Well..... color me stunned! The main point of this post was just so that my sisters current blog post was WRONG!!! (Now my last post is NOT in Dec!) :P 

  However, in logging on to my dusty blog I find they have changed blogger! It now shows me how many people check my page each day.  You can imagine my complete SHOCK to see that at least 2 people have checked my blog everyday this week and one day I had 6 people check my page! You guys really MUST love me and want me to post!!!!

   Well I can't promise daily posts ( I am a busy woman you know!) but with this new found information I will try harder to keep my blog from getting quite so stale.  Sadly this weekend I am booked out solid, so you will all have to wait until next week for a REAL post! Until then, enjoy this flash back!

One of my ALL TIME favorite moments in my sweet little boys life. He just turned 6 this week!! SHEESH! Where does the time go!?? He is still so skinny we have a hard time keeping his pants up and he still LOVES his milk!!!! 

FALL

So my last post was summer.... now it is a fall post.... maybe I am just a 'quarterly' blogger! lol

HALLOWEEN was a BLAST this year!! One of my most favorites of all!! I really don't feel like typing anything much so here are a bunch-o-picts for your viewing enjoyment.

My favorite costume to date!! A M A Z I N G!! At least that is how I felt in this Medusa costume! Thanks to my lovely cousin Amanda for spending HOURS on my hair to make this costume what it is! p.s. I won the prize for best costume at the YM/YW combined activity... yeah... that felt awesome!!


The hours we spent doing my Medusa hair reminded me of a cosutme I wore to another YW/YM activity LONG AGO! Bride of Frankenstein!!! Yeah.... that is my real hair... yeah it took FOREVER to get this out!!!

Though Medusa was an awesome costume it wasn't really an easy one to duplicate so I had a second costume for Halloween. Since I had a dog for Halloween this year (more on that later) I HAD to be Dorothy!!! this costume is thanks to DI and creative sewing by my good friend Angie!! This is my whole Trick or Treating Posse!!!!

My adorable kids!! AWWW!!!!

Amalyssa would want you all to know that she created her ENTIRE costume by herself this year! She raided her closet and dress ups and came up with this by herself!! (Then she tried to convince me that I should buy her a toy since she saved me all the money of buying a costume! lol)

Braden really wanted to be a dog. He was ecstatic when we found this bulldog costume!



Our Doggie friend!!! This is my mother in laws dog Daisy. Daisy was staying with us over the week of Halloween while Becky was on a cruise. We had so much fun with her! She is a great little dog! Someday I may want one just like her! For now though a week visit was just perfect! She adored going trick or treating with us and several people wanted to give her a treat when we came by!

And lastly some reminiscing. These are some costumes of yester year that I particularly remember.
Crayons. Oh yeah... cutest ones in the box!! We were these for a few years, but I loved them and remember them fondly! I am the yellow and my cutie sis is the red.

Butterfly. I remember how totally much I loved the wings!!!

And last but not least -Big Red - This was another AWESOME costume.... except for the fact that I couldn't sit down ALL DAY at school and climbing steps to trick or treat was an art that I had to master. Not sure why I even wanted to be this but I remember being so excited about my 'great idea' for a costume and my mom was up to the challenge!! THANKS MOM!!!! Do I have a cat in my pumpkin???? I think I do! lol.... I don't remember that!


Well there you have it, Halloween of past and present! In my future ... PEACOCK PRINCESS!! Oh yeah... I can't wait till next year!!!

I LOVE HALLOWEEN!!!!!

As a last little side note since I am hear blogging. Braden said to me the other day, "Mom, you need to get me a punching bag so I can practice punching for when I join the Army!."

Yeah.... ARMY!?? Mom was NOT ready for that little buddy! Let's wait a few years before we make that decision ok!! ;)

SUMMER!!!! (somehow I lived!)

What a CRAZY summer I had!!! I think that was my busiest summer to date!! As much as I LOVE going on so many wonderful trips I think next year I am going to have to say no to a few. (except Lake Powell... because it is already planned and I LOVE Lake Powell!!!)

So here is my summer in review! I am going for readers digest version here so I am limiting myself to ONE picture per trip.... (that will be HARD)... and a short paragraph about each event!!

The first trip I have already written about. That would be our fun adventure to Island Park. It was the large family reunion on Scott's side. It was a GREAT couple of days in a lovely cabin with a hot tub and 4 wheelers!! Sure I fell off a horse and almost died.... but at least I would have died happy!!!!! :)



Next came.... uh.... er... hold on while I get my calendar... that was a while ago!!!!

GOT IT! thanks for waiting! ;)

Next was my FAVORITE trip of the summer!!! The kids went to DISNEY WORLD!!!! Yep..just the kids! Scott and I went to LAS VEGAS!!!!!


So this year Scott and I hit 10 years of marriage! We wanted to celebrate by doing something special! We asked Becky and Dwayne to take the kids for a week and they decided it would be fun for them to go to Florida for a week! Turns out... IT WAS!!! The kids had a great trip and so did we!! THANK YOU BECKY AND DWAYNE!!!! (best in-laws EVER!)

So while the kids were hanging with Micky, Scott and I drove on over to Vegas! We stayed in a LOVELY time share (also thanks to Dwayne!) And crammed as much into our few days as we could! Shopping, shows every night, and sight seeing. The two highlights of the trip were Blue Man Group and dinner at the top of the Stratosphere! BOTH AMAZING EXPERIENCES!!!! Of course I was just healing from my fall off a horse when I slipped in the shower and totally bruised up the same ankle!! Wouldn't you know the mark that has become a permanent scar on my leg was from this fall and not off the horse!!!

As for the kids... not sure what they did, but they sure had fun!!! LOL I think they spent most of their time in the Hotel pool!! Since this was cheaper than Disney World or other theme parks my in-laws were happy to oblige!

(whew that was close!!!! my computer just hiccuped and I thought I lost all of this!!!! thank goodness for auto save!!!)

After a week of 'recovery' and Scott's b-day the kids and I were off on the road again.

We went to the reunion for my family! (July 11-15) It was at this great little group spot in Box Elder Campground. We did all the fun camping stuff like coating ourselves in bug spray, playing in the creek, roasting hotdogs, swimming in the local reservoir, and pulling ancient car parts out of the rubble on the mountain side!! ... what? not everyone pulls car parts off the mountain side?? Well you are really missing out!!!


Next came the 'first annual Idaho friends retreat!' (July 23rd) My good buddies from highschool and college decided it had been too long since we had gotten together (and it had!) We started with a family BBQ where we all brought the hubbys and kids and even invited brothers sister and parents to come (even though only my mom and grandma came... but they were the group parents anyway since most events were at my house back in the day) I snuck away from the BBQ a little early for selfish reasons. I REALLY wanted to go boating this year and give the kids that opportunity so we took off to the lake with Dwayne. Getting them behind the boat took a little convincing but once they tried it they were hooked!!!! Amalyssa is officially a water baby just like me! Once again I snuck out early so I could get back in town for the rest of the 'retreat' For the evening activities 'the gang' ditched the kids and hubbys for a ladies night out at our old hang Johnny B's!! IT WAS SO FUN!! We sat and chatted and laughed for hours!! We reluctantly left when they started counting out the register at 11:30! lol.

Next was GIRLS CAMP!!! (Aug 2-5) Oh how I was looking forward to this!! I LOVE YOUNG WOMENS!!! Seriously I am never leaving this calling! This is the first year that I was going to be able to attend all of GC. Becky was SO AWESOME as to take the kids for ANOTHER week! (not to Florida this time though, lol) It was ward camp this year so it was our girls and leaders up in the woods! SO MUCH FUN! Until everyone got the flu that is!!! Yep... 1/3 of the camp got a MAJOR nasty tummy bug... including me!!! I drove myself home early from camp so I could puke in my own toilet. It was a memorable camp, that's for sure!!! Did I mention we went boating?!!! Before everyone got sick of course thank goodness.



Then what did I do.... PASSED OUT!!! lol. ok not really. We spent the rest of the month getting ready for school and Amalyssas baptism. These were each major tasks and undertakings in their own right but I won't go into it now. Right now I am going to post this sucker to get my sister off my back!

Hope you all had a wonderful summer too!!!!

The water bottle that almost killed me!

So I have learned that if you want to blog about something you should really do it right away! The longer you wait the harder it is to make yourself sit down and re-live it!

Last weekend we had a family reunion for Scott's side in Island Park. We had a great time! There were ATV's a hot tub, fun and games, even a nice calm trail ride on horse back!!

