Snow

Now that the snow has, finally, melted I decided to post some pics. It was so bad here that Sophia's school and our church was cancelled. It lasted for a couple of weeks, but turned into ice. It was fun skating along the sidewalks!The girls making a snowman.

James in the back garden.

Chloe, posing on the night before the big snow.

James attempting to shovel.

The front of the house.

25 Randoms

I did this on facebook and thought it was so much fun! I believe everyone on here has 25 things about themselves that I would love to hear more about, so please do it! I'm not going to tag anyone, individually, I just want you all to do it! I'll add some more pics later, too, as I have some really great ones to go along with this post, but my scanner is out of order at the moment.

Rules:Once you've been tagged, you have to write a post with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

1) I have become completely normal and boring and I could have never envisioned that my life could be so happy, being as completely normal and boring as I truly am!

2) I stalked Simon. I knew I was going to marry him before he even asked me out. I freaked out after he first talked to me b/c he was going home for Easter and I thought he would forget about me. To prevent this from happening, I looked up his parents address on a Greece Mission website and sent him an Easter card. It did the job and I'm glad it didn't scare him!

3) My brothers are pretty strong guys and whenever they would come after me, my only defense mechanism was to moon them. It worked! They wouldn't come near me!

4) When I first came to London I didn't have anywhere to stay, so I booked myself into a youth hostel and stayed in a room with 4 Australian guys and 2 German girls. It's one of the most random things I've ever done b/c I didn't know a thing about London and I didn't know a soul in the whole of England.

5) I hate it when it's cold and wet outside. Can you believe I actually love living in England, though?!

6) My biggest pet peeve is blind, uneducated voting. Is it really so hard for people to take the time to find out about what the candidates really stand for and what they've voted for in the past before making a stupid decision?? I'd rather you just didn't vote if all you're going to do is listen to the rubbish that the candidates throw out at us and not actually look at what they're going to do when they get into office!

7) When I was 14, I was in a model search and chosen by the New York modeling agency, NAME. There were 400 potentials at the search and only 20 of them were chosen by 10 different agencies from NY. I know it's hard to believe that it happened to me, but it's true!

8) Tedi Herlihy and I used to go around Page in my convertible and slap tourists on the butt as we drove by them. It was so funny! I love small town fun!

9) I would love to serve a mission with Simon in a place like Africa. I also want to serve a temple mission, but Simon isn't as into it. I love the temple!!!

10) I wish I was more acedemic. I'm not stupid and I can carry on an intelligent conversation. I just worry b/c Simon went to one of the top universities in the UK and I believe he's going to be really disappointed if any of our children are as unacedemic as I was.

11)When I was in college, I used to go skinny dipping with my church friends in high school swimming pools at night. We nearly got caught one time!

12) I wish I had an amazing singing voice. I can carry a tune and I'm not tone deaf, but I would love if my voice was just beautiful!

13) I used to intern for the MTV show, 'Singled Out'. It was the funnest job, ever! I also used to help out doing wardrobe at the 'Tonight Show', occasionally.

14) Here's one that the Page folk probably won't believe, considering the cars I used to drive growing up, but I am completely uninterested in materialism. I don't have a fancy car, my house is pretty normal, and I could care less what label my clothes have. I hate how materialism rules so many lives. Can't we get our priorites straight?

15) In college, my friends used to call my car the 'Pope Mobile' b/c if I was driving they couldn't cuss, drink, or go home with anyone other than me. We had a problem with some girls going home with random guys they met in Hollywood, so that's why the last rule was included. Oddly enough, my friends always wanted to go with me and they would always go on about how much fun they had that their parents would entirely approve of. I didn't go to a church school and none of my roommates were Mormon.

16) One of the reasons I wouldn't want to move to the States right now is b/c my children would lose their English accents. Is that silly or what?

17) I'm an open book, but there are some things that I just think would be too shocking for this note. I'd tell them to you if you asked me, though.

18) Here's a random about Simon. He's really musical, so most people just think he listens to classical music all the time, which isn't far from the truth, but the other type of music he spends most of his time listening to is rave. I always have to laugh at his conflicting musical interests!

19) I used to be employed by a modeling agency in Beverly Hills to scout new talent and to style their photo shoots. It was fun, but put me off the whole world of modeling.

