Temple Square

I love to see all the Christmas lights this time of year. It's fun to just drive down the street at night and see everyone's houses all lit up and in all the different colors. Sometimes it justs makes me smile!!! One of my favorite traditions is to see the lights at temple square. We were able to go down there one Sunday night this month and walk around. It's always so beautiful to see the grounds all lit up. What a peaceful place it is...even when it 20 degrees outside.

Serving Together

My family always does some type of service project around the Christmas holiday season. This year we tried something new! It was really a lot of fun. We went to the Utah Food Bank up in Salt Lake and helped sort food. We went through pallets of surplus food brought in from stores in the area. We went through and packed boxes to make sure the food was still in good condition. It was amazing to see what the food bank was like and a fractions of all that goes into it. We had a fun time and even the little kids were able to help out. We sure are getting to be quite the big group when we all get together! It's the best!

Christmas Come and Gone

I can't be believe how fast Christmas has come and gone. I love this time of year!!! It's been a busy month with lots of parties with family & friends, cookie making, Christmas lights, decorating, and all the other festivities that come along with this wonderful season. Here are a few of the highlights..

We had a fun get-a-way up to the cabin. There was lots of snow and lots of playing. We have a great sledding hill right in the back. It was pretty bitter cold, but we endured and had a blast. It's pretty amazing to sink into snow up to you hips. No one got hurt and only one run into a tree! Later that evening, we(I should say the parents) put all the little kids to bed and we had a great time figuring out the new wii game system. It's amazing how competitive the 'adults' became. We played everything from tennis, baseball, and bowling. But I'd have to say the boxing is what really got our heart rate up. It was great to see even mom and dad punch it out in a match.

Surprise

We had a great Thanksgiving last week! We started out the week with a little surprise. We decided to fly to Michigan and spend the holiday with Stephen's family. They had no idea we were coming for the big feast. We let his brother and sister know we were making to trip... just to make sure they would be around when we got there. We took a red eye flight out Tuesday night and got into Detroit early Wednesday morning. We made the drive up to Midland and first stopped at Stephen's brother's house. (They live just a few minutes away and didn't want to miss the look on everyone's faces.) We walked right in the front door and said hello. They were busy in the kitchen with all the holiday preparations! I wish I had a pictures of the look on their faces. It was great! Jaws dropped and a few 'what are you doing here's' were said! I loved it! It was so much fun and well worth it all, in those first few minutes. We had a wonderful trip out there that went by way too fast. Here are some of the highlights! We loved eating lots of yummy turkey and mashed potatoes. We were able to see Grandma and Grandpa Wilke. Played a competitive game of dominoes. Went out to lunch and shopping with all the girls and stayed up to the wee hours in the morning playing x-box! We sure do miss them all and cherish the time we're able to spend with them. I really realized how fun it is to be spontaneous and surprise others! It's great!

Planes & Pilots

As of November 10th, 2007, Stephen officially got his private pilots license! YEA!!! I was so excited for him. This has been something he's always wanted to do and he has been working since this summer to get his license. Stephen put in his required hours and passed all of his tests (which took all day long). When he got home he found a surprise....what a great reason to celebrate!

I would have to say that Stephen's a little kid at heart. He couldn't wait to take me up in the air and show me all that he had learned. I decided to give in and he couldn't wait...so we took a little flight this weekend. It was so much fun! I couldn't believe it. I had never been in a plane so small! It still amazes me that such a little machine can fly so high and fast. I wasn't too nervous at the time, but now I think back and realize that we were about 9,000 + feet in the air. I could almost reach out and touch the clouds. It's a little scary, especially for someone like me who is afraid of falling from heights. We ended up going from Spanish Fork all the way up to Logan. It was so beautiful! You could see the snow capped mountains for miles and miles. We had a great time! Here's a few pictures of our fun adventure!

Spare Time???

Stephen keeps asking me what I like to do in my spare time when I'm not teaching or involved with school. Amazingly I really had to ponder this question. Do I have spare time? What do I like to do? Cooking? Well yes, but not when I get home at 5:30 starving and want to eat asap. My motto then is... I'll eat whatever is quick, easy and available. Cleaning? Well, I do enjoy living in a clean apartment and the satisfaction of it all. Although, I do have to admit that sometimes when I get frustrated or just have to let out some stress I do go into the cleaning mode. But as of late, I decided I really enjoy digital scrapbooking. It's taken me a while to find the 'spare time' to sit down and figure it all out. I've done a few random pages. The first one took me over an hour to do because I don't really know how to use the program. But it's coming....slowly and hopefully it gets a little faster and easier. I'm just a beginner at all this, but here are a few pages that I've put together in my 'spare time' :)

Happy Halloween

I just have to say that Halloween always brings out the little kid in you. I guess I sometimes forget that working in a school everyday. I'm surrounded by kids all day long. I love to see how excited they get around every holiday especially around this time of year. I think I've been bringing some of that contagious excitement home. Stephen thinks I'm weird at times, but oh well. This last weekend we were able to get dressed up for our annual family Halloween party. We've done this the past few years and it's always so fun to see everyone all dressed up in their costumes. I don't think Stephen has had to dress up since he was little. He wasn't quite sure about it all. But, we had a great time eating pizza and enjoying each other's company. Here's a few pics of everyone!


