Bears and Basketsball

For Christmas, the girls got some build-a-bears from Papa Rager. They are the animals that you sew together, stuff, and dress. Anyway, last week, the girls and I made their animals! They had a great time!

Shane and I have been playing basketball! Here in Utah, we have stake basketball for men and women! It's lots of fun! We will sometimes practice at the church and we started games. They are lots of fun but I have to remember that I'm almost 30 not almost 20!!!

I also started working out at a gym here and got several sessions with a personal trainer. Today was my first day! I don't know if fun is the right word, but it was nice to have someone tell me what I should be doing! So we'll see how it works out!

Last week, Shane was called as the new Sunday School President. Hopefully he enjoys that! Our ward is so transient that he will always be calling new teachers!

Updates

WARNING: This is long.

I just wanted to drop a quick note to let everyone know how we're doing. Fine. We are fine!! :)

I am staying very busy with my Young Women's calling. Because of the nature of my ward, I'm getting new counselors ever couple months and getting them trained, so that's kind of tough. But I'm enjoying the girls! I'm finally starting to make some good friends here, so that's been fun. Shane befriended a guy in the ward. His wife and I get along well pretty well and go to story time together. She even dragged me to Relief Society last night. (Which was probably a good thing.) I've also been building a prom dress out of camo for a girl in Casper and editing my book. I'm hoping to submit it soon, but I've been saying that for a couple months now! :)

Shane is enjoying his job at UVU. He is in meetings all the time and likes it. Apparently, if he wears green (the school's color) on Wednesdays, he gets a free 'J' dog for lunch! (I guess it's a polish sausage with some sort of BBQ sauce or something.) Anyway, Shane LOVES that! He and I are going to dinner with his boss tonight, so that should be nice. UVU's culinary instructor is going to be feeding us. Now doesn't that sound like a fun course! (One of my new friends went to culinary school and was a chef for several years. I love eating at her house!!)

Lylli's liking school still but doesn't have it much this month and next. They have half days on the first and third Fridays of every month throughout the year. And then through February, they are having half days on Thursdays too! Kind of crazy! They were offering some classes like a school newspaper, building a city and learning what people do, and a dance class for Thursdays after school. But you know Lylli. None of her friends were doing it, so she didn't want to. So I'm having her help me write a story we've wanted to create. So that's fun!

Layla is LOVING story time because she gets to go into the story time room by herself! It's her 'class'! She loves all of her little friends and is always happy.

Seryn is still into everything! She likes story time too. We see Layla into her room, then go to another area for Seryn's. It's kind of nice. The preschoolers are supposed to go by themselves and then the mom's can go sit with the toddlers. I'm surprised at how shy Seryn is when she doesn't have her sisters to bolster her confidence.

Okay, so this is eternally long. Sorry. But I did find one picture. After Christmas, we set up the girls' castle tent. They loved wearing the dresses Grandma made and playing with the castle!

We love you all!

Christmas & Casper

We celebrated our first Christmas in Utah this year. It was also our first Christmas away from family. It was nice to do a few things we've never been able to do before, but we did miss our family!

On Christmas Eve, we had our traditional chili dinner, we all got new PJ's (even mom!) and we read some Christmas stories and the Christmas story in the bible. On Christmas we opened presents, played and Shane's dad and grandma came down for Christmas dinner! I've never cooked a Christmas dinner before and it was lots of fun! (Blueberry Pomegranate juice is divine!)

On the 26th, the girls and I went to Casper. We had lots of fun playing with family and cousins! Lylli went cross-country skiing and had a blast! Layla and Seryn went sledding at Grandma and Grandpa's! We also went swimming at the Aquatic Center and Seryn went down the big slide with me a couple times. We also spent time with Nana. We had a great trip but it was busy!

One reason we went to Casper was to attend Mandy Blevin's baptism. (Mandy is my cousin's daughter. And my cousin married Shane's best friend.) Lylli and Mandy are five months apart and are great friends!! They talk on the phone periodically and Lylli will actually close her door so I can't hear what they're talking about! (I know. I know...And she's only 7. Fortunately, Mandy is the only one she does that with! Now.) It was lots of fun seeing Mandy get baptised, and even though Lylli had a hard time with it, she loved getting to be there for Mandy's special day! And she can't wait for her own!

P.S. For those of you who don't know, right after I sent out Christmas cards, Shane got a new job. He's now the Assistant Dean at Utah Valley University and he's over the 2 year portion of the college. And he's loving his job!

Lylli's Christmas Program

Lylli had a Christmas program yesterday. She did a great job and made a cute elf!!! She was sad that just the girls and I could go. She's been quite spoiled the last couple years. And she was upset that I didn't record the entire thing to share, but after realizing how long it takes to upload them, I'm VERY glad I didn't! But here's the last song they did! Merry Christmas!

Horses

The girls were playing dress up the other day! It was so cute!!!

Shopping, Cards, Trees - DONE!

On Friday, I finished up all my Christmas shopping!!! YAY! (It will be a very small Christmas again this year, but at least I can do a little!) On Saturday, I put together my Christmas cards to mail out. And tonight we decorated our tree! I'm officially ready for Christmas! And since I'm done with everything, I can enjoy the season.

Every year we have used the same angel at the top of our tree. I think I got it in Young Women's or something. But when we were first married, this was all we had and could afford. Now, Shane insists on using it. One year I got a real star, and he won't let us use it! This makes Lylli unhappy but every year we go with the little cloth, stuffed angel.

We usually have a Charlie Brown tree. This year, we had more options and got a nice tall and full tree! I love having a real tree. The house smells so good! And our tall ceilings are lots of fun at Christmas time!

Merry Christmas!

Thankgiving and Nana

I don't seem to be blogging like I should. Something about being busy? Hmmm.
For Thanksgiving, we went up to South Jordon and spent the evening with Shane's step-father, Harold's family. They were quite nice and we had a good time.
On Saturday, Lylli looked outside and saw a hot air balloon!
Needless to say, this was exciting for us! We'd never seen one quite so close before!

This doesn't look very close but it was really only on the other side of the block! We could even hear the fire in the balloon!

Lenay and Harold also came down for the holiday and though they didn't stay with us, we got to play with them. The girls and Nana built some gingerbread houses, or rather a collage of candy! I posted the pictures as a slide show below this post! Hope everyone had a great holiday!

* Shane is now working for World Class Auto in American Fork. He's really enjoying working as a mechanic again, but misses the community work he did in Casper. Still, he knows this is what the Lord wants him to do now and he really is enjoying it! Maybe he'll be able to do more community work somday.

** And for anyone who's interested, I've been holding monthly contests for various prizes on my writing blog! So visit me and see what's being given away! **

***I've also posted a new clip to another story on the sidebar if you want to take a look!