Eight is Great

When my oldest niece was baptized I started a little tradition of taking each niece or nephew out to dinner to celebrate them choosing to be baptized. It was a special night out just for them. I don't know why I haven't posted about it before. Sorry Ashlee, Cameron and Kali and I don't even think I got pictures when I took them out.

This night was Ella's turn. Ella was baptized a couple months ago but with schedules and such, we finally got around to taking her out. And she picked a great place to go that I love...Olive Garden. We had such a fun night celebrating with her. And she ate her entire meal of Mac and Cheese with the extra cheese grated on top. We had a great time and loved celebrating her baptism with her.

Daughtry

The other night we went to a Daughtry concert and had so much fun. Interestingly enough, I didn't even watch American Idol when Daughtry was on it, but since then have enjoyed listening to his music on the radio. Shane and I went and my sister Michelle and her friend Marci.

Daughtry was really good and I was surprised I knew all the songs he sang except for about 3 of them. The concert was sold out and so the crowd was pretty into it as well.

Cavo and Lifehouse opened for them and I actuallly liked Lifehouse just as much as Daughtry. I knew a lot of their songs and the songs I didn't know I still enjoyed. They put on a good show, especially for being an opening number.

Something that I thought was pretty funny happened during the Lifehouse set. The lead singer of Lifehouse decided to jump off stage and walk up the outside aisle of the floor and into the stands for part of his song. So he goes walking up the side of the floor we are on in the stands. So I'm watching above where he is walking and can see this whole thing happening. He has body guards around him but only one in front of him. As he's quickly walking up the aisle, this middle age lady is walking down the aisle, carefully balancing her nachos and soda looking at her food and not where she is going. She is not aware at all that she is in the direct path of the lead singer coming right towards her. They're getting closer and all of the sudden she is in the spotlight right next to him. I don't think she still had even looked up and had any clue who this guy was that was in her way until she was right next to him and saw him singing into a microphone with the spotlight on him. Then all of the sudden you could tell she felt pretty dumb and stepped aside to let him go by. Disaster averted, nachos and drink still in tact. The concert moved on but for some reason I just found this funny as usually when this happens the body guards are in front clearing the aisle before he gets that close. Anyways, just a funny little side story.

I love going to concerts and had a great time.

I hope they call me on a mission

My parents are so excited...they're going on a mission. We've been talking about it for about a year now. They put they're papers in and we've all been anxiously awaiting to see where they would go. They are going for 12 months so we knew it would most likely be somewhere in the United States, but where!?! All of us put in a guess. The grandkids were the cutest as to where they would guess. Abby wanted them to go somewhere where there were a lot of horses...she picked Idaho. Eliza wanted them to go somewhere near her so they could visit...she picked Los Angeles. Others just pointed to random places on the map.

Here is a picture of some of the grandkids holding the map with the places marked that everyone picked.


So we all gathered and watched them open it...



They have been called to serve as Office Specialists in the California Arcadia mission! We were so shocked. Of all the places in the entire United States, they get called to serve in the mission where they and we all grew up. For those of you not familiar with the area let me show you what I mean.



It's about a 20 minute drive from Arcadia to our house (La Canada) we all grew up in.

Well come to find out, my parents knew there was going to be an opening there and through a friend down there, told the mission president they would love to go there and the mission president requested them. So my parents were still pretty surprised because although they knew about it, they didn't know that anything had really gone through.

So Eliza won our little contest as she guessed the closest, Los Angeles! My sister Christy is more then a little excited and plans to take some trips up there on their p-days to visit. As we usually all make it to California about once a year, we may just all get to see them at some point on their mission.

I am so excited and proud of my parents for making this decision. I'm sure it's not easy to give up their nice house, surrounded by friends, family and lots of grandkids and leave. I know they will do a great job and will love serving and being surrounded by all the missionaries. I can't wait to hear all their stories and things they will be doing.

I love you Mom and Dad!

Where are you Tim Tams?

Ok so I know I just posted about Easter candy and all but I have another post about treats. I feel so nutritious these days! :)

Remember when I told you how much I love Tim Tams. Well, Tim Tams are now being made by Pepperidge Farms for America. For a while I had heard Target was the only store carrying them. We had some at our last Tim Tam party over a year ago and then all of the sudden Target stopped carrying them. Well this last November they came back!! And not only did Target have them but many other stores/grocery stores did too. I was so excited. I bought some for me, I bought some for Christmas gifts and not really thinking about it, I just thought Tim Tams were just available all the time now.

