Steak and a Movie Night

We had a fun Steak and Movie night on Friday. We had our good friends, the Meier's and the Stevens families over as a thank you for their help with the basement project. Jason grilled some steaks and we watched a movie on the big screen (projector system). The guys were disappointed when I showed up with "Made of Honor" as the movie to watch. I honestly did not see any "guy movies" in the new release section of Blockbuster. ( ha-ha) Oh, well! They were good sports about it. Here are some pics of the party.

My Corny Day...

What a busy day! A friend of mine talked us into buying some corn from a farmer and I am talking a lot of corn! There are five of us who took on this project and together we ordered 4o dozen ears of corn. That was a full day of shucking, washing, boiling, cooling, cutting, bagging and cleaning up. We had so much fun and the payoff was big, but it was a long day! Here are some pics for you...

Shucking...

Washing...

Boiling...

Cutting...

Bagging...

The Fruits of our Labor:

I know that it looks like I just stood around and took pictures, but I really did help a little during this process. We had a good time and the kids had fun playing together all day. Now we can have some corn on hand for this year. We froze it in the new Ziploc steamer bags so we can just throw a bag in the microwave when we want some corn for dinner. Overall, a very corny day...

Back to School

Yeah, I am a little behind with this Post, but I did get a picture of the kids on their first day of school...

We had a good weekend. Nothing too interesting to report. Kiley had two birthday parties and a babysitting job tonight so she has had a busy day. We had planned to participate in our Ward Campout this weekend, but it got rained out. Spent the day working in the basement, doing laundry, grocery shopping, and other things instead.

We did buy some new furniture for our basement. Well, new to us. I will send a picture of it later. In the meantime, I will try to come up with something interesting to blog about...

Bye for now...

SURPRISE!

What a party! What a weekend!

We woke up Thursday morning to a "Heart Attack" on our lawn. The activity day girls in our ward had written birthday messages to Kiley on little hearts and stuck them in our lawn with plastic forks. It was very cute.

Then she was off to the Red Cross babysitting course, which just happened to be on her birtdhay, giving us time to make some last minute prepartations for her party while she was gone.

Jason got off work early to take her to ice cream and to pick out a movie while her friends were secretly showing up at our house and helping me hang streamers and put out the food.

When she got home it was a big...

SURPRISE!

The next surprise came when a HUGE package was delivered by UPS that evening. Kiley was pretty curious and excited to rip it open...


She was thrilled to see that her aunts/uncles/cousins and grandpa and grandma Wallace had got her a HUGE Giraffe for her room.

I believe she named him "Mancala?" and he matches her room beautifully. The perfect addition, so thank you, Wallaces!

The girls watched movies and played American Idol on the Wii, and most of them were still awake when Jason and I woke up at 6:00 am. Needless to say, it took Kiley the entire weekend to get back on track with her sleep. I guess it was their one last chance before school starts on Tuesday. Well it is time for me to join my fam for a movie tonight. They are waiting impatiently. I will write more later, but it was a fun and eventful weekend. Thank you for all your kind phone calls to her and gifts. She had a special birthday and loves you guys.

The Decoy "Family Party"

Hi, everyone. Tomorrow is Ky's 12th birthday and we are throwing her a little surprise slumber party tomorrow with some of her close friends. In an effort not to ruin the surprise, we planned a little decoy family party for tonight and had some cake and gift opening, telling her that mom and dad had other things going on for tomorrow, so we needed to celebrate a day early.

Jason's family has a tradition of getting a cedar chest for the grandchildren when they turn 12. This is a very generous gift from Grandma and Grandpa Allen and Kiley has been anxiously awaiting her 12th birthday. She got to pick it out, but she was not able to open it until tonight. She loves it and it looks great in her new room.

Jason and I gave her the gift from us tonight also, which was the giraffe bedding you see in the pictures. She seemed very happy to get rid of the pink bed spread that did not really go with her Africa theme.

Her room really looks great now. I've been hesitant to send pictures of her room till we got some better bedding in there.

Summer is flying by...

Well, we had a great time in Idaho for a visit and for James's baptism in July. We spent some time in Island Park for the Wallace Family Reunion. The excitement really picked up when a grizzly bear and her two cubs visited our camp at night and tried to get into everything. We were staying in our tent and that was SCARY!

This is a funny picture of Russ, riding my mom's pink and very girly bike.

We visited Mesa Falls while we were there. Very beautiful. The cousins had a fun time playing together and spending time with eachother. We loved holding Sandy's new baby, too. She is so sweet. We also floated the river and nearly froze to death.

I love this picture of Kristie getting a drink at the falls. She is hilarious. For those of you who don't know Kristie. She married my brother. We really like her. She's a keeper.

Then we went back to Rupert and got to spend some time with Jas's family. Everyone came down from Utah for the weekend (and the baptism). Quite a group!

It was really fun to see everyone, and of course we wish we could visit more often, but it was really neat to have everyone there for the baptism.

Then we went to Twin Falls for the Temple open house and that was awesome. Very Pretty! We had a picnic lunch at Shoshone Falls afterward, and then headed to Boise for a few days. While there, we had a Settlers of Catan playoff game at Tracy's house. AND I WON!!!!

Then we headed back to Blackfoot for a couple days of down time with my parents. We went to Bear World with them too and that was really cool.

Now it is back to reality here in Wisconsin and it is hard to step back into my calling and my normal responsibilities. We did have a great time at the Company Picnic last weekend. Tomorrow we are going to take the kids to Six Flags. We got Ky's room all done and she is moved in (kind of). Jason surprised me for my birthday and had the computer all set up in the basement and the den is now done! Here is a picture of Ky's bedroom before she moved in.

She wants a giraffe room (her favorite animal) That is why we did yellow and brown. It looks way cuter in real life. This is a bad picture.

Smell that New Carpet!

Well, the new carpet is fabulous! We are loving the basemnent. Jason impressed us all with a cartwheel when he came home on Monday and saw the carpeted basement. He and I have stayed up till 2:00 am for the last two nights, finishing up the tile and stuff. Jason insists that we not move anything downstairs until all the little finishing touches are DONE. He is afraid we will never finish the little things if we start moving in down there. So this is killing me and I am pushing him to get it done. Here are some pictures of the Family Room:

Ky's room is behind the door on the opposite side of this room. The uncarpeted, messy room here is going to be Jason's Wood Working room and a storage room. Right now it is piled high with boxes and stuff. Here are some pictures of the tiled area.

The doorway on the left is a just a large storage closet. Jason is going to put shelves in there for me. The other doorway is the bathroom and on the right is where our little kitchenette will go. Here is a better picture of the kitchen area and the bathroom. Kate is modeling where the toilet will be...

And last, but not least, the den which I am most excited about because that means I can get this computer and desk out of my bedroom...

And there you have it. This weekend we hope to finish the doors and outlets and then start moving some stuff down there. It has been a very exciting week. This is a project that started about two years ago. Yay for Jason for doing this for me! Well, okay for us. He is pretty stoked to put up his projector and speakers too.