12/9/10
Cute kids in the snow
Here are a few cute pictures I took for my christmas card this year. Enjoy! :)
Sledding and a busy winter schedule...
We have been sooooo busy! I have had lots of craft shows and did a big sale on my website. Ivan has been busy with work and scouts. I have had a couple a fun relief society activities. I also had to give my first ever Relief Society lesson this past Sunday. I had way more prepared than I had time for and felt like it went really well. I had an openhouse at my house Tuesday and I have one last craft show all day this Saturday. Tomorrow I am taking family pictures for a friend and Sunday I get to speak in Sacrament meeting with the rest of our relief society presidency. Then on Monday I will begin my journey to UTAH! Whew!
Today we met a few friends at McDonalds where they have a nice big playground indoors. The kids had a blast and the girls enjoyed visiting. This afternoon we met up again and took the kids sledding. Emma had a BLAST! She was just running up the hill as fast as she could. It was in the upper 20's today and felt like a heat wave! The sun was melting the snow on the roads and the snow was dripping off my roof. By the time we were done sledding though we were pretty frozen. I need to buy me some heavy duty winter boots. The only boots I own are the really slick kind with foam bottoms and no traction. I think I will do some shopping when I get to Utah. While the kids were sledding I dubbed myself the camera man and really enjoyed watching them have a good time. When we got home Emma and I made some delicious Stephens hot cocoa and she sat and watched Rudolph. I don't think life gets much better than that. :) Here are a bunch of pictures!
Emma and Lexy flying down the hill!
Maybe too fast!
Some of the group...
Emma and Lexi
Mandy Miller's crazy boys...
Kelli and little Lexy
The Freeze kids
McKylie and Emma
Emma and Reddik having a good time...
Today we met a few friends at McDonalds where they have a nice big playground indoors. The kids had a blast and the girls enjoyed visiting. This afternoon we met up again and took the kids sledding. Emma had a BLAST! She was just running up the hill as fast as she could. It was in the upper 20's today and felt like a heat wave! The sun was melting the snow on the roads and the snow was dripping off my roof. By the time we were done sledding though we were pretty frozen. I need to buy me some heavy duty winter boots. The only boots I own are the really slick kind with foam bottoms and no traction. I think I will do some shopping when I get to Utah. While the kids were sledding I dubbed myself the camera man and really enjoyed watching them have a good time. When we got home Emma and I made some delicious Stephens hot cocoa and she sat and watched Rudolph. I don't think life gets much better than that. :) Here are a bunch of pictures!
Emma and Lexy flying down the hill!
Maybe too fast!
Some of the group...
Emma and Lexi
Mandy Miller's crazy boys...
Kelli and little Lexy
The Freeze kids
McKylie and Emma
Emma and Reddik having a good time...
11/30/10
A different kind of Thanksgiving...
This year we had planned to head to Utah for Thanksgiving but the weather was horrible that week so we ended up hanging out in North Dakota. We have some great friends here that invited us to join them for Thanksgiving. There were a bunch of us from the ward along with some of our friends' family and a few guys that work with our friend Todd. Tonya and Todd opened their home up to all of us...I think we ended up with over 40 people including the kids! They took their boat out of their garage and we used a big heater and it was perfect! We didn't have to worry about the kids spilling...or the big kids. ;) We had lunch at noon and ended up staying until after 8pm. I thought we would just stay for a bit and head home but we were having too much fun. Ivan took Levi home for a while for a nap but then came back. We had A LOT of delicious food! We played games and just hung out. It is so nice to have great friends when you are so far away from family. We are thankful for this great place that we live and for our wonderful friends that have opened their hearts to us. We are also thankful for good health, a place to live, our little family and our big family! We are truly blessed!
Here are the photos...
Kelli was happy to have her picture taken! I love this lady and am excited to work with her in the relief society presidency.
Miss Amanda and little Jacob...LOVE this girl!
Ike and the kiddos...
The OTHER Mandy!
I had to sit there a long time to wait for Justin to move his arm so I could get a picture...he was sure surprised when I caught him! Justin is Amanda's husband. He was just baptized a couple weeks ago. It was a great day! And that is Tonya in the front keeping busy!
Logan, Brian and Jaime...
More of the group...
Here are the photos...
Kelli was happy to have her picture taken! I love this lady and am excited to work with her in the relief society presidency.
Miss Amanda and little Jacob...LOVE this girl!
Ike and the kiddos...
The OTHER Mandy!
I had to sit there a long time to wait for Justin to move his arm so I could get a picture...he was sure surprised when I caught him! Justin is Amanda's husband. He was just baptized a couple weeks ago. It was a great day! And that is Tonya in the front keeping busy!
