LIVIN' LEWIS

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Family History

Today in Relief Society, we had a lesson on Family History and doing temple work for our ancestors. The teacher asked what kinds of things we can do to get our kids interested in family history. One lady said to take them to the temple to do baptisms for the dead when they are 12, another said to take a trip to a place your ancestors once lived or a place where they crossed the plains, etc. I raised my hand and said we also need to get them excited about family history that is being happening right now in our lives too and get our kids to write and take pictures about their lives. I told them how I felt that I am making a contribution to my family history by documenting what is happening today by taking lots of pictures. It was also at that moment that a little lightbulb went off in my head about this blog. I haven't written much lately or taken many pictures because I have felt like there has not been a lot going on. I realized today that that can't be farther from the truth. Writing about what might be just an ordinary day for us, could be an extraordinary family history moment for future generations to come when they read about us. Does that even make sense? It donned on me that futute generations will be able to come here to my blog and see our family history come to life. They will be able to see my kids grow up through pictures (I love taking pictures!) They will be able to make a connection with us and really, really know us. If either of my grandmothers had kept a journal/blog I would be fascinated to read about their lives as mothers and see my own parents as little kids.

My family history moment today is going to be about this picture. It was taken in 2010 at Grandpa's 90th birthday party at Golden Corral. One of the gals today said to make sure to label your pictures so that later on, people will know who is in the picture. It was a good reminder to do so:
Marcie Lewis, Dan Lewis Jr.
Carly Lewis, Galen "Dutch" Woltkamp, Hunter Lewis
Fisher Lewis

We went to church earlier today and sat in the foyer while Dan prepared his lesson. He teaches the 16 yr old kids. Such a last minute guy and yet a fabulous teacher. He always pulls off a great lesson. I was able to sit by Jessica and her family and catch up with her for a bit. Fisher went to his Primary class with no issues! Yay! Usually he wants me to come and sit by him and I have to sneak out of sharing time without him noticing. After church we went over to my mom's for dinner. The kids played and had a ball together in the back yard. Dan played cards with my mom, sisters and my grandpa Dutch Woltkamp. Grandpa can't hear very well, but he's as sharp as a whip and very witty. It's always good to see and spend time with him!

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Coloring Eggs

Since we don't have chickens anymore (since Dan got a new "bird dog" that ate the last few we had) Our neighbor has been giving us eggs from his chickens every weekend. I really love how the colors turn out a rich, deep color when you use brown eggs!

We didn't have any regular vinegar so we made do with this weird stuff that Dan bought that came from the Philippines. It was the same kind of vinegar he had while on his mission there.

Dan's bbq'ed shrimp avocado burger. I ate one similar -the shrimp. They were really good, and big.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

When they were 2

When my kids were 2, they would fall asleep in random places!

Hunter in a huge pile of toys he dumped out of the toy bin!

Carly asleep at my feet under the desk downstairs!

Fisher asleep in the tub!

Monday, March 12, 2012

Free Zoo Day

Maybe you already know this, but for the months of November, December, January & February the Zoo has free days on the last wednesday of each month. While the older kids were in school, Fisher and I braved the cool temperatures and had a great time together. His favorite was the tiger and the giraffes. I totally caved and let him take an expensive ride on the merry go round but the smile on his face was totally worth it!

Monday, March 5, 2012

can you spell p.u.k.e?

Let me start out by saying that I haven't blogged much in the past few months and the main reason was because my computer was SO slow.
Slower than cold tar.
It's annoying when it takes a web page 3 minutes to load and shockwave flash keeps crashing.
It's annoying when the computer freezes up because you opened one extra webpage.
So I was only getting on to check the coupon deal blogs and to try to watch a show on Hulu and that was tricky in itself and pretty slow and annoying too.

But now, I am HAPPY to report that my computer is lightning fast! Thanks to my good friend Jessica's husband, JD. I know my computer was a pain in the butt to work on but he did it for me and I REALLY appreciate it! I just had like 15 pages open at the same time in Google Chrome and the computer had NO problems!

THANKS JD!!

