Percy Jackson series

I recently finished reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and LOVED it! I was sad when I finished the last book, realizing that there was no more, BUT I was glad that it was left open-ended so another series could come later. I really hope that happens. I really enjoyed all of the greek mythology, which I had mostly forgotten. I thought it was new and original and creatively written. It kept my attention the whole time. I could hardly put them down. They are great books for anyone age 8 and up.

Right now I'm reading The Hunger Games and can hardly put that down. I'm almost done and can hardly wait to read the next book, Catching Fire. I find that this book has been mostly unpredictable. Usually I can figure out where the book is going and what will happen next, but not so with this book. It has some good twists and has kept me guessing. I highly recommend it!

The man of my dreams...

Fourteen years ago today I married who I thought was the man of my dreams. If I had known then what I know now I would have dreamed a little harder. My scope was so small. In the last 14 years I have watched my dream guy become even more than I ever, ever dreamed! I love him so deeply and need him so much - he truly is my everything! In this world full of Tiger Woods' and men who look for satisfaction and success everywhere but at home, I'm so grateful for my brilliant and accomplished, but simple and steady dream guy. I'm grateful he loves me even when I'm hard to love. I'm grateful he's attracted to me even with all my stretch marks and rolls. I'm grateful he's patient with me even when he's been patient long enough. I'm grateful he gave me the four most amazing and beautiful kids and that he is such a wonderful father to them. I'm grateful he's not afraid to wash a few dishes, mop a few floors, dig for his socks in the clean clothes pile once in a while, and put the kids to bed at night most of the time. I'm grateful he makes me feel like an equal and makes his family a priority. I'm grateful he's the spiritual leader of our home. I"m grateful he is dedicated to me and our life together. He makes my heart sing!!! I love you, babe, with all of my heart! Happy Anniversary!

Another one...

Here is another video of the Christmas lights we saw tonight. It's so amazing! This video is a little blurry in spots but it's still fun to watch. We also saw the Christmas lights at George Jones' house. They were pretty spectacular, too! I didn't get a pic though. Sorry!

Wizards in Winter - 2009 from Alan Sielbeck on Vimeo.

We went and saw Christmas lights for FHE tonight and this is one of the houses we saw. They actually broadcast the music on an FM station and the lights are choreographed to the music. Very cool!

Santa Claus is Coming to Town from Alan Sielbeck on Vimeo.

One last look at Fall...

I realized I never posted any Halloween pictures or pictures of the leaves around our house, so, before winter and Christmas take over, I thought I'd better post them. This is, of course, more for my benefit than yours so I'll have a record of our goings on, so to speak.

I love, love, love this tree. It is just up the road from our house. It is right in the middle of a field, all by itself, and it is huge. I love the shape of it. In the summer it was full of the most beautiful green leaves, which I didn't take a picture of, unfortunately. I plan on it next summer, though, because I have a project in mind that involves this tree. I am going to take a picture of it in every season (I'm hoping to get a picture of it covered in snow) and then I'm going to blow the pictures up and frame them so I can hang them on my wall. I can hardly wait to see the end result. This is, of course, step one on the project - the tree in all its autumn glory!

This is another thing that I love - our neighborhood! This is a shot of our street as you first drive into our neighborhood. At the very bottom of the picture is a walking trail that goes all around Brentwood. We feel lucky that it comes right by us. We like to go on Sunday walks and Adam and the 2 older kids have enjoyed bike riding on the trail. We really enjoyed the fall leaves on the hill behind our house this year - especially after 12 years of not really having a fall. I LOVE where we live!!!


This is on Halloween night. Hannah was already out trick or treating with a friend but she looked the same as she did in the picture below. Here Ethan is a member of the mob (in his birthday suit :-)), Ben is a very adorable skeleton (which got him voted for Best Costume at his preschool), and Levi was "just a cowboy, not Woody." Boy did they get a lot of candy!!


