Bills Turns 32!!!

Well it just occured to my blond head that I had better post about my son-in-law! So here we go, 32 pretty cool things we know and love about Bills:

1. He's a great dad, 3 darling girls!

2. Terrific husband, supports Marisa with all she does!

3. Good cook, tri tip, yum!

4. Sometimes odd, but wonderful, sense of humor (see above photo)!

5. Low maintenance, happy with hand me downs!

6. Frugal, "budget Sundays"!

7. Hard worker, HP!

8. Kind hearted, loved dogsitting Cherrio!

9. Crazy, whacky friends, "Cra(p)ft Night"!

10. Loves his elderly relatives, see photo above, and Gma/Gpa's Taylor and Benson!

11. Determined, Body for Life and triatholons!

12. Lives with interesting skin issues!

13. Never complains (not within my ear shot anyway!)

14. Can keep confidences, esp. with his church calling!

15. Loves to spring surprises on others, Marisa's birthday!

16. Enjoys pulling tricks, pranks or practical jokes - Super Size it in Spain!!

17. Loves motorcycles, Kaylee even has one!

18. Really likes to "nap"!

19. Could probably do some serious clogging if he just had the right kind of shoes!

20. Is fun and easy to be around, family vacations, 7 of us in a 1 bedroom condo....!

21. Honors his Priesthood, willing and able to give his family blessings!

22. Is a HUGE TEASE!!!

23. Can and does do household chores, mops the kitchen floor!

24. Mint chocolate chip ice cream, only on your Free Day!

25. Can tell I'm visiting just by the amount of garbage that accumulates!

26. Tastes the good treats, "just to make sure they aren't poison"!

27. Gives terrific hugs and shares my birthday month!

28. Good friends with his siblings, they enjoy talking, visiting and pulling pranks!

29. Is a perfect match with Marisa!

30. Screaming good on the Wii Fit!

31. Also very good on Karaoke, again see photo above!

32. Is a very quiet giant when he wants to be!

Eric, we love you and I realized that I have a lot more photos of your girls than I do of you. Sorry you have to share your birthday post with me, but hey, I know I am your FAVORITE mother in law!! Happy, Happy Birthday!! Hugs and love to you! xoxoxo

After School Smoothie!

I had the chance to watch Mike and Suni's kids today. Luke and Max were playing downstairs and in walked Jake from school with his friend Clay. He asked me if it would be ok if they made a smoothie, well you bet, go ahead. Well little did I know they had something more in mind than just ANY smoothie!

Once we made a call to Mike to figure out the Bosch blender deal the guys were ready to get started. The next thing I know Jake walks up to me with a coconut in hand and says "Grandma, we need to figure out how to get the milk out and then get the coconut open" I rose to the challenge and told the boys I knew just what to do, get me a big hammer and big nail! Jake was certain REAL coconut milk would be a lot tastier than just plain coconut flavoring, right on, this guy ought to be a chef! I can see it now "Janetha and Jake's Place"!!
After much hammering and draining, we got the hard nut cracked, Clay is busy slicing limes, mango, bananas. They added some ice and Sobe.
Jake knew just the right amount of flavoring to dump in the blender, he kept having me smell it and WOW it really smelled great!

Here they are, Jake and Clay enjoying their "after school smoothie". I think it took them almost an hour to get it concocted. They shared a taste with me and after some straining of the juice we all pronounced it DE-licious!! Way to let your creative juices flow guys! Oh, I need to add that they cleaned up their mess rather neatly. Thanks guys for a great after school experience!!

Happy Birthday to Me!!

Hello friends and family out there in blog-land! Yes, today is my birthday and I am turning 56, wahoo!! I decided to post a bit about myself for posterity sake and to make a HUGE request of my friends.

There may be a few things about me that some of you don't know - I will try to think of some interesting facts to share with you:

I was the first baby born in the Kennewick Hospital - however, I did NOT get any prizes because another gave birth in the front yard of the hospital and I was actually IN the building, bummer huh?

I grew up at 1807 West 6th Avenue in a very tiny 2 bedroom home with my mom, dad and older brother, Gary. We had a floor furnace that was right in front of the bathroom door and in the middle of the two bedrooms.....I was just as clumsy then as I am now and managed to roll right over that furnace, burning my left arm from the back side of my elbow to my wrist. This resulted in some pretty "sick scars", I still can see a faint brown X on my arm, even after all these years!

In junior high I was teased a lot about my last name, Hutteball.......go ahead rhyme it out a few times, you will get the picture quick! So for some reason I took up arm wrestling, no not just my family but all the guys that were brave enough to take me on during the lunch break, can you even believe that! It is true, I would arm wrestle them and BEAT them almost every time!!

