Tagged again...Eights

8 TV shows

*The Office
*Project Runway
*Top Design
*Amazing Race
*Seinfeld
*24
*The Bachelor or Bachelorette (when is it coming on again??)
*So you think you can dance

8 Restaurants

*Chili's
*Union Grill
*Azhan Bistro (It's closed) Anyplace with Szechwan chicken mmm
*Rumbi Grill
*Rio Buffet in Vegas
*El Matador
*Cheesecake Factory (new favorite)
*Chuck-a-Rama's

8 Things I did yesterday

*Took Andrea to her appointment
*Took Parks to Therapy, got his DAFO
*Babysat Dawson
*Was in charge of a game for Hudson's class Halloween Party
*Went to the library
*Watched Hudsons baseball team practice
*Ate Kim's yummy dinner
*Watched Freedom Writers

8 Things I'm looking forward to:

*Weekend getaway with the Augers
*Halloween weenie roast with friends and trick or treating tonight
*Christmas
*Summer
*Parks learning to read
*A new episode of Project Runway
*Being a grandma
*The second coming

8 Things on my wish list

*Visiting my sister in Germany
*Building a house
*Living on a tropical island
*Nice Grass, private backyard!
*Awesome Blossoms coming back to Chili's
*My cousins and friends all living in a cul-de-sac together ha ha (childhood fantasy)
*Being an actress on SNL or MadTV
*That I had one year old twins

I believe everyone in South Weber has been tagged so I'm tagging Tammy and Nadia (Nad, get going on your blog or there will be no Thanksgiving dinner for you)

**Monday Memories**10/27/08

Hudson's flag football season came to an end Tuesday with a loss in a tournament game. The team had a pizza party Friday night at Carson's house, where they hot tubbed and played around. The rest of us went to the Ward Halloween Party. I always think I'm starting early to get the kids ready in their Halloween costumes, but it always takes longer than I estimate. I made these mummy cupcakes for the party. Something fast and easy.
I never see Tierra anymore. At 15 she is on the go. She spends most of her time at Emily's. There was an afterschool stomp this week and a dance party at Michele's and of course she got in some time at the mall and then she went with her dad Phillip to a football game Saturday night and then back to his house, played some pool and hung out with family until 2am! But that's OK because he is moving to Las Vegas next month.

S.W. elementary does a news minute every Monday morning and they sent home a note to have your kids participate in a lipsync to be shown on their program. Well it just so happens...I am the queen of home made videos. ha ha As a child (and teenager) I made many home videos with my cousins. If you ever want to see them, come on over. They are a blast. I showed them to Larry on our first date. What was I thinking??? We always found old fashioned, interesting songs to do. And the best part was dressing up. So I wanted my kids to have a sneak peek at how fun it can be. We invited some of Hudson's and Parks' friends, Scott Daybell, Jessica Poff, Ellie and Molly McReaken, (Madeline Cook and Jacob Woolsey couldn't make it) and made this video a few weeks ago, that is probably being shown today at school. Amy, Angie and Lyn have not even seen the final product yet. You can't tell in the video, but it is pouring rain and we filmed at least 4 different takes. I wish I had zoomed in on their faces one at a time. But I tried to give them equal air time. Cute little Molly was cold and drenched but was a trooper and is soo cute! And Ellie has her mom's rhythm! Turn off my music before you watch it.

I've been tagged

7 weird things about me.

1. I do not like opening gifts in front of others. It makes me very uncomfortable.

2. I won't let Larry read anything I write, such as a letter or email. Other people as well, but not as much as him. I don't know why but it also makes me very uncomfortable. If he does it when I don't know about it or when I'm not in the room then it's OK but I'm still uncomfortable with it. I don't even want to know if he's ever been on my blog. I think if I went to one of your houses and found you reading my blog it would make me feel uncomfortable too. But I still like blogging. ha ha I'm a weirdo alright.

3. I enjoy reading true horror stories, and looking at gory pictures. Don't worry I'm not a serial killer.

4. I have a midget toe. I'll show her to you if you're curious.

5. I absolutely hate the movie Hairspray and I don't like the taste of chocolate. I don't think this makes me weird, the people who love those two things are weird. ha ha

6. I have to have vaseline on my lips when I go to bed or it really bugs me.

7. I pluck my armpits. I haven't shaved them in over 20 yrs.

And I just have to add that I just changed my header to "Awesome Blossom" and Tuesday we stopped at Chili's for an Awesome Blossom to go and she said they stopped selling them way back in June!!! I told her they might as well tear the place down then. I was so disappointed, horrified, and depressed. And right behind the "to-go counter" is a huge mural of a man hovering over an awesome blossom and it says "Discover the Awesome blossom" Well they're gonna have to paint over it so why not just sale the yummy things! They said it got a bad rap because it has 2500 calories. So don't order it then. I CRAVE an Awesome Blossom 'extra awesome'.
I'm running out of names to tag...so if you've been tagged forgetaboutit.
Tammy, Nadia (yes it's time to update your blog since last APRIL), Shaury, Stephanie M, Diana H, and that's all I got...

