My Challenge.....

There is a wonderful challenge going on over at The Sunshine Blog and here is my layout.



We had to come up with 14 different facts about ourselves. I found that pretty hard. Ask me to come up with 14 things about Guy or the kids and it would have been easy. But, it was hard to come up with them for myself - let alone just finding a picture of me. I finally finished it... and it was pretty fun to do.

Crazy!

I just got a call from my mom this afternoon letting me know about my Grandpa who lives in Preston. He has a bloodclot in his leg and has decided not to have surgery for it. Consequently, anything could happen at any time. So... everyone in my family (from Seattle) has been rushing to make plans to get here to see him. It sounds like all three of my brothers will be able to make it and my parents just booked a flight. I'm glad that we are all going to be able to be together for Easter and to be around my grandparents. My grandpa is a great man and I hate that his health is failing and that he hasn't been able to feel good for a while. I am going to try and post some pictures of my kids with him. They just ADORE their Grandpa Eliot. Austin just loves that he is named after him!!! (Austin Eliot) It will definitely be awful when he passes away to tell my kids. It will be so hard for them, they have never had the experience of anyone close to them dying - not even a pet! Anyway, hopefully, the clot in his leg won't break loose and he will be okay for a while. I feel so bad that we live so close and haven't made the short drive to Preston for a long time. It will be good to see everyone though - and now I must go so I can clean house for my parents!!!!

Old Times!!!

My mom just got a bunch of photos of my "growing up years" scanned in and I thought that I would make a page with one of my favorite pictures. Boy, how we loved those Cabbage Patch Kid dolls!!! These were my great neighborhood friends growing up and I can't wait to make more pages with some of these pictures - we've got some good ones!

Two in One! and funny Kaylee

I made this scrapbook page today!



It was a lot of fun to do. I'm going to make a page to go opposite of it with pictures of all three kids together that says "but, mostly, they're just the same!"

This was a conversation between Kaylee and I when I was sitting at the computer with this page almost done.

Kaylee: I don't like it.
Me: How come?
Kaylee: Because there's Jaden and Austin on it. I like just me!
Me: Don't you think it's nice to have all of you guys on it?
Kaylee: No, I like just me. (stated very matter-of-factly!)

Funny Conversation....

This was a conversation between Guy and Austin at the auto body shop while they were waiting for our car to get a little work done. They were in the restroom washing their hands...

Austin: I know what the soap is going to smell like?

Guy: What will it smell like?

Austin: People fixing cars! (Ewwww, I hope not! They don't smell very pleasant!)

Austin gets the soap on his hands and begins washing, then puts his hands to his nose and took a whiff.

Austin: Oh, it smells gooder!

I thought that was pretty funny... You may have to know Austin and his demeanor to find that as funny as Guy and I did!!!

Also, it has been pretty fun. I've been making digital scrapbooking kits, including the papers and the elements, and then putting them up on a blog so people can download and use them. I've had over 180 people download my last kit that Jaden helped me choose the colors for. It's pretty exciting!!!! Ithink because of the extra exposure I've gotten from the kits, my templates have been being downloaded like crazy!!! It's fun to watch the numbers increase and read all the comments people leave me (although only about 1/4 of the people who download actually leave comments)! Anyway, here's a preview of my last kit. I had sooo much fun with it.

How many of me?

This was kinda fun to do! I saw it on my friend Jamie's blog and thought it would be fun to do!

There are 511,399 people in the U.S. with the first name Heather. Statistically the 104th most popular first name.
There are 163,891 people in the U.S. with the last name Andrews. Statistically the 179th most popular last name.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 276 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

As for my maiden name - not quite as popular!!!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Apparently, Mockli is so 'rare' that they do not have it in their database and there are 0 people with the last name of Mockli and 0 Heather Mockli's in the U.S. Go figure!!!

Candy Hearts and Jaden's Basketball

These are so much fun and I can't wait to use them in a Valentine's scrapbook page!!! All you do is go to www.cryptogram.com/hearts and type in what you want the heart to say and choose what color. I made one for each of the kids and then also some generic ones, so I can use them later. Anyway, you'll have to try it out, it is a lot of fun. They look pretty real!!!







Also, here is a page I made of Jaden making an awesome bank shot at his last basketball game. He is doing really good lately. Especially when he is guarding. He keeps his hands up and sticks to his "buddy". We are so proud with how much he has improved since the beginning of the season! It is so much fun to go and watch him play. He was so happy that his Grandma and Grandpa from Seattle could come and watch last time. And thanks to my mom who captured this great picture of Jaden scoring!

