Well I suppose it had to happen sometime

The Stake Presidency has finally caught up with us. I guess its what we get for going in to get our temple recommends renewed and talking about how we love to do family names. They have called us to be the Stake Family History Directors, the assistant Multi Stake Family History Center Directors and the Stake Extraction/Indexing Directors! Its a mouthfull and the calling is even more daunting than the name. I hope that We can live up to the Lords expectations and fulfill this calling up to what he would want us to do. From now on the meetings are going to be endless and I hope that I am able to learn more about doing Family History!

Birthday Party!!!!

I know January has been CRAZY but we are doing Cake and Ice Cream for Mara (her birthday is Friday and she is turning 10) and Coulton (his birthday is Tuesday and he is turning 14!) on Sunday Night at 6:30 pm at our house. For those of you who haven't been out to see us yet this would be a good chance to come and see our new house and help us Celebrate! Please let me know if you are going to come so that I make sure we have enough cake (because I wouldn't want to run out with this family!! :)




Also they will be ordaining Coulton a teacher either the Sunday after his birthday or the Sunday after Just after that keep it in mind and I will let you know more when we get closer

YEA Birthdays!!

I'm getting that crafty itch....

Thanks to my darling sisters for sending me tons of cute ideas!! There are some fabulous things that I am just itching to be able to find the time and energy to accomplish!!


http://yarner.blogspot.com/2011/01/paper-rose-wreath.html

I just have to make this one for my front door!!


There is also this one made out of felt that would be so cute for V day
http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/

One of my favorite blogs that they have turned me onto is
http://houseofsmiths.blogspot.com/

She is so amazing she was even featured on Good Things Utah for this project that I am dying to do for Taylors room when we get it finished!

I have totally become a party blog person because I PROMISED my kids that this year after a VERY long birthday party drought in our house we WOULD be doing them this year, so I need Ideas!!!

http://www.hostessblog.com/2011/01/real-parties-sweet-singing-birdie-birthday/#more-31501

This is the idea we found for Mara, now I have not gone crazy I am not going to do everything in this blog, because well its a little to much. BUT there are some great ideas that I will be utilizing. I would post a picture but its to big so you will just have to visit.

Lexi- we are going to do a Ballarina Party with Tutu's and everything. I have a sweet friend at work who found a place to buy tulle in bulk for way cheap and we will definately be visiting. I also found these cute felt crowns that I am seriously considering making

Taylor is turning 12 this year!!! if a birthday wasn't enough it really does up the stakes a bit. We have talked for the last couple of years about doing a totally pink pj party and I found this blog with some SUPER cute fun ideas for it
http://onecharmingparty.com/category/pajama-glam-party/


This cake is going to be a must!! but we will be using Heather's marshmellow fondant recipie so that it will taste as good as it looks!

As for Coulton I CANNOT find the perfect party for him yet and believe me its HARD to find the perfect idea for a 14 year old. They just play Video games and hang out most of the time so it scares me to even try. Esp. when I only have about 10 more days to figure it out. HELP!

Wish me luck!! I will post more have to things as I find them!

We sing...... ALOT

Ok so I am going to start a little backwards, This is Taylors program that she did in January with the entire 6th grade and had a solo to boot! We are so proud of her she did such an amazing job she made her mom cry... Every time I watch it.

The other ones are from Mara and Taylors Christmas program, in which they did a wonderful job. Taylor was so nervous that we had to get her attention and get her to uncross her arms and relax. Mara on the other hand is really into the music and sways the entire time! I am so proud of my girls, both programs took alot of work and time after school. They where amazing, I am a very proud Mom!!

Of Weddings and Such....

Well my darling little sister got married a couple of weeks ago. As there are 15 years between us (almost to the day) I found myself feeling kindof old. Andy and I have been married for just about 1/2 of my life, and its been a while since we where sealed in the temple.  Its amazing the power of the priesthood that it does the same thing for my little sister and her new husband today just as it did almost 18 years ago.

This is almost all of us we are missing Daniel who when faced with the option of coming to the wedding or the birth of his son, chose the right one. What is really amazing is that for my wedding there was some very drastic differences in height that just are not a problem now! Of course that is just because my cute step-mother Lauraine has 4 in heels on!

