Family Photo

Look, we got all pretty!

Christmas 2007

Christmas in our new house was fun, we had a whole room for the tree (since we don't have any living room furniture), so we could spread out and enjoy ourselves.

Chandler got a new bike.

Sarah got a million Littlest Pet Shop animals.


Shane got a weed wacker.

Jen got a new printer. And we all got a wii and Guitar Hero 3, it's a blast to play. Fun Christmas!

Thanksgiving 2007

Arizona - Thanksgiving Weekend 2007

Sarah and Collin can't wait to go to Aunt Bonnie's.


Michelle's friend, Jacob, was a great jungle jim.

After visiting with Shane's side of the family, we went down to Tucson to visit Jen's side of the family. We went to the Children's Museum.
Chandler and Brianna



Lindsay and Lydia

Chandler, Brianna, Sarah, Bryant

Shane and I have been watching a lot of Dancing with the Stars lately and we think we have finally learned the Charleston - click on the video below to see us.

Dancing with the Dicous

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!

Finally we have grass...

We are so excited, we finally have grass in our yard. Only down side is that we can't really enjoy it this year, since it's getting colder outside. It's not green yet, kind of a yellowish green. It's great not having mud for a front yard and dirt in all of the window sills from the wind. We were also able to have the back patio cemented, which is really nice (why did Ivory Homes think a 5'x5' square was a patio?) Here are some photos of the yard and the kids in front of the patio - couldn't stand on it yet (don't you love my shadow in the photo, you'd think I've never taken a photography class)

Halloween 2007

Witches Night

I went out with some girlfriends to Witches Night! It was a blast, we dressed up as witches, went to dinner, and then went to Gardner Village for dancing, shopping and fun!

Tag game for Fours

My friend Muriel tagged me so here it goes:
Four Random things about me:
1 I remember lots of weird facts about almost anything.
2 I was once kicked out of Denny's for 30 days.
3 I really enjoy ballroom dancing.
4 I would love to fly an F-16.
Four Jobs that I have had:
1 Worked at Brooks Fashions
2 Worked at Franklin Quest, not Franklin Covey
3 Worked as stay at home mom for 7 years
4 Currently working as an Advertising Specialties Sale Consultant
Four Places that I have lived:
1 Born in Phoenix, AZ
2 Sandy, UT for most of my life
3 Bountiful, UT for most of my married life
4 Clinton, UT for the last 5 months
Four TV shows that I watch:
1 The Office - hilarious!
2 Heros
3 ER - still, I know, it's been on forever, but I like it
4 Dancing with the Stars - I'm a sucker for ballroom dancing
Four Places I've been on vacation: (some of the recent ones)
1 San Diego, CA - my favorite and Anaheim
2 Moab, UT
3 Las Vegas, NV (and Kingman, AZ)
4 St. George, UT
Four Favorite Foods:
1 Filet Minon from Tepanyaki
2 Lobster - good moist lobster (can't wait to try East Coast lobster someday)
3 Vanilla Ice Cream with Hershey's syrup and sunflower seeds
4 A medium-rare ribeye
Four Websites I visit:
1 www.jen.myctmh.com - shameless plug
2 http://www.shabbyprincess.com/ - see more digital scrapping sites on my blog side
3 http://www.msn.com/ - got to check my emails
4 http://www.muse.mu/ - I've recently found this band that I really like, but don't have their cd's yet, so I just stream their music during the day.
Four People I'd like to tag:
1 Ali Miller
2 Ashley Giessing
3 Lindsay Poulsen
4 Hilary Roller

Wow, where did September go...

Last month was so busy. The kids went back to school in August, so the homework is in full force. Shane has been really busy in the yard, preparing for a larger concrete patio and for grass. And he's in school too, so that takes up quite a bit of his time. Chandler has soccer games on Saturdays and practice during the week. Sarah participated in the mini-dance clinic for Syracuse High School, earlier in September, and we all went to the football game to watch her dance.

Shane, Chandler and I went to the BYU v. Airforce game week before last and that was a lot of fun - it rained the last quarter, but it wasn't too bad. I forgot my camera, so no photos - bummer!

My sister, Ashley, had her second baby, Madeleine, 2 weeks early on September 26th. She is such a cutie and of course when I went to visit, I forgot my camera.

Lagoon 2007

August 16th, we went to Lagoon with my parents for Franklin's Lagoon Day. The kids got in free with my mom, so Shane and I bought tickets for the day. The kids had a lot of fun in the short amount of time we were there. Sarah's favorite ride was the Bat. Chandler's favorite ride was the Wicked Roller Coaster. I loved the Wicked too - it was a huge thrill! Here are a couple of pictures from our adventure - it's so hard to take photos.

