Highlights and "lowlights" of the last 2 weeks

Hello friends!

I'll first apologize for the prolonged "blog absence" and then wish you all Happy Holidays!!! I've caught the holiday spirit in a big way this year. I'm feelin' "merry and bright" already! We even put up our new 9 foot Christmas tree yesterday!

It was a busy and fun 2 weeks for us! We spent a chunk of it in Utah with family. Thanksgiving was amazing - though it is always a stretch to include all of our family on that important day, we managed to do it! We're now back in the "swing" here and looking forward to a California Christmas :)

Here are the highlights of our trip- and a few "lowlights" as well.

Highlights:
**Showing off Annabelle ;)
**Spending time with James' family - dinners out, kids playing with their cousins, bonfires, playhouses, listening to James play the piano for his family on their baby grand, 20 grandchildren running around!
**Sleeping in until 9:30 am one morning!
**Thanksgiving at my cousins home - getting a 4 generation photo with Annabelle and one of her namesakes - my grandma Joy.
**Shopping with my sister-in-law Emma-Lee. It was just fun - just the two of us :)
**Getting to visit my family - my grandparents, my aunt and cousin, my dad, my siblings (love you all to death).
**Getting Allie, Derek and Lily to come spend the afternoon with us and take our family pictures! Thanks again Allie!!!
**The movie "August Rush" - one of the best movies I've ever seen!
**Reading "Twilight" on the drive up, and "New Moon" on the way back
**Taking my dad out for his birthday

Lowlights:
**THE DRIVE........took us 16 hours to get home. 'nuff said.
**The cold. I used to love it! I guess I'm getting spoiled out here?!?
**The other kind of cold - the one that made it so I couldn't breathe and constantly had a headache - the kind that plagued little Annabelle for a few days too :(
**Breaking out in mysterious hives from my head to my toes.
**Leaving.










We took some cute pictures of Annabelle today b/c she's 2 months old!! Happy "birthday" baby girl ;) You get cuter by the minute!



Charlie found Grandpa's old cowboy hat :)

A Special Day

We blessed Annabelle on Sunday. So that makes three babies blessed and three times that James has cried during the 9 years we've been together. It really was special, spiritual and a day I'll never forget. It helped that we had some family here to share it with us. We had such a nice time with them and were sad when they all had to go :(

Dillon was so happily surprised when his older cousin Jeffery decided to come! They had a blast playing pirates, trucks and bionicles together. Jeffery's little brother, Ethan, is Charlie's age so it was just perfect and sooooo much fun for my "cousin-starved" little boys!! James' youngest sister and my good friend Emma-Lee brought her little Abigail who charmed us all to death! She's way too cute. It's almost unfair to all the other little girls out there!

We went to Legoland with the fam. Saturday - it was pretty fun! It's great for littler kids and that's what we had, so it was perfect!





I also finally purchased a copy of this book that has now been recommended to me at least a half a dozen times by different people! I'm really excited and hope my expectations aren't too high.

Charlie's Halloween Trick that was not a Treat

I had too much stuff to put into one post, so I broke it up into two.

First of all, on Halloween, Charlie was a Monstor. He didn't DRESS as one he WAS one. He did what is by far the worst thing he's ever done. Let's just get to the evidence -


Funny.



Not so funny.





I couldn't even punish him I was so mad. I just cried and James and I were both in shock as we tried to wipe off the green marker. I feel lucky that most of it came off, but some of it didn't, so I'll never be able to forget how LIVID and hurt I was when it happened. I know he didn't really mean to do something so horrible, but he did and I'm not sure how long it will take before I'm laughing about it. Probably a while!

It's been quite a while since I've posted my Paper Posies stuff, so here's the latest from the amazingly cool November kit!!






I felt kind of bad that this was all I was able to get done this month, but hopefully next month I'll be more on top of things! I'm so looking forward to the cute Love, Elsie papers and the "holidayness" of the Dec. kit!!

I went scrappin' at Everafter Scrapbooks with a few friends from the ward on Friday. It was so FUN! I realized that it had been about a year and a half since I'd been to a crop and that is just toooooo long. I still really love to scrapbook and crops are just the best - especially when the company is so good! ;) Thanks Brittany and Sarah and Amanda for inviting me!!

I've been TAGGED!!

A friend from Paper Posies tagged me! Thanks Jill! So, I'm not sure how "wierd or interesting" it will be, but here goes..

