Snow Pictures From Last Week & A Sunday Surprise

Last week we had quite the snow storm and I haven't gotten around to posting pictures so here are a few nice ones:

This is the walkway heading to our front door. Insane in the membrane, insane in the brain! (I used to love that song!)


I love this picture. Check out the snow hanging from the roof! When it fell, my house rumbled! Plus, since we're ghetto and still have our Christmas lights on our house, it pulled some of the lights off their clips. So now, we are redneck ghetto trash with our lights hanging down. Sweet!


Sunday was quite the eventful day for us, thank goodness for my parents because besides church, we had meetings at 2:00, 3:00, 5:00, and 7:00 so they had my kids pretty much all day! Phew!

First of all, here is a cute picture of Sam on Sunday morning, teaching Carson how to tie his shoes.


Sunday at 3pm Sam and I were called into the Stake offices. Always a scary experience! Last Sunday at Stake Conference our Stake President told us the ward boundaries were being revamped and every ward in the Stake is going to be affected. So we didn't know what to expect at 3:00. It was quite the interview process with our Stake President, but at the end of the interview he asked Sam to be the 2nd counselor in the bishopric of our ward. I'm really excited for Sam because I think he is going to love this calling, but if I'm being honest, I'll admit...I'm soooo nervous about sitting by myelf in Sacrament meeting with my 2 boys and newborn baby. I'm sure a lot of you think I'm retarded, but that really is my biggest concern. I'm totally supportive of Sam being gone most Sunday's and several nights a week because he has supported me doing the very same thing this past 1 1/2 years as I served as Relief Society president. It's just that dang 1 hour and 10 minutes on Sunday that makes me nervous. So, if any of you reading this are in my ward, take pity on me when I look like I'm about to cry! :)

The great thing about Sam's new calling, is the 1st counselor happens to be one of Sam's best buddies in the ward, Davis Strong. You should have seen the smile that lit up Sam's face when he learned of this! Our new Bishop seems really awesome too, he was in a different ward before the boundary shifts, but we're so excited to get to know him. Also, remember my blog about the fireman hockey game we went to? Well, that is Chad Burnside and he is the executive secretary so that's going to be great too! Changes are good, I just keep reminding myself of that all the time.

I also need to thank my bishopric that was just released! Ryan Patterson, Paul Kocherhans, and Scott Festin: you guys rock and you did such a GREAT job!!! It's going to be so weird not having you up on the stand but I'm sure you are pretty excited about the idea of sitting with your families on Sunday! You have such supportive wives and I'm hoping to use them as my example over these next few years. Thanks for being so much fun to serve with, and Bishop, thanks for always letting me raid your "snack drawer" when I felt like I was going to pass out from lack of food since I've been pregnant! We love you guys!!

On that note, 3 weeks from yesterday is my induction day with the pregnancy. The end is in sight! Yipeeee!!!!!

Stupidity Is Paying Off

So I had an epiphany the other day. I have been working from home part-time for over two years now. Every time we have a company holiday I've put "zero" hours on my time card for that day because I didn't think part-timers got holiday pay.

As it turns out, I read the company policy on holiday pay and part-time employees DO get holiday pay! I talked to a guy in my HR department just to clarify that going forward I can put my normal hours on my time card for holidays and guess what he told me? He said that he would go back through my part-time time cards and pay me for the holidays I've missed in a lump sum on my next paycheck!

Unless I'm dreaming, that is over 22 holidays that I'm going to get paid for in a few weeks. It's really good timing too because part-time employees don't get maternity leave (I did read the policy on that one already!).

On another note:
I had my ultrasound yesterday and apparently, a normal woman has about 10 cm of amniotic fluid at 35 weeks of pregnancy. Guess how much I have? Well, because I try to do everything to the extreme, I have over 31 cm of amniotic fluid. There could be lots of causes or complications but the ultrasound tech didn't seem too nervous. He gave his report to my OB and since she didn't call me today freaking out I'm just going to assume that little baby sweet loves to go pee pee. So, if anybody wants to, feel free to donate some diapers to the cause once he arrives! I'm still set to be induced on March 9th so I only have 3 1/2 more weeks to go!!! Yay for me! These last few weeks have been pretty tough so I'm seriously counting the days now.

And another note:
We had a nice whiteout blizzard here today. It started at around 1:30pm and it's still snowing now. Sam caught a bus downtown at 4:45pm and he got home at 7:45pm. I went and picked him up at the bus stop and when we got home we almost got stuck in our driveway. Crazy snow.

