The Boam Family

Happy Birthday Jane!

2011-09-11T20:28:00.002-06:00

Of course Kayla is front and center in all bday pictures!

We celebrated Jane's birthday Friday night with pizza, cake, and ice cream. Hope she had a great day, I had planned on taking her to lunch and to the movie The Help, but it didn't work out with my sicko kids. At least we made it to the party and had a fun time celebrating. Thanks Jane for your endless patience with Kayla and for always being willing to help or do anything for anyone in the family. Hope you had a great day and have a great year ahead!

Happy Birthday Shelb! and the 4th too...

2011-07-05T15:33:00.002-06:00

On Friday the 1st we celebrated Shelb's 19th birthday. I took a couple of pictures and then my camera died so this is all I have. We spent the day helping Jane move. She moved to a really nice new apartment complex in Logan on the THIRD floor. It was a busy, tiring, hot day. After all that we had Shelb's party that night. Here she is opening her presents.

She was super excited about her new phone. Shelb and her technology. You could sing the Napolean Dynamite song about her. (I love technology...) and of course Kayla is front and center if there is any present opening going on.

We hung out and had dinner, cake and ice cream. We also played a rousing game of signs and then the festivities were over and Shelb had to go back to work Saturday and so couldn't spend the fourth with us :( She had a good time anyway but we missed her. Mom, dad, Jane and my family hit up the parade (which Jon is always in throwing frisbees and water bottles). Then we met up at my house that night for a bbq, fireworks, and basically a good time. Mike was in charge of bringing the entertainment and bring it he did.

He brought a volleyball/badminton net and a good time was had by all. Well, except maybe Paul since he is so competitive and none of us are. Many laughs were had, several falls took place, and several moments of Paul standing with hands on hips shaking his head in exasperation at his team (me and Jane).

Then the Baxters came and jumped in the game. They also put on a great show of fireworks for us and then we had dessert and settled in to watch the city fireworks show which you can see great from our house. It worked out great and hopefully a fun time was had by all.

Bear Lake

2011-06-22T15:06:00.003-06:00

Boam Family June 2011

We had a little family vacay last weekend up in Bear Lake. Mom and dad rented a condo in Harbor Village and we went on the one and only weekend this whole summer the whole family could get away. We had a great time walking along the trail and down to the beach, swimming, fishing (Paul and Mike), playing games, talking, and eating. It was a great time and was beautiful up there. The weather could have been a little warmer but otherwise it was great. Thanks mom and dad for a fun vacation, hopefully this can become an annual thing. Maybe next year it will be a little warmer and we can play on the beach and in the water!

Jonny Boy is 16!

2011-03-03T12:42:00.002-07:00

That's right, Jon turned 16 on Monday. Can anyone else not believe how old he is? That is so crazy to me. It seems so funny to me that we used to always laugh about how Jon would be home alone with the folks and it seemed so far away at the time. Anyway, I managed to snap a few pictures Monday night. Here he is opening up his presents. There is only one picture then my camera died.

Then it was alive again for the candle blowing.

Jon was able to go yesterday as soon as Drivers Ed grades were posted and get his license so he is now officially a driver- of the burb for now :).

3rd Annual

2010-12-07T11:59:00.002-07:00

A couple years ago mom, Jane and I decided that we needed a few family traditions. And so began the annual family Christmas party. I am proud to say that it has lasted for three years now and will hopefully continue on for many years to come. It consists of food (of course), a program, games, and a white elephant gift exchange. This year we had soup and french bread, and treats. Instead of white elephant we drew names and exchanged ornaments so everyone got a new ornament for their tree this year. We had a small program and played games then watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. Here are a few pictures.

The boys "assuming the position" as they call it, after eating too much of Jane and mom's yummy dinner.

The program: Mike singing Star of Bethlehem

Mom and I attempting to play our Sleigh Ride duet, we've had better performances.

Mike reading "The Night Before Christmas"

Kayla was supposed to sing Away in a Manger but was too shy to do it in front of everyone. After the crowd thinned out a little she sang it for Jane and Grandma with my help.

I should have taken more pictures but anyway, a fun time was had by all!

Thanksgiving

2010-11-30T08:18:00.003-07:00

We spent Thanksgiving at kerms this year. We missed Mike and Whit who were with her family on vacation, but everyone else was able to be there.

A quick update on everyone:

Jane is in full swing holiday season at Walmart and is very busy with that.

Read mine and Paul's blog to know what is going on with us.

Mike and Whitney are busy finishing up the semester and working.

Shelb is also a busy hard-working college student who has almost survived her first semester. We are all so proud of her for how hard she has worked and really tried to make the best of being the only one away from Cache Valley. She has done awesome.

Jon is starting to get over the MC state championship fb game and is in wrestling full swing now. He is counting down the days til he can drive himself and thinks he will be getting a new set of wheels. Keep dreaming Jon.

Mom and Dad are basically empty nesters since Jon is never home. They are crazy and continue to do the paper route even though every year they vow to never to do it again in the winter. They actually seem to like it. Hopefully we won't have any broken bones this year.

Happy Holidays!

New Things

2010-08-26T15:54:00.002-06:00

Well, it has been a while since we have posted anything on here and I have a little bit of time so i thought i would update.
Last Wednesday, I moved down to Ogden to go to college at Weber State. It was a little harder than I was expecting to leave my friends and especially my family. Now that school has started things are getting a lot better and although I still get home sick, it's doable.
Jon started his first year of high school today. I think he was a little nervous but more sad that his summer was over. i am sure he had a good time. i mean who doesn't in the MC welcome assemblies?
Last of all, Ash finally had Max on Tuesday afternooon. I guess it was a little scary at first( see ash's blog for details, if not already known) but it all turned out okay and they returned home this morning. I am so excited to see this little tyke. Well, I think that's all for now. sorry, don't have any pictures. until next time.

The Wedding

2010-06-13T15:17:00.004-06:00

Mike and Whitney got married on June 10th. It was such a beautiful day and everything turned out so nice. Whitney looked beautiful and Mike looked pretty handsome too.

Just coming out of the temple, gotta love Mike's cheese, some things never change.

Paul and Jon outside the temple.

Our newest family photo.

The bride and groom with parents.

Sisters at the wedding luncheon.

These are just a few snapshots of the day that I had on my camera. My dads nice pictures are all on his camera and since no one else ever blogs you will probably never see them. We are all so happy to welcome Whitney in to the family!

Shelb's Graduation

2010-05-27T08:50:00.001-06:00

Shelb graduated from Mountain Crest last night. Good job Shelb, this is such a milestone. I only have a few pictures that are on my camera, there are more but they will probably never make it on here because I am the only one that will put pictures on this blog.

Shelb and mom.

Jon cracks me up in this picture and there are two others just like it. He was starting to get a little anxious to get out of there.

Sisters

Shelb with my family of course with Kayla not looking.

Mike and dad left early to get dad to the car that's why they are not in any of these. Great job Shelb we are all proud of you!

Whitney's Shower

2010-05-23T19:04:00.003-06:00

We are able to throw Whitney a bridal shower yesterday. It was fun for our aunts and cousins to be able to meet her and get to know her a little bit better. We made Whitney play a game where we asked her questions and if she got them wrong she had to chew a piece of bubble gum. She did pretty well but the bubble gum still added up!

Here are a few other pictures of game playing and present opening.

Hopefully she got some things they needed and had a good time!

Happy Mothers Day!

2010-05-10T20:43:00.003-06:00

Mom got a bike from all of us for Mothers Day this year. We enjoyed a nice family dinner with Jane's delish food and just hung out together to celebrate. Here are some pictures of mom on her bike!

Hope you had a great Mothers Day mom!

Mike and Whitney- The Details

2010-03-14T21:14:00.004-06:00

Mike and Whitney got engaged on Friday night the 12th of March. Here is the story of the engagement: Mike recreated their first date(which was in August). They went to Fredricos for dinner, then to Cold Stone for ice cream and then they went for a walk down by the Logan River Golf Course. Mike had his camera on the walk and had been trying to take pictures of the date all night. They were trying to get a good picture on the bridge and had tried several times to set the timer and get the angle just right. Finally Mike had timed it in his head so he knew the camera would catch him proposing. Well, he got nervous and hesitated a little so the camera just got him starting to kneel. Anyway, he knelt down and pulled out the ring and popped the question. Whitney was completely surprised, Mike had picked out the ring and not told hardly anyone he was planning to do this. My parents, Whitney's dad, and Shelby and Jon were the only ones that knew what was going down. Needless to say, she said yes and the happy couple is very excited and are planning on getting married June 10. We are so excited for them! Whitney, welcome to our crazy family!

The ring--nice job Mike, it is beautiful!

Who's Engaged??

2010-03-13T07:41:00.002-07:00

Yes, that's right. Our little Mikey is engaged to Whitney Baxter. He did take some pictures but I don't have them so more information to come. Also updates on his and Jon's birthday to come.

Happy Birthday Mom!

2010-02-15T09:45:00.003-07:00

We celebrate mom's bday yesterday with a delish dinner prepared by Jane and Shelb and then cherry pie, german chocolate cake, and homemade ice cream for dessert. We had our uncle David there also since his birthday is just a few days before moms.

Kayla and Grandma blowing out candles.

After the festivities the boys favored us with a wrestling match. We have no idea why they think this is cool but they simply must do it every time we are all hanging out. Even Paul joined in this time with some killer moves.

Keep in mind that this is how Jon split his head open and had to get stitches not long ago.

Paul's killer move-flexing the foot.

The night ended with blanket tossing Kayla-one of her fave activities at Grandma's.

Happy Birthday Mom!

The Festivities

2009-09-13T19:48:00.002-06:00

Since Jane's birthday was so momentous this year (9-9-09) we decided we should do something a little extra fun to celebrate. Mom and Shelb and I tried to come up with something unique but didn't get starting brainstorming until the night before. We ended up pulling it off okay. Mom and I took Jane to lunch at Costa Vida then came home and threw together a few last minute preparations. Then we headed off to Jon's game and when that was over it was time to celebrate! We had dinner and then Jane opened her presents. At the end of the present opening we had a little scavenger hunt with a poem written by yours truly that led Jane to nine of her favorite things. It was a fun way to celebrate. Here are some pictures:

Happy Birthday Jane!

2009-09-09T00:04:00.003-06:00

9/9/09 what a fun day for a birthday! Hope it's a great day!

We love you Jane!

The First Day Of School

2009-09-01T19:38:00.003-06:00

It was the first day of school for me and Jon a couple weeks ago but since our camera card reader wasn't working, I decided that it wasn't worth posting until we got it fixed. It was a good day pretty typical for a first day. I started my senior year in high school and Jon started as a freshman. Weird.

Football Fall

2009-08-28T20:57:00.002-06:00

Jon's football season has officially begun! We love watching the boys play football. Jon is number 95 this year, his first game was against Sky View and they won! Good job Jon!

Half of Jon's fan club. Hopefully we'll get better at taking pictures as the season goes on!

news

2009-08-13T23:49:00.002-06:00

Well, I do not have any pictures because my camera is broken and our family is ironically very bad at taking pictures, but there are some family updates I feel should be mentioned. Me and Mike have grown up and moved away. Mikey is living with his good friend Jason Baxter. He is working two jobs right now, construction and Maceys. He really likes the construction job, he works with really good people and is learning lots of good skills.

I moved out about two weeks ago. For the first week it was pretty lonely because I was here by myself, but I now have two roommates and we are getting to know each other. It is nice to live close to work and have some new experiences.

Jon is in the midst of two-a-days. He is getting ready for his freshman year of football. Good luck to him. He also recently invested in some golf clubs, before Mike left they went golfing a couple of times. However, I don't know how long his interest will last when he has no way to get to the golf course and no one to golf with.

Shelb is getting ready for her senior year. Wish her luck. She is starting to worry and fret as she does so well. However, I know she'll do great.

I don't think that there is anything else very interesting going on. . . yeah, I got nothing.

Mother Goose

2009-07-26T18:01:00.003-06:00

Kayla has recently been introduced to the WONDERFUL world of Mother Goose. We used to watch these all the time at Grandma Kunzler's, and recently we found some on Amazon and ordered them for Kayla to enjoy. I don't know how many of you remember these movies, we loved them? There is one with Jack be nimble, when Jack dances around the candle and then finally jumps over it. She was looking at her mother goose book at Grandmas after dinner on Sunday and Paul started singing. This is the result.

Betos

2009-07-21T09:39:00.003-06:00

Here are some pictures I took one day when we were in Logan with the boys and Mike stopped off at Betos/Rancheritos. It is Mikes' absolute favorite place to eat. If you ever need him to do anything just say you'll buy him Betos and he's in. Shelb and Kayla and I watched Mike and Jon eat since it is too disgustingly greasy for us to eat. Mike and Jon decided to have a jalepeno eating contest. It was quite entertaining, I was glad I had my camera.

The beginning

Jon's eyes were watering.

Mike thought he was some kind of master since he ate Hmong food.

Jon started drinking. Mike said "Don't drink it makes it worse, just eat!" And they both started to chow down. After a few minutes Jon said "It wasn't as bad as I was expecting."

Shelb and I just laughed the whole time. As my mom always says -- little boys never grow up!

Oquirrh Mountain Temple

2009-07-19T19:08:00.004-06:00

On Friday July 10th we were able to attend the Oquirrh Mountain temple open house as a family. It was a beautiful temple and a neat experience for all of us to go together.

Ridiculous

2009-07-19T13:34:00.004-06:00

Sufficeth to say that the maintenence of this blog has been completely and utterly ridiculous, I'm not sure if anyone even reads this anymore, but if you do, please check back because I (Ashlee) have taken it over and hope to update it more often than three times a year. Pretty much the most monumental event of our family occured on May15, 2009 when Mike returned from his mission. It was apparantly a sad day for him but a very happy one for the rest of us.

Everyone waiting anxiously for missionaries to come down the escalator.

Mike with parents and fam.

Mike with the Ashlee's fam, first time meeting Kayla she was not a fan.

Mike in the sweet limo uncle Fred drove us to the airport in.

Mike was basically silent for the ride home and it took him a while to adjust. I think I heard him say "this is weird" a million times in that hour or two after getting off the plane. Paul and dad were sympathetic the rest of us just wanted him to snap out of it. Since returning home in May, Mike now is working two jobs and getting ready to move out in August and start school. We have so enjoyed having him and his sense of humor around again. Kayla is starting to warm up to him a little bit so that's an improvement. Mom is having a hard time adjusting to the new hike in her grocery bill but it's all worth it.

