Thanksgiving

November is a great time to express the things that you are thankful for. Many people are posting every day. I am not good at the daily thing, so here is my list of 50 things I am grateful for:

1-Tanner working super hard at school this year and getting almost straight A's.
2-My super cool kitchen table that Chris and Devyn made for me for Christmas last year.
3-Diet Coke, total lifesaver.
4-Books, ditto total lifesaver.
5-Chocolate.
6-Jared telling me, I love you mustard, eyeballs, hamburger, or whatever he is calling me at the moment.
7-Devyn bringing me breakfast in bed, especially when he has Jared help him bring it to me. Devyn makes really great crepes.
8-Justin rubbing my feet while he watches tv and I read my book.
9-Sami painting my toe nails.
10-Super greatful that my kids can cook and make me dinner.
11-When I have a chance to go away with my sweet hubby.
12-Wednesday lunches with Shanna.
13-Bread, I really love good bread.
14-Becky coming to clean my house.
15-Rare moments of peace and quiet.
16-Football is over, until next season!
17-My job, I know it's a surprise.
18-The super amazing primary kids in our ward.
19-Sweaters.
20-Really soft fuzzy socks.
21-Coming home to a clean house and happy kids.
22-Knowing that my 12 year old is going to be a fabulous mom, because she is typically the one that is responsible for the clean house and happy kids.
23-Fake nails.
24-When my family laughs and is happy.
25-The funny jokes that Jared and Justin tell to make us all laugh.
26-My Savior.
27-My dad.
28-Pedicures.
29-Mobile car detailers.
30-My testimony.
31-My sisters.
32-Even my brothers.
33-Freshly washed Egyptian cotton super soft sheets.
34-Days I get to sleep in.
35-LASIK surgery enabling me to see without glasses.
36-Weeks when Chris is home.
37-Weekends when I have absolutely nothing on the schedule.
38-Morning texts and nightly phone calls I get from Chris when he is gone and the lunch dates we have when he is home.
39-The snooze button.
40-The pool in our subdivision.
41-Vacations.
42-Cirque du soleil - the two performances I have seen are really amazing.
43-Phone calls to Karen to tell her my crazy stories.
44-Summer.
45-That I don't have to live through Wyoming winters anymore.
46-Ice cream.
47-Watching Sami play basketball and seeing how aggressive she plays.
48-Sweet hugs from my family.
49-Watching my kids succeed or make good choices.
50-When my husband makes dinner.

I have many other things that I am grateful for, but this is already really long. Thanks to my family and my old friends and my new friends. I am grateful to all of you for helping me become the person I am today. I hope that you all have a great Thanksgiving.

My husband, the mighty hunter

Chris went deer hunting

with his friend, Doug

They both came back happy hunters.
I ended up with a gross big deer in my garage.

Chris left his camera up on the hunt. He was very sad and was frantically searching for it, while I was frantically trying to get ready for the primary program. Chris didn't have time on Sunday to go back and look for his camera, so he phoned a friend that was still up there to see if he could find it. His friend found it and then lost it. He told Chris I think it fell out of my pocket in a flat spot by the river next to a tree. The following Thursday, Chris drove up there to see if he could find his camera. He actually found the flat spot by the river next to the tree and found his camera. It had been sitting there since Sunday, in the rain, and it still worked. Chris took this picture to test it out. I am still amazed that not only did he find it, it still worked.

Halloween 2010

Lauren, Jared, Tanner, Justin and Devyn

Lauren and Jared (tigger thinks that something is funny)

Tanner the Ninja

Devyn our biker rebel

Justin our nerd
(we are still debating whether he actually dressed up or really looks like this all of the time)

Sam and Jared as a caterpillar on day 2
(one of the benefits of being the youngest is that you have lots of costumes to choose from
he was also Bob the Builder at one point)

Samantha, Brynn and Brooklyn (barbie likes to pose)

Chris had to work and missed Halloween, but one of his friends was kind enough to dress up as Chris Perren, the Hunter, so at least Chris was with us in spirit

Beautiful Problems

I have a friend who was sharing an experience where she was frustrated and she called her mom for advise. Her mom basically said sweetie, you have beautiful problems.

I have thought a lot about beautiful problems since then. I am amazed at how often I am frustrated with things and when I think about it, the problems are beautiful. Things will work out and I don't need to stress about them. Luckily at this point they aren't nasty problems.

It has really helped me put things in perspective and I am grateful that my problems are beautiful.

September 11th

September 11th has always held a lot of meaning.

It is my dad's birthday

It is Ryan and Devona's wedding anniversary

It is Jenalee's dad's birthday, the day she called to tell me she was pregnant with Halle and later her son's birthday

It is the day the twin towers fell

It is Tanner's baptism day

Sadly, most people only know about the twin towers and they remember the day with sadness or horror. This year as I was planning Tanner's baptism, I wanted to do it on my dad's birthday and I ran into a scheduling conflict. Now September 11th is a day of service. It made me happy that people are doing good on this day rather than just focusing on the destruction. I know it would make my dad happy that people are using the day to do something good for someone else.

As for the baptism, Tanner just wanted to make sure we had good dessert. His happy memories are the baptism and the 4 1/2 donuts that he ate.

Tanner really wanted to spend the night with his Grandma Gayle. So Chris drove out to her house to pick him up on Sunday morning and they were late coming back. I also didn't have a chance to see him get dressed and it wasn't until we were at the church 10 minutes late that I realized he had one short sock and one long sock on. Since he could sit by the bishop and we were late he had to hurry up to the front before the sacrament prayers started. So Tanner ran as fast as he could through the chapel and sat next to the bishop a second before the sacrament prayers started. I have many memories about the baptism, but I will never forget Tanner sprinting through the chapel with mismatched socks on with the biggest smile on his face.

