Still crafting

I started crocheting this scarf right before we left for Christmas vacation. I got over half of it done in the car on the way to Oregon. Then I pretty much put it down for the rest of the vacation and after we got back. Yesterday was dark, rainy and gloomy and Cynjyn was home sick with a fever, so I decided to pick up the scarf and finish it. I just love making these scarves. I wore it all day yesterday and was nice and toasty warm!!

LOVE is in the air!

Cynjyn and I decided to whip up a craft we saw on a blog the other day. She helped me cut out and decopauge the letters and she did a wonderful job.

After they dried, I added ribbon and buttons and wala, came up with this!!

I had made these mailboxes last year for my visiting teachies, but never delivered them. So I finished four of them yesterday morning and went off to do my visiting teaching. I think they turned out cute. I kept one for me to keep by my LOVE sign. I love seeing my Valentine decor on my mantle!!

Randomness

This is what my house looked like Saturday. I fed 7 kids a semi-healthy lunch, pizza rolls, sliced apples, and cookies. Tyler and Austin were over here the whole day while their parents worked on the house across the street, Hunter came over to hang out and Rebecca spent the afternoon here.

Cynjyn and I were in the hot tub for the first time in over a month, then Rebecca showed up and I got out and let them play as it cooled down.

Taz went to Lawson's birthday party on Friday. They had to dress up (I don't know why though, no prizes or games with the dressing up, just very random that they had to.) Anyway, Taz went as the BYU waterboy. Those are raindrops and waves all over him (Which I cut out with my Cricut, it was the first time I've used it since I got it, EASY and QUICK!!)

This is Talon home from work for lunch. He ALWAYS takes off his pants the minute he gets in the door and wants to be comfortable so he runs around in his boxers, eating lunch and visiting with me.??

I'm rich!

In my never ending quest to eliminate piles of shame, I got sidetracked with our change baskets. I had leftover coin rollers from Pennies by the Inch and they were calling me last night. These are the 4 main places we keep spare change. The basket on the left is in our closet, the heart basket is on our desk by where Garry keeps his keys and work badge, the basket that still has Sacajawea dollars and presidential dollars and a Chuckecheese token is in Garry's cabinet and the cup is on our scripture shelf where I keep my keys. I seperated and rolled all the nickles, dimes and quarters last night and this morning. The cup is full of pennies that I just couldn't bring myself to bother with, and the heart shaped cup is the leftovers of the three silver coins. All said and done: $88.00!! Saving those daily coins does end up paying off in the long run!!

MLK Weekend

As I said before, it was a long weekend for us. Garry and I managed to work on the garage a little on Tuesday. We had DI come and literally take out half the garage. It was a huge donation and it is looking clearer by the minute. We also decided to defrost the freezer since it hadn't been done since 2006!! It needed it. We managed to cram everything in it into our two "little" freezers except our berry boxes. Luckily it was a cold and rainy day, so they didn't thaw out too much. Garry's weapon of choice: the dreaded blowdryer!!

After DI came. Now it is mostly my preschool stuff and that big dry laminater/press that we have to deal with. Small steps, small steps.

Heather and her family came into town for the weekend. Cynjyn and Megan hooked up a couple of times and they got along swimmingly.

On Monday, we went to lunch with Heather and friends at CPK. Then Heather came over and we visited for a while. When she got up to leave, it was like she was still here in town and I'd see her again soon at her normal Vegas house. It is nice that we can just pick up where we left off and feel like no time has passed. I guess it helps that we can stay in touch through email and blogs. A fun and productive weekend, what could be better?

Monday morning, Garry and I helped Cynjyn put together her coin collection she got from Gma and Gpa for Christmas. It was fun and she loves looking at it.

What good boys I have

We had Carne Asada tacos for dinner after church on Sunday. Talon volunteered to bbq the meat.

Tanner wanted to try his hand at making the guacomole.

So, between the two of them they cooked dinner that day. We all decided to pass the buck onto them and they could do Sunday dinner every week.

One resolution started, one pile conquered!

We had a long weekend. The kids had Friday off for Staff Development Day and we all had Monday off for MLK day. Garry had today off for his normal Tuesday off. Well, Taz, Tanner and I talked to Garry earlier in the week and told him we wanted to turn the garage into a hangout room for them and their friends. We were so happy he agreed!! We told him we'd help with the brunt labor and do whatever he needed. He agreed and we started on Saturday. Before I post those pictures though, here is a pile I conquered today!!

These are before pictures of the garage. It is piled with Christmas boxes and stuff leftover from our garage sale.

The bikes take up a lot of room and Garry has two workbenches that you can barely see because they are piled with junk.