At the wedding Andy let Coulton and Taylor take the camera and take pictures just as long as they didn't take pictures of people without asking permission first. My kids have gotten the picture taking bug that my family has and we got some really great shots of temple square and the reception center but not really any of people! But the 3 on this bog where all taken by them. Coulton took the top 2 and Taylor took this great picture of Lexi, Who looks way to grown up!!

The house is comming along nicely, and thank heavens we seem to be settleing into more of a routine lately. Homework is even getting done, and chores too!

Its hard to beleive that with as much as we have been blessed with lately I am still having a hard time with some things. The lord has truely worked some miracles in our behalf this year. And I feel kindof guilty wanting more. There are other things that I need help with and that I am having a terrible time with this year. I think that I worked myself up to think that as soon as we moved that within the first 2 weeks everything was going to fall into place. The house would all be unpacked and decorated perfectly, finances would be perfect, and my children would act like I really want them too. But of course that is not how things work out. I am not sure why after all we have been through that I still have a hard time with faith and with patience. Maybe one day I will finally get it, but somedays I think that there is no possible way to have the faith of a mustard seed when your heart and your head don't speak the same language. But one day I am going to get it! Christmas is coming and I am so excited for the season! I wish my christmas shopping was started and finished and I wish my life was perfect but then, maybe perfection is boring!!!

WOW where does the time go!!

WOW I have no idea where the last month went!! We have now lived in our new house just a couple of days shy of a month and it has been quite a transition! First of all trying to combine everything that we had in storage for a year (which I found out that I really had no clue what was in storage) and the stuff that we had accumulated over the last year living with Andy's parents has been one of the hardest thing that I have ever done. This is move 16 and seriously it has never been this hard. Usually I know what is in most of the boxes and have planned out in my head before hand where I want things to go tentatively. This time I have gotten things set and then found 2 more boxes of stuff and have had to start over. Also during the last year the children have grown (big surprise I know), but when we packed to go to Grandma's we only packed enough clothes to last 2 weeks, we where trying not to bring to much stuff to grandma's because we where only going to be there max 9 weeks! When we went to unpack the kids we found BOXES of clothes that no longer fit anyone. Lexi made out like a bandit and accumulated alot of clothes that she will fit into next year and the others girls found a handful of shirts that they could still wear. However, an hour project putting away clothes turned into 4 hours of trying on, sorting and huge mounds of clothing.
We are still trying to get everything sorted but it may be another month or 2 before I can get through everything. We did get the entire main part of the house painted, except for some of the trim. Unfortunately, that means that we still have alot of painting to do. All of the bedrooms, bathrooms, and doors still need the benefit of having more than one thin coat of paint. The girls are going through the growing pains of all being cramped in a 10 x 10 room together. They have all really wanted to bring all of their treasures out of their room boxes up to their room. However, there just isn't room for it, and that has been pretty hard on all of them. We hope to be able to finish the basement bedrooms before to long but right now, with Christmas looming on the horizon we figured that we need to calm some of the craziness before we try to add more.
The kids are adjusting to the way that we do chores again, which has been pretty hard on all of them. Things where pretty different at Grandma's house, and mom had very little control over alot of things and Grandma was really good at rescuing them from chores, or having things done the grandma way so we are really out of practice. Tonight alone it took 2 of them over 2 hours to do the dinner dishes. Its enough to make a mother pull her hair out!!!  To add mroe excitement to our life we also got a new car 2 weeks ago, we desperately needed something that got better gas mileage and was better in the snow than our 2 wheel drive Sequioa. So despite the fact that we loved it we now have a shinney new 2009 Chrysler Town and Country that has been kindof fun to have so far. All in all we are hoping to be able to have a house warming party so that everyone can see our new digs sometime in December should be fun!!

Moving Day!

We are FINALLY going to move in! If you can spare some time Wednesday night we could use all we can get!

House address is:


4103 Dakota Drive

Directions: From I-15:

Take I-15 to the 1st American Fork Main street exit and turn left to go on the new Pioneer parkway.

Take Pioneer parkway to redwood road (it doesn't go any further) and turn left.

At the first light after turning left turn right (Pony express parkway, this will be on the south side of WestLake High school)

Follow this road until you go over a hill

After coming down off of the hill take the second left (this is after the red brick church) on Porters Crossing
take Porters crossing to the top of the road and turn right on golden eagle

at the roundabout take a left and go to the top of the road and turn left on Yakima

Yakima turns into Dakota Dr and we are the house in middle left hand side of the street with the PODS in the front.