Can someone come and deck MY halls? PLEASE?

By this time last year, here is what my house looked like:

Everything was spic and span (notice the sheen of the floors), all of our decorations were up and most of the presents were bought and stored away. I had Christmas cards AT LEAST figured out and had a pretty good jump start on neighbor gifts and school staff gifts. I even went as far as to take these pictures so I could REMEMBER where I put everything so I didn't have to RE-FIGURE it out for next year (am I the only one who has such a poor short term memory)? Anyway, in a nutshell, I was as ON THE BALL as one could be! So what is my problem this year? Currently, my house looks like this:




The LAST thing I feel like doing right now is lugging all the Christmas stuff in and getting the house ready (let alone getting the floors to the perfect sheen). I don't have a clue what I'm sending for Christmas cards nor do I have any idea what the neighbors and co-workers will be getting from us. I didn't even make it to all the Black Friday events that I usually go to (Steve went instead). I just can't seem to even find the DESIRE to get going with the holidays this year and it's freaking me out a little. I am hoping that I can blame it on the fact that we were a little under the weather this Thanksgiving and have been a bit sleep deprived for the last few nights. But then again, usually the ENJOYMENT of decking the halls gives me a little adrenaline even if I am tired. So who knows?!

Anyway, just thought I'd blog it out a bit. See if any of the rest of you are having "Christmas Withdrawals" too? Probably not. This is so bazaar! Hopefully I'll snap out of it! Otherwise, it might be Christmas BREAK before I actually get my act together! Yikes. I really could use a decorating fairy to come over and deck our halls RIGHT NOW! Anyone?

Marriage Tag

Okay. I must be losing my mind. I can't get my act TOGETHER! I left my camera at school every night last week AND over the weekend! I guess I am not meant to get some of these posts up! So, I was tagged over the weekend and since I have a spare few minutes to blog (but no camera), I will answer the tag. I am going to do a different tag though (I think I have already done the other one that Jessica had tagged me to do-or at least a similar version to it), so I'm gonna do the Marriage Tag that has been floating around the last few days. This is fitting too since we have been listening to some of our Christmas CDs lately and one of the songs on one of the CDs is a song we put on our wedding video. Of course, the kids heard the song and asked to watch the video and so, marriage and weddings has been on our brains anyway! BTW, the song on our video is not Jingle Bells or anything like that. It is that Jim Brickman song with Collin Raye and some other lady called, The Gift. Cute little love song. In fact, I will add it to my playlist at the top and so, if you turn on your speakers, you can get the FULL effect. What could be better? Hearing the song while you read about the marriage. . .awesome!

HERE GOES:

1. Where did you and your husband meet? At his mother's Montessori school. He came in to make copies and I had to show him how to use the machine.

2. How long before you kissed? I can't believe I really don't know this? It was probably two or three dates in, at least. I am not a first date kisser.

3. Who kissed who first? Steve surely made the first move. . .

4. How long from the time you met until you were engaged? How long from the engagement to the wedding? About eighteen months from the time we met until our engagement and then about 3 months from engagement to wedding.

5. How did he propose? Okay, I still razz him about this. It was in front of his parents and two of his sisters. He tried to pull off some sneaky scheme that backfired. He actually wasn't even in the room when I opened the box with the ring?!?! It was on Christmas morning. I had gone to his house to pick him up to come back to my house for breakfast. He told me I would have presents under the tree from his family, so I started opening them while he was getting "ready." He had put the ring in a box marked "from Sandi". Anyway, he heard that I had FOUND the ring and came back in the room. He still wasn't "ready"-wearing his pajamas and his sister's new ski cap. Anyway, someone snapped a couple of pictures for the record. Definitely not how I envisioned the whole thing to go, but it is CLASSIC Steve and it makes me giggle now looking back on it.

6. Did he pick out the ring or did you? We both did. I would have tried on MORE if the salesman would have been more patient. But really, I think we chose a good ring. I have super long fingers and some of the rings that I thought were the prettiest looked really weird on me. This one suits me.

