California

So I've been a little bit stressed out lately with school, work, kids, young women's, and such. Steve decided it was a great opportunity for us to just get away for the weekend, and just relax. David let us come crash at his house for a couple of nights, and we had a blast. While driving to California we stopped at the roller coaster at Buffalo Bill's in Nevada. We have never let the kids actually get out and ride it, but thought they would like it.

Of course you can't make a trip to California without stopping at In n Out for an amazing hamburger. My boys all like it Animal Style.

When we got to David's house, Abigail was so cute, she decided that she was going to have us make some music. She pulled out a box full of musical instruments and gave us each one of them. And then she led us in some amazing tunes. As most of you know, the Collings aren't a musical family, but she was pretty insistent. We played these sticks, bells, and a triangle.

Abby taking charge.

Dave and Julie took us to Steve's favorite restaurant ever, Ruth's Chris. We enjoyed amazing steaks, and the best cheesecake ever! We had such a nice evening, and the cousins just hung out together at Dave's house.

We spent Saturday at Disneyland, David and Abigail came and hung out with us for a while, we tried to go with Abigail on the "it's a small world" ride, but it was closed. We enjoyed both parks, and had such a nice day. I was surprised that you could buy turkey legs to snack on. The kids really loved them.

They went a little crazy taking pictures on the carousel.

And this is their third time on "California Screamin' " You notice Steve and I aren't there. We rode it, but once was enough for us.

I think the person who invented swinging ferris wheels should be shot. They have got to be the scariest ride at any amusement park. I don't mind going on roller coasters, but ferris wheels make me feel like I am going to fall, and there's no safety net.

As I said, it was a really short trip. We woke up the next morning and went straight home. It's so nice having 5 drivers in the family, it really makes time go by faster. I really got a nice break, and am ready to tackle anything that comes my way. Thanks so much for your hospitality Dave and Julie, you guys are great!

Halloween

I guess my family is getting a little bit boring when it comes to Halloween. All of my kids are too old to go trick or treating. Stephen went to a party with some friends, Kaylea went to a Stake Dance, and Conner stayed home playing Xbox. I cooked a big pot of stew...for myself, because nobody else was around to eat (Conner hates it). My hubby went on a 3 day horse-back ride to Southern Utah (Moab area). I will be posting about that later, when we get pictures. He came home at around 7:30pm on Halloween night. Enough time to see some of the trick-or-treaters.

I have a funny story: There was a knock on the door, and I went to pass out more Halloween candy. When I opened the door a little girl, about 5 or 6 years old said, "WHERE'S THE VICE-PRESIDENT?!" I was a little bit confused, I did have a trick-or-treater dressed as President Obama come, but she seemed to think the Vice President was at my house. "Huh?" "THE VICE-PRESIDENT, IS HE HERE OR IS HE SNOOZING?!!" "Um..." I was still confused. Then her mom in the back ground said, "No, the STAKE President." I got it. "Oh the Stake President is right in here." She leaned in the door and said, "HI PRESIDENT COLLINGS, I'M SARAH STONE, DO YOU REMEMBER ME??!!! I HOPE YOU'RE HAVING A GOOD HALLOWEEN!!! I AM!!!" (I've changed her name.) She continued to talk to him about her WONDERFUL costume, and was so excited, and so animated. It was really cute, it made my whole night.

I hope you all had a happy Halloween.

COOL PHONE CALL!

I was driving to Tooele today when my phone rang. It was a number I didn't recognize. When I picked it up, it was the Nursing Administrator from SLCC. She said I was an alternate for the nursing program, and if all went well, I will start the nursing program in January 2010!! In 3 months!!! I was so excited I started to cry, and could hardly talk. I have waited so long, and thought I had another year to wait. AWESOME!!!

Conner's Choir Concert

Conner is in beginning chorus in Jr High School. They had their first concert tonight, and I LOVED it!!! I don't think I've ever actually heard Conner sing. During church he opens the book, but if he sings it's really quiet, and I think he just mouths the words when I'm looking. But they did such a good job, I thought I'd try to upload the video of my favorite song they sang. Conner is on the back row, in the center of the picture, when I'm not moving too much.

I absolutely love beautiful music, and even though this was a beginning chorus class, it brought tears to my eyes. (It's a mom thing...)

Happy Birthday Steve

It's hard to believe that 18 years ago, my oldest son Steve was born. He has always been such a fun boy, always sweet, and positive, and obedient.

He grew very slowly, and I noticed that by the time he was 9 months old, he looked the size of a 3 or 4 month old baby. I was okay with it, but people in the grocery store would stop me when I was buying finger foods for him to start eating, and ask me how old he was; they didn't think finger foods were appropriate for such a small baby. Others would worry as they picked him up, they said they thought they would break off one of his arms, because they were so skinny.

