Happy 21st Birthday Sam!!!

I've been meaning to post this all week, but we took pictures on Sam's camera instead of ours, so I had to wait until they were downloaded. (It's so nice now that Sam has her own camera to take pictures with!!) Monday Jan. 19th was Samantha's birthday. On Sunday the family come over and we celebrated, Parley even brought his dog Molly over-which totally made Sam happy! We had a yummy dinner of spiral glazed ham, potatoes, baked broccoli & peppers, and french bread w/melted butter and Parmesan cheese...all of her favorites. Mom, Sam, Nicole and Brenda all enjoyed playing with Molly (who was surprisingly well behaved, at Parley's place she jumps everywhere and barks a lot, but there are also 2 other dogs there. When she was by herself she listened and hardly barked. I loved it!) I enjoyed watching Sam open presents, mostly because we wrapped hers several times and used duct tape (I know that will come back to us on our birthdays, but it was soooo worth it!) We gave her the book "Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants" because she is a Gospel Doctrine teacher in her ward and she said it's a lot harder to teach than the Book of Mormon was. The whole time we were lighting the candles Brenda was taking deep breaths and blowing them out while her hand was over her mouth. Brenda absolutely LOVES to blow out the candles and she knows that she can't blow them out unless its her birthday. We used to cover her mouth, but now she does it herself. (it's really funny) Anyway, right when Sam went to blow out her candles Parley put his hand right in front of her face and in the process it blew out most of the candles....so she only got to blow out about 3 or 4. (Don't worry, she got to blow them all out on her cake that her friends made on her birthday). Hope everyone enjoys the pictures below...yes, mostly of Sam, but hey, it was her birthday so we gave into her vanity....next birthday in the family...Sara's!!! :o)

opening her gift from us :o)

Parley's dog Molly

Isn't she cute!!

She finally made it through all layers of paper & tape!!

Lighting all 21 candles

Enjoying the attention of us singing to her

Because of Parley she only got to blow out a few candles

Christmas 2008

It's been a while since I've posted anything. So, what have we been up to? Lot's of things! Curtis had the week of Christmas and the week of New Year's off, so we were able to spend lots of time together doing things. The week of Christmas we spent a lot of time driving around in the snow to finish our shopping, going to my doctor appointments, and running other errands. I was especially grateful that Curtis was home so that he could drive in the snow and not me. (Thank you honey!!!) Christmas Eve we drove around a few of the subdivisions by us and looked at the Christmas lights. Then Sam and I made a gingerbread house. It was pretty fun! We first made a replica of the Temple...we both thought that it looked pretty good (there is a picture below). Since we had a ton of candy we then turned it into a log cabin sort of building. We probably ate more candy then ended up on the house and we sure felt it afterwards. The best part of our house was the structure, it was very sold and there was no way it was going to collapse unless someone dropped a book on it or something. When we threw it away, Curtis finally saw it and was VERY impressed that we came up with it ourselves. I now can't wait until next year to see what we come up with....

Christmas day was fun and very busy. My Dad came over right after he got off work that morning (he works nights and gets off around 6:45 am) My family was all at our house by 7:15 am. We made breakfast and then opened presents. They didn't stay past 9, so that Dad could go home and get some sleep. After a few quiet hours we then traveled to Nampa to have "lunch" with my Grandma & Grandpa Ward and other extended family. We stayed for a few hours, came home long enough for me to take my IV medicine, and then we went to Boise to spend the evening with Curtis' family. There we opened more presents, ate dinner, talked to other family members on the phone, and played some games. I think we got home around 9:30 pm and boy was I tired. I very much enjoyed the day with family, which made it all worth it!!!

Other things we did: Went to New Plymouth (in between snow storms) to visit my Grandma Myers. Went to Mountain home to visit my best friend Shasta & her husband, took Grandma & Grandpa Ward out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse (That was fun because they had never been there & Grandpa LOVED the food!!!). We cleaned the carpets in the dinning room & living room (this took about 4 days to do because we moved furniture around, but we got it done!!!). I spend some time with my friend Jackie Hayes before she moved down to southern Utah. (she is a friend that I met when I did my internship in the disability office at BSU. Our favorite thing to do together....laugh!!!) We played games and went to bed early on New Year's eve, mostly because we were both pretty tired from all of our running around. Curtis and I also sang a duet at the Stake Baptism last Saturday. All in all, it was a great two weeks. Even though it was really busy, I was extremely excited about spending all of that time with Curtis. It was time that we BOTH needed together. Now that the new year is here, its back to work and still being as busy as ever. Happy New Year everyone!!!!

Our Temple

the finished product

top view...very cool with the "snow" on top

Curtis was VERY excited about his new backpack for camping!!!

Jackie & I

Grandma Myers & I

A fun & goofy picture of us on Christmas day