It's Birthday Time Again

February is birthday month at the conk home. I have 3 birthdays to blog but I just can't wait to blog chronologically. This was the last of the birthday's this month but by far the cutest, therefore I just can't wait to blog it. Knowing that I was going to be gone for Samantha's birthday I decided to break my party rules of only throwing parties on the 3rd, 5th, 8th, 12th, and 16th birthdays. I have this rule because, if you know me you know, I don't know how to throw "small" parties. I love details and all the little extra touches that make a party special. I would love to throw all my family parties every year but that would literally consume my life. So for Sam's 11th birthday we had a Valentines/Birthday party. It was super fun and thanks to my fabulous sister in law Jamie I was able to throw together a pretty cute afternoon.

The girls played "Guesstimation" where they had to guess the amount of candies in the container, there were M&M's, Peanut M&M's and Recees peanut butter hearts. I had to count over a thousand plain m&m's and over 500 peanut ones. It was a bit of a long night, and my will power was definitely tried only to fail to the temptation of all the chocolatey goodness. We played af ew other games including who could build the tallest tower of large conversation hearts and used chopsticks to see who could get the most in a minute. We made really cute necklaces with large gum balls, I'm really mad I didn't get a shot of those!! They were so cute! The girls also split up into 2 teams and dressed on of each of the girls into the queen of hearts using tissue paper, streamers and heart doilies.

The food table was so cute thanks to Jamie's decorations. The apothecary jars filled to the brim with candy and "Be Mine" were the best part! My favorite part of the whole party was being told that my cupcakes were too pretty to eat!



For dinner the girls each made a personal pizza. It was fun but i was very poor in my planning, we ran out of cheese and I even burned the last 3 pizzas because I got distracted. Sometimes ADD really sucks. If you were wondering though when you are in a hurry to have rice krispy treats cool, don't put them in the fridge, they become hard and are never chewy again!! I just noticed in the picture of Sam blowing out her candles you can see the necklaces we made!! All in all it was a really fun party!

Changes--Your Questions Answered

I have had such an amazingly positive response about our news and want to say THANKS!! I am surprised, (and hope it's just people being kind) by the amount of people that said they are a little jealous but the prospect of simplifying. You guys seem to have a lot of questions about the changes so I thought I'd just do a quick post to shed some light on the whole situation.

1. When? The plan is to be out of here by mid March, that is all subject to change but it is the plan for now!

2. When is the mother of all yard sales? Again tentatively it is scheduled for March 5th

3. What will you be selling? EVERYTHING, pretty much, I have had some call dibs on my kitchen table and entertainment center in the loft but the rest is up for grabs! I'll do a big post with pics and prices before the sale so if you are interested you can see what we will have for sale.

4. Are you planning on staying in Logandale? We don't really know and only time will tell, we have talked about maybe building a house out there eventually but I would like to come back to town...really though we just don't know!

5. What can we do to help? Pray that I can keep my sanity, and that Colby's "aim" improves, because frankly I am NOT looking forward to sharing a toilet with him!!

6. Will you be coming into town? I plan to be in town at least once a week, the kids will keep with their music lessons so I will be in for that and I will come in for lunch if anyone invites me!! (Have I told you about the lack of food out there...UGG)

7. How are the kids taking the news? Brett has known since the beginning, he is really good at eves dropping! He doesn't want to change schools and is telling everyone we will be homeschooling him...little does he know...MUAHAHAHAH!! (evil laugh) Samantha is using this to become the center of ttention in school and church so she's good with it! Colby is the only one that cried and he is sad to leave his buddies and he thinks we are poor...little does he know we will be much LESS poor when we have no rent!! Bonnie is the most excited of all, I hear at least 5 times a day "are we moving to grandmas yet?" So yeah the kids are taking it fine!

8. Please say you are normal and have been bawling about this. I'm not gonna lie, while I may seem all Positive Pam (she's my alter ego who is very rarely seen around here) I have had weeks of roller coaster days and buckets of tears shed. This is a really hard thing for me, I'm tearing up just thinking about it, but when i think about how hard it is I realize that nothing is harder than what I have been dealing with for the last year!

