Our new home

Here's a picture of the house we are going to be renting in New Haven:
I'm pretty excited. I think it will be a really good fit for us. It is on a nice little cul de sac in a pretty nice neighborhood in Hamden. The elementary school is a couple of blocks away and I think it will work really well for us. The rent is great for the neighborhood and there is a little forest behind the house. Around the corner is a Christmas tree farm. Anyway, I think it will be a lot of fun. I forgot to take pictures of the inside of the house, but it's pretty comparable to what we have here. It's about 2200 sqft, four bedrooms upstairs and then a living room, family room, kitchen and dining room on the main floor. THere is also an unfinished basement. It is a little more run down than some of the houses we looked at. Run down is not really the right word, The house is about 30 years old and it's obvious that none of the cabinents/bathroom tile etc has been updated in that time. It's clean, just old. The carpet looked good though (it's been replaced), and the rent is amazing for the area, so I think it will work well for us. We looked at some pretty crazy houses on our house hunting trip. One was built in 1760. It was absolutely gorgeous, except for the wavy floors and cielings. Also some of the carpet was pretty trippy. It was really neat though because the fireplace had a place for hanging a big pot on to cook and a little bread oven built into the side. It had a lot of other cute period woodworking pieces as well, like an actual water closet that was probably an actual closet at one point. It was just a little too old for a new baby, but the five acres it was on were beautiful too. I'm not sure Justin will ever forgive me for putting the ax on that house, but it had to be done for the safety of the children. Another house we looked at had a mouse in it that attacked our real estate agent. It was pretty funny (after all the screaming and Justin managed to lock the mouse in the bathroom. ) Another one literally reeked of urine and other pet odors. Anyway, I think we made the right choice. I'm getting excited for Connecticut,but I will really miss all of our friends here. I can't believe we only have about 7 weeks left here. We are going to be so busy up untill the minute we leave. Every single weekend is already booked with sleepovers, soccer games, dance recitals, temple trips, garage sales and fundraisers. Whew! I hope I can get everything done before we have to leave.

I'm still serving as the young women president and we are doing a fundraiser May 8th for girls camp. We are selling cinnamon rolls and chocolate covered strawberries for mother's day. I thought this would be pretty low key, but we already have 28 dozen cinnamon rolls orderd and 21 dozen strawberries. That's more than I thought we would get. It's great because we will make more money, but wow it's going to be so busy getting all those orders filled. We are just now realizing that we might not be able to just run down to the store the day before and pick up that many strawberries. Eeek! My 1st counselor is going to talk to the people at Costco and see if they can make sure thay have that many for us to buy from them. Luckily, my secretaries mom is a cook at a local elementary school and has offered to let us use their kitchen, huge industrial mixer and recipe that makes 200 cinnamon rolls at a time. Wow, this is going to be crazy! I'm excited though, I think it will go well. I love young womens, but it is so busy. It seems like I'm constantly doing something for it either preparing a lesson, planning a stake dance, visiting our inactive girls, planning a mutual activity . . . . the list is endless and it always seems like I could be doing more. I will really miss it when we're gone : ( The girls are so much fun.

Wing ski day at Bogus Basin

Once again we went to the wing ski day this year. It was Feb. 5th. Justin took the boys up on the bus that left at 7:00. They skiied all day and then met up with the rest of us to go tubing at 4:00. This year everyone was tall enough to go, but Michelle just refused. Each kid has to be in their own tube. She might have gone if she could have been in my tube, but she was not into it. Nathan went though. He had a lot of fun. Justin and I took turns walking around with Michelle. After sledding we went out to eat at Applebees. As we were pulling in I heard Joey mumble from the back seat. " I guess we could eat at Craplebees." It made me laugh really hard, because it was a direct quote from Uncle Danny. What a bad influence! J/K. Joey's never eaten there before, and we consider it a "nice" restuarant. Especially to go to with all of the kids. It was a really fun family day, and I think Joey wants to go back to "crapplebees" again. (Not that I endorse that kind of language. ) Michelle making faces. She did not want to go down the hill.

NAthan throwing snowballs. I think he thought that was more fun than actually tubing.

Joey and John getting ready to go backwars spinning down the hill.

Family picture at the top of the hill. It was a fun day.

Birthdays!

I'm still in catch up mode. We are almost finished with birthday season at my house. YAY! Joey's was in November and John and Samantha both have February birthdays. Joey had a football party, John a lego star wars one, and Samantha had a high school musical one. I love throwing parties, but have to admit they wear me and my budget out. Each year I keep trying to downsize, but my kids and hubby love the fun so we get caught up again.

