May 2012 Adventures

Phew!! May has been a busy month! We had Nathan's Jr Prom held at the capitol.....

In which the prom queen conceded her crown to Nathan who is the true royalty around that school.

Then there was the end of the year awards banquet and Gala where Nathan took over the dance floor and showed off his magic moves.....

Lets see that again shall we?

Here's his friend the prom queen, and his get that camera out of my face face.....

Open High School of Utah won Best of State for Best Charter School; so me ( in a weird looking scarf it's better in person) and the OHSU ladies and our spouses got to go to the fancy Best of State Gala.  That's me, our graphic design and digital photography teacher, Ashley Webb, DeLaina Tonks, our amazing director of the school, and Jenny Wurm; worlds best high school counselor!

This is Nathan (in the hat of course) and his construction classmates and teachers; they had an open house to show us the house they've been building all year; cool stuff!

Ribbon Cutting!

This house is fancy enough to be in the Parade Of Homes this year!

Nathan was trained to show the home like a realtor would and point out the features to the visitors and answer questions. He did great! The kids learned how to do EVERYTHING that goes into building a home; cement forms; framing, drywall, stairs, bathrooms,  installation of HVAC, plumbing, electrical, windows, floring, doors, carpentry details etc...etc...etc.... Nathan loves it and will do the same course next year where he gets to learn the forman and management side of construction.

We lost Kevin's Grandpa Hafen this month; he was 96 years old, a great man and a great example to us all. These are the cousins. Kevin is on the right. Lynette and JaNae are in there too.

Sweet time when the veterans removed the flag from on top of the casket, folded it and give it to Grandma Marie.

Cameron has also been up to his antics; he loves to create; here's his cup pyramid.

We also took him to try out a Karate class and he loves it! He's been back a few times since, we'll see how he does! His Sensai says he has great balance and he is FAST with his punches. We are hoping he gains some confidence and focus :)

This is Cameron pretending to be a turtle; he wanted me to tie the pillow on him like so so he could crawl around with a shell; notice the green - Turtles are green you know.

Had to put in a pic of my growing nephew, Luke. He is so adorable! 12 weeks old now. My mom got to go visit this month for a bit.  Wish I could have gone too!

Well that's it for May (I think!) Thanks for stopping by!

Happenings This Year

Some random fun things that happened in the last few months.....In no particular order....trust me.

Our best friends C.J. and John had babies like a month apart.... Well...their wives did.

Cameron lost his front tooth

We found some cool sled hills in Daybreak

I went to Indianapolis for the iNACOL (online learning) conference for Open High School of Utah

I got to stay in the biggest hotel I'd ever seen; it was amazing!

Beautiful City!

Here are some of OHSU's beautiful teachers! They all did a wonderful job on their classes and presentations; we were pretty popular for a small Utah School.  Innovators in Education!

Open High School of Utah!

Cameron's class celebrated Chinese New Year

Cameron helped bake cookies; ok, this was random

My brother Dave and sister Rachel had their first little one; Lucas Dale Parkin, Born March 3rd.  I'm gonna go visit in April,  YES! Can you believe he's only 3 days old in this picture?? He is so cute and alert - ready to take on the world.

He looks like Dave here

Kevin's family came over for some Kinect time after a family wedding, we connected over the Kinect.

They had fun!

We did too!

Here are the observers.

 

Ann and Tyler had baby #3 at the end of February; we are so happy for them! Meet Drew Michael.

More to come! I realized I hadn't posted Thanksgiving or Christmas pics yet.  We'll that's what I get when I start school full time and start a brand new extra challenging job and travel for said job for 9 weeks in a row.

My Baby Turned 16!

That's right folks, my firstborn child is almost an adult.....seriously?!?!?
What happened to my life?  Well, we wont go down that road here, maybe in another post......

We had a family party Sunday, his favorite dinner on Tuesday (his actual birthday) and then a friend's party Saturday. It's been a busy week.....
Here's the opening of presents.....

This lovely gift was not subway sandwiches after all....though it would have made Nathan pretty happy either way; Jeff and Siena you totally could have saved money here!

This outfit he's wearing was wrapped up in the Subway papers.....cute!! Oh, I mean, Awesome.

Party Guests! Family from both sides; it was great to have everyone together!

 Here's the Cake.....Oreo! Nathan's favorite; I'll show you how I made it on my cooking bloggity blog.

Then the friends' party was fun too; Nathan decided on a YouTube party.  We had decorations, food, and costumes all themed; YouTube.

