Mr. and Mrs. Nielsen

We spent the day Thursday in wedding festivities for Troy and Lisa. It was a fun and long day. They were married and sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. That was followed by pictures and then a luncheon at the Olive Garden. After that we spent the evening at the reception held at The Old Meetinghouse. It was fun to be with family and great to see Troy and Lisa so happy. They are off on their honeymoon to Hawaii now. Congratulations Troy and Lisa, we love you and wish you the best!!!

I had to post this picture of the nieces and nephews from the wedding also. It is fun to see them all together and having fun. Someday they might all pay attention at once, but that is part of why it is so cute.

Easter Sunday

Well, we were busy getting our talks written because we had to speak as a family on Easter Sunday. Travis and Tyrel wrote their own talks this time and did a wonderful job. I was really impressed with what they wrote and said. Sean helped Trevin with his talk so for the first time ever, I only had to write one talk, my own. This was a good thing since 5 of us had to give talks on 1 general conference address and it is hard to stretch 1 talk into 5, so I read "The Peacegiver" for more material for my talk. If you haven't read it, you should. It is a great book that helps us see another part of the Atonement that we don't normally think about. It was a great read and I am certainly glad we got our turn for talking in church out of the way for a few years (hopefully).

Spring soccer started last week. Trevin had his first game and they tied. Tyrel has back to back games on Thursday and Friday of this week. He is excited to be playing soccer again. He missed it in the fall because he did football instead.

My grandparents flew out from Denver this week and we got to have them over for dinner on Friday night. It was fun to get to visit with them and catch up. The kids were excited to see them. I did take a picture, but I'll have to post it later because I am too tired tonight. I have been gone all day to a scrapbook day with my friends and just don't have it in me to drag out the camera and load in on here.

Talk to you soon!

Just Chillin'

What is up with this weather? I thought Spring had finally arrived and we woke up to 3 inches of snow again this morning and it looks like we might get more this afternoon. Sean says he is doing his part to make the biggest carbon footprint he can so that global warming can take over and Spring can arrive. So why don't you all go buy bigger gas guzzling vehicles and leave all of the lights in your house on so it will quit snowing already this year.
I did this scrapbook layout of Tyrel's snow cave that I had to share. The first picture was taken inside the cave, the 2nd photo is Tyrel and Trevin peaking out of the entrance hole. They had Brother Smith, who plows the church parking lot, put all of the snow all winter long at the end of the parking lot. THey ended up with this huge mountain. All of the scouts spent their Scout nights and every day after school for 2 weeks digging out their snow caves in the church parking lot to sleep in for their February campout. They ended up with 3 people in Tyrel's cave. I was amazed at how big it was. Tyrel could almost stand up straight in it and there was plenty of room for 3 people in it. It was really warm inside also. He said they had to kick out of their sleeping bags because it got too hot inside during the night. They had a lot of fun with it. It even had little snow steps leading up to the entrance.

Basketball is finished. Travis and Tyrel's team made it in to the final 4 in the 3 city playoff tournament. It was really fun to watch them this year. Now we are just waiting for soccer. Tyrel and Trevin are both playing and Tyrel also gets the job of being a ref for the younger teams this Spring. He is pretty excited for the extra cash.

I play the Banjo!

For our YM/YW activity we got to be graced with the presence of Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband. Their guitar player is in our ward, so we lucked out I guess. The banjo player is someone who grew up in Sean's ward, so we knew 2 of the 4 band members. They gave great talks and put on a great show. My favorite song is "Dream Big" which you have probably heard on the radio. They also sang a Christmas song by request of one of the audience members which was a beautiful song called "The Gift". Travis actually was so excited because he went to their concert a couple of years ago at Christmas time and got a "I Play The Banjo" T shirt which is one of his favorites. I'm attaching a picture he took with his cell phone (not very good quality) and the Youtube video of "Dream Big".

Spelling B-E-E

Trevin took 2nd place in the 3rd grade spelling bee. The boy that won was his friend Matthew from across the street who is also in his class. Matthew actually has gone on and won the district spelling bee also. Trevin was kind of sad when he missed his word, but I thought he did great even though he didn't study the word list at all and Matthew studied every day after school.

Trevin's words were

L-e-a-f
H-a-l-f
B-r-a-g
G-r-i-p
L-i-l-a-c (I thought for sure he would miss this one, what 8 year old boy even knows what a lilac is?)
W-h-i-t-e
W-r-i-t-e (he had them use this one in a sentence so that he spelled the right write)
B-a-l-d
S-m-a-l-l
A-r-t-i-s-t
P-e-r-f-e-c-t
P-e-r-s-o-n

J-e-r-k-y (I though he missed this one as I was typing them on the laptop as he spelled, I spelled it j-e-r-k-e-y, I guess he is a better speller than I am)
Q-u-e-e-r
C-o-r-r-e-c-t-l-y
S-a-f-e-l-y
H-o-u-r-l-y
S-e-n-s-e-b-l-y (This is the word he got out with. Should have been s-e-n-s-i-b-l-y)

The last picture is of the medal that he got for finishing in the top two.

Work is still crazy. I used to think 45 loans was bad, now I'm up to 130, but I have hired some help so we are managing. One thing about the lending business, you have to make hay while the sun shines, as the saying goes, because it can be a very up and down industry. We are in full swing with Basketball season right now, so our Saturday mornings are consumed with basketball games. The boys are having fun and doing great this year.

Work is CRAZY!!!!

I've started a new entry several times only to be interrupted, so I'm ignoring everything until I get this done. SO I sit here with cold feet because I don't have socks on this morning and my hair is still dripping wet, but I'm determined to do this.

I have gone from processing 4-5 loans a month to around 45 loans a month. I am working from 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. some nights. My poor kids haven't had too many decent meals and my house is a wreck. I hired Tyrel to work a couple of hours after school. He loves the money and it helps me out. I also hired a neighbor girl to work a couple of hours 3 days a week. Hopefully when she gets trained, it will give me a little extra time although the loan officers seem to want to double their volume. At least I'm working from home, so I can at least say HI to the kids occasionally.

We have been getting lots of snow here lately. The boys built snow caves for their Young Men activity last night and thought it was great fun! Sledding at the driving range at the golf course here is the #3 spot for sledding in the State of Utah, so that is always fun too!

Basketball season has started, so the 1 free day I have each week (Saturday) is filled with games. I love watching my boys though. Travis has really done well this year. I think his coordination has finally caught up with his growth and he is doing great in all sports he tries this year. He just started a weight training class at school and thinks he is going to love it. Trevin is quite the little defender. This is his first year for Basketball and he always has his long arms out and waving to block the other teams shots.

That is all for now. Life is great and busy!

A Toilet seat????

Sorry if you are a regular reader and have missed us over the past few weeks. LOL, I don't really think we have any regular readers, but we never know.

I managed to get all of my Christmas things done, although I was hemming pajamas on Christmas Eve day and I decided to make some last minute vinyl wall football logos for my boys so I was getting ready up to the last minute.

We spent the Saturday before Christmas with the Evers family where we got the best news ever! Brett and Andrea are expecting a baby. We are so excited for them. That news made our day. We had a great dinner and enjoyed spending time with our family there. All of the boys got air soft gun gear and it was a hit!

The Sunday before Christmas we had the surprise party for Diane and LaMarr's 40th wedding anniversary. That is one of the reasons my life has been so crazy but I couldn't say anything about it earlier. I had to round up table settings, make food assignments, making place cards for the tables and had to have my house clean as well as help scan and get pictures to Jennifer for the video she did. It was great by the way. Here is a picture of the tables. Trevin said our house looked like a 5 star restaurant. Not that he has ever been to a 5 star restaurant to know, but...... We had tables decorated with candles and garland. We used red chargers with clear glass plates and had linen napkins with little name place cards for everyone. We first served a caesar salad to everyone while I started dishing up the main course of chicken parmigan, angel hair pasta, candied carrots and breadsticks. My boys served along with some help from Todd and Ken serving the sparkling cider. It was so cute to see all of the grandkids waiting their turn to give grandpa and grandma a hug.

After dinner we all retired to the theater room for 1 1/2 hours of Jen's video. It was fun to see all of the pictures and video clips. We had some great laughs.

Okay, now we are to Christmas. For Christmas Eve we made waffle cookies for Santa because dad said that is what kind of cookies Santa likes best even though they take more time to make. We read the story in Luke and Sean had each of us tell one of our favorite memories from Christmases past. Is Christmases a word? Anyway, then we opened the PJ's and the boys get to open 1 more gift because they say the PJ's don't count because they know what that is. Then we went upstairs to fill the traditional Santa plate. We give 2 cookies, a piece of string cheese (because of the national dairy association TV commercial from about 10 years ago, sorry if you don't know what I'm talking about) 8 carrots for the reindeer, and a cup of egg nog. Last year we had to make an emergency run to get egg nog because we were out and I forgot to buy more and Trevin was in tears because we couldn't very well leave hot chocolate for Santa because he likes egg nog the best as everyone knows. This year we had plenty because Sean went and bought 5 cartons of the stuff so we would be prepared.

Christmas morning the boys got up around 6:15 an we opened presents. The funniest gift this year (I thought) was the toilet seat that Sean got for Travis. The hinges broke on his old toilet seat a couple of months ago, so Sean got Travis a toilet seat with hydraulic hinges (so it doesn't slam when you close the lid, like a boy ever closes the lid). Tyrel got a flapper valve for his leaky toilet and Trevin got a 3 way lightbulb for his lamp. They all got a PSP game from dad in addition to their home improvement project. So we spent some of our time that day doing home improvement projects. I got a new wonderful heavy duty tripod for my camera that I am so excited about. Sean got gift cards to Cabelas to get a new scope for his gun and a Steelers SUperbowl leather jacket. The biggest hit was the 2 additional Guitar Hero games and an additional guitar. Even I have taken up the habit and can now play on medium. Travis and Tyrel are amazing to watch. I can't believe they can move their fingers that fast. THey are both on the "expert" level.

It was fun to get all of the Christmas cards, letters and pictures from family and friends. THanks to each of you who thought of us this year.

We had our annual New Years Eve party at our house and for some reason were up until 3:30 in the morning. We had some laggers after the fireworks at midnight and then just spent time talking and lost track of time. It was fun. That's all for now. Work has been very busy, so I guess I better get back to it.