I'll start with Samantha's party because hers was the most recent. She wanted a high school musical theme. It's so funny because she is so girly. She insisted on making her own invites. They were really cute. We made little backstage passes with all the info for her party on them and hand delivered them to all of her friends. I made her limit it to 12 and only invite girls. That was hard for her. It was a total girl party. We brought out all of the girl costumes and I borrowed a few from my friend Connie. When the girls arrived they got to pick out a beautiful dress and then came in for hair and makeup. They got to wear makeup and put some temporary streaks in their hair. (which they loved). THen we made picture frames out of foam and took a picture of each girl on the red carpet. Then we hooked up the karaoke machine (thanks again Connie) and sang through the high school musical sound track. Most of the girls sang and danced, but a few ran off to play. It's funny to see all the different personalities in kids. After the singing we ate pizza and corn on the cob, then had a bling hunt and did cake, ice cream and presents. It was actually a pretty low key party (especially compared to John's party a few week s before. Girls just behave so much better than boys). Nathan sporting a blonde wig, purple cape and glasses plays with the high school musical tent and dance pad that one of my friends lent me. Thanks Amber! It was a hit!

Making picture frames. I happened to have a bunch of foam in my craft closet. This was a great project to get rid of a lot of it.

The birthday cake. Samantha had very specific instructions on what it should look like. She really wanted red and purple, but pink was the best I could do. I'm actually very proud of this cake. My decorating jobs usually don't turn out so great, so I was really pleased with this one.

Next, I'll describe John's party. I couldn't find my camera at the time so you'll just have to use your imagination. He had a lego star wars birthday party. We put out our huge pile of legos and gave the kids 15 minutes to build a star cruiser/ racing pod. I set up our folding table to be a ramp so they could race. That was a bad idea because Michelle kept usig it as a slide and broke a part of it. I think it still works, but it's a little less stable than it used to be. The kids made some pretty neat things. Once again, it's always so interesting to see which kids really love that kind of thing and which ones are ready to move on to the next activity after 5 minutes. After the pod racing we made light labers. Each kid got a 3 ft piece of insulating foam for pipes, it looks kind of like a swimming noodle only a little skinnier. They then got to choose red or blue duct tape to cover their light saber with to make it a light saber. I also had metalic or black duct tape for the handle. THose that really got into it made little buttons to put on it as well. They turned out really cool, however anyone who knows 9 year old boys, should know better than to give light sabers to 8 boys and expect them not to hit each other. I expected them to hit each other, but not to hurt each other. I let them run outside and fantasy play, but ended up having to run out and stop and take everyone's light saber away as one of the kids was getting hurt and obviously not having fun anymore. For the next game, Justin dressed up as Darth Vader (thanks again Connie for the costume). Each Jedi was supposed to take a turn being blind folded and trying to hit Darth Vader with his light saber as he ran around and taunted them. Justin was a really good sport. He got hit a lot. I had to hold onto the sabers except the kid whose turn it was, Even so, it seemed like every time I turned around some group of kids had managed to get their light sabers back and were hitting each other with them. Finally we just put them all up high and ate padawan pizza and gungan grapes, kenobi carrots and yoda soda. I made a cool cake that looked like a light saber. I was really proud of it. We ate cake and ice cream did presents, and the boys played football outside until their parents got there. Boys are so rowdy. But, they had a great time. Grandma and Grandpa Stoker had come up for the weekend, so they helped with the party too.

Next we have Joey's party. He had a football/sports party. It was an excellent fit for that group of boys. THey have so much energy. As they came in they each made a jersey with permanent markers and cheap walmart t shirts. Then they played all sorts of different sport games. They did an obstacle course, the dizzy dash, chicken wrestling and shooting bottles with nerf guns. The best was chicken wrestling. We put duct tape on the carpet in the living room to make a ring that everyone had to stay in. Then each person had to grab onto their ankles with their hands and try to knock people over or butt them out of the circle. It was pretty funny and not very violent because you couldn't use your hands or feet. They asked to play that over and over. After food and cake the kids went outside and played football. I bought flags at the dollar store for them to use, but of couse they wouldn't. They are all about playing tackle. I don't allow it, but it seems they are always playing it whenever I turn my back. There's a big field behind my house so there is often a group of boys out there playing football.

Here's my football cake. Yes I'm proud of it! I know all of you cake masters could do better, but I'm happy with it.

Here's a little clip of Samantha's birthday party. Notice the girl in brown who looks like she's being forced to be there. It cracks me up. She is much more of a tom boy and this party wasn't really her thing, but Samantha loved it. It was exactly what she wanted.

sledding with the young women

Today I'm playing catch up. I use this blog as my journal/scrapbook. I just don't have enough time to do a traditional one and eventually I plan on making a book of this blog. So, here are some photos from our YM/YW combined activity for January. We went sledding up in the mountains towards Fairfield. It was only about 45 minutes away which is amazing because there was absolutely no snow in Mt. Home on this day. We actually really lucked out. The weather in Mt. Home was awful, cold and windy and threatening to rain. I almost cancelled, but luckily the mountains sheilded us from the wind and for the 3 hours we were there, there was no precipitation. It did start snowing just as we left, but that was it.

