Those Haskell Boys

Wes Haskell gave his mission report today. I just have to say how impressed I am with the Haskell boys! My boys just kept talking about Wes and his stories and his testimony when we got home from church. I remember one of the very first Sunday's after we had moved to Elk Ridge was one of the Haskell boys farewells. It was either Ryan or Justin, can't remember which. At that time, Wes was just a very little boy, but I very much remember him and Kyle talking at that farewell and coming home and talking with Sean about how impressive their testimonies were at such a young age. They have all been great examples to my boys and as they have grown into leaders for them I am still impressed. Ryan has been their scout leader, they have home taught Andy who is the Elders Quorum president and been able to be in his home and have learned about service from him. Justin has spoke to them at youth conference and also bore his testimony when he is around with such a great Spirit about him that he has made a great impression on them. They remember Kyle and Wes as missionaries and great examples and talk often about their mission reports and remember things that were said. Sometimes I don't think they are listening in church, but I know they are always listening when one of the Haskells is talking because they talk about it later. So, thanks for raising such great sons Lee and Maxyne. Thanks Haskell boys for being great examples to my boys.

Intelligent thoughts

I just had a thought and decided I would post it here so I don't forget it.

I was at the store about 3 weeks ago and they had cheddar cheese in 2 pound bricks on sale for $2.79! That is an amazing deal. So I quickly snatched 4 or 5 of them and brought them home and froze them. I freeze bricks of mozzerella cheese quite often and don't have any problems with it. I seem to have forgotten that when you thaw it out and try to grate cheddar cheese after it has been frozen, it just crumbles.

So, lesson learned, don't freeze cheddar cheese! But this morning I had the thought that if I grate it before I freeze it, the problem would be solved, so next time I find an amazing deal on cheese, that is my solution. We shall see if it works.

Friday Fun Night

I got to go scrapping with my friends tonight. We have so much fun together and learn so much. Thanks Janice for being our hostess and for the great template. We had 8 of us there and there were good times and yummy snacks. I just love the popcorn Heather. Janice is missing because she is taking the picture and Gerri came after the photo session, so she isn't in the photo either. We get together once a month to share and have fun and I love these ladies! I'm so glad I got them all converted to digital so we can fit 8 of us around one table. In the old paper world, we would only be able to get 2 of us in that amount of space.

I made 3 pages, one of them I didn't quite finish with. One of them is now posted in the post - Valentines Day part 2 and I'll post the other one later.

starting from the front left - Cindy, Lisa, Me, Janice's chair, Liz, Judy, Heather, Gerri's chair

Final Night of Digi-Scrap Class

I'm kind of sad that my class is over. Tonight was the last night. I did manage to get everything in that I was going to teach, but I think I might change it up for the next class. I was asked to teach the class again in the Fall so I think I might change the lessons around. It is kind of hard because there are so many different levels of computer knowledge among the students. So I felt like I was ignoring the more advanced students to help those that were having a harder time. It was a good experience though and I learned a lot about the method to use when teaching. I think the next one will be more successful. Sorry to those of you that were guinea pigs for me to teach this first time.

I think it is fun that the school district offers these community education classes. There are all kinds of them going on and I think it is a good program for the community to have going.

Blue & Gold - Trevin did IT!

Tonight we had our annual scout Blue and Gold banquet. This is the 100th year of scouting in America, so it was a big deal. They had a yummy rib/baked potato/salad/roll dinner with cake and ice cream for dessert.

After we all ate, they gave out the scout awards. Trevin has been working very very hard and just Monday was able to finish everything up for his All Twenty award. So he got that along with his Arrow of Light and his Webelo's badge. Then he crossed the bridge to signify going from cub scouts to boy scouts. I can't believe he is already old enough to be a boy scout!

I'm so proud of him for all he has accomplished.

Every year, they have the scouts all make cakes for the blue and gold banquet and then they auction them off after the dinner as a scout fundraiser. They had a real auctioneer this year so that was pretty cool! It was fun! This is the first year we ended up with a cake other than our own. Trevin's cake looked nice and I forgot to get a picture of him with it. Oh well.

