She Passed!!

Britni passed her drive test on Thursday with a 92 percent. I am excited yet a little sad. My baby girl turns 16 on Wednesday. She can start dating, driving and working which is exciting yet a little sad. I am sad about the fact that I wish I would have done more to enjoy having a baby girl. I wish I would have put her in gymnastics, and learned how to fix her hair super cute and have her take dance lessons and play games with her more. As my Mom always says "If Wishes were Fishes we would all have a Fry" I never understood that saying until I grew up and realized how many wishes I have.

Yet I am excited because, we won't have to drive her to practice. She can drive her brothers to activities. She is going to hopefully get a job and earn some money so we won't have to dole out so much. ;)

Britni is a great daughter. I couldn't have asked for a better daughter/friend. Hopefully she will forgive me someday for writing about her on my blog too. :)

P.S. Her Basketball team won both games they played this week. Yup they still have practice and games during Christmas break. No rest for the weary!!

Christmas Ever After

We had a great Christmas. I think we prolonged the present opening as long as we could!! We are so mean to our children. We let them open their stockings in the morning and then we got ready for church and went to Sacrament Meeting. Then we came home and ate lunch. Then we could no long contain them and we opened our gifts. It was fun. I think everyone was a little surprised by what they got. Britni was pleasantly surprised by a Special Gift from her Aunt Megan!! A pair of Toms shoes. However, they ended up being too small and will have to be exchanged but she is still super excited!! Daniel received much needed clothes as he keeps growing and won't stop!! How dare he!! :) hehe!!! :) Jacob received a surprise of an Remote Control Car. We had a no electronic Christmas policy this year. To me Remote Control is not electronic. But everyone has a different take on that theory. Lynn especially. :) Benjamin got a fish Aquarium!! We have it set up and will go get our fish tomorrow. He's pretty excited. His brother got his a PaperJamz guitar which the family is having fun playing with too. Samuel got Bey Blade toys. That is what he asked for. His brother got him slippers which he asked for also. :) So he was happy. Lot's of board games and BYU Shirts for Everyone made our Christmas.

The funnest of all was SHOCKING my husband. Yep, that's right. He always knows what I get him. But this time he didn't. He couldn't even guess. I got him (drum roll please), another pair of camo BDU's. He always tell me how comfortable they are and his other ones were worn out. They are a tad big on him though. I hope they shrink as I can't send them back due to my early shopping habits.

My Present was the best. My new tile in my bathroom. It looks amazing!! I love it!!If you can't tell.

Now the ever after of it all. Yesterday, Lynn and the kids got together with some friends and played Basketball. Then we relaxed the rest of the day and the kids played with their toys and games all day.

Now today Lynn's back at work, Britni had Basketball practice and the boys played with their toys and games.

Hope everyone had as blessed Christmas as we did. Love to you all.

Christmas Letter 2011

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DIY looks easier on T.V.

Yep that's right. We are in our first Home Improvement project. Since our house was built 11 years ago, it is time to update. Just wish we had the budget to do all that we want to do.

All I want for Christmas is Tile. Tile for my bathroom. It is the smallest room in the house, so I thought that would be a great place to start. Lynn would ask me, what do you want for Christmas? I would say Tile. :) Well, he surprised me the other night and told me to go pick out tile while he got some stuff for work at Home Depot. How fun is that?

My sweet husband even started on the project last night while I was in The Dalles with Benjamin at his orthodonist appointment. He was hoping to get more done before I got home but soon realized that it is a bigger job than he thought. He took out the toilet and the vanity. Now he is working on the bottom board that was under the vinyl.

I am afraid that this experience will ruin any chance of me ever getting the other bathroom and entry ways tiled!! I hope not. Maybe it will be like having children where you forget after a time the pain of the process!!! hehe!! We can always hope!! :)

Have a super day!!

School Program Volunteer??

I had a great start to my week when I went to a "Lunch Bunch" luncheon and my good friend Teri appeared. I had heard that she might be there but it was so good to see her and chat with her. I have missed her so. I always seem to lose touch with my friends when they move. It's a sad thing. I need to do better. I know.

Yesterday, I spent the whole day at Centerville School. I was asked to help make snowflake costumes for the little kids (Samuel and Benjamin's) Christmas program. I'm thinking, oh this will only take a few hours. Ha!! Joke on me. They had an elaborate design that they wanted. I will post a picture later. Lots of cutting, folding, taping and stapling. All day. Me and Jennifer made 50 snowflakes. Yes, it took all day. I even ate lunch at school. On the way home I told the boys, I now know why they are starving when they get home from school. I was dying!! I suppose that is the portion amount I should eat everyday then maybe I would lose some weight!! :)

Anyway, they asked if I could come in today also to help paint the scenery and do other stuff. Another day at the school. Lunch is Chicken Soft Tacos. The boys say they are good. We will see!! :)

My to do list for the week has been postponed a few days because of all the volunteering. I don't mind though. I enjoy working with the other women at the school. And Volunteering feels good. It helps me remember the True Meaning of Christmas is helping others with love. :)

Have a super day!! :) P.S. Today is my Dad's Birthday to all the relatives out there!! :) Happy Birthday Dad!!! Love you!!!

