It"s a Crazy Wonderful Life

This is a blog about my family and the crazy life in the Sims Household. We have 5 children, ranging from 14 to 5, and seem to be going in all different directions sometimes. The purpose of this blog is to help keep our friends and family up to date on what is going on in our lives.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Thanksgiving Weekend

Wow, the weekend is over! We had a great Thanksgiving week. It was so nice to have Mike home all week too. Mike's sister Teresa and her family came in on Tuesday for the Holiday. We had a great visit and spent lots of time together. The kids enjoyed playing with their cousins. pete and Mel were up Thursday and Friday as well.

We had a pretty big group on Thanksgiving Day for Lunch/Dinner. There were 23 of us all together. The nice thing about having so many people for Thanksgiving is that you can split up the meal. Many hands mak light work. We had so much food some of it barely got touched. Of course that was great for all the after Thanksgiving meals the next couple of days. Anyway, we had a great time and enjoyed the company of so many this year.
On Friday, I had a near death experience, well not really, but it was somewhat scary. I am sure most people have read about the trampling death of a Wal-Mart employee on Black Friday. Well, I had my own Wal-Mart experience. I was there at 4:30 in the morning for a key item that was on sale. I was standing 2 feet away from it on the opposite side of the rope to hold people back. When the clock struck 5 and the rope dropped, I took my two steps forward to grab the item. Just as I grabbed it, I was shoved forward an downward over the pallet by 3 other people behind me trying to reach over me. I yelled, "You know if you let me up, you could get to it much easier." I fought my way out and headed off to explore the other Black Friday Deals. It truly is amazing that people get so selfish, careless, and impatient that they would trample a person that way. Just run over him. It is sad.

On a happier note ,today we trimmed our tree in preparation for Christmas. It is so fun. I love this season so much. Christmas truly is my favorite time of the year. Here are a couple of pictures.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Twilight...aaah

Friday was the big day. I took my daughters at 12:15 to see Twilight, they loved it. I took a lot of flack for "bailing" on my ladies and was called a "traitor" for going with Kaylee and Tiff before seeing it with my lady friends for our GNO. That's okay though.

We had a great time Friday night. There were 12 of us that met at the Olive Garden for dinner and despite very poor, very slow service we still had a great dinner. The excitement in the air over the movie was almost visible.
After dinner we headed over to the theatre where we were crammed in like sardines to wait for the movie. There were several people ahead of us in line, but we had a pretty good spot. Eventually, the lines were out the door. We had a blast showing off our shirts (made especially for this night) and talking Twilight. Finally we were allowed into the theatre for the final waiting period. The time went so slow, but we had fun. When the movie started cheers went up in the theatre.

Overall, I really thought the movie was pretty good. The book is definitely better!! There were some things I didn't like, especially the bug eyed way they portrayed Jasper every time he was on screen. I also felt like there were some really cheesy scenes, and lots of the story missing or jumbled. But considering the low budget they had to work with and how much they had to try and cram into 2 hours, I think they did a pretty good job. I was very excited to read that they have announced that they will be moving forward with the production of New Moon. Maybe they will be able to make that one a little bit better. Anyway, here are my scrap booked pages of the pics from our GNO.
Thanks Ladies for a great Girls' Night Out. It was a blast as always. So what are we doing next time?
If you like my page layouts, they are available for Download as quick pages from my Digi Scrap Blog here.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Where is your Spot?

I found a link to this survey on Michelle's blog. This was fun and it's nice to know that I am actually living in my ideal spot. (as if I didn't know that already) Loveland ranked number 3 behind St. George, Ut. and Ft. Collins, Co. (which is our neighboring town) Several other Colorado and Utah cities were in my top 20 with a couple in Idaho and Montana as well. Go check it out and see where your ideal place to live is, then come back and leave a comment to tell me what you found. Click the link to go to the survey.

Blog background

I made this blog background, isn't it great? If you want to snag it for your blog just copy the code below and add it as an HTML Gadget in your layout editor.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Need a Twilight T?

