an update, no butts about it...

If this blog entry looks an awful lot like the one on my personal blog, it is because aside form this little introduction, it is exactly like the one on my personal blog. Have at it:



For the Thanksgiving holiday we drove to see all our family in North and South Carolina. The day after Thanksgiving we went to Myrtle Beach with my little sister Joni and her boys. It really wasn't warm enough to play in the water, but what's a mom to do? My sister Christie wanted to know what my house looked like all decked for the holidays: Nothing fancy. Niel and I are very likely going to be closing on this house in March. Yea! Our first home, and we won't even have to move! One of my favorite gifts I have given for Christmas this year was this book to Niel, N., and W. and as part of the gift, I gave my promise to take them all out to the movie with popcorn and drinks and candy! I have already read 173 pages of 268 to them... it won't be long. Cinema 8, here we come!

I made W. a super hero outfit for Christmas. N. fell out of her bed in the middle of the night last night. That top bunk blunder has my little girl sleeping (per her request) on the floor tonight and maybe many nights hereafter. Everything "food" came from a straw for her today. She likes it when we say "Aww, Nan, you poor thing". (Sometimes when W. gets hurt and I say that to him, N. gets pouty and says, "I WANT TO BE POOR!") I'd say she's poor now.

Working Late

It really stinks having to work late! I have to work tonight from 2pm till 11pm tonight. I am actually at work right now, which really stinks. I do not enjoy working the late shift, mostly because Danny and I usually go to bed about 10:30ish most nights, and so it makes for a really late evening when I don't even get home until about 11:15pm. But such is the life of being a supervisor at your work.

I did want to share one thing with all of you. The Christmas cards that i sent to all of you has a brand new picture of me and Danny in it. It was only taken about 1 month ago. If any of you want to see the full set of picures let me know. There are about 300 pictures total, but most of them are really adorable (if i do say so myself). So let me know and I can e-mail them to you or give you the link to the site our photographer gave us:).

Also something of good news is that Danny and I will be re-vamping the webiste. It's dncrews.com for those of you that do not know...but most of it is outdated and pretty old news. I've been telling Danny for a while that we need to re-do it and so we are finally getting around to it!! I will get it updated with current pictures of us and new info...and a sweet new design. So be watching for that:)

anyways, I better get back to my work...since there are a few more things I have to get done.

so I am signing off for now.

P.S. Oh and in case you're wondering what that picture is at the top of my post is I will tell you:) that picture is something i just painted in Microsoft Paint. we had a contest at work the last few weeks and that is what i came up with:) I really like how it turned out and so i wanted to share. It's kinda supposed to be in the same style as Andy Warhol. If you don't know who he is go google him and you will see what I am talking about:)

Test

Anita is making me do this.

Traditions

It's Christmas Eve! And my first one away from our safe haven of family in South Carolina. Other than when I was on my mission, this is my first Christmas away from "home", so to speak. Thank goodness Mom's coming to visit on Friday - it makes it a lot easier for me. We are terribly homesick this year. However, we are keeping busy and finding other things to enjoy, so I'm not trying to throw a pity-party.

A thought has been on my mind about Traditions. Because Ben and I have been around our families, we've been participating in those family traditions for all these years of our marriage. Now that we're in OK, we're discovering just how many traditions we want to keep. For example, in our family growing up we always opened up one gift of Christmas Eve. Since we've been married, we've also spent every Christmas Eve with my family. Since we were opening gifts there, I figured that was keeping with our tradition. The other day Ben and I had a conversation that went like this:

Anita: "So, we are opening one gift on Christmas Eve, right?"
Ben: "We are?"
Anita: "It's a tradition."
Ben: "Since when?"
Anita: "Well. we've always done it, but I guess at my mom's!"
Ben: "Honey, if we open on Christmas Eve, I won't have anything to open on Christmas - I've only got 2 things under the tree."

Welcome to a small family where we each get each other only one thing! And Ben and I didn't get each other gifts this Christmas - we bought a home gym instead so we can work out in our garage. (Ben actually has 3 things under the tree, though.) I guess this is a tradition that we won't keep up our here. Or rather, a tradition we won't start on our own. I guess that tradition works best in a family of 6 kids...

And dinner - Christmas dinner. I'm sorry, but I'm not cooking a bunch of stuff on my own for kids who won't eat it. We're having fajitas! With red and green peppers, of course. And I must have a pumpkin pie, but I'll make something else, too. Chocolaty. And they DID request homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast, so I'll have fresh bread. Maybe that will be my supper... And if we do the same thing again next year, does that start a tradition for us?

There is one tradition I started this year. We have a beautiful red and gold star box under the tree. Every day leading up to Christmas we give Jesus a present by doing service for someone, or being especially obedient, or something like that. We have to fill out one slip a day with what our gift of Jesus was, and put it in the box. Christmas morning we're going to open the box and read all the slips before we open our own gifts.

So tell me, all of you who have moved away - what traditions have you started?

