Okay, here's what you're supposed to do, and try not to be a SCROOGE!!! Just copy to your blog and change all the answers so that they apply to you. Then tag whomever you choose......'Tis the Season!

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Most definitely wrapping paper. Paper bags are easier but it takes the fun out of unwrapping presents on Christmas.

2. Real tree or Artificial? Definitely Real. I absolutely love the real Christmas trees.

3. When do you put up the tree? Right after Thanksgiving

4. When do you take the tree down? The day after Christmas

5. Do you like eggnog? NO. Not at all. It is so sickening.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? I remember the year that we all got new bikes after moving here to Arizona. I loved that. But I recently got a full length mirror that my Dad and Mom made for me. That mirror has been my FAVORITE gift of all times.

7. Hardest person to buy for? Jaden or my dad. They both don't tell me what they want. So it is really hard.

8. Easiest person to buy for? Amanda because I always know what she wants.

9. Do you have a nativity scene? I don't. I haven't needed one yet.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? I would like to send them by mail but that makes me have to be crafty by making the cards and I am really not crafty at all.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? A piece of coal. Haha. I am just kidding. I really don't have a worst Christmas gift. I have liked all my gifts.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? I have to agree with Amanda that my favorite is The Nativity. But My other two favorites are Elf and Santa Clause. They are all Totally amazing.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? When December hits.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? I do not think I have.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Anything with Cinnamon flavor. I think of Cinnamon as a Christmas taste. I love it.

16. Lights on the tree? DUH. Oh course. It is the best decoration.

17. Favorite Christmas song? I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas because I really do dream of a white Christmas.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Stay home.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's? Well as soon as I look them all up and read all their names once I will know them all again. I forgot them at the moment though.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Star. They are the best.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? We always open one on Christmas Eve but it is always pajamas, and then we open the rest on Christmas Day.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? All the snow birds are here.

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? I really like the silver ornaments. Or glittery ornaments.

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Ham, Chips and Dip, Corn, Home Made Rolls, and so fourth. It is all so yummy!! It makes me hungry just thinking about it.

25. Favorite family Christmas tradition? I like going to see the temple lights. But I also like going to see a movie on Christmas Eve with my family. It is fun.

Why Must They Grow?


I am sitting at the computer on a Tuesday night and contemplating life. I am going to state a saying that I find a bit annoying but yet it is true “why is it the older you get, the faster time goes?” I can not believe it is already November, what happened to the 4th of July? How is it that I only had the boat out three times this summer? The dog days of summer are gone…sort of, it is still 87 degrees out there. Thanksgiving is just a few days away and we all know that Christmas is not far behind that, and then WHAM! We have another new year and it was only last week that I finally stopped messing up whenever I put the date on paper. And what I hate the most of all is three out of four of my kids birthdays are around that new year thing as well and it wont be long before time will start to fly fast for them, and for me it will be in warp speed.

There is a saying that I also don’t like and that is “The reason you have kids is because you will get grandkids” This is the biggest pile of crud that I have ever heard. Now I do not have any grandkids to speak of, but I can truly say I wish my kids would stop growing. Is this selfish? I really enjoy my kids, they spoiled me, and they are just too good. Maybe if some of them were more annoying, or misbehaved, or in jail I would be willing to wish them to be older, but that is just not the case. In this world we all try to find faults with things, and then find someone to blame them on. I am truly putting all the blame on my children for spoiling me. Had they gave me a little harder of time I would be willing to have them move on and get married or go off to college. I am hoping that some day I will be able to move on from these feelings, and I will be able to move onto the Grandpa stage of life but I don’t think this is going to be coming soon. I think I will find away to freeze them, and time, in order to keep them from growing old like me. Trace Atkins has a song that has a lyric in it that loosely states “you are going to miss this time”. Most of my friends have kids younger than me, I exhort you to listen to this song and take it to heart. ENJOY your kids everyday because time goes by so very fast and before you know it your oldest is college and your second child is a Senior, and your Son has more girl friends than boy friends and all you have some times at the dinner table is your baby and she is nearly 13. By the way I know I am really not that old, but my kids are making me look old.

