BEST Sunday

Its been a really good Sunday.
To start out the day we had a farewell in our own ward. The best talk was actually the concluding speaker filling in for her sick husband. She gave such a great talk on prayer.
Then we headed over to the 4th ward, which is where the other half of our old ward is now, for Adam Swan's homecoming. He gave a great talk. It was so fun to see all of our friends. We had a really great time hanging out at the Swan's after church.
We went to visit Paul's parents and his brother who is town for the weekend. Jared and Kamryn were playing card games which was very entertaining for Paul's mom to watch.
Tonight we went to a stake fireside for the young men and their parents. It was about preparing now to serve a mission. Its hard to believe that is less than 2 years away for Justin.

BEST little fish

Today Jared and Kamryn were invited to a birthday party for one of their church friends. It was at the splash zone at the rec center. They had such a great time and it was so much to fun watch them play together and with their friends.

Kamryn, my little fish

Jared, my other little fish

Kamryn always has loved going down the slide on her own but Jared never dared to.
Well, this time, Kamryn got him to go down with her and he liked it.
Then they went down over and over and over.

Jared decided he could do it on his own and loved it. Yea!

BEST stuff

Just some random stuff:

I love this picture of Jared and Kamryn asleep on the couch last night. This was at 6:00 pm - there goes an early bedtime.
Tonight I got them to bed early so Brooke, Taylor and I watched a movie. We watched
Antwone Fisher with Denzel Washington and the rest of the cast were unknowns, at least to me anyway. I've checked this movie out a couple of times from the library but never got to watch it. I really liked it a lot. It was very different than what I thought it was going to be. Its based on the actual life of Antwone Fisher and he wrote the screenplay himself. He is an amazing person.

BEST music

We really get into music at our house. We have more iPods than we do people in our house. I alone have 3 - a regular iPod, the first kind of shuffle that came out and then the next version of shuffle to use when I was running.
Our family is into all kinds of music. One of our favorite things to do as part of FHE is take turns playing a favorite song from our iPods (how in the world did we live before iPods?).
I've read two different posts today about favorite playlists. They are here and here. I went on iTunes and listened to all of the songs listed on those playlists and I've decided I live in a cave and I'm getting old. I was only familiar with one group from all those songs - Muse.
After listening to all those songs I decided I wanted to make my own favorite playlist of what I've been listening to lately. With our entire iTunes library we could listen to music for over 12 days with no repeats (and not everything is loaded from our CDs onto iTunes). There is not enough time to really listen to all the good music out there. But here are some of my favorite downloads (we won't even talk about how much money we've spent downloading music):

Current Favorites Playlist

• Need You Now - Lady Antebellum
• 4 Minutes - Madonna with Justin Timberlake
• 4 in the Morning - Gwen Stefani
• 1973 - James Blunt
• Make a Memory - Bon Jovi
• You Could Be Happy - Snow Patrol
• Chasing Pavements - Adele
• Brick - Ben Folds Five
• Use Somebody - Brooke White's version
• Use Somebody - Kings of Leon's version
  
• Hurt and Fighter - Christina Aguilera
• Tennessee Line - Daughtry
• Only You Can Love me This Way - Keith Urban
• Ain't no Sunshine - Kris Allen's version on AI
• Happy - Leona Lewis
• Bye Bye - Mariah Carey
• Pleasure Songs - The Mary Onettes
• Uprising - Muse
• Dream Catch Me - Newton Faulkner
• Celebrate Me Home - Ruben Studdard
• It's a Man's Man's Man's World and A Change is Gonna Come - Seal

What are your favorites??

BEST youth activity??

So, remember doing roadshows as a youth?
Are they fond memories or a nightmare?
Well, for me, it was not a good experience personally. I'm not a big fan of the roadshow.
And I'm pretty vocal about not being a fan.
Now, what am I doing? I can't belive this but I'm one of the main leaders in our ward's upcoming roadshow. I'm the organizer of the committee. We have a great acting director and another awesome music direcotr. My kids and husband are all laughing at me.
Tonight was our first "practice"
We introduced the theme to the kids. The stake theme is "Disney Do-Over" and our ward has a fun script that Justin wrote after putting ideas together from our committee. We are lucky to have a good size youth group with several who are excited about being in the roadshow.
The read-through went pretty well. Now to get to real practices and hoping that the kids can get into their parts and have fun acting.

