Falling

As I was getting ready for church yesterday, I heard a terrible scream. I thought someone had broken into the house and was assaulting a roommate.

When I ran out of my room, this is what I saw! Susannah was wearing heels and had lost her footing. She fell forward and down a couple of stairs, landed on her knees and fell to the side and forward, causing her to land like this (picture above). We couldn't stop laughing!

I've got her getting up in stages in these next two. She didn't really feel hurt at all, so it's okay that we were laughing . . . right! :)

Here she is, a little shaken up and with a bit of a sore back, but okay!

Kids Singin'

I love both of these videos. I hope you enjoy them!

Gymnastics

Last weekend our ward had one of the best activities I've ever been to. We rented out a gymnastics and cheer place. It was pretty big and there was tons to do!

After stretching out with a gymnastics coach, they let us loose. One of our first items of business was to try and to watch others jump into the pit of foam from the REALLY long trampoline. We had the best seats in the house and took a lot of video as you can see below. You're actually going to be subjected to A LOT of video in this post, but you should enjoy it! In the picture above, we have Susannah, our new friend Amanda, Jen, and me.

Here are Adam's cool moves into the pit. The foam was kind of gross and little pieces of it would get stuck all over you. It was also a little difficult getting out of the pit.

Here's Ethan's high flying jump.

Amanda actually is a real gymnast . . . you can probably tell. She hasn't done it in years, but still impressed us. I actually have several more of these "runway" videos, but I'm just posting the highlights.

In one of the other rooms, they had two giant trampolines that were hand woven and way more bouncy than regular trampolines. I didn't get any video of those, but this was another cool trampoline thing that was in that same room. Adam is demonstrating here. I was never brave enough to do any flips.

One of the other foam pits was under this bar.

Here's a video of Susannah's little trick off the bar.

We also used this pit for a kind of balance/chicken game, trying to knock the other person off into the foam. This pit also turned into a wrestling match as we kept trying to shove each other into it. I was in there more than I'd like to say (none due to any tricks I did).

Megan's a pro! She did gymnastics for many years. Here's one of her floor routines. We loved this bouncy floor! Speaking of bouncy floors . . . I saved the best for last. The following video has provided many laughs over the past few days.

I'm told that Jen completed this very trick successfully before this video was taken. We're not sure exactly what happened; all I know is that this cylindrical mat thing-a-ma-jig pretty much steamrolled Jen's head. The best part is that the springy floor made her bounce at the end. Loads of fun!

Kindergarten Zoo

Susannah teaches kindergarten. One of the many things she's contributed to the kindergarten team is the idea for their annual kindergarten zoo. The kids are assigned a habitat and they have to research an animal from that habitat, memorize some facts, dress up like that animal, and perform it for everyone. Each kid has a little button that says "push me." Parents and visitors walk around and push the buttons. The kids then recite their facts. It's the cutest thing ever.

In the savanna, we have a zebra, a cheetah, a lion, and an elephant.

In the arctic, there's a dall sheep, an arctic fox, an arctic hare, and a polar bear.

In the ocean, there's a sea turtle, a killer whale, and a dolphin.

The jellyfish was too shy to join the group, but his costume was fabulous.

The desert animals included a coyote, a desert iguana, a rattlesnake, and a camel.

Lastly was the rain forest. The animals there were the tiger, the parrot, the jaguar, and the red eyed tree frog.

Here's a cute picture of Haiden, the killer whale! CUTE!

Reflections of Christ

Many of you have probably already seen this, but Adam sent a great slideshow someone put together called "Reflections of Christ."

Apparently at the Mesa temple visitor's center, they had 26 pictures taken by Mark Mabry on display. He had actors portray parts of Christ's life and took real pictures of it. They're really great.

This is one of the baptism of Christ. The slideshow features all the pictures along with a really cool arrangement of "Come thou Fount". It's performed by Clyde Bawden and Freddie Ashby. Click HERE to see the slideshow.

Asian Night

It's tradition to have a "Girls Night Out" Saturday evenings during General Conference while the guys are at the Priesthood session. Katherine had a FANTASTIC idea to do and Asian themed party. We had it at our house.

Susannah and I went shopping at Earthbound Trading Company (one of my favorite stores) and found some lanterns to liven things up a bit.We had lots of friends come. Katherine's grandmother had a ton of Kimonos that she brought with her, so we all dressed up for the occasion.
Here I am in my kimono putting the finishing touches on the sweet and sour chicken.


She even had some of those cool wooden flip flops that are tall. I tried them on and loved the sound they made so I had to take a video of it. I'm weird.We had asked everyone to bring an Asian dish and we ended up with a ton of food with lots of variety. I made sweet and sour chicken, Susannah made beef tomato, and Jen made Mongolian beef. There were various other things too. It was all delicious!Here's a picture of my very full plate. I even accidentally tried some rice pasta and shrimp concoction that Katherine made. I will confess that I didn't know there was shrimp in it, but I LIKED IT! WOW!The weather was beautiful so we ate out on the back porch. It was a great time.Susannah and Kim had a go at some arm wrestling. They're trying to make Sumo faces. Abraham showed up for some food after he finished working.

I had to take some video of it. This was a very fun night. We finished things off with the movie "Anna and the King."

Animal Crackers?

We all remember the little boxes of animal crackers, right?

Well, a month or so ago, one of my co-workers received a box of what she thought were animal crackers. She noticed that they were peanut butter flavored so she was pretty excited to try them.

The other day, she finally broke out the box and tried to take a bite of one of the crackers. It was so hard, she couldn't even crack it. Thinking they'd gone stale, she started to throw them away. She noticed something she'd missed before . . .

They were actually doggy treats for her Mastiff! Hilarious! It was pretty tricky because the boxes are the same size and those little dog treats even had a little string like the originals. Beware!