Tiny Tidbits Preschool

In January I decided to open up a private preschool. I was looking for a preschool to enroll Bri in in the area and I wasn't very happy with my options. There isn't very many to choose from and they are either really expensive, really hard to get into, or they didn't teach what I thought was important. I had a small preschool in Bullfrog which the school district had hired me to teach and I still had all my supplies. I had been thinking about it for a while and finally decided to ask around and see if anyone was interested. To my surprise there were ALOT of people interested. I originally thought I would be happy with five kids, but it has grown to eleven kids, AND I have a waiting list!! I am now even considering opening another session. It has been a lot of fun, and I really enjoy it. Bri is actually my most difficult challenge lately because the coolness of having so many friends over has worn out now that she has realized that it is not just play time and she actually has to work, but I am praying she will get over it.

Each week we focus on a letter from the alphabet. In this pic, the "letter of the week" was H so we had a hat day. The kids had a ton of fun playing silly hat games.

Computer Woes

Wow, I have not posted anything in way too long. It is crazy how life can get in the way. I wish I had something extremely exciting or fun to report but life has been pretty normal lately. A few weeks ago while playing a game on facebook I picked up a virus which has completely shut down my desk top and a few weeks before that Kent's laptop stopped taking any charge at all. Both fixes will cost a couple hundred dollars at least so we are now using my parents spare laptop which has its own problems. So sadly is the fact that all my pics that I have taken for the last couple years were saved on both our computers. Most of them being on my desk top and I am not sure we will ever retrieve them again. It makes me sad that the last couple years of our lives my disappear into the cyberspace universe. I do have few things that I have saved on photo bucket, but the last time I did that was almost a year ago so anything as recent as nine months ago is gone. The new pics I have taken since Halloween and Thanksgiving luckily are still on my camera, but I don't have a place to save them currently so I will have no pics on my blog for a little while until I get this problem sorted. Computers are amazing and they have done so much for our lives, but this has taken me back and made me realize that sometimes we can become too dependent on them. I never realized how much I could lose when one decided it was time to stop working for me. Nevertheless, it really hasn't slowed my computer use down much except to make me much more cautious while using facebook. Well at least I have learned that backing up your files on a separate hard drive, frequently, is a smart thing to do.

Fun with hair

Yesterday, Aurora came home from school sick (actually she never really got there, she threw up in our car pool friends van). But, after we got her all cleaned up (and the van), we decided to try entering into a hair style contest with the extra time we had in the afternoon. We decided it would be fun to do a Halloween do since its October. We figured it out, took the pictures, and then I had to leave to do some other things. Later that night, at midnight, I was getting in bed and I remembered the contest. I knew I had to finish it because Aurora would be asking me about it in the morning. My computer was moving like tar and it took forever to down load the pictures. I was working in the dark because Kent was sleeping in the bed next to me, and I was a little loopy and the words kept blurring together, but at 2:05 a.m. I sent off the e-mail.

Crazy enough, we won!!! Check it all out at http://www.cutegirlshairstyles.com/ , the link is in my right side bar. Thank you Mindy and your girls for picking us. We had a lot fun.

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus came to town a week ago, and we were lucky enough to get tickets for a great deal so we could take the girls. We surprised them with their early Birthday presents a couple days before and they were sooo excited. We went shopping the day of for the perfect Hannah Montana outfits, and then we went out to eat before the concert. The kids were so happy.

As for the concert I was a little disappointed. They hated the opening act which was Death Cab for Cutie the lead singer of which is Miley's older half-brother. My husband and I like Death Cab for Cutie, but they are definitely not for my 6 and 3 year old. And as for Miley she has really grown up and the show is really more for teenagers now than most of the 10 year old and younger audience that were present. The show itself was really cool, and the kids did have fun.

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Kent's jobs

I promised I would explain Kent's temporary absence from our family so here it is. I am happy to say that in June Kent received three offers of employment from the Clark County School district in one day. He happily choose his favorite. He decided to accept a job at O'Callaghan Middle school teaching 6th grade life science. We are all very excited about it.

We did have a problem though. He still didn't have a job for the summer, and he wasn't getting anymore subbing jobs. That is when we got a call from Kent's sister asking if there was any way he could come to Blanding for the summer to help build his dad's cabin. We have been wanting to help him for the last two summers, but our job situations haven't allowed it. He still needed a job though so he made a call to a good friend of ours in Lake Powell who is the head of HR in Bullfrog. Two hours later he got a call from Halls Crossing, Lake Powell offering him a job there in the office. Hall's Crossing is only an hour and a half away from Blanding and the plan was to work there and on his days off he would head into Blanding to work on the cabin. He left right after my grandfather's funeral in June. I was very worried about it at first. Aurora was still in school and we couldn't go with him, but we have been able to visit and the time has gone by quickly. He is coming home later this week for good, and I am so ready for him to be back. The kids have had a hard time while he has been away. Here are some pics of our visit.





Swimming off a cliff in Lake Powell.





Taking the ferry across Lake Powell to Bullfrog so we could attend church in Ticaboo (Kent changed after we got there). It was fun visiting the branch, and getting to see our old friends again.





Kent and his sister Ruth working on the cabin. It is going to be really nice when it is completed.

Bishop Grandpa

I thought I would do a quick post about my dad. The second week in July he was put in as bishop of our ward. A lot of my friends have made comments about if it is weird to have my dad as bishop. Kent's teases me that I am the bishop's daughter. I don't know why he thinks that would bother me so much when I was the branch president's wife at one time. It really is not that strange. It is a little odd since we live in the same house as him, but I am 30 years old so it really isn't the same as if I was in high school. Any ways, it has been a change. The biggest difficulty is what my dad has to go through now. He has been really stressed out about it, but I think he is beginning to feel a little more comfortable. Things will get better. The weekend he was put in my grandma Shelton and my mom's sister Dianne and my Uncle Craig, and two of my dad's brothers came down for a visit with their kids. We don't see my Dad's family very often so my kids don't remember much of my uncles kids, but they had a blast getting to know them. We decided to head up to Mt. Charleston to escape the heat.

Here is Bri, she had lots of fun walking along this log as if it was a tight rope.

Here are Aurora and my cousins hiking around the mountain stream.

This is my sis-in-law Mandy and my lil' nephew Andrew.

Fourth of July and reunion

This year we had our Shelton reunion on the 3rd and 4th of July up in South Jordan, Utah. We spent the morning of the third doing a service project fixing up my grandma's yard, and then that afternoon we went to the new Oquer Mountain temple open house (sorry if I slaughtered the spelling of that). On the fourth we spent the day at my aunt and uncles doing water games, food, and our traditional auction. That night fire works. Kent was not able to go due to his job at Lake Powell (which I will explain in a different post), but we all had fun without him.

This is my aunt Robin and and Uncle Donald's beautiful back yard. They put down a huge old billboard tarp for everyone to slip-n-slide down the hill on. That is Aurora in the middle with the pink swim suit.

Here is Aurora climbing back up the slide. No pics of me and Brianna going down, sorry. My camera's battery died.