Yay, Jenny has joined the comment section! This is my big sister......well she isn't technically "bigger" then me, other then her ginormous spirituality! :)

I wish I could leave comments on her cute blog, so maybe she will set one up through blogger so I can leave comments about her reglar one (hint, hint).

I like your blog Jenny! Lots of interesting stuff going on in your family!

Now we just need Neita to get a blogger ID and we can be one happy on-line family! I think I like the blogs because I get to see pictures of my family members, and get a glimpse into their day to day life. Its also fun to see comments left on my blog, even if I don't have as many funny entries as Melanie.

Wonderful MOM

So, I just want to let everyone know that my mom got a blogger identity so she can leave comments. That means she loves me! I think Melanie and I have been pushing it the hardest, but she did it none-the-less. Hopefully it wasn't a painful experience for her. Maybe she will even..... blog (gasp!) as she has one foot in the door!

I do have to admit that when I saw that she had left a comment on Angela's blog I was a little jealous. Kicks back to the old middle sibling, sibling rivalry thingy (figures she would leave one on Angela's... youngests get everything), but once I checked my last post and saw her comment, I was ok :) Funny how that reaction came on so fast, little suprising as I thought now that I was all grown up things like that wouldn't bug me. Hmmmm this post turned into all about me again, funny how that happens.

I taught Sunday School lesson on 3Ne 16, 20-21 and (tried to) focuse on gathering and building/establishing Zion in our hearts, homes, etc. Seems to me that sibling rivalry=pride, which is NOT good. So, I'll have to continue to work on that!

Speaking of teaching Sunday school, that is definately one of the reasons I'm looking forward to "retiring" from the singles ward. Ward change is about the only way to get off from that calling. Its good for me, and I enjoy studying up on the lessons, but I get so dang nervous and scattered and flustered in front of peoples. Just ask my roommates how red my neck turned this last time!

Another thing about leaving the singles ward is I will be in a new temple district so I won't be serving there anymore after the Christmas break. This is both a relief and a sadness. It means I will have my Saturdays free again, and can probably travel easier on the weekends, but I will miss the strength and blessing its been in my life. Also, I will miss the wonderful sisters I work with who amaze me with their strength, literally! I'm quite a bit younger then most of my friends there, but they are in much better shape then me! I'm dead on my feet after a 5 hr shift and they do it several times a week and don't always take a dinner break. WOW! If I don't get a dinner break its hard for me to feel any spirit other then irritation! Also, since I've been there for almost 3 years now, I've gotten to do the Mandarin Chinese session on the first Saturday of every month (5:00pm session). That always makes my day! This last time I was really able to help out, all in Mandarin! My daily chinese speaking is pretty non-exsistant now, but I can do the temple and that is way cool!

This post is dedicated to my wonderful dad. He calls me every first Sunday of the month, even if I don't ever answer my phone. He helped mom set up the blogger comment thingy, and he is the greatest dad I have ever had!! Love ya dad!

Day After the Day After Haloween

Well, while I'm sitting here waiting for "Dinner in a Pumpkin" to finish cooking, I thought I would write a bit about Haloween (I know its not Haloween- so its too late for Dinner in a pumpkin, but I had so much fun, that I wanted to spread out the joy!). By the way it has been raining pretty constanty since last night, and its a dreary Sunday, but I like those!

I think our tree has just about lost all of its leaves now, and they are wet so it was good that we had Noah come over to jump in them Friday. I put Max in some leaves, and he seemed to like it.

We also picked our last pumpkin from the garden. i was hoping it would ripen some more, but its still cool, even if its mostly green. Its the biggest of the 4. After Sarah, Noah, and Max left for naps and other important pre-Haloween activites, Jamie and I carved our pumpkins (yes they are from my garden) first is her's then mine, plus an additional close up of mine because it is so cool!

We, well at least I, had fun decorating our house. I got a few things on sale including a pumpkin latern, tea light holder ghosts, hanging ghosts for our tree, a skeleton for our door (thinking of Gage), pumpkin bowls, gourds, and orange mini lights. Jamie got the spider web stuff and put it on our porch with the lights, and inside with some spiders. Very festive! I'm only sad that we didn't do it earlier so we could enjoy it for longer.


