A family Favorite

I wanted to share one of our family favorites. We LOVE the Liken the Scriptures dvd's :) The boys love music. These dvd's are scripture stories set to a musical background....kind of like a musical play. The actors are quite entertaining and funny.

We hear such wonderful comments from the boy's teachers about how well they know their scripture stories. Liken has helped that understanding increase for them. It puts things into their prospective....as well as showing them fun in music. We've purchased almost all of the Liken series that is out.

Check out my link on the sidebar to see what they're like :) Some of our favorites are: David and Goliath with Thurl Bailey and Alex Boye, Alma and King Noah with Micheal B, Daniel and the Lions den, Ammon and King Lamoni (hilarious), Nephi ( I will go and do), Sammuel the Lamanite.

The messages in these dvd's are wonderful of course :) They are so engaging and entertaining :)

15 yrs

Today Tim and I are celebrating 15 years of marital bliss :) YAY!!!! It's been a FUN 15 years. We've grown so much together and we've been each others best friend....that's how it should be :)

Tim remembers our first meeting better than I do because he noticed me first :) He was sitting by me in sacrament meeting on my first sunday at the branch in Ontario. He must have thought I was a hottie or something :) lol..... I like to think that anyway :o)

At our first FHE for the branch, everyone was sitting in a circle and we went around and introduced ourselves. I was sitting on the couch with a friend, which, we were both surrounded by men :) hehehe.... I introduced myself "I'm Gina Downing, I'm from LaGrande and I'm single, that's why I'm here" Well, Tim leaned over to one of our guy friends and said "We'll see what we can do about that" And boy did he see what he could do about me being single :) HA!!!!! It's fun to remember the past and the fun of those years.

We remmeniss about our so many "first" dates as well :) Thanks to John Jorgensen, our first first date was foiled by John and Tim hiking :) "The roads over here" "It's not too far" LOL!!!!! Tim and John went hiking early in the morning and were supposed to be back in time for us to go out. We had only dated in a group until that time :) well, the guys didn't get back into town until after 10pm...NO DATE!!!!!!! Okay, so we did have a date, just not the one we were planning. We went to dinner. Our favorite place to go to dinner was a dinner downtown Ontario. Kingsbury's owned it. 4th street dinner. They had the best chicken sandwiches and milkshakes.

Then about a week or so later, Matt Anderson and another friend from LaGrande came down to Ontario on their way to Conference and kidnapped me. We left a ransom note with a friend in the dorms :) I had a great time at conference...we went to a BYU/ Uof U game :) It was a blast...that is where I met Mitsie Cowley. We became very close friends in an instant...thanks Matt :)

Tim and I eventually got our first date and have had many dates since then :)

For halloween Tim and I wanted to shock everyone so we went as bride and groom :) He rented a tux and I borrowed a wedding dress. It was such great fun to make everyone wonder :) Everyone seemed to know that we would get married, but it was still fun to shock people...we still have fun shocking people :)

When we got engaged, Tim and I wanted to shock the branch Pres..... he had a FHE at his house and we went to him and told him we needed to talk to him about something serious.... We weren't smiling at this time, we wanted him to be shocked :) hehehe.... So we told Pres. Hunter that we wanted to go to the temple but had some issues we needed to take care of first. He took a deep breath and sighed. He was quite sad.....but then we smiled big and told him that we wanted to go to the temple to get married :) HAAAHAAAA!!!!! He hit Tim and just laughed...then we went into the family room and he told everyone we were stinkers :)

On our wedding night, Tim had to work, so we didn't have a honeymoon. We have since made up for that by going to the coast or getting away by ourselves for a night or two :) Tim has made me laugh and smile almost everyday of our lives :) I have loved having him as my friend in whom I could trust. I appreciate him so much and his strength.

We had another fun experience at a marriage retreat. Well, it wasn't fun at the time, but it was fun later. I was about 12 weeks pregnant...not wanting to be because Josh wasn't even 1 yet. Anyway, during the retreat, I started to misscarry. Tim was talking to Bishop Banner and I was talking to Marshiela. I was crying as was Tim. Bishop and his wife were consoling us. Right after the retreat was over, we left for home. For weeks after that we had people calling us to make sure things were okay. Then another friend called one day and asked if we were getting a divorce. WHAT!!!!!! I guess word had gotten around that we were apparently having problems and we were getting a divorce. Nothing could be farther from the truth :)

Tim and I had grown closer through our trials.