He said he would trade horse rides for his kids for working on it, but I would give them rides anyway :) I told Jessica I would take her and her kids down to Gardner Village one day and take pictures for her too.

Now that I'm past the whole "I'm back" speech, lol I want to tell you about a day of orange and the letters p, u, k, and e

Last October-
Well, let me back up a bit more...
last February 2011 Dan said he was going to put me in for the rifle deer hunt.
I thought he was joking.
He wasn't.
My letter came from the state saying I had drawn out.

The evening before opening day came in October 2011 and I scrambled to find myself and the kids orange to wear the next day. I was successful in my endeavor.
When it was time to go to sleep, it was really late and I was not feeling very good. I figured I would sleep off my "not feeling good."

I didn't. We got up at like 4:30, got everyone dressed and headed out. We were going hunting with my parents, my brother Shane and his wife Becky, and their kids. The whole time I'm telling Dan "I don't feel very good."
I try to sleep in the truck on the way there and I do get a little rest.
When we arrive, we do lots of driving.
And I do lots of trying to talk myself out of puking.
My talking doesn't work and I yell for Dan to "Pull over!"
and then I wretch my guts out on the side of the dirt road.
Little did I know this scene would keep replaying itself over the rest of the day.

We arrive at this beautiful place and everyone sets out some chairs to watch a hill and meadow for deer. I slouch in my chair, still trying to talk my self out of being sick. It doesn't work. I take this picture of my dad-
and then go puke behind the truck.

and then I take this picture of Haylee-
and puke.

and then this cute picture of Kasey-
and puke.
And I don't even see a deer in that meadow that I could shoot with my rifle or my camera.
So I decide to lay down in the truck until it is time to drive on to another spot.

Once we get going again, I sit in the passenger seat and lean my head on the passenger door window, close my eyes and listen to the kids chatter in the back seat. They are having a fabulous time.

When we came to this place, I actually laid down in the bed of the truck while everyone else enjoyed the beautiful fall colors and the kids played pretty quietly because they knew they were watching for deer. I just wanted my own bed, and my bed was hours away.

After a little while, I wake up in the bed of the truck and I think I am feeling a little better. My mom feeds me half a sandwich and a coke and I'm good for about 10 minutes. And then the nausea and dizziness come back and I'm puking my guts out behind the truck again. Yes, gross.

And then I take this cool picture where Shane was showing Fisher how to look through the scope.

This is my sister in law Becky with my brother. Becky was so good to me and brought me a napkin after my puking. I just kept telling everyone I was sorry, and my dad kept telling me he was sorry I was sick. Me too dad, me too, lol.

Looking back now, I am glad I had my camera to capture God's earth in all her fall beauty.
~Although my appreciation didn't come until after I was feeling better.

and that was two weeks later!
Dumb 2 week stomach flu!
And no...
I didn't even get a deer-

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Money Machine

Every year, the kids have a fundraiser at school selling Happenings books. I love it because I am always using my book. It's got some great stuff in there. My favorite are the coupons up front for totally free items at various restaurants. I also love the Smiths coupons to save $5 when you spend $50 (before any coupons are applied). So, I always try to use my highest value coupons along with the $5 off for some great savings.

The school did something new this year for the kids...

THE MONEY MACHINE

Dan took the kids to his office and between the 2 of them, they sold enough books to be able to have them both take a turn in the money machine at school. I think there were like 16 kids from the whole school that got to do it and 2 were mine, lol. They did it during their lunch time so I went to watch. I was the only parent there. They each had their own technique. Hunter made sure he wore a long sleeve shirt that buttoned up the front that he could tuck in. He used the "grab and stash in your shirt" method.

He ended up with $5 and a coupon for free chips and salsa at Chilis

Carly used the "grab and hold method" I think it worked out good for her.