Homemade Bread

Doesn't that look yummy?! My mother in law has a really yummy homemade bread recipe that my family just loves! I have always had a problem, not sure what it was but I think I didn't let it raise enough in the pan or else I was putting it in the oven before the oven was totally up to temperature, but I could never make it look good. It always split towards the top on the side, like it was still trying to raise after it started cooking. So this last week when I made it, they all turned out beautiful! So, I just had to take a picture and scrap the recipe since I finally had decent looking loaves. I love that I know how to cook and that I enjoy it so much! I'm sure my family does too. I'm grateful for a great mother, mother in law, and sisters and sisters in law, and friends that are good cooks too that always keep me supplied with great recipes to try.

It's all moved!

The store that Heidi and I sell our digital scrapbooking kits at is having a major facelift this year. They have decided to upgrade the store, forum and gallery. So, all weekend I have been helping move threads from the old forum to the new forum and re-uploading all of my past layouts to the gallery so that it is full for the grand opening of the new stuff on March 1st! It has been a chore but the new forum and gallery are so much nicer and easier to use than the old ones with lots more options so it will be good! I'm really dreading having to get all the new kits in the new store when that comes up! Maybe we will have to retire some kits at that time so we don't have to move them.

It has been so fun growing with the store this past year and being able to do something with Heidi even though we don't live close to each other. We talk almost every day now via email and I even call her sometimes too! It has been a fun experience.

The kit above is our latest! I love how it turned out although I was skeptical at first. We had a special request from someone who has a freind whose horse raced in the Preakness horse race for a horse race kit. She had very specific things she wanted in it. We decided to encompass horse derby races, equestrian, English riding lessons, and Steeplechase races all in one kit. I've never seen any kits like this and I have seen a few requests in other forums for riding lessons kits that weren't cowboy kits, so hopefully it will sell ok even though it is pretty specific. I thought it turned out really pretty.

Date #2 with Tyrel

I think Tyrel was feeling left out that he didn't get a date with me, so he decided to jump on the bandwagon and I was able to squeeze in another date. Three in one day! I've never been so popular. He took me out for ice cream (yes I had ice cream twice in the same day, but I just got a baby cone with Tyrel and only had one scoop with Trevin.) and then we came home and watched a movie. He is fun to snuggle and watch movies with. It was fun to visit with him on the drive to and from getting ice cream too. I'm grateful I have such great boys and that they don't mind going on dates with their old mother.

Date #2 with Trevin

Trevin has been working so hard on scout stuff the past few months. He is trying to earn his ALL 20 award in Webelos and had about 6 more things he needed to get done before his very last pack night that is this coming week. So he and I spent a couple of hours working on his scout things and then had chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. I'm so proud of him for finishing it up. That is a lot of work to earn 20 activity badges in just 11 months. I don't know what the percentage is now, but when Travis and Tyrel did it, only about 15% of the scouts in the whole district achieved that award.

Date # 2 with Travis

Travis decided he could whoop me at Scrabble after seeing that me and Trevin played it on our date. So for our February date, Travis made us pudding and we ate pudding and played Scrabble. It was great playing with someone who didn't always do 3 letter words! He did whoop me by about 20 points, but that was because Sean decided to crash our date in the middle (I think because he wanted pudding) and so he helped Travis out with a few strategic words that got triple word scores. It was fun! I get double dates today because I get to do my date with Trevin tonight! I'm so excited! I don't think I ever had 2 dates in one day before.

Hallelujah!

I think my class is finally getting it! We finished up our template pages the first half of class and talked about drop shadows, then the 2nd half of class I taught them how to do a page from scratch. They were done in like 20 minutes! I don't know if the concept was just so much easier or if they are finally getting where things are so it is going smoother. I think I might have to move that to lesson 2 instead of at the end. Maybe it is an easier concept and then we could build from there. It's kind of hard because we have done quick pages, templates, and pages from scratch and they are all totally different concepts. Who knows?!

What's In Your Wallet????

The hostess this week for the My Life challenge I think forgot she was hostessing since they signed up so long ago, so Manda told me to go ahead and throw one in for this week. I am in charge of the slogan challenge in the regular challenge section of the forum next month, so as I was perusing through slogans, I saw the Capital One slogan "What's In Your Wallet?" and thought that would be fun to do for the My Life challenge. I'm sure the stuff I carry around is different than what my mother or grandmother carried around and I'm sure my kids will carry around different things than me.