Then in high school I wouldn't wear sleeveless shirts because I was now embarrassed by my muscular arms plus I was still teased about my name, go figure, it made me sad.....

I was always proud of that crazy last name, it used to be Hansen, but when my Great Grandpa was getting ready to move from Denmark to the U.S. he changed it to Hutteball. Supposedly it was a county in Copenhagen, I have yet to find the actual county! So needless to say there aren't a lot of us out there anymore!

Jump ahead to about 15 years ago. I needed a name for my real estate and property management business, not having a really great imagination, I decided to simply call it Hutteball, Inc. So I am still able to carry that name with me and I am still proud of it, even though there was a lot of teasing and even fighting for my dad when he was little, it is a great name!

Ok folks, now the real reason for this post. Blogging is fun, it is a riot, it is a great way to record your life happenings and it is a great way to connect with people you don't normally see a lot, or people you may never see or meet, or a friend you see everyday, once a week or every few months. HUGE REQUEST: In short, I know there are some of you who read this terribly interesting blog sometimes, and for my birthday I would like you to go the extra mile, please stretch just a little and post a comment, say "hello", or "hey I remember that", or "wow that was a lame post", or "that's cool", or "I would have done it this way..." do you see what I mean here!! :) The comments are as much fun as the post. So make me proud family and friends, give me a shout out for my b-day!

Much love and hugs to you all, please know how much I love my family and friends!!

2008 Utah State Fair Extravaganza!

We have a Benson family tradition of going to the State Fair every year - and we have been at it for over 30 years!! We LOVE the fair! It all starts at the Brighton Bank parking lot where parking is still a cheap $5, a lot of us park there, in fact I have even received birthday presents in the parking lot. The fair is usually around my birthday and sometimes we've been lucky to go on my birthday, what a great present! This year we had every one but our Dublin kids :( we missed them!

I downloaded these photos out of order and it takes way to long for me to move them around, so please enjoy this random sampling our our 2008 adventure at the fair:

Max rode out with me and we were hanging out waiting for everyone else to arrive, as you can see Max loves to climb and was busy on the fence that surrounded these giant cats:

Yeah that's right TIGERS at the fair, you have got to be kidding me!! Not just one either, there were three in this tiny cage and about 4 or 5 others in even smaller cages. This poor guy just kept pacing back and forth, back and forth. They do shows with them in the evening, we didn't stick around.

Janetha loves the fair too! There are way too many photo opps for her and we usually try out all of them, however, the line for the cute piggy, goat and cow was too long with babies and toddlers!!
Luke hung out in his stroller most of the night, he was cute when he saw the goats and the baby pigs!
Here is Maxwell getting a ride from his dad, this was near the end of our night and we had done plenty of walking......no one offered me their shoulders to sit on!

Randy loves to eat and especially at the fair! This was his "after" dinner snack!

One of the things we ALWAYS do is the BIG YELLOW SLIDE, wahoo!! I always try to get all of us lined up together in an organized manner for a perfect photo......wow this is the best I could do! All of the kiddos love the slide, old and young.


I would love to have a tractor like this someday, really, isn't it the cutest thing?! Since Janetha and I have been working hard on Body for Life, my muscles are not cooperating with me, hence the awful grimace as I try to get down off the tractor! haha
Ohhh, here they are, the darling baby pigs! A little bigger than other years but they were so funny chasing each other around the pen while the mom just lies there ignoring them all!!

I'm sure these two little guys were suffocating as they tried to get a bit more nourishment!!
Izzy loves to be on her dad's shoulders. This was a bit of a problem because she latched on to this bar while looking at the piggys and would not let go!! I have a few other photos of Doug trying to walk away but Izz was bound and determined to hang on tight!!

The bunnies have been a favorite of mine. Probably because they usually have the giant gray lop eared bunnies that remind me of our cat Blue.......I know that probably is hard for most to imagine, but trust me on this one! Well no huge blues this time, but we found some other cuties instead!
Look at these darling triplets!! I think we should name them Sofi, Lucy and Kaylee, they were just so cute and snuggly!!

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman......not quite but it was a lot of parachutists, and they got most everyone's attention.

In the first exhibit building we go through there is always a butter sculpture. This year the sculptor decided to do something a little more "out" there and the photo below is what the butter sculture ended up being. When Max and I arrived he was still working on it and then when we left he had just finished it. We talked to him for a few minutes and he told us the dog on the left was supposed to be a weiner dog, but he wanted a dog with more spunk and class so he changed it to a basset hound - modeled after Randy the Dog I am sure!!

Well there you have it, our night at the State Fair. We all felt a lot like Izzy, tired and ready to go home to bed!!