And just because I don't have any fun pictures to post, here is a doozy from August of 2005. I don't know if we were forcing Parker to eat something gross or what, but gagging children are just plain FUNNY!


And just because I'm ready for some warmer weather, here is Carson, also August of 2005, swimming in Lake Sammamish in Washington. My kids don't lack in the personality department, that's for sure!


Okay, here is a cute one I just found of Parker. September 2005.

I Don't Believe In The Term "Nesting"

I pretty much hate it when people say "You must be nesting!" or "Wow, you are definitely starting your nesting period!" and etc. Obviously, it takes some work to get ready for a baby. Why is it so necessary to label that work and say someone is "nesting"? What else are we supposed to do, wait for the baby to come and THEN figure out what we need to support the child??

You will understand why I opened with that paragraph after you see how friggin' busy I've been this past week! Oh yeah, don't hesitate to call me "cranky" or "ornery" because I won't be offended at that, I actually agree with it!

Okay, first of all, a huge ol' Happy Birthday to my mom this past Wednesday. She is 65 years young and I love her more and more each day. It was my own fault, but I kind of overloaded my schedule last week. I got this brilliant idea to create a memory book for my mom that would have 65 memories of her for the big 65th birthday. I included all my siblings and their families and everybody totally pulled through with some AWESOME memories! In fact, we love my mom so much that we ended up with 71 memories instead of just 65.

As I was going through some old pictures, I came across this gem. Remember how I despise butterflies? Well, here is my mom, pregnant with me, and she is standing in my nursery. Check out my CRIB and WALL!!! There are butterflies on them! Well, maybe this is where the butterfly aversion came from.... Now if I could just figure out why I banged my head over and over into my pillow until I went to college....


Here is the opening page of my mom's memory book. I huge shout out to my friend, Cathy Gilmore, for helping me do all the formatting of the memories. Cathy, you are AMAZING!
The title page says "65 memories of Mom, plus a few to grow on)


Then each page included a different memory, and some pages included pictures. It was a huge stretch for me since I shy away from anything that is scrapbook-related. Here is a picture of me when I had a she-mullet. Yikes.


The best part of the book was that it wouldn't close. After I finished putting my sweat and tears into this project, the dang thing wouldn't close! Well, all I could do was laugh and come up with a reason for it not closing. So we told my mom "your life has been so full, there was NO WAY your memories could be contained in a closed book!" Phew, dodged that bullet!


My dad wanted a nice wedding-style cake for my mom so I enlisted the help of my mother-in-law, Fontella. She has patience for cakes and the end result was super nice. I will admit, I had the honor of actually baking the cakes and you should have seen my laugh as I was about to turn the big square cake onto the cooling rack. I laughed OUT LOUD and said to myself "I can't believe anyone is trusting me to do this!" Luckily for me, the cakes came out perfectly, thanks to my friend, mister parchment paper!


I'm so lame because I didn't get a good picture of my mom with the book, but here she is looking at it. :)


Next topic:
Our Bonneville, affectionately called "Bonnie", was rear ended this week. The lady who hit Sam had totaled her car 2 weeks earlier so when she hit Sam she asked to settle outside of insurance companies. We got an estimate for the damage: $2500. Ouch. It doesn't look totally bad, but the trunk won't close and it's a real mess. The lady finally agreed to go through her insurance company, but the insurance companies are all backed up due to all the bad weather/fender benders so we probably won't get the car fixed for several weeks. If anybody is going downtown, call Sam, he wants a ride to work! :)


Final topic, and don't call it "nesting":
I was very organized after Carson was born. Every time he grew out of his current sizes of clothes I would get a rubbermaid container, labeled with that size, and store it away. Then along came Parker. When he'd grow out of a size, I'd just put those clothes in a garbage bag and throw it into the back of the laundry/storage room NEXT to the nice rubbermaid bins. Or, I'd try to use the bins, but wouldn't even look at the labled size on the bin so each bin has a hodge podge mixture of sizes... Are you understanding what I'm trying to say? My storage room was a mess! Plus, our food storage shelves needed some attention and organization... So, this weekend we tackled the storage room. Here is what my family room looked like after we hauled almost everything out of the storage room:


Here is the nearly emptied room. It's really long and narrow, and DANG, we can fit lots of stuff in there!


And here is the room put back together again. It's hard to tell, but in the back, behind Sam's dart board, are about a dozen rubbermaid containers with very organized clothes in them! I guess I'm thankful I don't have any girls because that would DOUBLE my bins, right? Phew!!!


