DONE!!!!!!!

Well This is an update from the post yesterday. Last night after work I went to my sister Kari's house cause she said she would help me with the wedding invitation layout for Joe and Yessica. So after hours of deleting Adobe photo shop, installing a new one (or trying to ) fiddling with the layout, colors, pictures sizes, fonts, etc. I am proud to report that WE DID IT!!!! I got home past 1:00 am and I am tired today but WE DID IT!!!!! Oh yeah happy dance time. :p Here is the final product...
I really hope they like it if not....I don't know. I'm just so happy that it's done so that I can focus on the rest of my house tonight. James (again) is so wonderful I came home to the floors vacuumed, dishes done, and the house looking TONS better. Now i just have to clean up our room and then do my finicky test on the floors and tub, hang up some pictures in our guest room, laundry for tomorrow, and shower and straighten hair for tomorrow then Presto time to relax. :) Ahhh...I wish I could skip all the other stuff and just go straight to the relaxing part. :p

My wonderful husband

This whole week has been very stressful to me for some reason. I have my parents coming to stay with us this weekend and the house is a DISASTER! I'm not even joking. So I have been stressing about that plus I am trying to get a layout for my friends wedding invitations and he keeps changing the design and he barely sent the pictures to me yesterday and they are really fuzzy so I'm not even sure what they are going to look like. Oh an they are getting married Sept 9th. Plus a bunch of other crazy things that just seem like it keeps piling one ontop the other. This is where my wonderful husband has stepped in. :) James has been so great. He cleaned the kitchen and the bathrooms and today he said he was going to tackle the guest bedroom. Yesterday I got home and saw what else needed to be done and I also saw that Rosko got sick. ( he had gotten into some human food this past couple of weeks) I felt my body go into shut down mode. James was finishing up the bathroom upstairs and then went to Tae Kwon Do. I sat all night and scrapbooked and watched a movie. I was getting ready to take the dog for a walk when James came home. I dont think he understands a girls shut down mode. (I dont know maybe I'm the only one that has it. But when Things get to hard to bear sometimes It feels like everything shuts down and try's tr reboot...Thats the only way I can describe it.) He was really worried about me last night. I feel so bad for making him worry. He is such an amazing person. He has helped me out so much this past week he is basically the one who has been cleaning the house and getting things organized for this weekend. He is such a comfort and relief to me. Most of the time he knows when I am about to snap and he tells me to go sit down and realx and he'll take care of everything. I think I just snuck up on him this time. :p James your so amazing and I love you so much. Thanks for everything you do.

Sunday Thoughts-Humility vs. Pride

I have been slacking on my Sunday Thoughts...sorry about that. Yesterday in sacrament we had the chance to listen to a new family speak. The mother talked about being humble and swallowing our pride. This is something I have been really struggling with. It seems really easy to fall to the temptations to our pride in this world we live in. Sometimes when we say our prayers we tell say "not my will but thine be done". But I was thinking Is that something that we just say or something that we mean? It can be easy to say but when we say it are we being honest with the Lord as well as ourselves? I have met quite a few people that may seem humble by the things they say but once I got to know them a little more I realized it was just words and they didn't mean them. One of these was a man in my mission. He was a pastor at the local baptist church he seemed humble and willing to know what the Lord really wanted of him but when we took the time to teach him it was clear what his true intentions were...to talk to the Americans. President Benson said "The proud cannot accept the authority of God giving direction to their lives. (See Hel. 12:6.) " On my mission I read an article on pride on our missionary folders. I learned that pride is more then just haughtiness and vanity. It's also fear, enmity and many more. President Benson also said in a talk titled "The Faces of Pride". "The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.” It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us." When I read this, I thought of "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens when the Marley brothers come to visit scrooge to tell him that he'll be visited by 3 ghosts. They had chains hanging all over them. It made me think that when we have pride and entertain that pride we are being bound by Satan. But when we are humble and work on being humble then we come closer to the Lord. There's a song in the LDS Hymn book titled Be thou Humble. It's a great hymn about how when we are closer we can be lead by the Lord and feel of his spirit more. "Be thou humble in thy weakness, and the Lord thy God shall lead thee,Shall lead thee by the hand and give thee answer to thy prayers. Be thou humble in thy pleading, and the Lord thy God shall bless thee,Shall bless thee with a sweet and calm assurance that he cares.
2. Be thou humble in thy calling, and the Lord thy God shall teach thee To serve his children gladly with a pure and gentle love. Be thou humble in thy longing, and the Lord thy God shall take thee, Shall take thee home at last to ever dwell with him above." It's a beautiful song. With all the Hymns in the LDS Hymn book are scriptures listed. One of the scriptures listed with this song is Ether 12:27 . This is one of my favorite scriptures, it has a wonderful promise if we humble ourselves before the Lord. In this world of wars, temptations, contentions and all the other bad thing that are going on. It's nice to remember that we are children of god and that our Heavenly Father loves us very much and wants nothing but the best for us.