20) We really want to have a house in Page and a house here when Simon retires, but I worry that I won't really want to spend as much time in Page anymore b/c I've made my home here.

21) Simon didn't kiss me for a whole month after we started dating. It was torture!!!

22)Simon and I have never had a fight in all the 9 years that we've known each other. The funny thing is that whenever I have a dream about Simon I'm always really angry at him b/c of the horrible, unreasonable person he is in my dreams.

23) I have hypothyroidism. It's the most common genetic disease in America. I have to take medication for it for the rest of my life and I still am always cold and tired from it. I also have to work harder than anyone I know to lose and keep off weight.

24) I'm 6 feet tall and I've always considered that I was a tall girl, but Simon has 2 cousins, who are girls, and are taller than me and they don't think that I'm tall.

25) I've been blessed to have everything I've ever wanted in life. I've had some pretty lofty goals that I've fulfilled, but my biggest goal was always to get married in the temple and have lots of children. I am just so grateful that all of my dreams have come true. I love life!

National Health...Ha Ha!

For the past 4-5 weeks, someone in our family has been ill, pretty much every day. All three of my children had slapcheeks disease, which I couldn't discover until they came out in the rash, by which time it's too late. I seem to get a bug, just when someone else recovers, just so I don't miss out on being forced to sympathise with all the sick patients in my home! It was all just getting a bit ridiculous!

Anyway, James had a high temperature for 4 days in a row last week and he was just a mess. I couldn't do anything without him getting upset and clinging onto me for dear life, so I resorted to the idea that all I was able to do was sit and watch dvd's all day. I couldn't understand what was wrong with him, though, b/c the only symptom he had was this temperature that just didn't want to take a walk!

On the third day of his temperature, I decided it was time to see the doctor about his temperature, hoping for some advice. The only problem is that over here, my children don't get to see a doctor for the first visit, they get to see the nurse and if they want to see the doctor after that, then you have to make an appointment for the doctor to call you to book an appointment with them. It's such a hassle, that I rarely ever bother to go through with it! So, I booked with the nurse and took James to the surgery, where the nurse saw that he had a high temperature, checked his ears, breathing, etc., and then proceeded to check the internet to diagnose what was wrong with him. Can you believe it?! After a million possibilities showed up on the search engine, she turned to me and said that she didn't know what was wrong with him, as it could be a number of things. Thank you so much for the information!! I could have come up with that conclusion all on my own! She then proceeded to tell me that it was not necessary to go to the doctor and just go home and keep loading him up on the Calpol.

I then mentioned to her that I had seen on the internet that slapcheek can cause complications to pregnant women who have been exposed to it, after which she again turned to her computer and found that what I was saying was right, but as I was over 20 weeks, the computer said that I shouldn't worry about it.

Uh, thanks for the confidence! You put all my worries to rest with your Googling! I can't believe that our tax money is paying for service that seems to be the equivalent of something out of a dodgy back alley!

To all my fellow Americans, you're in for a rude awakening when Obama starts throwing out his National Health policies at you! Most of you I know didn't vote for him, but for those of you who did...thanks a ton!

I love Wiltshire!

I really think we live in the coolest part of England, although there are many places that I love. I just love how ancient Wiltshire is, and whenever we go out on a walk we seem to find something cool that's a thousand plus years old. This time we decided to go to Longbarrow West Kennet, which is about a 10 minute drive from our house. We've always driven past it, but you can't see much from the road, so we didn't think there was much to it! It turns out that it's one of the coolest things I've seen here. It's an ancient tomb that's from about 500 years after the time of Adam. How cool is that! And even better is that it's completely free of charge! It has a proper tomb entrance and about 3 different rooms inside, which is a bit freaky when you're in there and start thinking about all the bones that were once piled up there. I just couldn't believe that it wasn't advertised more b/c I thought it was much cooler than Stonehenge (also near by), but I guess there always has to be the famous ones.

As a tradition for Easter, we always go out somewhere at sunrise on Easter Sunday and read the Easter story in the scriptures and sing a hymn. We were thinking that it would be really cool to go to Longbarrow this year, as it's a proper tomb and it faces the East. That would be cool!

Anyway, I do love living in Wiltshire. I'm happy that it feels like home to me now and I look forward to raising my children here.

Christmas...catching up!

