Well we can all say goodbye to the historic Star Mill in American Fork Utah. On December 5, 2007 the outbuildings went up in flames. The firefighters were able to save the main store, but most of the surrounding buildings were lost. Quite a fire. The pics do not give it justice.

Fun times in Oregon

Okay so Jeff found a toy hauler trailer in Oregon, and it was about $6,000 cheaper there that it was here. So Jeff and I loaded the kids and dropped them off at Joan's, hopped; into the trusty ole 95 Ford and headed for the open road. The trailer was located in Salem, Oregon, a 12 hour drive from home. We made good time getting there, but let me tell you, that drive from Boise to about Portland is crap. It was the most boring ride I have ever been on. Although I must say the Columbia River is an awesome sight, it makes the provo river look like a trickle. We arrived in Salem and went to pick up our trailer. It was everything we had hoped for. Well Jeff and I decided we weren't going to drive all this way just to turn around and drive home, so we headed to the coast. Let me tell you, that is a sight. Everything is so green and lush. It was beautiful. I found it cool that there was so much moss growing on tree trunks. We arrived in Lincoln City and the weather was sucky. It was blowing and "misting". It doesn't rain there, it mists, and we were soaked. Anyway after setting up our "camp", it was a parking lot with hookups, we decided to see if the Indian Casino's took our money as fast as the mob casino's. They don't, they take it faster. I think I played with $20 for hmmmmm about 10 minutes, I mean come on I was on the stinking penny machines. When we go to Vegas I can play at least an hour. Oh well I guess that is what we get for stealing there land. Anyway that night we went to bed, but we did not sleep. There were wind gusts up to 60 miles and hour, I have been in wind gusts before but there were things to help break up the wind, you know like mountains, trees, building. But we were on a hill and the wind was coming off the ocean and we thought for sure our trailer was going to blow over. Anyway about 2:00 we dozed off for a bit. Friday came about the same, but we decided alot of mist was not going to stop us so we headed down to Newport Beach. What a cool place. It would take pages to talk about. But here are a few fun things: we went to a lighthouse. It think it was were Pete's Dragon was filmed. It looked like it anyway. This lighthouse was cool (pictured above) it was 93 feet high. I did not realize I was scared of heights until I started climbing the stairs. Holy Crap I was not going to go back down those stairs. I told Jeff I was not going to come all this way and not play in the ocean. So we did and I think my toes froze the minute I stepped into the water. It was so cold. But hey, I went in the Ocean. It is a beautiful place and i kept telling Jeff "I could live here". That is until everytime I wanted a Diet Coke I heard "We have Diet Pepsi". Every stinking place until we hit Idaho had no Diet Coke. What is with that, do they have a law. They had Diet Rite and RC Cola( Hello 80's time warp), but they didn't have Diet Coke. On the day we were set to leave, we ate at about 9:00 in the morning, we did not stop to eat until 4:00. I was hungry, and I was tired, so we pulled into a KFC. This is how the conversation with the lady at KFC went - Me: "I want a chicken bowl" Lady: Im sorry we don't have chicken bowls. Me: okay I want a 3 piece strip and biscuit and a Diet Coke. okay here it comes.......Lady: We have Diet Pepsi. I lost it...completely, I looked at Jeff and I started to bawl...like a baby. Me: I hate this !@#$!@# state, I want to go home. Thank goodness once we hit Idaho (it took us 20 hours to get home by the way) I was finally able to have my Diet Coke, who cared that it was 11:30 at night I was getting my fix. Needless to say we did have an enjoyable time, and I will go back. It was very beautiful. Niki

First almost big snow of the season! Yeah!!!!

We woke up on December 1 and were so excited to see snow!!!
We skipped breakfast and played outside until 11:30. On another
note Grandma should be getting sprung from the hospital today.
We hope she is doing well enough to come home as the hospital
food is not looking too appetizing. Yuk!

At long last - the photo has been uploaded!

Hee Haws was an amazing trip - a great chance for us to commune with Leroy the pig, you know, get back to nature!!!!
Jake had a great time with the smiling pig, as did the rest of the crew. Thank you Lehi City and Meadow Elementary PTA
for a fantastic time.