BEST TV Show

I know there are many that will disagree with this post and that's totally ok.
But, for me, the BEST thing on TV is American Idol. Its actually the only show I watch. I don't have time to watch anything else. We don't have cable or DVR so that makes sure I don't watch much.
Usually I don't really get into the audition phase but this year its been a bit better - not so much of the ridiculous ones. Although the ones they show are pretty interesting.
I always love when they really get into the show and see the progression of the singers from the beginning to the end. And I can't wait to see how Ellen is as a judge. Should be fun.

BEST invention

The BEST invention, for me, could be a lot of things, but I'm going to say the Internet is the BEST invention. It is so amazing and definitely mindboggling how it works. I can't even begin to think about it or try to figure it out.
How did we ever survive high school without the internet? When Mr McAllister, my sophomore English teacher, would ask his crazy questions we had no Google to go to for answers. The only question I remember was "What is a blue moon?" It took a long time for someone to come in with an answer.
How did we communicate?
How did we research something?
How did we receive information, whether public or personal?
The internet definitely has its pitfalls and dangers but I'll just say I'm grateful for it and its good stuff.

BEST what?

So, what was the BEST part of this day? Good question. It certainly wasn't having to get up early for 9:00 am church. Some of the good things of the day:

• Gina singing a beautiful solo during sacrament meeting. She is a young adult in our ward with the most angelic voice. I could've listened to her for the whole meeting.
• Having a very productive roadshow committee meeting. I can't even believe I'm on this committee. I was not in favor of doing roadshows at all and was rather disgusted that the stake is MAKING us do them. But I felt pity for Paul since he's over the activities committee which puts him over the roadshow. He guilted me into going to the first meeting and now I'm one of the main people in charge. How does that happen?
• Watching the playoff games with my boys.
• Brooke making waffles for our family at dinner. She came downstairs at 8:00 pm and asked if we were ever going to have dinner. We told her when the game, which was in overtime, was over we'd eat. So she went upstairs and started making the waffles. She's awesome.
• Listening to Justin tell us about his date the night before with Isabelle to go the MA dance for his school. They went bowling, then made pizza at one of the guys' house, then downtown to some club for the dance, then back to another guys house to watch a movie. What's with these all day dates?
• Chatting on Facebook with my great neighbor about our girls playing volleyball the last 2 days and comparing experiences.

Looking back, it was a good day. Now I have to face laundry day tomorrow :(

BEST volleyball day EVER!!!

Mt Olympus 16 White Team
Emma, Taran, Katelyn, Brooke, Rachel, Victoria, Lauren, Coach Adrian
Front: Raichelle, Megan

It was the greatest day for Brooke's team. They struggled a bit yesterday and had a hard time at first playing together. NOT today. They played AWESOME! It was so great.
They won all their matches, played 4 matches straight and took 1st place in their bracket of the tournament. They ended up 23rd out of 42 overall. Right in the middle, which is a good place to start for the next 2 tournaments.
But, the best part of the day was watching Brooke really do so well. It was such a treat. And to think I considered for a minute not going to the tournament today ( I always want to go but feel bad missing the boys basketball games and Justin was going to a school dance tonight). If I'd missed seeing her play today I would have been so sad.
Brooke played great - she passed great, played well on the back row and got some great digs, she was hitting hard which is so fun to watch, and she served FANTASTIC!! She had 9 Ace serves in the whole tournament and in one of the matches this morning during pool play she served
15 serves in a row!!!
What a great day and it was so amazing to see Brooke so happy and play so great with her team!