We can't believe that summer break is over half over for Shelb and Jon. Jon has kept busy with training for fall football, his paper route, mowing lawns, and of course playing with friends. Shelb is working at Macey's which has kept her pretty busy, she is loving the independence of having her own money, a car, and all those other teenage things. Yesterday Shelb was seven and now she is suddenly 17! We celebrated her birthday on July 1st. I seriously can't believe that she is seventeen, I still feel like she should be in elementary school. We had a fun day with a picnic at the park, running through sprinklers, her fave homemade dinner-- compliments of Jane-- and of course the dot cake!

With a million conflicting work schedules we didn't make it on a family vacation this summer, but we have spent lots of evenings and weekends hanging out, BBQ-ing and the latest fashion at the Boam's-dutch oven cooking. In other news, Jane has found an apartment in Logan and is moving out the beginning of August. Wish her luck!

OOOPS!

2009-03-12T18:53:00.001-06:00

It has been brought to my attention that I neglected to mention that Shelby went to the Valentine's Dance on Feb. 14th. I thought that I had already posted this for some reason. Anyway she went with a friend from school. She had a good time and looked beautiful. Here are some pictures of her in her dress.

February Update

2009-03-06T19:40:00.004-07:00

I have lately come under fire from several different sources about my non updated blog. So here I am. February is a fairly busy month at the Boam house. We had David come to dinner on the 11th for his birthday, mom had her birthday on the 14th , and Jon had his on the 28th. Mom had to spend most of her's by herself because those of us who work in retail had to work Valentine's Day. However, after work we had a yummy carrot cake (her favorite) made by Ashlee and homemade ice cream made by Jon.

Jon also had to spend most of his alone, as it was also on a Saturday and that is a busy day for Macey's and Wal-Mart. But afterwards he got to go to Cafe Rio, his favorite place, and then we had the dot cake. He got shotgun shells and clay pigeons for his birthday, so he and Paul went out in an empty field behind our house and tried a couple. I tried to watch a movie with him that night, but I fell asleep about 10 minutes in. I have yet to be forgiven for that ;).

In other news, Shelby and Jon and my Dad just got back from a Youth Conference in Salt Lake. They had the opportunity to go to the open house of the Draper Temple and do baptisms at the Salt Lake Temple. Shelby really enjoyed it. She loved seeing the sealing room and the Bride's room at the temple, and she thought the Salt Lake Temple was beautiful.

Mike has 10 weeks from today. We are really excited. He is in Milwaukee again. His fertilizer talent has struck again. After weeks of rebuffs in Green Bay, after he left he heard they had three baptismal dates. He is with a Native Hmong speaker, and seems to really being his companion. Happy Birthday Mike!

Unfortunately, I cannot find the camera card that has the pictures of my mom's birthday. However, I do have a couple from Jon's. Sorry, we have lots of cameras and an professional photographer, but we really are not good at taking pictures. However I do have a video of Kayla I am going to try to load.

ok, i got the pics, but I have to download software for the video, so that will be put off to a later date.

List

2009-01-25T21:14:00.004-07:00

This was on Mellie's site and looked like fun so I decided to try them out here. I changed it just a tad as this is a family blog, the ones in bold are me, the ones in red are someone in my family. Hopefully that's ok. keep going, there is actually a new post after this one.
...for you to do: copy and paste this to your blog and bold the ones that you HAVE done.
1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors (country, not city, does that count)
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

An update

2009-01-25T19:46:00.015-07:00

Here are a few quick updates on our family: (especially quick as this is the second time I have typed all this information, and that makes me very angry!)

I am sure most of you are well versed in our Sunday Crises. We have had pipe leakes, frozen pipes, and most recently, broken pipes. Jon was showering, and somehow, we do not know how, he fell against the faucet and broke it off, pipe and all. So Saturday night we had a huge geyser of hot water shooting out of the wall. My dad had to turn the hot water off, so we were out of hot water all Sunday morning as we all had to shower, prepare for church and cook dinner. My Uncle Chris drove up from Layton and spent about six hours and 4 trips to Lowes later, we had a working faucet. Here are a couple pics of the fiasco.

Jon is almost done with wrestling. He got fourth in region yesterday. Good job Jon! He just has state next week. Since it region was at Mountain Crest, some of us got to go up and see him wrestle (I was still at work) and we got some pictures. They are on my computer somewhere. I will see if I can find them. When he returned home, exhausted, he gathered up all of his wrestling medals, there were 9 total I believe, and put them around Kayla's neck. She thought this was a wonderful new toy and she proudly strutted around the house, jingling all the way.

This is the pic Jon picked out because "his muscles are ripped"

Shelby is still staying busy with school, Macey's and a few social events. She is really starting to worry about college, her senior year, the ACTs, and anything else she can think of to fret about. She is currently trying to find the perfect dress for a Valentine's Dance.

Dad is staying busy. This morning before Bishopric Meeting, he got concerned that we would not get dinner ready. So, in the five minutes he had before he had to leave, he tried to start a roast. This is what he came up with.

Not to worry, we got it fixed and enjoyed a fully cooked roast after church.

In other news, it has been dreadfully cold and foggy here lately and we are all very anxious for January and the inversion to be over. We are also very excited that Mike's mission is nearing completion. As of Friday, he had 16 weeks to go! Here are a few words from him:

we're doing our best to keep warm. apparently the worst

is over. it's wierd when 9 degrees is warm.

most exciting news of the week, i touched the rim
yesterday when we were playing basketball. it was
pretty much one of the most exciting moments of my
entire life.i've decided in a couple years i'm
going to enter the nba dunk contest and dominate.

I haven't had squirrel soup for a while. just a
lot of cow stomach, chicken liver, and vegetables.

bai and sith aren't talking to each other
and are ready to tell each other good bye.
i've about had it with them.  i don't know
if we should drop them or not give up on
them or what.  the gospel is a gospel of
action, if people don't do according to
what they learn, they can only go backwards
cus they are held more accountable when they
know more.  where much is given much is required.

I cannot think of anything else of interest to add. Congratulations to Mellie and Baby Jackson. Wishing everyone warm thoughts of spring. This computer is driving me crazy. The fonts keep getting mixed up and I am having a dreadful time pasting Mike Quotes in here. AAAAAGH! Good bye.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-06T19:45:00.003-07:00

Jon singing his solo at the ward party.

Well, it is a good thing that I made no promises because I am way late posting a new blog. Hope eveyone had a wonderful Christmas, it looks like you all had fun. We had a delightful time. Everyone but me enjoyed the slower, lazier holiday pace. I was actually not home much to enjoy it.

We did have a fun family Christmas party. We had lots of yummy treats and played some fun games. We had a little white elephant exchange. Everyone else bought something to make into a W.E., but Jon couldn't be bothered so about 3 minutes before the party started he raided his top drawer which is, apparently, his leftover campout treat drawer, and pulled out 2 cans of Dr. Pepper, a half of a sack of beef jerky, and a smooshed candy bar. Dad was the lucky one to receive this gift, and amazingly it did not get stolen. We also tried to play catchphrase. Jon also starred in this game when he told the whole story of The Grinch trying to get us to guess Scrooge. Just in case anyone wondered, all of Paul's competitiveness was not left in DC as he claimed.

Kayla enjoying the treats at the party.

We got a couple good movies for Christmas, which is what we spent all day Christmas doing. We watched Chronicles of Narnia, which I really enjoyed. It was a little "out there" for some of our family, however. Then we watched several episodes of Monk. The highlight, of course, was talking to Mike. We were able to talk to him for quite a while. We had him speak to us in Hmong. It is really weird. I would advise you all to have him talk in Hmong when next you see him (about four months from now!). It is amazing. It is Mikey's voice, but it sounds really different. Speaking of which, funny story. He calls on Christmas day and I run to pick up the phone and say hello. And someone says hello, how are you? And I think, this doesn't sound like Mike, who is calling me? It took like 2 minutes for me to recognize his voice. I was so embarrassed.

Jon, as you all saw on Ashlee's blog, got a shotgun for Christmas. He has been begging and pleading for a while now, so the folks finally gave in and gave it to him. I bought it for him one day at work. For those of you who have never purchased a gun, it is quite the experience. You have to have a background check and take an oath and everything. Then, the manager has to carry it outside the store for you. I guess to make sure you don't bust it open, put it together (which I would totally not know how to do, they could call in the SWAT team and shoot me before I had even taken it out of its packaging) and shoot someone. He spent most of his break shooting at something, and finally landed a duck.

We also went to a Utah State Basketball game during the Christmas break. It was fun. I think, however any other member of my family should give you all the technical details. I do know we won stupendously against some college called Howard.

The only other thing of note is that Christmas is over, kids are back in school and I don't have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach everytime I pull into the Wal-Mart parking lot. Yipeee!

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-09T20:29:00.004-07:00

We at the Boam House wish everyone a Merry Christmas. We don't have too many exciting things to report. Mike is doing well. He is in Green Bay right now, which is apparently very cold. In his last email he requested thermals, wool socks, a beenie, and warm slippers. So we looked up the weather in Green Bay. It is about 20 degrees, 12 mph winds, and humidty of 72%. Poor frozen little missionary. His investigators Bai and Sith (I think) got married last week, which was a really big breakthrough which he was excited about, however, the after-wedding party included some beverages that kept them home from church the next day with a raging headache, so there is still some work to be done. It is getting close to Christmas and a chance to talk to him again, which we are sooo excited about.

Shelby and Jon are just about done with school and are both very excited about it. Jon is in the midst of wrestling. he got second place in his tournament last week, which he is very proud of. All the physical exercise is starting to show. He also hit his growth spurt, and is now taller than me (ok that happened a few years ago) and mom, and creeping right up on Shelb. One day Jon was babysitting Kayla for a few minutes until I got home. When I walked in I found this . . .

Aren't they cute?

Shelby stays busy with Maceys and school. She is really enjoying her anatomy class. I can see that I will soon be the only girl left out of the Nurse's Meetings. She and I went to the Twilight movie together. It was pretty good, and it was fun to go and do a girls event.

Last Saturday we all went to Temple Square to see the lights and visit Crown Burger. It was quite warm and a lot of fun. My mom wanted a picture to put on Christmas Cards so my dad set us all up and had a stranger take our picture. It was a lovely setting, I am not sure the rest of the picture turned out as well as we had hoped. It was fun to enjoy the Christmas Decorations together.

As this is the busiest time of the year for Wal-Mart, I have not had too much time to do Christmas decorations at home. However, we do have our tree up, sans ornaments. We got a new tree this year at the Black Friday sales. It is a little smaller than our old tree, but it looks lovely. Kind of. So funny story about Black Friday. I was opening a game case for someone (or like eight someones) and it got stuck, as it does quite often. So I jiggled it, as I do quite often. And it shattered, which it does not do quite often. All over me. I was rained on by glass. It was quite the event. For a full week I was known at work as the girl who broke the game case. It was rather a problem until we could get the new door in because we had to take all of the games out and hide them in the back. You can imagine how well this went over with everyone!

My dad had his birthday about a month ago, but I have not yet had a chance to blog it. I am hoping to find the pictures of it to post, we'll see what happens. Happy belated birthday Dad!

I think that just about covers the news. I will try to get a new post up before the end of the year, but no guarantees!

2008-11-26T18:35:00.001-07:00

Mike's Halloween Costume

2008-11-26T18:31:00.003-07:00

My mother apparently got an addenum to an email of Mike's after his birthday party at the popinga's telling us where to go for pictures. However, she neglected to mention this to us unitl now. However it is a fun picture of Mike being Superman. He told us in a letter that his belt buckle popped off just before the pic and he had to enlist the help of the other superheroes to be photographical.

The Month of October

2008-10-31T12:11:00.002-06:00

Waving to me and playing with Grandma's great toys.

With Jonny and the dog and really crazy hair!!

Yes I realize that it has been a really long time since I have blogged. I have been going to several times, but I could not think of a single thing to blog except Kayla's birthday, which Ash already did. But my family is getting angry with me, why they can't write the dang blog, I don't know, so here I go.

It has been fairly warm for October, it has really almost been another month of summer. Kayla spends quite a bit of time over here, which we absolutely love. She is so cute!! She is even getting used to Grumpy Grandpa. Her absolute favorite person is Jon. She has no time for any of the rest of us if Jon is here. He always puts her up on his shoulders and she grabs hold of his ears to steady herself. It is pretty cute. She has mastered walking and waving, which is lots of fun for us. It is really fun to have her so close!! Since she is pretty much the only thing we take pictures of, here are a few. She is the most photogenic of all of us.

Jon is in the midst of writing an autobiography for school. He was freaking out because he had to write FOUR pages. So we spent most of Wednesday night narrating the story of his birth. It was kind of fun to remember back at that time. He was such a funny kid. He loved to plug anything in. Curling Irons and vaccums were his favorite. He also had a fascintation with deodorant and would smear it all over himself. When he was first learning to talk, he would call Shelby Goggo, we still don't know why. His football team lost out of the MiniBowl. This is the first year they have not won it all, it is also the first year Jon was on the "good" Hyrum team. He was pretty bummed.

Shelby is staying quite busy between school and Macey's. She is doing quite well, except in Spanish. She can read it and (mostly) understand it, but she struggles to speak it. Her and Paul's Spanish conversations are quite amusing. She just went and saw the 3rd High School Musical which she really enjoyed. However it is nothing compared to the Twilight movie coming out soon. She is rather obsessed.

Wal-Mart is starting to get that crazy Christmas vibe. It is kind of sad, actually. We are doing a Veterans Wall on which I have posted Grandpa and Uncle Roy's military photos, if any of you all are in Logan, you should stop by and see it. I am going to try to get a picture to post on the blog, but who knows if I will remember. We have been inundated with Wii's and it looks like it is going to keep up. If one of you need one, please come visit me!

Mikey is still doing well. However he has forbidden me to post anymore quotes from his letters on the blog. However, he is like 5 states away, so . . .

"this week we're going to go help out with a halloween party at brady poppinga's house. i'm supposed to dress up as superman which is embarassing because i'm not in as good of shape as i was back in the day. which reminds me. do you think you could send out a couple of pictures of me when i was home? not a lot but that wrestling one that's hanging in my room (a smaller version of course) and a couple others cus nobody believes that at one point in my life i wasn't a fatty mcbutterpants."

"it's amazing to me how the lord is completely able to do his own work, he just let's us feel like we're important so that we can have the priviledge of seeing people change."

Hope you all have a happy halloween and post your pictures soon!!!

