BINGO!!!!!!!

Okay so let me explain...... Carter and his friend Dylan (pictured with him in an earlier post about blues brothers) came up with a new game to play in the car and it's called bingo! The object of the game is to find yellow cars and when you do you hit the other person- just like "slugbug". Whoever gets the most by the end of your trip wins!

This game has caught on MAJOR in our family and has begun an all out war between Chan and Carter! On the way home today with all of us in the car Chan decided the driver should have some "bingo's" given in advance due to the fact he's driving and doesn't want to wreck the car trying to spot others that are yellow! So from now on he gets 10 right off the bat! You should also know that ANY moving vehicles count, so Carter will call bingo on tractors, motorcycles and other construction equipment as long as it has a motor and can move!

We were all laughing so hard on the way home!!! The final tally- Chan 12, Carter 10, Andee 5, Brianne 3 and Will 0- he thought we were all nuts! So give it a try!! It's a blast!!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day Chan!! Hope you had a great one! I got up this morning and put in some cinnamon/orange rolls for breakfast which we all enjoyed and then it was off to church! The meetings were great and we took off to Chan's parents house to give Papa his cards from us. We stayed and visited them for a bit and then we headed home where I took this photo! Such a cute Dad- and great kids! :)
After a few minutes at home we were off to meet Brooke, Mark, Myles and Sophie! Brooke had called a few days ago and wanted us to come and celebrate with them and their kids by seeing Toy Story 3! Sounded good to us- so off we went!!
Sorry about my appearance in this shot I was worried about getting us all in and not so much about how I looked in it- oops- oh well! Anyway, here we are with our dinner as the movie got started! :) Brooke and her family are behind us in this picture- you can kinda see Myles in the green shirt behind Brianne!
It was a GREAT show! They couldn't have done better! We all totally loved it! It was rather weird however that three quarters of the way through the movie FROZE! That hasn't happened to me since I was a kid and the movies were on reels!! But thankfully 15 minutes later they got it going again and gave us all a free pass for our next movie as we exited the theater. Very cool! And since we have already seen Robin Hood, Killers and the A Team these past couple of weeks I guess we better hold out till something REALLY looks good! Can't wait! Thanks to all for a very fun day and Happy Father's day everyone!! :)

New challenges

Around the first part of the year I was assigned a new calling in church. I had been serving in primary and had a VERY short stint as the Humanitarian leader before our Stake realigned the Ward boundaries and our former Ward was dissolved into another. I had a break for a short while and then the new calling came...... Sunday school teacher for the 14-16 year olds! Even the counselor extending the calling said "we're going to stretch you a bit"........YA THINK!! I have never had a calling with the Youth and I was very nervous!! But I do love the Youth and see them regularly anyway since Carter is in there (and will be in my class in January). However, I have to say I LOVE MY NEW CALLING!! I just got done preparing my lesson for tomorrow and it's 10:40 the night before and I don't even care! I am just excited to go and teach! And the best part is I am learning right along with them! But the biggest reason I wanted to post this is because (as most of you know) I have a twisted brain and in my world I think it's more fun to go to Sunday school if you get a treat, but (and this is where the twist comes in) the treat needs to go along with the lesson! Now, in some cases this can be a REAL challenge! But I love taking it on and I have a lot of fun coming up with ideas! So I thought I would share tomorrow's treat and lesson message....."CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YE WILL SERVE; BUT AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSE WE WILL SERVE THE LORD." JOSHUA 24:15

"DO-NUT" GET CAUGHT UP IN THE WAYS OF THE WORLD!!

Don't you just love it!! I think it's pretty darn clever! Hope you enjoyed it too!

New summer tradition

Brianne and I decided we have a new summer tradition- Mom and daughter pedicures!! We had so much fun today going to get a coke together and then going over to dream nails to get pedicures! We sat right by each other and talked while getting our feet massaged and treated- and the best part was the cute painting details they do! SOOOO cute! We are ready for the pool!!

From eeww to OOOHH!!

This is a picture I shot with my iphone a few weeks ago of my master bathroom. When we bought our current home about 5 years ago we ripped out every bathroom except for ours. We simply ran out of time before we moved in. However, we knew we would eventually get around to it! Well, we decided to take the plunge and just rip it out!!
This was demo day! Here is Chan taking the plumbing apart so we could rip out the ugly vanity!!
One last shot before it all came out!! Don't you love vinyl flooring that goes up the wall.....ugh!
This is a picture of our shower before we had it refinished. I know it's hard to believe that the tile in this picture are supposed to be white- but what can I say- this house was built in 1978!! And the door was no better!
Here is a shot of the bathroom when all was ripped out-beautiful isn't it? I don't know what I was thinking when I painted that orange color- geez!
Here is a shot of Chan finishing laying down the new tile. we had bought enough for all the bathrooms at the same time, so this tile had been gathering dust in the garage! But thank heavens we already had it! That helped a little bit on the budget!
Here's the finished product on the tile! He did great didn't he! Impressive!! And that paint job is not too bad either!
And TA DA!! Here's the new and improved bathroom! I ordered a new vanity/counter top from a local cabinet shop, got a new mirror, faucet, shower door, paint, light fixture and had that nasty shower refinished and now it's got some WOW factor!! We love it!!
I would like to buy some new rugs/towels to match the picture (that I painted in high school) to finish it all up, but I'll have to get to that part later!
Here's the new and improved shower- hard to believe its the same tile! SOOOOOO much better!! Thanks Chan for making my bathroom beautiful again!! :)

Summers first "bump"

Yip- you guessed it!! The bump is on Will's head! If you look on the left side you can see where his hair sort of rounds outward....well that's not his usual head shape!! That's a MAJOR goose egg!!
Here you can see how all the blood came up to the skin! He didn't crack that big noggin open, but I am pretty sure it was darn close!
One more shot without my hand in it! So here's the story......

