Traditions

I love this time of year!

I love traditions! This week they started.

Well, I guess that isn't entirely true, we have traditions for other holidays as well and other things, but Christmas traditions started this week.

We got our Christmas tree, and no we didn't just set up a fake one or pick one out at the Christmas tree lot in the store... my friends we went out into the mountain and cut it down.

First, I have to tell you a story though.

So, every year my family likes to wait until everyone can be home to cut down the tree... even if it means waiting until like two days before Christmas, they wait. So let's imagine back to last year, three days before Christmas, my family is treeless. Husband and I and my little sister finally get to my parents house and we go to get the tree the next day.

We stop by my uncle's house to get a chainsaw because my dad's is MIA.

We ask, "Uhh, Dad should we take a regular one too just in case that one doesn't work?" He says, "No, it will work." So we drive out to get the tree, while listening to my Mom read The Forgotten Carols out loud and listening to the music at all the right parts, as we traditionally do. We are in the Christmas spirit! Not too long after we get to "the right place" (aka where we can actually cut down a tree), we find THE tree. So we take a picture by it, which is tradition; however, my sister's eyes traditionally aren't closed. After we take the picture, my dad pulls out the chainsaw and tries to start it. Nothing. He tries again, Nothing. This goes on for quite some time. Husband gets out and tries to help, I get out for moral support. I ask something along the lines of well maybe we could go home and get a hand saw and cut it down that way, my dad says that if we go home we're not coming back. At some point, we give up on the chainsaw and get in the car and go home... without the tree. We're all heartbroken, as many are without a Christmas tree... it is now remembered as "The year without a Christmas Tree".

I guess that name is not entirely true, as we did have a tree, it just wasn't as beautiful as the tree above.

Behold:

This is our traditional Christmas morning in front of the tree, before we can open presents picture.

As you can see, my little brother was REALLY excited.

Okay, so before I go on with my story I'd like you to scroll back up if necessary to look at the tree that wouldn't be from last year.

Now look at this picture:

It looks awfully similar doesn't it!

Well, folks that's because it is! It's the same tree!

This year my dad tried the chainsaw before we left

(and his chainsaw that was once lost, is now found... and works like a champ).

Husband and I got it instead of my family, but we love it just the same.

We all laughed that it was still there, and that we were able to find it.

Although, it wasn't that hard, it's a nice tree and pretty much right off the road.

Have no fear, my family did get a tree.

It's a little small, but so is my family (in height).

So it works for us.

It's a cute little tree.

We have many more traditions, hopefully I'll get to share them with you throughout this Christmas season! I love Christmas! Oh, and Thanksgiving was great too! And I forgot to take a picture of the whole crowd eating, but I think I figured out why that was. I was eating, and I was afraid if I went and got my camera I wouldn't get any food. I have a BIG extended family and while there was a ton of food... you just never know! He who waits is lost. Anyways.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm so excited for Thanksgiving! I love this holiday! Food, food, and more food! Sweet!

Oh and after you eat Thanksgiving dinner, it's totally okay to listen to Christmas music now!

I'm so grateful for the blessings in our lives! Our little family is so blessed!

We have the gospel in our lives, Hsuband has a great job, we have a home to live in, we have wonderful families!...

I could go on and on, but you get the idea

I couldn't find any recent pictures of Thanksgiving dinners, so this one will have to do,

and I'll have to remember to take some this Thanksgiving.

I would like everyone to notice something in these pictures...

(besides the fact that they are five years old)

what I want you to notice is that, no one is wearing a coat!

(sweaters don't count)

In fact quite a few people are wearing short sleeves... ahhh... warmth!

Also, I don't think this is even half of my family

(and it's my mom and dad's sides together....still there are a lot of people!)

We love family!

Happy Thanksgiving!

And so it begins...

You know that stuff that's white....

and cold...

and pretty when it first falls...

but quickly gets ugly and old?...

It starts with a S

and ends with a NOW....

Yeah, we got some of that two nights ago....

Behold:

He was afraid to tell me that it had snowed! He thought I would get upset, but I handled it fairly well, it is pretty when it first falls, but it can go now. :)

Autumn Crafts

I'm a little late, but I've been working on these for a while... actually not working, I've been thinking and finding the things I need to make them for a while. Putting them together didn't take very long. I got my inspiration for these crafts from here and here.

