Pumpkins!!

Halloween just isn't Halloween without carving pumpkins!! I decided to do this awesome mummy! Turns out it was harder that I thought it would be! But I love it!

Heather decided to make Jack Skellington! Which is actually very funny since she has never even seen the Nightmare Before Christmas!! But he turned out fun!

Halloween!

For Halloween this year my girls were Vampire Princesses! Mommy and Grandma Loralie made their beautiful dresses, and Mommy did a fantastic job on their make up! They look so adorable!

Bug really has that vamp look down! She had so much fun posing for pictures!

What did I tell you!!

Little Miss was a sad vampire. But only for pictures! She did not want to hold still long enough to take one! She was running around with her cape flying behind her! She was having so much fun!

Mommy was a beautiful Witch! I was glad I was able to snap one of all of them smiling!

Tagged

I got tagged, so here goes!

20 years ago......
1:I was 2 years old
2: I slipped in the bath tub and cut my chin open- 2 stitches
3: My bro was born and I was no longer the youngest

10 years ago......
1: I got my first Temple recommend
2: I was in my 6th grade Shakespeare medley play with a lead role
3: Got into honors English and reading for 7th grade

5 years ago.......
1: I was a senior in high school, and so ready for it to be over!
2: I was in my first car accident- totaled my parents van
3: Was in my high school production of "Bye Bye Birdie" very fun!

2-3 years ago......
1: Managed a movie theater, and hated it
2: Bought my first real car
3: Finally got my own apartment!

1 year ago.......
1: Sadly moved home again:(
2: Changed nanny families from the Christensen's (who I miss) to the Sanford's (who I adore more than life itself!)
3: wrecked my car (not totaled, but not good either!)

This year so far......
1: Been in way to many accidents (none my fault)
2: Turned 22 and LOVE IT!
3: Have been more sick more often than I have ever been in my whole life!!

Yesterday......
1: Drove carpool to school
2: Hung out with an old friend
3: Washed my jeans

Today.........
1: Sent my little girls off to Disneyland(I already miss them)
2: Saw a way freaky movie with a hot guy
3: Had leftover mac & cheese with ketchup (yummy!!!)

Tomorrow........
1: See if my dad and I can fix my blasted car
2: Run errands
3: Clean my room

In the Next Year.......
1: Go to Disneyland
2: Keep my room clean!
3: Get in shape!! (I just got a gym membership!)

Now I tag Amy, Kat, and Kristin!

Light in Motion

So I have this random fascination with moving lights. I know, sounds weird, but I love to take pictures of light in motion. Here are a few examples.

Bug Goes To School!!

Here are some pictures of Bug on her first day of Kindergarten!! She is going to Renaissance Academy, a charter school near where they live. She gets to wear uniforms!! They can wear yellow, navy blue, light blue, white, or red polo's and Khaki or Navy blue, pants, shorts, or skirts. She also has her plaid skort and jumper for formal days on Mondays. She looks so darn cute in her uniform!

Catch Up

I'm such a slacker!! I have so many pictures and so many things to write about!! I'll give a quick overview of the things that have happened and then I'll post pictures in other posts:)

So here are the many things that have happened in the last month!

• Bug started Kindergarten at Renaissance Academy!! Very exciting! She loves it and her teacher! She has made a few new friends in her class, and is always so happy to go to school!!
• Little Miss and I started our own little preschool for her, and she also loves it! I'm having a good time finding new ways to teach her things, and new things to teach her! It is good to have that one on one time to focus on her learning.
• Bug had her end of summer gymnastics recital. I was so proud of her! She is quite a talented and coordinated kid!! I don't think I could do at 5 what she does!
• Bug Learned how to tie her shoes!! I love that I don't have to do that for her any more. And every time she does it really, really well her face just lights up!! What a smart little girl!!
• I went to several awesome concerts in August! The radio station I listen to, 97.5 The Blaze, had a series of shows called Wednesday Rocks! Every Wed. in August they had a different concert. FREE CONCERTS!! They were a blast!! I have some pictures from the Shinedown concert. It was by far my favorite!!
• The summer ended!! But we had tons of fun this summer. I have so many pics of things we did this summer that I never got around to posting, so I'll be putting some of those up!

Well, I think that basically covers it!!