What adorns your fridge?

I just love Kindergarten when they bring home their first artwork and you feel like crying. This is Parks self portrait and I absolutely love it! I didn't know what a good colorer he was. Tierra was my only child who liked to sit down and color in coloring books. When Hudson started Kindergarten I was worried because all they do is artsy stuff and he was never into that at home, but he turned out to enjoy it at school. Parks loves to show me things he has learned to draw like a flower, bird, tree, house. When I tell him something that would be easy to draw he says "No way, that will be hard". Then I show him and he catches on fast. I wish they had made the same S.W. t-shirts as last year with their self portraits. I loved them.

So these are a few of the magical things that have adorned our refrigerator over the past month.
...then transforms into a butterfly.
Johnny Appleseed


monthly calendars

Parks has made an alphabet book, but I chose this one because it begins Parks' name.I felt bad I didn't take a picture of Hud's colorful fish while it was on the fridge so I had to take one of Hud's skeleton, since he is learning the names of bones.

And don't get me wrong, it's not all pretty. On the other side I have appt. cards, magnets, family pics, the lunch menu, spelling and vocabulary lists, library schedule, handouts, reminders, calendars, coupons etc.

The hard part is knowing which art pieces you hold on to and which ones you throw away. At my age I could care less to go through a book of drawings I made in elementary school. I'm getting less and less sentimental as my kids grow up and my house becomes smaller. They are very cute, but we can't take them with us. (the art that is, we CAN take the children with us)

I want to start a tag on this..I would love to see what's on your fridge. Anybody and everybody.

(Don't feel obligated to take the ugly picture of all the papers though.)

**Monday Memories**

The main thing this week is Logan had a birthday. I made him a spider cake. I've always wanted to make Halloween cakes, but our family isn't big cake eaters, but now I have the excuse since we have an October birthday. We were lucky to have the whole family home for UEA and so we celebrated by going down to Thanksgiving Point to the Scarecrow Festival. It was $30 for the whole family then everything was included inside. The kids had 13 different slides and bounce houses to choose from, a haunted house which was even a little spooky for Parks so Logan didn't want to go inside. Logan enoyed toddler land. A magic show, lots of carnival type games with short lines, thank heavens. A train ride and bike rides. And bungy tandem jumping (or whatever you call it) that had a huge line that Larry waited in while I took the kids around to enjoy everything else. We'd check back in on him now and again and finally after 2 hours it was Hudson and Parks turn. I didn't think Parks would like it, but it was his favorite part of the whole day. Hud was able to do double back flips. Larry told him he'd only seen one other person do that. The food was also reasonably priced. We had to break away early to go to Hud's tournament flag football game. I would have liked to stay another hour or so. We bought a huge pumpkin to carve and we watched a helicopter land, but didn't pay much attention to who got out of it. But as it was about to take off Larry said it was Sean Bradley and Diane is a huge fan so I ran to get a picture with him.

I look like his little pet.Gunner coming down the slide.Hud and Parks in the sharks mouth. Logan is our "scaredy cat" he wouldn't go on this slide because of the sharks big teeth.

They loved crawling through the caterpillar, whale and alligator almost better than any of the big slides.The funniest game was throwing the chickens into the cauldron.
Parks ringing the dinosaurs.

Logan content in toddler land.

These were pretty hard to steer.


choo-choo
Hud getting clocked on his throwing speed. He was pretty disappointed in his dad's fastest throw. And he pulled a muscle doing it. ha ha
Hud doing his flips.
Parks looks so small and helpless.

Logan flying the plane.

My four 'Punkins'

Saturday was the Christiansen's (Diane's side of the family) annual Deer Shop with all the adult women. We went to the Fashion Place mall. We left around 9am and got home around 8pm. We stopped for huge cinnamon rolls at Sill's cafe for breakfast, I had a scone, and ate lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Very yummy. The menu is pages and pages long. Aunt Debbie took a lot of pictures, but I don't have them to share. I did spoil myself and buy me a couple of sweaters and a new sweat outfit. I LOVE sweat outfits. They are so comfy.

