It's Official!

We are now the proud parents of a Teenager!

Morgan turned 13 yesterday! She's a very responsible and good girl. I can't believe that she's a teenager and that we are old enough to have one. I know that I'm getting old when Monique told me that I was old enough to be Zac Efron's (Troy from HSM 3) MOTHER! I was telling her how cute he was in the new movie.

Halloween FHE

For Family Home Evening we had a fun Halloween Dinner! Morgan has been wanting to use our new Halloween plates and serve this dinner for weeks! With a BUSY week ahead of us (homework projects, Morg's Bday, & the holiday) we decided to have our fun "kid" dinner last night. We served warm soup with cheese shaped into a leaf:

Hot Dogs wrapped in bread stick dough to resemble Mummies:

Witches Fingers and orange jello:

And yummy homemade Root beer!We invited our friends the McKagues over for dinner. I told them that it wouldn't be a gourmet meal but we would have fun! Jon's idea was to serve Fondue for dessert! It turned out soooo good. We all got filled up on chocolate and carmel fondue!Even Madelyn loved the fondue. Her favorite was the chocolate dipped strawberries, pineapple, bananas, and marshmallows!A fun time was had by ALL! (Sorry about the blurry pictures I realized today that some one's little fingers found my camera lens!)

Twilight Fan!

For the past couple of years I have heard much about the Twilight Books but never read them. I've seen the movie trailer, heard about the midnight book releases and read blog posts of people obsessed with Edward! I often thought to myself what's with all this Twilight Madness! WELL...last weekend Morgan brought the book home from her English class. She was reading it and so I thought I would read it also. Monday morning arrived and she took the book back to school. I needed to have my own copy! I was hooked! I quickly got on the phone and called two friends for their copy of the book. I actually stopped by to pick them up that morning! I haven't been able to put it down all week! A few times last week I even climbed into my bed after putting Maddie down for her nap and read the whole time she was sleeping! One afternoon Morgan came home from school and was giving me some attitude! She finally admitted to me that she was jealous that I could read at home while she was busy at school. She was also mad that I was almost finished with the book! I am now into book two New Moon. The best thing about getting on Twilight bandwagon this late in the game is that I can read one right after another! I don't have to wait until another one is released and the movie is opening up next month! Jon said he has never seen me so crazy about reading a book! I never read and my sister even calls me her Non-Reading Sister! It has been fun and now I can say that I too am a Twilight Fan!

Quirks!

I have now been tagged for the second time to list my six quirks! I guess I better finally follow up on these.
1. I have a problem with doing things sometimes. For example, I will begin to wash dishes, then get distracted and begin to fold laundry, before finishing either of those things some child of mine will then ask me to read some school paper, or sign a planner! UGH! I feel like I can never finish the first thing that I started.
2. I have to have my OWN space when I sleep!!! No one can be touching or snuggling me. I don't even like my own hair to be in my face. I'm so glad we have a king sized bed now because I don't even like it when Jon's close to me.
3. I am a claustrophobic person. I think I inherited this from my mother. I don't really like to ride on elevators fearing that one day I will get stuck on one. I don't like small tents to sleep in when camping. And when flying on airplanes I hate it when my ears get plugged up and I can get them to pop! I've decided that it's because of my phobia. So I am constantly chewing gum while trying to pop my ears and freaking out b/c they are not popping!
4. I hate to get ready for bed. I find the whole process long and annoying. Jon can just brush, floss and be done within 3 minutes! I on the other hand have to first take out my contacts, take off the makeup, then put on 3 different moisturizers to help with my aging skin, brush, floss, use the restroom, put on my chap stick, and lotion up my hands (sometimes feet when they're bad in the summer)!!! I then have to get a drink right before I actually fall asleep! By the time I have done all of this there have been several times in our married life that Jon's already asleep!
5. Since I don't own a scale in my home I have to find other ways to gauge if I have gained weight or not. I do frequent Stacey's scale about once a month to keep me in check, but the other days I just try on certain clothes. I have these pair of Silver jeans that now are fraying, and have holes but I keep them around to "try on" to see if I can still fit into them. I know if they are tight in the butt I need to get my butt out of bed to go running!
6. I can't stand all the backpacks, school papers, shoes, jackets, coats being left everywhere! We specifically had built into our house individual cubbies for all the kids! They use them most of the time b/c I make them but often I find all those things strung(is that a word) all over the hallway, kitchen table, kitchen floor and sometimes right in front of their cubbies!

I now want to tag my sister Monique (you might have already done this), my sister-in-law Jalynn, Amy Morgan, Amy Lopez, Stephanie, Christy.

A Week in Review!

Another week has quickly past us by and sometimes I can't even remember what I did yesterday! Here are some of this week's highlights.

Monday I worked in the yard and planted my beautiful mums we purchased at Costco.

Tuesday I went to Brinley's first field trip to the Pumpkin Patch! She had a great time picking out her pumpkin and at the last minute decided on this white one.

Wednesday I was entertaining kids all day since it was an early release day!

Thursday Brinley and I ran errands while Maddie was at school. She helped me pick out this cute "Boo" sign and the candy of course.

Friday evening my friend Jana dropped off her girls for the weekend. So I have been entertaining seven kids all weekend! They actually just played constantly with my children. It was fun to have them and we "almost" made it to church on time today!

Saturday we listened to the BYU Cougar football game. We all wear our BYU attire on football game days. Although Madelyn wears her BYU cheerleader outfit every chance she can get.

Jon and I also started to watch a movie last night in our bedroom. It was awesome because he projected it onto our ceiling. We are finishing the movie tonight but with a few visitors!

Have a great "NEW" week tomorrow!!!

Becoming Self-Reliant

This year we have raised our food storage game. It really started almost a year ago when Jon was asked to give a talk in the adult session of Stake Conference. His topic was, FOOD STORAGE. He didn't want to stand up there and tell people to be prepared with their food storage and not be prepared himself. So we purchased these Emergency Food Supply buckets from Costco that we had been eyeing for quite some time.We then for sure had a three month food supply but wanted to work towards a full year supply.

There were three things we have done this year to help accomplish this goal.

1. We purchased 800 pounds of wheat and a grinder. Jon was very excited about this! Morgan, Mason, Jon and I sealed the wheat in Mylar bags with our own iron in our garage one evening! We now have 17 full buckets of wheat in our pantry!2. Canning has been a fun family activity this summer and fall. We purchased 3 flats of strawberries and picked raspberries from the Reids home. We love homemade jam at the Jackson house and have several bags of berries frozen! B & B happily helped Jon do all the strawberries. I was not so happy to help because we were going on a big road trip the very next day. Just last week I bought 5 boxes of pears so this weekend was spent canning! With one box left we have already have 60 jars of pears. I need to go and buy more jars tomorrow because I have run out!

3. Last weekend we FINALLY set up our Canned Food Rotation System that Jon's parents gave us last year for Christmas. We love it and want to have it filled by the end of the year. We figure once we have this filled we will basically have a year supply of food including the food in our pantry. We're very thrilled to have accomplished so much in a year's time.