Make a Smilebox photobook

All I want for christmas is my front tooth!

The Finished Product (almost)
http://www.slcity.com/manager/tourbrand/850799/

Home Sweet Home.

I put an offer in on this home at the beginning of the week and it was accepted. If everything goes as planned we will be closing and moving in at the end of the month.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Check out these cuties! Brie-zy looks spooky, KeeAra's the glamore girl, MiKayla is cute as a bug, and poor Donavin is wishing he was in Never land.

"We actually had 4 days that we celebrated Halloween this year. ..[the kids] did get to go Trick-or-Treating on Friday. KeeAra was sick and Donavin didn't want to, but MiKayla & BrieAnna made the best of it."

Looks like a fun Halloween!

Make a Smilebox photobook

Ethan, our resident Bill Gates computer guy, just created this and wanted to see if it would post on our blog.

This was our hike up to Donut Falls, before it turned winter like, and some of our Halloween pictures.

So hopefully this works!

That's my boy! Creative and Crazy. This year Zack really wanted to be a tissue box. Not too spooky, but funny and cute. We even made a little candy basket out of an empty tissue box... too bad the costume doesn't have any arm holes, I guess that means no candy for him. We are going to try to make Sofie and tissue box costume too. Maybe if it works we can get her to carry the candy basket.

I hope you all have a Happy Halloween.

The party house is now open

WOW!!!! WHAT A WEEKEND WE HAD!!!

The girls (MiKayla, BreiAnna and KeeAra) got to spend the weekend in Salt Lake City with Grammy and Papa at a motel. We had so much fun. We jumped on the beds, and ate popcorn in bed. We watched movies until 11:00 and slept in. We swam in the pools until it got late and we were water-logged. But, that was only the start. Aunt Debbie and Jason wanted to treat the girls to "Build A Bear" at the Gateway Mall. The pictures show them with Aunt Debbie and also at the fountains at the mall. We had fun with Aunt Denise making cookies with the cousins and playing outside and at the school. When we got bored with that we went to the movies and ate more popcorn. We went to the Spaghetti Factory, IHOP, and The Training Table to eat. We also went to a wedding Luau. I'm sure I've missed some things, but all in all we just had lots of fun and the girls spent lots of time with their cousins, Zacky, Emmalee, Ethan and Tylar. They were really good about sharing the back seat of the car with Tessie. We can't wait to do it again.

TESSIE AND THE PUMKIN PATCH

MiKayla, BrieAnna, KeeAra and Donavin, had lots of fun trying to keep Tessie inside their ring of pumkins. She didn't mind the attention, so she posed for the photo shoot. The kids all got to take a pumkin home to put on the porch.

THE NEW OFFICE

You've all heard about it, and now you can see it. You guessed it. It is our new office. A photo just doesn't do it justice. It really does have lots of room, especially compared to the old one. But, I think you can get the idea.

HANGIN WITH THE COUSIN'S!!

So what a fun, full, weekend we've had! Mikayla, Brieanna, and KeeAra came to visit with Grandma and Grandpa and we had ton's of fun! Swimming at the motel, decorating Halloween cookies, Build-a-Bear workshop and just plain hangin out and playing! (Thank heavens the weather held!)

We were glad to have time with everyone and missed those who were not here. It occured to me as I downloaded the pictures that it's not in the to distant future that they will all be grown up and sitting around looking at the pictures of all the many family activities we've done together over the years and laughing at themselves and talkin about "remember when".

So here are a few of the highlights we thought we'd share!

Love ya'all!!

This year I have had some pretty scary experiences with prehistoric spider-pedes and a Hobo spider infestation at Jason's house, but this one might top them all.

We spent the afternoon at Jason's family house in Pleasant Grove. As we were leaving I noticed something crawling in the middle of the road as we stopped at a stop sign.

(if you zoom in you can see it right in the middle of the road)



It was a big, ugly, creepy, hairy TARANTULA!!! Talk about arachnophobia!

Apparently, tarantulas are common in Pleasant Grove.

Giant spiders just walking down the street!?! It reminded me of the stories mom use to tell us about living in Texas....I wondered if I smashed it with a shovel if it would squeal.

Sadly, there was no spider smashing today, partially because I was too afraid to even get that close to it and because Zack really wanted to take it to school.

Jason caught the spider for us, which involved a lot of "girly" screaming from all of us. Then we had to drive 45 minutes home holding it. We considered putting it in the trunk but the thought of getting home, opening the trunk and finding an empty Tupperware bowl was even more terrifying than staring at its hairy fangs for the entire drive.

So now the spider is hanging out in a Tupperware bowl in Jason's kitchen until school tomorrow morning. It left me wondering how tarantulas find each other to mate, perhaps it gives off ferramones or a silent squeal to attract more of its kind...Luckily I don't have to sleep there tonight.

AWESOME DAY OFF TRACK!

Before the kids went back on track we spent a beautiful day at Liberty Park picnicing and playing in the water. It's one or our favorite things to do when they are off track. It occured to me, however, that this is probably the last year that the three of us will be able do this together since Ethan will be in Junior High next year and he'll be on a traditional schedule. These are some of my most favorite times with the kids. Tylar and I will have to press on in the tradition!

