Temple Square Lights

Another Christmas season arrives and it it time to do our yearly activity of looking at the lights on temple square. This year with Dallin having Jr. Jazz games every Saturday in Magna, we decided to spend a little extra time in Salt Lake after the game and then go see the lights.

After the game we drove to Toys R Us and had the kids get a gift for each of their siblings. I know my kids our not very old, but I thought that to make it easier for them to give to their brothers when they are older I had better start now. It was hard because both Dallin and Isaac were focused on what they wanted and not what the other one wanted. We split them up and off it was a little better.f jeff then joked about that the gifts cost too much so the boys would think that they didn't get anything. I know it is a little mean, but it has made it so that either of the boys isn't tellling the other what they got for them.

We then had a little more time to kill before the sun set, so we went and parked at the gateway and went into Clark Planetarium. They boys love to look at all of the toys in the gift shop and then they go explore the exhibits on the second floor. Since I didn't want to climb the stairs(I was sore from my workout on Friday) I stayed downstairs with Kaden and Jeff and the boys went exploring. It took up just enough time and then it was time to go get on the TRAX train and see the lights.

The train ride was a little crowded, but we made it work and the boys loved having to stand up while the train was moving. We had fun looking at all of the lights. We did the rounds and I took a couple of pictures. I took a little bit of time trying to figure out the best settings for my camera. I had read an article earlier in the week about how to take good christmas tree pictures and I thought it would apply nicely to the lights. I was excited that I was able to take a lot of pictures that looked really nicely all without the use of the flash, and yes it was at night. Just for knowledge I had more mishaps than good pictures this year. It will take me awhile to get the use of taking pictures without the auto settings.

 Here are the rest of the pictures that I took. The green picture to the left was just a test to see if I had the settings right and it turned out to be really pretty. The temple had a lot of mini christmas trees in different colored lights in two of their flower beds and I loved the color and was trying to get those, when I discovered that it was perfectly set with the conference center so I took that picture and loved how it turned out.

There was also I lot of red on trees that made it look like the trees were on fire. I took this one while the boys were walking ahead of me. I just have to say that I was left behind a lot this time because of all the time that it took to get the settings on my camera just right to take a couple of pictures. My family was very patient with me. The boys loved it because it gave them more time to run around I also saw this star that was hanging from the tree and thought it was pretty. I know it looks like I took it when there was still light, but it was just the exposure on my camera was turned up to make everything a little brighter. I love that feature.

I am not really a fan of having blue for christmas. I don't really know why I just don't think it goes really well, but when I saw all of the blue trees that they had I thought they were really pretty with the reds, greens, yellow and clear lights that they had. So I had to a pciture of 2 lonely blue trees that were next to the church office building. Just to show you that I do make mistakes I put in a picture where I moved the camera and made it blurry, but it turned out that the design that came out looks pretty cool to me. I think I might have acidently made a bokeh effect.

It was fun to spend some time together while our drywall is being put up in our basement. I love that Jeff and I try to do this every year. There were times that we were a little frustrated, but on the drive home we all had a good time and it was a good day.

Thanksgiving at the VanShaar's

This year my family was switching which family we were celebrating the holidays with, and so we invited grandma and grandpa VanShaar to our house for Thanksgiving. I was a little scared because this would be my first time ever cooking a turkey. To tell you the truth I am not a fan of turkey mostly because it is dry.

I had a quest of finding a good recipe for the turkey and the stuffing. At this time I had started to watch The Chew on abc4 at noon and had loved some of the things that they had done so I went to there site and looked up a recipe for the turkey and stuffing. They had both and I printed them out. Also, while I was on the site I watched a couple of segments on cooking the turkey and I found out that cooking the stuffing inside the turkey actually will actually dry out the white meat because the bread stills the heat that the meat needs to cook. I was sold. No stuffing the turkey with stuffing this year.

When I would tell people my plans for the turkey I got some weird looks. When I told my mother-in-law that she seemed a little apprehensive. But she was fine the day of thanksgiving and couldn't wait to try the turkey.

I did stuff the turkey, I just used herbs instead of bread. It didn't take as long to cook the turkey and it was really moist and the flavors had seeped into the meat. Jeff carved the turkey and we finally got to use the electric knife we got for our wedding. It was really good I found myself wanting seconds and I hardly ever eat leftovers.

