Sunday, February 24, 2008

Pedicure

Every once and a while, we like to get pedicures.
They usually last us a long time. This is an old picture taken in AZ this last summer - July, I believe. We got pedicures while visiting the Mulders in the Valley.
Today, Sunday, February 24th, Susannah finally removed the final flower details from her toenails. It had grown almost completely off and had become unrecognizable as a lovely flower. She's having trouble recognizing her own toes now.

Bridal shower

Brittany's bridal shower was on Saturday at Olive Garden. She's marrying our good friend Joe Prince.
She's pictured here with her roommate/shower organizer Nicole. A year and a half ago, we really wanted Brittany to marry our cousin Brent, but . . . Brent got married. At least she's marrying our good friend!Here's the group of us minus Nicole who took this picture. It was a fun day!Incidentally - unrelated to the bridal shower, but related to Brittany's fiance, it was exactly a year ago today (don't worry - the 24th was on a Saturday last year) that Joe and I ran the Cowtown half marathon in Fort Worth. Yee Haw!

Large Talons

The other day Susannah, Jen, Anonymous, and I were in the car and Anonymous somehow got me in a headlock and began to give me a thorough nougie (sp?).
I could not escape and began flailing my arms a bit. Somehow, my fingernail ended up stabbing right in to Anonymous's chin. Ouch!
He said my new nickname is "Panthress." Although it's not really my fault, per se, I still felt a little bad so I tried to make amends.
You'd feel better if you got this card, wouldn't you? I had Susannah make sure to get my nicely cut, filed, and shaped short nails in the photo.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Cute Reception!

We went to a really cute reception on Saturday night.
Ben and Stephanie got married in the Salt Lake temple a couple of weekends ago. They're a great couple!
Not only did they have fabulous announcements, but their reception was so cute. Here's one of the centerpieces.
It was at an outdoor venue that was really pretty. It's brand new and is in The Woodlands. To bad a cold front hit right as we got there. The weather dropped 20 degrees instantly!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Quilting Bee

Last Saturday morning, we attended the annual Interfaith Quilting Bee. It's held every year at the Klein Stake Center to benefit NAM. Quilts are given to those in need.
They had a lot of quilts up for display. This is a quilt that I LOVE. It is actually always on display in the Relief Society room in the LDS church building on the corner of Louetta and TC Jester. The quilt had to have taken hundreds (or thousands) of hours to complete!
Here's a group of us holding up a quilt that we just finished tying. Aubrey and and few others put several quilts together for us to tie! Next year maybe I'll brave the unknown and make a quilt of my own to donate!
Aubrey and Nichole had to tie this one on the ground because all of the quilt stands were being used.
Susannah was in charge of displaying all the quilts in the chapel. She just hung them over the pews.
Here's a shot of part of the chapel. All of the pews were covered by the end. Over 300 quilts were completed for NAM this year. It's a fantastic event!

The Scarlet Pimpernel

For Susannah's birthday, Adam gave her some tickets to the musical version of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
We went out to dinner before the play. Adam and Susannah decided to switch coats. I actually don't know why.
Here's the group of us downtown at the Hobby Center. It was a fun time. Look at that picture - Adam's a lucky guy to be with all those great girls!

Freeze Dance

We had our class "Friendship Party" the day after Valentine's Day.
I had to take a picture of Paige's CUTE outfit! Just about every teacher in the school commented on it that day.

One of the games at the party was something the kids LOVE. It's called freeze dance. One of the moms made mix of fast songs that we played and let the kids go crazy dancing. They had to freeze when the music stopped. Well, I have some serious dancers in my class. Check out Eric in the blue shirt. His little hip movements at the beginning of this one crack me up.

In this one he does a funny chicken walk move. I have a bunch more video, but I'll stick with these two for now. All I have to say is if we have extra time at the end of the day ever, I'm going to play some music and watch the dancing!

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Happy Valentine's Day!

We were pleasantly surprised this Valentine's Day to receive stuff from actual guys (besides our cute little guys at school).
Abraham surprised Jen, Susannah, and I with chocolate roses. What a nice home teacher!
He also decided to rename the day. It has nice ring to it, verdad? I think it beats the name we've been calling it for years . . . singles awareness day.Adam came over later with a truffle surprise. He also made sure we tried them following the directions on the back exactly. They are definitely good!

Adam's quilt

Adam has been wanting a t-shirt quilt. As he was scheduled to leave on last Monday, we thought we'd rush to get it done before he left. He chose his shirts, bought the materials, and he and Susannah got to work measuring and cutting.
We stayed up super late one night and, with the help of Kim Larmouth, got the thing tied. There was something weird about the needles or the fabric because it was super hard to tie. We had to use pliers and this jar lid opener thing to grab the needles and pull them through. What was really funny is us three girls sat around the quilt and Adam laid underneath it. He'll pull the needles down and send them back up for us. It was a pretty good system.
Here's Adam after we finished tying. It was like 2:45 in the morning. It took a long time to get it tied!
Susannah did pretty much the whole rest of the work. She actually did most of the work anyway. She sewed the strips together and edged the thing all on her own. She even sewed one side of the edging entirely by hand!
Adam's enjoying his finished quilt here. It turns out that he's not going to Korea after all. We're glad to have him stay!