Another one of our shockers was when we were expecting Dallin, we didn't tell ANYONE!!!!! NO ONE AT ALL!!!!!! We did finally tell someone the week we were going to go in and have him :) That was great fun as well

I look forward to our eternity together. I can't wait to see what our next 15 years has in store for us and for others to be shocked :) Watch out everyone, we Love to shock you :)

I love my sweetheart Tim :) He loves me dearly and is my best friend. We are so truly blessed in our lives to have each other and to have so many wonderful friends and family.

A Photo Tribute to our DAD!!!!

Tribute to DAD!

Happy Father's Day :) It's time to toot Tim's horn. He's such a great dad. I want to share some things about him and toot his horn :)

Tim loves to take his boys fishing, camping, and do all sorts of BOY things with them. He loves to work with them on their scouting stuff and duty to God.

He is a great leader in our family and teaches the boys the great importance of Home teaching. He has a strong testimony of home teaching and shares it with the boys often. Tim is a wonderful example of a righteous priesthood holder. He is always there when we need him for anything. Tim works so very hard so that I can stay home and be MOM.

Tim is very kind and loving to our family. I'm so glad Tim knows how to cook and helps me and works with me in the kitchen. It's wonderful to be able to work with him in the kitchen cooking.

I love how he has the spirit of scouting and employs it on our family campouts :)

Tim takes ALL of the boys on the Father's Sons outings :) YAY DAD!!!!!!

Tim loves to snuggle with Kyler. I'm grateful that Tim has helped me and supported me while homeschooling Josh, by taking Kyler and helping him with his name. K-Y-L-E-R....Kyler.

He makes me laugh almost everyday of my life....ever since the beginning :) Tim helps his parents out and my parents when they need our help. He is willing to serve whenever. Tim has a wonderful caring heart. He will work until the job is done.... Tim joys in service and teaches it to our boys.

I love you Tim. Thank you for being such a great dad to our boys. The boys love their dad :)

Here are some pictures of our SUPERSTAR DAD!!!!!

What do you do when you're waiting?

The realtors were supposed to tour our house today so we had to be gone from 9-12 this morning. Sadly, the realtors didn't come :( not too happy about that, as I'm anxious to get the house sold.

While we were waiting, we went to the park and played. The boys have such fun at the many parks here. This one is Butte Park. The whole community helped to rebuild this castle park after a vandalism fire about 5 years ago. It's even better than the old one.

There are so many fun things to do at this park. There is even a "tot lot" for younger children. A favorite of most of the kids here is to play tag and not touch the ground. You can see kids jumping all over the playstuff :) It's quite fun to try to get around without touching the ground. It's also a great workout.

These are the big kid swing sets. There is more in the tot lot for the kiddies, as well as a handicap swing. This is a great park, even for the handicapped kids :)

This is one of the bridges throughout the castle. Aaron was riding his ripstick across the bridge :)

Dallin crossing one of the many groups of monkey bars. I think there are four total sets of bars.

SCHOOLS OUT

Summer is about to begin for the boys :) The middle school boys will be home in a few minutes and then Dallin. Josh will be done with his last class on Friday, but technically not done with school until the 10th. We're excited for summer and saving gas not going anywhere :(

We have a family reunion that we're going to this month. On the 21st, we're out of here :) And headed "HOME" to New Plymouth. It will be great to visit again. One thing that would make our visit even better is if we actually had an offer on our house so we could start looking for houses down there :) lol.....I'm too funny I know.

It's so nice to have our backyard finished so the boys can play in the backyard and play on the slip and slide. We got rid of the pool because we were selling the house :( I don't know if we're going to need it anyway with the way the weather is going :) it's cold so far. Very wierd weather that's for sure.

Okay, the boys are going to be home soon and I'm goin to enjoy them the rest of the day :)

Scentsationally Scentsy :)

I have signed up to be a scentsy consultant :) My consultant number is 9625 I will have a website within the next couple of days :) I'm so excited to be selling scentsy. I love the safety, smells :) Love the scentsy. More to come later :)

My personal scentsy website is in my favorite links. but here it is too :) check it out please :)

www.scentsy.com/9625