Stuff is everywhere. Well, Jack, our previous next door neighbor had his leasers move out and they trashed his place and so he had a dumpster put outside his house while he's in the process of cleaning it out. Garry asked him if we could put some stuff in it since we were cleaning out the garage. He said yes, so this was the perfect weekend to begin.

About 1/2 way through, Taz took a lunch break and had a bowl of Frosted miniwheats.

Here are Tanner and Taz in the dumpster.

Here are Garry and I working in the garage. I'm unloading file cabinets and Garry's making piles for Tanner and Taz to take over to the dumpster.

This was Garry's first purchase as a youth, a boombox and he bought it when he was in Jr. High. He is finally ready to dump it in the dumpster, but had taz do an 80's pose with it first.

He is junking his bigger workbench that he made himself out of dumpster dived wood. Notice Taz put on roller blades to take his piles to the dumpster.

After they got it in the dumpster, they let Taz take a sledge hammer to it to break down the legs so it wouldn't stick out over the edge...

...then Taz just had to demolish that boombox, he had way too much fun with that sledge hammer and dumpster!!

My piles of shame.

I saw a blog where a lady captured her piles of shame in her house. Just little corners or areas that were always a mess, or always cluttered, or always forgotten and ignored. As I walked around my house today, I noticed several of these. So I thought, why not capture these shames and document them? So here they are, in no particular order: I have a fairly big space on the end of my kitchen cupboard that just can't stay uncluttered. There is always mail, or tools that never make it back into the garage, or stuff people take off and place on the counter as they work on the computer (ie: the shoes and watch). There is even garbage on there even though the GARBAGE CAN is literally right there. Grocery lists, half drunk cups of liquid, and a first aid kit to repair Sean Borla's scrapped up knee from roller blading!! See that half full liter of ginger ale. It is there from THANKSGIVING! Yes that long, waiting for us to add it to the other half of our frozen slush punch that we didn't drink all of. You can see that I added some bins in the hopes of trying to stay a little less cluttered with the adds and coupons and such that come in the mail, but we'll see how long that lasts.

This is my baker's rack right inside the kitchen. The middle section is supposed to house our paper supplies like paper plates, silverwear, cups etc. Apparently we were all too lazy to take those out of their wrappings and so they just sit there unorganized and ugly looking. The bottom holds a few things like the crockpot and deep fryer, a water jug we no longer use now that the water dispenser is fixed on the refrigerator, plate cover lids for the microwave and Cynjyn's lunch bag. Another shameful mess.
This is the extra chair for the table. We keep it in the corner for when we have guests which is actually quite frequent as it seems that there are always a few extra kids at dinner time. Well, we clear off the table for dinner by piling whatever was on IT onto the extra chair. It currently holds Tanner's books for his research paper due in a few weeks, Catching Fire which he just finished reading, and a few other things. Usually though, it's piled with games we've played and are then too lazy to take back upstairs.

This is a bin right inside my bedroom door. It holds blankets that we use all the time to stay warm while watching TV, or eating or whatever. Now, however, I have put all my ribbon holders on it because I saw a cool way to store ribbon on a blog that won't take up as much room as these holders, so I'm in the process of converting my ribbon from the holders to the basket you see. Well, it's a tedious process I started two weeks ago and ran out of steam, so there it sits. Looks like I've piled a jacket, a scarf and some leftover fleece from Tanner's eagle project on it.

This is our headboard. Garry and I both like to read and so it's piled with old magazines and books. I probably clean it off about once every four months. At least the pillows cover it up and it's not so noticable.

Another place of piles of old magazines, the bathroom. This stack has all been read except for the Ensign which is on the top. Remember my resolution to read it every month, this is helping. It is piled on stacks of old People magazines seriously from September!!

Lastly, my closet. I believe at the beginning of the year, I had all my Sunday skirts hung up and arranged nicely in my closet. I'm talking about the beginning of 2009!! No, as I take off a skirt it goes ontop of this orange basket in here until I search for it to wear again. The pile next to it is pajamas and sweaters that I wear almost daily and a 10 pack of Kleenex I bought two weeks ago at Sam's and haven't found a place for yet. So, there you have it, my piles of shame. I really need to do something about them. When I do, I'll be sure to update my piles. Hopefully they'll be organized in a few months.

It's still a New Year

It is the first week of the new year and I have been thinking a lot about all the things I want to accomplish and experience this year. So, I have comprised a list of goals or priorities that I want to happen in 2010:

In 2010 I want to:

• Finish the Book of Mormon (I only got through Alma last year).
• Lose 30 pounds. I usually don't like to put a number on this, but I feel the need to do that this year in order to make it a reality.
• Scrapbook. In 2009, I blogged and thought that was good enough. I did a few digi pages for Primary and such, but I didn't physically put pictures in a scrapbook at all. I need to do that.
• Spend less time on the computer.
• Read for enjoyment more.
• Watch less TV.
• Become more physically active.
• Help Cynjyn develope a hobby.
• Pick up my quilting hobby again.
• Read the Ensign every month.
• Keep my house cleaner.
• Keep adding to my food storage.
• Remodel my garage and turn it into a family room (O.K, I really want my husband to do that, but maybe, just maybe he'll read my blog and see this:)).