So, the challenge was to scrap about what is in your wallet, or purse, or diaper bag, or car console, or in other words, what you carry around with you every day, everywhere you go.

I am so NOT a purse carrier, but this is the stuff I almost always have with me.

Taxes and Mother Daughter Party

I got our tax returns done today, and YAY! we are getting a refund. We usually try to make it pretty much balance out with not a lot of refund. So, we didn't plan so well this year apparently because we are getting a refund and it is soooo needed right now so we have been blessed. I can't wait for this snow to melt and for it to start getting warmer so Sean's business will pick up.

We had a mother daughter party for YW tonight. I think it turned out pretty fun. We had a "slumber party". Everyone came in their p.j.s and brought a snack. We also had all the moms and daughters bring their baby pictures. We numbered them all and played one game where they had to guess who everyone was. It was kind of crowded, I should have spread it out on more tables around the room so everyone wasn't crowded at the stage. We also played a balloon herding game, germ warfare, and another game that was kind of like button, button, but different. It was fun to see the mom's getting into the fun with their daughters and we had a great turnout.

Nothing in Particular

Nothing in particular happened today that I was grateful for, just a basic ordinary day, but I am grateful for the ordinary......I'm glad nothing stressful or tragic happened and that we were all able to just enjoy our day and be happy.

I guess Travis' bus got hit by a car. Travis said the car was pretty messed up, but the bus was barely scratched? How do you hit a bus??? They are big and bright yellow! Glad everyone was ok (other than the car).

I got to do a speed scrap tonight. I scrapped the pictures of my YW helping the people at the rest home decorate Valentine cookies. So, you will have to scroll down to the post on the 10th to see those.


OK, I just went and checked and I didn't post about the rest home on the 10th. So, I'm back to post the pictures here. I think the girls had a lot of fun! They were laughing and giggling the whole time. We ended up with lots of extra cookies, but we had a good time! I loved the word art I used for this layout. It is a quote by Joseph B Wirthlin and it says, "No matter our age, our circumstances, or abilities, each one of us can create something remarkable with our lives." I thought that went really well with the activity we did and the page.

Mady is helping this lady decorate cookies. She said she wanted 17 for all of her great grandchilren. I think Mady made it up to 6 or 7 and then the lady lost interest. Thanks Mady!

K, this little man was so funny! I think he took like 1/2 hour to frost his one cookie and the lady next to him was picking out the candies and handing them to him one by one. He told me I could only take his picture if I would make it handsome. The lady in the picture had the girls all laughing, She wanted plain cookies (ate about 3) because she said she didn't like frosting, then she started frosting them and ate another 2 or 3 more. I think she piled about 300 red hots on the one cookie she made. She kept saying funny things and kept us all laughing.

Combined Family Home Evening

We decided to do a monthly combined Family Home Evening with the Nielsen's. We are rotating through everyone to plan and host the evening every 3rd Monday of the month. This month Diane and LaMarr were in charge, but they were sick with colds so they passed it on to Shar. We met at Todd and Haylee's and had a lesson "Love One Another" and then we decorated Valentine sugar cookies for our activity and treat. We were done in about 40 minutes and that included everything plus some visiting. Only the Utah County family members were there and we missed the rest but we had fun!


We are in charge in March and then it will just rotate down through the brothers and sisters.

I am excited to get to spend quality family time together and have some fun!

Happy Valentine's Day part II

We went to church this morning. Travis stayed home sick but was feeling better later in the afternoon. I am glad he got better because I had a big Valentine's Day dinner planned.

When I was little, sometimes on Valentines Day my mom would make a fancy dinner, serve it on the best plates, make us dress up, and use our manners.

I didn't make anyone dress up, and Travis set the table and I was too busy getting everything finished to notice he was just using the regular plates until he was done and didn't have the heart to make him put it away and start over.

We had chicken parmesan with angel hair pasta, zucchini, spinach salad with strawberries mandarin oranges and feta cheese, Magleby's rolls, and fruit punch. I made 7-up cake with pink frosting and valentine's m&ms on top for dessert. It was yummy and everyone loved it and gave me lots of compliments. I have the best boys around I think!

