Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Visiting the Stettlers in Peoria Illinois....

Today we went to Nauvoo to visit the church sites (really-there's not much else to do there)

Crossing over the Mississippi River

We went to all the old shops- And Carson learned how to use a newspaper press


Then we learned how to make our own hemp ropes & got to keep it.  This is Emily chasing after Carson trying to get the end of the rope.....






 The Nauvoo temple is very beautiful! Hopefully I can go back when I have time to be there longer!

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Update

I've been a slacker at updating our blog....nothing really exciting to post about I guess.

We went to Pompano Beach, Florida August 6th-13th with Elden's parents, Carrie & Michael.  It was AWESOME-I wish we lived closer to a beach!!!! We went to the beach almost daily and ate a ton of Blue Bell ice cream (Thus-no pictures) :) Seriously-I personally only took 2 pictures while we were there and it was while we were waiting on a bridge to close in Key Largo.

It was a perfect vacation other than when the old guy ran into our rental car... we're still waiting for his insurance to pay us back since the rental company took our deductable from our credit card and then his insurance tried to stick us with a $300 bill. Luckily we have an attorney in the family who coached Elden on what he needed to say (Thanks Dave).

Exciting for us-we're ALMOST done with the big room in the basement.  Over the past year Elden's been putting up new drywall and re-wiring down there (which is a lot of work and he did a great job! I'm lucky I married someone so handy!).  We finished painting it last Friday night and now we're just waiting to put the floor in. I'm SUPER excited because I can move my office back home and try to re-organize everything since i'm running out of space for all the stuff i'm not really sure how i ended up with :) I've been trying to get rid of things every weekend but it doesn't seem to make any difference....how does that work?

I started "selling" Mary Kay....so if anyone wants to buy any from me you can go online to www.marykay.com/gretchwarner or just call me :)

Elden's Brother Dale & his wife Stephanie had their little girl Claire in July...she is SOOOOO cute!


I think that's it...

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Busy June!

June has been a busy month for me! Yesterday I realized I've been doing stuff non-stop and much to my relief, I don't have anything else planned for a while! Which I'm sure will make Elden happy so I can cook and clean the house every once in a while!

My mom and I flew to Oregon on the 8th to visit my sister Penny and her family.  The trip to Redmond was HORRIBLE!!! Full of missed connections because of delayed flights, crappy customer service and ghetto hotels!

The first day we were in Oregon was Blake's last baseball game.  Blake even got to pitch for the first time. 

A few days later was Caylyn's dance recital. It was fun to see her dance-I hadn't seen her dance in several years and she's really getting good! (For some reason-I only took videos of her entire dances and didn't get ANY pictures of her)  Her dances were really good, but there's nothing more entertaining than the little 4-6 year olds "dancing".  A couple of them had the whole auditorium almost rolling on the floor with laughter!

The rest of the trip we mostly hung out at the house (I worked some), Penny I did our normal shopping excursions, I got an eye exam from my brother-in-law Todd and I got some new sunglasses :) Mostly though, it was nice spending time with the Sheldon's! I really miss them!

The Sunday I was there, Kiley, Caylyn and I made "Hamburgers" out of cupcakes, brownies and frosting.  We tried to make french fries out of sugar cookies but they didn't turn out very good.


Our trip home was easy and un-eventful. I had one day to recover/catch up on work and then I had to go help at church with Cub Scout Day Camp Friday & Saturday.  Friday was absolutely insane and unorganized because the lady who had planned it, hadn't really asked anyone to help her so she was trying to run the whole thing herself resulting in near chaos.  Saturday was a TON better because I helped her delegate the activities and told her to just oversee everything so she didn't kill herself.  Of course, it's always a near death experience when there are about 30some 8-11 year olds all together! :)
Then Monday at work, my dad, brother and I had a meeting, and Will informed me that I needed to start driving up to Monument again every day to work with him and so I could teach Brandi (his wife) to do my job and I would be his personal assistant basically.  Anyone that knows Will and I, know that we don't work well together because we're too alike (not that he'll admit it-he thinks I'm just un-rational because I'm a girl or something).  We both like to be in control and we both speak our mind (which can result in some nasty fights) and I knew that working in the same space again wouldn't be an ideal situation for us to continue to get along!  The stress from that seemed to cause a near emotional breakdown :) I think I'm getting over it now though-or I guess I'm just half expecting to get a good system working with Will and I, and get Brandi trained, and then I'll get to move my office back home.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Lastly-the past several weeks I've been planning a baby shower for my sister-in-law Stephanie who is due next month.  I've never thrown a baby shower before and I was stressing out about it! I spent probably around 12 hours making 50 of the cutest invitations EVER! (Without my Cricut it might have taken even longer!)
  

Yesterday was the baby shower and it turned out great! There were like 14 people that came and I think everyone enjoyed it.

Now for the rest of the summer I've got nothing (hopefully other than work) to stress out about! Only things to look forward to! Trina and I are going to see Twilight next week (excited 1 because it's the new Twilight and 2 because I've not hung out with my good friend Trina in a few years!) and then in August, Elden and I are going to Florida for a week.  Elden's parents, little sister Carrie and little brother Michael are coming with us also.  My parents gave me a week to their time share-so I'm pretty stoked! A week on the beach...need i say more?

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Coupons

I'm not going to lie-I'm an excellent shopper! Yes-sometimes I spend WAY too much money on things I don't necessairly need, but when it comes down to it, I know how to save. Growing up in a big family, my mom used to shop with coupons for groceries (with 9 kids she kind of HAD to).  My job was to cut out the coupons, organize them and ocassionally go through them and get rid of the expired ones.  For some reason I always enjoyed it.  About a year ago I decided to try couponing myself-even though it's just Elden and I.  I had to make a game of it otherwise it can get kind of hard-so my goal was to see if I could save more than I spend- specifically more than 1/2 off (which i've been able to do plenty of times)
The purpose of this post is because I'm pretty impressed with myself today.  Since it was slow at work (and since I work from home) I decided to go grocery shopping to get some pork chops for dinner and see if I could find any chicken on sale.  I came home with 6 boxes of cereal (the good stuff too! Froot Loops, Cookie Crisp and Cheerios) 4 boxes of pop tarts, 2- 12 packs of Charmin TP, an 8pack of Bounty Paper Towels, 2 large bottles of Dawn Hand Renewal Dish Soap, 2 cartons of Bryers ice cream, 2 packs of porkchops, and a thing of sprinkles I found on the discount cart in the back of the store to add to my baking stash.  Total Spent-$34.03 .  Total Savings of $67.77 (between store sales and coupons)
Not bad huh?

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

My Granny


I wish everyone had a Granny like I did! She passed away yesterday morning after battling cancer for several years.  My whole life she's been close by and it's strange thinking about not having her around anymore-and now when I have children they won't know what "gimme some sugar" means :) 
I know I'll see her again, but I sure will miss her until I do!