Post Water Line Repair Photos

As many of you know, our water line running from the street to our house sprung a leak last Thursday. Four leaks actually. We had a vacation to St. George planned Friday morning - Sunday, so our water was turned off during that time. Brad spoke with lots of plumbers / excavators on Monday and got their bids. Tuesday (yesterday) we were excited for the project to start, so we could get life back to normal again. Our excavator / plumber was very confident that he'd only have to dig a hole around the meter, allowing him to pull the old pipe out, and the new one in (without disturbing the yard too much). Last night at 7pm he and his crew realized that the pipe was not going to pull. It was completely stuck in the ground, not even budging. That's when they tried digging in the flower bed by the house, so that they could try pulling it again. It still didn't work, so that's when they had to dig up the lawn. Because they had the excavator originally starting by the street, then digging by the house, and then eventually digging in the middle, the lawn got ran over by the excavator like crazy. Last night somehow a brass connector piece was buried in all the dirt somewhere. Without the piece our plumber couldn't get our water hooked up last night. So, this morning about 7:15 they were back, and finished at 10:30. They ended up putting about 8 hours into a job they thought would be quick. I am so thankful that the crew seemed very honest, and that our plumber said he'd never raise the price after giving a bid. They did their best to dig shallow to get the lawn scraped off, and they set it to the left, and placed the dirt to the right. They also intentionally left the area raised up so it could settle during the winter. Our flower bed is definitely going to need a complete overhaul come spring, but we'll be okay.

Here are some sad looking photos I just took this morning. Now I'm really excited for it to snow (to cover up the ugly!):














i

Officially Not Smarter Than A 3rd Grader

I've decided that I'm officially not smarter than a 3rd grader! On a regular basis, Megan's homework reminds me of math terms that I haven't used in 15 years.
For instance, yesterday Paige showed me this, and asked me to tell her what the words said:

I told her, "It says, one, two, three..." and so on. She was so upset with me. She absolutely did not believe that that's what the words said. After insisting that what I told her was true, I tried to teach her that there are 3 ways to show a number: you can write the number, you can spell out the number, or you can draw dots to symbolize the number. Immediately Megan corrected me and said, "What about standard-form and picture-form?"

Seriously?!

So then Megan wrote out an example of standard form for her mother! 50+5 = 55
then she drew 5 towers of 10 blocks each, plus 5 individual blocks.

It looks like if I'm ever going to use that elementary education degree of mine, I'm going to have to hit the books again! :)

2011 HALLOWEEN FUN

It's been a fun, exhausting week!! I took Ashlie and Paige to a Halloween party at the library on Wednesday, then to a neighborhood party on Friday, then we had a family party down in Kaysville on Saturday, Megan's classroom party on Monday, then trick-or-treating! We toasted pumpkin seeds, made white chocolate covered strawberry ghosts, and ate rectangular shaped homemade pizza instead of our traditional pumpkin shaped one (because I was in a serious hurry!). I dressed Ashlie and Paige in their costumes 4 times, and Megan 3 times...and washed Paige's witch costume 3 times this week! :) We trick-or-treated until the kids couldn't go anymore, and they came back very happy kids! Here are some pictures I wanted to share...

All ready for the neighborhood party at the Ray's house:

The doughnut game!


Decorating pumpkins!


My family, my sister Kim and her family, and my mom & dad.


Me & Brad the leprechaun, my two cute cowgirls, and my cute little witch. Brad has the most perfect leprechaun voice by the way:


Happy girls after finding goodie bags in the leaves:



Playing a game that Brad and I put together for the kids:


Sunday I came home from choir practice and saw this cute spider web hanging in my living room! These two were responsible:


Sunday night we carved our pumpkins. I was proud of Megan for drawing the face on her pumpkin for the first time. I thought she did great!
Megan's pumpkin:

Ever since I did a jack-o-lantern activity with my primary kids, Paige has known that she's wanted her pumpkin to have these eyes with the eyelashes. They turned out cute!

Here's Ashlie's pumpkin!


Monday I got to help do a Halloween party in Megan's class. I did a couple of games with the kids. For one of my games I had a basket filled with about 20 or so Halloween items, and I had all of the kids come up in groups to view them. Then I gave them probably a couple of minutes to write down what they remembered. The boy that won remembered 18 items. I was impressed! This is Megan's copy from the game:

Megan playing the doughnut game:

Megan won her round of the doughnut game, so she got to be one of 4 kids to repeat the game in "The Challenger's Round"! To win your round you had to be the first to pull your doughnut from the string. You didn't have to have it eaten entirely. I couldn't believe that Megan won the challenger's round, and that she ate 2 large glazed doughnuts during class!


Our ward did a trunk-or-treat at 5:00, then we went as a family to a couple of different neighborhoods. The second neighborhood we went to had tons of kids out and about everywhere, and it was a lot of fun. We don't have sidewalks or very many street lamps by our house, so we don't get trick-or-treaters (so we visit other neighborhoods). We were out until 8:00 and the kids' buckets were full!
Ashlie at the trunk-or-treat:

Megan and Paige's hauls:


2 year old on a sugar high!