Logan, Brian and Jaime...
More of the group...
11/29/10
Levi's First Haircut
Levi's hair was getting long enough that it was poking out over his ears and making me crazy...so I cut it! I thought I could just trim around his ears with the scizzors but he decided to do his fun head shaking trick. So I decided to get out the clippers. I think it turned out pretty cute. Here are some before pictures...
And after...(this picture was taken at Thanksgiving)
And after...(this picture was taken at Thanksgiving)
Another Bismark Trip
A couple weeks ago Ivan had to go on a business trip to Bismark and invited me! Our fabulous friend Mandy agreed to take kids OVERNIGHT! Emma has sleepovers all the time...but this was our first night away from Levi. She said he was really good. When we went to pick him up though I was buckling his carseat and said "were you a good boy?" and he started shaking his head NO. He is so funny. He likes to shake his head back and forth...especially if his head is hitting something. He always has fuzzy hair in the back from rubbing it.
Ivan and I had a wonderful kid-free time. The purpose of the trip was to attend a pulse meeting on innoculant. BORING! We got there around dinner time on Monday and the meeting he needed to attend was Tuesday morning. When we go there we were told there was a "hospitality room." Basically the company putting on the meeting bought A LOT of alcohol for everyone to enjoy. They had a suite and everyone just stood around drinking. We stopped by for a minute and enjoyed a coke while Ivan got to meet a few people in the industry. It's funny how different our environment is here. When Ivan worked for Honeyville Grain all the upper management were members of the LDS church. The standards are much different here but I feel like we have a lot more opportunity to be examples of our faith.
After we got to know a few people we headed out to dinner. We went to the Olive Garden where we were offered yet some more alcohol! You can always expect that at Olive Garden though. After a great dinner we went to a movie. The theatre was pretty awesome. It was a 9pm movie on a monday night so it was basically just us. There was one other lady in the theatre when we got there that was pretty chatty. Then as soon as the curtain opened she said "quiet now!" Ivan and I were busting up.
Here are a couple pictures we took. Ivan wanted to pose for the camera! And I even snapped a picture of one of the bigger theatres. It was way cool!
The next day Ivan went to his meeting and I started on some Christmas shopping. I spent some time at Barnes and Noble and even had lunch there. It was strange to hang out alone for once. It was so quiet and peaceful! I really enjoyed myself and am grateful we got the opportunity to get out for a minute.
Ivan and I had a wonderful kid-free time. The purpose of the trip was to attend a pulse meeting on innoculant. BORING! We got there around dinner time on Monday and the meeting he needed to attend was Tuesday morning. When we go there we were told there was a "hospitality room." Basically the company putting on the meeting bought A LOT of alcohol for everyone to enjoy. They had a suite and everyone just stood around drinking. We stopped by for a minute and enjoyed a coke while Ivan got to meet a few people in the industry. It's funny how different our environment is here. When Ivan worked for Honeyville Grain all the upper management were members of the LDS church. The standards are much different here but I feel like we have a lot more opportunity to be examples of our faith.
After we got to know a few people we headed out to dinner. We went to the Olive Garden where we were offered yet some more alcohol! You can always expect that at Olive Garden though. After a great dinner we went to a movie. The theatre was pretty awesome. It was a 9pm movie on a monday night so it was basically just us. There was one other lady in the theatre when we got there that was pretty chatty. Then as soon as the curtain opened she said "quiet now!" Ivan and I were busting up.
Here are a couple pictures we took. Ivan wanted to pose for the camera! And I even snapped a picture of one of the bigger theatres. It was way cool!
The next day Ivan went to his meeting and I started on some Christmas shopping. I spent some time at Barnes and Noble and even had lunch there. It was strange to hang out alone for once. It was so quiet and peaceful! I really enjoyed myself and am grateful we got the opportunity to get out for a minute.
11/9/10
Halloween
Wow! I hate when I get behind on my blog and have to play catch up. Well...Halloween was really fun this year. I found a cute spider costume online and decided it would be cute if Levi were a spider and Emma was Miss Muffet. I was surprised that Emma liked the idea too! I called my mom and she agreed to make the Miss Muffet costume for me! She is amazing and I couldn't have asked for a cuter costume! Emma wanted it to be blue so blue it was!
My order from the Childrens Place was returned because my address doesn't exist. We really do exist! I won't miss having all of my orders returned. It doesn't seem to matter where I had them shipped to they wouldn't deliver them. I started having things sent to Ivan's work address yet I still had something returned this week. Grrrr.... Well soon I will learn what my new address is and have things shipped here! I order a lot of things online for Snapbandz and seem to always have something on it's way here. Anyway...I called my wonderful sister-in-law Trisha and she agreed to run to the childrens place to see if they had any spiders left. They had one left and it was in his size! Best of all it was on sale for $10.00! My mom shipped it on Monday with Emma's costume and we got the package on Thursday just in time for our first Halloween party on Friday! Whew!
