See any resemblance?

Jason and I were looking at pictures on my mom's screen saver last night and these two pictures popped up and we got a good laugh. Actually these first two pictures were taken in the same spot on my mom's back patio, just 26 years apart:)



Guess we know where she got that crazy hair...
She loves to try on glasses wherever we go and makes me take pictures of all of them. Here's just a few of them:)






Love that crazy girl.

Bloggers Give Back

Hey lovely people in blog land. I am participating in this by donating one of my photo mattes. There are some superific things to bid on. You don't want to miss it!! It starts tomorrow!~Kristal CLICK HERE

Alan and Donna Gubler are both school teachers who were hoping to retire soon. On the weekend of November 28 an electrical fire started in the attic of their home. While away for Thanksgiving their furnace stopped working. Alan purchased some space heaters to get them through the weekend until someone could come fix the furnace. On Sunday afternoon while Donna was blow drying her hair a breaker was tripped. After spending some time trying to figure out which outlet was the problem, Alan gave up and decided to try again on Monday. Around 5 that evening Donna was in her bedroom hanging clothes and Alan was in the kitchen making some dinner. Donna could hear popping and crackling and called Alan in to see if he could hear it too. He could not and they both went back to what they were doing. A short time after that some neighbors came to the door and told them to immediately get out of the house because they believed it was on fire. Donna ran and put on her slippers and they left. Smoke was billowing out of the entire roof. They left the house with only the clothes on their backs.

At the time of the fire they did not have insurance on their home. Family and friends in Ely have rallied together to get them the necessities they need right now so that they could return to work. They will have to start from scratch with what savings they have. They have such a deep hole in their hearts right now and are entirely devastated. Their burden is not light and will likely last for quite some time as they try to rebuild what they have lost. We know this holiday season will be a very trying one for them and hope that this site and the donations raised, will ease their burden, even by a little.

Thank you for your interest, concern & donations!
CLICK HERE

Christmas Cards

It is that time of year again. Pull out the Christmas decorations, put up the tree, make goodies for your neighbors, and send out Christmas cards. This card below is the one I'm sending out this year. I made it and I can make one for you too! I put a preview of some that you can choose from or if these don't suit your fancy, send me the picture(s) that you want on it and I can whip up a cute little ditty that is all your own!

I made this one for Kandra last year and I liked it so much I used it for mine this year, just tweaking the background color a bit. Do you like one of these but want a different color? Just name it! I can do any size you want.

My mom and dad's Christmas card. Aren't they a handsome couple? Love them.

I whipped this one up yesterday and added Kandra's family pictures to get a feel for it with pics. Kandra, you know how to get a hold of me if you want it;)

One design is $6 for a digital JPEG file (picture) that you can then take to the printer of your choice. Easy peasy. Email me joykristal@gmail.com and let me know what design you would like, the greeting you want on it, colors, size, ect. Hope you are enjoying this time of season!

Ducky Shenanigans

It started out as a peaceful Sunday morning. Then Sophie came in with her finger up inside this porcelain duck's you know what and said she couldn't get it out. I tried some soap and vaseline, but just about ripped her finger off. So Jason was called in and he brought out the big guns....some pliers.

Here she is flippin' the bird...hahahaha

This is Regan's duck and she was in the background crying her eyes out for her poor, mutilated duck. She said she wanted us to cut Sophie's finger off so she could get her duck back. She cried for about a half hour over this. Ahhh...my little animal rights activist.

At last we can see the finger. Jason even cut himself on his thumb with this highly dangerous fowl. I was seriously thinking we were going to have to take her to the hospital, but all's well that ends well.

Just before Halloween, Regan's class was having a party. They don't celebrate any holidays to be sensitive to all the cultures in the class blah blah blah, so they had a "wild thing" party. She had to dress up like any wild thing and she picked an elephant. She was so excited about it and I didn't want to disappoint her so I pulled out some gray fleece and made this little number one night and surprised her with it the morning of the party. She was so excited. Sophie liked sporting it as well.

Fun stuff.

Halloween Costumes and Crap

Wow, has it really been 5+ weeks since my last post? How time flies when your doing the same things over and over and over again.

Regan's first day of school

I think her hair is starting to grow a little. She had a hard time going to preschool the first few days, but is now getting used to the routine and is getting to know the teachers, so she is doing better. Sophie is loving her preschool.

I made the girls crayon costumes for Halloween. I used some felt I had on hand. They weren't happy at first, because Regan wanted blue and Sophie wanted pink. I almost caved, however my cheapness won out. The whole thing cost $0.35 for embroidery floss, which my mom paid for. Sweeeeeet! They like their costumes now. We had a party in our court with all the moms and little kids. My neighbor is a photographer and she took all the kids pictures. These are a couple of the better shots.

Awww...so cute you could almost draw with them.

Sophie started posing for the camera.

I love home made Halloween costumes. I think they are so much cuter, more thought out, and a lot less commercialized. It just takes me back to my childhood when my mom would make our costumes out of things on hand. I loved that you could trust your neighbors. You knew that the popcorn balls from the Williams' house were going to be safe and not laced with drugs. My parents could let us go out alone door to door, instead of this stupid trunk-or-treat crap. Yes I said CRAP!! I hate it!

I hate buying into the commercialism for a holiday that isn't really about anything important except for how much candy you can score. What kind of holiday is that? Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Halloween, I just don't like all these people who like to make loads of money off a holiday because we are too brain-dead to use our own ingenuity. So I don't want to pay $20 a costume so my girls can go to the back of someones car and learn how to beg for candy for one night. I WON'T DO IT! So here's a finger to all those companies wanting my money for some silly holiday. Booya! (I really didn't mean to get on my soap box, but it is what it is. And mom, I'm sorry if you thought the finger part was offensive:)

Oh Regan....

