Sunday services.

Notice the red and green ties for Christmas

Ok, so back to my snow for a minute. Due to all the snow, our church services were cancelled this past weekend, so Derrick and Chad donned their white shirts and ties so that we could have Sacrament and our own Testimony meeting. It was really nice... and I am especially grateful that I have these men in my life who can perform these blessings in our house!

This is definately one of my favorite Christmas memories from this holiday season!

Merry Christmakkuh!

Notice the Hanukkah decorations? Really not that easy to find here!


So, those of you that know me, know that I love parties. I love to throw them, and I love to make up holidays. Not really into the cooking thing, but I just love to have people over. So, Sunday night was the first night of Hanukkah, and to celebrate the Jew in all of us, we threw a Christmakkuh dinner. It was great! We had 23 people over (missed you Mom, Owen's family, Evans' family, and everyone else we invited that couldn't make it!), and had a great time! We don't necessarily have enough seats, but that doesn't seem to matter. We had brisket (thanks Tweetie for the "brisket hot line"! - it was super good!), Liz made Latkes (they were YUMMY!), green bean casserole, a VERY creative salad that Susie made up, and Heidi brought some Challah - and then some very yummy desserts. We also had dreidles, chocolate gelt (coins), and blue and white candy canes (that's the "Christma" part of "Christmakkuh"). It was a lot of fun, and we truly appreciate that our friends and family are up for my made up holidays!

Ooohhh... and we just celebrated Mexican Christmas at the Geigenmiller's house. Thanks for making up holidays too! It was sooo, sooo good!!!

Still snowing.

The first day the snow started - like last Tuesday or Wednesday

Eating "snow cream" dad made for us.

Geigenmillers, Browns, Teames, Allens, Neffs and Huckvales (and that's only some of them!)

Taking Reed sledding. He loved it!

All geared up.

Chad and his friend, Charles

Sledding down our hill.The "concession stand" in our basement - that's Ben Teames

Watching the 1:15 screening of Wall-E

Our house today. It took us 40 minutes to get the car out of the driveway yesterday, so now we just park it across the top.

Macy buried on our trampoline.

Sledding in the driveway.

Cooper loves it!

So, a couple of years ago we went to Canada for Christmas. I compared our house today to that time we were in Canada. We've had 24" of snow in our town, more snow than we've had since 1968. Crazy!... and we're still expecting more.

Outside of all the cabine fever, the kids are still loving the snow. At our house, this equals about 17 children who... build tunnels, sled, have snowball fights, eat snow cream, eat TONS of popcorn and show movies in the Huckhood Theatre... I still haven't gotten a good snowman out of them yet though. Gonna be a white Christmas for us... and I'm so excited! It's so magical here right now. Love it!

Snow week.

So, forget the whole "snow day" thing... it's turned into snow week... or maybe "snow-end-of-the-year"... or, as the news is calling it, "Arctic Blast '08"! The kids had school on Tuesday, that's all. It didn't even really start "snowing" until about Thursday, but now it hasn't let up. The wind is howling outside, blowing the snow in every direction. My mom's flight got cancelled coming in from L.A., and now she's staying home for Christmas. Our road is closed, because we live on a steep hill, but it's great for sledding on and is always crowded with lots of kids having fun! (The past couple of days we've had tons of kids at our house while on their sledding breaks.) Our church was cancelled because the roads are too dangerous, and our Christmakkuh party might have to be just for us... and the Geigenmillers (they only live down the street).... and maybe Bob and Susie (they're not too far)... but don't know if the Petrowski's will make it, or any of the other guests. That's ok... I'd rather have them be home, safe, than out driving in this craziness. It's making the whole "Christmas" thing seem kind of odd though. The kids didn't get to have their holiday parties, and we won't get to sing Christmas carols in church tomorrow and see all our friends, so it's making it all kind of strange. Well... what can you do? Love the snow... but the cabin fever is definately setting in. Today we took a very slow drive to the gas station about 5 miles away just to get some soda and bread. Anything to get out of the house for a while.

Snow day.

So on Sunday, it snowed... A LOT. At least for us, a lot. Church only lasted 45 minutes and then everyone was sent home. Not enough for sledding though... but all over the place, hard to drive, hard to see. So yesterday, the kids lucked out with a snow day. No snow though. Most of the snow was gone. Patches of it all over the place, but still no sledding. Chad and Derrick both felt that it was a wasted snow day as there was no sledding to take place. More snow is expected later this week though, and we might possibly have a White Christmas, so keep your fingers crossed (grandma, be prepared!). So, yesterday, I had 12 kids at our house for most of the day looking for things to do. (It was BEAUTIFUL outside, but very COLD. I think the high was like 27*... and it's not gonna be much better today. I've just been leaving Reed in his footy jammies cause it keeps him warm.) So, we played games, decorated a gingerbread house, watched some Christmas movies, and just hung out. It was a nice way to spend a cold day!

Plumbers.

