The blogging dilemma

So I am getting rid of the Thanksgiving background on my blog and I did a quick check of everyone's blogs and I'm pretty sure everyone has just about given up. I actually got excited because a friend of mine from Vegas finally got a blog a couple months ago and put one post and hasn't done another. I really love reading my friend's blogs. I love keeping up with old friends that I don't get to see every day. I love the concept of blogs. But I sit here and wonder... why bother?

I can't believe it's November

How did that happen?

Sidney's birthday weekend

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIDNEY!


So I am officially the mother of a teenager. Sidney turned 13 about two weeks ago and it also happened to be a three day weekend from school. So we decided to get out of town. The last time we all went out of town together was 2 1/2 years ago for by brother-in-law's wedding. We didn't even really go too far. We left on Saturday morning and went to the aquarium in Denver. I'd heard a lot of good things about it and we had a really great time!
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Chris was the only one brave enough to feed the sting rays.... ewwww!

After the aquarium we drove up to Estes Park. It's about an 1 1/2 hours northwest of Denver. It was absolutely beautiful there. We were completely surrounded by mountains and the weather was pretty nice. We enjoyed the quaint little town and all of it's shops. It was just nice to spend some quality time together as a family.

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This is the Stanly Hotel where they filmed the movie The Shining. I've never actually seen the movie, but I just may muster up the courage to see it now. There are all kinds of stories of paranormal activities happening here. They do ghost tours, but there were all booked while we were there. Maybe next time...




This is candy they sold in the gift shop. It's from the movie. It's MURDER spelled backwards. Megan thought it was really cool so she took a picture of it. Who would actually want candy with murder spelled backwards on it?



I think we realized after this weekend that we definitely need to get out of town more often. It was nice to get away. There are definitely more parts of Colorado that we need to explore and I'm sure we'll get around to it... eventually.

It's amazing what a coat of paint can do!

We were given this dresser by a guy in our ward and all we did was paint it and put some new drawer pulls on it. Isn't it amazing what a coat of paint can do?

This Labor Day I decided to put my kids to work...

sorting socks. They have such a rough life! :)

Addiction? I think not.

So a little while back my husband was having a "choice" day and was being a real jerk. I had to leave to take the girls somewhere and when I came back this is what I found on my kitchen table...



Oodles and oodles of diet pepsi! I was in heaven! I promptly forgave him for whatever he had done (which today I have no idea what it even was!) I set to work drinking my glorious diet pepsi. I just finished the last bottle of it about 3 days ago. I couldn't remember when he had bought all of it so I checked the date on the photo. July 24th...
Hi! My name is Gretchen and I'm a diet pepsi-aholic.