Thanks Mel

Oh the days of high school, if only my stress level was where it was back then, this would be a piece of cake.

1. Did you date someone in high school? Yes, I was actualy engaged in high school, ha ha, oh that was SO long ago. He is now not married with two kids with a girl who cheated on her husband to be with him. Thank you GOD for saving me from that.

2. What kind of car did you drive? A 1996 green 4 door Ford Escort, that car treated me well.

3. Did you pass your driver's license test the first time? Sure did, even though I did a pretty crappy job on the parallel park.

4. Were you a party animal? If you consider staying up all night with the basketball team a party animal, then yeah.

5. Were you considered a flirt? no, boys didn 't like me enough to even let me flirt with them, ha ha.

6. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? I was the choir president and sang all three years.

7. Were you a nerd? Considering ,my answer to the previous question, I am sure I was.

8. Did you ever get expended or expelled? No way, the only time I got in trouble is when I got in a fight once with a girl at lunch but nothing happened to me.

9. Can you still sing your fight song? I can't remember the tune or the words, so no.

10. Who were your favorite teachers? Mr. LeMaster my history teacher, because he is the only teacher I have ever had that actualy made history fun to learn about. And my choir teacher Mrs. Graham.

11. Where did you sit at lunch? A round table right next to the pizza stand.

12. What sports did you play? Basketball, basketball and basketball!! ha ha

13. Were you on any varsity teams? Varsity basketball junior and senior year. Yeah you probably think I can't play huh?

14. School mascot and colors? Sumner Spartans, purple,yellow and white

15. Did you go to homecoming and who with? Sophmore year- Richard Doolittle, Junior and Senior- Michael Baker

16. If you could go back and do it again, would you? I would stand up for myself a little more, but be nice to people who were mean to me.

17. What do you remember most about graduation? The ferry trip we took the night after that lasted all night long....I caught my friend Jake Coheley and his girlfriend having sex in the bathroom, no lie.

18. Where did you go on Senior Skip Day? hmmmmm. I don't know that we even had one of these

19. Were you in any clubs? nada

20. Have you gained weight since then? considering I was taking two weight and conditioning classes and playing basketball, what do you think? Who asks this anyway????? A guy must have written these.

21. Who was your prom date? Jimmy Connell....He was a year younger than me and therefore made me pay for EVERYTHING.

22. Are you planning on going to your 10 year reunion? I really don't know, I guess it just depends on where I am living at that time.

23. Did you have a job while in high school? yeah I had two jobs, one at a coffee\deli shop and the other at a dentist's office as a sterile technician....well you, know, I had to pay for the car and all those clothes that I wanted as a 17 year old teenage girl.

Back in town

Whew! Lots has happened during and after my trip to Seattle for the holidays, so I will attempt to pick up where I left off from my last post.

Seattle was still getting snow up until the day after Christmas while I was there, it was a complete white out for days! I took a couple of pictures while still at my dads before heading down to visit with my mom for Christmas.

This was Christmas eve hanging out with my dad and his wife's family. We did a little gift exchange and spent the night beforfe heading south to my mom's

This was what we woke up to Christmas morning. Talk about a white Christmas! It's a rare thing in Washington when that happens. Lucky for us my brother had chains to help us get out of the subdivision where my dad lives because since I had been there, the snow plow hadn't come through once! It was a mess. The sad thing is that it took my dad getting severly injured for the city to finally come run a plow through the road they live on. He was helping a neighbor get up into their driveway and had put a board underneath their tires to try and give them more traction. When the lady driving the car gunned it up the hill into her driveway, one of the boards game reeling towards my dad's leg and hit him right smack in the shin, spliiting it complete open to the bone. It was aweful! (sorry a little graphic here) I was at my friend's house and got a call from my stepbrother that my dad had been seriously hurt and was being taken to the ER to make sure the bone wasn't broken. I made it up to the hospital where he was at in time to be there for him to get about 20 stitches and a lot of pain meds. The other sad part is that while the aid car was trying to get my dad to the hospital, they got stuck in the snow and had to call another aid car with chains to come and get him! Seriously people, we are talking about some massive amounts of snow here! The guy driving the first aid car told my stepmom that he was going to call and complain to the city, so that is why they ended up coming and clearing the road that night. It was quite a scary fiasco, but my dad ended up being ok and he will have a nice scar to remember the event by.
This was at my mom's while my friend Amy and her husband John were visiting with us and playing with all the animals my mom has. Seriously, five cats and a dog is a little much to handle sometimes in a house. But they are all cute nonetheless.


John and his awesome de-coder glasses that he wore while reading the answers to the Cranium game Cadoo. It was definitely a night of laughs thanks to those goggles.

Pepper getting all pretty for Christmas with her stocking and matching booties.

Sydney attmpting to attack the laser while falling down on his back.

I couldn't get a straight face from John for a good picture! Case and point, see below.....

Either that or he is just super happy all the time.

So we decided to switch him out and give the camera a try with Amy and me. Much better turn out I would say.

So that was the majority of my trip to Seattle. Honestly I didn't end up getting to go many places because of the snow, but at least I got to spend a good amount of time with my family, including my crazy brother who likes to watch movies on his Iphone while driving....seriously!!!!

So next are a few pictures of new year's (super long post, I know)

Chas and I went to Ben and Tiffany Smith's house for some games and chit-chat before ringing in the new year. Here are a few pictures from the evening....

Of course we had to get the dogs in on the fun. Plus they were very good at posing for us, especially Gracie, which you can see from above, she was a total ham for the camera.

Emma was being a bit more shy, but she didn't seem to mind wearing the new year stars on her head.