10 Years

Last night my friend Dawn and I went to do a little window shopping at Gardner Village, and the whole time I was having deja vu and flash backs. It's so funny how all those 80's styles are coming back...even the MULLET..ew. Anyway Dawn and I found the old plastic charm bracelets and necklaces that I use to wear as a kid. I couldn't believe it...I actually thought about buying one. :p I found this picture online if your not exactly sure what I am talking about. Anyway we also found those thin medal bracelets that were bulked together. Plus many more things I haven't seen in a lONG time. It's got me thinking a bit about when I was a kid and my life. I found on my friend Lisa's blog that she did something kinda fun. You know me and the "get to know you" e-mails and how much I like them...I think I'm just to bored at work. Anyway so here is the past 10 years...

****10 years ago- August , 1998******

1) How old were you? Just turned 17

2) Where did you go to school? I was starting at a new school called Monticello High

3) Where did you work? Since I just moved, I didn't have a job...but later I worked at Young's Machine Co. and Subway

4) Where did you live? With my sister and brother-in-law

5) Where did you hang out? mostly my sisters house since I didn't really know anyone

6) Did you wear contacts? I think I did by then

7) Who were your favorite friends? All my Salt Lake friends...like I said I just moved and didn't know anyone

8)How many tattoos did you have? none...yet :p

9) How many piercings did you have? 1 set in my ears

10) Did you drive a car? yeah my parents let me borrow their Honda Civic

11) Had you been to a real party? What do you consider a "real" party? If that involves alcohol...no if not then yes :)

12) Had you had your heart broken? Yes- Dan Hodges...I'll leave it at that

13) Were you Single/Taken/Married/Divorce? married at 17 hmmmmm! :) I was single

14) Any Kids? Again back to the 17 thing :)

*****5 years ago- August , 2003******

1) How old were you? Just turned 22

2) Where did you go to school? I wasn't at the time

3) Where did you work? for my sister

4) Where did you live? Monticello

5) Did you wear glasses? yes only on days I didn't have me contacts in.

6) Who were your best friends? Again I had just moved from Washington...so I didn't really have anyone.

7) How many tattoos did you have? One a panther on my shoulder

8) How many piercings? 2 sets in my ear and then 2 others :)

9) What car did you drive? Jeep Cherokee

10) Had your heart broken? yes

12) Were you Single/Taken/Married/Divorced? I was very single

13) Any Kids? uh...no

******Today: Aug 15, 2008******

1) How old are you? 26

2) What do you do? I'm an Administrative Assistant

3) Where do you live? South Ogden

4) Do you wear glasses? Nope but I would like a pair.

5) Who are your closest friends? Dawn

6) Do you talk to your old friends? I only keep in contact with a few of my "Bingham" friends and I keep in touch with quite a few of my "Monticello" friends.

7) How many piercings do you have? I now am back to the 1 set in my ears.

8) How many tattoos? Still just the one

9) What kind of car do you have? A Jeep Cherokee (mostly for wheelin) and a Kia Spectra5

10) Has your heart been broken? in the past yes but recently..NOPE :)

11) Single/taken/married/divorced? Married :) to a wonderful man

12) Children? We're workin on it.

Bad News...Good News

I don't know if anyone noticed that I have a counter down at the bottom that is counting down the days till the next Harry Potter Movie. Well this is where the bad news comes in. As some of you know I have a hard time playing and hanging out with kids. I don't know why I guess it's one of the curses of being the youngest of 8 with no little kids to learn to play with. Well I have been trying really hard at this cause I don't want to be one of those moms that doesn't like to play with her kids. I want to be a fun mom. :) Anyway one of the things that I have tried to to find common ground. For my niece Abby it's Harry Potter. So I told her that In Nov we would have a week long marathon and watch all the Harry Potter movies and then go to the theater together and see the 6th movie on opening night. (Nov 21st) Well (and again this is the bad news) I looked at my counter and noticed that it said 330 days till the movie. Well OBVIOUSLY this was a mistake. So I went to Mugglenet to see if I could get this changed. Well That's when I found out that they switched the date for the 6th Harry Potter Movie to....JULY. Abby if you are reading this I am SO SORRY!!! (We'll find something else to go and do to pass the time till the movie in July.) Yes I am a little miffed at that but I guess Warner Brothers just felt like they werent ready to release it in Nov. Oh well. On the positve side though With Harry Potter being moved to July this leaves an opening in Nov. to fill. This sopt was snatched up very quickly by the movie Twilight . This has gotten me excited too. I'm not sure what I feel about the movie's choices for the different characters quite yet. But I am going to try and go into this movie with an open mind. I am excited to see how they are going to portray the book on screen. Sometimes it can be very hard to make a movie out of a book...Sometimes they Succeed (Lord of the Rings) and sometimes they fail (Eragon). I am really hoping that this movie is a good one.

