John's EARLY bday

I bought a Samsung 50" Plasma HDTV on "Black Friday" at 5am for John's birthday which is on the 18th of Dec. John is turning the big 3-0 this year!! I am TERRIFIED of turning 'that number' in Feb, and even though I know it's not as big of a deal to John as it is to me, I still wanted his birthday to be a special and/or big deal. For me, I want my 30th to either be a BIG MEMORABLE BANG....or spent in hiding as if it didn't happen. That's how scared I am!!! The worst part is, my 30th birthday fall's on the worst day....MONDAY!! So if it's not going to be a memorable day, I don't want to remember it at all. Anyway, that is why I went shopping at 3:30am (without sleep) on "Black Friday" to go ALL OUT and get my honey an awesome 50" plasma HDTV!! As you may have read below, I got home close to 7am before John got up to go to work, and hid the TV in the garage. Long story short, by Saturday he saw it, LOVED it and didn't want to see it go!! He didn't care that it was early & so we set it up that night and watched "Lord of the Rings". Happy 30th Birthday Honey Bunny, I love you!!

Black Friday!

I've only done "Black Friday" a few times. The first time I did it was about 6 years ago and some lady tried to steal my cart at Kmart over some bed-in-a-bag. The 2nd time I did it was about 4 years ago when my older sister, Leigh & I waited in line at Circuit City for several hours. We took turns waiting in the heated car for the store to open at 5am. Since then I have not gone shopping on "Black Friday" unless it was later on in the day after I slept. But this year, there were some crazy deals going on, so I snuck out of the house while John was asleep, went to the Sandy Wal-Mart at about 3:30am (without sleep) and found massive amounts of people and couldn't even get to the item I wanted. I had to take John's truck because he was parked behind me & I didn't have time to switch. I texted my sister Gia, she called and said there were hardly anyone at the Springville Wal-Mart that she, her husband Tim, my other sister Re', her husband Buzz, and my mom Pam had been since 1am. She said she would hold the item I wanted since it was the same item her & her husband Tim wanted. I got in the truck & cruised to Springville. She texted me about half way there and said it was starting to get busy. A few minutes later she texted that it was starting to get crazy & to hurry. I prayed for no cops & stepped on the gas. I got there at about 4: 35am and they unleashed the pallets at precisely 5am. We already had a strong grip on the Samsung 50" Plasma HDTV's that we wanted. Re' was at the sheet sets, Buzz was at the DVD's and our mom was at the luggage & towels. The second they said go we pulled them off the pallets. Gia & Tim were pulling the TV off the top of the one I had a hold on, so I had to duck and hold while they pulled it off over me while I held onto the TV I wanted and pulled it off as soon as I was clear. Luckily it went by so fast and they held their TV high enough it only brushed my hair and didn't fall onto my head. We met Re' & mom at the checkout and waited. I finally got home close to 7am, just before John got up to go to work. I backed his truck up to mine, slid the TV onto the bed of my truck, closed the garage and went to bed for 3 1/2 hours before waking up to go to the movie "Twilight" with my mom. We were supposed to go to my step-dad's for Thanksgiving Pie that evening but I fell asleep at about 4:00pm, woke up briefly to barely eat and passed out for the rest of the night. But it was worth it for the deal I got on John's 30th birthday present :)!!!

Tim, me & Gia waiting for the 5am go ahead to pull our TV's off the pallets!

Tim & Gia with their TVFoolishness & Mayhem at 5amRe' & Hurley waiting in line to make our purchases!

