Journals on PBS

This is a project I created for Scrapbook Memories TV (a PBS scrapbooking show). I made the cover and my BIL Kraig bound the book for me. Last spring I was supposed to go to Ohio to tape this segment but decided to just let the hosts do it. It would have worked out just fine to go because I had to be in Pennsylvania the next day anyway, but I decided even though I'd only be gone a total of three days, that one extra day away from my kids was too much. It was a crazy trip. I was in Philly one day, then I had a meeting in both New Jersey and New York the next day. I drove from Philly to NYC for my second time that trip. It is such an empowering feeling to drive to NYC by yourself :) I can't tell you how much I love doing that. I love traveling on planes and figuring out how to get places by myself too.

I found the video online if anyone wants to watch it. If you are a digital scrapbooker you'll know the hosts didn't exactly know what they were doing but it's ok. You can see the video here. Jill's little boy Weston is in one of the pictures. I think it's lame you have to register to see the videos, so I'll give you my user name and password. However, it's free to register if you just want to.

user name: april@digitalscrapbookmemories.com
password: DSM

After you sign in, if you don't automatically get the right video you can search for SM_13012.
If you aren't automatically taken to the segment.

If I went to the show to tape the segment I would have concentrated on these three things:

1) Why journals are important, even if you scrapbook.
2) How to take existing scrapbook pages and alter them for other projects. I created this journal really quick by taking the scrapbook page shown below and altering it a bit.
3) How to turn your handwriting into digital form. See Megan's name on the cover? I had her write her name using a black sharpie on a white piece of paper, then I scanned it and turned it into a brush. You can learn how to make a brush here in my tips section on my website. It's soooooo easy!



By the way... for those of you who have said you don't have enough money for Photoshop, you are wrong. Well, unless $20 is too much for you. You can buy older versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements on Ebay for really cheap. I got some for $10 actually. I'd look for new, unopened ones so it's legal.

Swimming With Santa

Last night we went swimming with Santa. I expected him to be in a red wet suit or something, but as you can see, he didn't actually get in the water. He did let all of the wet kids sit on his lap though. My kids were so excited to talk to him. I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

In the past week in a half we have been skiing twice, swimming three times and ice skating twice. Wow. We need to stay this busy all the time! I'll have to post some ice skating pictures sometime. Luke especially loves ice skating. It's exciting for me because I love it so much! Actually I love all three activities fairly equal (skiing, skating and swimming). It is great that my kids are finally to an age that I can do these things with them easier. I figure the more I take them, the better they will get and the more fun it will be for me.

As long as we are only gone 2-3 hours, I have discovered it is actually more relaxing to go out and do things than it is to sit at home and try to entertain the kids. I find if I'm gone much longer than that I'm exhausted when I get home. Also, the more we go, the better my system is for leaving the house which makes things so much more fun for me.

Decorating the Tree

We are decorating the tree today. Are we the last ones? I feel like it.



Oooooohhh! I'm so excited for Christmas!

My Neice

Ahhhhh! This girl is SO CUTE!!

(embellishments from the Family Ties CD)

I need a friend...

...with a private jet to take my family with them all around the world.

Then I need this house to come home to...



It's currently for sale a few miles east of me :)

Honestly, I'm happy where I am, but I love to dream.

Housing & Accommodations Temple Committee

As part of my church calling (stake secretary to the Relief Society) I occasionally get to do some fun jobs I wouldn't normally be a part of. Right now I'm part of the Housing and Accommodations Committee for open house for the new Draper, UT Temple. The committee name is kind of misleading. Our main job is serving refreshments to the million (plus) people they expect will come to tour the temple. If I remember right that is about 260 people every ten minutes! We are serving water and nice soft cookies in case you are curious :)


The open house is for ANYONE who wants to see inside a temple. You don't have to be a member of our church. You have to be a worthy member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to enter a temple after it is dedicated, but not before. It's pretty neat to see inside a temple, so if you don't live in my area you could check (at the bottom of the page) here and see if they are building any near you.

Some people on the committee get to serve a really sumptuous buffet to many dignitaries who are invited to attend the temple open house. They won't tell us who is coming, but it would be fun to know wouldn't it? I don't get to help those days anyway.

My assignment is to help my presidency organize about 150 volunteers to help over a two day period (75 people a day). I think it will be fun. There is a need for over 250 volunteers helping in all of the open house assignments each day. That is a lot of people! Especially when you consider the open house lasts for two months.

If you want a ticket to the open house you can get them here for free. I think I'm helping on February 3rd and 4th. I'd be happy to find you the biggest, softest cookie I can find, if I see you.

