Farnsworth Family - A Whole Lot of Life Goin' On

The Boys Are Back in Town

2012-02-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

It's official! Look who's coming to the Nampa Civic Center on February 25 at 7:00!!!

That's right, The Standards are coming back to Idaho (they live in Nashville at present) and they will be performing in several cities - p.s. Elena, they'll be in Rexburg on the 24th. :)

Anyway, if you live anywhere close around here, then the NCC is the place to be on the 25th. They put on really fun performances that the whole family can appreciate - I mean, would I love it if it was any other way?!

But if you don't make it to the show, don't worry, I'm sure I'll tell you all about it afterwords. :)

(And no, I was not paid, nor do I receive any royalties for promoting this show. I'm just a little excited! :)

- In other news... I had a new experience of what it's like to go clothes shopping with a guy. David needed some jeans and since he went to Winco with me (have I ever mentioned that that store gets on my nerves for some reason?) I went to the mall - on a Saturday (also, not a store that I love to spend lots of time in...I'm a TERRIBLE shopper) with him.
But let me tell you, if you don't like spending lots of time out shopping, go with a guy. I was gearing myself up for hours of mindless wandering through the overly crowded halls of the mall. But no, we tried one store - fail. So we headed to JC Penney and he walked in, grabbed two different pairs of jeans, tried them on and liked one better than the other...so he bought it. That was easy!
He did want to try on a button up shirt, so he just stood next to the rack it was hanging on and slipped it on over his t-shirt. You know how it's "cool" for clothes to be on the small size? Well, he thought he would be able to avoid that by trying on a large, but even that was too tight. As he nearly broke a sweat trying to get his arms back out of the sleeves he exclaimed in his spastic frustration, "Is this the boy's section?!!" As opposed to the "man section", I guess.
I was cracking up already, but started laughing even harder when some poor lady who was there with her husband, cautiously looked over her shoulder to see where the angsty complaint was coming from. Of course, that only made David laugh and be even crazier as he wrestled to get the shirt off.
Even so, he ended up buying the next size up and we were out of there before the usual shopping migraine even had time to set in.
If only I could shop like that.....

Dance the night away

2012-02-05T17:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday there was basically a church prom that was hosted at the Eagle Stake Center. David and Spencer decided to do a double date and spend the day doing some fun stuff with their dates before going to the dance.

They started out by buying a bouquet of flowers then meeting at Ingram's house with their dates and making each other's corsage's and boutonnieres. After that they went and played some glow-in-the-dark mini golf.

Later that night David and his date Kayleigh, plus Spencer and his date Marley, and another couple Greg and Natalie all stopped by at our house so we could embarrass them by taking the awkward/dreaded,

pre-dance pictures. :)

Once we released them from the torture of being the center of attention, they headed over to the Macaroni Grill for dinner. David was telling us that when they finished eating and asked for their checks, the waiter told them that someone in the restaurant had anonymously paid for their whole group!

After the dance, David and Spencer ended up helping some random guy jump start his car, which had apparently died because he'd left his radio on too long! :) Needless to say, their date seemed to be pretty adventurous and fun.

Even though David cringes every time we take a picture of him, and makes it almost impossible to get a "normal" picture (if you need to be reminded, just look through a couple of past posts) the ones from last night turned out pretty good!

Here's David and Kayleigh

The whole group - Natalie, Greg, Kayleigh, David, Marley, and Spencer

Should we be worried? :) Nah!!

C'mon, it's only a little prick, right? Actually, she did just fine pinning the boutonniere on David.

This is one of my favorite pictures from last night. I told Kayleigh to put her flowers next to David's because I was impressed at how well their home-made corsage/boutonnieres had turned out. So she hopped right up and did this fun little pose. I've never met her before, but she goes to seminary with David and Kelani and seems like a nice girl. Anyway, it was fun to see them all dressed up and know that they were off to a glorified stake dance where they wouldn't have to deal with some of the messy bits of school dances.

Fun stuff!

Thought for the day

2012-02-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice little thought that I've learned to really love:

"Life isn't about waiting for the storms to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain."

I've realized how true that is the more I go day to day in life. I think you would all agree that there are times when things really just aren't going the way we wish they would. In our minds we think we have figured out the perfect way and when life proves otherwise, it can be frustrating, sad, disappointing, etc. This quote is a great reminder that even if we haven't had one of those perfect, sunshine filled days in a while, we don't have to be miserable. Take what you have and make the best of it - of course, I'm only saying this as something I'm still practicing.
But one thing that's been great to learn is that if you look hard enough, you can always find something good! Maybe this is on my mind so much because I just finished reading, "The Hiding Place", which was all about learning to "dance in the rain", and even more about being grateful for EVERYTHING that comes from Heavenly Father.

Anyway, just remember that dancing (and singing... :) in the rain can be something you look back on and be glad you did!

p.s. That's not my picture - I borrowed it from another blog. :)

What a relief :)

2012-01-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

In case any of you were worried about the whole "2012" end of the world stuff (which personally I am not), then don't worry! :) I saw this on thehobbitblog.com today and thought it was kind of funny.

Yes, I know, I'm a nerd!! But I'll admit that I'm totally excited for this movie to come out! David and I are LOTR movie buddies and we always watch them together, so this will be a little crazy to see in theaters without him (part 1 comes out in December) since he'll more than likely already be gone on his mission.
At least by the time he gets home, the second part of The Hobbit will be out too and he won't have to wait the year in between to see the whole thing. :)
But seriously - who else is excited for this?!! Woo hoo!!

Try this!

2012-01-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

Happy rainy Thursday! The snow yesterday was so pretty but now it's all mostly turned to mush, thanks to the rain. My institute class was supposed to start last night but they cancelled classes because of the weather and since Malia was at work and everyone else was at the church, I ended up being home alone for most of the night (and I am not complaining - it was actually quite nice).
   I was in one of those moods when it's just fun to cook and bake and stuff like that, and since I had that bit of free time, I decided to try a new recipe. It's from the cookbook, "Deceptively Delicious" and it's full of recipes that a mom created that are supposed to include, but disguise, veggies so that her kids would actually eat them. I've tried a couple different recipes and it's been kind of fun to see what kind of veggies you can add into food and not have it taste all weird.
Here's a hint - it's even more enjoyable to make these if you're listening to some good music, and while you're at it, go ahead and sing/dance along!! :)     (I may or may not have been doing that...)

So here is one that was pretty tasty:

Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins -
1/2 c. peanut butter (chunky was good, but plain works, too. It's peanut butter, can you go wrong?)
1/2 c. carrot puree (just steam carrots until they're soft and puree them in a blender with a bit of water)
1/2 c. brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 c. plain yogurt
1 egg
1 c. flour (I used wheat, but white totally works too)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
*Your favorite flavor of jam or jelly

Mix peanut butter, carrot puree, sugar, and butter until it's well combined. Stir in yogurt and egg. Add dry ingredients and stir until it's just mixed - it's ok if it's lumpy.
Fill a muffin tin (I only made 12, but some of them turned out pretty big, so you might want to do more and have them be a little smaller).
Drop a spoonful of jam or jelly on the top of each one ( I tried making a little crater for the jam but once it cooked, the jam all sank to the bottom and they didn't come out of the muffin tin very co-operatively - grrr).
Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes - basically until the tops are golden and a toothpick comes out clean.
                  Deceptively Delicious - Jessica Seinfeld p. 63

Enjoy!!

2011 In Pictures

2012-01-08T15:31:00.000-07:00

Are you ready for this? I think it's kind of fun to go back and remember some of the things that have happened in our lives through the past year of 2011.

As I think back, it seems like it was really full of some big, life changing events. And even if not everything was all that big, it made a difference to me in one way or another.

I was able to spend time becoming closer friends with people from church, dance, and my family. I've been tested and learned new ways that prayers are heard and answered - and I'm still learning how to handle the answers that aren't always quite how I hoped they'd be (and from what I understand, that's a lesson we never stop learning). :)

Life really is an interesting thing. As we grow up we spend so much time thinking about what life will be like when we're older. Some people have the perfect picture of what they hope to do, down to the very last detail; others have a general idea and are able to work towards it. I always thought I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted my life to be like, but what I'm constantly being shown is that the only plan that you can really count on is the plan to be willing to follow Heavenly Father's plan.

Sometimes things happen that you never would have imagined - some good, some not so good. But the point is that as long as you trust Heavenly Father and have total faith that He is shaping you into becoming your best self, then everything is going to be worth it in the end. Easier said than done!

There were a lot of those moments in the past year, and they're not over with yet. But as I look at all that happened last year that I never would have expected it's cool to see how well everything came together and to be able to connect a few dots. It also makes me wonder what this year will uncover and what new lessons there are for me to learn.

But now - without further ado, here are some highlights and turning points of 2011.......

January ~ ~ ~

We started the year off right by having a nice little buffet in the basement while watching some football together. Grandma Jack may possibly be one of the most die hard BSU fans I know and we spent many hours watching the Broncos play (and basically dominate) this season.

February ~ ~ ~
Our Boise Cloggers group returned for our traditional competition in Nampa and we were able to get past the nerves and fear and enjoy dancing together. All of us on the adult team are good friends, which makes it nice to have someone to panic with! :)

March ~ ~ ~
March is every Irish dancers big month. We spent the whole day on St. Patrick's Day dancing all over the valley. In fact, our school got divided into 3 separate groups for the day so that we could sort of "divide and conquer". And besides that one specific day we have performances leading up to, and following St. Pats and it becomes quite a marathon. It's a blast!!

                                                                      April ~ ~ ~
We went to Jerome to spend conference weekend at the Farm, and the line from the hymn, "Like a fire is burning" took on new meaning to us as Mom, Dad, Grandpa, and I were outside at midnight hosing down Dad's BBQ pit fire. As many times as he's cooked Polynesian style, with his meat in the ground, this was a new experience to have it actually catch fire. Of course, besides the Farm potentially burning up (which it didn't) the big concern was getting to the meat - since the whole family was planning on eating it the next day. But miracles do happen, and the only things that didn't make it out so well were: Dad's meat thermometers, Grandpa's wheelbarrow, Grandma's "favorite" shovel, Aunt Lisa's tarp, and a couple of tree stump stools. Did I forget anything? :)


   We also got to meet new baby Brittney for the first time!

April was a bit of a tough month, too. Dad's grandma (my grandma's mom) passed away the week after General Conference. In the midst of all the funeral planning, my grandpa ended up in the hospital and was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. He had to be in the hospital for about a week, but we were able to go see him while we were there for my great grandma's funeral.

I wasn't sure how he would be when we went in to see him, but I knew he was handling things well when I could hear him laughing before I even saw him. I had to smile once I saw him because he was sitting in the chair next to his bed, reading a conference talk, wearing his little hospital socks and robe and his Farnsworth Mortuary ball cap. :)

May ~ ~ ~

In May Dad got called as the bishop. It was actually a really neat day that brought our family together in all new ways. Mom and Dad's parent's were able to spend the day of church with us and it was so cool to have all of us together.

June ~ ~ ~
I LOVE summer and it was so fun to be able to spend a lot of it out in the yard and working in the garden. We had a fun dinner in the back yard and my grandma and her brother, and our friends, the Kays all came over. It was one of the last things we got to do with the Kays before they moved to Utah and we loved having them over!!

Before the Kays moved we got together with a few friends from church and had a little party.

Also in June, my cousin Ian got married to the lovely Reilley! I love getting new members in the family. Ian is the sixth cousin on my dad's side, but the first boy cousin to get married, so it was fun to get a new Farnsworth to the bunch!

July ~ ~ ~

We had a super awesome 4th of July/mini-reunion at the Farm and we spent the day painting t-shirts, swimming, eating, and visiting. Pretty much a perfect day!

Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like not to have grown up having somewhere like this to go. The Farm is beautiful, and especially in the summer I can't get enough of it.

Also in July, one of my best friends (who happens to be one of my Irish dance teachers) got sealed in the Twin Falls temple. I lucked out and got to be there twice in as many months (Ian and Reilley were sealed there in June). The Twin Falls temple is one of my favorites!!

Heidi asked if I would be a bridesmaid with her sister and new sister-in-law, which I was thrilled to do!!

August ~ ~ ~
We performed in La Grande, OR at the Highland Games, and had a fun time. I also got to see Wallowa Lake and Hells Canyon for the first time during that trip.

And another wedding! My cousin, Jeremy, on my mom's side of the family got married to Taylor at the end of August. We had quite the dance party out there afterwords, it was awesome!!

September ~ ~ ~
Our long time favorite local singers (five brothers), The Standards, came back to their hometown of Twin Falls and put on a really fun concert. We've been listening to them and going to their concerts since I was 11 or 12, and they just keep getting better. As fun as the concerts are, we really love getting to talk to them after all of their shows.

October ~ ~ ~
Cousin number 25 was born! Lincoln brought the number of kids in his family up to six. So now we have 25 grandkids, 9 great grandkids, and 6 cousin-in-laws!!

Hanging out with the little munchkins is always a treat. Gotta love those cousins!

Nani had her epic Halloween party at Grandma's, who has the perfect yard and barn for that kind of thing.

November ~ ~ ~
We learned the hard way not to put potato peelings in the sink disposal - it doesn't like it. And neither does Dad when he gets a mouthful of backed up pipe juice. Bleh!!

Our annual Irish Dance Idaho recital at the Nampa Civic Center went good and we ended up at TCBY with the Ingrams/Griggs/Bridy/Gretchen afterwords. :) I have been so lucky to be able to dance with the groups I dance with! As much as I love dancing, I wouldn't love it half as much if I didn't have such awesome people to be with all the time.

We had Thanksgiving at the Farm this year. Grandma loves nothing better than having her family together and doing special things for all of us. She makes little place settings for everyone and I realized how much more meaning this one has than usual.
Grandpa finished his chemo treatments at the Huntsman Center a week before Thanksgiving. They'd been driving to Salt Lake all summer so Grandpa could have the treatments. He got finished and after having some more tests done, they found a few cancer spots on his liver. But he'll be going in later this month to have them removed and other than that, I think everything is looking good. He's been quite the trooper - and Grandma, too!

We had a fun visit with the Kays in Burley during the Thanksgiving stay.

December ~ ~ ~
December started off with a dream come true for Kelani! David Archuleta truly equaled a Christmas miracle for her. :)

Christmas Eve at Grandma Jack's house. It wouldn't be the same if we didn't all get together there to talk and laugh (and eat, of course)!!

To wrap up the year, our family made the trip to Salt Lake and spent the day at Hogle Zoo, Heritage Park, and Temple Square!

Temple Square was the highlight for me!!

Well, if you're still reading this then you're a trooper! That was a long post, and it barely scratched the surface. Life is good, and even the hard parts are worth it as we look back and see what came from it. And if you're still waiting for things to get better, don't worry, somehow they will. It's a new year and anything is possible!

Christmas Adventures

2011-12-30T17:59:00.000-07:00

How was your Christmas? Ours was jam packed and so much fun!!

On Christmas Eve we did our traditional get together with Mom's side of the family where we all meet up at Grandma's for dinner. All of Mom's sisters were there and a small handful of cousins were able to make it, too. We ate and exchanged presents and had a good time.

My favorite part of the party happened towards the end. As everyone was getting ready to leave, my Aunt Judy wanted to round up all the sisters to be in a picture together, but as we tried to find Aunt Etau someone told us she was in the bathroom. A bit of history about this particular bathroom is that it has some random window thing right above the toilet and the door of the window can be opened from a connecting closet behind the bathroom. It's definitely good prank material, so I went over to Judy and jokingly reminded her of it and said that it would be funny just to have Etau peek through the window for the picture. I now know where I got my love of pranking! As soon as Judy heard that she started laughing and took off at high speed to the closet behind the bathroom. She stepped into the closet and shoved the window open. It scared Etau who had just finished up in there, but she was laughing as she said, "I was just looking at that thing wondering what it was even used for, and then it came flying open!"

We were all watching as this happened and it gave everyone a good laugh!

"Grandma and the Girls"

Us with a couple cousins

On Christmas day we drove to Jerome in the afternoon where we got to spend time with Dad's side of the family. By the time we got there, most of the party was over, but we got to exchange gifts with the people who's names we'd drawn.
The next morning was when the real adventure was starting. Grandma and Grandpa decided that as part of their Christmas presents to the family, that we would take a day trip to Salt Lake. It was a blast!! We haven't had a family road trip for a long time. David and I rode with our cousin, Ben (how crazy- he's been home from his mission for a whole year now) and had a fun drive.
Eventually everyone made it to our first stop - Hogle Zoo. I know, a zoo in the winter? It was cold, but we had a good time. There were about 40 of us that went on the trip, so you could say we were our own little zoo everywhere we went. But don't worry, no animals were harmed and no small children turned up missing, so I'd say it was a success for that reason alone. :)

This was the sunrise at the Farm the morning we left for Salt Lake - with a start to the day like that, how could it not be good?

