Wow! The movie was great! Apparently it didn't get very good reviews, but I loved it! After the movie I dropped my mom off to get her Jeep, then I picked up Sam and Heather to drop off dinner to a family in our ward (mom was down trying to prevent a miscarriage), then we dropped some gifts off to a couple of Sam's friends. Then I came home and Don and I went on a date. What a day!!

Today, I'm doing laundry, Christmas shopping and whatever else needs to be done before Christmas!

Do you ever feel like Christmas is just to crazy to be spiritual? We finally got our huge, old tree up, the lights look good, but half the ornaments are gone, etc.

Thinking about all these things made me think of a "list" of my own - a top 10 list of Irritating Holiday Issues.

10. Cold feet - literally!

9. Doing 10 loads of laundry because everyone thought someone else was going to do it for the last 2 weeks.

8. Last minute shopping because I finally realized it's really not still July!

7. Rude People (they're just mad because they procrastinated too!)

6. High phone bills (wouldn't it be great if Nextel had Cricket rates combined with their own coverage?).

5. Feeding my children ANYTHING while their wearing white shirts!

4. Battery operated irritating toys that last forever while fun battery operated toys last about 10 minutes!

3. Having a small stomach, and seeing way too much good food!

2. Christmas tree needles all over my carpet - from my artificial tree!

1. Just about done with a project on the laptop when it shuts down on me and I lose all the work!

Okay, now back to my usual cheerful Christmas attitude!

Nothin' like a good vent- ranks up there with chocolate!

Happy Holidays!

The last few days have been pretty busy for us. Don now has a waiting list for clients at Arizona Flyer Company - I think he needs another graphic designer - know anyone?
I've been working on my room and laundry, making sure all the dogs are fed and doing well, and helping my mom get a cat for Taylor (my brother) for Christmas. The cat is pretty cute, he's a Russian Blue mix. I'll try to post pics of him later. Today I'm going on a date with my mom to see the new National Treasure movie, I can't wait! I loved the first one!
Anyway, gotta go, we've got to drop mom's Jeep off at the shop to get her brakes fixed. Never a dull day!

Up all night with a grumpy puppy has me a little tipsy... so I worked on my blog. Tried to change some of my pictures, then it hit me... I could have a BIGGER slide show than Craig!!!
Well, not really. More like, I fumbled the stupid thing and couldn't figure out how to get the new slide show to upload, so I pasted the HTML and there it was... too big for my sidebar. Well I couldn't have that, so I moved it to the bottom of the page and it fit there pretty well, but then I realized no one would see it. Then I thought "If I can move it to the bottom, maybe I could move it to the top" I know what you're thinking... genius in the making! Yup, I should be... in a few thousand years maybe!
I think it's time for bed!

Tonight we've had a bit of a scare. One of the little Shih Tzus seemed to be having some stress. After talking to Rachel (Conover) she directed me to her good friend Sheralyn in Georgia who walked me through figuring out what the problem was and what to to do for the poor little thing.
She seems to be doing better and is snuggled in with her litter mates and mama, but we'll have to tend to her every 2 hours or so. But I don't think we'll need an alarm clock, this little pup has a set of pipes to wake the dead!
So say a prayer for the little pup that she'll be okay, because she REALLY wants to be here!
By the way I added 2 new blogs: www.AKCShihTzus.blogspot.com and www.MyAKCBoxers.blogspot.com. Feel free to check them out, and if you know someone who wants a new puppy, send them my way!

