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!

Let them have their cake . . .

Yesterday our ward Relief Society had it's enrichment meeting - a birthday celebration for the Relief Society program. For it, we received instruction on cake decorating.

Here's our fun table working on our cakes.

This picture is of the cakes Susannah and I made. She did the butterfly and I did the stars. They were going to throw away the extra cakes so we got them and decided to be productive with them.

We stopped by the bike shop to bring Adam a cake at work.

Abraham was next on the list at Sprint.

I came home and made 2 layer cakes out of the 4 little cakes Cara gave us. I thought they turned out pretty cute! We cut and ate one of them last night when people came over. The other we'll probably give to one of the girls we visit teach.

I LOVE BERRIES!!!

I love to see the temple!

Last Tuesday, March 25th, was kind of an anniversary for me.

10 years ago on that date I was able to go to the temple to receive my own endowments in the Mt. Timpanogos Temple in American Fork, Utah. I was then a student at BYU and had received my mission call to the Tennessee Nashville Mission. It was a great experience. Except for my mission, which didn't have a temple in it's boundaries, I've attended the temple just about every week since that date. It would be great to say I'd visited all the temples, but since there are well over 100, I don't know how possible that would be unless I came into a lot of money for traveling. Here's a list of all the temples I've been in to do temple work. I've seen several others, but not been inside.
1. Mt. Timpanogos, American Fork, UT
2. Provo, Provo, UT
3. Hawaii, Laie, HI
4. Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, UT
5. Arizona, Mesa, AZ
6. Nashville, Franklin, TN
7. New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
8. Jordan River, South Jordan, UT
9. Houston, Houston, TX
10. Washington D.C., Washington D.C.
11. Lubbock, Lubbock, TX
12. Snowflake, Snowflake, AZ
13. Dallas, Dallas, TXThis is a picture of the Houston Temple, my current temple district. I'm blessed to be an ordinance worker there and am so grateful for that opportunity.I took this picture of the Houston temple on the night of my 10 year anniversary. The picture below shows my faithful temple buddies!

Happy Easter!

CUTE!

On Easter Sunday, my Aunt Maylene and Uncle Darrell were kind enough to feed us a delicious dinner along with our cousin Eric, his wife and kiddos, and several of our friends! They're so sweet! I love this picture of Eric and Wendy's cute kids in their bunny ears!

When Bushman babies are born, one of the first orders of business is to check for "Turley fingers." Brandt is a lucky recipient of the distinctive gene! I couldn't get a very clear picture. He wasn't too excited about me taking pictures of his hands.

Eric, Brandt's dad, has some definite Turley characteristics, taking after his dad and a couple of uncles. I love it! I think I posted some of my dad, uncles, and my cousin Stephanie's baby at a wedding reception last year. They've all got some fantastic Turley fingers.

Here are the Bushman relatives in attendance. It's always a good time!

We also had to get a YSA picture for those where in attendance. We were happy to have Lala, Kim, and Adam join us for Easter dinner too! Another big thanks to the Call family for feeding us all!

Village Creek

On Good Friday and the Saturday after, I went on a canoing trip with a group of about 40 people. It was loads of fun.

The first order of business was to have Susannah braid my hair so I wouldn't have to worry about it on the trip. She did a great job. This picture was taken after the trip, so it had gone through a few days and two nights' sleeps! Susannah is the best!

This picture is of the group of us from the Houston area that went. The rest of the people were from Texas A&M. We heard a whole lot of "whoop"ing going on. It was a good time, though. We shoved off near Kountze, TX

There were two to a canoe. Kim and I were rowing buddies.

Here's some of our group as we're heading down the river.

The first day was the longest and had the most obstacles. We had to go under several fallen trees, laying down in our canoes to clear it. This particular one, we had to go over. It was a skinny log that was partially submerged. Luckily Katherine (AKA Superwoman) helped us over by pulling our canoe diagonally across the log. I think we went about 12 miles the first day.

We found a sandbar and pulled over to camp for the night. We fit a lot of people and a lot of canoes on that sandbar!

Jen was in charge of dinner. We helped her as best we could. She burned her hand on some boiling water!

Here's a shot of some of the yummy spaghetti and meatballs we had. It was so good!

Here's the whole Houston crew again on the second day. Despite some sunburns, sore muscles, and lack of toilets, it was a fantastic trip.

This is a video we shot just an hour or two before we finished the 19-20 mile course. We stopped at another sandbar just before lunch to go for a dip. Fun times.

I had to close out with this shot. Susannah and Jen helped me take out the multitude of braids. I was actually contemplating wearing my hair like this to church until I caught a big whiff of campfire odor and decided my hair was due for a good wash!

The Drive-In

Our Saturday night was full of fun at the drive-in.

A group of us drove out to the theater off of 2920 near 290. It was called the Showboat Theater. For more info, click here.

It was a double feature for only $5 per person. We watched "Horton Hears a Who" which we LOVED and another movie called "Jumper" which wasn't our favorite.

These are just some group shots. It got pretty cold after the sun had been down for a bit! Katherine had a great set-up in her truck bed.

Katherine had run a half marathon that morning in Galveston. Way to go!

Monarchs

Monarch Butterflies are a common sight in Texas during the spring. They fly through Texas on their way to Mexico.

I really liked this picture I found on the Internet.

The other day, the room mom for our class brought in some of the milkweed plants from her garden at home. Apparently Monarchs only lay their eggs on milkweed because they're bitter, making the larva that feed on them bitter as well. That keeps them from being eaten by predators. If you look at the picture above, you can see an egg on the leaf of the milkweed plant.

She also brought in several larva. She let us all hold them which was pretty cool. The kids were so excited!

This one's in my hand. It left me an unsavory little morsel. I'm pretty sure they did not enjoy all of the commotion in my classroom.