Once everyone got to the zoo we gathered around and had pizza before going in. Nothing like warm pizza on a cold day!

Three Amigos - Heather, Becky, and Tiana

The little cousins had fun just running around the parking lot and throwing snowballs at anyone they could actually manage to hit. There was barely even enough snow on the ground to make snowballs, but where there's a will there's a way!

Baby Lincoln's first trip to the zoo seemed to be a success. I got to carry him around for part of the time and it was so much fun (not to mention the fact that he added a bit more warmth)!

After we got done at the zoo, we went across the street to Heritage Park, the "This is the Place" monument. They were doing their CandleLight Christmas and we got to go check it out. It started out with a train ride through part of the pioneer village, which was all decorated for Christmas.

More cousins!

Look! An amazing Utah sunset to bookend the amazing Jerome sunrise!

We all piled off of the train and headed into the Huntsman Hotel where we had some tasty soup for dinner. We filled the whole hall with our family and it was so much fun to look around and see cousins, uncles, aunts, and my grandparents at all the tables.

It was the perfect little Christmas village and I loved having so many of us all there together!

Where's Waldo? :) Ok, so we don't have a Waldo - but we have just about everyone else!

After dinner we all broke off into little groups and went around to explore the pioneer town. Some of the different buildings and houses had little pioneer Christmas activites to do or see. The first stop that a few of us made was in the dance hall. All the family got paired up with each other, so I stepped out since it was an odd number. I was fine to watch and take pictures, but at the last minute someone pulled me into the line and had me dance with some random, little teenage boy from another group. My family was all laughing at me, and the cherry on top was when my cousin's husband yelled out, "And yes, she's single!" Awkward!! :)

There's Benny Boy and his girlfriend, Kim. We all met her for the first time and she was super fun.

The very last part of the trip, and the part I was looking forward to the most, was going to Temple Square! I've been wanting to go there forever since the last time I was there was when I was probably 3 years old. It did not disappoint. No matter where you look there are lights everywhere, and it has nativities all over the place. Despite the fact that it was freezing outside, it was so awesome just to be able to walk around and take it all in.

Me, David, Ben, and Kim hanging around Temple Square.

Here are the masterminds of the trip. Grandma and Grandpa were so awesome for planning this whole trip (among other reasons)! They got sealed in the Salt Lake temple 51 years ago, and I bet they never imagined they'd be back someday with such a big family - or maybe they did. :)

And here we all are! Halfway frozen, but glad to get to be there together.

It was time to head home to Jerome after that. David and I rode with Ben and we were joined by his mom, Lisa. We drove Kim back to where she'd left her car at the beginning of the day, then it was time to go - but not before we made a 10:00 stop at Carl's Jr. Once we got on the road, I'll admit, I didn't stay awake for long. In fact, Aunt Lisa was the superstar and drove us all back to the Farm where we rolled in at 1:30 in the morning.

It was totally worth it! That was the best way to spend Christmas and be with our family!!

Christmas Spirit

2011-12-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

Merry Christmas!! Well...almost. It's hard to believe that Christmas is in two days. Are you ready? I have to admit, I've really been dragging my feet for some reason this year. I thought I was going to be on top of everything I wanted to get done for Christmas, but all of a sudden it's two days away and I'm still not sure if I'm satisfied with everything.
I was so excited to have this whole month full of Christmas activities, you know - buying/making presents for everyone, making treats, decorating the house, watching Christmas movies, sending out Christmas cards. That all sounds good, right?
Well, I finished my college class towards the middle of the month and because I'd been putting in lots of time studying for my final, I just had it set in my mind that as soon as the class was over it would be time to start all the Chirstmas fun. But once that time came, all of a sudden it felt like I was out of time; and apparently I buckle under pressure (which I guess I already knew) because now that I needed to start thinking about all the people I still needed to get presents for I couldn't think of anything they'd like. And even though we've had our Christmas cards ordered and ready since the beginning of the month, there was still a huge stack of them waiting to be addressed and mailed. Pretty soon all these little things started adding up and honestly, I was ready to throw in the towel.
It got to be pretty depressing to wake up and think, "I still don't have something for so and so." Or, "Sheesh, when are we ever going to be done addressing envelopes?" I have to admit, I really wasn't feeling much of a Christmas spirit. Tell me I'm not the only one who's ever felt like that!
As I got to thinking the past couple days (yeah, I know, I should have been thinking all along), I realized that I wasn't feeling the Christmas spirit because I wasn't focusing on the real meaning of Christmas.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with buying presents for people you love; it's a good thing to send cards to family and friends; and it totally means you're thinking of others when you spend two or three days making enough chocolate covered food to feed a third world country! The problem starts when you realize that you're doing all of that more out of habit than anything else.
I truly was doing all those things because I wanted to let the recipients of any of those things know how much they mean to me - because they do!! But I got so focused on trying to make everything just right that I somehow forgot about enjoying it. Does any of that make sense?
But here's what I've finally started re-learning: Christmas really isn't meant to be a holiday where we give because we have to (and I'm not saying that to get out of buying presents). It's not about becoming the Willy Wonka chocolate factory. Christmas is about remembering the Savior, who was born in a humble, little barn and visited by people who loved Him.
Christmas is about loving each other and serving the best we can, or actually, it should be a good reminder that we should always be loving and serving. Of course we give presents and send cards and make treats with the original purpose of showing love for the people in our lives, but sometimes it's hard not to get distracted and start doing it out of some kind of obligation. Ultimately though, I think I understand: I wanted to do that to let people know I care. My heart has been in the right place, it's my head that got in the way. :)
Has that happened to any of you? Here's my "light bulb" moment - love doesn't have to be big or expensive (whether you're giving or getting)! It just needs to come from the heart. Some of my favorite "things" aren't things at all. One of the best parts of the holidays is stopping in and visiting friends, and getting to spend time with all my family. And if you're reading this blog then that means that you're a friend and I hope you know that you mean a lot to me!! And that is what Christmas can be for all of us, a time to let others know how much we care about them.
So with two more days until Christmas I hope it will be a time for all of us to find a simple, heartfelt way to love and serve others while we remember the true meaning of Christmas - which is the birth of Christ.
Thanks for letting me think out loud for a minute! As I climb off my little soap box now, here's a list of some of our favorite Christmas movies you might want to catch up on during your Christmas break! :)

* Top 10 *

1. The church just put these new videos out, all about the life of the Savior - check it out here (there's more on the website, this is just the first one).
http://lds.org/bible-videos/videos/an-angel-foretells-christs-birth-to-mary?lang=eng

2. White Christmas (with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye)
3. A Christmas Carol
4. Holiday Inn
5. It's a Wonderful Life
6. Charlie Brown's Christmas
7. Garfield's Christmas
8. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
9. Miracle on 34th Street
10. Elf

Merry Christmas!!!

A Christmas Love Story....

2011-12-11T18:19:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time there was a young girl known throughout the land as Kelani Farnsworth. One day while watching one of her favorite shows ("American Idol"), several years ago, she caught the first glimpse of the man whom she would soon dream of as her future husband. His name?

David Archuleta.

While he innocently captured the hearts of young girls throughout the country, one would stand out above the rest, a heart that beat only for him - Kelani's heart.

As his fame grew, so did her undying affection, and who would blame her? For this young man lived the same standards as she did, was kind to those he met, and had a wonderful singing voice that could warm even the coldest of hearts.

Through the years, Kelani kept a faithful watch on David's website waiting for the day that his tour would include her hometown, Boise. Finally, after years of hoping, she was elated to discover that David would in deed be coming to Boise for a Christmas concert.

She immediately went to her father to ask him if she could buy the VIP pass that would grant her an audience with her handsome Romeo prior to his concert. But it was not to be. And so, only slightly let down, she was happy that she would at least be able to buy a regular ticket and stand in the crowd as close to the stage as possible.

Kelani's parents and oldest sister thought it would be fun to accompany her to the concert and get a glimpse of the man who's music had been playing throughout their home for years.

But fate, it seems, would have more in store for thus young admirer. Finally, the week of the concert had arrived and Kelani was beside herself with excitement for Thursday to get here. But due to the aid of a friend, Kelani received word that on Wednesday at the local Deseret Book, none other than the amiable, available David Archuleta himself would be there to meet all the single ( *hem hem* desperate) ladies in the land.

Wednesday came and Kelani found herself standing in line with her mom and two sisters (who she knew were no competition) at Deseret Book, only moments away from seeing the man of her dreams in person at last.

The overly-filled store was charged with screams and cheers as the adorable David entered the room and took his place at the counter in the back of the store, where he knew he would be in the company of many silly girls for the next several hours of his life. But he bore it graciously and greeted each hopeful young lady with a smile.
But Kelani just knew that it would be different for her, and she waited with bated breath as she slowly made her way closer to where he was.

Kelani caught glimpses of David through the crowd, and time became a nuisance as she waited for the moment to come.

At last! She found herself face to face with our melodic, young hero and she was nearly speechless as he signed their names onto a cd (and poster).

Of course, even knowing that he was out of their league, Kelani's sisters joined Kelani and David in a picture (possibly the first of many family pictures to come). But the cranky employees of the store had had enough of the fans and were shoving them through the line as fast as possible. Kelani came away with the whole moment as a beautiful blur in her mind - but feeling a slight twinge of regret that she hadn't had time to be in a picture of just the two of them.

But do not despair! In another unexpected twist of fate, a friend of the family came to Deseret Book to do some shopping (completely un-aware that David was there). Much to Kelani's amazement, this friend was an acquaintance of David's, and upon hearing the sad tale of the missed opportunity for Kelani to be with David for a picture of just the two of them, the friend pulled a few strings. Before she knew what was happening, Kelani was once again at the side of her comely crooner. And if that wasn't enough, David hugged Kelani before the night was through.

She went away that night with dreams of David running through her mind. And as she stood in the crowd during his concert the following night, she knew that one day he would spot her in the throng of fans and realize that hers was the face he would always remember.

No matter where he goes and who he meets, he will always have a place in the heart of a sweet, young girl from Boise, Idaho.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-12-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

How was your Thanksgiving?

Ours was another good one! We went to Jerome from Thursday to Saturday and we filled it (and ourselves) with all kinds of good things. Malia did have to stay here in Boise to work, but I think she was happy to make a little extra money for working over the holiday.

We ate at the Farm and a couple of my dad's brothers and their families came over for the big lunch. It's a little different to have holiday get togethers as we get older, things are way quieter and slightly calmer. Another thing that changes is the length of time. When we were little and had to wait clear until 1:00 (or whenever) to have lunch, it seemed like FOREVER and that we would most likely die of hunger before they called us for dinner. It was something to be proud of if you could snitch a bit of turkey or some veggies without getting caught by a grown-up.

One year when we were all pretty little, one of the grown-ups went into Grandma's utility room where she was storing all her pies for after dinner. They were surprised to discover that each of the several pumpkin pies had a big finger swipe down the middle - the culprit was easily identified as our pumpkin pie loving cousin, Ian. :)

Uncle Dave and his family brought all those tasty looking fruit and veggie trays and we got to snack on them while we waited for lunch.

Grandma whipping up a few pans of rolls!

Don't they look ravenous? :)

My aunt has been raising turkeys all year so that each sibling could have a "home-grown" turkey for their Thanksgiving. It tasted so good! And she did a great job with them. The one my uncle cooked was so big that it bent his oven rack.

Uncle Dave got a laugh as he grabbed these leftover pieces of pizza out of Grandma's fridge to add to the food line. She was so busy though that she hardly even noticed - but she did end up getting a laugh out of it.

And of course, the wonderful dessert table! That's not even all of the treats that she made. There were several pies in several varities, plus I got a new favorite that she tried this year - chocolate trifle with home-made toffee on top )that's it on the very end on the right)! More please!!

Baby Lincoln's first Thanksgiving!

On Friday we got to do something way fun and drive to Burley to meet up with our good friends, the Kays. We haven't seen them since they moved in June and we've sure missed them! It didn't take long for Dad to start wrestling the boys.

I've been waiting to see little Emmy again. Everytime I see a picture of her or hear about her, I just want to hold her. So luckily for us she was pretty content to let us pass her around among us girls. She even fell asleep while I took a turn with her and it was so fun just to hold her finally!

We went to lunch with them at their family-owned restaurant, Papa Kelseys. If you're ever in Twin or Burley, definitely make sure you stop to eat there. It's super tasty!

Here we are!

It was lots of fun to hang out with them for part of the day!

Anyway, throughout the rest of our stay in Jerome I got to go watch the last Harry Potter with my aunt and a couple cousins; David and Dad hung out in Hagerman with one of David's work friends who was home for Thanksgiving, then that night David went on a date with the friend's sister; on Saturday a few of us and some cousins went and walked down the canyon between Twin and Jerome; and then Saturday evening we all met up with the youth from our ward to do temple baptisms. It was awesome! I haven't done baptisms since the Boise temple closed in July, so I loved being able to go back to the temple. And I LOVE the Twin Falls temple, so that was fun. Plus my grandma is a temple worker and she got to be with us while we were there - always cool to see your family in the temple!

And now it's December and that can only mean that more good things are on the way!

Golly, what a day!

2011-11-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

First off - here's the gang, complete with Piper! Yes, all of these crazy dogs live at our house. But as the saying goes, "Dogs are like potato chips - you can't have just one." (Although personally, I think I could). :)

Last weekend we had our 6th annual Irish Dance Idaho recital "Celtic Holiday" in Nampa. (Check out the sweet poster created by a couple of the awesome dance moms!)

St.Patrick's Day is our busiest time of year, but the recital is a HUGE deal for the school. We work up to it for months and it always turns out so fun. We had an afternoon matinee, and then "the big show" at 7:00 so we got to dance on the amazing Nampa Civic Center stage twice - woo hoo!!
While I was backstage waiting for one of my dances to come up, I noticed this sign taped to the wall. The backstage moms cross out the dances as we go so we know they've been done (mostly for the tiny dancers' sake), but I had to laugh when I saw the one about halfway down. The dance is called "Fairy Reel", but when they wrote it, I guess they heard "Fairy Wheel". I loved how it was crossed out, corrected, and then had a smiley face drawn next to it.
It kind of me think of performing. Sometimes it feels a little like that - you get most of the dance/step right, but occasionally there's a small mis-translation. But rather than let it get you down, just add a big smile and keep on going! I don't think I've ever had a flawless performance, but it's those moments when you finish and it feels good that make you want to keep on going.

Here's a little backstage view. There's something so exciting about looking at the stage from behind the curtains - right before you get to go on and you know that anything is possible!

David came and hung out with us for the day. Even though he's not still dancing, he comes along and keeps us entertained. This is a classic picture of David and Spencer. Whenever they get together you know something funny is coming. This year we decided at the very last minute to use flashlights for part of our

A Cappella piece. So in between the matinee and main show, David and Spencer took a little excursion to Fred Meyer and bought TONS of mini-flashlights and batteries (and a tie for Spencer -who forgot his for the performance). When they came back the the Civic Center they started putting batteries in the flashlights and doing all kinds of crazy things. It's a little crazy how much these two "little" brothers are alike about some things, but they're definitely good for a laugh.

The shows were a blast and despite all the stress and nerves that come with the territory, it was another great year and seemed to be over so quickly. We hit up TCBY with Ingrams (and co.) afterwords and re-lived all the crazy/funny things that had happened throughout the day. The guy working at TCBY was nice enough to come take a picture for us before we left. There will probably be several group pictures for the next little while, because as I've mentioned about other things we do together - this was Spencer's last recital to dance in, and David's last recital to hang out with us at, for the next two years!! So we're just living it up hard core until then!

To peel or not to peel?

2011-11-20T18:16:00.000-07:00

Setting: The Kitchen (again)
Time: Sunday evening
Culprit: Potato peels

This may look like an innocent bucket of potatoes, but don't be fooled. When left to their dirty deeds, things can get ugly. Perhaps in retaliation for knowing that they were going to be eaten, the potatoes took their last bit of revenge before being devoured.
Mom was making mashed potatoes for dinner a couple Sundays ago and as she peeled them, she let the peels go into the drain of the kitchen sink, thinking that the disposal would take care of things. Well, if our disposal had been a live animal (think Flinstones) it wouldn't have been a problem. But of course it wasn't a live animal - so yes, problem.
A while after dinner, Mom noticed that the sink wasn't draining and that, actually, it had some nasty stuff bubbling up from the drain. We went down to the dungeon where the pipes go and there was water getting all over everything down there near the pipes.

