say no to crack

Congratulations Patsy! She was the first (ok and only) one to leave a comment about my line from the movie GROUND HOG DAY! This is easily one of my most favorite movies, we are constantly quoting it, especially the lines, "don't drive angry" and, "side of your eye, side of your eye" and (talking to our friend Phil), "Phil? Like the ground hog Phil? Yeah, like the ground hog Phil", and "I sure as heck if I remember you", and "is it too early for flap jacks?" and "morons, your bus is leaving" and ok, you get it, we love this movie. Bill Murray's BEST movie ever, with What About Bob being number two. Thanks Patsy for leaving a comment! You are the proud winner of my new favorite flavor of Stephen's hot chocolate: Dulce De Leche & Caramel! YUM! Also, Josh wins a can for knowing the movie and for fixing my blog. Looks like I have some good mail to send out tomorrow. Today the heating guy came and mostly fixed our heat issues. It turns out we have a bunch of trapped air in our pipes which is causing some cold spots in the floor. It's going to be a bigger project later, but for now we're happy with the band-aid job which gives us some HEAT! At one point he was bent over in our closet looking at some of the piping and I could see so much of his butt crack that Allie and I almost busted out laughing! It was kind of hard to contain the laughter, it was gross but like a train wreck, hard to look away. Can't you feel that? Isn't it kind of breezy when that much of your hiney is sticking out of your pants? I guess I wouldn't know because my hiney has never hung out like that before so maybe I wouldn't notice. But I would think that I would. Never mind, don't get a visual. The point is, we had a pretty good laugh at the expense of the heating guy. :) Tonight I'm looking forward to sleeping with warm toes.

**Have you ever feel like you were going to burst out with laughter at the wrong moment?**

**Do you let your hiney hang out like this?**

**What's your favorite Stephen's hot chocolate flavor?**

**Do you love Ground Hog Day, what's your favorite line?**

josh rocks!

I have the BEST NEWS!!!!!! My devilishly handsome, charming, sweet, kind, not to mention GENIUS brother-in-law Josh, fixed my blog so that you can now leave a comment!!!!!! YAY!!!! I can't tell you how happy this makes me, I'm just so excited!!!! THANK YOU Josh! PS I need an updated picture of you! :) Please celebrate with me by leaving me a comment! :) So, Josh gets a can of hot chocolate too for being a genius! Go Josh!

baby it's cold out there!

So, here we are AGAIN, with NO HEAT. I loved this seven day forecast from Patsy's blog, it was so appropriate to my blog here today I decided to copy it. Now let's say you could choose the worst possible week for your boiler to go out, you would say this week for sure. Right? I mean could we have worse luck than this?Twenties and thirties during the day and teens at night? Holy crap! Last time our boiler broke, it took more than a week to get it resolved and I just kept feeling grateful that it hadn't happened in the dead of winter! I think my nightmare came true, the heating guy said today that he can't even come until tomorrow afternoon because he's so busy! Yikes! I should've taken a picture of Ethan eating breakfast this morning, with TWO blankets around his shoulders brrrrr. We got dressed and ran errands all day because Costco is a lot warmer than our house. On the way home from Taylor's choir concert tonight, I stopped at Target and bought two space heaters to add to our collection of a few so that everyone would have one in their room tonight. Thank goodness for space heaters man! Brrrrrrrr. "Rise and shine campers, and don't forget to wear your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today. It's cold out there every day, what is this Miami Beach?" Because my blog STILL has a bug and you can't post comments unfortunately, the first person who sends me an email with the movie title to that quote, will get a 1lb. canister of my new favorite Stephen's Hot Chocolate, Dulce de Leche Caramel! A hint is that it's probably one of my most favorite movies EVER! (rich, you do not count in this contest)Soooo good! Good luck! :)EDIT: My blog NO LONGER has a bug, you can now leave a comment! So instead of the first correct email, it's now the first correct comment! Do you know the movie?

