Favorite Old Movies

Ok, I was just reading someone else's blog and they were talking about favorite movies when we were younger. I started remembering some of my faves:

My Fair Lady
Sound of Music
Bedknobs & Broomsticks
Grease (totally fell in love w/ John Travolta, even had poster in my room)
Grease 2 (my sis & I watched them both and would sing with them)
Blackbeard's Ghost
Parent Trap (original w/ Haley Mills)
Old Yeller (totally cried as a kid)
Where the Red Fern Grows (cried at this one too)
Fox and the Hound (cried again) <--dang I was a blubbering baby
Flash Gordon (Go, Flash, Go!!!)
Karate Kid
Xanadu
Mystic Pizza
Annie (my sister & I watched this over & over & over, my parents got so sick of it. I see where my kids get it now. ha ha)
Jaws (saw all of them, I think. pretty scary but couldn't stop watching. My dad would always find the perfect time to grab us from behind so we'd scream! ha ha. Now I love doing that to my kids. LOL)
Zorro, the Gay Blade (w/ George Hamilton, ooohh so funny!)
SuperFuzz (Supaa Supaa! ha ha)
Old Disney Classics (animated & not)
Return to Witch Mountain (thought those kids were cool)
The Ten Commandments (w/ Charleton Heston, we'd watch every Easter)
Two of a Kind (love John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John together)
Pretty in Pink
Breakfast Club (thought Judd Nelson was HOT even tho he was grunge in that movie)

Ok, I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting lots of my faves! We love watching movies in our family.

What are some of your faves as a kid?

Felicia's Tooth

I was just invited & joined a digi-scrap online group that you can find HERE. Well, as a newbie, they give you a freebie kit for joining the forum. And in order to receive an even larger freebie kit, you have make a layout using their welcome kit & display in their gallery. So, here's my layout showing Felicia w/ her tooth that she had to have pulled by the dentist. Of course, in the summer, she had a root canal & silver crown placed on that same tooth. Thank goodness we have dental insurance that covered that, or I just might be really upset if we had to pay for the work just to have it pulled a few months later! Poor Felicia, the dentist had to give her a couple shots because she could still feel pain (her gums were swollen and close to abcessing). He finally "yanked" the tooth out of her mouth! I've never seen roots that big before! My picture doesn't do it justice. I think the roots were bigger than the tooth itself. Well, the ToothFairy definitely rewarded her for her pain & suffering! Felicia's definitely a trooper! She even took her tooth to school to show her teacher!

("Hello There Welcome Wagon Mini-Kit" from DSO.)

I also uploaded my layout to their online gallery HERE.

Cousins

Ashley loves her cousin, Richard. He's just a few months younger than her, and they get along fabulously! They are so cute & sweet. I created this layout to show how much fun they were having at our family party earlier this week! I wish I could've gotten more pictures of them together!

(I used "Express Yourself" kit by ShabbyPrincess.)

Lovin' the Digi-Scrap

I have been scrappin' like crazy the last couple days! I'm havin' a blast! I just printed out several pages to put in my kids' scrapbooks (well, they're just notebooks w/ clear protective pages but they don't mind). They are so excited to see them in their books. So, I decided to make a scrapbook for Ben and Me. I already made a couple pages of us, so I thought I should scrap our wedding pictures. We have our wedding photo album, but I thought it might be fun to add a page to our scrapbook. Here is what I made:

(I used the "Precious" kit from SueliColbert and the Antique frames from BannerWoman.)

Go Felicia!

Today was the Awards Assembly for my kids' elementary school. Felicia won a Winning Attitude Award for her class in 3rd grade. WOOHOO!!! She's so sweet & an excellent student!

(This kit is a "Scrappin Freestyle Blog Freebie Sampler" by MelanieAnnDesigns)

WAY TO GO, FELICIA!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!

Sisters by Chance, Friends by Choice

I created a layout of my sister, Christy, and Me! This was fun to go back and find pictures of us together! As it turns out, we don't have that many of just her and me. Guess that means I need to take even more pictures than I already do. ha ha :) She's a good sister and one of my Best Friends! Luv ya CHRISTY!! Glad we're Sisters!

I used the "Nacre" kit by AnnieV and the WordArt came from DSP.

My Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather

This is so neat! My Dad told me about this & I just wanted to share it with y'all.

This article was published in our Church News publication a couple weeks ago. Anson Call is my 4th great grandfather. (That's also where I got my son's name ->Anson)

'Great pioneer' — Anson Call memorialized

September 29, 2007By R. Scott LloydChurch News staff writer

When uttering his prophecy that the Latter-day Saints would become a mighty people in the Rocky Mountains, the Prophet Joseph Smith reportedly singled out Anson Call.

Boulter family members, grandchildren of Elder Oaks, perform at monument dedication.