BEST sport

Its club volleyball season again.
I love volleyball. I never get sick of watching volleyball - which is a good thing because these first tournaments are pretty long.
We left this afternoon at 2:00 and just got home tonight at 11:00.
Brooke's team was playing at The Gym in West Haven which is west of the freeway opposite Ogden. It took longer to get up there than expected so the girls got there just in time to start warming up for the first match.
The first tournament of the season is always rough - the girls are just getting used to playing together and are always a little tentative. Brooke's team took 3rd in pool play tonight. They really should have been 2nd but oh well. Its back to The Gym tomorrow morning at 6:30 to start all over again.
Its such a good thing I love volleyball.

BEST night and book

Its book club night and that's always a good night. The 3rd Thursday of the month is sacred and most of us that go to book club really hate it when we have to miss book club.
Our book club was organized over 15 years ago by my good friend, Melinda. We've been meeting every month ever since. Some members have come and gone but for the most part its been the same group of women that whole time. Its great to share what's been happening in our lives and what we think about the book we've read. And its always yummy to try new desserts!
Tonight we discussed THE HELP. What a great book. I'd read it a couple of months ago but this time around I listened to it (thanks to my aunt Sandy sharing it with me from her iTunes library) and it was SO GOOD. I find myself talking like those southern women.

BEST place to shop

Paul and I've been doing a lot of shopping the last couple of days.
Paul HATES shopping, especially for clothes for himself.
So he doesn't go very often - like once every 6 years or so.
Usually I buy stuff for him and bring it home and then he tries it on and keeps it or I take it back.
On Saturday I mentioned that I had a 30% off coupon for Kohls so our date Saturday night was to find some dress clothes for him. We were there until they closed but didn't really get to finish. So Monday we went to a different Kohls but didn't do as well there. So Tuesday I went out to Kohls at Jordan Landing and did some pre-shopping for Paul and then he met there after work. We hit the jackpot there.
In all this is what we ended up with for Paul:

• 4 pairs of dress shoes - 2 pair of exactly the same pair brown shoes ( he did this the last time he bought shoes 6 years ago and it worked out really well)
• 1 pair of court shoes
• 1 pair of work boots
• 2 belts
• 1 wallet
• several pairs of dress pants for work (this is the part we still have to sort out)
• 2 new ties to go with
• this is the BIGGIE - 2 NEW SUITS - Paul has never bought a suit for himself so this was huge.

Very SUCCESSFUL shopping trips - and now we're done for the next 6 years.

BEST way to Visit Teach

My visiting teachers have a great group that they visit and they get us all together and we meet to have dinner. Tonight we met at Zupas - YUM! And the really fun thing is we branch out each month and invite some of the sisters we visit and each month its a different group of ladies. This is especially good since our ward recently went through a boundary realignment. It was great to visit with so many great ladies and have an evening out.

BEST day

I had the BEST day - I spent the entire day with my hubby! We haven't done that for a long, long time. Part of the day was spent helping to get his mom to 2 different doctor appts but between the appts we went to lunch at Market Street Grill (we had gift certificates from Christmas) - YUM!
After we were done helping his parents we went to Sam's Club and wondered around while he was getting new tires put on his car. And then we went shopping at Kohl's for him. Nothing too exciting but it was great just to spend some time together.

A BEST Movie

Last night we watched possibly one of the worst movies ever.
Tonight we are watching one of our favorite family movies - The Princess Bride.

Not the BEST movie

Brooke has to read 2001: A Space Odyssey for school. She's really not into science fiction so she got the movie at the library to see if it could help her understand the book. We are all watching it tonight and it is the STRANGEST movie we've ever seen.

BEST offensive player

Wednesday night was the year end banquet for the Brighton HS volleyball teams. The season ended at the beginning of November but this was the first chance to do the banquet. It was a nice evening and the girls seemed to have fun hanging out together again.

Brooke, Ashley and Emily

These three girls all got awards for the sophomore team.

Ashley got the best defensive player.

Emily got the MVP award.

And

Brooke got the BEST offensive player award.

To be honest, I was a little surprised when her coach said her name for this award. I thought she was a good player but towards the end of the season he didn't play her as much. I was very proud of her.

Adams, Brooke's sophomore team coach talking about the sophomore team

and how much they improved over the season.

Most of the sophomore team.

