Flashback Friday

My friend Rebecca does Flashback Fridays on her blog and I was telling her how much I liked the idea. I also mentioned to her that my flashback to the 90s couldn't possibly compete with her 80's. Who doesn't just love the 80s? But she encouraged me to post anyway so here goes.

This first flashback is going out to my best friend, Michele. We have been friends for approximately 22ish years. We met in Girl Scouts when we were about 6 or 7 and have been friends ever since. We were inseparable for the first 10 years until my family moved to Utah. I remember when I was 10, my family actually moved about 20 min away from hers but we would still make our parents drive us to each others house every weekend so we could have sleepovers. We would usually end up staying the whole weekend. We made prank-calls, called the radio station to see if we could get on, had food fights, talked about boys, played games, had make-overs, and a million other girly things. I don't think I have a memory from ages 6-14 that she wasn't a part of in some way.

Here is the first picture I have of us at about 6 years of age in 1986...I don't know why her head is cut off...I think my brother actually took this picture. He was 5 at the time.



This is us in 1991



The next two photos of us are when we graduated from HS in 1997, her from Cajon HS in CA and me from Enterprise HS in UT.

Super Survey!

Getting to Know Me (tagged by Emily)

NO PICTURE AVAILABLE! (Honestly, I don't have a recent picture of me. Sad, I know. One of my goals this year is to actually take more pictures of myself...not because I love pictures of myself but as I have been scrapping pictures from the last 10 years, I can probably count on one hand how many pictures of me there are. I am sure my children/grandchildren will wonder where I was all those years! I would have taken one today but my batteries in my camera died and I have to go to the store to get more...)

Where were you born? Henderson, NV
Middle name: Michelle

How old will you be this year? 29 (August)

Nicknames: Jenny, Jenn, Fred

Are you taller than your mother or father? I'm 5'1.5 and my mom is 5'1...so yes, by a half an inch!

Do you cry often during movies? Way too much...pretty much every movie I watch I find some reason to cry...it is really annoying!

What is your biggest pet peeve? Inconsiderate people; like when people leave their carts out at the grocery store or rude drivers

Favorite color: I know this sounds corny but I really like all the colors!

Favorite foods: Cookies!

Favorite beverage: Usually water but if I had to pick something besides water it would be a Strawberry Lemonade from Red Robin...they put whole strawberries in it and I usually have, like 2 refills!

Favorite cold cereal: Sugary: Reese's Puffs; Healthy: Wheat Chex or Kashi's Mountain Medley (I can only find it at Costco and only some of the time)

Favorite smells: Clean laundry, my shower gel, freshly baked cookies
(I have to agree with you completely, Emily!)

Favorite time of day: 7am when the kids get up and run in my bedroom to give me their "morning hugs." and 8pm when I get to put them to bed and spend some alone time with Chris!

Favorite make-up products? Chapstick and mascara!

How many pillows do you sleep with? One

Do you play an instrument? I wish I did

Have you ever been skinny dipping? can I plead the fifth?

Did you do any sports in High School? Dance

What was the last movie you saw in the theater? Jumper

What is your favorite article of clothing? My "date clothes" because I don't get to actually get dressed up very often.

What is your dream vacation? I don't know if you would call this a vacation but Chris and I would love to take the whole family on a 1 year RTW trip but not necessarily to see all the tourist sites but to actually do humanitarian work! Weird, huh!

What was your first impression of your spouse? "Wow, what a hottie!"

If you were an animal what would you be? A Giraffe...wouldn't it be awesome to see the world from their perspective?!

What is your favorite "me- time" activity? Digi-scrapping, blogging and reading

Favorite TV shows: Heros, Good Eats, Oprah, House

What is your dream car? I actually don't have one.

What is one of your weaknesses? Speaking without thinking

What do you fix for dinner when there's nothing to fix? Spaghetti or Tacos

If you could live in a different decade/era which one would it be? Probably during the time of the restoration of the gospel or when the Savior lived.