"There are some of those standing here that will perform a great work in that land," the Prophet said, according to Brother Call's record of the incident. "There is Anson. He shall go and shall assist in building cities from one end of the country to the other, and you shall perform as great a work as has ever been done by man so that the nations of the earth shall be astonished and many of them will be gathered in that land, assisting in building cities and temples, and Israel shall be made to rejoice."

Today, at This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, a new monument commemorates Brother Call's role in the fulfillment of that prophecy.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve, whose late wife, June, is a great-granddaughter of Anson Call, dedicated the monument at a Sept. 22 unveiling. Hundreds of Call descendants and relatives gathered for the event at the bowery inside the park's Heritage Village, a short distance from the new monument, which is situated outside the village and thus can be viewed free of charge.

In addition to Elder Oaks, Elder Earl C. Tingey of the Presidency of the Seventy spoke at the service. Elder Tingey is a great-great-great-grandson of Anson Call.

"When Alma, the great high priest, went out to deliver the word of the Lord to a people who were weakening in the faith, he began by asking them if they had 'sufficiently retained in remembrance' the sacrifices and faithfulness of their predecessors and the 'mercy and long-suffering' of God toward them (Alma 5:6)," Elder Oaks remarked. "The importance of retaining these things in remembrance is what brings us together to honor a great pioneer with music, with the spoken word, and with the monument we dedicate today."

Descendants of Anson Call gather in bowery Sept. 21 at dedication of nearby monument. Photo by John Hart

Noting that Elder Tingey spoke earlier of Brother Call's accomplishments with the Church in the Midwest, Elder Oaks said he would speak briefly of Brother Call's life after he reached "these valleys of the mountains."

"As a colonizer, Anson Call did more leading than settling," Elder Oaks said. "He knew how to get there and get things started."

Brother Call pioneered the city of Bountiful, where he was bishop of the North Canyon Ward, Elder Oaks said. Other accomplishments Elder Oaks mentioned were assisting Elder George A. Smith in settling Parowan, where he organized Iron County and became a justice of the peace. He also mentioned that Brother Call helped colonize Fillmore, and represented Millard County in the territorial legislature; established Call's Fort about six miles north of Brigham City in northern Utah; supervised building of the territorial statehouse in Fillmore; led the colonization of Carson Valley in Nevada; and led 13 teams to rescue the stranded Martin Handcart Company in Wyoming.

Elder Tingey said Brother Call was always loyal to the Prophet Joseph Smith, adding that one year after being baptized in Kirtland, Ohio, 27-year-old Anson pledged his 50-acre farm to rescue the Prophet from imprisonment.

"In 1843, a year before Joseph was martyred, the apostate John C. Bennett slandered Joseph and the Church so badly that Anson, at the request of the Church, along with 379 other men left their families and traveled throughout Ohio, in the winter, as missionaries, to set forth the truth and preach the gospel," Elder Tingey said. "Anson's party baptized 40 people."

Elder Tingey said Anson knew physical and spiritual sacrifice. While crossing the plains to Utah with five children under the age of 12, Anson and his wife, Mary, awoke one morning and found their infant son Hyrum dead. "They dug a small grave beside an oak tree on a bluff and laid the lifeless body on the shallow grave," said Elder Tingey, his voice tinged with emotion. "There was no time to carve a memorial in the storm. They simply wrote his name on the tree."

Anson knew persecution, Elder Tingey said, recalling that in Missouri, his ancestor was taunted by a mob for 2 1/2 hours, that mobbers struck him in the face at least 50 times with the handle of a knife they threatened to plunge into his body. "Anson escaped, miraculously and cleverly, just before the mob planned to hang him. He returned to his family Christmas morning."
Elders Dallin H. Oaks, left, Earl C. Tingey and Eran Call stand near monument to Anson Call. Photo by Mike Terry/Deseret Morning News

The monument consists of a bronze bust of Brother Call atop a stone marker. A bronze plaque gives the text of Brother Call's record of Joseph Smith's Rocky Mountain Prophecy, uttered on July 14, 1842, in Montrose, Iowa, across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo, Ill. A plaque on the other side of the monument contains a map of the State of Deseret in 1849-51, showing cities that Anson assisted in building: Call's Fort, Bountiful, Fillmore, Parowan, Callville and Carson Valley. The plaque notes that Brother Call, who lived from 1810 to 1890, is buried in the Bountiful City cemetery.

Happiness Is...LOVE

I just created this layout last night using the fun & fabulous "Think Happy Thoughts" kit from Tangie! (The "Simply Fall" frame & green Ribbon wrap are from LemonaidLucy)

Thanks Tangie for the free kit for sportin' a blinkie! If you haven't already, you should check out her digi-scrapbook store HERE! She is very talented & has amazing designers!