Boys . . .

I was mocked and laughed at today by my two year old because I don't have a pee pee. He actually pointed and laughed.

Daddy Daughter Campout

Chris and Sam try to go on a summer campout

with their friends every year.

This year they had a late start and drove up to the

trail head to spend the first night.

The second day, they hiked in to the lake and stayed there.

Aren't the dads and their daughters so cute . . .

Bernt and Tessa

Gordon and Brooke

They hiked and made funny faces

They fished and made more funny faces

They ate and made more funny faces

Sam really likes to make goofy faces, if you can't tell by now

They hiked to a waterfall that still had snow around it

And they came back smelly and happy

They also took pictures of their dads asleep

and they took the camera in the middle of the night and took some high quality blackmail photos, but I will wait to post those for when she actually starts dating or her wedding or something.

Sam's Sixth Grade Graduation

Sam graduated from Sixth Grade

I think Chris was a little sad she is growing up

This is her teacher Mr. Blume, he rocks by the way

Sam's friends all received the presidential award, go girls!

Lauren came to show off her new princess dress

This is the boy Sam likes. Chris embarassed them both by taking their picture although they both really wanted it taken. Now I will embarass her by posting it on our blog :)

~ I love you Sam! Good luck in middle school ~

I know, I know, I'm a loser

I am really not so great about updating my blog. I keep thinking about it, but that is as far as it has gone. Maybe one day . . . Here are some highlights on how the last two weeks have been at our house.

We just moved again, I know it sucks. Our new house is great and I love our new neighborhood. Moving is always eventful for us. This time, Justin set down a heavy box on another box and all of this smoke started to fill the U-Haul. Justin ran to Chris and told him about it. Chris thinks "Great, there is a fire and I opted out of the extra insurance." Chris investigates and finds out that Justin put a heavy box on top of the fire extinguisher. So lucky we had no fire, and no chance of fire, but they still had to evacuate the U-Haul for thirty minutes waiting for the smoke to clear.

In March, Shanna had scheduled an appointment for Sami to have her hair done at a fun salon downtown and of course it happened to be right in the middle of when we were moving. I went to the school to pick up Sam and of course she is in the middle of ISAT testing. I am one of "those moms" who not only ignores the notes that come home telling you to pay attention to when the testing is and make sure that your kids eat and sleep well before the testing, I schedule a move and a hair appointment during the ISTAT testing. My kids were sleeping on matresses on the floor and certainly did not get a great nights sleep and probably didn't get breakfast either. Do I win mother of the year award yet? The school looked at me like I am so messed up. Luckily Sam had time to finish her test before her appointment because I needed to use the next hour hunting down Chris's mom's dog that we were dog sitting and ran away. There were two other dogs in the neighborhood that it ran after and a sweet lady down the street picked up Bella so that she wouldn't get ran over. It just took so much extra time to find her when she would have been able to just walk home.

Finally we are moved and I am back at work and the school calls to tell me that my son has been suspended from school because he had fireworks in his backpack. He has had them in his backpack since Spring Break - thanks again to his counsins for supplying my son with fireworks. One just happens to fall out of his backpack and a kid found it and showed the duty, who asked my son if it was his and luckily for him he was honest. I would have been more angry with him for lying, but did it really have to happen now. The poor kid felt horrible and I am really shocked that the school would suspend him for fireworks, but whatever.

Jared really likes to play with suitcases and they are all stored under the stairs. The crawl space door is also under the stairs and he thought it would be cool to pull it up. I thought under the stairs smelled funky, but I thought it was maybe the paint because it doesn't have any ventilation. Not so much, there is a dead rat in my crawl space. I decided that some days are just dead rat kind of days.

My mom ended up finally closing on her house at the end of my moving week. Karen came up with her four cute kids and stayed with us so that she could paint my mom's house and possibly help move. We worked all week painting her house and I had to work at my real job too. Finally Friday we finished painting and Saturday we were able to move her in. Yeah!!! Her house is cute and the painting turned out great! My sister is a master painter. I really really wanted to paint her hair so that she looked like a candy cane, but it would have been really rude, so I kept my paint to myself all week long. Maybe I am growing up a little after all.

My niece Lauren really loves playing at my house and she thinks she needs a minimum of eight hours if not a couple of days before she has to go home. Then it takes her a while to unwind once she gets home. My sister calls my house the baby crack house.

Mother's Day was great because I was able to finally take a day off and sleep in. Chris and the kids made a fabulous breakfast and sang Happy Mother's Day to the tune of Happy Birthday. They were very sweet. I even had lunch in bed. It was great.

Monday we went to the Nickelback concert and it was awesome. Chris wanted to go really bad, so I bought him tickets for Valentines Day and the concert came at a great time. We both needed a night off. We were on the floor and it was super fun until this hoochie girl pushed her way up in front of us and made some very hoochie like comments. I didn't mind any of that so much, it was her stupid bag that was driving me crazy. She had this mondo bag that she brought with her. We were all squished on the floor at this point and didn't have much room to move around and she thought that she could dance a lot from side to side with this huge bag and she kept shaking her hair on me. She was making me nuts and I elbowed her a few times. I really wanted to throw my gum in her bag and I am still regretting that I didn't. Luckily for me she liked the boy standing in front of me, so she kept eyeing him and started shoving her bag into him instead of me. She must have ignored his wedding ring because she is a hoochie. The rest of the concert was amazing and I am so glad that we went.