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A Girl Should Be Two Things: Classy & Fabulous. - Coco Chanel

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Friday, October 30, 2009

Halloween Dinner


My sister Kristy planned this cute Halloween dinner for her kids. She was kind enough to think of me and invite me along. This was such a nice break after working for 9 hours just to go back and work for 4 more hours. It made me feel like I got to do something fun on my Friday night. Nothing like my fall dinner... her's was all decked out cute/gross for Halloween. The kids loved it. It was so fun to see them get excited about it and the reactions they had. Kristy put a lot of work into it and it really showed. Everything turned out so great. It was tasty too! Thanks again Kristy for inviting me. I loved it. Here are my pictures of the dinner.

Chili aka Dirt with spiders and worms
Hot Dogs wrapped in bread aka Mummies


Juice with soda aka slime or witches brew

Also carrots and dip aka "finger dip"
And for dessert a cute center piece of decorated moon pies


Thursday, October 29, 2009

Carved Pumpkins


I enjoy carving pumpkins every year. I really wish I had more time this year to really get into it. Between the busy schedule at work and having to move.... I was not able to go all out like I wanted to. Last year's pumpkin carving was my favorite so far. I was going to try and continue Brent and Brian's pumpkin carving tradition and carve some sort of violet scene in my pumpkin. I even had a great idea of a nightmare my co-worker Paula told me about of her waking up in bed to big nasty spiders crawling all over her. But I didn't have time to get a pumpkin or a lot of time to create it. Also... Brent and I were a good team and he had a lot of those creative juices to get something awesome... like our pumpkin last year. So I ended up using the pumpkins we had bought for our soup bowls (we washed them out, don't worry). But those were tiny. So I drew Jack Skellington and the Oogie Boogie Man (From Nightmare Before Christmas) on two of them and Tina carved one and I carved the other at FHE. Ashlee did a cute little face of her own. Still fun, but not as awesome as last year. Oh well... there is always next year.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Lesson Learned


Towards the end of September, the townhouse that I am living in now, sold. My dad didn't realize it was still on the market (he owned it) and when he got an offer for his asking price, he took it. After he agreed to sell it, he thought of us 4 girls living here and wanted to make sure we were safe and have us sign new contracts first, but by that time it was too late. Allyson was the only one who had a contract until April and the rest of us were month to month. If we tried to change anything it would have been a breech of contract and my dad would have had to pay a lot of money. Feeling bad about the situation, my dad did the best he could to make this easy on us girls. There is a family living in another one of my dad's townhouses across the street and they had been talking about wanting to move, so my dad gave them a 30 day notice the same time we received ours. It was nice to know we always had a place to go and be able to stay in the ward and stay together. Although we had a plan, I was still upset about the situation and the girls that were moving in and how it was being handled, after all... it is not like we were not cooperating. I became very bitter at the girls taking over and one of them moved in with us. I have already been having a hard time lately with my emotions and missing Brent more and more everyday and I was not my happy normal self. So I just ignored the new girl and did not make her feel welcomed at all. Everyone around us has been nothing but sympathetic and offered service and one girl I visit teach even brought all of us a bucket full of candy and a sweet note. While I appreciated all of these gestures, I continued to be bitter towards these girls kicking us out of our home. I am so grateful to people like Ashlee and Allyson in my life who have such a good attitude towards life and trials. On Sunday they suggested to us that we invite the new girl down to have our fall dinner with us. So we did. We got to know her and she is a really sweet girl. She got to know us and figured out we were not so bad either. I felt good about this and thought it was enough until today. Today (without mentioning too much detail) something happened where someone was only thinking of themselves and not about the whole situation. Of course it affects me more when it happens to a member of my family... you get defensive for them. When I heard I sat there thinking "I can't believe they are only thinking of themself and not even considering everything my family member is going through!" Then it hit me.... I was being a hypocrite. I was doing the same thing. I was only thinking of myself with this whole moving situation. All month long I have been thinking poor me, I can't believe this has happened to me, the timing of this is horrible. What about the girls that are moving in? I have no idea what they are going through. I know the new girl staying with us doesn't come out of her room because she feels uncomfortable around us, because we have made her feel that way.
You better believe as soon as soon as I got home I went up to her room and apologized for my actions. Come to find out, their Realtor had lied to them and said we were moving out in October, and he told us that only one girl was moving in and she wanted roommates when all along he knew there were two daughters moving in and had friends coming too. Because of this, everyone living here didn't think we would have to move and the girls moving in thought they would get to move in right away... since they found out they couldn't, they were mad and two of the girls have just been living out of suitcases this last month at someones house. Now I know... their month has been as crummy as ours, and the girls are actually really nice. And because I decided to be nice and apologize, the new girl called her dad and told him to give us a break and give us two full more days to get our stuff out and clean. I can't tell you how amazing that is given Saturday is Halloween and I have to help with the huge stake party and it is busy at work right now for all of us. I just thanked her and told her to thank her dad and when I see her sister at church on Sunday... I am going to apologize to her too.
I defiantly learned (re-learned) an important lesson today... I need to look outside of my selfish world and look at the whole picture, both sides of the story, because you don't know what the other people around you are going through. And what good does it do anybody to just be upset anyway? It keeps you and everyone around you down. I will really try and be better about this.
I also want to thank my dad (even though he doesn't read my blog). He really came to our rescue in this situation. He has provided us a place to live, he is taking time out of his busy schedule to come up to Utah, hire a few guys to help and to fix our new place up so it looks new after a family with 7 kids has been living there for 3 years. He is paying for it all out of his pocket (and with travel, it ends up being a big chunk) and missing Halloween with my homeward and grand kids to make this happen. Thank you so much dad, I love you so much and hope you know that I REALLY appreciate all that you do for me and others. You are so service oriented and giving, you are such a great example to me. I am so lucky to have such an amazing dad.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Fall Dinner Party

