Update

I don't really have much to talk about this week. Work is getting busier, what with the Christmas season. I've just about finished my Christmas shopping. YEAH! We've had our first big snowstorm of the year. That would be great if I could just sit and look at it. But when you have to drive to and from work in the snow, not so much fun! For those of you who check out my other blog, the one with book reviews, sorry that I haven't added anything new lately! I have a bunch of books that I want to talk about, but just haven't had the time to write reviews. I think that's just about the extent of the current excitement in my life!

Oh! One other thing. For those of you who have blogs of your own, a couple of my friends just started a new website with blog backgrounds. Right now most of them are winter scenes, and a lot of fun! In fact, they designed the background that I'm currently using. Everyone should check it out! The address is: www.intothebackground.blogspot.com

Anyways, hope everyone's having a great December so far!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This month, on Facebook, someone challanged me to post one thing each day this month that I was Thankful for. Just a way to be thankful all month, instead of just one day. So, seeing as today is Thanksgiving, I just thought that it'd be fun to post a few of the things that I've mentioned being thankful for. Some are serious; some just fun.

* I am thankful for my parents always being there for me no matter what.

* Today I am grateful for a brother that I can look up to. I am extremely proud of him!

* Today I am Thankful that K-Bull 93 played the CMA awards on their station last night! I left for work very frustrated that I didn't get to watch the awards, and found out that it was being broadcast on the radio! It just made my night!

* Today, I am thankful for the chance to spend a fun day with my mom. We went to the Family Christmas Gift Show, a yearly tradition. And then out to lunch!

* Today I am thankful that I get to work in my pajamas! On a morning like this, it's so much better to just stay comfy in my p.j.'s!

* Today I am thankful for the fact that I have two good jobs. I have been pretty frustrated with things lately, but I just have to keep reminding myself that it could be LOTS worse! I could be jobless! So I have that to be greatful for!


* Today I am thankful for my very cute puppy dog! She entertains me quite a bit throughout the day!

* Today I am thankful for Caffeine. I'm going to need it tonight!

* Today I am thankful for long, hot showers! Perfect way to warm up on a cold day!

* I am thanful that my grandma is finally letting us interview her for her life history. I am learning so many things that I never knew before!

* I am thankful for computers. I really don't know how I would get by without one!

* Long "Thankful" today so bear with me! Today I am thankful that I live in this amazing country. I am thankful to live in a country where it's all right (sometimes even encouraged) to have a differing opinion! I am thankful that I don't have to agree with everything that my government does. I am thankful for every man and woman who has ever fought for our country. I'm thankful for both those that have served in the past to make our country what it is today, and those who are currently fighting to continue to keep us free. I am also thankful for every friend and family member of every service man and woman. Sometimes I feel like the sacrifices made by those left at home are at least as great, if not greater, than the sacrifices made by those in our military.

I am thankful that I was able to grow up in a place and time that encouraged me to think for myself, make my own decisions. And I'm thankful for family and very good friends who stand by me, even when the decisions I've made aren't things that they would necessarily agree with. And I am thankful for all of the blessings that I've had in my life. There are too many to even begin to name.

And lastly, I am beyond thankful for my family, for their love and support. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they will always be there for me. Even when I've done things that I'm not proud of, I know that I can turn to them for help.

I hope that everyone has a great Thanksgiving and truly takes the time to think about all of the things that you are thankful for.

Friday the 13th

So, since there wont be another Friday the 13th until next August, I figured that I'd take a minute to mention the date! Traditionally, everyone always considers Friday the 13th to be an unlucky day. Some of the radio stations that I listen to even do whole segments of their shows for people to call in and say all of the bad things that have happened to them on Friday the 13th. But for me, I think the exact opposite is true! I LOVE Friday the 13th. I've always found it to be a lucky day for me. And even if nothing necessarily lucky happens, it's at least never a bad day. *Knock on Wood*

I don't know when it started, but ever since I was little I have always found 13 to be a lucky number for me. I've always loved that my lucky number is one that most people don't like. Even look at my email address, and my blog address: kas913. That is my initials and my two lucky numbers 9 and 13! So, I hope that this Friday the 13th, some of my luck will rub off on everyone else. Hope it's a fun one!

Hmmmm.....Sleep? or Read?

You would really think that after 27 years, I would have FINALLY learned my lesson! NEVER, NEVER, NEVER start reading a new book an hour before you need to go to sleep!!! Because if you do, instead of going to sleep in an hour, you continue to read, and read, and read. And then the next thing you know, you are looking at the clock and you have to be awake in 1 hour! I think that I would probably be shocked if I knew the exact number of nights that I didn't end up sleeping, all because I was too busy reading. I can think of MANY times even as a kid when on a weekend or summer night, I stayed up until 8am reading. Have I learned from all of those sleepless nights? Nope! Just yesterday, I was off at the Post Office, so it was a rare night when I could actually get a good amount of sleep. Considering that most days I survive on far too little sleep, you would think that I'd take advantage of this chance to catch up! Nope! I started reading a new book. 5 hours later, I finally forced myself to put the book down so that I could get at least a little bit of sleep. Will I never learn? It's a good thing that I've learned to function on very little sleep!

