Funny Faces

I love it when I go to download and save some pictures from our camera to the computer, and I'm surprised by random out of the ordinary pictures taken by my husband. These are such pictures. I thought they were too cute not to share.

My favorite quote

The General Relief Society Meeting last Saturday evening was fabulous! I went with 5 other ladies from my ward. Our stake combined with the Middleton Stake and we had a punch and cookie social afterwards. I really enjoyed listening to all of the speakers. The new General R.S. Presidency seems great. As always, President Monson gave a wonderful talk. There was one quote towards the beginning of his talk that I absolutely loved. He said it in speaking about the General R.S. Presidency and the spirit they brought to the meeting. He commented on how thankful he was for their parents and leaders as young girls. It made me think of Ella. Nobody really knows what lies ahead for her, what she'll accomplish or how she'll be. I have many hopes and dreams for her though, mostly of her becoming a wife and mother and remaining a faithful daughter of God all of her days. Every woman, even those who are accomplished or well known, were once ordinary little girls and those who loved and cared for them had no clue of the ladies they were going to someday be. I hope I am doing all I can for Ella to help her live up to her potential. As a matter of fact, I loved this quote so much that I printed it out, framed it and put it in her room. This is it.

Some inside projects from the last year

Going up our stairs are the only vaulted ceilings we have, so I had this idea to use the wall space and hang some of my favorite mostly older family pictures. I am a big fan of the vinyl letting on walls and boards and have words and phrases scattered all over the house. I was particularly pleased with how this wall going up the stairs turned out. It's nice to see all these pictures of such special people each and every time I go up and down the stairs.
Our front room. Some think of it as a waste of space, but I love having a nice room that doesn't get too messy. It's great for when people stop by and things like that. I like that it has the piano in it and not a t.v. and toys. I like to go in there and just sit sometimes.
We have a RED wall! I've always wanted a red wall and love the way they look whenever I see them. It took a lot of courage for me to actually do it in our house though, but as you can see we painted part of the family room red. I'm still not sure I love the tone of red (I was trying hard to not end up with a purple red), but it's Mark's favorite.
Ella's room is one of my favorites in the house! We painted it the softest pink color. It is my favorite choice of color of all the painting we've done in this house. I love the color of the room when the sun is coming in. Walking down the hall it always catches my eye. We were able to get Ella some new furniture when we moved in too. Gotta love Target and their Shabby Chic line! Mark made her the picket fence headboard a couple of years ago, Ella and I love it!
We finally got a headboard and some bedroom furniture!!! This is our bedroom and the lovely quilt and pillow shams Mom Bishop made us for our wedding. You can't see in this picture, but we painted an accent wall a sage green color when we first moved in. I really like how it turned out and it is a peaceful room to me.

We've put in a lot of time and work to get the inside of the house the way we want it and it's pretty much done for now. Probably the most recent project I've done is decorating the plant shelves in the kitchen. I should have taken a picture, I guess. Our kitchen is a cheery yellow color. It was fun to pick the colors for the walls and the curtains, etc. I love to decorate! I'm not the best at it, but I really do enjoy it. Making this house "our home" has been really rewarding to me. Today was a good day to take some pictures and post them because we're coming up on our one year anniversary of living here and the house was clean (at least for what pictures can pick up). We're grateful to be here in this area, ward and house!

MARK, my hard worker

Mark designed this stone path at the side of the house just this week. It is an area that tends to always be a muddy mess. We are going to try and move some more dirt in that area before we plant the grass to raise it up a bit. That's where the trash cans are, so it'll be nice to have a clean stone path to walk on when taking the garbage out.
This picture isn't the best and our garage is a bit cluttered, but these are the great wooden shelves Mark built and installed in the garage going down both sides. Towards the front he's built himself a workbench and shelf. It's nice to have a place to put all of our things. I love having these shelves because they make accessing our rubbermaids a lot easier than if they were piled on top of each other.

Mark put together this small, stone retaining wall. We're going to put perma bark (it's sitting in a big pile in our driveway waiting to be moved back there) in the area by the fence and plant some shrubs or something. The square box is going to be a planter for flowers, there's another square box just like it on the other side. Should be pretty!
The back fence he built (with some help from wonderful friends and family).

