I Am NOT Thankful For....

My piecer of a computer. It's dead. Not just "mostly dead" as defined by Billy Crystal describing Wesley (or the Dreaded Pirate Roberts) to Inigo Mantoia and Andre the giant in The Princess Bride but completely dead. Dead. Finito. Ka-put.

Boo.

No computer=no fun pictures of Jason and I in San Francisco last week enjoying 2 new favorite places:

1. WICKED. Need I say more? It was A-Maz-ING!! Beyond Amazing. Paint me green and call me Elphie. I loved it that much. I may have sang along to 90% of the performance. Don't judge me.

2. Alcatraz. Who knew we would love a old dilapidated prison as much as we did? We even met a former inmate of The Rock. That's right, I run with a rough crowd.

(I won't tell you he is now a perfectly reformed criminal with 9 children and a whole lotta grand kids...that would ruin my new bad girl image).

Dear Santa,

I've been good this year (mostly).

Please don't make me use the Library computers.

I may get H1-N1 by touching the key board.

That would be bad.

Love,

Dana

*p.s. I'll throw in some extra cookies if you can make this happen before Christmas.*

Hallloween

Yes,

I know Halloween was two weeks ago.

Here are the kiddos and their pumpkin masterpieces.

They toiled over what to be for a few weeks and then bam! It all came together and they looked great.
Ansen was Iron Man.
Look at those GUNS. This kid has been eating his Wheaties!
Yeee-haw! This little cowgirl defiantly made her own statement by adding pink to her ensemble. The most stunning piece of her outfit?
That would be the pink rhinestone cowgirl boots.
Chop sticks in hair? Check.
Beautiful kimono? Check?
A undeniable need for pork fried rice? Check, check, check!

Here are a few random pictures from our ward Trunk or Treat.

Braley is such a cute cowgirl. I just love her.

Jayden is cute too. I just love her style.

Ansen and his friend Hailey. They costume swapped this year.

Don't they look great?

Halloween was spooky, fun and, as always, sugar filled!

For Kristine

One of the best things about being in Vegas was that I got to see one of my favorite people, my cousin Kristine. I also got to spend the morning with her cute family while Jason worked. I got to meet this little cutie patooie.

Everyone, meet Micah.

Alessia and I meet for the first time too.

The girl has great hair.

I am totally jealous.

This is my best picture of Curtis. Yes he's throwing his sister to the floor. So what. In brother-sister speak it translates to "I love you."
Kristine and I. Who would have ever thought we would be all grown-up, married and raising kids of our own? Kinda a scary thought but I think we are doing a pretty decent job.

Love you guys!

Around Here Lately

Child labor.

We believe in it here.

Auntie Jamie is just trying to instill good physical labor habits.

We're okay with that.

Bigger is better.
Finally after 13 years of marriage we bought our first tv.
We have always had one but we have never purchased one.
TV's just kind of have a way of finding us.
Jason has been saving his pennies and this is his new beauty.
(notice our old tv in the background)
Little man was just as excited as daddy. It must be a boy thing.

The ladies promptly moved into the box and have been sleeping in there all warm and cozy.

For Christmas they are all getting empty boxes.

Ansen got a new bed this week. He chose his bed spread all by himself.

Jason couldn't have been more proud.

Ansen's exact words, "Mama I NEED the bed with flames and the motorcycles. Its so awesome."

Things have been busy around here.

Just the way I like it.

Viva Las Vegas

Jason and I went to Vegas a few weekends ago. I'm not really the Vegas type but every once and a while, why not?

We hit The Strip and did some fun things.

First we went to a (weak) Haunted House.

Because I am a scardy cat I was screaming. Jason just laughed at everyone working in it. He did hold my hand. My hero.

Next, we went to the Shark Encounter/Aquarium at Mandalay Bay. It was such a cool aquarium and we basically had the place to ourselves.

What could be better?

And because we were on a mini-vaca there was heavenly ice cream involved.

Finally we rode the Roller Coaster at NewYork NewYork.

Good coaster but it was a rough ride!

And to top everything off we ate ourselves silly. We had a amazing steak dinner-just the two of us. That never happens and it was really nice.

This little lovely was my breakfast and it was soooo good!

Next time I am in Vegas I will be having myself another one of these. Okay, why lie...I'll most likely have 2!

I think Vegas is growing on me.

