Yesterday after Landon and I braved the crowds at 5:00am to get some good deals at Walmart, K-mart and Walgreens and after Kristen and I went to see Twilight (LOVED IT), the LeFevres, the Finaus, and the Christensens drove about 50 miles to cut down a Christmas tree in Island Park. We parked the cars, then hiked up the side of a mountain in the snow and found a really nice tree to cut down, take home and decorate.

Emma and Daddy looking for the perfect tree.

Lauren and Ketti eating snow pretty much the whole time we were on the mountain.

Emma, cutting down the tree.

Heading up the mountain to find our tree. Kristen and Oliviana

This picture doesn't really show how pretty the tree really is. It's a very pretty tree.

Puppies At 3 Weeks

Kristen and a puppy. Their eyes are open!
Two babies.

Baby Lauren and a baby puppy.

Big Emma and a baby puppy.

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving! Kristen, Manase and Oliviana came up Wednesday night from American Fork to visit us. We spent Thursday cooking turkey, stuffing, curried cauliflower (thanks Aunt Stacy!), rolls, mashed potatoes, gravy and pumpkin pecan pie. We also had a Marie Calendar's chocolate satin pie. I have to say, all the food was fantastic! Probably our best Thanksgiving dinner ever. We went to the Thanksgiving K-mart sale just to check everything out and to kill time while the turkey cooked, but other than that we hung out at home and played Wii, watched Oliviana and ate food. A pretty great day.
Emma and Lauren dressed up for Thanksgiving.
The best Thanksgiving dinner ever.

Kristen and Emma set the table very nicely. They had a lot of fun with the roll plates.

This is the best pie ever!!! Note to the Las Vegas LeFevre family: I'm planning to make this at Christmas, so prepare yourselves.

Baby Oliviana slept through the original dinner, but ate on her own after we finished.

We are so happy the Finau's are visiting so we can share the food and the fun.

Who's That Sexy Man?

Someone got some new clothes! Doesn't he look hot?

(He has a tendency to close his eyes, so I went straight for the body shot.)

Visit From The Lukes

Jane, Jessica, Samantha, Ashley and Rhett drove up to Rexburg to visit us this weekend! They haven't been here since July 2006, so we were really excited that they were able to come up. The girls and I met them in Idaho Falls around 11:00am Saturday morning in order to attend the Sam's Club festive holiday sampling event. After our sampling and shopping, we went to Sarah's Candy Cottage near Winco so we could get some candy. (I told Landon I was going to buy some M & M's at Sams, and he begged me not to. My plan B was to go to the Candy Cottage and buy caramels instead.) We made it back to Rexburg in time for me to drop off the kids with Landon and take Jane to Real Deals for some browsing and free cookies and Sprite (they were having a holiday open house event too!!). The remainder of our two days together was spent making and eating homemade BBQ chicken pizza, eating the best ever caramel dip with some apple slices. Side note--the caramel dip was so good that we all started forgoing the apples slices and just ate big spoonfuls of caramel. I'll include the recipe here, don't worry.

We also went to the new Meadow's clubhouse and let the kids play on the fitness equipment, play air hockey, and Foosball and pick out a movie at the DVD vending machine. Rhett and Landon bonded over Wii, rented Mario Cart to play, and Star Wars Clone Wars to watch. We fed the Lukes some sausage and egg burritos this morning, then they left around 11:00am. After they left, we were exhausted and bloated from the overeating, but we were all really grateful they made the long trip up to see us!

Jessica, Emma and Samantha playing Wii Fit.

Landon and his new buddy, Rhett, playing Mario Cart and other Wii games.

Lauren and Ashley--these girls are two peas in a pod. In the car on the way from IF to Rexburg Lauren was whispering something funny to Ashley. Ashley says loudly, "Lauren, I don't like to talk gross this early in the day." Another Ashley story: during FHE, the Luke kids were going around trying to say something nice about each other. They told Ashley that she was generous. Ashley said, "Yeah, like when I gave Samantha a dollar to stay away from my room."