We had the wonderful pie and then we all packed up and the grandparents went home and we traveled up to Logan to do black Friday shopping. That was an experience. We got all of the things that we wanted, but our favorite thing of the night was waiting in line for Kohl's to open and we ordered the products that we couldn't get at Walmart. We had so much fun trying to think of everything that we wanted so we could look it up and not have to stay up all night. We were able to get a little bit of sleep during the night, but most of our sleep was the day after.

Also, over the weekend we did something a little different at my parents. With me trying to lose weight(as of today I have lost 20 lbs this year) I am always looking for ways to be active to burn the calories. So on Friday we took my sister Amanda and her husband Scott to play racquetball. We also took Dallin to teach him how to play. The next day most everyone went over to the church and we played basketball. It was crazy with everyone there but it was really fun. We even got my dad to play with us.

This year Thanksgiving was wonderful and I am really thankful for my family. I love them all and wish we lived a little closer so we could spend more time with them

Update on our lives throughout November

Yes I know that November isn't over yet, but with everything that will happen this week I wanted to give a little update on everything. Basketball season has arrived and Dallin is in a clinic run by Stansbury High School. They help teach the boys some of the fundamentals, and since the Jr. Jazz program in Tooele and Stansbury got shut down for not paying their bills(don't get me started) This is where Dallin went.

Although a couple of weeks ago, we got asked to join the Jr. Jazz program in Magna with a boy from our ward. So Jeff and I decided that would be good for Dallin. Since the father of that boy will be the coach, he offered to carpool Dallin into Magna for us, so that saves us a 20 min drive twice a week which is nice.

Our house has offically become of a house of a toddler. Even thought Kaden turned 1 on Aug. 31, he wasn't walking so I still considered him a baby, but in the last couple of weeks Kaden has found the confidence to let go of the furniture or hand by himself and walk towards something. The funny thing is that it is usually after mommy. I got to admit that I love to have him love me so much, but at the same time I can't hold him all of the time.

The happiest piece of news that I can come up with is that we are close to getting our basement ready for the drywall. Our goal is to have the drywall up downstairs by christmas and since we are paying someone to come in and do it for us it will be done. We have a couple of things that need to be finished before we can call them to come and do it, but it should only take a couple of weeks for the workers to finish it up. Jeff and I are so excited for me finally to have my craft room back. He has been very patient with me while I have had all of my crafting supplies in our bedroom and around our kitchen table.

While the basement plumbing was getting completed we had the plumber that we hired move the plumbing for our washer and dryer into the front bedroom. Isaac has to sleep in that room until his room gets completed, but I just make sure that all of the laundry is done before bed and he doesn't mind. It is nice to have a larger place to sort the clothes. The best thing of all is the dryer vent is maybe a foot long where before it ran the width of our house. It has made our dryer more efficient and it should be easier to clean by ourselves if it ever becomes clogged.

The last piece of news is that I have started a crafting blog. I have been reading a lot of blogs about crafts and I have a lot of ideas on how to make some of my own and now I have a place to share my experiences. I wanted to have the site open to anyone, but didn't want all of them to read about everything my family does, so I had to separate them. If you would like to see what it is all about please go to http://splendidfailurecrafts.blogspot.com/. I posted my first tutorial on how to make a Flower belt.

Halloween festivities

I want to combine all of the activities that we did for Halloween into one post. We started out this year's Halloween activities by going to the school Halloween carnival. Dallin and Isaac had a really fun time playing in the bounce houses. After a little time letting them have fun I made them go inside to play some games, because I was cold. They played a couple of games and had a fun time.

I wanted to kids to go to the cake walk. so we had to stand in line. Dallin didn't want to play the game, but once I told him about what he could win he was all for it. It was a good thing because he won. He picked out a plate of cupcakes and we went to play some more games. After we got done with the games, I still had a few tickets left over and we spent them on some popcorn for Isaac and some cotton candy for Dallin and we went home to share with Jeff, who stayed home with Kaden.

 Dallin waiting for the cake walk to begin

 Isaac waiting for the cake walk to begin

 Kaden at the Halloween Carnival before Jeff came and got him

On Sunday, we got together and carved the pumpkins. I was a little rushed for time so Jeff and I gutted the pumpkins while the kids were still playing. We then asked the boys what they wanted their pumpkins to look like. Isaac wanted pac-man and some of the dots, so his pumpkin was easy. Dallin wanted the ghost from pac-man and Jeff made him one, and then hung some eyes and a mouth. I made just a regular jack-o-lantern face on the rest of the pumpkins.