Mike

2008-09-25T12:44:00.002-06:00

I realized in looking back over my blog for the past couple months, that I have not really said anything about Mikey. He is back in Green Bay now. When he first went, they said he might be doing some English work, but it seems to have become Hmong, with English incidentals. We think he sounds like a good missionary. He is really not a great letter writer. He writes weekly, but he tends to just tell about one incident and then considers he has poured out his heart. However, I will put some of the highlights on if you are interested. He has been out now for sixteen and a half months. I must say, everyone was right, the second year goes by much faster! It's kind of long, I just realized, sorry. Don't read it all if you don't want to;)

May: and mother you'll be happy to know that despite continuing criticism from both of my companions i set the cruise at or below the speed limit the entire time because memorial day weekend is dangerous for travel. wisconsin is a very pretty state to drive through during the spring

In response to what car Shelby should drive: 5 reasons why the rodeo is the best car we own(i'll have you know i originally titled this 3 reasons but great accessories continued to pop into my head):

a-the secret compartment in the center console

b-the sick snake head shifter

c-the ode to betos on the rear

d-the easy access rear hatch and security proof driver's side door

e-the afore mentioned spacious backseat...for large loads of cargo of course.

June: on saturday we finally got to go farm with hmong people! it was so fun. they spent most of the time laughing at us because 1-we had no idea what we were doing2-most of the time we had no idea what they were sayingso it made for quite an interesting experience. we went with a less active and one of the people that we're trying to teach. so contrary to the original plan i don't think that our stupidity helped them want to come (back) to church. her son is one of the solid members and him and his wife said they went and talked to them after we left and they just laughed at us and told them us stupid american people don't know how to farm. i'm afraid i have disgraced grandpa kunzler but i'm sure he got a kick out of it too.

we had a good week. our best lesson was with the pentecostal lady i don't know if you remember me talking about her. she has a baptismal date in another church in july so we went over and talked to her about authority. i've become a lot bolder than i was before. which is sweet because at the first i was a little shy about saying our church was the ONLY true church. but i feel like the spirit is there when i testify of things like that. but anyway that lady said she'd pray to be baptized and that she'd come to church on sunday but didn't because of the insane thunderstorm. hmong people are very superstitious. the storm yesterday knocked out the power which cancelled church after sacrament meeting. it was lame because one of our less actives was there so he thought god was mad at him for coming back to church. i'm sure he was just kidding. i think god was just really surprised to see him.

July: our 4th of july was a heck of a lot better than the last one in the mtc. wal-mart had a sweet sale on brats so i cooked up some for lunch. i've become quite the fan of brats. that means i'm acclimating to wisconsin. the department of health says you should only have one every 6 months but we've had about 50 since i've been here in madison. the wisconsin people love their brats.

this week like all of them has had it's ups and downs. some of the highlights: we were talking to some hmong kids at an apartment complex full of hmong people and we were trying to go but they kept talking to us and stealing our stuff so we were having fun messing around and some jackA white trash guy stopped his car and yelled "get away from those kids!!" i told the kids (in hmong) that we needed to go because that guy is retarded and while we were saying good bye he jumped out of his car and started walked towards us with his chest puffed out and talking about how it was private property and you can't just talk to people's kids like that and blah blah blah i'm a dirty tramp. i told him to have a nice day and we walked away and he kept yellin crap about how if we want to talk to somebody we should go to the office and they'll tell us NO. i'm sure he was pretty proud of himself for clearing out the riff raff. maybe next time we'll ask him to take us to the manager and let him yell at us. we're very tight with him and are working to set up some service projects with him.

August: It has been a really good week in general. we've been biking our little tushies off. well little for elder lee, grande for me.

The CRAZIEST thing happened yesterday! We had a great lesson with one of our investigators about baptism and things like that. And as we were getting ready to go, he asked us if he could show us something that his relatives had sent him a few years ago. He brought out a toiletry bag and opened it up. iside was what looked like a couple of sticks wrapped in toilet paper. He handed one to me and i asked him what they were. He said "pob ntxa" or bones. Turns out his relatives were farming over in Laos a while back and found the remains of an American Soldier who had died in the Vietnam war. So they didn't know what to do with them so they sent them to their uncle in America. What the HECK!!! This guy has had an MIA sitting in his closet for a few years. He showed us the jaw bone and stuff, it was really wierd. President Barret says not to get involved too much but to encourage him to do something with them. They didn't train me for this in the MTC.

The best thing however is that Chong Sor, the sweet less active temple worker, is going in for back surgery on wednesday and last night we went over and helped give him a blessing. it was so sick!! His hometeachers who don't speak hmong gave him the blessing and although he doesn't speak english he told us that he didn't need translation because he knows whatever they say will come from the power of god. i'm so stoked, this surgery should help him to be able to walk again and if he comes back to church he'll bring his whole family back with him. He's such a cool guy too.

September: i'm happy this week because i decided that i'm too dang negative all the time. but the great thing is that the atonement has the power to change people and it's making me more optimistic through a lot of prayer and faith. so i'm down with that.

any way zone conference was all about how to make lesson plans and extend solid commitments and give homework assignments to investigators and stuff. so right after that we came home and made a sick lesson plan for a lesson we had that night and it turned out to be one of the best i've had on my mission. it was in english cus the guy is laotion but he's way cool and we thought he was coming to church tomorrow but he didn't. But his less-active girlfriend that he lives with came and she's way sweet. except of course for the whole law of chastity thing. but we're excited about them.

we helped an english partmember family tear out some cement in their backyard on saturday. it made me miss construction work and my little backyard projects. everyone was impressed with the way i could swing a sledge hammer. i felt really important. the guy apparently used to be really anti but is starting to come around.

Peaches, Peaches, Peaches.

2008-09-21T21:44:00.003-06:00

My entire family besides me is in Park Valley for Charley's baptism. I, of course, had to work, so I decided to blog the week in review whilst I await their return. We recieved 2 bushels of peaches this week for canning, one for Ashlee and one for us. We have not canned peaches for over 15 years. Seriously. We had to empty out our old peaches to get enough bottles for the new. Remember cleaning out Grandma's fruit room? Yeah, it was about like that. The newest ones we found were Shelby's age, but we think some were at least my age. It took quite a while to empty, wash and sterilize 52 quarts. In the midst of that our disposal broke, so dad had to clean it all out and reset it for us. Good thing he was home. Ashlee had bought a new canner so we could have two going at the same time. However, it did not come with instructions so she took it back. She sent Paul in early Saturday to get one with instructions, but the only one he could find was so big it wouldn't fit on our stove. So they took THAT one back and finally, after going all the way to Smithfield, found one that would work. We started at about 7:30 and worked through (with a small break for Jon's football game, which he won) until about five. I had to work at two, but everyone else carried on. When the peaches were done, it was time for a few tomatoes from Ash's garden. Voila the fruits of our labors.

While I was loading these pictures I found a couple old ones I had forgotten and never blogged. Here is Kayla tearing out all of the piano music. This is one of her favorite things to do. Also pictured are Paul and Karissa and Charley after a fishing trip when they came to visit a couple weeks ago. While they fished, the rest of us played MarioKart, which was quite fun, but with out physical results.

Slight Update

2008-09-14T20:54:00.004-06:00

No real news here at the Boam's, but in order to avoid an irate email from Mikey tomorrow morning I will write a little bit. The big news of this week is that Ash and Paul moved out to Hyrum, they are now just a couple of minutes away from all available babysitters. It will be really fun to have them so close. We spent most of the week at Ashlee's trying to get her moved and then find a spot for all of her stuff, in amongst all of the Morrison's stuff. It was a busy week. Then we tried to set up her internet in a wireless network. We have spent many, many hours, but so far to no avail. Any ideas out there, give us a shout.

On Tuesday it was my birthday so we went down to Salt Lake to see IKEA which I had never seen, but really wanted to. It was very, very fun. I've decided my new dream job would be to design all of their vignettes. Then my mom made one of my favorite dinners and homemade German Chocolate Cake. DELICIOUS! Thanks mom!

Kayla and Ashlee came over tonight and we took Kayla out to the tramp. She loved that. We got her laughing and scrunching her face. It was very fun.

Shelby is struggling a little bit adjusting to being a working girl. She is scheduled every Friday and Saturday, including Homecoming, which she is bummed about, but she likes having her own money, so I guess it will all even out.

Jon's football team is undefeated this season. He has really enjoyed being on a winning team this year. However, he doesn't play as much as he likes.

The rest of us spend all of our time working. If any of you are looking for Wii's for Christmas, let me STONGLY suggest that this is the time to get them. They are lasting almost three days right now, but if you give it another month, they will be impossible again.

Last night was the U of U vs USU game. I was not there, but by all accounts it was pretty pathetic. About five minutes into it, Wal-Mart was filled with disappointed Aggie fans. I guess that is all I have to say. Sorry no pictures, as I said there was really nothing picture worthy this week.

First Day of School

2008-08-24T16:49:00.004-06:00

WOW! Three posts in one week, it must be a miracle. The kids started school this week. Shelby drove to school the first day because she had to work immediatley thereafter. Mom was a little nervous about all the traffic, but she came through without a scratch. What a first day! She thinks that it will be an ok school year. She is a little nervous about Algebra 2, which I can totally sympathize with. However she is a lot better at math than me, so I am sure she will do fine. She is liking working at Macey's and is anxiously awaiting her first paycheck.

Jon officially started Junior High this week. He was really nervous about getting beat up, but after the first day he feels much better about it. He has an odd Art teacher that I am sure will produce many stories through the trimester. After the wrestling fiasco earlier this week, Jon has not played any football. He went to the practices and the game, but he didn't even dress for the game. Although his team did just fine without him, they won by a good margin.

Ashlee, as you will see from her blog, ran the half marathon on Saturday. Go Ash! She was a bit bummed because she thought she could have done better, but I think 13 miles in 2 hours was fabulous. Hopefully she can move today.

I really can't think of any other news this week. Wal-Mart is TOTALLY insane right now with all of the stupid USU people thronging through the store. It has made me start dreading the Christmas Season already, and usually it is my favorite time of year! How sad.

Also, what post is complete without some pictures of Kayla? Here is one we took when she was out on Saturday. She loves the piano and Grandpa was the only one willing to sit and let her pound on the keys for very long.

Kayla's new chair

2008-08-19T20:37:00.004-06:00

They are tearing down an old church in Hyrum and announced that they were sending all the furnishings to DI, so my dad went to get a big tables and some chairs. When he saw an antique children's chair, he couldn't resist getting it for Baby Kayla. The Willardsons brought out the table in their truck later that night, so we snapped a couple of photos of her using it. She loved it.

Wrestling in the Living Room???

2008-08-19T19:34:00.004-06:00

So on Monday night me and Shelby were both working so Jon was home by himself with the folks. Probably not the most exciting night he has ever spent (at least at the beginning.) In an attempt, we believe to liven things up, he tried some wrestling move on my dad. I beleive he called it a turkey head. No I am sorry, Jon says it is a chicken wing. My dad reposted with a reverse and a double chicken wing (do NOT ask me what the difference is, I have no idea) and tripped him. He tried to trip him towards the rocking chair, however Jon swerved away from that and hit our big black chair. He grabbed his head and started immediately complaining of a headache. When my mom looked over, she asked if he was bleeding, he didn't think so until he pulled his hand away from his head dripping in blood. This was after 8:00 so all doctors office and the instacare were closed. However, my mother has connections and called Dr. Taylor who was on call. He was in the middle of the Olympics (observing) and was nice enough to have them come down to his basement and staple Jon's head together again. Jon gets more Humpty Dumpty-ish every year. Never a dull moment!!

I was trying to get a good picture with the staples, but this was the best I could do.

These were done at Dr. Taylor's house with a cell phone.

Not much . . .

2008-08-17T20:28:00.006-06:00

I really don't have any news, but as I am feeling very ambitious and trying to have something fun for Mike to look at when he gets on I am going to do just a little blurb. I have worked since we returned from Island park, so no news from me. However, Jon started football. They work pretty hard at practice, he is always really tired until it is time to play nightgames.

Shelby has started work at Macey's. This week she was on her own for the first time, she was little nervous, but did fine. Now she is a working girl.

I had a couple of late days this week, so I spent some time watching Kayla while Ash and Paul were at a friends wedding. She was so fun. I think she may be starting to remember me, because she was very smiley and fun to play with. We played tag and talked on the phone and walked around the house and made my bed played the piano and lots of other things. Here are a couple cute pictures I took. I do not have Ashlee's skill with doing hair, so I did the only thing I knew how to do and put a little gel in it and scrunched it to make it curly. I don't know if Ash appreciated this, but I thought she looked cute.

She LOVED playing the piano! You had better get one Ashlee

This was me attempting to get a picture of her

with curly hair. It didn't work out so well.

I thought this was the cutest picture

of her playing with all her Grandma toys.

I had to get her and my clean sheets downstairs.

Me and my mom and dad went to a playt a bunch of my friends at work are in last night. They did 7 Brides for 7 Brothers. It was so fun they did a really good job. Me and my dad always love a play, it went a little longer than my mom wanted, she did not get home before dark, but I think even she enjoyed it. I hope!

We have also really enjoyed the Olympics. Everyone of us has missed some sleep in order to watch some of the finals. I always love the gymnastics, and the swimming has been really fun this year to. GO USA!

The kids start school this week, so new photos should be added soon, hopefully with some news next week.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

2008-08-10T18:23:00.006-06:00

I decided it is high time I caught up on my blog, especially as I finally have something fun to blog. This past week, our entire family (missionaries excluded) went back up to our old stomping ground. We went to the Idaho Falls temple, where me and Ash and my mom had spent many a Saturday waiting for weddings to be done so we could go to Choices and the Mall. Then we headed up to Rexburg and drove around all of our old houses and went up Main Street. It is amazing how much smaller Rexburg is than we'd remembered. I don't know if it is just because everything is smaller when you're kids, or if I am must used to spread out Cache Valley, but it was funny to think how far away somethings used to seem. We went and saw the new temple, which is quite weird for us all, then went to Ricks College. I always still think of it like that. It had changed a lot. We went and saw the people my dad used to work with, well a couple of them. Judy was there, which was really fun. She said to tell Mike she hadn't forgotten him.

After a few more hours in the car we arrived at our Cabin in Island park. I really, really wanted to go jump in the river and relax, but no one would come with me. I finally had to go by myself, which was kind of embarrassing, but then the slowpokes finally came. Kayla really loved the water, even though it was a little cooler than she is used to. She definatly got Paul's love of the water, instead of Ashlee's terror of it. We cooked hot dogs and smores on the fire pit, then the boys headed out fishing while we played a new game Quiddlers. It was very fun. The next morning the boys got up bright and early for more fishing and we played some more Quiddlers. We pretty muched layed around for most of the day, it was so nice!! We all needed a break.