Becoming a homemaker

One of the things that I really love is shopping at Farmers Markets. Everything just seems so fresh I love it. Well with the new fruits that are ripening and coming to the farmers markets we have been able to enjoy them a little bit at our family dinners on Sunday. I started to notice a trend in some of my friends blogs. A lot of you are canning, bottling, making jam and fruit leather from all this fruit. It got me thinking that I really don't know how to do any of that. So I decided to learn. Fruit leather is something I have always enjoyed and thought it would be fun to make. Saturday we were going up to James' parents house so he could help his dad with the waterfall. Well for those of you who aren't very familiar with the northern part of Utah. Perry and Brigham city have A LOT of farmers markets. We probably pass at least 7 on our way to mom and dad Armstrong house if not more. James and I stopped at one. I wanted to get raspberries, peaches, and anything else that looked enticing. :) well the first place we stopped didn't have any peaches...I guess they had a frost and all their peaches were frozen so they didn't have the chance to harvest a whole lot. But we did get green beans, choke cherries, grapes, oranges and local honey. mmmm Anyway, I wanted to stop by another one but we were running a little late. but I had the chance to go a little later in the day with my sister-in-law Nikki. We found peaches and a lot of raspberries....but not just any raspberries Bear Lake raspberries. mmmmm. I bought a whole flat. and ate a good amount while sitting at mom and dad's talking with mom and Nikki. I did find out from Mom how to make fruit leather. So tada... I made fruit leather. :) We haven't had a chance to try it yet it's still sitting at home drying. But I really hope it turns out ok. I also have half a flat of raspberries left...so I'm thinking about attempting jam again. Not sure yet...but maybe. Or I might just make more fruit leather. :p

Weekend Warriors

Sorry it's taken me so long to post about our weekend. This past weekend was a little rough. James' Tae Kwon Do school had another test. James didn't test but he always reviews to see where he is at and what he needs to work on. He is in the Masters club that they offer and had to get a different kind of uniform for that class...which actually worked out really well cause his old uniform was really tattered and torn...literally. So he has this really nice looking black uniform. (kinda an FYI so you know which one James is in the videos that I'll be posting) Fridays test they had everyone go through their forms. James did his form Perfect. (well in my point of view but I'm kinda biased) He has been working on it for a long time now to try and get it looking clean and sharp. I was really impressed also by a lot of the lower belts in the school (white belts and orange belts) who had their forms down really well too. After forms they had all the students except for the black belts do their breaks. (board breaking) It was cute to see the little kids get so excited for getting the chance to participate. The test ended a little after 8...which was nice cause James and I were able to have a date night. We were to tired to go out anywhere so we just went and got a pizza and went home to watch half of Harry Potter. (that's all we made it through before falling asleep. I guess were getting kinda boring. :p) Saturday before we left I took Rosko to Idle Wire to get his haircut ( I figured I needed to get him use to a professional haircut so maybe in the future he'll sit better for me when I cut his hair.) and then James and I went to the rest of the test. James continued to judge like on Fri. But he also had a demonstration...his break. He did a speed break and a power break. His power break was two brown belt boards together. I forgot what it equals to in wood. but here it is...

His speed break was an inch of pine and Mr. Shaw was on a chair and held the wood up by one hand. The more speed the more chances that you'll have to break the board. This was a REALLY neat break.

Well after the remaining board breaks it was time for sparring. Now sparring is something that you either hate or love...I have never met anyone yet who was on the fence about this topic. Mr Shaw did it a little differently this test. He drew 2 circles on the ground the outer circle (the one with the solid line) is for lower belts white to brown. The inner circle (the one with the dotted lines) is for the black belts. That was the area they had to spar in. There was also a square in the middle and this was for the elite group. You could make it your goal to be in the elite group no matter what rank you were. All you had to do was stay in the square. They started with all the lower belts and went up. James had a chance to spar with a few people. I'll post a video and explain a little about it.

