Temples and Missionaries!!!

I don't know why exactly I'm posting this, I guess mainly for my own benefit and happiness :) Anyway, if any of you know my family, it's a pretty good size-I have 1 sister and 6 brothers. We definitely aren't a perfect family but we love being together (I hope I can say that for all of us - ha ha). Out of those 6 brothers, there has only been 1 brother who has served an LDS mission. Not all of them have gone in the direction of the faith that we have been brought up in, but regardless, I love to death. My sister also served a mission and that was one of the hardest times of my life when I couldn't just call her up and talk to her and get her advice for a hard time in my life that I was going through. For me, a person serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints is called of God, following the commandments, obedient, and basically serving the Lord in love. It is not only a blessing for the person serving, but also for family and friends. I have seen miracles happen in my life because of my siblings choosing to serve a mission. Now, my brother who is younger than me, has been out for over 2 months. Yes, definitely a greenie, but I cannot express how happy, joyful, blessed, grateful, for him choosing to make this decision. It hasn't been an easy road for him and he's gone out later than the regular 19-year olds, but his whole heart is in it. I have no doubt in my mind that he is out for the right reason, HE wants to serve the Lord. I think one of the greatest and precious moments of my life was when Clay and I got to go to the Temple with him, my parents, and my sister and her husband. We were late for the session but did other work, but when we met in a room, his face was just beaming with the Love of our Savior, Jesus Christ and never have I felt so close to my family than being in the Temple. A couple weeks after I gave a lesson in Relief Society about the Temple, the Bishop's wife had mentioned that they were just able to be together with all their children in the Temple for the first time. I pray and hope all the time that there will be a day that I can be in the Temple with all my family enjoying those blessings. But with another brother going through the Temple...that just gave me another glimpse of hope and faith that it is possible-with God, all things are possible. I have seen a complete 180 change with Jake preparing for his mission and cannot express how thankful I am for the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is perfect. None of us are, but with this fullness of truth, we can become perfect like Him through Him. I know of this. I love missionaries. I don't even have to know them personally but I know the sacrifices they're making and the blessings they're receiving for themselves and their families. Let us all be missionaries!!!

Here's my brother with his Mission President and his wife. He's serving in the New York New York south Spanish speaking mission.

We Survived Our Travels!

We are now Washingtonians. It's already been quite the adventure but I'm sure it will get better. Here's just a quick overview of what's happened, then I will post the pictures.

*We got a lousy Budget truck that wasn't a Diesel so on our way to Boise through the hills and passes, the truck was overheating so we were going oh, about 25 mph up the hill just chuggin' along while everyone's passing us. Embarassing. I hate being passed.

*While in Boise, we got to meet up with about 1/2 my family for Shay's 1st Birthday party!

*Left Boise/Nampa at 5:00 a.m. (4:00 Pacific Time) and didn't get to Tacoma until 2:00 p.m. which should have only been about a 7 hour or so trip.

*While driving to Tacoma, the truck overheats again going up the steap mountains so we have to stop several times to let it cool and once again we are traveling about 10 mph this time. Lucky for us we didn't get hit with cars coming around the corner or whatever.

*We unpack the truck in the blasting heat of the day at 104 degrees so we don't get much accomplished. Luckily, Clay calls up his old Bishop and he brings his family to come help. What a blessing. I started tearing up when I saw them pull up. We get the rest of the truck unpacked in less than an hour which would have taken us the rest of the night. THANK YOU!

*We also find out that our neighbors (the other side of the duplex) got "broken" into earlier July after the person couldn't get into ours. Our previous tenant actually used the security alarm therefore the burglar/drunk couldn't get in the window.

*Our 2nd or 3rd night we were watching a movie with our blinds and windows open around 10 p.m. Clay changes the water at 11 p.m. Our movie gets over at 11:30 p.m. Clay goes to shut off the sprinkler and it's GONE. Our neighbor rings our doorbell wondering what's going on. She got hers stolen too. She said it was probably the little punk gangstas.

*I have heard just about 10 sirens already around the neighborhood just today.

*Today is Clay's first day as an official Mortenson Construction Member, or whatever you want to call it. He has no office yet so he's using the Superintendent's while he's gone and is out on the site for a while!

*I'm glad we have an alarm system, yet I still have freaky dreams that people are getting in and stealing things from our room while we're "asleep". I'm trying to get over that and know that we're a lot safer with the alarm. Welcome to Tacoma. Definite culture shock for me.

Max, Gillian, Sydney, and Sadie enjoying the pool!

I'm Done!

We also visited one of the first and biggest REI's so that was a quick trip to Seattle.