This is Kayla loving crawling around after being in a car seat for 6 hours and Mom and Dad and Shelb at Big Springs.

Jon, with his new best friend, relaxing outside our cabin, Paul ready for fishing

Dad reading while the rest of us played Quiddlers, and Kayla having a bath in the kitchen sink since we didn't have a shower. She did not particularly enjoy this.

We then headed up to West Yellowstone for a little souvenir shopping, some dinner, and of course PLAYMILL. While Paul really liked the fishing, Playmill was the highlight for the rest of us. It was so fun to be back eating fugde and enjoying the play. It was Oklahoma, which I really like, although there was too much kissing for the boys. It was as good as we all remembered it and we already have plans to go back next summer, with Mike. Then we went back to the cabins and vedged some more. We also had a few more smores.

Kayla on a . . . animal of some sort, I can't tell, that Paul found in West Yellowstone, in front of Playmill, and Kayla riding down the slide. Please ignore the pink marshmallow next to her, she should not be in the picture.

The boys spent the next morning fishing while all the girls packed up both cabins. Then we headed home for a final pit stop in Rexburg for Frontier Pies, one of our most frequented restaraunts in the old days. And then it was all laundry for about twelve hours. It was so much fun. I am already excited for next year and the fun we'll have then, with Mike this time.

And the Chaos Continues - - -

2008-07-20T21:15:00.006-06:00

Hello all of you non-mess-encased peoples. We are finally to the point where you can actually move through our house without tripping over something (that is if you are not clumsy like me). However we really missed all of Mike's muscles this week! It is still a bit of a work in progress as me, my mom, and my dad worked all week and any house work was done after eight hours (which unless you have endless amounts of energy, which we don't, is rather slow going). Shelby was at EFY all week, so we didn't even get laundry and basic clean up done. We were all Pretty sick of all of the pictures of our dirty chaotic house, so there are no more, but here is the (almost) finished product. As you will probably deduce, there is still a bit left to do, mostly finishing touches, but you get the basic idea. We have had a few questions about what our kitchen floor is but we found it kind of hard to explain, hopefully the pictures will enlighten you. While I am waiting for my pictures to load, I will entertain you all with some amusing incidents of getting the house presentable. On Friday night Ash and Paul were staying with us and they generously brought their truck to haul away our old carpet and etc. While the boys were gone doing this and Kayla was asleep, we girls thought we should move the old furniture downstairs and the new furniture upstairs. This turned out to be a very bad idea. We started with the red love seat you will see in the pictures. It was downstairs and needed to come up. It is a pretty fun chair with a little bed inside, but it is rather wide. I don't know how may of you know our house at all well, but at the bottom of our stairs we have about 3 feet square of space surrounded by doorways on two sides, a wall on one, and then of course the stairs. It is a rather difficult corner to manouver a somewhat large couch into, but we did do it. Then it wouldn't fit upstairs so we had to do some more manouvering and turn the couch on its side in this small space to get it up the stairs. In the midst of this the bed fell out of the couch. At this point it was leaning into the stairway and the bed got stuck on the railing. I really wanted a picture of this wonderfully amusing moment but there were only three of us home and all three were needed to either hold up the couch or put the bed back in. It was about this time that we decided the stairs were not an option. After the bed fell out a second time, thereby totally destroying the paint job we had so laboriously done two weeks ago, we once agin manouvered the blasted thing into the family room. We dismissed upstairs to remove the furniture there out on the lawn (yes we are white trash, but by this time it was dark, we were going to make the boys move it downstairs when we got home). This was another Lucy and Ethel project as all of our furniture was too wide to fit the right side up, so we turn it over and trip over ourselves, the door and the steps to get it out there. Let me say that with three pairs of legs all at different heights it was a rather lurchy process. We then wnet back down to the red couch and tried going ourside, up the steps, through a man killer tree and up the deck into the house, all trying not to put the couch down and rest so it wouldn't get dirty. This did not work out as well as we'd hoped. It took us twenty minutes and a broken glass vase just to get the thing outside. The hill and stairs in the dark were murder. My mother was attacked by the tree, and we had quite a few rest stops along the way. But, at last . . . success! We were all three exhausted by that time to we collapsed and waited for the boys to get home. They, studly men that they are, then proceeded to load all the old furniture in the truck and DRIVE it down the hill. Load up the new and DRIVE it upstairs. They carried their stuff about ten feet. As Mike would say: " Wow." What more can I say. Wow.

Saturday night after a full day of work for me and a fully day at the Park Valley 24th Celebration and visiting a sick David in the hospital for my parents and Jon, we made a valiant effort to put the house into the best possible condition. We had a desk to build (apparanly, after much trial and error, we found it is quite important to tighten all screws!) Pictures to hang, more furniture to move and a lot of organizing to be done. We finally finished at about 11:30. As most of you know, my mother goes to bed at about 9:00 so this was a very late night for her, but she was a trooper. Today we all took long naps and tried to sleep in. It didn't work so well for my dad, who had a paper route and early meetings, or my mom, who had to do the paper route also as someone who shall remain nameless was too tired. Whoo, what a spiel.

In other news this week:

Ashlee's Birthday was very fun. We are always happy to have her and Paul and Kayla out for a visit. Pictures below in all the glory or our mess. This was the day before the carpeting was going in. Actually now that I think about it, Paul spent most of the night helping to scrape up the old linoleum and move appliances out of the way. Thanks Paul!

Shelby got American Idol tickets for her birthday, so on Tuesday, she and my mom went down with Kerma and Lindsay (sorry if you spell it with an e, can't remember right now) to the E Center for that. They said it was really fun, but was another late night. We think the one in the middle is David Archuletta (totally guessed on the spelling of his name.)

Shelby, as I mentioned, spent all week at EFY with her friends Teddi and Shalane. She really enjoyed it. She also went to Dark Night with a group of friends last night. She said it was good, but really creepy. She had to check her car driving home, she was sure the joker was there.

I beleive that is all the news I have. If not too bad, my hands are aching from all this unaccustomed typing, although I will put in a plug for a new movie I just discovered. Penelope. It is darling and clean. A perfect chick flick!!!

I just remembered the Four Aces got together for lunch at Olive Garden on Wednesday night. It was sooo fun to catch up. Unfortunatly, Ash has the only picture of it. She needs to either post it or email it to me. Thanks for the planning Mel and Kar.

Another Busy Week

2008-07-14T09:54:00.009-06:00

The Makeover continues! I have had the past five days off, but never fear, I have been busy. We painted Shelby's Room and Dad and Jon put our old living room floor in there so that she had wood floor. We went with white accessories and kind of tried for a beach look. We were happy with the results, see what you think.

Here are some pictures of the process, the first is a messy before, we had already started taking the room apart before we remembered to take it. The painted walls, taking out the carpet. The next is a picture of our pulled apart living room and then dad a Jon putting the floor in Shelby's room. And here is the finished product. I am not the best photographer, but hopefully you get the idea.

Also during the week, we repainted our entryway, which really needed it. We also repainted some old furniture we had to fit in more with the future decor. It was quite the process.

Additionally here are some of the pictures of the mess our house was in, actually still is in. It was quite overwhelming to my mother. If anyone has a spare bedroom for a week, she may need it!!

And Lastly, happy Birthday to Ashlee!!!!!! Happy 23! Here is a picture of her about 22 years ago, doesn't she look like Kayla in this picture, I think so. (Sorry, I am in there as well, I couldn't cut myself out, but as it is probably the last cute picture of me, I am not as embarassed as I should be.)

What a Week!!!

2008-07-06T20:24:00.005-06:00

Hello all!

Happy Sweet Sixteen!!

This week has been a busy one at the Boam House. Shelby's birthday was on Tuesday. I had the day off, so me and Shelby and Jon went to the movies. She had really wanted to see Get Smart, which she had gotten tickets for. However when we got there that show had been cancelled so we went to Kung Fu Panda instead. It was most enjoyable. It was very funny. We really enjoyed it. When we got out of that movie Get Smart was just starting, so we made a total waste of a day and went to that one too. It was also REALLY funny. We laughed pretty hard.

Then Jon had a playoff baseball game so we went and watched that. He won, which was pretty fun. Jon played really well, got some good hits and made some good plays on first. Unfortunately he lost his next game miserably (10-0) and is now done playing baseball, although (fortunately for US) football starts soon.

We also had all of our cement redone this week. It was quite the procedure and we have pretty much taken over the street as a parking lot for the last few days. However, we should be able to drive on it tomorrow, which we are all excited about. Especially my mom. She is rather spoiled and has not liked having to park in the sun. Poor mom!!! I would hate to have to see her scraping her car in January!!

Our cement workers. I tried to get a picture of all our cars lined up, but it didn't work. Just use your imagination.

My mom had almost all week off, so we dug in to our house and painted all week. It took a lot of time and a lot of climbing up ladders and on top of cupboards, but we finally got all of our white painted and even added a colored accent wall. In another week we will have new carpet and move our new furniture in. We are all excited. We were all so tired and achy after this, but it looks so good that we were glad we did. (Well not that good, there are a few places we need to touch up.) Shelby's room is this week.

Our house in Shambles and Shelb and Jon vegging while me and mom worked around them.

In amongst all of this was the Fourth of July. I actually worked all day so I missed most of the festivities, but I hear they went to the parade and had a barbeque. Ash and Paul also stayed at our house so they could get up early so Ash could do the Freedom run. After I got home at 8:00 we decided we would go to the Mantua Fireworks because they always looked fun as we came home after boating. However, we went about 10, and there were no fireworks. We drove around for a few minutes, didn't see anything, so we turned around and drove home to light our few sad, pathetic fireworks and go to bed. Next morning at work, I heard people saying the went to the Mantua Fireworks at 10:30. Oops!

Ash near the finish line and our sweet fireworks.

Well I think that is all the news, I will try to add some pictures and end this fascinating dialogue now.

My Uncle David came up to visit today with a new car. His old Blue Car was dying, so he and Chris went to an Auction. Apparently he had one in mind, but by the time he got there Chris was already bidding. He thought that he was bidding on the car David wanted, but was actually bidding on an old Crown Victoria Blues Brothers car. I have never seen this movie but my parents say it is a good comparison. So, since he does not currently have a blog, I decided to blog this story. We found it quite amusing that they didn't even know what they were bidding for but would up with an old cop car. It reminded me of that old Dick Van Dyke show where rob spends a fortune on something.

Happy Fourth of July!!!!

2008-06-29T20:34:00.005-06:00

We have just come home from spending a very enjoyable, though rather warm, evening at the Hyrum Patriotic Program. Hyrum does this every year on the Sunday before the Fourth. They raise the flag, do a Veterans Tribute, and honor all those who have served in the Armed Forces. This is always a favorite part of me and my moms when they play the theme for each branch of the Armed Forces and have them stand up as it is played. This year Doug Wright was the guest speaker. He did a fabulous job, it was wonderful. He talked about his experience watching his Grandfather care for the flag, and how it helped him realize what it stood for. He also quoted Ronald Reagan saying " Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children what it was once like in the United States when men were free. " He talked about how important it is to pass our stories of Patriotism and our love for our country on to future generations, which I totally agree with, because I attribute most of my patriotism to stories of Grandpa and his example.

Another speaker also quoted the following, which is one of my very most favorite quotes:

"It is the soldier, not the reporter, Who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, Who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the organizer, Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.It is the soldier, Who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag, And whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows the protestor to burn the flag." - Father Dennis Edward O'Brian, USMC

There were also some wonderful renditions of some patriotic songs which I was grateful for because I have to work next Sunday and the Fourth of July, so I would have missed them otherwise!

We are all truly grateful for this country and the freedom we have, for the examples of sacrifice and patriotism that we have all experienced in our family. Happy Fourth of July!!!!!!

A New Post

2008-06-22T16:51:00.004-06:00

I decided to try to update our blog, even though I am sadly lacking in pictures. Shelby just returned from Trek. She said it was really, really hard. They were at a new campground that is about 4 miles farther away from everything, which made for a long and exhausting 3 days. She is glad to be home and is appreciating the spiritual side of Martin's Cove more and more from an air conditioned house and soft bed. Dad also went as a photogragher. He seems to have done okay, he got a picture of a Rattlesnake that he was pretty excited about. Shelby said when the missionaries were warning everyone about the rattlers, they told the story of Wayne Pugsley getting bit. They said, "We have only had one incident, and the man thought he knew what he was doing, but he didn't."

It was the IHC swim party on Friday, me and Jon were the only ones home, but we brought the Willardsons along. It was very fun. It is always so nice to jump in the water after a hot working day. Kayla was a lot of fun to play with, she really enjoyed it.

Mike was transferred to Madison a couple of weeks ago. We have only had one letter from him there so far, but he seems to really like the area, it is very pretty. We are all kind of imagining it as a little more rural than Milwaukee, but we could be wrong. He is opening the area, as it has been closed for a transfer. I am not really sure what this all entails, but he was slightly nervous about it.

I planted my garden in the beginning of June, and low and behold it frosted two days later. Who knows if anything will be any good, but I do have some squash, tomatoes, beans and peas up, which is exciting.

Also in the past month Jon went to Scout Camp. He had a good time, but I am not really sure what he did, other than eat a lot of good food. We did not have such a good time taking care of his dog and doing the paper route. He has also been playing baseball. He isn't on the star team by any means, but they have won a few. Jon is a pretty good hitter, and has a good arm, but unfortunatly he has inherited Boam running genes instead of Kunzer (remember that story about Grandpa having to follow someone around the bases, and wait for them to cross the plate, yeah that's pretty much it.).

In our leisure that past month, we have discovered Mario Kart for the Wii. May I highly suggest to those of you who have a Wii or are planning to get one. It is very fun, although I suck! Also me and Shelby are watching the Next Design Star on HGTV. This is my favorite show and I wait all year for summer so I can watch it. Also highly reccomend. I guess that is all the news I have. I will dig through the last month of pictures and see what I can find to post. I can promise it won't be much!!!! Unfortunately our card reader has gone missing, so I have no pictures to post. I will update with picutres once I find it, or buy a new one. Sorry about that Y'all. Mikey, I will send you some this week.

However, here are a couple of Mike.

The last two are the flooding that the missionaries tried to help with, and drying off at a members afterwards.

OH, OH, OH!!! I just remembered my fancy dancy printer/scanner also has a card reader so here are some more pictures.

Jon trying out Dad's new riding lawn mower.

One of Jon's baseball games.

Dad and Shelby dressed as pioneers ready to load up on the bus (or wagon.)

Kayla chillin with Gramps and Gram.

