Thanksgiving Pictures and Deets

We had our Thanksgiving today instead of Thursday, so that we could have it with my ex's family. I had Sandy and Dave, and Jessica and Adriaan. My family had Thanksgiving in AZ and we weren't invited, so we wanted to wait so we could have family. On Thursday, we just went out to dinner (Denny's) and a movie (Wall.E at Movies 8 in Provo) and then drove around looking at Christmas lights. It was nice. I am glad we waited. I did all the cooking, because I love cooking if I am having people over. Chris (my ex's other brother) and Great Gma and Gpa Anderson were supposed to come, but Gpa's leg was bothering him and he took some meds that made him loopy and Chris had to take care of him, so we really missed getting to see them. The food was great and so was the company. I really enjoyed just sitting around visiting and watching the kids play with their Aunt and Uncle. Our menu was:

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Herb Crusted Turkey

Warm Sweet Potato and Spinach Salad

Sage and Walnut Potatoes Au Gratin

Stuffing with Root Vegetables

Homemade Cranberry Sauce

Chocolate and Mint Cookies

Maple Sugar Biscuits

Celebration Cake

Pumpkin Pie

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Everything was great. The potatoes were my favorite of all. I think the kids liked dessert best - big surprise there. I loved having everyone over. Like how my menu looks like an arrow pointing to the pictures? I didn't even do that on purpose, that's how talented I am. Here are some pics. I couldn't get the mosiac site to work. Enjoy!

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Brooklyn and Hailey being silly with Aunt Jessica.

Camren being cute.

Brooklyn with Grandma Sandy.

Austin being cute.

Hailey with Grandma Sandy.

My fantastic Celebration cake with shredded apple
and carrot and homemade frosting. Mmmmm!

Tyler enjoying my chocolate and mint cookies.

Hailey with Uncle Adriaan.

Brooklyn and Amelia with Grandpa Dave.

All the kids at the kid table.

Somebody Peed My Bed And Demo Drama

What's worse than your child peeing their bed? Said child peeing YOUR bed. Yes, you read that right. I went to bed around 1am last night. Sometime after that, Amelia (age 3) came and got in bed with me. I was ok with that. She does that all the time. She had been dry for several nights now, so I didn't get up and take her potty (which I usually do before I let her get in bed with me) I just snuggled her in. Well a little after 2 I woke up suddenly. I rearranged Amelia, who was not practically on top of me and realized that she was wet. When I went to move her I realized that I was wet too - as in soaked to the skin. Then I got out of the bed and realized that 3/4 of my bed was wet as well. Fab-u-lous. So I woke up John and I changed her clothes, then changed my clothes while my husband stripped the bed. Problem? I don't have a water proof mattress pad on MY bed, because I don't pee the bed. So my mattress was soaked too. So my husband headed downstairs to sleep the rest of the night on the family room couch. I, on the other hand, can't sleep anywhere except a bed. So I wrangled myself into the sliver of bed on John's side that wasn't peed and slept there. After finding a big fat old comforter to lay over my mattress, of course. After a while, I was able to fall asleep, but it was definitely not a restful night of sleep. So now I am in a sleep-deprived coma, self medicating with Diet Coke, trying to finish the laundry (along with all my extra clothes and bedding from last night) and also write the 4-5 songs I need for my demo.

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Oh yeah, that's right. I thought that I could just do cover songs on my demo. I had worked them and worked them, and had them all ready to go. Well, apparently that's all fine and dandy for handing out to get gigs and such, but if you want to submit it to a producer it has to be original material. So in all my work this week. I have 1 1/2 songs with lyrics and no music, and a melody to one song that has no lyrics. Yay for me. Not. I downloaded Mixcraft and a couple other programs that will hopefully help me out. So far I have done a couple songs on Mixcraft, but nothing actually useable. Not for what I am trying to do anyway. I hope I get through this wall soon, because I had hoped to do the recording next month and my coach books a week and a half in advance. Looks like this may be my first project of the New Year. Grrrr.

