"Good Girls Go Bad" -- Cobra Starship
"Undisclosed Desires" -- Muse
"Come Back to Me" -- David Cook
"If It Kills Me" -- Jason Mraz
"Beautiful Mess" -- Jason Mraz
"Slow Dance on the Inside" -- Taking Back Sunday (my FAVORITE right now)
"Fallin' For You" -- Colbie Callait
"Battlefield" -- Jordin Sparks (I'm already tired of this one)
What are you listening to?
(Don't forget to enter the $100 Visa drawing on my review blog!)
Being that music was my first love and I consider myself a novice musician, I was thrilled when Sean decided to join the band this year. Here he is (on clarinet) with his friend (on trumpet) performing a little "Jingle Bells" for ya.
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Check out my review of Febreze NOTICEables and enter for you chance to win $100 Visa Card and gift basket! If you win, take me out to dinner! :)
And now for something completely different.
I took a week off from blogging and really, it felt good. I think I was becoming a slave to it. And I will become a slave to nothing! So take that, Blog! You're not the boss of me! (or something)
Nah, it just felt good to leave it and keep a 20 foot perimeter from my computer for the most part. Ok, maybe that should read a '3 foot perimeter' seeing as how my bed is right next to my computer desk, but still...
So what's up? This:
100: the score I got on my first A&PII test last week. Woot.
911: the calls Danny will now be responding to at work starting tomorrow on his new shift with his new partner.
2: the days of completed after-school detention served by a certain 7-year old in the house.
185: the number of songs on my ipod at the moment. Just downloaded "A Beautiful Mess" and "If it Kills Me" by Jason Mraz. Why is he so cool? I just love the music.
3: the times Dan and I attended the temple in September. Gotta love it.
53: the days left until the "New Moon" movie comes out. Can't. Hardly. Wait.
135: the # my scale said this morning. Not too shabby, but I know I can do better.
0: the scrapbook pages I've done in the last two months. What's wrong with me? (incidentally, this is what I got for my birthday, a mega heavy duty adhesive applicator.)
So I'm finally done with all my camping pictures. I can hear ya'll now, 'yee-haw!' Since that weekend we've been busy busy with birthdays, school, more get-togethers with friends, afternoon detention, and the book "The Hunger Games" as well as its follow up "Catching Fire".
Dan's leg is still all swollen, but the bump is finally down to about a golf-ball-size as opposed to the baseball-size it was before.
I'm a year older. Twas my birthday last Sunday. We celebrated by going for some tempanyaki at IchiBan and saw the movie "The Time Traveler's Wife", which I recommend if you like good interesting love stories, but don't recommend if bare bum offends you. There's a lot of it. *wink*
The kids had their primary program at church on Sunday and everything seemed to go well. I couldn't see much as I was stuck behind the piano. Later we got together with Dan's brother and sister and their families for a birthday dinner. :)
Dan and I went to the temple Wednesday and ate out with some friends that night to celebrate more birthdays.
Then I stayed up til 1am studying for my 1st lecture exam in Anatomy & Physiology. I think I did ok (maybe high B?) but who knows. I'll just have to wait for next week's class to find out.
Dan just won a bid for a new shift--he'll be leaving the station in our city and his partner that he really gets along with (boo) but FINALLY aftre 3.5 years of working with Southwest Ambulance, he'll be one of the medics who responds to 911 calls, car accidents, heart attack, etc. He's very excited to finally use his skills, and the G. station where he's going is one of his favorites to work at.
My kids have joined band, art, and drama at school and then the younger boys will start T-ball and baseball in October. Throw in Scouts twice a week (we're double-dipping with another troop!) and after-school detention (long story!) and they're staying plenty busy! Me too--in school twice a week and then I try to go to the kids' class rooms at least once a week if I can. Keeps me active and leaves my housework undone at home. Just how I like it. :)
Have a good weekend everybody!
Well maybe my second favorite part - because everybody knows my favorite part is after the kids go to bed and all the adults just hang out around the campfire swapping stories and laughs.
No, my second favorite part is when we play games. Be it card games, board games, electronic, whatever. We did a nice mix of all three, first playing some rousing rounds of Electric Catchphrase, then Apples to Apples.
I was first introduced to this game last Christmas at my in-laws, and now all of us adore this game. So fun and easy to play, and best of course, with a big bunch of people who make it fun and sarcastic and interesting.
On occasion when we camp up near the rim, and particularly if we know we're going to be there 3+ days, we'll eat one meal at the little diner up there. It's nice greasy all-american food and gives us a small reminder of what it's like to eat in civilization.
Isn't she just too cute for words?
One pic of me just to prove I was there. But oy, I hate my Camping Hair. Oy.
Thanks Cavazos and Browns for a fun-filled weekend! Let's do it again sometime, and to our friends who weren't able to make it, we missed you and thought of you and hope you can come next time. =)
Our Labor Day experience was long - done over four days - and so we had to come up with original ways to keep the kids entertained. We talked about in the past we had set up a treasure hunt for the kids using a map and markers along the way. This time around, our supplies were limited, but the kids still had fun following the clues and gathering the wiffle balls along the way.
There was no prize at the end of the hunt.
But there was this.
(Sorry Chris, I swore I was not gonna post this one online but it's just so dang funny)
Yes, I realize this is going on and on and on and on. But it's my blog and I'll beat something to death, wear something into the ground if I want. :)
Random story about our camping experience: at one point we had to leave camp to go get water or get more ice or go down to the lake or something. Most of the time I'm really good about hiding, protecting, and otherwise securing our food so the animals can't get at it. This time, brilliant me, I left some bags of bread, tortillas, and chips on the table-all bagged and tied up, but still, within reach.