This picture was taken the night of our Trunk or Treat at the church. These costumes were my favorite! Levi was Jack Sparrow, Ethan was Nephi, Hannah was a zombie ballerina (Adam wondered why she couldn't just be a beautiful ballerina?! My only answer was that she is growing up - too fast!), and Ben was Link from the Zelda cartoons. We managed to make it through another Halloween successfully. Yea!!

Wrestling Ethan

Ethan decided to join the wrestling team this year. He hasn't won a single match. In fact, he hasn't lasted more than a minute in any of his matches. We couldn't be more proud of him, though. He gives 100% every time and has stuck to it even though it's been a little discouraging and hard. We knew going into the season that he would struggle a little because he only weighs 60 lbs. He is usually out-weighed by at least 10 lbs. every time he wrestles. He also has weak muscle tone which makes it hard for him. He's been a trooper, though, and has enjoyed being part of a team. He has a great coach who has been very encouraging. Ethan is the only guy on the team who has been told by Coach Reasonover to eat as much as he wants! He told Ethan to eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich or two every night before bed and wash it down with a glass of whole milk. We'll see if we can finally put some weight on that kid!

Smokies part 2

Every day I miss our trip to the Smokies. It was so beautiful there and it was so great to spend 5 days all together, with no interruptions or stresses. So awesome! I think everyone's (except for Adam) favorite part was having Adam with us the WHOLE time and not having to share him with anyone else. So, SO awesome. I love that man!! Here are a few more pix of our trip, from day 3.

This was the view from the deck of the cabin we rented. We loved it! It's definitely a place we plan to go to again.

This is the main part of the cabin. It had a bedroom off either side, each with their own bathroom. It had a hot tub, which the kids loved, and a jet tub in our room, which we never got to enjoy. Too many kids around! We did, however, enjoy the two-sided gas fireplace. One side was in the room Adam and I slept in. I loved falling asleep with the fire burning. Lest you worry that we were being unsafe, it had a timer on it and would turn off automatically. Awesome!

Adam and the kids while we were hiking in the Smokies. It was very fun, but got a little chilly. Poor Hannah got very cold. The rest of us didn't seem to mind so much.

Ben had fun picking up the "star" leaves that his teacher talked about in his preschool class.

This picture was taken to prove that I really was there! I'm always the one behind the camera it seems. Once again, Ben has a star leaf.

Thanks to a really nice guy, we got this family shot. I love the mountains in the background!

The fall leaves were incredible, although I think we were there about a week to early. Now that we are in TN, I'm loving Fall again! It's my favorite time of year, I think.

Awwww! This picture makes my heart melt and brings back some great memories. (Including Ben's plumber bum! I had to keep pulling his pants up while he was on Adam's shoulders.)

We even got to see snow!! I love this shot with fall below and winter on top.

Another great shot of the snow.

We went to a place called Cade's Cove, where there used to be a little community. There are still cabins and so we got out to walk to one of the cabins and there were a bunch of deer in the meadow. Ethan and Ben decided they wanted to walk up to them and they actually got pretty close. I was amazed!

This is one of the cabins.

Sunset in Cade's Cove. It was so beautiful. I'm afraid the pictures don't do it justice.

Another shot of the sunset.

And... one final shot of the sunset.

On the way back to the cabin, Ben had fun making silly faces. What a cutie, even with Doritos all over his face!

Hannah, our sleeping beauty! After a day of whining about the cold, we realized she wasn't feeling well. She had a fever when we got back to the cabin and she and I stayed home the next day while Adam and the boys did some more hiking. Poor girl!

Stay tuned for days 4 and 5!!

Smokey mountains part 1

(The moose at the Wilderness at the Smokies resort)

About a week and a half ago we went to the Great Smokey Mountains for Fall Break. It was soooo much fun! It was great spending time with just our family, especially with Adam. In the past he hasn't had a lot of vacation time and the kids and I have had to do things without him, so it was a special treat to have him to ourselves for 5 days. The first night (Friday night) we stayed at this place called Wilderness at the Smokies, which is a hotel or resort with an indoor waterpark. We were able to swim for 2 days with our one night stay. We all had a blast!This is part of our room. It had a full kitchen that we should have used more than we did. I did manage to burn some popcorn in the microwave, however, which is why this picture is a little smokey. I thought for sure that the fire alarm and the sprinklers would go off, but thankfully they didn't! It smelled like burned popcorn for the rest of our stay.