Snow!

These pics are from the other day. I forgot I had taken them, so I don't remember when. Some time during the beginning of this month, because they were right after my Halloween pics on my camera. The kids enjoyed the snow, how ever little of it there actually was. It didn't last past 10am, but they had fun playing in it before school. We don't have any now, but I bet they will have a blast once it starts coming down and staying. And I'll enjoy watching them from the living room window. :)

6 Month Itch

(my house, sans landscaping)

Lately I have been feeling like I want to move again. I know that people will look at me like I just sprouted 2 heads for saying that, considering we moved into this house 6 months ago, but I do. Last spring (before we found this house) we went to Tennessee for spring break. We don't know anyone there, we just went for fun. Cause apparently fun for me is a 30+ hour drive with 6 kids. Hey, at least we had dvd. Anyway, with all the sight-seeing and house looking we did, I really fell in love with the area. I especially fell in love with Spring Hill and the Williamson County area. It is beautiful and close to Nashville and has the best school district in the entire state. The house that we really liked didn't end up working out (they needed someone right away and didn't want to hold it, we needed to wait a couple months 'til the kids were out of school) and so we stayed here. We didn't want to keep wasting money on the house we were renting in Stansbury (because the deal to buy it had fallen through) so we decided to move to the house we are in now. We got a great deal, it's in a fabulous neighborhood with beautiful views that I have posted on here from my porch and bedroom. My ward is great, I have friends here, the school is good. But yet, I am still not happy here. I find myself thinking all the time about Tenn. and how I wanted to move there. I get online to check my email and end up cruising the Nashville housing section on craigslist. I don't know what it is. My family and friends think I am crazy for moving all the time. In the last 10 years since graduating high school (yes, I said 10. ugh.) I have moved 15 times. I am not kidding. Before you freak out, 10 of those moves were within the first 5 years. Ok, I guess that may make you freak out more. Anyway, I guess I am just a wanderer at heart. I haven't found anywhere that I want to stay. I haven't lived anywhere that I just felt like, oh this feels like home to me. Like I could really stay here for a while. I have loved all the houses we have lived in, but after a while I just start feeling like ok, where to next? I feel somewhat bad for my kids because they have gone to a different school every year, but at the same time they are great at adapting and making friends. They have never complained, or said they wished they could stay where they were, or had any problems adjusting to where they were. Well, the boys have had problems in school, (but I don't think that has anything to do with moving. I think I need to have them evaluated for ADHD- Tyler and Austin, and learning disabilities - Camren.). I don't know. we have been talking about Tennessee. With me working on getting my demo together and hoping to get something going there, I don't think that where we live is very conducive to anything happening. I have connections to some people in the music industry in Nashville, but in talking to them they have told me the same thing. You need to come out here if you want your career to go anywhere. After all, Utah is not exactly a country singing mecca or anything. Does that make me selfish? I don't know. I am sure my family would say so, but then again my family criticizes everything I have ever done my entire life, so it's hard to be objective. I think that supposing that things do work out, it would be great for my family. If not, well maybe we would really like it there. Or move again, which is nothing new there. I have several houses that I want to go take a look at next weekend. My kids are off for Thanksgiving, and since I am not welcome to spend the holiday with my family, I am working on convincing John to take us to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. We didn't get a whole lot of sight seeing done when we were there the last time 'cause it rained part of the time and we were mainly looking at houses. So maybe we could go see all the sights and then look at houses on Saturday. I already have the kids on my side. They loved it there when we went before and like the idea that we could get a large enough property there to have animals (aka: horses and chickens). I just have to get John to warm up to the idea of it. (The trip, not moving there). Actually he told me as soon as I get the tracks laid down for my cd, and send it to my producer contact in Nashville, he would be willing to move out there. Kait said it will probably take a couple weeks to get my cd together. He looked online today and actually found a hospital that is very close to several of the houses I like that has several openings that he is qualified for. He is going to call and talk to them about their first assist positions tomorrow. They are a couple hours ahead of us, so hr was closed before he found the listings. So I guess it is just wait and see. In the mean time, I am going to be working on my cd non stop and get that wrapped up asap. I have been putting it off for too long, but I finally have put together a long list of performance ready songs I can record. I am only going to use about 5, but I like to have a lot of choices to narrow down to those 5 so I have been compiling and working nonstop.