Dad tried doing a few things but realized that this problem was bigger than one person could handle, so he called in the big help - Bro. Gillette. Actually, the cool thing about Bro. Gillette is that Dad wasn't calling him to ask him to come over and help, he was asking if he could borrow some tools that might help. But a few minutes later Bro. G. showed up in his big, white, utility van, ready for action!

We went down and tried to help them snake the pipes, which took several attempts that didn't seem to be going anywhere. Of course the dungeon is crowded with all kinds of things that don't have a place anywhere else in the house. So as we're wading through puddles, boxes, tools, and junk, things got pretty crowded.

They took out the screen of the window well to run a hose out to the backyard and so now it's not only wet, it's cold!

After who knows how long, they decided to try running some water from upstairs to see if all the snaking had had any affect. I went up to see if the kitchen sink was draining yet and when I got back to the dungeon, Malia and Bro.G. were laughing hysterically. Supposedly the pipes had decided to blast a bunch of junk and Dad had been right in the line of fire!

Open mouthed and way too close for comfort, this is what Dad got a faceful of out of the pipes. It must have been more than potatoes backing up the system.

Notice the wall across from Dad is covered in grossness, too! Bro. G. helped towel off Dad's face and also decided to call him, "Mr. Potato Head" after that little episode. It happened again a little while later and we couldn't stop laughing.

Finally, close to midnight, it was decided that the snaking wasn't going to help. It was time to call it a night. So the next day, the plumber showed up and got things taken care of.

It's just lucky for us that it happened on a Sunday (which is why the plumber didn't come sooner), I mean, how else would we have gotten to witness Dad getting a taste of the plumbing? ;)

Goodbye, October

2011-11-02T15:23:00.001-06:00

Wow! November is here. October was a bit of a rush, but it was good! Here's a little summary of what we did in the past month.
Our friend, Whitney, has THE BEST recipe for canning homemade apple pie filling, so she came over one morning and helped us can our own. It was lots of fun to hang out with her and a couple of her kids while we did the pie filling. After we finished that, I went out and picked the grapes we grew. This was the first year we got fruit off of our one, little grape vine - it was awesome! We got 11 quarts of grape juice, I was so excited.

New in October is David's little puppy, Piper. Yes, we have 4 dogs....I don't know what we're thinking. But look how cute she is! She's a cocker/dachsund mix and she is crazy. :)

Kelani had a choir concert for her 9th grade choir at Fairmont (no puking students during the performance this year - but I couldn't stop laughing everytime I saw this one, older guy at the concert. I fondly named him 'Pocahontas' due to his beautiful, women's cut, woven shirt and fitted jeans - ewww). Kelani is in the "UU" row, fourth one down.

David turned 18 on the 29th! Freaky, huh?! Grandma and Grandpa came up on Friday and brought Lanie and Maddy to party with us. :) Actually, they came to bring us a cabinet that Grandpa built for us, so we made it a party. While they were here we went to a fun Chinese restaurant with Grandma Jack to have David's birthday dinner, then we watched his b-day present "Captain America" that night.
The next morning Grandma made her ever-popular donuts for breakfast - David's favorite. They were so good! It was fun to have them all here that weekend.

Satuday night Kelani had a Halloween party at Grandma Jack's house. She was inspired to have a party there after our cousin's wedding in August was so much fun. So we spent a bunch of time getting it all set up. As soon as Grandma Jack heard that Kelani wanted to have a party, she started buying Halloween decorations. She's been buying stuff since August so you can imagine how many awesome decorations we had that night.

Grandma was so excited about the party and she made TONS of treats for Nani to set out. This is only a small sample of the things there were to eat. Yum!

The yard/barn looked awesome! It was a Halloween wonderland. There were ghost and eyeball lights hanging in trees, pumpkins, cornstalks with big glittery spiders in them, and all kinds of noise makers and lights all over. It was so cool. Nani looks excited!

Our aunt came with a couple of her granddaughters (our second cousins) to check out the party. Kelani assigned me the job of hiding behind a little brick wall and jumping out at her friends as they got to the party. I was only too happy to oblige! :) Of course, these are all a bunch of jr.high kids, so they tried to act brave - but some of them just couldn't help reacting when I jumped up and yelled at them! My little cousin, Ronnie, wanted to help so she took a couple flashlights and stood where I could see her from where I was behind the wall. Anytime people would start to get close to where I was, she waved the flashlights all around as the signal that a victim was approaching. What fun!

Doesn't the barn look cool?!

Well, there are more stories that need to be told, but I'll just have to save them for another post!

Happy October!

If at first you don't succeed...say "cheese"!

2011-10-14T16:18:00.000-06:00

Not that anyone has to be too interested in this, but today I was cleaning out some old picture files on the computer and I ran across these. The pictures are from 2008 and we were attempting to take a family picture (via the self-timer on my camera) for our Christmas card.

I'm the only one who is ever very motivated to do this, mostly because I like getting pictures from everyone at Christmas, so I wanted to try sending them out to our family and friends. Too bad for my family, but I like taking pictures, even though they all pretty much hate being in them (especially David).

Anyway, the first one is just what we ended up with as I tested out the self-timer. And the rest are just the "bloopers" you could say.....

Hmm, makes me look forward to doing this again in just a few months.......

More fun things!

2011-10-10T22:00:00.000-06:00

Wasn't General Conference awesome?!! It was so nice having two days to listen to such amazing church leaders. I love how they are inspired to say just what each one of us needs to hear. It definitely gave me a little extra peace to face the things that are hard for me, and even though the problems aren't gone, I feel a little more able to handle them. The gospel is great!
   Holding with tradition, we went to The Cabin, in Garden Valley with our friends, the Ingrams for the fourth annual conference gathering! :) It is beautiful up there and we had a blast!!
  A few of us went up Friday evening and had fun watching movies, talking, and looking at all the stars (once it was dark enough, of course). We may have even set a new record by going to bed before 1:00 am this time (Friday night only).
On Saturday we had some tasty breakfast then gathered around to listen to conference. Afterwords we drove into town and all of us girls went for a fun walk. The weather was perfect!!

Becca caught a fuzzy little catterpillar, a praying mantis, and almost a frog (he was just out of reach).

We went back to the cabin for the second session, had some dinner, and then it was time for the guys to go to the priesthood session broadcast at the church in town. Malia had to work Saturday morning, so Dad and David waited and came up with her after the second session.
By the end of the day we were all back at the cabin (Kelani's friend, Gretchen was with us, too!) and it was time for a party. Shawna made some awesome mini fruit pies for everyone and the rest of us sat around talking and laughing. We ended up watching "Tron" on the projector and it was after 2:00 am by the time we headed to bed.
David and Spencer in an intense "beater stick" war.
How crazy is this? Next year, Spencer will be on his mission, and if David isn't in the MTC by next October conference, he'll be going soon after! These two "little" brothers of ours are on their way to 19 pretty fast!!

Only one of the gorgeous shots of scenery there were all weekend.

Here's a few of the crew waiting for breakfast on Sunday morning. It was awesome because everyday we were there, more of the family showed up. On Sunday morning, Bryce and Heidi came to spend the last day with us. It was so great to finally have all of our families together again!

After the last session we all found different things to do, and some of us went for another good walk before it was time to go. Mom made a delicious cream cheese pie that we had after dinner - never a shortage of food when we're there! Bryce and Heidi left before we took this picture, but here we all are at the end of another great year of conference at the cabin.

This last weekend we went to Jerome for our newest cousins baby blessing! He is the 25th grandbaby on Dad's side of the family, and the 6th kid in his own family. He was born right at the end of August and he is adorable!! His name in Lincoln Samuel; he is so fun!
I was worried that I might not get much time with him since he was the main attraction on Sunday, but after sacrament meeting, his mom (my aunt Angi) saw me waiting to go into Sunday school and wondered if I would hold him while she led the music in primary! So I got him for all of class and I loved it! After church a bunch of our family all went to Jared and Angi's house for lunch and I got to hold him a little more.
Isn't he cute?!

I love it when our family all gets together. It doesn't happen as often as it used to just because everyone is growing up and getting busier, so it's the best when it does happen.

There's Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Uncle Dave and Aunt Cheryl.

Grandpa just found out a couple weeks ago that the cancer is gone!! He still has to wrap up a few more chemo treatments, which are really hard on him, but we're just so glad that they worked!! He's awesome!!

The next couple of pictures, I just have to stick up here because they crack me up with their "epic-ness". I took a little nap at Grandma and Grandpa's after we ate, and when I woke up, I went outside to find a bunch of the little boy cousins running around the Farm dressed like ninjas.

Lucky for me, I love taking pictures, and they love being the subject of them! We took a whole bunch, but these are just a couple of my favorites.

How awesome do these boys look?!

And this one is sweet! We caught the sun at a perfect angle and Dillon and I both were surprised to see how this picture turned out.

It's kind of hard to tell from this picture, but up by the playhouse, that's a pretty nice little hill down the driveway. The cousins ride anything they can, with reckless speed, down that hill and it gets pretty hardcore. Yes, there have been crashes, major wipeouts, and several tears in each generation of daredevil cousins - but it's all part of the glory of being a surviving rider. :)

As this little gang went flying down the hill, David would stand right in their path and then jump over them at the last minute. It never gets old!

We have been so lucky to have the Farm as we've been growing up. The truth is, "The Farm" is more like a universal term for family/cousins/parties/memories/"the good ol'days"/fun.... you get the picture.

The older I get, the more I start to realize how blessed we've been to be brought up in a family who loves to be together and spend time with each other. That's something that will never go away. And something that I want to continue as I "grow up" and add to the family someday!

How sweet it is!

2011-09-25T16:56:00.001-06:00

Well, it's Sunday, which means that tomorrow is Monday, which means we start up with more crazy, hectic, non-stop days. It really is great to have Sunday because some weeks it truly is the only day of rest, and I don't know about all of you, but I NEED that!
It feels good to go to church and be able to have at least one thing that really stands out from a talk, or lesson and turns out to be just what you need to hear to buoy you up for the busy days a head.
But....Monday is just around the corner and it'll be time to get back to work. So how do you retain the things you felt at church to make things feel better? It's definitely something I'm working on.
   Unfortunately it can be really easy to get caught up in all the reasons that life is hard and to lose sight of how it's so good. Did you hear Pres. Uchtdorf's talk in the RS broadcast? Yeah, I'm guilty of being one of those people "waiting for their golden ticket". There are things I think, "If only it would go this way" or, "Why can't life just end up the way I want?" Well, the point is, sometimes you get a "golden ticket", but even more common - sometimes you just end up with a candy bar. Just a candy bar? I love candy bars!! But honestly, sometimes I forget to enjoy it.
   But when you're looking for a golden ticket and it's not there, don't forget you still have a candy bar. For example: I was working at an elementary school cafeteria the other day and I was tired, and a little ready to be done, yeah, probably sweaty and in a hair net to top it all off. I would rather have been home getting things done that needed worked on there, but instead I was at work away from home.
    But I was at the serving line as the kids started coming through and the more of them I saw, the more fun I had. They were so cute and full of smiles! I noticed one little girl who kept staring at me as she got closer. Once she got up to where I was she smiled at me and said, "You look beautiful." Did I mention I'm wearing a hairnet? :) See, the "candy bar" is still good.
Life isn't always how you hope it will be, but I've started to realize that if you keep the hope for the golden ticket, but learn to enjoy the "plain old candy bar" it's sweeter than you think.

Have you heard these guys?!

2011-09-18T17:07:00.001-06:00

Why these happy smiles? Because we just got done enjoying an amazing concert in Twin Falls by a musical group called, "The Standards".

Who are The Standards? Let me tell you!

They are 5 brothers from Twin who have been performing for more than fifteen years. They are LDS and most of them are returned missionaries and come from a really great family.

When they started they were an A Capella group and through the years they've branched out into country music, so and now they do some of both.

Our cousins in Jerome introduced us to this group when we were all pretty young and most of us have been hooked ever since.

And for fun, here's a little story about them. When I was turning 13 (a long time ago) my grandma called my dad to ask him what I wanted for my birthday. My grandparents were leaving for their mission a few weeks after my birthday, and I figured they should leave with a bang and go all out. So half joking, I told them I wanted The Standards to come to The Farm (in Jerome) to sing to us! I mean, they lived in Twin, and Grandma knew some of their family, so it wasn't too impossible, right?

Right!

She surprised me and actually called and asked them to come to The Farm!! And they did! Talk about an awesome grandma! :) They sang Happy Birthday to me, Kelani, and our cousin Heather (all of us have September b-days), and David (Oct. b-day, but this was a b-day party and Grandma and Grandpa would be gone by the time David had his b-day).

They also sang one of my favorites that they do (by request) "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", as well as three or four other songs. It was so awesome!!!!

We had a ton of our family all there to hear them and then Grandma invited them to stay for pie and ice cream afterwords, so we got longer to visit with them. So anyway, I liked them before that, but after something as cool as that was, I'm pretty much a fan for life. :)

That was in 2002 and we've seen them every year since 2000 (I think) at least once - usually more - up until 2008. They moved to Nashville since that's where all aspiring musicians go, and they haven't been back since 2008. So I was extremely happy to see they were coming to do some hometown concerts this past weekend! There was no way we could miss that, so on Friday Mom, Kelani, her friend Gretchen - a "first timer", and I all drove down to see them perform in Twin. Grandma, and two cousins, Maddie and Audrey came to the show with us and we had a blast!!

So here's just a few pictures from that night to give only an idea of the fun we had; you'd have to see them in person to get the full effect. :)

Because they started as an A Capella group, naturally they need someone who can be a bass, as well as beatbox/instrument guy. Lucky for them they have Nic. He's the curly haired one and he is awesome! He does everything from the tuba to the didgeridoo.
They always do an impression of a "lowrider" car; the kind that always pull up next to you and their bass is so loud it rattles your windows. It's so awesome to hear, and Nic is the one providing the bass.

Most of them play at least one instrument, as well, and we got to hear some of the new music they've been working on. One of the other brothers, Morgan, can also beatbox and he's come up with a way to play the harmonica at the same time that he's beatboxing!

A bunch of the fans all ran up to the edge of the stage towards the beginning of the show and just stood there the whole time. So of course me, Nani, Gretchen, and Maddie all joined the "family friendly mosh pit" and got up super close to them all. It is pretty exciting to have one of them look down and smile at you while they're singing! :)

As great as the show is, it's only part of the fun. The guys always come out afterwords and stay as long as it takes to talk to the fans and sign autographs and pose in pictures with people. We always stay and talk to them and have gotten to where they remember us and stick around to chat for a bit while they sign our new posters or cds.
But since it's been 3 years since the last time we saw them, and since they've covered a lot of ground and met a ton of new fans in all that time, I was afraid they wouldn't recognize us. Wrong! They totally remembered us and asked how we've been and gave us all hugs and just stood there visiting with us. It was so much fun! And of course we got our traditional pictures with the guys, which we always do before we leave.

It was a night to remember and I know all of us around here suffer from The Standards withdrawals for a few days after the show. :) It's nice to have such a fun, clean, happy group of family entertainers to look forward to seeing, and I can't help but become a bit of a "fan girl" at heart whenever they're in town. If they're ever in your area, check them out, you will not be sorry!! :)

How did September get here so fast?!

2011-09-12T18:44:00.000-06:00

Wow, not only is it September, it's almost halfway through already! Summer went way too fast and I'm a little sad that it's over. We packed it pretty full this year (again) and it kind of feels like some of the things that happened during the summer happened a long time ago. Weird, huh?!

So now we're trying to get back into the swing of things as the school year starts up and "real life" has begun to sink in.

I'm back in school and taking a humanities class, taking two institute classes, working for the Boise school district as a substitute lunch lady, teaching clogging on Thursdays, taking Irish on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and trying not to go insane as I do all of that on top of the everyday things that are always going on.

Malia is still working at Petsmart and loves it, her and I go to institute together, and she's been extra busy lately by taking care of Frodo. He had to have knee surgery last week and it's been quite the recovery! Lucky we have her to take care of him because I don't think the rest of us would have the patience to put up with all the schedules/therapy/pills/and keeping him from moving around too much that Malia takes charge of (but, also lucky for us, Mom is the one who's right there to help when she needs to).

David got a new job and works at a battery shop. It keeps him busy, which is good! :) He also goes to seminary every day and tries not to annoy the seminary teacher too much - no, I'm kidding. The seminary teacher we've all had is a good friend of all of us and I'm sure he gets a kick out of David and his shinanigans.

