Lion-O the completed

Wow!... We are gonna have a Baby!

Well, we've always wanted one, so now we're getting one. This is about twelve weeks along so far. And we are due the middle of June. Its nice to finally let people know, so that Alison doesn't have to be stressed out that people suspect something. Especially after going to moms, Alie would say "she knows! I just know it, she can tell!" Well mom pinned us down about a week ago, so she still has it, and Dad figured it out six weeks ago, so there is only so much time you can hide things like this from those two.

Who likes a Goblin?

This was a fun one to pull out of my head. But it was a little weird at times sculpting him. I would like to do more, maybe even do some busts of the Thundercats, and then a line of the Thundercats in my own interpretation.

Halloween Party!

Here they are! finally, sorry it took forever. But we got 'em! The small group is of the cast from our Movie.

Lion-O Lord of the Thundercats

Lion-O Lord of the Thundercats. This is it so far, I'm working on adding a cape for his lordship. The head sculpture is a wrestler, I thought it turned out ok without not having a model. I just need to hire a body builder to be my model, I could use a model for Lion-O as well. The last one is a moquette of a 2 foot sculpture I'm doing for my final. I hope I can get it finish in time. 

The Bandit

Be careful what you name your pets- they might live up to it. Bandit likes to play with my hair clips so much that he learned to open the drawer I keep them in so he could steal them and play with them in the kitchen, then stash them in a pile for his later use. 

This here is going to be Lion-O from the Thundercats. At this point i'm just having fun with the figure. And if I ever finish it i'll post a picture. the reason I say that is because i'm soooo far behind in sculpture. I've started 10 plus figures and only finished three since the semester started.

Alie and I went to the Halloween concert as Sparkplug and Spike from the old Transformers cartoon. and i'm just now putting up the pictures. The Halloween party pictures will be done after Thanksgiving, sorry its taken a while.

                                    

Here is our CTR 5 primary class. A lot smaller class than the group of nine last year. they absolutely amazing.

I can do hard things!!!

Forgive my urge to write for a minute. It has been a means of comfort for me in the past and I haven't done it for a while. The problem is that things at work aren't going well for me. I've worked there for two months. I love it! I love the people I work with I love working with the costumers, the brides, everything. It's a great job and I'm soooo grateful for it. Well, I'm afraid I still havn't quite gotten the hang of it and just got strike two in a situation that feels more like baseball than is comfortable. I won't go into the details, but it's really gotten me down this weekend. Lots of tears, frustration, taking to Troy, beating myself up, running through the mistakes over and over, thoughts of quiting and finding a new job, etc.
The thought of being fired to me is synonymous with failure! I don't fail! So now what do I do? Pre-emptive strike and quite before I have to explain in my future job interviews about being fired? Or do I keep going? Well, that's been my weekend. Today was different, though. I had the day off so I was doing dishes and brooding over my misfortunes when it hit me.... I've felt this before many times, and where has it gotten me? I'll tell you where it's gotten me...
It's gotten me to leave home, work on a ranch and become the one of the best (and youngst) draft horse team driver of that year. I didn't think I could do it. It was a scary job for someone so young. I remember many tears and many prayers.
It drove me to become a darn good pizza maker and manager of that pizza store. It's gotten me through two chemistry classes, and loads of tests in school. I've bought a home, sold it and bought another one starting out with no idea how to do all the paper work. I've also learned to navigate a completely new city, learned to cut rebar and build domes (earning quite large biceps in the process), thrived in a close-quarter office setting, handled classrooms of crazy kids, learned to get a long with many bosses and many co-workers. AND to top it all of I did graduate from College with the degree I wanted.
So what's my point? Each time I've felt exactly like I do now - that failure is just around the corner, and every time it's been a turning point for me to decide that it wasn't around the corner and that I was going to conquer these tasks-not for the money, not for the recognition, but because I DON'T FAIL! and I don't quit! I will not put up with it! This is my turning point.... selling dresses will not get the better of me!

More Halloween by Troy

Here is a picture of some of our group at the party. still don't have the professionally done photos. but here we are. a lot of creative Ideas here.