As Steve got older, he was still always the smallest in his class. I bought him size 3T for his kindergarten clothes, and when he became a deacon, I bought him a size 8 suit. But Steve never let his size stop him from doing the things he loved. He has always had a love for basketball, he'll practice for hours on end, and has become really good at it. One year when he was just starting Jr. Jazz, his coach was having all the boys shoot free throws. When Steve got to the front of the line, his coach told him he could move closer to the basket to shoot. Of course Steve wouldn't, instead he shot a free throw from the free throw line and made it.

Steve has always been very smart. When he started kindergarten, I couldn't get him to hold the pencil right, and he would only draw spiders, but as soon as another adult started to teach him, he caught on really fast. He has never had homework, has always had straight A's, and I've never had to worry that he'd miss a report or project that was due.

Steve decided about 4 years ago that he wanted to try to graduate from High School with an Associate's Degree. He never lost sight of that goal, and encouraged several of his friends to attend college classes with him. Now that he's taking college courses, he does have homework, and has to work a little bit harder to keep his grades up, but he never asks me for help (he's too smart for me to help him now), and never turns in anything late. I have started college, and have asked him several times to help me with my homework...

He is an excellent leader, he is an eagle scout, and is the 1st assistant in the priest quorum in our church. He always has a positive attitude, and a great sense of humor.

Today Steve is 18 years old, he's 5'8" and still growing, and I am still so proud of him. I am so glad he came into my life, and only want him to be happy. I hope you know how much I love you, and I hope you have had a Happy Birthday Steve.

Unexpected Dinner

Conner and I went to feed the turkeys last night and Grant was there working in his back yard (we keep the turkeys in a pen in his back yard). He said that there was a turkey who was struggling with a deformity and he thought it was suffering, and should be put out of its misery.

"Do you want to take home some fresh turkey tonight?" I was okay with it, but wasn't sure how Conner would deal with it. It took us about an hour to kill it and clean it up. Wow, that was the last thing I expected to do when I woke up that morning. But I have to say, there's nothing like fresh turkey. I came home and marinated the breast over night, and boiled the rest for turkey noodle soup. It was way too big for my family, so I split the meat with Erin. Tonight we had the marinated turkey breast, and it was YUMMY!!!

Tricia, it was one of the turkeys with Drop Crop. Not exactly what I thought it was, I'm getting quite an education raising these turkeys. Molly, I'm dealing with my fear quite well now. I haven't run screaming into the night yet... none of them have started chasing me, which has been nice. I think this is the last year we will be raising turkeys though, it's a little more work than I want to be dealing with right now in my life.

SALSA!!

This year I have had so many tomatoes! I decided I'd make some salsa. I usually have enough to make about 4 quarts of salsa every couple of weeks.

About a month ago, the weather was getting colder, and they said it was going to freeze over night, so I decided to pull up all of my tomato plants. I kept the green tomatoes in a bucket to see if they would ripen. Apparently my neighbors had the same idea. When they found out that I had been making salsa out of the tomatoes, they would bring me all of their ripe tomatoes too!

This morning I had this many ripe tomatoes....

This afternoon, I have this much more salsa to go in my food storage. I LOVE being able to put up the fruits and vegetables out of my garden. Thanks for teaching me to love canning mom!!

A fun tradition

About a year ago, we had the Young Women come over for chocolate facials. I decided it was a tradition I'd like to continue. Conner decided to help me test out the chocolate mask. Isn't he cute?? The girls are all really good sports. We had facials, and then watched a classic, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It was a really fun night.

It doesn't seem like it was that long ago that we had this same activity, but there were only two girls who were here when we did it the first time. One just left this week, and the second will be leaving in November. They sure grow up quick.

Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs!

Jessica has been dating a young man named Chris Hoskins. Steve and I decided it would be fun to take them out on a double date, and get to know him a little bit better.

We went to Tepanyaki, as many of you know, that is Steve's favorite restaurant. We had a fun show, along with some really good food.

After dinner, we decided to try and find a movie to see. It was a little bit late, and there were not a lot of choices. We picked "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs". I didn't realize that it was in 3-D! It was quite a funny show.

I forgot to take pictures while we were at dinner, so I decided pictures of us in the cool 3-D glasses was the next best thing! We ate too much, laughed a lot, and really enjoyed spending time with Chris and Jessie.

Aren't they cute? Okay 3-D glasses aren't that good looking, but it was worth a few embarrassing pictures to have a really fun night.

Homecoming Week 2009

Last week was Homecoming week. Kaylea is the Sophomore class president, so she had an extremely busy week. She was in charge of decorating the Sophomore hall, decorating the float for the parade, and decorating the sidewalks. She was gone every morning at 6:30 and didn't come home until 10 or 11pm each night. She did a great job of planning and delegating. Their class took first place in the sidewalk decorating. (The ONE project I didn't get a picture of.)

