Happy 4th of July!

For those of you who don't know it, here in Utah the big Celebration part of the 4th was done on the 3rd this year because of it falling on a Sunday. Well we were in the computer room on the computer writing letters to family, when we were hearing all kinds of cheering and excitement outside, we finally decided that we had to go see what was going on, when we went out, on our small little street we were surprised to see probably at least 100 people lined up watching as our neighbors (mostly Spanish speaking) were putting on their firework Celebration. We live in a pretty poor part of town and I have to say I have never quite seen anything like this and it touched my heart to see the Celebration put on by sacrifice and gratitude that these fine people have for this country! In a time where there is so much negative attention given to the state of our country, I would like to express my gratitude that Our Heavenly Father prepared this promised land as a place where ALL his children could gather and his gospel could go forth and bless the Earth. I pray that we will all be grateful for the freedoms we enjoy here and that we will do our part to insure that those freedoms remain a blessing to this country!

Please note I put a disclaimer on this photo....do not try this on your own! So okay maybe my neighbor is a bit crazy too.....everyone liked it....not sure it was legal though!

Long past over due!

I know we all enjoy a picture or something to catch our attention, but sorry to say I don't have one and waiting to take one would just delay this post even more! I wanted to thank my children for a lovely Mother's Day present, all chipping in so I could afford to get my hair dyed and highlighted again, it turned out great, I know you all know how much I like to brag, so you may be wondering why no picture this time, but I really don't much feel like taking pictures right now. Life around here has been very hectic here and not much has changed, I am still working 80 hours a week and Darin still is looking for work, we have been blessed though by many wonderful people who have been charitable to us and we have learned to put trust in the Lord. I hope all my sweet family is doing well and know that they are loved and missed soooooo very much!

The Hunt!

This year I was able to have my annual Easter Egg Hunt in Vegas with two of the grandkids, I was sad that the other 3 are so far away and could not participate, but hopefully someday they will be around to enjoy one. Luke, Logan and Timmy all helped me prepare for it and we invited Bryan and his family and Karl's family was out of town. Timmy decided this year that he was too old to participate and Logan felt guilty for having helped hide the eggs so he got the least amount of eggs. Brent's 2 boys proved to be Nelson's and non competitive like their father at that age, but I am sure they will learn soon enough. I think all had a good time and everyone was happy with their takings, this year there wasn't a tear in the crowd!

For those of you who do not know the history of my Egg Hunt, it all started back in 1985 when we lived in a ward in California that had an annual Egg Hunt for the primary kids, I took Brent and Kerstin and much to their disappointment one of them found one egg and the other got none, of course this was a appointment to a 3 year old and a 2 year old, so I decided that year that I would have an Egg Hunt of my own and that the way to cure the problem was to have enough eggs that the aggressive kids would not be able to pick all the eggs up before the less aggressive kids at least could pick up a nice amount, I did this by hiding no less then 2 dozen eggs per participant. To keep the cost down from year to year and to keep the candy edible, I would put nothing in the plastic eggs and to get the prize (money, candy or toy) the eggs would be turned in, thus I would have the eggs for next year and the house would not be litter with plastic eggs.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!

Yes I am in Vegas and yes these mighty fine boys happened here too! Arrived this morning at 7am Vegas time and am having a blast hanging out with the boys (mostly Timmy right now, cuz Sean hasn't left for the beach yet and the other two are hanging out with him), got to go shopping with Shayla and the boys, (boy is Brighton just like his dad was at that age) and tomorrow we will have an update as we try and pull off one of my good old Easter Egg hunts?

What boredom can produce!

1. Posterise
2. Posterise 3. Cartoon
4.Sepia

5. Sharpen

6. Posterise
7. Fog

Okay so with all the time I have a work with nothing really to do I get a bit bored at times, so my latest venture has been using the tools on my phone to change my pictures, I was going to do what my son and daughter do at times with their blog and have a survey to see which effect you like the best but I don't know how to do that. You may be wondering about the pictures, well I tried out some new makeup on Sunday and Darin took some pictures to see if you could tell the different and if it was well liked can you tell which pictures have the new makeup and which have the old?

Hair today gone tomorrow!