9. What is going to happen to your Photography Business? I will still be booking sessions and I will be doing mini sessions 4 times a year so I can get more when I am in town. I have also started doing in person one on one (or two) mentorships teaching photography, it is really fun and I am really enjoying teaching!

10. Where exactly is Logandale? It is about an hour from Las Vegas and if you want to come see us I would love company!! We can blow up a mattress for ya!! If your heading to Utah it's only 10 minutes off the freeway!!

So there you have it, I don't know if you really are curious about all this but you know me...I'm an open book, ask and it shall be answered!

My boys at Lunch...(doesn't my 13 year old look...OLD!!)

Ch-Ch- Ch-Changes

Hi, Ya'll!

How's it hanging? Life is one big ball of craziness here but more on that later! I mentioned in my previous post that big changes were in store for the Conk family so I figured I would let you all in on the deal-io!! Well some of you may already know but we are moving...YES MOVING!! After much thought and prayer we have decided to move to Logandale. A teeny tiny little town about an hour out of town. Many of you know first hand or have heard about the struggling economy especially in the construction field. We as business owners have been hit hard and we need to downsize A LOT...and when I say A LOT I am not exaggerating!! We have bought a home to live in out in Logandale next door to Terry's parents. When I say home i use the term loosely, actually it is a 5th wheel travel trailer. We will be going from about 3,600 square feet in our current home to somewhere around 350 square feet. SEE!! I told you I wasn't exaggerating!! We will be staying poolside at the Casa de Conk and while we will have all the amenities afforded us by out generous parents we will still have a place to call our own! We will miss so much about the city but think this really is the best thing for our family. It is going to be a big adjustment for everyone involved but I believe that it will bring us so much closer together as a family and require so much more of us that we can be a stronger family unit.

Since January 1st I have been racking my brain to come up with my word for the year and when we made this decision the word was chosen for me...

We will be simplifying every aspect of our lives, from the amount of clothing and furniture we have to the commitments and responsibilities that cause us to have so much stress in these tough times. A big part of my stress is caring for this ginormous house with very little cooperation from the children! I won't have to scream and yell at the kids to clean their rooms because they won't have a room to clean!! Family time will take on a whole new meaning! We are really excited and look forward to the change and see it as a wonderful opportunity. We have been so blessed in our lives and through this whole experience we see even more blessings coming our way!

So about this trailer, I have big plans for it, I really want to Kristin-ify (totally a word!) and make it a place I am excited to spend time in. We are going to paint and do some refurnishing, as well as some rockin accessorizing!! I plan to document all of this here if I can in between getting ready to sell my entire life at the moving sale of the century (which, if you are local, should totally be on you calendar because I have some really nice stuff that we will be selling CHEAP!) and packing the rest of our belongings away to be seen another day! Again we are so thankful for the love and support given to us by the friends and family that have supported us through all of this and know that the Lord will bless them for their kindness! I love my blog readers and I will not abandon you, I'll be here, probably more that usual, with totally random, lame, to much info, personal, soul exposing posts since I will be living no where near a Target I'll have lots of free time! I hope you'll stick around and love me even though I may be saying ya'll a lot more (it's a small town thing...right? I want to fit in!! haha!!)

Love you!!

♥Kristin

p.s. since I have been absent so much here is a list of posts in the works, i expect you to hold me to getting them up on here...kthanksbye!

1. Brett b-day

2. Sam's b-day/valentines party (which is what those super cute cupcakes were from)

3. Terry b-day

4. It's a freaking month of birthdays around here so you may end up with 1 GIANT post with 1, 2, & 3 all in one post!

The End...for reals this time, I'm going to bed...goodnight! Seriously stop reading, I'm done typing, this post is OVER!

Oh my I can't leave you without a picture so I give you the cutest 3 year old EVER (well, since Sam was 3)

I'm Sorry

I know that I have been totally MIA around here, and everywhere else for that matter. There are big changes coming to the Conk family and I haven't been able to share, which those of you who know me know that KILLS me. I am one who is very open with others, I have been know to share birth stories in the grocery store line. I am working on a big announcement post but I just wanted to pop in and let you all know I am still here and kickin'. I have so much to blog about too, namely 3 birthdays one AMAZING Valentine/Birthday party and Some of the cutest class Valentines I have ever made!! So stay tuned, if there are any of you out there that even still read this ol' blog!!