My boys with some of the pumpkins that we carved

As usual Spillman Technologies had their yearly trick or treat party for the kids at their work. The boys all dressed up. Isaac as Iron Man, Dallin as Darth Vadar, and Kaden as Tigger. Jeff and I decided that this year we would not dress up. Kaden had fun walking around the building and seeing everything. When the boys got a long stick of sugar, Kaden held on to that for the rest of the trip. He loves sticks. Dallin and Isaac had fun getting all the candy that they normally get.

The last thing that we did before trick or treating was we went to our local grocery store(yes, Stansbury Park now has its own grocery store) and we got candy from all of the departments, spent time playing on the bounce houses, decorating some cookies, and playing the pumpkin walk. Which was every 15 minutes the boys had to go and find a number to stand on and they would call out one or two numbers at a time and they would win a bag of goodies. We played twice and didn't win, then after we did all the rest of the stuff I let the kids play one more time, and Isaac won. He was so excited. 

Family Photos 2011

It is that time of year again. It is time where I go and find outfits that coordinate and then drag my family to a location and take their yearly picture. We went up to Logan for General Conference and I knew it would be a perfect time to go up the canyon and take pictures with all of the color.

Through Sardine Canyon Jeff and I noticed that the color wasn't there just yet and we worried that we would not be able to get the background that I wanted. We still got up and got ready Saturday morning and went up Logan Canyon to try and find a pactch of colored fall leaves. We decided to check the road that you take to get to camp Lomia. We started to drive up the road and found that we found a good spot to take pictures, there was red, yellow and green all over the place. We found a place to park and we unpacked the car to take the pictures

I used my father's tripod and my camera's timer mode to take the family picture and we started taking pictures. I knew that since we had a one year old with us it was going to be hard to get a good family picture. So I picked a picture where you can see him smiling and happy and called it good. I then took the individual pictues. Jeff noticed a rock on the hill across from where we were taking the pictures and had the kids look up. We didn't know at the time, but later that weekend their was a talk by a general authority where he told a story where Presiden't Monson told him it is better to look up. With the pictures I made a printable with the photos of all the boys looking up and that saying.

The boys wanted Jeff and I to take a picture and we obliged them. We let them press the button to take the picture on the camera and they thought that was fun. We even had a request from Isaac that he take a kissing picture. We thought that was funny.

We had a wonderful time and we love the way that the pictures turned out.

Chimpsy!!!

Ever since I bought my dslr camera I have wanted to learn more about photography so that I can take pictures only using the manual settings. So when I found a groupon to go on a fieldtrip for $49 instead of the $125, I bought it quickly. It was worth it.

The class was for 2 hours at the Gateway. For the first hour the instructor taught us about aperture, shutter speed, exposure, ISO and other photography things. He would give us little test to make sure that we got the suggestions down. The second hour he sent us around the gateway to take pictures and practice the techniques. He would go around to each student and answer questions or look at the pictures that they had taken and give them pointers on how to get better photos.

My favorite things to take pictures of are flowers and other landscapes. It was nice to learn how to take clearer and better landscape pictures. He had a polarizer filter that he let us take down to the fountain to try and it made those pictures ten times better. The polarizer filters out the light and so it makes the water look like one solid falling sheet of water instead of little droplets.

 These two pictures are of the same thing, but all I did was adjust my exposure. To me the darker makes the tower look a little more creepy. It also helps that it is cloudy.

These three water features will help you see what the polarizer filter does. The picture on the left is taken with nothing changed (you can see all of the water drops). The middle photo I used the largest aperture setting (you can see that the water looke a little more flowy). The photo on the right is using the polarizer filter. You can see how much clearer the water is and how it looks really pretty. Let's just say that I am going to save up my money to buy this filter.

And finally these are my favorite photos and of course they are of flowers. I love how the flowers pop. I know it is a really easy photo to get, but I don't care I love flowers.


There were a technique that the instructor talked about and I thought that I would give them a try. It is called something like photo painting. The first painting I took one of Kaden's bibs and dragged it in front of my camera while the shutter was open. It left the cool colors. It isn't my favorite and I need to try and investigate this process more.

The next 2 photos I used a light in my dark closet. You move the light in front of the camera with the shutter open and it leaves a cool design behind.

 I really liked this light painting thing that I tried a new approach where I took a yellow t-shirt and then put it over my camera and repeated the process.It is kind of cool what design was left behind. I am going to investigate what other designs I can make with light. It is fun.