This paper globe was pretty easy, I think I would recommend using more than three different papers... I was cheap and only got three, it worked but sometimes I had to pull pieces off and rearrange them because I didn't want the same papers touching. Overall, I think they turned out cute. In total they cost about 5 dollars... if I had paper it would have been cheaper, the paper was the most expensive part I think.

Then I figured since I was already at the scrapbook store I might as well get paper for a Christmas one! I will just switch out the sticks (I glued the globes to the sticks)... easy! I think I might make one for every month or something, but we'll see.
I loved the thankful garland on Tatertots and Jello! I was going to make it exactly like hers, but I couldn't find a grapevine garland anywhere! I found a few online, but the shipping was outrageous! Then I went to Tai Pan Trading with some friends and found this cute garland, I think it will be pretty versatile and I'll be able to use it for more than just this garland, then I can just switch out the picks... I feel like I'm getting a better deal on something if I can use it more than one way!
Here's a close up
A close up of the entire garland
I really liked how she used clothespins to pin leaves of things they were thankful for onto the garland, I have the clothespins and I've even put the glitter on them, but I forgot to get paper for that... so that may have to wait until next year. However, I like it like this too, so it works for now.

Moving Up in the World!

Guess what?! I have wonderful news! I got a job as a substitute teacher! That's right folks, substitute teacher. I'm still doing the subbing for aid positions (sort of, I actually turned one down today... I've done it a million times and I was kind of sick of it..but that's another story). I haven't taken the tests I need for public school or gotten my fingerprints. Here's how I did it:

A lady in our ward asked me one day at church if I was a substitute teacher, I told her no and gave her the spiel about how I thought I'd signed up for it but I hadn't really. Well she said that she worked at a private school and I didn't have to do those things to be a substitute there, so I told her I was interested and asked what I should do. She said to contact the school, so a couple days later I drove to the school to ask about it in person. Well, I got there and seriously there were four small buildings and I didn't want to interrupt a class by going into the wrong building, so I saw their number on sign outside of their school and just called them. The lady that answered was just subbing for the day, so she wrote a note to the principal. The lady in my ward saw the note and wrote a little note on it saying that she knew me and all that. So by Sunday I still hadn't heard anything, but she talked to me and told me that the principal would call me and that I should send in my resume. So I said, okay and planned on doing that. Well, for some reason I just kept forgetting to send it in, and then when I was going to I wanted to write a cover letter and put it with it so they didn't think I was just some average Joe, so I called the school to find out the principal's name, they didn't answer, and sadly this was the Wednesday before Veteran's Day so I figured they wouldn't call me back for a while. So I just decided to wait. However, after our trip to Oceanside, while we were at Husband's parent's house, the lady in my ward called me. She asked if I would be willing to sub. I told her that I still hadn't talked to the principal so I wasn't sure if I could. She said that the principal is out of town and when the principal is gone, she takes over because she's the assistant principal. She said she talked to the principal about me and the principal said, "Yeah call her." So I subbed for the principal in the morning, she teaches fourth grade in the morning and does her principal duties in the afternoon. So I did that in the morning and then subbed for a sixth grade teacher in the afternoon (her sub has health problems and could only stay half day). It went really well! The kids were really helpful and really well behaved. The sixth grade class was a little bit more crazy than the fourth grade class, but that's probably because it was after lunch and it's always harder to pay attention after lunch.

Oceanside

It seems like the only time I post these days is after the weekend, but sometimes nothing too exciting happens during the week and we have really good weekends I guess.. lol. Well, this last weekend we got to tag along with Husband's parents and little brother to Oceanside, we also spent a day in San Diego! It was a lot of fun!

While we were in San Diego we went to the USS Midway, Husband and I went to the Midway on one of our honeymoons, but as we all know, Husband loves airplanes so we didn't mind going again. We also got to see parts of it that we were unable to see before, so that was really neat too. It's fun to hear him tell us all about what he's learned from work and just over the years.