7 weird and/or interesting things about ME:

1- I used to be so anal about keeping my house clean. I really couln't stand it when things got even cluttered! I've never been really organized, but I liked it when things were tidy and clean. NOW, there aren't many things LOWER on my priority list! I guess kids changed all that. I still LOVE it when my house is clean, but not enough to spend my free time cleaning ;)

2- I've always wished I was a morning person. I AM SO NOT A MORNING PERSON. In my next life, maybe. I'm a night owl for sure. It doesn't matter how little sleep I've had that day, at about seven or eight o'clock I get a second wind and that is when I am the most alert and productive! It takes me a couple of hours once I'm out of bed in the morning, to convince myself that I can get through the day and don't need 15 more minutes of sleep. It takes a couple of hours to stop rubbing my eyes and dragging myself around. I feel like crying when I have to set the alarm at night! And when the blasted thing goes off, well...

3- I've never really struggled with self confidence. I mean, I've had issues with feeling self conscious and shy and whatever, but I've never really lacked confidence and have what I think is a pretty healthy self image. I'm not blind, I know I'm overweight and I hear myself when I say dumb things. I'm constantly putting my foot in my mouth, but I've never been one to obsess about it. This is sometimes a blessing, and sometimes a curse.

4- I do wierd things in my head. I try to connect things that happen in my life with similarities, like even or odd numbers or similar colors or just weird things.. it's kind of hard to explain. I'm a little superstitious or maybe just crazy I guess.

5- Some of my long time friends will attest to this - I used to be somewhat of a comedian. I used to love to make people laugh! I would do crazy things in a group setting and you know how there's that line that you just don't cross in certain conversations, well I used to love to cross it and get a reaction out of people. I still do that a little bit, but not nearly as bad! I used to love to be the center of attention - so I'd do skits for school assemblies or whatever that I get sick just thinking about now! I was such a DORK! I'm glad that I've mellowed out that way, because I humiliated myself way too often.

6- I have one other soul mate besides my husband, and that's my cousin Missy. Even though she's actually 9 months older than me, and we're as different as two people can be, we have a scar along one side of our bodies where they surgically seperated us at birth. Here's the wierd part, it's been nearly three years since we've seen each other! That's neither weird, nor interesting, it just plain SUCKS!

7- Here's a really weird one.. Somehow, by some miracle of fate, despite my stupidity and lack of effort, all my faults and mistakes, I managed to meet and marry the most perfect man for me. I don't know how I got so lucky, but I feel it every day. There just could not possibly be another person who could love me like he does. I know it may sound naive and lame, but it is true and it's a miracle.

I TAG: Missy, Kami, Angie, Sarah, Natalie, Shelly, and Katie
THE RULES:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

I LOVE this BABY!

{{{What do you think Allie? The dress is a hit, no? I LOVE IT!!}}}

She is one month old as of yesterday! She's just so cute and sweet and easy going. She's smiling more and more and just makes me happy! Now, if she would sleep at night, that would just be the icing on the cake! No, seriously I'm getting like maybe 4 hours of sleep most nights. James has to leave for work at 5 am so I feel bad making him get up with her. Here she is sleeping.. during the day of course!



{{Thank you Ryan and Emma-Lee for the cute jammie and blanket}}

Speaking of James, he worked another 100 hour week last week and it looks like this week isn't going to be much better! :( I really miss him and the boys, well they just about go nuts whether he's here or not! When he's not, they get all whiney and restless and when he is, they frantically try to get him to take them to the park and play catch and wrestle before he remembers how exhausted he is!!

The air has cleared considerably and we even had RAIN this last weekend! Thanks for the prayers!! Still no school today, but tomorrow it's business as usual. We feel so blessed and fortunate that we are safe an relatively unaffected by those horrible fires. There is a lot of work to be done, though.

The "Big Boo To Do" for all the wards that meet in our building was Saturday. We had two little ninjas and a tiny little bunny! James was a rocker and I was a witch. Our littlest ninja won "funniest costume" ?!?!?!? Also, I slaved over a delicious apple pie for the pie baking contest and then never heard who won! I'm not sure if they forgot to judge them, or if I just missed the announcement somehow. I did get to eat a piece, though!! ;)





Happy Halloween all!!

Pictures of FIRE behind our house

These pictures are of the fire that started yesterday afternoon about a half of a mile behind our house. They were taken by a neighbor/ friend from the ward.









We were packing the car when we got word that the fire had been contained. Whew.. Pretty crazy huh??!!??

Red Sun

Here's a couple of pictures of what it looked like here yesterday afternoon. You can't see it, but there was ash raining from the sky too.