Thanksgiving

Some of Sterling's Family!

We're all trying to recover from two fun filled days spent celebrating Thanksgiving! This year we went down to Sterling's parent's on Thursday and spent the night. The kids had a blast sleeping in the loft with their cousins (from CO so they don't get to see them very often). We had a great time catching up with Sterling's sister, Celeste and her husband Kevn and kids.

Jason, Christian, and Emilee.

In the evening the older kids and Sterling made things out of Popsicle sticks and glue guns. They had a blast making bridges and houses and Sterling made a huge Turkey!

Jason and Raina

Sterling and I got up at 4 AM to hit some black Friday sales. First we went to Wal-Mart. It was pure chaos. We only had to wait in the check out line for 1 hour and 15 min. Then we went to Kohl's. I think I waited about an hour in that line also. It was crazy but I did get some killer deals so to me it was worth it!

Emilee enjoying her pumpkin pie!

Then we went back to Sterling's parents and got Thanksgiving dinner ready again. 5 of Sterling's siblings plus spouses and kids came on Friday. It was so much fun visiting with everyone! When I first married into Sterling's family gatherings like this were sort of overwhelming because I wasn't used to all the chaos and noise. I' m used to it now. It's crazy, fun and very loud! In the evening we all played Balderdash! It was great fun. I then got the kids ready for bed and we headed home. We got home at 10:30 PM and I was beat. I had been up since 4 AM and didn't get a nap. We had a great Thanksgiving and hope you all did as well!

For South Summit Alumni

I was reading the Salt Lake Tribune yesterday, and came across a weekly article in which people can write recipe requests and The Tribune tries to find it, whether the recipe is from a restaurant or just a long lost favorite recipe. Someone wrote in to get the Almond Cookie Recipe from the South Summit lunch ladies. I've seriously been craving these for 10 years now! I've tried many almond cookie recipes from the internet and none of them come even close. So I was Thrilled that they got the home sized recipe from the lunch ladies! I wanted to post it here in case any of you have been craving them as much as I have!

Almond Cookie

1 Cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
2 1/3 Cups brown sugar (not packed)
2 Eggs
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups Flour
Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and almond extract and mix well. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cream of tartar. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture until combined. Drop by teaspoonful onto a cookie sheet. Press down. Bake 8-10 minutes. Over baking will dry them out.
Servings: 4 dozen

Enjoy!

4th Folder 4th Picture

I was tagged a long time ago by Beau to go to my Fourth Folder and find my Fourth Picture and describe it. This is Emilee at the Oregon Coast when we were out there for my nieces' wedding! We had so much fun that day. After the coast we went to an Animal Rescue Shelter that rescues hurt sea animals. We got to see baby sea lions playing! It was so cute! Then we went to a local pizza place and had dinner. The next day we headed back home and drove 14 hours straight. Crazy!

I tag Tahnie

One Word Tag!

One word Tag
You have to stick to one word answers! Here goes...
1. Where is your cell phone? Car
2. Where is your significant other? Computer
3. Your hair color? Brown
4. Your mother? Enlightened
5. Your father? Caring
6. Your favorite thing? Vacation
7. Your dream last night? None
:)8. Your dream/goal? Organized
9. The room you're in? Office
10. Your hobby? Crafts
11. Your fear? Alone
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Away
13. Where were you last night? Home
14. What you're not? Energized
15. One of your wish-list items? Minivan
16. Where you grew up? Utah
17. The last thing you did? Read
18. What are you wearing? Jeans
19. Your TV? Old
20. Your pet? Scared
21. Your computer? Love
22. Your mood? Sick
23. Missing someone? Yes
24. Your car? Old
25. Something you're not wearing? Perfume
26. Favorite store? Costco
27. Your summer? FUN
28. Love someone? Sterling
29. Your favorite color? Red
30. When is the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? weeks
I TAG... Tahnie, Alayna, Alisha, Beau, Amanda

I'm A Bella!

Take the Quiz and Share Your Results!

Halloween!

I know, I know it's been way too long since I've done a post! I've just been really, really busy! So I'm finally getting around to our Halloween post! I decided that I wanted to sew my girls authentic looking Disney Princess costumes this year. Patterns weren't to found anywhere so I finally turned to e-bay to find some out of print patterns. It was quite the ordeal winning the patterns but I finally got them about a month before Halloween. My mom and I started with Emilee's Sleeping Beauty because it looked the hardest. And it was! It took both my mom and I two hours just to cut out all of the pieces for the Sleeping Beauty costume alone. The costume is fully lined and the skirt was much harder than expected. Next we did the Belle costume and finally Jasmine. We spent days and days and many, many hours sewing side by side. I brought my sewing machine to my mom's house. I wouldn't have finished these in time if not for my mom helping me. Thanks Mom you're the best!!!!!!

Here's Emilee as Sleeping Beauty!

Aubrie As Jasmine!

Hailee as Belle!

