Flashback Friday

Shan's Update

10. We got new phones for Christmas and I’m not really sure I like it. Its way more fancy then my plain old flip phone and somewhat more complicated. The up side to our new fancy phones is that I now get my email on my phone AND I can watch TV. So when Ethan is having a melt down I can bribe him with watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or Handy Manny.

9. I need a new job! Desperately! I’ve been working for Kristy’s mom, Martha for about a year and half. Usually I work 3 days a week for about 4 hours. But a few weeks before Thanksgiving she reduced my hours to only 3 a day and then it was hit and miss if I even got to work. Since I’ve been back from Disneyland I’ve only worked 3 days. So if you know of any jobs please send them my way.

8. Ethan still has his binki. We really need to take it way from him but it’s going to be so painful! He is really attached to his binki but only has it during naps and bedtime. I’m not sure how to go about doing it. Part of me just wants to have him throw them away and tell him no more binkies but that sound a little bit cruel. The other part of me wants to try the binki fairy thing but I’m not sure he’ll understand that. Any suggestions?

7. I got kicked of SMG. It’s some what funny to me but a little disappointing. I honestly just couldn’t keep up with comments. I’ve been so busy since Thanksgiving with going to Disneyland then coming home and getting ready for Christmas and then trying to find a new job that SMG was that last thing on my list. I understand that they needed to let me go but it would have been nice if someone cared enough to ask why I haven’t been around. Instead Denise just sent me an email saying that I wasn’t holding up to my commitment and they had to let me go. I don’t know how a lot of these ladies do it. With being a mom, working, and everything else that goes in our lives how do they have time to fit everything in? I guess I just couldn’t make it work. Oh well.

6. One of the many things I did before going to Disneyland was make all of my nieces and nephews an autograph book. I think the turned out so cute and the kids seemed to really like them. I know that Ethan did. By the end of our trip he really enjoyed seeing the Characters and handing them his autograph book. On one side of the page is the character's signature and the other side will be a picture of them with that character, kind of like a little scrapbook.

5. My mom turns 50 next month and me and my siblings are going to give her this quilt. Her grandma made this quilt for her but was never able to finish it. So my mom has had the top and bottom for over 30 years and now we are going to have it machine quilted and then finish it all up for her. I think she is really going to love it. Plus it’s going to be a surprise.

4. Jared is going to be running in a marathon this year. He loves to watch the biggest looser and last season when they ran the full marathon he was inspired to run one too. He says it’s going to help him keep in shape. Last year he lost about 50 lbs. and this year I think he’s hoping to loose another 25 or more. He’ll be running in the Ogden marathon on May 15th. It’s supposed to be all down hill and somewhat easy. I’m hoping to make signs and get some people to come with me and help cheer him on. He’s invited his friends Chad Luke and Cory Pulsipher to run with him but I don’t think they will. They haven’t signed up yet and the spots are filling up quickly.

3. I still haven’t mailed our Christmas cards. People I saw before or on Christmas got theirs but everyone else is still waiting. They are in the envelope, addressed and stamped. I just need to seal them and mail them. I know they are way late but I’m going to mail them anyway.
2. My big surprise Christmas present this year was an external hard drive. I’ve been talking about getting one but they are pretty expensive and I figured we’d have to wait to get one. But my sneaky husband got one on Christmas Eve and surprised me. Now I need to get it all set up so that I can back up all of my pictures and scrapbooking stuff. Do you guys back up your stuff? I’m so afraid that one day our computer will die and I’ll loose everything.

1. You’ll have to wait until later this week for number one. I need to get a picture of it before I post about it.

Britt's Update

OK - here's goes. Counting down 10 things Britt's been up to lately.

10) Fairy Cakes. Ok - really they're just cupcakes, but I think I've told you guys this before, in the UK they call 'em Fairy Cakes, and I think that is just too cute. So that's what I call 'em too.


(no I didn't make these - just a pic I found online)

I've been really into making Fairy Cakes lately. I even got a sweet Fairy Cake stand for my birthday and a 101 Gourmet Cupcakes in 10 Minutes cookbook for Christmas!



Tomorrow I'm making "Cookies & Cream Dream" Fairy Cakes from the cookbook for my family for Sunday dinner. I can't wait. Its my first try at one of the fun new recipes. I'll be sure to take pictures.

