Happy Easter

Easter at our house is a struggle. I try to get the kids to understand the true meaning while they are strung out in a sugar high. Luckily I can also count on their excellent primary teachers to help me out. Ronnie was able to go to church with us today since Sam's Club was closed for Easter. It's so nice to have him at church to help out with the kids. This Sunday however he was in charge, since I was helping with an Easter program. It was a nice break from my usual roll at church. Not one time did I say: shhh, be quite, fold your arms, there are no more snacks, only one piece of bread, please listen, get off the floor and sit in your seat please, put your dress down, please don't color on your fingernails...etc. Church is such a peaceful experience when you don't have to worry about your child bursting out in screaming and yelling because you ran out of snacks.

All in all Easter went very well this year. Everyone made it to church, we had a great dinner, and all eggs are accounted for.

Spring Break the Vegas Way

Ahh… it’s Spring Break time in Vegas. That wonderful time when plain city walls get a nice coat of graffiti and packs of teenagers can be found roaming the streets at all hours. Yes indeed good times. I had the pleasure to have a knock on my door this morning from a young girl who was holding a bag that looked just like my church bag. I thought that maybe she was selling some form of fundraiser and just happen to have the same bag as me. Then the young girl said I found this down the street and I saw your name in it. I’m sure the young girl saw a very puzzled look on my face as I said oh, thank you so much, and then my mind was piecing things together. I took the bag and went through it to see if indeed it was mine. Sure enough it contained Kyle’s and my scriptures and some other things I take to church. Then I remembered I left the bag in my car, so then I headed out to the car. The passenger side door was open. This is what I saw.

The people must have been really disappointed when they realized there was nothing in my car. They went through the glove box and the center console and I think the only thing I had of value to them was about $1.50 in change that they took. I had some boxes of food storage in the back and they ripped open a box to find of course, 6 No. 10 cans. I would loved to have seen the looks on their faces as they found kids songs CDs, and little kids jackets, and big boxes with cans in them. I can only imagine they were a little disappointed with their heist of a buck fifty. Oh and also as I was walking around the car to make sure all the doors were shut and I found half a bag of Cheetos sitting on the top of my car. They were left in the car by Lana. I think the thieves put the bag of Cheetos on the top of my car so when I went down the driveway they would fall. I can’t think of any other reason to put them there.

Here is a rundown of the, oh so joyous activity that has taken place around our house since we moved here.

2 hubcaps stolen off the Nissan

Tailgate stolen

Trailer egged

House and truck paintballed

Jeep broken into ($1.50 stolen)

Between Ronnie’s truck getting broken into 3 times and the Nissan getting stolen at his work and all of the goings on at home, living in Vegas is such a JOY! I just can’t wait until summer break is here.

A Little Taste of Home

The other night we went to Jason’s Deli for dinner and to my surprise they now carry my most favorite soda ever! Right there amongst the rest of the normal soda fountain varieties was Dublin Dr. Pepper. I was giddy with excitement, because I haven’t had that soda since I left Texas in 1992. Don’t go thinking that Dublin Dr. Pepper is the same thing as Dr. Pepper, it’s SO not.

You can go to the Dublin site and read about it if you so choose. There is a cute story on there about the bottling plant’s owner’s wife wanting him to drink less sugar and he just couldn’t stand the thought, so he got the plant to bottle his soda in a bottle that was labeled diet.

So anyway, you see the yellow, red, and white dots on the label, well here is the story that goes along with that. They represent the time of day that you need a little pick me up or energy boost. So that would be the perfect time for a soda.

It's Pi Day

For those of you that are not nerdy enough to know that today is Pi day, it is. It is just one more day that gives us an excuse to eat pie. Although some nerdy circles celebrate by eating things like pineapple, pickles, pizza, pitas, or pine nuts and drinking pineapple juice. I’m not that big of a nerd, I just want my pie. I also calculate my age in Pi, I am 9.51pi old. My next Pi birthday will be on Oct. 1, 2009, I will be a whole 10pi old. I wonder if I will celebrate by trying to eat 10 pieces of pie. More than likely I will forget the date by then until Mar. 14, 2009 rolls around and then I’ll be sorry I missed my pie gorging opportunity.

Go calculate your Pi age and then you too can say I celebrated Pi Day with the rest of the nerds.

The Needle and the Damage Done

I came across this cool little crayon carrier one day and thought I’m going to make that for Lana. I also thought what a cute gift that would be for her little friends. I had high hope of making dozens of these crayon carriers. In case you don’t know this about me, I can’t sew, and I blame it on my sewing machine. Let me just show you how my sewing went.