Kelani just turned 15 and is starting her first year of seminary (she goes to the same class as David - there's a pair for ya!), and is in the Jr. high choir this year. She's the last one for Mom to do school with!

And of course, Mom and Dad are just trying to keep up with all of this, as well as keeping up with Dad being bishop, and Mom a counselor in YW. They're extremely patient, that's for sure!! :)

Anyway, here's some pictures of a few things we've been involved with the last few weeks. Enjoy!

The scouts did their own tri-athlon at the end of August and I think overall it turned out pretty good.

David was the decided winner even though there's a scout or two who thought otherwise.

Even Dad decided (the morning of) that he'd give it a try!

I looked out the kitchen window one morning and saw this! Isn't it pretty? These are the kinds of skys I miss once winter hits so at least it will last in a picture.

At the end of August our Irish group got to perform at the Highland Games in La Grande, OR. We had quite the trip, which could fill a whole new post. But it was fun and we covered ALOT of ground over Friday and Saturday.
Here's the awesome Boise Highlanders who are so great to listen to! One of our friends from church is in the group and plays the bagpipes. He's 14 and he is amazing on the pipes!! He's in there somewhere...towards the middle left.

The stage that they made for us was awesome!! Too bad you can't hear how great this dance sounded! And luckily it was one I got to watch and get some pictures of.

On our way home we took a detour to Wallowa Lake, which I was seeing for the first time. It was BEAUTIFUL!!! I would totally go back there some day when we have more time. Definitely worth checking out if you're ever "in the area".

We also stopped at Hell's Canyon, also a first for me. It was right before sunset so the colors up there were awesome.

Well, stay tuned because you know that we've already got more things in the works. We just can't seem to sit still, can we?

Another wedding!!

2011-08-24T12:11:00.001-06:00

This summer has been filled with weddings, so in holding with tradition, we had the third wedding in as many months!

My cousin Jeremy married his fiance, Taylor on August 20 at my grandma's house here in Boise.

It was a fun evening with family!

(Disclaimer: For some reason, a bunch of these pictures loaded sideways and I'm not sure how to fix them - grrr!)

So enjoy a few highlights from the wedding and reception!

Here comes the bride!

Grandma's yard always looks nice, but it looked extra pretty with all the twinkle lights they hung in the trees and wrapped around the fence posts. Jeremy and Taylor's colors were John Deere green and yellow and it was western themed.

From left to right: Jenny (Jeremy's grandma on his Dad's side - Jeremy's mom is my mom's youngest sister), Grandma Jack (our grandma), Taylor, Jeremy, Aunt Joni, Uncle Jay.

Here's Jeremy and his brother Jason. Jeremy is a few months younger than me, and Jason is a few months younger than Malia. They're quite the pair! :)

Here's the blushing bride!

The yard was all covered in green and yellow decor and it looked so cool!

Nani and I had to scope out the dessert table! Mmmm....

Time for a family picture. Doesn't David look excited?

At the end of the reception Jeremy and Taylor had a dance, but sadly, there weren't many people who took advantage of having a dj available and fun music to dance to. Don't worry, though, Nani, Mom, and I let loose and danced up a storm! :) Actually we were a little un-official, so maybe it doesn't count. There were a few people over on the designated dance floor, but the three of us just danced in the yard (which was right by the dance floor) as we put up chairs and started cleaning up.

But that was seriously one of my favorite parts of the night. We were making up moves never seen before - and probably never again! :D It was awesome!!

How do you like Grandma's socks? Once the main festivities were over she "slipped into something a little more comfortable" shoe wise. ;)

And last but not least, this is Mom with all her siblings and their mom.

Left to right: Judy, Joni, Grandma (Janell), Jana, and Janis (aka, Etau). They have a thing for "J" names.

So a re-cap of weddings this summer:

June - Ian and Riley (Dad's side)

July - Heidi and Bryce (best friends)

August- Jeremy and Taylor (Mom's side)

Nothing for September that I'm aware of, but who knows! :)

Livin' it up, Boise style

2011-08-13T20:31:00.000-06:00

Boise is one of the coolest places EVER!! I mean, of course there are tons of great places to visit all over the world, and I've even got to go to a few of them, but have you ever taken a few hours just to explore Boise?
The last couple evenings I've been down in the Camel's Back park/Harrison Blvd. part of town and it's awesome.

Wednesday evening Malia took her activity day girls from the ward to hike Camel's Back so I got to go with them. Lucky for me, she's the leader so I was mostly there just to have fun! :)

Then on Friday night most of us drove down to Camel's Back and took off on our bikes to just explore. Sadly I didn't get pictures of all the fun stuff we saw, but here's a few...

This first one is actually from Wednesday and it's a view of Boise from the top of the hill we climbed at the park. It was such a clear evening....beautiful!

Here's the crazy activity day girls! :)

So on Friday we started by riding our bikes through Hyde Park. There were so many good smelling restaurants as we went through there! Then we made our way over to the river and went down the greenbelt for a little while.
There's a little spot we like to stop and wade in and the river was pretty low right there so Malia, Nani, and I went out to the middle.

Mom and Dad just sat and waited for us while we played in the water and cooled off.

We were down there at one of my favorite times of day. It was still light outside, but starting to cool off and everything was clear and sparkly as the sun got closer to going down.

On our way back to the car we stopped at this old, little market and went in the store to look around. I think it's been there since the early 1900's.

As we rode past the Veteran's hospital there was a huge grassy area that had big, ol' sprinklers going so Nani and I took a few minutes and ran through them. It was awesome!!

Then we rode our bikes through some classy, old neighborhoods where it was fun just to see all the different house styles.

Anyway, it was lots of fun and I would do it again any time! So next time you want some exciting site seeing why don't you try exploring a bit of Boise and you might just be surprised!

A fond farewell and other things

2011-08-09T11:20:00.001-06:00

The day has come that I never even dreamed would happen. When I read the news about it, it just about broke my heart and brought tears to my eyes. It was a tragic day. What has happened lately in my life to turn it upside down in so upsetting a manner? BORDERS BOOK STORE IS GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!!! Are you kidding me? Yeah yeah, I know we still have Barnes and Noble, and they're a great bookstore, too, but Borders was my store!!

You might already know this about me, but if not, let me tell you something. I get quite attached to things and then it's hard for me to just let it go when it meant something to me. So am I loosing just a bookstore? No way! I've been going there since I was a little kid, and we've had a Borders in walking distance ever since we moved here when I was 7.

I've had midnight Harry Potter book releases there through the years; I've gone there when I had free time to just sit and read; and I always go there and get totally excited at all the different things there are I could read and learn and find. Anyway, I was so sad to find out that this was all going to go away!

But don't you worry, I've been there several times since I heard the news to be able to spend a final few hours in my favorite store. And now a moment of silence.......

Something else that came to a close recently was David and our neighbors basketball season. The "Imperial Guards" won some and lost some, but I think they've had fun this summer.

Dad, Mom, and Kelani went to girl's camp this past week and had a blast! Mom brought home some of these white mariposa lillies and asked me to take some pictures of them 'cause she loves them. So here's one of the pictures I got. They're pretty little flowers.

And to finish up, our chicken Pippy hatched a little chick! There was more than one egg but this is the only one that hatched this time. Isn't it a cute little cheeper?

My Best Friend's Wedding (not the movie)

2011-07-24T17:52:00.000-06:00

    I told you there were some fun things to look forward to coming up! Here's one of the major ones I was talking about. One of my best friends Heidi (whose family are also some of my best friends) got sealed in Twin Falls on Saturday!!
    My family went to Jerome Friday night and stayed at the Farm, and then on Saturday morning the Ingrams came and got to the Temple at about 10:30. Since Heidi needed to be in there so early, that left Becca, Spencer, and their friend Laura with some time to get a few important jobs done.
    They came to the Farm and got me and my siblings and we all went back to Twin and paid a visit to the local Zurchers. Yes, we were buying the top secret, extremely mandatory "car decorating supplies"!! Bryce (Heidi's husband) was a little worried that his car wouldn't make it out unscathed, so we went easy ;) and only bought balloons and streamers.
    Then we had to zip over to Kimberley to pick up some food for after the sealing and before heading back to Boise. I found some crazy sort of pleasure in stopping at the restaurant and picking up the pre-ordered meal of 50 burritos!! It was awesome!
    Of course entertainment was not lacking as we rode in the car while Spencer drove and David sat up front inflating balloons as the two of them sang random Youtube songs! :)
    The sealing started at 12:00, so we got back right before 12:30 and had plenty of time to wait outside the Temple for our first look at Heidi and Bryce. It was so much fun!! So the rest of the day will be highlighted in the following pictures (with a bit of commentary)!

(Don't worry, Spencer didn't play with the balloons while he drove:

this picture was taken while we were parked outside the restaurant. :)

Here's Mom, Laura, and Becca waiting outside the temple!

There's the new couple; do they look happy or what?!

Check out this group picture! This is just about everyone that came to the temple with them.

Love this picture!!!

             This is the sibling shot; there were a few people all taking their pictures, so I just kind of snuck in
                         and took one from the side (which is why they're looking a different direction :).

I loved this one, too! I was just randomly taking pictures and Heidi looked over just as I took this. She was such a gorgeous bride!!

   So once the picture taking portion was over we ate some burritos, stopped for a lemonade at The Burnt Lemon (soooo good), made a quick stop at the gas station, and headed back for the reception. I was with Ingrams the whole time and we had so much fun; we even had time for a few rounds of Mario Kart on the Wii when we got back to Meridian! :)
    The reception started at 7:30 so we spent the rest of the time getting everything ready for that. It all looked so good (they had some awesome helpers the whole night, too) and it was a blast! Becca, Heidi's sister-in-law Mikayla, and I were bridesmaids (which meant a lot to me that Heidi would even think to ask me!) so we all got cute dresses to wear for the day.
     During the evening (while Bryce was occupied) a few of us went out and took care of some business. We filled his car with balloons and tied streamers on door handles (later on that night, some of Bryce's family decorated the windows with wash-able paint, which was the perfect touch)! It was great!

Can you find the bouquet? (Hint - it's still in the air).

Because Heidi is not only a good friend, but also one of our Irish dance teachers, of course a ton of dancers came for the reception!! So we pulled a group of us together and got a fun picture. Do you like how we're all pointing our toes in the traditional Irish dance form? :) The guy on the end is in a Celtic band that our group has gotten to be friends with so Mom told him to get in the picture, too. When Mom took the picture I asked her to count to 3 for us before she took it, but instead she said, " 5, 6...5,6,7,8" (the usual counts all of us dancers are used to)! It was so funny!

Before Bryce and Heidi took off on their honeymoon, I had to get a quick picture with her! Their family are seriously some of the best people ever and we've been such good friends! I am so happy for her!

But it wasn't going to be an easy get away! They had to stall for a few minutes to get the balloons out of the car to even have room to sit down.

They finally got on their way and the rest of us got things picked up and put away (most of it, that is). The reception was at their grandparent's house, so once it was all cleaned up about as much as it could be for 11:00 at night, we all kind of crashed in the living room and just talked and snacked. It was awesome!

Such a fun, fun day!!

Catching up for June!

2011-07-08T13:24:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone! Yes, I know it's been a long time that you've been stuck looking at the same pictures, so finally here are some new ones. :) We've been staying nice and busy and we're just getting started! Theses pictures are all mostly things that happened in June (and don't worry, there will be tons of things going on in July that you'll hear about soon).
So I'll just try to keep a little summary going and we'll move right along.....

First off, here's a picture from our Irish performance at the Emmett Cherry Festival. We've performed there every year for several years, probably 5 for me (it's all a wonderful blur). We love it, despite the major hazard of their slippery bandshell floor...it just adds to the thrill.

The next performance was one we did at the Renaissance Faire. It was lots of fun, but also a first for us in getting a chance to actually perform in the rain! It started raining on us in the morning as we danced, and I don't think it stopped the whole day. Of course the whole event was outside, and we had another performance later on, so must of us hung out under our little "IDI tent" (but of course, most of us had some exploring to do and got rained on any way). It was awesome though and I'd do it again!

At the end of June some of our best friends moved their little family to Utah. The Kays have been in our ward for 7 or 8 years and we've had so many fun experiences with them. We've been lucky enough to be around as they've had their three little kids during the years they've been in the ward (the newest one is just a little over two months old). Malia and I even got Machelle as one of our YW leaders, plus they're the ones who take our awesome family pictures, and they got to be witness to the first group date that us siblings went on (that's a great story)! :) Our family and theirs have become life long friends.

We love them all, and we'll miss them a ton!

David and the neighbor brothers across our street joined a city league basketball team this summer so they've been having weekly games that we like to go watch (even though they don't win very often :)!

We also had dance camp for Irish at the end of June, which was super fun! I think altogether I had about 15 hours of dance class that week (which is nothing compared to how many hours our teachers had). But it was great, and as tired as I was, I was a little sad for it to be over!

The week after that, our cousin Ian got sealed in Twin Falls! It was great to hang out with some of our cousins outside the temple while we waited for everyone to come out. I love the Twin Falls temple, it is so pretty!! What a fun day!

During the luncheon after the sealing, the wind picked up (hard to believe for Twin Falls, right?) and the table clothes were refusing to co-operate! So Dad decided to put them to better use and turn into Superman!

Before the reception a few of us drove down to see Shoshone Falls. It was awesome! There was this one spot that was super windy, so Kelani, Lanie, and I seized the opportunity to get some "model hair" shots. :)

Here's Ian and our new cousin-in-law Reilley! They are so perfect for each other, it's just awesome. And, Ian is the 6th cousin to get married, but the first boy - so we now have a new cousin with our last name. It was pretty exciting. Their reception was in Glenns Ferry and it was so nice, and the weather was perfect that whole day (minus the wind in Twin).

That weekend we got together with some of Mom's family and got to ride over in our uncle's boat to a little picnic spot up by Lucky Peak. It was fun and the water felt so good! We found this big ol' log that me and some of my cousins tried floating on, but it was not co-operating! I loved getting to ride in the boat, it's always so much fun.

Besides all that, Malia's still putting in lots of hours at Petsmart, I'm taking a communications class, and all of us are staying busy with callings, or jobs, or just living up the summer - finally!! The garden is doing good; Grandpa Farns is going through chemo right now and is pretty warn out, but as funny as ever! And lucky for us there are still so many things coming up to look forward to - - so stay tuned......

Memorial Day

2011-06-05T16:16:00.000-06:00

So what did you do for Memorial day?

We had a BBQ and Grandma and her brother (Uncle Bob) came over, along with our good friends the Kays.

Don't let this picture fool you, it might look sunny, but it was still a little chilly!

Uncle Bob travels around throughout the U.S. alot, so it's always a surprise when he stops in for a visit. But it was fun to see him and have him with us for dinner!

As Dad likes to say, "Check out my burger, it could be on a commercial!" For part of dinner we had baby burgers....mmmm!

Tyler asked me if I was going to sit with him (the little one on the left) but when I got outside, this table was taken by the boys. So I looked at Tyler and he kind of shrugged and said, "This is the boy's table!" He's a fun kid, and we've been lucky enough to know him and his little brother, and now new little sister ever since they were born! We've had lots of fun with them as they're grown up!

Time for some wrestling!

Notice how all the little guys have cleared the trampoline now that the big guys have taken over? :) Looks like David could use some back up!

Here's our family with the Kays. Lots of fun memories with them!!

What we're up to

2011-05-28T13:41:00.000-06:00

Thanks for tuning in to another addition of our family updates! :) It has been so busy around here, but I honestly don't think we'd know what to do with ourselves if it was any other way.

Summer has been rather flighty and somedays it feels like it's finally here and then the next day it's totally rainy and cold again. I caught David on one of those golden days, out on the tramp soaking up some sun and taking a nap. It's got to get here eventually, right?!

We've had some fun performances over the last few weeks. IDI got to perform at the Boise Farmer's Market a couple Saturday's ago and it was awesome!!
We danced about three different times in the space of a few hours, and in between performances we got to go explore the market.

I was starving that morning (that's what happens when you choose sleep over breakfast) and everywhere we went it smelled like food...good food! One of the dance families had a homemade toffee booth set up down there so we got some tasty samples.

And afterwords I got to go out to eat with Ingrams, so it was all worth it!

We thought it was so cool that we could walk out in the middle of what are usually busy intersections downtown, but that had been blocked off for the market, so I had to take a picture of some of us in the middle of the intersection!