Not doin' her BEST

Today has been a super busy day. I fit in 2 VT appts, brought my mom home from the hospital - she had minor surgery yesterday. On the way home I got a call from Paul's dad telling me that Carolyn had been in for a chest x-ray and her chest is full of fluid and her regular dr was sending her to a pulmonogist. he was exhausted and upset and she was refusing to go. So the rest of the afternoon was spent helping them get to that appt. It was a good appt and I really liked the doctor, Mark Zenger (I think). He was very nice to her yet honest about her condition. Her symptoms are puzzling to him and he's ordered some tests to try to figure out what's going on.
Hopefully we can find some relief for all the pain she's been in.

BEST dance teacher ever

Miss Liz is the BEST dance teacher. We've known her since we were in college. We were in the same ward and lived up at the University Village in the same court. We were in the Primary presidency together and pregnant with our first babies at the same time.

Now Kamryn is taking dance lessons from her and it is awesome.

Kamryn with Miss Liz

Kamryn loves to go to dance.
Its totally worth the 20 minute drive out to West Jordan.

BEST storytime

Since Jared and Kamryn were about 18 months I've signed them up for storytime on and off. We usually went once and then not again for several months. I was never too impressed with the adult doing the storytime and it was too much hassle to be worth it.
Then Desiree told me about this lady that does storytime for the preschool age at Whitmore Library. She is great and the kids love it. It is 3 weeks of the month and the off week is torture for the kids and me. There was no storytime in December and we really missed it.

They love to sing the songs.

And Janell (the storytime lady) always does fun stories with actions and displays and visual aids. She also always does a fun craft to go along with the theme of the day.

Kamryn getting ready to make her snowman craft.

Jared working on his snowman.

Having fun painting and doing stamps.

Jared and Kamryn love story time and so do I!

The BEST parts of my day

The BEST parts of my day were:

• going over to Jenny's to have her help me finish a Valetine's craft. I've had this craft in my room for almost a year and finally got it finished. Thanks Jenny.
• finishing the laundry and having it out of the kitchen BEFORE dinner.
• making dinner with Brooke. She had to make a complete, and nutritious dinner for an assignment in her foods class. She made a new recipe, Sante Fe Chicken, and it was SO GOOD.
• Going with my parents to my aunt and uncle's house for homemade donuts and to hear my cousin tell us about his experience in Quito, Equador. He was there for 3 month volunteering in 5 different orphanges in the city. He had a DVD he showed us and those kids are SO CUTE!

Not my BEST Sunday

Last night while we gathered together for scriptures and prayers Taylor mentioned that he was giving a talk in church soon. He wasn't sure when or who had asked him. He was very vague about it and that should have been my clue to call the bishop and check up on this. But I didn't - BIG MISTAKE!
So, this morning at 8:00 Paul calls and says he has something for me to do - help Taylor with a talk because he was on the program for today - at 9:00. I freaked out. I tend to do that too much. I told Paul he better be coming home to help him and why didn't the bishop let us, the parents know, and why wasn't there a little reminder call yesterday about this (I know this is what Paul does when he is asking a youth to speak and I thought that was the procedure).
I told Paul to talk to Taylor and that was the last thing I heard. I tried calling Paul back but he didn't answer - I wanted to make sure he was coming home. So I called the bishop's office and the bishop answered. I should've just asked for Paul but I kind of let the bishop have it. (I feel badly about it now). I told him he should make sure the parents know and he said Paul did know about it.
So Paul came home and helped Taylor get a talk ready. The theme for today was your favorite Old Testament story. Paul did a great job helping Taylor and told me to go away to and try to get my head in the right frame of mind to go to church. That of course made me not want to go at all but I did as he asked and tried to calm down.
We made it to church, a little early even.
And you know what, Taylor did a FANTASTIC job! He was amazing and it turned out great, better than if I had helped him for the week. Taylor told the story of David and Goliath in his own words and then talked about how its important to have faith in God and not fear men. He did all of this without anything written down except for a few key words. Then he related a personal story from when he was 5 or 6 and he even got a little emotional about it. He told about when we were living in Phoenix and I couldn't get the stove to light (it was gas) and I was trying to fix dinner. Taylor told me he'd said a prayer and that I should try to light the stove again and it lit right up. He shared this story and then bore his testimony.
I know I'm biased but I think it was one of the best youth talks we've had in a long time.
And I apologized to the bishop and will say sorry to Paul for freaking out. And the lesson I've learned is to go with the flow and leave it to Paul to get things done right. And try to be more mellow.