Just a little FYI for everyone: Tylar's bird Snowflake passed away earlier this week. It was a very difficult thing for her and she was very sad. (so was the mom!) She was brave though and we have since gotten a new bird whose name is Candy.

So this week Ethan ran for Class President! He had to write a speech and everything! We even put big words in it like "facilitate" and "integrity"! We also made handout's that were "SMILES" fruit snacks with a note attached that said "Vote for Ethan....he'll make you smile!" We thought this was pretty clever since he's somewhat known in his class for always smiling! Anyway, in the end one of the girls in his class won but picked him to be her Vice President. He is pretty excited about it!

HAIL TO THE CHIEF CUZ HE'S THE CHIEF AND HE NEEDS HAILING!!

WE ARE LAME!!

So I keep thinking I need to post something on here but we haven't really had anything exciting to share. Other than Torrey this summer we really didn't do much. Lance's back and the cost of gas pretty much kept us at home.

I keep trying to get Lance to take his shirt off so I can take a picture of his scare so maybe we could post that, but we've all seen enough of Lance with his shirt off and his scare isn't really that exciting. So I just thought I would take this opportunity to thank everyone for the phone calls and the show of support and love as Lance has gone through this back surgery. It's always comforting to know that whatever life throw's at us (any of us) that we are surrounded by people who care and will be there for us. So thank you to everyone who took time out of their busy lives to think of us, keep us in your prayers and just simply care. We are truly grateful.

TIMBER-R-R-R-R-R-R

So, everybody comes home for a nice relaxing, get together, weekend at the 4th of July. But, Dad has other ideas. "Let's cut down the tree, that mom wants to get rid of." So look at Dad run. You won't see that too often.

The tree came down, but it was an all day project. First you have to cut the tree and then you have to get out the 4 wheelers, all the boys and lots of "do this" "do that" and act like "Tim the Toolman" and more power.

It was lots of fun to sit on the sidelines and watch. It made a mess of the lawn, because you had to use "more power" to try to pull the stump out. Zack loved it.

We'll see what project we can come up with for next summer. Always new adventures to look forward to in this family.

What happened to the family blog? From the looks of it the Lords family haven't left the house or done things interesting all summer. My excuse is that I lost my camera and have had problem pulling pictures off my phone....what's your excuse? Hello? Are you guys still alive? Let's see some posts?

Poor little Sophie. My little terror terrier is so humiliated by her new house breaking pants. Oh yes...they make diapers for dogs, and she hates them. For the most part she has been doing really good, but some days her over excited bladder gets the best of her and I have to put on her "potty pants". I thought this picture was so funny. She sat there straddling the arm of the couch, sulking about having to were her plastic pants.

Last week Zack and I had the opportunity to visit the Utah Museum of Modern Art where they had a Monet to Picasso exhibit. It was really exciting to be able to see some of these really famous painting right here in our own MOMA. We saw Monet, Picasso, VanGogh, Dali, Mondrian, and Renoir along with several other artists. We decided that we liked Picasso and Mondrian the most. This is a picture of Zack standing in front of Picasso.

This summer Zack has become very interested in electronics. A majority of his time is spent dreaming up crazy electronic devices. On one of our ritual stops at Radio Shack to randomly browse we found a really cool project sheet for making an LED flashlight. Zack was really excited about the project and saved his allowance until he could purchase all the components for the project. He built the entire thing by himself with a little soldering help from Jason. It was a cool project and I can't wait to see what other cool things he can build.

THE SPIDER-PEDE

the half daddy long leg / half centipede.

Imagine laying on the couch watching television late at night, when out of the corner of your eye you see something quite large scurry across the floor in front of you. So you jump up on the couch with a shoe in your hand hoping to squish the intruder. And then you get a closer look at it...and say "holy ####, what is that!!" When you realize you have some kind of pre-historic insect taking up residence in your living room, you throw the shoe and watch the monstrosity bolt for the crack in the floor at an unbelievable speed due to the fact that it has about a hundred thousand long creep legs. Despite your screaming and pleading for your ferocious terrier to attack, the infamous "spider-pede" slips away, leaving you terrified of day you cross paths with it again.

But last week, this "spider-pede" made the terrible mistake of falling into the bath tub, allowing me to get a picture to document the discovery of this new species. Sadly, although this one is the size of a bar of soap, I believe it is only the smaller offspring of much larger one I saw that night on the couch.

Be afraid...be VERY afraid!

Well we got the new plane home. What a trip that was! Lots of truck problems for Angie and I that cost a lot to get fixed once we got to Troutdale. Needless to say we are in the market for a new truck. Dad and I started to work on the plane at about 9:00 in the morning and finished at about 7:00 that night. Loading the plane was quite comical if you were to watch us. It was a lot of work and I don't think that there was one bolt that wasn't stuck and rusted. It was great though. The adventure continues. Mom, Angie and the girls after taking the truck in and driving around in the loaner pimp mobile went to Multnomah Falls, and had a fun day. On the way home the wings that were in the trailer behind my truck bounced off the shipping platform we had them on and damaged both wings. Easy fix though. Dad and I are both excited about this plane. You would have to ask mom and Angie how excited they are ( Ha Ha).

