I guess..

I guess you all want an update huh!? We havent been doing much. Last night was my last night teaching at the pool. I am very sad that I wont be with the kids anymore but I am very excited for my up and coming job as a Nanny!! We are going to move back to Utah in almost exactly one year! And Boy o Boy let me tell you how thrilled I am. Since we are going to Utah next week we did our christmas this week. It was very simple but a BLAST!!

We are being temporary parents for a little while for our friends while they have their baby. We have a 2.5 year old and we love him and he has been soo good! Hopefully this baby will come soon we want to meet her.

My sister is doing as well as can be expected after falling 260 feet off a cliff without a helmet or harness. She now has either a bruised tailbone or its broken. Unfortunately for her there is nothing that can be done. SO she is stuck in a wheel chair still the same.

We sent out our first christmas cards this year. Last year we werent able to because we moved and etc. It was so much fun. We included pictures and a VERY hysterical story. If you want me to post I will but you need to ask.

We are going to Utah in exactly 1 week from today! O how happy we are to see the snow and REAL mountains and REAL trees. O how exciting it is to see family and meet our niece for the first time! O how exciting it will be to ride in a car for 12 hours! NOT!!!!

A full Heart

This post may be boring for most and if you so desire you can just move on to something a little more entertaining. This post is for me to get my thoughts out.

Tonight was our relief society Christmas dinner. If you are not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, relief society is a place for the women of the church to spend time with friends and learn about Christ's teachings.The relief society Christmas meeting is my all time favorite every year and I count down the days until the next year. This years was no exceptions. A wonderful narration was done by the most awesomest narrator ever. He has that perfect voice for movie previews, commercials, and the radio. Anyway enough about him. We watched a beautiful rendition of the book A Christmas Bell for Aniya by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. We were all in tears. And then we watched the Nativity. Along with amazing songs sung by amazing voices it was wonderful.

I love this time of year because it makes me so grateful for what I have and who I am. With the trials and miracles we have had in the last 6 weeks I have never had a stronger testimony that the church I belong too is the true church. My sister who fell 260 feet should not be alive and although we have our tiffs I love her and I am so grateful that god was able to stretch his hand down and cushion her fall. I am grateful for a small gift that came in the mail today that makes it possible for us to live.

While listening to the wonderful program this evening all these emotions flooded my mind and soul of everything that I have been blessed with in the last 6 weeks. Its been rough but because of friends and family I have made it through alive and kicking.

Christmas Angels

If you dont know already my sister Megan fell from a 200 foot cliff and then fell into a 60 foot slot canyon. She came out with some broken body parts and some slightly damaged organs but without a helmet she managed to live. We ask ourselves and pray everyday as to why this wonderful young lady lived through such an awful experience and the answer we have came up with is Angels were surrounding her. She should have not lived but those angels helped cushion her fall and make it so she is alive today. She is going through a hard time emotionly and physically and so my dad has come up the angel tree idea. 

He would like it if anyone and everyone can donate an angel to their tree. This will remind her and our family that there are angels around every corner and that they come in every size and shape. This will also show her that her friends, family, and complete strangers are there to be her angels as well. You can mail your angel or hand deliver it, I can get you the information for either method. 

My dad made this announcement last night so I went and made my angel last night. I made my angel to look like my sister. I am so grateful and blessed to have her here and alive. 

An eventful 2 days!

The 2 days of thanksgiving which I count as Thanksgiving day and Black Friday were very eventful. We went and spent thanksgiving with a bunch of people from Utah. We went Black friday shopping at midnight. On Friday we went and played arcade games, then went to a festive and then went and saw the coolest house. There are like 10 times more pictures on Facebook if you care too see more. I just posted my favorite.

Some of our food!

Truly the best turkey I have EVER had!

We went on a carriage ride. But let me tell you it is not the same when it is 70 degrees outside and NOT snowing!

The BIGGEST rocking horse ever!

So in Arizona people think it is alright to decorate their WHOLE entire home from top to bottom with anything you can imagine and then let you walk through their house without an escort. Does anyone else find this oddly unnerving? Because I sure did! But let me tell you this dude had 50 yes 50 christmas trees in his house not to mention the 60000 lights and all the other crap. I chose a few pictures but I went a little picture crazy so go look at facebook for more madness.

The entrance

These are the explanation. Just as I was taking these Soap fell from the sky. It was slightly odd

Inside this giant gingerbread man is a crash test dummy

This room had like 10 trees I think. Including an upside down one.