Kayla loves Ice Cream

2008-05-20T20:11:00.007-06:00

We took a video of Kayla eating ice cream. This is the first time we have tried to post a video, so we are not sure how well it will work. She loves, loves to eat real food. If you ever eat while holding her, she opens her mouth everytime you do. We found this extremely amusing.

Eureka, it worked! PS--I just realized that you cannot view the video if you link from another site, however if you type the address (theboamfamily.blogspot.com) directly in, it comes right up. Sorry about that, if you care to see the video, you'll have to have a two step process.

In other news, Shelby passed her Driver's Ed Test. She was really, really nervous, but she did just fine. Her teacher even told her that he could not even tell she was nervous. She is now very excited for July 1st when she can officially get her license. CONGRATULATIONS SHELBY!!!!!!!

Pictured above, the infamous Driver's Ed Car, Walking away from the final drive, and with her friend Teddi, who also Passed.

While loading the rest of the pictures, I realized that I had never posted the pictures of Jon's choir Concert. It was quite a good concert. He sang, Old McDonald had a Jazzy Farm, Cantar, Stars and Stripes Forever, Come Follow Me (not the hymn) and Charlottetown. He did not solo, but the ensemble sounded lovely.

Isn't he cute?

Today, my wonderful brother-in-law brought over his tiller and tilled up our miniscule garden plot. It looks so good now, it is the best soil I have ever planted in! Thanks again Paul!!!!!

Happy Mother's Day

2008-05-13T20:01:00.007-06:00

As you all know last Sunday was Mother's Day. It was a lovely day, everyone was here, except Mikey, but we got to talk to him, so it was like he was here. On Saturday, we got the Pre-Call Call. We were expecting it, and Jon really wanted to be the one to answer when he called so he put batteries in our one phone so he would know when it was Wisconsin calling. At one point his cell phone rang and he answered it. His conversation went about like this.

--Hello?

--Excuse me?

--Wrong number.

--Click.

Then he told my mom, that was weird it was some guy talking Spanish. My mom asked if he was sure it wasn't Mike talking Hmong and about that time the home phone rang. Mike had called Jon's cell phone, but he hung up one him. It was pretty amusing.

On Sunday we had yummy muffins for breakfast and then went to church. Ashlee and Paul and Kayla joined us. Shelby had to talk and she was really nervous, but she did a wonderful job.

This is a picture of my mom with her mother's day present. Thanks for the help Melly.

Mom had requested grilled chicken and pasta salad. So I had cooked the eggs before church. Unfortunately I failed to turn them off. I only remembered before the closing prayer of Releif Society. By the time we got home the house was full of smoke, and a lovely smell. See picture for my success at cooking a delightful mother's day meal. However, everything else was edible, so we had dinner and then went downstairs to watch a movie and wait for Mike to call.

He did, and we had convinced mother to buy a good phone, so we were all able to hear him and talk to him. We talked to him for about an hour and a half. It was sooo fun. We had him tell us the first discussion in Hmong. It was TOTALLY nuts. It is so weird to hear Mike's voice and not be able to understand at all what he is saying. He is doing really well. His ankle is still pretty sore, but he is keeping it iced with frozen peas and corn. They are struggling to find people to teach, he gave an example of a door approach that pretty much went like this.

--Have you ever heard of missionaries?

--Yes.

--Would you like to talk to us?

--No.

--OK, bye.
He is still quick and funny, and pretty much kept us laughing the whole time.

All sprawled around the phones listening to Mike.

Monday night, Jon had his first Baseball game. It was not really a success. Let's just leave it at that. He only got up to bat once, and was not too successful there either. It was really cold and windy, so me and my mom and dad just watched from the car, but we did get a couple pictures.

Lastly, I am adding a few of the pictures Mike sent Mom in her homemade Mother's Day card.

At the Buck's and Jazz Game

Elders' Boam, Heath, Simansen, and McCoy

This is after the GPS was stolen.

Luckily he has amazing automotive repair skills.

1 Year Anniversary

2008-05-06T19:09:00.003-06:00

For those of you who do not keep obsessive track, Mike has now been out for a full year. Actually almost a year and a week. He is training right now and just got a new Elder in Transfers. He, Elder Heath and Elder Findley, are in Milwaukee. Last week sometime the got rear ended by a teenager who was eating and attempting (not so successfully) to drive at the same time. Later that night, while they were all asleep, some lady started pounding on their door, saying someone had just bashed in one of their car windows. Mike does not like to be interupted in his sleep, so he promptly went back to sleep. However, when they woke up the next morning, sure enough, the window was broken and their GPS was stolen. High quality neighborhood he lives in apparantly. He may want to consider leaving his car unlocked. It may turn out to be cheaper in the long run. They are not having tons of success, as he tells us often, he is definatly in a hunter mission, rather than a fishing one. However he is working hard and has had some success.

In other news, school is getting close to over. Shelby and Jon are working hard. Jon never worries about everything, because of course he does everything well. Shelby worries about everything. She is just about finished with Driver's Ed. She is really nervous but getting better every day. I am sure she will do fine. The rest of us pretty much go to work, watch American Idol, and sleep. Pretty boring people, I know!

Foot Damage

2008-04-16T19:54:00.003-06:00

This is just a quick update to post a couple of Mike's pictures he sent this week of his injured ankle. Looks pretty painful!

Hello Again

2008-04-13T20:51:00.005-06:00

We spent ten minutes today while I tried to figure out how to set the timer on my new camera to get a snap of all of us, we finally got one, but for some reason it did not get saved, so, no picture of that. However here are some fun pictures of Conference weekend at the Boam house. Most are of Kayla, because lets face it, she is pretty cute.

These are of a fun spring outfit Grandma bought fot Kayla.

Nap time!!! Jon is the one burrowed into the red quilt. Shelby is in the greeny one.

I realize that I have not blogged for nearly a month. This is for the very good reason that there is NOTHING going on in the Boam family that has not been blogged already. Yeah, I got nothing. Shelby and Jon were out for spring break this week, and my mom was also off, so they had fun shopping and going to lunch and hanging out. On Friday me and my mom and sisters went to the dry pack cannery in Logan to stock up on food storage. It is really amazing to see the system the church has worked out to help all of us prepare. We just have to do our part. We spent a bit over an hour canning rice and wheat and oatmeal. It was the first time any of us had ever been for ourselves. So it took us a while to figure out what we were doing, but we eventually got it. All went well until it was all packaged and we went out to pay. That was our undoing. I pushed the cart out to stand in line while the others finished cleaning up. I got in what I thought was the end of one of two lines. Turned out it was the middle of one. One of the missionaries had to come rebuke me for budging in line. I was most embarrassed. Then when that same missionary came to check our sheet that says what we had, we were accidentally trying to cheat the church. Instead of 18 cans of wheat, like our paper said, we had 20, and so on through the rice and oatmeal. It was very sad. Let me promise you all however, and maybe some day the missionary will read this, we were just stupid, not dishonest. Mother's car is now stacked with giant storage cans, however, it would not all fit so the rest is in Ashlee's.

In other news, Dad did General Conference again, and again thoroughly enjoyed it. Those of us at home enjoyed listening and watching Conference. It was such a good feeling to listen to President Monson speak and know that he is the prophet and the church will go on. I had that weekend off and enjoyed lazing around the house and listening to general conference. We, for the first time in years, had no major projects we were trying to do, and just enjoyed the time. We went to dinner at Kerm's on Sunday afternoon and saw most of JoAnn's Family and all of Kerm's. A fun time was had by all.

Mike is still doing well on his mission. He did play some heavy duty basketball a couple of P-Days ago and ended up with a pretty sore ankle. He has promised pictures of it, but we have not yet received them. No worries, however. He was able to fix all with a bunch of Otter Pops straight from the freezer and a borrowed set of crutches. Also a brace from Walgreens. Allow me to quote the play by play we received. well it was me, heath, and i don't remember who was on are team but we were getting dominated cus the other two teams had a bunch of studs that played in high school. we were playing cutthroat where three teams are on the court and you play half court and the team that scores goes down and plays the other team at the end of the court. any way i suddenly turned on my john stockton skills and started dominating and we were making a sick comeback when both me and elder heath went for a rebound and he says i stepped on his heel but i think he stepped on my ankle and i don't think i've ever been in that much pain in my life. We hope to hear he is back to normal this week. It is getting warmer in Wisconsin and he can take of suit jackets and wear slacks (purchased we hear from a DI type store called Vinny's, which will be interesting). He is a good missionary and we are proud of him. At least if he can keep his body in working condition.

Yes, I am still at Wal-Mart. It is delightful. It really isn't that bad, the worst part is the annoying customers, please don't any of you be one of those! Also the fact that I know exactly what movies are coming out and see the great deals, so my DVD collection has tremendously increased the past few months. Speaking of which, I must take a moment to reccomend Stardust to those of you who haven't seen it. I know what you're thinking, I was doubtful as well, but if you like a good love story (and let's face, which girl doesn't) this is one you should see (I just bought it last night. On sale at the Logan Walmart for $13.00!)

Happy Easter!

2008-03-23T19:26:00.003-06:00

I hope everyone had a Happy Easter. Mike sent us some new pictures this week, but this is the first time I had to blog, He bought himself a leftover bike. He also was made trainer last week, which he was fairly nervous about. The picture with the four missionaries are all the Hmong Trainers (we think) Elders Boam, Hiatt, Jolley and Jones. He has never been terribly newsy, so I don't have much to report. The work is going really well in Milwaukee, so he is happy.

All of the girls in the family, and even my dad had new Easter clothes, however, with choir practice, and bishopric and trying to get dinner on we neglected to take a picture. However we all looked beautiful, as usual.

I work with a girl at Wal-Mart who is in a community play of Beauty and the Beast. We all went out last Friday, it was a fun time. Shelby and Jon don't remember any plays, so it was fun to go and enjoy it together.

Jon got a football today in lieu of an Easter tie. He thinks himself quite the athelete, but those of us who have been on the receiving end of his passes know better. We all asked him to stop throwing the ball in the house, but he assured us that while his baseball aim leaves a little to be desired, he was a great thrower of the football. We were preparing for dinner with ham and potato salad and of course devilled eggs. I was finishing the devilled eggs, we did a dozen eggs, so it was quite a process. I had them all nicely arranged on the plate and turned around to get some paprika to make them blush, and in that split second, the sure-fire aimer had landed a football all over them. The football came out with about six eggs stuck to it. In our haste to get the football cleaned up, we neglected to get some pictures, although we have since regretted this lapse, as it would have been fun to poste on the blog.

Other than those exciting pieces of interest, not much is going on. Wal-Mart is still moving along. The wii's are coming in at a slightly higher trickle. Shelby and Jon our in the last long haul of school. Shelby is really, really nervous about driver's ed, but hopefully in three months she will be driving.

Jon's Birthday

2008-03-04T21:06:00.005-07:00

Jon's 13th Birthday was last Thursday. He was pretty spoiled, as usual. He had decided earlier that he wanted a video Ipod (a $400 investment), but as he really does not care for music, I talked him into a PSP, playstation portable for the uninitiated. This will play games, and movies, plus store music. And you can get on the internet with it, if you are lucky enough to have access to wireless internet. He thought this was a fine idea and since it was less than half the Ipod, he got it for his birthday, plus a baseball game and a couple of movies to go with. He also got a RipStick, which is a really funky looking skateboard. His friend broke his arm using his, I have almost killed myself a couple of times trying it out, but Jon thought he would like it, so there you are. It is good because it will get him out of the house. It is actually pretty cool. You stand on it and shake your legs and it kind of moves itself.

In other news, hmmmm. . .

Shelby started Driver's Ed today. She is freaking out because it is going to be so intense! She is a pretty nervous driver, but she will improve with some driving experience.

Our dryer broke last night, so when I got home at three in the morning, all of our laundry room was all over our kitchen. It was an all day project to get the old broken down dryer out and put in the new one. The men in the family worked at it for about five hours, then had to go to mutual, so me and mom finished it up and got everything in place again. What fun we have here at the Boams.

Jon would like to announce that he now has one arm pit hair. He tried to show it to us, but no one could see anything, (however for obvious reasons no one would look real close).

Mike is still doing well. It seems like every week he announces another new investigator. He is still trying really hard to master Hmong, but hasn't quite made it yet. His one request for his birthday was for the Gift of Tongues. He is not really enjoying the big city, but is loving the people there. He found out that at the next transfer we will be training. He is excited to no longer be the junior companion. He has been out 10 months this week. I guess time is moving forward. We missed him today during the dryer crisis. He would have been very helpful.

Guess that is about it. Everyone else is doing the same thing, work-sleep -work -sleep. Hope you are all having fun! Here's hoping spring arrives soon!

New Pictures of Mike

2008-02-16T10:08:00.013-07:00

For mom's birthday, we recieved some new pictures from Mike. Some of them we thought were quite funny. I thought I would post a few on the blog. Hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

Christmas Morning with my Haul.

Singing with Elder Graham at
the Hmong Christmas party.

Gone with the Wind and the
fat guy who made it.

In the Big City of Milwaukee

This is the Hmong guy we helped move. He had me tie his dining room table on top of this van. He handed me 15 ft of PHONE CHORD to accomplish this task. Needless to say we kept a safe following distance.

This is one of our delicious creations. It's tuna, black beans, fried a a tsp of oil and some barbeque sauce and wrapped in a tortilla. It wasn't very good but it worked. We call it Tor-tuna Delight. (It really is a shame this recipe was created too late for the cookbook!)

In other news, Mom's birthday was this week, on Valentine's Day. She had the day off as well as Ashlee and myself, so we took the rare opportunity to go down to Ogden. We had lunch and went shopping at the Mall and Target. (We also had to go to Sportsman's Warehouse, but as this was only for Paul and wasn't very fun, I don't actually count it as shopping.) Then we came home and had Carrot Cake and Ice Cream and opened presents. Hopefully it was as fun for her as it was for me and Ash and Kayla.

For part of my mom's birthday, I repainted and decorated her bathroom. It was rather an all day project and had quite a few setbacks, the shower curtain I ordered has still not shown up, the cabinet I built broke, and we CANNOT find a suction cup that is strong enough to hold all of her shampoo. We have now tried two and everytime we think we have it, it tumble down again. However, it did turn out pretty cute, and will be much cuter when the darn shower curtain shows up.

The almost finished product,
it will be much cuter with the
shower curtain. Picture big red
and white squares.

We babysat baby Kayla last night for the Valentines dance, so she has been hanging at Grandma's. She got a little scared last night at bedtime when she couldn't see mom or dad of anything familiar, but other than that she has been a beautiful angel.

Sleeping peacefully on uncle Jon's bed.

