Thanksgiving

Ok, So I am a little late with this post....i have been sick and we have been busy, but I just couldnt pass up the opportunity to publicly thank my Heavenly Father for all the amazing blessings he has given us and to remind myself that despite quite a rough year of 2008, We should never complain nor be ungrateful for we truly are blessed. So....I am reminding myself....in a generalized list. I thought about naming each thing individually, but my family takes up more than 50, so i will keep it simple for any readers, but mostly this is for me.

I am so grateful first of all for my savior, and for his amazing sacrifice so that we could repent and have the opportunity to return our Father in Heaven. I have done some stupid things in my life, and have learned the meaning of repentance and am humbled at the thought of the things the savior suffered for my mistakes, my sorrows, my pains. We do not know such love and I am so grateful for his gift and for the continuous gifts of love he gives in the great big and the small and simple things in my life.

I am so grateful for my amazing husband. I am absolutely head over heels in love and cant believe i have such a wonderful man to be my eternal companion. He is handsome, loving, sweet, loving, caring, helpful, patient, stubborn (when i need it), thoughtful, smart, hard working, funny, playful, and my everything. Eldon I love you!

I am grateful for the wonderful family that i inherited when I married Eldon. The Larson family is beyond words. It is crazy and perfect at the same time. Everyone gets along and loves being together and spending time together. We always have a blast together and I am so grateful to be a part of such a happy family. I never wanted to be an "in-law" nor to have any, and with this family, you are family just the same and that is exactly how it should be.

I am also so very grateful for my own amazing family, for the chaos, and the calm. I love the memories I have of growing up and the fun I had with my own brothers playing "super stef" and "super boog" on the trampoline. I love that we are still good friends now and have a great time together. I love that my parents are always there to support me in good times and especially in bad. I am grateful for the person they helped me become.

I am grateful for amazing friends who taught me so many valuable life lessons and who continue to love and stay in touch in various ways (yeah for blogs!). I wish we could spend more time together but I cherish all our time and our memories together.

I am grateful for the blessing of 2008- especially for our health. It has been a rough year healthwise but we are still here and probably better for all our trials this year and yet through everything, we have a beautiful new house, an adorable new puppy, a great new car and hopefully another new car shortly! We both have work right now and are able to pay our bills and even donate a bit to those less fortunate than us.

And From all our trials this year, I am especially grateful for the gift of the priesthood. We have had numerous priesthood blessings this year, and I dont think that we would be where we are without the amazing gift and blessing of the priesthood and the gospel as well.

And just incase i missed anything or anyone important....Thank you for the gift you are in our lives and the blessing and joy you bring.

Santa visited the Larson house early this year

Introducing the cutest little pre-Christmas present ever.....The mighty Zeus!!!

He he. We have been wanting a puppy for a very long time, but wanted to wait until we had a house with a yard, well we got one, and found the most adorable little boy online. He is maybe about a foot long and weighs just over 1 pound, which is mostly fur. He is just a big puffball. He has such a wonderful personality. He loves to cuddle, he doesnt bark unless he is playing and even then it takes a lot to get him riled up enough to make noise. He is great with children and other dogs and is just so freakin adorable. He would be perfect if he was totally potty trained, But we cant have perfection right away I guess. He is close though.

Congratulations Divers

For the past couple of months, I have been coaching 2 different High School Diving Teams- Red Mountain and Skyline. It has been a blast to be back in the diving world (blast from the past :P) But it was alot of fun and I had some really great kids. Last week was the state finals and I had 3 divers make it to the state competition. Ryan placed 7th, which is awesome for a sophomore, and two of my senior girls from Skyline, Lauren and Khazia placed 3rd and 15th. They did awesome and I am very proud of them, and proud to have played a small part in them getting to this point.

Bye Bye Blue....Hello Beautiful

Before.....




After.....


We got new granite counter tops!!! No more ugly blue (sorry Donna :P ) I am so excited. It has made such a difference in the kitchen! Now I just have to stain the cabinets and the kitchen will be beyond beautiful!!!! I just wanted to say thanks to Valerie and my Scot! They hooked me up with my beautiful new counter tops!! If anyone wants granite- Epic Renovations has the best stuff!! I would definitely recommend them to anyone!

Happy Halloween!!!

Happy Halloween Everyone!!! I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween. I really enjoy this holiday but for the past couple of years we have been bums (not literally, bums as in, not really done much). This year my cousin August and his wife Melissa threw a Halloween party. It was a lot of fun. They had a costume contest (we were in second place by 1 vote), yummy food, a donut eating contest ( my sister Nauni won for the girls ), bowling with pumpkins, and just some fun times. Eldon and I were Hercules and Meg from the Disney version of Hercules,

but everyone thought we could be the couple from 300....didnt see it, but I will take their word for it. (Check out my hot hubby!! )

Nauni and my cousin Melissa were scary fairies

and my Brother and Cousin August were MAC and PC from the commercials.

I thought it was pretty creative. We had a blast hanging out with family and meeting new friends out on this side of town, but we were a little sad not to be at our house for trick or treaters for the first year....oh well. This year, Halloween was for us and we had a blast! Hope Halloween was happy for you all as well!

My First Time

Lame, I know, but yes this year was the first year that I carved a pumpkin all by myself. Eldon did give me some good pointers, but I did it! This is definitely a tradition that I want to keep. It was a lot of fun, but I had no idea that pumpkins dont last very long. :( It didnt even make it to Halloween. Sad, oh well. I am still proud of myself. Eldons pumpkin is the transformers symbol for those of you who arent in the know. and mine is eating the small pumpkin. I was laughing so hard carving the small pumpkins scared face that i think it turned out more like a smile ( or at least that is what my grandma saw when she "oh its cute" ha. oh well..... Happy Halloween!!

Back from the Dead

Hopefully!!! Many of you may not know, we basically died (at least from our social lives) for the month of October. Eldon had his surgery to remove his giant kidney stone and then had to deal with a stint for a week (not fun, but he was a good sport). He kept me company while I was on bed rest- and no not for a happy reason like a baby.....for a stupid cyst that burst and caused internal bleeding and so much pain that I thought I was going to die, and resulted in my first ever hospitalization. I never want to go through that again!!! It was absolutely miserable. Hopefully that is all behind us. We are feeling much better and back to work and school and starting to pick up on some of the things that dropped off....such as the blog. (So sorry for the long time with no posts :) One of the good thing that came out of all of this was the great company we had. I am so grateful to Mom and Dad Larson for coming to our rescue when we needed some extra help (its no good to have both of us out of commission). We also had Mack and Valerie out for a few hours to visit and see our new place. They brought their dog and I thought it was so funny.

T

the dog (Damage....yes that is the name) apparently was cold at our house because he snuggled right up to my heating pad and blanket....please ignore the ugly pictures of me, i just had been released from the hospital, but i think it is funny.

We also had Misti's family out. They entertained us with Rock Band. It was a riot. The kids were really good!!!! Grant Man rocked it on the guitar

and Olivia hit every note singing.

Issac really liked the drums and liked that Uncle Eldon helped him win!!

Thanks for playing with us guys!! It was a lot of fun. We had some other wonderful visitors as well, but I didnt take any pics. Sorry! Anyways, that was our October basically. No fun...hopefully the rest of the year goes much better.