Blame it on my Parents

My Parents are serving a mission. They are supposed to be in serving in the Mexico City Temple, but due to visa issues, they were sent over to the Washington D.C. Temple. They are loving it there, but they have to leave on a moments notice when my mom's visa comes through. Her visa already came back, but they had her listed as a male instead of a female. It really made me laugh out loud. For their farewell I made them a sign that said "Farewell Hermano Y Hermano Delahunty" Ha! my two years of Spanish class in middle school really paid off there. Hermano means brother. Wait for it......



I know that I have been a giant slacker on my blogging. I was almost ready to be done with it anyways, but my parents would like to know how things are going all the time. Although face time is so easy on a Sunday afternoon, they don't get all the pictures and other stories, so I am blogging for them. Does anybody else even read this? Hello, hello, hello......(Echo sounds)

For firsties, I am in the cub scouts. The committee chair in fact. I have real power you know. Like I have the choice on whether I attend roundtable or not. My first time attending that thing was a real shocker. I thought I stepped into an alternate universe. There are some heavy duty scouters among us. Me, you ask? No, I am not one of them. But I go to magnify my church calling and it has been a lot of fun with Kameron.

We just had our pinewood derby last Thursday. Greg, oh wait... I meant Kameron placed third. All of the other dads, I meant cubs, were jealous of our car. It was lightening fast and extremely dangerous.

Greg is in the Young mens and is also the Stake athletics director. A.K.A the Peacemaker. The young mens games are just fine, but the mens games are downright ruthless. I went to help keep score and you would have thought that the Crescent 5th ward was playing the 19th. (Very few of you will get that joke, but none the less, FUNNY!)

The little miss, is almost in Young Womens. What??? This August. Scary. She is enjoying her "middle school" time and is getting social. She has been very quiet for the past few years, in fear that she would make friends and we would move her again. I think she is starting to realize that wee are here to stay, so, make your friends little darlin' because I threw away all my moving boxes!!! She is in that awkward stage where you are the tallest in Primary, but they still insist on you standing in sacrament and being the reference child. Awesome! We have a tiny primary too, so the opportunity comes around A LOT!!!

Kameron is crazy. He is in Karate and is enjoying the heck out of that. He is actually really good at that, and is well on his way to a black belt. Well you know, after all of the other colors too.

 

As for us, we are all happy and doing well. Preschool is great. I LOVE it! Those little kiddos make me smile. laugh, cry and they all melt my heart. I wish I could post there cute little faces for you, but I better not. I promise to update more often, because If I don't, then I will have to here it from my mother, and I make it a point to never have to deal with my mother!! So can you guess what we were for Halloween??? I am the one wearing the Captain America mask. Just in case you didn't know.

Best Bulletin Board Ever!

I know I have been absent on the blogging front. Summer kicked my behind!

Today was the first day of school. Hallee went to the sixth grade. Here in St. George sixth grade is in an intermediate school with seventh grade. You still have periods and go to several classes a day so it is basically middle school. I was a mess. Today is cloudy with a chance of tears.

Kam is starting the third grade. He didn't even say goodbye to me. I walked him to his class and he was gone. Found his friends and never looked backed. He is a social butterfly, that one. He is just like his dad. We can't go anywhere without visiting with somebody. Although my heart hurt that Kam didn't turn around, I was so excited to see him happy and free.

 So now I am home all by myself. Preschool doesn't start until after Labor day so I started browsing some bulletin board ideas. I came across this one and I think it has to be one of my favorites.

Yes, that is a roller coaster! all I can say is AMEN!!

Praying for my OC peeps!

Stay safe and please be careful.

We are sending prayers from St. George.

How did this happen...

How did my cute little goofy girl, who is usually like this...

turn into this... When did she stop playing on the swing set and start reading books by the pool.

All she wants for her birthday is to go to the mall. What ?

I am up to my eyeballs in about 30 different remodel projects right now, more to show you on that soon. Kameron is getting baptized on May 5th and that has been my dead line to get the house somewhat decent. We have put in grass in the front yard because my neighbors started to give the stink eye, I forget that I don't live in a small town where people don't care if you have grass or not, they would send their sheep over for a graze regardless. I miss my OC peeps. We have pulled out 4 trees, and 14 dead bushes. (Tell me! Who plants a pine tree over a swimming pool, Honestly!!)

Then we threw all the dead stuff in the trampoline hole in the ground and torched it. I got a little nervous because our fire was huge. It got all the neighbors attention though, and they stopped giving me the stink eye because they saw that I was actually working on something.

Inside, we are just about ready to be done with the painting and replacing the baseboards. you would think we would have started with blinds, but oh no, we like to run around in our house in our skimpy's for all to see. I wasn't really thinking that one through, but blinds will have to wait, and my neighbors will have to just be patient.

Sod for the backyard will be delivered on Friday. Yippee! I get to be reminded just how old my body is again, the front yard was 2200 sq. feet, and after we threw that down, I thought I was never going bend again. I can't wait to see how I feel after 7000 sq. feet.