When we came back from our outing, even from the road I could see that there were giant predators on our table trying to get at our food. Huge. Vicious. Crows. Or something-they were seriously HUGE! I've never seen such a big crow; I actually thought it might even be a vulture. They had sniffed out and attacked my plastic bag full of chips (the SunChips were their favorite; I found 4 empty bags around our site) while we were away. From then on, I made sure nothing was left out.
Note: in the mornings and evenings, it was cool enough for fire. Surplus note: even if it were not cool enough for fire, my pyromaniac husband would have built a fire. Because it's what you do when you go camping and how often is a grown man (or anyone) allowed to play with fire? However, by 11, 12 it was decently warm, as in maybe upper 70s, lower 80s.
By our third day out there, some of us stinketh. Not me-I smelled like fresh daisies the whole time, but my boys-whooo. Dan decided that no matter what the temperature of the river, he was going to jump in and scrub off. We weren't sure how warm the water would be, so all of us had brought swimming suits. The boys got in theirs; there was no way I was jumping in that ice-cold crick. It was chilly and I don't do chilly unless pushed in. (don't get any ideas, peeps)
So anyhoo . . . we drove down with our friends, made the slightly treacherous hike down to the water (sorry Preggo Chris, you weren't able to go) and one by one, all my boys jumped in. They said it was stinkin' freezing at first, but they got used to it quickly. I stuck my feet in and that was puh-lenty for me.
My one regret? Forgot my camera back at camp. Oh well.
So now all my boys were semi-cleaned and scrubbed and Ethan even had fluffy hair. Then we experienced a dead battery due to someone-who-shall-remain-nameless listening to the radio for 5 minutes in her truck whilst she waited for the rest of us. =) Strangers helped us out with a jump start (note to self: buy jumper cables for the truck) and we were on our way. We drove down to the dam just to turn around and head back to camp. Our truck did brilliantly on all the hills, mud, rocks, etc. Much fun and so much more practical than our Mormon Mini-van. =)
Back at camp we ate a nice lunch and then had some fun with the camera and the kids.
So from jackets and long-sleeves to swim-suits all in one day.
Good thing we got the rat-dog in there too. ;)
The show-us-your-muscles pose.
The ok-just-go-ahead-and-act-silly pose.
The now-everybody-laugh pose.
The everybody-scream-at-the-top-of-their-lungs pose.
The show-us-your-Grrr-face pose.
As you can see, the cleanliness from their dip didn't last long.
I have a boatload of pictures from Sunday that I'm gonna have to divy up over the next few days. I can't help it; kids do fun things!
First of all I must mention Sookie-Chris' little 3 month chihuahua-that Sean fell in love with. I don't know why he loves these little rat dogs (sorry Chris!); I think they are uuuugly! But he loves them and was holding Sookie every chance he got until I had to threaten him with grounding should he pick up that dog One More Time. Let the poor thing have some peace!
And let's not forget Sophie and her homage to Twilight. :)
Cameron was introduced to football this trip which he happily played with anyone willing to chuck the ball to him (thanks, John!). I love the faces he makes while trying to catch the ball!
His favorite part was doing the Victory Dance after he made a 'touchdown' (ie, caught the ball).
Now, I'm gonna tag all my scrappy sisters to do this! That means you, Christine, Chris, Toni, Jenna, Angelina, Natalie, Christy, and so on and so on! This is a fabulous prize-either a new Cricut or all 4 of Cricut's latest cartridges. Check out the links above to get all the details!
(I'll continue the weekend's pictures next week, but for now I wanted to honor those sacrificed and fallen on 9/11)
The night was awesome, the morning was very comfortable, and so we ate some super yummy breakfast burritos-my favorite camping breakfast! The only bad thing is, they take forever to clean up after! After about an hour of scrubbing my pots and pans (ugh!), we played some games.
We called our friends who were on their way to joining us to let them know where we were. Then. . . things got interesting!
It started to cool down.
It got windy.
It got stormy.
And then it rained.
For.
Four.
Hours.
And we were miserable! It was cold and wet, our feet were all muddy, and the kids were bored of staying under our canopy. So we took off their shoes and banished them to the tent for some Gameboy time. Eventually most of us fell asleep in there as we listened to the rain, found leaks in our tent, and tried to figure out if this was nature's way of telling us to go home.
So after the four hours, the skies finally started to clear. We wondered if we should warn our friends about all the rain and perhaps tell them not to come? On my way out of town (in order to get some cell phone reception) I passed them, so I just turned around and followed them back to camp.
From there on, the weather was perfect the rest of the weekend! I am so glad we did not pack up and go home! However, the sides and bottom of our tent were soaked, meaning the edges of all of our mattresses were wet along with sleeping bags, pillows, and our bags of clothes.
We helped our friends set up and made some dinner.
At this point I'd like to point out a "leave it to Danny" moment. In preparing for our friends to join us at camp, he tried to clear out the dirt road entrance to our spot. He was shoveling and hauling large rocks, moving them, splitting them, whatever. At one point, he dropped one rock on another to break it up; it ricocheted off his shin, and very nearly broke his leg. When he showed it to me an hour later, it had swollen up to the size of a baseball-this picture really doesn't do it justice AT ALL. He was fairly certain he hadn't broken it, just really severely bruised it. But man, was he lucky.
Again, the angle in which I'm taking the picture doesn't show the swelling. I've never seen the side of a leg/bone swell up so big before. The Dork.
Yesterday, I actually asked him to go to Urgent Care to have it checked out, just in case. The doctor promises it was not broken-she didn't even take an x-ray.
The night ended without further rain or further incident. We ate pulled pork sandwiches and James cooked popcorn for us as a snack.