February

2008-02-09T17:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, I realize it has been a long time since my last post. I am in the midst of a nine day Wal-Mart marathon. I am thoroughly not enjoying it, but I finally got off in time to catch up on my blog. I thought I would start my updating all of you on my latest car disaster. Another one? you say. Oh, yes indeed. So one day last week, I was on my way to work, and was, as usual running a bit behind. So I was going a little faster than conditions perhaps warranted. Anyway, I can see a huge semi coming towards me so I slow way down and wait for it to pass. The wind that day was quite bad in and of itself, but when the semi passed the wind that came off of that blew my little car all over the road. I spun around into the other lane, and and then slid back over into my lane (turned around this time) and into a ditch. I knew there was no way I could my car out of the five foot deep snow filled ditch, so I called my dad immediatly, and he was quick to assure me he would be there with a shovel. "No, Dad a shovel will not work, bring the burb and a chain." He however did not think I knew anything and took an extra ten minutes gathering shovels to dig me out. He realized I was right when he saw me. However, my situation was a little too dire even for the burb. So we called a tow truck and one hour, $60, 2 highway troopers, and plenty of humiliation later (plus a partridge in a pear tree) I was dug out of the snow drift. Only to find that I had locked my only set of keys inside my car. (Beat that, Melly!!) I was lucky however, that no one, including myself was seriously injured (it could have been much worse), my car is drivable, there were no tickets, and it only cost my $60 for this tow job.

On to other exciting news. Not much really, I provided all the excitement for the week. We have been getting a lot of snow. More than I ever remember since I was a child. I really hate driving to work in it, but on the rare days I can stay home and make bread, I really kind of enjoy watching the snow fall. I am enclosing a couple of pictures of our house surrounded by snow. THis is mostly just for Mikey, because everyone else either has more snow than us, or really doesn't care, but it is a lot of snow for Cache Valley.

The snow cave Jon and his friend made, and the snow reaching to our top step. I did have a better one of the whole house, but I cannot find it and I don't care enough right now to load it again.

Shelby and Jon both got on the honor roll this past trimester, which is always an acheivment. Mike hit his 9 month mark a week ago. He seems to be doing really well in Milwaukee and really getting into the swing of things. He informed us in a recent letter that he is really starting to enjoy the Book of Mormon. As he says " now it's really becoming interesting and i'm getting a lot more insights than i ever have. i now know the exact location of kolob, where the gold plates and urim and thummim are, and where dinosaurs came from. but seriously the book of mormon is the true word of god and it continues to strengthen my testimony everytime i read it of the divinity of jesus christ. "

He also told us a little bit about what he did during President Hinckley's funeral. "Me and elder johns along with a set of spanish and english elders all got together at the milwaukee branch building to watch president hinkley's funeral on saturday. that last song was a beautiful song but whoever decided it was a good idea to put up all those clips wasn't very considerate. it must have been quite a sight to see--six weeping elders huddled around a tv in a chapel in the middle of the milwaukee ghetto. it was a lovely funeral. it's a blessing to know that even though he was sweet, this isn't president hinkley's church, it's the lords. and he set it up perfectly so that we always have proper leadership."

Please excuse the punctuation, the Hmong must not have capital letters or periods.

Well Hope all is going well with everyone else. Good luck with student teaching Melly!

President Hinckley

2008-01-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

I am taking a leaf from Andrea and Jenn's book (or blog) and marking this day for President Hinckley. He was such a great influence on all of our family. Shelby and Jon do not remember any other prophet. We will all miss his humor, his testimony, and his insight, but are glad to know the church will go on, lead by another true prophet. I am so happy for him to be reunited with his wife and everyone else he loves!

No News

2008-01-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

Not much happened this week with anyone but Jon. He had his state wrestling tournament, and placed fourth in his weight class. (We don't talk about the fact that there were only five boys in the weight class.) Considering the fact he was injured for most of the season with his foot, he didn't do too badly. He got to go down to Orem and stay the night at a hotel with the team, so he had a good time, even if he didn't have the best record. Thankfully, wrestling is now over, we are all relieved!

The pajama pants were all finished yesterday, although there was a slight mishap. I was sewing the last pair (mine) and moved my thumb wrong and caught it in the needle. The needle went in the nail, and started to come out, then broke off and was stuck in my thumb. In the aftermath, I thought that I should have taken a picture before I was operated on, but at the time all I could think of was that I wanted it out. However I was not brave enough to pull it out myself (it was kind of stuck) so Shelb, the only other one home, got the privelege of yanking it out. Fun times!

The other exciting thing was Kayla rolling over, she did it at our house, so it was really exciting for me and grandma (we were there with mom).

Shelby has been sick all week, but enjoyed a day home watching Sydney White 7 times. (A very fun show for all of you chick flick-ers out there). She is trying to learn to drive, and drove me into Logan yesterday without mishap. No other news at the moment. We are really pretty boring!

P.S. Check out the bottom of last week's blog, I added a picture of Ashlee and Kayla in matching pajama pants.

January News

2008-01-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

January is, of course, the most boring time of the year, however, we have had a few blogworthy events. Jon has been wrestling again and won second place in his weight class at region yesterday. He won twice, but then got pinned by a bigger guy. He was a little bummed, but he seems to have gotten over that and is quite proud of his silver medal. As you can see below.

News from Mike is another transfer. A missionary had to go home for medical reasons, so they had to do some re-shuffling and Mike landed in the midst of Milwaukee in the ghetto. He is not terribly excited about this as he has a well-known hatred for big cities. However, after three days, he seemed to like his companion, and they get a car because the Hmong people are spread all over the city, which was a plus. We are hoping for a few more details this week. Here is our newest picture of Mike outside of his new apartement with his new companion, whose name escapes me at the moment.

Yesterday was a busy day at the Boam house. Kayla came out to get Grandpa to take some new pictures of her. We got a couple cute ones, but she wasn't as happy mom wished she was. Here are a couple fun ones, I will leave the rest for Ash to do with as she wishes.

The first one obviously wasn't taken by my dad, but she looked so cute, I put it on anyways. The second one was, but we couldn't get her to look at my dad, so it is not a straight on picture.

Finally, just as we should have been settled down for the night, me and my mom embarked on a sewing project. Ash and my mom stood in line for 2 hours on Black Friday two years ago to get a bunch of flannel to make pajama pants. However, we only got down to making them last night. It took us a while to figure out the patterns because I have never made anything but blankets, and the last time my mom made pants she was in the Big Room. However after our initial experimental pair which turned out somewhat less than stellar, they went pretty quick. We did not get all eight pairs made, but we did get five done. More to be done tomorrow. Here are a couple quick pictures.

These are all of our first experiment. When they are all done, I want a picture with everyone in them for the blog. I know you are all excited. Hope you all have a good week! Ok, so the rest of the pants didn't turn out so well, mine and Shelby's were too small, my dad's were way too big, etc. However, Ashlee and Kayla's matching pairs turned out really cute, so here is a picture of them.

Amazingly, a new post!

2008-01-07T20:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I realize it has been a long time since I updated my blog. It has been a busy three weeks. I worked everyday the week before Christmas, then a week afterward, then flew to California for 5 days. Today is the first chance I have had since to update. Christmas was great. The big surprises were a Wii (sometimes it pays to work at walmart), and a trip to disneyland and SeaWorld. We spent a couple of hours that day talking to Mike, it was really exciting. He sounded really good, and still like Mike. Next time we are going to have to invest in some new phones as the old ones were pretty fuzzy and hard to hear him on. He is still in Appleton and doing well. For Christmas he sent us a Hmong recipe for Kuab Txo. It is a very hot sauce for rice. Today was the first day I have been home to cook dinner since we got it, so we tried it out. It was quite hot, but very good.

This is the finished product in the authentic Hmong pepper crusher he sent us. His recipe doesn't make very much, but it is very potent so you only need less than that for a whole pot of rice. In his letter this week he said they were excited for Sunday because they had several promising investigators that had promised to come to church, however none of them showed. One was hungover (he is working on a word of wisdom problem) and one had a relative for Thailand show up for the three hours chuch took place. What are the Odds?

Our California trip was great. It was a lot warmer than Utah at this season, but not hot. The first day at Disneyland was REALLY crowded, so we didn't get much done (plus we were pretty much exhausted as we had been up for 12 hours by the time we got there). But we did do Splash Mountain and Soaring over California, both of which were fabulous. We got an early start the next day and the crowds had thinned so we hit pretty much everything we wanted to, plus Splash Mountain a couple more times. One time we were completely soaked! See picture. The next day we headed to San Diego to do Sea World, which I totally loved, but I was pretty much the only one, all anyone else liked was the roller coaster. We also hit the temple, Old Town, and of course, the Beach.

It was a very fun vacation. I could have gone a couple more days, but everyone else was very, very glad to be home. Especially my mother. Here are some funny pictures of us on Disneyland rides. The one of my dad is on Space Mountain, and the other is on Splash Mountain. I had to scan the ones we bought there, so I am not sure how this will work. Sorry if it is really bad.

Hopefully you can blow them up, my dad's expression on Space Mountain is priceless!

Mayhem

2007-12-15T16:12:00.001-07:00

Tis the season! While most of you would think that it is the season for Peace and Joy, you do not live at the Boam House. We have regular crisis' around the Christmas season. For example one year we had Carbon Monoxide poisoning after putting up the Christmas tree. This year we have one to compare with that memorable Christmas. My bedroom is in the basement. I went down to go to bed last week and went into the family room to turn off the lights when I heard plunk, plunk, plunk. Our ceiling was leaking. Somehow our kitchen sink's plumbing had gotten loose and found its way to the basement floor. By the time I spotted it there was already a rather large spot of wet carpet, the shlef underneatht the ceiling was peeling paint and there were several holes in the aforementioned ceiling. Me and my dad spent about an hour trying to mop up the water, fix the plumbing, and drain the ceiling. Here is a picture of what our ceiling looks like now. I did not post the picture of the pots/mop buckets/garbage cans which we used to catch the leaks. Yes, it really was that sad!

Other than that, not much is going on. We got an email from Mike this week, or course. He says the weather is pretty cold. It has not been above freezing since Thanksgiving. We also received a picture of a lovely snowman he had made (don't ask us when). He had also 'babysat' an elder with pneumonia, which was pretty exciting. We are all getting really excited to talk to him on Christmas.

While I live in Cache Valley, which has no snow so I have to fun snow pictures, I also LOVE the Christmas Season. I would love it more if I did not have to spend it with all the psychos at Wal-Mart. I feel like I haven't really had time to do all the Christmassy things that I love to do this year. But we do finally have our Christmas tree up (with ornaments, which took a while). It is lovely. We even have five presents under it. So far Shelby and my dad are the only ones getting presents this year. Hmmm.

Ash and Paul are visiting us right now with their beautiful baby. They claim she has learned to really smile, but so far I have not seen it, so no pictures. However, I thought this was a cute pic of mom and baby, so I am posting it.

Hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas Season. Merry Christmas!!!!

Tagging, I guess

2007-12-04T22:19:00.000-07:00

I am not really sure how tagging works, but I looked at Ashlee's and Andrea's so hopefully I copy theirs correctly. I am posting this about myself (Janey) and not the whole fam since I am really the one that does the blog, and it would be too complicated to do it for the whole fam.

7. Even though I am actually a very good worker, I have had way more jobs than someone my age should have. They were mostly at the same time, and some only seasonal, but still, for less than ten years of working, it is a lot. Some include: Nordstrom, Artic Circle (two different stores) Ridley's Bakery, Qwest, Western Watts, the Training Table, maid/housekeeper (two times), janitor for Weber, preschool teacher, preschool aid, Wal-Mart, and secretary for Global Accessories. I may be missing a couple, thats all I can think of off the top of my head (that does not include babysitting.)

6. I once had an imaginary friend that lived in my ear. I still talk to myself upon occasion as a result of the long conversations we used to have.

5. I love books. I have a lot. I have read a lot. My room has two bookshelves overflowing with books, I have boxes of books in my closet, I have taken over one of the bookshelves in our family room, and the one in Mikes room, and I still have piles of books that can't go anywhere. It is kind of an addiction.

4. I was born at the wrong time. I should have lived fifty years before I was born. I love old stuff, old movies, old books, old furniture, old styles, old, old, old. I would infinitley prefer a old house that I could fix up to a a brand new one.

3. I took seven years of piano lessons, three years of violin, and have absolutely no music ability whatsoever. In the simplified hymn book I can play #67 (but only the top hand, and very slowly).

2. I am not a good driver. I have driven since I was 15 (in Idaho) and have been through six cars. Three I totally trashed. I have had my license revoked, have been sued for an accident, have run several redlights/stop signs. Have had several accidents, several tickets. However, until 8 days ago, I had a clear record for 5 years.

1. I have a habit of throwing things in anger. I threw a rock at Ashlee and hit her in the head (she had to have stitches). I threw an alarm clock at Mike (however it was plugged in and the plug didn't stretch far enough to hit him, so that does not really count). I also threw a couple of boxes across the back room at Wal-Mart the other day because some fool had messed up my carefully organized bin. There was no one back there however, and they were very small boxes, and they only went about 6 inches, so I think I am improving. Don't you?

I, um, have exactly 4 blogging friends, and they have all been tagged so, I am the end of the chain.

I never have a good title.

2007-12-04T21:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I thought it was about time for an update, and I actually have a couple fun things to blog. My Grandma Boam has had an organ for as long as I could remember, no one knows how to play the thing, they don't even know how to play the piano, but it was always a fun toy if we could talk my mom into letting us try it out (Grandma was ok with anything). Anyway, David is doing some remodelling and was ready to get rid of it, so my dad said to bring it on up. It was pretty dirty with sheetrock dust and such, but we cleaned it up and shoved into our already over-crowded "piano room" (now to be known as the "music room") and my mom has loved it. She spends at least a half-an-hour every night trying to teach herself the foot pedals, right now she is working on Christmas Hymns. Her and Ash are excited to try out some piano/organ duets. Me and my mom tried Silent Night a couple days ago, but as I can only play the top hand of the VERY simplified Christmas book (like for Bailey, maybe even Ellie), it was somewhat less than stellar.

