Home By the Creekside

My baby girl turned 8 last Monday. On Saturday, she was baptized. This was a very special and exciting day for her. This is a very important event in the life of person who is in the LDS faith. It is spiritual occasion and filled with tears of joy and happiness.  She wore a beautiful white dress and white shoes. This is to symbolize the purity. When you are baptized, all sins are erased and you are clean. White represents that serenity.   One of my friends made this cake for Lyndee. It was so delicious. Under the fondant, it was a white cake with a raspberry filling layer.  We are getting ready to go to the church for it but we had to do a photoshoot.  Her grandma had this towel made for her on this special day. At Lyndee's baptism, she had to be baptized twice because her feet came up. It was a good experience and the girl after her had it done too. Lyndee was presented in front of the congregration and she also bore her...

 Yesterday, Brayden played out in the snow and decided to use the snow brick maker. He lined our sidewalk with the bricks. Today, we went over to my brother's house and he pulled the kids on a sled behind the four wheeler. I am not going to say how I had him pulled me and I wrecked and fell on a pile or two of rocks.

New Year's Eve was Lyndee's 8th birthday. I can believe how time is flying. She is getting older as I am getting older too. Makes me sad! For Lyndee's special day, she chose her favorites for dinner. She wanted just top ramen noodles. Not sure why but she loves them! I also made homemade chicken nuggets. My kids were quite impressed. Clay had three helpings of them. We even had them for leftovers for lunch the next day.   Lyndee's cake was triple chocolate fudge with a chocolate marshmallow frosting. As I was frosting it, she mentioned to me in passing that I could draw a cat in the frosting. So I did...just for my girl. Did I tell you that right now she is obsessed with cats. She loves our cat we got this summer and tries to hold it and love on it anytime she gets.   Lyndee is an extremely picky eater.  I think it has to do with textures as well. But..she gobbled down all her food tonight.  Take two: the first shot of her blowing the candles out w...

 After my kids ransacked their stockings, I realized that I never took a picture of the tree with all the presents. Those aren't all of our presents. My parents were here with us. You can see my mom's legs in the picture below sitting on the couch with her dog. It was a real nice Christmas. The kids went to bed not too early. Santa came as well.  Here's my dad in the picture with Brayden....I think they avoid the camera.  This was the big gift that we splurged on for the kids. They and me love it. We have spent a lot of time playing against each other during our Christmas break. I hope next year is just as good if not better.

 The kids had two different opportunities to sit with Santa and tell them hearts' desires. One was at Walmart. The last one was at our ward's Christmas breakfast.

So lately, I feel that we have been overloaded with electronics/ipads, iphones, tv, computers, etc...As parents on Sunday (well actually me and Clay agreed), we decided that we would park our technology at the door when we got home from school/work until after dinner. I thought it was a great idea until Lyndee had to practice her clogging before her practice yesterday on the computer. I excused that one but will plan better to have her practice in the evenings after dinner. Then my son thought he would get out of piano practice since it is an electric piano. I said that was an uplifting activity and they both practiced. So we will see how the rest of the week goes.I am hoping to have more uplifting activities in our home....

Back in April/May, I applied to be an online teacher to BYU. I went through the whole application process. I did a two week online application process on the computer that took over my evenings. Then I was told that they did not have enough positions for me. I was heartbroken and upset over wasting my time. I guess that is what they do. It was not a waste of time because...out of nowhere, I received a phone call about two weeks ago saying that they could offer me a position to teach a class online next semester in January. Of course, I said that I was interested because we need the extra money and I want to get my foot in the door to college teaching. So..I start my three week certification course this Monday and then I will be having my own online class starting in January. It will be ESL math.  I am excited even if it is math but I get to teach students that are speakers of other languages. I am especially excited for that! If I do great in this certification course and the cla...