Chapman Family Reunion 2009

Last week we headed to Antimony, Utah to the Rockin' R Ranch for a family reunion for Mike's family - his mom's mom and all her family. We hadn't seen everyone together for such a a long time, and it was a lot of fun seeing everyone!

The ranch is located in Antimony, Utah, which is close to Richfield.
Some pictures of the inside - this first one is the lobby.


Stairs leading up to our room (which was the first one on the left there). I didn't get a pic of it, but boy, was it tiny!!! With a tiny little bathroom that you could hardly turn around in!

We arrived at the ranch about 1:00 on Monday afternoon - we had lunch, checked in, and then headed out - our group A was going horseback riding. Sierra was not sure about that yet, so we decided to be in group B which was starting with archery. Yes, I learned to shoot a bow and arrow! It was fun, but hurt the fingers!

Sierra was still deciding about the horses - lots of babies to play with!

She decides to do the "kid" ride, which was someone walking the horse while she rode - she wasn't too sure about being in charge of the horse!
Later on that night we had dinner, and a campfire and just relaxed - it was a nice evening!

Second day, they are taking us for a hike - flat and easy they say....they lie! It was all uphill and I was dying!!! But the views were nice.
Then Sierra decides she wants to ride the horse for real - so we go horseback riding. Yes, that's right, I went horseback riding. I still have the bruises and mosquito bites to prove it! It was fun, but my horse was a little obnoxious and had a mind of its own - it was definitely in charge! We rode thru this huge standing water thing - we had to lift our feet up so they wouldn't get wet, and we got eaten alive by mosquitos. That part was NOT fun!

Then back inside for line dancing lessons, dinner, and a band (to show off our line dancing lessons).
The next day, there was more horseback riding (I didn't go, but Mike took Sierra again), and then family pictures.

Then back outside again for a rodeo. The kids had a blast - we did have a few injuries, but all in all everyone seemed to have a good time!
This was one of the last activities in the rodeo - JR - the guy that was in charge - put pieces of duct tape all over these calves and then let them loose. The kids had to pull the tape off, and everyone that pulled off tape got a free ice cream cone. The kids had a blast chasing these cows, but some of the grownups got hurt trying to corner them!

On Thursday it was time to go home - but not without a hayride!

Kids waiting for the hayride (Sierra and all of her cousins)


Now I know that none of the kids look very happy in this picture, but I promise they all were! I think they were getting a little tired of having their picture taken!

So, great trip - fun to see all the family and spend time catching up.

I will be back next week with pictures from Lake Powell - see you then!

What has been keeping me so busy!!!

Well, I have been so busy the last month or so! Finally, I think I'm all caught up and maybe I can update here more often!

Weeds, weeds, and more weeds! We spent 2 weekends in the yard, weeding and mowing, and more weeding. I was SO incredibly sore, and I've never worked so hard in my life! Our house is next to some vacant lots and they are always full of weeds - it also doesn't help that we are about the only ones in our entire neighborhood that have our yard in, so everyone else's yards are full of weeds. Finally we finished up last weekend and got the veggies planted. I had Mike mulch with the grass that he mowed up since we don't have any mulch yet and I'm trying to keep the weeds down. I do need a few filler things - I kinda have some empty spaces, but they will fill up eventually. A few pictures for your enjoyment :)

Front by sidewalk (Sierra named our tree "Whitney" LOL).

By front porch - my irises are blooming! And my hostas came back - I was so happy!

Other side of front porch (lots of empty space here in the front).

East side of house (more blooming!)
My little veggie garden along the back of my house.

The other thing that has been keeping me so busy is Sierra's dance recital. It was finally over this week and they all performed great! Here are a few pictures:

A little blurry, but you get the idea. They were the "Thunderbirds". Cute dance, and cute costumes!




This dance was "Shopping" - I didn't get very many good photos - the auditorium was too dark and everything turned out blurry, but the dances were cute and they did a great job!

Hopefully I will be able to keep up here more often - we have lots of vacation time coming up, so I should have some interesting pictures to post soon!

