Weekend Happenings!

Another busy weekend as the holidays get closer...Friday was nice, Dan and I were able to go out and get ALL, yes all :) of our Christmas shopping done. All I have to say is "ouch". You always go out with a budget, but there are always a few little things you can't resist to get the kids...I'm so excited for Christmas this year. It's so much fun as they get older! You know what they want, where as when they are really little, it's just rattles and clothes. Joe is so into the Disney Cars movie and all of the cars, that shopping for him was a blast! Abby informed us she wants a dog...so we compromised and she can look forward to something robotic! I seriously would consider getting a dog if I weren't allergic. It would be so good for Abby, she loves animals so much! Rachel is our princess girl and shopping for her was easy. Hailey was a little harder. She loves art and changed her mind a bunch when we asked what she wanted for Christmas. She'll love what she got! I hesitate to tell too much, for fear they will read what I write...

Saturday was a very nice day. We hung our Christmas lights. I insisted on the small lights and Dan insisted on the big ones. Well, I convinced him to get the small lights and he put them up...well, everyone in the neighborhood has big lights....so Dan wasn't too happy, but when we saw them in the dark, they looked pretty cool, so we'll just keep them this way this year and get big lights next year. I'm so excited to have a house of my own this year to hang lights on!

Saturday night Dan and I went over to my moms and played games with Teresa and Rob & Merrill and Sherrie and they're kids. I can't believe how Andrew, Jordan, Megan and Rachel have grown. What great kids! We had so much fun!

Sunday was soooooo nice! It was the first time I was able to go to Sunday School in years! I loved it! I was nervous going to YW but anxious to meet the girls I will be working with. What a great group of girls! I'm teaching about talents this upcoming Sunday and I've called all the girls parents and asked them about the girls talents' and I've learned some neat things about each girls. I will wrap they're best talent in a small box and they will open they're box one by one and we will talk about they're talent, then they will have to tell us a talent and then the class will tell us about each girls talent, and it can't be one that's been mentioned. YW in Excellence is this week. It's been so long since I've been to one of those, I'm excited about that as well.

LD Singers

Last night I took Hailey over to my parents stake center to watch the LD Singers. They were so much fun to watch! They are college age kids, about 30 strong and they harmonize wonderfully! They sang serious songs, hymns like "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" and fun songs like "Farmer Tan". Hailey laughed out loud several times and ate up every minute! She told me she would love to do that when she gets older. It was a fun night, thanks mom and dad for letting us know about it!

The Spider Bite Saga

So, yesterday was a full day! I was so excited to have Matt & Stephs kids over to play and got a super cute picture of Haven...which I'm posting. She snuggled with me the whole time Steph was gone. Aubrey, Parker and Samm played with my Rae and Joe so well. We all had to much fun! After they left, we had lunch and it was off to take Abby to the doctor. Abby wasn't sure if I was going to get her out of school early because I was still debating about whether to call the doctor, so she was a little surprised and a little scared. So she cried quite a bit on our way to the doctor and I had to reason with her quite a bit and explain that the doctor probably wasn't even going to touch it, just look at it and that she wouldn't have her finger chopped off, or have to go to the hospital and I had to reassure her the whole way there! Our doctor is wonderful, but he's downtown so it's quite the commute to get there, but he will be moving in a few weeks to the new women's center by the new hospital over off of 5300 S. State Street....anyway, that will be nice for us! Dr. Templeman was so nice and told Abby that looked like it hurt and she reassured him that it did not hurt! He smiled and said that it looked a little infected and would treat it with some antibiotics, and that was it. Abby was so relieved that she smiled the whole rest of the day. I asked Dr. Templeman what it would look like if it had been a poisonous spider (black widow or brown recluse) and he said that the skin would turn black and spread and she may, not always is this the case, have upset stomach, vomiting and fever.

This has been a good thing because I told her she would get super sick if she sucked on her two fingers and that puss went into her tummy and that did it. She hasn't put those fingers anywhere near her mouth, however, I do think she's sucking her two other fingers on her other hand during the night, but at least it's not constant like it's been. We'll see :)

One other quick tidbit, I went to YW/YM last night...holy cow! Talk about from the frying pan into the fire! They were crazy! The leaders could hardly get there attention for some planning we needed to do for YW in Excellence. It was crazy and I couldn't get home fast enough. I met some great girls and am excited to get to know them but that was kind of overwhelming for me right out of the shoot. Pray for me....Please!

Joe's Funny Face & Abby's Spider Bite :(

The other day Joe wanted to eat some of his Halloween candy, so I gave him his bag and told him to pick out 3 candies. I left the room for a few minutes and came back and he had 3 suckers unwrapped, lined up on the table and he was taking a lick of one, put it down and licked the next and then the next. It was hilarious and I had to take a picture!

I think this was the same day, Joe found a funny face glasses and nose and put it on, it was so funny!