In addition to the sledding we had chili and hot chocolate thanks to the huge stove the ym brought. They also chopped wood and made a fire for us. It was great. The day was really perfect! I think everyone had a lot of fun.






Joseph, John and Dallin Brown. I konw, they're not ym or yw, but my first counselors husband is deployed so she had to bring her son, and mine just begged to go. I'm glad I took them. They probably had more fun than anyone else there.

Brother Powell tending the fire. As you can tell, we just set up right on the side of the road. We were at Little Camas, a public area for hunting etc. Our ym leaders are avid hunters/outdoorsmen. It's so handy having them around because they know the area and are great fire builders.

A few of the young women eating chili and hot chocolate. MMMM! It was a great day!

Sweet, sweet Samantha

I just have to write a little about Samantha. She is such a good example to me. Yesterday when we were getting ready for church, she kept asking me if she could invite a friend of hers to come with us. This friend's parents are members, but are inactive. I know her mother, but we are not really close. Honestly, I really didn't want to call and invite her because I was pretty sure the answer would be no. It was just a few hours before church, and I kept coming up with other excuses as to why we shouldn't call her. Finally, I decided just to do it to get Samantha off my back. To my suprize her mother was almost glad to have her come. She did great at church today, and when I dropped her off she begged her mom to let her come again next week. I was so tickled that it all worked out. Samantha is a good example to me.

On to other things: We are now the proud owners of an 8 passenger van. How much was it you ask? $155. That's right! O.k. we didn't buy a whole new van, but we bought a new middle seat that seats 3 instead of two. I found it at the auto salvage lot so it was pretty cheap. (a new one from the dealer was over $500.) I'm just pleased as punch that it all worked out so well. The color is the same and everything. YAY me! Now we can save all our money for a house in Connecticut rather than a new car to fit the new baby. YAY!

Nathan and Michelle

Right now I'm home all day with Nathan and Michelle and I always have little things that I notice about them that I tell myself I'm going to write down, but never seem to have the time. This post is dedicated to them and some of the funny things they do.
Right now, Nathan is obsessed with cutting things. Everyday he asks me if he can learn to cut something new. It was so annoying at first, because, really I don't trust him with knives, but he has proven himself to be pretty good at it (supervised of course). One day when I was making stew he wanted to help with everything! He cut up almost all of the vegetables for me. It was pretty awesome. He didn't survive the onion though. He's such a funny boy. When he decides that he wants to do something and that it's worth it to follow all the rules, he will be the most obedient, sweet, charming child. . . . I love Nathan.

Now on to Michelle. She is so different from Samantha, it's mind boggling. When Samantha was 2 she would only wear dresses, even in the winter. I had to beg and bribe her to wear pants. Michelle is just the opposite. She hates dresses. Every Sunday we battle it out so she will go to church in a dress. It just cracks me up, because I really thought they would be more similar. She also really hates having her hair done. So did Samantha, but at least when it was finished she could appreciate they way it looked in the mirror and would keep the bows in. Not Michellle! However, Michelle still loves make up and she loves being told that she's beautiful. Maybe not when she's wearing a dress, but when she picks out a sparkly top and anything with Dora on it she beams when she wears them. I love Michelle.

Christmas 2009

Our Christmas Eve this year was really special. I decided to do a shepherd's dinner since it was just our family. WE all dressed like shepherds and ate dinner on a blanket under the Christmas tree with the lights off and the tree lights on. I made roasted beef kebabs, pita bread and hummus, oranges, and rice. It probably wasn't that authentic, but I was trying to make something that the shepherds might have eaten that evening. During dinner we talked about the shepherds and a little about what their lives were like. After dinner Samantha came dressed as an angel and quoted the bible "for unto you this day . . ." During dinner I had hidden our "manger" (baby cradle) in one of the bedrooms. I put a nightlight above it. The lights were all off and the kids had to find the star and the baby Jesus. It was really neat. Then we went back downstairs and read the rest of the story. It was a really sweet experience. I think the kids had fun too.

Earlier in the day we finally put together the gingerbread house I made. I made the gingerbread from scratch, but I didn't measure very well and one of the roof pieces didn't fit quite right and fell and broke. We had fun eating it anyway, but it wouldn't win any contests.




Of course, you read my other post and know that Michelle was making mischeif later on Christmas eve. Christmas itself was really relaxed. We ate, played with toys and watched movies. Then a few days later we drove to Washington to see my parents and siblings. We only had a few days, but it was a lot of fun. I'm just kicking myself because I forgot to bring my camera. Both Maia and I are pregnant so it would have been fun to get a picture! Too late now! Next time I see her, she will have already had her baby.