Watch out...here comes princess Leah and Darth Vader!

What a cute group of kids!

I love this time of year!

I guess it's been a while since I've last written, but I'm sure I'll get better at this as I go. The past couple of weeks have been great! I love this time of year with General Conference and the all the leaves changing. I always hate to see summer go, but I love the fall.
The past few weeks, Stephen has had a "normal" 8-5 shift at work. It has been so wonderful to have him around more and to be able to see him each day! I think I've been spoiled. (Having a swing shift and only seeing each other a few hours in the night has been harder than we thought...for both of us.) Stephen has had more trainings on this temperary shift at Fidelity before taking his series 7 test on Friday. We are glad the test is now over and I'm proud to say he passed with flying colors! YEA! We found every excuse to celebrate all weekend long.
I had a short week at work this week. Our district took it's Fall Break on Thursday and Friday. It's been so wonderful to relax and not have to worry about school. I've been able to get some things done at home. A great catch up time for projects I don't usually get around to doing. But like I said before we played extra hard this weekend.
On Friday, we had tickets to a local community play of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It was so fun. They performed it in an old outdoor amphitheater made of rocks with a live headless horseman. We had a great time and it really got me into the Halloween mood. Then on Saturday, we met up with a bunch of my friends from USU and went to Frightmares at Lagoon. We had a great time catching up with everybody and riding all the amusement park rides. However, I can tell I'm not as young as I use to be. My body isn't able to handle all the spinning and twirling from the rides. But needless to say it was fun to catch up with people I haven't seen for a long time and to play all day.

Reasons to Smile!

It's pumpkin carving time!
Stephen passed his last exam for work on Friday.
As of Friday, my classroom finally has heat! Yeah, the kids and I have been wearing coats all day as of late.
We had our first snow storm of the season!
Lots of family and good friends so close around us.
Eating yummy peanut butter cup ice cream.
Watching a good dose of 24 in bed with Stephen.
No student's this Friday!!!!
Doing dishes....maybe if I smile at them, they'll clean themselves!

First Blog

Friends and Family... I decided I'd jump on the bandwagon and try to figure out this whole blog thing. So I hope this works. I figure this is a great way to stay in touch with friends and family who don't live near us! Plus... it will give me something to do in the evenings when Stephen is at work till the weee hours of the morning. :) We're enjoying the cooler weather we've been having this past week. Especially since our swamp cooler in our apartment went out. If it had to die...now was the perfect time and not when we had 100+ degree weather in July. It was great to have a short week with the holiday on Monday. We enjoyed the long weekend. It was a wonderful surprise to find out that Stephen didn't have to work. I loved being able to spend the day with him around. We spent most of the weekend with the Dent family up at the Cabin. It was so nice to get away up to the mountains and spend some time relaxing and laughing. All the adults brought up their high school year books which were hours of entertainment. I probably haven't looked through mine since high school. But we had a great time looking for mullets, finding girls with big poofy hair and reading the sappy love notes previous boy/girl friends had written. Lets just say we learned lots about each other!!! Oh those were the days...I'm glad to say I never have to repeat again. :) Stephen's been enjoying flying lately and has been working on getting his private pilot's license. He's already got 20 hours of flying time and is almost half way there. He's pretty disappointed though, because all the planes are being serviced and he hasn't been flying in 2 weeks. He looks forward to it and it gives him something to work towards when he has his days off. School & Scouts seem to be my life lately and is keeping me pretty busy. I have quite an interesting little group of kids this year. With only being in school 2 1/2 weeks... I have one little girl who reminds me of Dori (off of Finding Nemo) she's just not quite all the way there (but then I guess I teach Special Ed), another boy who has left our school campus everyday at lunch time this week and it took us over an hour to find him on Friday. We almost had to have the police involved! Then I have another little boy who my aide and I had to chase for almost 15 minutes around the school because he got in a fight. We finally caught him out back by the dumpsters. Ahhhh the joys of my job!