7. Do you still like the ring? Yes. I am sentimental about it. I will not ever get a new one as long as I don't lose it. I never take it off. I have had the prongs redone twice to be sure that diamond stays put. It's a nice size. Not too big and not too microscopic.

8. Where was your wedding and reception? We got married in the St. George temple and had our reception at a club house at Green Springs Golf Course. It is called the Lion's Head Clubhouse and it sits up on a cliff overlooking the greens. It was a beautiful location.
9. How many bridesmaids did you have and who was your maid of honor? Let's see. Steve's two youngest sisters, Sunnie and Sandi were bridesmaids and my sister Jaime was the maid of honor.

10. What color were your bridesmaid dresses? They were semi casual, with a pale yellow, floral pattern. It was the late 90's and pale yellow and sage green were the IT colors.

11. What was your bouquet made of? Honestly, I really don't know. It was beautiful though!

12. Who gave you away? Nobody. That isn't a sad thing. It's just not part of the temple marriage ceremony.

13. Did you cry during your wedding? Of course. I am not a robot. Steve and I had a CRAZY roller coaster courtship. Emotions were high. Finally MARRYING him was such a big moment!

14. What style was your dress? I am not sure on this one either. Just late 90's princess-y type. It was raw silk, so not a pure, true white. I loved it. I borrowed it from my friend Kristen. She has great taste!

15. Was your wedding kiss sweet or sexy? Church sweet.

16. Who caught your bouquet? My cousin, Kristi. BARELY. It was a terrible throw! I am embarrassed when I watch the video footage.

17. What flavor was your cake? Actually. The cake was not real. We did serve each other a bite of the chocolate cake we served the guests though.

18. Did you smash the cake onto each other's faces or feed it to each other nicely? Nicely I suppose.

19. What was "your song" that you danced to at your wedding? We stood in our wedding line (typical Mormom reception tradition) until 11:00 at night! Steve's dad was the Stake President and County School Superintendent and everyone in the entire city stood in our line to meet and greet us. I really don't think we were worth it! Anyway, there was no time for dancing!

20. What did you serve your guests to eat? We served chocolate cake and ice cream. That's it. (see, not worth it):).

21. What did your friends do to decorate your car? Not a thing.

22. What was your favorite wedding gift? Any and all cash-AWESOME!

23. What was the worst wedding gift you got? I really can't think of one that totally stands out. I think we got like three or four of a LOT of things though. A LOT of taking stuff back. . .

24. Where did you go on your honeymoon? VEGAS!

25. Looking back, is there anything you would have changed about your wedding? Yes. There is one part on our wedding video where I am hollering at Steve to come over and get pictures taken! (Um, the sun was setting and we still had LOTS to do.) Now, I was NOT a wedding diva by any means (note the fake cake and the borrowed dress. For me, it wasn't about the wedding)- but I did want decent pictures. Anyway, Steve's buddies thought that opening a "gag" gift RIGHT when we were supposed to be snapping photos was a great idea. I called for him like five times. Finally-I shouted "STEVEN!" On the video, all his buddies are giggling and looking at Steve like he is in massive trouble! It's actually kind of funny, but I am just bugged that my shrieky voice is forever captured on our video-for all of posterity. That particular moment would probably be all I'd change:) The rest was FABULOUS. Best day of my life!

Pictures Please!

I know. I have TOTALLY fallen off the wagon. My last two posts were TEXT overload and slightly lame. Here are some photos to make up for lost time. Just a sneak peek as to what has been on our camera lately and the short version of the stories to go with them! Enjoy!