If you dont know me even the slightest then this wont matter to you. But I LOVE cows! And he had a cow nutcracker! And we tried to buy it off of him but it wasnt happening. And he didnt remember where he got it. So if you see one of these cute fellas remember me!

Yep! He went there!

I wanted to buy this tree from him too!!! But I couldnt afford it even if he would sell it

We had a blast of a 2 days before I had to go work at the hospital!

Day 22

Today I am thankful for Uhaul giving us a free turkey! And man o man for our first turkey it was Delicious! It was so much fun to make it and eat it with friends from Utah! We had a fun day and now were heading out to go black friday shopping! At the coolest electronic store EVER!

Day 21

Today I am thankful for pricematching and coupons. It saves us so much a month by just doing these 2 simple little things. I am also thankful for my kids at work they make me laugh so hard and I LOVE their stories

Day 20 happiness is...

I forgot last night so hear is tonights...

Today I am thankful for homemade doughnuts! They made my night!!! And guess what!? The dough was Rhodes Rolls!!! Who knew!!! I mean AMAZING!!! And Jack and Stefen and I ate a lot of them!! They were sooo yummy!

Day 19

Today I am thankful for my home and my bed. After my first weekend at the hospital working my clincals I am so thankful to come home to a REAL bed and not being stuck in a hospital bed. I am also thankful for the roof over my head. I am also grateful for Stefen cooking me dinner and Jack bring dessert so I could just relax and attempt to stay awake to visit with everyone. Which I was probably poor company. I am rambling now.... on a blog... Man I guess I am more tired then I thought.

I am thankful for the medical technologies we have. I have seen many many amazing things this weekend. And It feels my heart to know were saving lifes.

Day 18

Today I am thankful for my grandarents. They have been sick in the off and on in the last couple months and I have struggle with it because I am pretty close to one set of them. My Grandma is in the hospital right now and although she is alive it severly affects me when she is soo confused. It hurts me to not be there for my family this week but I am soooo thankful everyone is alive

Day 17

Today I am thankful for last minute CPR trainers! I found out 2 days ago I needed CPR training but tomorrow at 6 am for my clinicals. With everything going on this week I was done by the time I found out what I needed more. Luckily there was this nice old couple who was able to train me today and I was able to get it into the school in time and it didnt cost a fortune! I was sooo thrilled!

Day 16

As tired as I am of my cell phone ringing I am so grateful for cell phones. Its been so easy to get ahold of the people I need and to keep everyone updated and to make arragments. I dont know where I would be the last couple of days with out it!

Day 15

I dont know where to start. I think Ill start with prayer. I am so grateful for prayer. Many peoples prayers have been answered in the last 24 hours. To make a long story short and most of you are on facebook anyhow my sister Megan fell down in a slot canyon. She fell 200 feet. She should have died. But she walked away with a broken foot some minorly damaged organs and a broken shoulder. I am grateful for my family that they are alive. I am thankful for Jetblue and Everything they do and I am thankful for my friends. Where would I be today without all that? On my way to Utah for a funeral. I am so glad my sister is alive. I have much more to say but my thoughts are so jumbled right now I cant think to write them all down.

Day 14

I am thankful for good deals. (Dad dont make fun!) About once a month the Albertsons brand cereal goes on sale for $1 a box. So I price match it at Wally world. Today we bought 9 boxes. Our record has been 16 in one trip. Here is Arizona they have way better deal than they do in Utah. Sorry Folks. If you havent heard of our Mexi Mart your missing out. We get meet for .99 a pound and 10 pounds of fruit for 99 its our favorite store for produce. I dont know what will happen when we move. Its the only way we eat healthy.

Day 13

Let me tell you a story. As most of you know I work at a swimming pool and usually I leave my swim suit at the pool and change there since it is starting t get chilly. So on thursday for some reason I took my swim suit home. Fast forward today. I walk into work and go looking for my swim suit. I go and ask my co-worker and reminds me I took it home. O shoot I said. Well in a matter of 13 minutes I was able to drive home, do the fast change of clothes I have EVER done and drive back. I was right on time.
So with that story being said I am thankful for VERY supportive like family co-workers and I am thankful I live 5 min away.

Day 12

Today I am thankful the LDS church I belong to. It has been such a help and a support for most of my life. I am so glad that I am a member. I am also thankful that I am a primary teacher. I love my kids!