Some very happy kiddos!!


Favorite moments from last night: Megan skipping down the sidewalk while trick-or-treating, and Ashlie saying trick-or-treat louder than her sisters (the entire way up people's sidewalks). She was so much fun last night. She wanted me to carry her in between houses, but even when her bucket was getting heavy she wouldn't let me hold it. She was not going to let it out of her sights! :) I put all the candy buckets away up high in their closets before bed last night, and Paige told me she wouldn't go to sleep until I put her bucket on her bed. She said "I promise I won't eat any". I guess she just wanted to know it was close by? :) I didn't find any empty candy wrappers in her bed this morning, so I'll assume she kept her word.

Now it's time for some fun November memories! Happy November everyone!

Future Athlete Maybe?

Megan loves exercise. She loves P.E. at school. She's not aggressive, so although we keep putting her in soccer, I'm thinking track might be a better fit for her. She's also the kind of girl who rarely says she is bored - only because she's so creative that she comes up with her own fun. Last night while I was doing dishes, she was doing all sorts of crazy moves back and forth from the living room, down the hallway to her bedroom. Turns out she was timing herself to see how long it would take her to go from her room to the living room, doing different moves. Here are her results (which she charted herself on a piece of paper):

• Snake (1 minute 25 seconds)
• Spider (36 seconds)
• Hopping on one leg (15 seconds)
• Kangaroo (10 seconds)
• Horse (9 seconds)
• Crab (32 seconds)
• Twisting (1 minute 26 seconds)
• Karate (13 seconds)
• Turtle (2 minutes 23 seconds)
• Run (7 seconds)
• Heels (16 seconds)
• Tip Toes (11 seconds)

My favorite was when she came into the kitchen (where I was) and said, "Wow! The turtle was a slow one!" I asked her what she did for turtle, and she showed me her super, super slow crawl. It was seriously hilarious.

By the way, we're hoping our new camera comes today! Megan's been forgiven, and I've learned my lesson that I'll only take pictures when she's not looking!

Hole-In-The-Rock

I thought some of the John family would like this. Maybe you know this, and maybe you don't:

Until about 2 years ago when I was reading Gerald Lund's book "The Undaunted", I had no idea that I had ancestors that were Hole-In-The-Rock Pioneers. As I read the book I kept reading the name "Decker", and I quickly learned that my Grandma John's relatives were part of this neat history. Anyway, there are some good websites out there: trekholeintherock.blogspot.com, and others, as well as a book called Hole in the Rock by David E. Miller that mention my ancestors. If you've read the book, or know the story, I think you'll like these paintings that I found online by a man named Lynn Griffin:

This one is of the last wagon:

I found out that the following Hole-In-The-Rock Pioneers are related to all of us John's: (I've done some reading to figure out exactly how they're related). Hopefully I've recorded it all correctly. Anyway, it's pretty neat to find out information about these ancestors online.

- Cornelius Isaac Decker & Elizabeth Morris (married; they are my grandma's great-grandparents)

- James Bean Decker & Anna Maria Mickelsen (my grandma's great-grandpa's son & his wife; his father is Zachariah Bruyn Decker, and his mother is Nancy Bean)

- Nathanial Alvin Decker & Emma Morris (my grandma's grandparents)

- Zachariah Bruyn Jr. Decker (my grandma's grandpa's brother) - he's married to Emma Seraphine Smith

- Zachariah Bruyn Sr. Decker (married to Nancy Bean; my grandma's great grandma)

- George William Decker (my grandmas grandpa's brother)

- Peter Mickelsen & Harriet Emily Decker (married; Harriet Emily Decker is the daughter of Zachariah Bruyn Decker Sr. & Nancy Bean)

Ever since I read The Undaunted I've kind of taken an interest in family history work. I thought maybe I was a little too young to be interested in it, but Elder Bednar's talk in conference proved me wrong. He said, "Many of you may think family history work is to be performed primarily by older people. But I know of no age limit described in the scriptures or guidelines announced by Church leaders restricting this important service to mature adults. You are sons and daughters of God, children of the covenant, and builders of the kingdom. You need not wait until you reach an arbitrary age to fulfill your responsibility to assist in the work of salvation for the human family..."

A little research on the new family search website taught me that I'm related to all sorts of Lords, Kings, etc. on my mom's side of the family. It's pretty cool!

A Halloween Primary Music Time

I'm the primary chorister in our ward, and we've been reviewing songs since the first week of September for our upcoming Primary Program. In preparation, the Primary Presidency gave me the entire 40 minutes of sharing time / music time this past Sunday. I know the kids are growing tired of the songs, so I knew I had to make the 40 minutes of music time fun. I was thrilled yesterday when all my work paid off! It was fun for me to see the kids creating these jack-o-lantern faces.

