Abraham's video

Another Famous Story

Most of us are pretty familiar with what's going on with the big polygamy scandal near San Angelo, TX.

Since my parents live in San Angelo, they're right in the middle of it. My dad is a bishop there and has been interviewed by reporters and has been on the news as well! The other day, we got an email from my Aunt in Salt Lake telling us that my dad and us girls were on the front page of the Salt Lake Tribune! I stuck the picture on below. You can obviously see my dad, but if you look closely, there are school pictures of Susannah and I in the bottom corners of the picture of Christ. Funny. If you want to read that article, click here. You can also click here if you want to read the one in the Deseret News. He's quoted at the very bottom of that one.

It's pretty sad that this picture is my claim to fame!

The Garden

WARNING: To those of you who are easily bored, skip to the next post. We are SUPER excited about our garden and I had to do a post about it. We check it every day - multiple times. I'm actually surprised at how fun and exciting our little garden is!

I had to repost a before shot so everyone could get the full effect! This first one was taken the end of January, I believe. Could have been February. I'll have to check.

I took these shots today. Even the grass looks great! :)

This first shot is of our cherry tomato plant. This is just one or two little bunches. There are lots more. They're so close to turning red!

This is another of our tomato plants. These are just regular ones. I should have put something up there for scale. That bigger one in the front is a little bigger than a golf ball probably.

We've got several little blackberries growing. Were not going to have a very big crop this year. It makes me want to plant A LOT more blackberry bushes!

Here's a close-up of the biggest blackberry. It was the first to start growing and it seems to be just about ready. We're going to have to fight over who gets to eat it!

The strawberry plants have at least doubled in size. There are several blossoms and berries are beginning to form in 3-4 of the blossoms.

Here's our zucchini plant. You can see at least one zucchini growing to the left of that middle blossom.This one is the biggest one so far. It's about the size of my pinky.

Here's a shot from the other side. Hooray for gardens!

Weddings of late

We've had a few weddings/receptions we've been to within the last couple of weeks. They were COMPLETELY different from one another.

One commonality was this lovely couple - the Chappells; our bishop and his wife. We love them!

Here we are at Norma's wedding. We were her visiting teachers. This wedding was performed in her backyard by Bishop Chappell. It was perfect weather; so perfect that their neigbors were having a huge party with ultra loud music. We could barely hear the ceremony. L-R Abraham, me, Norma, Susannah, and Karla.

This is Norma and her new husband whose name I don't remember. We thought it was Emilio, which we wrote on the card, but when we got there we were in for rude awakening! :)

We wanted a cool picture of the lights around the yard so I snapped this one of Susannah. It's fantastic, I think!

Abraham snapped one of me. . . sorry, no lights!

The second one was a reception at the Chappell's house. Joe and Brittany were actually married about a month ago in Utah, but came for a reception here this weekend. It was so good to see them. We were really excited to see Brittany's influence already. Joe was wearing a black suit instead of his usual grey one! Yahoo!

We had to take a quick picture with all of us! I like those guys!

The Grill

In the post below I mentioned that Susannah got me a grill for my birthday.

Here's the old charcoal grill. It's survived a lot, including being blown across the backyard during a serious storm. It's hardly sturdy anymore.

I'm proud to say that I set this puppy up all by myself. It wasn't too bad. I can't wait to use it!

Here's a view with it open. I'm really excited about the warming rack on it. Woo hoo!

Birthday

April 25th is one of my favorite days! It's my birthday and I've always been blessed with amazing friends and family who make my birthdays great.

This morning Susannah and Jen made crepes for breakfast! Susannah also made her famous smoothies (just like Jamba Juice). I opened presents from Jen, Susannah, and my parents. We were in too much of a rush to take any pictures, but Susannah got me a new propane grill with a little help from my parents. Jen got me a Bocce Ball set, and my parents sent a new pressure cooker. Fun stuff!

My room mom and a couple of other moms from my class surprised me at the end of the day with some gifts and cookies for the kiddos. It was a lot of fun.

Here's me with the class and some of the gifts they brought.

I had to take a close-up of the cake George brought me. It's tiny - maybe a twinkie is underneath. It's so cute, though!

A few of us went out for Mexican food at Los Vega. Jen's plate was FULL of food. It was like a huge mountain!

Here's my annual chocolate chip cheescake, lovingly prepared by my fantastic sister. Thanks to Jess for passing along the recipe!

Happy Birthday to me!

The Mexican surprised me with a cool photo album and a beta fish and little tank with food. We decided to name him "Nacho." I'll get some grill and bocce pictures posted sometime soon!

Mulberry Pie

Adam goes biking near his house at a place called Cypress Trails (I think). He and a co-worker spotted some mulberries growing there so Adam decided to pick some for us.

He brought them over and I baked them into a yummy pie.

This was one of my favorite nights with the A's. One of the moments included this little exchange between Adam and Abraham:

Abraham: How long did it take you to get those delicious fruits for us?
Adam: Freakin' forever, man!

It was really funny at the time. There was also a comment made about dancing like a fairy princess in British Columbia while picking berries, but I won't elaborate. Adam's mulberry picking outfits are quite entertaining, I must say!

Dancing Spiderman

Susannah found this dancing Spiderman years ago in college. It didn't have sound. She tried a bunch of different songs with it and found that "Happy Feet" from the "Strictly Ballroom" soundtrack fit the best. The music on this video is pretty funny. For the silent version, click here!

Hafiz

Our ward Relief Society was invited to another ward's Enrichment Meeting. They had a fabulous speaker there (Mary Lee Roberts M.S.) who quoted a 14th century Persian poet named Hafiz. He wrote a lot of poems about God. Mary shared one with us called "Without Brushing My Hair" that I really liked. I've posted it below for you!

(I got this picture off the Internet. I think it's an illustration on a cover of one of the compilations of his poems.)

Without Brushing My Hair

The closer I get to you, Beloved, the more I can see it is just you and I, all alone in this world. I hear a knock at my door. Who else could it be? So, I rush without brushing my hair. For so many nights I have begged for your return and what is the use of vanity at this late hour, at this divine season that has now come to my folded knees. If your love letters are true, dear God, I will surrender myself to who you keep saying I am.

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."