I have mentioned many reasons why I like the fall.... another reason is the food. I decided it would be fun to have a fall dinner party, so I made the Sassy Salsa Pumpkin Soup that I mentioned in the "Hungry Girl" post and added sausage. It turned out amazing. Tina made an awesome salad, Ashlee made corn bread from scratch and Allyson made Halloween decorated sugar cookies. Everything tasted so good and it is always nice to have a big dinner on Sunday with a group. I had been missing that lately.


In case you are wondering why we have pumpkins on our plate... I thought it would be more festive to not just have pumpkin soup, but to eat the soup out of pumpkins. Everyone got a kick out of it. We talked about how cool it would be that when you grew pumpkins and cut them open, instead of having that nasty gook, there was hot yummy soup inside or pumpkin chocolate chip cookie dough. That would be awesome.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

The Nightmare Before Christmas


I love this movie. I have loved this movie since it came out back in the 90's. I am actually surprised how many people have never seen this movie. I think it is a crime. My roommates fell under that category... until last night. One Halloween tradition that I have started for myself is... I watch this movie every year in October. It makes me happy. I love the music, I think it is cute and clever and I am so impressed by claymation films. I believe it took them 3 years to make this film. Plus... I love Tim Burton and Danny Elfman movies.
I have been watching this movie for many years. One of my favorite years was when my friends and I went and watched it in the Disney Theater in Hollywood. They play it there every year. Not only do you get to see it on the big screen with amazing sound, but they show a lot of short films before the movie and then they have a display in another room of parts of the set from the movie. It is pretty neat. If you have not seen this movie.... I totally recommend that you watch it.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Corn Belly's

Friday night I went to Thanksgiving Point with my roommate Allyson and a couple of friends to go to the corn maze (thanks to 20 year old Josh at work who has a crush on me.... I tend to attract the young ones if you remember my "work crush" post last summer.... Josh works at the corn maze as a second job and gave me 4 free tickets). The weather was pretty nice and there were lots of people there and lots to do. It was fun to go to Thanksgiving Point because the last couple of years I went to "Hee Haws" instead. So much more to do at "Corn Belly's". Here are a few of the activities we did there. (FYI, some of these pictures are from a couple years ago when I went on a group date, pictures used just to demonstrate activities)

"I Spy"
There was a case which inside the case there was a halloween sncene. There was a list on the outside of the case of things to find in the scene. We spent a while here... determind to find them all (but we lost interest before that happened)









"Go Carts"
In this picture it shows me on the big go cart... but all the kids were on the big ones, so we raced the small ones. It was a work out I tell ya... an adult can barley fit on those things let alone pedal them. I think this is when I hurt my back









"Chicken Comedy Show"
There are seats.... people just sit while someone pushes a button to make the chickens tell lame jokes.














"The Creature"
Next we went into the big blow up creature. It is some sort of reptile thing, you go inside, see its guts and there are people in there that scare you.Not going to lie... I screamed.