Mariah's class this week did a play, A Mid-Summers Night's Dream. She did a really great job. It was a hard play to learn concidering the way they speak in the play is in Shakspearian form. The room that the play was in was really small though so the only ones that could attend were Angie the girls and I. She has preformed in several play when we lived in Mount Vernon. I think she really enjoys the whole acting thing, where I enjoy just acting up (Ha Ha). We were really proud of her and wish that you all could have seen her.

We don't know who changed the look of the blog, but it is awesome. Really like the thought that comes with it. Great job.
mom and dad

Deb's thought for the week

Life is like a jar of jalapenos....

What you choose to do today....

might burn your ass tomorrow.

A thought from Denise!

This is one of my favorites!!

"ADVERISITY IS MANDATORY BUT MISERY IS OPTIONAL"

New Members of the Family

Well, I guess it is time to reveal the new plane. As you can see it is blue and white, and in Portland. So the magic question is, when does it come to Idaho? For the answer to that question, you'll have to talk to Dad and Doug. We are in the process of getting it ready to come to Idaho, and it will take some time and work to get it ready to fly here. We hope that July is the magic date of delivery. It is cute, though, don't ya think??

Now check this out!!! It is a Mother's Day gift, for me. Yahoo!!!!!

It is a 2007 Dodge Caliber. Dad and I bought it yesterday. It is a snappy, cute, and fun little car. And unlike GG's car, it has a CD player. Yippee for me. I love it.

A thought from Denise!

"Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears!"

First Official Twilight image

For those interested:


There is an article with details here. For my money, the only detail that matters is the release date (2008-12-12), at which time we will finally get to see what all the fuss is about. :D

A thought from Denise!

"WE MAKE A LIVING BY WHAT WE GET BUT WE MAKE A LIFE BY WHAT WE GIVE."

Great Job Zack!!!

We are so proud of Zack and we wanted to share the great news of his big accomplishment. We have struggled all year long with spelling. This week while practicing his spelling list we tried something new. I am certainly happy that I had the time to invest in trying new learning methods with Zack because it really paid off. This is his first 100% all school year, so needless to say, it is a pretty big deal. He is so proud of himself. Great job, Zack!

ATTENTION BACKPACKERS!!!!

So......... that quote when I heard it pretty much reminded me of chocolate........and cookie dough!

Happy day! I recieved our backcountry reservation confirmation today and we got ALL the campsites we requested!!!!! YAY!!!! And they will allow additional people at the Summit Lake campsite which was our big concern because they generally only allow 6! I wrote and asked them if they would consider letting us have more for that one night! So no plan B!!

So......dust off your hiking boots, get out the "Vanilla Ice" pants Doug, and hop on those bikes and treadmills, because we only have 135 days!!!! It's going to be an awesome year with a little bit of all the years put together in one 4 day hike!

Love ya all!!!

A thought from Denise!

"IT IS EASIER TO AVOID TEMPTATION THAN TO RESIST IT!"

Five Mile Pass

This weekend we loaded up the bike, the kid and the dogs and headed up to Five Mile Pass, west of Lehi. We spent the afternoon eating munchies by the fire, throwing the ball for the dogs, digging in the dirt and riding the motorbike up the trails.

When we got up t0 the pass it was extremely windy. I wasn't really sure that we would be able to get the fire going so I put Zack in charge of the task. Without a second of hesitation he went to work and shocked us all when he immediately got the fire going with only one match (no gas). I think he was hoping for more of a challenge because he dug a second fire pit and tried to light a second fire using only the magnify glass, without much luck.

The dogs had a blast running around playing ball and eating sagebrush. We have been wondering what kind of camping dogs Jessie and Sofie would be and this weekend we found out. Jessie is apparently terrified of the fire and wont come within 20 feet of it. Sofie can't stand to be left out of the fun. When I took off on the motorbike she chased me for a quarter of a mile before Jason finally caught her.

It was great day for riding. We did however have one bike accident which resulted in a broken front brake. Luckily it was just a big gust of wind that broke it and not me. We are excited for summer. We can't wait to go camping and four wheeling with the family!

DON"T CLICK ON UNKNOWN COMMENTS!!

So, the comment under Denise's post from galmaran is just spam. Apparently, I had the settings for comments open so that anyone could post. I have changed the setting so that you have to login and verify a scrambled code before you can post anything. I think this should prevent anymore spam on our family blog. Let me know if you have any problems with it.

P.S. I quit my job on Tuesday after sending a lengthy resignation letter detailing what a terrible manager I had. I am attempting to find a part-time or flexible full time job. I hope to find a great job that will let me be more available to Zack.

A thought from Denise!

"OTHER THINGS MAY CHANGE US, BUT WE START AND END WITH FAMILY."

Are we awesome or what!? We just wanted to thank everyone again for being there for Ty this weekend. She was so excited to get baptized and that everyone got to be together, as was I. It was a really great day and we appreciate everyone so much.

Love,
Denise