he holidays were a amazing, but unfortunately its back to the real world. Erin and I spent much of the holiday season working on our house. Its coming along but I think its going to continue to get worse before it gets better. The renovations started the day after we moved in. Erin woke to me in the front room tearing the carpet off the floor. She understood that was the plan eventually, however, I don't think she thought that I was going to start that soon.

But she soon caught the vision when she saw the wood floors.

Erin began to get into the tearing things up mode.

Things are progressively looking worse
but our hope is that they will soon start to look progressively better.

In addition to the blessing of a new home over the Christmas break we were blessed by an abundance of snow. I have now experienced one major drawback to owning a home.
With all of the work, Erin and I did have some time to play during the break. My sister Jamie came over and made candy with us. It was a ton of fun Jamie and Erin worked on candy,

while I taught our niece and nephew to rock out!

Even with the mess we were able to set up a cozy little family room in our basement, which was perfect for opening presents.

It was fun having family and friends over to our new house during the Christmas season.
After Christmas we took our two mentor kids rock climbing. The little girl, loved it! Apparently the little boy is terrified of heights. He got stuck half way up the wall, we sent his sister up to rescue him but finally it was the Amazing Erin who saved the day and coaxed him down. He was up there for about twenty minutes.
This is the little girl trying to help her little brother off of the wall. the experience was sad but I had to laugh a little.
Well that was our holiday. It probably seems a little boring but we had a blast!

MOM's birthday

So my mom's birthday is 12/27. it's the big one! there are multiple big ones but this is one of the biggest or i mean bestest. We thought it was appropriate to list one reason why we love mom for every year she was born!


50 reasons why we love MOM
1. Generous in talents, gifts, and money
2. Faithful to family, friends, and to church
3. Excellent cook
4. Loving
5. A great example
6. The best IN-LAW
7. Happy and Fun
8. Forgiving of mistakes
9. Genuine
10. Amazing listener
11. Super funny
12. Killer Zumba instructor
13. Good friend—The best-est
14. A Leader
15. Great genetics (Danny thinks☺)
16. Smart
17. Amazing chocolateer
18. Patient
19. Supportive of her kids positive choices
20. Service oriented
21. Devout member of LDS church (and comes by it so naturally)
22. Good boulder-er- Go MOM!
23. Super fit—more fit than Erin and Danny
24. Erin’s own personal therapist
25. Loves her family
26. In style and hip
27. Great waker-uper- squirt gun was the least favorite
28. Fun movie buddy- game to see any and all kinds of movie
29. Great linguist- Stacey-ism!
30. Expert reader
31. The only morning person in the family
32. Super Inspiring- I wanna be like you
33. Great teacher
34. Very accepting
35. Hard worker
36. Independent- now as well as when she was a kid
37. Makes beautiful kids
38. Good looking
39. Out-doorsy
40. Good sand hill climber in Moab
41. Aggressive driver in time square- that was scary
42. Allows Erin to call every other day and answers her phone almost every time she calls
43. Excellent wedding cake maker/caterer/hostess
44. Great missionary
45. Sweet dinner bell ringer
46. Amazing soccer mom- literally
47. Active volunteer for her kids school classrooms- teaching chocolates, etc.
48. Feminists- specially for church oriented camping trips
49. Great father-son team for camping
50. Will be great grandma! (P.S. I’m not pregnant)







Hope you have an amazing birthday mom! Happy 5-0!

A New House For Christmas

e made it! The move was awful but now that we're in our house we couldn't be happier. We love the house, its a great Christmas present. Right after we moved in I started pulling up carpet and taking off wall paper. The house has so much character that is covered by lots of tacky 1960's remodeling. it's cool to see the different time periods that are in layers on the floors and walls. We have paint over paint over wall paper on the walls and 80's carpet covering traces of brown shag and beautiful wood floors that will need to be redone. in some places we have carpet over linoleum over wood floors. It's kind of exciting to see what we might find. Needless to say, we're in a bit of a mess. We have set up our living area in the basement until we can get the floors upstairs finished. Everyone is welcome to come and visit, just be warned we are in a mess but we would love to have some company to show off our house to. We will post some pictures of our mess when I can find the fire wire. We hope to see some of you soon. Merry Christmas

oly Cow! I still can't believe it but we bought a house! After looking online for the last year and walking through places for the past month and having two other houses taken from under us, we have finally put in an offer that was accepted. We just have the inspection and closing left. The house is a cute 1935 house in the historical part of Payson. It is right across the street from the old Payson Park witch is awsome! The park is where all of the Payson Onion Days festivities take place and the Payson Scottish Festival. Every sunday night in the summer they have free band concerts and the big Payson parade goes right in front of our house. Erin and my favorite restaurant is just a couple of blocks away. It's this really cool little Thai resaurant where the people don't speak English. The house itself is so amazing. It has a lot of character. Lots of custom built-ins, a cool fireplace, 4 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, a great backyard with mature trees which are perfect for a slackline. The Kitchen is a good size which excites Erin. The house is in good repair but outdated. We are going to be taking down wallpaper and pulling up carpet, which is covering beautiful wood floors. It will be a lot of work but we are so excited.

The front of the house.

Some of the custom built-ins

Some other exciting news is that Erin passed her LPN boards and started working as a nurse 2 weeks ago. The expectation of this is what solidified our descision to buy a house. Anyway, thats our news.

Halloween Fun!

ast week, Erin and I had the two kids that we mentor, over for a Halloween party! We had a blast. We started off by carving pumpkins, which was a super fun! The kids were so excited about it and did a really good job. After carving pumpkins we had dinner. we got a really good idea from my cousins Jeff and Suzie. Every year at Halloween they have a Monster Manners Meal with their girls. Its basically a meal where there are no manners. This was actually a lot of fun and the kids had such a good time eating messy spaghetti with their fingers.


After dinner we watched a scary movie and had carmel apples. Overall it was a fun night.

Kids, and Tassles

rin had her semester break from school last week so we decided to go on a trip to Moab! Unfortunately our car broke down and it took all of our trip money to pay for it. Even though our weekend was seemingly destroyed, we decided to make the best of it. WE went on a tour of of the northern part of Utah and mooched off of family and friends. We started out in Spring City, which is one of our favorite weekend getaway spots. My sister Jamie lives there and my parents have a second home there, which is a free hotel for us. We spent the day with my sister and her family and my brother Nathan and his wife. It was really fun. Jamie's kids are the cutest things in the world. I spent a lot of time reading to and playing with them

Ollie, trying to wake up uncle Danny by strangling him. Notice that Ava's hair is wet. Actually it is dry, she just put an entire bottle of lotion on her head. Jamie had washed it 7 times before this picture was taken.

Such cute kids!

After we left spring city we drove to Layton where we spent the night at Erin's Grandma's. that night we went and had a fantastic time with some of my cousins who I have not seen in years. So, long story short, we had a great time and learned that we don't need to spend much to have a great time.

Erin Graduated with her LPN this week. I am so proud of her. She will be done with her RN in June but this is still a great accomplishment. She has worked so hard. I am just so lucky to be married to such an amazing girl.

Here she is getting her diploma, doesn;t she look pretty and smart? I was very excited for her.

She was also very excited!
A cute picture of all in attendance.
WAY TO GO ERIN!

handbag planet and free bags

handbag planet is giving away 24 free bags on 10/15/08. sign up and see if ya can win! or not to help my chances.... just kidding. go there right now and sign up...it's easy!

http://www.handbagplanet.com