Thanksgiving Improvement

This year was not as bad as past years have been for our Thanksgiving celebration. I even baked for it and made Oreo truffles and Crack bars. The division of labor was better and people seemed a bit happier than usual. That's success right there! We had the monthly family birthday party afterward to celebrate Nate, Brett, and Jeremy.

 

Black Friday started early with what is now called Gray Thursday. Lori and Cody went and hit the sales and left a sleeping Ari at home...sleeping for 20 min that is. She decided she wanted to get up after that and pulled some pretty sad faces during the course of the evening. I did not get the TV I wanted. :-(  I need to pull some Ari faces now.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandma Backlund's birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year. She went and ate at Sherry's, but when she got back to our house, I pulled out my cello and played In the Garden for her. She sang along for the two verses I played. I thought it turned out nice!

Shaken, Not Stirred

The couple missionaries in my parents ward were asked to put on the Thanksgiving dinner for their Spanish ward. As my parents are the diligent ones for that, they begged me to come down and help them do this dinner. Taylor and Kevin were also recruited and Lori even came with Ari. The sister missionaries were a huge help too. It was A LOT of setup and cleanup and was probably the first time in that ward that I felt used instead of appreciated. It didn't help that when one of the ward members spoke to me, I was called the 'grandota', meaning the big, huge girl. I may be taking a break from this ward for awhile now.

 

Saturday, my friend Melissa came over and cut and straightened my hair before I headed to the movies with mom, dad, Cody, Lori, and Ari (who doesn't make a peep when she has her noise-cancelling headphones on!). We saw the new James Bond movie which I thought was really good...except for an uncomfortable moment when Javier Bardem's bad guy character made a partial pass at Bond. That was just weird. I had to send Jodie a picture of me after the movie and told her in my text that I'd just caught dad ogling my chest. Her response? "Hahahhaha-was gonna say ew. But that's hilarious." I do love this sweatshirt. French Connection United Kingdom, baby!

 

 

Today I got a new calling at Church. I am now Relief Society 4's pianist. There are five Relief Society's and 3 Elder's Quorums in my ward.

Twilight Ends at Last

My brother, Dana, won a bunch of tickets to go see the final movie in the Twilight saga at it's pre-showing before it's released tonight at midnight. I battled the rush-hour traffic to make it to PG and had dinner with my mom before heading to the Thanksgiving Point Theatre. While eating dinner, mom and I heard a funny noise. She said that she didn't know where most of the noises in her house come from anymore. I insisted that it was the garage door latching. She denied this claim. To prove I was right, I got up and opened the door into the garage...at the exact same moment that my brother-in-law, Brett, was reaching for the door to come in from the darkened garage. Needless to say...it may have scared me just a little. Okay, maybe more than a little. In fact, I may have sprayed the cracker that I was in the process of eating all over the kitchen. Mom laughed so hard there were tears. And at the end of it, what does she say? 'NOW how do you feel about being right?!' It was pretty humorous.

 

The whole evening was a success in my book. It was a free movie, we got gift bags entering the theatre which had $5 gift cards in each one that you could use in any Megaplex theatre, my number was drawn in the pre-showing raffle and I won a camouflage hat (not as cool as Dana's $15 iTunes gift card, but Micah is going to seriously love this hat!), Ari sported her noise-cancelling headphones and was quiet the entire show, and it was a good movie! What more can you ask for?

Winter at Last!

The meterologist broadcast snowy conditions for this past weekend. It ended up snowing non-stop in Salt Lake all day Friday. I petitioned all day at work to be let out early, but the roads were still warm enough that the snow wasn't piling up there even though it was everywhere else. Turns out the general authorities let all their secretaries go early but everyone else had to stay. :-( 

 

As this was my first weekend home in quite some time, I decided to make the most of it. I slept 10 1/2 hours Friday night, took a two hour soak in the bathtub, and then made a run to Sweet Tooth Fairy to pick up a caramel apple for Dana for his birthday. The snow was really piled up by this point but I made it safely on the roads still. It was a lovely day. Especially since I'd picked myself up a Red Velvet Cupcake...

