It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Tis' the craziest season of all. First there is piano recital...

(Jingle bell, Jingle bell, Jingle bell rock...)

Swim meet... (took 1st place in two different heats!)

Next we had a orchestra concert...

Then we had school play...

(Christopher did a great job!)

Winter sing...

(Look for the girl in Santa's hat! So darn cute!)

Preschool program...

(Kathryn loves to sing!!!!!!)

And of course everything else that goes with Christmas...shopping, cards, sub for santa, excitment, and the ever enjoyable, Christmas music, which may be my favorite part, so I usually get an early start (October?).

This post may be too graphic for the weak of heart (or stomach)

So, you know that we have a gofer problem, or let me say "had" a gofer problem. After my last posting of the man of our house taking care of business setting off gofer bombs, we had a new development.

A couple of days later, I was walking past our corner where the little critters seem to make a big mess of mounds, and I could see a very fresh pile of dirt. I marched right into the man of the house and said...we have another intruder and the evidence is fresh.

Well, I must say for all the gofer bombs that we had set off in their holes, we must have some well-trained militant gofer that is not effected by our warfare. We had used them all....two whole packages used and they seem to be saying "Hit me with your best shot!" So that is exactly what Mr. Wack-A-Mole did. Not having any more gofer bombs left, and not wanting to run over to Home Depot and risk missing this opportunity, he got his pellet air rifle and made his post next to the fresh mound of dirt.

I was just leaving and took the opportunity to call my mom and tell her how funny it was that he was going to waste his time. That it would take less time to just drive himself to the local Home Depot and just buy more bombs, but he wanted to stake out the gofer hole instead. Well about 1/2 hour later I got a phone call, from Mr. Wack-A-Mole gone military defense squad, and he told me he had shot that pesky gofer right between the eyes! We have won the war against gofer terror, at least this one. He hit him with this best shot!

Kathryn in Church Today

Ah... Stake Conference, on one hand, it's only 2 hours - on the other hand, it seems like 5 - especially with 5 bored children (6 if you include me). So in the middle of the meeting, Kathryn looks up lovingly to Liz and says, while gently caressing her face and brushing her hair out of the way "Mom, let me help you" She begins to comb her hair now with a colored pencil.
"You're pretty, but you're not cute."

Posted by Thom

Who is that man?

So we have this little problem in our front yard. We will walk out and find little mounds of dirt in our grass. It is the evidence that we have a growing hotel under our earth that rents out to gofer passersby. We had a problem for about the first 4 years we lived here, and than a reprieve for the last 3, but wouldn't you know who has come back to visit? Those pesky gofers!

But as you can see, they won't be around for long...I could actually hear them runny and screaming "Save yourselves! Run! The WACK A MOLE champion is coming!" And as you can see, my good husband does look armed and dangerous. If those gofers know what's best for them they will run fast and tell their friends, too.

Personally, I have lost that childhood tenderness I use to have when my brother's would come up from the downstairs with a dead mouse in a trap, or firecrackers in their hand with a mission to blow up the ant holes. Oh, how I would cry, feeling the pain of the unnecessary death of one of God's creatures. Gone are those days. These gofers have made one too many mounds in my yard and I say ...

"Get 'em honey!"

To all of you loyal followers...

including:
Becky,
Connie,
Thom,
and Liz....
Thank you for following :)

Post from Thom:

Sunday Morning, November 9th. Isn't is a great feeling when you wake up and for a minute think it might be Fast Sunday (also known as Really Slow Sunday around our house), and then realize that it was last week? Food seems to taste better when you eat it after you THOUGHT it was fast sunday. I love Honey Nut Cheerios in milk in the morning. Sometimes I think that might be the perfect food - perhaps it should be it's own food group.

Craig, Warren and I took the scouts over to Mount Jordan pool yesterday morning to pass off their lifesaving merit badge. It's been planned for about 2 months, and we reconfirmed twice with the pool the time and date. Guess what? The crack squad of saavy personnel that runs that fine establishment booked a scuba diving guy during our time, and they had us down for 2 hours later. Of course, having 10 scouts in swim suits by the edge of the pool for 2 hours would not pose any type of a problem.
We used our Jedi Mind Domination techniques on the 15 year old operator to get things straightened out. It went kind of like this: "These are not the droids you are looking for...we can move along and have our class anyway since we confirmed our time twice...now go teach our boys.." Anyway, thats the best I can recall.



To my pleasant suprise, ALL of the boys passed off their requirements - which included swimming 400 yards (16 lengths of the pool). I'll admit to enduring a little mental anguish as I viewed the swimming prowess of a few of the boys. At times I wasn't sure if they were swimming or pretending to be an agitator washing their clothes. I am certain several of them burned off 3 times the amount of necessary calories for the distance travelled. This was made all the more apparent as Ryland, one of the boys in competition swimming, finished about 5 minutes ahead of everyone, and over 20 minutes ahead of the stragglers.



I went to drop Christopher of at Grandpa Johnson's to go to the BYU football game with them, and got an unexpected invitation as they had an extra ticket. We all drove down together, and had a great afternoon with perfect weather and a crushing victory of BYU over San Diego State.

Thanks Becky!
for doing a blog for me, so that I had no good reason to not write on it. She did a great job...didn't she!
So here I am...an offical blogger!