Girls Nights

Tonight August 15th, 9:30 pm my place, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - to prepare ourselves for tomorrow...





Saturday August 16th, 8:00 pm or 10:25 pm (comment which time is better?) at the Ko'olau Theatres.








Girls Night have been so much fun! We really enjoyed Mamma Mia, it was so entertaining, I am not into musicals but this one was very entertaining. We laughed, we cried (OK, maybe only I cried because Natalie kept saying, "that will be you and Kali one day", speaking of helping your daughter get ready for her big wedding day, not trying to figure out who the father is:) A special thanks to Alyse's husband who put together goody bags for us, we each got a water bottle, a caramel popcorn ball, and a bag of assorted candy!!!!

Also recipe night was a big success, thanks all who came and started this wonderful new girls night of excellent food and good times, we have now started a recipe blog, skinnyjeansrecipes
where we will continue to add the recipes we get together and try. We hope to have a blog full of the best dishes, so that we can have better variety for our dinners:) We hope to better our cooking skills and make happier husbands:) That is the purpose of these get togethers, RIGHT:)

If you are curious as to how the name of the recipe blog came to be, check out Hillary's blog, "I don't even know who skinny jeans is?"
This is Hillary's side of the story:) My only comment is that the correct statement by me, was, "man, I must be really old, I don't even know who skinny jeans is" and in my defense I was across the room, not really knowing what was going on, all I heard was Avril Lavigne and then skinny jeans, and like I said, I had never heard of a band named skinny jeans, hence my blonde moment. Moral of the story, don't try to be part of a conversation you are not in.

Wood family reunion

We spent Friday playing in my parents pool and hot tub. Then Saturday we headed to our cabin in Oregon. On the way there we stopped at my dad's store, The Country Mercantile, where we picked up some yummy food. You can check out his store's web page here, and see all the fun things he sells there.
I have to explain the picture of my sister's dressed in BYU gear and the tortured Ute doll. My youngest sister Coriann plays basketball for BYU and a couple of her good friends play for U of U. One of her good friends sent her this doll, so Aaron thought it would be funny to hang it from the back of the Tahoe on our two hour trip to the cabin.
It was so nice hanging out with family and for the cousins to play together. Kali and Michael did really well together. Seth (my sisters boyfriend) and Aaron spent most of their time fishing. Aaron was extactic that Janica was dating a guy who liked to fish as much as he did. Sad to say the Wood clan are not big fisherman. Last time we went to the cabin Aaron spent many lonely hours out on the dock. Now he has a fishing buddy, YAY, for Seth. While I am on the topic of Seth, I am going to tell you a little about this guy. Janica has dated LOTS, and naturally I am not going to blog about every guy she dates but this guy is different, he is by far the best guy she has ever dated. He fits right in to our family. So as you can see I am really routing for this one to work out. He is an amazing writer, check out is blog for some excellent literature. Along with being a good writer he is extremely smart, athletic, and most importantly a honorable priesthood holder, a strong member of the church who grew up very similiar to how our family did, BIG BONUS:)
At the cabin we spend our time on the canoe, jet ski, and paddle boat. We ski, wakeboard, and inner tube. The kids (and my mom:) love to feed the ducks. Every once in a while a deer will walk across our lawn which is always exciting. Janica spent a lot of her time trying to finish up on the last of the Twilight series, "Breaking Dawn." Most of you know I am not a reader, I will pick up a book every once in a while if it is supposed to be REALLY good, you know like the Book of Mormon, but I really have no interest in this vampire love story that every girl is now obsessed with. I know I am planning on getting a lot of hate mail after making this last statement but sorry girls, not interested. When Janica wasn't reading, she was getting pushed in the lake by Aaron:) We of course had to take family pictures and I am extremely excited about putting together a my publisher book of the whole reunion.
Nights at the cabin are spent around a campfire, eating smores and Dad telling us some awesome spiritual stories. On Sunday we spent our day together as a family holding our own church meeting and having one of the most spiritual and memorable days as a family. Mom and Dad told us more about their thoughts and feelings when they met and then all of us children talked about memories growing up together. It was such an amazing day.
On Monday we went to Jubilee lake for a little hike and walk around the camp grounds.

10 year High School Reunion

It was pretty cool getting together with all of my old friends from High School. It was interesting finding out what everyone was up to, ten years later. The fun part was that you could pretty much talk to anyone. It did seem as though you gravitate to your closest friends or the people you stay in contact with, but most everyone walked around and just talked not caring what group you were a part of in High School, I guess that comes with age a maturity. These pics are most of my girl friends in High School, the top one is of my BFF's except for Wendy, who could not make it and she was definitely missed:( F.Y.I. for all of you who will one day have your 10 year High School reunion, if you do have a couples night at a bar, do your spouse a favor and leave them at home. Aaron got lucky, we met up with Tamara and Hauni to drive with them to the reunion not realizing their husbands did not make the trip, so Aaron got off the hook and headed home to hang out with my fam. Any spouses you did come, ended up hanging out in the corner getting to know each other while the rest of us ran around a mingled.

playing catch up

So we returned from our vacation on Tuesday afternoon, and now it is Thursday night and I am not sure where the last few days went, the kids and I pretty much have been playing catch up on our sleep. So now time to update you on a WHOLE LOT of things.

First of all before the vacation Kali had an Ipu making day for her school at Hau'ula beach park and Angie got some awesome pictures with Brylie, Kaiya and Kali with the finished product:)


For school on Wednesday we went to Kahana Valley and the kids made canoes out of Hawaiian tree parts. They have an awesome shop that we went to and saw how they make Hawaiian hats, wooden bowls and spoons, they showed us how they work with stone and make poi pounders and round stones to play ancient Hawaiian games. pretty cool.