• First, I went to pumpkinlady.com and found some great jack-o-lantern faces that I dragged onto my computer desktop. I hand drew the mouth, nose, & eye pieces that I liked onto yellow construction paper. Once I had as many as I wanted (I ended up making 14 of each), I put masking tape on the back of each piece and taped them onto an extra white board that I have. Then I made 14 different shaped pumpkins out of construction paper.
• I had all of the pumpkins hung up on the chalkboard with magnets when the kids came in, and had the marker board (with face pieces) on an easel low to the ground. Anyway, the whole concept was to make it fun for the kids to sing through all of the primary program songs, and to encourage them to sing the best they could. I told the kids that I would be looking for the best singers, and that they would be the ones that I'd choose to come up and pick a piece for our jack-o-lanterns.
• So the singing went great! After each song we sang, I chose a child (well, normally about 3 - 5) that sang the song well and told them that they could choose an eye, nose, etc. The kids completed one pumpkin at a time, so we could make sure each face got completed. They turned out real cute I think! Of course, about the last 5 minutes was spent saying "Who hasn't had a turn yet?" and making sure they all got a chance to come up. It helps that we have a small primary. Every single child got a turn, and at the end I invited one girl who sang awesome the entire time to come up and have a second turn. I only had about 3 pieces left over, meaning that we had about 38 kids in our combined junior & senior primary. See, sometimes a small ward has it's advantages. You nearly always get a turn!

Going to that website: pumpkinlady.com made me wonder why I still think and think about how I can carve my pumpkins each year. From now on I'm going to that site (or one of the gazillion others) for my inspiration! Megan's called dibs for the pumpkin that is on the top row, second from the left (That's why it has eyebrows. She used the extra eyes and turned them into eyebrows.) Anyway, that's how she wants her pumpkin carved this year! Paige wants her pumpkin to have "woman lips" like the pumpkin on the top row, 2nd from the right! :) She's funny. That's actually the piece she put on during primary time. :)

Book titles to pass on

My blog will temporarily have to do without any photos, due to the death of our digital camera #3. The blog is to blame actually. I was taking a photo of something cute, and by doing so upset my daughter, causing her to knock it out of my hands - causing it to die a sudden death on the ceramic tile in the kitchen. It seems not everyone is happy to have the cute little things they do photographed.

I actually wanted to write about some of the books Brad and I have been reading. I don't know what has happened to us, but lately we both love to read, and will stay up late just to do so. I keep a long running list of books I want to read, and I'm always adding to it. A few months ago I searched online for "Clean Reads", because I was tired of checking out a book, only to find it filled with language I didn't want to read. I found a couple of excellent websites. On one of them, a suggested book was "The Witch of Blackbird Pond".

I never read this in school, and actually thought maybe it would be a good book to read before Halloween. It was actually more a story of independence, friendship, & romance, and had absolutely nothing to do with Halloween. I LOVED THIS BOOK!!! I finished it last night (early this morning at 12:15), and am convinced that I want a copy for my book shelf. There wasn't a single boring page in the entire book in my opinion. It actually reminded me a lot of Little Women. Most people have probably read it, but I hadn't, so maybe you haven't either. Anyways, GREAT book, and a quick read!

You'll be surprised by the titles of these books that Brad is reading. There's a story behind these. Dan Wells (the author of the series) actually worked with Brad as a writer for ICON HEALTH & FITNESS in Logan. Brad and I became friends with Dan & his wife while we lived up that way. Anyway, Dan wrote his first book series. Our library didn't carry the books, so Brad put in a purchase request. The librarian laughed at the titles and said "Are you going to leave those books lying around with your girls in the house?" The first one, which he just finished was "I am not a serial killer", and now he's 30 pages from finishing "Mr. Monster". The third book in the series is "I don't want to kill you". Keep in mind, this guy (Dan) is a good guy - we had no doubt that they were going to be clean books. Brad has really liked them, and thinks that they are really clever.




We both liked The Mark by Marilyn Bunderson


I loved this book, and am excited for the sequel that's coming out in November:


Brad recently read and liked:
Slathbog's Gold - ML Forman

The Horn of Moran - ML Forman


I read "Flipped" by Wendelin Van Draanen, which I'm hesitant to recommend, because it does seem like it had some language in it. It was good, just not my favorite. However, when I finished it I couldn't stop thinking about the message of the book. One chapter would be from the girl's point of view, then the next was in the boy's point of view. You relive the same exact instance two chapters in a row, but completely differently. It's all about how sometimes we judge, but we don't know the whole story. What we're thinking might actually be totally wrong. It did have a great message.


I'll be taking a night off, so I can watch TV. It's Biggest Loser tonight! By the way, anyone else liking Terra Nova? Those are the only 2 shows were even watching. Maybe that's why we have time to read! :)

Fall Photos

Since winter weather is supposedly hitting tomorrow, I thought I'd better get around to posting these fall photos we just took. Fall is a fun time, but it just doesn't last long enough around here! Brad and I have enjoyed taking fall pictures ever since Megan was really little - just for fun. I'll be thinking of my sister in Arizona tomorrow while I pull out the winter coats.

I LOVE Ashlie in this picture - I kind of think she steals the show! :)


Here's Us: