I've been tagged.

Krista tagged me, so now I have to put 7 things about myself that some people wouldn't know.
1. I'm #6 in my sibling line-up, although only 4 of us are living now.
2. Back in the day of being paid for my work, I've worked as a - receptionist, data entry typist, legal secretary, after-school program teacher.
3. I went on an LDS mission for 18 months to northern California.
4. Hyrum Smith, brother of the prophet, is my 4th great grandfather which makes Elder Ballard and my mother 1st cousins.
5. I'm a writer.
6. I hate doing laundry. (or maybe everyone knows that already? lol)
7. I laugh at the most inappropriate times. In other words, I have a very morbid sense of humor. Ask Joe about the time we almost got in a head on collision because he was driving on the wrong side of the road. =]

The 7 people I'm tagging are:
Kristi, Megan, Raegan, Jen C., Wendy, Heidi, Tali
Now it's your turn to let us know about you....

busy is good :P

Boy am I glad that Primary singing program is over. :):) I managed to fumble my way through the 8 songs. I hadn't even heard of 3 of them before. They did awesome. Now the fun begins in singing time, eh? :) Not much is new. Oh, Michael went to the Billings Clinic on Friday to do a pre-op appointment with the surgeon since he's got a hernia. We scheduled his surgery for the week of Thanksgiving so he can use the time off school as part of his down time. This is his second surgery, he had a hernia on the other side 4 years ago. Crazy! So far his Nephrotic Syndrome is still in remission. The doctor will watch him to make sure the surgery doesn't cause a relapse. Michael is looking forward to having it fixed. I probably shouldn't have let him play soccer, but I forgot all about it when I signed them up and Michael didn't remind me of his hernia until after their tournament. LOL. Oops, pin a medal on me. =]

Flashback Friday!

I originally wanted to post pics of the kids when they were little, but they wouldn't upload...darn it. So here's one of Theron on his brother's guitar when he was like 8? I think it's the same guitar he colored the strings with crayons then his brother broke the guitar over his head.....can you feel the love? haha! The one of me was back in 1977....I was one.

time goes marching on....=]

Hey there! We've had a fun few days. Theron got home Monday morning and had 2 days with us for his reset. It was great to have him home. It worked out perfect since the kids didn't have school Monday for the hunting holiday. I had a wallpaper project I tried to recruit him to help me with, but no suck luck. haha! It's a doozy of a job so I'll have to do a little "how to" researching on the internet before tackling that one. Here's couple pictures from the past few days.

My dad was pushing the garbage down with a fist to make more room and met a little resistance with a can.....being on coumadin(sp?) he bled all over the place for like 2 hours. Not that we'd neglect it that long on purpose, but we all went down for naps on Sunday and he woke up with blood all over his blanket...poor guy. So I called the hospital and he gave us the idea of using super glue to seal the cut....it was FABULOUS! a little mess sure, but it worked!

There's a walking path along the river close to our home and pretty much goes the length of town north to south. It was a pretty walk.

Theron played a little "Simon Says..." with the kids last night. It was nice to see that they still had it in them to do what they're told immediately without griping. hahahaha! The little one is them walking like eqyptians. haha

The self-shot is fabulous for dragging people who don't want to be in pictures into them. haha! So there's Dad and me, Theron and me, Michael and me & Paul and me.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, we've decided to add a little fun to this blogging and poach on others creativity. =] We are going to do a Flashback Friday every Friday we remember to post and put old pictures up from our suplus of photos from before the conversion to digital cameras. =] This week I found one of my family at Thanksgiving in 1983. I was 7. Theron's picture is his school pic from like 4th grade. We got a chuckle out of these, hope you do too. Can I just say what the heck am I wearing? I vaguely remember that my mom made my vest and skirt, but hello? I love the shoes!!! LOL

All about Jacob!!

Jacob turned 1 today! It's amazing how the past year has flown. We did a little cake for him and sang. Jacob hammed it up as you can see in the video and pictures below. :) Jacob is crawling at lightning speed all around the house. He'll stand up and balance without holding anything, but won't take any steps by himself yet. He's pretty close to walking. I keep telling him to slow down and stay little. Funny how that never works. I remember saying that to all of them and time kept marching on. LOL! Anyway, Happy Birthday Jacob!! We love you bubbers!

p.s. Michael is the cameraman in this little clip and laughed till he couldn't breath when he watched it again and heard his little growling Godzilla moment at the end then the scratchy breaking up noises....silly boy.

whirlwind of activity

,
Hi all! We had a very fun filled and wild weekend. Tali & Steve came into town on Friday for Michael's baptism Saturday morning. It was loads of fun. There was no hot water to fill the baptismal font so calls were made for people to bring 5 gal. buckets of hot water or coolers full. It was a little hilarious if you ask me. =] Tali & SheraLee sang a duet together that was pretty. We had cake afterwards in the kitchen area of the church then migrated to the house with everyone for hoagie sandwiches for lunch. It also snowed like 5 inches over the weekend as well. It was extremely weird to wake up and see all that snow after only 2 weeks of Fall weather. It's October for heaven's sake!!!! lol. Here's a few pics of the crazy weekend.

mini cheerleader

This is a clip from the football game we went to last Friday night. It was Rocky Mountain against Greybull. We sat with the Rocky side since SheraLee is a cheerleader. (The cheerleader closest to us in the front row). Madelynne had fun copying her cheers.

