If you don't agree with where the stimulus money is going.....

I thought this was pretty important and I had to share. If you agree with me and would rather have stimulus money go where it needs to, instead of for signs in Las Vegas, please visit this site:

HERE


I hope that Ashby doesn't mind if I qoute her message on this. It helps to see why this petition is so important:

"For those who may not know, contacting your senators and congressmen really doesn't do anything. Usually a secretary takes the call and writes your name or opinion on a list. SO....if you are opposed to the new Stimulus Bill which is aimed at stimulating the government and it's entitlement programs, then PLEASE go here and sign the petition as well as call your senators. We still have time to make our voices heard!!!"

Been a long time...Lots of pictures I will fix the pics in the morning. oops!

Okay so it has been just shy of a month since I have posted. The holidays are always so crazy busy. I really hope that my slacking doesn"t keep me from remembering all the Dec happenin's.

The first thing that comes to mind is our ward Christmas party. I felt like this one had such a nice family feel and it really brought to the true spirit of Christmas to the party. Our ward did a Nativity play. It began with an angel choir which consisted of Rebecca Squires, Erin Parrot, Ashley Stone and me. Then there was a narration by Bonnie Solheim and the Nativity began. Andrew and Kristin Briggs were Mary and Joseph and Dawson and his friends Bo Tenney, Andrew Hudson and another boy were shepards and the ward missionaries and another ward member were the 3 wisemen. It was really cool. Here are some pics:

Here is our Angel Choir (totally awful pic, but all Mike could get with Peyton in his arms):



Here is Mary and Joseph, The Shepards and The wisemen:



Next on the list is our family pictures. These will be special since they are the last ones my brother Billy will be doing for a loooonggg time. He is quitting the photography buiz to focus on school in hopes of entering Medical School. It sucks but he needs to follow his heart. I will add more once I get the disc from him or an email with the rest of the pics HINT....HINT BILLY!!!

Here is what we have so far:




We also got to go to Mike's company party. It was at the Hyatt Regency in Scottsdale. I found a really nice dress and actually pulled off something semi fancy on a low budget..SCORE! We jad so much fun. We had such a fancy gourmet meal, dance a lot, and Kareoked (sp??). We also had fun watching people go crazy drunk. I am so glad I don't drink. Oh and Mike was runner up on a dance contest and he wasn't even drunk! It was a great time!

Next ofcourse was my 27th ;) Bday. Okay, Okay I am actually 31 now. Wow that sounds so weird. I do not feel one bit of 31. I still feel young and I don't know it all yet like I imagined I would by 30. My Mother in law was in town and she got us a Cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory it was soooo dang good. Mike made pot roast and it was sooo yummy. He had taken the kids out the day before to buy my gifts. Emmalee got me a super cute necklace, Dawson got me a nice watch and Mike did great and got me 2 Michael Buble CD's. He is one of my new faves! My mother in law gave me moolah which went to Bath and Body Works Semi annual sale! My mom gave me some voice lesson CD's with lots of vocal warm-ups..much needed and wanted! It was a GREAT BDAY!

Since my bday was on a Sunday, Mike had his parent's watch the monkey and he took me out. We went to Serrano's and then he took me to see Twilight for the 2nd time(his first). He like dit but thought it could have been made better (which I sooo agree). It actually perked his interest and he is thinking of reading it. We shall see. We also went shopping while we were out. I found Emmalee the cutest Christmas dress at Mervyn's closing sale. It was $50 dress and I got it for under $20!! It was nice to get out.


Christmas was a lot of fun. On Christmas Eve we got together at our house iwth my family. We had a pot luck dinner, sang some carols, opened gifts and the kids decorated sugar cookies. They had so much fun doing that. We wanted to just do gifts for the kids this year and focus more on the real meaning of Christmas. It was great. Here are some pics..I added the kids in their Christmas Eve PJ's and setting cookies out for Santa!