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Celebrity Look-Alikes

Nightmare

This is the stuff of nightmares, folks! Seriously! My cousin Jen just told me about this little tidbit. It happened a few days ago in GALVESTON, TEXAS! For those of you not from TX, that's REALLY close to where I live!
Many of you know that I am phobic/fascinated with sharks - especially great white sharks! I've pasted the story below!
GALVESTON , TX
While the ocean vessel 'Dawn Raider' was commercially fishing for shrimp, this Great White was hooked in the mouth but only resisted slightly for 15 minutes
before it came up alongside the boat to have a look; long enough for one of the crew members to slip a rope a round it's tail !!! 'And that's when
things heated up!!
... The
Shark took off towing the 42 foot fishing boat backwards through the water at about 7 Knots. Just like in JAWS, the boat was taking on water over the stern and the crew watched in horror as the shark would actually jump completely out of the water at times. This went on for an hour before the shark finally drowned. She weighed in at 1035 LBS. It is suspected she followed a weak El Nino current into local waters in search of food. Although mid 60 degree water is considered ideal for these sharks, the larger ones can tolerate water in the low 50s.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Pleasant Surprise

The last person you plan on running into when you make a quick stop at Wendy's is your mission president!
Yesterday after we went to the temple, we stopped at Wendy's to get some grub and we ran right into my old mission president and his wife - President and Sister Bray. I LOVE THEM! They were there with their daughter and her family. What a fun day!

Susannah's Birthday

For Susannah's birthday this year, I made a book for her - a "what I like about Susannah" book. I had all of her friends write what they liked about her.
She really liked it. Thanks so much for all of you who participated. It really meant a lot to her. For those of you who didn't respond, but would still like to, it's still possible!
The weekend after her birthday, we had a party at out house. It was kind of a joint thing - it was a happy birthday/congrats on finishing chemo for Nathan and a happy birthday for Susannah as well. Here they are blowing out their candles.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Visitors

I had to work late tonight because I hadn't been at school 3 out of the 5 days! Being sick is no fun. Anyway, I had a lot of catch up to do. I heard a knock on my window and saw . . .
these two jokers outside stopping by to say hello. Adam snuck that face in there right after I said "3" so I had to take another one.
This is a little bit better. Fun!

USA vs Mexico

Abraham is a soccer LOVER! Several months ago, he bought himself, Jen, Susannah, and me tickets to the USA vs Mexico soccer game. Well, the game was on February 6th. It was a great time! I can't say that I've ever really watched a game of soccer. I've played maybe twice. Soccer wasn't the big thing in Joseph City. I was always terrified of getting kicked in the shins as well. Anyway, the game was very enjoyable and exciting! Thanks, Abraham!
One of the reasons we liked the game was this guy - Carlos Bocanegra - on the US team. Nice.
Here's a cool shot inside the stadium. We had great seats.

Here's a video Jen shot of the crowd doing the wave. It shows off the stadium really well too!One of the things I DON'T like about soccer is that you can end the game in a tie. That brought up a little dilemma that has something to do with a bet we made about the game. It will come up in a post or two.Here we are after the game! We were so excited to get our picture with a guy wearing a Luchador mask! He was sitting a couple of rows in front of us and we were hoping it would happen the whole game. Wish granted!

Here we are in the car leaving the game. Abraham has this song he sings in his "special" voice. I love it!

Here he prompts Susannah and she gives it a try. She's not quite as proficient . . . yet! She kept getting better and better that night. I found out later that there was a shooting at the Reliant Center after the game. That doesn't actually surprise me. There were some crazy people there - from both sides. Yikes!

Shocking

This is a funny little post I called "shocking" because it contains a few of the shocking things that have happened over the last few days.
Shocking thing #1 was the fact that Adam cooked us dinner. WHAT?!?!?! It's true! He did it all by himself! It was very impressive. . . that he cooked for us.
Okay, it also tasted really good. The next shocking part of shocking thing #1 was that he cooked fish - tilapia - AND WE LIKED IT! For those of you who look closely at pictures, you'll notice he's not actually cooking fish. That's because I accidentally erased the pictures of him cooking fish so we had him act like he was cooking us dinner the next night. He did help, though. That can actually be shocking thing #2.
Shocking thing #3 happened today. I thankfully didn't see this mess, but Jen captured the beauty of it with her camera. She spilled un-mixed-up cake mix down the cupboards. Full shock value is shown below.
Luckily, it was spilled at the cupboard she uses for her cake stuff, my stuff was spared! Whew! Sorry, Jen!

The final shocking thing of this post is this little slap video. Believe it or not, it's not that shocking that we're slapping Abraham. It happens all the time, probably due to the fact that he slaps us. Anyway. I think it's actually shocking that he's "letting" us slap him!