Hurley slept through the whole thing :)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

As it is with every family holiday, its a little chaotic because I have 3 families + John's. And because my family has grown so much, my dad's side of the family has been doing a Thanksgiving Breakfast for the past few years. So we started our eating frenzy of a day by going to my dad's house at 8:30am for a yummy breakfast of sausage biscuits & gravy and breakfast burritos. Afterwards we visited while looking through the ads and mapping out our Black Friday. We then went to my mama's house and I set the tables and helped my mama finish making our Thanksgiving Lunch. She & my sister Leigh had drove to Arizona the week before to pickup my Grandma Dorothy, my Uncle Curtis & my cousin Josh's daughter and brought them to Utah for Thanksgiving. So we had 14 of us for lunch, and we were only missing one of my brothers & his family of 6. We had a good time eating Turkey, potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffed mushrooms, deviled eggs, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, rolls & of course watching football. We then went home for a few hours to let the boys out before heading to John's parents for Thanksgiving Dinner. We're lucky enough to have his whole family together, including his grandma & grandpa, a grand total of 7....at 1 table :) Actually I should say I'M lucky that John has a great, wonderful and SMALL family. I love them all and they've been so loving & accepting of me and I couldn't ask for a better family...nor do I think I could handle someone that had a big family like mine. After dinner John's dad put on one of his notorious slide show performances. I got to see a cute picture of John when he was little dressed up as "Big Bird" for Halloween :) His mom promise to get me prints :) Tomorrow we'll be going to my step-dad's for pie :) Happy Thanksgiving to all, I hope everyone had a wonderful day and rememered everything that they are thankful for.

The man of the house, my oldest brother Shane, cutting the Turkey

Table #1 - the adult's

Table #2 - the kids

Craft Night

Last Friday night Desiree' had a "craft" night at her clubhouse where anyone could make anything that they wanted. She brought all of her stampin' up & scrapbook stuff. Our mom, Pam, and myself brought all of our stamps as well for anyone to use. Mom bought Pizza & Hot Wings for dinner, and Re' & I brought snacks to share. We had a lot of fun making cards, tags and whatever else we wanted. I made Turkey cards for Thanksgiving and made a lot of the Snowman cards that I wanted to give to people at work for Christmas. Thanks Re' for a night of fun :)

Grandpa holding Hurley

Scrapbookin' stuff

NKOTB - A childhood dream come true

Last Saturday I got to go back in time and live a childhood dream. 17 years ago (wow I'm old) I had a dream to see my favorite band, 'New Kids on The Block', in concert. I had begged my mom to let me go to their concert as so many of my friends were going. I was devastated that I couldn't go & thought it was the end of the world, and then a few laters they broke up. Now, 15 years later....they're back!! I can still remember listening, singing & dancing to their tapes, watching my VHS music video dreaming that my favorite band member Jonathan Knight was my boyfriend. Me & my sisters were all about New Kids and had T-shirts, posters, trading cards, dolls, etc. So when we heard they were coming to SLC, we were not going to miss our chance to finally see NKOTB in concert! I didn't care who made fun of me or how old they are, I was not missing my 2nd chance! The timing couldn't be better as my sister Desiree (Re's) birthday was coming up, so me & my sister Gia thought the best birthday present EVER would be to take Re' to the concert!! So we talked to our family and we all pitched in to get her ticket :)

Gia & I had bought the tickets in advance (floor seats row 30) & decided to keep it a secret from Re'. FINALLY, the day arrived and with the help from Re's husband, we surprised her at her doorstep, had her listen to "Happy Birthday" by NKOTB, and gave her the ticket! She was so excited and could not believe we were actually going to be seeing NKOTB live! We then went to my house to get ready, 80's style :)

We got to the concert and of course we each spent outrageous dollars $$$ on NKOTB memorabilia. We each bought Tour T-shirts (which we wore throughout the concert) keychains, and "Property of" T-Shirts & Buttons of our favorite guy. Re' also got a onesie for baby Hurley :) The whole concert we screamed our hearts out until we had no voice left. Half way thru the concert they put a spotlot on a spot 3 rows behind us and it turned out to be a rotating mini-stage with a piano & the NKOTB!! We FREAKED out and could not believe our eyes that they were INCHES FROM OF US!! Everyone around us went ballistic and we about fell off our chair (literally) as we each made some sort of contact with our favorite guy!! I kept screaming "I LOVE YOU JONATHAN"!! He actually blinked AND waved at me :) Donnie winked at Gia, posed for her camera and she had to grab onto me to keep from falling of her chair & passing out :) There was a girl behind me that also grabbed onto me to keep from falling. Re' was screaming after Danny saying how HOT he was. If it weren't for some girls in front of us, we would've touched all of the guys!!