Ok. So the plumber is currently on his way back. He only left about an hour ago. I called my contractor (who hasn't been here since like June), to report to him that our new bathroom was currently flooding for no apparent reason, getting onto the new carpeting, and going down the heating duct. The toilet has filled up before, not sure why, we just took it to fact that it's on a sump pump, and it's "below ground", so maybe it just took longer to flush, but it's never so fully overflowed, so this time I was stressed. Well... I'm happy to report that after the plumber, the contractor and the framer cut a hole in the side of our house in our siding to get below our basement, they discovered that no one actually plugged in the sump pump (duh...), so it's never fully been working and there is water all over the crawl space. At least it's an easy fix.

Totally random...

ok, so totally random. I'm sitting in line at Target this morning at about 4:15 and I start talking to the couple next to me. I overhear her say something to her husband about "Deseret Bookstore", so I ask them if they're LDS, and sure enough they are. While, we just spend the next almost two hours together, and then Derrick arrives (he was at WalMart), and I introduce him to them, and then we shop and I think nothing of it.

So, fast forward a few hours to my Facebook account. I get a message from Amy, the girl from this morning (I never got her name, so I didn't know who it was). She tells me that she totally recognized me from my Facebook account. Apparently, she knew one of my "friends" in Facebook and remembered seeing my picture. So, then she went and found me and it turns out that she knows one of D's sisters, from a long time ago. That she was even married to someone D grew up with in California. Totally random. So, now we're all friends on Facebook. Pretty cool, huh? Small world we live in.

P.S. Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving! We spent the day at Aunt Heidi's house, where I definately ate too much and was regretting it a bit this morning, but it was oh so yummy!!!

'Tis the season...

Making candy calendars with leftover Halloween candy.

The holidays are definately upon us! Thanksgiving is in two days, Thanksgiving feasts at schools today, kids off the rest of this week, shopping being done (I LOVE Black Friday - all the craziness, commotion, camaraderie!), Christmas cards (TOTALLY) being stressed over!, candy calendars being made.


I hope that you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and remember to count your blessings and think of all the things you are grateful for. Take a little time out of your day and make a list, even the silliest things, just to count all of your blessings. One of the things at the top of my list right now is "a husband who will make dinner when I really just don't want to". See... that easy.

I love...

when I take 4 kids to the dentist, and there are no problems! No cavitities... no teeth needing to be pulled... nothing. Now granted, my kids typically don't have cavitities (only Chad... and only when he was little... and that's because he was a "bottle" baby - i.e., going to sleep with a bottle of milk), but usually one of them - Chad or Luke - has to have some tooth pulled because for some reason their teeth don't come out on their own. Oh happy day for all involved!

God Bless America!

Here we are practicing with our Scouts. Michelle and I. Doing the flag ceremony.The girls holding their flag strips.The first piece going into the fire. Playing "taps" at the end. Awesome!

So in our family, there are 5 scout representatives! Chad is a Boy Scout, Luke a Cub Scout, Macy a Girl Scout, Derrick an 11-year-old Scout Leader, and I'm a Bear (Cub) Scout Leader. Scouts keeps us running a lot. This past weekend Macy and I got the opportunity to walk in a Veteran's Day Parade - in the pouring rain I might add. Very wet, but we had a lot of fun.

Today my Cubs got to do the Flag Ceremony in a Veteran's Day assembly at their school. Always fun when we get to be involved, but the really cool part was that during the assembly, one of the local Girl Scout troops read all about our country, how it was founded, all about our flag, and then they "retired" a flag. "Retiring" a flag is when it is no longer able to "fly", and needs to be burned. What an amazing thing this was! I told Derrick about it and he was surprised because he thought that only Boy Scouts and Military people were able to retire a flag, but they did an amazing job. The leaders cut the flag up into strips to represent each of the stripes and they also cut off the field of blue with the stars attached and as they were cutting all the Girl Scouts were reciting each star, in numerical order, and the state that it represents. Once they were done, we all went outside to a fire pit manned by the Fire Marshall where they proceeded to very reverently place each strip, one at a time, in the fire. It was so emotional, and the audience, K-5th grade, were all quiet and in awe. What a wonderful place we live in where we respect our flag and country so much!

Trunk or Treat!

Haley and her friend, Christina
Chad and his friend, Dallin - both as "Jokers" from Batman - Chad's real hair dyed green, Dallin wearing a wig!

Everyone. Notice Reed is about done at this point.

Macy, Reed and I handing out candy. Reed's favorite part was just taking the candy out of my bowl and eating it.

Reed trunk-or-treating. He didn't quite get it, but candy it always good!

Just putting this pic in for our old Sunland Ward family. This is our party... and this is after our ward got split about 3 weeks ago. See all those people? Crazy!

Me and my little monkey.

Our church does this thing called "trunk-or-treating". It's lots of fun. You start off with a big chili cook-off in the building, and then go outside for all of the kids to trick-or-treat out of the back of everyone's cars. Sounds a little strange, but always fun.

Happy Birthday Carrie - almost!

D and I looking totally rad!

Madonna me and Flashdance Susie. We are so AWESOME we can't even stand ourselves! I make a very good Madonna by the way!


