2007 Year In Review

Instead of enclosing a Christmas letter in our Christmas cards this year, we decided to put our letter on here instead. Here is a recap of 2007 for the Kents!

January

*We spent time recovering from the holidays. We traveled to Kansas for Christmas and New Years last year and had the pleasure (haha!) of driving through the huge snow storm that pounded Colorado and the Midwest.

February

*Holly took a trip to St. George, Utah for her friend's baby shower. Erin has 3 boys and finally got a little girl!

*Holly interviewed with LifeTouch and became the JCPenney Portrait Studio Manager in Provo, Utah.

March

*We went skiing with Holly's Uncle George. It was Dave's first time skiing and Holly's second time. We both decided to take a class so we could learn how to ski the right way! We both had a GREAT time and plan to go again in March!

*Holly traveled to California (Sacramento) for the first time in her life for a week long training with LifeTouch to become a new Studio Manager.
*Dave received his acceptance letter from Brigham Young University! He is getting his Masters in Science Education.

April

*We took a trip to St. George for Spring Break to meet Erin's new little girl who was about a week old. While we were so close we decided to drive down to Las Vegas with some friends; Jarrod, Mindy and their boys. Neither of us had ever been to the "strip." Dave's spring break fell on Easter weekend so we also got to be involved in all of Erin's family's Easter plans.

May

*We celebrated our 7th anniversary!!
*Dave finished his second year of teaching at Independence High School and had 2 1/2 months off (although he wasn't really off!).
*We hosted a Memorial Day BBQ to break in our new patio furniture and show off Dave's carpenter skills. He built a planter box for our backyard. Dave finally got his dream grill as an anniversary gift from Holly.

June

*Dave traveled to Southern Utah with other masters students at BYU for two weeks to do research for his Masters degree and learn how to be a better science teacher.

*Holly volunteered as the Accounting Chair for the American Cancer Society Relay For Life of Orem/Provo. We started planning the event in February and finally saw all of our planning come to fruition in June. It was a HUGE success. We raised over $30,000 for cancer research, education, advocacy and services!
*We made it to the one year mark of living in our townhouse. We have enjoyed being homeowners and adding our personal touches.

July

*Dave spent the month taking a summer course in statistics at BYU. He also spent time at IHS helping with the Homestudy Program.
*We traveled to Kansas for Holly's ten year high school reunion. It was a quick trip because of Dave's class schedule, but well worth it.



*Dave turned 29!

August

*Holly turned 28!
*Holly decided to part ways with LifeTouch realizing that being the Studio Manager was not a good fit. She is still interested in photography and decided to begin working part-time for Our365 taking pictures of newborn babies at the local hospital while continuing to work for Quality Transcription doing Medical Transcription from home.
*Dave began his 3rd year of teaching at IHS!

September

*Dave began fall classes at BYU.
*Holly's Grandma Thomas passed away at age 90. Holly decided to fly to Kansas for the funeral and spent ten days visiting with friends and family. Below is one of Holly's favorite pictures of her Grandma with her Mom and Aunt Cathy. It was taken last summer.



*We began tearing up our carpet and replacing it with laminate floor in our living and dining rooms. See older posts for pictures and details.

*In our debt reduction plan we decided to sell our car and become a one vehicle family. It poses challenges at times, but we are making it work and are enjoying no car payments!!

October

*On Dave's fall break we began a tiling project for the kitchen. See older posts for pictures and details.
*Holly joins the blogging world!

November

*Spent Thanksgiving with some of the Kents in Logan, Utah. See older posts for pictures and details.
*Cut down our Christmas tree in Southern Idaho.

December

*Dave was busy with finals and Holly was busy getting ready for Christmas!
*We spent Christmas with some of the Kents in Layton, Utah.
*Dave enjoyed 13 1/2 days off for the Christmas Break.

Christmas Photos

Christmas Lights

On the news the other night there was a story about a house in Pleasant Grove, UT which is about 15-20 minutes from our house. The owner of this house decorated his house with lots of lights and put music to them. He entered his house into a nationwide KFC contest and actually WON! I guess he won free KFC for an entire year, his electric bill for December paid and a credit card bill for the month paid. The news story sparked my interest so we decided Friday night to go see this show for ourselves. Although we had to wait in our car for a long time before we actually got to see this house, I think it was well worth the wait. The show was very impressive. I can't even imagine having enough creativity and know-how to pull something like this off. On top of winning this contest, he also is raising money for the Make A Wish Foundation. For more information or to see the official video of his lights, visit http://holdman.com/christmas/

Below is video that I shot from our truck. Hope you enjoy!

FYI - On my video it helps to turn off the music on my sidebar so you can hear the music in the video which the lights are coordinated to!

What in the World???