This is something I actually forgot about. Mr. Shaw was explaining that things that are done in forms can be applied to sparring or fighting. He had James come up and show a demonstration of one of those techniques. The man in front of James is his Dad. :) Dad was surprised to be asked to help in the demonstration. But James and I think that he really enjoyed it too.

The first person that James sparred was Mark. Mark is a blue belt...at our school... but before he came to Mr. Shaw he studied Chung Do Kwan at another school for a number of years. He stopped when he went on his mission but decided he wanted to get back into it when he came back. James says he really like sparring Mark and he likes to watch Mark spar others...Especially people who don't know his history and just think he's a blue belt. Anyway so this is them sparring. It starts in the middle of the fight cause I was trying to get to the back for a good camera shot. But I did get this shot. Mark got a good punch in...to James' nose. He thought it was fine, but then realized that it was really hurting...then it started to bleed. It bled for a long time. After he got some tissues in his nose he wanted to continue to spar Mark. After all the higher belts were done sparring they let Michael Lang spar with James and a few people. Then James sparred with Mr. Shaw. It was really neat to see these last few people spar and to see the control and discipline they have. Plus they had some really neat moves. :) The test was over close to 1:00 and they said they would have the test results at 2 for anyone who wanted them that day. So why they were discussing the test and deciding who passed and who didn't. I ran back to Idel Wire to pick up Rosko and then went and got some lunch for James. I got back a little at 2 and they were done. James' nose was still bleeding pretty bad and he said he had a really bad headache. So we stayed home and watched the Olympics and just relaxed. Sunday we watched the Olympics till church. After we went to family dinner and watched the Olympics there too. :) It was a good weekend. Oh and something for fun. I know this wasn't part of our weekend but it was still fun. :) On Monday after work my friend Dawn came up to go to a BBQ at some friends house. We went and did a little shopping before. Dawn had on a dress and needed some jeans. The BBQ was so fun. It was Alan and his wife Hakel that hosted it, Alan's sister Lori was there as well as Dan Degner and his friend Rachel. These guys are all friends of James'. They all grew up together. It was really fun. the girls were in one corner making new friends and chatting with each other and the boys were in front of the grill...doing their man thing. :p After dinner Alan gave us a family home evening message about faith. Then we played Mafia. I love this game it's so fun. How it's played is there are 2 mafia members and 2 detectives and the rest are citizens. everyone closes their eyes and the narrator has the mafia put there heads up and then point to someone to "kill" them. the the mafia puts their heads down and the narrator tells the detectives to put their heads up and they point to someone they think is a mafia member and the narrator shakes or nods his head. Then everyone "wakes up" and the narrator tells who "died" in the middle of the night then everyone talks about who they think it was. When the decided on one person that person is "killed" and they tell what they were. The games continues till the mafia or the detectives win. It's a really fun game and the more the narrator gets into it the funner it can be. We had so much fun.

Yup, I'm one of THOSE people.

Yes I will admit that I AM one of Those people. I love these books and have anxiously awaiting the last book in the series...Breaking Dawn. No I didn't go and get it at midnight on Friday like I have in the past with the Harry Potter books ( only the 5th and 7th) but I couldn't wait till my sister-in-law finished her copy so I could borrow it. So I had to go search for it...not to bad just two Walmarts. For those of you who have noticed the books I have been reading (on the left side of my blog) I am still reading the rest of the Chronicles of Narnia...but it is put on hold while I read this book. :) I cant help it. So you can tease me all you want but I don't care. I think it's good to be more into a book then a TV show. But I do think it's funny to see all the books out the first week after the release date. We went to the Chiropractor last night and at first I hid my book cause I knew that something was going to be said but then I noticed that all the...I don't know if they are nurses or helpers...Chiropractic assistant maybe. Anyway I saw that three of these Assistant had the books in hand and were talking about how many they had seen that day. I smiled at Amy (the receptionist) and put my book on the counter. They all started to laugh. as I walked in to sit on the massage chairs to wait my turn. I saw 3 other ladies have books too. HA HA! 7 of the same kinda book in the same hour. It was awesome. James was seeing Dr. Ludd and another guy came to take his seat next to me. He noticed too and said "wow I feel like I am missing something or not apart of some trend." I couldn't help but smile. I asked James if he wanted to try and read them, he said he might try but he wanted to finish the Sword of Shannara with me first. We are in the middle of the first book on that one. :) Anyway I just wanted to share my opinion and how fun I think it is as well as funny. :) If by any chance if you are wondering I am currently on Chapter 13....but that will change as soon as I post this and get back to reading. :) It's times like these when I love all the free time I have at work. :)