Greetings from HeeHaws

Hello family. We had an exciting time at HeeHaws farm. The Magnusson's along with the Thompson's spent a fun filled day during fall break enjoying the great outdoors. We took a nice looong walk through the corn maze where my son Colton became $20.00 richer. He happened to find it while exploring the maze. We then proceeded to the animal portion of the farm. Jake happened to get his picture taken with a smiling pig. Im sure Nat will post that picture soon. The kids took a ride on an animal train and we also went through a "scary" house. ooooh not so scary. After this exciting day the MagThomps family went to Arctic Circle and enjoyed free ice cream cones courtesy of Meadow PTA. Thank You PTA. That was probably the most exciting part of the day. Oh Yeah, the little paper man that Jake is holding is our good friend Flat Michael, sent all the way to us from our cousin Garrett in Missouri. It is a school project and we have to take him to do fun things with the family and write about it later. I hope he is enjoying his stay. Love Niki

Grandma and Grandpa wanted to say "hi!" I tried to explain to them what we are doing, but it was rather difficult to understand, having never seen one. As you can see their garden is now short a few veggies, and they were delicious!!!

Proposed RULE for Blogging/Comments

Seeing as we all sign in with the same user name, I propose we sign each blog or comment we make. There are a few "anonymous" (accidental, Im sure) comments on here, and I would really like to know who's participating!

I'm really excited about this new site, and Dusty, I think you're wonderful for setting it up. Welcome to Sunday dinner! I hope the rest of the family joins us soon!

-Jammie
(note the perfect example of a signature)

Pictures of my Wedding... at last!

Finally! The long awaited pictures proving the long awaited nuptials of the New Mr and Mrs Brooks! I thought I'd post a few pics for all you jackasses that couldnt make it! ha ha.. I'm only kidding. Congrats to those of you who had new babies keeping you home... it's a good excuse! To the rest of you - I'm pretty sure I gave you plenty of notice! :)

Anyways, here they are! I seem to be a little more excited than the groom.. but oh well! :)


This one with me and Grandpa is one of my favorites!

I like this one with Dad alot too!

Here are just a few more.. it takes forever to upload on this site! I could put so many more on, but the time!

I really liked my Cake!

The Candy Buffet was a hit! It kept all the kids (and some of the adults) occupied for most of the reception!

This is a good pic of the Simper family!

Like I said, It would take all day to put all my favorites up! But it was a beautiful day, and I was a beautiful bride! he he. kidding. (but really, I was!)

We newlyweds are extremely happy, living in Lehi - here's our address: 1371 N. 600 East, Lehi, UT 84043 801-766-1269. I think we should be added to the family phone book now!

We have Jesse's 16 year old son, Kerric, living with us. It's been a challenge for all three of us (mostly for me though.. ) but things are going well. I've never lived with boys before. They're mostly icky, but i'm learning to cope. I'm sure I'll have continual stories on this topic to share with everyone!

Thanks again to everyone who was able to make it to the wedding, and I forgive all of you who couldnt! And thanks to all of you for all the gifts (shower, wedding, etc). I suck at sending Thank You notes, so lets consider this it! I love you all!

Jammie

Okay, here are the photos (I hope). Obviously technology is not my forte.

back to school

Hello! If we are going to post cute pics of our kids I will add mine.
Taylor is in 5th grade, Torey in 3rd, and Jake just started kindergarten
and you can tell from the pic he is very excited.

Reed will be done in December - hallelujah - with his bachelor's.