It was a day like any other. The girls being their usual crazy selves. I was getting ready for a girls night out and taking my girls to a babysitter (insert choir music). Sophie fell asleep on the couch, and Regan was just occupying herself with her vivid imagination and telling me all about this party she is going to. "Yeah, ok, that sounds good honey." I'd heard this party gab before. I continue to get ready and don't really recognize that it is kind of quiet....you know....too quiet. (insert creepy, butt-clenching, white-knuckled suspense music here) As I'm putting my make-up on, you know where your face is about two inches from the mirror and you have this weird open mouth thing going on (what's up with that anyway), Regan starts her rambling, about going to her party, and she's going to be late, her imaginary friend, Bill the Rainbow Guy, is going to be there, yadda, yadda, yadda, you have to have short hair to go the party........ What was that last part? I may not have caught all of what she was saying, but I did catch that much. My mouth snapped shut, my head whipped around, and all sorts of images and thoughts go whizzing through my mind. It only took about 3 seconds to figure out that she really had done what thousands of other kids have done before her. She had cut her hair. The shortest piece being above her ear. "WHAT THE HECK DID YOU DO?!?!?!", I said in a slightly raised tone;) "Mama, you have to have short hair to go to my party, and itsonlyapartyformamasandbiggirlsnamedreganandnotlittlegirlsnamedsophiesso I need to cut your hair too. She was talking fast, probably knowing that I would interupt her if she let so much as a millisecond of time lapse between words. She said all this calmly and matter-of-factly. How was I to argue with her logic and imagination. What's done is done. I heaved a great big sigh and called my hair-cutting neighbor upstairs to see if she could do an emergency repair job. She wasn't home and I realized that I only had 45 minutes til I needed to leave so I made a mad dash to change my nice clothes for grubby ones, grabbed the scissors and tried to come up with a solution to this chop job before me. Not being a stylist, it was a difficult task. Regan kept wiggling and complaining because she was itching from the hair. She kept wondering why I was cutting her hair. Can I just have a hosanna shout that Sophie was taking a rare nap!! Otherwise her beautiful curls would be gone too.

My once pretty girl with long hair......

My now pretty girl with short hair.....


Tomorrow is her first day of preschool. I'm excited for her to go. She loves to learn. I just wonder how she'll do the first day. Going to primary today she was, I think, pretty embarrassed about her hair and wouldn't go in for about a half hour. Thus the lack of decent pics to show her hair. What's done is done. Her hair grows pretty fast. BTW, that tomato she's holding is from my garden. It was big, around the size of a softball.

Sweet little Dopher

Little Dopher started going to Miss Catherine's Shining Star Preschool and she is having a great time. She loves wearing her back pack and feels so grown up.

This is her first day of school. Posing for the camera. What a ham.


She is a funny, sassy girl that loves to drink "chocolate and chocolate milk" ALL day long. The other day she and Regan were fighting and I hear Sophie say, "I'm getting madder! See my eyebrows!" >:(

In other news, I have been canning my guts out. My mom was here a while ago and we found a tree with some cherry-sized plums. The tree was loaded and spilling plums all over the side walk so we relieved the tree of some of it's burden:) I've made 37 pints of plum jam, and 2 pints of plum syrup (super yummy). We have a garden with tomatoes, so I've canned 21 pints of salsa, and 2 quarts of spaghetti sauce. Then I brought back peaches from SG and bottled 17 quarts of those. It is very satisfying to see the food I've been able to can and store, but I'm a little pooped to say the least. I may do a few more cans of diced tomatoes with the rest of the tomatoes from my garden, but not for a couple weeks. We need to be outside as much as possible before it starts getting colder and the snow traps me inside. Ciao for now......

Second Annual AZ, NV, SG Tour

So during Jason's last two weeks of school I took the girls down to Heber, then on to Las Vegas, and finishing up in St. George.
We had a great time in Heber. It was beautifully green and the temperatures were amazing from the monsoons. Loved it!! I was able to help my parents around the yard with the weed eater and trimming trees. It was nice to be able to help them in some way. It rained every afternoon I was there and after one particular pour down the whole street in front of my parents house was flooded. It was a gully washer!! The girls and I went out there after it had started receding and played. They had a great time. Brought so many memories back to me of when I was younger. We'd go out with the Cheney's after a gully washer and stomp around. Good times. We also got to see Wendy and her kids. The girls love playing with the boys. They roughed Hunter up pretty good.




We went to Las Vegas to see Kandra and her family. Kandra talked me into cutting Sophie's hair. Her first hair cut (sniff sniff).....I love the first two pics. She said, "take this happy face. Now my mad face." What a goof ball. She is a little pink cheeked from swimming all day. She is a fish out of water.

Before

After...ahhhh...much better

Regan let me take a rare picture of her.

Kandra is a crafty girl, well at least she has some crafty ambitions whether or not she follows through. She wanted me to "help" her fix up her 2 bedside tables. Her definition of help was to provide the financial backing for the materials while I did the grunt work. It was a fun project though. I love doing this kind of stuff....seeing a transformation.
The color of them really wasn't anything to look at, but it had some great contours and details that I didn't want them to get lost in the sea of black. So I distressed it to highlight those details. I think they turned out pretty awesome.



Then on to St. George. We hung out for a few days before Jason joined us after he got out of school. The girls had a good time playing in the water, getting messy with moon sand, jumpin' at jumpin' jacks, playing with cousins, and trying to get daddy wet as you can see below.




So after being gone 3 weeks it was good to get back home. Can't wait to do it again next year!!!