Check out my t-shirt store. Right now all the designs are Twilight related because it is at the forefront of my mind these days. But I am sure I will be making other designs too, so check back there often.

http://www.cafepress.com/MLSDesigns

Friday, November 14, 2008

Digi Scrap Freebies

Hello Everyone, I just wanted to let all my friends and family know that I have officially completed a full week of freebie giveaways on my digi scrap blog. I am loving this designing thing. It is so much fun!!! I think I have a new obsession, I mean hobby. ; ) If you are into digi scrappin or want to do it in the future. Go check it all out here. Also, I could really use some help getting the word out about my new blog, so please tell your friends to come see me there too. In addition, I will have a new kit that will be given away next week. It is Twilight inspired, so if you like Twilight, you will definitely want to visit there next week. I am really excited about how that one came together at 1:00 in the morning the other night. (I couldn't sleep) Well, I am off to see the wizard...I mean take the kids to school. See ya!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

2 days in a row with doctors

Well, I decided to go to the doctor yesterday, for myself, which is something I really don't like to do. However for the last 6 days now I have had numbness in my left hand. It is constant and very annoying. So I called the doctor and went for my appointment which led to x-rays and further tests. I do not have answers yet other than the logical guess that it is a compressed nerve somewhere between my neck and my fingers. I hope to get this figured out and fixed soon because I am tired of the constant feeling that my hand is asleep. meanwhile, I have been trying to figure out what I might have done that could have injured my neck , shoulder, or elbow and all I can think of is a couple of weeks ago when I was coaching volleyball and took one of Kaylee's bullet overhand serves to the jaw. It definitely jarred my neck and hurt for a couple of days, but then it seemed fine for a week or two. My neck is sore again so I don't know if that is related to my numbness or not. I guess we will see.

I also talked to the doctor about some digestive issues I have been experiencing for many months and she is doing testing to get to the bottom of that as well. Oh joy!

Last night, Kyle was up a lot of the night with a croupy cough and trouble breathing, so it was back to the doctor again today. She put him on Orapred and hopefully tonight will be better. He sounded so terrible last night, I felt so bad for him that I let him sleep in my bed so I could have him close to me in case he had any more problems.

I've been busy, busy on my scrapbooking blog so go see what I have been up to. I think I have found another great hobby. Maybe this one can one day make me some money. Who knows.

Well, I guess that is it for now. See Ya!

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

I'm So Slow...Halloween and more

Wow, It has been a crazy week and a half. I have been busy working on stuff for my new Digi Scrap blog, PTO Book Fair, teaching my quarterly YW joint lesson, YW in Excellence, Halloween, Halloween Parties, preparing for Tiff's B-day party this week, and making preparations for a digi scrap Christmas Card Class I am teaching tomorrow night for our ward RS Enrichment Night. So, I just need to catch up on what has been going on in our Crazy, Wonderful Life.

First off, after about 3 weeks of working from home, Mike is officially traveling again. He is now working on a job in Las Vegas managing the remodel of 54 McDonald's to add the new McCafe. He is taking over for someone who is far less organized than him and the last 2 weeks have been long and busy. He has still made it home for weekends though which makes me happy. The advantage to working on a job in Vegas is that we have friends and family there that he can visit making his evenings much less lonely. Yeah!

Kaylee started with a new Volleyball team practicing in a nearby town. She LOVES volleyball and just can't seem to get enough of it. She had a super Halloween Bash on Halloween here at our house. Several of her friends came over for the night. They seemed to have a lot of fun. We had set up the unfinished basement as a movie theater for the night. We moved the extra couches from the loft down to the basement, used a carpet scrap and projected a movie on the basement walls. It was pretty cool. In addition we strung cobwebs, hung spooky lights, and had dry ice in the punch.

Tiffany is getting ready for her birthday party this week. She is excited to be turning 11 on Monday. YIKES!!! She is loving being the Student Council President at school and is enjoying reading Twilight.
Ryan is obsessed with Legos lately. He made a plane and has not let anyone take it apart.

Jake is running constantly. He enjoys the park across the street and playing with his new friend Daniel.

Kyle has finally learned to say his K and G sounds. I was beginning to wonder if those sounds would ever come to him, but he finally got them. I am still reminding him of proper pronunciation when he says words using these sounds, but he can say them and he is getting it. How nice it is to hear him say his name as Kyle not Tile.

We had a great ward party and trunk or treat. The theme was Indiana Jones and they had lots of carnival type games for the kids to play. It was a super fun night! Halloween was lots of fun. The kids got way too much candy. Here are some pictures of them in their costumes.
Kyle the Bat, Ryan as Harry Potter, Jake the Power Ranger, and Tiffany the cheerleader. KAylee decided she was too old to dress up this year. Tear Tear, no pictures of her.

So like I said in the beginning, I have been pretty busy. I have been busy designing for my new scrapbook blog and have a scrapbook kit that I hope to release next week. If you are into Digital Scrapbooking, you will have to bookmark my blog and check back often for Freebies. You ca find it at JustForYouDigiScraps.blogspot.com Tomorrow night I am teaching a class for our RS Enrichment about making your own Photo Christmas Cards. I am really excited about it and hope it turns out to be fun. I am also really excited because the other night I bought my tickets fr Twilight the movie. I cannot wait to see it yippee! Well, I suppose I better run for now. See Ya!

Our Family in Pictures