Kristen and Jared's Wedding.

Kristen was our roommate for about 6 months. She and Jared were sealed on Feb. 26, 2011. President Johnson sealed them. It was pretty cool, because he was also Jared's mission president. Bev (Jared's mom) Alona and I hosted a Bridal shower for Kristen. Alona left town that weekend to go visit family in Idaho so she couldn't attend. She did make some really fun games for the event. We missed having her there since she is an expert and documenting occassions with pictures. I am not, which is why we only have a few pictures for the occassion. Sorry Kristin!

Sister Chappell, Kristin's sister and her mother-in-law, Carrie Paige

Jennifer Norman and her adorable son Alex, Sister CookYeah for presents! Kristin had a each person assigned a room and they were to buy something to help decorate her new house.

I love making cakes and volunteered to make their wedding cake. I was all excited until the week before I got the flu and just as I was getting over that I got few poisoning just a few days before their wedding. I was getting really nervous that I was not going to be able to make the cake. Thank goodness for the Priesthood and a Dad who is worthy to hold it. He and Josh stopped by and gave me a blessing. I was perfectly fine by Friday and it only took me 6 hours to bake everything. My favorite part of the whole cake was the LEGO cake topper. I even had some white LEGO from school that Kristin found to make a stand for the cupcake to sit on. ( Doesn't the pool in the background look inviting?)

This is halfway through decorating them. The brown cupcakes were white marble and the red ones were cherry chip. I had a lot of fun making this one. I love her colors.

Would you believe that I still had to make more frosting to finish decorating all 200 cupcakes?

Jared and his sister Julie love porcupines. Apparently they would try and catch them when they lived in Alaska. I was a little nervous about making the groom's cake, but I love it. The quils are shoestring potato chips. It was 100 times easier to make than I thought it would be. I don't have a picture of the little porcupine cupcakes that went with it, but they were cute.

Jared's Family

Painting

Jason and Dadra come into town for mom's birthday. Her birthday wish was to pick out paint colors for the house. Some people from our ward came and rebuilt the fireplace and painted the trim in the TV room. I love the colors we picked out. Mom and Jason did most of the painting. I helped with a few walls. I didn't have much energy since I had got sick right before they came into town.

Finished product. Can you tell we had some very fun visitors?

I think this wall has been taped about 4 times from painting the molding to painting the wall. It looks good though!

I Love the frame the blue paint made above the mantle.

Christmas

Santa had a few helpers this year. It's tradition that Santa puts balloons on our tree every Christmas.

It's always nice to have family home for Christmas.

Every year Santa gives everyone an apple and an orange in their stocking. This year since I got to Help Santa out I put two oranges in my stocking along with the Candy mom had divided. Unfortunately some younger twin of mine decided to be funny and changed out the two oranges for to apples. Pretty funny!

The long awaited moment where Shalene opened her gift. I had her family this year and decided to make her a book of pictures with all her children's funny quotes. Believe me there are a lot. I'm glad she liked it.

Jonny, Alaina and Cody made Christmas much more fun this year. It is so much fun to watch young kids get all excited for their gifts.

Christmas Eve matching PJ picture!

I'd say Cody was done!

Beautiful Mary!

They did a great job acting out Mary and Joseph. It was nice to have them here this year.

Santa was good to us all this year.

We went looking at Christmas lights near the temple. When we were done we stopped off at the temple so that we could see the Manger Scene. Cody stopped long enough to pose for a picture with me.

Alaina and Jonny had fun looking at the water too.

Jonny tried to get out of the picture.

Can you get much cuter than this?

Manger Scene at the Temple! It's beautiful.

Alaina's all read for Santa!

Catch up

Ok so I down loaded these first two in the wrong order, but oh well. Our school had a sock hop night for our PIE night (Parents Involved in Education). We got to dress up 50's style all day. It was kind of fun. For the month leading up to the sock hop parents could check out books to read with their child that were popular when they were young.

