The answer to a cold house...

What was I thinking? I didn't need to spend $168 to get our furnace fixed! All I needed to do was order Snuggie for $14.95, with a reading lamp thrown in for good measure in case the electricity goes out! What a great idea for Emergency Preparedness!!! I know what I'm going to get R next year for Christmas!!! He can wear it to stay cozy and warm at sporting events (a.k.a. football games.) It's so versatile and snuggily warm and it comes in an assortment of colors, even BYU blue. Go Cougars! Go Snuggie!

Fit for the Kingdom

I just came across this interesting group of films today entitled "Fit for the Kingdom." They give a little unedited glimpse of life in a Mormon environment. They feature short documentary films on the lives of everyday members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I haven't watched them all, but the ones I have watched are insightful. Some of you will be very interested in the films entitled "Lorien" and "Lloya." There is also a quick guest appearance by someone Courtney will be very interesting in seeing in the one entitled "Girls' Camp." Who knew that our friends were so much more than movie stars?

A good time was had by all

Thursday - Rick and I took an afternoon flight to see R and Claire, wheat bread making demo for the Mia Maids in the evening for mutual at C&R's home, R and Rick had some bonding time

Friday - temple attendance, lunch with R and Keith and Lorie, some of our dear friends from college days who live in town (Claire was at work), evening games and ice cream with Rick's cousin and his family (he is also R and Claire's stake president)

Saturday - the guys played tennis and went running , and Claire and I went to the ice skating show of "HSM." This quote from Rick "Keith, on hearing about that asked if it wasn't gay enough as a play or movie, why did they have to make it more so by putting it on ice. Nice point." We didn't invite the guys to go and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! BYU basketball game that afternoon. Claire and R invited 50 of their BYU friends to attend, so we had a good group. The game was fun. Dinner at a great local restaurant and then two Netfliks movies back at their home.

Sunday - chilling out, reading and chatting, church, lovely dinner prepared by Claire, watched tennis, watched football, played Scattergories. Claire showed me how to operate my new camera which is a lot like hers.

Monday - R to work, the rest of us to play tennis. I played Claire and Rick played a man in their ward who wanted to get in on the action. I'm proud to report that I won two games out of about 10 against Claire (who is very good at tennis), so I feel pretty good about that! We played some doubles with the guys and had a good match. We did errands with Claire, helped her with some home projects and went to a movie (Last Chance Harvey - which we enjoyed) before heading to the airport. Got home to the FREEZING house.

It was a very fun and relaxing weekend. It was 60 degrees in the day and not that cold at night. We love visiting R and Claire and we enjoy every minute of our time together!

It's cold ouside (and inside)

Have you ever wondered how cold it would get in your house if your furnace didn't work? Well, we now have the answer to that question in our home. We came home last night from a four day trip to visit Claire and R. The minute we walked into the house I could tell that the heater hasn't on. It was probably off most of the time we were gone. The atomic clock thermometer registered at 43 degrees in our bedroom last night. Luckily we have a small electric space heater, so we turned that on all night and put more blankets on the bed. This morning when we woke up it registered at 63 degrees. Those twenty degrees made a huge difference!
This morning, it was 9 degrees outside. I went upstairs to try again and see if the furnace would start. Nothing. I could see my breath in Claire's room, the coldest room in the house. I'm sure it was around 36 degrees in there. We called the furnace repair guy and he came right away. It took him 15 minutes to replace a small fuse in the furnace electrical box. $168. A large price to pay for a small service, but a small price to pay for heat. Has something like this ever happened to you?

Baby Books

This year for Christmas I finally gave our kids their own baby books. I started a baby book for them when they were born and I actually recorded a bunch of information about their growth and experiences in each book. Then the years went by and pictures were taken out of the books for various reasons and they kind of fell in to disrepair. The pictures were scattered and disorganized. I spent some time this fall working on this project and it has taken me hours and hours to get it done. I reassembled each book with the new little glue dots that are now available and found most of the pictures that had been taken out. My friend, who makes her own paper and books from scratch, did some repair work on the bindings and got them back into great shape. I then took the books to Kinkos and made a color-copied book for Rick and me to keep. Then I gave our children their books for a Christmas gift, along with a separate photo book of about 100 or so of the other loose pictures I had of them. Now they finally have pictures of themselves in their childhood and youth to keep in their own homes, and we have a copy as well. Joy!
I also spent some time getting our family history book caught up from the years 2005, 2006 and 2007. Everyone cooperated and submitted their own family or personal written history along with some pictures and I got those books complied and bound as well. Everyone got a copy, so hopefully everyone will enjoy that slice of their own personal history as well.
It's been a great project to work on and I've enjoyed going through all the pictures and remembering so many wonderful days gone by. I love my family!