Barb's Random Thoughts & Doodles

Elder Devin Durtschi

2009-06-18T22:50:00.006-06:00

Devin is on his way! He entered the Provo MTC on June 17th. It was quite the day for us as our first missionary went out. Lots of emotions. This is a big corner for our family. We miss him tons but when it comes down to it, we wouldn't want him anywhere else or doing anything else with his life right now. We are looking forward to his first letter....which better come soon, be long, and filled with details for his mother....and we will keep family and friends updated on him. He will be at the Provo MTC until July 7th, then on to Georgia!

His mailing address at the MTC is:

Elder Devin Durtschi

MTC Mailbox #190-0707

Georgia Macon Mission

2005 N 900 E

Provo, UT 84604-1793

Drop him a letter. He'd love it!

Here's some pictures from the day:

Devin's looks like a missionary!

I have a life-size cut out of Edward from the Twilight movie. We play jokes on each other with him from time to time...basically to startle each other. So Camille and I couldn't resist making him into a companion for Devin the night before Dev left by leaving Edward in the dark by Dev's bedroom door. We got him good! Unfortunately, Janell didn't receive the text message that warned her Edward was lurking in the hall that night and we inadvertantly got her too.

Grandma Hanson and Uncle Cliff Hanson with the family before we drove Devin to the MTC in Provo.

Grandma & Devin

The Crew

The Crew as we know (and love) them.

One more hug

Garren, Barb, Devin
June 17, 2009

Garren celebrated his 48th birthday by taking his first missionary to the MTC.
What a day!

Family Reunion

2009-06-18T22:31:00.003-06:00

Ty, Ry, and Elise with a water balloon launcher.

Ryan and Grandma
Coats in mid-June in Utah! It was a cold and rainy day, but still lots of fun!!

Vampire sighting

2009-04-23T22:34:00.006-06:00

The girls and I had a fun, very late night with my sister at a Twilight DVD midnight release party in the Salt Lake area in March. There were only 5 locations in the nation that were getting appearances from Twilight actors at midnight release parties. Rumor had it that the Riverton Walmart would be one of the locations and Rachelle Lefevre, the actress who plays Victoria, was expected to make an appearance and sign autographs. We waited in crowds and lines for quite awhile but finally got to meet her. She's so pretty and very graciously stayed and signed thousands of autographs. It was a lot of fun!

The initial mayhem as people were waiting for "Victoria's" arrival.

There was already a line half way around the store waiting for autographs.

This crowd extended this deep around all sides of us.

Think: Day After Thanksgiving sales and multiply it by 2.

An hour or so later and we're settled in line now and waiting....and waiting...

....and amusing ourselves while we wait.

Vampire sighted

Very fun night!

Another fun video

2009-04-18T23:00:00.002-06:00

LOVE STORY (Taylor Swift) meets VIVA LA VIDA (Coldplay) - Piano/Cello - by Jon Schmidt

2009-04-17T00:13:00.001-06:00

Just for Fun

2009-03-29T18:48:00.000-06:00

I recently downloaded 8 months of pictures from my camera.

Here's some of them, just for fun.

Tyler & Clark - tough guys and best buddies

Camille & Ashley - Girls that just wanna have fun!

2 Webkinz + 1 cowboy + lots of candy = Halloween '08

Naughty or Nice??

Tyler decorated his own gingerbread house birthday cake.

Elise - relieving some holiday stress.

Ryan & Elise doing Christmas baking.

Our annual Nativity play gets a little crazier each year...from Garren accidentally reading "...with Mary, his estranged wife..." to the kids' increasingly creative interpretation of the characters. If lightening strikes our house on Christmas Eve some year, you'll know why.

Christmas Eve pajamas

Temple Square

Steven ready for a school dance.

Ryan and his dump truck birthday cake. The back of the truck was loaded with cookies.

Devin's Mission Call

2009-03-25T19:37:00.000-06:00

This morning Devin received his mission call to serve in the Georgia Macon Mission! He enters the Provo MTC on June 17th...which is Garren's birthday. We are all very happy and excited about Dev's assignment. Since he's had the opportunity to live in Virginia, he's had some experience with humidity and will be a little more familiar with the climate, scenery, etc. of that part of the country. That will be one less adjustment to make so he'll be able to hit the ground running and get to work. We joked with him that language shouldn't be a problem either since he's already familiar with "Southern." We feel like he just got handed the greatest part of the world to serve in. He's going to be awesome!

Devin with his mission call. All the post-its on the map represent guesses from friends and family of where he would be called to serve. A few people guessed Georgia in passing, but Julie Gustafson committed to Georgia and so she's the big winner! The major award has yet to be determined but she is entitled to pretty impressive bragging rights as she was debating between Tallahassee, FL and Atlanta, GA and Macon is between those. Just before Devin opened it, Janell also said Georgia. Although it was snowing, it was a great morning!