Liz Ray, Me, Lindsey Rousseou all dressed up for the night.

Jill Ainsworth and I spent two hours of the night dishing up Culver's Custard for the night. It was a lot of fun.


Claudia, Baily and Kyla at the ward halloween party. It was a lot of fun, but very crowed.

I love it when Shanna wears her hair in ringlets. Kyla had fun with all the candy there.

Carson loves "New" Mario brothers on the Wii. I visiting teach his mother who is the Primary President in our ward. Her husband is also a councilor in the Bishopric, so I get to go over once a month and babysit he and his brother while they are at Ward Council meetings. It's lost of fun.

I love Claudia's custom!

Bailey did not like this hat very much so we had to snap a very quick picture with her wearing it. Ok so the candy bribe didn't hurt either. I love having the Bushman's in our ward.

Raggedy Ann and Tigger. Somehow I don't mind being the one to watch all the kids while the mom's go and get something to eat. Can you blame me?

Did you know there are "Mountains" In Texas? Dec. 9th I flew to El Paso to Present at Region 19 "Together for Autism Conference" We snapped this picture on our way back to the airport. Andrea Cherry and Heidi also presented.

I have never met a nicer group of people than I did in El Paso. They were all so polite and helpful in getting set up for the conference.

Christmas Vacation is never complete unless you are baking. So I'm catching up with all my cupcake decorating. I found these snowman in a magizine and just had to make them. It was a lot of fun. They are marble cupcakes. My roommate Kristen is getting married Feb. 26th 2011 and asked for me to make her cake. She want's marble cupcakes so I had to try them out first.

I also have been dying to make a cupcake wreath. I bought a book three years ago from our school book fair. I've wanted to make it ever since. The leaves are chocolate and the cherries are red gumballs. It took a long time to make but I think it turned out ok.

The leaves kept breaking as I tried to put them on the cupcakes. It took lots of patience.

Gig'em Aggies and Friends Reunion

Last month was a great month. I had reunions with several old friends and families I worked for. Made me miss my days in College Station!

Arzu and her family came to visit first. It was great to see them I was impressed that Shayan remembered what CD's we use to listen to in our car when he earned RT time. We went and had Chinese food together. Unfortunately I deleted the picture of Arzu, Reza and I.

Next came my good ol' aggie friends. Ben's 30th birthday was last month and his girlfriend Holly tried to have a surprise birthday party for him. They were all in town for Crystal's Wedding the day before. Holly sent out FB invites out to everyone, but two days before the party Ben sent his own invites out to everyone. We all kind of laughed at him. We met up at Goode's BBQ. We had such a fun group of people at A&M when I was there. It was nice to catch up with everyone.

Ashleigh, Katherine, Ben, Jennifer, Nefilinda, Daniel, Jacob, Bryan and his wife.

Gig'em Aggies!!!!!!!

Autism Conference

Texas State Autism Conference was held in Corpus Christie on Oct. 7-9. I presented on Saturday for two sessions. It was a lot of fun! Alona's School sent her and it was nice to have someone to hang out with at night.

I had two Sessions on Saturday. I think the first one went a lot better than the second one. I had lots of people who want to buy copies of my Picture Activity Schedules. I've made about a hundered of them now. I'm just waiting for the Sales tax permit to come so I don't get in trouble.

The room was huge. It seated about 500 people. Don't worry not that many showed up. I had about 40 -50 in each session though. Last year there were several fights amongst attendees that this year they decided not to have make and take sessions. Instead the presenter did a demonstration on how to make each item. That's not nearly as fun and to talk for 90 min on how to make a little book is rather hard. Needless to say we got out early :) I don't think people minded though since it was the last day of the conference. We all wanted to go home. There was not nearly the attendance as there was last year.

One night we went out to eat with a few people from Alona's school. I think I'll just say it was an experience. Teachers can get kind of crazy when they are not at work.

Harry Potter Piano Theme