All in a weekend...

We've had a pretty great weekend. We got to listen to conference on tv and have my sister Andrea and her family hang out with us yesterday for a while. It was too short of a visit, but it was good to see them.



RJ helped Dad around the house with things like blowing the sprinkler lines out so they won't freeze in the winter and even put new tubes in Michael's bike for him. woohoo! I was excited. They are planning to come next month for Thanksgiving though and actually staying with us so that will be something to look forward to.



The kids and I spent the afternoon today making peanut butter cookies. It was fun and super yummy. I thought we'd double the recipe and now we've got like 6 dozen cookies lying around and there's still cookie dough to cook up. hahahaha! If you're craving peanut butter cookies, this is the place to be. lol Here's a couple pics of the kids having fun while helping mix.

new frontiers...=]

Hey there! It's been a while. I update myspace then this one gets neglected...lol. Here's a new post Kristi...heehee. Life is good. Even better now that soccer is over. It's always fun to go to the games, but after a while and 3 players later you go insane with all the running around. Saturday was the 5 hour tournament and each boy had 2 games. Thankfully Paul and Michael were on the same team. Benjamin's were three blocks away so Grandpa got to sit in at his for the cheering section when games overlapped.

The other day the boys were playing soccer in the enclosed porch and Ben kicked a goal right through a window. Pretty funny. Thankfully it was only $35 to replace. He's working it off. Poor guy came running in to me with a completely freaked out face and told me he broke the window. There are days I really loathe disciplining my kids, but then I also think I'd better do something or they'll think it's okay behavior....i swear. I told him I really appreciated him telling me right away and being honest....a quality on the verge of extinction these days...lol.

Let's see....what else is new for us. Oh, I'm the new Primary singing leader at church. Yesterday was my first time and I felt it was extremely unorganized and we ran out of time. I swear.....I can't even imagine the day that it's easy to get up there and not be freaked out. Imagine I have to teach these kids the songs when I don't even know them. HAHAHAHAHA! At one point I was leading them in the second verse of some song and halfway through I reverted us to the ending of the first verse. It was a little humorous. A couple of the teachers in back were having quite a chuckle. =] One day..... lol

Michael's 8th birthday was yesterday. He's sure growing up. We came home from church and he was sort of bummed saying he really wanted a cake and I played along that there wasn't time to bake one since church was at 9am. Then after lunch I lit the candles on the cake I'd baked the night before and had hiding in the microwave so then when we started singing he was still bummed it was over ice-cream and his little face lit up like Christmas at seeing the cake. It was way cool. His expression was better than when he opened his presents. lol. Theron was always about the cake growing up too. Forget the presents, he always looked forward to mom baking a cake just for him. The slide show below has a few pics to go with everything we've had going on so far.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

most dangerous cake recipe in the world! lol

MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE

1 Mug

4 tablespoons flour (that's plain flour, not self-rising)

4 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons baking cocoa

1 egg

3 tablespoons milk

3 tablespoons oil

3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)

Small splash of vanilla

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well .

Add the egg and mix thoroughly.

Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.

Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla, and mix again.

Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!

Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.

EAT! (this can serve 2 if you want to share!)

And why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world? Because now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Frustrated =]

Wow, I can't believe how easy it is to accidentally erase your post before you hit publish....argh. My camera cable is still missing in action. I suppose it could possibly be in one of the dozen or so unpacked boxes....yeehaw. lol So wish me luck and I'll try and get some pics up soon. Ciao!

soccer season

Having 3 boys playing soccer is always crazy. It would be tooooooo easy to have them all on the same team. Yesterday we went to Benjamin's soccer game over in Burlington and found out he was 20 minutes late for it. So he jumped into the game then Paul and Michael (who are thankfully on the same team) were on the opposite end of the field warming up for their game that was getting ready to start. It was a little crazy since I ended up watching both games from the playground with Madelynne somewhere near the middle of the field....lol. It was fun though. Theron was home to come with us and cheer them on. Benjamin's game got over in the middle of Paul and Michael's so he volunteered to sub-in for another team that was short players....holy hannah.....three hours later and we finally headed for home. Benjamin is HUGELY into soccer. He asked me the other day if he could play in high school or the olympics. I say the sky's the limit....go for it. lol. I finally got batteries for my camera and took a bunch at the games yesterday then this morning I couldn't find the cable to download them to the computer....sigh. It'll turn up. I'm sure if I follow Jacob and see where he stashes the goods after he's crawled off with them then I'll hit the jackpot. lol. so till then.....hasta =]

....and God bless the internet =]

Hey all! We are officially back online. Not having internet the past two weeks has been quite the chore. It was amazing how much more time I had to do dishes, laundry, vacuum, sweep, mop...rofl. haha! I am extremely happy to be online again. I feel like I'm connected to the world (or family and friends I keep in touch with) again. It's GRAND!

