Magnets

So, my grandma goes out to lunch once a month with the girls from her high school graduating class. There are 24 ladies, so I made these cute magnets out of some bright flowers, then I added the word 'friend' under a flat marble. They turned out really cute, then I coordinated a paper that showed where they were meeting for lunch for the year. I hope my grandma's friends think they are as cute as I thought they were!

Taran

Yesterday I was driving and Taran was looking out the window finally he asked me "Mom, do they make those polls and strings (talking about telephone polls and the wires) so that the birds have a place to sit?" Pretty cute question if you ask me!

Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year. Yesterday was officially Chinese New Year, it is the year of the Ox. We celebrated with the Johnson's, which has become a tradition. She made some Chinese and Thai dishes that were super yummy. Then the kids made an Ox magnet and we played charades where the kids took turns acting out animals from the Chinese zodiac. We had a lot of fun and the kids were excited to bring their magnets to school to show them off!

On the Chinese Zodiac, Joel and Joely were both born in the year of the Dragon.
Taran and I were both both in the year of the Goat, and Kyler was born in the year of the Dog, and obviously the new baby will be born in the year of the Ox.

Yipee

Joel got me the Cricut Expression on Saturday! I am SO excited, I think he was just get tired of me always saying how much I wanted it. This is perfect timing because I have to make a bulletin board for the Primary room by next Sunday, and I am in charge of sharing time on Sunday also. My old cricut will be moving to a new home, my friend Amy Johnson has a preschool, so Joel told her she could have the other cricut :)

Muddy Day

I love rainy days! Luckily it was warm enough to enjoy, Kyler was loving the mud, and well let's face it mud is fun! So here is my muddy buddy!

1 Nephi done!

In primary we are reading the Book of Mormon, and we are pleased to say that we have completed 1 Nephi! This is a pretty exciting day for the kids!

Inauguration

Yesterday both kids watch ed the Inauguration in school. Yes, Joel and I also watched it at home. After school Taran was all excited at his Barack Obama flag he made and told me that Barack was just 'over the orange states' I think he meant United States. :)

Hip Hip Hooray for 100 day

It's 100 day in school, so I made some cupcakes to bring into Joely's class. Taran's class is celebrating next week, so I'll be doing this again next week.

Draper Utah Temple

We took our kids up to see the open house of the Draper Utah Temple (actually we just got back about an hour ago) and let me tell you it was so beautiful!

So here's how the day went, we went on Saturday to see it. We got dressed up in our church clothes at the motel around 3pm. Then for some reason Joel calls his sister in SLC, they talk about the temple, and she mentions that most people will probably be in regular clothes, not church clothes....Joel gets off the phone and declares that we should all change our clothes again...and we do.

We then drive to the temple, needless to say we don't have a map or address, but hey it's a huge temple, it cant be too hard to find. True, it wasn't too hard, but we did get a chance to see many houses due to wrong turns.

We then get to the temple and the parking lot isn't too full, naturally we like awesome we totally lucked out, we pull in, where there are two men to great us, the kindly tell us that there is no parking at the temple. They have three stake centers set up for people to park at and get shuttled up to the temple. They give us a map, and we head to one of the stake centers. (Now we notice the hords of busses passing us)

We get to the stake center, finally find a parking spot, and notice that NOBODY not one person is in casual clothes. Dang us for listening to Tawni! Now we have to decide if we want to stay or go back to the motel and change... we opt to drive back and change.

Take two of changing into our church clothes.... and driving back to the stake center.

We decided to call Tample Square on our way back to the Stake Center, to see if they can give us more info....they mention we just need to show up at the designated stake center at the time indicated on our ticket...what a ticket, we don't have a ticket, where do you get a ticket. Now we are stressing about this whole thing, but we do still go to the stake center. We go in, where we notice tons of people sitting on rows of chairs filling the whole cultural hall. They ask us for a ticket, where we explain we are from out of town and don't have a ticket. We were told it was okay and to sit on an assigned row.

They call out about two rows at a time to board the bus, we can tell it's going to be a long wait, we weren't wrong. When we get called, we find out we don't board a bus, but go to another room to watch a movie, then we board the bus.

At the temple we get dropped of at this covered walkway they have set up that leads you to the temple, and it is chuck full of people. More people then could have been imagined, and the line creeps along. All in all it took us three hours to get through the tour....but, it was all worth it!

The Temple was so so so pretty! The kids did great considering it took us such a long time.

This was the first Saturday the tour was opened, so I think others will have an easier time then us, just remember 1.Wear church clothes 2.No parking at the Temple 3. Be prepared to wait

I hope everyone gets a chance to see it, I think the tour is opened until March 14th!

Useless Facts

I love useless pieces of knowledge, so here are two new things.

#1. (Thanks to my grandma for enlightening me on this one). Garbage men get paid based on weight and houses. Who knew I figured they would just get paid, but actually they get paid based on how many homes they have on there route and how much garbage they have (the weight) So Christmas must be an awesome time to be a garbage man. So next time you have a whole lot a trash going out, think of the how happy your garbage man is, you are securing a larger check for him!

#2. In the middle of Utah is a town named LEVAN it is actually NAVAL spelled backwards. Needless to say, it's the belly button of Utah!

Kinda Funny

So today I was reading one of those 'week by week in your pregnancy' books. For 15 weeks it mentioned some things that I just laughed at, it mentioned sudden outbursts of emotion...I found this funny because yesterday I went to Hollywood video and had to pay a late fine (a rather steep one I may add) and it just must have hit me wrong, because I started crying about it. Yup, I cried about paying money to Hollywood, needless to say we cancelled our membership too. Hmm, sudden outburst of emotion?