As we were going through our clothes we also created quite the D.I. pile because I refuse to let my 3rd child LOOK like he's a hand-me-down-third-boy! I got all my newborn to 6 month-old clothes washed and put in the baby's dresser. We got our crib set up, and we are 95% ready for this baby. I just have a few odds and ends I need to finish up.

I had a doctor appointment this past Friday and apparently my uterus is measuring large and my doctor thinks it's because I have excess fluid in there. So tomorrow I am going to have another ultrasound (this makes 4 this pregnancy) to determine exactly what is going on. I guess the risks of excess fluid are pre-term labor and my water could break...Ewwwwww! Who knows what else might happen, I have nightmares of my water breaking in public places. Anywho, regardless of what my ultrasound shows, my doctor has set my induction date at March 9th, if I don't go on my own before that. So, 4 weeks from yesterday is the big day and I'm very excited because I'm quite the uncomfortable grump.

Here is just a random picture of crazy Parker. Sam put one of the D.I. shirts on Parker which is clearly too small. I am pretty sure Carson or Parker never wore this shirt, so why did I keep it stored all these years? The answer escapes me...

Blizzard...Seriously

We had tons of snow in January and February is proving to be CRAZY as well. I woke up at 6am today (because I have early meetings, not because I'm crazy) and I couldn't believe how hard it was snowing and blowing. It totally reminded me of Southeastern Idaho winters when I was just a wee lad. Our neighboring Stake, which is only like 2 blocks from here, cancelled all their church meetings. Not our Stake, we are hardcore church goers and I'm happy about that!! It was quite the adventure and as Sam says "It's just something to shake up the day."

I couldn't believe the drifting in my back yard. I have 3 flower pots on my back patio and one of them was totally buried in the snow. At about 7am I opened my back door to take a picture and got SLAMMED in the face with the wind and snow. I laughed because I was such a dork for thinking that WOULDN'T happen! Anyway, you can barely see one side of the top rim of the flower pot in this picture. I'm guessing the drift was about 2 1/2 feet. Sam concurs.


Carson and Parker were kept entertained all morning with examinations of the snowflakes under a magnifying glass. Carson was really into it because, as he'll tell you, he wants to be a scientist when he grows up.


Sam had already shoveled the driveway once before we went to church. When he got home, here is how much snow had fallen while we were gone those few hours:


Just for fun, Sam buried Carson in the snow so all you could see was his face. Carson was a better sport than I would have been!



After Carson broke out of his snow prison, Sam told him it looked like he was emerging from his Rocket Ship. Parker heard that and for the next half hour all he did was sit in the "rocket ship". Carson and Sam came inside and Parker just sat on that pile of snow like he was king of the world. I kept saying "Parker, do you want to come inside and have hot chocolate?" He would shake his head "no" and say in a serious tone "no, I'm sitting in my rocket ship" I kept laughing because every car that drove by would wave at him and he would just stare off into the distance. One day I will totally understand Parker's thought process but for now I'm determined to keep laughing!

Nalani's Baby Shower

As many of you know, my cousin Nalani and I are both due with baby boys this March. This past Saturday I attended her baby shower. Nalani has more friends than anyone I know so she got some great loot! Among some amazing gifts, she received a basket full of children's books from Sarah, and a "tower of books" from Missy. Check out the tower:


This is a good thing to remember, when going to a baby shower, include your favorite book with your gift. When I had my baby shower when I was pregnant with Carson, everybody brought their favorite children's book along with their baby gift. My sister-in-law put that idea on the invitations and pretty much everyone who came to the shower participated. It was a great way to start my library. To this day, some of those books I received over 7 years ago are still Carson's favorite!

One funny memory from Nalani's shower: As Nalani was opening all the cards, they were really cute and all looked homemade. A common phrase after a card was opened was "this card is adorable! Did you make it?" Then everybody would "ooh" and "ahhh" at the cuteness.
As Nalani opened my card, it looked homemade, but she didn't say a word. Somebody said "I love how Nalani knows you so well that she didn't even ASK you if you made your card!" I was like "yep, Costco special!"

I think my new motto should be "Why make it, when Costco can help you fake it?"

Gordon B. Hinckley 1910 - 2008

I just heard on the news that President Hinckley passed away this evening. I'm devastated, but at the same time, I feel so relieved for him. Sam and I were in President Hinckley's ward from the time we were first married until we moved to West Jordan (4 years). He was a wonderful man and a great example of what it means to belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He had been the prophet of the church since March 12, 1995 (Sam's 19th birthday!). While I am going to miss him terribly, I know he is in a better place and now he is with his wife once again.

