Voice Blog

Someone asked how to use the voice blog, so I figured I'd better post directions. You have to go to my main blog page or one of the posts (you won't be able to see it if you just read the post in an email if you get a subscription to my blog). In the upper right corner under the LO slide, you will see the Snapvine Voice Blog widget (has a picture of me on it). Click on it to activate it, then click on the play button to hear the most recent recording. You can go to other recordings by pressing the forward and rewind buttons--it will show you the date of the recording just above the play button. If anyone else has problems, or if it's just not working, let me know and I will just do away with it.

Christmas 2007

I added a voice blog to go along with the pics, so press play on the voice blog widget and listen as you view these pics:

New feature on the blog sidebar

I added a voice blog widget to the sidebar--if you get the automatic email updates from my blog, you will have to come and see the actual blog to see it. I will add voice messages from time to time and I think you can add voice comments back to me. Let me know what you think about it.

Kiki's family's trip to Louisiana

Here are some of my favorite pics from the past week; make sure you listen to my voice blog to hear about all the happenings (BTW, you can turn off the song on the picture slide, if you'd like--just press the little sound icon on the bottom of the snowman):

The Santa pic with all three kids was taken by the professional at the mall--I scanned it.

Here's that hilarious video of Carma opening her princess dress-up kit:

1st week of December

Here's our happenings this past week:

Pics from the game I watched at my friends' house last Sat. (Jared was home sick):

My brother, Ben, and our friend, Greg:

My brother, Tim:
Our friend, Greg (the party host):
Belle (niece) and me:
Jared caught a snapper turtle while I was still in Utah (scared him pretty good when he picked it up, as he didn'tknow it was a snapper, ha ha! Wish I could have seen that!). He was keeping it in the back of his truck and feeding it but decided to put it the pond next door:

This was hanging over the fireplace when I got home Wed. morning from spending the night at Maw-maw's--I have a very sweet hubby!:

Jared came home the other night with a Christmas tree. A real one! It's really pretty and full, ~5.5 feet tall:

Here's my annual pic of Chloe checking out the tree. With the artificial tree we used to have, she would get up in it and climb the branches. This one's too full for her to get in just yet but I'm sure she will find a way to get up in there somehow:

2nd week in Utah

I had a great time spending a few days with Kiki and her kids last week. Judson is growing up so fast and Carma really could not be any sweeter. I just wish it would have snowed while I was there. At least it actually feels like December there, though!

Tuesday night, we had a sisters' night at Winger's. We had so much fun together!!!:Juddy showing off a little dollar store gift I got him:
Carma is ALL GIRL!!! Here she is wearing the dollar store jewelry set I gave her and playing with her Cinderella phone. How cute is that?!:
Here's a video of a conversation I had with Carma about bananas:

And this one's for Jared:

I got home late Friday night, slept in a little on Saturday, unpacked a little, and spent over 7 hours at a friend's house watching the LSU game (beat Tenn. in the SEC championship, YAY!), playing Wii, and watching parts of other football games (getting my wish of West Virginia and Missouri losing). I had a hard time getting up for church this morning but couldn't get to sleep when I tried to take a nap when I got home because I was on pins and needles, wondering if LSU would be voted into the national championship game. Well, they were! WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO! Tigers in the big game on Jan. 7! Should be a great game and I just can't wait to see it!

Lots of great stuff happening between now and then, though. My sister, Kiki and her family are flying here on the 11th! Better get my shopping done! I still haven't gotten my Christmas decorations out of the attic--want to clean my house first but haven't gotten around to doing that yet. Temps in the upper 70's and humidity in the upper 60's doesn't really help me get in the Christmas spirit. Hoping to get LOTS done tomorrow, though. Better get to bed so I can get up at a decent hour (considerig it's 1:45 here! :) Happy Holidays, y'all!