sunday best

Wayne and Eileen's church block was not until 1pm and our block is at 9am with primary/sunday school first. My kids love their friends and teachers so much that they all got up on their own, got ready and went to our block of church long enough for primary and sunday school. Spencer especially has had a huge turn around this year, I'm sure it has something to do with having friends in his primary class and also his wonderful teachers the Millers. I definitely pick my battles with this kid and one of them is letting him wear a polo shirt and dress pants instead of a shirt and tie. He has never been excited about going in the first place and he absolutely hates wearing a button up, much less a tie. So, I decided I would fight that battle later when he became a Deacon and kind of has to. So today, I never even saw the kids leave, I'm lame and decided to stay home to cook brownies knowing that I would get my church in later on. So when Spencer came home from church looking like this, I was shocked! I told him how handsome he looked and asked if I could take his picture. He beemed and said, "yes, you should take my picture and then blog about how this is the first time I've ever worn a tie!" I laughed and said, "that is exactly why I want to take your picture!" Funny kid, next time you see him, tell him you saw him on the blog wearing a tie and that he looked so handsome! :) EDIT: Ok, what I really wanted to say in this entry and didn't, is how grateful I am to the youth leaders in our ward who can do for our kids what we as parents just some times can't. Like get Spencer excited about attending church. I think that we don't realize as leaders the influence that we have on these kids, for good or bad, and because the Millers love him just for him he felt comfortable and somewhere along the line started enjoying his time in their class. I'm going to send them some good mail for sure, they need to know what they've started here. I'm just so thankful for loving leaders who embrace my kids.

homecoming...again

Yesterday was Wayne & Eileen's homecoming that they had to talk in church about their mission experiences. It was very nice to be able to hear how much love they developed for the people of Uganda and some of their challenges and triumphs while there. Eileen said it was the hardest 18 months of her life but also time that she did the most growing. I can't even imagine. Wayne said several times how grateful they are to be back and to be surrounded by family, amen dad, amen. We are happy to have them back too, it was a good meeting. It was especially fun to see the front right row full of missionaries who served with them in Uganda get up after the meeting and bear hug little Eileen. It was obvious that they love her and I'm guessing because she has so many boys of her own and it was easy for her to love and take care of them too. Afterward it's always tradition to have a sort of lunch at their home and this was our favorite part of the day. We loved being able to hang out with brothers and their wives and cousins who we don't see as a whole group often enough. We always laugh and laugh and this gathering was no different. I have always been so grateful to have been born into such a wonderful family but the last nine years or so I've realized what a blessing it is to also be married into such a wonderful one. We are excited to spend some time with everyone at Jenny's cabin in Oakley over Christmas break this year. Good times. Would you believe that I forgot my camera? Crap! Jenny provided these nice pictures for me, so thanks Jen!

you are the dancing queen, young and sweet...

You can dance, you can dance, having the time of your life...ooooooooo....
One of my biggest joys in life are Allie's dance recitals, I actually love the kids' music recitals too, but the dance recitals often make my teary, sorry but I'm just being honest. Allie has been doing dance since she was 3 - almost 4 and so we have attended many, many dance recitals, two a year for the past 8 years, wow.
This picture is of her first year, it was taken when digital images were brand-new so it's small and pixely but I love it, it makes me giggle every time I see it! Look at that cutie patootie little girl! It is always during Allie's number that I feel many emotions all at once, hopeless about how quickly she is growing up, shocked and amazed and how grown up she really is and what she's capable of, and chest swelling pride because of what a great dancer she is! Now I know that I am biased, but she just shines up there on the stage and you can just feel how much fun she is having, pure JOY on her face. Saturday was the Christmas dance recital, grinch themed, so cute and we had a huge cheering section. Both sets of grandparents came, lucky for my parents, Makenna also dances with Melanie (dance teacher) and lucky for Rich's parents, Charity and Joy dance there too! Lots of stones, one dance recital. We just love sitting with all of our family. We also love that Lauren and Natalie dance there too so their families are all in attendance! It's like a big class reunion. :) The recital did not disappoint, I thought all of the girls did such a great job and had a lot of fun. We always take pictures on the stage after the recital is over because the black curtain back drop is so great and the lighting is wonderful. This year they turned the lights off too quickly, so everyone has red-eye. Some day I'll get around to fixing that in Photoshop, but for now it's just too much work! Happy dancing queens!