Christmas morning was a lot of fun. Mike and I or should I say santa had a lot of things to put together and it was fun!

This is the living room Christmas morning:



Peyton got a Big Wheel, TMX Elmo, Farmer Elmos set, playskool cars and legos! He was pretty excited to tear the wrapping paper open, though he thought his Big wheel was for Elmo at first!







Emmalee got a rose petal cottage, the sansa kid mp3 play, some barbies, little tykes camera, a boy cabbage patch she named Ethan (she reminded me for months that her CP Emma needed a brother) and ofcourse play baby stroller, carier and highchair and a bunch of stocking stuffers.










Dawson got Wall E, an MP3 player, little tykes camera, magnetix, Lego Star wars set, wii games (Lego star wars and a cra racing game) and he got his dog Bella for an early gift in Sept.







I was so prud of myself. Usually when I get Mike a big gift, I ended up blabbing i before his bday or christmas. Well not this year. I got him a new car stereo and he didn't find out till Christmas! His old one wasn't working so well anymore. He loves it! I also got him mechanic gloves and All the superman movies.








Mike got me a jewelry Armoire which is so nice. You can see it in sme of the old pics. My necklaces don't tangle anymore! He also got me a super nice sewing machine travel case! I love both gifts so much!



After Christmas we headed to St Johns to see Mike's family. We had a lot of fun sicne there was snow everywhere! The kids were constantly outside. Peyton was in love with the snow. He didn't want to go back in. The kids had slumber parties nad lots of play dates with their cousins. We also went down to Showlow to see Bedtime Stories. I highly reccomend seeing it. It was really funny and cute! I enjoyed Sandler humor in a clean movie.

Here are some pics of the snow!

Emmalee making snow angels! She wasn't happy about wearing Dawson's old snow coat!


Emm and I helping Peyton make a snow angel!



Don't you love my snow baby!!! Reminds me of a Christmas story!



Dawson making a snow angel!






Well it is late and sadly I took so long to post that I may have forgot some things. Hopefully i will remember later! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

Ideas jumbling around in my head....

Many of you know that I make jewelry. I used to sell a lot, but lately it just doesn't sell on Ebay and Etsy (too competitive). I have been tossing an idea around in my head for a few years and I am really wanting to do it badly now. I have been thinking about starting a little side business of doing beading parties. Not parties like Scentsy or Pampered Chef, but birthday parties. I would come and show girls how to bead a bracelet and then they would make their own. I think it would be a lot of fun and girls would love it!

I would have lots of styles, and embellisements to choose from from very basic to name bracelets. The prices would start at $10-$15 per girl for basic and end around $25 to $30 per girl for fancier or name bracelets. It would be a fun activity and I would include a goody bag for each girl.

I really want to do this but don't know how to get started, so I figured I would post it on my blog. Please share your input!!

Second I would really love to do a craft boutique. I just need to get the $$dough to get an inventory and info on craft boutiques. So if anyone knows of craft boutiques coming up with atleast a few months prep time I would love info!

The Incredible, Edible......PLAY DOUGH!

Emmalee was begging for play dogh today. For some reason I remembered an episode of Jon and Kate plus 8 where she made the kids edible play dough. So I decided to make it for Emmalee. She loved it. Now it does cme out pretty sweet so you can try substituting 1C of powdered sugar(or all of it) with powdered milk. I may try that next time because it really is seriously sweet.

Emmalee loved it and was so suprised when I encouraged her to eat it!


Peanut Butter Play Dough!
Ingredients:
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup honey
2 cups powdered sugar

Directions: Mix all ingredients in a bowl, using your hands. Dough should feel soft and pliable. Form shapes and be creative!! Storage: When not using, MUST be stored in an airtight container.

Twilight

Saturday my Sister-in-law, Teanne and I went and saw Twilight together. It was a lot of fun. Ofcourse we had to go to Cafe Rio first! Teanne has NEVER been and looks like I made another Cafe Rio fan.