Happy Valentines Day - part I

It started out like any other Saturday. We got up, went to Trevin's basketball game which they won, and then came home to do chores. I went grocery shopping in the afternoon and then got ready to go out.

We gave the boys their Valentine's gift. They each got a bag of Valentine's Mike and Ikes and I got them a couple of DVDs to watch while Sean and I were gone.

We went to dinner. Sean had Ribeye Steak and Shrimp and I had a New York Strip Steak and Shrimp. It was yummy!

Thanks honey for taking me out, it was fun to sit and visit with you for a couple hours.

We ran by Sean's parents house to see if he could get their new internet router to work and then came home and watched the 2nd movie with the boys. It was a fun night!

Science Fair - Growing Crystals

Trevin wanted to grow crystals in different liquids for his science fair project. He used 10 different liquids and did salt and sugar mixtures. The 10 liquids he used were: Water, vinegar, club soda, bleach, Shasta, Coke, white grape juice, apple juice, lemonade, and Koolaid.

By day 3, the water, club soda and vinegar were all growing crystals. The bleach/salt mixture ate through the string, disentegrated the paperclip holding the string down and started forming crystals on the surface of the liquid.

By day 7, he still only had crystals forming on the strings of vinegar, water, and club soda and all 3 of them were doing really well.

By day 14, he had crystals forming on the salt/apple juice mixture and his first sugar crystals were forming on of all things, the sugar/bleach mixture.

By day 16, he started getting crystals on the Coke/salt, and Shasta/salt mixtures and the apple juice/salt mixture was getting a few more crystals. The Coke and Shasta mixtures were growing crystals on the string as well as coming towards the center from the edge of the cup.

By day 21, all of the salt mixtures had crystals forming and growing. They were all growing in different shapes though, nothing consistent.

Although vinegar/salt was the first to appear, the water/salt crystals that formed were the best
looking crystals.

This is Trevin with his display board. He seemed to have fun. I'm grateful to have my kitchen counter back.

Happy Birthday Heidi

Happy Birthday to my little sister! Just wanted to take a minute to tell Heidi how much I love her and hope she had a wonderful birthday. We had our share of arguments when we were teenagers and it seemed to me growing up that we didn't have a lot in common, but now that we are older and our kids are near the same age and mostly because we have been designing our digital kits together, we have become closer. It has been fun and I hope we can continue for lots of years. Luv ya Heidi Ho! You are the best sister out there!

Cutter Machine

Did I ever mention how much I love my cutter machine? I've been using it for vinyl projects lately but we used it today to cut out all the letters for Trevin's Science Fair project. It is so nice also to be able to hook all the letters together so they cut out as words instead of individual letters. That makes for a lot less pasting. It is much easier to put on an entire word instead of all the little letters. We are almost done with the project. He needs to do the graph tomorrow and then he will be done and ready for the big day on Friday.

Happy Late Birthday Little Bro's

I did wish both of my brothers happy birthday on Facebook, but I forgot to post about both of them so here I go. I am so grateful for both of my little brothers, or should I say younger brothers because they have both been bigger than me for a long time now. Greg's birthday was January 25th and Brett's was February 6th. I am so grateful for both of them and hope they both had a great day. I had so much fun going to Denver with both of them in December. We had a great time talking, reminiscing, and having a few good laughs. Thanks guys! I love you both.

A Sickling

Travis called me at 11:30 today asking me to pick him up from school. He rarely gets sick so I knew he must not be feeling well if he called me. I picked him up, we came home, he took some Pepto and slept for 5 hours. He seems to be doing better this evening. I'm glad he is feeling better.

Fast Sunday Warning!!!

So, we get to church today and first thing as I walk in, I get asked to say the closing prayer. Tyrel says, "That will teach you to get to church on time." It's no big deal though, I don't mind. So then, Sean and Travis get there and here comes our happy Bishop making a beeline down the aisle to us. He comes over, shakes our hands and says, "I like to get a couple to start off the meting with their testimonies and would like to ask you two to do that today." Tyrel laughs again.

