My new house numbers

Nephi always laughs at me because I've had an obsession with house numbers for years. I love them. I think it is a shame when they aren't treated as their own work of art. Call me nuts. I can't help it. When we bought this house I salivated over the possiblility of great house numbers. The old ones were small rusting numbers drilled in under the front light. Technically nothing wrong with them, I'm pretty sure they were serving their purpose well, but awful to me. So anyhow, here's my new numbers. Oversized - stainless steel - custom made beauties. I love them. Clean and modern. Because they're not under a light I put a spotlight in the ground pointing up at them at night. Very dramatic. At Christmas clearance sales I bought two more spotlights to point up at the two trees in front of the house and put them all on a timer. At night everything is lit up. I'm really happy with it. Mom, I know you'd like to see it but it wouldn't photograh well I'm sure. Enough about house numbers! :)

Christmas 2008

We had a GREAT Christmas this year. Nephi's brother, Jared, came from L.A. and spent 4 days with us. It was FUN! We cooked, baked, made candy, relaxed, watched movies, etc. The kids said over and over again that this was the best Christmas EVER! (Not that our other Christmases haven't been fun). The kids really bonded with Jared. It was so nice having him here. With being new in town we don't have close friends here yet so it was so good having family with us this Christmas. It really was our best Christmas ever.

But.....we still missed and thought of all you that we weren't with!

cutting out the gingerbread

The kids each had 3 cookies to decorate how they wanted. Jared let them pick out the colors for the frostings, we made them little decorating bags and they went to town. It was SO MUCH fun for everyone.

whoops, repeat picture.

In person they looked like something out of a Martha Stewart magazine.

Yes, I actually was there for all of this. A picture to prove it.


oh, so cute.....

Here we go....
starting with the stockings...

Laci trying to figure out if presents have her name on them.

Brigham checking out his Ironman

Brigham playing with his new Ironman and Batman.

quote of the day

Brigham: "Laci, what is the opposite of cracker? Is it chip or is it cheese?"
Laci: "Cheese."
Brigham: "Nope. It's chip."
Laci: "That's okay. Because I like chips."

Winter is here....

Our Christams Tree

In my haste to take a few pictures of mom's painting I snapped these pictures since the kids both wanted to be in a photo. nothing fancy.

Mom's new painting

Mom let me take one of her paintings. I thought it would look perfect on that wall and it does. It's on loan, but I don't think I'm giving it back anytime soon. I love it mom!

more photos from Thanksgiving in Mesquite

These are some pictures from our bonfire in the backyard. We were planning to go out in the hills and have a fire, but John was called into work so mom made a campfire in the backyard and we sat around and ate sandwiches! ha ha! The kids didn't know the difference. They had a good time.

Family History

Thanks to the Dec Ensign I learned about how I can do family history work at home. pg 74. Have you read it? It talks about the new program where anybody can download a new progam (FamilySearch Indexing) and you just upload a batch and you get to work. Basically it's data input. I started last night and I've done two batches. If I can figure it all out, anybody can. In the first batch I had to go through a scanned image of a census sheet from 1920 Illinois. Tonight I went through early 1900 New Hampshire births. Basically it's tedius work, but the spirit of Elijah is real. I truly feel good when I work on these. Except of course when I can't read handwriting. That can be a real challenge. Especially when you aren't familiar with some of the old fashioned names and towns you've never heard of. In my determination not to submit a bunch of crap to the church I googled until I found a good census listing from 1895 of the towns and cities in New Hapshire. Everytime I came across a town where the spelling wasn't obvious, I would just jump over to my town listing page and look until I could find a good match. That was awesome. If I hadn't done that, I would've been submitting some real unhelpful info. So that felt really good. I did send a couple projects back as soon as I looked at them because they were so faded it was impossible to deciper. I felt bad for those people. Hopefully they get found on other documents.
I'm grateful that I can finally be involved in family history. I've always felt bad/guilty that I've never done anything and I'm truly grateful to be a part of something so big. Maybe I can help make a difference for someone else.
I've always found it interesting that Heavenly Father has the power to get all the work done in no time flat and yet he gives all of us the opportunity to serve each other and no doubt form bonds (though we may not feel them yet in this lifetime)of love with others. I envy those people that have and are doing so much work for the dead that I can only imagine the wonderful bonds with people they will have when they get to the other side. That is sooo special.

On a side note: I think half of the 1895 New Hampshire population was named Henry Johnson. I have never seen so many Henry Johnsons in my life.

hello again...

Thanksgiving's over. We went to Mesquite and had a good time. I personally haven't been home for Thanksgiving since before Brigham was born. We had a good time. Grandma's 90th birtday party was on Saturday. How cool that we still have grandma at 90 years. I love her. I tell everyone that she was my second mother. We were very lucky to live next door to her and have her presence every single day. Pretty much everyone attended her party. It was a family reunion of sorts. I saw some cousins I haven't seen in years and that was really cool. Mom, uncle Don, and aunt Suzanne said a few nice words for grandma and we sang happy birthday. Very low key. The way we like it.