We had so much fun. It is kinda weird that Teanne and I have never really had a girls night out. We hang out with the family or we will have play dates with the kids, but we never went out alone before. It was so much fun and we found we had more in common than we knew. I hope we will continue having girl's nights out Teanne! I know neither of us get them enough!

We were able to find a lesser known but great theater. Sorry I cannot give the info out, because the regulars wanna keep it little known. So it was a huge relief that on a saturday there was just a group of four ahead of us an hour before the movie! So we sat and chatted about what else, but Twilight and Stephenie Meyer!

Now for my take on the Movie. I really liked it. I didn't like it as much as the book, but I did like it. I think I expected too much though. I had to remind myself how hard it had to be to write a 2 hour script out of a 500 page book. I liked most of the beginning, but thought they sped the plot up too fast, and left out some crucial things. Nothing is ever as good as reading a book though...especially Twilight!

I did love how the last half of the movie was played. I felt like the moment Edward took Bella to meet the Cullen's that he seemed like Edward and the chemistry was perfect. I think from then on the movie was like I imagined it. I LOVED the baseball scene.

I think they chose the cast very wisely. Bella and Charlie were portrayed well. Carlisle was perfect. I loved Jasper's pain look, that cracked me up. Edward was great and Alice was perfect. She had the look and the voice I imagined.

By the end of the movie I didn't want it to end. I loved how they tied the end into New Moon. I really am positive that New Moon will be way better. They will have a bigger budget and the characters are developed so no akwardness.

This is a video that gives me some hope for 4 years from now

I just saw this video on faebook. I belong to a Mitt Romney 2012 group. I hope that after things get so screwed up and twisted to the left direction that people will see that we need someone like Mitt for president. He has Values and what is best for the country in his heart. He wants America the way it should be, united and holding up the constitution.

So here is the Mitt Romney 2012 video I wanted to share:

Halloween 2008

I finally downloaded our Halloween pics. Last week was so busy. I had something going on everyday, sometimes quite a few times a day. I have a few more post to add due to the busy week, but that will come later.

As some of you know, Dawson is a die-hard Star Wars fan. I was a bit nervous when I asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween. His answer was General Grievous??!! My first that was "ummm...okay...why??" and then "How on earth would I manage to make that costume? It would entail a lot of time I don't have. Finally, I was able to talk him into Anikan. His costume is the only one I didn't make. Long story. He does want to be Jengo Fett (sp?) next year. I have a whole year to figure out how to do that one atleast.

Emmalee being the type that wants to follow along with Dawson on just about everything decided to be Princess Leia. I got a bunch of FREE material from a sweet lady in my ward last year and so that is why Emmalee's material isn't exactly Princess Leia'ish. It was free so it worked, lol. Emmalee could care less anyway. I just used a cloak pattern and bought an embellishment to tie it. Her hair was tricky. I tried using a styrofoam ball cut in half, with braided curtain embellisment on it, attached to a headband, but it was too heavy and looked clunky on the ehadband. So I put her hair in piggies and too small sections of hair and rolled it in to curls and pinned it in place.

I decided that Peyton would make the most adorable Yoda. Yoda was so easy. His cloak was suppose to look homeade so I did a blind cute on some folded fabric, sewed the sides together and frade all the ends. Mike has all his old draftimg stencils from school and so I found triangles. I cute smaller triangles out of cardboard and 4 just a bit larger in fabric. Then I sewed the cardboard in the fabric and somehow made a hood. It was a bit mishapen, but oh well. He only wore it for a whole 2 minutes anyway.


I had no time to make my own costume so on Halloween I went as a frazzled housewife. Mike went as a chain killer...nice, huh?? lol.

Here are the pictures of our Halloween fun!

Anakin Skywalker


Princess Leia


Attempts at taking pictures of Yoda. He is a fast little critter and a bit camera shy.




Family Randoms



















We had a blast. Now I just need to get this candy out of my house. It has sabotaged my diet!