Explosion Box

I'm the Young Womens first councilor in my ward and recently we made "explosion boxes". They are boxes that fall apart when you take the lid off and reveal pages that act like a scrapbook. I needed to make one as an example for my young ladies, so I had to decide on a theme to build my box around. After several seconds of hard thinking, I settled on one of my favorite subjects as of late: my nephew Cannon.

After getting all my paper, scissors, glue and do-dads assembled, I went to my sister Mandy's blog and hijacked many pictures of the boy. (technology rocks) When it was all done, I was rather pleased with myself. Here is the finished project.

Here it is in box form.

With the lid off it looks like this:

This is the first level, over on the left it says "always a cutie!"

Half of the second level:

Second half of the second level:

Half of the bottom level:

Second half of the bottom level. In that green envelope is a picture of Cannon sitting on the San Fran 49ers blanket I gave him. You can open it up and take the picture out.

The boxes made by my young women were WAY CUTE! They were all so different but wonderful. It was a very successful mutual night. I have thought of giving this box to Cannon's mom, but I think I'm going to keep it!

Our Flight (Fight) Out

OK, It's been awhile, but here's the end to our getting-to-Utah drama. (But not the end of the drama!)

Anyway, Trevon picked us up at The Barkers at 4 A.M. sharp. We loaded up and the roads were decent so we made it to the airport by 4:45. IT WAS A MAD HOUSE! At this point, we had 1 hour and 35 minutes until our flight leaves. It took 1 hour and 20 minuets to get our luggage checked in. And, because of how busy Southwest was, we had to stand OUTSIDE and check our baggage with the sky cap. It was very cold. We only had 15 minutes until our plane was supposed to take off, and we still had to get through security. The one good thing I can say about the Portland airport is that security is very organized and we got through in just a few minutes. Then we had to sprint to our plane. I got there about 2 minutes before Daniel because his ankle was already killing him, and he had to limp. I advised the gate person that he would be along, just don't close the door. They didn't. We got on the plane just in time. We sat down, sighed and smiled at each other. Then we sat, and sat and sat. It took an hour for our plane to get de-iced. The flight was OK, we got there alive and I was so relieved and happy when I saw my dad, I laughed and then I cried.

After the tears, we went to get our luggage. We had 4 pieces of checked luggage. One came out on the belt, then two, but that was it. My suitcase was missing, as was the suitcase that had the blanket I had made for my new nephew Cannon. I spoke with a lady in the luggage office who informed me that since we checked in late, our luggage didn't have enough time to make the plane. (Let's just review here: I sat on the tarmac for ONE HOUR waiting to take off. I guess that's enough time to get 2 out of 4 cases on the plane, but not enough time to get all 4.)

So, we left and went to Layton with the understanding we would come back after 1 p.m. and my luggage should be there. We had a wonderful Christmas Eve. We went back at 7 p.m. and still NO LUGGAGE!!! We asked again and they said it would be on the next airplane from Portland, Fer Sure! Then they told us that they would kindly deliver my luggage to my parent's place, between 1 and 6 A.M. (Sigh.....) Anyway, I left permission for them to leave it on the porch if nobody came to the door. At 8 A.M. we got up and opened our presents and still no luggage. There was a storm coming and we had to be in Evanston that night. So we left. It's over an hour to get to Evanston, but we made it. I called home to let my mom we'd made it safely. She let me know my luggage had arrived about 5 minutes before I called. (sigh again.....)

Other than that, it was a great trip!