Let it Snow!!!!

you all will never believe how much snow we got today here! we woke up this morning to about an inch of snow that had accumulated over night. it wasn't that bad. It was a little rough drive to work, but not too bad. Then about an hour into my work day it started snowing really really hard. Huge snowflakes the size of your hand started falling, and not lightly either. It was snowing so hard I couldn't see across the street. It kept snowing all day until about 1:45pm. It never let up once! when i went out to my car at 2:45pm it was snowing again..but only lightly. I had to scrape off my car so that i could get my lunch out:) it took me about 15 min to get all the snow off. the snow was so deep my whole foot and ankle and shin was deep in snow. there was at least 6 inches on my car at that point. the grass and roads had more since it snowed over the weekend, and none of it melted off so we were totally buried in snow!! I had lunch by myself, since i was too chicken to brave the roads. when i got finished with my lunch break at about 3:30pm it had started snowing really hard again. I knew I was in for quite an adventure later on. Sure enough, I left work about 5:15pm only to find my car completely re-buried in snow again!! It took my another 15 to wipe off the car again and then i tried to back out. the problem is the snow was wet an so it really compacted. when i tried to back up the snow compacted around my tires and turned slick and my tires were spinning! after about 5 minutes of digging and re-digging the snow out from around my tires and behind my car i finally got out. the drive home was really rough. accidents left and right. I passed about 6 accidents on center street on the way to our apartment! I made it home alright, thank goodness, and so did Danny! we are in for light snow all through the night tonight and then heavy snow all through the day tomorrow! we already have about 9 inches on the ground and by tomorrow we will most likely have about 14. the weather man says we are supposed to get about 5 more inches tomorrow!
anyway, I wanted to share our snow stories. I haven't seen it snow like this in years, and never this much all at once!
anyway, I wish i had pictures to show you...they are all on my phone unfortuneately!

Out in Utah

Never posted on here before, so i hope it goes ok. Danny is not much of a blogger and so every time we talk to Anita she bugs Danny about not posting...so i finally told him that i would gladly post as long as someone would invite me:) so Anita gladly sent me the invite and now here i am:)

We are pretty much snowed in, here in Utah. I has snowed constantly for the past week, but even though its really cold and snowy we are doing alright. I am actually glad we finally got some snow here. It hasn't snowed all year until this week, so its been cool to see. I just went to the dentist on Friday for my follow up root canal appointment. I spent an hour and a half there. It was not too fun! The sad part is that i would have never had to go to the dentist for my root canal in the first place, if I hadn't had the crappy dentist who removed my wisdom teeth! Anyway, that was not the final appointment either. All they did was remove the temporary filling they had put in and then they put a temporary crown on for now. I have to go back in January for the real crown. I was not feeling good yesterday. And on top of that the dentist said i can't chew gum or eat gummy bears or anything hard or crunchy! So that pretty much means i can't have anything I want to eat this Christmas. Mushy foods only, but don't worry i'm not bitter!
oh and on top of all of that, my car broke down last week...and i have been relying on Danny to take me everywhere. I really hate when my car breaks down because i feel so out of place. I have no idea what to do with it. I mean I know how to change the oil and tires and things like that but when major things happen, I don't know what to do. So finally on Friday I asked Brian and Natalie if they would help tow my car to the mechanic with their jeep. They said yes and so we took it in. The car place called Danny yesterday night and told him that the car was ready. We had to drive in crappy conditions, since it had been snowing all day and the roads were frozen solid, we made it there ok to the mechanic just to find out that the spark plugs were the problem. this might not seem too big of a deal to you but let me explain why i was upset about it. So last sunday is when the car actually stopped working...right before i was on my way to church. I could not get the car started...and when i finally did something was terribly wrong. so i had to walk to church and later that day while we were talking we decided tha it might be the spark plugs that were bad. so Danny went to the auto parts store and bought the plugs...but we had lots of trouble changing them. Danny could not figure out where on the engine the plugs were supposed to go in. so we were freezing and cold and after a long dilerberation we decided to give up and take it to a shop. we ended up paying like $400 to have them redo the plugs and change the lightblub on my licence plate and replace the lignition starter. I was pretty upset about it, but Danny is going to call around and see if any place offers to do it cheeper, and if he can the car place will refund us our money.
I guess i should just be grateful my car is back working now.
we love all you guys and we hope to see some of you in Februrary

we are so excited to go to the temple. Most of my mom's family is going to be there, witch will be really nice, since most of them could not come to our wedding. we are also going to try to go to disneyland when we go, which we hope will be much better than our last attempt.
hope everyone is doing well:)

Anita's Co-op Soup

Hey guys! I just joined a produce co-op and got my first order yesterday. So I invented a soup recipe to use what I had. It was fabulous!! Here's approximately what I did. (I didn't measure much, of course.)

Anita's Spicy Co-op Soup

1 large potato, peeled
1 large carrot
1 small zucchini or 1/2 of large zucchini
1/2 large onion
1 red bell pepper
2-3 stalks celery
2 cups kale
2 cups fresh spinach
2 cups water
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 c fresh cilantro
1/2 tsp thyme
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 tsp. chicken bullion
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
light sour cream

Directions:
Chop veggies and put in large pan with water. Add salt, pepper, cilantro, thyme, garlic, bullion, and red pepper flakes. Simmer until veggies all veggies are tender, about 30 minutes. Remove from heat. Puree the soup in a blender and return to pot. (If preferred, use a mixer and it'll be chunkier.) Add a spoonful of sour cream to each bowl before serving. Makes about 6 cups of soup.

Calories: About 350 calories for the ENTIRE RECIPE before you add the sour cream. That breaks down to about 2 Tbsp of light sour cream per serving only adds 35 calories.

Notes: This can be varied however you'd like. You can use white beans if you don't want to use potato. I also threw in some milled flax seed. You can also add more or less of most of the veggies based on what you have in your fridge. Most veggies can be tossed in. And because it's got a little kick to it, it's more filling. This was spicy enough to make my nose run a little, but mild enough that Amber's 1-year-old son loved it!