Circle Journal

Well, I have been so busy with Sierra's swimming lessons and dance lessons and karate that I haven't had much time to myself! But now swimming is over, things are getting better. I am WAY behind on my Project 365 - and I haven't been very good about taking pictures the last couple of weeks. Plus, my printer ran out of color ink and I haven't bought a new one yet, so I haven't been able to even print my pictures to keep up. I will try to get caught up in the next few days and post.

Anyway, I am doing a circle journal project with three other friends. We made journals and then we are sending them to each other to complete pages. We chose 3 different subjects for the first round - mine were "Favorite Memories of Us", "My Inspiration", and "Favorite Ways to Unwind or Relax". I don't have pictures of my last section, but here are some pictures of my journal and the first couple of spreads. I can't wait to see what my friends do in my journal!!!

Busy Week

We had a really busy week here, so I didn't get a chance to take a lot of pictures. Sierra started swimming lessons this week, so now we do that twice a week, karate twice a week, and dance once a week. That didn't leave a lot of time for pictures!

These few that I did take are from Sierra's swimming lesson - she is pretty afraid of the water, so she did really well in my opinion.

Before class started:


I bought her a bunch of 2 piece swim suits at Old Navy so she could mix and match them, and they wouldn't wear out so fast. She looked pretty cute in them.

Starting class:

Her teacher is really cute and patient with all the kids.

Sierra, first time on the kickboard - away from where she can hold onto the wall (which is all she wants to do LOL). She is being very brave here!



That's all I have for now - I'll be back later with some other pictures of some stuff I've been working on this week.

Project 365 - Week 9

Well, this week was a little bit different for me - I didn't wind up taking pictures every day, and we had a couple of activities that I wanted more than one pic for, so here goes!

This week Sierra attended cheerleading camp at the high school. They practiced every day except Wed from 3:30 to 5, and then they performed on Friday night at halftime at the basketball game. She has done this for the past 3 years, and loves it every year - this year was no exception. The cheerleaders were so cute with the girls, giving them great treats/snacks every night after practice, and then at the game they brought them a treat for the game, and then gave them a cup afterwards with their name on it full of candy and decorated with cute cheerleading stuff.


Then on Saturday (yesterday) we headed down to Salt Lake to the Safe Kids Fair. We had never been, and it was free to get in this year, so we decided to see what it was like. When we got to the South Towne Center, we saw that they were also having a Diabetes Expo, so we went in there too - nothing too fantastic in there LOL. But the Safe Kids Fair was pretty fun - they had police, firemen, EMT's, and also lots of other stuff for the kids to do - We stopped by a reptile place - they were letting people hold tarantulas and scorpions these HUGE hissing cockroaches. Sierra was having NO part of it, but I decided to be brave and hold one of the tarantulas - I am completely TERRIFIED of spiders, so don't ask me how I did this, but this is me holding the spider - YUCK!!! Sorry the pic is blurry - I can't figure out how to work my camera LOL.




I also took some really cute pictures (or so I thought) of Sierra in a police car holding a badge, and in a firetruck, but I was using my good camera that I don't know how to work yet, and I screwed up a lot of pictures, so I can't use a lot of the pictures I took. This is about the only one that turned out decent - her on a police motorcycle.



Afterwards, we were planning on going to Taco Del Mar in SLC to eat - the one close to us has been closed for a couple months, and it is one of our FAVORITE places to eat (seriously, if you have one in your area, try it out - it is YUMMY!!!). Anyway, when we got there, it was closed down (darn it!). The only thing that made us feel better was the fact that the one close to us is reopening this Thursday - YAY!!!! Anyway, we decided to try this new place in Layton called "Noodles" - they had a booth at the Diabetes Expo, and Mike went to talk to them about their menu and found out that they serve rice noodles, so I could eat there. We decided to try it out since it was on the way home. It was VERY good, as you can tell by this picture of everyone eating LOL!



That's all I've got - until next time - bye!

Project 365 - Week 8

Yes, my life is boring, but here is my Week 8.

Sunday - I am working on recipe swaps for 2 different message boards - CHW and SCS. Here is my messy desk - with the swaps in progress. I hope to be finished soon!