Family Party

Ben is one of 8 children in his family, 5 girls & 3 boys. Most of his siblings live in AZ, but 2 sisters live in UT and one brother in FL. One of his sisters, Soni, is here to visit this week, and it happens to be her birthday and my niece is also having a birthday this month. So, we had a combined birthday party last night at our house while she's here visiting! YAY! We had a lot of FUN!!

We had a yummy potluck dinner w/ birthday cake for dessert.

Here's part of our group at one table

Here's the rest of us at the other table
We're singing "Happy Birthday" to the 2 birthday girls (the two in the middle)!

Soni also brought her grandson, Dominic. Isn't he a cutie?

He's 2 months older than Anson.

(I know, she doesn't look old enough to have grandkids yet)Richard & Ashley (they are so darn cute together!)
The Cousins
Ben with his Sisters & Mom

(Heather, Soni, Ben, Joy, Susan, Mom)
Me & Ben

(he was laughing right before we took the picture, so I don't know why he's not smiling)
I'm glad we all had a chance to get together & hang out & LAUGH!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Soni & Tiffany!!!

Old & New

Ok, FINALLY I am able to upload pictures to my blog. It keeps messing up.

Anyway, here is our old table (we used both tables last night for a family party).
Here is our NEW table! (All the folding chairs are borrowed for our party.)

I am so excited! We actually seated 12 at our new big table. I'm not sure yet if we'll keep the leaf in (just for fun) or take it out for normal daily use.

I Love IKEA

We just bought a new table today (I've been wanting this for a while now) from IKEA and assembled it tonight. YAY!!! As soon as I saw it at IKEA a couple months ago, I immediately fell in love with it & couldn't wait til we could afford to get it. We've had the same table since we first got married 11 1/2 years ago! Don't get me wrong...I love our other table. I mean that's why we bought it (with our wedding gift money) in the first place. It's the all natural pine country-style table that seats 6 or 8 if we squeeze tight. LOL. So, now our new beautiful birch wood table can seat 8 or with the leaf can seat 10, but I noticed w/ our chairs we could probably fit 12 (if we had enough chairs anyway). I'm so excited!!! I know, it doesn't take much to make me happy! :)

Ok, either my computer is messing up or blogger keeps messing up cuz it won't let me upload my picture. I keep getting an error message. So, I'll have to post the picture later.

Cute Li'l Critter

Look at what Ben found lurking around by our shed tonight! It's so cool. This grasshopper is a really bright shade of green & big. It also has fast wings & was flying around our house. The kids were loving it! I didn't mind the flying, but I was also cooking dinner & didn't want it to get near the food. ha ha. Don't worry, it didn't. (In Texas, the grasshoppers were even more awesome! They were huge & usually bright yellow w/ green or tan specks. They almost looked plastic. They could jump high & fly. One time we were playing w/ one in our front yard, then it went to jump & fly across the street, when all of a sudden a bird swooped down & snatched it out of the air! It was so wild.)

Ok, I just have to say that at our house, we LOVE geckos, fence lizards, crickets, grasshoppers, moths, and cool-looking bugs. I do NOT like spiders, cockroaches, creepy crawlies, silver fish, earwigs, and other yucky bugs. My hubby on the other hand, loves spiders and snakes! He pretty much loves all creatures except roaches! That's where he draws the line. Anyway, we like to catch bugs & play with them for a little while, then let them go. Nathaniel even has a fun bug catcher that he got for his birthday. I know, we may sound weird, but oh well. We have fun with it. Do you like bugs?

Sweet Saturday

Look what my awesome Dad brought us for our Saturday morning breakfast! Those were the only two left after we attacked the others. He actually brought us half a dozen, but Ben was at work and Nathaniel had already eaten so he wasn't hungry. These yummies were so huge we couldn't even eat half of ours (everyone got their very own). We saved them and ate more later.

Huge Cinnamon Rolls from Sweet Cakes Cafe

THANKS DAD!!! They were so delicious!

So, we were off to a good start for our day! The kids got to eat their treats and take a break from "pretending" to do their chores. They finally did some chores later.

Then we went to a friend's daughter's baptism. It was great & her daughter was absolutely beautiful. I love going to baptisms! You can always feel the spirit so strong & the kids are just glowing! Saturday was a pretty good day!

Whatever Shall We Wear?