Yeah for random whims!!

So LeLe and I had a random whim to get imitation crab and just eat it! So we did! Well, sort of. :) Come to find out, you can only eat so much imitation crab plain! So we had 3/4th's of a package left and decided to find a recipe to use it. We found a few that looked good, but the ingredients were to expensive. We found a few others that sounded fantastic, but we're kinda lazy and they were a lot of work and time! So finally we decided on a crab pasta salad! It was fantastic!! Easy, inexpensive, and actually pretty healthy! So here is the recipe!

Crab Pasta Salad

INGREDIENTS
2 cups uncooked medium shell pasta
1 1/2 cups imitation crabmeat, chopped
1 cup broccoli florets
1/2 cup diced green pepper
1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup chopped green onions
1 1/4 cup meduim olives, halved
DRESSING:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup creamy Italian salad dressing
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

DIRECTIONSCook pasta according to package directions; drain and rinse in cold water. Place in a large bowl. Stir in crab, broccoli, green pepper, tomatoes and onions. Combining dressing ingredients; pour over salad and toss gently to coat. Cover and refrigerate for 2-4 hours before serving.

It only took us about 10 minutes to prepare the whole salad. It is super simple and very delicious! This is also a really good base to start with. You could also add cucumbers or peas. I think I might experiment with some other things. My sister even suggested spicing it up a bit for those who love spicy food.

Hope you enjoy this as much as we did!!

I've Been Tagged!! For the first time!!

Here's the deal: Post these rules on your blog list your 3 joys, 3 fears, 3 goals, 3 facts about yourself, and 3 current obsessions/collections.Then tag your friends at the end of your blog by leaving there names. Let them know you tagged them by leaving a comment on there blog.

3 Joys

Music, any kind

My Girls

Reading, anything and everything

3 Fears

Spiders

Being Alone

Dieing before accomplishing something worth telling people about

3Goals

To go back to school and get my degree in interior design

To get into better physical shape

To keep my life a little less chaotic :)

3 Facts about Myself

I actually like being single!!

I dream of traveling the world

I love my job more than anything else in my life!

3 Current Obsessions/collections

Twilight book series

Harry Potter book series

Jewelry

Tag...Amy, Kat

Yeah!! Progress!!

I've been putting this off for so long. Even though I have really wanted to do it, I just didnt know where to start!! So I'm taking the first step toward sanity while living in my parents house. I've decided to rearrange my room, and in fact, completely redo the interior! I'm going for an aqua and chocolate color palate. I've been looking for a bed spread in those colors, but I find that I am very picky about what I want!! Today and yesterday I did a lot of looking for that, but today I also decided to get a new computer desk!! I bought one and set it up in my room, and I love it!! It fits perfectly, and gives me so much more space to work with!! So, hopefully this week I'll find a comforter so I can pick paint colors and then I can get to the reall work! I'm excited!

Small world, Good memory!

So last night I was invited by one of my good friends to go to a movie in the park! We watched Field of Dreams. It has been far to long since I've watched it. I really enjoy that movie. But before we went to the movie, we met up with my friends cousin at her house. We were going with her and some of her room mates. I have only ever met one of her roommates, so it was nice to meet 2 more. So I met Annalisa(not sure if that's spelled right!) and she looked really familiar to me, but I just couldn't figure it out! Well, after the movie was over and we were all headed to get some desert it finally clicked! She was my Oakcrest Camp Counselor!! For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a girls camp in Utah that girls go to the summer after they turn 13. You go for a week, and just have fun! I seriously cant believe i recognized her! It has been 9 years since I went!! But we had fun talking about it. The reason her name didn't alert me to who she was is that all the counselors have "nicknames" that they go by rather than using their real names. Her name was "Sprite", and she was one of the things I loved most about Oakcrest! It was so fun to talk and get to know each other as adults. Kinda weird at first, but very cool! I'll try to scan in some of my pictures from camp and post them up here. But it may not happen any time soon since our family computer rolled over and died today, and that's what the scanner is hooked up to!!

