Job update!

I have been working for SmartMed since 11-24. It has been tough! I really thought I was prepared but learning a new system is a lot harder than I thought. I chose to work after everyone goes to bed. It seems that I end up working until 5am everynight. So that leaves me with 1 1/2 hours before Michael has to get up and going. Most days I get to sleep while Christian is at school. So far so good. I did have a nap tonight but man I could have slept all night. I am learning tons though. I have a wonderful mentor that is straight to the point and really knowledgable. I am just sooooo grateful that I have the opportunity to work from home. I am so glad that I can choose to sacrifice and my sacrifice doesn't include everyone else. Although Cory might feel like it does. He says he can't sleep all alone but I think he is just worring. Today the Spectrum laid off another 12 people. Where Cory works up in the Cedar office I think he is pretty safe but they were still on pins and needles. All the lay offs were suppose to be known by 5 today but they had only heard of 8. So who knows we could still be SOL tomorrow. I am so glad I am not in charge. There have been so many things in our life this year that has proven that to me. It has been such a blessing Cory getting transferred to Cedar but you should have heard me when we found out! I was ready to chop someones head off. He would have never came across the opportunity to go to school and rejoin the Guard with ROTC. I know whatever is thrown our way is for us to grow and for our own good. That makes the rough times a little easier to swallow. I do have to say, everything is easier if you find something to be grateful for. I have so many things to be grateful for. I have the best husband in the world (sometimes). He is sacrificing so much by working his butt off by going to ROTC and doing school plus having a full time job. He is such and inspiration to me. I appreciate the kind of father he is to our kids. He is all three of theirs best friend. He cares about their likes and really knows them. Most of the time better than myself. He spends time with all of them and that is so priceless. Since I have started working he has really stepped up to help me. He has been doing housework, dinner and other house hold things so I can get stuff done. I am so appreciative. Of course I am so grateful for my children. They are everything to me. They are who I am. Everything I do I do it for them. I hope they feel like that when we are late in the morning and I am yelling loud enough for all the neighbors to hear. I am truely blessed. I could go on and on. I have a hard time being sad when I find so much wonderful things to be grateful for!

EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it!

Just wanted to pass along some savings. There is a $1.00 off coupon in this weeks SS (SmartSource) coupon packet for Green Giant Steamers. If you shop at Walmart that makes it...... FREE!

Cheap, CHEAP!!!

Just wanted to share a link with all ya for $2 off any Goody Ouchless hair accessory. Enjoy!
http://www.goodycomfort.com/main.taf?p=1,9

Age

I wanted to share one of my age moments....
I was doing Jessica's hair the other day and she asked, "How old were you when you got your first cell phone?"
Classic!

Halloween at LaVerkin Elementary

My 1st GrocerySmarts shopping trip!

Jami and I have been soooo excited. We were a little unprepared (I mean me) for the stores not having what we had planned on getting. Note to self, go on Wednesday morning. We did get quite a lot of savings. I am just going to share my triumph at Smiths and Albertsons because I "cheated" at Walmart and although I saved #20 from coupons I really needed to get the basic stuff so I spent more than I knew I could of with the grocerysmarts program.

Smiths:

2.73 lbs of Gala apples (.79 a lb. not a killer deal but I needed some)

4 tube of Colgate toothpaste (big tubes)

2 boxes Swiss Miss hot cocoa

4 cans Carnation evaporated milk

Total: $4.27 Savings of $21.33

Albertsons: (They were out of everything!)

2 boxes Green Giant frozen vegtables

Total: $1.06 Savings of $3.78

Not bad for our 1st go at it! Thanks Keri!!!

Pumpkins

I know a week late but Oh well, story of my life!

Daddy Daughter Date!

Jessica has the best activity days leaders. Becky Church, Melissa Haws, and Joyce Smith are so wonderful. They planned a night where the girls and their dads got to carve pumpkins. Jessica was so excited. As soon as the date was planned she made sure Cory knew all about it and he was going to be there. Such a special time for girls that age. I remember mine. We did a luck of the Irish theme and I don't remember much details but we had a full dinner with fun names of things. It was very special to me. We got Jessica a corsage (thanks for the idea, Mom) and I think she thought that was pretty special until she put it on and it was HUGE. We had to quick do something because Cory had football practice and barely made it home to take Jess. She was so cute though. She wanted her hair all curled and the perfect pumpkin. She was so excited. They came home and talked about the fun quiz they did. They did so much better than Jess and I did at our Mom day. I think they missed one. I know I am a bad mom! Guilt.... I am so glad that Cory is such a great dad. He is very kind and thoughtful when it comes to our kids. They are truely blessed and I have to confess. Sometimes I am a little jealous. Dad is their fav.