Conner's Stitches
Let's just say this is not his first set of stitches (although I can hope for it to be the last, right?). This child, I tell you! He is soooo stubborn and determined (Hmmm, can't imagine where he gets that from?)! So, he decided he needed to cut his own grapefruit. He watched me slice into mine and carefully cut away each section (just like Grandma used to do) and although I shared some of it with him and offered more, I guess he thought he needed his own. Shame on me for believing my son would actually listen to me when I said, "please do not try to do that-you better not be using a knife". About five seconds later, he rushes over to us holding a little pool of blood in his hands (at least he was being cautious about dripping all over). I ran his hands under water to find the wound and wrapped it tightly in a towel. Of course, this was all very chaotic with Conner screaming, "am I going to lose my finger?" and Steve frantically trying to decide if we should take him into the Insta-Care place. With no signs of the blood stopping, we decided to pile in the car and head there. Halfway there, the blood stopped flowing so we headed back home and slapped on a bandaid. Phew. Problem solved-right? Well, we went to my mom's for dinner and after we ate, the blood started flowing like a river again! No problem-now we've got MY mom to figure it out. "Let's just put the bandaid on tighter this time." This sounded like a logical solution. However, about twenty minutes later, I couldn't believe that dang finger started bleeding again. I finally took him into our doctor's "night light" clinic (we were the only ones there-thankfully) and we stitched that boy up! Two stitches and a few tears later, the blood has finally ceased! I really don't care to see any more of it for a long time-so hopefully, Conner, if you're listening? Hopefully you've learned your lesson!

Wall of Fame

So, my little brother turned thirteen this weekend. We headed to Blue Bunny to celebrate. They have this thing on the menu that appealed to Kirk and his clan of five friends. It is basically 21 scoops of ice-cream in a giant sundae bowl. If you finish the entire thing, you get to put your name on the Blue Bunny Wall of Fame (very prestigious). So, the boys picked the flavors and toppings (with a little coaxing from us) and we were told we could "sample" a little bit of it from the big pot. So, before the boys dug in, we all scooped out our shares of the ice cream and then let them have at it! I can't imagine what the melting pot of flavors must have tasted like there towards the end (not to mention all the saliva that was swapped) but the boys were determined! I think they probably set a record too. They had the ice cream devoured in no time. Thus, all of them are now proud owners of a strategic place on the Wall of Fame, and on top of that, it was a fun birthday party! Happy Birthday Bro!

Lewis' Art

Speaking of walls, these little jewels of Lewis' have been on display at school in the hallway. He really enjoys art and has for a long time. I love seeing what he comes up with and the little fun touches that he adds to things. I really need to do a whole post devoted to Lewis' art and some of his on-going projects. They really are something to see!

Award Winning Door

I had to take a picture of our award winning door! Our kindergarten class won a popcorn party because of this baby! You can never go wrong with hand prints and children's writing when something is to be judged-seriously. And, if you're wondering how I can come up with such a creative Red Ribbon Week Door decoration idea? Well I have four words: stolen from the internet. Yes, this is someone else's genius just brilliantly executed by the K kids at the last minute. I loved how it tied in with our new high frequency word we were learning, "LIKE"! Killing two birds with one stone is always good:)
 In case it is difficult to read:

100% Me!

I like you!

You like me!

Together we will stay Drug Free!

Keeping Warm in STYLE!

We are to the point now where Conner has a ton of clothes (thanks to Lewis' hand-me-downs) and poor Lewis has slim pickings. We used to get oodles of awesome clothes from my sister's boy, and they were always JUST the right size when we got them-but they moved! He still gets hand-me-downs from another cousin (who is only one month younger) but he somehow wears like two sizes bigger than Lew.?.?. This summer while I was shopping for deals on clothes for the boys, I kept remembering the giant storage container of hand-me-downs for Lewis and I kept myself from buying him much, thinking everything would fit. In fact, I did not buy him any pants. Well, we have gone through that container several times and only one pair can fit (barely)! We are still waiting for him to fit into some of those clothes. Anyway, I decided poor Lewis needed some stuff so I used some of my Old Navy bonus bucks and bought him some new duds. A few pairs of pants and this cute jacket with wool lining. He was thrilled. Conner-however was not! He had a complete come apart about not getting any "new" clothes. "Ummm, excuse me?" I said, I opened his drawer and pulled out THREE bran new pairs of pants (that I got on sale this summer-WITH his approval) that he REFUSES to wear! So, finally I came up with a plan. If Conner would wear the pants, I would buy him a cool jacket with wool on the inside too! Viola! Now everyone has clothes to wear and DON'T those kids look cute in their new jackets?