Another (not really exciting, but interesting) thing to happen this week was a school project of Jon's. I do not know if it is a Utah thing, or just Cache Valley, but in 7th grade you have to make a mousetrap car. This is basically a car that will self propel for 30 feet using the mousetrap as the engine, so to speak. (I don't know the specifics, all you engineers out there can set me straight next time you see me). We have done this for Mike, for Shelb, and now for Jon. You would think we would have it down. Well. most of us do. We actually kept Shelby's car for 3 years just for this eventuality. However, Jon likes to be independant (to begin with) and wanted to try a new idea, even though Shelby's could go like 100 feet in 10 seconds. So he plays with it all week and weekend, and then on Sunday night (of course it is due on Monday) he tries it out and it goes like four feet. So my dad and Jon spent all night trying to make the thing work. I think the farthest they ever got it was 18 feet, which was good enough for a B+. Good enough. As you will see from the pics below, Jon always starts out being independent and wanting to do it all himself, but usually ends up watching my dad finish/fix whatever he has started.

Last I will give a quick update on Mike, minus pictures. He seems to be really enjoying his new area and his new companion. They had a huge blizzard last weekend the Mission President forbade driving so they pretty much stayed around their apartment and decorated for Christmas. He did walk to Target (a mile in a blizzard) for colored lights instead of clear for his Christmas tree (this was not his choice). Then they went around and shovelled people out. He asked for the recipes for sugar cookies and Gone with the Wind because "i refuse to go a holiday season without gone with the wind, even if i completely destroy it." He tends not to use the shift key in his emails. I neglected to post his latest address in my last post so I am adding it here. 1515 E. Coolidge AveApplelton, WI 54915. Other than that he was not terribly informative about his life. He did enjoy the Christmas Fireside, especially the Choir.

News Update

2007-11-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

Well, life is continuing at the Boam house, same as always. Sad to say, after over five years accident free, I have againlived up to my reputation as a bad driver. At 6:30 Monday morning, I was on my way to work stopped at a red light (Yes I did stop this time), however, I thought the car in front of me had already gone, and as I was turning right, I did not look that way before I pushed the gas, and the lady had not left and CRASH! I had to call the cops, and about that time Jon passes on the bus (I was unaware of this at the time, but he later informed me of the fact that everyone on the bus thought it was a drug bust, lov-erly!) It was dark, so I couldn't really tell, but I don't think it did too much damage to her car. However . . . my car is a different story. See picture below.

Thankfully, my insurance will cover it and I don't even have a deductible.

Next news is that it is Christmas Season, so it is time for Christmas Decorations, the most wonderful time of the year. Jon was good to help me put up decorations, it is a full days project. I have enough Christmas decorations to fill even Kerma's storage room. Anyway, while I put up my Christmas village (can I just insert that it is It's a Wonderful life and pretty much the coolest village ever!) He put up the tree and the lights. I am grateful to him, and glad that he helped, but it was too funny not to post. Here is his first attempt on the lights. Also, just because I like my village so much here is a picture of it, you can't really see how cool it is because it is too far away.

Along with the Christmas season, I will mention that I did survive Black Friday at Wal-Mart, however I have decided to have a new job by next year :). I do have a picture of that day, however it does not do justice to how incredibly crowded and insane it was. I had it loaded and all, but then my mom informed me it is on Ashlee's blog so you have probably all seen it, oh well.

Kayla was blessed on Sunday, which you will all know from Ashlee's blog, but since the after-chruch dinner was hosted at our house, and it was a big event, I am posting a couple of pictures also.

Proud Grandma and the party in full swing.

It was a busy day, but it was very fun. After all of the excitment ended we settled down to a rousing game of Rummikub.

Ash and Paul are out for the evening tonight for some Christmas card pictures, so far Kayla is not cooperating. But it is always fun to have them all out here.

Also, since my last blog, we had Thanksgiving. We were at Kerms's of course, and a "fun time was had by all." Here are a couple of pictures of the big day.

Trying to figure out how to stuff the turkey, and loading up our plates.

Boredom at the Boams

2007-11-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

So, it has come to my attention that I have been neglecting the blog. A thousand apologies. There are three reasons for this"
1- We are all boring and nothing exciting has happened.
2-My scanner broke so I could not upload Mike's pictures, and lets face it, who wants a blog without pictures.
3-Wal-Mart is absolutely insane at this time of year. People are driving me insane. Let me announce it here for the world to know: WE DO NOT HAVE ANY WIIS. WE DO NOT KNOW WHEN WE WILL GET MORE. I AM NOT LYING TO YOU I REALLY DON'T KNOW. THIS IS NOT A CONSPIRACY TO GET THE WIIS TO BE REALLY POPULAR! THERE ARE NO WIIS!!!!!
Ok, now that I have announced that on this incredibly popular blog, perhaps I will get only 100 questions about it today at work instead of 500.
Let's see, news about our fam. . . Mike was transfered to Appleton, which boasts the only Hmong branch in his area. This is a change because when High council or stake visitors come, they translate into English for them instead of into Hmong like they have in the past. (Although, or course they still have to translate their talks for the Hmong.)He is out of a threesome and with one companion, Elder Graham from SLC, who is supposed to be the best Hmong speaker in the mission. Mike is hoping his Hmong will improve. He found a little park while they were tracting and insisted that the other elders swing with him. He sent a fun picture, which I would put on the blog, except my STUPID SCANNER broke. He was jumping off and informed us that he may, or may not have ripped the crotch out of his pants on the landing, but it was ok because he got a sick picture and took a sweet sewing class in high school.

Mother is back to work and not really enjoying it. Shelby just finished her first trimester, the end was very stressful for all of us as she started freaking out and had to enlist the help of the fam to finish her interior design final project. But everything turned out fine. Jon hurt his ankle clear back during baseball season. We finally decided after, what 3 months, that is might be serious so he went and got an x-ray. Sure enough he has something wrong with the growth plate (page my mom for technical details) so he can't wrestle. Glory, Glory Hallelujah (I think that is spelled right, if not please excuse Kerm.) I hate wrestling! Ash is enjoying her baby (in fact the whole family is enjoying her). As a result the little darling is somewhat spoiled and thinks she has to be held all the time. She is very very cute and the joy of the fam right now. For pictures see Ashlee's blog. Dad is staying busy. Besides all the other stuff, he is doing some stories for the deseret news in Cache Valley, which he is really enjoying. Now as a courtesy to the family, I will share some of my hard earned knowlege about movies and provide release dates (these would make great Christmas presents, but please to not buy them at Wal-Mart)
Bourne Ultimatum and High School Musical both come out December 11. Come on who's excited? Well now that you are all bored out of your mind by this exceedingly interesting blog update on an exceedingly interesting family, Happy Thanksgiving! I will see some of you tomorrow, but the rest of you, enjoy your Thanksgiving as much as I plan to enjoy mine. (And please do not visit Wal-Mart the next day, it would be hazardous to both your health and my sanity.)

Short Update

2007-10-31T19:55:00.000-06:00

This is just a short update on Mike as there is nothing else going on in the family but Kayla, and Ash's blog pretty much has that covered. However, I am attaching a picture of her in the Green Bay pj's Mikey sent.

Isn't she cute!!

Mike is doing well this week. He seems to be doing so much better in Wausau. His letters are always upbeat. However, he is never terribly newsy. This weeks highlights were that he is learning to like veggies (I know, I know, totally shocking!!) And they had a trunk or treat that they were able to participate in. Mike loves Halloween and spends all of October (in normal years) figuring our a great costume. This year he was a redneck on the way to the out house.

Update on Mike (with pictures).

2007-10-24T19:14:00.000-06:00

Mikey sent us a package this week with some fun pictures and a pair of packer's pajamas for Kayla (to be pictured in a later blog). He seems to really enjoy his new area and his new companions. He just had a baptism this Saturday. He did not do the baptising because he gave the talk on baptism and the Holy Ghost (in Hmong, nice job Mikey!). Here are some pictures he sent us.

At the baptism with Cheng and his mom.

I am assuming the children are his as well.

On a Hmong farm. Apparently they buy

big chunks of land and several families farm it.

I quote "Hair cuts are expensive so I bought

some clippers at Wal-Mart and this is my first

self-given haircut." What a wierd person!

"This is our sleeping arrangements.

It's pretty ridiculous, but we have fun with it."

(Mike's is the one with the MC colors and,

unfortunately, unmade bed)

KAYLA HAS ARRIVED

2007-10-21T19:03:00.001-06:00

Proud Grandma and 2 day old Kayla

Checking her over, ..........................First Family picture
not even an hour old.........................about 10:30 that night

Baby Kayla arrived Friday night at 10:06 pm. It had been a really long day for Ashlee as the first contractions had started over 24 hours earlier, but they both did fine. Kayla was 7 pounds, 4 ounces and was 20 inches long. She is a contented baby, and we think she is about the cutest baby ever born, but probably other families would contend that statement. I don't want to take up all of Ash's information when she gets around to blogging, so I will just add a couple of pictures for those of you who haven't yet seen her.

Random Events

2007-10-11T19:08:00.000-06:00

Jon's Apple Pie

Jon is in Seventh Grade right now and has an exploratory class where they do all sorts of fun things. Today, they made apple pie. They put the pie together in class, then brought it home to bake. When I came home from work, the house smelled good and there has a delicious, if half eaten, pie waiting to be blogged. The pie tasted really good, and was even quite pretty. Almost good enough for the fair.

In other news, mother is really into food storage right now, which is admirable in itself. However, for some reason she is obsessed with sugar (this may have something to do with the length of the dessert section of the cookbook). What she fails to realize is that we live in a very small house, and we are absolutely and completely out of room to store her 200 pounds of sugar. We have finally convinced her that there is no more room in the storage room (as this is full of several hundred cans of green beans), so her next epiphany is to stack them over every inch of floor space in out very small pantry. They are now about three buckets deep and three buckets high. We cannot make anything with all this sugar, however, because one can no longer stand inside the pantry and so, one must stand in the doorway and reach. All that is accessible from this position is the cold cereal. However, we have enough sugar for hundreds of batches of brownies if there is a sudden food shortage.

p.s. I know I will get in trouble for this, she will make me take it off if she sees it, so look your fill
now.

Mother's forty year supply of sugar.

Conference Weekend

2007-10-11T18:56:00.000-06:00

The Fall Colors in Sardine Canyon

Fun at the Shower

We had a really fun time over conference weekend. It is always nice to sit and listen the Prophet and the apostles. I am always ready to dig in and be a better person, and yet in six months I need to be reminded of the same things all over again. Usually we have a big project for conference weekend, quilts, cleaning, etc, but this week we worked all week before so we could be lazy and vedge for conference. On Sunday evening we went to the Williamsons for dinner and a baby shower for Ashlee. Sardine Canyon was really pretty with the fall colors. It had snowed in the mountains over night, and the top of the mountians were white. I made mom stop and get out for a photo opportunity. It was fun to see everybody. Ashlee got a lot of really fun, and really cute things. She was really excited to go home and lay everything out. Now she is even more excited for Kayla to born, but she is as stubborn as her mother and is not yet ready.

Transfer Update

2007-10-03T09:16:00.000-06:00

Mike emailed us a little blurb today saying that he got transfered to Wausau, WI, into another threesome, which is not his favorite. He will be with Elder Jolley (1 year) and Elder Hyatt (8 mos). They are both from the Salt Lake Area (Cottonwood and East Highs). From what we can tell from Mapquest, Wausau is about 100 miles to the west of Green Bay. Hopefully, it will be somewhat warmer.

Mike's new address in Wausau is:
7345 Whitespire Rd #7
Schofield, WI 54476

FIVE MONTHS TODAY

2007-10-02T17:52:00.000-06:00

I do not have any big news to relate, but as we got an e-mail from Mike yesterday, and he has been gone 5 months today, I thought I would put a little update on him up, and anything else I think of that someone might be interested in. His bishop was in Cache Valley this week and called my mom to report on Mike, we were pretty excited to hear from him. Mike is expecting transfers this week, he had thoughts on going to a couple new areas, but everywhere he considered has already been assigned, so he doesn't know whats going on. Next to a museum where they do service is one of the Top Ten spook alley's in the nation. He is planning to visit that unless he is transferred. It is starting to get cold in Green Bay, and the winter horror stories are coming out, "so that's always exciting." He is still funny, and his sense of humor always comes through in his letters, here are a couple of fun quotes from him:
---(about Kayla) "I figure I'll miss all the cute stages and get there when she's just a little brat. I'm not sure what to be excited about.
(just kidding ahs)
---(we asked him who he thought the next apostle would be) "I think that the 2nd counsellor will be elder Packer or Ballard, and the new member of the twelve will be Elder Michael R. Boam"
---(We asked him if he has given a blessing in Hmong) No I haven't given a blessing in Hmong. One time nkauj neeb's car wouldn't start so she asked vaj xeeb to pray that it would start and it did. I guess that's not a blessing and I didn't have anything to do with it. Everyone reading is now dumber becasue I said that. I award myself no points, and may god have mercy on my soul."
He ends with "the gospel's true, repent vile sinners."

Me and my mother went down and tackled Mikes' room today. He had left it an absolute disaster, if anyone talks to him tell him he is dead meat!!!

In other news, Jon is FINALLY done with football, hallelujah. Mother is still recovering and seems to be doing better every day. Janey got moved to a new work schedule, which is usuallyMon-Fri 7-4, which she is very excited about. Shelby is in the midst of the Vampire books by Stepanie Meyers, and so has not had any exciting experiences.

The Boam Luck

2007-09-24T20:06:00.000-06:00

This actually happened a few weeks ago, but it is the most exciting thing that has happened to us, so I decided it was blog worthy. Thus I am sharing it anyway. With all of the great reccomendations for The Bourne Ultimatum, I wanted to see it. But it had been so long since I had seen the others that I held off until I watched them (which after I saw the third, I was very glad). So at (where else?) Wal-Mart (I spend a lot of time there lately, you may have heard) they had this great deal on both movies. I borrowed them to Ashlee and Paul and we had this great evening planned with home-make caramel popcorn and the Bourne Supremacy. Shelby was driving us into Logan and all the sudden my (new) car starts making this horrible noise. Immediatly, because I have been in this position before, I had her pull over. Yep, there was a torn apart flat tire in the middle of the highway. And, NO JACK. So we had to call my dad to come rescue us, with a kind-of-pathetic jack. Then take my dad's two door car into Logan, a half hour late. But, after all that, the movie was great, the popcorn supreme, and the excperience, unforgettable! Only with the Boam's!

Bad News Stangs

2007-09-24T19:57:00.000-06:00

He is Number Sixty

Jon's team is still not stellar. In fact, they are truly bad. But John is having a good time playing and getting some physical exercise. He is also having fun with all of the guys!

The Aggies

This Saturday was a rainy day here in Cache Valley. The Aggies played in the afternoon, and while none of the girls were interested in the game (mom was snuggled up in some warm blankets, Me and Shelby went to Sydney White (it was a pretty fun movie!) and Ashlee had worked twelve hours and wanted to stay home and be warm and lazy) the boys did go. It was a pretty exciting game. It actually looked like they were going to win (apparently) until the fourth quarter when they gave it away. They were all pretty mad at the sad ol' Ags. All in all, it was not a good day for Cache Valley football!

