Wednesday, December 30, 2009

6th Anniversary

This last year of marriage has been as wonderful as the first 5. I’m so thankful for Brian and his goodness. I’m thankful for both of our parents for their examples of successful marriage relationships, and I’m thankful for our little boys who somehow manage to drive us crazy but humble us with their sweetness and hilarity at the same time.

Our anniversary this year has been… just a regular day really, since Brian had to work at the restaurant tonight. We did give each other cards and a VERY simple gift each, and that’s about it. We’ll go out Friday night thanks to Devon’s kindness in volunteering to babysit.

Brian and I enjoy picking out that “perfect” card for each other. I had to show Brian’s card to me this year. I laughed when I got it. Also, if you’re a Brian Regan fan, you’ll get the inside joke of this card. (See video clip below) Love you Brian!

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Jokes.com
Brian Regan - Greeting Cards
comedians.comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

Christmas Eve Fun



I LOVE spending Christmas with Family. Yes, that includes my inlaws. Brian and I have always switched off on whose family we spend Christmas with. This year was a Templeman year for us, AND among the Templeman side it was a Corvallis year (as opposed to a Grants Pass, Oregon year). What this meant is that it was our first Christmas sleeping in our own house since Brennan was 8 months old!

Since we were in our own home, we had our own Stevenson family Christmas eve. Brennan and I made cookies, which we left for Santa of course. After dinner, we did the Nativity story as a puppet show. The video above is a condensed version. I loved doing it that way. As much as Brennan would have enjoyed dressing up, I think puppets simplified everything-he could easily cover all the characters without time-taking costume changes. I loved watching the production!

After the show the boys got to open their pj gifts. Finally, Brian read "The Night Before Christmas" to them, a tradition from Brian's house. It took the boys hours to fall asleep that night, but we enjoyed our Christmas Eve.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Surprise! We've Moved...



...to Blackfoot, Idaho. Located in Eastern Idaho, Blackfoot is a small, but homey community. A great place to raise a family.


This move came as quite a surprise to many, especially our Bishopric who had no notice of this impromtu relocation. The surprise was greatest however, for Brian and I, for we had no plans to move to Blackfoot.
It all started Saturday evening as Brian was working on the Corvallis 2nd Ward bulletin. When he tried to log in to our stake website on LDS.org, he found himself sent to Groveland 2nd Ward in the Blackfood Idaho Stake. He asked me to try logging in, and sure enough, I was also in the Groveland 2nd ward. Brian didn't mention it when he emailed the bulletin to the Bishop for review, but the Bishop responded, "So it looks like you haven't moved to Blackfoot." Our Bishopric had already received word that our records had been requested and sent.

This evening I got a call from the Ward Clerk in Groveland who sounded quite mystified... he told me that our records had shown up, but there was no address (which it sounds like does not usually occur). I told him that we don't know what happened, but that we're actually in Oregon. He was like, "Ohhh, so you're still there?"

I did eventually explain to him that we are not even intending a move to Blackfoot. He responded, "Oh, o.k. I was thinking, 'why would they move from Oregon to Blackfoot where the winters are like this?'" He also told me that he has a child (or two) in Corvallis and when he saw our records arrive he had been excited to tell them of our move from there.

Anyway, sounds like it's being worked out. There might be a few glitches, such as Brian still having access to the website with his calling as the Stake website specialist. Also, I was hoping to renew our temple recommends in the next few days, but now I'm not sure if we can do that without our records being here yet.

We've had some good laughs over this though. Over the weekend we joked about whether we were going to be read in to our new ward, and if we would be extended callings. We joked that that means we must by default be released from our Corvallis callings. Yesterday was our LAST 9 a.m. church meeting time until 2011, and as we struggled out of bed, we almost convinced ourselves that surely we didn't need to go since technically, it wasn't even our ward anymore! =-) No one seems to know how this happened, but it's been interesting.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

God Bless Us, Everyone

Our Ward party was Friday evening. the theme was “A Dickens Christmas Carol” and went smoothly enough I guess. It seemed to fall significantly short of the vision for those of us on the committee who knew it, but I suppose that happens when the leader (whose vision it was to begin with) was gone the night of and the weeks previous to the event. There were aspects that we all assumed were being taken care of by someone else, but never officially assigned I guess. Anyway, the food was good, the company was enjoyable, and the program… well, happened.

IMG_2202 Like the previous two years, which were VERY awesome (the program leaving people in tears, 8 ft tall themed back-drops, etc) the members were encouraged to attend in costume. The last years were a Bethlehem theme and about 98% of those in attendance decked themselves out in bathrobes, and such. This year however, only about 5% of us gave that a go. I think that had to do with the availability of options. Brian thinks the Dickens costumes would have been easier for people, but that they were just lazier this year. I don’t know. Anyway, we all dressed up.

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IMG_2207 I got some pictures of my boys in their attire. In my case, I had already changed out of my dress to skate on the street, but I had a costume dress that worked well.

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Saturday, December 12, 2009

Asher on Ice

It's been an interesting season so far. Very, VERY cold lately, as I understand is true of most the U.S. Last night Brian and I showed up for our ward party early since we're on the Activities committee, and the weather outside was fine. Within a half hour others arriving were talking about how slick it had become outside. When we left after the party, we slid our way to the car, during which time Asher was laughing and laughing! When we got home, a neighbor and fellow LDS family were taking their son on a skate around the street. We did the same with Asher (Brennan didn't want to) and he loved so much, he got upset about going inside.

Boys Will Be Boys