Alright. I am gonna have to stop there for tonight. I had a few more pics I wanted OFF my camera but I'll have to get to those sometime in the near future. But, at least I got a new post up! Woo HOO! I'll catch ya all later:)

The 50 Book Challenge!

The 50 Book Challenge!
I completely stole this entire post off of my friend's website. I have been looking for a great new year's resolution and I think this will be it. My life is SOOOO different than it was two years ago. Two years ago, I was a part of two book clubs and read all the time. Now the only reading I do is informational type reading for school or lame magazine reading for "vegging"! So, I am going to take this 50 book challenge and see how far I get! This information is available on the Shelfari website.
When asked about the new Amazon Kindle product, Steve Jobs CEO of Apple computer had this to say: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
Basically .... the challenge is to read 50 books in one year. Or...establish a goal for yourself it's up to you.

The books the Shelfari staff loved in 2007:
1. Harry Potter the final - 15 votes 2. The Kite Runner - 12 votes 3. A Thousand Splendid Suns - 11 votes 4. Twilight - 5 votes 4. The Thirteenth Tale - 5 votes

With 4 votes each:Water For Elephants, The Road, The Red Tent, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Middlesex, Eat, Pray, Love

With 3 votes each:Eclipse, My Sister's Keeper, Suite Francaise, Shadow of the Wind, The Lovely Bones, Jane Eyre, His Dark Materials (plus 3 honorable mentions), The Glass Castle, Girl With the Pearl Earring, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

With 2 votes each:19 Minutes, Black Swan Green, Dogs of Babel, Heart-Shaped Box, In the Woods, Into the Wild, Kafka on the Shore, On Chesil Beach, The Book Thief, The Memory Keepers Daughter, The Stolen Child, No Country for Old Men, Marley and Me, New Moon

This will SERIOUSLY be a challenge for me, but I am up for it! Happy Reading!!!

Favorite Five for the Week

Piano Lessons Finally!- We have been on the search for almost an entire year to find somebody to teach Lewis the piano. There has been nobody that lives on our side of town and that could make our crazy schedules work, until now! We are soooo stoked about the great teacher Lewis gets to learn piano from. She is the organist in our ward and taught lessons for a long time while her kids were growing up. She is an older lady with the most fun, awesome personality and she decided to pick up a few students to teach after work a few nights a week (she works full time and could only teach lessons at night-um PERFECT for us)! Anyway, it was so fun dropping Lewis off at her house the other night and watching him settle down to the piano with her. Of course, he was stoked to come home and show off his stuff. He is a natural and is picking up fast. I spoke with his teacher at church today to find out more about their frist session and she said she really enjoyed Lewis' company and that he ia a natural (I suspected):) She said a lot of kids have trouble with timing initially, but Lewis was great. He has already been working hard on the first half of his first book and I am looking forward to some Christmas entertainment this year. He is on fire!

Election Day!It was soooo much fun to share election day with our boys this year. Having them both be old enough to understand the process and make formative opinions was something I wasn't expecting but was pleasently surprised by. A brilliant teacher at our school (Lewis' teacher actually) set up a mock election for our students to participate in. She even registered the children to vote(she thought of every detail). She set up this bulletin board in our school that showed all the candidates, both local and national, and posted results of the election through our mock votes as well as the real deal so we could see the comparisons. She taught the children in her class about the candidates and their different platforms and encouraged the other teachers to do the same in their classrooms before the kids voted (I'll admit, we did not get far in kindergarten-we are still trying to figure out the difference between Mrs. Peterson and Mr. Peterson - I am still being called Mr. Peterson in this late date in the year). Anyway, through this mock election experience, the kids were able to learn all about the elephants and the donkeys (and what they stand for), how voting effects our country and most importantly that every vote counts! In our house, we were all unanimously McCain, but overall, Obama won the mock election at our school. It was fun to see the boys get passionate about "their" candidate and tell why they supported him. Lewis blew me away with his growing political mind. He is already surpassing me in knowledge and this scares me! I thought I had a few more years before he realized that really, I don't know much. Anyhow, we really had a fun election day this year, and although our first choice did not pan out, we still live in a great nation!

