Back to School!

My school!

Summer is officially over for me. School started on Monday. It would be just terrible if it weren't for these cute little munchkins! I've got a really good class and I think it will be a great school year!

MOST of the kids look really happy to be in first grade!

This picture was just too cute for me not to put on here. Kids really are so sweet at this age!

Moving

It seems like all of our really good Houston friends end up moving! I really made a list once and it was huge! Anyway, Elliott pulled a double, actually triple doozie. He was in Houston and then moved away from us to Dallas. We still hung out some so it wasn't too bad. Then he moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana - closer to us than Dallas is, so I guess that one wasn't too bad either. Now he announces that he's moving back to Utah (consequently - the destination that has absorbed most of our friends)!

We took these pictures last Sunday. This was just a couple of days after he decided to quit his job and move. He bought a brand new H3 that was pretty nice.

We're sporting some turtle shell bracelets Elliott's family got. He gave Susannah and I each one. She forgot to wear her bracelet this day and was off taking care of RS business when these were taken.

The Luchador

We've got some great friends here in Houston.
At the bottom of the pyramid are Adam and Jason. Our friend Abraham (aka The Luchador) is at the top. I had to put in this picture to show his fabulous shirt. He loves to wrestle.

The other night he was over and Susannah agreed to wrestle him. He pulled this move on her that had to have come from Nacho Libre. We were all laughing hysterically!

Congratulations!

I got a call this last week from my good friend Allie. She and her boyfriend Brett finally got engaged! They're great together!
I took this photo during our visit to Utah this summer.

FHE Broom Relays

So, for Family Home Evening the other night, we decided to play a game of broom spinning. You hold the sweeper part of the broom to your chest, look up at the top, and spin. We said you had to spin 15 times, throw the broom down, jump over it, then come back to tag the next person on your team.Here Adam and Bradford are giving it a go.

Jen's looking pretty good.

Susannah and Kelly look like pros. The following videos came out kind of dark. I hope you can see them!

This first video is of Adam skipping back to tag the next victim. I think he paused too much so he wasn't very dizzy.

Susannah had some real trouble here! My attempts were similar to hers. We got really familiar with the fence!

Branson, Missouri

Okay, this is our final trip of the summer! We went with our family to Branson, Missouri. This was our 3rd time to visit and we still love it!

Most of these pictures are at Silver Dollar City in Branson. It is a fabulous amusement park. My dad, Susannah, and I are big fans of roller coasters. This is us just before riding our favorite - WILDFIRE!!!!!!

Dad and I are buckled up and ready to go for our 4th ride in a row on Wildfire.

Susannah is really good at milking cows, apparently.

Dad's a pro.

This a cool scenery shot in Silver Dollar City. Susannah wants a disclaimer that although her nose looks rather large in this picture, it is JUST the angle.

Our family as we were leaving the park. I didn't do so well at hiding my feet. I had to wear tennis shoes instead of my regular flip flops because I'm having foot issues. These shoes have a tendency to look like "moon boots."

UMMMMMM, I really like this picture. Bad angle of me, but who cares anyway? We went to several shows in Branson - Spirit of the Dance, the Incredible Acrobats of China, and finally Island Fire. Island Fire is put on by a bunch of dancers from Samoa who are very talented . . . and good looking. We had to get our picture with this guy!

Adam's 18!

We had Adam's 18th birthday party at our hotel room in Branson. He's not a cake fan so we got some pre-packaged brownies and some drumstick ice cream cones and had a grand ole time. He's posing here with his infamous "chicken lips."

Tahitian O'Tea

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com
This is the video of us dancing with Joe Cook.

LUAU!

This last Saturday was our 7th annual Houston Metro YSA luau. It was a ton of fun as usual, with authentic Hawaiian food, a program, and a dance afterward.

Susannah and I dance in the luau every year and usually end up borrowing Tahitian skirts for our duet. This year we decided to splurge and get our own skirts. We ordered them online and they came in plenty of time. Here, Susannah is modeling the ensemble pre-luau. We had to cut off about 3 inches from the bottom of each of the skirts because they were so long.

The girls in our ward got together and learned a nice hula for the Hawaii section of the luau. They stuck us front and center.

The highlight of our evening was when we danced our Tahitian O'tea number. The past two years Susannah and I did it as a duet. This time, we had a fun addition that really made it even better. We've got some video of it that I'll have to upload.

Joe Cook is part Hawaiian and actually danced at the Polynesian cultural center. He's really good. He watched our dance as we were practicing the day of the luau and made up a part, found a matching costume, and performed with us that night!

Joe also led some of the guys in the ward (along with two cute little boys) in the Haka, a Maori war dance from New Zealand.

Of course, no luau is complete without a Samoan fire dancer!

Tubing Terror

This summer we learned about the continuous shot option on my camera. Without it, we wouldn't have these gems. You may have to enlarge or zoom to get the full effect. What we have here is a tube with three seats. Just looking at it, you'd think it would be a nice, relaxing ride . . . that's what I thought until we put a guy named Brandon (Adam's high school buddy) at the driver's seat in his boat.
He started making these sharp turns which would swing us out really far and really fast. We'd then be drug back over the wake and hit the most terrifying part - waves from the boat. In this particular picture, we hit a wave that was a good 3-4 feet high. It launched us into the air. My right hand was ripped off the handle, but my left hand stayed strong. This lead to the next picture.

My body was still trying to go up, but my left hand anchored me down. I ended up face planting in the middle seat of the tube. Pretty funny. I was done tubing after that!