Double Rainbow Cupcakes; these had rainbow cake on the inside and chocolate rainbows on the outside; I'll have these on my cooking blog too then; Charlie bit my, Fingers, these were dough with a pepperoni stick wrapped in there; cut to look like a bloody nail (no blood in the real video clip; I promise) Nyan Cats Treats; just strawberry PopTarts; then Potter Pals Licorice wands; licorice dipped in white chocolate for the handles.

The only clip from above I found funny was the Potter Pals, but whatevs....

Nathan streamed a bunch of his favorite YouTube videos in a play list to watch randomly with everyone

Gifts!

Games!

Water Balloons!

And of course Costumes.  Nathan is this guy from YouTube and Old Spice TV commercials. Love it!

We decorated the house with these

Friends!

We got out Nathan's Scrapbooks at both parties for some teasing and reminiscing.

Fun Times!!

Week of Staycation

I love a good staycation.  I was able to spend tons of time with my boys; I made SURE Nathan had something awesome to do with friends every day to make his summer more fun.  He usually watches Cameron all day for me when I'm at work so I wanted him to have a vacation too!

He got to:

See a movie with me

Go to Raging Waters with a buddy from Trek

Spend the entire day with said buddy till 10pm - complete with pizza and snacks and sodas.

He also took the train to another buddy's house from school to sleep over , then the next day he took the train further north to Syracuse to spend the next 3 days and 2 nights with another buddy; then we picked him up and we went to our amazing friends' Matt and Teri's house for a get-together: Where I made Nathan's favorite dessert (Chocolate Chip Cookie pie) and he slept in their basement for the most part while we played.....

Here he is not at all awake at 5pm after 3 "sleep overs" you can see the problem

On the other hand Cameron had a great time and he's wide awake at 10pm

We also did some home decor projects during the week- I got like 6 of my closets re-organized and now I have a lovely Pantry, Hallway,  Scrapbook, Game, Master and Laundry Closet. They are AMAZING now. It's like a huge relief to open them and see organization and fabulous synergy staring back at me. It's peaceful, it really is. If I need a little Zen, I open one of these closets, take a look and let the peace and tranquility wash over me. 

Well, with home improvement projects you usually start with a HUGE mess; Which we did.....

Here are a few projects we did....

TOKEN FAMILY PHOTO WALL

It took a while (a few months for me anyway) to get mostly black photo frames (couponer skills inserted here)I got most of these 8 1/2 X 11 photo frames for $3 and the bigger ones for 75% off or more on clearances or with coupons.

Then I organized, chose and printed my favorite photos, went through archived school pics and put them all together on my couch....

 and on my ping pong table.....and on the floor.....

When they were all in frames and I was happy; it was time to organize the wall. 

I got a big roll of paper, and cut to size all the photo frames. then I labeled them; and stuck the papers on the wall with painters tape so I could space them out and have them work in chronological order.

Now my friend -  who shall not be named  - called me a way meaner name for "Overly Organized" (Anal) when I told her what I was doing..... and the process involved; but in my defense you CANNOT start hanging pictures up randomly with NAILS! If you don't like where they are you have to move them and then you have NAIL holes in your beautiful PLUM wall!!  (The HORROR) so I had to get it right the first time.....this template and hanging process took like 8 hours total AFTER all the pics were in frames.  I have NO idea how long it took to get them all chosen, printed, bought and in the frames.

Here's the paper wall all organized......

 
And here's the picture wall ALMOST done!

Honorable mention goes to Kevin and his awesomeness; he did all the hard labor whilst I did all the directing.  Oh and added bonus is that he used these handy little templates to draw leveled lines on for the pics and he measured the hanger; centering and nail holes vs the top of the frame; and he marked the nail hole spots and hammered through the paper without marking my wall up with pencil YEA!!

(I still think that I am NOT anal)

Now on to the.....

Great wall of Awesome Redness Project

This baby is in my basement; I have an Americana Theme down there and it was BORING in white, so Kevin and I chose a lovely shade of awesomeness and he painted up my wall in one evening - after 4 coats (two primer and two paint including trim) and a midnight/1am quit time this is the result!

Here it is all done with my stuff.....
 
Awesome, No?
Well, here is that mess I told you about.....I took this picture after I did dishes BTW.

The next project was to make our main floor bathroom look fun and not boring.  It is a bathroom with 10 foot ceilings and it was a boring white and now it is a:

Lovely shade of sea blue and sea green striped

Bathroom Project

Kevin did the striping and everything - he is awesome!!

Cute!!

Here it is finished with some seaside pics.

Love Love Love!!

Nice bunch of things done here; then we had a party at our place for my mom; I'll tell you about that coming up soon....here's the food link though.

Peace!