every dog needs a boy

Friday was a great day of getting good things done, mainly a few Christmas gifts. Lauri and I worked at her house on some gifts for our sister-in-laws and since mine frequent my blog, all I can say is that it involved some of this...Ethan doesn't mind hanging out at Laur's house at all because he loves Lauri, but he also LOVES Goldie, Goldie doesn't really share the same sentiments about Ethan, but she is such a good dog that she tolerates all the eye poking and tail grabbing just fine. While I was busy painting away today, all of a sudden I noticed it was really quiet, which when you have a toddler, generally means bad news. I turned around to find Ethan using Goldie as his body pillow and loving every second of it. Goldie doesn't look too thrilled, but maybe she was too tired to care. What a good doggie, Goldie is. We're glad that we get to dog sit her from time to time since we will never have a dog of our own. Poor Ethan, and Spencer, they are the kind of boys dogs are made for. I just hate the hair! And let me tell you, Ethan was COVERED in it when he stood up from his Goldie snuggle session. Yuck. Lauri and I took a self portrait when we were done but I'm never happy about the size of my head when we do this. Do I really have that large of a head? And it looks like I need to start wearing mascara all the time, Lauri has great eyes. Later Rich and I opted not to go out, it was snowing and freezing and we hung out and caught up on our TV shows on the Tivo. It was nice to snuggle up in PJs and just relax after such a busy week.

our cards

Christmas cards, to me, are the best kind of good mail that you get. I especially love that they come in droves and by the time Christmas day rolls around my front door is plastered with them! There are only a few up there today, I'll be sure to post at the end of December because it's a sight that makes me just SO happy! I always like to get my cards out early, mainly because I LOVE sending them out (the good mailer in me) and also, they always feel like a huge load off of my shoulders once they're done. So I got them mailed out early last week and decided I could finally post how they turned out on my blog because it won't ruine the surprise of anyone getting them in their mailbox. I also mailed out a simplified version of our normally novel long family letter, and LOVED it, especially because I also mailed out my blog address (to most people) and decided if they really wanted details, they can check them out here! :) So here goes, our cute cards, family picture thanks to Kayleen Feil, my cute friend who agreed to trade me for family photos since they just weren't in the budget this year! :)

Merry Christmas to all of you, our friends and family!
As always, I’m shocked to be reflecting on another year passed. We have had a full year, here are just a few of the things that we have been up to in 2007…

changed jobs (again)
junior high work load
learned to walk
Guitar Hero competitions
golfing
scout camp
mudding & painting
entered Beehives
still trying to learn to talk
many, many photo shoots
volunteering
blogging
launched photo mahjong
singing in the boys’ choir
starred in the school play
ditched work the day Halo 3 was released
listening to our ipods
playing lots of piano & guitar
memorized all the lines from “cars” and “toy story”
read Harry Potter 7
surviving the toddler stage
writing “band” for the wii at work
learned to embroider
co-chaired a fundraiser
helped with all the math homework
rode the zip line at Snowbird
enjoyed many out-of-town visitors
dance recitals
...and so much more!

We are so grateful for our many blessings and hope that this finds
you all healthy, happy and enjoying this special time of year.
Thank you for all for your friendship and love.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Love, the Moore family
Rich Wende Taylor Allie Spencer and Ethan

Of course, after I sent it I felt bad that I didn't include about our award winning photographs this year, but you can read about it here if you missed it the first time. :) Merry Christmas

great hair kind of day

Tuesdays are my crazy day, but today was especially fun, and crazy. I started out the day with great hair, I didn't take a picture of this specifically but trust me, it looked great today. I love great hair day, you feel good all day long, and I did! Lauri and I did some errand running in Layton and stopped by Jason's Deli for some lunch and to see my handsome brother Brandon. This time I brought my camera with fresh batteries. We ate some seriously yummy baked potatoes and Ethan LOVES macaroni and cheese. He also LOVES Brandon, in fact, it's one of the few words that he tries to say, kind of sounds like bah-dah, but close enough. When you're two and STILL not talking, this totally counts. The fact that he loves Brandon is a total turn-around from when he was a baby and would burst into tears at the sight of him! Seriously, I felt so bad for Brandon, Ethan hated him! Having fun at lunch made running errands bearable, it also didn't hurt that during our Barnes and Noble run, there was a kid section with a cute chair Ethan wanted to sit in (that's right SIT in) and a Buzz and Woody book he wanted to read, so cute. This does negate the fact that on the way out of the store, he swatted at a stack of books on a table and ALL the books on the table fell to the floor, loudly, so that everyone looked at me. UGH! Toddlerhood, sheesh! Next I was on to the post office to send a good mail package, a long over-due thank you note and some tail-ender Christmas cards, the line was only two minutes long, not bad! Later was Webelos and piano, and I took the thirty minute break to run to Starbucks to try Patsy's beloved Carmel Apple Cider and OOOOOOHHHHHH, so good. I sat in the car all by myself in the peace and quiet, sipping away the goodness while I waited for Spencer to come out to the car. Later when I got home I found this....Allie knew I was having a rough go of things today, so she cleaned the kitchen AND organized my giant drawer of rubbermaid containers. Man I love this girl. I'm so tired, I'm going to fall into bed like a rock. Good night!

