Salty Mommy

It's a BOY!! (but we already knew that!!!) Zion Jonathan Imel was born yesterday 9lbs 3 oz and almost 21inches long... We cant wait to meet him!! Hip Hip Hooray!! Pre baby pictures of karyn are up now and they said pics of Zion will go up soon. (karyn has quite a belly in the pics on her site.)

As the holidays get closer ( i put up most of my decorations last night - actually going to Michaels to pick up a few more today with davids grandmom) ok where was i? Oh yeah i logged onto Explorer to check my email and update my blog and there was a very interesting article about families and the holidays. i know it isnt easy having my entire family in CA and davids in NJ especially since we live in NJ now...it makes it difficult for both of us. So here is the article which i thought was very good and appropriate to the world we live in. Sorta sad too though. So to the Butcher Girls...enjoy your Christmas together...it will be wonderful!!

brrrrrrrr!!! it is cold here compared to maui. so we made i back safe and sound after a wonderful time in paradise. and i arrived at my store after flying through the night and the heater is broken. it certainly was cold until big dave brought me a plug in heater and the sun began to shine in the windows. i am glad to be home and i hope it snows before christmas when we go back to CA.

so a couple of days ago david's mom called and said she was going to the new grocery store and they have a sushi section. so david asked her to get him some california rolls. a little later she called from the store and said i am looking at the rolls and i see portuguese rolls, italian rolls, sweet rolls but i dont see any california rolls. she was in the roll aisle and not the sushi aisle. so be sure to tell your mom what type of rolls you want when you ask for something special from the store.

Maybe i will try this next year. Cooking a Turkey. I read about a college in CA cooking 3 turkeys in a kiln and decided to do some research on how it would work since i have a kiln. we will be in hawaii on turkey day this year but maybe we can have a special kiln cooking day. i wonder if i could bake a few cakes or pies in my kiln...maybe my mother in law could use it for wedding cakes...she could cook all the cakes at once. you never know!!

when you are sitting inside and the sun is coming in through the windows it gives the appearance that it is nice and warm and sunny outside. then you hear the whirling of the wind or maybe it is whipping wind. and the realization that NO WAY is it nice and warm beyond the glass of the windows. that i guess is how you know winter is coming quickly. we also had a crazy storm last night with wind and rain, it was funny to see everyone running for thier cars after church. someone told david there would be good waves today but when we drove over to check them out it was very choppy. not to mention it would be so cold brrrr! so our surfboards are waiting for summer again inside our living room as decoration. who needs a christmas tree when you have two 9 foot surfboards?? maybe i will string some lights around them after turkey day.

so i just got an email that david and i are silver elite members with north west airlines . what does this mean? well i am trying to figure it all out but one thing for sure is we have free upgrades when available we can call the day before a flight and get an upgrade if there are open seats. very cool.

so i have a cell phone that is a blessing...yes i know. but i hate it...it drops calls and doesnt have any service in most areas. and it turns off on its own. so i sent it to my mom in california while we were in romania to see if she could get it fixed or better yet replaced. and they told her she needed to buy a new battery. so she did and guess what a $50 new battery doesnt help. it does stay charged longer then the old battery. so there it is the bright side, i fnally found it. so i am going to have to go to the verizon store here which is actually exit 38 on the parkway inside the mall and try to get it fixed or updated or something. it is making me crazy!! but hey another bright side i get to go to the mall.

so i am the teacher of the 1st & 2nd grade caravan class at my church. the kids are all really cute but some are very bad...as kids tend to be when they have sat in a classroom all day and all they want to do is have fun not do paper work or color pages. so i try to make every night fun for them and my class is really big - 19 kids on a low night 25 on a high night. tonight is our scarfing ceremony and 1st night of badges. my class has earned their personal care badges and sports and fitness badges. they also learned their "i believes" and will get a pin for that. i get to go in front of the church tonight and give out their badges and scarves and talk all about what we have done. (this is the only part i dont like about caravan) i am sure it will go ok i am going to work on my "speech".

so we are starting to get back into the swing of things. i am still pretty tired around 9pm and waking up early but i think i might be starting to like waking up early. i did say like not love it is growing on me. other then that david is working on a photo album of our trip and i will post some more pictures soon. thank you for your prayers and support for our trip. in the recent news of our lives david's dad and my brother both celebrated their birthdays on 10/31 and Melissa Joy (david's little sister) is celebrating her SWEET 16 on 11/10.

so going to romania i knew we would have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but i had no idea i would push myself as far as i did and see how strong i really am. the first day we arrived at the church we waited for the truck to come with the roof tiles and once it arrived we worked for what felt like days unloading the tiles. after many hours i could no longer feel my arms and i could feel my bruises beginning to form. we ended up unloading all of the tiles before lunch, but lunch wasnt until 2:30 that day... so by the time we ate everyone was ready for a break. after lunch we went up to see the tiles stacked on the 2nd floor, thankfully i was not on the stairs or at the top of them. there is a picture below of all of the tiles on the 2nd floor.

me & david on the top story of the church before the roof began the church before we started (check out the scaffolding) passing roof tiles (we moved 17,000 tiles up to the second floor) all the tiles unloading the wood truck more wood unloading the ladies dirt in the driveway we bucket brigaded to the 3rd floor lifting the buckets of dirt

 

so we are back in new jersey. the trip was amazing and we are getting our pictures developed and printed today. we stopped by to see davids mom and sister and i hopped on the computer, now we are going to see grandmom at mcdonalds. yum!