SWEET HUSBAND

This is just a really quick blog. I thought this was a funny conversation Matthew and I had today. This is how the dialogue went:

Alli: "I'm sorry that I'm so grumpy, and onery and annoying all the time."

Matthew: "You're not annoying."

Isn't he a sweetheart!?

In his defence, I am really grumpy a lot and he is really really great to put up with me! I probably make his life really hard sometimes! He really is a sweetheart!

HAPPY HALF BIRTHDAY MATTHEW!!

November 2009:

Once upon a time Matthew went swan hunting for the first time, and had a blast! He came home with the BEAUTIFUL swan, and put it in a pillowcase and garbage bags and in his grandma's freezer. I wanted to have it stuffed and make it a birthday present. His birthday is in May so he knew it was going to be a late birthday present. He just didn't realize how late.

One day, under false pretenses (he thought I had colorgaurd practice) I drove up to his grandma's house to get the swan out of said freezer. The man that was doing the taxadermy was supposed to be available for me to drop the swan off at his work. However, I couldn't get in touch with him, so I was on a desperate search of dry ice throughout all of Cache Valley. Do you think I would have any such luck of finding dry ice?

No.

I had to SNEAK (Matthew was in our bedroom when I finally got home with the swan) a big white cooler full of swan and the little dry ice I did manage to scrounge up into our basement. I had succeeded!

I got in touch with the man who was working on the swan and dropped it off and all was well. (This would be much more exciting for you if you knew how hard Matthew is to surprise)

All was well? So I thought. We all went up to his grandparent's home and as we were cleaning up and putting chairs away, Matthew went downstairs and for some unkown, insane reason, decided to check on his swan in the freezer. Why he felt he had to do this, I have no idea. The swan was wrapped up like a mummy! He couldn't have seen it anyway...but he just had to look.

I was busted.

Thankfully Jeff had the swan for about 4 months and I didn't tell Matthew when I had been talking to him, so I thought he had no idea that his swan was done and I could pick it up anytime.

Or again, so I thought. I got Jeff's (the taxadermist) information from a friend of ours, who was also keeping tabs on the swan. Matthew heard our friend talking about how good his swan looked.

Again, I was busted.

Granted, Matthew wasn't sure when I'd bring it home, but it was like he had a little spy the whole time this opperation was taking place.

Maybe one day I will be able to surprise him with something, but I think it will be a lifelong battle.

After much annoyance, and attempted secrecy, and about one year later, Matthew came home from work on Tuesday to a big ol' swan laying in the automan with a green birthday bow wrapped around it's neck!

November 2010:

It's a good thing he LOVES it!!

The End.

I love you Matthew, and I hope you had a great birthday in May,

as well as an awesome half birthday!

ACT ENTHUSIASTIC & YOU'LL BE ENTHUSIASTIC, HEY!!!!!

2010 SkyView High School Colorguard

KOTO

I am so proud of my girls!!!!!!! However, let me start by telling you how nervous they made me at the beginning of the year! We had a really, really rough start. I didn't go into this season with very many returning girls because all my seniors graduated last year. I had about 18 (if I am remembering right) rookies this year. We have an awesome band director who planned a really smart show. It was one that was smart in that drill worked out well but it was easy enough to accomplish, but also challenging enough to keep the kids interested...for the bad. I think the guard was RUNNING in and out of every set for the most part! :D Plus we have an awesome choreographer who wrote some pretty hard stuff. To top it off, I wasn't there a lot this year because of my work schedule. I had heard a lot of parents at the beginning of the year talk about how worried they were about the guard, and how they looked so dirty, etc. etc. Anyway, honestly, up until the practice before our Red Rocks performance, I was still extremely nervous!

But my girls quickly changed my mind, had an AWESOME rehearsal and then went out and had an AMAZING performance!! It was so fun to watch their energy and see the flags spin together and see how much fun they were having!!!

Red Rocks is basically the championship competition for the season in Utah, and I was going to be proud of them anyway, and then we had our scores being announced and it turns out that my girls are:

THE NUMBER ONE COLORGUARD ON THE UTAH CIRCUIT!!!!