I especially like Bakerella. I started with the basic cake balls, and then moved up to trying the cupcake bites. They are SOOOO dang good. And so easy. A bit time consuming, but not difficult. They are a MAJOR crowd pleaser. Here are some pics of my cupcake bites. I took 'em to my parent's for a family Christmas party. And they tasted as good as they looked!!

9) Trip to Phoenix. The first week of December my cousin, Morgan, flew me out to Phoenix to take her family pictures. It was cheaper to fly me out there than to hire a photographer!! haha We got a KILLER deal on a flight. $100 round trip! I had a great time. I LOVE those girls and I miss them like crazy. So it was a lot of fun. I was there for about 4 days. And the photos turned out quite good, thank you very much. I was so relieved. I was totally scared they'd turn out not-so-hot and she'd regret flying me out. Here's a few of my favorites. You can see all of 'em HERE if you want (along with a bunch of other photos of mine).















8) Scotty came home! Yep, Dec. 11 Scotty came home from his mission in Chile.







It's been SOOOO great having him home. He's SO normal. He didn't have any of that return missionary weirdness at all. Surprising! He is totally fun and awesome and we love him so much. So happy he's come. He's got a girlfriend already too. She wrote to him his whole mission. They've been friends forever, they were on swim team together. They went to a dance together in High School, but I think that's the extent of their pre-mission dating. Just friends before the mission. Now they are totally in love and serious. I don't think it will be long before they're engaged. We love her, so while that would be WAYYYY too quick for me personally, I'm just happy for him.

7) Book Club. You probably know I've been in a book club with the women on my mom's side of the family (aunts, cousins, grandma) forever. We went on a summer hiatus, but this fall we started up again and its been awesome. I got to host in November, which means I got to pick the book and have the get-together at my house. We read "Austenland" by Shannon Hale. If you want a good read, go to the store/library and get this book TODAY. It's my favorite book I've read in years. I REALLY LOVED IT!!!!!



As you can see, the turn out for November, wasn't the best (one aunt is actually missing from the picture. She left early before we could take the photo). But it was still tons of fun. We shared Christmas children's stories for the December book club, and the January book is called "A Great and Terrible Beauty" by Libba Bray. Marci is hosting, so it was her pick. Its in a couple weeks, and I'm still waiting for my book to arrive. I ordered it online a couple weeks ago, and its still not here. I hope it comes soon so I have time to read it!! It looks really good. I can't wait to start it. I might have to email the place I ordered it from and find out what the heck is going on.

6) Our house. We love our house. We want to buy it. Our landlord is interested in selling it to us. But that's about as far as our talks have progressed. We are dumb and haven't saved any money for a down payment though. :( I REALLY REALLY hope we get to buy it and can stay here. We really like our ward and our calling and this neighborhood and location.



And c'mon - our house is so cute!! And thanks to our awesome landlord, its in great shape. Sure, it needs some updating. But mostly, its a fabulous little place. I really would love to buy it. Say your prayers we get the chance!

5) Dante. Josh's dog, Dante passed away last month. He got the dog when he was in high school, and that dog really saved his life. Turned him around and really helped him through some tough times. We were never able to have Dante live with us, he always lived with Josh's parents. But I learned to really love Dante too. His passing was quite sudden. Although he was old, and we knew the time was short at hand, it all just happened so quickly. Poor Josh was so heartbroken. I really hated seeing him have to go through such pain. But we know Dante is so much happier now. Running through the icy snow in heaven, singing and howling with all the other Malemutes! And we know we'll all be together again someday.







He was an amazing dog and we miss him. It's still a very tender, sensitive subject. It's sad for us, but happy for Dante.

4) Work. Work, work, work. It's all I do sometimes. The digi-scrap business is booming. I've been very blessed to have such a fun, successful job, despite the bad economy. My business continues to thrive! :) It's been a lot of fun. December has been and off month for me. Tons of personal stuff, holiday stuff, etc etc going on so I haven't made many new products at all. But I have tons of plans for the next few weeks and plan to jump back in and get going. My poor creative team is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for me to get crackin!

But the good part of my work is I get to scrapbook my own pages as part of the job! I'm so lucky. I can't believe its been almost 3 years now and I'm still obsessed with digi-scrap. My style is continually changing and I feel like I just keep improving all the time. So that's fun. I've been hosting a series of challenges over at ScrapMatters called "My Story Matters". Basically its just a personal history album and every other week I give a prompt on what to scrap for your album. They used to be more popular, but they are really dying out. I think I'll only do a couple more months and then wrap it up. But I have had a lot of fun doing the challenge and I can't WAIT to put together my "My Story" book when its all over with. Here's a page I did for my most recent challenge:



Kind of a simple page, but I like it!!