3 years ago today

My other kids got slideshows for their birthday so I might as well finish off my last child's birthday for this year with one. Logan enjoyed picking the pictures for his slideshow, he wanted pretty much any picture with him in it...so I pretended to use them. He'll forget once he watches the final product.
While looking at baby pictures of him, he reminded me "I'm not a baby anymore". That makes me sad. I no longer have a baby in the house, but he will always be the baby in our family even if he passes Hud up as an adult.

**Monday 'Memories**

Let's just start with last Thursday. I put Parks on the bus and the bus driver says "this is going to be tricky" referring to manuevering around the giant hole dug in the middle of the road. Well I head for my mailbox and am talking to Rose when we turn around and see the bus's back wheel is in the hole. "My son is on that bus!"

They have all the Kindergartners get out and sit on the grass...you can barely see them in the distance. I run over and tell them I can round up enough parents to take these kids to school. So me, and 2 other parents come to help. By the time we drove away with our carloads another bus had come to take the last of them.

Notice the front tire is not even touching the ground. A tow truck was called to pull it out. But don't worry about the kids. The ones I talked to were laughing about it and Parks said it was "awesome". On the way to school I asked the kids if they wanted to sing a song. So we started singing "the wheels on the bus" song. But I changed the lyrics to "the wheels on the bus go in the hole, in the hole, in the hole" the next verse was "the tow truck pulls the bus out of the hole, out of the hole, out of the hole". They laughed and we had a great time riding to school together. I came home and went across the street to talk to Jean the bus driver (who was taking pics on her cell phone) and told her the story. She said I was mean because now she'll be hearing that song on the bus every day. ha ha

I was just glad that I had been dressed and ready for the day, sometimes I'm still in my sweat bottoms and sleep T-shirt at 12:30pm. ugh

Friday, Tierra's bus didn't come down our street and she got left!!! I'm upset because her bus driver called personally the night before and said he would come down our street. I'm sick of this construction.

I was able to take Andrea to one of her appointments and I really, really enjoyed talking with her and crying with her. My boys loved playing in the waiting room, it had the best toys. I enjoyed a peaceful 30 minutes of reading. When it came time to leave we were literally walking out the door without my boys because they didn't want to leave. Yet Andrea feels like she is a burden, when on the other hand because of what she is going through, we are learning lessons and hopefully becoming better people. She is so fun and easy to talk to that I wonder why we didn't hang out more often then just at YW's activities. But I'm so glad I served with her, otherwise I wouldn't know her like I do.

Friday we had our first "Narnia" meeting with Mrs. Sheffield. That's why I'm reading The lion the witch and the wardrobe. But it's close to the movie so when I'm done I'm going to need to read The Magicians Nephew so I know what's going on. I'm so excited. It's a lot of work, that's why we're planning so early. It's not even until May! This year it will be combined with Mrs. McGarry's class.

Larry flew home late Friday night. I'm sad to report I didn't get any cleaning done while he was gone. :( And after this snowstorm, the worst part is my patio still has summer stuff scattered all over and is now buried in snow. I wish I had my camera to take pictures of my boys playing in the first snow of the season. Hudson built a fort and came in sopping wet because we haven't dug out their boots, hats or snowpants yet.

Saturday was our annual donut making day at Gram's house with all the cousins.

We tried to count and estimated between 40 to 50 dozen! There are many jobs to do and lots of little hands to help.

Cutting the donuts and holes out, frying them and glazing them.Don't forget, eating the donuts! Everyone had messy faces and fingers and achy bellies. And of course we don't hog them all to ourselves, we share with our neighbors, family & friends.
Delivering them in the sleet.

If you didn't get any, I'm sorry. We came around and many people were not home because of the temple assignment I assume.

It's Cry time...I mean Bath time

Sure these may seem like cute innocent faces to you, but don't let them fool you. Bathing is no picnic in the park at our house. Oh, they love the thought of taking a bath and it's all smiles and giggles until the dreaded

HAIR WASHING!

You'd think I was pouring draino in their eyes instead of a cup of warm water on their heads. The howling, the bawling, I can't hear with the ringing in my ears and I'm sure I'm going to be wringing more than a wet towel if it won't stop. I can't believe I still have the will power to give them a bath every other day. I should change it to once a week, Saturday nights, and call it good.

Calgon take me away!