Day 11

Today I am thankful for our friends here that act like our family. Our friends Jack and Janice Balloon attacked our front door last night and it was great to wake up to something that made me feel so loved and warm inside. We were able to go to the temple and dinner with our friends Erica and Jordan. It was so much fun to talk and laugh and sing songs with them. My friends at work and my sereget mothers who roll there eyes at me when I drop a litter of ice on my foot are a huge support to me. I am so grateful for the smal supprt system we have here.

P.S our new business Bris Heartfelt creations is up and running go check it out here. There is a contest going on too!

Day 10

Today I am thankful for temples. We got to go to the temple today. We live about an hour a way and I am so grateful that we are even remotely close to one. It was a wonderful time and we got some answers to prayers that we needed.

After the temple we went to the mall and ate dinner at Johnny Rockets and window shopped! It was so much fun!! We acted like little kids when we saw the lego store, disney story, puppy store, and Kitchen supply store. Stefen got a new timon and Pumba ornamament and he loves it!

So now that we have told the family the bad new that I talked about I can tell you all. We found out this week that the pool I work at is closing. The owner is trying to find a building to lease but doesnt know what that means for job security. As of right now I have till the end of January to figure something out. So one thing that we are going to do is start a business making all my crafts and such. Its going to be up and running with in the next couple days. It feels right for right now and I know the lord is guiding us in this decision. It has been a rough week all around but with going to the temple today I am at such peace and humility for my savior and the blessings that I have.

Day 9

Today I am grateful that we have 2 cars. Many of our friends have 2 and although the truck can be a pain in the butt I am grateful we have 2 working cars. I am glad that stefen is able to fix them and keep them running well. This school has been a blessing!

Day 8

Today I am thankful for friends. I found out some bad new today which will be mentioned at a later date after both families have been told. And I am so grateful for friends to just listen. And to let me cry on their shoulders.
I am grateful for my mom who listened to me cry for a while. I am grateful for cells phones that give me instant access to whom ever I need.

Banana Bread Balls....

Tonight I realized that I had some Bananas that needed to be made into bread. But I wasnt feeling just Banana Bread. So I made Banana bread ball. After your bread has cooled you cut or tear pieces off and "roll" them into balls. This is A LOT harder than it seems and mine turned into add shapes but taste just the same. Then you freeze for 30 min. After the chill you dip in chocolate I used Almond Bark for most of it. Then put what ever yummy topping you want. I used Chocolate sprinkle, mini mm's and christmas sprinkles. 

The outside of the finished product.

What they look like on the inside

Oddly this one was actually a ball! LOL 

More. It made A LOT. Stefen and our friend Jack ate a ton though.

The pre-balls waiting for there chocolate bath. I used the crust too. But I did not use the ends of the loaf because A: I hate ends and B: i wasn't up to fighting with it

Day 7

Today I am thankful for my grandparents. We almost lost my grandpa last year when he got hit by a car. It made me appreciate him even more. Today was his birthday and it was so fun to sing to him and make him smile. I could hear that huge smile and he was so grateful. I have never really appreciated my grandparents like I should but today it was awesome to just sit and listen to my grandma tell me her stories and how much she loved our pictures I sent her. I am thankful that my grandparents are still alive.

Day 6

Today I am grateful for having a job that I enjoy most of the time. I love how much the kids can cheer me up. I love getting excited and making a huge deal if they make a new improvement. I love the hugs and the trinkets I get from them. Sometimes I do get overwhelmed but I love knowing that right now in my life I dont need to have my own kids because I already have 70 something.

Day 5

Today I am thankful for laughter. It has been an overwhelming 2 days and today as we had to go to buy more thing for the computer all we could do was laugh. We did however get to go to the COOLEST and slightly oddest electronics store I have ever been too. It had REAL LIFE palm trees in it and it was HUGE. We found the stupidest things funny the last 2 days but it been what has kept us going and alive.
I am again thankful for all the support we have gotten. Especially from our computer guy and his family. They have saved our lives this week and have tried as hard as they could to make it so it wouldn't be bad new. I am thankful for our good friend Jack who let us barge in and bum food off of them so we wouldnt have to come up with something like beans and pineapple.

Day 4

Today I am thankful for best buys finance option and the fact that they have computers.  Our desk top decided to blow up this week litterally catch on fire. So we had to go buy one so stefen could work.  We were only able to afford it cuz we can make payments. I am so thankful for all the support we got today from friends and family letting me whine,.