On Tuesday I decided that I really needed a haircut and so on my way home I stopped at Dollar Cuts, while I was there getting my hair cut for the first time in 8 months, my stylist Jennifer mentioned that my dying my own hair was really drying out the ends, so I asked her about how much it would cost to get it dyed there, she told me it would be $30 plus she had a $5 off coupon for me, this was awesome news since I can barely dye it myself for that much and last time I had it done in a salon it cost me $85. Well I made an appointment for today and took Darin with me, since it was so cheap for the dye job I decided I wanted highlights too, so I told Jennifer and she started the transformation, when she was done she blow dried it and straightened it and when it was all done all my sweet husband could say was it was beautiful, I don't think I have ever seen him this surprised or impressed with a hair color job(which he picked out by the way), and to think the whole thing only cost me $65. As many of you know when I first got married 3 1/2 years ago I quit dying my hair not only to prove a point (that I could be happy with myself no matter what), but also to try and get Darin to see that there is really a reason woman do these things for themselves and it is not just about being vain, so to hear him say that he loves my hair and to have him participate in the process means the world to me! I feel like I am on top of the world!

Valentine Treats!

So for the last two or so months I have been suffering if you will from broken down cell phone syndrome. Okay so do you think the cell phone companies can really produce a phone that will last the full two years of a contract without either falling apart on the outside or breaking down on the inside? I did however this last contract manage to make it 17 months without breaking or dropping my phone into the toilet, but eventually the screen decided to stop working, so I had to go back to using my old phone (yuck) which lasted about 2 months before it started showing signs of dying. Well a couple of days before Valentines Day we got a text about adding a line, we had been talking about adding a couple of lines so Luke and Logan could have a phone separate from Timmy and getting one for Cynthia and Joey since they don't have a house phone, then of course we could upgrade and get new phones. Well when we got to the store the first thing we were drawn to was the Iphone, Darin had got an Ipod for his Birthday and we loved it, anyways they had this deal going on where if you bought an Iphone for $100 you could get up to 4 Smart phones for free, so we did some checking and they did some bending and we were able to get Darin an Iphone and renew 3 of our existing accounts along with my new account and get 4 Smart phones 1 Impression and 3 Flights. All the phones have internet coverage and by cancealing our Cricket internet access we don't have an increase in our monthly budget. So now all the family should be able to get in contact with each other at a push of a button.......do we love our phones? We will let you know when we get our first monthly bill lol!

Adventures in Food!

Lately we have been eating a lot of Hearing and Sardines out of a can, I grew up on Kipper Snacks and Darin had a lot of Sardines on his mission so we have been trying to be healthy by getting our Omega 3's. Well yesterday when we were at Walmart buying our fish we noticed these little 3 ounce cans of Anchovies next to Hearing, neither of us had ever had Anchovies before so we decided that we would give them a try, without reading the label we opened both cans, I started by taking a tiny little bite of mine and about choked, I have been on my diet this last week and it has no added salt, so I just figured maybe I was very sensitive to the salt, then Darin decided to eat his, well he managed to down his in one bite and in the process about killed over. I grabbed the can and noticed it had 980 mg of sodium per ounce, I tried rinsing mine off, but the salt would not disapate, finally I tried a fillet on a cracker and it wasn't too bad, but I don't think we will buying Anchovies again anytime soon, needless to say both of our blood pressures went up yesterday.

Life and New Year's Resolutions!

It's been a long time since I have posted online and to be honest I haven't even been on much these last few months and it wasn't until yesterday when I was checking out my kids blogs to see if they had posted Christmas pictures of the Grandkids that I realized that I couldn't really get frusterated with them for not posting when I myself had not posted since the beginning of October. So one of my first resolutions this year is to trying be better about posting, especially since so many of the ones I love, live away from me and keeping up on each others lives can be difficult. Months ago before my life got REALLY hectic I had told Darin that I wanted a Wii Fit for Christmas, but by the time Christmas came around I was figuring with my hectic schedule it would probablly not be very practical. Much to my surprise (thanks to the in-laws giving each of us money for Christmas) I found a Wii Fit Plus under the tree, unfortuneately after a week and a half of having absolutely no time to even open it I was beginning to think it was a waste. Well on Tuesday I decided to take my new treasure to work with me on my swing shift and my manager and I had a blast checking it out, I took it again last night and to my utter excitment I had not only already lost weight, my BMI had gone down. After being told my real age was 66 on Tuesday I was thrilled to see after one day I had improved enough to be as fit as my actual age which is MUCH younger by the way! I have found myself craving water instead of soda and the workouts on this game are actually quite fun. For any of you wonder about this product I give it an A+, we will see after my time is up to reach the goal I set whether I still feel the same way!