BTW, for those interested in knowing, the book was "The Summoning" by Kelley Armstrong. I'm a huge fan of her Otherworld series, and this book is the first book of her new Young Adult series. Look for a review of it on my other blog within the next few days!

Target Practice in Henefer

Traditionally, at about this time each year, my Uncle Mark and his sons would come into town. Then my dad, my brother, two of my uncles and a lot of my cousins (all boys) would go deer hunting up in Henefer. As all of the boys have gotten older, they tend to do their own thing now when it comes to hunting. And the older guys no longer care to stay in a camper all night out in the cold! This year, instead of hunting, they just decided to go target shooting for the day up in Henefer. And, for the first time ever, a couple of girls were alowed to tag along! Me and my cousin Kelsey. Once it finally stopped raining, we had a really fun time. We had a number of different types of targets, including shooting clay pigeons with the shotguns. I have to say that Kurt was probably the best shot, with Kyle a very close second! Hopefully we do this again soon. It was great!

Disneyland and the joys of flying standby!

So about a month ago, my family decided that we wanted to take a quick trip to California to see Disneyland all decorated for Halloween. Our family LOVES Disneyland! I couldn't even guess at how many times we've been. I think that my parents have been at least once a year since they were married. Or if they've missed a year, that's not too common. In fact, they've now been twice this year. Anyways, as Scott and I were growing up, we visited Disney most years as well. But I haven't been back for about 6 years. So this trip was long overdue! Since I work for JetBlue, we can fly standby down to California. Perfect! None of us really had a lot of time that we could take off of work, so we decided on a very fast trip. Down early Thursday morning, spend the day in Disneyland, fly back early Friday morning!

Ahhh...the joys of standby! For three weeks, the flights looked fantastic for us to get on. There were about 50 seats available on the flight, and only 6 people besides my family on the standby list. Plenty of room! 2 days before the flight, about 25 seats had sold on the plane, but that still left 25 and still only 11 people on the standby list! Perfect! Then comes the day before the flight! Every time I checked, things looked worse. More and more people we signing up for standby! By midnight there were over 40 people listed. I was just panicking! We can check in to the flight up to 4 hours before, and the order you get on board goes off of who checks in first. So I knew that it'd be a race to get checked in. Somehow, miracle of miracles, I got all 5 of us checked in fast enough that we could get on! But there is nothing more stressful than being up at 3:30 in the morning, fingers crossed that you can all get on a flight in 4 hours! I didn't want to let my family down by not being able to get us on!

The flight was great. Gotta love those TV's! So, we picked up the rental car, checked in to the hotel, walked to Disneyland, and then it was time for fun! There were pumpkins and Halloween decorations EVERYWHERE! It was so much fun to see!

Here's dad at the entrance to the park. If you look closely you can see that they made Giant pumpkin versions of some of the Characters above the entrance.

The Haunted House was one of the things that I was the most excited for! I love The Nightmare Before Christmas! It was great to see how they had completely changed all of the decorations both inside and out to go along with the movie!

Over in California Adventure, they had an entire area called "Candy Corn Acres". Everything was done with giant candy corns! They had windmills, corn stalks, flowers, and lots more! Candy Corns are one of Scott's favorite goodies, so I had to take a couple of pics of him and Kelli with the Candy Corns. Sorry, one of the pictures is a bit dark.

The rides were all great. I hadn't been on Pirates since they updated it with characters from the movies. And Scott got to go on the Matterhorn. He was pretty insistent that we needed to get on it asap, because it seems to always break down before we get a chance to go on it! We went on the Tower of Terror a couple of times. Even convinced dad to go on it the second time! The park wasn't too busy so we got to ride everything that we wanted to. I think that the longest wait we had was about a half hour. It was a really fun day!

Surprisingly, the best part of the day was probably the fireworks show! I have NEVER seen such a fantastic show! I really wish that I'd had a video camera with me! It was all Disney Villains. They had music and lights and images projected on a big screen. Even fireballs! Also, they lit up the castle with all of these different colored lights that somehow transformed it into looking like a haunted house! It was just such a fantastic quick trip! I think that we need to make a Halloween visit to Disneyland a new tradition!