So our friend, Carrie, is turning 40 this week! The big 4-0!!! She doesn't look a day over 16 - especially with the braces! Anyways, this weekend we had a surprise party for her, at the roller-skating rink, 80's theme. It was great! We all dressed up and skated, and no major injuries!



Carrie and her husband, Scott. He rented the super cool blue ruffle tuxedo just for the occasion!


Happy Birthday Carrie - we love you!!!

300 posts!

Oh my gosh, I just realized that I've posted 300 times!!! Can you believe that???? So, happy 300 post-day to all!!!

(And look, I figured out how to put a cute background up. Fun, huh?)

Little People, Big World

Luke, Haley, Macy, Chad and friend, Daelin, in front of the Roloff Farms sign

The zip line. Not exactly sure how it works with the bicycle, but it sure did look cool.
There's Matt Roloff in his mule. They were filming while we were there.


The "mens crisis center - no criticizing men in the barn". Gotta love that.
Haley in the wild west town.

Reed LOVED the pumpkins! He thought they were all giant balls.
The kids picked out HUGE pumpkins. We had 7 of them, one for each of us, and they were great!

Last Friday, the kids didn't have school, so we headed to the Roloff Pumpkin Patch. (It's only about an hour from our house.) You know, Little People, Big World, on TLC? It was pretty cool. Neat to see their farm and how they really live. Matt Roloff, the dad, was there and we saw him a few times. We got to see the western town, the pirate ship, and all the other cool stuff that they've put down there. It was very much of a novelty to see where they live, but very different than I expected. Not bigger or smaller, just different. Things were in different places than I thought they should've been based on how they were shown on the show.

Why I have turned into a bad blogger.

Really? Ok, I'm crazy, busy. Who isn't? But besides that... we have very stupid computers in our house. We have 3 laptops, as if 1 isn't enough, and they all have issues. Mine, which is the oldest, works the best, unless you go on the internet. It will go on fine for a while (after convincing it that it really wants to be there) but then after a while, it totally freezes and you have to bring up the task thingy.... yada, yada, yada. Just a pain. And besides that, it doesn't have it's own memory card thing. I have to plug in a little thingy (like all the technical terms here?) and then put my camera memory card into it to get them on the computer. One too many steps if you ask me.

Then there's D's laptop. The laptop we love. Perfect. Great. Until it was left on our bed, and someone little accidentally (get ready for this) pee'd on it, thereby shorting out the monitor. This happened last May, and for some reason the other night it decided to work again, but every so often the screen will just completely black out and stay blacked out (I'm typing on it right now... keep your fingers crossed!). Poor little computer. Note to self: laptops and pee definately don't mix.

Ok, so then there's the third laptop. The one bought to replace the pee'd on one. HP, good, has a memory card thing right in (as does the pee'd on one), bells, whistles, the whole thing. Until after having it about three months it decided to no longer have the middle row on the keyboard work. Seriously. Including the letters A-L, and the "enter" key. You know how many words contain these letters? A whole lot. Now granted, it has a stylus thing that you can write directly on the monitor with, but it takes oh so much longer than just typing it. We've contacted HP, and they are trying to fix it, but so far, no help.

So now you see the real reason why blogging has become such an issue for me. I will try to do better... but no promises. You'd have to get them from the laptops, and I just don't think their willing right now.

I challenge you.

Last week, a scrapbooker who I "follow", put a challenge out there. So today I am giving myself the 'gift of the present time' as so wisely suggested by Stacy Julian. The idea is to snap 10-12 photos that represent your life, right now. Keep the tiny collection in your purse, tote or diaper bag, look through them frequently and then -- early next October '09 -- document your thoughts on the experience. It's an exercise in appreciation of life through photos. Love that!

So really, super easy. The little "scrapbook" is only like 2 12" big, and my pictures 2"x2". Totally tiny. So easy to do and to keep in my purse. Gotta love that. So, I now challenge you, to somehow document your life. Right now. What's important. What matters. What makes you happy or sad. Whatever. Just do it... and see how it changes, or doesn't, by next year at this time.

The big day.

Macy and Derrick before her baptism
Macy and some of her friends - Sierra, Alina, Julia and Elley
Macy and Grandma and Grandpa Huckvale
Petrowskys, Grandma and Grandpa, us and Bob/Susie Huckvales

(about 1/3 of the Huckvale clan)

us - our little family - Reed, D, me, Luke, Chad, Macy and Haley

When you turn 8 in our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, aka "Mormon"), you get the choice to be baptized. Since Macy turned 8 earlier in September, she got the chance to get baptized last weekend. It was really nice. Grandma and Grandpa came from L.A. for it, as well as the Bob/Susie Huckvale family, Heidi/Duane Petrowsky, and many, many friends. D baptized her, I cried (of course!), cousin Robby and Grandma Huckvale spoke, and Jenny Huckvale sang. Chad and Luke gave prayers, and Aunt Susie led the music. It was so nice, and I'm so glad that Macy chose to be baptized and that she is the sweet spirit that was loaned to us for her time on Earth. We love her so much and are so thankful for her. Wish all of you could have been here with us for this special day!