Emma's concert

Emma was so excited to make it into Franklin Singers this year.  It's a brand new show choir with boys and girls performing together.  

They sang old standards, like "Misty," upbeat jazz, and a fun medley of Queen hits.

 I thought they sounded fantastic, but apparently not everyone agreed.  This little girl plugged her ears throughout most of the concert.  Oh, well.  You can't please them all!

Several of Emma's friends are in choir with her.  From left, Anna Sanford, Emma, Jessica Tolman, Sadie Gardner, Rachel Brown, Addy Bailey, and Hannah Keating.

Some things I love about Del--A Valentine's Tribute to My Honey

I married a really wonderful guy!  Look at this beautiful shelf he built me!

 

I didn't like my boring dining room window and wanted a place to display some of my favorite vintage bowls and things, so he built me exactly what I wanted.  In fact, he built it twice because I changed my mind on what I thought I wanted, and he didn't even complain (the first one looks great in the girls' room, so it wasn't a waste). 

Del does great work and made this one look like the one we built in our living room.  Notice I said "we" because he lets me design it and then he builds it.

Here's another thing I love about Del:  He is always willing to help me with chores that I don't like to do.  Our freezer frosts up at least two or three times a year, and I HATE defrosting it!  He did it for me last time without any asking or nagging on my part.  He just saw that it needed to be done and pitched in.

He also makes our sandwiches every morning for lunches and breakfast on Sundays.  He's a pretty great pancake and waffle maker.  I'm afraid to admit that he may even be better than I am!

 

Another thing I love about Del is that he reads in bed with me now.  I've always loved the idea of reading together at night, and now I've got him hooked on books!  Lately, he reads as much as I do.

Yep!  I got a keeper.  I love you, Honey!  Happy Valentine's Day!

My Passion: Organizing and Dejunking

 I really, really love to organize closets and drawers and make every little corner of my life a little tidier.  I like neat little rows of toilet paper in my storage room, and neatly rolled socks in a drawer just make my heart go thump, thump!  I don't like cleaning at all, though, so most people have no idea that I have really neat cupboards underneath a counter top covered in crumbs and dishes.  Oh, well, we each have our own interests and scrubbing isn't mine.

I recently decided to tackle our food storage, which was a monumental task!  We try to follow the prophet's counsel and have a year's supply of food and personal products in case of emergency, and I think we've done a pretty good job.  Our biggest problem is where to store it all!  We had food in the storage room downstairs and wheat buckets, canned goods, and paper products out in the garage, and the kids never knew where to go to find it all. 

 In order to organize, we had to take everything out of the storage room so we could add more shelves.  The extra shelves held so much more and made everything much easier to find. We also have a wall of shelves to the right of Del and in front of him, so it holds quite a bit.  Big improvement!

In my organizing phase I also decided it was time to get rid of some books.  We have book shelves in every room in our house except the bathrooms, so needless to say, we have a lot of books! We ended up with over 200 books for family and DI (which left some space on my shelves for new ones!).

Next, I tackled my drawer of tights.  I love patterned pantyhose, but it can be hard to find the pair I want for each outfit, so I put them in ziplock bags labeled with a description.  Now they fit better and I can find them easily.  

I have so many more projects to do, so many messy corners in my life, but this was a nice start!

Winter 2013

  

I can't decide if Emma's snowman is cute or creepy, but either way I'm glad we got a picture of it!  What a masterpiece!

 Here's a quick picture of the favorite Christmas gifts and new clothes (over pjs--quite stylish!).  Frozen theme for Emma because she can't get enough of that Disney movie!  Superheroes for Maren and guitar book and bow tie for Chris, Duck Dynasty for Del and new sheets for Devin.  I'm glad they're all so easy to please!

Halloween fun

Rachel Summers, Emily Park, Rachel Brown, Sidney Olcott, Emma Thiessen, Anna Sanford, and Emma

Emma and her friends decided to go Trick-or-Treating together again this year, and they had so much fun!  Emma and Anna made My Little Pony costumes with appliqued felt and fabric paint, and the room was covered in glitter from their tutus.

Maren and her friends had a party and watched some movies at Lauren Holmstead's house. She made a fantastic gypsy and even had misfortunes to pass out to her friends in exchange for candy!  Her misfortunes were things like, "The end is near, and it's all you fault!" and "You are about to be very sick from eating too much candy."

Popeye, the Sailor Man

 

Every year in October my book club friends have a Halloween party with our husbands.  It's always fun to get together and visit, and it's great to have a reason to dress up.  This year I decided to make Popeye and Olive costumes.  Maren helped me make the ridiculously large arms, and I think she really liked the powerful feeling that came with them because she didn't want to take them off!  Here's the finished product:

I Yam What I Yam

 Everyone else in our book club looked great, too!

Crystal (8 months pregnant) and Danny Miles

Cherri and Jeremy Porter

Hailey and Jason Dye

Rita and Nick Peck

McKenzie and Gary Johnson

Julie and Steve Brown

Teaching Citizenship

Every three months I get to go to a citizenship ceremony at our federal courthouse.  I love this amazing opportunity because there is a special spirit there, watching people who recognize that America is a blessed land and want to be a part of it enough to go through the legal process and work hard.  I love to hear the judges talk about citizenship and patriotism. 

Recently, my friend and co-worker, Farhana Hibbert, was asked to speak at the ceremony and share her own citizenship experience.  She's originally from Pakistan and emigrated with her family to Puerto Rico during the Indo-Pakistan conflict in 1971.  They came to the United States when she was 12, and in 1989 she met her husband and joined the LDS church.  She was a perfect speaker for the citizenship ceremony. 

Maren, Sarah Hibbert, Emma, and Priscilla Hibbert sitting in the jury box.  Renee Richardson from Senator Risch's office in back.

Since she was speaking, we decided to volunteer our daughters for a medley of patriotic songs, and they did a great job! I've sat through many musical numbers at these events, but I've never heard one as beautiful!  Judge Randy Smith was very impressed and took a picture with them.

 After the ceremony we took them outside to ring the Liberty Bell.  Each state received two of these bells in 1976, cast from the original mold, and our federal courthouse has one out front (the other is in Boise at the Capitol). The judge always encourages the new citizens to ring the bell loudly for freedom on their way out, and we thought our girls should too.  

I love giving my kids opportunities to see how blessed they are to live in this great country.  Too often we take what we have for granted, and because of this, some of our freedoms are slowly slipping away, but I hope mine will always be good citizens in a great nation.