Magnusson First Day of School

FREE AT LAST! FREE AT LAST! I AM FINALLY FREE AT LAST! WOOOHOOO! All three of my children are in school all day. Colton started at the Junior High. He is a mighty 7th grader. He is loving it "all those hot girls." You remember how it was. Kinzie is now in 4th grade and as a side note she in now in level 6 gymnastics. Jaycie is now going ALL DAY as a 1st grader. I was asked if I was sad. I had to think about it for......a second hmmm. nope. Actually I am kind of sad that my kids are growing up so fast, but it sure is nice to have some time to do what I want or need to get done. I am once again PTA Pres.(shoot me now). But this is my last year and I have done my duty to the public school system. My wonderful, sexy, handsome husband is still protecting the fine citizens of Lehi, Utah. In other news.... our dog died. I know sad, but, he was getting old. I know many of you didn't know him but we got him when Colton was just one. He has been a member of this family for quit some time. We are thinking of getting a pot belly pig. If we do I will name him Carl. Jeff wants a boxer. We will see who wins. Also, my birthday is coming in a few days. Just a friendly reminder for those of you who want to send gifts.

First Day of School(Brinkworth)

Hip Hip Hooray, school finally started. This year I got to put three in school, Braxton in third grade Carsten in first and a very excited Ardynn started kindergarten, poor little Kalli has to stay home with Dawson and me. We started back on the 11 of August, so we have a pretty short summer so they punish us with 3 weeks at Christmas and alot of little made up holidays. So far we have had no big problems with school other than getting up early, the bus leaves at 7:30 sharp, and Ardynn is too cute, the boys keep pulling her hair ribbons.

Mike left us on Friday the 19 of August for Montana to fight fires. We miss him but are so excited that he is back to flying and doing what he loves(we really like him better when he is happy). His helitack crew has worked on two fires rescued 7 dirt bikers and learned to herd cattle in the helicopter. The best part for us was that Mike was able to land in Driggs and deliver brownies to Grandpa Ron(the government paid $12,000.00 for that delivery). Now those are good brownies. Mike has had a few job offers while up there so we are going up for Thanksgiving to look around.

Dusty

Mag Family Vacation

While we were enjoying our "family" outing, others were enjoying this. Jeff spotted this funny on our way back to camp. Notice the small sign above the yellow one. It says 1st Anal Lava Olympics. teehee

Hello, Y'all. We are just returning from our fun filled family vacation at Lava Hot Springs, in the great state of Idaho. We had a very good time. We floated down the river and after a few bumps and bruises, the kids decided they had had enough. Kinzie fell off the tube twice. Once scraping her elbow and the other hitting her knee. I also took a tumble only to hit and scrape the small of my back on a HUGE #$% rock. We were told later that the water was really low, thus the scraping and bumping of body parts all down the river. On Sunday we went to the Olympic size pool. It had several diving boards, and two water slides. Also, they had 3 platforms for our enjoyment. The first level was only a foot or 5 higher than the high dive. My lovely children talked me into jumping off of this. Me being all cool, proceeded to the edge, only to look down to my death. The kids in line behind me started to call me chicken, well I could not stand for that so holding on to my bikini top, so as not to frighten anyone, I proceeded to jump. It really wasn't that long of a drop, but dang it sure felt like I was falling for ever. And just so you know the highest platform was over 30 feet high. None of us went off this one. Although, Jeff did go on the middle one. He said it was fun, but he would stick with the lowest one. After about 8 hours of fun in the sun, we decided to go to these cool gardens they had. They were so awesome we decided to play chinese tourist and take us some pictures. Here are a few. Well there it is up top. I'm not sure how to use this pic and blog thing but I will figure it out. Okay let's see if I can do another one. Nope they are both up top. Anyway on with the vacation story. After our little outing we went to the "hot pools." and oh my goodness were they hot. After about 3 minutes I had about all I could handle. We removed ourselves from the heat and every body part we had in the water was now bright red. It was hot. We are recommending this fun place for a family reunion one year. You can rent houses, hotel/motel rooms or campsites. It was great fun. Hopefully my next blog pictures will be better. Maybe I will do 1st day of school pics. Oh what fun for you. Until later.

Look what we started!!

Okay all just because we all live so far apart doesn't mean we can't still see each other after all we all have digital cameras. Natalie and I have had so much fun with family history stories we thought we should have our own family blog. so here it is, it's titled Greetings from Grove Creek, please use it to keep us all up to date on family happenings: cute stories of the kids, new babies, new jobs, and all that other stuff you want to brag about. Please include pictures! Don't forget you can also create your own family blog that we can all see also.

Best wishes and good luck,
Dusty