Okay, our female dogs just had puppies and they ate all the "afterbirth" of each one (if you are unfarmilliar with whelping sorry to gross you out), which means that their stool becomes very loose the next day or so (probably to clean them out). Sunday is our "trash the house in honor of the Sabbath" day (the kids haven't caught on that while they may not have to do their chores, they still have to CLEAN UP AFTER THEMSELVES!). On top of all this the hot water pipe to the kitchen sink broke! So can you imagine what my house must look like this morning? Probably not (try to imagine it 10 times worse, then you've got the picture)! To top things off, both Ginger and Button couldn't make to the back door soon enough - so huge mistakes all over the floor - if you think human diarriah smells bad, try dog sometime! Whew!!!! So top the smell off with the sight and boy do we have our work cut out for us!
But not to worry. I have a little trick up my sleeve (ladies, write this down, it's a life saver!), it's called www.flylady.net and if you've never been there, you must visit, they have some cute stories, great ideas and lots of cool stuff to check out!
I'm going to add the link to the sidebar for future reference! Hope your week isn't a busy as mine!

Savanah received her patriarchal blessing today. It's neat to see a glimpse of the person she will grow to be. Sometimes it's hard to see past today to realize that our children will grow up and be adults with missions of their own someday. At the same time someday seems to come all too soon! Just like this seems to be the hardest time in my life, it's also the best time in my life and I DON'T look forward to my children growing up! I wish I could keep them the way they are forever!
But then again, maybe being a Grandma wouldn't be so bad either...

Well, believe it or not, Ginger (our Boxer) delivered today! 8 puppies! We don't have an exact count of girls and boys though because about 1/2 way through, she started getting very stingy with her babies. She would hold her head over them and growl every time we tried to get close. So within 2 days we went from 4 dogs to 19 dogs. It's no problem right now, but I think we're going to be glad to sell them when it's time!

We had our ward Christmas party tonight, it was fun. The girls performed on their instruments, they did really well. Savanah's flute teacher was surprised to see Savanah playing a song she hadn't taught her - and do so well. Savanah really worked hard on that song. She felt pretty good about herself.

What a day!

Yesterday the girls had their first violin concert.  I stayed home sick (bummer), but my Uncle Nick came and taped it so I can see it later.  My mom and Don's parents came too.  Attached is some pictures from the performance.  Today Button had her puppies - all 7 of them (4 girls & 3 boys).  She did great and is such a cute little mama!  I've attached a picture of her with her little family as well.  Okay I'll have to upload the rest in a seperate post...

Thanks to Craig, I was able to fix my background, now all I have to do is figure out how to fix the words when I upload pictures... this sure takes getting used to! By the way we are starting a new business with my mom, click the link "Delivered with Love" to check it out!

Not sure if this is going to work, but I'm going to try to upload this picture

into my background...

Yesterday we went to Stake Conference. We planned to get there around 6AM, but never got there till 7:30, which I figured on, so we got there at a good time. The cool thing is, if we hadn't planned on getting there that early, we would have been exceedingly late, because our power went out on our block, it was even out at the Stake Center! President West said a prayer that we would have power for our 10:00 meeting and it came on around 9:30. The meeting was great. I only wish I didn't keep falling asleep during Elder Uchdorf's message - and he kept looking at me! How embarrassing! Of course it didn't help that I went to bed around 2Am and got up around 5:30! So we worked so hard to get there to get a good seat, but in the end it didn't really pay off (for me anyway).

The session was overly packed so Don invited Sister Christensen to sit with us as we thought would still be enough room for the 8 of us in addition to her in the pew. Later Don went to make a quick phone call and Sam and Caianna sat on the pew behind us to help that family save seats for their family and the family that was sitting with them - at that moment Sister Kensey came up and asked to sit in our pew as well. I explained that Don, Sam & Caianna weren't sitting with us at the moment but are "here" and will be back shortly, she sat anyway and looked quite squeezed once the whole family was seated. Then the 3 youngest children engaged them in non-stop conversation after which they took a self-guided tour through their purses - Nope, no terrorists here! Only gum traffickers - they enjoyed the spoils of their mission!

Later Don noted Katelynn standing at the end of the pew looking cross-eyed trying to find the hair that was in her face and had to laugh.