This here is Snake Eyes from the old comics G.I.Joe he

made the visor out of some screen printing templates I scrounged up for him. his suit was Latex based Lycra and the symbol we spray painted it on with a homemade stencil of duct tape. I thought Fred did a great job on his costume.

Carson Tietjen was Spock for the party. His ears are real (jk, of course) and the badge I made with epoxy glue in a plaster mold I carved out. He sewed the shirt, and Shelleena Carson's wife sewed her dress. in our movie we painted her black to batter play the part of Uhura from the movie.

This is just a really strange man. If anyone remembers pickachu from Pokemon, that's who he is. He obviously never forgot.

And these two mummies randomly showed up at the party. I still haven't been able to find anyone who knew them. For the most part they didn't talk much, and kept staring at people. In a way their appearance greatly added to the atmosphere of the event.

Peter Pumpkin head

this is a little something form our Halloween Party. The claws were made out of pine wood, which actually click into the silver housings on my gloves so that they can be worn with or without the claws. The Jack-o-lantern was inspired by an e-mail that Aaron sent out. Soon i'll post the pictures of the costumes from the party once I get them from the photographer.

Big Thanks!

A big thanks to everybody who helped make the party a success and for everyone who came and joined the fun. It was a load of fun! Those of you who didn't make it (not counting you out-of-staters) you know who you are! Well, you were missed and hopefully you can come next year! We'll be posting pictures soon.

Halloween Party!

UP DATE!!! Oct 31st this saturday, come to our Halloween party at 6:00 in the dance studio on the second floor (YES, the ballroom) above the Bed Place on Main Street, we will try to put up signs, and parking will be in the back behind Wells Fargo and the Bed Place. DRESS UP!!! It doesn't have to be an amazing costume to be able to come. Aside from a costume party this will also be a Pot Luck, so bring a Halloween treat/snack! It can be crazy, traditional, or foreign. You don't have to bring a lot of food if everybody brings something. My friend Doug McKay will be taking professional pictures for a $1 for a digital image or if you want he will do a printed one for $5, this will be fun for dates and couples to get a good looking picture on Halloween, I'm getting one. There will be a room for kids and space for coats. We will have games and a special Halloween movie! Carson took a few of the characters and filmed a movie that he will show that night. As well, we will have a table to put jack-o-lanterns on for everybody to see, so bring one carved if you want. We hope to make to make this a halloween tradition and will definitely do this again next year! so come and have fun!

Christmas is coming.....

I've been thinking about Christmas stockings for two years. How would I make ours? How could I make them unique and fun but still match my other holiday decor? Well a couple weeks ago I got an idea in my head and couldn't get it out. This has been my project for the last two weeks. I LOVE how they turned out. I made Santa and Mrs Clause for me and Troy













and when I finished I thought "why stop there?! so I didn't! I made an angel, elf,
snowman, soldier, and reindeer.


It was a fun project. I still need to make a gingerbread man and possibly a polar bear.

Summer of the Cars

I don't remember much about the book "Summer of the Monkey" except that lots of stuff went wrong and lots of bad stuff happened. Well, that's how this summer has been for us, but not with monkeys- with cars....

It all started when Troy was on his way to California at the beginning of the summer. The plan was that he would take the Gallant because it was more likely to make the long trip. He made it to Blackfoot and had a melt down- literally! Luckily his parents weren't too far ahead and his mom's brothers (who live in Blackfoot) towed the car away to be fixed up in a shop there. So Troy took the other car to California, and on the way one of the tires fell off twice on Donner pass. Lovely.

So back at home it took about two weeks and $1000 to get the Gallant fixed. My sweet Mother in Law drove with me to blackfoot to retrieve it. Well, it was now leaking oil. So we went back. Another week later it was finally working.

To make a long story short, since then we've gotten 2 flat tires, replaced 8 tires and a radiator, and fixed a dented bumper, but it still wasn't enough. I topped all of this the beginning of september when I had a lapse of all sanity and ran into the truck in front of me at a stop light in BLACKFOOT of all places!





So now I have a banged up car, a ticket, and outragous insurance premiums to add to my list. If only these cars can make it until we're done with school!!!!
I hope that, like the book, this adventure ends with the summer. So, while it's sad that summer is over, maybe autumn will be kinder to us.

