Alisha's Thirteen!

 

Tah-dah!

 

Brooks, Bryce, & I had fun making home made pizza for Alisha's birthday dinner!

On January 21st, 2009 Alisha turned 13! (She's an official TEENager now.)

Bryce came over to do music stuff with Brooks and stayed to help me cook dinner. As you can see from the pictures we created four masterpieces! ;) We found a quick and easy pizza dough recipe off the allrecipes website. (I've been getting all my cake recipes from there as well.) 

It seems this year has brought on funny "blowing out candle" stories. Alisha took a big breath to blow out her thirteen candles and right before she let it out she laughed, so her breath kind of died in mid blow...haha.

We also watched the new Journey to the Center of the Earth movie.

 

Here Alisha is laughing as she is blowing. ;)

 

THE CAKE!

No Reason. (Carrot Cake)

 

Tuesday evening I made carrot cake from scratch. I figured since they canceled mutual (due to black ice from 6pm until morning) I had some time on my hands. Everyone kept asking me, "Is there a special reason?" Nope.

The cake took a while to prepare, but it was worth it. I had fun using my carrot cake decorating skills that I learned at a young woman stake activity.

You would never be ale to guess...but there are 9 whole cups of shredded carrots in the recipe! My grandpa saw all the shredded carrots in a bowel and said, "Well that's one way to get kids to eat their vegetable." Haha, funny grandpa. (btw, we increased the "regular" size by 50%)

We are still enjoying our Grandparents visit here. (Parents of my mom.) They are leaving January 31st. I am sure that time will come all too quickly!

 

Grandpa Jones, Grandma Jones, & Angela out in our field!

SNOW DAY!

It snowed in North Carolina January 20th, 2009! Whoo!

We had lots of fun in the snow (as you can tell from the pictures).

The snow started to melt around 2:30ish, but we were just grateful for the time we had with it!

Busy Saturday.

 

Sam and I "working" hard at Bryce's eagle project. ;)

Saturday (January 17, 2009) was a pretty busy and cold day!

It started at 8:45am when I got to Bryce's eagle project. A couple of the volunteers worked on reorganizing part of this warehouse by moving set pieces (from old Matthew's Playhouse plays) and some cleaned this "forgotten" bathroom in the warehouse and some others worked out in the COLD taking little props off shelves so that they could be brought to the warehouse to be cleaned and eventually used for storage in their new home. The props will be brought over as well this coming Saturday. The project as a whole is hard to explain (at least for me) to people that haven't seen for themselves the site of the project, but what I have told you is sort of the gist of it...so, that was in the morning.

When I came home I conked out in my parents room in a rocking chair. When I got up (thanks to a friendly call from Christie G.) it was time to get ready for THE P.J. DANCE! :)

I drove Brooks, Bryce, and Jordan. IT was in Rocky River! I don't think I have ever driven that far before...so it was kind of exciting! The dance turned out to be a big hit. I would say at least 90% of the youth there were wearing their p.j.'s! It was awesome! I wore my brown fussy pants and black long sleeve shirt. (I know, I know! They don't match...but hey, who really tries to match what they are wearing to bed? -No offense to any of you that do.) Haha.

We got there around 7:00 and the place was packed! (It started at 6:30 and went until 9:30pm.) I saw a bunch of old friends and it was just a really great night! I love dances!

 

Jordan, Me, Bryce, & Brooks. Yes, I am wearing a one piece pajama set. (I actually gave them to Bryce as an inside joke...fun stuff!)

First Temple Trip of the Year!

 

Columbia, South Carolina Temple

On Friday my (Waxhaw) ward went on our first temple trip this year! It was wonderful despite the fact that it was super de duper FREEZING! They changed the system a little bit since the last time we went. Instead of having it go girl, boy, girl, boy, they had all the girls go first while the young men sit out in the waiting room. When the young women were done they had them go out into the waiting room and then brought the boys in to do their work. It was different, but I thought it was good. The spirit was strong.

 

The Waxhaw AND Weddington ward. This picture was taken some time last year when they combined our wards on temple trips (since the wards split we combined since there were no open spots for one of us to get our own slot).

Grandpa's 83!

 

The German cake I made! (ALL FROM SCRATCH! Including the frosting.)

Grandpa turned 83 yesterday! Whoo! Hard to believe! 

I feel so lucky to have him here on his birthday because if he were in Utah the whole family would have had a big dinner for him and they would of hung out...but instead WE, the Butlers in North Carolina, got him! 

I answered about 4 different calls from Utah. :) Grandpa's a loved man!

It was sooooo funny! Grandpa only had 4 candles to blow out (an eight and then 3 separate ones) and he only got 2 of them on his first blow! :) We were laughing soo hard! He just smiled and said it looked so easy he hardly tried but then didn't blow hard enough! It was a fun night. 

 

Grandpa Jones blowing out his two candles. ;)

Homeschool Ski Trip!

Taylor, Kristine, Bryce, Brooks, & Pollie

(Not pictured: Sister Hibbard & Matt)

 

We left from the Hibbards at 6:40am January 14th, 2009 and arrived at Sugar Creek Mountain by 9:30am (barely). The ride up was fun! We were all ready to hit the slopes! :)

The temperature stayed at an average of 20 degrees while we were there. The highest it got was about 23 degrees. It was a beautiful day! The sun was shining and the snow makers were makin' away (which got kind of annoying at times). The resort had some pretty good slopes! 

We skied/snowboarded from 10ish to 4:30 only to take a short lunch break around 1:00!

No one got sun burned. I got a little red by the end of the day but it was gone by morning (thank goodness)!

We arrived back home around 8:30.

It was a fun day!

 

Bryce and Kristine