THURSDAY NIGHT- Usually, this is our busiest, craziest day. A couple weeks ago, I posted "a day in our lives" and it was a pretty busy Tuesday, but seriously, that day doesn't hold a candle to what our Thursdays are usually like! I think it is so funny that every thing gets scheduled for Thursday nights these days? I guess it is a good night for most families? Usually our Thursday involves needing to call in some extra help from friends and neighbors to make it all pan out-but this week was different! Steve usually has meetings on Thursdays leaving me to run ragged getting the kids to and fro. Everything seems to start at the same time and on opposite ends of town. Luckily, this night-Steve was home! He ended up droppping Lewis off at scouts and taking Conner to his football game. Leaving me to only have to pick Lewis up from scouts and take him to his football practice. THAT is do-able! We actually were able to eat dinner as a family around the dinner table! It was GREAT! I know this seems so lame, but for me, it was a nice change.

Primary Program- Our primary put on their annual sacrament meeting program today and it was such a good one! I have been the CTR 6 teacher for almost three years now (and I hope they keep me there forever. . .I LOVE IT) and I gotta say, this has been my favorite since I've been in the primary. The theme for this year, "I am a Child of God" was presented in such a cute, special way. The kids knew the songs really well too and I think that makes a difference. Their voices were just awesome! Lewis actually had a chance to give a talk in our program and I gotta say, he was very impressive! He spoke very clear and loud and even made EYE contact from time to time! Who taught him that? Actually, he has been surprising us a LOT lately with his little hidden talents. He was in charge of our Family Home Evening lesson this week and all we did was give him his scout book and showed him the page he was supposed to present to us. The lesson was on "Cooperation". He was a NATURAL at teaching the concept and THEN, he came up with a little game to go with it. He actually came up with little scenerios and we had to guess if it was an example of cooperation or not. Steve and I about died at how cute this lesson was and we were left scratching our heads as to how our son became this great little presenter/teacher?

DAY OFF- The best part of our week is that we have a three day weekend this week! So, more fun to be had tomorrow! Here's to a great week next week too:)

Visions of Halloween

Halloween is one of those holidays that I am JUST so glad to see go! It is not like Christmas or Thanksgiving where you are a little sad to see it end and wait for as long as possible to take down the decorations or eat that last piece of pie. I think I look forward to the cleaning up of and the taking down of all the spooky reminders of the craziness even more than the actual making of the little projects and the details of the day. This year, we had our fill of fun Halloween events but the biggy came on Halloween evening, our school carnival. It turned out great. It was less stressful than I thought it was going to be, but nonetheless, I am a "stresser" kind of a gal, so I still wasted precious night's sleep worrying about how it was all going to pan out. Luckily, there are way awesome people that I work with who were willing to help take some of the load off. I remember at last year's carnival, I was running around like a mad woman and didn't have time to take any pictures. It would have made this year's carnival so much easier to put together had I done that. So, this year, I tried to take pictures before the major crowds started rolling in. A lot of the images are blurry, 'cause I was in a hurry, but at least they will be little reminders of what our carnival was like this year. I also got some pics of the kids at the trunk-or-treat that was held right after the carnival. Such a FUN-FUN night. I handed Steve the camera in the morning for the school parade because he did such a great job last year capturing most of the teachers in their costumes. This year, he totally dropped the ball. I think we had two images from the parade. One was of our son Lewis, which I am glad he got before his make-up got all smeared off. Anyway, Halloween was big, full and fun, but most of all it is OVER and I am SOOOOO glad! Now, to get rid of that Halloween candy. . .