But I did get to see Elder Uchdorf again and report on the challenge he gave us the night before which was to invite someone to the Sunday meeting. I stopped by at a client's house (someone who works with us in our printing co.) and invited them to come. She said that Sunday was their wedding anniversary, but they would come the following Sunday! I'm pretty excited about that!

So after the meeting we went home and slept till around 4PM then headed to Don's folks house for a get together for Debbie. We ate dinner and visited, then we went to Handel's Messiah at their Stake Center, and stayed for her setting apart - she leave for her mission tomorrow!

Anyway, it was a long - but fun day for all!

There's me looking "drunk" again! If all my posterity gets of me is pictures, I'm going to be referred to as the drunk that never had a drink in her life!

Enough about me though! Here are some pictures of my most favorite people!

This is what I usually do...

This is me...NOT blinking!

Happy Birthday Mom/Grandma! It's Penny's 55th birthday - even though she still looks 45! We love spending time with Grandma, this is a picture of Grandma and Mom on Mother's Day this year.

No, I'm not drunk, I just look that way in nearly EVERY picture I take (I can't get my eyes not to blink)!

Well Don finally completed a huge project today, I can't include all the files to show you, but I'll try to download one of the files to show off, including a cute business card I'm trying to get him to print for us. Information on the last image: first of all, Don created the logo on the top left for the company, the layout of the old presentation was not pleasing to the eye at all. All of the images on the page were created as a separate image by Don, then placed on the page, so in illustrator you can actually zoom into the images and see the wording on the flyer for example. The guy holding the laptop was an image we uploaded, then we captured an image of the company's website and placed it on the laptop. Since the logo is new, it hasn't been downloaded to the website yet, so we created a banner just like the banner at the top of the website and pasted the new logo over the top of it. Anyway, it was pretty cool to watch him created this page from scratch in just a few hours (the brochure isn't really a brochure, by the way, it's 3 images that are brochure size that he placed together to make it look like it's a brochure that's slightly open.

Okay, front and back of the business card. My mom e-mailed us this "dog" image with this story "I was pulled over by a cop for speeding, I was successfully convincing the officer that I really wasn't speeding till he saw my dog in the back seat", we laughed pretty hard, then thought this image is so funny that it would be great on one of our business cards.

Tonight we are taking Ammon, Caianna & Katelynn to an Elders Quorum / Primary party. I'm bringing my camera, so maybe I can upload some pictures tomorrow!

Okay, so I'm trying to get the hang of this, I guess I'll have to turn the pictures before I add them.  Today Don treated me to getting my hair colored and cut by working out a trade with Carlos the owner of Total Hair Experience on University & Gilbert here in Mesa.  It turned out so cute!!  (I'll add a picture later - when I find the cord to the camera).  Then I went visiting teaching and took Heather to a sister's house in the stake to schedule a trim for her hair.  Tonight the family read a christmas story, sang Joy to the World, read scriptures and said prayer.  It never feels like the the evening has ended very well unless we do the little things that help us grow closer to each other and to the Lord through prayer and scriptures.  We have such great kids, and I thank the Lord for them every day I'm blessed to be their mom!

By the way, check out our (very small - one page) starter websites: www.AZFlyers.com and www.AnnouncementPrinter.com  they will be better once we get a chance to work on them for longer than 5 minutes!

Well, it's official!  If you want to spend time with the family, or see what we're up to, just log on to our little page here.
Right now Don on his way back from a violin lesson with Samantha & Heather, they are doing great!  Savanah has really taken off with her flute lessons too!  Soon we'll have to add a video of them playing for your viewing pleasure!
Ginger (our Boxer) and Button (our Shih Tzu) are expecting puppies any day now, that will be either really fun, or really not fun!  
I've added a couple of pictures of the family and some newer pictures of Sam, Heather & Savanah, one of them is pretty funny, just another dramatic moment in the life of our family - its the "dirty feet" picture, which is why I don't leave my room without my shoes on!
Samantha takes more pictures with my christmas present from last year than I do (maybe because she keeps it in her purse?)...anyway, till next time!