 

Sunday I was supposed to drive down after Church to Pleasant Grove for the combined family bday party. My Church was cancelled for the day though because of the bad weather (it was still snowing). I couldn't get ahold of anyone though to see if the party was cancelled too so I decided to brave the roads and make the journey. Turns out that once you hit 4500 South, it was clear roads and skies. By the time I got to PG, there was hardly even a skiff of snow in the yards! It was a completely different world. I'm glad I got the snow though because winter is my favorite time of year! The family party was fun and I spent the night afterward and drove up to work this morning from Utah County. I got in some good time with mom.

 

Tonight I pulled the cello out to start practicing a song for grandma's birthday next week. It's pretty much been a year since I played last and the total time that I played last year was really only about 4 to 5 months. Four months really. So, it was like starting over from scratch again. I even had to google what note the strings are supposed to be so I could tune them correctly! Then I went through all my old books to re-teach myself the notes and then played. It was almost two hours total and I pretty much relearned the cello completely. I could play grandma's song by the end of the practice session, but I'm going to have to keep practicing to make it perfect. Made my string finger SORE though!

The snow piling up when it was still early in the weekend.
Two of us shoveled twice Sunday morning and it still needed
it again so the third roommate did it that afternoon!

Lori and Cody heard about the Zabel's rubber spider in the bed trick so
they tried the rubber mouse tactic. Made me laugh so hard when I saw it!

I love Sudoku and a co-worker sent this Samurai
version to me. I finished it in two hours. Yay!

 

Catch Up

Since this week was just more of the usual now that I've finally gotten caught up at work from before my Alaska trip, and extra-curricular activities slowed down a bit too, I thought I would take the chance to catch up on some pictures that I thought were super cute and missed putting them in earlier in my blog.  I love Jeffrey's pink kissy lips! And the boys were all trying to raise one eybrow without much success. Either I was winked at, scowled at, or was on the receiving end of some pretty funny looks!

 



Did I mention that for my birthday, the Zabel boys drew things that reminded them of me or of both us on coasters? They are on display in my room. Also, I found this picture of a bearded winter cap. It's called a Beardo and I wish they weren't $45 because I want to get one for Jeremy and Nate so bad!

 

 

Cowboy Church

Cowboy Poetry has been in Heber this past weekend. To wrap up the event, they do an event on Sunday called Cowboy Church where all the performers sing religious songs or tell religious stories. Jenny got mom, dad, grandma Backlund, and I tickets to attend with her family. Brett went a little early and saved us seats. Micah had a drawing on display during the weekend that he had submitted. He was the winner of the contest and received $50 for it! The show was SO good! I had tears just pouring down my face when one of the cowboys sang How Great Thou Art. The Bar J Wranglers were the main act and did a great job. They always make me laugh! I loved seeing Nate helping mom walk out to the car afterward and Jeremy and Brett helped grandma. They're such good boys (Brett included)!

 

 

Traveling South Again

I've decided to do a more personal approach towards birthday gifts for the nieces and nephews. Bryan and Bailey were my first guinea pigs. I drove down to Pleasant Grove Friday night and picked up Bailey and Bryan and took them to McDonald's for an ice cream. Turns out they hadn't had dinner so I also got them a hamburger and then let them play on the playground. I was going to let them play for as long as they wanted, but after there weren't any signs of letting up an hour and a half later, I rounded them up and we headed home.

 

Today is Dana's birthday and also Bryan's baptism. What a good present for a father! Mom gave the baptism talk. She said she never gets to just sit back and relax at these events. I mentioned that it's because it's the grandchildren choosing who speaks and they always want someone special to do it like grandma. We met at Dana's afterward for lunch and a chat. They didn't look like they were going to be playing games so Lori and I took off and went to see the movie Taken 2. Lori had gotten some noise-cancelling headphones for Ari (my suggestion) and we decided to try it out. She was quiet the entire movie! Plus she looked super cute like she was out on the town with the girls and enjoying it. Turns out the family ended up playing games afterall, but oh well because we had fun at the movies!

 

I was taking the picture of Bryan and Bailey photobombed us!

Oh yeah!