Well after Christmas I didn't really think that much about it until a couple of weeks ago. Then I all of the sudden had a big craving for Tim Tams, so one night I drove to Smith's and low and behold, they had NONE. Not only were they out, there wasn't even a space for them to be re-stocked. So the next day at lunch I drove over to the Target closest to work...surely they would still have some...they had NONE...nothing in site. I was so sad! After complaining to Shane about my ordeal, that weekend we were out to dinner and we decided to try the Target by where we were. I knew they wouldn't have any but thought we should just check. Sure enough, NONE. Then I was determined to find out what happened to them. So standing in the cookie aisle of Target, I whipped out my iphone and spoke 'Tim Tams in America' (side note: I love the search feature of the Google app on my iphone.) This is what came up:

"In the fall of 2009, Pepperidge Farm announced that Tim Tam cookies will be made available each year between October and March."
From Wikipedia...click here for more information on Tim Tams

Are you kidding me? I just missed it by about 2 weeks??? October through March! Now I was really sad and resigned to my fate....I couldn't believe I was going to have to wait until October! Very depressed I turned and left the aisle. As I walked to the front of the store....low and behold there at the end of one of the aisles was a whole section of Tim Tams!!!!!!!!!!!! And...to make matters even better, they were on sale! This was the last of the Tim Tams left and I felt like I had hit the jackpot. I ran over to them and just stared. How many to buy??? I checked the freshness date...they're good until December. Hallelujah. So I decided to buy one for each month left until I can get them again in October. So I loaded my arms up with Tim Tams and bought 8!! There was another lady looking at the Tim Tams so I had to go and tell her to stock up because this is it until October. She looked at me funny and said 'oh are they good?' She didn't even know what they were! I told her yes but really I wanted to say if you don't know what they are save them for others that will be excited.



So here's my almost years supply of Tim Tams...food storage at it's best. So I've already eaten my package for April and am waiting most anxiously for May to pull out the next one. I hope I can really keep it to one package per month until October!

Candy

Those of you that know me pretty well know that I LOVE candy. In fact I think I would rather have candy over ice cream...yep, I'm positive of that actually.

I have a favorite kind of candy for almost every holiday. And when the stores get in the next holiday's candy, I get very excited. My 2 favorite holidays that have my favorite candy: Halloween and Easter.

Halloween brings out the best and only kind of candy corns I eat...Brachs. It makes my mouth water just writing about it. They're soft and fresh and just plain yummy.

So the purpose of this post is to talk about my love of Easter candy. It's actually evolved and changed over time.

Growing up Easter candy to me was the regular types of candy and jelly beans. But the Easter Bunny used to always leave a chocolate Sees egg (you know with the pastel flower on top of it) and some Sees sucker sticks (my favorite was the yellow ones...I need to go get one of those, I haven't had one in years!)

Then the last few years, my favorite candy has been the Mini Robin Eggs, Whoppers with a cool, cruncy, shell. Ask Brigitte, she knows...I ate bags and bags of those while we were roommates. I still like them, in fact I think I have 2 bags sitting on my counter right now.



Then a couple years ago I started eating the Cadbury chocolate eggs. Pure, delicious, milk chocolate with the same fun, crunchy shell as Robin Eggs. Just finished my bag of those yesterday. I might need one more bag before Sunday.



However, the last 2 years I have been completely and totally addicted to Sweettart Jelly Beans. Not just jelly beans, the Sweettart jelly beans. You can't find them at every store (try Smiths and K-Mart around here) and you can only get them at Easter time. I can't even begin to tell you the amount of Sweettart jelly beans I have had since February 15 (the day they put out the Easter candy after Valentines.) In fact it would be embarrassing to tell you how many bags I have bought. They are soooo good. My favorite flavors are the green and purple ones and I eat all those out of the bag first.



Some people think I'm weird and crazy...which I realize I kind of am. The good news is Shane likes all the candy I like so he helps me eat it too, and he lets me have all the green ones to myself (what a guy!)

I need to go to the store now and stock up...in 3 days time, all the Sweettart jelly beans will be gone for a whole year (well 10 1/2 months.)

So let me hear from you...What is your favorite kind of candy?

Backyard, part II

Last weekend we had our Gazebo put up in our backyard. Spring is here and the heat is just around the corner (I hope) and I wanted to make sure we had some shade to enjoy our backyard. We still have more work to do in our backyard but I just wanted to post a few pictures of the small progress we made. Now I need some patio furniture to enjoy it with.

Those of you who live around here will know that I took these pictures last weekend. Right now the Gazebo is not brown, it's white, covered in snow!!! SNOW....go away. I want to enjoy the outdoors again very soon!

Thanks

Just a quick note to say thanks for all your comments over the last post. I purposefully didn't respond to any of them because I didn't want this to be a debate, I just wanted everyone to be able to express your opinions without judgment.

I hope everyone enjoyed expressing their opinions as much as I did. I still don't feel settled totally on one side or the other but it sure felt good to express it and to read everyone's opinions.

Now onto lighter subjects...