The next stop was the Mormon Battalion Historic Site. This was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. It was really neat! The visitor center thing is really interactive and cute. I got to dress up as a Mormon Battalion Soldier, I guess usually it's a little kid, but our group didn't really have any kids, so I stepped up to the plate. The center had kiosks where you could look up your MB ancestors, that was really neat. Husband and I both have ancestors that were on the MB. Then you could email yourself the information. They also had a picture booth and you got the pictures for free and you could email that as well! There were also games. And we got to pan for gold!

(this was our free picture, sweet huh?!, we also got a group picture, but I'm not sure where that one got emailed)

After that we went to "Old Town" it was a bunch of shops that of the 1800s era. That was fun, but I forgot to take pictures there.

On Saturday we stayed in Oceanside. Husband took us all sailing! It was really fun. I like sailing a lot better on the ocean (in the harbor) than at Utah Lake. I also found that if I turned so I wasn't facing the front of the sailboat I enjoyed the ride a lot better... I always feel like we're going to tip and crash into the oncoming boats. We took turns on the sailboat, so the boys went first and then the girls went.

After we went sailing we were all pretty tired so we rested for a bit, ate, and then we went and walked the pier at sunset. It was beautiful!

After that we went to the hot tub and relaxed... and got lectured on how we should learn about timeshares, but that's another story in itself.... lol.

It was a great weekend! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa and Husband's family! We had a great time!

Nice and Relaxing Weekend

We need to get better at taking pictures... I guess I should change that, I should get better at taking pictures. Anyways, we had a great weekend. Friday night we went out on a date! YAY! We at a burger place here. It was good. Then we went to Home Depot to pick up a few supplies for projects we wanted to work on on Saturday. We actually didn't really get to work on the projects but we will eventually.

We did watch the BYU-UNLV game, it's days like that when I kind of wish we were still at BYU so we could go to the games, this one looked like a lot of fun to be there and watch. BYU killed UNLV! 55-7, ouch! We also watched a little bit of the U getting dominated by TCU, all in all it was a great day in sports at our house! Lol!

The picture above is from last year when we were at a game. We were on the LAST row... the people behind us were the standing room only people, I'd never trekked up that high on the stadium before, but it was actually a really nice view, you could see everything!

Church was good, as usual. We got to watch the CES Fireside, it was really good as well. If you didn't get to watch it, I'd recommend it!

I hope you had a great weekend as well!

Election Day...

Dear Voters,

I'm a little disappointed in you. How do you expect things to change when you keep voting in people that don't do anything, and it's not like they "might" change, they've been in politicians for like 30 years! If they were going to do something, they'd have done it by now!

I am very grateful for the right to vote, the one thing I don't understand though is why people disapprove of Congress and then vote in the same old people as last time. In school we learned that people usually disapprove of Congress as a whole but think that their representative is good... however in Nevada's case, I'm not sure how one could think this, but I guess we all have our opinions.

However, I am happy that the Republicans took the House back, and they are only a few seats short of a majority of the Senate... had you kicked out the people I wanted you to, we may have been able to get a majority, but I guess we'll have to wait....another six years.. gr.

Well, I guess I'll stop rambling and pray for the best.

Sincerely yours,

A sad voter

We like tools

His dream is to have a big shop. I'm okay with that, he likes to make stuff, I like to make stuff, and I like making stuff with him. It works.

Well folks, we're on our way. We found a really good deal on this on Craigslist... greatest invention ever!

Ours doesn't look exactly like that, the wheels are a bit different, and we didn't buy it new (although it looks brand new and a lot of things were in the box still, the guy had only used it like three times... sweet!).

Slowly but surely friends, we'll have that shop he's dreamed of.

Another example of how we like tools:

That's right, he used his dremel to carve our pumpkin. Granted he did use a knife and a spoon for parts, but he used the dremel for most of it. It looked really cool, sadly I apparently just looked and it and forgot to take a picture of it. I've been meaning to every night, but I keep forgetting and now it looks like a shriveled old man.... it was a skull with his strobe light in the back of it. That's how we decorated the trunk for the trunk-or-treat, which was really fun. One little girl was pretty scared by our pumpkin.. lol. Good times.

Anyways, hope all is well with all of you!