BEST new game

We played this game up at the cabin with my cousin, Alex. Justin and Taylor really liked it so we bought it with Christmas gift money. We've played it several times since. Its a great game for our family and is different every time we play. Its a strategy game so it will be a miracle if I ever win.

BEST gingerbread houses

This is our family's first attempt at making gingerbread houses.
The house on the left is Taylor's house that started out as a school project.
I failed on making his royal icing so he didn't get much of the house done at school.
So I made the royal icing again at 11:00 at night and we finished decorating it together late on a Saturday night. It was really fun and I wanted to do more.
So, on Christmas Eve I was getting the last few things at the grocery store and they announced that gingerbread kits were on sale for 1.99! Cool. I picked one up and that is what we did for our family activity on Christmas eve. I never did post a finished project picture so here they are.

Taylor's house

Our family's Christmas Eve house

BEST post on jeans

This is the BEST post I've read on the trials of jeans wearing.
I've recently had these dramas myself. This is my favorite and best pair of jeans and as you can see by the pictures they are blown out. SO sad.

Blown out crotch stitched back together

Pocket ripped away from jeans -

this was the final straw since you could see my underwear now

Belt loop ripped off

Hole in pocket

Hole in the knee

These were well worn and much loved jeans.

I feel like I should have a funeral for them.

I went shopping with the kids last Saturday and while they were off finding their stuff I was trying to find a replacement pair of jeans. I tried on 14 pairs of jeans! And found one pair I love and that fits. I consider that quite successful.

BEST kind of mail

This is the only part of Christmas I haven't taken down yet. I have a hard time taking down all the fun pictures we received over the holidays. I love getting the mail in December - there is finally something worth going to the mailbox. I especially love reading newsletters from our relatives and friends.

BEST place to be

My new years resolution this year is to go to the temple at least once a month.
I feel really bad that I probably only went twice last year.
So this year I intend to go at least once a month and hopefully more than that some months to make up for last year.

Ladies from our ward

We thought it would be a good idea to go during the day on a weekday

It turns out that everybody else had the same idea

We waited for an hour just to get in

But that's okay, it was wonderful to just sit in the peacefulness of the temple

Afterwards we all ate lunch in the temple cafeteria and it was nice to visit

And get to know some sisters better

I love this temple

(and can't wait until its this kind of weather again)

BEST kind of family history

Erma Kunzler and Paul's dad, John Adams

On Sunday we got together for a little family history talk.

Erma is in our ward and when she met Paul she asked him about his ancestors. They discovered that they had a common ancestor, Arza Adams. Ever since they discovered this, Paul has been anxious to get his dad together with Erma. We finally got them together and it was fun to listen to them compare family histories.

John and Erma share Arza Adams as their great-grandfather. Their grandfathers are brothers, Nathan and Joshua. It was a great get together for everyone, but especially for John and Erma.

BEST primary activity

Kamryn and Jared at the annual primary breakfast. Our ward has been doing this activity for several years and its a great idea. They get to meet their new teacher before Sunday. Jared and Kamryn are in the same class and have one same teacher that they had last year and one new teacher, Susan. It was good for them to meet her and learn her name - today they were looking for her and asking me where Susan is and when is time to go to class. I'm so glad they love Primary.

BEST Friends

some of our group of friends from way back

Some have been friends since 1st grade

I was lucky enough to meet these girls when we were in 6th grade

and they let me in their circle

and we have been friends ever since

My friend Michelle and her sister Rachel.

I remember when Rachel was born and now she's having her 1st baby.

Paige and Lisa

Tina and Melinda

Friends we missed that night: Charri, Stacie and Sharmyn

I am VERY grateful for these wonderful friends. I am so LUCKY to have had the same girlfriends for over 30 years!!

BEST place - The Cabin