I'm probably the happiest director around! Not to brag (and I love A.F. and Davis) but my girls took first place over the guards that have been on top for the last, at least, 8 years! I'm so proud of them! I love them tons!

To top it off, we went to B.O.A. and competed against about 30 bands from Texas, New Mexico, California, Nevada and Utah and the SkyView High School Marching Band took

5th PLACE!!!!!

I love our kids! :D

This is what they really act like most of the time! They're SO pretty!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Love, Matthew & Alli

EVERY LIGHT IN THE HOUSE IS ON

So I have lots of pictures and things to post...just so little time to do it. I just wanted to share a quick story.

My husband, I think, thinks it's funny to freak me out.

Lately I have been watching a show called "Bones" and another called "Castle." They are all about solving murders etc. etc. Well, my mind likes to play tricks on me and one morning I freaked myself out so bad, I seriously walked around the house with my pistol in hand, checking every room, just to calm myself down and make me realize that I was freaking myself out...there was nothing in the house.

So this morning, we wake up. It's 5:30 in the morning, so still dark outside. We could see the light in the basement was on. I had turned it on yesterday morning and last night he was supposed to shut all the lights off. So the first thing is says is:

"I swear I shut that light off last night."

Great! Now I'm gonna have to check all the rooms again so my mind won't play stupid tricks on me anymore! :D

CATCHING UP

It has been a rather eventful couple of months! There has been so much going on, it seems like. Matthew went down by Blanding for the bow hunt this year. He got a call 2 days before the hunt started and they told him that he drew out for the San Juan unit...which he obviously hadn't been scouting for because he thought he was hunting in Logan. He was kind of stressed about that but very excited as well. This is a limited entry hunt (they only give out so many tags a year) and there are supposed to be a lot of really good sized bucks down there.

The first weekend he chased a four point...had a good shot, but didn't take it because he figured he's see something bigger. I think he still wishes he had shot that deer because the only thing bigger he saw that weekend was a bear! He was out looking for deer and he found some cow elk. So he was watching them when he heard a big crash in the trees and a black bear came running toward him like 60 yards away. Thankfully he was next to his four wheeler so he got on that and drove away. I was pretty scared when he was telling me about it. I can't imagine how he felt!

The next weekend he went down there, I got to go with him! It was GORGEOUS down there! Big ponderosa forests and quakies. Lots of cows and the only deer we saw were right off the side of the road. We hiked sometimes but didn't see anything off the fourwheeler. It was crazy. These are pretty stupid deer--just asking to be shot!

Like I said, I wasn't great about the camera but here are a couple examples of how close they were! This was us driving in the truck!

We were driving down the road, just kinda looking around...not really expecting to see anything, when all of a sudden we saw five awesome bucks. One was a huge four point. They just stood there and looked at us as we drove by. So we parked the four wheeler and tried to stock them for a minute, but something spooked them. So we chased them for a minute and they started heading back in our direction, and then got spooked again. We decided to find a spot to hide and wait for them. So we started walking (getting farther away from the fourwheeler) and we heard a noise behind us. We turned around and there was a cinnamon black bear. My heart started beating a million miles and hour and the only weapon we had was a bow. If I was in charge of the bow, I don't think I'd be accurate enough in a situation like that to kill anything! I was so scared! He looked small enough that he might have had a mother somewhere. I didn't like the thought of that. Matthew told me that he was probably old enough to be on his own, though. Anyway, he stood there and looked at us for a while as we were walking away from him. Then he took off running in the oposite direction. I couldn't believe how fast he made it as far as he did. He was so fast! It was pretty cool, but I was really bummed that I didn't get a picture! He was so cute!

I did get a picture of his footprint!

Well, it turns out that I didn't bring much luck to Matthew. We came home with no deer again, but I did get some pretty pictures and we had a ton of fun!

These are called the Bears Ears. It's near where we set up our camp!

We didn't get back to our camp until after dark every night, so in order to cook our gourmet dinner of Oscar Mayer weiners, we needed a fire. We only had one minor set back. We forgot matches. So, we used the next best thing...




A FLARE!!!

My husband is a genious!

And dinner was

delicious!