Hot Caramel Dip

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup butter or margarine

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup corn syrup

Combine all ingredients and bring to a boil. Pour into a crockpot and set on low. Serve with sliced apples.

Yummy Pasta Salad

This pasta salad is awesome! It is a good "meal" salad, because it has chicken in it. This recipe makes enough to feed about 20 people, so you may want to cut it down unless you plan to share it.

Rich People's Salad
5 Chicken breasts cooked and cut into bite sized pieces
12 oz. box uncooked shell or bow tie noodles; cook them, rinse/drain
1 can water chestnuts (optional)
2 cups diagonally sliced celery pieces
1 bunch green onions, cut into small pieces
2 large (20 oz) cans pineapple tidbits
4 gala apples, cut into bite-sized pieces (put apples slices in pineapple juice first)
3 cups red grapes, halved
1 1/2 cups cashew pieces (serve separately)

Mix 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise with 12-16 ounces of Hidden Valley Ranch Coleslaw dressing.
Toss with above ingredients and refrigerate.

Look At My Wreath!

So when Nana was here last week, we visited my favorite Rexburg home decor store, Real Deals, which is only open on Thursdays and Saturdays. It's such a fun place to browse and shop around. Well, Nana asked how I liked a couple of different wreaths, so I told her which one I liked the best, thinking she wanted to take one home with her. Imagine my complete delight when she bought the prettiest wreath and gave it to me! It happens to be the biggest and prettiest wreath in the whole Meadows Townhouse community, so I'm pretty happy to have it on my door.

Landon's Media Coverage

Landon made the Rexburg Standard Journal as well as the local ABC station's news (Local News 8) this past Friday! It was his idea to have the 3rd and 4th graders at Kennedy Elementary create a red, white and blue paper chain to represent each soldier who has died serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. The chain goes all around the whole school and makes a real impression when you see it. As his personal publicist, I contacted both the newspaper and the TV station, and both responded to my news "tip" in less than an hour. Click on this link to read the article from the newspaper.

http://www.rexburgstandardjournal.com/articles/2008/11/17/news/26.txt

Daisy's Puppies

Morris and Heidi Christensen's dog Daisy had 10 puppies on Wednesday! Daisy is a yellow lab and gave birth to 5 boys and 5 girls.

These are the 1 day old babies.

Emma holding a baby puppy.

Lauren with one of the babies.

Weekend in Pocatello

I hatched a plan to have some fun this weekend, and luckily everyone wanted to go along with it. We drove 75 miles to Pocatello and stayed overnight at the Red Lion hotel. The girls got to swim at the hotel, we enjoyed a good meal at Red Lobster, and we explored the brand new Costco in town. We also dropped some money at the Enchanted Village Craft Fair, JoAnns, Sportsmen's Warehouse and JC Penney. One of the highlights of the trip was when Landon provided breakfast in bed for all of us after a quick McDonald's run. The worst part of the trip was coming home to find out our satellite had been disconnected. Landon called the satellite company 3 or 4 times within 30 minutes to make sure somebody got over here to fix it right away. That would pretty much be our worst nightmare--not having access to TV for a couple of days. That crisis was averted thankfully and the panic is now over.

Lauren and Nana shared a bed; we made a bed on the floor for Emma.

This is Emma, enjoying a fruit and yogurt parfait for breakfast in bed. (We let her get off the floor for her parfait.)
A well-rested Lauren eating her bacon, egg and cheese McGriddle.Fun times in the hot tub and swimming pool.

Outside the new Costco with our Clementine Cuties, giant bag of pistachios, and smoked salmon.