Thanksgiving week

We had a great Thanksgiving week in Utah. We flew in last Monday morning (11/19) and stayed at Jared's mom's house until Sunday. We spent Tuesday in "Happy Valley" to visit my sister, Kiki, and her kids and have lunch with Jared's former boss and co-workers but the rest of the week was spent with his family. Everyone in Jared's family stayed at his mom's house, except for his sister Stephanie, who lives in Florida and couldn't get off of work to come for Thanksgiving. We missed her VERY much!!! Here are some of the highlights from the week:

We were all hanging out Monday night and Mariya helped her grandma decorate the Christmas tree:

Tuesday night, Judson and Carma winking for us:

Gift Exchange Day breakfast (i.e. early Christmas since we won't be with this family for Christmas): Our present to Hailey:

Our present to Hunter:

Our present to Justin:

Our present to Benson (he was LOVING it!):

The Crittenden grandkids:

We went to Temple Square in Salt Lake City Friday night to see the Christmas lights. It was really crowded but SO BEAUTIFUL:

The Assembly Hall on Temple Square:

More views of the temple:

Jared with his brother and grandpa, who we went to visit Sat. morning:

Jared and Jason on the frozen Provo River Sat. afternoon:
The Upper Provo River Falls:
Carma in some princess garb Sunday night:

Renaissance Festival, LSU, HILARIOUS video

Jared and I went with my mom and Ben, Becky, & Belle to the Renaissance Festival yesterday.

We saw The Duelists:

A Magician:
The Dog & Pony Show (so cute!!!):
A bird show (falcons, hawks, and owls):
A jausting match:

And a juggler:

We left the festival to go watch the LSU game at my parents' house. LSU beat Ole Miss 41-24. GEAUX TIGERS!!!

And, since my dad wanted me to put this on the blog so bad, here's a video of my mom getting scared from that Scary Maze Game after the game on Sat. We got her to play it but she wasn't able to get far enough to get scared, so we had her sit and watch while Ben played it--she still got scared pretty bad and we were all laughing hyesterically! Here's the video:

You can go to this link to see for yourself what the game looks like (or send it to other people to scare them! *evil grin*): http://www.wimp.com/maze/

We should be packing right now but Jared is watching the NASCAR race (he's probably actually sleeping, ha ha!) and I'm just goofing off here on the computer. We're leaving at the buttcrack of dawn tomorrow to fly to Utah (flight leaves at 6am). YAY!!! Not sure if I'll be able to post while I'm in Utah, so I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!

Train story

A funny story I wanted to share--instead of typing the whole thing out, I recorded it. Just press play:
boomp3.com

Oh, and give me your honest opinion--would you rather listen to a recorded story or have it written out for you to read? Just wondering for next time.

Choir Concert, Raised Fish Pond

I joined the Livingston Parish Adult Community Choir a couple months ago and our concert was this past Sunday. We did a couple of patriotic songs, in honor of Veteran's Day, and some Christmas music. The Apprentice Choir (kindergarten through 2nd grade) sang a few songs and joined us in our final song, as well; they were so cute! I played the snare drum for one of the songs, "Pat-a-Pan". It was so fun to be able to play percussion again, even though it was a very simple part. My mom, dad, brother, SIL, and niece all came to see me sing and play. So sweet of them! Here are some pics from the concert and after:

I'm in the second row up, on the left end: Jared and Belle, after the concert:
Belle just wanted to play with my drum sticks:
My concert guests (Mom, Dad, SIL, brother, niece):
My sweetie and I:

And here's a video of part of the song for which I played the snare drum:

A friend of mine just moved from a house where she had a coi pond to a house that doesn't have a pond yet. Her daughter is one of my piano students. She was afraid the fish and plants wouldn't make it through the winter in the kiddie pool she had them in, and we were looking to get more fish (had bought 3 coi and several goldfish but only 1 coi, 1 goldfish, and one "boggle-eyed" fish survived), so we worked out a deal to exchange three piano lessons for all of her fish and plants. I think there are 7 or 8 coi and another little fish of some kind. There are three potted plants and two different kinds of floating plants (still need to learn the plant names). The main pump broke, so we will work on getting that fixed but, in the meantime, this is what it looks like:

The log and plants on top of the waterfall, as well as the tube running into the water and the electric cord running out, are part of an aquarium filter and will not be there once we get the main pump fixed:

The floating plants bloom these gorgeous purple flowers:
The fish are SUPER hard to get good pics of. Here's the best I could do for now:
I'm excited to have the pond up and running and to have more fish to look at. One of the first things I do in the morning is go and look at the pond. We've had the windows open for most of the past three weeks and it is so relaxing to hear the water flowing down into the pond. I'm glad to get all the water plants, too, to help keep the fish warm and alive through the winter (if it ever actually cools down here!).

Today is the coolest it's been in weeks (in the 60's today and may get down to the 50's tonight). Yesterday was pretty warm and humid, so today was a nice change--beautiful, low-humidity, breezy day. I need to gear up for the next two weeks of Utah weather, though! Speaking of which, we fly out really early on Monday. I'm super excited to see our family there!!!