Job hunt .....

So I sent away my resume today. I tell you, I am not sure why I am so apprehesive. I don't know if it is because I might have to start having a schedule -I hate schedules- or if it is the fact that now I will be required to work. It is a new place that I haven't been for quite some time. I worked at Zions Bank for 2 years until I had Jessica but this seems so much scarier! I am really excited but really worried that I will have a tough time finding work. I am scared about the employment tests. Although I know Career Step has prepared me in every way possible I am still a little scared. I haven't been typing like I know I should have. You should have seen the piles of laundry I did today. It was like I haven't washed in months. I have been trying to cook a little more, which for me is quite an accomplishment. All these things give me a pretty good excuse why not to practice typing and listening. I really enjoy it when I do it. I don't know why it is so hard to get to that point. Tomorrow while Christian is at school I am going to apply for MedQuist. It is the company that I really want to work for. I would be an employee and the always have you a Q&A. That gives me a whole lot of confidence. I guess we will see in the not to far off future. As for the here and now, I am hunting........

VOLUNTEERS!!!!

Well! Kendra was amazing and found some help for me. My deepest, heartfelt thanks goes out to Mrs. Cook, Mrs. McNeel, Mr. L., Mr. Randall and family, The Crappas, and the Valentines! Thank You, Thank You!!! Jami and Courtney plus two friends were also on hand to assist in the Hamburger stand. Thanks goes to them. I do have to give give credit to Taunya Rangel. Can I just say- she is AWESOME! She was (well her husband signed up) in charge of Halloween. She did the bake sale. I am not sure how many people actually helped her cook but you can not believe the stuff that her and Nancy made. There were cupcakes decorated all cute for Halloween, cute little cakes of all types, rice crispies, oh I can't name everything she had. They had all the stuff presented so well. They were all wrapped in cartons, boxes, celophane bags. Very professional! She is such a trooper. Taunya, You are my hero!!!! Thanks to everyone else that came and helped. The bake sale brought in a little over $200 and Lamar gave us a check for $750! A big thanks goes out to Farmers Market!! They are so supportive of everything the surrounding communities do. I sure appreciate that! My heart is full as you can tell with all my exclamation points and all caps. Thanks again!

Volunteers.....

We have been asked to man the Hamburger booth at Farmers Market for Halloween, in addition to having a bake sale at that time. I am always shocked on how hard it is to find people to help with things like this. If I am planning on going somewhere I just figure I might as well help while I am there. There are always a very SPECIAL few who are always there for me when I need some extra hands. Thanks to them!!!! We had so many people at the first of the year sign up to volunteer. I am so thankful for that. Kristina's idea of having specific sign-ups helped a ton and sending out the sign-up with specifics at the first of the year also. We have a yearbook committee. We had a few moms sign-up for that and the yearbook committee has already had two meetings! I am so happy about that. I love additions like that. I have to say I am pretty excited about the fundraisers we are doing this year. Sees candy, Isabella Photography, and a personalized cookbook. I am really happy about all of these. I know they do not have th potential for bringing in the $ that cookie dough did last year but we just didn't have very many want it this year. I think out of all the slips, Kristina is the only one who said she wanted it. CRAZY! I am relieved though. Last year getting the cookie dough organized, set up and delivered was insane. Monica did such a great job at that though. I am also working on a football video. I have to go through it clip by clip, which means play-by-play the way I record, and it is taking forever. I have finally come to the realization that I will always keep my 8mm footage on the 8mm. I might make movies with some subjects but there are too many special moments that take 2 seconds of tape time and I would hate to loose that timeline with the other activities. I have to give an example: Michael's first game was in Cedar. It was 8:00 am and super cold. Of course we all wore summer clothes thinking Cedar hadn't cooled down yet. Cory, Michael and the Churchs rode up in our van and our sitting blankets were in the van. So of course being there by 7:00 am they had the blankets wrapped around them. We got one blanket back but there was a 9th grader that had on the other blanket. Christian wanted a blanket so I told him he had to get the one from that boy. He walked down there and came up with every excuse you could have thought of not to get that blanket. Hands in pockets, he would walked within a few steps of the kid and turn around. It was so precious. I would hate to lose that. Someday when 8mm are outdated (too late) then I will just make one constant stream of video and copy it to a disc, or maybe a blue ray. I would hate for the DVD to get scratched and we wouldn't be able to watch it ever again. Then again, I might as well just get a 8mm player and leave it at that!

Hair!

