Happy Leap Day!

Here are some more scrapbook layouts I've recently done. These were all done for work at last minutes' notice, so they're not as thoughtful as the previous ones. Anyway, enjoy!

Snow Fun

Scott and I are watching my sister's children for a week while she is in Mexico. So while she's enjoying hot sun and warm beaches and sunburn, we decided to enjoy what we had and play in the snow. Uintah basin has definitely had it's share of snow! There are piles and piles of it to sled on...
...and eat.


Some favorite quotes of the week:

Said by Kaelan (age 10) to Scott just tonight while Scott was cleaning up after dinner: "You can fix the internet but you can't turn on a vacuum?"

Bryson (age 3): "Do you want a friendly alien?" but which sounded like "d'yoo wanuh fwendwy aweean?" (It took Scott three or four attempts to figure out what he was asking, with Bryson's anger rising each time Scott didn't understand what was so painfully clear to Bryson.) Then Bryson went on to "show off" his friendly (imaginary) alien that was walking beside him.

Bryson: "When I grow up, I want to be arithmatic." Britta: "a what?" Bryson: "Arithmatic, you know, and do magic." Britta: "Oh, a magician" Bryson: "that's what I said!"

What do YOU do on Sunday Afternoons?

Hobbies

Britta and I have been saving old jeans since we've been married in the idea for making a quilt. Our Freshman year of college Britta made me a blue jean quilt for Christmas, and it has remained my favorite blanket ever since. Once our collection of old jeans reached critical mass, Britta started on another. (Thanks to mom for lending us her sewing machine for this project.) Two and a half weeks, several pin pricks, and thread bobbins later, we have a new, multi-toned, super jean quilt, bigger and heavier than the previous. Britta made it large enough for both of us to fit under it comfortably, and so it is about 86"X72". We love it already. Thank you Britta!


With only a few months of normal life left before school starts again for me, I decided I would like to pick up a hobby. (I also think that this is spurred on by my day off when I don't have anything to do and my tendency to become awfully stir-crazy.) I have always had a dream of doing wood working, even furniture building, and having my own shop. This dream is quite impracticable now, or even in the near future, so I decided to start small. In south Provo on State Street is a woodcarving shop called Treeline, and visiting the store made me feel like a child in a candy shop. I picked out a couple of tools and a pattern for a wood chain and some wood blocks and so I'm off on a new hobby. I'll keep you updated on my progress and future projects, at least until time runs out for me.

Cancelled!

We awoke this morning to a snow storm. By about 8:30 four or five inches had acumulated. After spending the better part of two hours trying to keep the walks clear at the stake center, and another three inches adding up, church was cancelled. This is the first time in my living memory that church had been cancelled. So, instead of spending the time in church, I began to reread "Standing for Something," by President Gordon B. Hinckley. What a great book. Much of what was written seems especially insightful and prescient now, just as it did eight years ago when first published. The world seems to be such a different place than it was then.
On another note, Britta has spent a god deal of her time making a new quilt for us. . . pictures to follow. I won't say any more so I don't spoil her presentation party.

Happy February!

While I was in paper craft mode, I thought I'd share some Valentine card ideas I made for work. Happy Early Valentine's Day!

Scrapin' Gal

After working for over 9 months at a company that designs things for scrapbookers, I decided I should try my hand at scrapbooking. These are literally the first four attempts I have made at serious scrapbooking. I have so many ideas now to do so much more! I'm excited. I'm also a little crazy cause I don't have much time to add another hobby to my to do list...

p.s. Thank you to Nettie and Sarah for letting me use your blogs as a resource for my scrapbooking!

Three cheers for snow!

hip hip HORRAY

hip hip HORRAY

Since I've lived in Utah (for over 8 years now) I've never had a winter as wonderful and snowy as this one! It's snowed at least once a week since the beginning of December! What makes it even more wonderful? That means we haven't had a single inversion in the valley! And for that, I jump up and down and shout

hip hip HORRAY!!!

Napkin Heaven

Merry Christmas to me! I love folding napkins. It's a hobby I picked up when I was really young, living at my parent's house, decorating for special family dinners (like Christmas). When I got married I got a linen set with four orange, green, and yellow large plaid patterned napkins. It was a strange pattern and none of the napkins were quite square. So for the past 4 1/2 years I've made do with folding misshapen or paper napkins. For Christmas my sister gave me all the above napkins! I'm in napkin-folding heaven! Now I just need to get my starch out...

I love my sisters

Minnesota December 2, 2007
First time we were all together in 1 1/2 years.

O Christmas Tree

Here is our blurry Christmas tree (sorry, its the best picture of it we've got). We got a screaming deal at Target for this artificial tree and the much of the decorations ( I think all of them, actually). I like it, though it is a skinny-triangle-tree. We would like to see pictures of everyone's trees if you don't mind posting them.

