It's that time of year When...

....A tree goes up in the front room and doesn't get decorated for weeks.

....Santa's advent house gets filled up, and children come and eat all the treats.

....It's the 9th and I've bought one thing for Christmas so far.

....The party's get put on the calender.

....Taylor puts up the outside lights, half of them don't work but who cares, their up.

....Family gets together to eat and play games.

....Watching Christmas shows on T.V.

....End of the year planning for R.S.

....The CLOWN gets passed to someone else. (i hope not me)

....Don decorates the downstairs but the stockings are missing.

....The UPS man rings the doorbell and runs.

....The fridge gets full of breakfast foods.

....Treats and cookies appear on our door step.

....The mailbox is full of cards.

....You are confused..is it sweater or coat weather?

....Soup is the better choice for dinner.

....Jesus is the reason for the season.

....Merry Christmas is spoken from everyone you see even me.

Taylor is home and Halloween is over

Taylor with the grand kids. 3 of them he has just met.

I couldn't hold the camera still, my hands were shaking

Erica and her family's Halloween costumes. A sweet late 60s early 70s dude and his dudete. Hanging with a ballerina and a ballerina/fairy.

Kim and her family's Costumes. Hawaiian girl, 2 zombies and a ladybug. And Max glass man.

Mal and her family's costume's. Peter Parker disguised as Peter Pan, Windy and Tinkerbell.

Nate and his family's costumes. 3 monkeys hanging out with a banana.

guess what they are

a

b

c

d

e

f


P.S. Taylor comes home this friday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All 8 of them

I'm blessed to have all of our Grandchildren close by. Here they are eating Popsicles and watching Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin. Don and I were out of town at the time.

Almost HERE!

16 more days, I'm painting his room, and taking out all the stuff I put in it while he was serving.
Going to make a WELCOME HOME sign for the house.
Copy some pictures of the people he met and frame them for his room.
He will speak Sunday, November 13, 11am at the Preston Street & Power building.
I am walking on sunshine in cloud 9!

Last week Don and I went on a Cruise to celebrate our 30 years of marriage. We had a great time.
My brother's and their wives and my Dad came too. My brothers celebrated 25 years, and my dad celebrated 18 years being single. Lot's of fun and laughs.
The only pictures I got were of the nightly towel animals. I'll put them in at another date.
Deb

Happy Birthday Don

Love this silly picture of Don and Hanna. They were on their way to hike the Y mountain in 2009. I think Hanna got tired and wanted to Walk, then Uncle Taylor had to hold her hand the rest of the way. BTW Taylor has 6 weeks until his return from Uruguay. Silly Papa

Today is my husbands 52 birthday. He is an amazing man, and does a lot for me and the family. He will be hiking the Grand Canyon this weekend with other family members for his birthday. He usually goes to Utah and attends the home coming game for BYU but not this year. I took him out for breakfast at "The egg and I" Then he went to work and then he'll be off for the Canyon. Love you DON.

Our Summer Vacation

All 8 Grandchildren ready for church and a Sunday drive

The new Dam bridge

St. George Temple

Where we witnessed the sealing of this new cute Cluff family. She was one of our missionaries that lived with us.

Lots of fun at the beach for the grand kids

And a tour of a air craft ship. they are very BIG

Sea world funThen off to Florida with Country Financial where we went to all the Parks in one day.

9am to midnight. it was a great day

Animal kingdom

Disney World

Came home and helped with a wedding then got my nails and feet done.

These are my real finger nails. They don't look like this all the time.

The Wedding

happy birthday Nate

26 years ago Today My first son was born. I prayed for a son that would be sweet and giving, become a wonderful missionary and be obedient. I received exactly what I prayed for. He was always a good example to his Brother and Sisters, and his friends. He is now a great husband to Amy and a wonderful father to two of the cutest babies ever, Rigden and Rylee. He honors his priesthood. Provides for his family. It's all a mother and father could hope for.
Happy Birthday Nathan we love you. If you would like to see a recent family picture of them click on the blog site of Nate and Amy Crandell on my side bar_}

TREK

After Nine month of preparation the TREK is done. Don and I worked hard and it paid off.
We were the leaders of the service core known as the Minute Men (MM) and the Pioneers in Petticoats (PIP's) we had 14 men/YSA and 10 women/YSA. that came with us on the TREK site.
We had 24 others that helped with the pre-Trek stuff but could not come on the trek. Our people were asked to do many different things, clear roads, direct traffic, give out fatherless children, be Angels and help push handcarts up a hill, teach boys to march as part of the Mormon Battalion. That was day one. We woke up early each day 6am and didn't stop until 8pm.
We were asked to be Indians and raid the wagon train and take their cookies or bullets, help put together a sweetwater crossing with water and Ice, set up stoves for the chicken dinner and give service to the pioneers by helping set up camp, gather the fatherless children, build a graveyard.
that was day 2. we also fixed up the graveyard to make it look desert natural again after the pioneers ran over it with the handcarts, we helped the handcarts up a rocky ridge. we loaded up wagons, we loaded up pioneers personal gear. we unloaded the wagons in mesa and unloaded personal gear in mesa. Don and I were personally responsible for the Indian raid. I think they all looked great, and they did a great job.