"Corn Box"
Okay, so we didn't go in the corn box because kids were throwing corn everywhere, but it reminded me of when I last went in the corn box and they covered me in the corn except for my head. That was gross... never again. Sometimes I wonder why I will do almost anything.




"Corn Maze"
The reason everyone goes to these activities! Last year they shaped the corn maze like David Archuleta. This year it was shaped like Larry Miller. A nice little tribute to the owner of the Utah Jazz who died this last February.












All in all a pretty fun night. I enjoy going to the corn maze every year. I guess I just enjoy being festive around the holidays.




Thursday, October 22, 2009

Halloweens Past

I am trying really hard to think of what I want to be for Halloween this year. Time is running out! This happened to me last year too and I felt like my costume was so not as cool as years past. My roommate Ashlee suggested that I do a post of my Halloween costumes of the past and maybe I will be inspired of what to be this year/ she wants to see my Queen Amidala costume. So here we go. I don't know which year I should start. P.S. If you have any suggestions of something fun I can be this year PLEASE let me know. Time is almost up!

2001- Queen Amidala
Shawntel, Aaron and I also wore these costumes to the Star Wars Episode II premier. All kinds of people were asking to get their picture with us and we made it on the local news! ha ha

2002- Black Cat
You can't see because it is too dark, but I have little cat ears

2003 = Too lame to post

2004- Pir
ate

2005 - Forest Fairy?
Not completely sure what I was, but I thought it was pretty cool.

2006 - Angel?
Not sure what kind of angel, I think I just liked the face make up from the year before and just made up the rest

2007- Jem
From 80's cartoon show Jem and the holograms

Last but not least...
2008 - Lady Bug
I think I tried to make this costume cooler by doing neat make up.

Okay.... so maybe I have only had a couple cool costumes. I still love to dress up and would like to think of something fun to dress up as this year. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Roommate Pictures


Yesterday was a beautiful day. The weather was perfect and the trees are BEAUTIFUL! Around the house I have lots of pictures (go figure). A lot of the pictures that are up of me and old roommates that no longer live at the house. Just not fair to the new roommates, makes it seem like they don't live there. I could not have this. So I decided we needed to have a photo shoot in order to put up some new rockin pictures of the roommates. PLUS I have a new camera that I LOVE and it takes amazing pictures. I thought a lot of the pictures turned out beautiful. Here are some of my favorites. P.S. My roommates are SO beautiful!

The Roommates
Tracy


Tina

Ashlee

Allyson

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Family Singing

After being in AZ with some of my family last weekend, I was reminded of another thing that I love about my family. I love to sing with them. It was so fun to sit next to my mom and sisters in church and singing all the different parts to the hymns. My mom will sing tenor an octave higher, I always take alto and Jamie and Lori will usually take soprano. Growing up with a mom and dad that both like to sing and play guitar and my mom also plays piano, gave me my passion for music. My sisters and I all did choir in high school (except for Lori, although being Mills, the choir director tried hard to get her in there) and we love to sing together around the house making up harmonies to any song (you have never had the Happy Birthday song sung to you like it is done at our house) and one of our favorite family Christmas traditions is going Christmas caroling to ward members homes and to people who are less active or at the retirement home. We also grew up being asked to sing at church in sacrament meeting, firesides, baptisms and whatever else. We love it. Singing makes me happy. I have a couple recordings of my mom, my sisters and I singing. Thought I would share one on my blog, although it is not the best recording... you get the idea. Sometimes I watch these video's of us singing or listen to the songs we have recorded on CD when I get a little home sick and it makes me smile.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Allyson's Birthday

Allyson moved in with us in June and we are SOOO glad she did. She is the sweetest and we love her. This last Monday was her 26th birthday. She was in NY (by herself... like I was a couple years ago) and so Ashlee and Tina made her a cake. Tuesday night we knew she was coming home from her trip, so I finished the cake by decorating. It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it, but I think it still turned out cute. It looks like a Valentines cake, but whatever. I tried. Allyson liked it, and that is all that matters. We were all so tired the night she got home, so we were going to eat the cake and celebrate on Wednesday night, but she wasn't feeling good, so we finally got to eating the cake and singing happy birthday tonight. It was fun roommate bonding. I really like my roommates and am very thankful for them. Happy Birthday Allyson, we love you!


I guess it is tradition in Tina's family to take a bite out of your birthday cake before you cut pieces for everyone else. She made Allyson do this before she would cut the cake.