So how was I almost killed by a water bottle?? Well lets back up to that nice calm trail ride! I hadn't even planned on going since trail rides are not exactly cheep, but when Amalyssa found out Grandma Becky was going she was BEGGING to go! And thus it was that Amalyssa and I ended up at the corral on back of two lovely horses. My horse was named Princess and hers was named Rat! HAHA!

I have no pictures of these lovely horses since I made the choice not to haul my cumbersome camera for this particular even. This ended up being a really GOOD thing since I don't think it would have survived the water bottle attack!

The trail ride was two hours long so of course I took some water bottles along for the ride. My jacket had ginormous pockets that the bottles seemed to fit perfectly into!! For the first half of the ride they DID sit perfectly in my pockets. For some reason they decided to get slippery on the second half of the journey! At one point one of the bottles fell out of my pocket onto the ground. No big deal, the trail guide stopped and picked it up for me and we were on our way. After that the bottles never did sit right in my pockets and I kept finding them slipping out. I thought about asking the guide to put them in a saddle bag for me but didn't want to disturb the ride again over silly water bottles. As it turns out... I did anyway!

A friend and I were talking once about how you know whether a thought is from the Spirit or just from yourself. She said something very profound to me that day. She said "If it's a good idea then do it anyway!" That has stuck with me ever since! This particular day is a perfect example. I never felt like the spirit was urging me to remove the water bottles from my pocket... but maybe it was... I thought it was just me thinking something that would have been a good idea but not wanting to disturb the group by making them stop I ignored it and went on.

I heard the water slosh as the bottle left my pocket the second time. What came next was a surprize. The horse became startled at the sound and began side step in what I instantly knew in the back of my head was the horse getting spooked. At just about the moment I realized this I had a new sensation to contemplate. A crushing thud on my back. Looking up it was now clear to me that I was on the ground underneath a spooked horse. I had just enough time to think "I hope it doesn't step on me. That could be bad." and then the ordeal was over. The horse calmed down and for the most part managed to miss me. It's hoof did clip my ankle and left me this lovely souvenir.



In the end I was barely even battered and fairly calm over the entire event. (My poor mother in law on the other hand was having a panic attack for the both of us! Thanks for loving me so much Becky!!!) The Guide later said he had seen the horse get spooked and in loosing my balance I had yanked on the reigns causing the horse to rear up and me to go rear down. :) Joking with the guide I had scolded him for not teaching me the "Proper" way to fall of a horse.

After the fall the water bottles were safely relocated to the saddle bags. Back at the stable I gently reminded the guide they were in there and that they could just throw them away. The guide joked "Are you sure you don't want to keep it as a souvenir?" I responded ".... hmm, the water bottle that almost killed me.... no thanks, I am good!"


p.s. Yes I did get right back on the horse and wasn't afraid at all. In fact I would now LOVE to take some riding lessons and learn more about these lovely and amazing creatures.

Deffinition of humor : Kids

I said I would try and do smaller posts more often so here goes!

Amalyssa graduated 2nd grade last week and brought home a book they had made through the year. At the end of the book was a page of common sayings and idioms. They started the saying and then left a blank for the kids to fill in. So it would look like "You can't teach an old dog new _____". Amalyssa had that one right but I found myself laughing hysterically at some of the blanks she had filled in and thought it would be fun to share some of my favorites with you!! The words in italics will be her ending to the saying

"Don't change horses ... ever."

"Don't bite the hand that .... hurts."

"No news ... for you!"

"If you lie down with dogs you'll ... be licked."

"An idle mind is ... tough."

"A penny saved is .... lucky!"

"Two's company three's ... a party!" (this is my new motto!)

and my personal favorite!

"Better late ... than on time!"

HAHA... I still laugh when I read them! I sure love how creative that girl is!

And for Grandma B I am posting a video! We took Grandma B and Grandpa D out to dinner at Tucano's for a birthday celebration on Saturday and Braden was eating with the meat tongs again! (Tucanos is a Brazilian grill and they bring meats around for you to sample. Everyone has a set of meat tongs to pick up their samples with.) It reminded me of a few years ago when we took my mom to that restaurant and Braden ate his cheesecake with his tongs. Mom took this video of him and I still laugh when I see it!

IT WAS REALLY GOOD CHEESECAKE!!!