I really do not want to go onto another rant about Taco Bell but I feel that I must. I was asked by my lovely wife on Saturday to stop after work and get some Taco Bell. I work 15 miles from home and I have a lot of choices to what establishment to patronize. Well I immediately thought of the last location that gave me material for my last blog and I thought twice about this, so I went to a location that is close to my work.

Life was good, the location is always clean and for the most part they at least have one white person working the counter. Upon ordering my food witch consisted of a potential for nine wrapped items and a total of 15 items all together I was feeling really good about this place. I received my bags of food and was loading the bags with various levels of hot sauce, I was sorting out the packets that said "will you marry me" this is saved for another blog. When the thought came to me "count your many items, name them one by one" Since my last auto accident in January I have decided to listen to the spirit a lot more closely. I could not believe my eyes. I was short food, not just any food, MY FOOD! I really do not know what is going on in my life to warrant such bad service. I really try to tip well when I go to restaraunt even when they food stinks and the service is worse. Is carma trying to tell me that Chalupa's are bad for you. Maybe my waist line is getting larger due to these Chalupa's? I dont think it is my bad carma, I think that people at Taco Bell is making minimum wage and they cant count pass ten whithout taking off some shoes and then possibly pulling down their pants.

So Halloween has come and gone again. It was the last Halloween I will have at home for a while. Sad days. Now I won't have my crazy friends to dress up with even though we are all older. That is my favorite part about Halloween. I LOVE to dress up. This year was a great Halloween. I had a costume thought of since the Halloween before this years. I decided that I would be dressing up as Frankensteins Bride. I was so excited to dress up like this and could not wait. After enduring a whole 12 months of waiting, it was finally here Halloween!! My friend had a costume party for her birthday party on Halloween, so I had an excuse to dress up as Frankensteins Bride. So me and my mom went out and looked for something that I could wear as my dress. We went to the D.I. and looked at the wedding dresses, and thought after looking at them that it would be kind of sac-religious to ruin a wedding dress for a Halloween costume. So we ditched that idea, and ended up using my angel costume from a couple of years ago and making a train that attached to the angel costume. So now I have a two in one costume. It is awesome. My mom and I also bought a wig for it. On Thursday we carved pumpkins and I carved a Frankenstein pumpkin just because that was relating to my costume that I wore. Then Tori carved the Statue of Liberty, and my mom carved the amazing Dracula. That was my favorite pumpkin. She did a great job with it. Here are some pictures of it.

So those are the pumpkins and here are our costumes. Jaden was too cool and did not carve a pumpkin, or dress up for Halloween. So Tori dressed up as an Egyptian, Tysen(my cousin) dressed up as a knight, and I of course dressed up as Frankensteins Bride.

So that is our Halloween. Oh and the cool part is, there was an owl on the roof of our neighbors house. I am not kidding about that. Here is one last picture. It was totally amazing. It was a GREAT Halloween.

I know some of you have heard my rant on Taco Bell this last weekend but I still bitter. After Tori's game on Saturday I went to Taco Bell to get some lunch for the kids. Some of the kids were still at home so we needed to get it to go. I hate going through the drive in, so I made the effort to go into the building and order the food. I have many times not received what I have ordered when going through the drive through. Well you can guess by now what has happened. I was shorted some food...MY FOOD! I do not understand the complexity of making food, wrapping food, and then putting food in a bag, but for some reason this is next to impossible to do 100% of the time. I am not asking the great Taco Bell employs to do a really hard task such as quantum physics, it is simply put the food that I ordered and paid for into a bag, seriously my six year old nephew, Tyson could do this, with much more accuracy. Some of you are saying that I am taking this to far and I need to give it a rest. I would just like to say that while I am not makeing $8.50 an hour, if I left something out of my job someone would die. Luckily I had some food in my house to eat, and I did not perish. I love the quote from the not so great Isaiah Thomas when during a Utah Jazz basketball game Karl Malone elbowed him in the head and he had to take a few stitches "I could of died" let it be know that even though you don't use a drive through, count your items that you think you have ordered because we know how hard it is to count to ten sometimes.