Thanksgiving

This year we traveled to Idaho Falls to visit Gary's grandparents for Thanksgiving. Along the way we stayed at Jeanette's brother David's house. I met his beautiful family and enjoyed a lovely Papa Murphy's Pizza dinner. We stayed the night and had a fancy breakfast, went to church then headed to Huntsville. There we were served an amazing Thanksgiving dinner at Jeanette's other brother Greg's restaurant, Texas Pride. There I met all her sibblings except for her one sister. It was a great get together!!

We then headed to my grandparent's house and had a fantastic time visiting with some of my favorite people in the whole wide world! We enjoyed a very cozy nights sleep and took off once everyone had eaten breakfast. I was extreemly thankful to get to see them and Tanya!

Two hours later we landed ourselves at the Hall grandparent's house. Rachelle and Ryan came up from Rexburg and together we filled the house with loudness and fun! We played games at the church such as ping-pong and human fooseball... we also played games at the house (maffia, uno and more games that I'm not remembering...). We watched movies and even went to see New Moon on Thanksgiving day. We had a really yummmy Thanksgiving dinner and napped the afternoon away.  It really was a wonderful trip!

Blogging out my eyeballs

Hey, sorry I have not blogged on my own family blog in about a month! Ouch! That's bad. I have however, posted 40+ blog posts since then... As I mentioned, I'm blogging as a major hobby. When I get a good amount of visitors and/or someone clicks on the adds I get money from Google. How cool is that?!  So far, I have made $3.78! Enough about blogging.

Gary and I had a great Halloween! We (Paul, Gary and I)  went to Qdoba dressed as burritos (hardly) and received two free steak burritos. As long as you had some tin foil on you got to pick any burrito you wanted with any or all the toppings you want. It was fun! Then we went back home and watched a move and wished there were more trick-or-treators. It was a pretty good night.

Gary is still working away with his business. He's making enough to live off of which is very nice. We are also wrapping up tax school. We're learning how to use the computer software and work problems out as if there was really a customer in front of us. It's much more fun than the class.

I had a job interview today. It was for a preschool in Arvada. Lucky me! Now I get to go to work from 9:00 to 5:00 and teach 7 little 2 year olds. Your jealous. I know you are. Really, I'm excited to get to work with such little children and teach them the basics. We get to learn about colors, how to count to 10! And our ABC's. I really am looking forward to seeing them progress as I plan, prepare and teach them my lessons.

I talked with my new boss and from the sounds of it, I'll get a good amount of time off (maybe 3 hours a week) because other girls really want extra hours! Thank heaven for them! I'd love to have time off! As I explained to my boss; I am working for fun, not because I need the extra money. If other people need/want the hours by all means... take my hours! I'm not sure how that works exactly though, since I'm "group leader" or their main teacher. I guess the assistants get to watch them for a while without me or something of the sorts. Honestly, I know nothing about the job yet other than my hours and the age and number of children. I don't know where my room is, what their daily schedule is like. I don't know names, what they already know. I don't know what materials I have to work with. To say the least, Wednesday will be interesting.

Gary and I were blessed with callings yesterday at church. First he was called into the office. The counselor asked if we were temple worthy. We replied not only with a yes, but also telling him we just went on Wednesday! He was pleased and then asked Gary if he'd be the Sunday School President. It was a bigger calling than I was expecting as new ward members but I'm excited for him. On our way to Sunday School (our first hour) another counselor asked if he could talk with us. We agreed and he pulled us out into the courtyard (yes, our ward building has a courtyard!). He asked if I'd be willing to work in the nursery!  Wow, lucky me! I get to work with 2 year olds 6 days a week! Thank heaven for Saturdays! I'm excited to work with them though and thankful that I have the opportunity to serve.

Well, that about sums it up. If you want more details... just read my other blogs!

Recipes for Kids!

Opinionatedfood

Happy Family Ideas

Colorado Critics

Family

I don't know if this is normal or if this will ever go away, but I miss living at home with my parents! I miss it more than I can explain!! Don't get me wrong, I love Gary and I love living with him. I know I'm building my own family. I know all this. It's just so hard sometimes to realize I'll never live at home again. Just had to get that out there.

General Confrence, Rockies and Amazing Cinnamon Rolls!

Well... I have a lot to blog about today! I guess that's what I get for avoiding it for the past week.

Thursday I was fortunate enough to get to go to the Rockies game with Gary, Eric and a girl Eric brought (her name was Erin). I don't really love baseball as much as I do football or basketball so I was a wee bit excited but figured it would be long. Well... we got there and luckily it was sunny and warm-ish. We were sitting about 8 rows back from the field so we had a great view! It turned out to be pretty fun and entertaining. We won which gave us a wild card so the fans were pretty dang excited!
Eric was asked to play a game between innings. He said yes and was pretty excited. When it came time to play and the camera was all ready the announcer decided he had a better idea! So Eric didn't get to play. He did receive a $50 visa gift card though!

Friday we hung out with Eric, Bua, Taryn, Kris, and Derick. We mostly just  at around our house waiting for everyone to show up, at which point 6 hours had passed and it was midnight so they went to go party and we went to bed.

Then, this past weekend was General Conference. Everyone always asks one of two questions so I'll answer them both for you.
1) What was your favorite talk?
Answer: I really loved President Monson's talk. I loved the service ideas and how it helped me see the millions of little things I can do to serve others!

2) What did you think the theme was?
Answer: I saw a few themes but mostly, love and service. I loved it!

We went up to Gary's parents Saturday morning to watch Saturday's two sessions and stay the night to watch Sunday's two sessions. I woke up at 7:00 on Saturday and make some homemade cinnamon rolls using a "Clone of a Cinnabon" recipe. They were amazing! We enjoyed eating them as we watched the Saturday Morning session. The rest of our weekend was spent just hanging out with the family and enjoying each other's company!

New Grass!

When we moved into the new house the yard was filled with weeds! We knew it needed to be tilled and that we should put in some grass seed but we were going to wait til Spring. Well, Monday morning we found out that the church was going to be taking out some grass to put in some pipes. We rented a sod cutter and ta da! We had grass! Ok, it was not that easy! The guys (Gary, Mark and their dad) cut sod for a few hours, loaded it up in the trailer, tilled the yard, we all raked and Gary's mom pulled weeds. Then we had to lay the sod. It was our Monday activity.

When it was all finished, we ran to Home Depot and bought a few flowers for the flower bed. It was dark by then but I was so excited to have a presentable yard that I put them in right away!

This sod business actually ended up taking another day since on Monday we really only did a quarter of the yard... So now it's beautiful!!!! I'm pretty thrilled to have such a nice front yard. I haven't taken pictures yet but I will put some up this week. With the new paint and the new yard, this is a pretty hip house!