I just started a new passion.... reading other blogs. LOL - anyone with me? Well Keri had princess and her hair on her blog so I checked it out. OMGosh! I am so excited to start trying some of these hair dos. I showed Jessica this morning and she even likes some of them. A few are a little too young for Jess but some aren't. So now we have started a quest. Unfortunately this one requires me to be up earlier in the morning. It will be fun. I am excited to try some things, but not to excited to hear Jess get angry. She really doesn't like having her hair pulled. Who does, right? I will post some pics.

San Diego

I am not sure what we fell in love with first - the San Diego Chargers (GO CHARGERS) or San Diego itself. We love it there. We would never want to live there but it is our favorite vacation spot. This trip we were able to have Erick (my youngest brother) join us. We were all thrilled. Cory finally had a body surfing buddy and the kids, of course, had their buddy. He is so great to them. We all love to have him around. We had planned a whole family trip to San Diego in July but we were never able to get the timeshare. We tried again in August but it just didn't happen. We are glad we got to go in September when the kids had a break in school. It was quite chilly but I am sure there were less people. We only had one destination other than the beach and that was the San Diego Wild Animal Park. It was fun but really expensive for what you get to do. There is one place- Lorikeet Landing- that was unforgettable. First they have you buy nectar, $3 a tiny cup (yup each) and then you go into this double door huge cage. We bought 4 cups, and at first when I walked in I was amazed at a lady with 5 birds on her arms and head. They are beautiful birds, kindof colored like a parrot. As I was helping Christian get a bird to drink his nectar I heard Jessica yell and she had one on top of her head! Then another and another. Before she knew it there were 4 birds on her. They drank her nectar really fast so then they wanted to eat her earrings, thumb and freckles on her arm. She was freaking out. I had the video camera and all I could do was laugh - bad mom huh. She was almost hysterical when they all flew away. Erick had one land on his head and scare him to death and Michael had one that really wanted the mole on his neck. It was the best part of the whole park. These pics are of the beach at Catalina Island. We had a lot of fun. The water was pretty cold but we didn't care we were at the beach! I went out to body surf with Cory and Erick one time and there was a huge seaweed forest that you had to treck through to get to the deep water. It was so gross. You had to just run with everything you had to get through it. I just couldn't help but wonder what was inside all of that stuff. We were really lucky though, we saw 6 dolphins not to far away, pelicans flying everywhere (that is what the black specks are in my title pic), and there were 4 sea lions. It was kindof creepy. Overall we had so much fun! We love San Diego!

Recipes

SALSA CHICKEN
4 to 5 chicken breasts
1 1/2 c salsa
1 to 2 Tbsp. mustard
1/2 c brown sugar
Cut chicken in bite-sized pieces and saute. Add remaining ingredients and simmer 20 minutes. Serve over rice.

PUMPKIN SEEDS
2 c pumpkin seeds
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbsp. butter, melted
1 tsp. salt
garlic
Mix together and bake on a cookie sheet for 2 hours on 250 degrees. (We carved pumpkins late at night so instead of cooking them then, I put all the ingredients in a ziploc bag, put them in the fridge and cooked them the next day.)

TAGGED

8 SHOWS I LIKE TO WATCH
I don't have TV (Weird huh but we had to cut $ somewhere - we really only miss football)

8 FAVORITE RESTURANTS
Cafe Rio
Durangos
Red Robin (opening soon- chicken burger w/guac)
Olive Garden
Pasta Factory
McDonalds
Sonic (Love the 1/2 price Diet Coke w/vanilla and pebble ice)
BK

8 THINGS THAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY
Got my MT final results back 98% High Honors Graduate Career Step Medical Transcription School
on the road.... 1- Jessica to piano 2- Michael and Taylor to football 3- pick up Jessica 4- pick up Michael but forgot practice didn't get over till 7:30 (oops my blonde is showing)
Started a blog
Tried a new recipe (Salsa Chicken)
Jessica and Dad off to Daddy Daughter Date (dads have all the fun)
Carved pumpkins
Read stories (we checked out a book from the library that had the mom with a nose ring, very slutting clothes and a tattoo-what is this world coming to, I am glad it was parents that were a man and a woman)

8 THINGS I LOOK FORWARD TO
Getting a job
Spring
Cory finishing school and getting out of sales
Thanksgiving (at my house this year)
Basement finished
Daewoo being fixed

8 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT FALL
FOOTBALL!!!!!!
Leaves changing
Lower water bill
Opening windows
Fresh air
Cooler weather
School (I never thought I would say that but I really like time to get things done)
Halloween

8 THINGS ON MY WISH LIST
Basement being finished
My office/craft room
Cruise
Job
Sell Cory's dad's Harley
Michael/Christian earning his eagle
McCain/Palin victory
Economy stability for the country

I am tagging Kendra!

Wow! Did this work, am I blogging? You will have to let me know. Help!