Well, let me tell you. Holly had nothing to do with this. In fact, she wanted nothing to do with this. She wouldn't even post this knowledge on her blog. Problem is she saves her passwords on sites like this. So, I admit what I did was silly. You know what some say though about doing things for a good cause. My students were doing a fundraiser for a "Sub for Santa" thingy at school. As motivation to donate, milestones were set for certain dollar amounts raised. Hindsight, don't underestimate children and don't sell yourself for such a small price. I thought $100 would be a fair deal, so it was agreed that I would do something totally silly. They had that much in 3 days. I was proud of them for having the ability to end up with $220 for some fortunate family. Maybe they would have reached that mark anyway, or maybe not. For what I did, I like to think that I played an integral role (but probably not, just had to look silly). So, what did I do that was so obnoxious? Well, enjoy the picture. I did finish it off later just so it had some equilibrium to it, but at school I had to stop where I did.

Sugar cookies

It's that time of year again when we start making SUGAR COOKIES! I don't know why we don't make sugar cookies any other time of the year, but for some reason we don't...just at Christmas. We decided to go simple this year and only use one color of icing and one type of sprinkles. I was tempted to only use one of our cookie cutters as well, but decided against it. Enjoy the yummy pictures!!!

Dave's mega icing sugar cookie creation
(makes you sick just looking at it, huh?)

I got elfed

Hey, I just made a total elf of myself. Check it out by clicking the link below.

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1378899007

This elfin' greeting brought to you by OfficeMax®.

I've been warned

On Tuesday night of this week Dave warned me that over the course of this week leading up to Tuesday, Dec. 18th that I would not see much of him. This has turned out to be very true. He is busy working on his final which is due the 18th. I'm not sure about all of the details, but I guess he and his fellow classmates are busy working on getting their final paper published (they've been working on this together for most of the semester I believe). I'll be excited when the 18th has come and gone and will get to see Dave again. It definitely isn't easy to work full-time and get a Masters degree. Poor guy!

Relief!

I have to admit that I have been pretty frustrated with my hospital photography job lately, which for those of you that know me really well are probably chuckling at because you are saying to yourself, "When is she not frustrated with her job?" I don't know if I just pick crappy places to work for or if my expectations are too high, BUT...lately I've been very frustrated.

About two months ago my boss called me in desperation and said that the girl covering another hospital about 30 minutes from my house was quitting and she was wondering if I could help "cover" that hospital while she found someone to replace the girl that was leaving. I was interested in picking up some extra hours so I gladly agreed. As already mentioned...that was two months ago! You would think two months is long enough to find a replacement, right?

This job is commissioned based and so it has turned out to not be a wise financial decision for me to drive up there and back five days a week. In Utah, especially Utah County, there are a lot of big families with NO money so selling hospital pictures (taken mostly by nurses who could care less about the quality of their pictures) is pretty darn hard to say the least. One pay period I made a little over $6/hour and I could hardly believe it! I haven't made that little in years!! So, about two weeks ago I finally stood up for myself and told my boss as of Dec. 14th I would no longer be able to help "cover" this other hospital. She gave me all of this sad sappy stuff like hiring for that area is next to impossible, etc. I just stood my ground and told her I had to look out for myself for once.

Well, this afternoon I got a call from her and guess what...she has hired not one, but two people for that hospital!! So, because I am the Area Trainer I get to train these two new girls so that I can have some time off at Christmas to relax with my dear hubby who gets two weeks off at Christmas! I've realized that my boss is "one of those people" that when you put the pressure on, she can get it done. I think she just figured I had it all under control and everything was running smoothly until I started to complain. I don't think it helped either that the nurses were feeding me with things like, "You know she isn't worried about hiring anyone because she knows you will do it" and "She is just taking full advantage of you."

The side note in this story is that the company is thinking about creating a new position called Area Manager. Because my boss lives in Salt Lake City she has approached me about my interest in this position for Utah County. I would basically do all of the interviewing, hiring, training, firing, etc. for the three hospitals in this area. I told her I would be interested in learning more about this new position, but have not committed to anything yet. So...we'll see what happens.

More Snow!

For the second weekend in a row we have had snow! This weekend we were actually able to watch it fall during the day unlike last weekend when most of it came while we were sleeping. Dave thinks we got about 5 inches out of this storm. There is just something calming and peaceful about watching snow fall and blanketing the earth in white. Dave and I are definitely HUGE fans of the snow! They are forecasting another storm for this coming weekend too, so it might be three weekends in a row. What more could you hope for? Before the biggest part of the storm got here we ventured out and took in a movie. We decided to watch Fred Claus. We thought it was a cute movie with a good message.

Perfect Weekend

Last weekend was very nice. We spent the weekend relaxing, watching the snow fall, working on Christmas cards and watching movies. It was a perfect weekend. We finally got some snow after having a very dry November! We both LOVE snow so it was very exciting for us. We also helped our neighbors out by watching their new puppy, Jake, for the weekend. It reminded us of how much energy puppies have compared to our good ol' dogs that just lay around. It was Jake's first experience with snow and we had fun watching him jump around in it. I thought he was so cute that I just had to take some video of it.

I'm very excited about my Christmas cards this year! We typically buy cards for the next year at the after Christmas sales to save some money. This year I decided that I wanted to spruce up those generic store cards with a touch of "Holly." I also was able to recruit Dave in helping cut out things, glue things, etc. I just had to take a photo of him helping although he tried hard to hide from the camera.