I'm BAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my goodness. I have been a very bad girl and have not posted for...let me see...pretty much three months. I have missed A LOT. However, here I am! So as not to be completely confusing, I'm going to post stuff in sort of separate posts, with an overview at the beginning of things which happened in between and weren't significant enough to deserve their own post. Please don't be too confused. Or angry. Here we go!!!

General Conference

     This is going to be just a quick post about General Conference. We had Conference Breakfast as usual with yummy cinnamon rolls and sausage and fruit and eggs and all that good stuff. Cinnamon rolls...om nom nom :) So our friends the Ostergaards and the Larsens came over and had breakfast and talked about Conference with us. The general consensus was that all the speakers were fabulous! I liked Jeffery R. Holland's and President Eyring's a lot. I'm going to refrain from telling about all of my favorites so that this post won't drag on into infinity and bore you to death...but I am going to mention one more thing that was pretty funny.

     All of you who have watched Conference may remember one speaker's reference to something President Kimball said when he was asked what to do in a boring Sacrament Meeting; President Kimball replied, "I don't know; I've never been in one."

     At this point, Samuel looked up from his Conference Bingo and emphatically stated, "I have!" (Oh well, at least he was paying attention...*sigh*)

Butterflies

Today, since we didn't have school, we went with our buddies the Larsens to the Butterfly House, which is a very fun place to explore in Dow Gardens here in Midland. They have about fifteen hundred thousand bajillion types (okay, I have no idea how many, but it's a lot) of butterflies. They are brought in from all over the world and if you haven't ever been to see them, it's pretty awesome.

Here's Samuel with a little bright yellow butterfly.

Samuel had two butterflies here-a little tiny one on his shoulder (more on that one later) and one on his hand.

This is me and my butterfly BFF. Allow me to explain. Andrew handed me this Queen butterfly, (which, by the way, kept walking all over me) and it adopted me. It would not go away. I would give it to someone else to hold, and after a few minutes, it would stubbornly flutter back to me. So naturally, we have a lot of pictures of me holding this butterfly.

Samuel and his butterfly BFF. This was a really, really cute little one with black wings and a big, bright orange body. I still have NO idea what type of butterfly it is, so if anybody figures it out, please let me know!

Andrew and a Julia butterfly, which are INCREDIBLY hard to catch-wow! :)

I don't know what kind of butterfly this is either, but it looks really cool, and it was really big (for a butterfly.)

The Butterfly that would not leave...

And here it is again...

Andrew and some type of butterfly

Andrew showing a butterfly to Kate Larsen

Andrew was SO lucky to get this: two Blue Morpho  butterflies at once! He immediately drew a large crowd.

Samuel, me, and Beth Larsen (and various butterflies)

Andrew and Samuel and their butterflies

   We had a great time visiting the butterflies!

Birthday Pictures

A while ago I posted about my birthday, but I posted no pictures. I'm going to post them now.

 Me, Andrew, Samuel, and Dad with my yummy cake.

 Is this not the best face you have ever seen? I have no idea how Mom managed to take this picture, but I think it's hilarious.

BLOWING!!!!! Gotta love the second silly face, right?

Art and Catupult

We have been having a lot of fun recently with Andrew as he is earning his scouting Arrow of Light. He has gotten to do a lot of fun stuff, and we have had a lot of fun with him. One thing he got to do was make some different types of art. He used some stuff he made at school, something he made at a friend's house, and some stuff he just did at home. 

This is some "splatter art," a la Jackson Pollock, which he made at his friend's house. It is appropriately named "Splat."

 This is a flag drawn with markers. The title is "Old Glory."

 This is a crayon-resist called "The Fish."

 Profile of me. (Ask Andrew how a profile picture is made-he is now an expert!) I don't think it has a title.

 This is "The Rainbow Fish." You have to love the bubbles! :)

 A beautiful sunrise on a nice beach (I want to go swimming now...fishies and beaches...summer...ahhh...)

 "Bull's Eye" (I don't really know what this one is, but I like the colors he chose..)

I think this is King Tut or something. I love the gold paint and the hieroglyphics. (This isn't a very good photograph of the picture, because of bad lighting-it's hanging up in our house and if you come over you will be able to see it better.)

So, that's some of Andrew's art! Now, we will move onto another fun scouting thingy: a CATAPULT!

In theory, the catapult shoots marshmallows. Well, it turned out that we have no marshmallows. So we made do with cotton balls, milk bottle caps, and in one instance, a glove. (You will understand when you watch the video.)

So this is a video, fantastically narrated by me, of the catapult in action. We also took a few photos of Mom and Andrew building the catapult.

 A cute picture of Mom, Samuel, and Andrew next to the finished product.

 Working on it...

Well, we had a fun time with Andrew-and if you ever need somebody to assault your enemies with cotton balls, we're ready to help! :)

My Birthday!

Last week, I turned 13. Yay! I am now officially an annoying teenager. Anyhoo, y'all may be rather annoyed that I didn't write about this earlier. Well, I have a good excuse. I was sick. Yay, not. I had something nasty all weekend, which made me so mad. (Happy birthday to me-I get to be sick on my birthday! And, of course, I didn't even get to miss any school because it was a four-day weekends. Grrrrr...) Well. Getting back on track, I did actually have a good birthday. We had a family celebration on Saturday, which was fun. Mommy made me a lovely chocolate cake, as per my request, and we had a very fun time with balloons and movies. Despite me being in my pajamas and in a state of semi-consciousness all weekend. Thank you, wonderful family for putting up with me! I <3 you! 

