Death is all around us.

So it's that time of year again for the 6th grade Egyptian project. Now, some of you may recall last years project, that took over 22 hours and 3000 popsicle sticks. This year, T2 was much more realistic. She did her report on death masks, and made one that is reminiscent of King Tut's death mask and a little bit Queen Nefertiti statue. It still took 6 hours, but I think it turned out great!!
Gold paint clean up.
Before the details.

After the details. Ohh, and yes the left eye is missing, total accident, when the clay dried, it was not attached to any of the pieces around it and fell in the eye whole of the mask.

Ohh yea.. dead on! I mean from clay, a .50 Halloween mask, gold spray paint and some free handing.. I think she looks 300 points good!

Haloween 2009

I love Halloween! I love getting to dress up and go out as anyone or anything I want. This year I don't feel like I got into it as much as I like, but I've been busy. Here is our holiday in photos:

This is my first place winning pumpkin that I made for the Elementary School staff pumpkin contest. They were donated and the kids that voted for it, one of them got to take it home.

These are Tori as Tinker Bell.. so damn cute!!! We took her Howl-O-Ween at Pets Mart and let her see that other dogs are treated just as weird as she is.

T1 and myself at her dad's ward Trunk or Treat. I think T1 is a well dressed dead teen, but I am not really sure.

Sirj and I. He was a "dark scary guy" and his main goal for the night was to scare kids.. he is so good at it! I just put on some stuff.. together I think it all looked kinda cute.

T2 was an adorable sprite.. the colors were so her.. really a perfect costume for her!

My mom's pumpkin.

T2's pumpkin.

T1's pumpkin.. OK.. so we have a rule that when picking pumpkins, you have to be able to carry it.. so she got the biggest pumpkin she could carry. We got it home and found it had a scratch.. the next day that scratch was filled with white fungus, inside it was nasty, black and gooey (hence the gloves and nasty face). She cut out as much of goo as she could, covered the whole gauze and band aides and called it done. I think they look alike.

T2.. here in last years Halloween costume. She volunteered at a Princess Tea party for scouts, and the older girls were encouraged to dress up.. she ate it up, EVERYONE commented on her dress.. she really loves getting to help and work with others.

T1 before school on Friday. The Jr high PTSA did a stomp after school and all the kids were allowed to dress up for the costume contest. She went threw many different ideas before ending with a dead nerd.

Ohhh, you noticed Sirj and I didn't do pumpkins? Yeah.. he wasn't in the mood to do his and I tried twice to do mine and killed it both times. I need to invest in better tools! Halloween this year was our year with the girls. I don't see this being an on going issue for much longer.. T1 has maybe 1 more year of Trick or Treating, T2 maybe 2. T1 went with friends and that was always the plan, T2 told me "I'd like to just go with my friends, but if you want to come you can". I let them both go with friends, they texted every 30-60 min and let me know where they were.

A great year, but even so.. all the decorations where down and put away but 9:30 am. Looking forward to family for Thanksgiving.

School...

Today was my first sub job at the Jr High. I admit, I was pretty worried, but it turned out great. The class was gym and a great introduction to Jr high. The 9th graders were a little mouthy, but I have noticed that any age older than my own kids I struggle at first to deal with. So I am sure over time this too will get easier. I decided to open myself up to the Jr high and the High school to be more available for jobs. With the economy a lot more people have signed up to sub and the online jobs are gone fast.. so getting "in" with the teachers and the school administrators makes getting jobs a little easier. It doesn't pay much, but its nice to have a full day and I get to see first hand the kids environment and who they are hanging out with. I have also found that I get a much better prospective with the girls and where they are. T1 doesn't seem quite so mouthy or moody when I see that every kid her age acts the same way.
Today is also the last day of first quarter. T1 (from what has been updated as of right now) did fantastic.. we might have to buy sushi! She set a goal for all A's, we hope for all A's, but even more that she is really trying, she has adjusted to Jr high well, and I couldn't be more proud of her! T2.. she is doing great, I am hearing that she loves math and she has never said that before.. the new 6th grade teacher is making a great difference for her. I wish I could explain more about her grades, but I HATE (and I don't use that word lightly) the new grading system. They are now getting numbers 1-4 and it correlates with the standardized testing.. So if she does a writing assignment.. it is put under many areas like: clear point, following instructions, spelling and maybe one or two more areas.. if she bombs.. she could bomb in all the areas.. there is not just a grade. They changed to this so the teachers, staff, school, and district could see if the testing took place about where the kids would be. Well.. guess what.. I don't care about the districts scores, I want to know where my kid is.. give me a grade!!! So... honestly.. I really don't get where she is, but I know she is a good kid, who doesn't try as hard as she could, because she doesn't really care to and she likes to talk. This leaves us in a weird spot and I don't know how to reward her this year. But we will work it out.
Lets see.. what else. I got my school photo.. cuz' I am a teacher and all.. hehe.. I don't like it! I dislike head shots, maybe I will post it later. Ohh, I put in a pumpkin for the staff contest and I won first place.. yeah for me! I love feeling part of the team, I like working at the schools and getting to spend so much time with kids.. esp mine! I feel like I am finally good at mob control at the elementary and now I have a new challenge to learn the Jr high.. I like goal setting.

Life is good.

Happy Anniversary my love!

