Oh and one more thing...

It was our 14th Anniversary this month too. Steve I love you! You work so hard for our family to make our life better. I am glad that I married you. You were my right decision. It is fun to have my best best friend live in my house with me. For our anniversary this year we went to dinner at our favorite place - FLEMMINGS! and then we went to see "CURTAINS" at Hale Theatre. We love going to plays there. We have season tickets. Our day was pretty low key. We went to Rich's Bagels for breakfast and hung out together the whole day... I even got to go to work with him for a while. We had a great time just talking about our future.

Steve - I LOVE YOU!

Happy many more years to come.

Love - Me

This one is for you Jelissa...

Where to start? Well at the most recent I guess! So elementary kids all three entered the reflections contest this year for the first year ever. The theme was "Beauty is..."! Cameron took a picture of of whale tail in San Diego this summer and then zoomed in on it and blew it up. Ashley drew a picture of a rainbow, mountains, trees and a butterfly. It was so dang cute. I loved it. Alyssa took a picture of the San Diego Temple Moroni from sitting on the ground looking up to the spires and the Moroni... seeing it through flowers. It really was beautiful.

SHE WON! Can you see the cute excitement!

Ashley and Cameron were a little sad but they both did good and they were glad that Alyssa won.

So about Alyssa again... about a month ago she decided to run for the Grant Elementary Student Council. You had to write an essay of why you would like to do this job and then specify what position to run for. She picked Secretary/Treasurer. Then if you made the first cuts then you go on to making some posters and campaigning to the 4th, 5th and 6th grades. They campaigned for a week and SHE WON! This was a great self esteem boost which she need so I am glad.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Nikolah K. - President
Brooklyn M. - Vice President
Whitney R. - Secretary
Alyssa M. - Treasurer

Cameron's Soccer ended for about a week until indoor soccer started. He was super happy to start playing indoor. It is different but he likes it even when their team lost 13-zip!

Dance, Dance, Dance! My other three are in Guyz n Dollz. They are loving it. All three of them love the kids in their classes. What a fun uplifting group!

We are now car salesmen. It is pretty cool but it also meant that by selling two cars that I was going to have to ride the UTA. AWESOME!!!! Luckily my amazing sister let me borrow he cute little for escape for the month! Thanks Jelissa, I really really appreciate it! We sold the 03 Expedition and the 04 Mini Cooper. We just got an 07 Expedition! I love it. It is really nice to have a car big enough for our family.

We had Halloween in there too but that is a whole other story in it self. Jelissa - My life is pretty boring. I am sorry - no great pictures of some AMAZING place that I have traveled to. I love you Jelissa - I will see you in a couple of days!

Grant Elementary's 50th Birthday Party!!!

Happy Birthday GRANT!

Grant Elementary Built 1959!

All current and former students (and their parents), teachers, administrators, and staff are invited to attend the celebration!

50 Rockin' Years

Open House and Sock Hop
(with Steve as the DJ)

November 12th 2009

6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

@ Grant Elementary

Please come to celebrate with us!

My Young Women Craftyness (is that a word)

So in Young Womens I am the second counselor. I get to welcome in the cute new beehives. I wanted to give them a little something when they come in. I give them a little sack with all of the "stuff" that they need in young womens but it didn't seem like enough.

• personal progress book
• personal progress journal
• parents guide to young womens
• for the strength of youth booklet
• their favorite candy bar

All of this just didn't seem like enough. I started to think (and search the Internet) for some ideas. I came up with these little blocks that were a conglomeration (again is that a word) of ideas that I had seen online. Our 2009 youth theme is "Be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity"(1 Timothy 4:12). In these blocks I just simply wrote "BE" and then on the little tag it says "thou and example 1 Tim 4:12". I painted the block and mod podged it. They are between 5" and 7" square. I think that they turn out pretty cute. The new little girls seemed to love them.

Harley Dog...