photoshop queen

Ok, I'm not really the photoshop queen, but over the last few days I've made enough digital Christmas cards that I'm feeling like the digital queen for sure! It's been way fun though, good experience for me, plus I get to hang out with all my cute friends and sister-in-laws. I'm not going to post any of their pictures because that would spoil the fun of them sending them out. But I will show you my proud accomplishment over the weekend... My Christmas cards are finally done, and I mailed them out yesterday, YAY! I did not take a treat to the postal workers, I'm definitely going to be there later this season so I will do it then. I'm SOOO glad to have that crossed off my list. Something about having cards done make me feel like I can take a deep breath and now enjoy the holidays. I love having them done early, and we're still in the single digits for December so, good job to self. Good job!

charlie boy

Happy Birthday Charlie! My cutie nephew turns one today and I can't believe that a year has gone by already! Crazy! He is such a sweet little boy, he hardly ever cries, and he loves to smile, especially for his daddy, but not when the camera is around. For the camera we get the "Jason" look, you know, deer in the headlights, "are you lookin' at me?" kind of a face. Just kidding Jason, love you buddy. What a cutie. We celebrated his birthday on Sunday at grammy's house with the best batch of her spaghetti and meatballs that she's ever made. Seriously, they were so good, I had to say to myself, "four is as good as ten" because ten is how many I wanted to eat, forget the noodles even, mmmmm good. The picture looks disgusting, you'll just have to trust me. And here is my nutty brother Brandon, who is not gay despite what you might think by looking at this picture! He wants me to make him a Christmas card with this picture to send out to his friends. Whatever! He wants the caption to say, "during the holidays you should show your best side, Merry Christmas, Love Brandon. What a nut. On that spiritual note, let's talk church...Our Sunday church service was so good that I ended up being especially gateful for Patsy's good mail package with the cute tissues in it! They came in handy, the spirit was so strong and it was one of the best meetings I've attended in a long time, just what I needed. Isn't that funny? How it always seems to be just what you need? No coincidence there I don't think. Happy Birthday Charlie!

spider type scream

I wear flip flops almost all year long. There has to be deep snow in order for me to put on my tennis shoes, even then it's negotiable. I am lucky to be warm blooded I guess, and the whale blubber helps too. But I have a confession to make, I wear flip-flops because I have always had a fear of putting my toes into a shoe and then feeling a spider in there! I'm sure this is the real reason people in Africa don't wear shoes. Ahhh, so irrational I know, but it could happen and it totally scares me! My fear was made worse one day listening to the Today show's Matt Lauer tell a story about finding a scorpion in his shoe on one of his "where in the world is Matt Lauer" trips. Oh my gosh! The spider wouldn't even have to bite me, I would die of cardiac arrest! So, on Saturday I had to go out to the car for something, and while in the garage decided to slip on some snow boots due to the deep deep snow in the driveway. I was getting ready to slip my bare vulnerable piggies into Rich's snow boot when I looked and saw a BIG brown spider sitting right on the edge. Did I scream? Oh baby, I have never screamed like that before. Poor Rich came into the garage with a look of terror on his face, expecting to see Ethan or me bleeding to death and instead I yelled "spider! kill the spider!" He was so mad! But he killed the spider. After it was all over, I ended up wearing flip flops out to the car and my poor neighbor Don was shoveling his walk and said, "everything ok in there?" Poor guy! Completely humiliated, I told him the whole sad story and he said, like a true dad, "ah, I have daughters and should've recognized the scream". So that's it, I don't think I wear anything but flip flops for a while. Oh well.