Day 3

Today I am thankful for rain. Being from Utah you tend to appreciate cold weather more than most people. And it has been chilly lately. It is only suppose to 65 tomorrow I am slightly thrilled for this new development in the weather

Day 2

Today I am grateful for long lost friends and the medical things that we have today. I have a friend that I could call a friend maybe a person I used to know but never really knew. We are now best of friends. I can unload on her and she can do the same for me. I wouldnt get through my boring days without chatting with her.
For my clincals for school I had to prove that I had chicken pox. You know how hard it is to prove you had chicken pox if you didnt go to the doctor? Well I tried to talk my doctor into just giving me the shot but that didnt work so I had to have blood work to test to see if i had chicken pox. Is that crazy or what?

Grateful

With this month being Thanksgiving I thought it would be good to write about how thankful we are for things. The computer that Stefen works on crashed today. We have been so blessed today to have a family in our ward fix it for us. It was very stressful today. We were both in a panic because we cant afford a new computer and it was acting like it needed to be replaced and thank goodness to this family it is working.  I am so grateful and a little emotional because we depend on this computer for our livlyhood.

I am grateful that stefen is able to work on cars. He is almost done with the "car" portion of school and he knows so much. It has helped us out when we need to trade goods etc.

There are so so so many more blessings I am grateful for.

Stefen is grateful for my resourcefulness.

The Story of the Paintchips

So we all know how much I love Pinterest, right? Well there have been a few ideas of things to do with the free paintchip cards you can get at Lowes and Home Depot. So I thought well we need some sort of leaves for our tree, OOOO paintchips would work. So thats was started this adventure. Stefen and I went to Lowes! I didnt know if there was a limit on how many you could take and we needed a bunch and I was slightly embarrassed to be seen with 40 chips of the same color. So we came up with a plan. We would grab 4 or 6 of one color and stuff them in my purse. If someone walked by Stefen would grab a random color (which usually was blue) and say wouldn't this be great in the living room? The person would walk away and we would crack up laughing. Now this happened like 5 times. I am sure that the people on the security cameras were laughing too. At one point in this mission we were laughing to hard and couldnt get the pirse open. I had like 10 in my hand at that point. I knew that we were going to be in trouble. Just as somebody waalked by the magically slipped into the purse. We were done after that. This was becoming a very stressful process. We ended up walking away with 40 some odd paintchips.

There are some on the bottom too

The leaves they have become

A close up shot

Another close up

There are more pictures of our thanksgiving decorations here. This story is one that had to be told.

I know Halloween is for kids but we LOVE to dress up! Its our favorite! So here is our costumes.

Stefen was initially going to be a ghost But he changed his mind

Heres your hint... It involved gold plates!

Ta da! Meet angel Moroni. At the ward trunk or treat most people got who he was but other had some weird ideas like the Arch angel...

He even had Nephi shoes!

I was a witch with crazy hair. which was my own hair. Many thought it was a wig. 

Stefen found this hysterical when I did this.

Us together.

So one quick story. We went to Walmart after trunk or treat and I didnt want my hair to look so weird with the hat off so I wore my costume in the store. Stefen did not. I got the weirdest looks from people. And stefen was giving me just as weird of looks too!

Pumpkins!

My pumpkin is the small one and Stefens is the big one. 

A step towards home!

Today was an exciting day. We renewed our lease for one more year. Which means *drum roll please* that we have one year and two months left till we move back to Utah!

Our plans are to move back to  Utah and let me tell you how excited we are to make that move. But we know that not all things happen the way you want them too. So our back up plan is to move back east somewhere. Stefen says Long beach could be an option but I want to have 4 seasons again. Sadly I miss snow and spring and fall!

We have decided that if we move back east our decision will be made by whether JetBlue flys to that particular city and how easy it is to get to Salt Lake.

New Skirt!

Please note this is a spin off of something I found off of Pinterest. I found a dress that had a shirt sewed to a skirt. It was super cute but I didnt want a shirt sewed onto my skirt so here enters Bri's imagination... I created my own skirt! Yep thats right not one single pattern was used in the making of this skirt. I am pretty excited! 

Front

Back

Sunday Feast...

Today we thought we would have fun making yummy food for dinner... We found a homemade pizza dough and homemade white pizza sauce.

Breadsticks

Grilled Chicken pizza

Yummy sauce

All of it together...

Bat turds for our family home evening tonight...

Our presentation for our bat turds...