I really don't have any pictures to back this post up with, (mainly because I begged that none be taken of me) but there is one of my with the cake because it was dark in there. I will try to post it later. So. Until my next post!

Happy Holidays! (a.k.a. the Longest Blog Post In The World)

   Wow. What a busy few weeks! We have been having lots of fun and I can think of about ten zillion things I need to post about! This is going to be a very long "scribble-scrabble" sort of post and I probably won't be able to do justice to the awesomeness of all the stuff we did over Christmas break, but here I go! (Feel free to  skim; I know it's a lot to absorb.)

1.) Mom and I went to the Nativity Open House and helped out. (This was for my Divine Nature project.) If you don't know what the Nativity Open House is, it's a really awesome display we do every year at the church. There are 600+ AWESOME nativities from all over the world. If you haven't seen it you totally should! During the project I did everything from putting up fake trees to ironing fabric to setting up Nativities. I also got to do stuff like polishing wood and replacing trash bags. One really neat thing we did was hosting a room. This means sitting in a room with Nativities and answering questions.

Mom in the Classical Room.

Me in the Classical Room.

 An awesome silver Nativity inside a huge geode.

 This was in the room we were hosting-I had to put it in after a little boy walking through with his mom took one look at the gate and yelled, "Hey Mom! Look, a dungeon in Bethlehem!"

 Stained glass Nativity (yes, it is on top of the coat racks-probably to keep little kids away from it)

 This one was made from odds and ends from a hardware store. I know it's hard to tell what everything is-oh well, it made me laugh!

 The highlight of this one is the hilarious fat cow right in the front.

 A really, really awesome plastic Nativity...with FIBER OPTICS! This picture does not do it justice.

A Nativity in an acorn! This is one of those things you have never heard of but you love it as soon as you do.

2.) Grandma Schramm was here! Grandma is awesome and we all LOVED having her visit us.
First, I shall post the authorized picture of Grandma...

Grandma and Samuel reading together on the couch

...and then for the ones we took when she wasn't looking.

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Grandma the tickle monster!

Grandma with her "loot."

Grandma helping sweep up pine needles (this is what we do for fun; now you know!)

3.) We went to the annual Jones Family Christmas party, which is always awesome. They always have a great theme, and this year the theme was...NARNIA!!!!!! I was so excited because I love the Narnia books. As usual, we all went in costume. Grandma Schramm was the White Witch, (fearsome with a curtain-rod magic wand) and Samuel was an ADORABLE little talking leopard. Andrew was Peter, and despite his protests I think he looked very dashing in his sweater and khakis. Mom and Dad were Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. Mom made some lovely tails for them to wear, and after she made Dad's, she said, "enjoy it...its the last black leather thing I'll ever make for you." :) I was Lucy. I know the theme is Narnia, but I put on my costume and screamed "HOGWARTS!" (hehe)

Sorry about the picture quality... ah well we already knew what the top of our heads looked like.

4.) Christmas Day!!! We actually had Christmas on Monday, because of church, but it worked out well. We had a great time. Probably the top presents in our (the kids') eyes were: Andrew loved the new WiiPlay game, Samuel got these nifty little building toys called Connectagons (actually way cool and fun!) My favorite present was probably my awesome fuzzy boots, which I really wanted! Christmas was a great day to have fun and to think about the first Christmas-when He who was to save the world came as a baby to a tiny stable.

Waiting to go down and get stockings...

Me wearing: new Christmas pajamas, new bathrobe, new hat, and new scarf reading my new book. My frog hat (his name is Fiyero) is next to me on the chair. Life at its fullest.

(Honestly, I have no idea what this picture is of, I just liked it.)

"Ho ho! What's this squishy thing they put in my cage? I shall step on it and show it who's boss."

 "Oh, so you SIT on it! Huh, kind of comfy."

"Ah, I see. It's a bed! Well, I may as well use it, all this Christmas spirit has worn me right out..."

This was taken on Christmas Day and it doesn't really have anything to do with anything, I just thought Charlie looked funny like that.

Me and Andrew putting together his new Star Wars Battle of Endor Lego set. Andrew almost fainted with joy when he opened it! (Who doesn't love Ewoks, right?)

Andrew and his extensive block domino-racetrack-like thingy, which is really awesome! The moment before the KABOOM.

5.) This is probably the most fantabulous thing that has happened all year... Our family saw Wicked the musical in Detroit! Now, if you know me, you know I'm a huge Wicked fan, and I go around pretty much 24/7 singing the songs. I had wanted to see it forever, and the Broadway production was coming to the Detroit Opera House,  but I was pretty sure Mom and Dad would never take us. It was an awesome surprise to find out we were going! We had a great time with our good friends the Leonhardts and the Lovells. We went to a fancy Cuban restaurant and ordered stuff we couldn't pronounce and altogether had a great time. (You know it's a really fancy restaurant when you can't read and/or pronounce the menu because it's in a different language...well, despite me poking fun at it, it was a good restaurant with yummy food.) The Elphaba was incredible, as was the Galinda. And, I personally think "our" Fiyero was even better than the original! Well, I don't have adequate words to describe the "Ozomeness" (awesomeness) of the show!!! I loved every minute of it.

Andrew and his friend David Leonhardt at Wicked

Me, Andrew's head, and my friend Brinli at Wicked

Dad and Samuel in the Wicked theater

Well, we had a great end of 2011. We are looking forward to a great 2012, and we are so grateful for all our friends and family who have been there for us during difficult times. We love you all!