House Project

2009-03-19T22:15:00.000-06:00

Last summer, we purchased this house and added on to it. The great (and crazy) thing about it, as most of you know, is this house is one we built 16 years ago and lived in until we moved to Virginia. So I guess you could say we're back where we started from. We added 2,600-ish square feet, adding 6 bedrooms, 2 baths in the following way:
3 bedrooms and a walk-in storage closet over the garage;
new family room, mudroom, 2nd staircase, and master bedroom on the main level going out the back of the house, with a 2 bedroom apartment underneath that addition.
We also converted a former bedroom upstairs into a wonderfully big laundry room. Our builders were great and we really liked working with them, however, it was quite an adventure to live here while all this was going on. The bulk of the project was completed at the end of 2008, and the laundry room conversion was done by early February. We still have a lot of projects to do as we get "unpacked" and settled, and try to get rid of the construction dust, but we LOVE our house! We've been very blessed!

Our friends from Virginia, the Caudill's, were visiting us and helped us take out some trees in preparation for the construction. Gotta love the chainsaw vacation package!

Steve is in this photo with a sick tree that had to go.

We also have a picture of him helping to plant it when he was about 3 years old.

With some trees gone and brick removed, they're ready to start digging.

Nothing says cool like construction trucks right in your yard!

Please note that amid the missing wall, the insulation on what's left of the floor, and the general construction debris and power tools, that I had the classiness to keep a tablecloth on the table!

A trench was jack-hammered in our basement at the bottom of the stairs so they could run the plumbing lines to the addition. Ryan enjoyed sitting on the stairs and throwing rocks in the comfort of his own home.

Trusses going up....which was almost as cool as seeing the crane take the roof off.

The new back of the house.

I must say the tarp wall was an improvement over the plywood wall as it let in more light and air. And as an added bonus, we could enjoy hearing the construction guys sing to the radio a lot clearer....and they could hear our commotion clearer too.

They were fun guys who did great work and became part of the family for 5 months.

It's coming together!!!

We were surprised at how much backyard we still have....or maybe we're just getting older and yards all look bigger to us. We are very happy with the curvy, new patio and I can't wait to landscape around it!

Everyone got in on the painting....from choosing colors to applying them...usually in the wee hours of the morning. Here Ryan is painting his room and later he was quick to give us painting tips based on his experiences...like "You're leaving globbies, mom." We knew he'd been hauled to too many Lowe's stores to look at paint chips when he decided to re-name his room's paint color....."Ryan's cookie dough."

Ta-Da!!!!

This was as things were finishing in late December.

We have a dog!!!

2009-03-19T10:19:00.001-06:00

We have a new member of the household! We have been actively looking for a dog for a few weeks. Yesterday Elise found an ad for a free dog on KSL classifieds that had only been posted for 2 minutes and was right here in town. 15 minutes later we were on our way to see him and brought him home. He's a sweetheart. I'll post other pictures later after he's cleaned up. After 2 hours of negotiations in family council, (our diplomatic system could effectively run a small country!) his name is Jackson or "Jack"...although Ryan's favorite name choice, and what Ry still calls him, is Jackson Edward Spongebob.

Devin's mission papers are in!!

2009-03-17T14:19:00.000-06:00

Devin's mission papers were submitted Sunday night! We are hoping his call comes on the 25th. If not, he can look forward to receiving it on April Fools Day....which he's not too excited about. I can't believe he doesn't trust us! We would never mess with his mission call unless we could think of something really good, of course.
Anyway, post your "bets" on where and when he will serve. We have prizes for the winners!....use of Devin's iPod and other favorite possessions for 2 years! (Thanks Katy for that idea. We thought it was hilarious. Dev wasn't so amused.) So post your guesses and we'll let you know when he receives his call.

Twilight Movie Event

2009-03-13T15:39:00.000-06:00

In honor of next week's release of the Twilight DVD, I wanted to post these pictures....

Janell, Camille & I went to a Twilight opening night movie event hosted by TwilightMoms on 11-21-08.

(Thanks to Janell for scoring us tickets to this event a week before--

although it had been sold out for months --- The girl has connections!)

For a few hours before we saw the movie, we hob-nobbed with other Twilight Fans and had a blast!

There were Twilight trivia games (which we rocked at!), booths selling all things Twilight (Breaking Dawn earrings, Renesmee locket, color changing nail polish...), and fun Twilight-ish activities.

There was an area of the event room set up like the Cullen's living room. As Camille jams on the piano, Janell displays her major award -- a poster of Edward --- that she won in the character look-alike contest by dressing as Bella meeting the Cullens.

Did I mention this night was a blast! Nothing like partying and then seeing the movie for the first time with 2 of my girls and another 500 fans!

Women Drivers

2009-03-13T13:39:00.000-06:00

Welcome

2009-03-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog! Uncharacteristically modern and technical of me, I know, but here I am with my own little piece of cyberspace life.