Wow, I'm tired just thinking of all that I want to do. Maybe I should add Nap more to the list then I would keep one "resolution" on a regular basis!!

Seriously, this list is doable and I'm a gonna DO IT!!

Happy New Year 2010.

Christmas vacation and New Years in a blog post.

Our vacation to Oregon started out with high hopes. We only wanted two things: Clear roads for driving up and back, and snow to play in while we were there. We arrived in Boise on the December 19th with the first part of our wish granted. Clear, wonderful roads for driving. We stayed with Krissy and Brian. We bought tickets to Bogus Basin for the 22 of December to do a two hour tubing session. In the mean time, we enjoyed visiting back and forth with Ky and Krissy and their families. Garry, Trey, Tanner, Taz, Ella and I went to Avitar one day while Ky, Kris, Cynjyn and Kres went to the Frog Princess. Tuesday morning came and we woke up to snow!! Yeah, it was snowing, but the bad news was our sledding was cancelled due to LACK of snow up on the mountain. Here are three sad children because they won't be able to go tubing.

However, we also had three happy children because it was snowing.

They made snow angels,

a small igloo,

and improvised their own tubing hill with some of Krissy's boxes and a small hill.

Beckham was a little overwhelmed by us all invading his house and space, but quickly warmed up to us and especially loved Tanner because he would "walk" him places. We traveled to La Grande on the 23rd and again had clear roads and made it there safely.

Christmas eve we had a houseful. All of the Goon's except Talon, Randy and his family, Krissy and Brian and Ky and her family and Grandma and Grandpa. We had quite the feast that evening, but my favorite was the chocolate fondue!!

Lucky for us, Grandpa has a barn, so each year we go up there, we reinact the nativity. Here are Garry and Grandma as spectator in the barn.

Grandpa reads the story from Luke.

Ella is the angel, Cynj in Mary, Kres is Joseph, and Beckham is Baby Jesus.

Trampis, Tanner and Taz are the three wisemen.

After the nativity, we played the chocolate bar game,

Musical bear,

had the gift exchange and played Mafia.

Then, the stockings were hung,

the goody plate prepared for the Jolly one and his reindeer,

and the children all nestled snug in their beds!






Trampis got to sleep in the living room because Santa was bringing his stuff to the motel room where his mom and dad were sleeping.

Oh, yea, I forgot to mention that Grandpa had bought two new TVs. One for his room and one for Grandmas. Garry and Brian mounted Grandpa's in his room. Now, here's a joke for you, how many men does it take to hook up a TV??

Apparently, 3. Clay jumped in to help on the big one in Grandma's room.

Christmas morning saw the kids up at 6:00 am all bleary-eyed, but anxious.

Beckham was the first one up! We let Kres sleep in though!!

The kids think Grandma is mean because they only get to open their stockings and then they have to eat breakfast before they can tear into everything else. With a houseful of people, we had to put up three tables so we could all eat breakfast.

Then we all stake our claim in the dining room and pass out presents. We go one at a time in birth order opening each present so that way it lasts longer and we can all see what everyone got. Here's grandma and grandpa with their stash.

Garry is helping Lola with her presents.

Here is Taz's stash,

Tanner's and

Cynjyn's. (Ella opened hers at the hotel with her mom and dad).

Now, here's our funny story of the year. Our kids draw names so that they can get something nice for a sibling. Talon drew Taz's name. Taz had been saving his money to buy an Xb0x. We told him we weren't getting him one because we'd gotten a cruise for us as the main gift this year. So, he went on saving and almost had enough to buy one, but we wouldn't let him until after Christmas. Meanwhile, Talon's friend at work had an extra one and sold it to Talon for $50.00. So Talon jumped on that. So we decided to get him a bunch of games for Christmas. So, fast forward to Christmas morning, Taz get's an Xbox game from Santa under the tree. Garry and appear worried that Santa confused Talon and Taz's gifts and left Talon's in La Grande and must have given Talon Taz's Wii game in Las Vegas. Taz looks a little confused and worried. So, we go on with the morning and it's time to open presents. Taz picks his first one and it's another Xbox game, oh, no, did Garry and I confuse his with Talon's AGAIN?? Still, he looks worried. He gets to choose his second present, another Xbox game. Garry and I are so sorry Taz!! Finally, he chooses to open Talon's present for him!! An Xbox, all is well and Taz is smiling the whole morning. Now, the funny thing is; Brian comes up to us after all is said and done and says that we really had him going. He thought we really had confused Talon and Taz and he was getting really worried and sad for Taz!! Never fear, all is well and Talon got the BIGGEST hug from Taz the minute we got back to LV.