Road Trip Number 2

My, it's been a fun summer. I apologize for the sheer number of pictures I've uploaded in this post, but after going through the, at least, 200 pictures from this last trip, this is what I've narrowed it down to. For this trip, Adam, Susannah, and I drove straight from Houston to Boise, ID. We were there for almost a week, then spent several days in various Utah locations and then were in the Arizona "Valley" for the end of the trip.
Adam is from Boise. We stayed with his family at the first of our trip. We floated the Boise river soon after we got there. Adam's Dad has a plane. He took us out flying one morning. It was awesome.

I'm actually flying the plane in this picture. Pretty cool!

This picture was taken on a lake in Donnelly, ID. We were staying at Adam's friend Brandon's cabin. He had an awesome boat and there were tons of pictures of people water skiing, wake boarding, wake surfing, and what not. I liked this action shot the best of all of them. I just realized I forgot to stick in the coolest tubing picture ever. I'll have to post it by itself after this.

Next, we headed to Placerville to Adam's parents' cabin. They have 80 acres of property up there and we went 4-wheeling forever. It was a lot of fun. Despite the fact that Susannah and I were wearing helmets, we still got pretty dirty. This shot is our attempt and looking tough. Apparently, I forgot to open my eyes.

White water rafting was our last Idaho adventure. We rafted on the Payette river on a section called "the main." It is fairly tame as far as white water rafting goes, but Adam and his friend Aaron still got knocked out on one of the rapids and were stuck under water for at least 10 seconds. Scary! Other than that, the rafting was a blast.

Susannah and I headed to Heber City, UT next. Our grandma still lives there. Here, we're visiting some of my mom's "North" cousins. They have some really cool horses. This one took a liking to "the giant."

This post could also be entitled "some of my favorite people." We made short visits to many of our favorite people. One of our first stops was to the BYU campus. We stopped in the good ole' JKHB to say hello to Paris. He was being a good student and studying there until we interrupted him.

Yahoo! Some Bushmans! We were excited to see our cousin Ryan, his wife Sarah, and their daughter Brenna. They're soon to have a new addition - Cannon. You'd better believe that SkipBo was involved in this visit.

We made another Bushman stop at the new home of our cousin Daylen and his wife Scarlet. They have 3 CUTE little boys named Austin, Connor, and Brady. A couple of days after this picture was taken, Scarlet had their daughter Valeska.

I was excited to see one of my BEST friends in the whole world - Allie. She was a roommate at BYU for a couple of years. It wouldn't be a trip to UT without seeing her!

Here's a picture of my cute mom with her cute mom who turns 92 this September!

Here's a picture I took at our big A.E. Bushman (my great grandpa) reunion in Mt. Pleasant, UT. This is a picture of most of the people who came to the reunion (minus the 10 or so of us standing in the middle of the road taking pictures). This particular branch of Bushmans has over 600 members! Wow!

Our timing was just perfect for this next stop. Richard and Jeffrey Ure are good friends of ours who used to live in Houston, but moved back to UT. We made it just in time for Jeff's mission farewell! Good luck in Taiwan!

Speaking of Texas deserters - the Mulders are some more of our favorite people. Jason is a chiropractor down in AZ (he went to school in Dallas). I grew up with Kristal in Joseph City and really enjoyed having them in Texas for a few years. They're a super fun family with three kids - Jayden, Kamryn, and Boston.

Some of my favorite high school memories include these jokers! Kristal and Greg always kept us laughing in Spanish class. Greg is now a detective with the Phoenix Police Department.

The last AZ stop was the home of my best friend from high school - Jinny. Again, good timing. She had just had twins less than a week before our visit. She named them Sadie and Tatum. I'm having more eye trouble in this picture.

Lest our road trip should be over, we had to make another quick stop at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. They're pretty amazing!

I love this shot - especially the AWESOME shirt Adam is wearing!

Ping Pong MASTER

My dad is a ping pong wizard!!!!! He challenged the local sportscasters to a match and killed them! He's got it on DVD and it's hilarious!
He likes to give everyone a sporting chance to beat him, whether that involves giving people 15 points to start out with, playing with his left hand, using his "mini paddle", playing on his knees, or - the most humiliating - playing while sitting down.

Road Trip Number 1

Our first road trip of the summer was to Lake Powell. We went with Adam Warr. His parents have a house boat so we were out there for almost a week and then headed to Joseph City to show him around the coolest place in the WORLD!
A beautiful shot of the Lake. This is from the campground we stayed at. We got in too late to get on the boat the first night.

This is just about as we're leaving. L-R is Deidra (Adam's mom), Adam, me, "the Vic" (Adam's dad), Blaire (Whitney's friend), Whitney (Adam's sister), and Susannah.

Here's a picture of Susannah and I at the good ole' Wigwam motel in Holbrook, AZ. The wigwams may look familiar to those of you who watched the movie "Cars."

Here we are at the badlands. We showed Adam Devil's Cave. I was happy we found it after several failed attempts on previous trips home. I'm happy to report that we didn't see any bats in there on this trip!

A cool shot out at the badlands.

A trip to Joseph City isn't complete without a stop to Pioneer Dam (Upper Dam to you old folks). We pulled the old quick sand trick on Adam. We let him get stuck up to his rear end in the mud before pelting him with mud. He couldn't do anything about it . . . until we helped him out. I decided to keep the camera in hand to keep myself from getting as muddy as these two jokers.