I Need Therapy

So here is the story that goes with the picture of the sunset through the grass. I decided that I wanted to get some pictures of the sunset out at Saltair. I gathered all my stuff and set off around 8:15. Well, I miss calculated how long it would take me to get there, and the sun set was at 8:54 that day, so I didnt get there in time to hike out to the lake. But I got out my camera and set up a shot right in the parking lot along with several other people there to watch the sunset. The colors were amazing that evening!! truely incredible, and I wish I knew how to make a camera show how awesome the color was! Any way, I got some decent shots. After the sun was gone, and nearly all the color, I got an idea to jump onto some rocks in the middle of some tall grasses and shoot the picture through them! Cool idea, right! So, being the daring, sometimes unthinking, girl I can be, I hoped up onto one of the rocks and stepped down onto another one right in the middle of all the grass. With the color quickly dissapearing, I immidiatly set up the shot and didnt really pay attention to anything else. After I snapped the shot I glanced to my left and saw an aweful sight! A GIANT spider web with 2 of the biggest spiders I have ever seen in it!!! I immidiately started to freak, but got control of myself. Well, until I looked to my right and saw even more!! I looked all around me and realized I was surrounded!! There had to be 15 or 20 of these huge spiders in all these huge webs. I FREAKED, and turned around to jump out the way I came, thats when I saw the remnants of a spiderweb that I HAD JUMPED THROUGH!! I flew out of there faster than Superman ever flew!!! By this point I was crying my eyes out, screaming, and to top it all off, beating myself. Oh, and remember, I wasnt alone!! I did all this wigging in front of 10 or so total strangers!!! Finally a woman got the courage to come up to me to see what was going on. She helped me check to make sure I didnt have any spiders on me. It still took me a good half an hour to calm down, and I didnt sleep well that night. In fact I've had a spider nightmare every night since then. My mom and best friend think I need therapy. I think I might agree with them.

My First Roll cont...

Here are a few more pictures from that first roll of film.



Bug was having so much fun posing for me!! It will be even better when I am better at it and can show her how fabulous they turned out!! She thougth these were ok, but she's a tough critic!!

My First Roll!

So here are the pictures I promised. Give me feed back if you would please. And the editing was mostly just me playing around with things to see how they worked. Let me know what you think! Original ones On top, Edited on Bottom!

This first picture has quite a story to go with it. I'll put it in the next post!

Not a huge difference, but better lighting. I quickly learned Little miss is a rather difficult practice subject!! Wiggly little girls are hard to focus on! most of my pics of her were blurry!!

My Newest Obsession!

My new obsession is photography. I blame my boss. She has a fantastic camera and is a wonderful photographer. She makes me jealous. So, since I am rather poor and dont have the money at the moment for a nice digital SLR, I have pulled out my dads old 35mm Pentax MG. I've been trying to teach myself with a little help from the boss and another friend of mine who is majoring in photography. The biggest problem is, FILM IS SO DANG EXPENSIVE!!! Well that and the fact that you dont get the instant picture showing you if it sucked or not! And also, because film and developing are so expensive, I try to use as few shots as possible! Dont want to waste any. But with a digital it is so easy to just snap, snap, snap! Much easier to learn on! So I'm struggling a bit with that! But I am having a good time doing it! In fact, I developed my first roll of film this week! I'll put up the photo's in the next post. there were only a few that I really liked straight out of the camera (sooc). So she, the boss, has also gotten me interested in photo editing! So I've done some simple editing on some of the photos and I'll post them with the originals!

Black & White

Tonight I decided to go through some of my old pictures and try a little photo editing. I don't really know what I'm doing, so I just tried a bunch of different things. I played around a lot with black and white and light contrast. Its pretty crazy how just changing a picture to b&w can change it so much! Here are a few of the pictures I worked on!

Oops!!

Yeah, ok, so I'm a horrible blogger!! So sue me. Ok, the plan was to get on and put up pics and blog a bit today, until I realized that all the pictures I want to post are on the camera at work, and not my camera!! So I guess that will have to wait!! Sorry!!

Update!