He always gave inspiring talks about doing the very best you can. I'd like to share one of my favorite quotes from a talk he gave at a Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting on January 10, 2004:

"I have been quoted as saying "Do the best you can." But I want to emphasize that it be the very best. We are too prone to be satisfied with mediocre performance. We are capable of doing so much better.
Brethren and sisters, we must get on our knees and plead with the Lord for help and strength and direction. We must then stand on our feet and move forward.
I am absolutely confident that heaven will smile upon us. The Lord will hear and answer our prayers if we will commit ourselves, giving our very best to this work.
I pray for you. I plead with heaven in your behalf. I thank you one and all for all you are doing and pray that you may have the strength to do more as we face the great, almost overwhelming challenge that comes with life in our time.
God bless you is my humble prayer as I express my love, in the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen."

President Hinckley will be greatly missed!

The Chosen Toy

Parker chooses one toy to sleep with every night. Here is tonight's choice:


It's the sponge Sam used to wipe off the excess grout from our backsplash. What can I say...he's definitely a unique child!

300th Posting!

This is my 300th posting. Seems like just yesterday I started this blog....I can't believe it's been over 2 years! Huh, actually 300 postings isn't that great for a blog that has been going for over 2 years, I should have at least 600 posts by now! SLACKER!

Anyways, what was I going to say....? OH brother, I'm starting a fire in my pellet stove right now because my basement is freezing. Carson just walked up to me and said "P.U. what stinks? It smells like human flesh burning!" First of all, it just smells like a fire. Second of all, how would he know what flesh burning smells like?? If he would have said "it smells like burning hair" I would have understood because last summer Sam burned his eye lashes and eye brows while we were camping...ah yes, those were good times.....

I digress...

I know I promised you a Chia Pet update, but sadly, the chia pet looked rather sad today, I think he botched his picture day on purpose! So maybe I can revive him and we'll do a picture later with "retakes" day.

Guess what I did yesterday? I went to the "Guns and Hoses" game. No, not "guns n' roses", you heard me right, "Guns and Hoses"! It's an ice hockey game between firemen and policemen and the proceeds benefit the Huntsman Cancer charity. It was tons of fun. Our friend, Chad Burnside, is a fireman and he played in the game. Chad is very soft spoken at church so I was secretly hoping to see him throw a few elbows and perhaps a nice hip-check or two, but he was just as gentlemanly in his game as he is at church. Bummer....just kidding! The fireman won big-time over the cops so good job Chad! Here he is:


After the game, Sam and my dad worked on doing the grout for our tile backsplash in our kitchen. We still don't have the border for our backsplash, but it was getting tiring not having the grout done so we decided to just do what we could now. It's only been 9 months or so since we hung the backsplash so the grout was a long time coming! :)

Here is the first section Sam did:


I really felt bad because Sam is a very positive happy person, but as he was doing the grout he kept saying "I really hate every bit of this process...." But he and my dad were troopers and got it done. We pulled the stove out so Sam could do the grout easier and I laughed at what I saw. I just love that Sam-I-Am!


Here is a picture of what the final product looked like. Real purdy. Now we just need a border...


On an unrelated topic. I am happy because Carson goes back to school on Tuesday after being off-track for an entire month. Don't get me wrong, I love Carson. I am just really excited.....well, just because! ha ha ha

Yay, An Update!

Sorry about the lack of updates. When I have time to blog, it seems like I'm choosing to lay down instead...being pregnant is getting the best of me!

Last Saturday we moved the boys room downstairs. In our cracker jack house, we have 2 bedrooms on the main floor and 2 bedrooms downstairs. We moved the boys downstairs so the baby could have the other room on the main floor. It was quite the process, it pretty much took all day. I thought the kids would be nervous about being downstairs, but you can see from their faces, they were very excited! You can also tell that Carson isn't dressed yet, from his mismatched pj's...and Parker picked out his own clothes, right down to the Walmart slippers!


It's not decorated or anything fancy yet, but here is what is looks like right now...
The boys have done great, they stay in their beds all night and because it's darker in the basement...they sleep in longer! That's a big score, until Carson goes back on track next week, then I'll be hating it. :)


On Sunday we had our monthly cousins dinner at Nalani and Jed's house. When we got there, there were tons of deer behind Nalani's house. Carson was tripping out! Can you see the deer? They got lots closer but this way, you can enjoy the view from Nalani's deck!


