It's My Body

The Herald Journal (Cache Valley's Newspaper) is doing a 4-part series to create awareness about sexual abuse.  My boss, the director of the Child and Family Support Center here in Logan had the idea.  Apparently one day while looking on Amazon.com she came across a book called "how to be a pedophile".  She was outraged that such a book even existed.  So she decided to try and create an awareness (at least here in Cache Valley) about the sad problem of sexual abuse. The first article was about sex offenders here in the local jail.  The second article was a few personal stories of victims and the third article (click to read) is about prevention and therapy for victims.  The reporter was able to sit in on a presentation of Good Touch, Bad Touch and Hilary who is my supervisor over GTBT is the one in the picture and the one he interviewed.  She is so awesome at what she does.  I hope I present as well as she does.  So if you wondered what GTBT is when I've blogged about it before, this article explains it a little bit.  
And yes, I use the giant storybook about my friend Jonathan and he helps us learn the 5 body safety rules for keeping our body's safe and knowing what to do with the problem of sexual abuse!  It's great.  We have the kids shout "Hey, It's My Body!"  I love it.  If you are a parent and your child ever has the opportunity to have listen to a Good Touch Bad Touch presentation at school, let them stay and hear it.  I'm always so sad to see a few kids each time I present being sent to read a book at the office because their parents don't want them to be there.  We also teach the older children about stranger danger and Internet safety rules.  All the information is so important for children to hear!

Blogging Funk

I'm in a bit of a blog funk.  I'm sure there are things I never blogged about like Christmas, my 25th Birthday, & New Year's.  My camera is being dumb, and my phone camera is good, but not all of my pictures look that great.  Also I work all day now, and when I come home I don't feel like blogging much.  

Clark is currently staying in a Yurt up Logan Canyon with some friends so they can ski tomorrow.  So I'm bored at home on his laptop and I found a few pictures.  

My little nephew Jack on his 2nd birthday.  I love his blond "beach bum" hair.

Christmas Eve Ski Day

Allison, Adrienne, Me, Melissa, Katie, Dad {Clark is taking the picture for us.  Thanks Clarky!}

My poor dad didn't have any sons to ski with growing up... just girls that complained and cried.  Now we are adults so we can have fun skiing together with little complaining.  

Santa took some time off to ski a few runs! 

Me & Jack on Christmas Eve.  

Once I put my pictures from my phone on my computer, maybe I'll blog again.  I must say I'm enjoying my new jobs (Good Touch Bad Touch and a Home Visitor).  I work with really fun girls and I only work about 35 hours a week so not bad.  I'm sad all the snow is melting, but I will admit the warmer weather has been pretty nice, just not for skiing.  Clark is on his second to last semester of school.  Hopefully he can find an internship or something this summer that will lead to a job after school.  

We are still living with my cute Grandma.  Since Clark is gone tonight my Grandma and I enjoyed a nice dinner together.  She is helping me make a quilt out of my old jeans... okay she is making it and I'm giving her moral support.  I will help her tie it, but that's about all I can help with.  Basically my Grandma is awesome and is such a kind hearted person.

  

Long Time No Post

I have been busy with work and the Holidays and when I have free time I haven't felt like blogging.  One reason is because my camera is struggling.  It has worked fine until just recently all my pictures turn out blurry.  It refuses to focus.  It is a fairly nice camera for just a "point and shoot", and I got it last year for Christmas so it isn't old.  I did get the iphone 4 for Christmas and it actually has a pretty sweet camera, so that's nice.  I don't want to blog blurry pictures and those people who took pictures during the month of December need to send me their pictures (hint hint sisters).   


I'm going to try and do a quick recap of the past months.... I can't believe I haven't blogged about Thanksgiving.  


Thanksgiving: This year we were in Kaysville with the Clark's family.  His parents and sister Angie were there and then his sister Natalie and her cute family (The Stromberg's) came.  The next day I went Black Friday shopping with Angie, Carolyn, Natalie, and Nash.  We go up to the outlets in Park City at midnight and shop there for a few hours then we made it to the Target in Centerville around 3:30 and they opened their doors at 4am.  I was wanting to get a Sony Blue Ray player for Clark.  Other than that I didn't really need anything else.  I got a few small things but nothing big.  I don't really know why I go... It is kind of fun and crazy.  We were home by 6am so we all went back to bed for a few hours.  Clark actually went hunting with his Dad and a neighbor that morning while we were shopping.  I went back up to Logan later that day and hung out with some family staying at my Grandma's.  We watched "Babes in Toy Land" which is a funny Disney movie from the 60's with Annette Funicello.  Classic.  