For those of you who know us well or follow our blog closely know how we are truly a football family! Well on Friday I took Carter and the two of us picked out the boys' new cleats for football season. Carter needed them for his camp this week, but truly we always buy them early so they can break them in. So on Saturday Carter got the idea that they should put them on and go out in the front yard with Dad and do some drills- great idea!! Now you must know that the cleat style that we picked is new to Will. They have removable cleats that you can screw in (thus making the cleat last a bit longer) but also makes them EXTREMELY slippery on a solid surface! Carter discovered this a couple of years ago when we started buying them for him- and also had a couple small spills- but this story is more intense!! Anyway, so they are doing the drills and the boys are running at full steam when they run out of grass and Will steps on the driveway- and BOOM!!! Slips and skids on his knee/arm and whips his head and slaps the cement with it! Sounds great doesn't it? But after a quick trip to the Dr office and a lot of ice- it has pretty much melted away! But boy did it scare us!! It was a nasty one! But at least we got summers first injury out of the way!

The Blues Brothers...

This is my son Carter (on the right) and one of his best friends Dylan as "The Blues Brothers"! About a month and a half ago they decided they were going to try out for the talent show at school. They went through several ideas before landing on this one- they decided to sing "Soul Man". Yes I said SING! My son is a football player!! Not someone who I think of as a singer! But they downloaded the version they needed and started to practice- and to my amazement made the talent show!!! Then it was another month of practice before the big performance this morning!
They watched a live performance by the real Blues Brothers several times and got their moves down- and they really nailed it! It was awesome!!
And on top of that- they sounded REALLY GOOD! I was laughing and crying all at the same time!
I also didn't realize what a good dancer Carter is! I guess he's multi- talented!!
I wish I could get the video on here because it is truly priceless!! They had so much fun! And they were a hit with their peers! However, I must say that I don't think a good majority of their peers have ever seen the real guys because at one point Dylan yelled into the mike- "Elwood!! The rollers are coming!!" and only the older people laughed! So funny!! LOVE them!! Way to go Carter and Dylan!!

Happy Birthday to you!!

Well this year was a big birthday for Chan- his 4oth! He has been dreading it for a while and because of his dread I decided well in advance I would make it one to remember! I wanted him to have happy memories of this day so I started to plan......
About a month before his birthday I put my plan into motion! I sent out a notice on my facebook page to all our mutual friends that I was going to have a surprise party for him! I called those out of town that HAD to be there and sent out invitations to get everyone there- and ON TIME!
I let Carter in on my plan early on and he helped me with some ideas- like how to get him out of the house- and he also had the duty of listening to me vent about all the behind the scenes stuff! It's so hard to keep a secret from your husband!!! Anyway, the day arrived and we did our usual family celebration with the balloons and gifts and we followed it by going out to breakfast and then headed home to hang out. I had made plans for Chan's Dad to take him, his friend James, and brother in law Mark to a gun range to do some shooting! So at around 3:30 his Dad picked him and the boys up at our place and they were off........and so were we....decorating that is!! Tammy couldn't make it up here for the party but she made 17 scrapbook pages that were plastered on the walls along with the other usual birthday decoration! It was cool! And I made a slide show of photos that was going all night- 256 pictures of him from Dad to coach- it was awesome!
This is a shot of the group waiting for him to appear! And believe it or not- more people came later! It was a great group of people..... and then......
SURPRISE!!!!!!! And for those of you who know Chan well- it was AMAZING that he was CLUELESS!! He was really shocked and didn't know what to do with himself!
He did finally collect himself and went to each person who was there and gave them a hug!
It was quite a group so that took a while! But you can see how much fun we all had surprising him! It was awesome!
Then it was time to party, eat and visit! I thought I had got plenty of food, but man it went quick!! However, it was great food and everyone was enjoying themselves!
One of the best parts was when Swen arrived- his BESTEST friend! (yes I know bestest is NOT a real word but it just sounded right to me!) He flew in from out of town to be there- and had literally just gotten off a business trip! Crazy! But I was so grateful that he came and Chan was thrilled to see him!
This is a great shot of (from right) Chan's sister Brooke, his Mom Kathy, Aunt Jenny and Aunt Kris! You can see the resemblance right?!! They are a fun family!
Here is a shot of Chan's Dad Tom talking with Swen.
The most surprising part was that he got a lot of gifts (which was so nice) but I think his favorite was from his Nephew Dakota- some new Lego sets! And yes he built all of them the next day!! He is a true blue Lego fan and always will be!!
So Happy 40th babe! It was one for the record books!! We love you soooo much and I am so glad it was a memorable Birthday for you! You deserve it!! Love you!!