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Ok, since I talk like I type, I better go! More to come. :)

No I Didn't Die

but I've been so tired lately, I feel like I'm about to keel over. I need to start going to bed earlier! Between 12 and 2 am doesn't work so well when you have to get up at 7. It is so hard because I am totally a night person.

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I have been babysitting Barrett (2 yrs.) and Carter (2 mo.) for a couple weeks now. My kids are really enjoying having them around and Amelia is liking having someone to play with while all the other kids are at school. I am looking forward to having some spending money, to get some things we need around here but haven't had the money for.

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I got my piano tuned on the 4th. I have had it for 3 years and hadn't had it done, but according to the guy that did the tuning, it had been probably 30 years since it had been tuned. It sounds so much better now. It is still about 10 cents off, but he said I should wait til spring to have him raise the pitch again, because if you do too much at once you can break strings and things. He also fixed my keys that were sticking. So I am back to practicing every day and working on my playing. It has probably been a year since I have REALLY played, because of the tone and sticking keys. It is really hard to play songs without the F above Middle C.

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On the 7th, the kids' school had family skate night at Classic in Sandy. We went and had a blast. The kids hadn't skated before, so it was pretty entertaining to watch them. Out of all of them Amelia did the best. LOL! The next best would probably be Tyler. He was able to stay on his feet most of the time. Hailey and Austin had the hardest time because of their feet size. The skates that go over your shoes were too small to wear with their shoes, so they tried wearing them with socks, which hurt their feet. They tried the regular skates, but couldn't manage to stay up on them. So I don't think they had as much fun as they could have. Brooklyn and Camren did ok. They fell from time to time, but for the most part shuffled around the rink and waved their arms everywhere singing along to the music. It was pretty funny to watch. They were in their own little world.

John and I are thinking about going to Wal-Mart or Target and getting some kid skates. I figured they could practice in the church parking lot or something 'til they were better.

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On Saturday we took the kids to see Madagascar 2. It was fun, because we didn't tell the kids we were going. We just had them get ready to leave and told them it was a surprise where we were going. When we got to the theatre, Camren was all "Are we going to see a movie?". Duh. I made the kids stand with me while John got the tickets, so the kids didn't know what they were going to see. Then after we got all settled in our seats, John went for popcorn. I had a purse full of candy that John had got at Smiths, so we enjoyed mini snickers bars, peanut butter cups, and strawberry twizzlers. (Well I didn't enjoy any twizzlers - Yuck!) The kids had a blast and were laughing their heads off. The movie was great. I enjoyed it too.

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Random:

- Today is early day and I actually remembered. I am feeling pretty impressed with myself.

- It is raining, so I think it may snow later on.

- I feel like screaming because once again Brooklyn can't find her backpack. I mean, how many places could it possibly be? I don't understand how she can lose it all the time. It's not like it is small.

- I really need to go fold about 4 loads of laundry, but I'm having a hard time psyching myself up to it. I'll get to it though, because the baskets are in my room and taking up my side of the room.

- Weight Watchers yogurt is really good. Which is saying something because I don't like yogurt.

- I really can't wait 'til John gets his settlement check and we have money. Yay for HUGE settlement checks! At least there is one good thing that will come out of his injury. It will be nice to do things like get glasses for the 3 big kids, who really need them. Or get more contacts for me 'cause I'm out and I'm tired of wearing my glasses.

- I think I slept about 3 hours last night. I didn't fall asleep til after 2 and then I woke up every hour or half hour. I don' t know why. I am so tired now. Maybe after Brooklyn leaves Amelia and I will take a nap together.