3) Christmas. Our Christmas is always a little hectic. Since both Josh's family and my family are nearby, we go back and forth the whole day. But this year we worked it out so that we were at my parents house in the morning 'til about 2, and Josh's parent's house after than until about 8! We had a wonderful day!! I haven't had a moment of downtime to edit my photos from Christmas! I'll go in a edit a few just for this post!!

Traditional Rodee Family Christmas Jammies. My mom made all our pants. Cute huh??



I gave my mom a vintage Mickey Phone like we used to have when we were little. I think you can tell she loved it!



This is my beautiful niece Ava. I stole her away for a photo shoot in front of the tree over at Josh's parent's house. It was fun!!



And this is our gorgeous Christmas dinner table at Josh's mom's house. Tami and I set the table and prepared most of the dinner ourselves. Doesn't it look purrty!?



We had a VERY merry Christmas!! Josh spoiled me with WAY too many presents. I felt very special!! :) It was a great day. I just love Christmas.

2) Spool Dolls. Ok this is my newest craft and I'm obsessed!!! I made my mom a set for Christmas of our whole family in Mickey ears - 11 dolls in all.



Can you tell who's who?? From left to right it goes: Cameron, Scotty, Chad, Dad, Mom, Britt, Josh, Christian, Marci, Eden & Ella.

I also made my niece, Ali, who is in love with Tinker Bell, a Tink spool doll for Christmas too. I seriously wanted to keep her!!!



I made my ScrapMatters Secret Santa a Christmas themed doll, and I made a set for our friends Jordan and Sydney that were made to look like them. So yes, in the past 4 weeks I've made 15 spools dolls!! And I'm lovin' it! I can't wait to make more! :)

Ok . . . we're finally to #1!!

1) Disneyland!! We just got back from Disneyland this past Thursday. Josh's parent's gave us all a trip for our Christmas gift this year so the whole Leavitt clan went together. They paid for the hotel, plus gave us a heafty gift card to use in the park! It was a lot of fun. The bigger the group, the more hectic it gets, but all in all it was such a fun trip.



We caught the tail end of the holiday celebration. Seeing the park all gussied up for Christmas was so awesome!!







Got to meet Tink for the first time ever. She was SO SASSY!!!



I think seeing these character moments with my nieces and nephews was the cutest and most magical part of the trip. Their little faces just lit up. It was so awesome. I loved being there with the kids!!

I'm still as obsessed with Disneyland as ever. Maybe more so!! HAHA I can't get enough. We're going back at the end of February for our yearly DPOTD trip! I can't wait!!!!

And that's my 10 things. Now you officially know everything that's been going on with me! Ok - maybe not EVERYTHING but you know a lot!! EEEEEK! I just realized this post took me exactly 2 hours to draft. Holy smokes that's a long time!!!!!

Ok Shan - you're turn!!

Much Needed Update

Our "friendy" blog is suffering & I have been thinking about posting something for a really long time, but just haven't. I miss my best friends and hate knowing that I have no idea what is going on in your lives!! I noticed today that it has been exactly 3 months since any of us have posted anything & that is just not acceptable-right? :) So...I think we should each do a little post about what we have been up to. (In honor of our new year I think we should post 10 things)

1. I LOVE GLEE!

There isn't really much I can say other than that-I am obsessed. I was so shocked when the season was already over & I probably watch at least one episode per week still (thank goodness for DVR)! The singing can almost always get me teared up & I love all the characters. Even Sue-she is one that I just love to hate!! Matt got me the soundtrack for Christmas & I MUST HAVE volume 2! I think I'll go watch an episode as soon as I am done with this post! :)2. Our Dog is making me crazy!!

Buckley is the sweetest little dog, he plays so well with the kids, is very patient with being pulled and tugged on, hasn't chewed anything he isn't supposed to (knock on wood), and the kids ADORE him. BUT-he refuses to be house trained!! I am constantly scrubbing the carpet with my little green clean machine-which I couldn't live without-but AHhhrrgg!!! I just want him to figure it out!