Let this be a lesson to all of you in my ward about getting to church early on Fast Sunday! Really though, I was grateful for the opportunity. Sean asked why when he nudges me to get up and bear my testimony I don't but when the Bishop asks I do? Who can say no to Bishop Christofferson????

It was a great meeting and I'm not just saying that because we bore our testimonies. I bear my testimony every time I teach in YW, but it is good to do it in Sacrament Meeting so that the boys can hear me and know that I have a testimony. So, because of that, I was grateful for the opportunity. I wasn't even that nervous.........

Trevin's Basketball games

Trevin had another game this morning. It was such an exciting one! They were down 11 to 22 at halftime. Then, the whole 3rd quarter they kept the other team from scoring at all. So at the end of the 3rd quarter, it was 17-22. Then, with 4 seconds left in the game, after we had almost caught up, we scored a 3 pointer to tied the game at 24-24. It was so exciting. Unfortunately, the other team came back and scored a 3 pointer in the last second of the game to win it. The team was excited and bummed at the same time. It was exciting that they were able to come back so much during the 2nd half and a bummer that they ended up losing, but I can't believe how much better they have become this season. It is almost over, they only have a few more games left!

UGGGHHHH!

I've missed 2 days of grateful posts because my computer got a virus on Friday and we have spent the last two days transferring everything important to my external hard drives so Sean could get it working again. Luckily (if you can call it lucky) it only affected my email and internet and not all of my files. Sean ended up just having to delete my old user and set up a new user on my computer and then we transferred everything back on. I hate that people think it is funny to send viruses and worms and destroy other peoples stuff. What are they thinking?! The worst part is that now I have lost all my email addresses and all my logins and passwords for processing loans. What a pain.

So, on the bright side, I'm grateful for a techie husband that can fix stuff like that and knows what to do to get me up and running again and I'm grateful that it didn't totally take over my computer.

Book Club

I'm grateful for my Book Clubees. I'm sad that I have to miss bookclub tonight because I am teaching my class at the High School. I am so grateful that they got me into reading again. I read a ton in high school and college and then when I got married, I kinda quit reading and didn't really even pick up a book for years and years. I'm glad I have re-discovered it and love getting together with the girls once a month. I will see you all next month because my class will be over by then!

The Rubber Band

We are fortunate to have a member of the Rubber Band (the one that goes along with Ryan Shupe) in our ward. So, since Roger's wife (Roger is the guitarist for the band) is in Young Women's, we have the opportunity of hearing from them every once in a while. The whole band came a couple of years ago and did a great little concert/mission sharing experience night for us. Tonight for our combined YM/YW activity, we got to hear from Roger and Ryan again. They did a great job talking about how music influences our lives and performed four songs for us! It was great and I left feeling really happy!

They sang "Walk the Walk", "If I Were A Bird", "Dream Big" and "The Gift". Their song Dream Big is one of my faves! If you haven't heard it, look for it on youtube and listen to the words. Actually, I believe it is on my playlist here on my blog if you want to click on it there. Have a great evening!

Cooking

It seems to me that I've always loved to cook. From the time I was really little and my mom would let me dump stuff into whatever she was making after she had measured it, till now. I'm grateful that my mom was such a good cook and taught me how to cook and instilled the love of cooking in me.

I set a goal this year to do layouts of all my boys favorite recipes to make into a book to give to their wive's someday. I have a goal to do 52 of them and I am ahead of schedule so far. The hard part is remembering to take pictures of the things we eat.

For more great family recipes, you can go here.

If you are related to me and want to contribute your own recipes to the blog, let me know and I'll send you an invite. We would love for everyone to share!

Family Home Evening

I'm so grateful for boys that do family night lessons. We have a chart and we all take turns and my boys have been giving lessons since they were able to read on their own. Sometimes they are very short, but they are getting better with age. They use the Friend, the New Era, the Ensign, Preach My Gospel or sometimes they get parts of lessons from their teachers at church or their Seminary Teachers. Hopefully this will make them good missionaries someday. They teach their lesson, sometimes they have a question/answer session, they share scriptures and they are all really good about ending their lessons with their testimonies. I'm so grateful for the gospel and for the fine young men they are all turning out to be.