Fun With Nana

Nana flew to Idaho Falls from Las Vegas Monday night to spend a week with us. We let the girls stay home from school today so they could have some fun. They went shopping to all the Rexburg hot spots (Walmart and Porters), did a ladies lunch at McDonalds, then came home to watch Tinkerbell--a movie Nana bought for them. Then they went to the 4:15pm showing of Madagascar II, stopped for dinner at Taco Bell then came home. I got home from my meeting in time to tuck the girls in.

In addition to Tinkerbell, their fun day "booty" included Christmas ornaments, Madagascar posters, toys from the arcade in the movie theater, lip gloss, a Magic Treehouse book to share and some sugar coated cereal. It's such a nice bonus to have a visit from Nana in November! I'll get some actual photos of Nana later this week to provide proof that's she's really here. We're having fun.

Adventures in Enrichment

I had an Enrichment Committee meeting tonight, so to keep up with my super creative, over-the-top enrichment leaders, I made mini-bread loaves for all the members of the committee. Nana bought some decorative apple slices and rafia for me, and I wrapped the loaves in some leftover fabric. I appeared creative and clever, which was the illusion I was hoping to create.

Emma's Veteran's Project

Emma had an assignment to create a poster about a veteran in her family. We called Uncle Alex, who is Landon's dad's sister's (Aunt Dawna) husband. I talked to him on the phone and the very next day he put original photos in the mail to us and told us we could just keep them if we wanted. He was really eager to answer Emma's questions and very helpful for her project.

He served in both the Navy and the Airforce. He served on the USS Columbus (the commanding ship in the fleet, so the Admiral was on it) in the Mediterranean from 1950 to 1954. He then served as a staff sergeant in the Airforce on Nellis Air Force base in Las Vegas from 1956 to 1960. (That's when he met Aunt Dawna.) We completed Emma's poster this morning.

High School Musical 3

Nana sent the girls some money to go see High School Musical 3, so we saw it last night. We made Landon come with us after promising him he could have popcorn. The theater was packed, and there was a group of 12 or 13 year old boys on the top row. They made fun of the movie the whole time until a mom went out and brought in a theater employee who made them stop. Landon found a lot to laugh about in the movie, like when the basketball team broke into song during their basketball game. My favorite part of the movie was when Gabriella told Troy, "I love you, Wildcat." At one point in the movie Troy went into the locker room. A whole bunch of girls sitting near us, grabbed each others' hands in their row and said, "Wait for it...wait for it..." until Troy took off his shirt and exposed his naked, muscular back to the audience before he put on his basketball jersey.
In spite of all the tormentors, the girls really liked it and were happy we went.

Bruise

This is the result of shooting Landon's gun on Saturday. This is next to my shoulder on my upper arm. I shot his 12-gauge shotgun with some super powerful shells.

New Calling

If your testimony is weak, read no further.

I just got called to be the 1st counselor in the Relief Society today. Evidently the honey oatmeal bread I brought over to the Bishop's house as a "thank you" present for letting me borrow their canning supplies was a big hit with the Bishop. He actually told me that my name came to mind after he ate the bread. After he explained that and extended me the calling, I mentally damned that honey oatmeal bread straight to hell.

Dad's Birthday

Landon turned 35 yesterday, so to celebrate we went hunting/shooting. We drove out about 5 miles west of our place to the desert, brought our pumpkins to shoot, and went hunting for rabbits, squirrels, birds, mice, etc. Basically we were looking to shoot anything that moved. After hiking a mile or so around the truck, Landon successfully shot a mouse. Lauren said, "Look Daddy! You killed it! Good job!" We were all very proud of dad. We spent some time shooting skeet and pumpkins, then went home. Landon and I later went shopping and he got some new casual pants, some outdoor magazines, and some pajama pants. For breakfast, I cooked breakfast burritos with steak, potatoes and eggs, then we ate Halloween candy for lunch and dinner. Emma took over camera duty for much of the day, so we have enough pictures for a slideshow. Enjoy. (Don't forget to pause the music at the bottom of the blog so you can hear the music in the slideshow.)