I thought this might be a special way to thank Mark for all of his hard work on our home. We are nearing the one year mark of being in our new house. Boy, has it been a lot of work (inside and outside)! We've had fun making things nice and the way we want them. We're far from done, but it does feel good to have accomplished what we have. Who knew it would take so much time, work, and money? Anyone who has ever moved into a new house I guess, but I never had until this point and and had no clue! Mark has been just incredible! He works early mornings at EDS, he starts work anywhere from 4:30 a.m. to 6:30 a.m., and stays up really late at night working on things around the house. You should see him.... out there in the dark, with his head lamp on working away. He is very sleep deprived, but keeps plugging along and getting things done. He just finished putting in the sprinklers in the backyard and he's now getting ready to plant grass seed. Hopefully next Spring we'll have a green backyard. Projects he's already finished which I've included pictures of are: building the back fence (we still need to seal it), building and installing shelves and a bike rack in the garage, leveling out the backyard (it was shaped like a bowl), building a stone retaining wall in the backyard, and some landscaping out back. I don't think I'm forgetting anything. He has done all of this while being a very dedicated husband, dad, scout leader and employee. I have helped very little with the physical labor. My contributions have been by way of suggestions and ideas, and trying to manage the kids and their activities while he's working on these projects every chance he gets . Hopefully I've been some help, but hats off to Mark for working incredibly hard and doing so much for our home and family! He's learned a lot and I'm sure he'll be able to help others with their yard projects now. Anyway, thank you and we love you, dear!

Pictures from the Fiesta

In John's class each student made one of these ovals with things describing themselves and the parents were supposed to guess which one their child made. When I asked John why or how the word 'superjumbo' described him, he said he just liked the word. Funny!

Some interesting art by Cooper. His is in the bottom right corner.

Ella and her friend, Dallyce, showing their maracas. Doesn't Ella's hair bow look so crazy!?

Cooper performing with his class and the 2nd grade class.

John with his 6th grade class. He's standing in the first row and has a blue sweatshirt on.

Here Norma Pintar dances with a lit candle on her head!

Fiesta de las Artes

Just a little video from the Fiesta de las Artes. This was at the kids' school, and it's of Ella playing a xylophone.


The school has an arts and sciences emphasis and each month they study a different artist. This month it has been Diego Rivera and last night's Open House had a Mexican theme and we enjoyed chips, cheese dip and salsa as we watched the children perform. Each grade presented something from the Hispanic culture. Some grades learned Mexican dances that they performed and others sang songs and played instruments. Our kids all sang and Cooper and Ella played the xylophone. Ella's class also made and decorated maracas. They had Norma Pintar (a traditional Mexican dancer) perform and she has also been at the school teaching the kids in 4th and 5th grades dances the past couple of weeks. I think there were close to 500 people there last night, which is a great turnout for a small charter school. Being on the PFA, I helped prepare and serve the chips, cheese dip and salsa. YumYum!

A fun and relaxing weekend

This past weekend was such a great one for me and I thought it was worth writing about. On Friday night I went to Mark's Aunt Cindy's house. She had Mom Bishop, Alysa, Amanda and I over for a girls' night. We missed you Janice, Jen, Janet and Kamber! It was a very relaxing evening with fantastic company and great food. Cindy had made chili, artichoke dip, stuffed mushrooms, fruit w/ fruit dip, vegetables and lots of yummy stuff. She planted us each a little pot with a plant to take home. I got a Christmas cactus and have high hopes of not killing it before Christmas comes and it gets its' blooms. We had fun conversation each answering questions such as who we would most like to meet (alive or dead), and other interesting and thought provoking questions like that. Thanks Cindy for such a fun time that's sure to be a special memory!

On Saturday I had the opportunity to attend a Time Out for Women in Boise at the Boise Center on the Grove with some ladies from my ward. This was the second time I've gone to this event (the last time was five years ago, I think) and it was a fabulous day! Deseret Book is who puts the event on, I believe, and it is a day filled with wonderful speakers and music all geared towards women. The speakers were Jane Clayson Johnson (she used to be the co anchor for the Early Show w/Bryant Gumbel) and she spoke about "Seasons" of life and how she traded in her television career to be a stay at home mom. Mary Ellen Edmunds was the event host and she was hilarious! She's an LDS author. Stephen Robinson spoke (he wrote the book Believing Christ and is a BYU professor) and was also very funny. Chris Stewart also spoke, he is the author of The Great and Terrible series of books and is the CEO of The Shipley Group. The highlight of course was Sheri Dew. Kenneth Cope was the musical guest and he sang several times throughout the day. I never realized how amazing his voice is! All of the presenters did really well and their messages were uplifting and inspiring and made you want to do better. It was just what I needed to hear! The spirit was evident throughout the day. There were almost 3,000 ladies there. It was a nice break away from home and kids and I'm grateful for the opportunity I had to go and be taught new things and to be reminded of things I already knew. Hopefully I'll be a better wife, mother and daughter of God for having gone. Thanks so much to Mark for going solo with the kids all weekend and getting them to and from football games, sleepovers, etc. all on his own. You're the BEST!