We are loving our new house. Theron only got a small handful of days here in the new house before he was on the road again. We miss him tons. He'll be back after the weekend though for a couple days. It will be nice when his schedule has him home more often. Anyway, enough about his schedule and more about the house, eh? haha It's the biggest house we've ever lived in and we fit perfectly. The boys still gripe that they can't have their own room, but so it goes with a family of 4 boys and one girl....she'll always be the lucky one with her own room. :) She's loving it.

My camera has been dead and I haven't broken down and bought rechargeable batteries yet so I don't have any pictures to download tonight....sorry folks. =] I'll get on it.......in a day or so...haha

I was settling in with my little computer here tonight and going through the kazillion emails I had in my inbox after forever and my doorbell rang. (It's a very annoying doorbell that is more like a buzzer on a gameshow signaling that you've lost...anyway) and it startled me so I didn't want to go answer it alone so I dragged Ben out of bed and made him go with me to answer it. Pretty pathetic...kind of like when I took Paul with me to see what that loud noise was, right SheraLee? hahahaha! Anyway, it was a dozen or more young girls between the ages of 12 and 17 all bringing me dinner for tomorrow night. They'd made it at their activity earlier. It was really sweet. I was relieved it wasn't really the boogie man and they came with a plate of brownies in tow so that made my night (major brownie junkie). Anyway, we're good. I could keep rambling and rambling very easily so I'll quit and kick Michael off to bed since he's dragging out his homework. Hasta

new stuff...i tell ya

It's kind of weird being home owners. I can't believe how stressed out I made myself this morning before all 2,139 pages were signed this morning. LOL. I was literally sick to my stomach and nauseated and then went to the bank for an hour and signed my life away as well as my first born and then I was fine. =] hahahahaha! It was pretty funny. I've been more stressed out lately than ever and in the middle of packing up a bookshelf I came across a letter from my mom the last month of my mission. She asked me if I was stressed (since I'm such a fan of change) and then told me to lighten up and think of it as an adventure. Hello!! I could just picture her saying that to me too. It was a bittersweet moment. Anyway, it was a good little piece of advice brought to my remembrance again...............

................ok, Benjamin came in and did a little session of "who's on first, what's on second" with me and I lost my train of thought as well as lost a few inches on my fuse...heehee. Anyway, Theron got to see the house for the first time today. He'd never seen the inside. Talk about going on faith that my dad and I knew what we were talking about. ha! He liked it a lot and is excited to get in and make it home. The missionaries tracted into our house while I was hanging out with my folding chairs (for soccer and tball games) for furniture and will let the ward know we moved in. I guess we can't go into hiding this year...totally kidding. (wink wink) =] We'll be offline for about a week though so when we come back I'll have some new pictures. So I'll catch ya'll on the flip side. lol

state of shock...haha

WE GOT THE HOUSE! I'm so excited! We take possession of the house the 25th of this month. Crazy! So now the dejunking begins and the packing then the cleaning. I used to be a pro at all of that with how often we moved around there for a while. Now that we've been in the same town for the past 4 years I'm a little rusty...hahahahaha! Maybe it's like riding a bike and it will all come back. LOL! My dad is pretty excited as well. He'll be moving in with us and out of the house he's been living in with his sister and her husband. The kids start school at their new school on Tuesday and it's a half hour commute one way....fun fun. The school is only two blocks from our new house so it can't get better than that. They can walk and be there in like 5 minutes. Woohoo!

Hogle Zoo trip with the Dent's

We spent over two hours there and still didn't see it all. Somehow we missed the bears and zebras...lol

Theron, Benjamin, Madelynne & Lexi with Jacob and me in the background.

Steve & Tali

Theron, Jacob & me

I couldn't believe how much Hogle Zoo has changed. Major renovations everywhere. Elephant area above.

the crew and me at the penguin pool.

school shopping

wow, I had this whole post typed then mistakenly typed some combo of keys and it's gone....lovely, eh? Anyway, I'm amazed at the list of supplies the kids are sent to purchase before school each year. Blows my mind. 6 dozen pencils for Michael's class is a mind boggler and a pair of shoes to be left at school at all times is an eye roller...lol. As if 3 pairs of shoes originally on the shopping list weren't enough, let's double it. =] So anywhere between $30 and $50 for just supplies, then you get to buy clothes. I say move Christmas to August people! 4 months to recover for the holidays isn't enough any more...hahaha! All right, I'm off my soap box. I'm with ya Megan. Next we'll be supplying ink cartridges for the teachers..rofl.