snow has it's good points too

So, I know that unless you are a skiier, snow is generally frowned upon due to all the shoveling, de-icing, crazy drivers, snow tires, the list goes on. But I have to say that I have never minded the snow, in fact, I love it. There is much to love about the fluffy white stuff, but my favorite thing is that strange peaceful feeling I have after the snow is done falling and everything is clean and white and just breath takingly beautiful. It makes me think of heaven, all that white. This is my view of the valley from my back porch. The light was terrible so it doesn't do it justice, the whole valley is just a big blanket of white. So great.Dead, brown trees that are naked from loosing their leaves are suddenly decorated and gorgeous. And the mountains, oh the mountains, brown and dry all summer long finally look like real mountains, winter is the only season that they take my breath away. I also love snow because we live in a desert people and we need the water! I love looking out the window in a snow storm and thinking, "now I have an excuse to just stay home in my flannel pjs and read". It's a pain to bundle Ethan up every time we have to go some where but that's ok, the cold is refreshing after a blazing hot summer. My favorite thing about Utah is the extreme weather we have in each season, it makes you look forward to the season to come. So, we finally got dumped on, we've gotten snow a few times so far, but this was finally the big one and it was awesome. The best part was the it dumped for most of the morning and then stopped for the rest of the day which left time for sledding and snowman building. Taylor injured his knee sledding, I think we're probably off to the doctor's tomorrow to have it looked at, but he was more upset about having to leave his friends on the snowy hill who would continue to have fun without him. I bought Ethan the wardrobe, boots, snow bib, etc. but he was too nervous yesterday to play out in it, I'm hoping he will "warm" up to the fluffy white stuff soon. Ahhhh, snow.

christmas traditions #1

Wow, December 2nd already! Wow, good thing my shopping is mostly under control. I HATE having a crazy December, it's so not the point of this wonderful time of year right? So I try to shop early, or at least have a handle on the shopping to this point, which thankfully I do. What I don't have a handle on are my Christmas decorations which are usually up by now. We are having a dilema about where to put the tree exactly, now that the family room is full of furniture (unlike last year), that space is out. And the formal room is almost done but not quite, so I don't really want to mix our tree in with the ladder and painting supplies and a piano wrapped in plastic. Hmmmm, what to do. Something I do want to document this year are our Christmas traditions, so here goes....this post was inspired by Patsy's Great Gift Idea List, if you haven't looked at it, you should, it's great. When I saw her list, I thought this little tradition of mine deserved it's own spot on the blog. So here goes (again)....

Christmas Tradition #1 Children's Christmas Books! Every year I add at least one children's Chrismtas book our stash, children's books in general are one of my favorite things to collect, I'm going to have one awesome grandma's library some day. So Christmas books are no different for me, I love carefully reading each and every one, I could spend HOURS in Barnes and Noble purusing all the pages. I do this with photography books too, but that's another blog for another day. A few years ago I worked in a Kindergarten class and there was this awesome mom who would come read to the class every Thursday. She would always bring her favorite stories to share and her collection rocks! I looked forward to story time even more than the kids and you can imagine how bad I pestered this poor lady to share her favorites reads and authors with me, great things that I never would've thought of on my own. So, Christmas time rolls around and she brings this book in called Jolly Old Santa Claus, which at first I didn't recognize but then all of a sudden, memories of being a little girl came flooding back. This was a newer version than the one we had looked at as children, but it the same classic oil paintings by George Hinke as a long time ago. I remember my brothers and I pouring over these wonderfully detailed paintings over and over trying to take it all in, always discovering something new each time. Some day I'm going to have a framed picture of this Santa reading mail playing with his beard. My pictures are not doing this art work justice of course, you'll have to check it out for yourself. Of course I ordered it immediately on Amazon, I love finding a memory that you had forogtten is what there. The book has not disappointed me, my kids LOVE to look at the art for the same reasons the boys and I did when we were small. Ok, so I don't have a great story to tell for each of my favorite books, these are just a few of them...Snowmen at Night and Snowmen at Christmas by the Buehners, because the story is just so clever and fun and because there are hidden pictures in each of the beautiful pages which make for hours of "I spy" kind of fun. The Christmas Oranges retold by Linda Bethers because it makes you think how thankful you are you have a family and it inspires me to be kind to all children, you just never know what their situation might be. Plus, we always get an orange from Santa in our stockings.A Christmas Dress For Ellen by Thomas Monson, because he is one of the great story tellers of our time and Grandma Evelyn's family came from Canada and so we picture her when we read this story. Uncles and Antlers by Lisa Wheeler because it's just so clever with great art work and has a great message about how even though we are all different, we come together at Christmas and in that way we are all the same. The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg, we have loved this story for a long time, the movie that came out later is great too. I love the message of believing and the idea that bells don't jingle unless you believe. Santa's New Suit by Laura Rader, just for some cute fun, no deep message in this book, except maybe love yourself just the way you are, or tradition is good. And of course The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore, because it's such a classic and beautiful telling of the Santa's big night and the art work in this version by Bruce Whatley is just fantastic. Ok, so that's it, these are just a few of my faves, I will post more next year. The theme I'm noticing through most of these book is beautiful art work, that's a huge draw for me. If you have a minute, check one of these out, I promise they won't disappoint!