Elder Boam's Life

2007-09-24T19:07:00.000-06:00

"This is our stake temple trip. . . ."A lot of people came by the booth
to Chicago. Mkauj Neeb is in . . . .& wanted pictures of all the white
white. She's the coolest. . . . . . . . . dudes in Hmong clothes (like guy in middle.)

"This is one day when we got . . ."Me and Jones at the game.
a flat tire." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Don't act like those ties aren't
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .the shizz!"

This is me and Elder Lanj at the . . .This is from left to right:
Hmong Tourney in Oshkosh. . . . . . .Elder Miller, Elder Jones,
He's the only native Hmong . . . . . . .Elder Petersen, and the
Elder in the mission. He's . . . . . . . . .Pride and joy of the Boam
pretty awesome, from . . . . . . . . . . . .family.
Sacramento.

So I finally got my scanner (which I got for a killer deal at good old Wal-Mart, I had better luck than Andrea) so I can upload some of the fun pictures Mike sent us. So I thought I would tell a little about what he is doing. They recently went to a "tournament" in Green Bay. Apparently this is a big gathering where all of the Hmong people get together and have soccer and volleyball tournaments. It is a really big deal, there are all sorts of booths. Mike and his other Hmong missionaries set up a "sweet booth" where they got "sweet referrals." He got a chance to walk around and buy things, which was good for him to practice his Hmong. You can see in the pictures all of the Hmong accessories he bought (who knows if that is actually what he thought he was buying.) He sent us a hand-stitched pillow cover of a "bunch of Hmong people chillin' in Laos." He went somewhere with a native Hmong Elder, and at that point he was "the only white person for like a mile." He also got to go to a Packer's Preseason game, which he thoroughly enjoyed. He is now a big packers and Brady Popinga fan! He is still struggling a little bit with some of the people in his mission, but seems to be excited about the work he is doing. He was supposed to do a confirmation in Hmong this week, but, to his embarrassment and disappointment, he didn't end up doing it. He is in a threesome right now, and has splits with another Elder which he enjoys, because then he has to speak in Hmong. His testimony is growing. Transfers are in 10 days, but he is not really expecting to be transferred. It is starting to get cooler in Wisconsin and he has requested a sweater and his coat.Hopefully he survives! Also I can't figure out how to make my captions stay in place without all the dots, sorry if it bugs you, any ideas on that I am totally open to.

Rexburg Temple

2007-09-19T20:46:00.000-06:00

Hello All!

I have kind of slacked off in the last couple weeks with the blog. However, that is mostly because nothing noteworthy had happened. School has started and everyone was busy with that or work. However a week or so ago, some good friends of ours in Rexburg had a son getting married, so mom and dad headed up to visit. While they were there they took a tour around the old town. They say it is almost unrecognizable! The college has grown so much that what we always knew as "the college" is just a little square on the outskirts. They also went up to look at the temple that is supposed to be dedicated in January. The temple's outside looked almost done. They, of course, forgot a camera (remind me again what my father does for a living???), so they had to buy a little disposable film camera to snap some photos. Thus the long wait while we tried to remember to get them developed and uploaded. We also got a couple of letters from Mikey. He sent us some really fun pictures that I am trying to get in a format that I can upload them. Once that is done I will give more of an update on him. For now I will just say that he seems to be getting really excited about the missionary work, but is still a little bummed because some of the other elders that he is with don't seem to want to be too ambitious.

Football Fall

2007-09-01T21:02:00.000-06:00

Jon is # 60.......................The Aggies Game

Action with the Stangs

Like the Payne's, fall at the Boam house means football. While we no longer have a fun high school player to follow, Jon continues to keep us busy. He played today in Brigham City. He is unfortunately not on a very good team, so the score (47-0) was not to inspiring, but he played well, even though he got injured when a big fat boy stepped on his hand with his cleats. Let's hope his other games get a little better.

Speaking of losing teams, we also support the Aggies. Ashlee won free tickets to the opening game on Thursday, but she only needed one, so Jon and Dad took the other one and enjoyed the game as well. While the Aggies did not win, they did perform better than expected, so they enjoyed the experience.

Mike's Update

2007-08-27T18:57:00.001-06:00

Well, it is Monday so that means another email from Mike. We had major Drama today because we did not think he sent us an email. We were all very upset. I finally checked my junk-mail and found it. Apparently myldsmail wasn't working and he had to use another email address that is not in my address book. Good think I checked!! Mike was upset about myldsmail not working, to quote him "I intend to write a strongly worded letter to President Hinckley about it today!"

This was transfers week. His companion was made DL, which he was excited about, as he would go on splits and be on his own with Hmong, however, another Elder got put in with him and Elder Jones, apparently he is not the greatest, so he is a little concerned about that. He informed us that he is eating veggies with the Hmong people. Anyone who knows anything about Mike knows he has had a lifelong hatred of all things green. However, he informs us he is "really starting to like vegetables." He has been given a peeled cucumber to eat like an apple at least a dozen times. He is not yet enjoying that.

He went to the Packers' preseason game, which he really liked. However, he said he had never been stared at so much in his life. He sounded pretty ok this week, hopefully he will have another good week.

The First Day of School

2007-08-24T16:50:00.000-06:00

Jon ready for anything. . . .Shelby very nervous!

Thursday was Shelby and Jon's first day of school. Shelby begins her high school career this year. She was really nervous about starting a new school, especially as she has no friends in her classes, or even her lunch. However, the first day went swimmingly, she found a girl in our ward to sit by at lunch, and did not get lost once, which she was excited about. Shelb has Geometry, English, Web Design, Interior Design, and Seminary. She takes driver's ed third trimester, which she is pretty excited about!

Jon is starting 7th grade this year. It is his last year at Willow Valley, which we are all excited about as it is the earliest and the farthest away school in the Valley. Nothing really fazes Jon, and according to him the school sang Hallelujah when he walked in again, so I guess he is going to do fine. Fall is always busy for him with school starting and football, which takes up a lot of his time.

Update on Mike

2007-08-20T10:32:00.000-06:00

I decided to post Mike's address and a bit of information from his last email on the blog, it is a good way to keep anyone who is interested updated. So his address is:
118 South Washington #430A
Green Bay, WI 54301

He is doing better this week, he took a troop of members to the temple and he went along to translate. They took a bus to Chicago (I have no idea how far that is) and he sat next to his favorite Hmong lady who made him speak Hmong the whole way, he says he can tell a difference so he is pretty excited.

He is going to watch a Preseason Packers Game. He is going to try and make a sign that says "Mormons Love the Packers." We'll see how that works out. He has a couple of messages, so I thought I would put them up here, it is easier. Chelse, he says if he were your favorite cousin he would get more than one letter a year. Kar, congrats on your marriage. Stauffer, lay off his woman. He also thanks everyone for the prayers, support and advice. As he says "Advice, like good manners, is always in style." Yeah, I don't know about that. He ends with his testimony.
"the church is true. jesus atoned for our sins and he loves us a lot. he knowswhat we're all going through and he'll take care of us but we have to let him. joseph smith was the true prophet of the restoration who lived and died for thecause that i'm trying to carry on. i'm not contributing much but i know thatwith the help of the lord, and elder jones i can become a better tool in His hand."

Montpelier

2007-08-16T10:25:00.000-06:00

This is in the first "room...................Without the people
it is pretty cool, there are
thousands of years of
drippings in there.

The end of the cave, they ...............Me and Jon at the end, just
call this formation the groom..........Just getting ready for the
.............................................................Long climb back up.

Out side the back door.....A Stained glass window

The kids and the folks outside the Paris Tabernacle

Dad had to go to Montpelier (By Bear Lake) to do some pictures, so we used it as an excuse for a mini-mini vacation. We spent a night in the hotel, and then went around and saw the sights. We visited the Paris Tabernacle, which was really cool. It was built during the Pioneer Era. They brought huge chunks of sandstone across a frozen Bear Lake for the foundation and spent years before they began gathering all the materials they needed to build it. It is always fun to see evidence of the pioneers' faithfulness.

We also went to Minnetonka Caves. Me and Dad and Jon really enjoyed them. However, Mom and Shelby chickened out when they said they have seen packrats in there. I was a little nervouse myself, but I decided to brave it. I was really glad that I had. It is full of thousands of years old Stalagmites and Stalagtites. It was fascinating to see what a drip of whater can do over thousands of years. At the back of the caves, they turned the lights off, and it was incredibly dark. We were 1800 feet in and 350 feet under the mountain. WOW! I was going to post some pics of this cave, but mine turned out horribly, and my dad's camera is at work, so they will have to come later. Okay, here are some pictures of the caves. They were pretty incredible. They grow 1/2 inch every hundred years, so you can imagine how long they have been there!

Kayla's Quilt

2007-08-16T10:17:00.000-06:00

Ash & Paul with the finished product.....................The Endless cutting!!!

Me and Ashlee spent one full day working on a baby quilt for Kayla. It was one of those that you fray the ends. It took a lot of cutting, a lot of pinning, a lot of sewing, and then some more cutting. After eight hours we finally finished. We are so proud of our beautiful quilt. We cannot stop looking at it.

Kayla

2007-08-08T13:36:00.000-06:00

The First is a picture of Ashlee pregnant. If you look
close you can almost see a belly.

The other is a picture taken by an ultra sound at 20 weeks of
Baby Kayla. Isn't she cute? When Ash sent thisto Mike, he
told her her baby looked like it was made of clay.

One of the most exciting things to happen this year is Ashlee's announcement that she is having a new baby. She is having a girl and is going to name it Kayla. Everyone is very excited and can hardly wait to have a little niece/grandaughter. Ashlee is also VERY excited and has several quilts planned for the baby. She is due October 18, but may come later, as Ashlee herself was three weeks late. Ash and Paul have had a really fun summer, but as this is all detailed on her blog, I am not going to go into it.

Fishing

2007-08-08T13:25:00.000-06:00

Janey and Shelby with our successful catches
I think they are both Catfish, but I may be wrong.
Paul???????????????

Because of the fishing fanatic that Ashlee married, this summer has also been fairly full of fishing (or at least full compared to the zero amount of fishing we usually do). Paul has taken us on several fishing trips, usually in the evening when everyone is done with work. While none of us has yet to acheive the passion for it that Paul has, we all enjoy it. It is fun to sit quietly and relax with your family around you. There is nothing like the excitement of a big tug, although Paul usually has to help us reel it in. He also gets them out of the water, takes the hook out, baits the hook, touches the fish, you know, all the gross boy stuff. Thanks Paul!

Mom and Dad

2007-08-08T11:56:00.000-06:00

Br. Mangum, Br. Alexander, Dad, and Br. Zook

Mom and Dad have spent most of the year working hard. As a result we do not have many pictures of them. Besides shopping, moms favorite thing to do during the summer is to lay under the fan and be cool. She does not do well in the heat. As a result, she had a kidney stone. It was not a good experience. Dad was put in as Bishop of our ward this summer, so he has been doubly busy. His counselors are John Alexander and Shaun Zook, with Chad Mangum, Mike's old YM president as Executive secretary. They took a little mini vacation to Salt Lake City in August. They had fun relaxing and enjoying themselves. They went to the temple, shopped at IKEA, and went to the Church history museum, which they both really enjoyed. Although I gave them strict instructions to take some pictures, they refused, so you will just have to use their imagination!

Yard Work

2007-08-08T11:50:00.001-06:00

Working hard on .............................The Fire Pit

The Steps..............................................The Garden

And the Parking Pad

Early this spring, we decided to make some improvement in our yard. Mikey had not yet left and was the major work horse. He made some steps in between the two levels of our yard, helped to plot out our garden, and made us a parking pad on the side of the house. He also made a firepit for us.

Shelby's Summer

2007-08-08T11:18:00.000-06:00

Shelby with Teddi and Shalane at EFY

Posing with the statues of Lucille Ball the the stars of Oceans Eleven

In Vegas and at the ...........................M&M Factory

Shelby and Shalane at the "Eiffel Tower" Driving around, AAAAh!

Shelby has had a busy summer. She spent a week in Las Vegas with her friend Shalanea couple weeks after school got out. She had a lot of fun here. They went to the premier of Oceans 13 where she saw, up close and personal, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon and George Clooney, and John Chedle. However, because she was so nervous and was shaking, she could not get any pictures. One of her favorite things was the Wax Museum. She really enjoyed seeing the lifelike statues of her favorite movie stars. She rode on a Gondola, visited the Eiffel Tower, and viewed the Manhattan skyline while there. A few weeks later she attended EFY at USU with her friends Teddi and Shalane. She had a lot of fun and made some new friends. She did all of the other usual summer things, like Girls Camp, laying around, and watching ER rerums every morning. She is excited to go to High School this year. Because she turned 15 in July, she has her learner's pemit and has had fun driving around Hyrum, Logan is still too scary for her to attempt.

Jon's Summer

2007-08-07T21:44:00.000-06:00

Coming down the Slide and Pitching his 1st game

Rogue playing Fetch and Reading the 7th Harry Potter

Riding a neighbor's moped home

from the wrecking yard after a crash

Jon and the Moped were pretty gutless!

He drove it from Logan, about 5 m iles.
Jon spent most of his summer playing with his friends and laying around the house, however, he did find time to play baseball. Although his team was not the most successful, he had fun playing and getting to know some new kids. He also tries to spend some time with his dog, Rogue. It has been a hot summer and they both have enjoyed being in the water. And of course, most importantly, he found time to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows along with me and Shelby.

The Mission

2007-08-07T21:00:00.000-06:00

Mike "Reat- to go" May 2 and Mom pinning on his tag

His Tag, the dot means he is a solo Elder and Outside the MTC

The biggest thing that happened to us this year was Mike's Mission Call. He left on May 2. This was exciting, but for everyone but Mike it was also sad. It was tearful couple of days. A couple months later he arrived in Milwaukee Wisconsin where he is "trying" to speak Hmong. He has had a couple of chances to interpret for some investigators. To quote Mike, "I realized how much i suck at hmong. therewere only two ladies there that we were translating for (we give them headsets and then we sit in the back and translate) and they were really nice about itand kept looking back at me and laughing with me it was pretty ridiculous." He is trying to stay busy and be a good missionary and we are proud of him. However we do miss him around the house, and look forward to his emails every Monday! Below are a couple of pictures of him on his mission. The first is with some Hmong Children, then in Wisconsin, and finally with his companion, Elder Jones by Lake Michigan.