LOVE this site! So I'm soooo obsessed with decorating my house. Unfortunately my budget doesn't keep up with my taste. Check out my ideas and make some of your own!
http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=3387021


This is my new bedroom.


This is the starts of my basement. I'd like to paint the walls blue. More like the blue of the bathroom than this blue.



And here is the beginnings of my living room. This one is the biggest work in progress.

It's Football Season!!!

Phew, what a squeaker. They better not turn the ball over like that against some of these bigger teams or it's going to be a long season.

BYU 41 UNI 17

Top 100 Books

I stole this straight from someone’s blog. Who knows how reliable it is but I think it’s FUN! This is a list of the top 100 books ever published. Supposedly, the average person has only read 6 of these books.

I tag everyone. This is what you have to do:

1. Copy the list on your blog.
2. Read through the list and mark the books you've read.
3. Italicize-Books I would recommend

1. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
2. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
3. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
4. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
5. Life of PI - Yann Martel
6. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett-Erica-Wonderful Story worth reading
7. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
8. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
9. Jane Eyre-Charlot Brontte-E- Favorite Book of all time!
10. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee-Erica and Jason
11. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte-Erica and Jason Started
12. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell-Erica and Jason -Love Love Love anything Orwell writes
13. His Dark Materials (trilogy) - Philip Pullman
14. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens-E and J
15. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller-J
16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien- E and J-I read the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as an adult. If you haven't read it yet you'll enjoy it!
17. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger -E and J
18. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
19. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky-E
20. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
21. Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis-Erica and Jason-We LOVE C.S Lewis and read these once a year
22. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis-E and J
23. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
24. Animal Farm - George Orwell -E and J-Again I Love Orwell.
25. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
26. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck-E and J-This book started me on other Steinbecks. I also liked East of Eden. Be careful if you're easily offended you may not like it.
27. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
28. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens-J
29. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White-Erica and Jason-Ummm How can anyone never read this book!
30. Hamlet - William Shakespeare-E and J-College
31. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl-E-Love IT!
32. Complete Works of Shakespeare-E-So when you listen to General Conference the 12 are very well read and often use literature and poetry to emphasise Gospel principles. It sent me on a quest to read Shakespeare. Well worth it!
33. Ulysses - James Joyce-Erica-Joyce is FANTASTIC!
34. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
35. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo-E and J started-LOVE this book! You just have to skip the first 100 pages the first time you read it!
36. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen-E -What woman doesn't love Austen
37. The Bible- Jason (Front to back not from a class. I find this impressive even in Spanish)
38. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
39. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
40. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck-Erica and Jason Started-Favorite Steinbeck
41. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy-Next book!
42. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -I've read A Thousand Splendid Suns and LOVED it! It's a tragedy so if you don't want to be exposed to abuse, and sacrifice you don't want to read it.
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen-E and J
45. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
46. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
47. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery-Erica in English and French-We don't have many children's books because, huh, we don't have children but we own this one!
48. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
49. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien-E and J
50. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling-Erica and Jason-We read this together and I love hearing stories out loud! Plus Jason does voices.
51. Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott-E and J-LOVE this book!
52. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
53. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
54. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
55. Middlemarch - George Eliot
56. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
57. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
58. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
59. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
60. Emma - Jane Austen-E and J
61. Persuasion - Jane Austen-E
62. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
63. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
64. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown-E and J-J liked this more then I did but it was a great read
65. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
66. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
67. Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery-E-My favorites as a 12-15 year old and the books go way beyond the movies so if you love the movie you'll LOVE the books
68. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
69. Atonement - Ian McEwan
70. Dune - Frank Herbert
71. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
72. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
73. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
74. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
75. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
76. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
77. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
78. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas-E and J-Dumas is one of our favorite authors. I think we own all of his works. Actually, I know that's not true because only part of them are being printed.
79. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
80. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
81. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
82. Moby Dick - Herman Melville - J
83. Dracula - Bram Stoker
84. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
85. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
86. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
87. Germinal - Emile Zola
88. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
89. Possession - A.S. Byatt
90. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens-E and J-It's a Christmas Tradition! Thanks Dickens!
91. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
92. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
93. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
94. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
95. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
96. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
97. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
98. Watership Down – Richard Adams
99. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
100. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas-E and J-It's part of this series that is being condensed to 20 years after and the Man in the Iron Mask. There's a 3rd book between these two that isn't being printed.

So I’m not sure how they determined which books would be on the list (I haven't been able to find a duplicate on the Internet) but here’s some authors I thought should've been there: Twain, Hemingway, Faulkner and Proust . Not to mention some of my favorites playwrites, Edmond Rostand, Oscar Wilde and Nathaniel Hawthorne. If they did it by number of publications, than shouldn't Twilight be on the list somewhere around Harry Potter? Oh well, according to the 33 books I’ve read off this list I’m a third of the way to making my own top 100! Enjoy!

For Anita

The "Nursery"

Here's the 3 in 1 crib we bought at a garage sale.



Notice the damage on the drop down rail.



This is a chair given to us by Megan's Grandpa. I'm going of recover the chair and was wondering if I should paint the chair and the crib while I'm at it.

So there's a lot of interest in our process to be licensed to be foster parents. We've been to 2 classes where they bombard you with information. I feel like we leave each class with less confidence. There is sooo much to know and sooo much to prepare for. Our last class told us about licensing. We were prepared for half of the info and had a price tag on what it would take to get licensed. The other half.... It seems we have a lot more to do, which means a lot more money.... I'm not sure when the change came, but it seems having children in our lives has a higher association with money than with love.In order for us to comply with all of the requirements we will be looking at several months out so we probably won't be licenced as soon as we planned