Sledding!!!

Last Saturday we all went sledding with our friends, Kristy and Mike, and their kids, David and Kaitlyn. We went a little early in the morning because I had a lot to do that day with my parents coming and Jaden's basketball game. It was awfully cold!!!! My nose and cheeks hurt so bad! The kids didn't seem to mind though! It did start to warm up a little for the last 15 minutes or so we were there - the sun felt so nice! The kids had such a great time sledding. It was a lot of fun to watch them. Jaden is usually so apprehensive about things like that, but since he had David there he jumped right in! Kaylee preferred to slide down on her bum and climbing up the hill. We are definitely going to go back there. We are sure glad that Mike and Kristy showed us this sledding hill! Since it was so cold, our cameras wouldn't work. They kept turning off. However, I did get a few pictures - they aren't the best, but at least I got some!

Bridesmaids!!!!

I have been having so much fun doing these pages of my wedding album. I haven't posted all of the pages here - I've posted a lot of them on my ward's digital scrapbooking groups blog, but I thought I would put this one on here. I'm having a hard time getting all these pages done now that school has started up again, but I'm still trying. It's not like I have a lot of pictures to do - I was disappointed with the way a lot of them turned out! Anyway, this is a page of my bridesmaids - Jillian Beach and Jamie Paul (at the time, it's Reber now!). I thought this turned out good.

Well school is going good. I'm only in the middle of my first week. It is going to be a tough semester though. A lot of readings - and even more papers and projects! I have two history courses - Middle Eastern Civilization and The History of Christianity. Both of them will be very interesting, I think I'll enjoy them. I also have a Special Education course that will be good, however, my professor seems very strict and will be slightly difficult, but I think I'll be okay. I also have an Education course that will be talking about literacy and assessments - this class will have a TON of projects to do, but, once again, I think it will be good. I'm just hoping they will give me enough spare time to be with my family.... and do a little scrapbooking.

I also registered with familysearchindexing.org and hope to be able to do a little bit of work there. I don't know if anyone has tried it yet or not, but it is a good thing to do. All you do is look at old microfilms on the internet and figure out the names and such and type them in. The church is just trying to get the names off of these so people can be found and others can find their names. You don't have to be a member of the church to do this, in fact, there are a lot who aren't. Anyway, I hope to be able to do a few batches of these.

Well, here's the scrapbook page I told you about:

Wedding Pages

I'm doing a wedding album. Here are a couple of pages I made for it:

My BIG 7 year old!!!

Well, it was Jaden's 7th birthday yesterday. I can't believe he's that old already!!! We had a great time. Guy and I picked up Happy Meals (quite the treat for them!) and dropped them off at Guy's parent's home. We let Jaden pick anywhere he wanted to go and eat dinner, just the three of us. He was so excited to be with us by himself. Jaden picked Sizzler, he loves to go there and get the salad bar because that way he "doesn't have to wait for his food." When we got there, he didn't know who he wanted to sit by and asked if we all could fit on one side of the booth!!! After we were done eating we let our waitress know it was Jaden's b-day and a couple of the waitresses started singing him Happy Birthday and before long the whole restaurant was singing to him! It was pretty funny, Jaden thought it was cool.

After we picked up the other kids we went back home and opened his presents and had cake and ice-cream. When he opened the gift from my parents, he got so excited he had to sing and do a little dance as he jumped around saying "YES!!!". They had gotten him a SpongeBob game for the Wii that the kids got for Christmas.

I'll have to post some pictures after I get them onto the computer. Maybe I'll even post a video of his reaction to that present!

Anyway, I just can't believe my kids are growing up so fast! Today was Kaylee's last day in the nursery at church. I'm going to have three kids in primary! CRAZY!!!

Christmas is approaching......

.... and so is the end of the semester - which comes with projects and finals. It has been tiring ever since we got back from Seattle for Thanksgiving.... finally starting to ease up a bit. I've had paper after test after paper after test!!!! Anyway, I'll be glad when the semesters over (only to start a new one!!!).

I am getting so excited for Christmas! The kids are just going to be so much fun this year, they are at great ages... plus, their presents are going to be awesome! The kids went and saw Santa - three times! We went and saw him once and got the kids picture taken with him, then we saw him at our ward's Christmas Party, then we went and saw him in town... at night... in freezing weather... so they could see Mrs. Claus, too. It was fun, the kids had a good time, anyway. I'm not so sure we'll do it again next year!
This is a picture of the kids with the first Santa we saw: By the way, Jaden is now noticing that the Santas are not the same person.....