Halloween at Disneyland

I am really excited! My family is heading out Thursday morning for a quick trip to Disneyland! I haven't been to Disneyland since the Jay Break-Up trip! And that time I was so stressed out that I couldn't even enjoy myself. So, I'm pretty excited. I've never seen Disney all decked out for Halloween, but the rest of my family has. And they say that it's great! Space Mountain and the Haunted House have all been changed for Halloween. The Haunted House is the Nightmare Before Christmas theme! Considering that I've been working for JetBlue for 18 months, it's about time that we finally made time to take a trip to Disneyland. I'll take lots of pictures and post them when we get back!

Book Reviews

So I decided to make a bit of a change to how I do my blog. I am part of an online book club, and I've had several people talk to me about a blog that is strictly book reviews. Well, I don't really want people that I only know online reading about my personal things in my regular blog, so I'm going to start a second blog that's reviews. I'm sure that I will still be talking about books quite a bit on here, but the second blog will only be about books! On that blog, I'm also going to open up the comments section so that anyone can comment, instead of only people that have the right accounts. So, for those of you looking for some good books to read, I hope that you check out my other blog! The link for it is up on the right hand column of the page. For the next few weeks, there will probably be a ton of new posts over there as I write reviews of a lot of my favorite books! I hope that you enjoy it!

3 Important Anniversaries

The next three days are all very important milestones for my family. All for very different reasons, and kinda fun that they are all together!

The 1st Important Day - Tomorrow, October 3rd, is my dad's Birthday! I'll refrain from teasing him about his age, because I'd hate to embarrass him! LOL! Instead, here's a little blast from the past pic of him. This was taken only a couple of years after my parents were married. I've always gotten a kick out of this picture, with his Mr. Tough Guy look. Plus on more than one occasion, I've seen my brother looking the exact same way! Just thought that it was kinda fun!



The 2nd Important Day - The next important day has always been called My Special Day. On October 4th, 1982, when I was 6 months old, I was sealed to my family in the Jordan River Temple. As most of you know, I am adopted. My mom and dad got me when I was 6 days old (on April Fools Day, but that's a whole other story!). I'm not sure what the waiting time is now for adoptions to be finalized, but back then you had to wait 6 months. This first picture is of our family outside of the courtroom that morning. The judge had just declared the adoption finalized! Sorry about the smudge on the picture! Someone had their finger over camera, and this was WAY before digital cameras!



From what I've been told, we practically went straight to the temple after leaving the courtroom. I, of course, don't remember anything about it. But I think that Scott, who was 3 at the time, has a couple of brief memories of it. I'm not sure though, we haven't really talked about it in a number of years! Here's our family, dressed all in white, standing outside of the temple!



The 3rd Important Day - October 5th is Scott and Kelli-Rae's 7th Wedding Anniversary! Wow! 7 years! That still seems crazy to me. Seems like they just barely got married. I am still so happy for them. They are perfect for each other. Scott dated a lot of girls that I really liked before he met Kelli, but none of them really seemed to complete him. I never felt that he seemed completely himself around all of them. The first time that I saw him with Kelli-Rae, I just knew that they would be fantastic together. They are just like two peas in a pod! I still have to laugh at them every time that I see them together. They are just constantly laughing and teasing each other and goofing around. I love it! I think that Kelli-Rae is the best thing that ever happened to Scott. And the great thing is that he'd be the first person to whole heartedly agree with me! This is one of my favorite pictures with Scott and Kelli and my parents.



So, those are the 3 important dates that my family will be celebrating this weekend!

October

I really hate changing the backgrounds on my blog. I'm just not as creative as some people! And I'm not very good at matching up all of the different colors to make something look good. So I figured that I found a background and color layout that I really like, and I had no intention of ever changing it. But I had to change my mind when it came to October. I mean, I have to have a Halloween background! When it comes to decorating, I think that Halloween is probably my favorite holiday. Now hopefully once Halloween is over, I'll be able to get my background back the way that I like it!

On my online book club, someone mentioned the other day that October really should be my favorite month because of the kinds of books I tend to read! I guess that's true. I mean, Vampires, Werewolves, Witches, Ghosts, Fairies, Immortal Hunters....hmmmm sounds like a Halloween costume party! lol! So, in honor of Halloween, throughout the month I'll try to share some of my favorite Halloween books, stories, poems, pictures, etc.

So to start things out, here's just a fun little poem:

Halloween Warning

On Halloween Evening, one night in the year,
When ancient graves open, all the ghosts then appear.
We flit through the shadows, we moan and we groan,
We pounce on the mortal, straying too far from home.
So Humans be wary, stay safely within
Lest a Halloween ghost scares you out of your skin!

FYI - The picture at the top of the post is the cover to a book called Hunting Ground by Patricia Briggs. I love the covers of her books! They are all so great looking!