If you don't know the Salt Lake area very well look at this picture too. It shows the temple from a different direction so you can see the gorgeous mountains that surround it.

Zoobs

I highly recommend asking Santa for Zoobs. They are so much fun to play and build with! I had been looking at these for a while and then finally got them one day when I REALLY needed a break from my kids. My kids played with them nearly non stop for over a day. They are a little pricey but totally worth every single penny. I don't think you can get them at most of the big box stores, but Amazon and specialty toy stores will have them.

Festival of Trees

If you go to the Festival of Trees in Sandy, UT make sure you pick up some of our CDs. All the money goes to the Primary Children's Hospital. Keith and I have a real soft spot in our hearts for that hospital after staying there a week with our little boy in 2004. I can't imagine not having good insurance and having to deny my child the benefit of good health care. I am so grateful for charity events like this that raise money for children who need it.

Pennies by the Inch is another excellent way to give money to the hospital. In Utah most people get a knock on the door from church groups asking for donations to this charity. I was in charge of this at one time. Most people give a handful of pennies and while every bit helps I wonder if people know that the goal is to raise a lot more than pennies. When the volunteers come by they have envelopes you can take and mail in your donation if you prefer. I KNOW most volunteers don't mention that so keep that in mind and mail in a larger donation.

Here is the box I gave for the festival today. I recommended they sell our Santa Claus CD for $3 instead of the current sale of $5 or the regular price of $7. I also recommended the sell a package of 3 CDs (Family, Flower Patch and Santa Claus) for $30 rather than $47. It's a great deal so go buy them!

Bring on the Snow!

Yesterday I took both kids skiing at different times. It's so awesome living so close to so many ski resorts. First I took Megan while Luke was in school. Then, as soon as Luke was out of school, Keith met me at the base of the canyon and we traded kids. Megan had a great time but was totally content to be done after an hour and a half. Luke could have skied all day and was sad to leave. Both kids are just learning to ski. I can't quite figure out how to teach them to turn and stop yet. I guess that will come with practice, but I'd love teaching tips if anyone has some good ones. Fortunately both kids kept smiles on any time they fell. Sometimes they even fell on purpose.

We got season rentals from Canyon Sports this year. You get to keep the ski equipment at your house all season. I love that. I just couldn't justify buying the kids their own equipment to grow out of each year so this is a great option for us.

We are going to spend most of our time at Alta this year. Alta has a free tow rope all day and a free chair lift from 3:00 to 4:30 every day. I love that i can pack up my stuff, leave my house, drive to the resort, gear up, ski, gear down, and drive home in just three hours. Very cool. Later in the season we'll head to Snowbird a couple times too. Keith got us some passes there :) If anyone ever wants to meet us for skiing, let me know. I'd be willing to go almost any day between 3 and 4:30 and we would love some ski pals.

Embellishments from the Santa Claus Lane CD.

Speaking of Sticks...

While we watched the kids play with sticks this past weekend, my BIL Kent told me that they just put the stick in the Toy Hall of Fame. I thought that was kind of funny, yet appropriate. I found this article on CNN. It's really not that interesting of an article but I still thought it was blog worthy to mention :) Also, why, why, why would the baby doll be a new inductee?

Christmas Trees

Every year we go to Vernal to cut down Christmas trees. This year was THE BEST YET!! Although the snow can be fun it was great not to have hardly any this year. It made it much easier to get around, find a tree and stay warm. The kids had so much fun together. They were laughing the whole day and didn't need very much help with anything which made my day pretty relaxing.

Look how cute these little monsters are!



You'll quickly notice there are "guns" in lots of the pictures. The kids found sticks that looked like guns and had a blast pretending to be soldiers. Our family laughs because from a VERY young age they started turning all sorts of things into guns without any prompting from their dads. This picture (below) cracks me up because it shows off the kids personalities. Serious, serious, silly, cute.



Kaden was in charge of lining up and marching the soldiers. The kids loved following him.



Following Grandpa into the forest.



Posing by our tree. Again, serious, cute, serious. Ha ha. I love how Megan has her hand on her hip and her leg out. She is such a girl :) and I LOVE her! The boys are guarding the tree and doing a great job, don't you think?



Cutting down our tree:



The boys drug our tree all the way to the car by themselves! Wow. This is another benifit to not having snow.





I dressed my kids up extra warm so they would stay happy longer. Three hats might have been pushing it but she was warm!







Aunt Stacy, Megan helped pick your tree. Here it is.



