Abundant Recompense Copy

We might as well start at the beginning our customer service woes - last June and Ogden's Carpets. We have mostly wood floors in our house, but decided that it'd be nice to have some cozy carpeting for our family room, so we picked out our fave and eagerly awaited the installation date. It came, two guys showed up, I gave the one who was in charge the instructions (leave a square of wood uncarpeted around the door so we can still open it). He failed to relay them to his english-speaking-challenged coworker, and we end up with a strip of carpet tacking and a ripped out baseboard where the wood was supposed to be. He pulled out the carpet tacking and left. Lame. So Add and I went in to the store and asked the "customer service" man to fix it. He tossed me a tube of putty, insisted there had only been one worker at our house that day, and sent me out the door. So my mean hubby called him (after talking to his tearful wifey), and he studdered his way through an apology an...

Back in September, Michelle posted about never-ending projects , and since then I had the distinct pleasure of blogging about finishing the dang-blasted reupholstered couch. Now I get to unveil Michelle's pride and joy, her work and her glory since last February: T H E C H R I S T M A S T R E E S K I R T ! ! (If you think I've overdone that last bit of text, trust me, I have not; in fact, if I knew how to make text blink and flash different colors, that there text would be doing so right now.) Before I show pictures, I need to apologize for their low quality. Our camera went the way of all the earth (and all electronics four years old or older) this week, so I'm taking these with our web cam. Someday when we get a new camera - Santa take note - I'll put up better ones, including shots of the Christmas tree skirt actually skirting the Christmas tree. Hundreds of hours later, the final product. I'm very sad it's blurry--come visit to get the full effect. Keep a...

I got so carried away with the collages on the Thanksgiving post that I forgot about videos. In fact, lately I've been posting all out of order, so even the most faithful readers have probably missed a few of them. So scroll down and take a look. Enjoy! Two uncooperative kiddies in the middle of a photoshoot. Beck and Nate showing th eir rappelling prowess. Fun at the sand dunes.

Check it out! Nate is famous !

On December first, our bouncing baby boy turned one! I like to think that we've come a long, long way since this time last year when we traipsed to the hospital in the middle of a blizzard. For his birthday we had a party in St. George and a smaller one once we got home. I think Nate and I cared a lot more than Addison did, but we had a blast. We made him a polka-dot cake with cream cheese frosting and lots of mini m&ms. It turned out really good, I think. At home we decided we didn't need a whole cake sitting around, so we got him some strawberry cheesecake ice cream instead. He hasn't eaten many sweets in his life, but he caught the vision pretty quick. I thought I'd fill you in on a few facts about this cute little guy to commemorate his big day. Favorite food: beans and rice Favorite drink: water Loves: baths, Mommy and Daddy, the cat, pictures of babies (no matter how ugly), looking at pictures on the wall, cell phones, reading books, and his blankie. Scared of...

We spent Thanksgiving in St. George and had a blast. I am thankful that Nate has an awesome family that lets us come home and take over their house and just chill whenever we want to. We got hyped about Linzy's upcoming wedding, talked movies with Abbey, ate way too much food, and just relaxed for awhile. My sister Rebecca went with us, and she did a great job of putting off homework and giggling late into the night with Abbey on the hide-a-bed. Us ladies went to see the movie Twilight, and in my opinion you should save your money. I wasn't a fan, although I do like the books. Thanksgiving dinner was sooo good. There was seriously not one food item that turned out badly, which is saying something, because I helped. Aunt Abbey can never res ist a chance to do Add's hair. All the cousins: Addison, Aria, Sonnet, Trinity, and Dayson (not wearing pants because he's potty training!) Addison and Sonnet We went to the sand dunes and on a little walk in Snow Canyon. Man, talk a...

We left to come home from our long, luxurious Thanksgiving break in St. George on Sunday afternoon and didn't quite get there until Monday evening. The holiday traffic was pretty busy the whole way, and at about Santaquin , it slowed down a lot really fast. Nate slammed on the brakes and just barely managed to miss rear-ending the car in front of us, but there was a big pickup truck pulling a trailer behind us and it just couldn't stop in time, so it made a sandwich out of our poor little Civic. Luckily we're all okay, just sore and scraped and bruised, but pretty shaken up. It's really scary when your baby's in the backseat. To make a long story short, Nate took care of business while Beck and I cried, shook a lot, and took Addison first into the backseat of a police car to stay warm and then into an ambulance so they could check us all. Shauna and Doug and Doug's brother Jake came to the rescue and took us and all our stuff back to their house in Provo where N...

A couple weeks ago I had the distinct pleasure of accompanying my hubby to a swank reception at the top of the Church Office Building to celebrating the printing and distributing of the first volume of the Joseph Smith Papers. In what turned out to be a stroke of luck, I managed to leave my i.d. in the car. As Nate and I were rushing to the parking lot to get it, we crossed paths with Elder Holland who said in a booming voice, "Hi, how are you two cute kids doing tonight?" Wow. When a prophet calls you cute, it must be true. We made it on time and enjoyed hearing remarks from several people who have been involved in the researching, editing, printing, distribution, funding, and administration of the project. And then came the moment we'd all been waiting for - we got our copy! I've enjoyed being in the loop and hearing from Nate about all the work that's gone into putting the book together. He's been working there just over a year, and knowing the hours and wo...