29th Birthday

I had such a great birthday this year.  I woke up to big David singing Happy Birthday to me and giving me a very funny card as usual with a note that said I could get one vacation day! I am very much looking forward to that.  I also got to get a Kindle Fire. I have been wanting one for a while and Amazon had a great sale this week and I got a great deal on one!  David then went and got me some doughnuts for breakfast and took the kids to school for me.  Then I went and picked up some lunch for myself and had a nice relaxing day. That night we took the kids and went to eat at Tepenyaki. It is the restaurant where they cook in front of you and oh so yummy! The kids especially enjoyed watching the fun show, especially Parker. He kept saying, “Fire! Fire! “  He was so amused by it.  Then we came home and I had quite a few sweet friends stop by.  My beehive class president, Allyson, dropped off some gorgeous flowers from the beehive class. My friend Alice-Anne dropped off some delicious home-made salsa and chips. Another one of my girls from church, Sierra, brought over some yummy rice krispy treats and lotion. Then a yummy treat from my home teachers.  Then my mom and dad sent me the perfume I asked for.  It was such a great day and I felt so grateful for so many great friends that helped my day feel so special.  At night David was asking how the birthday was and I told him it was great and he asked if he remembered everything. I told him the only thing was the cake…he felt so bad even though I told him it was fine and I had enough sweets around the house. The next day he showed up with a cake from Sam’s club and it was delicious. He put all 29 candles on it and was impressed, when I blew them all out in one shot.  Thanks to everyone who made my day special and here is to my last year of my 20’s!

Fall Festival

Kate the evil witch and me the good witch obviously we fit our roles well! 

In the background behind the wicked witch is the “tunnel” I wish I had taken a better picture of it.

Every year our ward usually does a trunk or treat, but we decided to change things up and did a little carnival type thing.  The young men and young women were over it and we have been since forever I guess, but every year it just sneaks up on us. This year we wanted the youth to be over most of it and really get a feel for what all goes into planning and preparing a ward party. I am pretty sure they had no idea that so many hours went into planning it.  It was nice to see them working so hard.  We had a planning committee that had a few leaders and about 4 youth the first week, but luckily the number of youth grew each week.  I don’t know about other churches, but our church has had a huge problem with kids always wanting to go and jump on the stage and off the stage, so we wanted to come up with something to help block them from it.  The young men did a great job. They got the big plastic strips and made a little maze going under the stage and completely blocked the stairs completely.  It worked like a charm and all the kids loved going through the tunnel!  Then we had a fishing station, a cupcake walk, face painting, bean bag toss, a ring toss, glow in the dark games, a coloring station and pin the nose on the jack-o-lantern.  We had a great turn out and everyone seemed to be having a good time. The kids were each assigned a station and got to hand out treats to the kids after they played.  I know my kids had a great time with all the games and prizes.  We also had a chili cook off and a costume parade.  David made the chili for us and got an award for tastiest chili. He was pretty proud of himself.  It was really good! Our family won an award for our costumes and David won for his costume too and was proud to be called Tin man Torgerson!  That whole day was so busy. I was doing all the last minute prep for all the games and browning the meat for David’s chili and making cupcakes and trying to get everyone ready. I think we went to the store about 6 times that day for last minute things that we kept forgetting.  I was so exhausted by the time I got home that night. My feet were shaking and I was so excited to finally just lay there and not do a thing.  The good news is that for next year we know what will need to be done and we have a lot of things from this year that we can reuse, which is awesome. 

All in all it was a big success and I am so glad that it is over!  Now just Young Women in Excellence to plan and then we are done for the year…until new beginnings. It turns out there is no down time in this calling, but it is so great to work with such great and fun youth and leaders!

7 Months

7 months old.  Lizzy is learning to do something new everyday. In the past month she has started scooting all over the place.  She can now get into crawling position and then get back onto her booty.  She can move her hands about 2 times before she falls on her belly. She also does some amazing push ups and tries to do crunches anytime that she is laying on her back or getting her diaper changed.  She is just so proud to be able to get from laying to sitting.  She loves eating by herself and does a great job with it.  She likes baby food, but I think she prefers whatever we are eating! She is still just a very easy going little girl and easy to please, as long as she is with mom! She is not sleeping too great at night, but at least she is sleeping in her bed most nights.  She loves to talk and says, “Mama” all the time and has also started saying “bye-bye” She also loves screaming especially in the car.  She still just has the 2 teeth on bottom and just looks so cute!  I just love little Lizzy and her happy attitude. She has such a sweet disposition about 90% of the time and is a joy to be around.