Amy and Pete chillin on the couch after toasting in the new year. Pete looks like he has stayed up past his bed time.
Lisa and Kyle were also there, I have to say that as insecure as she was when we first started playing the game "Buzz Word", she rocked the socks off a few rounds during the night. She didn't think she would get any of the answers, but shouted out quite a few that put us in the lead a few times. Sad to say though, the boys kicked our butts.

Jeremy and Stacy celebrating their first new year's together as a married couple, awwwww.

And Chas and me at the end of the night. I couldn't get him to keep the shooting new year stars on his head, so I was left looking like the idiot with the only one wearing them. You gotta have a little bling to ring in the new year though, and since Noah was sleeping upstairs we couldn't use the noisemakers. We had a great time with everyone and it was nice to be back home in Utah visiting familiar faces and enjoying time with the one I love. Awwwww. :)

The Emerald City

Is no long green, it is white. I have not seen this much snow in Seattle since I lived here. It has been crazy downfall of snow since I got here, and we are supposed to get more. I took my Dad and Karen's new dog for a walk and got some pictures of the scenery, check them out....

This was from my dad's house on the front portch, he had shoveled but by the time he was done you couldn't really tell. It has been coming down faster than we could shovel it, it seems like.

The dark sky at about 4:00 in the afternoon, by this time it was dumping on Skippy and me.

The pup checkin out the snow, he was not sure about it at first, but then he started diggin his nose into it and flopping around in it.

You can see some of the Christmas lights but they are mostly covered by snow. And of course the snow is still falling.

One of the houses in their neighborhood decided to build a snow fort, and they did a pretty good job of it!


So let's get out of the snow for a little bit. These were taken last night at Karen's brother's house, Glen and his wife Julie. We decided to celebrate his birthday, since it is actually on Christmas day. Here are a few self pics and some of the girls throughout the night....

Glen's wife Julie, my stepmom Karen, Julie's daugther Britney, and her brother's girlfriend also Brittainy.

The great self-pic with Karen's mom Barb and me.

The o-so-photogenic step-broher Michael and me. He is gonna love me for this one.

And my dad and me, can't you tell?

So the forecast is snow, and more snow, in the next couple of days. I should be heading down to visit with my mom and friends tomorrow, but we will have to see what the weather has in store for us. If not, I may be staying up with my dad for an extra day or two until the roads clear up. The bad thing about snow in Washington is that it does not happen very often, so they don't plow roads a lot and it gets very icey because of the humidity. Not good for driving an hour and a half to get south to my mom's. But we are making some good times here at my dad's, I am baking a lot, no surprise there, and even got to have a nice sit in the hot tub this morning while it was still snowing a little. That's all the update I have for now, if things get any more interesting, as I am sure you thought this post was, I will be sure to let you know. Hope you all are staying safe wherever you are.

It's snowing.....

Not where you would expect it to though. I just talked to my best friend up in Seattle, and she said they have gotten a good four inches of snow today. I think that may be a record for them. Ok, not really, but that is surprising for up there because it hardly ever snows in Seattle.
The cool thing is that I will be up there in it tomorrow. The possibly not so cool thing is that with weather like that, flights are likely to be delayed, and the roads up there are not so ice friendly. So let's hope my rental car has good traction.
I haven't posted in a while, due to the lack of time with trying to get everything squared away before I am gone for 9 days.
I did finish my finals though for my first semester of the Master's program I am doing, and lets just say that I was very happy with my final grade for each class. Let's hope that I can continue the trend.
Chas and I have not been doing much performing the last month, mostly because of the holiday season, finals, and both of us being gone for Christmas. But, we did play a little show out at the Hogle Zoolights a couple of weeks ago. It was fun to do some Christmas songs for people, even though it was freezing cold outside and the heat lamps they had for us pretty much only kept our hair on the top of our heads warm. But, people did give us some tips, so that was a good sign that despite the chill in my voice and Chas' crippled hands, we still did alright. My cousin and her little boyfriend even came out and saw us, it was cute.
So I will be off tomorrow morning, granted the weather permits my plane to leave on time, and won't be back til after Christmas. You may not hear from me while I am gone, the parentals usually keep things pretty busy while I am there, so I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, safe travels, and wonderful times seeing family and friends.
Happy holidays everyone. :)

It's that time of year

It's time for the holidays! So you know what that means... Lots more eating, Christmas decorations and festivities. We'll start with the completion of the GF pumpkin pie, first time making it myself this year. No one else tried any over at Pastor Roy's house because of there being other pies that were not gluten free, but I would have to say (and Chas too) that for my first shot, it wasn't too bad. The crust was not as flaky as I would have liked it to be, but the inside was delicious.

Just a few Christmas decorations I put up in the living room this year. I don't have a ton of space so I just have to make do with what I have, but these little mini bulbs work nicely when you don't have a lot of space to work with.

And the lovely tree, I think I have done this one for the third time, so next year I might have to mix up the colors a bit. But here it is in B&W and then color.......love the blue though.

And the mantle with the candles, Mr. Snowman and some other fun decorations. Oh, and you can't forget the stockings on the fireplace, they just add the right touch of Christmas spirit.

And Ogden would not be complete for the holidays without the parade, fireworks and lighting ceremony of Christmas village. Chas and I stayed as long as we could, but Roosters was calling our name just before the fireworks. Plus, we wanted to try and beat the crowd since we knew it was going to be rockin' on 25th street. But here we are checking out the parade, and below he got a shot of a horse doing the moonwalk. Impressive.

Good times at the holiday festivities, and lucky for us it wasn't quite as cold this year as it was last year.