Technical Difficulties

I want so badly to post... I have so many things I could write about...BUT my computer is NOT cooperating! I'm having all sorts of technical difficulties, with downloading pictures.

Don't you just love, to hate technology sometimes? I do.


PS-I do believe this is my 100th post in 2008. I only had one more in 2007. So technically this is 101... or do you count each year. What's the blog etiquette? Do I need to give away a prize or something? Or do y'all send me a prize? :o)

Count Your Blessings

With Thanksgiving a day away, I've been thinking about my many blessings and the people that I'm most thankful for... my family.

I am thankful for Jason, my wonderful husband. He's kind, loving, understanding and likes to watch "chick flicks" with me. He's thoughtful and is always thinking of ways to surprise me or make me happy. He believes that Heavenly Father wanted us to be together and "doesn't plan on going anywhere". He's just right for me and I'm glad that we are eternal companions!

I am thankful for 4 great kids:


I am thankful for Rylee because she is honest, reliable, helpful and makes good choices. I appreciate her willing spirit and good example to our family. I know when I am out of the house, everything is going to be ok and that she's got things under control. She's been a sweet, scheduled kiddo from the start and I love her!









I am thankful for Taylee because she is tender-hearted, creative, sweet and dramatic. I appreciate when she's extra kind to her siblings and when she surprises me with her deep understanding of eternal truths. I have been head-over-heals for her cuteness from birth!

I am thankful for Treyson because he is thoughtful, helpful, energetic and persistant. I appreciate when he's joyful. We used to keep him up late at night, just to play with him. He's made us laugh from the beginning. He was such a cute bouncing baby boy butterball!

I am thankful for Abree because she is sweet, observant, detail-oriented and my buddy. I appreciate her smart brain and am amazed when she talks to me about "older than 4 year old" things. She's generally easy to be around and goes-with-the-flow. I've been in love with her from day one!

Have a great day tomorrow and count your blessings!

(These pictures are of some of the new Thanksgiving decorations, I purchased at Real Deals, way back in September. I love them.)

Pre-school Pilgrim

Yesterday, Abree had pre-school at the Stokers. They had a "Thanksgiving Feast". Abree said she ate a HUGE pretzel and popcorn. She made an adorable pinecone turkey.

She also made a cute handprint turkey potholder.

After stripping her pilgrim attire, she said, "Mom take a picture of this!" When I turned around this is what I saw.

Spending time, savin' money

Guess what I did last night... saved some bucks!

Thanks to my awesome sister-in-law Julia and http://www.pinchingyourpennies.com/ I'm getting into the art of couponing (there really is some "art" to it). At PinchingYourPennies you will find all the ads and what coupons are floating around out there. Then the idea is to use those coupons to purchase items on sale. The biggest hitter is Albertsons. They have the biggest ads with the most sale items. (But there are others too like; FredMeyer, Walgreens, Rite Aid, etc.)

Here are some of the HIGHLIGHTS of my shopping trip:
I bought a 16 pound turkey for around $6 ,after purchasing a few Nabisco items. (The FREE turkey was for turkeys that were under 12 pounds, I think.)
Pillsbury brownies and frosting for .50/each, DelMonte canned vegetables for .38/each and Jollytime microwave popcorn 3/$5, then if you send in the rebate, they send you back $5... so eventually almost FREE.

Green Giant frozen "Steamers" vegetables almost FREE. They were on sale for $1 and I had a coupon for 1/$1 off. I say almost FREE because of sales tax and cost of purchasing lots of coupons (60 to be exact). So when I added the sales tax and cost of coupons, they ended up being around .25cents... not too shabby.

**Thank you Tim and Karen for housing our turkey and some of the veggies in your freezer. **

We need to purchase a big freezer in the near future.

Don't get into couponing if you don't have a little time to spend. It does take time, but I'm willing to spend some time, to save some money.

Because this was my first big coupon purchase, I'm finding there's a learning-curve. I was at Albertsons for about 2 hours! Partly shopping, but mostly waiting. I'm having to train the Albertson employees too. :o) I had pre-ordered my big purchase, so it would (in theory) be waiting for me, but someone dropped the ball and not everything was ready. I've told them to get used to seeing my face, because I think I will be frequenting Alberstons a lot more than I used to. Next time, I will call ahead and make sure my order is there and waiting for me.

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Side note- To make a long shopping trip just a little bit longer... on my way home I noticed I was almost out of gas. When the gauge hit "0 miles til empty" I got a little worried, that I wasn't going to make it. I did make it to the gas station, but once there, I was so distracted and unthinking that I locked my keys in the car!!! I was frustrated, because I don't lock my keys in the car...I'm not that kind of person (this was my first time ever). To add to that, Jason's truck is not working (so he couldn't come rescue me)and I lost Jason's set of van keys this week (I'm not usually that kind of person either. What's up with me?) What to do???? After calling around to my family, searching for a AAA member (to no avail), I called a locksmith. He was a cheerful young guy, who drove a yellow VW bug. I asked if there were any discounts for previous good customers (Jason had used this same company for carwash vehicles). No. But I found out that my car insurances includes "road side assistance". Wa-hoo! So he billed the insurance company.

Even with that little "hiccup", I drove home pleased and happy with the nights results.

Girl's Night & TWILIGHT

We saw Edward, at "Edwards".

