Musubi

Our new friend, Megan, is from Maui - the best place on earth. She's in our ward now and we've started practicing our Polynesian dance moves with her every Tuesday. We've been working on a hula that she and her friends used to dance. She's very patient with us! We have to include dinner with dancing as well.

This week she cooked - spam musubi. It was fantastic. I highly recommend it!

Fry't Night

Our ward had its long awaited "Fry't Night" activity. Our friend Katherine throws a fry party every year. She heats up the oil and tells people to bring whatever they want to fry. Since she got called to the ward activites committee, they decided to make that into our ward activity.

Here's Katherine dressed up as a "bunch of grapes" frying up some goodies.

Daina, me, & Susannah are trying some of the fried oreos.

This picture shows only a few of the things available to sample. These are the ones I can remember that were out there: sweet potatoes, pickles, bananas, onions, jalepenos with shrimp and cheese, green tomatoes, donuts, oreos, twinkies, and my favorite - snickers. I'm sure I'm missing several.

It was also a costume party. Several of us took the easy route. Susannah and I just threw on our fairy wings. Jen was a Bushman.

They had a nice bonfire going! It got a little chilly - in the 50s!

We couldn't stop laughing at Cynthia's costume. The front of her little rubbermaid thing says "hand basket."

This is a little sample of some more costumes. Daniel made the armor he's wearing! He had to take off the mail shirt he was wearing. It weighs 30 pounds!

Abraham was a soccer player with a major afro.

Spiderman was happy to pose for a picture.

I don't know why this turned out so small. They played a spooky movie afterward in Jason's backyard. Fun activity!

Ping Pong Invitational

Last night we held the first ever Bushman Ping Pong invitational at our house.

The participants were Joe, Brittany, Ethan, Susannah, Jason, and Collin.

I was actually quite sick that night and wouldn't have been able to stand long enough to play a game! Sad for me!

Due to the lack of seating upstairs, we all had a grand time watching from the floor.

Jason was one of the finalists. Here he is warming up for the final game against . . .

Susannah "green shirt" Bushman. Results are posted below.

Who else was meant to win the Bushman ping pong invitational?

The guys

We have a great group of guy friends in Houston right now. They're tons of fun and HILARIOUS!

Yesterday was Abraham's birthday so Jen made him an awesome soccer ball cake as a treat for FHE tonight.

Great pose!

Here's the little posse - Joe, me, Abraham, Sus, and Adam.

They do a lot of teasing, but they're really great friends.

For example, tonight we mentioned that we would like "someone" to switch deadbolts from the back door to the front door since the front door is super difficult to use. Abraham suggested WD-40, which sadly enough, we would have never thought of. He asked if we wanted him to get us some. We said no, we'd get it tomorrow, but he called us 10 minutes after he left to say he was back with the WD-40! So nice! The deadbolt works just as good as new. We made Jen and Seana come down and try it out right away! What a great home teacher! He really didn't spray it in his mouth! :)

This is Adam's special rendition of Happy Birthday in Spanish. He claims to be 5% Mexican. Hmmm.

Haunted Trail

My friend Stephanie works at The Woodlands Recreation Center and is in charge of programs there. Every year they have a Haunted Trail. She asked members of our ward to help out this weekend.

Here Ben and Stephanie pose before the Haunting got started. They recently got engaged.

Jeremy joined the tour guides for a photo after his make-up was done.

I think Nichole did Jeremy's make-up. Felicia looks pretty scary too.

Finished products . . . very effective.

Israel and Nichole also scared a few people.

Here's Jeremy with his chainsaw. Israel had one too. They chased people through the cemetery scene. It was pretty scary.

I was a tour guide along with Heather and Shelly Burnham. They made us wear those silly bow ties!

Colleen looked pretty scary as well! Happy Halloween!

Fright Fest

We took a trip to San Antonio to the Six Flags there (Fiesta Texas) for Fright Fest.

Josh, Susannah, Adam, and I posed in front of the entrance.

They had some pretty spooky decorations up. I was hoping they also had spooky people walking around - but it was sort of the same as usual.

This is one of my favorite rides at this park. I think it's called the Frisbee.

Josh and I are ready to take off!

Adam is making his usual lovely face in this one. He and Susannah were on the ride after us.

I love this sillouette (sp?) shot of one of the roller coasters - the Rattler, I think.

We went to a show there that was supposed to be spooky, I think. They opening was great, but the rest . . . not so much.

We tried some cool camera shots with a few of the decorations!

Fun way to spend a Saturday.

Kaleidoscoops

The other night we went to watch a couple of our friends play at a little sandwich & ice cream shop called Kaleidoscoops in Houston. They were really good!

Our friend Jason is on the far left, Jody is in the middle, and we didn't actually meet the bongo player on the right.

BYU

We just got a call from The Giant today saying he got accepted to BYU! Congratulations!

He'll be attending BYU winter semester before heading on his mission!

I liked this cool aerial shot of BYU in Provo, UT.

I missed only one home football game in my four years at BYU! Love it! Go Cougars! By the way, I got the logo and pictures by searching on Google images. Didn't see who took them!

Exercise Queen

Stephanie is my exercise hero. We had her over the other night (with Ben - her fiance. Congrats!) for dinner. She showed us some exercises with these new bands we got!

We're going to be pretty buff like her if we keep these up!

Ouch!

Fun at home

We decided to spend General Conference weekend with our parents in San Angelo. We had lots of fun (that's where Susannah made all those great jib jab dancing videos below).

Susannah and I stopped in Austin for lunch at the Hula Hut. We took this of ourselves just outside the restaurant.

Susannah practiced her photo shopping skills to enhance our eye colors from the previous photo.

In between conference sessions, they always have those great little programs going on. I was working on my photo album and looked up to see this scene through the kitchen interior window. My dad had just picked some of his awesome sweet corn and they wanted to watch and eat at the same time.

The giant got hungry later on so he just whipped up a little meal - potatoes and carrots with cream of mushroom and onion soup! He made it and baked it himself! Impressive!

My parents' plumeria plant got some flowers this year! They're my favorite. The parents were nice and let Susannah and I each take one for the ride home. Susannah practiced her skills on my eyes again!

We stuck the flowers in the air vents so we could smell them the whole way home. It worked splendidly! She did a great job on this photo along with the black and white one below!