Twlight weekend

Forks weekend

I am not done with my girls weekend in WA but I had to at least start my post about it! Mostly because Celeste told me I had to, hi Celeste I will be home soon! This has been a riot! I have laughed soo hard I've cried on several occasions! The area is so beautiful we were at the very tip of the united states, I looked across the water toward Victoria, where I will have to go next time.  It is so green, the dirt is green, moss everywhere, slugs the size of my hand!  we ate at the Bella Italia restaurant where the characters from our book had their first date and the food was soo amazing! The best food I can remember having in a long time! We got three desserts and passed them around which finished off Port Angeles beautifully. Forks WA is as small as it is described in the book and you couldn't pay me enough to live there full time. The area was gorgeous but there was no mall and NO movie theatre!! The grocery store was also their hardware/ clothing store!! Eck. We went to the midnight party to get our copies of the Breaking Dawn book and then Becky and I read the first chapter in the car with the light from our cellphones as we drove to the bed and breakfast where we stayed. We all read until 2:30 am and then were up by 7 to read again. We stopped only to eat breakfast and then drive to the La Push Indian reservation and read on the beach and could imagine Jacob behind every tree!! It was fun but stressful to be reading with 4 other women! Mom would gasp or laugh out loud Bex would say DON"T SAY ANYTHING! So we tried to read as fast as we could so nobody could tell us anything too fast!! Once in awhile I would ask what page everyone was on and if someone was close to me we would smile or grimace knowingly to each other. I won't ruin it for anyone but I LOVED the book. I was happy, estactic, stressed, worried, every possible emotion was used in the book and I loved it! We were done with the book by about 4 pm on sat and we immediately started again. I've now been through it twice and it's about 750 or so pages. Good stuff!! We are leaving with lots of inside jokes about chasms, hamsters, little dam road, and the pictures we did not get!! The pictures I did get I will post as soon as i get home from this marvelous trip! I feel rested and ready to attack school starting next week!! But only because i have to, because it really is too soon!!

Sunday dinner

This is a small sampling of the dishes after the Sunday family dishes with the Johnstons. Every Sunday someone has dinner at their house after church. You have Bill and Susan, Kyle and Olivia, Ryan right now, Mike and Tiff with Porter, Lily, Cooper and Maddie, then our 5. It's fun and chaotic and I admit stressful to me. Tonight I did spaghetti which needed 3 packages of spicy Italian sausage, 3 jars of Paul Newman's marina sauce, 1 batch homemade rolls, 1/3 of which i made into Cinnamon rolls, stuffed mushrooms and salad. And I skimped out and only served milk or ice water, no strawberry lemonade for anyone!! Unfortunately Sunday dinner has become you cook it you clean it. This is partly our fault. When we eat dinner at Bill and Susan's we have to leave a short time after dinner because they have 2 dogs and Kirk can't breathe at their house. So we leave before the dishes are done, because everyone like to talk and hang out after dinner and not do dishes for an hour or more. SO I think since we always leave the dishes undone now everyone thinks they can leave with dishes undone. I try to be smart and have a totally empty dishwasher when the dinner starts so I can immediately load every ones plates and then run it. And I must say a big thank you to my mom who got me the Mormon cookbook for my birthday and because of I finally successfully made rolls in GA!!! That has not happened since moving here, i tried recipes from the Clarks, Betty Crocker, Martha Stewart and the JOy of Cooking. Nothing broke the curse of my homemade rolls until now!! So thank you!!! And it ended well everyone left except for Kyle and Olivia so we taught them Five Crowns and had a blast!! Although Kirk had to help AJ, Elle, Connor and Kyle!! Olivia ended the game with only 36 points! I've never seen anything like it! I had like 140!

ON a side note, I really think I need to cut another inch of my hair!! I like it better today then the first day where it was so straight. The funny thing is, because it hits at my shoulders it looks almost as if the hair is just behind me, so not one person noticed it at church or the family dinner tonight!! And may i note that I even lead the music in church, so EVERYONE saw me!! And not one person noticed!! IS that a good thing or bad?? I was kinda hoping for more dramatic then that!! Oh well guess I'll go clean the dishes!!

Haircut

Alright I really needed a new haircut. I wanted drastic I admit and this is only halfway there. My bangs were cut sooo odd last time that this is all he could do with them, but I am really happy with the shorter length and I get the feeling I am going to want it shorter really soon!

Of course it's one thing to like a haircut after they blow and style it, the real test is if I like it after I wash and style it myself!!

Random day in July

Busy week midsummer!! I was putting the music numbers up in the chapel on Sunday morning a mere 5 minutes before Church started when I looked down at the program and saw Matt listed as the youth speaker!! I excused myself from the Bishopric member who was speaking to me walked down gave MAtt and Kirk my scriptures and a pad of paper and sent them to the foyer! Matt was aksed to speak on Thursday night and totally forgot about it, didn't tell me or anything! I have been waiting for him to be asked so we, i mean he could prepare this wonderful talk and i would be so proud! Alas. But he came in right after the prayer sat on the stand and gave a wonderful marvelous talk with no notes or anything!! He told a mission story kirk told him quoted a scripture and bore his testimony, it was awesome!! I was very proud of him and relieved, I know a lesser tween would have run from the building!! He definatly has his fathers public speaking charisma!
But to make up for this wonderful moment he spoke very rudely to me last night and has spent the day grounded. During which I have had the wonderful motherly opportunity to turn off the power switch going to his room and caught him taking out his screen to see if he could get out of his 2nd story window! It was a fun, FUN Fun day that I am quite sure I should win mother of the year with! Anyone want to nominate me???

Check out my Slide Show!

Vacation

Well it was a eventful vacation for the kids and I to WA, OR, and ID! We had a great time and enjoyed getting away from our southern heat wave! I've been thinking of our funniest moments and it is down to 2 easily!! Elle wanted her cousin Brig to sleep in the same room as herself and her brothers so she asked me, " Can Brig sleep with me? I want him to sleep by me.. But not on me". Ric and I had to bite our lips very hard to keep from laughing and only Bard had a strong enough non laughing voice to say that sounds good Elle. The next is when Kirk flew out from his 4 days in Germany just to spend 2 with us, and he was taking a confrence call from work while we were playing on the beach. He was walking backward to help stop the wind from the phone, and he was talking very lawyerly and offical when he fell backward into a pit that Bard had dug and while falling screamed like a girl! It was awesome!! Needless to say I fell to the sand laughing and was unable to take a picture in time! Kirk recovered very nicely by saying, " I apologize I lost my train of thought, I fell in a hole". SOOO Funny! The kids loved seeing their great grandpa and I saw loads of cousins that I'm not sure even know me!

Sad to leave my family behind but good to be home! Connor is cuddling with his bird and AJ is set to get his lizards back today and Elle is running around with her smelly hamster that sadly surivied our absence!!