Goal Review

I haven't done a goal review in a while. Mainly because there is nothing really to review.

1. Lose weight. Well, I have gone up and down and up again. The Roller Coaster continues. However, I have added a tracker on my blog from MyFitnessPal.com. It's a free site a lot like Weight Watcher e-tools. You can track your food and your exercise and set goals and join groups. I thought maybe if I added this to my blog that it will help motivate me more. The winter and exercise is not going well. We have freezing temps right now. I know no excuse. At least it's not snow just thick frost.

2. Read Ensign and Sunday School lesson. I have done this pretty well. I may have missed one or two Sunday School but that is still pretty good for me.

3. Scrapbook Lynn's mission. I haven't worked on this lately but I finally bought an album to put the pages I have done already in.

4. Kids Scrapbooks. I have been doing digitally. I really like using Smilebox. You can get them printed but with how many children I have. I can't afford it. So I will need to put them on disks and add to their books.

5. Write Blog. I haven't done very well the past couple months but I will try to do better.

Now that Nativity is over and Stake Conference. I may be able to breathe again. Or Not!

We had Elder Brinkerhoff from the Seventy at our Stake Conference. He is really nice and a great speaker. He teaches and entertains and spiritual. We also had Elder and Sister Greer, the Mission President and his wife. Really nice people. They say they have 200 more children that they care for in the mission field. With Lynn's calling we get to eat dinner in between the priesthood and adult session last night. It's great to hear their stories and get to know them better.

Time to move forward and start thinking of goals for 2012. I hope to do better. Maybe I'll actually lose the weight this year. I always have good intentions. Enjoy your Sundays!! Love to you all!! :)

Back to the Real World

Monday started off by taking down the Nativity and checking out Nativities. I actually finished all of it by Tuesday night. Thanks for friends and family. My husband must had missed me because he came up to the church Monday after work with the kids and helped get a lot of it torn down and put away. :) I have such a great guy for a husband!! :) I have been trying to recover the rest of the week. Wednesday and Thursday was clean the house days because it hadn't been clean for 2 weeks. Now today I will be doing the never ending laundry and getting together V.T. handouts with my partner.

There have been lots of Basketball games. My boys have won 1 game and lost 2 games so far for the season. Daniel said that his coach told him he played his best game yet last night. So he is pretty happy. He almost didn't get to play last night though because he had a C in one of his subjects. He had to get that up to a B before he could get on the bus. I got a cute e-mail from Daniel yesterday telling me that he has a 82% in that subject now. I hope he can keep that up instead of always struggling to get it back up to a B. Jacob's grades are great but he hasn't been playing well this week. Probably lack of sleep. They have been playing away games this week and getting back late at night. That wears on the kids pretty hard. Even Britni has a hard time with that one. She didn't get home from her last away game until 12:30 a.m. We can't wait until she gets her license so we don't have to go pick her up at that hour. Less than a month now. She's counting!! :)

I'm not sure on Britni's stats. But she is playing well and improving all the time. She is keeping her grades up too. Her first home game is tonight.

Oh for Visiting Teaching hand out this month I found this cute one. You get a whisk and fill it with Hershey Kisses and wrap it in cellophane and put a tag on it that says "We "Whisk" you a Merry Christmas!" I found a great site that has all sorts of them to choose from too. There was one that was candles "May your Christmas be Merry and Bright". and etc.

Well, I best be going to now. Everyone is doing well and enjoying the Christmas season. Love to you all!! :)

Goldendale Ward Nativity Exhibit 2011

Yes, this is what I have been doing for the past week. O.k. I actually started working on it a month ago but this week was the stressful week of putting it all together. I am so grateful for my team that I was inspired to have. Carollynn did a great job with the decorating, Diana was great at getting all the nativities placed,
Carmine went over the top with the lighting, Suzie and Diana B. were great with the foyer and chapel, Pauline did great with the food and of course, Mom, for ironing all of the tablecloths and skirting for the tables,I could go on and on.

The event began tonight with music from people in the community and also people in the ward. I am amazed at all the talent in our area. We invited the High School Choir and band to play. I think that is the most non-LDS people we have ever had in our building!!

I will post pictures but it just doesn't do justice to the experience of being there. I have realized though that if this is what a job is like maybe I don't want one yet. I really did not like being away from home so much. I knew nothing of what my kids were doing in school or with Basketball either.


In other news, Britni passed her written driving test yesterday!! She is almost a full fledged driver. YEA!! I was wishing last night that she was already driving so I wouldn't of had to take Benjamin to Scouts!! :) Our Driver's License place is only open 1 day a week and for limited hours right now. So it is very hard to get any Drivers License stuff done. We will be setting up her appointment for the drive test next week because they can only schedule 2 weeks ahead of schedule. She still doesn't get her license until she turns 16 though. She just gets to take her tests early which is really nice of them.

I best be going. Samuel is about done doing dishes and I need to go load for him. I send my love to all of my family and friends this time of year. I miss you and think of you often. Happy Holidays!!