Camping Trip #2

Last weekend we went on our second camping trip. We camped at Lake Livingston State Park. This was going to be a coed camping trip, but Nate ended up being the only guy that came. The others backed out at the last minute, so it was Nate, his dog, Gus, and 7 girls. How fun is that? :)

This was the most common scene at the camping trip. Susannah got a fancy new camera and took tons of pictures, trying out different things on her camera. This post has mostly her pictures, and it contains only a small fraction of them!

Kim and Julie were instrumental in helping to create the once again fabulous and HUGE tin foil dinners.

I like this shot she got of the dinners. I want a new camera now!What's a camp out without a little camp fire shenanigans?

Nate's checking to see if the food is done, in a very interesting way.

Nate also brought a cool toilet seat for us to use, and had to demonstrate how to use it in case anyone was confused.

This is where he slept. He was trying to be macho and said he wanted to just sleep out by the fire. He's now concocted this whole story about how we took all the tents and air matresses so that was his only choice. RIGHT!

Here are a few people just waking up.Susannah snuck off in the woods to take some fancy pictures with her ring. This one was my favorite.We had a lovely breakfast of instant oatmeal and then . . .. . .went on a nature walk around the lake. This is Susannah's favorite picture of the trip. It is awesome! Her camera rocks - as do Nichole and Kim. :)Nate was trying to impress everyone. This was one of his attempts. That's his dog Gus.Cynthia and Nichole played guitar for us quite a bit. I loved it!The funniest/most tragic part of the trip came when Cynthia accidentally NAILED Julie's Exterra with a stick she was throwing for Gus to fetch. It left a nice little dent and scratch.Here I am enjoying the campfire! I'm sure we'll head out camping again sometime soon!

Engaged!

So, for those of you who haven't yet heard the excellent news,
Susannah's Engaged!

She headed to Moscow to visit Adam again over the long weekend (Martin Luther King Jr.). I love this picture they took outside in the snow.

I also love this picture of her!

She got there on Thursday and went to some of his law classes and just hung out there with Adam and his roommate Sean.

She had to wait all the way until Sunday night for this! He gave her a bunch of gifts - early birthday presents and a late Christmas present. The Christmas present was a digital photo frame that Adam had already loaded pictures onto - including a picture of the ring. When they got to that picture, he proposed.

With great joy, I can say that her answer was YES!

Here is her AWESOME ring! Good job, Mr. Warr!

Girl's Campout

This weekend I went on a very fun girl's camping trip.

I knew it was going to be a good time when I saw Julie wielding a machete. She and Arlena drove in this truck that was filled with firewood.

We followed them in Katherine's truck out to Huntsville State Park. Tatum, Kim, and Kirsten had the back seat.

I was in the front with Stacie and Katherine.

One of the first items of business was to get our tents set up. Kirsten and I shared a little 2 man tent. I brought a big twin blow up air mattress that took up at least 3/4 of the tent so we both ended up sleeping on it. At least we didn't get cold! Our head lamps came in very handy on this trip.

We made up some foil dinners not long after we arrived. Kirsten peeled the potatoes, Kim cut them, I cut and peeled the carrots. Kirsten also took care of the onions.

Tatum, Arlina (not pictured), and Katherine got everything all arranged.

Contrary to what one might think about a girl's camp out, we were not light eaters. This was a serious meal! It was delicious too! Katherine put cream of mushroom soup on these and it was so good. I had never done that before, but will from now on!

Kim had a little fun with the last remaining peeled potato. Don't worry. We put it to good use later!

Kirsten and Julie are expert fire makers. They had the coals just right for cooking by the time we had everything prepared.

Julie even had these fancy fire gloves. She looks pretty spooky in this picture behind all the smoke!

Katherine got a potato gun from Garon for Christmas. It was put to good use on this trip.

In this picture, Julie was trying to shoot small pieces of potato into Kirsten's mouth. Katherine actually made one into Julie's mouth. It was pretty impressive.

After dinner, the girls made a pretty big tepee fire. It was pretty impressive.

Kirsten whipped out her harmonica and played us some tunes. Here's her tribute to Susannah who couldn't join us because she's in Idaho this weekend.
Our music session was interrupted by some rustling. Upon investigation, we found a baby armadillo trying sneak into our camp. A racoon later joined us.

When we woke up in the morning we found this in our camp. It had been there the whole time, it was just too dark for us to see it when we got there the night before. Julie was pretty excited about it. She seems to be a bone collector of sorts.

Today we did some biking and just hung out by the fire. It was a very fun and relaxing trip. . .

. . . with a little wrestling thrown in for good measure.

Faucet Drama

On Thanksgiving day, I had a not so happy surprise. I found a major leak under my kitchen sink. We got it cleaned up and have kept buckets underneath it, but it has still been leaking. I called a repair guy through my home warranty company to fix it in Dec. but it continued to leak. He came back and said it was the faucet, but it wasn't covered under the warranty. He said he'd install a new faucet for $200, but I decided to try it myself.

Here's the before shot. I bought a new faucet at Lowe's, got all the tools assembled and set to work. Apparently, I'm not strong enough to loosen some of the nuts. I couldn't get a good angle.

I called my dad for some technical support, called Abraham, my Uncle Darrell, and finally conned Nate into coming to help me get it installed. I couldn't have done it without him! Thanks, Nate!

Here's the finished product! It looks great and works perfectly! Yahoo!

Go Green for Kim!

Last Friday was Kim's birthday. We decided to throw her a party at the Bushman Funhouse. Kim and I share something in common. We both LOVE green. Since she loved it so much, Susannah had a the great idea to have a green themed party.

I made this cake and decorated it with kiwi fruit and green sprinkles.

People brought tons more green food as well. Everyone even dressed in green. When people came in and saw the kitchen, it was a little shocking to them. It sort of threw us all for a loop seeing that much green. You can see Susannah's lime green rice krispie treats in this picture as well. No one would eat them at first because they looked so . . . unnatural!

I loved these chocolate dipped pretzels that Katherine and Stacie brought.

Here are a few of the people that came. We had about 20 give or take. I'm proud to say that everyone wore some shade of green. Way to participate, everyone!

Kim and Cynthia are showcasing my lovely green jell-o jigglers.

Here's Kim getting ready to blow out the candles.

We found these awesome candles and I couldn't resist taking another shot. I thought it looked pretty cool.

The inside of the cake was green. That yellow color was supposed to be lime green, but it didn't really turn out that way. Oh well. It was a hit. We played games too, even though it looks like we only ate green food all night.

Fun times of late

I've not posted super recently so I have a few things to update on.

First of all, New Years! We went over to Kirsten's brother & sister-in-law's house for some fondue fun early in the evening. It was such a fun time! Kim, Susannah, and I came back to the funhouse and set up my new surround sound system and then had fun watching favorite parts to movies with excellent things to listen to. We finally watched Phantom of the Opera and then rang in the New Year with watching the neighborhood fireworks outside. Very low key, but fun.

Kirsten's sister in law has this awesome height chart that I LOVED! I want to have one of those if I ever get to have some kiddos!

We started the new year right with a car cleaning party. Susannah, Kirsten, Abraham, and I went on a bike ride and then majorly cleaned all of our cars - inside and out.

We had to make sure our memories were recorded from both angles.

Abraham was being Mr. Fixit and helping us with all sorts of little car issues. He loved it.

Another fun thing was heading to the zoo with Nate and his kids. They wanted their pictures taken all over the place. Here are 3 of them.

Here are all 5 with Nate. It was a fun day.