Megan loves her grandpa. He is so good to her.







After we got the trees we went to each of the Vernal grandmas. Grandma Oaks was doing the best I have seen her in a long time so we got to have a great visit with her. The kids were adorable talking to her and giving her hugs. I love watching my kids give her hugs.

Grandma Pope and Emil are doing great too. We stayed at their house a little longer than planned but the kids had a blast! They must have asked 15 times when we were going there. Keith's uncle Wayne stopped by and I know all of the adult boys were excited to see him. It was a great visit.

Boys

I love watching kids play. Their laughter makes me so happy. This picture was taken at their great uncle David Oaks house.

Rats

I woke up early to get a black friday deal on Amazon.com and even though I clicked on it the second it was available, I didn't get it. Oh well.

Balloon Fashion

Megan's cute cousin started putting those tiny little hair bands all over her little Disney dolls. I should have thought to take a picture of them because it's such a funny look. It looks like the dolls have leg warmers and weird ropes all over their heads. Megan took her idea and did the same thing for a while until she found a bag of water balloons. Here is the new creation both girls think is so cool. Four year olds have such great fashion sense don't they?





We found these dresses for only $2.50 at Old Navy the other week. I bought two so the girls could be twins at school. They had so much fun dressing the same and had a GREAT day together. Megan was mad in this picture for who knows what reason. Fortuntately that was our only tantrum of the day and they have both been perfect otherwise.



Luke spilled mustard all over my carpet. I saw it happening and just couldn't stop it. Sigh. I don't think it's coming out. Does anyone have a magic solution?

Christmas Trees

It's almost time for our annual trip to Vernal for Christmas trees. I hope all of my brother and sister-in-laws are coming :) Well, except Stacy and Kurt who are hopefully having a great time on their own this week.

I can't believe...

...I'm blogging about Twilight. I never thought I would but the movie was so good! I liked the book but I didn't really love it enough to read on. I think I will now. Part of the reason I'm sure I had so much fun at the movie was because of the group I went with. We had a blast together. My friend Amy (and awesome work partner) got this all started and opened it up to anyone who wanted to go from my message board. She is the one in the very front. She is amazing! I'm a big Amy fan :)

When we were getting everyone together afterwards for a picture, my mom made a funny face and said "pictures?" I laughed and reminded her that we are all scrapbookers.



It was a great night. I really need to get out with the girls more often. My friend Erin came for dinner but not the movie. It's too bad we didn't get her in the picture.

Fall

Well, the leaves are almost all off of our trees. We have three big trees in our backyard so we get to rake a lot of leaves each year. I love taking pictures of the kids in the leaves though.





Unfortunately, this little girl seems to cry over everything lately. I remember her crying over something last December and while she was crying I made a comment to my uncle that I couldn't wait for her to outgrow this phase. He and his wife laughed and said it only got worse as they got older. Sigh... Megan is proving them right. She is so emotional about things and doesn't understand how to control her emotions. In the past couple months it has been really obvious to me that I need to work on her behavior. It's going to be a long road but she is worth it. I just hope she doesn't do this at other people's houses to often.



BTW - taking pictures of her screaming made her even madder, but since there was no reason for her to be crying in the first place I wasn't very sympathetic.

So Easy

My friend pointed me to this site. It's SO EASY to send a message to the troops this way (thanks Xerox). It only takes less than a minute and they don't ask for any personal information other than your name and state. Go do it :)

For Jill

Looking at my SIL Jill's blog today I decided I HAD to do a collage with some of the funny pictures I've found on her blog. Does this look like a family that knows how to have fun together or what? The thing I think is the funniest is that all of these pictures are from totally different days and months.



Jill, this would make a cute scrapbook page. I think you should make one.

Great Neighbors

A couple of my neighbors gave me this a couple days ago. My picture isn't the best because it kind of looks like an orange... but it's really a pumpkin. I think it's such a cute idea.

Then last night two of my neighbors helped me with a project in my front yard. One helped me for TWO hours and the other helped me for an hour. Both are about 40 years older than me and one of them seemed to really over-do it helping me (he has had health problems). I need to check on him today. They are both SOOOOOO NICE!

Another neighbor helped us for an entire day a couple Saturdays ago (the pictures are down a few posts).

We have no reason to need so much help. We just have nice neighbors and they are excited to help us with our project or simply just like to help.

Last year I was shoveling the driveway of a neighbor down the road and while I did some other neighbors shoveled mine!!! I had no idea they were doing that. It was such a nice surprise and totally made me laugh. It's amazing how when you do nice things for others, others want to give back to you.