Adam and the kids kicking back and watching a movie after swimming. This is where the kids slept. Adam found the movie TRON, which he loved when he was younger, and was so excited to share it with the kids. The story line is a bit confusing unless you know a little bit about how computers work, so the kids were a little lost and didn't enjoy it as much as he was hoping they would. Ethan finally caught on, I think. More than anything, I think they just enjoyed being with their dad. Here are the boys looking all cute and trying to stay warm while waiting for Hannah and Adam to come out of the water slide.

Here they are!

Now it's Ethan's turn!

The wave pool was a big hit also!

So this is what we did the first couple of days. I will add another post in a day or so with our third day, when we stayed at a cabin near the mountains and did some hiking. We had so much fun, there's just too much to share in one post. Besides, it takes me forever to post pictures. I don't think I'm doing it right. At least they're on here, though!

Moon Pie Owls

I made these cute little owls for a school bake sale a couple of weeks ago and will be making them for the kids class parties later this week. They are so simple and cute! All you need is a moon pie, 2 Oreo cookies - opened with white on one side (use other side for something else or eat it!), 2 brown m&m's, a candy corn, chocolate or halloween sprinkles, and melted chocolate to stick it all on with. Refer to picture for putting it all together.

FREE pattern

I love free things and this cute little pattern is free at http://www.twinstitchers.blogspot.com/. I can hardly wait to make mine. It looks so simple yet adorable. I just LOVE stitchery and now that the holidays are upon us I am enjoying making a few new things for myself and others!

Secret of Happiness is to be Thankful

I can't figure out how to post a video from youtube on here so you'll just have to click on the link to it. I feel like this guy is right on and I hate to admit that I'm a little guilty sometimes of what he's talking about. It was a good little reminder for me to be more grateful in all things.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzNrO54xsY&feature=related

The spice of life...

These photos are of our youngest son, Ben, who truly adds a lot of spice to our home - definitely our spiciest kid! Over the years he has kept us on our toes. The boy has eaten just about everything you can think of, truly! Even at age 4, I caught him drawing on the couch the other day with a crayon. I thought he'd outgrown that stage, but once again, he caught me by surprise. Don't get me wrong, he is absolutely adorable and has the cutest smile you'll ever see. He brings a lot of joy along with the spice. Here are a couple of recent photos of him.

The above pictures tell the tale of another Sunday with Ben. He went to church that day looking very normal. I helped him get dressed, so I know everything was on correctly. Whe we picked him up from his Sunbeam class, this is what he looked like. I looked at him and then I looked again, trying, at first, to figure out what didn't look right. It was obvious that his vest was on backwards, which wasn't a surprise at all, but that didn't seem like that was it. Then I turned him around to get a look at his back and immediately realized why it all looked so strange! Apparently he had been pulling his arms out of his sleeves and messing with his shirt, which eventually ended up backwards. What a character! I don't love spicey food, but I really love this spicey kid!!!

Mmmmm

I love the smell of homemade anything just baked. It so happens that I just pulled this streusel-topped banana bread and matching muffins out of the oven and the whole house smells so yummy.

Of course, there has to be opposition on all things and there does happen to be a negative side to yummy homemade goodies...

Shocking!

I know it is shocking that I am finally posting something new. I can't believe how long it's been since I put something on here. Sorry about that. I have no real good excuse, so I won't even try to give one.

I finally downloaded the pictures off of my camera, so, even though they go back a few months, I will get them on here so you can see what we've been up to since we moved here.

My neighbor actually took all of these pictures. The first two were taken from her deck and it looks into our backyard. For those of you who have been asking me to post pictures of our house, this will give you an idea what part of our yard looks like at least. I absolutely love the deer and am excited that they are around.

I'm excited for the black mail value of the picture below! Ben was playing dress up at my neighbor's house and this is what they came up with. So hilarious, but very cute!