3. Grayden is in Nursery, Brinley is a Sunbeam, & Trinity has moved on to CTR!

I feel like going to church finally has a purpose again! :) Our ward also switched time slots and we get to go to Sacrament Meeting first instead of last. Ah, it is so great! Grayden LOVES nursery & goes right in without a problem. Trinity is more confident going into Sunday school now that she has Brinley to tote along, & Brinley has no problem whatsoever being with the "big kids". Sunday school and Relief Society were like a dream & I actually learned something last week!! I need to bring a treat for all the kids teachers on Sunday because they are making my life so much easier!! :)4. Matt leaves on the 26th and will be gone for SIX weeks. Yikes!

This training is the last part of the requirements he needs in order to be promoted to the next rank up which is an E7. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I know he is pretty excited & I am not at all against it because it means another pay raise! :) That is also the last thing he wants to accomplish before he officially applies for PA school through the military. If he gets accepted then we will be off to San Antonio, Texas for a few years. (There are a lot of details, so I'll keep you guys filled in as I find out more info). I just hope the six weeks go by smoothly while he is gone.

5. My Latest Project: Rocking Horse Make Over

I love being able to work with my hands & thought it would be fun to basically tear this little rocking chair apart & put it back together with a new look. As usual it has taken longer than I expected & so far I have successfully pulled out all the nappy old "hair", completely taken it apart, & sanded all the pieces down to the natural wood color. I need to do a little more touch up sanding, but will have to wait until I can either borrow a smaller sander or rent one. It only cost me 8$ at our local thrift store & I don't think I'll have to put much money into it to be totally happy with the results.6. Christmas Around the World

I absolutely love being on the activities committee & this year we had a brand new chair person called right before the holidays. She was pretty stressed out & our committee isn't huge, so I decided to help out as much as I could. I ended up being in charge of finding "Santa", making ornaments for him to give to each child, putting together a craft table for the kids, doing the fliers & other announcements, taking care of sign up sheets, and taking pics of each child on Santa's lap. The entire gym was lined with tables of things that ward members brought to display, sample, or try from different countries & cultures. There was a hand made pinata & all the kids loved taking a whack at it! Matt even got the chance to bring his souvenirs from Bosnia, Paraguay, & Germany. It turned out great & I think it may be a new tradition in our ward.7. Matt's 30th B-Day Surprise

Matt turned 30 on Nov 3oth and although he had told me in the past that he didn't like surprise parties I just couldn't resist. This is the first ward we have been in longer than a year & Matt has been able to be more involved in this ward than any of our past wards. I feel that we have so many friends and so much support, so I went for it! For a minute there I thought he may have suspected something, but I was wrong. He was totally surprised & was glowing when he saw how many people had shown up to support him on his B-Day. There were about 30-35 people & it was such a fun night!8. Thanksgiving with our "Ward Family"

Have I mentioned that I love our ward? ;) We knew we wouldn't be going anywhere for Thanksgiving so I decided to ask around and see if anyone else was in our same boat. It turns out there were a handful of other families that would be in town & I thought it would be fun to do a Thanksgiving together. I didn't want to exclude anyone, so I reserved a few rooms at the church, put a little invite in the ward bulletin, sent around sign-up sheets, & put together a few games for the kids & adults. I got in a little over my head in thinking it would be fairly simple to oversea, but it all turned out so great & was a Thanksgiving I will never forget! (There were between 30-40 people that ended up coming) Oh...I also made these fun little Turkey hats with the kids-they LOVED them! :)9. Making Time for my Kids

I feel like I have been a crazy woman since early September & realized that I need to slow down and spend more quality time having fun with my kids. I thought it would be fun to pull out the bread maker and make pretzels. The girls were my 2 assistants & had so much fun watching the bread machine work. They did their best to roll out the dough and make some sort of shape, but everyones favorite part was eating them-Yummy!!

10. Back on the Baby Train

Yup, I am pregnant again already! Our midwives assured us that there was no reason to put having kids on hold after my miscarriage, so we just carried on! (hehehe) I am not exactly sure how far along I am because of the recovery from the D&C, but I think I'm around 12 weeks. I feel like it is such a huge blessing to be pregnant again already & can't wait to find out what baby #4 will be!! I have been feeling pretty crappy and seem to be getting worse rather than better, but if feeling sick is what it takes to remind me each day of such a great gift-then I'll take it!