Our cousin dinner theme was "breakfast" and we had tons of grubbin' breakfast foods. Oddly enough, nothing normal like hash browns or bacon. We had a few French Toast casseroles, German pancakes, Orange rolls, fresh fruit...yummers! Here is a nice shot of the pregnancy bellies on Nalani and myself. Precious!


Sam's brother, Rod, is in the Army and he is going to Afghanistan for a year, starting next week. So most of the Sweet's met up at Cafe Rio for dinner in his honor last night. It was a blast, partly because my parents were kind enough to watch my kids so I was carefree!

Cute pic of my hubby and myself (and Sam's brother jeff!)


Here is Rod and his family, too bad Rod was closing his eyes...on purpose! Maybe it's symbolic....like "if I can't see you, I won't have to say goodbye!" It's so sad that he is leaving. I remember when the war first started he went to Bosnia for a year. Tough for his wife and daughters, but we're so grateful for his service to our country!


Well, I know that was a jumbled update of random happenings, but stay tuned because my next update is going to be amazing....the Chia pet is thriving and I'm excited to share that with everyone! I bet you can hardly wait!

If anybody needs a good laugh, you need to check out Mike and Kim's blog. Watch the video from their January 15th update titled 'Dance off'. That is my dad and he has no fear!

Late Christmas Present

A few years ago I attended the bridal shower for my nephew's fiance. One of her gifts was a recipe book her sister had compiled of all her favorite recipes. I remember being amazed at all the yummy looking recipes and I really wanted a copy! So as Sam was asking me what I wanted for Christmas about a month ago, I mentioned that he should try to get a copy of this homemade recipe book.

Apparently he was able to get an emailed copy, there were about 150+ recipes. However when he pulled up the recipes in the Word document, all the spacing had been messed up and nothing was aligned properly. He started to fix everything, but basically lost patience and ran out of time.

After Christmas, he told me about the recipe documents and he said "they are there for you to have, but you'll have to fix the spacing." I kind of forgot about it until last night. I was talking to Fern about the woes of what to make for dinner and then I remembered I had all those recipes on my computer, waiting to be fixed. I immediately opened them up and started to get to work. Because I'm so fast and amazing (ha ha ha) I had everything looking proper after about 30 minutes. Since I'm also a bit OCD, I wanted everything done last night so I printed all the recipes, put them in sheet protectors and assembled my newly updated recipe binder. I know it doesn't look like much, but there are over 200 recipes in this book, organized, tabbed, and easy to read!


Now, it's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of cooking....but at least if I get a wild hair I'll have some resources!

In the meantime, I thought I'd share a recipe with you. This recipe came from my mom and dad's friend, Helen...hence the name "Helen's Meatballs". It's one of my favorite dinners! I agree with my mom, she doubles the soup and we serve these over Egg noodles, Mashed potatoes, or rice. I don't even like meat that much but these are AMAZING!!! Try it!!

Helen’s Meatballs
(Mom & Dad’s friend, Helen Smith)

1 lb. hamburger
1 Tblsp. milk
1/2 C. cornflakes, crushed
(can substitute oatmeal)
1/2 tsp. salt/pepper
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1-2 carrots, grated
1 egg
1 onion, finely chopped
1 can cream of mushroom or chicken soup*
1 soup can of milk*

Mix all but soup and form into balls. Brown all sides in frying pan. Add can of soup and one soup can milk to drippings and balls. Simmer 20 minutes. Serve over rice, noodles, or mashed potatoes.
*I usually double the soup and milk to have plenty of gravy. Using evaporated milk for half of the milk makes it more rich.

Enjoy!

Now That's A Good Dessert!

6 adults...9X13 pan...practically licked clean in one sitting.



Cream Puff Squares

Crust:
3/4 cup water
6 Tblsp butter
3/4 cup flour
3 eggs

Filling and Topping:
2 cups cold milk
2 pkgs (3.4 oz) instant vanilla pudding
8 oz. thawed Cool Whip
2 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

For crust, heat water and butter in saucepan over medium-high heat until butter is melted and mixture comes to a boil. Stir in flour all at once. Reduce heat to low and stir mixture vigorously for about 1 minute or until mixture leaves sides of pan and forms a ball. Remove from heat, let stand 5 minutes.

Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition until mixture is smooth. Spread mixture evenly over bottom of 9X13 pan.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Prick 10-12 times with a fork to release steam and continue baking for 5 minutes or until golden brown. Cool completely.

For filling, pour milk into bowl. Add pudding mixes. Whisk 2 minutes until thickened. Fold in 2 cups of the Cool Whip. Spread mixture evenly over cooled crust. Refrigerate for one hour.