RICE is NICE

Just over a month ago Jason and I sat down with the kids for Family Home Evening and talked about making goals. We talked about how goals make us better people and that they also teach us to work hard and try new things. Goals, while not always super fun or easy, are always worth making. Once the kids understood the purpose of goals I showed them a 5 lb. bag of rice. I explained that our ward was collecting rice for hungry families and that we needed to make a goal of how much rice we were going to donate as a family. I told them the ward goal was 500 lbs. then asked how much they wanted to collect.

"700 Pounds!" was their response.

700 pounds? Jason and I knew this was a tall order to fill but we were not going to discourage their lofty goal. So after some talking the kids decided that they would in fact collect 700 pounds of RICE. The first thing they did was make a flyer with daddy that they could hand out. Next, they made 400 copies of that flyer.
Once the flyer's were ready they hit the streets. They knocked on peoples door's and explained their project to anyone and everyone who would listen. They gave up their Saturday's, Sunday afternoons and Monday evenings for a few weeks and delivered 360 flyer's to homes in our community. They worked hard. They gave up their free time and they enjoyed being together.
(sorry, I can't get this to rotate)

Then the RICE started coming in. And boy did it ever!
(Side note: Jason and I both knew the kids could get 700 pounds of RICE but we thought it would be a close call with their 4 week goal. Boy, were we ever wrong!!)
The kids started receiving 2-5 calls a day to go pick up RICE. Whenever they got a call they had to stop whatever they were doing (i.e., homework, coloring, playing on the playground with friends), hop in the car and head off to pick up RICE. No one ever complained about this and I am so grateful for that. They were excited and enthusiastic about what they were doing. All 3 went on each pick up and took time to say thank you and chat a few minutes with whomever helped their cause.
After 2 1/2 weeks of collecting the kids had collected quite a bit of cash. We took a Saturday morning and took their cash to Costco to turn their money into RICE.
Since this was their project and not ours we, Jason and I, did none of the heavy lifting. It was all them. We figured they had enough money for 17 of Costco's 25 lb bags of RICE. So they went to work.

Even as they were working hard they got a RICE phone call. No rest for these little hard workers.

They made it to the front of the store and pulled out all their $1's, $5's, quarters, nickles, and dimes....

....then pushed their RICE out to the car.

While the kids were working hard Jason and I may have bought a Costco Pumpkin Pie to reward ourselves for having such great kids.

The heavy lifting was not over at Costco. They next had to move the RICE into our house. These 3 have some super muscles after hauling RICE for a month.

At the end of 4 weeks our great children reached their goal of 700 lbs. Actually that's not accurate. At the end of week 2 they had reached 700 lbs. By the end of week 4 they collected at total of:

1,780.5 Pounds of RICE

They exceeded their goal by

1,080.5 Lbs.

This is what (almost) a literal ton of RICE looks like:

Here's what my beautiful hard working children look like with all their RICE:

*Mr. Ansen**Miss Braley*

*Miss Jayden*

This past Saturday was our delivery day for their RICE collection.

Soooooo, they hauled RICE again. Still no complaints about the hard work and heavy lifting.

Love it!

Our Bishop came by with a truck for us because we filled the van to the max. So we set up an assembly line to get the RICE out of the house.

The back of the van:

The back of the truck:

Then off we were to Marion-Polk County Food Share.

They had to haul RICE ONE LAST TIME.

They did it with smiles on their faces.

Oh I just love that.

We are so, so, so PROUD of Jayden, Braley and Ansen. They set a goal and they worked and worked and worked. I am grateful for the time they gave and the kindness they have shown. They are pretty special children and we are so grateful to call them ours.

Pumpkin Patch!

I love the pumpkin patch.

It's one of my very favorite things. We go to the same place every year.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

We always hop on the train and ride over to the pun'kins.

The kids always ride in caboose and take the "top seats."

We always crawl through the hay pyramid in the pitch dark.
We always walk through the groups of pumpkins to find the very best ones.
We always take pictures of the kids on the tippy op of the hay pyramid...
and the pumpkins below.

We always make the kids sit and smile for at least one picture.

We always try to get Grandma to come inside the hay maze.

She always says no.

We always go with grandma and grandpa...cause you'd look silly if you showed up without kids:)

There is always a picture of Ansen sitting with the pumpkins because he is still so small.

I wonder how he will feel about this when I am making him do it when he is 15.

We always have a really great time, rain or shine.

*sigh*

I love the pumkin patch