Shane and Chandler waiting for the Wicked Roller Coaster, Sarah and Chandler on the train, Sarah and Papa getting ready to take off on the Bat, Chandler and Sarah (the little arm) waiting to take off for our second time on the Bat, they sat in the front seat!

Oh, and Happy Anniversary to us - it's our 14th Anniversary!

Flaming Gorge

We just got back from Flaming Gorge. It was a short trip, but we had fun. We went with Shane's sister, Denise, her husband, Eric and their kids, Courtney (13), Caleb (8) and Madison (4).






















On Friday, we went to the Guest Ranch where we were going to stay for the night and then we drove down to Flaming Gorge to do some fishing. The kids had more fun catching crawfish than the brown trout or small mouth bass that we could see swimming around. The fish that we saw at the lake were little and they would just steal part of the worm and swim away.




On Saturday morning we drove back to Flaming Gorge Resort, where we had rented a 9 man raft for the day. We drove back to the bottom of the dam where we put the boat in and floated down the Green River for 7 miles from Flaming Gorge Dam to Little Hole. It's a slow river at that point and we did a LOT of paddling (my arms are so tired). There were a few rapids; if you could call them rapids, maybe you could call them fasters (slightly faster than the river). The kids had so much fun, they got so excited when they would see the white caps coming up and we'd try to paddle us into it so the kids could experience the bumps. Sometimes we'd just end up high centered on a rock. It was really windy at some points which made it pretty tough paddling against the wind - sometimes we felt like we were going back upstream. There were hundreds of fish in the river, we could not believe how many and how big they were - much larger than the fish we saw in the lake. There were tons of fly fishermen - floating in the their little boats, or wadding in their neoprene wadders. With as many fish as we saw, it must be a popular place to fish. Three and a half hours later, sore muscles and all, we arrived at Little Hole and pulled the boat out. We had considered taking a second trip down the river, but the adults were feeling worn out and we decided we better just get the boat back and head home. Now that I'm home and have looked at our photos, I'm disappointed that I didn't get a photo of our family together and I didn't get very many photos - but I've posted a few for you to see. Guess that doesn't matter to the kids, they still say that they had a lot of fun!

14 years later...

On July 27th, I went to dinner with some of my high school friends. I haven't seen most of them since my wedding. I was excited when Muriel found my info and sent me an invitation to dinner with Stephanie, Marci, Kim, Suzie, Lyndi and Muriel. It was a great evening; it was hard to keep up with all of the info going around the table. Well, I hope to keep in better touch with everyone. It was incredible to think we are all moms now and in our thirties - wow. (update - check out link at right for Long Lost Friends blog)

I thought I would post a couple of my favorite photos of Chandler and Sarah. My good friend from BYU, Michelle Willis, (http://www.edreamphotography.com/) took our photos down at Thanksgiving Point last November and I have just loved them.

Aren't they cute! Our family photos turned out so nice too! In case you didn't receive one of our Christmas cards (and if you didn't please click the email link and send me your address for our list), here's my favorite family photo.

It begins!

Well I finally decided that I better start a blog so that I don't have to remember to send you photos, you can just log on and see some. We just moved into our new house in Clinton and ended up with a computer problem that forced us to purchase a new computer. So now that we have a much faster computer, I won't mind sitting down to do some blogging. Our computer is also in the family room now, so that helps. We got a laptop (so cool)! It's a year old and we got a good deal on KSL Classifieds. Now I just have to install Photoshop CS2 so that I can do my scrapbooking. Enough about the computer - on to us!
Our new house!

We have to park outside of the garage right now because we still have stuff in the garage that needs to be taken out of boxes and put away into it's space. The hard part is we haven't got two huge wood shelves anymore to put our stuff on in the basement - so we are trying to figure out the best options. My craft room is non-existent, so I have a LOT of boxes that are still boxed up because they don't have a new home yet. We have a guest room in the basement that is unfinished that I will be using as a craft room/guest room - but it's been hard figuring out what to do until it's finished.
No yard yet - we just had sprinklers put in a week ago and now we need to get the dirt ready for grass. Shane and Chandler work on it a lot. It's a lot of hardwork and sweat!

Sarah got her training wheels off her bike today, but she won't let Shane take his hand off the back of the seat yet. At least now we have a neighborhood street that we can teach her on, instead of having to go to the funeral home down the street in Bountiful.

It's been a nice Pioneer Day today, we went to the Days of 47 parade this morning in downtown SLC - it was fun, lots of great floats. The weather has been much cooler today - I think we only got to 93, which is much better than yesterday's 102. Looks like there is going to be a thunderstorm soon, the clouds are pretty dark. I'll post again soon and add some more photos for you to see. Email us if you don't have our new address and phone number!