Monday - My Garden Journal. I have started this journal to keep my seed catalogs and all of my gardening info in. So far, it's empty, but I hope to start filling it up soon. I was hoping to be able to start my own seeds this year, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen, so I will do that next year. I hope to get some time to work on it soon, so that I can figure out what I want to plant this year in the vegetable garden and what I want to fill in with in all of my flower beds.


Tuesday - my Scentsy burner. I love this thing! It sits on my kitchen counter, and it's usually on anytime I am home. I love the way it makes my house smell!



Wednesday - I can't post Wednesday, because it's a picture of my recipe binder (which is a 4x6 photo album) with recipes in it from the swaps I am in, and I don't want to ruin it for anybody!!!

Thursday - Sierra on her computer in her room - this is where you will usually find her when we are at home.



Friday - Zeus - sleeping LOL. You will usually find him somewhere around the house, sleeping. He is 10, but he still goes to doggie daycare every day, so he is usually exhausted when he is home. He sleeps a lot!

Catching Up

I haven't been very good about keeping up here - sorry about that! I decided instead of taking so much time to post all of the weeks from my Project 365 that I have missed, I would just take pictures of the finished layouts in my album. See, I may not be caught up on my blog, but I am caught up in my scrapbook! So here are the weeks 4-7.

Tagged

My friend Jeanne tagged me - here are the rules:

Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures.

1. Pick the 6th Folder, then select the the 6th picture in that folder.

2. Post that picture on your blog and the story that goes along with the picture.

3. Tag 6 other people that you know or don’t know to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog or an e-mail letting them know you chose them.



So here is my picture. I used the 6th picture in the 6th folder for 2008. This was taken at Disneyland (of course - 80% of my pictures on my hard drive are from Disneyland). This is from July 2008 - we were in line at the Princess Fantasy Faire to meet all of the princesses. and one of the people that worked there came up to us and asked us if we would like a private meeting with Cinderella - uh, YEAH of course we would! Sierra was SO excited to get to go into a private area to visit with Cinderella - alone. As you can see, they were having a great discussion!

I think the only person that actually reads my blog is Jeanne LOL, so if anyone else BESIDES Jeanne is reading this - consider yourself tagged!!

Project 365 - Week 3

So I decided it was too hard for me to keep up with posting my Project 365 every day - some
days there just isn't enough time to download my pics - so I'm going to do it once a week. Here is my week in review (and I'll warn you that it's not very exciting!).

Sunday Jan 11: Laundry Laundry Laundry - need I say more?




Monday Jan 12: Sierra and her white alligator Allie. They had a white alligator at our zoo for a couple of years and Sierra loved going to see it. When they said this was the last summer for the alligator, she decided she wanted a stuffed one and she carries it everywhere!




Tuesday Jan 13: I love Scentsy (burners that plug in the wall that you put wax cubes in to melt and they smell wonderfully yummy!), and I am having a "Scentsy Basket Party" this week. My friend Kristi sells Scentsy, so she put together this great bag for me with order forms, and all of the testers and I took it with me everywhere this week. I sold over $200 worth of stuff, and got lots for free! I'm so excited to get my order!



Wed Jan 14: Wednesday is pizza night at our house! We love pizza, and since I can't eat gluten, I gets to make pizza from scratch! It's so good - everyone absolutely loves it, but it takes forever to make (about 2 hours), but it's so worth it!!!




Thursday Jan 15: Sierra got an American Girl (Kit Kittridge) for Christmas. She has her own bed and pj's and everything, and Sierra loves to put Kit's pj's on every night and put her to bed. Here is she is with a blanket that I made for her. Sierra said Kit was sick, so she put her to bed early (it was really Sierra that was sick!!!).



Friday Jan 16th: Sierra was sick all night and into today. Mike stayed home with her in the morning so I could go to work and finish up a bid. Then I came home to stay with her so he could go to work. She was much better this afternoon, so apparently it was a 24 hour bug - the best kind if you are going to get sick!



Saturday Jan 17th: Woke up early this morning - early enough to see the sunrise! It was beautiful through the kitchen window, I just didn't think to take a picture through the side that didn't have a screen until it was too late! Oh well, at least a bad picture is better than no picture at all!