Yep, we braved the opening night crowds to go see, "Twilight". Candice purchased our tickets early and we made a plan to show up at 5:00p for our 7:30p show. We planned snacks, chairs, warm clothes and blankets, anticipating having to wait outside in line to get in. Me, Karen, Mom and Candice

We gathered around 5:00p, but never saw anyone lining up outside, so we hung out in Candice's van to stay warm. We talked and snacked and talked some more. We saw a lot of people pass by, but never a line. Finally, around 6:30p, we decided to go in.

Wow, that's where the line was!

There were hundreds of people in line to see this highly anticipated movie (in several different theaters).
Here's where we should have been standing (in the front of the line), but were naive about the opening night particulars.

All was well, and we made it into our theater and even found good seats all together. The movie was good. I had low expectations (because how could the movie be as good as the book?). I wasn't disappointed. I'm looking forward to the next one, if there is a next one...oh, I hope there's a next one. I do think some of the enjoyment of the movie, came from reading the book. Someone who hadn't read the book could still enjoy, but wouldn't notice or catch some of the subtleties, like facial expressions that go with thought.

One of my favorite parts was the audience. There were screams and squeals, clapping and cat calls. Don't know if I've ever been to a movie with so much audience involvement.

After the movie, we weren't ready to go home. Our first plan was to go somewhere, but we ended up back in Candice's van and just hung out and talked until past midnight. Lot's of good quality chatting and "me time" for all of us. Thanks girls. That was a lot of fun.

FREE book!

Last week on Oprah, they announced a FREE photo book from Snapfish. I couldn't pass up FREE, so I quickly took advantage of this deal. Here are the results (in brief)...

I used our family photos, just because they were easy-access and current.
You could choose the quick option of using one of their templates, or you could create your own template, by using the different page options. I chose the latter.

My kids were amazed that are family photos were in a "real book".

Now if I never get those photos scrapbooked, they'll be documented anyway.

(I'm having a hard time keeping up on scrapbooking. Blogging is so much more imediate, easy and mess free.)

Happy 60th Dad/Grandpa Smullin

We went to Utah this weekend, to celebrate Jason's Dad's 60th Birthday. He knew his kids were coming, but didn't know that many other's had been invited to the church for an open house. The grandchildren decorated a birthday banner for grandpa.

A big part of his life, he served in the Military; air force.


















He also refereed many a game.

We enjoyed many of his very favorite desserts. Yum, mine too!

Cute Jeremiah blowing on a party favor. Cathy (daughter) and Mom made a whole scrapbook about his life. They had us all write letters of appreciation and memories we've shared with him. It contained pictures of him as a baby, all the way up to pictures of him with grand babies. There was even a letter from his mom (who passed away long ago). Cathy did an awesome job. (She said it had consumed most of the last 6 weeks of her life.) It was so fun to look through and reminisce.
Cathy also prepared an hour-long DVD with ALL the pictures she collected and put them to music. (She was up til 4am, the night before, finishing it up.) While watching a few tears were shed. We've all begged for copies of the DVD.
Later, back at the house, he opened presents.

Then it was finally time for cake. We had so many yummy desserts at the open house, we were almost too sugared-up to have any cake. I managed to have one piece later on that evening. :o)

All Aboard the Norwegian Star!

Cabo San Lucas

Mazatlan

Puerto Vallarta

Killing time in California

Delay + Missed Connection = New Friend

Leaving L.A. our flight was delayed for at least an hour, because of some electrical problems (how comforting, right?). We sat in the hot airplane while ground crews tried to figure out what was going on. We finally headed to Salt Lake. When we arrived, we discovered that we had missed our connecting flight to Boise. We were slightly disappointed because we had been looking forward to seeing our kiddos that evening. The airlines accommodated us and extended our vacation for one more night. They set us up with vouchers for a shuttle, hotel stay and food. They put us up in the Comfort Suite Hotel, close to the SLC airport. The room was about 3 times the size of our cruise ship "stateroom" (cabin). It was nice to be able to stretch out. While in the airport, an Asian girl (from Taiwan)approached us. She had been on our flight and had also missed her connecting flight to Seattle. We found out that she had only been in the United States for a year and was still learning English. She asked for our assistance in understanding what was going on. She was confused by missing her flight and didn't understand the idea of voucher. We took her under our wing and made a new friend. We stayed in the same hotel, went to dinner together and helped her get set up with a wake-up call and ride to the airport, the next morning.

Her name is Hsiao-Chi (pronounced Sh-owe Shee). She was a lot of fun to get to know and to hang out with. We shared stories and laughed together that evening. She has a great sense of humor.

Here's the little restaurant we ate dinner at and got to know Hsiao-Chi better.

Although we don't know what the future holds, both Jason and I felt like this evening was no accident. Things happen because they are meant to happen.

Token Halloween Picture

Although it seems I've been posting Halloween stuff all October long, I decided to post a picture of the actual Halloween night. Our ward didn't do any activity, like trunk-or-treat, so we decided to run around our neighborhood trick-or-treating.
It was an AWESOME weather night, quite warm in fact. We barely had to wear long sleeves or a jacket the whole evening. Our kids enjoyed going door-to-door and then we went into the Saguaro Canyon neighborhood and participated in the "Haunted Maze", atleast the older girls did, while Treyson, Abree and I hung out in the car. We ended our evening at Grandma McKinley's house for a visit with cousins and a little bit of candy.

We're baaaack!

As soon as I get my "land legs" working again and settled in, I'll tell you all about our cruise to the Mexican Rivera. Short and sweet; it was a blast, but I have to admit I'm glad to be home.