So there is not much to tell in my life right now. Things are going good! Work is fabulous, I'm having a good time with friends, love what I'm doing these days. Ok, so there is one thing, but I dont want to jinx it!! I met a guy, a really great guy. I'm not going to say his name for fear of jinxing it!! Any way, he is great, as I said before! We've been spending more and more time together, and finding that we have more and more in common with each other. Just this last Sunday we were together for 9 and a half hours, and for 7 of those hours we talked non stop! There was never an awkward moment, we never ran out of things to say! The conversation flowed perfectly! And another nice thing about him is that he is older, and so much more mature than the rest of the idiots I've been meeting lately!! We can have intelligent conversations for hours without it turning to dumb things like video games and dumb stuff! Yes, he likes video games, but he has other things to say! And he also shares my odd obsession with houses!! We drove around the Park City area for a while just looking at the homes! It was fantastic! any way, I'll let you all know if it goes any where!

My Birthday!!

For my birthday I went to Sizzler with some of my friends. It was a blast to just have good food and good friends. Great day!!

Catch up!!!

Just some pictures I love of my little sweet hearts!! And one of Jade's new favorite hairstyles that I love!!

Are they always right??

One of those things I hate to admit...... My mother was right. This is a novel by the way, really really long!!
For about a month or 2 now my mother has been getting on my case about burning the candle at both ends. In fact a few direct quotes from her have been "your going to wear yourself out until your sick" and my favorite " If you don't slow down your body will make you!" well, dang it, she was right on the nose this time! Last weekend was supposed to be fun and exciting! You know, Holiday weekend! Well, it started out good, but I woke up Saturday morning with a pretty sore throat. Blah, but you can't let a little sore throat get you down, so I lived through it for Saturday, and Sunday by just taking it easy, having a relaxing weekend. On Monday it was worse, but I really wanted to go out with this guy. So I went to an afternoon movie with him, against my mothers advice. Again, my mother was right, I shouldn't have gone. I felt worse when I got home. A lot worse. So I went straight to bed and planned on having a normal day on Tuesday. Yeah right. I was going to get ready for work, but I couldn't swallow, talk, all I could do was cry!! I felt so bad, because my job is not just one of those where they can do without you for a day!! So my mom took me to the doctor, but decided I was a big girl, and she sat in the car when I went in. Yeah, I have never, ever cried when given a strep test. Well I bawled, and the nurse felt so bad for me that she even brought me an otter pop. They did all the tests, and it turns out I have Mono!! Yeah!! Ha Ha. fabulous! So I get my medicine and instructions from the doctor to come back if my throat gets any worse. Well, it did, a lot worse. I went back in to the doctor on Wednesday and ended up getting antibiotics, steroids and fluids through an IV. and plus I got to have home health care come and show me how to give myself more medicine through my IV every 4 hours!! So here is where that mother was right thing really bites. The doctor said and I quote " sometimes your body just makes you slow down" OUCH!!! She really was right!!! I stayed on the couch or in bed for 4 days straight. I finally finished my IV meds, and I can swallow and breath now, but I'm still exhausted. I'm happy to say that I will be going back to work on Monday, come rain or shine!! I miss my little girls so much!! And one more thing, which is breaking my heart! Having mono means one big thing to me right now... I cannot go to MDA camp. I cant even go to the talent show on Sunday! I am so crushed by this. This will be the first camp I have missed since I turned 16. This would have been my 7Th year!! I'm so broken about this!!! But I guess I really am just not supposed to be there this year.

I Will I Will!!

So I've been getting in trouble for not posting recently, but I promise I will!! I've just been really busy and really tired every time I get home! So for now just know that life is going great, I'm really active and always on the go, and I love it! I'll get more update posts up here when its not 11:00 at night!! I need my sleep!!

My Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday to ME! Happy Birthday to ME! Happy Birthday to MEEEEEEEEEE!!! Happy Birthday to ME!!! Yeah! Today is the happy day that I turn 22!! At precicely 12:15 this morning I turned 22!! Everyone is like "well thats cool, but 22 isnt really special" Well Bah to them!! I think 22 is fantastic! To not be 21 anymore!!! I know when you turn 21 you're an "adult" but people only consider you a baby adult!! Now that I'm 22 that will stop, and I'll be a full fledged ADULT!!! Any how, I'm glad its my birthday, because that means that summer will be here soon!!! Yeah!!! Happy Birthday to ME! Happy Birthday to ME......................... yeah, you know the rest!

Giant Target!!!