Christmas day was spent working and playing. My parents have been putting on a Christmas dinner for my dad's 5 brother's and their families for 25 years. They always have it sometime after Christmas, before New Years. They reserve the church and we start around 10 and go to about 10 at night. We have a movie watching room, a game playing room, a food room and of course the gym for volleyball, basketball and soccer. My parents provide the dinner everyear as their Christmas present to Dad's siblings. Every else brings snacks for later in the day. We eat at 1:00 and play and snack the rest of the day. So, this celebration was the day after Christmas so that is why we spent the day working. The kids wrapped potatoes for the potatoe bar, then Randy, Darla and Clay took them to Sherlock Holmes while the rest of us stayed home to finish up the preparations.

We did manage to have a yummy Christmas dinner. Cynjyn and Ella decorated the table.

We had turkey and Brian brought a prime rib and cooked it and we had rolls and broc. salad, and mashed potatoes and cheesy potatoes and stuffing and 4 layer dessert and peanut butter ice cream pie.

No one went away hungry!!

Mom and dad kept the Waite family party simple this year. They both haven't been feeling good, with mom recovering from back surgery and dad just having no energy. Usually they (we) make 5 or six salads and desserts and a couple of main meals. This year, we had bbq beef and homemade rolls, a potato bar and a salad bar. We bought two big cakes for dessert and wrote on them ourselves. This is the last year mom and dad will do this as it is so much work. Next year will be potluck and we will rotate families in charge of arranging it all. So there was a bittersweetness to it this year as it is so much work!!

Robert and his family showed up for the Waite party. Rob has tickets to the BSU/TCU game in Arizona for him, Jodi, Trey, Dad, Brian and Wayne. Rob was trying to spiff up Dad's wardrobe. He wanted him to look presentable for the game. Usually dad either wears a flannel shirt with suspenders and jeans for farming, or a white shirt with two pockets for his casual wear. Rob bought him an outfit and mother TOLD him he was to wear it and not complain because the shirt wasn't white and didn't have pockets. Garry and I had gotten him a blue jacket at Mom's request so he'd stop wearing him flannel jackets to weddings and such in the winter. So, here is Dad modeling his new outfit with our jacket. He truly looks like a BSU fan now and he seemed pretty happy about the outfit.

Kres was obsessed with the hot tub and wanted to go in everyday with anyone who'd take him. This day, it happened to be his mom and Cynjyn.

Garry once again was a trooper and went out everyday to help dad feed the cows. It was windy and cold, but his snow gear he'd bought for Bogus Basin kept him warm and cozy.

Taz, Cynj and I went out one day. They weren't afraid to be in the midst of it all.

Taz even got a picture by his beloved Bull.

Lucky for him there was a brand new calf he got to wrestle and hold down while it got tagged.

There favorite part was when grandpa let them steer the truck up and down the lane. They love to feel like they are driving.

With grandma not feeling up to her old self, we got to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant TWICE!! El Erradero!!

Now, we were trying to be good and watch the weather for the perfect time to go back. Unfortunatly, the kids didn't get any snow to play in while we were there. We headed back to Boise on the 29th. We stopped to eat lunch in Ontario and the kids found this frozen patch to "skate" on.

When we got to Boise, Brian's sister Alisa had made Cynjyn a cake for her birthday. Alisa is just starting her own side business and wanted to practice perfecting her purse cake. Cynjyn loved it.

Thanks Alisa!!


Even after watching the weather everyday, we woke to this the day we left Boise. We left at 5:00 am and the roads were awful. It calmed down a little once we got throught Twin Falls, but it was a very stressful morning.

We stopped in Ely for dinner and the kids got to play in the snow there. They were bummed that it snowed the day we LEFT!

We were relieved to back in Vegas safely. NY eve was spent quietly. Taz and Cynj spent the night at the Bailey's (Taz took a break to go to a friends NY Eve party from 6-9:30). So it was just Garry, Tanner, Talon, Tiffany and I for dinner. We had lettuce wraps and egg rolls and our fav. slushy punch.

Then Tal and Tiff left and so Garry, Tanner and I watched Angels and Demons and watched the fireworks on TV.

I literally took the picture of Tanner at the stroke of midnight,

Then handed him the camera and he took this one of us. I know this was long, but I needed to document it for posterities sake. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!