I don't mind that only two people came to our party, more food for us!!!! Actually as you may know, I'm not that social and so I was very comfortable with a small party. I'm glad Cathy came afterwards and she was a really good sport about bobbing for apples and eating left overs. I was careful this time to not over prepare too much food, but there is toooonnnnnssss of candy left at our house. And its mostly good candy like Snikers, Butterfingers, Almond Joy, Kitcats, whoppers, M&M's which means I want to eat it all! Pictures of me bobbing for apples, plus me and my roommates in our awesome costumes, us with our pumpkins, and me and Kate cheering for Eric as he bobbed for apples:

This party was not nearly so stressfull, one because I didn't try to mamke as much food, and two (and most importantly) Jamie baked all the cookies! We had sugar cookies, spider/bog monster cookes, and blood-eye cookes (actually cherry chocolate drop cookies). I made pumpkin 7-layer dip, and artichoke-spinach dip. I also tried to make a smokey Gouda dip that didn't work (still don't understand how it sperated like that....yuck!) but we didn't miss it. Our plan was to have a fire and roast hotdogs, and smores but as not too many people came we decided it wasn't needed. Too bad because

Cathy had brought over a lot of wood. I put the hotdog stuff in the freezer so we will have to do a roast later before it gets too cold. I also made Rootbeer and here is a picture of the fun process, along with our cute table the day after.

After our two guests left, and before Cathy stopped by, I went outside, and discovered how fun it is to run around in a cape. No wonder super hero's have them!!!!! It was suprisingly warm even in the light drisle of rain. I tried to catch a lucky leaf, but no luck that night. Thanks Jamie for the fun pictures, and all your help! You are my biggest fan!!!! oops reverse that.

For more pictures and commentary on Haloween see Jamie's blog (we did use mostly the same pictures so far warning!): http://jamesfarfar.blogspot.com/2008/11/halloween-noah-max-and-sarah-came-trick.html11/halloween-noah-max-and-sarah-came-trick.html

Late Thoughts

I have to get up early tomorrow. Thats one of my least favorite things in the whole world. Because of that, I find myself putting off going to bed which really doesn't make sense. It just makes the inevitable harder, but here I am still up and wanting to put off going to bed because it means I'm going to have to get up early.

Anyways, I was leaving a long comment on Melanie's blog when I thought to myself, "self, this is turning into a blog entry, so you should just write it down." So here it goes.

I've been reading on some of the blogs I follow that they are going private. Some are blogs of people that I grew up with and now live far far away and have lives very different from mine (ie married with kids). Many of them were good friends of my little sister who lets face it is way cooler then me and so had a lot more friends then me (thats why her middle name is "favorite") or siblings of people I do know etc.

I totally understand the wanting to go private. Who knows what wierdos out there right now are reading this. But frankly, if someone is going to stalk/murderate me, its most likely someone that I know (ie maybe someone who hates me because I took away their kid or something, or someone who thinks they love me because we had a conversation at institute once :) Its true that I don't link to others' blogs on my blog just in case. But I still must not understand all the reasons for people going private......

At any rate, it makes me sad when I'm not able to secretly follow someone's blog anymore. I guess its because then I don't feel obligated to leave comments if I don't feel like it. So maybe its because at the heart of it all, I'm really lazy! That is probably true, but I'm sad also because some blogs I only check on occasion or just stumble across briefly before they go private, I'd feel weird inviting myself onto someone's blog I only sort of know.

Well thats my ramble for now. I've been getting these headaches because I think my contact perscription needs to be upped, but I'm too busy right now to schedule it. Its only gotten bad this last week or so, but I'm having a tough time reading road signs, and I realized I'm squinting at the computer screen (hence the headaches at work?). I think I will try a new pair tomorrow just in case I got a bad one this last time.

Domestic?

So this week was very crazy busy. In many ways its good to be busy again, but its kind of stressful. This Saturday I was very busy but didn't get much done. I did Can some tomatoes which look pretty, but I only got 3.5 quarts. That was a lot of work for not much reward, nonetheless after canning those and making spaghetti sauce today, our tomato pile has gone down significantly. On a happier note, the grape jam fiasco actually wasn't as disasterous as previously recorded. Some how they set. Weird. Probably still tastes funny!

More news of the dehydrator: We've done many batches, but it seems as soon as one is done, that it gets eaten up. Interesting because we can do about 12 apples in a batch. Needless to say we are getting plenty of fiber in our house. So we also tried making some fruit leather with apples and grapes. I think I would like one with peaches and strawberries. Grape skins are a little bitter!

We went on a Sunday walk (Jamie, Kate, and I) up South Fork towards Big Springs. It was beautiful! The sky was so blue!

and we were following a beautiful stream most of the way. Maybe its because I grew up in the desert, but anytime I hear water I'm amazed. Its such a beautiful sound, and I just want to jump in. This water was cold so I only put a foot in.

We came up to a beautiful meadow where we took beautiful and silly pictures! It was a glorious fall afternoon that just made me happy to be alive. I sure like Jamie's camera!

This is me trying to catch a lucky leaf. I got one!

I picked 3 of our pumpkins today. Here is a picture of the mini pumpkin and a carrot from our garden!

Vegas...again

So, those of you who follow Melanie's blog know the reason I didn't update what my exciting plans were for the weekend. For those of you who don't, its because I made a suprise visit to Melanie to support her triathalon! I am very proud of her and she did awesome. I took good pictures (yes, self compliment). The drawback was getting up at 5:30!