She ended up with $8

Monday, January 9, 2012

Year 13 of cutting down our Christmas tree

With the exception of a single year (before we had kids and still lived at our old house) when I bought a tree at Smiths Marketplace, we have traveled up a canyon somewhere and cut down our Christmas tree every year since we've been married. That's 13 out of 14 years of cutting trees! This was a a particularly busy holiday season and I didn't know how we were going to fit in a tree cutting trip, but somehow we did. I have a love/hate relationship with this tradition. Well, maybe hate is too strong of a word. I don't hate it, but some years, like this last super busy Christmas season, I was really wishing I had a beautiful pre-lit tree that I could put up and decorate at my own convenience without the mess. It's okay to call me a Christmas tree Scrooge, because I totally was. I have even looked for a screamin' after Christmas clearance deal on a tree as recently as 2 days ago. But alas, the only one they had at 90% off at Target was nearly a foot shorter than me... and I'm pretty short.

We usually try to go the weekend after Thanksgiving to cut a tree but it didn't happen this year. Life was just way busy. It wasn't until about a week and a half to two weeks later that Dan called on his way home from work one night and unexpectedly said "Let's go cut our tree!" I had like 5 minutes to help everyone find their winter clothes. Notice in these pictures that Carly has on 2 totally different gloves, Fisher has only 1 glove and Hunter is sporting no gloves at all. Ha! We piled into Dan's truck and zipped up the canyon shortly before before dark.

Dan and I used to make a day of it and take a couple hours searching for the "perfect" tree before making our decision. Maybe we've gotten better at knowing what tree is going to work in our house and what won't, or maybe we are not as picky as we used to be but we found this tree at mock speed! One thing we have learned is that the tree cannot be taller than Dan can reach. Otherwise, the tree will be too tall and we may end up with a sap stain on the celing like we did about 8 or 9 years ago when Dan put the stand on and shoved the tree into an upright position and the tree was too tall. Another thing we have learned is that looking at the size of a tree on the mountain is totally different than actually looking at it in your house. It seems like every year we get the tree home and say "Wow, it didn't look that big on the mountain! It's huge! It didn't seem as wide as it really is!"

Dan pulled out his little saw and lickety split, the tree was cut and loaded into his truck and we were on our way home.
The kids did nearly all the decorating themselves. I just helped throw on some lights and let them have at it.

Although I don't always love going to cut down a Christmas tree,
my kids love it.
And I love that they love it.
And so the tradition lives on :)

Sunday, November 13, 2011

4th grade, 1st grade and Preschool

I am a little slow but here are the pictures from the first day of school:

Hunter is now in 4th GRADE! Wow how time flies. He has a class that is split between two teachers. One teaches monday, tuesday, and every other friday. The other teaches wednesday, thursday and every other friday. It seems to be going okay. The only problem we've run into is he turned an assignment in to the teacher on tuesday and the other teacher on wednesday said he did not turn it in and gave him a zero. Obviously, I did not think this was fair so I went in on the following monday to talk to the teacher he actually turned it in to. She could not find it either but said she would not give him a zero, as she had seen him working really hard on it. We'll see how it goes. He said they are both really nice and we had a positive parent teacher conference last week.

Little Miss Carly is now in 1st grade. This was totally weird to me because I kept on thinking I was late picking up a kindergartner since she is now at school all day. I quickly got over that and am enjoying some one on one time with Fisher while the other two are having fun at school. She is loving first grade! Her teacher is new at the school but has been teaching for 10+ years and she is SO nice. She has a Hollywood theme in her classroom and tells the kids they are all "Stars" I love it.

Little Mr. Fisher-man. Love this kid. Such a poser in this picture. Can you read what his shirt says? "What happens in Preschool stays in Preschool" Ha ha. Yep, my BABY is 4 and in preschool this year! He goes to our local high school and I love it because they have 1 high school student teacher to every preschool kid. Since the High School is on a block schedule, he rotates between two teachers. Mr. Braden and Miss Manda. I asked him how Braden was and he told me Braden was "Lots of Nice" When I asked him if Miss Manda was lots of nice too, he replied "Uh uh" I asked why. He said "Because I don't like her." I then asked "Why?" He said, "I don't know. I just don't" Hmmmm. Does not surprise me because he said this because he is in this phase where he does not like ANYTHING you suggest to him. Does not matter what you say, he says the opposite. Hoping he will grow out of it, lol. Sure he will :)