Our Trip to Paradise!

This week we celebrated our 3rd Anniversary and since other obligations prevented us from really doing anything on the 29th, We took the weekend off so we could spend sometime together doing something that we both enjoy. Originally we thought we might travel up to Idaho to visit Cythia and Joey, but our wires got crossed and we had some misunderstanding and ended up making plans for here at home. We decided to take a trip to paradise instead. Below you will find some pictures of that trip.

New addition to our family!

Some of you may already know and perhaps some have even already met our new addition to our family! For the past couple of weeks we have become the proud parents of a little kitten we have named Gizmo! He has truly been a joy in our lives and has brought us much comfort and happiness. He is such a funny cat and we have posted a few pictures to show you how funny he can be.

The Bernstien Bears

I remember as early as my own childhood reading the original version of the Bernstien Bears Book thinking how cool it would be to have a tree like the one in the original where they went to find the honey, I can even remember wondering if there truly was a tree that looked like this or whether it was just someones creative imagination. Well yesterday as Darin and I took a walk by the river I saw this tree and realized that there probably really was a tree that inspired the tree in the Bernstien Bear book and perhaps this is the tree!

Special Visitors

On August 15th we were blessed with a visit from Brent and his family, even though it was short, we had a nice time. After being showered with wonderful gifts (Mother's Day and Father's Day) we took the kids to McDonalds for lunch, Brighton was so cute because he kept calling it Oma's Donalds, he was a little more excited to eat his fries and play in the toys then eat his Chicken Nuggets. We were so greatful to Shayla's family for sharing them for a few hours during their family reunion vacation. Brent telling Brighton it is time to leave, Brighton learned to love the Hotels, so alls he had to say was it was time to go to the new hotel.
I love this picture because I can really see the Steed side of Brighton!
Seth was such a good baby, a little tired in this picture after eating lunch!

It was so fun to have Brighton at our house, Obpa took him into the entertainment/guest room to watch "Cars"while we visited with his mom and dad!
Seth is so good natured he can entertain himself with most anything, of course it always helps to have his big brother bring him things to play with!

The promised answer!

Last week we had a couple of scares at our house, it all started a week ago Monday when Darin and I were busy doing home improvement type stuff when Darin got this bright idea to sweep the very dirty stairs down to the cellar/crawl space, this was a good idea just not so good without a mask, unfortuneately he sucked in a lot of dust/dirty/mold and by Wednesday morning had a fever and a nasty cough, when I got home later that afternoon his fever was higher, so I took him to instant care where we found out that he had a chest infection, they didn't even bother doing a chest x-ray, but instead put him on a heavy duty antibiotic and a narcotic for his cough, by this time he was coughing up some pretty nasty yellow phlem, by Friday morning the phlem was looking like the picture in the last post, the funny thing is I knew he had this cough and in fact just before he sent me the picture he had told me that he had been coughing up some darkish stuff, but for some odd reason the only thing I could see in that picture was a ghost or a demon. As a side note on Friday morning at work I was having a bit of a head ache and touched the left top side of my head and there was this goose egg size bump on my head and it hurt to touch, the weird thing was I had not hit my head on anything and the bump was not discolored in anyway, it scared me a bit since it had not been there the day before. We went to instant care that afternoon, but the doctor was clueless and said he had know clue what was going on, but that if it didn't go away in two weeks they would do a CT scan. Well I don't have the head ache so much anymore (or I have gotten use to it) and it doesn't seem so swollen to me, but it is still there and it still hurts to touch. Needless to say it has been an interesting week and we are looking forward to a little better health! Sorry about the picture hopefully you can see the bump as it makes my head a little more squared at the top.