After the three raids were over, one of our Indians scalped the others!

Some of our indians. one dude painted his legs red.

WE had one indian be the krazy old woman who cursed the babys in the familys. She's in the red face with a rust color blanket around her. she was great at it!
Some more

The chest plates were made out of a old bambo blind, with adornments from two ugly dream catchers from goodwill. All the wigs were bought after halloween sales, some even were 99 cents.
Fethers were donatied by the Cluff chickens. (no chickens were harmed they gave freely)
We hope all who went to trek and lived these experences had a great time and that their Testimonies were strenthened by the service we were able to give.

p.s spell check is not working sorry

summer time

Well school/work is done. By choice I have retired my job with Mesa Public School. I was at the same school each of my children attended. I was able to be room mom, volunteer coordinator, art masterpiece coordinator, S.I.A.C. president, Cafeteria monitor, playground aid. Kindergarten through 6th teachers aid. The past 4 years working in the Reading Lab 1-3rd grade. I've been to 6th grade science camp. Lots of field trips. I have enjoyed my time there very much. It's now time just to be. I will miss the children from the old neighborhood that went to the school. BUT life goes on.
This past 9 months I have been working on our stake Trek. Don and I are over 25 young single adults that will help with the experiences the Trek youth will have over a 3 day journey. I will show you the finished project after we are done. We leave on the 8-11 of June.

This month is our 30th anniversary. Can you believe that, 30 years. That means Kim is 29.
We will be celebrating with dinner on the dolly steamboat.
We are going to St. George for a wedding at the end of June.
The middle of July we take the whole family to San Diego for a week of relaxation. Then Don and I are off to Florida for a company trip. We will be keeping busy this summer, hope you all have a great summer too.

Number "8" is Great

Hello people! we have a new grandchild HER name is Rylee Mae Crandell. Her Birthday is 5/9/11
To read more about HER, go to my Daughter in law Amy's blog (look at side bar) and read all about her and see how pretty she is. We are so excited to have her in our family. ALSO my brother Richard and sister in law are grandparents for the first time, their Grandson Brigham Mitchell was born on 5/10/11 in Provo Utah. (to find their blog go to Amy's then search for the Mitchell family) Welcome to the world little ones

Happy Birthday Hanna

Today is Hanna's 3rd Birthday! She had a great day! all the grand kids (7) came by to say hello to her today. we had so much fun having hot dogs and chips and cake. Papa and Debs Love you!

Fun Day Had by All

Soon pictures will be on my daughter-in-laws blog, "Amy" and Nate Crandell, of the Baby shower we had at our home today for her. She has 6 weeks left and is excited to be having a girl.
Kim and Mal and Erica did all the work and they did a great job. Amy received so many cute girl dresses. We are excited to be having a new little spirit in our family.
thank you to all who came and made the day special for Amy.

Changes

Taylor has been transfered out of the mission office back up to the town of Rivera. about 6 hours north of Montevideo. He is very excited to be back in the field again, after being in the offices for 6 months. He is doing great and loves the mission life.
Don and I just got back from Chicago, and yes it is the windy city and it was cold the first few days. Our last day there, it was 50 degrees, warm enough for an ice cream cone.
Don had meetings and I had a nap. It was great to not worry about things at work or church for just that little while.
Today I turned in my notice at work. After 13 years of working at Hale Elm. I'm done at the end of this year.
It was a tough decision, all my children went there. The children from the old ward went there and now their kids go there. 6 of the 13 sunbeam's I had in my primary class from 7 years ago are there. They are 5th graders. I will miss seeing them every day.
Living life is about changes, and how you deal with them.

Happy V-Day

First let me tell you why I say V-day. I don't know how to spell the V word and it will take too much time to figure it out. It is 6:44am and my V has already made me some peanut butter on toast, for breakfast and presented me with flowers, swept and moped the kitchen floor and did the few dishes i didn't get to on Saturday. I'm sure right now he is making the bed and will put treats on my pillow with a card. I know we are going to the movies after work but I'm sure he'll have a few more surprises for me. Every day is V-day at my house. I feel loved every day from my V. Happy V-Day to all of you.

Starting off the new year write

It has been a busy 14 days, but there is one thing I always do every January and that is write in my journal. Lets just say that I've had the same journal for 35 years and it's still not filled up. This year when I opened it up to the next empty page to start to write, I realized that I didn't write a single thing that happened to me last year. The scary part is I'm getting older and I don't remember things like I used too. So I started writing a years worth of stuff in my Journal. I'm not a very good example. I have been writing in a R.S. journal for the past year. I have been writing on this blog for the past year. I have been writing to Taylor once a week for the past 15 months. I hope that counts for something.
I hope everyone has a write nice New Year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Have a Great New Year Every one!