Christian was already at the Trunk or Treat in our neighborhood with his friends by the time I got the camera out. He was Spiderman. I'll have to get him to put his costume back on so I can get a photo! I was very happy about how the girls costumes turned out and they will be wearing them next year because they were so much work!

I also did the Halloween Party for Emilee's Class. It was a lot of work but tons of fun!


This is Emilee's class.

These are the teachers and the aides for the two Life Skills classes in Emilee's school. Emilee's Teacher and Aides are on the front row and the one in the middle row on the far left. Don't they look awesome?!!

Decorating Foam Pumpkins!



Decorating Sugar Cookies!

Pin The Nose on the Pumpkin.

Fishing Pond.

I was also making Hydrobraclets with the kids but I don't have a photo.

Here's my costume!

We had a great time at our Trunk or Treat and it was a good thing my costume included an umbrella because it rained for about 20 min. while we were out Trick or Treating.

Twilight Countdown

Saturday

We were planning on getting together for my mom's b-day last night. An hour or so before we were suppose to be there my mom called and said she thought Ren (my stepdad) had a stoke and they were at the ER. Turns out he had something called Transient Global Amnesia. In a lot of ways it mimics a stroke and the only way they can tell it's not a stroke is by running some tests. Transient Global Amnesia is a short term memory loss (usually around 5 hours) that is usually only seen in 50-60 year olds. After about five hours Ren was just fine. I'd never heard of this condition before yesterday. Needless to say we didn't have the B-day party last night. But we did have it today. It was great to get together with my siblings and my mom. We had dinner, cake and ice cream and my mom opened her presents. I got her a really cute purse from my new favorite store. Bags That Fit.

It's located on Main Street in Lehi! Believe me it's worth the drive (if you're a purse person, which I am)!

After the B-Day party we went to Lehi Legacy Center for some swimming. Our dentist rented out the whole place so we got in for free! They had a drawing and gave away a mountain bike, i-pod, dvd player, and 42" flat screen TV. Too bad I didn't win anything. That's ok cuz we still had a blast. They also had snow cones but I'm glad the kids didn't notice because they'd already had tons of sugar with the cake and ice cream. I forgot my camera but did find this picture of the Legacy Center.

That's a huge bucket that fills up with water and dumps every few minutes. Once Hailee and I were walking right under it when it dumped. I felt so bad for Hailee that I didn't notice it was about to dump out. We were like the people in the right of the picture. So much for trying to keep my hair some what dry.

We were really tired when we got home and the kids went right to bed! It was a great way to spend a Sat.

Our Yard

Our yard has slowing been going downhill ever since we moved into our house 3 1/2 years ago. When we moved here I was sure I hated gardening. I've since changed my mind! This summer we finally decided to do something about our yard.

Here are a couple of before shots. Don't you love all the weeds? It had so many thistles that the kids couldn't even play on it. Something was also wrong with the sprinklers and you had to manually turn them on (in the basement) when you wanted to water. Such a pain. I don't even have a picture of the backyard. Just imagine knee high weeds.

We hired some landscapers, to come and do all of the dirty work, and it took them about a week. They were amazingly fast!

They...

- Tour up the front and back yard

-Ripped out the old sprinklers and put new sprinklers in the front and back

-Put new wood chips in our flowerbeds

-Put a weed killer mat under all of the wood chips (I don't have any idea what the official name is?)

-Put good top soil in the front and back yard

-Put in a flower bed on the north side of the house and in the backyard

-Planted flowers and plants in the flowerbeds

-Put a drip watering system in all of my flowerbeds

-Planted two big beautiful trees in the front yard

-Laid sod in the front and back yard

-Put gravel and stepping stones on the south side of the house

-Put curbing around all my flowerbeds and the two trees

-Put in a fence with two gates in the back yard

The Front Flower Beds.

One of our Beautiful Trees!

North Flowerbed.

South side gravel.

Back flowerbed.

Our backyard!

It's so nice to have some privacy and it's wonderful to be able to contain the kids!

Twilight Movie News!

I just found out some exciting news from stepheniemeyer.com!

"The good people at Summit were thrilled to let me know that now Twilight fans are going to get their movie three weeks earlier than scheduled. That's right—Twilight will be released in theaters November 21st! Let the merry-making commence!"

-Stephenie

I just had to pass on the good news!

Welcome To Forks!

You need to read this post while listening to Starlight By:Muse (on my music player on the right)!!! True fans know what I'm talking about.

So I'm a HUGE Twilight Saga fan and just had to have a party to celebrate the release of Breaking Dawn. I invited some friends over for a fun Girls Night Out!

This is the entrance to the back yard where the party was held. You can't see the white Christmas lights around the "trees" and the swag but it looked awesome when it turned dark.


I had huge red, black and white tissue paper flowers hanging down from the tent ceiling. Which you can't see in this picture but it looked awesome.





These were the centerpieces!

Here is our food buffet. I also made signs of all of my favorite Twilight quotes and stuck them up all over the fence.

We had Sparkling Fruit!!

Blood Red Ice Cold Punch.

We also had Vegetarian Salad!