For topping, microwave remaining Cool Whip and 2 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips on High for 30-40 seconds. Stir until smooth. Pour chocolate mixture into a small Ziplock bag. Close bag, cut off tip of bag and garnish the dessert with drizzles of chocolate.

Enjoy!

Happy 2008, My Kids Are Crazy As Ever

Some people have the "after Christmas letdown" where they are so sad that the holidays are over....but not me. Don't get me wrong, I love the holidays but once they are over, I feel this huge relief and I'm so excited to start the new year all fresh (especially once the Christmas decorations are taken down!).

So, my kids are still crazy and wild and here are some pictures of what they've been up to this past week:

Parker went through a "I think I am Superman" phase:


One day Carson was sort of in my face and I needed a break. So I asked him if he would clean my closet doors, which are mirrors. He happily agreed. I then got on a phone call for about 20 minutes and I could still hear him in my room spraying Windex. OH man.... I walked into my room and it was pretty humid and damp in there because he pretty much sprayed 1/4 of a Costco size bottle of Lime Windex in my room, with the doors shut. I think he was a little 'buzzed' because then he ran outside and started cleaning my storm door. It was really cold out there! Oh well, Windex is cheap and my closet doors have never been so clean!


My kids have really been into Scooby Doo lately. For Christmas, my parents found a Shaggy Chia pet and gave it to the boys. Hopefully in 2-3 days we'll have sprouts growing out of Shaggy. Maybe next we can buy the "Clapper". That sort of falls into the same catergory as a Chia Pet, don't you think?


It's quite the process actually...Shaggy had to soak in a bowl of water for 24 hours and the seeds also had to soak with some water for the same amount of time. The seeds turn into this nasty jelly that reminded me of fish eggs. I had the privilege of smearing the fish eggs onto Shaggy's skull. Yummers!


Oh don't worry, I'll take more pictures when it starts growing!

We've been so busy lately that there hasn't been much play time/rough housing with the kids. So Sam let the kids use him as a jungle gym last night. I caught some nice shots. Sam is such a good sport! If it were me, I'd say "ouch, my back...hey, be nice!...don't touch my hair...ug, go find your dad!"




Carson finally pulled his other front tooth out. I was so glad because it was hanging at a weird angle and it stuck out really far. He looked pretty hokey, and not in a good way. This is his 6th tooth he has lost so far...


And finally, tonight the kids were playing with their robotic dinosaur. Parker has worn this sweat suit all night with the hood on. I kept laughing at him because I couldn't see his whole face, just his mouth and chin area. He reminded me of that wicked Star Wars character...um...what's his name? Is it the Chancellor?

Open House for Amy Curtis

Amy Curtis, who is one of my long-time friends from my ward, is moving to the Boston area to obtain her Masters Degree. While I am really excited for this new "chapter" of her life, I'll miss her and it's going to be so weird without her in the neighborhood!

Amy and Cathy put together an amazing menu of Mediterranean food and Cathy hosted an Open House in Amy's honor. The open house had the perfect blend of good friends, good food, and good conversation! My only regret was that I was only there for 3 hours. :) Here are some of my favorite pictures that Sam captured that night:


This is Lisa, Jason, and Jaden Kros. Lisa and I served with Amy in the Relief Society presidency in 2005 and 2006. They have since moved to Morgan and it was a blast getting caught up with them and just laughing about life in general!


This picture makes me laugh because it's me, talking to Ryan Patterson, who is my Bishop. I can't remember what we were talking about, but it looks like I'm giving him a piece of my mind! Bishop, sometimes you just have to tell me to "chill out!"


It's a real shame this picture is blurry. As a going away gift, Ed (Cathy's husband) gave Amy a flask. Cathy, maybe you can comment as to his explanation because I missed it! Anyway, here is Amy trying it out. She was a very good sport....I don't know, maybe she secretly was hoping for one because its contents may keep her warm in those Boston winters!


It was so thoughtful of Cathy to hold the open house on a night when the Utah Jazz were playing....I think this crew temporarily forgot why they were there that night (**hint-you are there to spend as much time as possible with Amy and to give her your best wishes).


The night was great and I'm hoping Cathy puts something on her blog about it...at least she could list the menu and describe the food because it was definitely not your "normal" party food. We were laughing later that night because if I tried to put on an Open House for a friend I'd probably have something like corn dogs and chips. Seriously. Oh yeah, and maybe Mountain Dew!