They put together the float a week early, because she knew she'd be under a lot of pressure throughout Homecoming week. Their theme was Roast the Bears. They decided to do a little camp fire and have bears roasting over it. they would all sit on camp chairs with different trees around. They even talked about holding roasting sticks with teddy bears on them, kind of like roasting marshmallows.

On the day of the Homecoming parade, Kaylea came home on her lunch break and painted 3 large posters. One for each side of the truck that said "Sophomores, class of 2012", and one for the back of the float that said "Roast the Bears", they played against Bear River. She wanted to tape them on the truck right when she was done, but I talked her out of it. I could just see it ripping off as I was driving to the beginning of the parade. I said just roll them up and put them in the back of the truck, and we'll tape them on before the parade begins. About an hour later I was feeling pretty ambitious and thought that the truck would look better pulling a float in the parade if it was clean, so I took it through the car wash...with the posters in the back. I didn't realize it until we were attaching the truck to the trailer to haul it to the parade. When I got about 1/2 way to the start of the parade route, the entire contents of the float tipped over and were rolling all over the place. The next 1/2 hour was spent setting up the MANGLED float, drying the two posters that were quite soggy, and using what little bit of paper was left to replace the poster that was SHREDDED! When we finally had them all dry and ready to tape on...right before the parade...we realized that the sign for the back of the float was too wide and would drag on the ground, and not be seen anyway. We just slapped it on the back window of the truck and called it good. I think by this point Kaylea had had it with the whole thing, and didn't care what it looked like. She was just glad to have Homecoming week over with.

Steve helped out the senior class by using his little truck to pull the seniors "KILL a BEAR" workshop. They showed all different methods of torturing teddy bears, while Steve pulled them along the parade route with a shredded bear wired to the front grill, and a pole that had a bear hanging from a noose attached to his roll bar. He had his wheels spray painted red with "GHS cowboys" spray painted in black. The seniors in the back of the trailer would rip off the heads of the teddy bears and toss them to the kids watching the parade, or use a drill and drill into the head of a bear. Steve thinks they traumatized a few kids on the parade route. I couldn't see them because there was a float between us, but I did see fluff flying every once in a while, and heads rolling down the street...a little bit morbid. Steve took pictures on his cell phone, but I'm technologically challenged, and can't find a way to get them from his phone to my computer...sorry.

I LOVE living in a small town, Friday was such a fun day. The grocery store had a Homecoming party with TONS of blow up slides, jumping gyms, and obstacle course, and they gave out free treats. It looked like a huge carnival. Then when we came down main street for the parade, you would have thought it was the 4th of July. I couldn't believe how many people were watching. We finished at the high school where there was a FAN FEST, another fun party with games, treats, and more blow up play equipment for the kids for 2 hours before the game even started.

After a fun week, the football team lost the game....little bit depressing...but spirits were high, Grantsville is an amazing place to live.

This n That

I haven't had a lot of time to post anything lately, and when something comes up, I forget to take a picture. So I have a few things here and there that I thought I'd mention. Here is a recent picture of Maizey, she's all cute and fluffy. We have good days and bad days with her. The worst was last week, she got into 1/2 stick of margarine and ate the WHOLE thing. She threw up all night... YUCK! She looks so funny when we bathe her, she looks like a cat! Conner thought it would be fun to take a picture of bath time.

This year, Conner and Kaylea have decided to raise turkeys to auction off for Thanksgiving. They will be able to earn a little extra Christmas money by doing this. Most of you know my fear of turkeys, and I have been helping feed and water them for a couple of months now. I guess when you raise them from chicks, they don't seem so scary. We are raising them with three other families, so my family actually only has 6 turkeys, they're getting so big and plump! I hope they taste yummy!

While we were at the high school on Saturday after Conner's game we saw a Ferrari, we don't see many of those in Grantsville. Conner couldn't pass it by without a picture. He looks good next to this car, don't you think? He thought it was pretty cool.

Too Close for Comfort

I haven't done a very good job of staying up on my blog. I started school, and that, along with work, young women's, being a wife and mother, has really kept me busy. I have a story to tell about our Labor Day weekend.

On Labor Day, Steve decided to take his horses up into the mountains. He would ride Dakota, and pony Cheyenne. He has done that several times this summer, and always tells me what a great job they do. They really are becoming great horses. But on Labor Day, that all changed. He was riding through a river, with brush on both sides, and he doesn't know what happened, but his horse freaked out and started bucking and bucking. He tried to ride it out for a while, but the horse was heading for a tree, and Steve was afraid he'd be knocked off. He decided to jump off the crazy horse. He got his left leg out and the horse bolted. Steve's right leg got caught in the stirrup. He was dragged for a short distance, then fell, and Cheyenne ran over the top of him.

