had 3) and froze a lot of it. And tonight I will use up pretty much everything else to make Thanksgiving pizza (recipe at bottom).
But our Thanksgiving was great! We had 22 people (hence the 3 turkeys) and we managed to fit them all in the living room to eat together. We hauled the piano out to the garage and fit 2 long folding tables in the length of the living room. (By the way if anyone knows some one in the Brigham area who wants to buy a piano message me!)
We ate and then took down a table and people broke up in little groups to visit and play games. And of course there were leftovers and plenty of pie and other desserts for munching. We all had a great time.
John's parents, brother and his wife came since Nathan's on his mission and their usual plans were disrupted. Heather came and announced her engagement to Evan Smith (who came and his familly too). I was nice to meet everyone, we like them all, and he is really nice and sweet to her. And of course Sarah came up from school. And Rick came. And my uncle Mike. And Grandma Earl (my great-grandma).
It was great to have every one and it was so nice just hanging out talking and playing games and things.
And before you freak out about the cooking involved, we did: pies, turkeys, rolls, stuffing, taters, and veggie tray. Everyone else brought potluck drinks, side dises, and desserts. So we didn't do all the cooking (thank goodness!)

Thanksgiving pizza
1 Grease a cookie sheet and cover it with a thin layer of roll dough. This can be leftover frozen dough or comes in a can dough or make your favorite rolls dough. I usually use canned cresent rolls dough.
2 Pre-heat the oven to whatever you cook the rolls at.
3 Cover the dough with leftover mashed potatos or if those are all gone whip up some instant.
4 Cover that with the leftover gravy
5 Sprinkle generously with leftover stuffing or whip up some stovetop
6 Top with little bits of leftover turkey.
If you'd rather you can put the gravey on last. And you can add anything else you'd like or skip anything your kids won't eat. (But I wouldn't skip the gravy 'cuz things dry out in the oven)
7 Now bake the whole thing for as long as you would bake the rolls. Check if the potatoes and turkey are warm. If not pop it back in the oven for another 5 or so minutes. Serve and enjoy. And even though its called pizza it eats better with a fork.

Christmas is coming!

So I've gotten behind again. But its for a great reason. Santa's workshop has reopened in our basement. I believe in a homemade Christmas. I have lots of reasons and since my blog can be my soap box, I'm going to share them with you.
1 It's often more bugdet friendly (which really matters right now!)
2 If you're going to spend that much time/effort you're going to make something that person really wants, instead of getting just "something"
3 While you're working on the gift you're generally thinking about the person it's for and how much they'll like it
4 There's a lot less going out in the crazed crowds of shoppers
5 You're usually working in your comfy home where you can play Christmas music/movies and really get into the feeling of the season
6 Everybody can work together on same/different projects (providing it doesn't spoil any suprises) and get in some extra family togetherness
7 Kids rarely have money to go shopping and grandma really would rather have the fingerpaint picture than whatever they can get at the dollar store with thier small allowance or the thing you picked and put the kids name on
8 I love getting homemade things,
9 I just love having a project to work on!
10 It get us away from all the comercialism and back to the real meaning of Christmas.
11 It spares other people from the obnoxious talking/beeping/musical toys I could have bought

Halloween

So I know it took me a long time but here are our Halloween pics.

A friend gave me this hood, but we already had a costume for him. Its too big anyway, but he had fun wearing it around.

This is the costume I made him, he's the ace of hearts. He didn't like getting stuffed into it though.

John and I were the King and Queen of hearts. Little John's was out of fabric but it was easier to do ours out of garbage sacks using sharpies.

This is all of us. I tried to talk my brother into coming with us as the Jack, so we could be a royal flush, but he went to a Halo-ween party instead.

But this one is my masterpeice: Hogwart's portait of the Fat Lady. (Click on the picture to see it bigger) If we'd have been in Phoenix I would have worn it too the Harry Potter party. Instead my mom wore it to school and the kids loved it. It took me a couple weeks because everything has to dry before I can do the next part. I painted it on part of a giant cardboard box, because I didn't feel like getting foamcore, but foam core probably wouldn't have curled as it dried. If anyone wants more details so they can make their own just leave me a comment.

This is a Test

This is a test to see if my blog works. I'm also testing to see if I can get the pictures to work. So here is one of the pictures we took to enter in the Peach Days photo contest.