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!!!

Halloween Night

Last night was really fun, except the fact that Jared had to work. I went to a party at the Barker's house. There was lots of people, tons of food, and a fun hay ride to go trick-or-treating. I dressed up as the Statue of Liberty again. Here are some of the other costumes:

Belle as JoJo from JoJo's Circus (how cute is she?!):

The Barker family dressed up as characters from The Wizard of Oz--they all look great but I have to say that The Lollipop Guild and the flying monkey were my faves:

My mom dressed up as Raggedy Ann:

There were two trailers full of people for our hayride trick-or-treating. They would drop us off and we'd walk to a couple of houses, then they'd drive to the next house (this is in a rural area and the house were a little further apart than in an actual subdivision). It was a cool way to trick-or-treat! Here are some shots from the hayride:

Deb (Auntie Em), Zoe (Cowardly Lion), Amy (Dorothy):

Flo (my SIL's mom) and Me:

The other trailer:

Belle scoring some candy:

What a CUTE trick-or-treater!:

Ben, Belle, Becky--Ben got there late because of work but was able to join us on the hayride:

Ben and Belle gettin' hooked up:

Belle and Becky enjoying the ride:

It was a fun night and the weather was great. I just wish Jared could have been there. I hope you all had a great Halloween! Looking forward to Thanksgiving in Utah now! I can't believe it's November already!!!

Halloween Party

I had LSU football withdrawals on Saturday because they didn't have a game this weekend. I kept myself busy getting our costumes ready for a Halloween party that night, though. We skipped our ward trunk-or-treat to go to an adult-only party at the Emerson's house.

Jared dressed up as an attack dog trainer (the badge on his shirt says "Critt's Attack Dog School" and we actually pinned the dog to his shirt sleeve for the party so it looked like it was attacking him):I used the Statue of Liberty costume I made a few years ago (found it in the move) and decided I'd use it again since I'm in a whole new state. :)
My parents were Shrek and Fiona:

My parents won 1st prize and I won 3rd for best costume. The party was fun. There was lots of great food and company--mostly people from the Hammond ward (Emersons, Bourgeois, Fletchers, Littells, Sis. Bounds, R. Calmes, Garbers, Rendines).

We played a story-making game where everyone says a sentence or two then the next person has to take it from there; it was pretty funny. I didn't like being put on the spot but it turned out funny. Jared said something about a pink hand grabbing a guy, then I added that the hand wasn't attached to a body, then somehow the pink hand ended belonging to Uniqua (from the Backyardigans). It was hilarious. We also played a written version of that game; we got to see the last person's part and had to write a couple of sentences based just on that. It ended up with Pooh Bear (my mom's doing) being stuck in Rabbit's hole and being scared by a heffalump (I ended it). Needless to say, it turned out to be a very weird story but very amusing! We also played Taboo and tried to guess how many M&Ms were in a jar--my dad won! It was such a fun party!

Catching up

Since it's been over a week since I've posted, I now have to catch up a little. In the past week, I've been to the temple, then out to eat to celebrate a church sister's 95th birthday! She is the cutest ever and still going strong.

I play volleyball for a couple of hours every Friday morning and some of us in the volleyball group had a small potluck, then went to the LSU women's volleyball game Friday night. It was really fun! We were making jokes about making it a rule to wear the same kind of shorts the LSU players wear--we decided most of us would stop coming and we'd scare too many people away, anyway! Here's a pic of the game:

Saturday, Jared and I went and bought a big-screen TV--50", baby! We got it set up just in time for the the LSU vs. Auburn game. You can't believe the difference it makes. Since I couldn't go to the game, watching it on the new TV was the next best thing. And boy, was that ever a game! I seriously just about had a heart attack!! We were down by one point and got the winning touchdown with one second to go on the clock. ONE SECOND!!! If we hadn't made the touchdown, we would have kicked a field goal and won but I sure held my breathe when I saw that football headed for the end zone. Holy smokes! I'm embarrassed to admit that I was jumping up and down like a spaz and screaming my head off, then I proceeded to get on the twin bed in our TV room and jump up and down on it! Ha ha, funny to picture myself doing that now! Oh, we are now up to #3 since we won that game and South Florida lost. Praying that we win out the rest of the season so we have a shot at the national championship!!

Sunday, I got a second churchcalling--assistant ward activities committee director. So now I get to help plan ward activities. Funny thing--one of my volleyball friends and I were just talking Friday night about how our ward doesn't do enough activities and I was telling her how my ward in Utah had both a potluck and breakfast every single month. As soon as sacrament meeting was over, she was like "did you know about this calling when we were talking?!" I didn't--Bishop didn't extend the calling to me until right before church on Sunday. Funny, huh?

I had the privilege of watching my niece all day yesterday while my SIL went to the dr. We had fun together. Here's a pic of her gobbling up some candy corn:

Then I went with her and my SIL and brother to Chuck E. Cheese. We had fun playing games and Belle certainly had a blast riding all the littles rides and stuff. When we left, she was saying, "I want more Chuck E. Cheese!" She LOVED watching the musical show--she was enthralled:

She played a game of Skee-ball--I'm sure this is against the rules, though :) :

It was great to see her have such a good time. Oh! The best part--beating Ben at Skee-ball. Bwahahahaha!!!!!!!!!