On a sad note, I found out a couple of days ago, that my grandpa is in the hospital with a progressive lung disease. They don't know exactly how long he'll live with it. It could range from days to months. I've always thought of my grandpa as invincible.... he is 93, though. He's a wonderful man, can't wait till he's out of the hospital to go visit!

Space Needle!!!

We are in Seattle visiting my family and took the kids to the Space Needle. It was a lot of fun. Jaden loved the ride up and how the cars looked like matchbox cars. After the Space Needle Guy and I took the kids to the Science Center and played there for a couple of hours. The kids just had a great time. It was a little chilly, but definitely worth it! Here are a few pictures of the kids at the Space Needle and the Science Center.
Here is a picture of the kids at the top of the Space Needle:

And looking up at the Space Needle:

Here is a picture of the kids "digging for dinosaur bones":

This is a picture of the kids in the butterfly exhibit. It was a lot of fun watching the butterflies flying all around. Austin had one land on his bum - he thought that was pretty funny! He also thinks he was a 'butterfly magnet'.

Austin - even after a careful inspection by the exhibit worker - had a stow away on his leg. We found it after we had left the butterflies and were out playing. Luckily, Austin was able to walk careful enough that we were able to get it back in.

Halloween Party page and blah, blah, blah!!!!

Here is a scrapbook page I did of the kids from the Halloween party Lexi had for the kids. It was a lot of fun!!!! She had a bunch of games for the kids with prizes for them. They all got a new halloween shirt from her as well. I still have more pictures from their little party to make at least one more page of, and I still have yet to do a page of them all dressed up on Halloween!!! I'll get there someday!


(Notice Kaylee's eyes! She kept trying to look up at the visor on her head - it was so funny! The picture just doesn't do it justice!)

We are planning on going back home to Kirkland for Thanksgiving. I'm so excited, it's been almost a year since we've been back. The kids can't wait to see Grandma and Papa (as Kaylee refers to Grandpa - she has the boys calling him that half the time as well!). Kaylee keeps going through her toys and telling me "Papa would like to see this..." She is just so matter-of-fact! Over the Thanksgiving break, I'm going to have quite a bit of homework to do. I have a big project due right afterwards as well as two tests! I just hope I can make myself do them while there. That's the tough part.

We are going to try and get everything ready to decorate for Christmas before we leave, so we can enjoy it when we get back! I'm excited to get all the Christmas stuff out, just not looking forward to the mess it makes.

Well, tomorrow is my crazy day at school. 9:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night with just a short break to pick up kids and get them fed before hurrying off to my night class - which is so boring and pointless most of the time!!!

Snow!!!!

I made a couple pages of our way too early snow day this past September. I had so much fun with these ones. I made them using a couple of snow templates that I made. Templates are so fun to make and so easy to use. I've actually started up a blog to give some of my template freebies away! I've had 84 people download one and 63 another! It's crazy! I'm going to be giving away these snow templates sometime next week.... just in case you're interested! Go check out my blog here. Anyway, here are the scrapbook pages of my kids playing in the snow... and building their first snowman of the year (he was kinda small!!).

Interesting.....

I saw this on Jamie's blog. Check it out and see which way you think the dancer is spinning. I had a very hard time trying to make it change directions, but I finally did it. I saw the dancer spinning clockwise. (If you want to try to make your eyes see it the other direction, try concentrating on the shadow.) I guess I'm right brained!

On a side note, the other day when Kaylee woke up (I was still in bed) I here her say "uh,oh" in the bathroom. That is never a good sign. I get up and walk in to see her with her pajamas and underwear pulled down, standing facing the toilet, with her underwear and pajamas soaked and pee on the floor. How did that happen? She was trying to be like her older brothers - standing up to use the potty! I had to explain to her that only boys could stand, girls ALWAYS have to sit!!!!

Great Grandparents

I've been having a lot of fun doing some scrapbook pages of older pictures. This is one of my great grandparents Vern and Lucia Nelson.

Kaylee's 3rd Birthday

Kaylee's birthday was on September 30th. We had a princess party for her and she just had a great time. Tyra and Lexi, and Marydell and Blair came by for it. She just loved opeing up her presents!!!! She also couldn't wait to dig in to the cake. Here are some pages I did of her party!!!!

If only it were this easy!!!!

Austin's Look-A-Like

Interesting the difference between Kaylee and Austin - since they look so much alike!!!!