Twlight

A friend of mine recommend this book to me and it was incredible. I have never been so obsessed with a book and its characters before. I read Twilight and the sequel, New Moon in 5 days. But that isn't even the obsession part; it was the two weeks afterwards where all I could do was search the internet in hopes of finding some information on Edward and Bella. I discovered some great website that have tons and tons of information on them.
http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/ (This is the authors website and my favorite thing about it is that she has put chapters that were deleted out of the books on the site to read.)
http://www.twilightlexicon.com/ (These people are even more obsessed than I am. This site provides information pertaining to Twilight and New Moon. You can find anything and everything on the books and characters. There is a timeline, character bios, chapter discussions and summaries, etc...)
http://www.fanfiction.net/ (I found this site the most interesting. What it is, is a site where fans of the book can write there own stories about Twilight and then post them on the internet for everyone to read. Yes, I found myself reading quite a few of the stories and yes, I liked some of them a lot. My favorite one is titled The Lion and the Lamb, it is a retelling of Twilight from Edward's point of view and it was great.)
If you read the books, which I highly recommend you do, these websites will come in handy. They will also help crave your addiction while you are waiting for Book 3, Eclipse to come out in August.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my mom's birthday. She would have been 59 years old.

I miss her a lot and wish her a Happy Birthday.

Age: 57

Age: 28

Age: 3

Grandpa Hacking

I attended the funeral of my grandpa Hacking this week. He lived to be 99 years, 3 months and 23 days old. In celebration of his life I would like to share a couple of my favorite memories of him.

- My grandpa was a farmer and always had a tractor. One of my favorite things to do when my family went out to visit was to have my grandpa lift us up in the tractor bucket and drive around. We would drive up into the fields to see the cows. Once we got there he would let us down so that we could help feed the cows. For this city kids it was fun to help my grandpa do some farmin' chores.

- One of my grandpa's favorite sayings was "Come again when you can't stay so long." He would always say that and then follow it with a big hug and sloppy kiss.

We are going to miss him, especially at his 100th birthday party (family reunion) that is planned for July, but we know he had a good life and is up in heaven having a good time and bringing smiles to people's faces.

Grant Leland Hacking passed away May 16, 2007 at the age of 99 years and 3.75 months. He almost reached his goal to live 100 years. He was born January 23, 1908 to Joseph Pearson and Carrie Claire Stringham Hacking as the sixth of eleven children, 4 sister and 6 brothers. He married Mildred Lynore Bailey on December 23, 1935 in the Salt Lake LDS Temple by his name sake Heber J Grant. He lived all of his life within a mile of his birthplace except for the time he attended Utah State Agriculture College and his 18 month mission with his wife. During his life time he went from the horse and buggy to the computer era, purchasing his first computer when he was 90. Grant was a farmer and rancher all of his life and truly enjoyed his occupation even into his nineties. He loved farm work and taught many young people the joy of hard work especially his own children and grandchildren. He served an LDS mission with his wife to the White Rocks Indian Mission and Washington DC Mission. Grant served in many church positions, but his favorite was “Grandpa” in the ward nursery which he did for almost 20 years. He was delighted in his later years to grow out his beard and hair so that he could visit the elementary schools, wards and family parties as Santa Claus. A six year old was heard to make the comment, “Now that’s the real Santa Claus.” He lived to see all of his children and many grandchildren graduate from college. One of his delights was showing his children the world. Grant and Mildred took their children and their spouses on wonderful trips to Mexico, Israel and Hawaii. Grant is survived by his children Eleanore (Lynton) Scott of Trinity Center, CA, (James Ely) of China, Brent and (Roberta) Hacking of Langley WA, Douglas and (Adrian) Hacking of Layton, UT, (William Beesley) of Draper, UT, and Barbara and (Berkley) Hall of Vernal. Grant and Mildred have 29 grandchildren and 47 great-grandchildren. Grant was preceded in death by wife Mildred, two daughters, Sandra Ely and Marilyn Beesley, daughter-in-law, Cherry Hacking, two grandchildren, his parents and all of his siblings.

Guitar Hero Update

I'm proud to say that after many long hours of practicing I received my first perfect song on Guitar Hero. Instead of 5 black stars I received 5 yellow stars. (Yes, it was totally worth the yellow stars.) It was quite the feat and I am very proud of myself. I'm sure there will be many more exciting developments on Guitar Hero and I'll be sure to keep you posted.

Audio Books

I LOVE, let me repeat, LOVE audio books. I have a 15-20 minute commute and I tend to get lots of road rage while I'm driving. The radio doesn't seem to help either, it usually just adds to my already bad mood because of all the commercials and so few songs they play. Then I discovered listening to books while driving. I have found that listening to a book while driving makes all my anger melt away. I like being in the car now, sometimes I wish I could drive around longer (I don't though because of gas prices) so that I could keep listening to the characters and hear their stories. When I bought my vehicle it came with a CD player and a tape player. At the time I thought, what am I ever going to do with a tape player. Well, it has come in quite handy. The audio books at the library are more readily available on tape then they are on CD, so I can usually find what I am looking for and can drive away happy with my audio book playing.