Our ward had a Halloween costume party on friday night and it was a lot of fun! They had a chili dinner and tons of games for the kids to play to get treats! Our ward has a lot of activites but it is fun to get out and get to know more people. On Saturday we went to a Halloween birthday party for Emma's little friend Alli. She turned 6. Her mom, Tonya, did a great job with the party. I was amazed at all the details. They did it out in their garage and had wrapped the walls in black plastic. All the food was Halloween themed and there was a ton of it! Alli has a few kittens and Emma was entertained by chasing one around the garage the entire night. Ivan and I had planned on dressing up for Halloween but I just plain ran out of time. I will make sure that next year makes up for it! We took Emma out on Sunday and went trick or treating to a couple houses. We had a couple people that were driving by slow down and roll down their windows to check out her costume. She did look adorable!
My order from the Childrens Place was returned because my address doesn't exist. We really do exist! I won't miss having all of my orders returned. It doesn't seem to matter where I had them shipped to they wouldn't deliver them. I started having things sent to Ivan's work address yet I still had something returned this week. Grrrr.... Well soon I will learn what my new address is and have things shipped here! I order a lot of things online for Snapbandz and seem to always have something on it's way here. Anyway...I called my wonderful sister-in-law Trisha and she agreed to run to the childrens place to see if they had any spiders left. They had one left and it was in his size! Best of all it was on sale for $10.00! My mom shipped it on Monday with Emma's costume and we got the package on Thursday just in time for our first Halloween party on Friday! Whew!
Our ward had a Halloween costume party on friday night and it was a lot of fun! They had a chili dinner and tons of games for the kids to play to get treats! Our ward has a lot of activites but it is fun to get out and get to know more people. On Saturday we went to a Halloween birthday party for Emma's little friend Alli. She turned 6. Her mom, Tonya, did a great job with the party. I was amazed at all the details. They did it out in their garage and had wrapped the walls in black plastic. All the food was Halloween themed and there was a ton of it! Alli has a few kittens and Emma was entertained by chasing one around the garage the entire night. Ivan and I had planned on dressing up for Halloween but I just plain ran out of time. I will make sure that next year makes up for it! We took Emma out on Sunday and went trick or treating to a couple houses. We had a couple people that were driving by slow down and roll down their windows to check out her costume. She did look adorable!
We moved...again!
We are finally all moved to our new rental house. Hopefully this will be our last move for a while. We feel so lucky to have found this house. There are a lot of guys working up here that are still waiting to find a place to live so that there families can move here with them. We heard from a friend that this house was going to be vacant and happened to be the first to call on it. It is a tiny little house but is on an acre lot. I think we will be investing in a riding lawn mower this spring! The kids rooms are upstairs in the attic. I painted the entire upstairs blue...including the ceiling which I painted clouds on. Emma wants me to paint grass along the bottom with some flowers. I am hoping to get a new vinyl machine for my birthday and will most likely do the flowers with that. Levi's room also has clouds and I am going to paint grass and bugs along the bottom. I am painting one wall red to make it look like a barn. I will post lots of pictures when I get it all done...so after Thanksgiving!
The house needed a lot of work done to it before we moved in. The owners put up all new siding and windows. Ivan helped out with that part. I had the job of painting the entire house! It makes me tired just thinking about it. I still have to finish painting Levi's room and the cabinets in the kitchen.
Emma was only here one day to help out. We pitched the tent in the office and let her have popcorn and watch a movie. She loved her little hideout and we loved that it kept her entertained.
Emma helped us paint one night and had a blast! She just kept making up songs and singing to us. If nothing else we were entertained!
We moved most of our things in last thursday just before Halloween. We are lucky to have a lot of great friends in our ward that were willing to help out with the kids. Emma has had lots of sleep overs! We still have a lot of unpacking and organizing to do...but it will all get done eventually. We had Halloween parties to go to friday and saturday night after we moved and finished up cleaning the trailer out on Halloween night. Then I had a craft show this past friday and saturday out of town so I had to do a lot of work to get ready for that. Ivan and I stayed up the entire night on Thursday getting ready and headed out at 6am. We were exhausted! The show went really well though and it was good to just sit and hang out together for a few days. We got home at midnight on Saturday night and had to get up for church the next morning. I have never been so grateful for daylight savings in my life! We really needed that extra hour of sleep! I have another show all day friday and saturday this week and am hoping to do an open house here at our new home next week. I am really hoping that life will slow down a little after Thanksgiving!