Scott's Random Featured Quote

"I want to punch this cardboard box because I'm a boy."

Happy Thanksgiving!

Who says people are ignoring Thanksgiving to decorate for Christmas? They should meet our neighbors. Here's a taste: monster turkeys, pilgrims, yellow and orange lights all over...

Can you see Mr. Pilgrim winking in this one? I couldn't get a good shot of Mrs. Pilgrim from the street. These manekins are decorated differently for every holiday: zombies, pilgrims, Mr. & Mrs. Clause, lovers (for Valentine's Day). Scott refers to them as the corpses.

Vindicated

BYU 27

TCU 22

Last night Scott and I got to go to the BYU vs. TCU game (Happy Birthday to Scott! Thanks, Gary and Sherri). It was awesome! I know this is a little ridiculous, but I still felt bitter from the fall 2005 game at BYU and this win has finally quenched that. I felt like TCU joined the MWC just because they thought they would have easy wins and get a better ranking. Then that first season, 2005, they were overrated and set up to win the Conference title (ugh). When we played them (I was there) BYU looked clearly like the better team, but because of two major bad calls, in overtime TCU won 51 to 50. We were robbed! But now, two years later and with two wins over TCU (including last year @ TCU) I finally feel vindicated.

Guess who's birthday is today!

Happy Birthday SCOTT!

Happy Halloween

Isn't it fun to dress up?

Fall Farm-tastic Fun

Last night Brett, Sarah, Oliva, Sherri, Scott and I went to a corn maze. I haven't gone to a corn maze in over five years, and I have been wanting to! This was just perfect. (oh, except I recommend going to a corn maze when there's a little more light outside.)
We went on a hayride there, and that was a highlight. "Cornbelly's" had hired artists to carve dozens and dozens of pumpkins in recognizable images, portraits, cartoons, and they were really elaborate! It was amazing. The hayride drove us past all of them. Unfortunately, it was too dark to get good pictures.
Scott and Brett got a good workout on the jumping pillow and the pedal go-carts.
It took a little while for Olivia to get used to being outside in the dark and cold, but she warmed up to it and was such a little doll. I love her hat with the two baubles!
The cow train. Good clean fun!

Growing Up

Do you ever feel like you're still growing up? Last week was a week where I felt like I was growing up fast with too much responsibility. Here are some highlights of my week:

The week started with Sunday where I had to teach a joint lesson to all the young women about chastity. I'm sure I fretted more about this than I needed to, seeing as Scott was team teaching with me. Well I survived that, and it was actually pretty rewarding to know we did a decent job on a potentially tricky topic.

Monday I got to work and learned that the employee who I manage was still feeling sick from his wisdom teeth removal the previous week, so he wasn't there Monday or Tuesday. With deadlines creeping up constantly, I picked up a lot of his work load on top of mine.

The Young Women of the ward were planning a retreat over the weekend, and Mia Maids were in charge of dinner and an hour long spiritual class (which one of the other Mia Maid advisors was scheduled to do). I learned on Tuesday that I probably would be the only Mia Maid advisor there, our previous dinner plans weren't going to work, and I would most likely be teaching the class at the retreat. I met with my class presidency on Tuesday and arranged dinner plans for the retreat, and on Wednesday night, the girls came to my house to chop up enough vegetables for soup to feed 50 people.

Thursday at work was another crazy day with a new project decided upon to be released the next day. This required me to teach myself how to use a font program I've never used and modify, adjust and assemble a very complicated font by early afternoon because my employee wasn't able to come in until mid-afternoon and wouldn't have time to complete this project.

Friday morning I woke up and quickly assembled four crock pots of soup before leaving to teach yoga. After Yoga, I had to rush to work to reach a newsletter deadline.

When I got home in the afternoon, I discovered that two of my (favorite) soups for the retreat had overcooked and were no good. I had to leave in an hour and only had two crock pots of soup to feed 50 people.

My hero, Scott, was so helpful at this point, and ran to the grocery store to get sandwich ingredients while I threw clothes and toiletries into a bag and frantically tried to think of how to beef up a spiritual thought to last an hour.

Well, I survived the dinner (though I don't think I really tasted any of it) and my class managed to last 40 minutes, which turned out to be just right. I maybe slept four hours that night, and then it was Saturday.

After I drove the girls in my car home, I went home planning on spending the whole day working on several freelance projects that I had been putting off because of my busy schedule. Well, I decided to put them off a little longer and took a break to watch the BYU football game and enjoy my Saturday.

I see some women who live at this pace constantly and I don't know how they do it! Looking back, it was a good week, but I'm glad every week isn't as busy as last week.

I cut my hair!

Before

During After

Thanks Sarah!

My Celebrity Look-alikes

Eva Longoria? I don't think so. And 76% Brendan Fraser?!