Last week we had the annual Boise Cloggers Spring Show in the front yard of our clogging teacher's house. It always turns out really fun! It's a potluck for the dancers and their family and friends, then after we eat we all perform the dances we've learned over the past year. The weather was really nice and we had a fun crowd.

This dance is called, "Sweet" and it's sooo fast, and check out the sparkly costumes. :) In case it's hard to find us, I'm the one in the front on the end, and Mom is next to the guy in the back.

We've been Irish dancing and clogging for about 6 1/2 years and it's awesome to look back and remember all the cool things we've been able to be involved in with these groups!! We're so lucky!

Here's poor Bishop Dad trying to get some scripture reading in! :) He just couldn't make it.

(As a side note, he fell asleep reading all the time, even before the new calling).

Even with the mood swings in the weather I've been able to get some yard work in! I love it when the weather cooperates and things can start being planted and the yard gets all spruced up. This little corner has hosted several different ideas of mine through the last few years. But every year I end up trying something different. This time around I decided just to let it be a little flower garden.
Some of those flowers are Moms that she wants to plant in the front yard and hasn't gotten to yet, but they add lots of pretty colors to the corner so it's all good!
This year we've got tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, cabbage, beets, cucumber, zucchini and onions going. I sure hope they'll make it since somedays they get tons of sun, and other days they end up practically
water-logged. But we'll see how it turns out; if nothing else, it's just good to be out there in the garden!

Besides all that there's just lots of other things going on:
Grandpa started chemo earlier this week and so far he's doing good!
School is almost out for Nani and David, and I'm about to start a class at a community college here (yikes!)
Malia is still loving her job at the pet hotel at Petsmart.
Mom and Dad are great and just trying to keep up with everything going on.
So anyway, life is good here at the funny farm and we're just glad to have each other through all of it!

Funny quote by David: The other night we tried the Brazillian restaurant "Tucanos" and Dad kept saying how "I bet this is authentic Brazillian..." meat, or recipes, or thing like that.
So at one point, as he went to take a drink, David grabs the straw out of his cup and says, "Guys look, I bet this is a real Brazillian straw!"

That's why we keep him around! :)

A Mother's Day post

2011-05-08T16:06:00.000-06:00

Since today is Mother's Day, I thought I should specially acknowledge all the awesome moms I know. Of course everyone has their own, personal mom that is there for them from the beginning and always will be. My mom is so great and does everything she can to make sure all of us are happy and get to do fun things.
   She couldn't bear to send us to school and so she decided to keep us all home and teach us as a family. I have loved being able to be home and learn more than just math, or science, or reading. Thanks to her we learned how to take care of a house, and be responsible people (some of us are still learning that...). She's been an awesome example of how to serve others through callings she's had in church, and just being friends with the people we're around.
   I've had a hard time as I've gotten older when it comes to deciding what to do when I "grow up". I never had big dreams to have some major job, or earn every degree I could from college (not that I don't love learning). I've just always planned on growing up to be a mom, and I'm sure it's mostly because of the kind of mom I had that makes me want to be a good one, too.
   And then there are all the other neat moms I know, whether it's grandmas, aunts, or really good friends. We're lucky that we each get our own mom, but then we also get moms in our lives to look up to who unknowingly set examples for us by how they live.
Today is one day set aside to especially make it a great day for those special moms that we know, but hopefully we'll realize everyday how blessed we are to have such great people in our lives and to make sure they know that we love them. Happy Mother's Day!!

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

2011-05-01T16:05:00.000-06:00

I'm still here! It's been kind of a whirl wind the last few weeks, but life is good! Since the last post, here's just a few things that have been going on in our lives: The week after general conference, my great-grandma (my dad's grandma) passed away. Of course we miss her, but she was ready to go and it was a blessing.

But a few days before the funeral (in Jerome) my grandpa (my dad's dad) ended up in the hospital because of some chest pains and dizziness. They found out that it was because he was extremely anemic and bleeding internally. Long story short, they found and removed a tumor on his colon, but he has also been diagnosed with colon cancer and will be starting chemo in a few weeks.

All of it was really hard, but having the gospel and having family and friends to support each other has made a huge difference! I was amazed with my grandpa at how positive and happy he still was. When we walked into his hospital room to visit, he was sitting in a chair by his bed wearing his hospital gown, hospital socks, using an oxygen tube, and to top it all off he had on his "Farnsworth Mortuary" baseball cap!! It was great! He's home now and feeling really good and we're just all so thankful for answered prayers. He also made up his own version of the Jewish song, "Hava Nagila" which went, "Hava, hava anemia..." Yeah, he's quite the composer. :)

Anyway, this past weekend Dad and I went to Jerome and stayed at the Farm because I performed with IDI at Twin Falls' Highland Games. It was so much fun!! We had a couple performances throughout the day that both went really well, and even most of the little mess-ups were entertaining.

Since all of my dad's family live in the Magic Valley alot of my family came and watched, which was so nice of them. It's fun to look out into the audience and see my dad, grandparents, cousins, second cousins, and an uncle and aunt all out there!

In between performances a few of us went over to take a look at Shoshone Falls, which was beautiful! So of course we took a minute for a little photo shoot. :)

"You got tickets to this gun show?"

We finished dancing then went out to eat with the Ingrams and one of our dance pals, Anna Sue. We took them on the "scenic route" through J-Town aka Jerome, then headed home for Boise.

This is one of the awesome scenes from the drive home. I love it that spring is really trying to get here, and it's getting so close. It's one of my favorite things to see our part of the world start coming back to life and filling up with color again! I've been so lucky that I've grown up with the drive from Boise to Jerome because I've come to love almost everything I see on the way. It was such a fun day and one of those ones that just kind of stick with you and make you smile, even years down the road.

Here's a fun new family picture that a friend took of us today after church with Grandma and Grandpa Farns, and Mom's mom Grandma Jack!

Happy Sunday!

What happens at the Farm stays at the Farm

2011-04-09T13:29:00.003-06:00

General Conference was so amazing!! I love hearing what the leaders of the church have been inspired to tell us. There were so many talks that seemed to touch on things that I needed to hear. We went to Jerome for the weekend and got to listen to conference with some of our family there.

While we were planning to go, Dad thought it would be fun to cook some hog legs in the ground (Polynesian style) like he's done dozens of times over the years, then he invited all the family over for dinner after the Saturday session. So we went down Friday evening and got the bbq pit ready for the meat. We put the meat in just as it was getting dark outside (and cold), so we hurried and covered the pit so it could cook over night.

Basically it goes:

hot lava rocks,

the meat, which is wrapped in tin foil,

more hot rocks,

tinfoil,

soaked cardboard,

then a plastic tarp,

and all of that was held down by anything close by that we could throw on.

So we had a couple Home Depot buckets, a shovel, and Grandpa's heavy duty plastic wheelbarrow.

Everything was nice and snug so we went in expecting it to work out like it always has.

Dad went and checked on it around 11:30 and it looked fine so he went to bed. But about 5 minutes later, Grandpa (who had been getting a drink in the kitchen) called downstairs for dad. The next thing I know, Dad's flying all over the place saying, "The whole pit's on fire!!"

He ran outside, and I wasn't too far behind him and Grandpa.

Sure enough, it was nothing short of a massive bonfire.

Dad ran to use the hose he'd had earlier to soak the cardboard, but it didn't reach to the pit. So Grandpa went over to turn on another hose which I held, ready to spray as soon as the water came on. But for whatever reason, it wouldn't work. It was kind of like one of those movies where no matter what you do, something prevents you from getting what you need. Surprisingly, Dad was the only one really freaked out (mostly just because he was thinking of the three hog legs he needed to get out of the fire). I was mostly amused at how much this was like a scene out of a movie. But eventually Grandpa got the water on, then joined me and Mom, as Dad took command of the hose.

As soon as the flames were down he started throwing off all the layers while I started spraying off all the things on the perimeter of the pit that were still on fire, or smoking - fun stuff!

He did manage to save the meat, which turned a bad situation good! :) Grandpa had been so thoughtful and even offered to thaw out some hot dogs in case things hadn't turned out.

It was around midnight by the time the meat had been put into Grandma's oven, and even one of my uncle's ovens. But once that was all said and done we had to consider the damage. "What happened to the buckets?" you may be asking. There wasn't a single trace of them after the fire. The shovel? It doesn't have a handle anymore. But on the plus side, Grandma was quick to find a use for it, saying that the next time the cousins come over asking for a shovel, she knows which one to give them.

And the wheelbarrow? As one of my uncles told his wife after being one of the first to witness the damage the following morning, "I don't think we're having pork. I went outside and saw tinfoil and burnt cardboard thrown all over the place, and half a wheelbarrow." He fondly christened Dad with a new name, "Flame On."

Well, we did have pork and there wasn't even an after taste of plastic (despite our telling Dad there was, just to see what he'd do). Another plus I pointed out to Dad was that if his career as a chef doesn't work out, he'd make a great fire fighter!

It was an awesome weekend!

Pit prep - - - before

After- - - - - (Grandpa got a turn with the hose, too).

Farewell, wheelbarrow!

All's well that ends well!

Another exciting thing that happend was that we got to meet our newest second cousin, Brittney! She was born at the beginning of March, which was early. In fact, as I was holding her and talking to her mom (my cousin) Heather, she told me, "I'm not even due for another week!" :)

Brittney weighs a little under 6 lbs now, and she is so cute!!

It's kind of hard to tell in the picture just how tiny she really is, but you can maybe get an idea. Can you see that the little, elastic waist on her pants are too big around her middle?

So much fun!!

And this is Harley, who had fun rocking out while some of the cousins played "Just Dance" on the Wii.

There's never a dull moment in Jerome!

Words from the wise

2011-03-28T10:37:00.000-06:00

Today David got all four wisdom teeth pulled. He went in the morning and came back pretty drugged. Since I'm such a nice sister, I won't put any pictures of him on here (at least not right now), I'll just talk about him! :) No, actually, he's doing pretty good, he just looks super out of it right now. He got home and was helped downstairs by Mom and Dad, and got all settled on the couch.
I was up in the kitchen and Mom came up laughing and carrying a little carton of ice cream that David got to bring home. She put it in the freezer as she told me, "I have instructions 'not to let Tiana eat this'!" Hmmm, I guess he's not that delirious. It's kind of funny to find out what things lurk in people's inner sanctum, and only truly reveal themselves when that person is only semi-conscious.
Kelani was downstairs watching, "Eclipse" and cleaning, so David got to "enjoy" the movie while he laid on the couch. He's been making fun of it the whole time (which actually isn't any different from how he is without medication).
He has a nice "Jacob Marley" head wrap/ice pack thing that we had to put on him. As I went to tie it on, I asked him if he was ready for it and he shook his head, so I told him, "Mom said to put this on in 20 minutes, and it's been 20 minutes." So he mumbled, "She meant 20 minutes from now." Nice try!
Then just a few minutes ago he said to Mom, "Ith my tounge thwollen?" Probably just numb. Poor guy!
But he's quite the trooper!

A week not for the weak

2011-03-20T18:27:00.002-06:00

   St.Patrick's Day has officially happened, and it's been another great year!! This week alone, the Irish dance group I'm in pulled off about 27 performances, most of which run for about half an hour in length! We danced Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and we had a blast!! I guess I'm still a little tired because the more I try to think of what to say about all of it, the harder it gets to think of anything.
    And maybe alot of the stories are the: "I guess you had to be there" kind that are too hard to explain. Then again, sometimes words just aren't enough to convey what it feels like to go from one performance to another, several times over in a day, and a week, and still find the energy to keep going.
   But the love of dancing is apparently enough to keep us going, because everyone did! And after a week like this, dancers come away being such better friends and learning all kinds of meanings to the word "teamwork". We were split into 3 groups for the actual day, since we had so much ground to cover, but luckily we got to combine with the groups throughout the day as we danced at retirement centers, schools, the Capitol, the VFW, and assisted living centers.
   I heard a story from one of the groups, that during a performance, one of the dancers got so tired that she feel asleep "backstage" and had to be woken up when it was her turn to dance! But it's so worth it once you see how much the people you're performing for enjoy it; or when you leave the school you just danced at and happen to notice a line of little kids all testing their skills as they copy what they just watched the group do.
We also got to dance for the half-time show at the Stampede basketball game.
Check it out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCnT1H0koro&feature=player_embedded
(Mom and I are both in the group on the left, and even got to be partners for most of the dance!)
   Anyway, it's pretty awesome that even though this is only my 6th year to perform as an Irish dancer, it feels like something that is so much more than that. Despite nerves, sore muscles, or cramping arches, and everything like that, I would do it again (and plan on it)!!

To end this post, and this week of adventure, the lines from a funny song come to mind:

"Are we human, or are we dancers?"

(This is just a few of us at one of my favorite places to dance. Mom was sick though, and couldn't come, which was a downer. This was our last performance on Saturday night, but do we look like we've had enough?!)

The breath before the plunge....

2011-03-16T13:11:00.000-06:00

IT'S FINALLY HERE!!!!! St.Patrick's Day is tomorrow, but in my opinion, March should just be St. Patrick's month! We've already had several performances in conjunction to St. Pat's, but the official day is going to be CRAZY!! We are going to hit it hard all day, and I can't wait. I look forward to this time of year almost as much as I do Christmas, and definitely more than I do my own birthday (I don't get any older on St.Pat's)! So anyway, as I post this, we're between performances and I have a little down time. If I weren't an Irish dancer, I'll admit that this is just another holiday that could easily be un-appreciated, but for the past several years it has been one of my favorites. So as we get into full swing for tomorrow this quote that I found off another person's blog (hopefully they don't me using it) seems to be a good thought to keep in mind, “Be calm and expectant of good.” As we go through a busy day, I'll try to remember this and just have fun no matter what (which happens pretty easily anyway). And since I'm going to be dancing like crazy tomorrow, "Happy (early) St. Patrick's Day"!!!!!

Another success!

2011-02-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

February finds Mom and I gearing up for the Boise Clogging competition (which actually happens in Nampa). We've been dancing with Boise Cloggers for a little over 6 years, and have been competing for probably 4 or 5 of them. As a disclaimer, none of us particularly love to compete, and if it was a solo, I would be out!!! But since we go as a team "for the fun of it" it all works out. :)

Our adult team always gets so stressed out and we practice to the point of exhaustion on a weekly basis in the weeks that lead up to competition. Who knows why we put ourselves through the stress - mentally as much as physically- but once competition is over, it all feels worth it.

It has nothing to do with prizes, or fame ('cause there really isn't any of that!) or anything like that: it's the feeling that comes from knowing that you did your best, pulled together as a team, and the outcome was good...great even!

There's just nothing like the satisfaction of getting up there, feeling the energy of the lights, and music, and crowds and then giving it all you've got. All of us were nervous, or stressed about things going on in our lives, or just plain tired. But the minute you walk onto the stage, all of that goes away and the only thing left in your mind is the dance.

It's funny how many things run through your thoughts once you actually start dancing! Of course the steps of your dance start out as you try to keep all the "step toe step heel up - step toe step heel down" 's straight. But then the muscle memory in your feet and legs start to run the show and your brain can start noticing things out in the crowd, or you start thinking, "Man, it's hot up here!" Or, "I hope I don't slip!" :) And before you know it, you've done it and it was actually ok! So you walk off with a smile, and head off to change into the outfit for your next dance, and go through all those emotions again.

Our adult class decided to cut back and only compete 2 dances this year, which were combined with the younger (but extremely skilled) team. Then, long story short, we ended up competing a dance that is just our adult team. So three dances later, we were pretty happy with how it all went.

Here's some of the adult team. One of the other dancers had already gone home, so we missed getting her in the picture. During our first dance, I remembered there were judges watching at the very front of the stage, so I looked down at them and the first one I saw was someone who used to dance with us before she moved, a couple years ago, and was actually Mom and my teacher when we first started. I had no idea she was a judge, so I was happily surprised to see her there! Once the competition was over, we all got to tell her hi, and get her in our picture - fun!!!

A few of us were still there when they started giving out awards, so we all went up on stage together, along with other studios who were being awarded. I have to admit, Boise Cloggers made a haul!! :)

Zack and Allie pretty much sum up how it felt right about then!

Model those awards, Laura and Carsten!

I guess the point is, sure it felt nice to be recognized for doing our best. But more than that, it was just fun to be there as a team and as friends, and be part of something exciting.

Dancing might not get me into a major job, or Harvard. Some people might see it as a nice hobby but nothing special, but those are the people who have never known how it feels to dance.

Nothing can compare to that feeling when you are able to express something through dance that you could never say in words. I'm so lucky to dance where I do and get to be an Irish dancer, and a clogger. I'm just going to enjoy it for as long as I can, and know that "once a dancer, always a dancer."