Last Weekend in Idaho

I'm definitely late on some of these posts due to the process of packing, moving, and having no internet until now. Our last week/end in Idaho was quite an adventure and full of fun! Clay and I got to walk together at Graduation in which we were 1 of 40 married couples graduating together! Commencement was so blasted hot that I didn't even pay attention to the speaker who was Bishop Richard C. Edgley of the presiding Bishopric. I feel bad, but Clay took some notes. Convocation was pretty cool, didn't pay much attention either though but I was 3rd to last in walking and when I stood up I turned around and saw Janelle and Shay! I didn't think they'd make it in time but they just made me happy because Clay was in another building with his family and so I just had my parents and then they came, along with Tom and Jordan (my brother).

The next day we were going camping in Island Park...it rained all morning long while we were trying to get outta town but surprisingly the sun came out later and got hot. There were a total of 23 that were camping that weekend and so it made for great fun. We all got innertubes and floated down the river and just relaxed. Saturday morning/afternoon was spent in Yellowstone! I haven't been there since I worked in West Yellowstone 5 summers ago so it was great being able to see everything again. Here's some pics of the hot pots and geysers we got.

This was the only Buffalo we saw. We were on the wrong side of the park because my parents went all the way through out to Jackson and they saw a herd crossing the road and saw many Elk and a Grizzly Bear. Oh well. Scenery was still lovely :)

And of course, Old Faithful.

That evening when we got back into West we ate dinner at Buckaroo Bill's...such a GREAT place! I had 2 of my roommates work there during the summer I was there and then we HAD to stop at the Candy store (Rustic Candy Shop) where I used to work making taffy, etc. :) We got some great fudge and of course, Taffy. Next was Playmill. We saw Guys and Dolls which was pretty good. They didn't really have a comedy show this year which was a bummer, but I think we saw the best of the 3. President Clark (of BYU-Idaho) was there so it was interesting to see how he interacted with the performers. ha ha Sunday we packed up and stopped at Big Springs to see the big fish and feed them. Shay was so cute about it all. She ate the bread herself.

Janelle, Shay and Tom. So glad they came to camp with us as well as Jordan and my parents!

Over 2,000 Miles in a Weekend

I am such a slacker...I am supposed to be packing right now, even though I've been packing all morning, but I need to take a break. Clay and I left for Utah Friday night and made a stop in Poky for a Twin Falls Roommate Reunion :) I can't believe that we made it work because we had been trying for months to get something together to all meet up. Even though it was just for a couple hours and eating at Texas Roadhouse, it was well worth it. Thanks to you all who sacrificed your time to come!!!

L-R: Heather, Brittnee, Kandra, Me

Bottom: Daisy, Niki, Nicole

Thanks Girls!!!

That night after getting into Utah, Clay and I decided to stay in a Hotel by the airport so we stayed in at the Holiday Inn and it was awesome! It wasn't like your average hotel room with the flower bed spreads, little mirrors, etc. We had a King size bed, flat screen tv, HUGE vanity mirrors :), white bedding against a dark red wall. I loved it. We ended up with the place from Priceline and so we got it dirt cheap too for what the average rates were! Saving-check.

We took the shuttle to the airport in the morning, got to security quickly, only for them to stop Clay.
Security dude: "Who's laptop is this? It's not supposed to be in your bag."

Shoot, well we'd never taken a laptop flying so we had no clue what to do with it and I didn't realize it was in his bag. So this guy has Clay follow him behind the x-ray machines or whatever and this lady freaks out and yells at him telling him he can't go that way so then this other guy looks for Clay while he's going the other way. He has him pull all his stuff out and put it in its own bin and go through again. LAME. Then while we're waiting for our plane, Clay gets a drink of water and gets splashed all over his face. Can this trip get any worse? ha ha Well we finally arrive in Seattle/Tacoma and get to choose our rental car (economy size) and are left with a Toyota Yaris (?) so Clay looks like a giant and hits his head every time he gets in/out. We get to our first place for housing. Here's the background real quick. 2 months ago we looked for fun on craigslist, knowing we weren't going to rent yet, but we found an awesome duplex. Clay decided to call on it weeks later and the lady said the other side would be available the end of July! Perfect, just when we'd be there. In the meantime, we found another place of hers that was ok, but nothing like that first place. Ok, back to story. So this first place was that ok place I just mentioned. Not too bad, small bedrooms, kinda scary neighborhood. Please take us to the next place. Instant Love!! Someone was still living in it otherwise I'd have pictures, but he showed us around. 2 story duplex, wood floors for the living room which is huge and wood stairs. Storage under stairs, pantry, nice cabinets, stainless steel appliances, washer/dryer closet with storage, 1/2 bath, full bath, 1 nice sized bedroom, bigger master than ours right now with a better closet :) Not to mention that we have a small backyard, new 2 car garage and an alarm system! We had one more place to look but we took the applications and after that other place, went back and took it. YAY! I'm super excited! So here's what it looks like on the outside. Ours is on the right where the lady is.