What is the emotion you feel the most? Joy (even though we may have problems, I am so happy with my family and feel truely blessed everyday)

Do you consider yourself outgoing? Sometimes

What is something you are constantly working on? Being a better example to my kids.

Any hidden talents? Nope!

What is a word or phrase you overuse? "Like..."

What was the hardest thing that happened to you this past year? Moving back home where Chris took a very large paycut and an even bigger hit in benefits! But since it was self-inflicted, we can't really complain much.

What is the best thing that happened to you this past year? I gave birth to our sweet Abigail almost a year ago exactly!

What is one thing you hope to accomplish this year? Buy/build a house!

The best piece of advice you learned this past year? To allow God to direct my life instead of trying to push my own plan & to be content with where I am and with what I have!

I Tag: Stephanie B., Michele R., Amme R. Mandi M. and Kristi H. and anyone else who wants to...,- You must post a recent picture of yourself!

The Making of a Star

Austin loves to sing, dance and, even, act. He will act out whole scenes from his favorite movies (all the actors, word for word). The only problem is, he inherited his mothers severe stage fright. So when he goes to perform, and you can really tell he wants to, he just can't bring himself to do it. So I continue to be his only audience until...last night. Last night, I was able to record him. So without futher adieu, here is Austin making his singing debut...hehe



Unfortunately, my camera battery died and I only got a glimpse of his shower performance. I still thought it was pretty cute! Maybe, next time. LOL

New Scrapbooking Pages

I posted more scrapbooking pages on the left in the slide shows under both family slides and Allison's slide. It has been interesting to scrapbook Allison's pictures when she was the same age as Abigail is now. They look so much a like. I am glad that I am finally getting around to scrapping them so I don't start getting their pics mixed up.

Cupcakes!

I saw these cute Valentine cupcakes in a newsletter I get from Familyfun.com. I thought the kids would enjoy making them and they looked easy enough. We were having our monthly DeMille dinner on Monday night so I decided that we would make them and bring them that night so I didn't get stuck eating them all. There is over 30 DeMille's so I had to double the recipe. That didn't seem too hard, right? I didn't really calculate until the cupcakes were in the oven that would mean that I would have to actually decorate 48 cupcakes. I thought, no problem...the kids will decorate maybe 5-10 each and then that will leave me about 20-30 to decorate by myself. Well,my kids only decorated 1 each...just enough for them to eat. That left me with 46 to decorate! Half way through decorating them the family night dinner was cancelled because half of them were sick. Now that left me with 46 cupcakes to eat! Not good! Did I mention that the kids had also made Valentine candy bags for their 12 cousins. We could NOT keep all this sugar in the house! Since it was FHE night anyway, we decided to deliver the cupcakes to all the family members anyway and talked about service, etc. It ended up turning out ok but, needless to say, I am "cupcaked-out!"

A Kool New Toy!

So, I just bought a kool new toy with money I earned doing surveys (that is whole 'nother post). I bought Adobe Photoshop Elements 6. It is the cheap version of Adobe Photoshop but I didn't want to spend $4-600 on the full version until I learned the easy version...and let me tell you...that will be a long time. But I did learn a new trick today that I thought was so kool I had to share it. Look at the first two pics and then look at the last pic. When taking a group shot, especially with children, they often are turning their heads and fidgeting, etc. You rarely get a shot that everyone is looking at you AND smiling. So you end up taking about a hundred different shots hoping that there will be at least one worth anything. I took about 2 dozen of the kids on the stairs and really none of them turned out well. BUT I learned how to combine the pics so that you can use the best of two or several pictures. IT IS AWESOME! In the first picture Austin is looking at the camera but the kids on the left are fidgeting. In the second picture the kids on the left are looking and smiling but Austin is looking away from the camera. The one on the bottom is the combined picture. FUN!