Perils of a frenzied cook

2011-01-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

This might be one of those "You had to be there" sort of stories; but with a little imagination, this could work.
Setting: Dinner time
Location: Our kitchen
Circumstances: David's numerous claims of starvation; Dad being late getting home from work (forcing all of us to have to wait to have dinner); Mom being busy trying to make dinner, pick up Malia from work, get to dance on time, etc.

Story:
   Mom got some veggies steaming on the stove to go with our dinner of a tasty pasta dish that we all love. So once the veggies were going, she went around doing all the other things she was hoping to get done before it was time to eat. Malia got picked up from work, and now we were all sitting around wondering what was taking Dad so long to get home. David was only slightly cranky as he reminded me that he'd been up since 4:00am to work, hadn't gotten a very good nap once he came home, and now he was starving.
   We've all learned a lesson now that we need to be a little more helpful for Mom because no one can successfully accomplish all the little things she was trying to do, and have it all turn out right. Just a few minutes before Dad got home, we all started to realize that something smelled extremely burnt, and it was coming from the kitchen. Kelani came downstairs where the rest of us kids were and told us the water had all boiled down in the veggie pan and that's where the smell was coming from.
   So despite the pan itself being burned, Mom reassured us that she'd tasted the food and it didn't taste burned. (But with that smell, it was hard to believe). If we had helped Mom with a thing or two, the veggies wouldn't have been forgotten and the intoxicating burn smell wouldn't have been so bad that we all tasted it, even though we were sitting downstairs.
   Finally Dad got home and naturally the first thing he said was, "What happened in here?" So it was explained and we all sat down to eat. As Dad started serving the pasta, it was a little watery around the edges (which it's usually not) so he asked if something had gone wrong with that, too.
Anyway, Mom wasn't getting too happy about all the complaints that were going on; and of course any one's mistakes in our family are immediately a target for jokes and getting made fun of. David showed no mercy as we all dished up a helping of the pitiful, soggy, gray broccoli and carrots (yes, we still had to eat them). And I'm not going to lie, I had a forkful of them and as I put it up to my mouth, there's that little inhale you take right before a bite, and as I did that all I got a huge taste of the flavor of the burned smell.
   David grimaced (some of it was exaggerated, but there was still too much truth behind it) as he shoveled it in. In fact, I think I saw his eyes watering a little before he managed to swallow. We were all laughing until it was our turn to try them.
    Anyway, the veggies went down - eventually- and we saved the pasta for last, to ease the pain.
Mom was still discouraged, even though she had been laughing, too. But then Dad came along. What he didn't know was that Mom had also made muffins for breakfast, and they were good, but sort of plain.
     So once Dad ate dinner, he got a muffin and after one bite, he looked at it and said, "Where did the muffins come from?" I could tell by his face and the tone of his voice, there was something he didn't like about them. So trying to spare Mom any more degradation, I quickly started signaling Dad to stop saying whatever he was about to say next.
     He looked at me curiously as he continued about the muffins, "They're gr-...." And before he could finish his sentence I loudly said, "Great!" Just then he caught on what I was doing, and said, "They're great!" But he was trying not to laugh, and by now Mom understood what had just happened, so pretty soon all of us were in tears from laughing so hard.

To be fair, Mom's cooking really is good and this isn't a usual occurrence; in fact that's probably why it was so fun to joke about. So she told us she'd given up cooking, and she went and got ready to go to dance class.

The "cherry on top" of this story was that once we'd all finished eating, and started to clean up, Kelani leaned over to me with a mischievous grin and whispered, "I didn't even eat any of my veggies!"

2010 Highlights

2011-01-24T11:59:00.001-07:00

I know I've kind missed doing this right at the beginning of the new year, but I guess late is better than never! I thought it would be fun to pick a picture to highlight something fun from each month of last year. The hardest part is picking just one thing to highlight, because we do so much in a month. So, here we go on some of the fun things from last year!

January-

We had a babyshower for Becky, who has been one of my best friends (not counting the fact that we're cousins) since we were both little. This is her first baby, and we couldn't wait to find out if she was having a girl or boy.

February-

We set up our big canvas tent out in the backyard (which feels like a tent out of "Harry Potter"; it's just so big on the inside it's like a little house) and we had a campout with Grandma and Grandpa, and a couple cousins. We ate dinner and breakfast, all cooked out there on our little stove thingy, and played games. It was cold outside, but we kept the stove going, and used our thick sleeping bags and it was all good!

March-

Our Irish group that we dance with got invited to dance with an awesome group, Leahy, in March. We danced at the Morrison Center the weekend before St. Patrick's Day and it was so much fun! Leahy played and we got to dance to their live music, which was so cool after listening to them via cd while we practiced. They were extremely nice and we had a blast!

April-

Becky and Cody's baby, Harley got blessed in April. It was great to be there with so many of our family for a special occasion. That blessing dress is one that Becky and her three sisters were blessed in, as well as Malia and I.

May-

My aunt and uncle got sealed in the Boise temple. My uncle is a recent convert to the church and we were all so happy for them when they were able to be sealed. Kelani and I babysat some of our cousins while the family was at the sealing, then I got to take the kids up to the temple to see everyone when they got done.

June-

I've talked about this before, but June was Grandma and Grandpa Farns's 50th anniversary, so we had a super fun party for them! Getting this many people in the family to be there for a picture is something to celebrate, too; we were only missing a couple of people.

~ In June all of us in the family (except David) were all up at Girl's Camp for a few days. Mom and Dad are the cooks, and Malia and I were leaders, and of course Kelani is one of the newer campers (and she loves camp). They do the "polar plunge" most mornings at camp, which means if you feel like waking up early and jumping into the pool, you're free to do so. :) I hate being cold, and I don't particularly love waking up early, so naturally I did the plunge. That's me the second from the left. I've done it previous years, too, and the water was actually pretty warm, so I wasn't too worried this year. Big mistake! It was too cold for my liking this time. Brrr!!

July-

This picture is representative of all things Summer. We spend lots of time at Grandma Jack's, whether it's taking care of the pets, mowing the lawn, or having dinner outside in her gazebo (like we are here). Grandma's house has always been one of our favorite places to go, and of course she's one of our favorite people, so it works out well! :) The greenbelt is close to her house, so we like going on bike rides with her sometimes, too.

August-

This year at our family birthday bash we set up a treasure hunt for the littler cousins. So here's a couple of them digging up the treasure chest (with a little help from Malia). It looked so authentic it was just awesome! That treasure chest is one Dad made for us one night a few years ago, because we were making a pirate movie the next day and were in desperate need of a good prop! We love it!

September-

Malia got to ride in a parade in Sun Valley, so all of us and Grandma went for the day and had fun just hanging out. I love going to places like that and just walking around and seeing what there is to see.

October-

Of course, one of our favorite new traditions is going to "the cabin" with the Ingrams on conference weekend. We go up there and watch conference, play games, go for walks, stay up late, and eat like there's no tomorrow!

~~ Also in October I wanted to put this picture up of three of my cousins to just remember how much fun we have with them. We definitely have way more cousins than this, but this is kind of a classic portrayal of how things are when they're around. Our cousins are so wild, and crazy, and just right!! There's never a dull moment. But even though they're all so rough and tumble, I have to tell one of my favorite stories concerning something I learned about one of them.

They always come over wanting us to play with them, which is great that they don't care about how old any of us are, and still want us to hang out with them. It's clear that they like us, but usually they show us with a good solid punch, or tackling us when we're not looking, or things like that. Well, one day I was walking out of Grandma's house to go to one of my aunt's house. As I was putting my shoes on, Cody (the one on the right in the picture) was coming over and when he saw me, he said, "Where're you goin'?" So jokingly I said, "I'm running away because no one likes me." I watched to see if he would laugh, but he just kind of looked at me for a second, then quietly said, "I like you." He's so cute! (Don't worry, I reassured him that I wasn't really leaving).

November-

We had Thanksgiving here this year, and Grandma Jack came over. It was quiet, compared to our usual Thanksgivings in Jerome, but it was still good! And classic David hates getting his picture taken so he does what he can to avoid it.

December-

Of course one of the major highlights was Ben getting home from his mission!! His nephews couldn't get enough of him, so it was like a rock star coming in, the minute Ben walked through the doors!

~~Christmas in Jerome was pretty exciting because we all got to participate in a present exchange. Heather's husband, Brad, got David's name and was pretty excited for David to open his present. This is only one part of it. The other thing he got was a set of "hill billy" teeth! :) This mask has a little wind up button that makes the mustache wiggle back and forth; it was hilarious!

(David just came over and saw that I was using this picture. He told me, "Tiana, you're not allowed to put pictures of me on your blog without my consent. I'll sue!" Ha, good luck, David!)

So there they are!! A few of my favorite events from 2010! Now it's a new year and I'm sure we'll fill it up with a ton of new, exciting things.

Something to think about

2011-01-04T15:40:00.001-07:00

This is a link from one of the new Mormon Messages so lots of you have probably already seen this. But I just watched it, and with a lot of things that have been going on for me lately, it just kind of seemed to fit.
    Confession: I definitely live in the past and look back all the time. But why not? How we were in the past is pretty much what has made us who we are right now, right? So by looking back and seeing what has made us who we are today, I think it can help us decide how to be in the future, too. The trick is learning from the past but not getting stuck in it. Somethings were only supposed to happen back then and now we need to be ready to keep learning, even if it's different from how we learned the first time; it all kind of builds on each other. It's hard for me to keep moving forward to something new when what I already have is just fine with me. But as the guy in this video says, maybe the Lord has something even better planned for us, we just have to have faith.
     This is pretty hard for me to actually apply to myself, but as long as we have faith, everything will be fine! My past has shaped me into my present so I'll never just forget it like it isn't important, IT IS!! I just have to be willing to keep learning in new ways, too. As they say, "There's no growth in comfort and no comfort in growth." Too true! I hope this video gives you all a little more courage to do whatever you feel prompted to do, no matter how hard it is! Happy New Year!
      http://lds.org/pages/look-not-behind-thee?lang=eng

These are a few of my favorite things.....

2010-12-29T17:30:00.001-07:00

Well, Christmas has come and gone again. It's so hard to believe another year is up, and a new one is on the way! But Christmas is always one of my favorite things to happen every year. It just seems like at Christmas time anything can happen. So it only makes sense that some of my best memories involve Christmas.

I thought it would be fun to show a few of my favorite things that turn up around this time of year - keep in mind that this in only a small list of favorites, since a full list might be to uninteresting to most of you! :)

This is a new favorite: Papa Murphy's new "Bacon, Bacon, Bacon" pizza! Need I say more? Probably not, but I will anyway. This delicious new heart attack in a slice features: Canadian bacon, peppered bacon, and just the good ol' regular bacon. I LOVED it!!

Next we have the treat table (part of it). Included in this favorite is the fact that we get together with my mom's side of the family every Christmas Eve at Grandma's house and eat, and laugh, and open presents from each other. Usually the girls from our family, and sometimes Aunt Joni, get together before hand and make tons of candy and cookies. So there's always plenty of that around for the party.

I love seeing David get "beat up" by our cousin, Jeff. David has been a favorite target of Jeff's ever since David was little. Unfortunately for Jeff, David's not so little anymore, so this could be one of the last pictures of David looking so helpless. (But probably not)! :)

Something else I love are Nativities! I might not be as much of a die hard as Mom, who collects Nativities and has almost too many to set out every year, but this is one of my favorite sets that she has. It's really easy sometimes to forget that Christmas isn't actually about presents, and worldly things. But having these Nativities around is a good reminder of the real and best reason we have Christmas.

Grandma Jack comes over every Christmas morning and we have one of my favorite breakfasts (homemade cinnamon rolls, usually accompanied by hashbrowns, eggs, and bacon). Normally we get up pretty early to open presents, but Malia took the early shift at work so we had to wait until almost 11:00!! Don't worry though, we did make it. :)

Christmas wouldn't be the same if we didn't spend it in Jerome. We haven't always made it exactly on Christmas day every year, but we do our best. This year we went in the afternoon and got there in time for the family present exchange.
Normally all the cousins draw each other's names and get presents that way; but this year Grandma decided to have the entire family do that. I liked it! It was fun to see what the little, tiny cousins picked out for uncles, or older cousins (and vice versa). My cousin-in-law got my name and I scored with a bunch of Reeses! Grandma's basement was filled to the seams with food, family, and noise, but that's the way we like it.

Grandma and Grandpa brought all of us some really cool presents back from Israel. We got a bag, and some of the Aunts and married cousins got scarves. The little kids got flutes (which I think everyone had mixed emotions about whether that was the best gift or not). But the thing that was super impressive was Grandma being the excellent shopper that she is, get 53 pairs of hand made, camel leather sandals made for every single person in the family. I heard it was quite a riot with her getting the right sizes and placing that order to the shoe maker, but it all worked out.

The flutes and sandals.

Another fun surprise for all of us was my uncle telling everyone that my aunt is having another baby! They have 5 kids (counting twins), so it's going to be super fun to see what this baby is like. Now we have two babies on the way in the family!

So another good Christmas has wrapped up and now we're on the way to a new year where anything is possible!

Exciting things!

2010-12-13T21:00:00.002-07:00

This past week has had some really exciting things going on!! Our cousin Ben got home from his mission to Argentina on Wednesday! All of us, except Dad and Malia, went to Jerome on Wednesday so we could be at the airport with all the others in the family to see Ben get home.

A couple of Ben's sisters made this "Welcome Home" sign for him, so Heather and I posed underneath it in anticipation! :)

While we were at the airport in Twin, we look over toward the arcade section, and a couple of our sweet, innocent, little cousins are rockin' the "Deer Hunt" game!

These are two of Ben's nephews who were so excited to have Uncle Benjy come home.

He finally made it!!!!! The whole, tiny waiting room in the airport was FILLED with our family, and some of Ben's friends. Every window was lined with grandparents, cousins, Ben's siblings and their kids, and especially his mom, as the plane came in for the landing. He came in with a big grin looking exactly like he did two years ago! All his changes happened on the inside; he's even more amazing than when he left which is definitely proof of a good missionary!

His little nephews went around the minute he came in yelling, "BENJY!!!" But they got their turn to be hugged just like everyone else. Ben (and some others) were shedding a few happy tears, so Ben had to throw in the disclaimer, "I'm not usually like this!"

Anyway, we came back to Boise that night, but all of us went back to Jerome on Saturday for a big family reunion, so we got some good time to visit with Ben. He gave a great talk in sacrament the next day, plus him and his mom sang a really pretty song.

After church we all hung out at one of his sister's houses on the Farm and heard some fun mission stories.

In this picture from left to right it's: Scott Pettingill (one of Ben's best friends, who got home from his mission to Switzerland the day after Ben), cousin Hardy, David, cousin Ian, and Ben. Ian and Ben hadn't seen each other for several years, because Ian left for his mission, then Ben left just a few months before Ian got home. Needless to say, all of these best friends are happy to all be together again!

Here's a few more of us, Kelani, Malia, cousin Maddie, me, and Ben's sister Heather.

It's GREAT to have him back!!!!!

On another note: Our family reunion was one that involved people who I have no idea who most of them are. That sounds terrible, but my great grandma had somewhere around 9 or 10 siblings, and so it was with all of them and their kids (the ones who could make it). There were a TON of people.
My grandma was in charge of the reunion this time and it was so fun! For part of a little program, my grandpa read this wacked out version of "The Night Before Christmas" with a "Swedish" accent. I guess he's done it before, but not in my living memory.
I didn't know he was going to do it, so when Grandma announced him and he came out of the bathroom looking like this, I died laughing!

And after church, Grandpa came out of his room wearing this totally ligit' head dress that he got in Israel when they were there (they just got home the day before Ben). My grandpa is awesome! :D

So there you have it - those are some of the fun new things happening in our family!

Updates - The lamest post name ever!

2010-11-27T18:49:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything, so I figured it's probably time to do something new!

David turned 17 at the end of October and for part of his birthday present he got a new unicycle! It was like Christmas for him! He had one that Grandpa helped him "re-make" this summer, but it wasn't very comfortable so he decided to get a nice, new one. It got to our house one morning before David was awake, and when he came upstairs and saw the box in the living room he got so excited and said, "Why didn't anyone wake me up?!" So he promptly got the tool kit and set it up. He's actually really good on it, and sometime I might have to put a video on here of him riding it.

We went to Jerome for Halloween and had a great time when all our crazy cousins were around! Grandma made pans and pans of pizza for a party for David, and for the Halloween family party. There were all kinds of costumed cousins running around and helping themselves to all you can eat candy.