December Happenings: A Pierson tradition that I love is going to the Festival of Trees every year.  They started this tradition years ago when they first bought a tree.  And now they go every year.  It is usually the first week of December on a Tuesday night.  This year it was actually on November 30th.  It is a great way to get into the Holiday Spirit.  

I got this picture from their website

I was also able to go to the Ballet West production of the Nut Cracker in Salt Lake on December 4th.  I LOVE going to the Nutcracker.  I love the dancing and the music.  I went with my sisters Adrienne & Katie and my Mom.  We ate at Noodles & Co. before which is one of my favorite places.  We took pictures but as you know, mine did not turn out, so I googled this picture! 

Love the Sugar Plums

On December 18th I went to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with David Archuletta!  My step-mom Lorie tries to get tickets every year.  Each year it seems like she gets at least 4 tickets.  This year she got about 16.  Clark came with me last year, but when he heard it was David Archuletta he asked if he could stay home.  We aren't big David fans.  But I will say I really really enjoyed the concert and he does have a really good voice, especially live.  After the concert we walked around temple square to see the lights.  The weather was nice, not too cold and it really wasn't crowded at all.  The only bad thing was we couldn't find our way back to our car!  We had a voucher to park under the church office building.  After we parked there were all these nice men in suits guiding us where to go, so we didn't even pay attention.  All we knew is that we suddenly appeared out of a door somewhere on temple square. We seriously looked forever and couldn't figure out where we came out.  So we went to the Joseph Smith building and a nice man was trying to help us figure it out.  We finally found our way, but it seriously was A LOT of walking and took us forever!  

There is little David.  He was so funny and would just smile the whole time and wave like a million times anytime he walked on and off the stage.  {I also just googled this picture}

Pictures of Temple Square

Part of the Nativity

I love the red/orange lights

Snowflake

Just two random pictures of our Christmas Decorations.  We are living with my Grandma in her basement and I love that she has a mantel down there.  It was a nice place to put decorations and we were actually able to hang stockings by a fireplace.  

Our Tree

The picture was from my old phone, so not the best quality

My Grandma puts up a "skier" tree which just has ornaments of skiers or anything to do with skiing.  Then she has a group of 6 trees with snowflake ornaments that my great grandma made.  She also has two trees out on her front porch.  We put our own tree in the basement so there were 10 trees at my Grandma's house this year.  Very Festive!   

The Snowflake Trees

We had a great Christmas this year and were able to spend lots of time with Family.  My sister Melissa, her husband Adam and their little guy Merrick came to Utah for Christmas.  It was a lot of fun spending time with them.  We were able to go to Kaysville a few times over the break. We spent New Year's with Clark's family.  We played the wii game Just Dance 2 {that game is so fun} did a few puzzles and went to a movie.  We also played Just Dance 2 with my family on Christmas night and the day after Christmas.  It is awesome!  We've been skiing a few times already and when it isn't so cold up there we will go some more.    

This post is getting long so I will save my skiing pictures for another post!

Where did all the snow go?

I was so excited because right around Thanksgiving we got a few big snow storms and I LOVED it.  Now it is almost all gone because of the dumb rain we keep getting.  It looks so ugly outside.  

Clark measured the snow on a bench in my Grandma's backyard.  Yep that's right, 16 inches!  

While it was snowing one day I went outside to take a picture of the old chair from a ski lift at Beaver Mountain that is in my Grandma's backyard.  I was trying to be "artsy" and get a picture of the chair with the snow.  This is what I took.....

Not bad.  I thought it was cool because you can also see the giant red wooden skis in the backyard.  

Well then my artsy/creative husband took the pictures I took and turned it into this....

Clark's looks way cooler!  He did a few other ones that are way cool.  I didn't really want to put them on my blog.  No one reads my blog except family and friends (and not even that many) but I didn't want some random person copying the picture.  I think it is way cool, and I don't want someone else to try and take credit for it.  Maybe I need to start getting copyrights for Clark's creations!  He has done a few other cool pictures and I want to turn them into a sweet calendar.  

We are finally going skiing tomorrow and I'm really excited!  Hopefully we will have a White Christmas down here in the valley.  

Logan's "Blizzard" 2010

I'm not sure if it was as bad as everyone anticipated but we got quite a bit of snow here in Logan.  I think it snowed for about 3 or 4 hours, but there was a lot of wind so who knows how much snow actually fell from the sky.  

somebody was out walking in the blizzard before we could snow blow

Clark was out of Vanilla Ice Cream so at 8pm we drove to Lee's in snowy roads that hadn't been plowed, just for his precious Farr's Vanilla Ice Cream bucket.  When we got back he decided to get out the old snow blower.  I bet there was about 6 or 7 inches in the driveway (don't quote me on that because my estimation on measurements is horrible!)  