I am also putting a lot of time into my new calling. Right before we found out we were moving I got called to serve as the second counselor in our ward's Relief Society. I think it is going to be a really fun calling! We literally have at least one new family join our ward each week. This past week they read the names of 3 families. It is a little overwhelming but I am excited to get to know even more people! We got there right at 10 when church started this week and had to sit in the double overflow. It is crazy! Ivan is enjoying his calling as primary and scout leader for the 11 year old boys. His class has about tripled in size since we moved here. He has a boy with down syndrome in his class who really keeps him going! Ivan is so patient and works really well with the boys. They couldn't ask for a better leader. It is such a blessing to be living "in town." It is much more convenient to get to all of our meetings. We might even be able to get a babysitter one night and go on a real date!
The house needed a lot of work done to it before we moved in. The owners put up all new siding and windows. Ivan helped out with that part. I had the job of painting the entire house! It makes me tired just thinking about it. I still have to finish painting Levi's room and the cabinets in the kitchen.
Emma was only here one day to help out. We pitched the tent in the office and let her have popcorn and watch a movie. She loved her little hideout and we loved that it kept her entertained.
Emma helped us paint one night and had a blast! She just kept making up songs and singing to us. If nothing else we were entertained!
We moved most of our things in last thursday just before Halloween. We are lucky to have a lot of great friends in our ward that were willing to help out with the kids. Emma has had lots of sleep overs! We still have a lot of unpacking and organizing to do...but it will all get done eventually. We had Halloween parties to go to friday and saturday night after we moved and finished up cleaning the trailer out on Halloween night. Then I had a craft show this past friday and saturday out of town so I had to do a lot of work to get ready for that. Ivan and I stayed up the entire night on Thursday getting ready and headed out at 6am. We were exhausted! The show went really well though and it was good to just sit and hang out together for a few days. We got home at midnight on Saturday night and had to get up for church the next morning. I have never been so grateful for daylight savings in my life! We really needed that extra hour of sleep! I have another show all day friday and saturday this week and am hoping to do an open house here at our new home next week. I am really hoping that life will slow down a little after Thanksgiving!
I am also putting a lot of time into my new calling. Right before we found out we were moving I got called to serve as the second counselor in our ward's Relief Society. I think it is going to be a really fun calling! We literally have at least one new family join our ward each week. This past week they read the names of 3 families. It is a little overwhelming but I am excited to get to know even more people! We got there right at 10 when church started this week and had to sit in the double overflow. It is crazy! Ivan is enjoying his calling as primary and scout leader for the 11 year old boys. His class has about tripled in size since we moved here. He has a boy with down syndrome in his class who really keeps him going! Ivan is so patient and works really well with the boys. They couldn't ask for a better leader. It is such a blessing to be living "in town." It is much more convenient to get to all of our meetings. We might even be able to get a babysitter one night and go on a real date!
Grandma and Grandpa Mills came to visit!
Ivan's parents came to visit a couple weeks ago. Life has been incredibly busy and I am just now getting a chance to blog about it...in fact my internet was just hooked up a couple hours ago! Butch and Marjie came the week that we were trying to paint the new rental house and get moved so it was kinda crazy. They stayed at our house and had a sleepover with Emma since there are NO available hotel rooms where we live. Emma was VERY excited about this. Here are a couple pictures of her and Grandpa eatin' popcorn and watchin' a movie.
We mostly just hung out while they were here. We took them on a tour of Viterra and Ivan introduced them to his boss and coworkers. Ivan and I are really immature and were in tears laughing when Butch was telling Ivan's boss about having a really good year on the farm one year so they bought a van! It was hilarious...guess you had to be there!
We went to the confluence center but it was closed so we just walked around and took a few pictures. It was a beautiful day!
We also went and visited Fort Union. I wasn't too excited about going but it was actually way cool! I will let the pictures do the talking!
We were so glad that they were able to come and visit us and hope that next time we will be settled into a house and they can stay a little longer.
We mostly just hung out while they were here. We took them on a tour of Viterra and Ivan introduced them to his boss and coworkers. Ivan and I are really immature and were in tears laughing when Butch was telling Ivan's boss about having a really good year on the farm one year so they bought a van! It was hilarious...guess you had to be there!
We went to the confluence center but it was closed so we just walked around and took a few pictures. It was a beautiful day!
We also went and visited Fort Union. I wasn't too excited about going but it was actually way cool! I will let the pictures do the talking!
We were so glad that they were able to come and visit us and hope that next time we will be settled into a house and they can stay a little longer.
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