YAY! We have the kids' Halloween costumes! Well, almost all of them, we're waiting for Anson's to come in the mail. I bought it on ebay. Anyway, Anson decided to be Dash from The Incredibles. I got the one that doesn't have muscles in it. I guess it's last year's design. I'm not sure. Ashley wanted to be Batgirl, but suddenly decided that since it didn't have an ounce of pink on it, she wanted something else. So, we got her a Girl Bat costume instead. I know it sounds like the same thing but it's basically a bat costume that's dressed up for a girl. It's a pink and black dress w/ bat ears-headband, gloves and wings! She just had to have it because of the pink and the wings! Silly girl. Felicia has decided to be a Vampire like me. We found a pretty red & black dress that's similar to mine. It looks really good on her. She loves it! We tried to tell Ashley that some vampires turn into bats, so she's kind of like us. She likes that idea! Nathaniel is going to be Optimus Prime (the leader of the Autobots in Transformers). We found the costume, supposedly the deluxe one cuz it has a chest piece & face mask. Anyway, the mask is kinda lame, and he's really wanted the voice-changer helmet. Since he loves Transformers so much, we splurged and got it for him. The helmet is way cool. It has lots of phrases and it also changes your voice so you sound all robotic. He loves it!

So, to get into the excitement of his costume, he changed the colors of the bands on his braces. He had his orthodontist appointment today & picked black, red, and blue for his braces. He's so funny!

He picked black for his bottom teeth,

red for the top right & blue for the top left teeth

Spooky Decorations

Ben and I finally got our spiderweb & spider hung between our big trees! We also added a spooky ghost behind the web today. Everything (except the spider) glows w/ our blacklight that's also in the tree. We also found some Halloween lights at WalMart. So, we hung them by our porch so that our little ghosts could be seen! It's been so much fun! Ashley says that we're going to have the scariest house! She loves all the scary stuff. She didn't used to, she cried the first time we took her to the Spirit Halloween store 2 years ago. Ben had to carry her throughout the store & help hide her face, so she couldn't see anything. She's come a long way!

Here's a little peak at our spooky decorations:

Our front porch

Our huge spiderweb (the big black spider is in the middle of the web) & ghostClose-up on the ghost
Sorry the pictures are a little fuzzy. Apparently my camera isn't very clear when there's not much light. Anyway, we love the creepy, scary Halloween stuff. We're hoping to be able to add a little more each year.

Which Twilight Character Are You?

Which Twilight novel character are you?

You're Esme Cullen - Your maternal instinct to take care of people and be kind draw people towards you. You're compassionate and loving, yet firm when you need to be. You appreciate hard work and value the beautiful results of your dedication to any project.
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Weekend of Candy

All 4 sessions of conference were awesome! Since the kids remembered a few talks after the first session on Saturday, I decided to challenge them. I told them that they could each have a piece of candy for each talk they could remember for the rest of the sessions. I have a bag of hard candies that my Mom gave me last week (mints, jolly ranchers, strawberries w/ chewy center, etc). They were really excited! Felicia decided that she wanted to take notes, so that she could remember even more! ha ha. Ashley was able to remember more each time, Nathaniel did great and Felicia took notes during the other 3 sessions. She wrote down the speaker's name, and several things they talked about. She was so cute! And her notes are actually really good. So, naturally, she got the most candy, but the others did good & were happy with their pieces of candy, too. Anson remembered words like "church" and "Jesus" for 2 sessions, then the last one he admitted he "wasn't listening" so I asked him to repeat the name President Hinckley. He could do it, so he got one piece for each session. ha ha. I had to give him at least something since everyone else was loading up. He was pleased with his one piece of candy! Nathaniel kept telling me that eating candy is FUN! They did great! I don't think I listened as well as they did when I was their age! WAY TO GO KIDDOS!!!

General Conference

I just finished watching the first session of the 177th Semi-Annual General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. All the talks have been truly awesome! Since President James E. Faust died, President Hinckley just announced Henry B. Eyring as the new 2nd Counselor in the First Presidency.


And Elder Quentin L. Cook to join the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
If you want to read the whole article, click here.


This is going to be a great weekend full of wonderful talks and spiritual uplifting! I love General Conference! It was always hard for me to watch as a kid just because we'd watch from home, I would get sleepy and close my eyes. Then I'd get in trouble for not watching. I guess as I've gotten older, it has become easier to watch and really want to hear every word. Sometimes it's still a little hard to hear but that's just because the kids are being noisy. But the rule around here is that all the tv's are on the same channel with conference, so no matter where you are in the house, you can hear it. I just asked the kids what they learned from watching this morning session. It was so good to hear they all learned (and remembered) at least one thing. The older kids could name a couple. So, I told them I will ask them again after each session. I think they're beginning to enjoy watching conference.

Happy Friday!

YAY!!! Today is Friday! Ben & I also get to go out tonight! We're going to the Elder's Quorum dinner. They're providing the meat, everyone's bringing side dishes, and I think the dessert is already taken care of also. Sounds like fun! We got a fun babysitter and the kids are excited! We hardly ever get babysitters, so it's like we've set the kids up for playtime, too. It's a win-win situation!

New Banner

Look up top! I just created my new blog banner using creations from MelanieAnnDesigns (Chocoberry Creme). It was fun to do! What do you think?