We Give Thanks

Over Thanksgiving weekend, we packed up and headed down to Las Vegas. My sister just moved into a new house, so we went to see it and just to relax and have a lovely Thanksgiving meal. We had a great time shopping some Black Friday deals, visiting Santa at Bass Pro Shop, playing with the kids, and of course eating! Thanks for having us Kris and Joe, and it was fun hanging out with the rest of the family.

Clark helping me make deviled eggs.

The beautiful table setting complete with place cards. (Thanks Kate).

The delicious food. Man that seven layer dip and deviled eggs sure look tasty! ;)

We went and saw this huge gingerbread house display at the Four Seasons Hotel. Very cute.

And last but certainly not least, we are thankful for kidney beans, especially the one that will be joining our family the end of June. Yep, that's right our duo will become a trio and we are super excited!

Date Night

Hooray! Kyle and I finally did something fun and exciting! Last night we went and enjoyed a night out on the town. We went and saw Snooty and the Beast at the Desert Star playhouse. The show was very entertaining, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The actors even did an after show where they performed the Monster Mash in honor of Halloween, and that show was just as good as the play. It was a very nice date to get out and do something fun, and I didn't even have a chance to take a nap ;)

"Good" Times

My dad recently celebrated his 60th birthday on July 9th. To honor the big occasion we planned an early surprise for him. Now my mom is not very good at keeping secrets, so she enlisted the help of all the kids to help her pull this off. My sisters planned a secret trip to come up over the 4th, so we could celebrate the party a little early. Mom had reserved a banquet room at Goodwood, and she was scared that she might blow the surprise, so I called my dad and nonchalantly invited him and mom out to dinner. Everyone had to meet at the restaurant at 5:20, before my mom and dad arrived at 5:30. I had Kyle go meet them up front (to say that we had a table in the back) and when they rounded the corner of the banquet room, my dad got an eyeful. All of us yelled surprise! He had no idea! He had seen Cath and Jay's car so he assumed Kyle and I were going to give a pregnancy announcement. Ha Ha (We fooled them ;). We had a great time eating dinner, and then we all went back to mom and dad's house to enjoy cake and ice cream. We had all pitched in and got my dad an awesome Cowboy style grill with a side smoker. I managed to get 60 candles on the cake and by the time we got most of them lit, the decorations started on fire. After removing the blazing decorations, dad was able to blow all the candles out (with 10 little helpers)! Happy Birthday!





American Fork Canyon

On Friday the celebrations continued as we spent the day up in American Fork Canyon. Everyone had their food assignments, and Geoff and Alanna headed up earlier to find us a good spot. When all of us arrived at my parents, we caravanned up to Tibblefork. Geoff and Alanna did good and found us a perfect spot by the Horse Trailhead. The weather was perfect and there was a huge tree that shadowed the campsite all day so we didn't get too hot. Right away after setting up camp, dad suggested taking a hike down one of the trails. Most of the grandkids, Joe, Kris, Steph, Jim, Kyle and I all went for one of my dad's adventurous hikes. I love my dad's hikes because he never stays on the path and starts making his own trail. We were weaving in and out of the sagebrush, sliding down the mountain, crossing rivers on not so stable logs, looking at wild animal tracks, and hearing stories of Bloody Bill and Old Ephraim (Sierra even found his belt buckle :), and we were loving every minute of it. By the time we got back to camp, we were beat and ready to eat. We pulled out the food and relaxed for a bit. We roasted marshmallows, where most marshmallows were burned and put in the fire. Well, except for a couple that Clark willingly ate for $2 (not worth it as they were totally charred and broke to ash when he bit into it) eeewww! Steph started a marshmallow fight followed by a water balloon fight with this huge slingshot that Geoff and Alanna had brought. Jim, Kyle and Joe started launching balloons to Jay and some of the boys. Afterward we just sat around the campfire talking and watching the kids swing around a tree on Kodi's leash. We ended the day tired, but happy. Thanks everyone!
Carlee and I were bringing up the rear waaay back!
Cute Picture!

School is Out!

Hooray! School is done for the year!

Happy Birthday to Me!

My whole family got together for Easter this past weekend. Lucky for me my birthday falls pretty close to Easter each year so it was nice to celebrate with my whole family complete with all 10 nieces and nephews. My birthday was on Friday, so I still had to go to school, but my kids were really nice and brought me some presents and were really good considering it was right before spring break, we were having our Easter party and it was my birthday. We had just gotten in from recess and I was explaining our list of things to do when I got an unexpected surprise from my mom, sisters and all my nieces and nephews (with balloons on each of their wrists) who came to sing me happy birthday with my class. It was a fun little visit and they got to meet my class and take a few pictures. They also spilled the beans and let my students know how old I was! Oops!:)

After school I met up with Kyle at my parents house and he surprised me with a Hannah Montana party! The reason for this is because the movie came out that day and I told him I kind of wanted to see it (but so did he)! So he took that I am a fan and made Hannah Montana as the party theme. At least my niece Katelyn was excited! Anyway, we went to dinner and then came back to my parent's house and opened presents and had cake and ice cream before coloring Easter eggs. It was a great birthday! Thanks everyone! (Oh and we did go and see the Hannah Montana movie and it was cute).

April Fool's Day

Ahhh, the joys of tricking second graders on April Fools! I gave my students an April word search to do after they took a math test today. I told them that they needed to be absolutely silent so that everyone could concentrate and do their best. I explained that when they were done, they needed to raise their hand and I would trade them their test with the word search. I also told them that whoever found all the words on the word search first I had a treat for them, as long as they didn't get help from anyone. I threatened that if they talked they would automatically get a yellow flag (don't worry it was all a part of THE PLAN).
So throughout the whole test they were silent. I had a few kids that got done with their test fairly quickly and some that took a long time. The trick: none of the words that they had to find were in the word search! HA HA HA! So while I was waiting for a few kids to finish up (and they took forever, almost 20 minutes after everyone else was done). I was secretly laughing watching all of the kids try to find words that didn't exist! I could see that quite a few of them were getting so frustrated, some had given up and were just sitting there, I caught a few that glanced at their neighbor's paper, some were going up and down, letter by letter over again and again, but they all still kept silent the whole time. Finally, when I collected the last test, I said, "You know whats funny?" "April Fools!" I then explained that none of the words were in the word search. It took them a minute and then they all started freaking out! I was laughing so hard and told them I tricked them all! They were laughing and were trying to get me back. After the uproar ended, they all wanted to try that trick on their parents too. I must admit I got them good! So unexpected! HE HE HA HA!

Happy 26th Birthday Kyle!

On Friday we celebrated Kyle's birthday (the Big 26)! We started celebrating when I got home from school. I had made him a candy bar poster, something he had never heard of before, so I had to explain that you read the poster inserting the candy bar words where necessary. He thought it was pretty funny. He then opened presents and was pretty surprised and excited about them. He received a button up shirt (eyes rolled on that one), a DS game: Professor Layton and the Curious Village -a brainteaser and puzzle game, Chipmunk Adventure movie and three Halo books. It was Friday night, so we decided to stay home and go out to dinner on Saturday afternoon when it wouldn't be as busy, so we just hung out at home and enjoyed the night.