Friday, May 29, 2009

Funny Story

We were eating lunch at a Greek Restaurant in SLC last weekend and my mother-in-law told us a true story that happened to her in the same place. I couldn't stop laughing all day long. Just wanted to share. She was eating with two of her brothers and they were sitting next to an old man. The old man let out a loud, boisterous fart. One of her brothers said at the top of his lungs, "I think he just S**T himself!" Even funnier is that the old man just sat there without caring. They didn't really finish their food before high-tailing-it out of the place.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Memorial Day Weekend & Preschool Graduation

Madison graduated from preschool yesterday...I can't believe she is old enough for kindergarten. Now I really feel old. She posed for pictures in her red, white, and blue outfit, and was all over the place, I could only get this one picture that was not goofy. I was so proud of her. She sat in the front row and belted out the songs, every word. You should now that this is a major accomplishment when you compare it to the dance recital she had two years ago where she stood on stage and picked her nose/bothered the girl next to her. She really is growing up.








Memorial Day weekend was so much fun, but exhausting. First, we took the girls to Hogle Zoo. It wasn't as fun as last time we went, but it did start raining (a little bit) at the end. They had a very small MADAGASCAR exhibit. Not really worth seeing, since there were only two things in the exhibit. Emma wasn't very impressed with anything except for a little cotton-tail rabbit that she kept trying to hug and kiss and a squirrel that was on crack and running all over the place. Hogle Zoo has all sorts of statues and we always take pictures with them. Emma was terrified of this gorilla and she would go near it unless I held her.





Then, we stayed at the Grand America Hotel for a night in SLC. We stayed there once before when I was pregnant with Madison. This place is AMAZING!!! 5-Star all the way. I've never seen so much marble in all my life. Although...I wasn't too happy that the air-conditioner didn't work!!! I was miserable all night. Stupid old hotel.



Anyway, next we went to the Thanksgiving Point Museum of Ancient Life (aka the world's largest dinosaur museum. We love it there. We've gone 6 times or so in the last few years. It has some amazing dino exhibits, plus they have a 3-D IMAX theatre, trilobite/boring rock stuff/nick's favorite hobby/rocks that inhabit every inch of my house exhibit. For all of you lucky folks who don't know what a trilobite is, I took a picture of a display they had. Imagine my house full of large slabs of rocks with these all over the place. Anyway, they also have this really cool exhibit where they let the kids play in the sand and water and create dams and islands, etc. Also, they have a fossil dig site that the kids can climb into and dig for fossils. It's pretty cool. Or maybe we're not so cool, but we like it.


We also went to temple square for a while and the girls were playing in the reflecting pond, so I had to take a few pictures. I know they aren't supposed to play in it, but it was so darn cute. There was this couple that just got married in the temple and were taking pictures outside. When they walked past us, Madison, out-of-the-blue asked them if they had gotten married in the temple. It was super cute and they were caught off guard. It was pretty cute.




Madison helped Grandpa Skabelund plant a garden on Monday, which thrilled her to no end because she has been asking to do that for months now. All we have currently is a large pile of rocks surrounding our rental. She did get to plant a small garden in Spring Creek. She was so proud of herself when she actually grew some mini watermelons and carrots. It did help a little bit that the garden just so happened to be over the septic tank. Oops! They also spent the day on the four-wheeler with Grandpa and playing on their bikes, and running with the dogs.


Tuesday, May 19, 2009

100 greatest novels of all time/of the century

So, I love to read and my latest venture is pretty enthusiastic. I am going to work my way through two lists of books. The 1oo greatest novels of all time and the 100 greatest novels of the century. Some of them overlap, but not that many, so there are about 175 that I'm attempting to read. Very, very, slowly. I got the idea from my high school friend, Whitney Bushnell Smart's blog. She's doing the same thing. Here are the one's I've read so far and when I read them:

1. Emma by Jane Austen (high school)
2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (2009)
3. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (college)
4. Wuthering Hieghts by Emily Bronte (high school)
5. Jane eyre by Charlotte Bronte (high school)
6. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (2009)
7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (college)
8. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
9. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
10. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
11. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
12. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
13. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
14. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
17. Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
18. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
19. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
20. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
21. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Genius way to sort socks



Okay, so maybe I'm just really dull, but I hate sorting socks and I never do. As you can see from the picture, I just take them out of the dryer and put them all in a big basket. If you need socks at my house, you usually get your own. It's not very convenient. So, I came across Nancy Worth's blog at http://worthfamily.blogspot.com/2009/03/sock-problem.html and thought she was a genius!!! I can't believe I didn't think about something like this before. I decided to use bins, (since they were only $2.94 at Tai'Pan Trading) instead of baskets. I couldn't find any good baskets like hers anyway. I matched and folded all of the socks this morning and this is all that is left. I would have thought for sure that half of those socks in that big basket were long gone mates that I was too lazy to sort through the last six or so times we moved. Who knew??? She's a genius, I tell ya.

Monday, May 18, 2009

We found a house, finally!





We finally found the house we wanted last week and so we bought it! It's perfect. We will finally have enough room to have another baby. This house is three stories, 6 bedrooms, 1/3 of an acre, and the best part of all...completely done. I don't have to paint, landscape, remove rocks or anything! So excited. Can't wait to move in. It's still under construction, but it's about 99% done. It just needs a few things and then it's ours. Here are a few pictures I took today; just ignore the construction materials and extra doors leaning up against everything. If you look really closely at the picture of the backyard, you can see Madison hamming-it-up for the camera.

My Birthday!!!


Today was really fun; one of the best birthday's I've had in a while. My husband came home early from work and took the girls and I out to the dam to have a picnic. What impressed me the most was that he actually planned ahead of time and ordered us some food to pick up on the way. If you knew Nick, this would be a jaw-dropper moment. Then he took me to Tai'Pan Trading in SLC (double jaw-dropper) and told me I could get anything I wanted! Then on the way home we stopped and got a ColdStone Ice Cream Cake. It was all perfect! I really enjoyed myself. I even came home to a freshly installed air-conditioner. It was heaven. All in all, it was a wonderful day. Thanks, Nick. I love you.

Monday, May 4, 2009

House Hunting





I spent the afternoon looking at houses with the girls and nothing really caught my eye. There is always something wrong with them, isn't there? I would rather build one, but I don't want to wait six months to move in. Sigh. I did notice something else, though. The smell of other people's houses makes me nauseous and I'm always ravenously hungry lately = Pregnant??? Yikes. I hate waiting. I really miss my house in Nevada, so here is a picture of it and my amazingly huge kitchen. Also, a few of our "golf-course" sized lawn at our home in Cache Valley where we lived in college. I'm missing the gorgeous weather! And really hating the rental home we are in in the mean time.