This one is of Abby who woke up Friday morning with a huge blister on her middle finger. We thought it was from sucking her fingers (she sucks her two fingers all the time!), but it was really swollen and looked full of puss, so we popped it and it was! It's getting worse, but she otherwise seems okay. I'm taking her to the doctor today. This has been quite tramatic for her! I have no idea what kind of spider bit her but we did move the girls downstairs last month and there are more spiders down there. I really do need to look into spraying my basement or perimeter of my house. I feel so bad for her and am a little worried :(

My Weekend & New Calling

This past weekend was so full, but so much fun! My mom has only one sister, Teresa. She is like my other mom, sister and best friend! When I was a teenager, she was my saving grace! For about 8 years, she lived about 5 minutes away and I would spend a great deal of time with her. She has 3 kids, Erica, Ryan, and Mike. I would spend a great deal of time with these kids and loved every minute of it! Her oldest, Erica is currently going to BYU and this last Friday, I went down and picked her up to come and spend the weekend with us. She was nice enough to let me set her up on a date with one of Dan's cousins, Greg. Now, I worried about whether the two of them would talk, since they are both quiet, until you know them, but they did and it turned out to be a really fun night. Saturday morning, Dan and I got up around 4:30 and went to the Salt Lake Temple with my Mom and Dad, Brent and Cortnie (Brother & Sister-in-law). It was so nice! I had only been to a live session once, Brent, Cortnie and Dan had never been, so this was a neat experience, even though it was so early in the morning! It was so nice also to have Erica with us to watch the kids. My kids love her, Hailey, Abby and Rachel think she is so "pretty" and Joe says she's "cute"!

Later Saturday night we had two couples from our ward over. They taught us a really fun game, sort of a twist on Phase 10. It was so much fun! BothDan and I have had callings where we haven't had the chance to really get to know anyone, so it was very nice to meet some people that we have some things in common with and it was nice to have more than a 30 second conversation in the hall at church. So fun! Anyway, about 9:30 p.m. I got a call from the 1st Counselor in the Bishopric wanting to meet with me Sunday morning. Right after I got off the phone, Trisha, my friend from our ward, told me she thought I was going to be the next Mia Maid advisor in Young Womens...so that had me a little nervous!

The next morning, I received my new call as the new Young Womens Mia Maid Advisor! I'm so nervous! As I looked over the lessons, I began to calm a little. It will be so much fun to teach these girls about talents, testimony, cultural arts, etc., rather than about "I'm Thankful For Tree's", although those Sunbeam lessons are great as well. I also get to go to Young Womens on Wednesday nights. I'm almost more nervous about that. Well, I will have faith and I know this really build my testimony and help me as my girls get older. I've been needing a change.

Trick-or-Treat

What a day! My day started at 4:30 a.m. when I was crazy enough to pull myself from bed and run 5 miles at the gym! I hurried home to get Hailey up at 6 a.m. to go to choir at the school. I then got Abby up and, of course, she has to have make-up! She looked too adult with it on, I'm glad she's still 7 and not 17! We got her off to school and then Dan and I had to hurry and take our van in to get fixed (it was shaking really bad when you get up to 60 mph), so then we had to run some errands for his work, and then we went in search of pumpkins! We couldn't find pumpkins anywhere! I couldn't believe how just last weekend, there were boxes of them overflowing and now, not one to be found. We went to 3 places and finally found a few dilapidated ones at Harmon's. We then rushed home to put Rae and Joe down for naps. Rachel came down with a fever and earache Tuesday, so she still wasn't quite herself. The girls came home from school and we carved pumpkins, then ate a quick bowl of chili and it was time to get ready. Rachel of course had to have her hair up, and all getting all the girls ready was quite the ordeal, but fun! Dan had the easy task of getting Joe ready, how would it be? I took the kids out at about 6 p.m. and we had so much fun looking all the costumes and houses decorated ( I need to be better about decorations!). There were a few houses Abby would NOT go to because they were too scary, but the other kids had no problem. They came home and hour later with tons of candy! I, of course, had to sort through all they're candy and beg a few pieces off of them and had them go to town on they're candy because after Halloween, it's one piece a day, isn't that mean of me?

My parents came over around 8p.m. to see the kids costumes. They had so much fun telling grandma and grandpa all about it! Then we watched "Private Eye's" with Don Knotts and Tim Conway. I love that movie (Teresa, have you seen it? We were thinking of you!). It was a super fun day!

Carving Pumpkins!

Carving pumpkins is such a fun tradition. The last two years we were in Portland and we would get together with Mom and Dad Johnson and carve pumpkins together, but this year we were on our own and decided to do it Halloween night.

So about noon on Halloween Dan and I went shopping for pumpkins, Yeah right! We couldn't find pumpkins anywhere! We went to Walmart, they were out, Smiths, a couple of pumpkin patches, which were closed, and finally to Harmons where they had only a few and they weren't that pretty. So gathered what was left and bought them. We learned our lesson, next year, get pumpkins early...duh!

As usual for our pumpkin carving, it's us parents (usually Dan) that cuts the pumpkins out. The kids take one scoop out of the inside and they're done, then they design the front of the pumpkin with a marker and Dan and I cut away. So here are the pumpkins the "kids" did. It really was a lot of fun!



Joe decided to show my his Lightning McQueen instead of his pumpkin...whatever makes him happy is what my motto was yesterday!