Our wedding part 5 of 5

Our reception was fun. I mean with that fantastic food how could it not?!? We did some photo's right after the reception. Rose Sachs Gardens is beautiful and has a stairway up to a waterfall where we did some family photos right after the ceremony. Then we did family photos and the one of Sirj and his mom is just cute!


Some of the photos that I used for this were taken by Blaine, Sirj's best bud, he sent me a photo book after the wedding, it was the first time I had seen something like that and it just made me cry.
The sock issue. Sirj wore white socks to the wedding and didn't grab black ones.. Jeff to the rescue and traded socks.. Sirj now has black Sponge Bob socks and he wears them with great pride and memory of our wedding day and what an amazing friend Jeff is.
What can I say.. he just makes me happy.. I am honestly one of the luckiest girls on the planet!
Our exit, flowers and bubbles.
Our flowers were beautiful and smelled amazing. I still have my bouquet and a lot of the flowers Laurel took home and shared with her neighbors.
I didn't have attendants, but my life would not be the same without these folks. Kim, Mom and Laurel keep me sane.. then and now. A couple of days before the wedding I gathered these ladies and my Mother in Law and had them all to tea at the Grand America to say thank you. I gave them each a Christmas ornament and we enjoyed a lovely afternoon together.
My loving parents.
The girls (esp T2) was not happy about us leaving for 9 days.
Sirj surprised us at the house on the way to the wedding with a Limo.. the girls thought it was the coolest thing EVER!
My hansom dad giving us our first toast.
Everyone who shared our wedding day with us. It was perfect!
After the wedding we went to The Hotel Monaco, had dinner at the Melting Pot and the next morning flew to Disneyland. The following day we had lunch at our little Italian restaurant in Venice (C&O Trattoria) then flew first class to the Big Island of Hawaii for 7 days. Ohh yeah.. our honeymoon was scheduled to be the Grand Cayman Island.. but hurricane Ivan had other plans.. 10 days before the wedding we had to find a new place to go. It's so great we don't melt down over change. Kind of a good base for a marriage huh.
Our take aways were a CD that we made, and leaf shaped chocolates in cute little boxes at each place setting.

Our wedding part 4 of 5

The food.. oh my. Our food was the best! Have Party Will Travel of Murray catered our wedding and when we sat down to plan our food, she was so open to us planning the food we wanted.. so we did!
A veggie tray, baked brie, gyoza, chocolate dip with yummies and the best part.. carmel apples. Oh yeah and a beer/wine open bar.

Our cake.. it was amazing. Two of the tiers were German chocolate and one was raspberry swirl. The big chucks of mosaic chocolate on the outside were so yummy.. and one year later.. it tasted just as good as at the wedding. (Thank you mostly to Barb who wrapped it so very well!) There was also no smashing of cake, we were both very gentle and polite. We also did get sit down and eat the food at our wedding, I know so many that don't, and our food was good!

One day I want to call them and order our menu again just to have it. They were so great, they made a to go box for us to take. We had chocolate covered, carmel apples that we took to Hawaii with us!

Our Wedding part 3 of 5

Our ceremony. The foundation of our relationship is parallel with a lot of the teachings from The Prophet. We had a close friend read "On Love", then Allison (our officiant) read "On Marriage" and Sirj and I read "On Children". Oh yeah.. Sirj purposed to me at the end of the isle. How could a girl say no? (in the dress and all). Continuing with the plan that the wedding was all about our new family, we didn't have an attendants, the girls gave me away and we did a sand ceremony. It was so perfect. The weather was mid 70's, the sky was blue, the trees were colorful, our guests were who we really wanted there.

YES!!!
Sirj is green, T1 is pink, T2 is turquoise, and I am purple. Still individuals, but never to be separated again.. Family. We had the vase at the sign in table (thank you Laurel) a glass etching pen and had everyone sign the vase as they came in. We also had candy corn and candy pumpkins in a glass pumpkin jar at the table.. the kids spent a lot of time down there eating the candy. My copy of The Prophet, Sirj gave me for our first Christmas. Here you can also see our rings (a little). Sirj's is a TeNo, stainless steel with a tension setting .10 diamond. I never asked what size his finger was, I only knew what his right hand ring finger was.. because we did rings without each other I ordered his (not available in Utah) to big. And five years later he's smaller and his ring barley stays on! My ring is a Natalie K white gold Victorian style with etchings and diamond down the sides, eternity designs on the top and bottom and a .85 round diamond in the middle. I had showed him what I liked, but he did the rest on his own.. and then hid it in my car trunk.

"Give me, a kiss to build a dream on..."

Aren't they cute!!

Sirj walked down the isle to "Love me Tender", I walked down the isle to "When you wish upon a star" and we ended with "A kiss to build a dream on". We both wrote our vows. Sirj's was short and perfect, mine took me months and used a lot of words. Both were so perfect for our day.

Ohhh.. you noticed the girls are in different dresses than the photos.. yeah.. that was fun! After our outdoor photos I had all of our dresses cleaned.. the girls came back looking like they had the chicken pox.. so I re died them and that didn't work.. so the week before the wedding I went out alone looking for anything in the girls sizes that were in the right colors. I bought everything, took them over to the girls (at their dads) and they each choose the dress they liked the best. It ended up fine.