Introducing: Bandit!

Let me start out with a couple disclaimers. First of all, we don't adopt every stray in our neighborhood. We never adopted Sharona, the kitten that followed Monster around when he was tied up outside. And second of all, we had no intention of adopting a kitten this weekend, or anytime soon for that matter. I just came up the driveway on Saturday and he was hanging out outside the house....

And I went inside and said "Troy, hurry and come look at this kitten, it looks like a racoon!" so he did, and I left Troy trying to communicate with him while I went to get pizza. When I came back the kitten was gone and I was dissapointed. Oh well, we had pizza to eat. So I went inside and found Monster waiting ouside the bathroom. When I opened the door to let him in, this cat jumped out at me! It nearly gave me a heart attack!

He was pretty dirty so we don't think he belongs to anyone (we're not allowed to have outdoor cats in our trailer neighborhood) We'll keep our eye out for flyers, though. It turns out he's very sweet and Monster is pretty cool about it. He treats the new guys like the rest of the family....that is he chases him around the house and pounces on him from behind corners. We're not sure about his name and we'll see if we can handle two cats in our little home.

Nephews

My nephews are so fun. Because there's only two of them on my side I'm going to take a minute to highlight them on my blog. I just think little boys are so funny. He're some funny moments captured on film of both of them:


Aiden rolled from the top of the stairs to the bottom in this bag. What a goof!

This movi just kills me everytime I watch it! We were in a hotel and he did this for about an hour.

Happy Aniversary 8/17/09: a belated post

The second year really does go by way faster than the first!

Picture of the Week...

So, I was at my parent's house last week working on a project while they were gone. All of a sudden I heard this really loud bird. At first I was annoyed, then I decided to go see if I could shoo it away. Well, there was no bird. This is what I did see:


A marmot! In the middle of town! He was stuck in the fence. I was so wierded-out I didn't know what to do so I called our family friends the Lindermans. They had the presence of mind to get a two-by-four and push him out. He ran into the neighbors yard and hopefully found his way back home. Poor critter!

Plaino Bridge Jumping

This was my first try. No one told me what and how I should do it, so I flopped. luckily I had enough sense to flex my back so that it didn't hurt so bad.

One Life Goal Down...

The Graduation Banquet

Mom and Dad at the Banquet

Gettin my diploma

Ta-dah! I got my bachelors degree in Exercise Science finally. For me it has been a rough four years and so it's a big deal. I'm so happy!

Two Weeks Left!

Well, I don't have any pictures but it's about time to update. There will be pictures next time. After much thought and prayer Troy came home from Sacramento last week for good. We might try the security sales thing again next year when I can go with him, but we'll see. I personally am very glad he's home because it been a very rough week and the next two weeks promise to be very rough as well. It's my last two weeks of school ever! At least until grad-school and I'm not sure when that will be. I'm so excited that I bought a BYUI class of 09 t-shirt and I broke my own rule and wore it to class today. Maybe I'll put a picture up of it later. Anyways, I have nine group projects (which includes four dances to choreograph and perform and three slide show presentations) and three tests (that I know of. I hate group projects- all the meeting time problems and discussion and time! They are so time consuming just to get people to agree on something! I'm not sure how to squeeze this all into two weeks. I guess eating will be out, and so will sleeping, and probably blogging. I better get started.....

Weekend in Sacramento

First of all a picture for Troy: this is the boy, Chaco.

Now about my trip: I got to go to Sacramento last weekend with my Mom to see Troy. I didn't take very many pictures, but I went shopping with my mom and Heidi, hung out, anddid some homework while Troy was at work. We went to Olive Garden, an awesome ward party with really good food and a crazy water-basketball game, and to the lake when Troy wasn't working. It seems they like to make the guys work extra hours whenever I go down there (I went down for Memorial day weekend, too, and they worked extra), but Troy managed to get off a little early. It was so good to see him!

I don't recommend being apart if possible, but Troy and I are trying to look on the bright side. We decided that being apart helped us realize that we still like each other, we appreciate each other more, and we do, actualy and (after two years of marriage) need each other after all.