This tri was more fun because I got to drive along the bike ride and cheer Melanie on at a couple of places I stopped. Its fun because I could tell when Melanie would be coming in because I recognized the people who she was near. There was one lady running in a fairly skimpy outfit who was (yes its possible) whiter then Melanie. She beat Melanie in the run, but it was easier to guess when Melanie would finish. The only annoying part of the whole race was the announcer guy.

He thught he was funny, but he was the only one laughing at his jokes. He even went off on this rant about how the Prius isn't a Green Vehicle, and even has a bigger carbon footprint then a Hummer. Not sure how he came to that one. But he was supposed to be just announcing the finishers. It went like this (anouncer in red, Emily's thought responses in black): Another LA Tri member- Joe Schmoe just finished good job Joe! I lived in Bellvue so I'm familiar with LA Tri, its my favorite Tri team, although later I moved to San Franscisco. I will be here with you until the last finisher comes off the course, then I have to hurry and catch a flight (Nobody Cares!). Hey, you all should come to my house for a party afterwards. HA HA HA (Huh? Nobody is listening, and nobody cares! Who is this guy?)

Anyways it was a beautiful day and it was really fun to suprise Melanie! Melanie didn't get as much studying done as she was supposed to, but I got through 4 books. That is my type of vacation!

Afterwards we took a nap, then spent some time in Melissa's hottube. The nice thing about being back is my own bed! I'm not supper excited about being cold in my house yet, but at least its hot chocolate season. I already bought 3 new varieties today.

Update

so i've been negligent in keeping up my blog. Sorry! Well I had fun that weekend with Melanie, Jared, Amy, and Gage. Gage is a cute kid and I like the way he always has a song to sing. It was even more fun to watch his parents when he was having a tough time! He and I seem to have the same opinion of the Belagio water show....IT ROCKS! Maybe next time he and I will just hang out there and everyone else can do something else. We had fun at the Spring Preserve, even though I had gone there on our sister's weekend this spring, I saw new things and it was fun showing Gage. I liked the animal part the best I think.

Us girls went to the relief society broadcast on Sunday with Melissa's stake. I think its a great idea to do it like that. I really enjoyed it and reminds me of how blessed I am, and that I need to do more good things in my life!


It took me awhile to recover from two weekends in a row in Vegas, but I'm back to my chipper happy self! Conference Weekend was also really good. I was sad when Angela wasn't able to come down, but maybe I got more out of conference that way =) I started (again) a quilting project. I'm cutting up old clothes to make into an easy quilt. However, I think I'm probably just going to end up with lots of square rags and not a quilt. It did keep me awake during conference and it is always fun to cut things up. I'm worried about sewing anything because my sewing machine is in open rebellion currently. Granted I haven't used it that much, but it does seem to be an especially contrary machine!


Couple of other fun things for this past weekend was picking up Jamie's wedding dress and picking out a tiara. As Jamie said, "Everyone should have a tiara." Ok maybe thats what I said, I think Jamie said something more along the lines of "It will be great for dress up!" More practical, but I think my sentaments are applicable. I took some fun pictures of Jamie in her kokopelli shirt, kahki's, a veil and a tiara, but forgot to push save after I took them.





I also went shopping with Jamie and Cathy up to the outlets at Park City. I guess I'm one of the few people that didn't know Park City was more then ski resorts. The trip up the canyon was beautiful. The leaves were changing colors and the sky was soo blue. I'm not much of a shopper, but with great company it was very pleasurable. We stopped at Granny's for shakes, and I got a cheeseburger! We all picked out the same color of shirts at one of the stores (they didn't have the sizes we needed with the other colors, and they were way on sale!) so we can all be twinners! I got a new pair of jeans which I think are now my favorite (I had to replace one of my other pairs as the zipper broke- at work which is awkward!).





This week has gone by very fast. I had an adoption which closed 4 cases, and now I've got a new case. But its great to be doing stuff. I don't have any specific plans for this weekend, but I do need to make sure I go to bed on time as I got back into bad habbits!

I have a new toy! We are happy to welcome the food dyhydrator to the family of random kitchen appliances! I dyhydrated probably a whole a bushel of home grown tomatoes which I eat like crackers. I've heard tomatoes are good for you so I should be extreemly healthy now. I think the apples were the biggest hit as they were all gone sooo fast. I got the apples from a coworker and used my other favorite appliance, apple peeler-coorer-slicer (neck and neck with the noodle maker) and it was super fast, super easy. I'll have to get some more so we can have more healthy snacks. I also did pineapple which is tasty, and carrots (from my garden) which aren't.


In other news, I started excersizing a little every night. Hopefully by writing this down I don't jinks myself. I'm just doing situps, pushups, etc but I figure its a start. Wish me luck!