Cousin Get Together

When my cousins get together we like to talk and have fun and talk and be loud and oh yeah, did I mention talk. We see each other when there is a bridal or baby shower, but that just wasn't enough, so my sister-in-law had a great idea and decided to put together a scrapbooking/card making party where we could get together and of course talk, but also make something cute. We get together once a month and have a great time making really cute scrapbooking pages and cards. Here are a few of samples:

Sally's Card: Happy Father's Day

Angie's Pages: Happy Birthday

Heather's Pages: You Are My Sunshine

Fashion Show

If you would like to watch the fashion show, here it is. The first minute or so is a description of my sister's design style. Then the fashion show starts.

Seven Nights in Paris

This was the title of my sister's Fashion Show that took place last Friday night (I was in it, my first model debut and it was totally awesome.) My sister is in a fashion design class at school and for the final assignment she had to assemble a portfolio of all the clothing she had made throughout the year and put on a Fashion Show Extravaganza. Her line of clothing is called Maran (which is also her middle name.) There were 16 girls that participated in the fashion show and out of all those girls, my sister won the category for Most Original and Marketable. I am really proud of her. She did a great job and the clothing she makes is really cute.

My sister, Miss Fashion Diva. She is the designer and seamstress of all the clothing.

Doesn't the look on her face just say, "I'm a model and I don't care."

I saw Paris Hilton wearing this exact outfit last week.

It is going to be very popular this summer.

The Models

From casual to party these outfits can be worn for all occasions.

I'm not claiming to be a model

(pretty obvious from the picture)

just that I had a lot of fun doing it.

Never Fly Southwest

This should be self explanatory but for those of you who have never flown Southwest or who have blocked the horrible experience out of your mind and forgotten, let me remind you so that you don’t make the same mistake I did. I recently took a business trip and was booked on Southwest (unfortunately I didn’t make my own travel arrangement or this never would have happened.) My brother, who was also on the same Southwest flight, but who knew better, changed his ticket to Delta. He tried to warn me, but did I listen, no, I didn’t want to pay the change fee. In hindsight it TOTALLY would have been worth it. The reasons being: 1. The no assigned seating policy. If I am going to get stuck with a middle seat, it should be because I didn’t book my flight early enough and all the good seats were taken, not because I didn’t show up to the airport two hours early to stand in line. 2. The sarcastic yet not so funny flight attendants. 3. All the crying and screaming children. Because Southwest is usually cheaper than other airlines it seems that more families fly with them. Good for them for saving money, but bad for me. If one more kid would have started crying or kicked the back of my seat again, I would have snapped. 4. The Southwest flight had a layover, where as the Delta flight my brother took was non-stop. So let my suffering be a valuable lesson to you all, Never Fly Southwest.

Mad Gab

A couple of months ago we had game night at our house and one of the couples brought the game Mad Gab. We had a blast playing it, so yesterday while I was in the toy/game section at Target I saw it and bought it. We played it last night and it was as fun as I remember. Some of my favorite phrases: “Tubby Horn Hot Tubby,” “Abe Hat Chill Harp Add” and “ Abe Hole Hutch Hip Sand Hip.” (See comments for the answers.)

Dinner Group

Dinner Group is by far one of the best things I have ever joined! Basically what it is, is you swap dinner each week. A friend of mine started it with me. She chose Tuesday nights and I took Thursdays. What happens is on your night you are in charge of making a main dish and one side dish and delivering it to the family. I love coming home on Tuesdays and not worrying about rushing around and getting dinner ready, because around 6:00pm it is delivered to my house. Each person makes a serving of four. My husband and I usually have left overs which we love, because we get to eat it for lunch the next day and it has cut back on our eating out budget. Besides those, there are other great benefits too. 1. Instead of running to the grocery store every other day like I used to do, I now go once a week on Wednesdays to pick up the items I need to make my dinners. 2. I have actually started to enjoy cooking. What I do is I set aside time on Wednesday nights (while I'm watching America's Next Top Model of course) to make my dinner. That way when I get home from work on Thursday, all I have to do is put it in the oven or heat it up on the stove. 3. And this is the best part, I get a home cooked meal or have left-overs almost every day of the week and I only have to cook once. I tell everyone I know about it, because I think it is such a great idea and now my cousin and another friend do it too.

3 Yummy Dinners!

Reality TV

I LOVE reality TV. I just can’t get enough of it. Those are always the shows I watch first on the DVR. My favorites in no particular order are; Survivor, Amazing Race, America’s Next Top Model, The Bachelor and The Apprentice. I mean who honestly can say that they don’t like “The Donald.” The other great thing I love about reality TV is that they play all the shows until the season is over. They don’t take spring break or Christmas hiatus or whatever the networks are calling it where they play 4 episodes and then it is 6 weeks of reruns, play 4 more episodes and then sorry its fall interlude so here are some more reruns again. I will miss all my favorites during the normal summer break; Tyra Banks, Phil and Jeff (hosts for Amazing Race and Survivor) but when they return in the fall I will have my DVR set to record.