CONFUSING WORD USAGE

Now tell me, do these two look like they

could be easily confused??

There is something that stumps them every time I bring it up, which I try to do on a regular basis just to bug them, cause it's so darn funny.  Here it is.

Ask those 2 what this means.  They have to say it slowly, like this, "objects,   in mirror,  are closer,  than they appear".  It's the word "IN" that is confusing.  Anyway, this is something about them that makes me chuckle, I'm even laughing right now.

And when we were in Logan we saw this sign in a parking lot and Nicole confessed that when she was younger this also always confused her.

She wondered what it meant by "owners expense" did it mean emotional expense??  Then she confessed, when she was a freshman at BYU, she and a friend went to visit another friend, they happened to still be parked in the parking lot when it was after hours.  When they went to get in the car, it was gone.  They found out that it had been towed away.  After paying a hefty fee, they were able to pick up the car and go home.  That's when she figured out the sign, it does indeed mean emotional expense not to mention monetary expense.   She kept that little story to herself for 2 1/2 years.  Good job Nicole, I'm glad you took care of it yourself.  There are some things that it's best I don't know about, wait, did I just say that?  Scratch that, I NEED to know everything.  haha.

THANKSGIVING IN WASHINGTON 2010

Guess what was on my to-do list today.  Wash the towels, clean the bathrooms, work on a sewing project for the ward Christmas party.  This is what I've done, put the towels in the washer and blog.  Sigh.  It's okay right, I really need to catch up on the happenings over the last couple of months.

For the 3rd year in a row we've gone to Washington to spend Thanksgiving with Brit, Shared, Ethan and Kylie.  Thanks you guys for letting us come invade your home and a HUGE thanks to Ethan and Kylie for playing musical beds.  We love you guys.

Ethan and Kylie had fun lounging on Nicole and stacking pillows on her.

Here they are showing off their jumping skills.  It was fun until Ethan landed on his nose.

Every time Missy was asleep, which is all of the time, Kylie would get on the floor next to her and say "Missy, wake up".

SOME CUTE PICTURES OF ETHAN:

SOME CUTE PICTURES OF KYLIE:

Thanks Cockcroft family  for showing us a good time.  We miss you already.

EPHRAIM, UTAH

On October 14th over UEA we headed to Ephraim to check out Snow College.  Steph is thinking she might like to major in music and Snow has a really good music program. I've never been there before and it's a super small town, they only have one traffic light  and the big place to shop is Walmart.  Here are a few highlights of the campus.

Don't ask me why, but at the time it seemed like a good idea to take a picture of the drinking fountains and then a picture of Steph and Erica getting a drink????????

After our visit we headed to Provo to pick up Nicole and take her to dinner at our favorite Mexican dive to celebrate her half birthday, since she'll be in Russia in April on her legit birthday

That was 2 very very fun day trips in October. Score!!!



OCTOBER TRIP TO LOGAN

As usual I have some catching up to do, so here I go, I hope I can keep up the momentum.  In early October on a Saturday, the family went on a day trip to Logan.  In all honesty, it was a food trip.  We started with an early lunch at our favorite place, Maddox, in Brigham City.  This is not a good picture cause I forgot to take a picture so I clicked one in the car driving by on the way home.

After a yummy lunch of fried chicken we headed up the canyon hoping to take some pictures of the fall leaves.  We were a few weeks to early but we did get a few good pictures.

After driving through Logan canyon we headed to the Gossner Cheese Factory where we found some fun and interesting things to buy, like the whipping cream in the boxes that can be stored in your food storage, it only has about a 4 month shelf life though, but I've used it and it's good.

Next we headed to Steve's favorite Chinese restaurant for his favorite Tiny Spicy Chicken.  It was strange, the tiny spicy chicken makes Steve's cheeks (the ones on his face) tingle, and it made Nicole and I have a full blown case of the hysterical giggles.  I wonder what spices are in that chicken.  It took about 15 tries to get this picture cause I could not stop laughing.

In the background behind Steve's head is our waiter.  In our fits of laughter we were thinking that it would be so funny if he wanted to come over and take our picture, and guess what, he did.

All of us were trying so hard not to laugh.

Next we headed back to Salt Lake and made a little stop at Iceberg for ice cream.  See, I told you it was a food trip.  We ALL had a ton of fun together.

OOPS, MORE ERICA BIRTHDAY PICTURES

I totally forgot to put these birthday pictures on.  So one of the highlights of the summer was in July my Dad planned a little family reunion.  Jeffrey came from Washington, Roger and Katheryn and family came from Pennsylvania, and Bruce, Jamie and family also came from Pennsylvania.  And then we were so lucky to have Britney, Shared, Ethan and Kylie drive down from Washington to be here too.  I am not normally a picture taker so I totally forgot to take my camera on the days that we all got together.  But Steve did remember to take his camera the day we celebrated Jeffrey and Erica's birthdays.  In years past we always had birthday celebrations for the girls with family birthday parties.  The grandparents and whatever aunts, uncles and cousins were around would come.  Well, it just so happens that Erica's birthday is on July 12th and Jeffrey's birthday is on July 14th, so we would usually have them blow out candles together at the extended family birthday celebration.  And that's exactly what we did this summer at our family reunion.

Here are some pictures getting ready to light the candles, lighting the candles, and blowing out the candles.

CONFERENCE WEEKEND

I have a lot of good memories from Conference Weekends from the past.  When my mom was alive many many times we would get together with my Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins on Saturday night.  Everyone would bring potluck and we would eat and then the men would go to Priesthood session together while the women and girls stayed home and would work on quilts together.  This year our family decided that we would carry on the tradition.  It was me, Steve, Erica, Nicole, Stephanie, my Dad, my niece Rebecca and Kortney and her husband Clayton.  (Kortney was Nicole's roommate for 2 years at BYU).  We had some serious fun.  First we ate spaghetti for dinner with Steve's famous spaghetti sauce, then the guys went to Priesthood while us girls tied a Halloween quilt for my cute niece Rebecca.

When the guys got home we had a dessert bar.  It was tons of fun sitting around the table eating, talking and laughing a lot.  Thanks to everyone who was there for making it a memorable Saturday Conference evening.

Here's Erica ready to eat.

Clayton, Kortney, and Nicole.

Before we ate.

After we ate.

 There's a package of saltine crackers on the table because we thought it would be fun to do the "Saltine Cracker Challenge".  In case you don't know what that is, it's where you try to eat 6 crackers, and swallow them in 1 minute without taking a drink.  Nobody was sure how many actual crackers you had to try to eat in the challenge but I just looked it up and it's 6.  If I remember right I think Clayton ate 7, none of the girls got past 5 and I only ate 3.  It was hard not to laugh while we were eating them.

 Erica is 25 years old this year!

I feel pathetic.  I haven't posted since April, now it seems to overwhelming, but I need to do it.  First things first.  Erica turned 25 on July 12th.  It was an especially fun birthday this year because Brit, Shared, Ethan and Kylie were here on account of a family reunion that my Dad put together. Here are some pictures of Erica opening her presents.  Kylie was very involved and very excited, she handed Erica her presents and then was excited to see what she opened.

OPENING PRESENTS

And here is a cute picture of Ethan with Erica as she's opening a present from her Visiting Teacher.

CAKE MAKING

Erica and Kylie had fun watching me make the cake and frosting.

And Kylie especially had fun licking the beaters.

BLOWING OUT THE CANDLES

And last but not least, blowing out the candles so we can eat the cake.

Happy Birthday Erica, we all love you so incredibly much.  Thank you for being in our family and being the perfect example of love and patience