One of Grandma's biggest joys in life is to make her family happy, and she does a great job of it.

My cousin's husband had a "bigfoot" costume (which he never actually wore for any of us) but their little 2 or 3 year old daughter kept saying, "My dad is a bigfoot." And their other daughter called it "the scary bear" costume!

This little guy went as Blue's Clues and I think he was amazed at a holiday that allows you to eat as much candy as you possibly can. I mean this kid a sugar hound and he was pretty happy with all the sweets! David and I went trick-or-treating with a bunch of the little cousins (actually they're our second cousins) and it was fun to see our cousins (their parents) handle all the action! In between houses, one of the moms would drive her car and follow along and any of the little trick-or-treaters who were cold (it was FREEZING!) would ride in the car with her. Well, Blue's Clues started taking his costume off during one of the short rides (he rode pretty much every time) and so Steph asked him if he was done. His reply was, "Yeah, I just want someone else to get my candy for me." Pretty smart if you ask me!

We were super excited because a whole gang of the family came here to watch "Harry Potter" with us on the day it came out. So before hand we stopped at Olive Garden for some tasty lunch. Grandpa poses so well for pictures! :) And you'll notice Hardy there on the end looking warm and dry. Sadly that didn't last long! We got to our table and shortly after, the waiter came along with a big tray of water and accidentally spilled it all over Hardy! He took it like a man though, but the waiter felt so bad that they gave Hardy his meal for free. The rest of the time we all kept hoping we'd get spilled on, too.

Thanksgiving was a pretty quite day for us. We usually go to the Farm and eat at Grandma and Grandpa's, but they get to go on a trip to Isreal (they're probably there by now) and were leaving Thanksgiving afternoon. So we stayed home and Grandma Jack came here. We had a good day, and tons of food (and football, if you're David). Mom made an Oreo cheesecake (she's becoming quite a pro at making cheesecakes)! David admitted that yesterday breakfast was the only meal that day that he didn't eat while watching football! :)

Plus we got to clog at the Festival of Trees on Wednesday night, then did Irish there Friday afternoon!
Fun stuff!!

Saturday we got to ride in the holiday parade that went through parts of downtown Boise. It was SO fun!! It snowed the whole morning, and we sat all bundled up and had our fun Irish music playing as we went along. It got pretty cold towards the end, but didn't stop us having a great time!

I had to put these pictures up because this is one of the cutest babies I know! She's my little second cousin, and her mom asked me to take some family, pictures of them while we were in Jerome at Halloween.

It was so much fun!

Another day in the life of the Farnsworths

2010-10-22T22:44:00.000-06:00

       One of the things that is good to learn in life (in my opinion) is how to go through it and be able to find the humor in things that could other wise drive you crazy. So here's some things that I realized tonight, that are kind of funny (in some way).
     A few days ago, Frodo (our Yorkie/Bichon) had to have a kind of "emergency" surgery to have bladder stones removed. It was pretty unexpected, which is why some of the family here got a little worked up, and quite anxious about it. But the surgery went good, and he was able to come home the next day.
The story isn't over there, though. He came home sporting the lovely "cone of shame", which he has to wear until Sunday, along with a doggy catheter - ewww!
   Then this morning, two little pug puppies were dropped off at our house for us to pet-sit until next Friday. Mom quickly dubbed them "Muggles" and "Puggles" (we like nicknames). :) And our poor Dachshund is not a fan of any of this! She's a little grumpy with the visitor dogs, and Fro's cone freaks her out! So she's been a little moody the last few days!

So a quick sum up of the dogs:
     Frodo with his cone, plus meds, and other things.....
     Koko (our other dog) on meds for her itchy skin, and
     "Muggles" and "Puggles" have to take their alergy meds twice a day.
I don't if any of you have ever had the "joy" of force feeding stubborn dogs their pills, but it's not exactly a picnic! Luckily Malia and Mom are the best pet nurses of the family, and end up taking those jobs; and with 4 out of 5 dogs taking pills everyday, those guys are saints for doing it!

Here's one of the visitor dogs walking on the back of the couch, while Nani and Penni are watching a movie.

Our other little guest.

Malia and her doggy patient, Frodo.

And now, to top off this interesting day.....
   Kelani had a big choir concert tonight, that was combined with choirs, bands, and orchestras from a bunch of the other schools around here. The bands went first, and did pretty good, and then it was the choir's turn.
About halfway through the first song, we noticed a girl from one of the other choirs, helping another girl walk out of the group to the empty side of the bleachers. One of the choir directors noticed and went running up to them, just seconds before the girl puked! She leaned down over one of the bleachers and was quite sick. So once she was done, they helped her off the bleachers and cleaned up the best they could - all while the choir was still singing.
     I felt really bad for her, and that wasn't necessarily the funny part! The part that makes this story amusing, was watching the girls who had to sit there, right next to "the sight" of where she was sick.
    They had to sit there while the orchestra performed their three or four songs! And too bad for Nani, but she was sitting right on the outside edge closest to where it had happened.
   So this picture is of some of the girls who almost couldn't stand the smell, so they tried covering their faces with their sleeves! It was awesome!!
            (It's kind of hard to tell, but Kelani's the one in the dark blue, on the top right corner, trying surreptitiously to breath out of a small corner of her mouth).

Anyway, life can be really interesting sometimes, but depending on how you look at it, it can also be pretty darn funny!

Quotable quotes - by David

2010-09-27T21:40:00.001-06:00

Here is a story about David. There's quite a few about him, but this is one of the most recent (and maybe you had to be there to really find it funny, but oh well).
      For several years now, he's HATED getting his picture taken. Even if it's just for fun, he usually complains about it a little, and you really have to work to get him to be in the picture. Lucky for us, we have a friend in the ward who does photography (her and her husband) and they always take our family pictures. Ever since we were born, Mom has gotten a new picture of us around our birthdays, and for the last few years, our friends have taken those, too.

Of course, when it would get to be David's turn, he'd go, but his smiles looked so forced and almost painful that we couldn't help giving him a hard time. But every so often we'll catch him in a better mood and get pictures like the ones in this post, where he's just totally goofing off!
             Tonight we got a family picture taken, and then each of us kids got our own individual pictures as well. On the way to the spot we wanted, David said, "And no one tell me how bad my smile looks. We all know I can't force a smile." But I think he's taken a new approach to it all, and instead of being totally grumpy, he's almost too silly to work with!
                 If the photographer told him to pull down the bottom of his shirt because it was stuck up weird, he'd stretch it down to his knees. If she told him to get ready, he'd cross his eyes. When she'd say, "Put your leg up a little against that tree," he'd stick it way out. Whenever we'd do a sitting pose, he'd cross his legs and sit like a girl. Anyway, we were all getting a kick out of it. But one of his best lines tonight was during our family picture.
         We were all standing in a bit of a random order, and David was behind me. It was starting to get dark, and so of course there were little bugs starting to fly everywhere. As soon as we'd gotten the pose right, and the camera was being adjusted, David pipes up with his fake lispy accent, "But what do I do about all these bugs?" I guess he figured it was just one more detail that in all honesty he could care less about, but that maybe the rest of us should be aware of! Anyway, he was so funny I think he almost had the photographer wet her pants laughing a few times. But for as much as he dislikes being photographed, he sure has some good ones!

The look he usually gives us when we try to take a picture of him!

One of his poses for his prom pictures.

Hangin' at the Rose Garden

Updates!

2010-09-26T17:24:00.001-06:00

Ok, I know all of you have been overwhelmed with curiosity as to why I haven't posted anything new on my blog for about a month. :)

So here are a handful of pictures - seriously, I have hundreds, so I just picked a few- to give an idea of what we've been up to.

To start with: One might think that since we have so much family here in Boise (on Mom's side), that it wouldn't be hard to get together on a regular basis for birthday's, holidays, or just because we'd like to. But the truth is, all of us have so many different things going on in our families, that we might as well live hours away for as much as we see each other. Sad, yes! So every year at the end of summer, we get everyone who can make it, and have a birthday party for pretty much everyone in the family. It's lots of fun, but should require cue cards when it comes time to sing "Happy Birthday". It usually goes something like,

"Happy Birthday dear.....BobGrandmaDavidJasonKelaniEtauRonniMaliaHeidiJudyStanJonna......"

I think you get the idea! :)

Anyway, this year in our own little family, we thought it would be fun to make a treasure hunt for the littler cousins, since it would be hard to buy presents for every single person having a birthday. So we made up some little rhyming clues that eventually led them to the coral, where (with some "volunteer" help from David) we'd buried a homemade treasure chest. It was so cool looking to see some of them out there pull this dusty, old thing out of the ground and carry it back to the party.

But they all seemed pretty excited about it, and we spent the rest of the night laughing at all the parents who kept getting slightly more annoyed at the noise makers that were part of the treasure!

Our next fun thing was heading off to Baker City, OR with IDI for the Highland Games! The whole family, including Grandma, went and we had sooooo much fun! If you've never been to Baker, it's definitely a trip worth making (especially to go to the Games). We got there Friday night and the weather had been a little cool, but not too bad. But Saturday was FREEZING!!! In fact, it was so cold, we even had a lady from Scotland make a comment that it was colder at the Games, than it is in Scotland, BRRR!

But despite the fact that it took about a week of Boise weather to thaw us out, we still had a blast. And with the rain, and foggy mountains, it all felt pretty authentic. We danced on and off all day, and during our breaks we had time to check out the fun merchandise stands.

Here's a picture of David looking pretty dapper in one of the hats he tried on.

And like I said, I have so many pictures, it's hard not to put a ton more up here, but I'll try to restrain! :)

The following weekend we headed the other direction to Sun Valley. Malia got to ride in the parade for "Wagon Days" with the Eh Capa bareback riders. The weather was completely opposite from Baker, and some of us came home sunburned. In fact, take a look at the headband Malia's wearing....now imagine what her forehead looked like after being in the sun all day, then taking the headband off! It was a sweet "tan" line! :D The riders did really good, and it was fun to hang out in Sun Valley.

In case you can't tell, Malia's the one on the left. It's so hard to tell them apart in those wigs! :)

Grandma and Mom getting a little more sun while we waited for Malia to finish up on the parade.

A few more things we've had going on the last few weeks are things like:

IDI distance Feis (competition)
IDI perf. at the Boise Farmer's Market

IDI perf. at the Women's Show at the Center on the Grove

Clogging perf. at the Women's Show

That stage is so slippery in clogging shoes! But we managed to make it without any major problems. I mean, who doesn't love a good "near-death" experience when your shoes start to slip out from under you once in a while? :)

Good times!

The Women's Fitness Walk

We've done the walk pretty faithfully for the last 10-12 years (give or take). It's always a good time, which might be in part because of the endless amounts of free chocolate milk we consume during all the events in conjunction with it. We wore our blue and orange to support the Broncos, who played ( and won, I might add) later that day.

So, if you've actually read this saga all the way to the end, and you're not bored to tears, you now have an idea of what we've been doing.

We're just really lucky to have so many opportunities to do so much with our great family, and so many friends!

Jerome Festivities!

2010-08-01T18:40:00.000-06:00

We went to Jerome this last Friday and Saturday and were able to make it to several different parties! Friday night was my uncle's birthday and he had a big ol' party in his backyard with tons of food and treats.
Then we got to watch "Zorro" on a huge projector on the side of their house. It was alot of fun to lay out on a blanket and be there watching a movie with so many people in the family.
On Saturday some of us went to a luau that was happening at the nursing home where my great grandma lives. It's good to get to go do stuff with her when we have the chance (and no, she didn't hula, even though we were hoping to see some action)!
Then later that day my cousin got sealed to her husband and their baby in the Twin temple. Grandpa Farns got to seal them, and I'm sure it was awesome! Malia and I helped another cousin watch her kids, and her sibling's kids (our second cousins) until it was time to get the baby, Harley, to the temple. She was so good!
After the sealing, everyone went to Aunt Lisa's for dinner, which was a blast. We were supposed to be heading home pretty soon after that, before it got too late (the dinner wasn't until 7:00), but we had a rather impromptu swim party after we finished eating.

Heather and Becky and a few of us went up to the pool, mainly to watch the little kids swim. But while we were up there, Heather (being her usual, hilarious self) started teasing Dad about something. The next thing we knew, he was up at the deck getting ready to chuck her into the pool - completely dressed (aka, no swimsuit). It was a riot and everyone busted up laughing, including her husband, Brad (who is in the pool watching). In she goes!

A little chilly?

The great thing about Heather is that once she was wet, she decided she might as well keep swimming. So she hopped back in and didn't come out for most the night. She had Brad tossing her, she helped us make a sweet whirlpool (side note - Becky and I weren't in our suits either, but we decided to join the party and got in the pool, too!), and she roused up the gang to catch my dad and toss him in (which we did)!

Before we knew it, pretty much everyone ended up getting in the pool, most of

them fully dressed; some of them came willingly, and some by force. :)

In fact, the first time someone chased Rachel down to try to throw her in the pool, she ended up tackling him to the ground and into a bunch of gravel! I was quite impressed! But even she didn't stay dry for long...... in fact, pretty much no one did.

As Heather was being picked up by my dad to be thrown in, she turned frantically to me and said, "NOT MY SHOES!!!" We managed to rip them off before she went into the water. They might possibly be the only dry thing left!

So far, so good!

2010-07-02T15:34:00.000-06:00

Our summer has been filling up just as much as ever! We've already done so many things and it's barely July! Some of the things we've been up to are (mostly just the stuff in June, but a few recent things happening this month, too):

IDI performance in Sun Valley
Emmett Cherry Festival
Maila's 19th b-day
Grandma and Grandpa Farns's 50th wedding anniversary
IDI dance camp/parade in Weiser
Re-painting Malia, and Kelani's and my room
Malia and I got accepted to a local community college
Malia and I (with help from Mom) made new skirts for church
Stake Girl's camp - Kelani's 2nd year, Malia and I leaders, Mom and Dad camp cooks
David being sick for a couple weeks, and finding out today that he has the beginning of pneumonia (don't worry, he's fine!)
Bike ride at the green belt
Hitting up the theater to see "Eclipse"
And a week in Jerome coming up!

That's to name a few, besides the everyday things we all seem to find ourselves doing. I don't know how we keep up with ourselves, but somehow things seem to work out!

Bike ride at the green belt
IDI Cherry Fest

Farnsworth family picture (we're only missing about 4 people)!

Our new skirts

Nani and her friend Liz at Girl's Camp

And now, on to the rest of the summer!!

(I'm tired already)

More chicks

2010-06-01T09:23:00.000-06:00

We did something fun, that we've never done before! We decided to let our hens hatch some eggs! We were told to see which nest filled up first, then not to collect the eggs out of it. Eventually the hens would notice it filling up, and start sitting on the eggs. Apparently they usually end up with about 8 - 10.

One of our hens, Pippy, started sitting and from what we could tell, there ended up being about 18 eggs! After a few weeks, it was time for them to hatch, and it happened on Mother's day weekend. Not all of the eggs hatched, and all together we ended up with 9 cute, little chicks. It was hard to know how many there were at first, because the chicks actually hide under Pippy and tuck themselves into the underside of her wings.

But every so often they'd poke their little heads out, and some even got brave and came out onto the ramp in front of the nest.
They were so cute! Pippy would kind of chirp at them as they started exploring, and before long, they'd run back to the nest and hide again.

So that was about a month ago. But even after a week or so, they were out of the nest and checking out the coop. We started digging up worms for them and it's so funny to see those tiny, little chicks grab a big ol' worm and then take off running as fast as they can. Their legs are just blurs as they try to get away from each other, since they all try to take the worm from who ever has it.

These last two pictures were taken yesterday, and I managed to get all nine of the babies, and their mom in the picture (the black hen by the shovel is Nugget- she's hoping for a worm, too). They were pretty busy hunting for worms. They're starting to get to the stage where the soft, baby feathers are giving way to the "grown up" ones. But they're still pretty cute at this point.

Enough of them are pretty close to the same color, that it's hard to tell them all apart. But we got one black one, and named (her?) Nacho from the first day we saw her. We have one who had a little sore over one of her eyes, so she's had a couple nick names, one of them being "Left eye".

Dad chillin' with Nacho.

They're so fun!

Prom part 2

2010-05-30T22:02:00.000-06:00

David and Hailey I loved this one!

JUMP!

Here's the group: Nick, Ashley, Hailey, and David

The following picture will give a better idea of what kind of stuff was really happening during our time taking pictures. Nick and David were so weird the WHOLE time, and it was hilarious!! With this picture, we were just about to leave, and the boys were walking a little ahead of us. They were walking weird anyway, but then, at the same time, they both stopped and pulled this pose! Awesome!