I'm very behind on my posting, so I thought I'd catch up with a Christmas report. I have a picture of our stockings, because my mom always made stockings for us and I've carried on as the tradition for my children, and I'm making one for Simon, too. Sophia's is the one on the left, the one my mom made me in the middle, and Chloe's is on the right.


I'm very proud of Chloe's b/c I just finished it this year. The detail on it was impossible!! I've been working on it for a couple of years now.

I hate the amount of toys we have around our house, so we've decided to get one big thing each for the children, or just one big thing for all of them. This year the girls got a proper wooden doll house that I've always wanted for them to have. Their Yia Yia and Pops (my parents) got them all the people and funiture to go inside. They are having fun with it, and I can't wait to wallpaper and carpet the inside!

James enjoys the dollhouse, too! He got a parking garage and a bunch of cars to go with it, as he didn't really have any yet. His favourite gift is a £2 helicopter I got from Woolworths. Go figure!

We had a really lovely time, but I was eager to get the decorations down this year. Probably, because we finally got carpet for our lounge. Simon went mad and bought new couches, too! We've been saving up and they were all much needed. Below is a pic of the children with their reindeer and sleigh that they made. Sophia is Santa and Chloe is an elf bride (her own idea). I hope you all had a lovely Christmas!

Review...

I, finished the Twilight series a couple of weeks ago now and have seen the movie, too. So, here is what I thought:

Twilight - fantastic! Couldn't put it down!
New Moon - Not so good. I pretty much read it just to get to the next one.
Eclipse - Loved it! Another one that I couldn't put down!
Breaking Dawn - Alright, but not my fave. I thought it was very predictable and all the typos really annoyed me!
The movie - FANTASTIC! I've got to see it again!

Mormon Love. Okay, I'm as hopeless as the rest of you!

Before I continue with this blog, I'm sure some of you are wondering why I haven't blogged about my recent trip to America. The reason is simply down to the stack of Relief Society stuff that I had waiting for me when I returned...and because I can't seem to find the disk where I stored all my America pictures. That will all just have to come at a later date.

I probably wouldn't even be bothering to blog yet, but I keep getting bewildered by just how hopeless I have become. My mom gave me the 'Twilight' book when we were in the States. I thought, given the current hysteria that seems to have engulfed most of you with book and movie, that it was going to be rubbish, especially when I found out it was written by a Mormon, but at last I now knew why all of my Utah friends and family had blog entries on vampire love. I was confused there for awhile. Anyway, I knew that I'd get a chance for some reading when we went to Simon's parents for Christmas, so I took it along with me...not expecting much out of it. Boy was I WRONG!

I started to read the first couple of pages, very skeptically, and then I just kept reading and reading! If I had to stop, then I would just think about it every second. It consumed me for the 3 days it took to read it. It wasn't because I thought I was anything like Bella. I definitely would run if I ever had 4 dodgy men approaching me, and I have actually screamed when I thought someone was following me in London, before, although I think the guy was just normal and thought that I was the mad one! The one thing I could relate to is how my friend Candace would always remind me that if there was a weirdo or scary guy in a 1 mile radius of me, that I would have attracted them. Simon is definitely no Edward, either, (nor would I dream for him to be) although he does serenade me with beautiful songs that he's composed on the piano just for me. A talent that I will definitely be imposing on James and any other boys I have.

The thing that grasped my attention the most was all the (what I like to call) Mormon love! If anyone ever asked me what it was like to date the person you were madly in love with and not act on it, I would have them read 'Twilight'. It just brought me back to those dating days with Simon and all those overwhelming feelings of just wanting to kiss him forever, but then having to stop and compose myself before things got out of hand. And the electricity of the simplest brush of his hand on mine. I just have never read anything that described those feelings better. It just took me back!

So, at 5am this morning, I ordered the rest of the series, but I did make an effort with some self control in not paying for express delivery. That means I have to wait at least 4 days for them to be delievered. Ugh! I don't know why I'm letting myself get so consumed b/c I really don't have any time for them. I'm just going to have to stay up all night until I'm finished. I just hope that when I'm finished, that I'm satisfied and I can get it all out of my head. By the sound of the rest of you, that seems to be a hopeless wish.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm too scared it will disappoint me. The trailers look as if they changed too much, but I probably still will watch it.