So, Matthew tried again. He and some buddies went back for a couple of days, again, with no luck. Although, I would consider him kind of lucky because he got out of teaching sunday school. It was our first Sunday teaching, and he was hunting, so I had to do it by myself!!! I wasn't angry, but I definately felt like he owed me one! I made him teach last week by himself!

Haha!

So, he tried one more time. This time he went down there with his friend Brady. He was determined to shoot something (hoping to get a four point, or the massive 28 inch two point we saw...or something exciting.) I guess he had the right attitude, because he shot something. It just wasn't exactly the big buck that he wanted.

I was really excited though! And he was happy to have shot something!

The deer down there are well fed, that's for sure. He was such a fat deer!

He's a pretty cute little three point, and he was starting to get cheaters on both sides, so he's really not bad!

As you can see in the other picture, Matthew dug up all of our potatoes and carrots, and picked some more tomotoes (which we are still getting more of) and some more squash and zucchini (which we are also still getting more of) and our onions! Then, he put his deer head in the mix. Boys.

So, we still have tons of potatoes and hopefully our tomoatoes and squash quit producing here pretty quick! Matthew's mom and sisters made 14 pints of salsa, and some spaggheti sauce, and some stew (using all of the russet potatoes and carrots...don't worry we still have tons of red potatoes and yukon gold potatoes) while they were here. Then I canned 4 pints of pizza sauce, and this weekend Matthew and I canned 14 pints and 6 quarts of salsa, and 12 pints of deer meat. Hopefully we are set for the winter!

Matthew is headed out this weekend and next for the elk hunt so wish him luck!

YOU HAVE TO PUT IT IN PARK!


We made salsa!!!!! It was great! I am so glad that Julie (or Mom...she's pretty much mom to me...)taught me how to make salsa! Just a side note, she has been awesome!!! I think Matthew gets sick of me telling him how lucky he is to have such awesome parents. I really could learn SO much from them! Anyway, while we were making salsa, we realized that we didn't have dry mustard. I have TONS of spices at my house--I'm not kidding, a large spice rack (4 sided, rotatable) and a cupboard filled with spices--but no dry mustard. I know, strange. So we had to make a quick run to the store. Finally, by about midnight we had 7 jars of salsa. Everything, (except tomatoes--we have tons of green tomatoes but not many red ones yet--and red peppers and spices) were grown in our amazing garden! I can't help but be kind of proud!




I know it seems like I went into great detail for nothing, but I promise there is a funny story coming!


So, obvioulsy since we had no dry mustard we had to take a quick trip to the grocery store. We all piled in the truck and when we got to grocery store, Robert pulled in, shut the truck off and he and Julie walked into the store.

"Are we moving?" "I think we're moving!"

Thank goodness Jeni was paying attention! Matthew and I were too busy looking at his ipod to notice what the truck was doing. Matthew got up and threw the truck into park and we started laughing so hard! It was so funny. We looked to see if Robert and Julie had noticed anything but it seemed that they had no idea!

We kept laughing. We laughed until they came back. We laughed while we explained what happened.

Then we laughed even harder when Robert said the truck had hit him, and how he thought he "had missed that."

I think the funniest thing for me was that he thought he had run into the truck. He didn't know the truck had actually run into him!

So, lesson learned. Put it in park before exiting the vehicle!

...The Garden...

I now understand why people choose to have children. It's so that they have help weeding their garden! Or they just have wonderful family who does all the work when they come to visit. Whenever our family comes to visit, they don't get a vacation because they are working so hard at our house! But it looks BEAUTIFUL!!!

We have radishes and carrots and green beans and spinach and lettuce and potatoes and jalapenos and bell peppers and tomatoes and squash and zucchini and corn and pees, etc. It's been so fun to watch everything grow and it's been even better reeping the rewards! We've had so many great meals and I haven't had to go to the store for all of this stuff! The only thing is, it's coming out our noses!!!! We have SO MANY VEGETABLES!!!

This isn't even an eighth of everything we are going to end up with! It's been great, and I can officially say that I hope to always have a garden. It's been so awesome!! And I can't wait to learn how to can some of this stuff!

Salsa, here we come!!!!!