We finished off dinner with some Dangerous Dessert! Team Edward and Team Jacob Cupcakes.

After Dinner we Played Twilight Jeopardy. It was a lot of fun and Tahnie won by hundreds of points! I was seriously impressed. There were some hard questions in there.

These are the party favors I made for everyone. You can't really see them but in the left back are some Twilight bags and in the red Chinese take out boxes are super cute T-shirts I made. Some of them had a picture of an apple with a bite out of the side and they said,"Bite Me" the other ones had the Twilight movie poster picture on them. We had a great time talking about all the Twilight books and talking about what we thought would happen in the fourth one. I was dying to get the fourth book and didn't get it from Amazon until Tuesday-Aug.12 (It was released on Sat. Aug. 9). It was pure torture waiting for it! I loved reading the fourth book but my favorite is still Twilight, then Eclipse, Breaking Dawn and finally New Moon. If you haven't read these books you're really missing out! I CANNOT wait until Dec. 12 when Twilight the movie hits movie theaters!

High School Tag

High School Tag
I saw this on Anna's blog and thought it would be a fun one to do.

1. Did you date someone from your school? Yes, Senior Year I had a pretty serious relationship.

2. What kind of car did you drive? A Grandma car. It was some kind of brown Buick. Sweet!

3. Did you pass your driver's license test on the first try? Just barely.

4. Were you a party animal? Nope, I was such a good teen! I never even snuck out of the house.

5. Were you considered a flirt? Nope

6. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? Choir; we called it Tapestry. And we went on an awesome trip to Disney World Junior year. It was the best.

7. Were you a nerd? No

8. Were you on any varsity teams? Drill Team for four years.

9. Did you get suspended/expelled? No

10. Can you still sing the fight song? Um..... nope, sorry. Maybe if I heard the music it would come rushing back to me?

11. Who were your favorite teachers? Mr. Draper and Mrs. Sylvester

12. Where did you sit during lunch? I mostly went and ate at Dick's Drive In, Summit Inn or Kamas Food Town.

13. What was your school's full name? South Summit High School

14. School mascot and colors? Wildcats and our colors were kelly green and white.

15. Did you go to Homecoming and who with? Yes, it was just a casual dance in the gym after the game. (Am I remembering this wrong? Did we have a formal homecoming dance?)

16. If you could go back and do it again, would you? No way. I have some really awesome memories. Especially from Junior and Senior year. But that was the past and I want to live now.

17. What do you remember most about graduation? Staying up all night for our senior party at the high school. It was really fun. I won a huge green bean bag. It was hilarious to try and get that thing stuffed into my grandma car! Also I remember pining for my ex and being so excited when he gave me a hug. Weird, the things we remember, huh?

18. Where did you go senior skip day? Lagoon and Karalee and I were late getting on the bus and everyone was booing at us. In our defense we really had to go to the bathroom, and it was halfway across the park.

19. Were you in any clubs? Governor's Youth Council, Future Business Leaders of America, and Future Homemakers of America

20. Have you gained some weight since then? Nope, I weigh the same as I did in HS after FOUR kids. I'm pretty proud of that fact.

21. Who was your prom date? Junior Prom-Shane Hilton (from rival school North Summit), Junior Prom (when I was a senior)-Rick Shaw, and Senior Ball-Trent Vernon.

22. Are you planning on going to your 10 year reunion? Yep, it was just this month! See a couple of posts below.

23. Did you have a job while in high school? Yes, I was a checker at Kamas Food Town for three years.



I tag Tahnie, Alisha, Alayna, Beau, and Amanda

Emilee's Birthday Party!

Emilee turned 7 years old yesterday. We had a fun friends birthday party to celebrate. The theme for the party was Princess and Knight's. We had 22 kids there. It was pretty crazy but a lot of fun.

We colored pictures of Disney Princesses and Dragons while we waited for everyone to come.

We then played a few games. First we played Belle's Rose Petal Game. I put some princess stickers on the backs of loose fake rose petals. I mixed those in with lots of other rose petals and then spread them all over the back yard. The kids had to find one with a sticker on the back and bring it too me for a prize (candy bracelets for the girls and a gummy mouse for the boys). We then played pick up the rose petals!

After that we played Pass the Poison Apple!




I told the kids that Ariel had hidden treasure for them under the sea. They had to dig through the "water" (blue balloons in a kiddie pool) to find it. They really enjoyed that. Then they had fun popping all of the balloons.















Then we decorated crowns with jewels and foam stickies.




When we tried the lite the B-day candles the wind keep blowing them out so we just sang Happy Birthday and Emilee "blew" out her candles even they weren't lit. It was really cute. At least she wasn't disappointed that she didn't get to really blow out her birthday candles! After cake we opened presents and passed out gift bags. The boys got shields, helmets, and swords. The girls got a little purse like bag (I ironed a princess picture on it using t-shirt transfer paper) with a crown picture frame, pencil, and two rings.
It was a really fun party!

Here's a video of the Boy's having a sword fight.