**Monday Memories**

Oh, this is getting hard to keep up with. I might change it to another day. I'm usually taking away from my Sunday evenings to write this, and I'm not liking that.And they've been too winded so I'll try to keep it short. (that's hard for me)

Larry left for Cincinnati for work training Sunday afternoon. So again I'm feeling like I want to clean the toy/scrapbook room before he gets back. That room was where all 7 of my sister's families suitcases were. It's a small room so eventually nothing got put away because we couldn't get around stuff. I know what it is about Larry being gone that makes me want to clean...it's having a dead line, it's a challenge.
We started our food group again and all I can say is "GET IN MY BELLY".
Amy and I are now kid swapping while we volunteer in Mrs. Sheffields. I hope Logan learns to treat Allie like a lady. He wants to wrestle and be rough with her, like he is with his brothers and Dawson. Allie doesn't seem to mind. According to Amy, I'm one of the very few she likes and doesn't cry with, that makes me happy. Emily and Allie are so dang cute.
Today Parks and Logan get to play at the Poff's for their first day.And of course Logan's weekly fix of Dawson. Me and the boys are addicted to the game Sequence and these boys seemed to be able to entertain themselves with it also.
I ran into an old acquaintance (I wouldn't even say friend) from OHS at Tierra's dance. For some reason we just hit it off and I really enjoyed talking with her! I hope I see her again this week!

We hit the annual Fall festival at the school of course. Always fun to talk to everyone there. Andrea Gardner took her kids! She looks beautiful. I thought she looked a lot like Amanda which I've never noticed before. She said it was the face lift that came with the surgery! :)
From there, Hudson went home with Jacob and Scott and had a sleep over. They are so cute together. They have been friends since the Woolseys lived in the Rock house.

Hud and Jacob

Then the next morning was Punt, Pass and Kick at the Rec. Center. Alex West won Hudson's age division and Scott (Hud's best friend) took 3rd. They are both on the Redhawks team. Larry also told me Alex beat everyone's score, including the 15yr olds!
Tierra hit Frightmares with her friends in the rain, but they loved it. There weren't any lines.
Hudson and some friends made a video in the rain. We had fun and it turned out great.

Scott and Hud

Nadia graced us with her presence Saturday night, but made a quick exit Sunday morning for a breakfast with friends.

And we started a fresh week with Conference. Definately my favorite Sundays. Got to love the packets.
And that's a wrap.

Temple Tuesday

Rachel and I have decided Temple Tuesday will be the first Tuesday of each month. We will do initiatories, which is only 5 names and takes 1 hr. Call to car pool or we'll meet your there at 1pm. :)

Temples

I really enjoyed Pres. Watts talk on temples Sunday. It was the same one he gave last December. That was pretty powerful coming from our very own Temple President. I thought then, 'how can I not go once a month and get those blessings he promised'? But this time he said once a month was a minimum. Since I don't work, I think I should be able to make it once a week. Rachel and I thought it would be nice to set a certain Tuesday every month aside for a girl temple day. We haven't decided which Tuesday yet, but we'll let you know soon. We'll meet at 1pm (after we get our Kindergartners on the bus) to do Initiatories for anyone who wants to come. If you want to carpool, call a friend and invite them. Spread the word. If you're not able to make that certain Tuesday, I'll be going trying to go every Tuesday if you ever want to go please come keep me company. I'll even buy you a Farr's Ice cream after. ha ha

My brother had researched family names almost a year ago and we've all been taking turns doing the work. When Cynthia came this summer from Germany she really wanted to attend the temple while she was here and do our grandma's name. The closest temple to her is about 4 hrs away I believe. She didn't realize her recommend had expired in June until she went to buy garments downtown. She had plans to attend the Ogden Temple with her friends and do lunch. They had to go without her. She was in tears.

She is the Relief Society Pres and is always reminding everyone else to renew their recommends so she was so frustrated that she forgot her own. They can't renew their's weekly as we can. Their Branch Pres. comes around every 6 months. I talked to Pres. Watts to see if there was anything we could do and he gave us the Bountiful temple Pres.'s name (since the Ogden Temple was now closed for cleaning). But then we decided if we had to drive we'd rather visit the SL temple. We called the SL temple Pres. who told us she'd have to call her bishop and do her interview over the phone, then he'd have to call the branch pres. then she'd have to call the branch pres. and do the final interview and then he'd have to call the temple pres. While she was on the last few questions with the branch pres. her cell went dead. All this trouble for little ol' her. ha ha

We were so lucky to be able to finally take those names and go do a live session together just one week before she flew back to Germany. The live sessions are going to end soon. That was the first time we've ever been to the temple together and my first time for a live session.

The day we went was 8-8-08 so it was so crowded with wedding couples. It was fun to watch them take pictures and Nadia, who waited for us outside, was speculating which dresses were cute and what kind of dress she wanted. I also ran into Stephanie Cook on the grounds.

We met our friends the Boydens at Gateway for lunch after the temple, then went to see their home under reconstruction. It turned out to be a long but fulfilling day!