I got all my fabric cut out. I measured everything with my trusty green tape measure because I don’t have one of those really big tables with a ruler stuck on it like they have at Wal-Mart. There is probably something else that I should have used to measure fabric but I don’t own that item.

I did the very stressful job of sewing lines one inch apart, and Lana and Ronnie look at me like I was insane because I was talking to my sewing machine about how I really didn’t like the job it was doing.

Then I pinned the rick rack on and the last piece of fabric on. Do you see a problem? I didn’t….

I sewed the entire thing and then I realized there was a problem.

Luckily I cut out enough material to make two crayon carriers because I this point I really didn’t feel like undoing all my stitches. I had Ronnie double check my layering before I sewed it all together this time. It turned out so cute! As is with just about everything I make it wasn’t my idea, so click HERE to visit Skip to My Lou, the site I found it at.

If you know where the title for this post came from let me know.

Cannery

This is a picture of our cannery group from yesterday. The couple on my left is so much fun to be around. The gentleman reminds me so much of my grandfather on my mom's side and his wife is just as sweet as could be. On my right are two of the coolest girls! My Sister Lacey and Jessica help at the cannery almost every month and I couldn't have done this trip without their help. It's so much fun to pull your sleeves up and get some work done when you have such great company to help you out. One of these days I'm going to get a picture of a pyramid of cans that we can, but we were too busy to get one this time. I wonder if there will ever be a non busy cannery trip.

D'oh!

Well something that I left out of the last post was that during my hike I kind of twisted my ankle a little bit on some loose rocks. I didn’t write about it because it wasn’t really an issue. I would have totally written about it if it had been so bad that I needed my friend Kristin to give me a piggyback ride to the car. I just caught myself half way through my fall from grace and kept on walking and everything was fine, so I thought. The next day I went to church wearing these cute little shoes, with a little heel even and I was just fine. Then Monday morning I was out in the garden and we have a little retaining wall that I have to step up to see my garden, all was good until I stepped down. Then I really twisted my ankle, I could hear the gross pop and all. So I sat on the ground I thought about how stupid I was. I have always had bad ankles; I blame them on my many years in gymnastics. I knew I should have taken care of my ankle on Saturday, but I was trying to be Super Shawna. So after that I went in and started taking care of myself. That is until this morning when I went out with camera in hand to the garden to take pictures of the cauliflower that was actually growing. Yes, you guessed, I have short term memory issues or something, again I found myself on the ground, wanting to totally smack myself on the forehead and say d'oh! So I go inside and look for the icepack that I used yesterday and it was gone. I thought I was going crazy because I remember right where I put it and it was not there. Weird, then I picked Kyle up from school and found out where the icepack went, in his lunchbox.
While I was sitting around with my foot propped up today, Lana and I made this cute little fairy that I found at this site. Then I made these pots that you start seeds in with my new pot maker and some of my neighbor’s old newspapers. Well that was enough sitting around so Lana and I went to Target. I found these cute baskets. The two round ones are the Kid’s Easter baskets and the oblong one is for decoration. I am going to try to grow wheat grass in all of them this year. I hate the plastic Easter grass and last year we did the edible grass and the kids didn’t like the way it tasted and it got sticky from the condensation on the cold eggs.
Now tomorrow I am going to go to the cannery for our Ward, since my Mom is out of town she asked me to cover for her. I have a cute little couple coming to help fill the orders and the gentleman has a cane, it might come in handy at the rate I’m going!

Hiking

Well I woke up this morning and started preparing for the hike with the Young Women. Everything was going smoothly until I went to get my shoes. Now I don’t wear these shoes very often because I really don’t go walking very often. So this is what I found when I looked at them. Lana helped me tie my shoes I think. It took a few minutes to untie. Then I was off to get the kids ready, they were going to fly a plane with my Dad until Ronnie got home from work. Kyle got up no problem, but I had to dress Lana while she was half asleep. So then I get both kids dropped off at my Dad’s and go pick up the girls. We are right on time as I pull up to the parking lot and then realize I went to the wrong building. So now we are running a little late, I hate being late. We make it to the right building and get checked in then head out to Lake Mead. I am so glad we have such great girls because an hour long car ride with not so good of girls could really be horrific.The hike was so neat; it was on an old railway. The slats were gone and the only thing that remains were 5 large tunnels and of course a very level path. The weather was great for hiking and I don’t even think I got sunburnt…woohoo!