Yesterday!! Oh, boy! I think my car has a giant target painted on it that I can't see, but everyone else aims for!!! I got in ANOTHER car accident!!! It wasn't a bad one, but it still bites!!! The guy clipped my back bumper going 50 mph. I really was lucky, he swerved at the last min and just clipped me, if he hadn't, oh, I don't even want to think about it!! But I'm OK, and my car will be fine, and paid for by the other guys insurance. Its just annoying to be in 3 car accidents(one with a friend the her car) in 5 months!! Not to mention the ones before then! My dad was joking that by this time next year, my car will be brand new!!! Didn't exactly make me laugh last night, but it is funny I suppose! Oh, well! Guess that's my luck!

Concerts!!!!

So April was an amazingly luck for me!! I got to go to 2 awesome concerts!! Both for free!!! The first one Leanne and I had been trying forever to win tickets to because you could only win them!! It was the Rock in UVU concert hosted by X96! It had 5 bands playing! It was Josephine Collective(that we actually missed, they were first on) Ludo, The Brobecks, Story of the Year, and The Bravery!!! It was freakin awesome!! So Leanne finally won tickets and we were stoked, but then we had a chance to get 4 more!! Leanne and I each took a date, and gave the other 2 to our friends RJ and Alle. It was such a blast!! And it was cool to find out that the camera in my new phone doesn't do half bad!!
The other concert our friend Jon had won tickets to and decided he didn't want to go! Sad for him, but yeah for me and Leanne!! This one had Rev Theory, it was the first time I'd ever heard of them(but they have a really hot lead singer!) Flyleaf, who I really like, and Seether!!! That's the band I really wanted to see!! It was a blast, and we got a great spot, in the balcony right beside and a little back from the stage! The view was incredible!! So here are the pics I got, not amazing I know, but pretty darn good for being in a crowed that was moshing and constantly moving!!
PS. I was NOT moshing, I was avoiding the pits as best I could!! I may be crazy, but I'm not a complete lunatic!!!

Small Taste

So this week has been quite hard. I have been sick all week! Blah, just feeling terrible! And Amy, my boss, has been out of town for work since Tuesday afternoon, so I absolutely had to work. I have had a small taste of what it would be like to be a real mother and sick at the same time! And on top of that, my little girls have been sick as well! I am glad to say that I am stronger than I thought I was! Yes, I am exhausted, and yes, I am still sick, but I also made it through! I love those little girls so much! Jade has been so understanding that we cant wrestle, and rough house like we usually do because Miss Kim has an upset tummy and headache. She was also very helpful with Ivy this week, offering to get her bottles for her, playing with her to keep her busy, and cheering her up when she felt particularly awful. She's such a great helper! Ivy too! She has been so good this week! Its hard on me to see them not feeling good!! I'm just really glad that the weather hasn't been great, it gave me a valid reason to say "no, we're going to stay inside today!" Well, Amy is home now, and I even get to go in an hour late tomorrow, and its Friday so I'll have the weekend to recuperate! I'm happy to know that I could handle it, but not pushing to be a real mother any time soon!!! I'll stick with my sweet little ones that I have now!!

A Day At the Farm

This past Saturday I took my niece and nephew, Kate and Steven, to the farm at Thanksgiving point. We had a great time!! It was extra fun because they were having the "Baby Animal Birthday!" so they had all the babies out where you could see them up close, and touch and feed them!! It was really windy, but the kids were troopers, and even insisted on standing in line for 25 min. for the pony ride!!! But it was totally worth it!! I don't know that I've ever seen Katie smile so big for so long!!! They loved riding the horses, and feeding them too!! I cant believe that feeding the big horses didn't scare the kids half to death!!! We had a wonderful time! I love getting to spend time with just me and my nieces and nephews! Plus I love being able to give my brother and sister some time off!!

Snapping!!

So lately the girls have been obsessed with Mary Poppins!! Which I really dont mind, because I love that movie myself, and I feel flattered when they call me Mary Poppins! But to the real point of this post, Jade wanted to learn how to snap! She thought it was so cool on the show and she just couldnt figure it out! Well, I taught her how! It was really great to see her little face light up every time she got a good loud snap! I even got some pictures of her doing it!!

Fun Hair!

So Jade and I have decided to try some fun new things with her hair. It is long enough now that we can do some fun stuff, and even Ivy is getting in on the fun!!

I'll put more pics up as we do new styles!!