After the baptism, we are putting a theater down in the basement. Greg's timeline, not mine people, and we still haven't budgeted for the blinds yet. Priorities I suppose.

I can't wait to post pictures, I am hoping to have them up by Sunday.

Oh, by the way, in between all these projects, I have started to advertise and and got my house inspected for a business licence. I passed! Whew!! I can now officially open my preschool. So if you are in the area, and you are looking for a place next year for your little one, let me know, I have a few spot available.

When the fire department came out for their inspection, they came in a fire engine. Although the whole street came out to see why they were there, no one bothered to ask me if I needed a meal brought in. Bummer! Not even a plate of cookies!!

We're Back

Well we sailed the high seas, and we picked up these two swashbucklers in the Bahama islands.

We took pity on them, and let them travel with us.

Our reactions to the news that we had to travel with two "Real" pirates.




Greg took our family, my parents and his parents on a beautiful Bahama's cruise. Once again, Disney nailed it, like they always do. This was the veranda off of our stateroom. It was beautiful.

We also visited Germany

Italy

Japan

France

Picked up a cute little frenchie along the way!

We traveled to China, Africa and England, where if I do say so myself, my accent was spot on people, but you have to remember that my brother-in-law is from just over the pond, and I get a lot of practice in, so 'ello govena', Cherrio!

And we did it all in 5 days. It was a whirlwind of fun and excitement.

Life is BUSY!

Where did October, November and December go? Holy smokes! It went by so fast. So be prepared for a lot of catch up.

My little guy made decorations for the Jubilee of Trees down here in St. George. He was so proud that his ornament was front and center. I loved the tree, but I loved watching Kam tell me everything about it most of all. He was one proud poppy, and he should have been, it was a beautiful tree.

Next, we have been working non stop on our fixer upper. You know, this house was a costum built house for somebody who LOVED outlets in very unusual places. The more we uncover, the more we find. Weird ones too. Up on the ceiling, in the mantle on the fireplace, in wooden beams that have no function whatsoever. The good side to all of this is I always have an outlet close by to plug in my vacuum. These pictures are going to go out of order, but we are in such a mess at the moment, you won"t know the difference. Lucky ME!

First of all, we ripped out all those shelves and built ins along this wall, it wasn't really my style, and we didn't have a T.V. from the 80's that would have fit into the giant hole that was built for one.

Remember the beautiful rock work with the weeping mortar in my kitchen and family room. Ha! Give a 7 year old a hammer and a crowbar and it was hasta levista baby!!

All of this is all gone as well. I will have to post the new pictures soon, but I am waiting for my new fireplace mantel to be built. Just in this picture alone we uncovered THREE wall outlets that were covered up. THREE!

You know we just kept on getting awesome news the more we dug into our projects. Like," Sorry mam, you have a huge honey bee colony under your shed, and you can't kill those, you have to have them removed. "

Well Holy Smokes!! It is such a good thing that Greg's best friend can do ANYTHING, and lucky for us, he just took up the hobby of bee keeping. He is one of those that was first on the scene when the diesel tipped over on the freeway down here, carrying a load of 25 million honey bees.

25 MILLION!! Those things were swarming around forever down here, and you should have seen hos arms. They were so swollen and red because he was stung so many times. Ouch.

But lucky for us, we didn't have any issues like that. It was actually really cool to watch and very educational for the kiddos.

Here we are in our homemade bee keeper outfits. Creative I know, but I didn't like them buzzing around my ears. It kind of freaked me out. We were holding part of the honey comb that was under the shed. We had a little taste of the honey and it was delicious. Greg kept telling me that he knew we were supposed to move back to St. George, although I was skeptical, how can doubt now, he are practically in the land of milk and honey.

This is what real bee keepers wear. This particular bee keeper has also been our electrician, our tile setter, our pool mechanic, and our tool guy. I told you, he can do EVERYTHING.

They pulled tons of honey combs out. It was very fascinating. The built bee boxes and put the honeycombs in there, and then with a genius invention, they sucked out all the bees from under the shed and put them in the bee boxes and moved them to a safe spot.

This picture is taken from Hallee's bedroom window. This is as close as I got when they first started. Good thing too, those bees were not very happy to be moving.

*Side note* I know you are all jealous of my sweet trampoline. It was one of the deciding factors in buying our home.

This year's Halloween Loot!

Hallee wanted to go as the Bride of Frankenstein. Her wig was hilarious, it resembled more of a dead skunk then the actual bride, but she was a hit. I made her skirt. It has 25 yards of tulle in it. It was very poofy!

Kameron had to be Harry Potter this year. He won't watch the movies because they scare him, but he said he had to be Harry Potter because the Lego sets were cool.The Little Lady and I saw these cute little things on homebody's blog and we decided to make them for part of our Halloween dinner. I thought they turned out very cute. We had mummy hot dogs as well. It was a lot of fun.