Even though it wasn't a horrible blizzard storm like they thought, we got snow and that's all I care about.  The snow is making me think it's Christmas, but I will patiently wait until I properly celebrate Thanksgiving to go into Christmas mode.  Clark already put up the Christmas lights on my Grandma's house while the weather was still nice.  I can't wait to turn them on!  

Thankful

I have so much to be thankful for in my life right now.  As my previous post mentioned, I had been back and forth on applying for a new job position at my same place of employment.  Well I decided to follow everyones advice and at least apply for it.  After I applied the job position changed slightly.  It is still for a home visitor but it is with the Healthy Families program.  This program works with first time parents before the baby is born and up to 3 years old.  They test the development of the child and provide support and information for first time parents who may be at risk for abuse or other situations.  
So I had an interview on Thursday and I just got a call today from the girl over Healthy Families and she offered me the job!  I am so excited because we specifically work with young babies and children under 3 who I love the most!  I get to put a lot of things I learned in school to use, like testing a child's development.  I will get a lot of training with this position too, so I'm glad I will be prepared for this job.  I will get a pay raise and more hours.  It is going to be a little hard the first few weeks because I will still be in school and teaching GTBT, but it will work out.  Yes I am still teaching GTBT in the schools until it ends in about May or June.  The new home visitor position will be around 20 hours a week, and GTBT is generally 10-15 hours.  So two part time jobs = a full time job.  I'm really excited to branch out and learn new things and get experience.  Now I feel that eventually when we move out of Logan, I will have more experience to put on a resume and I look more like a professional.  I feel so blessed to have a job before I even graduate.  I know so many people who graduate and can't find jobs that are in their field of work.  This will help me with paying off my massive amounts of student loans.  Who knew just getting a Bachelor's degree would cost so much!  I'm also so glad I can continue to work where I've been working for over a year, I love it there!
Another reason I am thankful is that my wonderful Mother called me the other day to let me know that with some new Health Care system I can be insured on my Mom's insurance until I am 26 even if I am married.  How sweet is that.  So I have 1 year to be insured.  Clark on the other hand is uninsured.  BUT we do have Aflac and we have accident insurance specifically for Clark because of all his craziness on skis.  I'm grateful for whoever made it possible for me to be insured, even if it is for just 1 year.  That's long enough to have a baby, right!  FYI not announcing anything except for the fact that come January I'm insured.  


I didn't want to do another post without pictures so I'll add some random pictures that I found from my phone.  

One warm day in September I went for a bike ride and Clark rode his long board.  We rode to my old neighborhood just a few blocks from my Grandma's house where we are living.  It was fun to feel like a kid again riding my bike where I used to when I was growing up in Logan.  

My house I lived in from the age of 1-6.  It is funny because Clark's house is the exact layout as this one.  We grew up in the same house!  I miss my old neighborhood, it was the best.

I found these pictures on a blog called Alice Lane Home.  It is an Interior Design/Home Decor store in Orem I believe, but I love looking at their blog.  Christmas Decorations I would LOVE to have!  

I love those cute stockings.  Basically I just love the whole mantel

I also loved these glass trees.  Sometimes I need a break from the cutesy and crafty Christmas Decorations.  I love those too, but it would be fun to have a house with fancy Christmas Decorations.  

I decided I need multiple homes to decorate in different ways.  I like too many styles of decorating!  

  

This is getting long, but since the title of my post says Thankful, I feel like I should write a few more things I'm thankful for besides a job and insurance.

In no particular order....

1. Family.  Immediate and Extended.  I love them all!

2. My husband.  Clark really puts up with a lot from me, and he still loves me!

3. Living with my Grandma.  This has been such a blessing to Clark and I in so many ways.  Quality time with Grandma is always good!

4. Health.  Clark and I are fairly healthy people, with no major issues or concerns.  

5. Food.  I seriously love food, and knowing that I will always have something to eat is a blessing.  Not everyone knows where their next meal will come from.

6. The Gospel.  I don't know what I would do with the Gospel in my life.  I think I pray a million times a day, and it gives me peace knowing that someone is actually listening and answering my prayers.  I'm always worried about something or wondering how something is going to work out, and I love knowing it will all work out the way it needs too.  You just have to have Faith and be Patient.  

There are a lot of things I'm thankful for, but those are the major one's I can think of right now.  Hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving.  We are going to Kaysville to eat a lot of food and do a little Black Friday Shopping!