Carving Pumpkins

Sunday night we had Katie,Rick and Tony over and we all carved pumpkins. Matt and I shared one while Rick, Tony, Lucy and Katie each carved their own. Matt roasted the pumpkin seeds for us while we carved.




Matt and I carved the Spider, Lucy carved the Skull.

Rick carved theSkull and cross bones, Matt and my spider, Lucy's skull, and Tony's Star Wars.
Katies Comedy Tragedy masks and music note.

Katies hands all covered in goo!

I have heard her story, so should you.

I just had to share something with anyone interested. I have followed a blog called the Nie Nie Dialogues (link is to the right) for quite sometime now. It is written by Stephanie Nielson from Mesa AZ. She is a beautiful writer, and a beautiful person. In August she and her husband were involved in a horrible plane crash, she has severe burns on 83 percent of her body. Her 4 children are living with two of her sisters (link to cjane who writes updates, to the right) in Utah while she and her husband recover. Many benefits and a lot of fundraising has happened in her and Mr. Nielsons behalf. I know she, and her family are in my constant thoughts and prayers. This is incredible article about her, her sisters and their strenght. I encourage you to read this. Their story has touched my heart.

Click to read: A Sister Held Closer

Chante Update

Little Eddy Mae arrived early this morning at 1:40 AM. She weighs 7lbs 11oz and is 20 inches long. As soon as I get pictures I will post them.

All things Fall

These cute little daisies wouldn't bloom for me all spring and summer. The didn't bloom for me until right before that freak snow storm we got a few weeks ago.

Terry Fator and Forever Tango

I was looking over my blog and realized I had completely forgotten to write about a few shows we had last month. One of our first shows in December was Terry Fator. If you don't know who he is, he was the ventriloquist that won the first season of Americas Got Talent. (I personally didn't watch the show and only knew of him by word of mouth) He was great. Super, super nice guy. He gave Lucy and I signed turtle puppets. His production team and promoter were not. I will leave it there. Incidentally we were the first, as well as the last stop on his tour. He just signed a multi million dollar 5 year contract in Vegas. We wish him the best of luck!


Also, the first few days of October brought us our first "broadway" series shows. Forever Tango tells a story through different variations of the tango. Many of the staff, performers and orchestra didn't speak English. The crew consisted of 3 guys, all of them were incredibly sweet guys as were a few of the dancers. The rest kept to themselves. I have to post this picture because of this ladies hair. Her, as well as most of the male dancers all had their hair greased up. It was gross. It was petroleum jelly. ICKY! At one point before she went out on stage she was messing with her hair and then proceeded to WIPE it on our black curtains. BLEH!!!


This guy was the band leader. He played an accordion type instrument. He rocked it! He had several solo... He was like the Eddie Van Halen of the accordion, seriously!!

Chante update...

She is officially a week past due and still no baby! Keep her and her poor little body in your prayers. Hopefully it happens soon!!!

Larry the Cable Guy

Last weekend we had Larry the Cable Guy. While his opening act was a bit distasteful and his act more gross than anything... he was a complete joy to work with. I couldn't have asked for a nicer guy to work with. Oh, and he doesn't talk like that off stage. I found that pretty humorous. :)

This coming week we had a barbershop quartet competition... lol, I know. Then next week is Opera Idaho and then Alanis Morrisette. I am very much more looking forward to the later over either of the previous...

The Big Read

The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. How do you do?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 The Story of Tracy Beaker - Jacqueline Wilson
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince- Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Chante Update

My beautiful sister Chante was due on the 13th. As of this afternoon, she still hasn't gone into labor. Poor thing. Little Eddy Mae is comfortable where she is. She is a gorgeous little pregnant lady though. :)

Let it Snow???

This is what we got yesterday for a few hours. Now are mountains are all dusted white... prematurely in my opinion. I want to enjoy my fall!!!

Frustrations...

Why do some people have to thrive off of drama. When things start returning to normal, the game starts running smoothly, somebody has to throw in a personal foul. (can you tell I've been paying attention to football lately?) Its frustrating to watch the personal foul, and the hurt and anger and sometimes utter shock, that comes with it. You want this dramatic person to know that they can't treat people that way and that treating people like that isn't going to get you anywhere positive in life.

I know that this person does it for attention sometimes, and that by doing it, in some sick way they feel better about themselves, but how long can they continue hurting people to make themselves happy... how long will it continue until there is no one left to hurt, they have all shut you out of their lives?

In thinking about and dealing with this person I have gone through many, many emotions. I have been furious, angry, irritated, hurt, betrayed, used, sorrowful... I have had punches thrown at me and many things stolen from my family and I and when it comes down to it, I feel bad for them. I get really frustrated when I realize that this is something I am going to have to live with my entire life. This person probably is never going to change as much as we have all prayed for it. All I can do right now is not allow this person into certain aspects of my life until trust is once again acuired.

So my big question is....

How do we retain the Christ like attributes that we have taken so long to attain, specifically, how do I express my unconditional love for this person when everything she is doing now is directly hurting someone else, myself included? How do I teach this person that their behavior is unnacceptable and won't be tolerated anymore in a Christlike way? How do you make them think about what they have done in a non-judgemental way? I feel like this has been a never ending cycle, a broken record kind of thing.

Sorry for the vent. I needed to write out my thoughts. Although if you have advice, I will gladly accept it.

Its October 10th...

I am watching it snow outside, and I don't have my camera. Boo...

I love General Conference weekend...

Aside from cuddling with my two favorites, I thoroughly enjoyed ever single talk. I feel refreshed, and rejuvinated... physically and spiritually!

The (almost) finished bathroom

Aside from a few very miniscule details, our bathroom is done. Here are a few pictures.


The sinks.

The shower and tub.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the color of the counter top. The picture doesn't do it justice. The little cubby is PERFECT for the laundry hamper.

I really like the color of my rugs a lot. We went and bought a few new towels too. You can't tell but we put the shower curtain on lightweight curtain track so we could pull in all the way over against the wall keeping the bathroom open. Love it! Makes the small room feel so much bigger.

Its about time...

After months and months (or what feels like it...) the board of directors for the Morrison Center FINALLY approved Matts full time, salaried position. It has gone in for deliberation for the past few years now but this year it made it through. YAY!!! At any rate, we are very excited and very blessed!

Congrats Matt!!!

How??

How is September gone? I feel like I jumped into October from August, or June for that matter. Its been a tiring few weeks. I feel like I am constantly busy. We have our first Broadway Show ( and I use that term loosely ) of the season. Forever Tango is a dance show. Very authentic Argentine show. Authentic dancers, singers and a band that rocks three accordians. These three accordian players average age is 70. They rock out seriously! Maybe three of these guys speak English. I will post pictures when I get them.