Prom!

2010-05-30T21:53:00.000-06:00

Well, it's "only" been about a month, but finally, here are a few of the prom pictures!

David's looking pretty dapper in his sweet tux.Yeah, in my defense.....these guys were hilarious to take pictures of - but pretty much impossible to get them in any "normal" poses. (Especially the boys!)

Here's David's date, Hailey.

Lookin' good!

What did she say?

2010-04-27T15:44:00.000-06:00

Friday night David was on a scout campout, so on Saturday, before he got back, Hailey brought this over to our house. Some of us were going to be running errands while David got back, so we hid the box from him until we could all be there to watch him open it. Hmmmm.......

Ok, David, pop those balloons!

Anything yet?

Drum roll please!

So this Saturday David and Hailey are heading to prom.

Stay tuned to hear how it goes! ;)

Prom is in the air

2010-04-27T15:26:00.000-06:00

It's that time of year! High schools throughout the world

(ok, maybe not the world, but around here) are gearing up for "the big one"....... prom!

Well, David decided to go where none of us (Malia and I) have gone before, and ask someone to the prom. Her name is Hailey and she's a fun girl from our ward who goes to Borah High school.

Here's the sign I helped him make that we taped to the windshield of her car (among other things that we did to it).

The plan was to wait until really late at night, then go over to her house (which is just behind ours) and saran wrap her little VW beetle and put the note on her windshield.
So around 11:00, David and I went over there and most the lights in the house were off. He went around the car with the saran wrap a couple times, but a few lights had come on in the house and he was getting nervous that someone in there would see us. So I hurried and taped the sign on and we left.

But, it was such a pathetic wrap job that I kept telling him we needed to go back and use more. So we came home, rallied the troups, and me, Mom, Dad, and David went back over a little later and Dad and David got the job done right!

Now we wait for the reply......

The family keeps getting bigger!

2010-04-12T22:45:00.003-06:00

Remember these guys? That's my cousin Becky and her husband, Cody. They were married a year ago in November. Well guess what?!This "before" picture was taken in January, right before.....
This "after" picture was taken this Sunday!

Here's our new cousin, Harley Murphy!

She was born on Feb. 28 and is sooo cute. It's hard to give anyone else a chance to hold her once you get your hands on her.

The whole family.

We got to go to Harley's blessing on Sunday, and then we were all invited to Cody's aunt's house for a fun lunch afterwords.

Isn't she cute?

Here's a fun fact about that blessing dress:

Harley's three aunts, her mom, and Malia, and I were all blessed in that same dress that was made by a friend of the family!

It was a fun day, and we're so glad to have such a sweet, new member of the family.

April Fools

2010-04-02T10:57:00.000-06:00

In our family, April Fools is really a holiday to celebrate! Not that we need an excuse to prank each other, but it just makes us extra aware of things to try on the people in our family (and friends).
Well, yesterday was filled with a few small pranks, but classics just the same. Of course the old standby is to tape the handle of the squirter hose thing on the sink. Malia totally soaked the front of her shirt- thanks to me! :) We also put double-stick tape on the inside of the steering wheel of my dad's truck. So like I say, nothing too big.
By the end of the day we still hadn't done much more than that. Dad had tried pulling a couple things on us that failed (what's new? :D) but I wasn't going to just let the day end without one more attempt. What I did might be considered cheating, because technically the prank wouldn't have happened until the next day. But before I went to bed, I taped the squirter at the kitchen sink again, thinking that no one would discover it until the next morning. No big deal, right?

So, Dad had gone to bed, Mom had been up reading, but then eventually went to bed. I was the last one still awake. So just before midnight I turned my light off and was just starting to fall asleep when I heard someone walking down the hall. Hmmm, kind of suspicious, seeing that I'd finally gone to bed....could Dad have been waiting for that moment to finally strike with a good prank? So I laid there and listened to see what was going on.
A second later, I heard someone going downstairs and into the kitchen - at midnight? After listening a little longer, I realized that Mom had gone in to use the bathroom (which is right next to my room), and that Dad was in the kitchen.
So I sat there anticipating the cry of surprise when Dad would turn the sink on (apparently he wanted a quick drink). I heard the water come on, but then didn't hear much. So now I was confused even more.
I leaned up over the end of my bed to poke my head out into the dark hallway and try to ask Mom what was going on, once she came out of the bathroom.
Well, poor Mom was probably half asleep (for the moment) and couldn't see very well since she wasn't wearing her glasses.
As soon as she came out, I whispered, "What's Dad doing?" Of course seeing my "floating" white head in the dark doorway was the last thing she probably ever imagined.
She started making this strangled sound in her throat (trying not to wake everyone else up) and starts swatting at my head, then grabs it and says, "Ooooo, you scared me!!!!" And I couldn't hold it in and I burst out laughing.
Meanwhile, she'd started laughing, and then who would turn up but Dad.
He's more confused than any of us and says, "What're you guys doing?" I catch my breath long enough to look at him, and notice that he's standing there holding his wet shirt!!!! The taped hose had worked better than I thought!
Mom asks what happened to him, and by now I'm having a fit of hysterics!
I couldn't have planned all of that better if I'd tried! Luckily, the only person who really got woken up by the whole thing, was our weiner dog, Penni.
Mom and Dad headed back to bed, and I tried getting back to sleep (since it's past midnight by now). I couldn't stop laughing, and just when I thought I was in control, it would start all over again, and I just laid there and laughed silently for about another 10 minutes.
Needless to say, we managed to have another successful April Fools (even if it was "slightly" un-intentional). The great thing is, it's never too early to start planning for next year......

Cleaning philosophies of a 16 year old guy

2010-03-03T22:01:00.001-07:00

In our family, all four of us siblings take turns doing various chores each week. It might not be pleasant, but it's only fair. The problem is that sometimes one person's chores can hold up the other person from accomplishing a chore they've been assigned. For example, if it's my turn to load the dishwasher, and Malia's turn to un-load it, she might not "get around to it" until there are more dishes on the counter than there are in the cupboards. Meaning, my job of loading takes FOREVER!!
Then, if you're lucky, you get chores that, even though they should be done everyday, they're not as noticable if you go a couple days (or the whole week) without ever doing them - things like, wiping down the microwave, or cleaning the top of the stove. The worst one is when it comes around to your turn to *hem hem* clean up the backyard (we own three dogs).
Generally what happens is whoever's turn it is does it once or twice a week (at the most), and so by the time one of our parents finally notices (usually Dad) that our yard looks like it's covered in tiny landmines, whoever's turn it is that week gets stuck with a pretty crappy job (literally). Unless it's bad enough that we just divide and conquer and all go out together to "clean up".
But after all these years of chores and lectures on how we need to do them, the truth finally came out.
Today I swept, then started mopping. But thanks to the kind of mop we have, it reaches places that the broom just won't go. So even though I think I've gotten everything swept away, the mop finds more! So I was expressing my frustration with the whole situation to David, as he sort of stood by watching. But as he walked off, he casually said, "That's why you should do what I do. Just don't ever sweep or mop and you won't have to worry about it." Hmmm, if only........

What a day!

2010-02-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

So right now it feels good just to be sitting here at the computer, not doing much of anything. Yesterday was a different story, though. We started off our morning nice and early (and yeah, to some of you it won't seem that early) by getting up and ready to be at the church by 9:30 for a stake women's conference. We heard from three really good speakers, followed up by our stake president. Then everyone stayed for a fun little lunch of sandwiches on rolls. Mom, Kelani, Malia, and I stayed as long as we could to help with clean-up, but had to leave around 1:00.

Mom and I scrambled to get all our things together to make it to NNU in Nampa for our clogging competition. We had four team dances throughout the afternoon, and despite the nerves and stress, we had a fun time!

We finished up there around 5:00 then headed over to our friend's house and hung out until about 6:45ish when we all made our way to a church to perform Irish at a High Priest dinner. That performance was really fun, too. By the time we got home it was late, and we were ready to get in bed and not move for a long time! But we went to bed feeling good about all the great things we'd been able to do in one day. These costumes made a debut with our new dance, "Cup of Life", a sassy little, Latin type dance. We were so nervous, especially since it was only the second time that some of us had ever performed it, and a first for Mom! And of course, it ended up being our last dance of the day (not to mention, the whole competition), and I think most of us will agree, one of the most fun!

Way to go team!!!!

2010-02-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

In this last one, David said the entire 5th Article of Faith (hopefully that's not totally dis-respectful!) with the helium. Check out his face when we finishes. He said he got pretty light headed for a minute. Yeah, like I said, it's really not a good idea to do this! But, we can't help but laugh when he does.....

Helium part 2

2010-02-17T21:47:00.000-07:00

David really out did himself with this balloon! Here's another little clip.

More helium.....

2010-02-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, for those few of you who even know about this blog...yes, I'm still alive! :) Just very busy! But I had to put these videos up. I mean, let's be honest here- yes, we all know helium is not exactly good for a person; but let's also admit that as soon as word gets around that somebody is sucking in a lungful of helium, we can't resist hearing what they have to say!

Dates, treats, and Christmas

2009-12-24T13:47:00.000-07:00

Ok, so here goes a quick up date of the last few weeks of us getting ready for Christmas!

The first thing that got December started for us, was that Malia, David, and I all decided to go on a triple group date- with the catch that we got to pick each other's dates (and not tell the person who we picked until it got close to the day of the date)! Well, Malia picked David's date soon and easily, I got ahold of Malia's date pretty easily and he was excited to go. But my date proved to be a little more challenging than David originally thought. When it comes down to it, everyone I could go out with is either on a mission, or away at college! So after David's first and failed attempt to get someone for me ( turns out he has a girlfriend.....can't see that going over well! ;) he pretty much gave up. Luckily Dad was able to talk to a family friend, and bishop of the single's ward, and they found someone for me to go with.

If you think it sounds crazy already, it gets better!

Malia and my dates were meeting us at our house at 6:30, then we were all going to hop in the suburban and go get David's date. Well, we ended up babysitting for two different families in our ward, at the same time, at our house. So it gets to be 6:00 and everyone's hungry so Mom and Dad cook up some pancakes and sausage for the masses. All together there were five extra kids, the six of us, and of course Jordon. Then the parents of some of the kids got here, so we invited them to stay and eat with us, and we got to see their new baby!

Not long after they got here, so did my date. The house now has 16 people in it and is getting noiser by the second. Then Malia's date shows up....17! But I loved it. There were kids running around yelling, a huge stack of dishes leftover in the kitchen, and our friends from our ward.

Anyway, we all left to go get David's date, got to her house and......she'd forgotten and wasn't home!!! We gave David a hard time about 5th wheelin' it all night on our dates. But he happily offered to chaufer for the night (not to mention he wanted to go mini golfing). Afterwords, we came home and played "Apples to Apples" with our dates, and had hot fudge cake with them,our family, and the other kids we were still babysitting, and their parents. We had a good time, and I was so glad to have friends from our ward there throughout the night, too, it was a blast!

Don't mess with these hunrgy boys!!
Who wants more pancakes?

Another fun thing we've done this month was to go out to Grandma's to do our annual candy making day. Joni came, too, and we all spent the day in the kitchen whipping up (and sampling) some sweet treats!

All together we made, bon-bons, fudge, orange cookies, choc. covered pretzels, and mint truffles.
Not to mention Grandma and her awesome sugar cookies. I'd told Mom that I wanted to take some cookies to our dance class, and the people I visit teach. Well, Grandma found out, so while we were at her house she said she had some sugar cookies to send with me. She asked if
10 dozen would be enough! I told her that was plenty (and some) plus I didn't want to use them all up if she needed some. But she assured me she had time to make more, "Plus," she said, "I still have 11 dozen." Holy cow! She's been busy!

And here's our little Christmas tree that we've had since....I think forever! It already looks like Santa's stopped by ever since Grandma brought over presents for us. She's always so thoughtful and spoils us WAAAY too much!! Just one more reason we love her!

Dad's made treats, probably almost everyday for the last week (at least that's how it feels!) He's done several batches of English toffee, almond and peanut clusters, Baklava, cinnamon rolls, and tons of food besides that. He loves baking, and we love eating, so it works out well!

This has been alot of fun getting ready for Christmas-buying, making, and wrapping presents, visiting friends and family, and spending time together. It's one of the best times of the year! Merry Christmas!!!!

Fun costumes

2009-11-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

Look at the fun costumes the cousins had.
Have you ever seen a cuter cowboy? He's got a gun in one hand and a carameled apple in the other!

Three little kittens

Ok, so we're not dressed up, we're just enjoying our treats.

Look at these superheros!

The last tractor ride

2009-11-08T17:04:00.000-07:00

Every year we go on a hayride out in the field. So after dinner we piled onto the trailer and Grandpa started pulling it around with the tractor.
We were having fun riding along, but pretty soon there was a weird smell. We waited a bit to see if it would go away, but it kept getting worse and soon the tractor started smoking a little.

Eventually the tractor got slower and slower until it finally just died. So everyone got off and traipsed back home. That wasn't what we were bummed out about, though. That tractor's pulled us through years of hayrides, and this was probably it's last one.

Look out, Dad, Wolverine's behind you!

Happy Halloween

2009-11-08T16:53:00.000-07:00

We went to Jerome for Halloween and had fun seeing the little cousins all dressed up. Grandma made chili and cinnamon rolls for dinner on Friday night and most of the family made it over to eat and visit.

Carameled apples that are good enough to sink your teeth into; and if you don't have your own, here's some extra teeth for ya!

Look at those scary guys!

There were pumpkins all over the Farm, it was so fun!

David turns 16!!!!

2009-11-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

Can you believe it? David turned 16 on October 29th!! Because Malia and I are such great sisters (right, David?) we surprised him and snuck into seminary to make the classroom a little more festive for the occasion! Of course Bro. Featherstone was totally fine with it, so we made a "little" not on the board for everyone to see.

The picture's a little hard to see all the writing, so here's what we wrote, "Watch out ladies!" and "Call for a good time!"
We even got him some birthday balloons to tie to his desk. It almost worked, except we put them on the wrong one!

You wouldn't believe all the stories we had to make up to pull this off, but it worked and he had no idea it was us!! It was awesome!!

And now, here's a video of part of our car ride home, after we picked him up from seminary. David can't resist helium! (Does that clear things up about him for you?)

Fall fun

2009-11-08T16:24:00.001-07:00

After spending the morning working in the yard, what's better than a nice hot dog roast?
Check out this feast! :)

I'm sure David will love me for putting this picture up....

Hungry?

Choir concert

2009-11-08T16:17:00.000-07:00

Woo woo!! There's Kelani on her way to perform in a multi-jr. high choir concert! Isn't that robe a real treat? She "loved" it!!

Where's Waldo? (aka, Kelani)

Pretty big bunch of singers! They sounded good and it was fun for all of us and Grandma to hear them perform.

Good job, Nani!

Capital homecoming week

2009-11-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

David got into the spirit of Capital's Homecoming week and decided to show his "Eagle's Pride" by doing something a little different with his hair.

Yes, it's real mohawk....no he doesn't still have it!

We helped him color it so he could wear it to seminary like this, then we did it again the next night when we went to watch the varsity game.

It was pretty amusing to hear about all the people (*hem hem* girls) that asked if they could touch his crazy hair! There were so many double-takes anytime he'd walk through a crowd. I guess it was a hit! (And by the way, Capital varsity won their homecoming game against Centennial)!

Fun fun fun

2009-11-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

Saturday night while the guys were all at priesthood, Becca and Heidi set up the projector and we watched, "Brigadoon", such a good movie!

The boys got home and there were some serious rounds of "Set" going on. We had some treats and of course some entertainment....
Those of us who were upstairs could hear all the "partying" going on downstairs. Lots of cheering, yelling, and laughing, all accompanied by the beat of the juke box in the background.

And of course, we all stayed up late talking and laughing while it was raining outside. The cabin was nice and warm and we were having a great time. Then all of a sudden the power went out. It came back on for a minute, then went out again. You'd think that would be the end of the party, right? Not! Ok, so the parents went to bed (Dad made a few re-appearances, but it was mostly in his "almost awake" state). But Becca and Heidi rounded up some candles and we were up for about another hour or so. Of course, once we'd all decided it was time to go to bed and had just gotten tucked in....the lights came on. So we all got up and went around turning them off!

Thanks to the flash on my camera, we can see what was going on in this picture. But what you won't be able to tell is that it's completely dark.

But after all the fun we had, it eventually got to be time to head home. Not without a group picture, though! Which was followed by David and Spencer beating each other up a little. :) What a fun weekend!!