So last week (on Friday) my brakes went out. On Saturday Steve was changing them at our house. He went to the back to get our car jack from under Shawn's car and when he moved it there was some anti-freeze that he didn't notice dripped out. Sometime in the day Harley went out back to potty and licked some up (we didn't see him do it - we found out later). Apparently anti-freeze is sweet and pets like to like it. A few hours later Harley started to get a belly ache and started to have diarrhea and throw up. We just assumed that he was sick (we still didn't know about the anti-freeze). Steve walked around to the house to see if he could see anything that he got into and that is when he saw the fluid. We just thought he would get it out with diarrhea and throw up. Be Sunday Night he was doing worse. He wouldn't even get his head off of the pillow. He was so lethargic. It was super sad. Sunday Evening Steve and I decided to take him to the Pet ER. We got him up to Cottonwood Animal ER around 9:30pm. The Doctors did some tests on him. They came up with that he did in fact have anti freeze in his system. This is when we found out how bad it is for pets. We found out that a HUGE percentage of animals that eat anti-freeze actually die. The Doctor suggested that because Harley was SO dehydrated he should keep him over night for a couple of days. He said he was in kidney failure and then it would go to his liver. This is when I asked how much this was going to cost. I really love my dog (I thought that I would NEVER say that about an animal), but I can't afford thousands of dollars. He said it was going to be about $500 - $600 a day with tests and everything else. It might go down in price after the first couple of days. UUUMmmmm I am not sure about you guys but I can't afford that much money for my dog... my kids yes but not a pet. We asked what our alternatives were and he suggested that we take him home (basically to die) and to keep him hydrated he would show us how to inject his body with fluid. Basically keep him comfortable and love him for the rest of his short life. We were pretty devastated.

We decided to come home and get some rest (it was 1:30am by the time we left) and then the next day Steve and I would spend the day with him and tell the kids as soon as they got home from school. We during the day he got worse and worse and worse. We just hoped that he would make it for our kids. I think that Steve and I cried pretty much all day. It was really hard to know that we were going to have to tell the kids as soon as they got home.

When the kids got home Steve and I were sitting on the couch waiting for them. They walked in and knew that something was wrong. Except for Shawn, they didn't even know that we had taken him to the Vet. When Steve told them what was going on they all four immediately started to cry... uncontrollably. Which really made it harder to explain everything. We told them that the Doctor didn't give a very great chance of living. We told them that the Doctor told us that we should decide if we would want the Doctor to put him to sleep and take care of his body or if we should let him just die at our house with us around him and then we would decide as a family where to bury him. They picked that he die at our house and we would pick where we bury him. They thought maybe (if we promised to live here forever) we could bury him here at the house so they could go out to visit him every day. That was so sad to think about.

We decided to take a whole bunch of pictures with him. We were all sobbing. I could hardly even see through the lense to take the picture. I had no idea I loved him so much.

The kids were so cute they just took turns holding him. It really was tender. Our family is lucky and hasn't had to deal with death yet with anyone even Great Grandparents. We didn't really know how to deal with this.

Well with a whole lot of prayers and a whole lot of luck Harley slowly started to do better. By about Wednesday or Thursday he was on the mend. I think that now he is back (almost) to himself. He is still a little tired but that is understandable. I hope that he stays in our family for a long long while. We are happy that the kids decided to have hope that the doctors would be wrong and he would live. We all really love him.

WELCOME BACK HARLEY ~ WE LOVE YOU... STAY AWHILE!

My new favorite hobby...

So after hearing years and years of 5th Sunday Lessons on being prepared, I finally got myself a cool new hobby... I love buying food storage supplies. I am not kidding. I am getting the biggest highs from it.

I actually have a 3 month (almost) supply now. It is amazing... I love to go down to my storage room and look at it. These are just a few pictures of it.

I figure I don't really look all that great in all the new clothes that I buy anyway and food ALWAYS fits me. I am now buying that. I shop all the ads and go in and by the stuff that we use if it is on sale and then I buy at least 12 of what ever it is. It is such a great feeling to know that our family would be pretty prepared in case of an emergency. There are so many emergencies that we could encounter here in Salt Lake... financial included. I am going to keep going... it feels great. I still need to save up our stashed cash and a few other things but we are well on our way. I love my family and I want to be as prepared as possible for them.

I challenge you next time that you go to the grocery to pick up 12 of something that is on sale and stick it in your food storage.

Happy (NO) Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day!
I am pretty sure that I have the strongest husband... He didn't drop me in the river on accident or on purpose... AMAZING!

So this year for labor day we decided to leave Sunday right after Shawn & Steve did fast offerings. We decided to take the kids up to Mirror Lake area and find a spot to camp.

Sometime during the trip I found Ashley and Cameron laying on our bed just looking out the window and having a cute little conversation. I really love the sibling bonding that you get on a family trip.

I am not sure what my eyes are doing. Weird! Maybe they are still glued shut from the long time that I slept in or maybe from the 2 hour nap that I took. Either way they look funny!

What a fun quick, unplanned camping trip. I love to spend time with my little family! We actually camped up in this same area about 7 years ago when Ashley was a brand new little baby! We took a family picture on a log just like this. We were even in the same order, only Ashley was in a baby car seat. It is weird to see what has happened in 7 years. Our kids are so old and big now. It really happens so fast. I love them. I love their ages right now. I wish time would slow down.

Happy (no) Labor Day! I hope yours was as fun as ours!