Of course Steve didn't have his cell phone, so he had to get up, catch and trailer his horses, and come home while he was hurt. It wasn't bad enough to take him to the hospital, but he had scrapes and bruises all over his body. It's been a week, and he's still really sore; his ribs, ankle, legs, arms, and shoulders. I feel really bad for him. I took a picture of his bruises on his leg, we think Cheyenne stepped on him here, but Steve really doesn't know what happened... remember this is a week later, it's hard to believe how bruised he still is.

His calf and ankle on this leg were really swollen, but that's gone down quite a bit. I think the Lord preserved him, because he had stake conference this weekend, and he had to speak a couple of times. All I can say is this was too close for comfort.

The season has started

Saturday was an extremely busy day, Kaylea had her first cross-country meet in Tooele. I love cross country, because of the pretty places the kids get to run. This race was up Settlement Canyon in Tooele. Grantsville lost about half of their team and their coach to the new Stansbury High School this year, so it will be interesting to see how they do. Kaylea's time was 21:45 for 3.2 miles, she did really well, but is in a really fast region, she took about 15th place.

Conner also started his football season. He was really excited to start playing. The game was pretty discouraging, they lost 34 to 7. They lost about half of their team when Stansbury High school split with Grantsville High school, so the boys are trying to get used to each other. Hopefully that was just a rough start to a great season.

In the picture below, Conner is making a tackle. For being the smallest guy on the team, he's still pretty tough. He is really excited to have his friend and our neighbor, Ryan Egan on his team this year. Ryan's mom, Krysten is the team mom, and does a great job.

Wish us luck... GO COWBOYS!!!

Time to catch up

I have had so much going on, it's been hard to keep up with the blog. My sister, Jamie and her family came up for about a week. They were bringing Sage and Zach to Utah for a wedding reception, and then taking them to college in Cedar City. It was a lot of fun having them here.

School started, and my life is like a whirl wind. Conner started Jr. High school, Kaylea decided to take early morning seminary this year, Steve has college classes...day and night, and I decided to start college again. It's quite funny, I take the same math class as Steve, and the same computer class as Kaylea (who is also getting college credit for it).

Besides school, we thought it would be fun to get a dog!I know...call me crazy, but look at that face!! Isn't she adorable?? Her name is Maizey (MAY-ZEE) she's a maltese, yorkie mix.

Even Stevie likes her, although he calls her a little rat. I love her most days, but I'm not sure if I was ready to take on house-training a new puppy again.

Youth Conference at Camp Williams

I just got back from Youth Conference. We had about 20 kids come, and we spent two nights at Camp Williams, which is an army base in the Salt Lake valley. We actually started at the American Fork temple with a service project. We did landscaping work for about two hours, spreading bark around the base of trees, trimming bushes, dead-heading flowers, trimming ground cover. Needless to say by the time we were done, we were all pretty tired. We went to Camp Williams afterward and were treated like real soldiers for a while, I don't think I've ever done so many push ups in my life! And I'm pretty good at standing at attention now, but I have a hard time keeping a straight face.

The kids spent a lot of time just having fun. Playing card games.

The Stick game. (My personal favorite.) That's Steve in the middle.

The Hand game. Kaylea and Steve are in this picture.

On our second day there, we all got to go rappelling . I actually tried this when I was first married, (20 years ago) and it really freaked me out, but this time I had a blast!!

I didn't get pictures of myself doing this, but I did it both ways. Going down the rope without the wall was actually my favorite way to go down. I wouldn't even try it this way 20 years ago!! The platform is 45 feet high.

We also did a leadership training course. It was like an obstacle course for the kids, but a little harder than normal. There were several areas that the kids couldn't even finish, but it was amazing to see the leadership strengths of the youth come out.

On our second night there we had a terrible wind storm! While walking back from the mess hall, Kaylea took a picture, proof of how hard the wind was blowing.

It was such a fun experience, I would love to go back. We have some great youth in our area.

Education Week 2009

Steve and I have gone to Education Week in Rexburg Idaho for the past 3 years. It's always nice to get away and be spiritually filled for a few days. It's so nice to see a temple in this small college town. Last year I was able to go to the temple before Education week started, this year we were a little bit too busy. We have been going with our good friends the Tucketts. Troy was raised in Rexburg, and he and Shanna met while attending Rick's College at the time. They are our neighbors and talked us into going our first time three years ago.

I think I enjoyed this year more than I ever have. I really felt like I had some questions answered, and was able to really relax...sometimes that's hard for me when I'm away from the kids.