Brunette again

I decided that I didn't want to keep up the blonde hair while I am taking prenatals, so a couple days ago I dyed my hair a dark blonde color. I thought I would just do it myself, well the results were aweful, it turned out gray. I'm totally serious it was GRAY. Joel told me it was a shade of gray. Quite frankly gray is gray, and I didn't want to try to bring gray in as a new color for the under 40 group. However I was a little hesitate about dying it immediatly after. So, I used the purple shampoo, hoping to take out the icky color. It didn't work. Anyone who saw me on Sunday was probably wondering what was going on with my hair. Needless to say I had it done brunette this morning, just like it used to be, and it worked out great! I think I'll wait for the whole head of gray until I'm a little older!

So what would you have me do? -Kyler

I am sure this is what was going through Kyler's head...
"I just wish I could play with these trains with out anyone bothering me..."
at this moment the idea strikes
"I'll just put them all down my onsie, watch them try to take them now...ha ha ha"

And so this is how we found Kyler, trying to stick as many trains down his onsie as he could, and thinking he was quite clever too!

Sorry the pictures are sideways, it's a habit of mine to take pictures vertically.

My Girly Boys

I just love girls with cute hair, but I only have one girl...So I decided to put cute little pony tails in the boys' hair. Taran thought it was funny, but after a while Kyler started crying. How's a mom supposed to have fun if it's not making life difficult for her children?

The Scorpion

Here are the boys making paper airplanes. This has become a new past time in our house. Of course you can't just make an airplane, it must be named, and grouped into the type of plane it is.

Me, I make dud airplane, mine never fly, or they do funky spirals before crashing, but Joel (and his dad) this is a fine art. The Scorpion is Tarans personal favorite airplane, others include The Spider and The Black Hawk.

Joel had to give Taran lessons in the fine points in aerodynamics like slighlty rolling the ends of the wings upwards to give the plan lift...Me, of course I never knew this. Do people actually do this? and slighlty weighting different parts of the plane...What? I thought this was a paper airplane. Taran just loves all the information, he always want to know how everything works, and Kyler, well he could care less, but he sure does laugh a lot when we are throwing the planes around!

Good News

I am just the most excited person right now because I received two great calls this morning... First my good friend Jennifer Anderson got called to be the Young Womens president of her ward and my friend McKenzie Hansen is her second councilor! They are going to have so much fun I cant hardly stand it! Robyn you'll have to pass fun ideas on to her! Second my friend Janae Bang had a baby boy this morning, he was two and a half weeks early and still 8lbs 15 oz. Wow that's a big boy. I just love hearing such great news! Hopefully this happy feeling will continue as I head into see if our baby is still doing okay, we've have an odd weekend and we need to make sure there is still a little baby. So I hope all the happiness will just keep on going!

Congrats to Jennifer and Janae!


PS. We still found the heartbeat, but they have some concerns with the pregnancy. So all is well, but we just have to wait and hope this baby decides to hang in there!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and happy New Years! I can't believe it's 2009 and I'm just posting my Christmas Pictures!

We went to the grandma and grandpa Stouts for our traditional Christmas Eve festivities, complete with dinner, caroling and lots of snacks. We got home Christmas Eve at 11pm just in time to open our Christmas PJ's and notice that Ivins was completely covered in SNOW! St.George looked nothing like Ivins did. I think knowing that I was going to have my first white Christmas ever was the best part of the whole holidays (what-ever global warming!)

Christmas morning came early as usual with Joely and Taran calling us from there room, because of course Joel and I have hung sheets up to block the view of the front room, oh, yeah and there is the chair barracade. (We do this because it's all tradition, not because it actually keep kids from peeking, oh no, because the first thing Joely said to me when I made it to her room was "You know I forgot about this, but I think a scooter would be a really cool present, you know the kind with two wheels. I forgot to ask Santa for one but I think that would be fun...." Hmm I bet you'd never guess what Santa brought her....perhaps a scooter. I guess the whole house re-do to prevent peeking is crap, but we'll keep on doing it!

Kyler was still asleep when the kids woke up in the morning so, at 6am we played games in Joely's room so that Kyler could sleep for a little longer. At 6:30 we decided this was pointless and we would just go and wake him up, he greated us by throwing-up. I'm sure that was him thinking Take that for waking me up so early in the morning when I didn't get to bed until midnight!

The kids had a great time opening presents, the most loved presents I think were the Pixos. Then we prepared for grandma and grandpa Foremaster and grandma Barabara to come over for breakfast...YUM!

This was one of my favorite Christmas' because of the snow, I hope it doesn't take another 30 years to have a white Christmas!


Last Night we spent New Years at the Stouts, they live a block and a half away from First Night, so everyone can easily walk to First Night and back as they please...Of course I never choose to actually go out in the cold, in the middle of winter at night, not when there's a heated house to stay at! Why be cold?

I haven't made any New Years resolutions, probably because I won't keep them. They usually are, get in better shape...I'm guessing that resolution usually comes with the required exersize...which I know I wont do, so forget it. And there is always eat better...but I got that really cool new brownie pan this year, so forget that one too. Keep up on dishes and housework....hmm, dishes in the sink as we speak, I could have been cleaning like I said I would when I got home from town, but then I saw my sad little lonely computer, and i figured the dishes weren't going anywhere...so I guess I better scratch that resolution. See, I just figured it was easier to skip the resolutions this year! Better luck with yours!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!