We had the time of our lives at this concert and we still get excited when we talk about it. They sang a ton of their old songs which was AWESOME and brought back so many memories. It was a childhood dream come true for all of us. We felt like kids again, and we had SO much fun hanging out together. It was GOOD TIMES!! Re' said it was the "best birthday present EVER"! I only wish that Loni was with me because she is a HUGE part of my NKOTB memory as we both loved (or obsessed) over Jonathan ;)

After the concert we each called our hubbies and told them that we "fell in love in love with another man" :) LOL.

TAHNA + JONATHAN KNIGHT (I guess I was always destined to be with a Jon...I mean John :)

RE' + DANNY WOOD (Took us awhile but the minute she saw him she remembered who her guy was :)

GIA + DONNIE WAHLBURG (Even at age 5 she had good taste in men :)

I wish I would've snuck my camera in because 90% of the pics that Gia took were of her favorite guy, Donnie!! I think Donnie is hot & all, but I had to keep yelling at her to remind her to take a picture of Jonathan & Danny. The pictures of Jon & Danny in the slideshow are seriously the only ones we have. The rest are Donnie!! LMAO! Not that I blame her because if I had my camera, they would all be of Jonathan :)

Gingerbread House Festival

After I took John to the airport, I went to Thanksgiving Point to help my mom & volunteer at the annual "Gingerbread House Festival". I also got to hang out with my nephew, Parker, who had so much fun watching the train, talking with the "conductor" who was a nice old man that talked to Parker about 'Thomas the train'. He also loved "The Muppets" puppet show. He kept calling them silly puppets:) There were some AMAZING gingerbread houses that sold for thousands of dollars and all the proceeds went to the Boy Scouts of America and Learning For Life program. There were also a lot of activites for the kids, entertainment, and my favorite...Tai Pan who setup a mini store :) It was a lot of fun.

Parker LOVES trains

The Muppet Show

"Under the Sea" - I think it won 2nd placeBack side of "Under the Sea"I think this house won 1st placeParker's cookie that he madeMy favorite - "Great Wonders of the World"

John's first airplane ride

Last Saturday, John got on his very first airplane and flew to Jacksonville, Florida. He has NEVER been on a plane before and I always thought & hoped that I would take him on his first flying experience. However, his work beat me to it and he left for 5 days to train some people in their Jacksonville office on a new business database program that he has developed. He was quite nervous about the whole thing, especially since at the last minute he found out he was going by himself. I went inside to show him how to check-in and said goodbye at the security gate. He had a great experience on his way to Jacksonville, but it was the opposite experience on his way home. To make a long story short, there were problem after problem and when the boys & I went to pick him up from the airport today, he had no bag :( Lucky for us, the airline delivered his luggage to our house....at 2:00 AM!!!! Hopefully this experience hasn't ruined traveling for John because I LOVE to fly & travel and I want to be able to do it with him. Sorry honey but I'm glad you survived :)

Snow Day

The other morning I woke up to a winter wonderland in my backyard. There were several inches of snow and it continued to snow all day and my boys LOVED it! I wasn't feeling very well but I couldn't help but go outside and watch them play. They ran all over the yard jumping in the snow and chasing each other. I guess this is the end of Fall :( I'm not quite ready for winter yet but I'm glad they had fun in the snow.

Hurley's Baby Blessing

Sunday we went to my new nephew, Hurley's baby blessing. It was a special day as Desiree' & Ryan (a.k.a. Buzz) waited so long for their "little man". It was wonderful to see Buzz bless Hurley. After the blessing we celebrated with yummy Navajo Tacos with family and friends. Hurley looked SO cute and handsome in his traditional Navajo outfit. I'm so happy that John & I were able to be a part of Hurley's special day. This is the first nephew that John was able to be a part of from the beginning. He doesn't have any neices or nephews on his side yet. Hurley was also the very first baby that John has EVER held. Congratulations to Re' & Buzz!! We love you guys and we love you Hurley :)