We went to lunch after that at this place called Anthony's at Point Defiance off the bay. We ate outside which it was only "80 degrees and it doesn't ever get this hot" but seemed fine to us. Well the sun was blasting down on us and I got a sunburn! ha Kinda funny. But here's our view from the dock where we ate.

Mt. Rainier looks gi-normous! It was a great quick trip as we took a quick nap in the park and headed back to the airport. Next time we'll be pulling a big moving truck and ready to make Tacoma our home for a little while!

A Dream Come True

I'm still lacking on catching up with recent weekend activities (the 4th of July...) but I couldn't wait to post this. You probably think I'm weird for even thinking of posting this or sharing it with everyone, but it cracked me up to the furthest extent (does that even make sense? oh well, it sounds good). So...Clay and I are riding with my parents to Bear Lake today and as we're driving through Soda Springs, I look in the middle of the street and out of no where, there's MONEY FLYING EVERYWHERE!!!!How could you mistake those great green dollar bills, just feet from us as we're going oh, about 30 mph, and I freak out because...as weird as this may seem, I have constant dreams that this would happen in my life. I wish for the day that I would be walking down the street and come across a big pile of either coins, quarters, or simply dollar bills - preferably 100's ;) Ok, so me freaking out...I yell at my dad that we should stop so I can go grab it all! (My mom agrees with me, ha ha) Well, come to find out he saw a wallet a few feet from us too, which of course I didn't and wasn't aware that maybe someone lost this money - well there wasn't anyone running around crazy trying to catch it all so I figured that this was just a figment of my imagination and that it was in fact still a dream of mine and too good to be true. Needless to say, we didn't stop and just drove on through looking through the back window to see if anyone else stopped or if someone was brave enough to dart in the middle of the road to grab the loot. But it sure made me ecstatic to see that dreams do come true, even the most wildest and unprobable dreams :) I love it. The end.

A Day in Island Park

Last weekend, the end of June, Clay's brother, Tyler, and his friend Caeli came up from Utah to hang with us. Friday night we did a session at the Temple with our ward and then Saturday we headed up to Henry's Lake and fished their outlet. The first place we went there was nothing...other than Caeli finding this fish just "floating" by the bank which was a good 16 inches. So, Clay went to grab and it suddenly came to life! So we took it with us happy that we already had a big one! We left and went more into the trees and fished a wider river/stream. We borrowed our friend's waders so I put mine on and headed through the bushes upstream. We got into the water, quietly may I add, and instantly saw fish jumping! I was so excited! I am the type of fisher that if I don't at least see that there are fish there, I lose all hope. Ha ha So it looked like a bright day. Not too long after was I already having bites. I ended up catching at least 4 fish, however, they were not the legal size limit so sadly I had to throw them back in. It was so cool though just catching them and reeling them in! In the meantime of me catching mine, Clay changed bait and as soon as he cast his and took the first reel, his pole just bent like it had caught on a log. But NO...it started pulling so he had caught a big one! He finally reeled it in, and it was a good 17 incher!!! It was so cool! I act so surprised and excited because we haven't caught anything like that! So we caught some good ones there. We went to one more place and it seemed like a lame place but Clay was by a little dam and cast it by the side of it and low and behold, the same thing happened and he got a 16 incher! Tyler was taking it off the hook while Clay was freaking out that he was going to drop it when he took it and chucked it onto the bank. I picked it up and it had some spasms or whatever so I freaked and dropped it. Anyway, that's all we caught and so it was time to gut 'em so they let Caeli help out, this being her first time fishing. We then headed off to Tyler's old Bishop's cabin in Island Park and visited with his family and had some grub. We took off with the 4-wheelers up to Sawtelle Summit. It was an awesome ride and the top was spectacular! I was a bum and didn't go explore like the others so they were the ones getting the pictures. We ended the night with dinner at Pond's Lodge. I got a funky burn on my arms because I only used the remaining sunscreen from my face and didn't rub it all in so now it's a weird looking tan. Ha ha It was a lovely weekend!

Then

If you aren't into country music, you need to be just for this specific song. I'm sure those of you that do listen, have heard of Brad Paisley. His new song, Then, is like the perfect love song. I've heard it quite a bit lately and just imagine it being played at my 50th Wedding Anniversary someday :) Here's a video of it with the lyrics if you want to enjoy listening to it. I love it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npE8QdDtN4I
I don't know how to get the actual video on the post so if you know, please help me out!