This was the Sanders 2011 Halloween picture. Greg found his Super Hero costume at Walmart for 5 bucks, and it fits up to 5 years old. I thought it was so funny. It totally made him look he had severe googly eyes. what did I go as for Halloween this year you ask? A witch of course, and a wicked one at that!

We will be gone for the next two weeks, so stay tuned for pictures of my own before and afters from the house and to see where we went!! It is a surprise!

Hawaii 2011

Greg has impressed the heck out of me lately. We have always talked about going to Hawaii. Even before we were married. That is where we planned to honeymoon, but you know how it goes. School gets in the way, then you plan for a first year anniversary, but once again that pesky school business poked out its little head, and we forked over the money for tuition, and there wasn't enough left over for a trip. This went on and on for years, and when he wasn't in school, I was, and then when we were both graduated, he always had to work over our anniversary. While we were living in Delta, our anniversary came around again, but remember we were tethered to Millard County. The farthest we could really go was Fillmore, and if he felt like he could push his 20 minute radius from the hospital, we would hurry over to Nephi and get a frosty at the Wendy's. This particular anniversary he really razzled dazzled me at the Arby's in Fillmore. If any of you have been to the Arby's in Fillmore you know darn well that it is located inside the Chevron gas station. We pulled up to the Chevron and he walked around to open the door for me and he found me in tears. When he asked what was wrong, in between sobs I said,

"This used to be a pit stop for me when we were traveling down to St. George and now we are going to dinner here."

I know he wanted to laugh, and laugh hard too, but he saw that I was in no mood, so he hugged me tight and lead me in to eat my roast beef sandwich with a big sobby face, and he even let me finish the chocolate shake we ordered for dessert. Such a gentleman, even at a gas station restaurant. Then we had to drive like mad back to Delta because he got called in to the hospital for an epidural. Story of our lives there, but not this year. Although Greg really did have to work over our anniversary again, we were married on September 3rd, we post- poned it until October.
He surprised me with this way fun trip. Never in a million years did I think that I would ever go to Hawaii, I thought my world travels would consist of California, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and sometimes Colorado, but only if the highway I was on crossed over there at times. The top picture was the view from my hotel room. Not so shabby, although we slept in Waikiki, we didn't spend more then 15 minutes there during the day, we opted for the other side of the island where it was absolutely gorgeous. So, we jumped in the rental jeep and explored every single part of that island. We had so much fun.

Greg is always making me laugh, I know this isn't a very flattering picture of me, but I just loved the sunsets, each and every one. Living in Utah, we have beautiful sunsets every night too, but there is just something about the sun dipping itself into the ocean every night that I will never get sick of, and obviously I will never get sick of taking pictures of it either.


You want to know a little secret. The Dole Pineapple Plantation serves a soft serve pineapple yogurt that everyone goes cuckoo for, me included, but you don't have to go all the way to Hawaii to get it. I keep telling them that it is called the Dole pineapple whip and you can get it at Disneyland in front of the Tiki room, but my real secret is, Krave, a local yogurt shop sells it too. The Dole pineapple whip, and I can get it anytime I want, and I do. The owner recognizes me now, and he knows that he better always have it well stocked, or he gets the angry fist from me. You have to be careful of impostors though, there is a flavor called pineapple tart, or pineapple delight, these are not the same thing. It has to say DOLE PINEAPPLE WHIP. If you come across this flavor, and you dig pineapple like I do, get it, you will not be disappointed.










Greg and I got pretty good at taking self portraits everywhere we went. Not that I didn't trust anyone to take my picture, I just don't speak Japanese, because that is the second language you are going to need while visiting here. Greg's Korean was no good to me here, but the more I think of it, Greg's Korean has never been any good to me anywhere.

We were fortunate enough to visit the Temple why we were there. The Temple and the BYU campus are right next to each other, and if I turned around and took a picture the other way you would see ocean, not so shabby. It is absolutely breathtaking.

The flowers! Don't even get me started. They are so beautiful. I hope that heaven is filled with them. I have seen pictures of the flowers before, but I have never seen them in person, and I do not have the words to describe them. Before we we went I was telling Greg what trees and shrubs we need to pull out of front yard, because I would like to have something with a flower on it, but after seeing what Hawaii has in compared to what I could actually get to grow here in the desert, I may as well be one of those people that have rocks for a front yard, because there is no way that I could ever get anything this beautiful. I took hundreds of pictures of the flowers, all different kinds, and the sunsets, it drove Greg bonkers.

We had such a wonderful time. The kids stayed with my parents in Salt Lake and they had a wonderful time as well, but honestly a week was a little long for me, I was ready to come home, living on a small island kind of gave me the creeps and I missed my kids. I need someplace to go, a long open highway that I can go hundreds of miles on, or I start to feel tethered like I did in Delta. Not that I need to go anywhere, I just like to have the option if I so choose.

And a sappy sunset picture to end my post. Just for you Greg!