Memorial Day Weekend

Dear Family,

Things have been good in my life.  Unfortunally nothing too exciting to report.  About the most exciting thing to of happened this weekend is on memorial day Etta played in a volleyball tournament with her older sister Belva.  I went to support.  Belva's husband and his brother also played together.  I just sat and watched and took pictures.  Belva and Etta took second place in women's novice for the tournament and won prizes.  It was a lot of fun, but left all of us (including me) very sunburnt.  It was a fun time.

Belva is on the left and Etta is on the right

Etta also got a haircut this weekend.  She got it cut shorter.... if you want more of an explanation you'll have to ask her...I'm only a guy.  But it looks really good, I like it.  It's similar to how it was when we first meet.  She spent about 15 minutes getting it cut, and 4 hours waiting for her sister to get hers colored.  We decided the next time she wants to get her hair cut we'll gets ours done together, since neither of us want to be in a salon for 4 hours (unless it's at Janessa's house...she has the funnest salon of them all!)  

For those of you who don't know, Etta and I are taking a trip to New Mexico this next week.  Belva and her husband Jeremy, Etta and I are all leaving sunday morning and will be there for about 5 or 6 days.  I'm excited and nervous to meet her parents, but it should be fun! (Hopefully they are as good to me as you guys were good to Etta!)  

Thanks for all those that have contributed to the blog! It's a joy!  And for those of you who haven't, consider this your call to repentence!  Just kidding!  But it is so nice to hear what's going on with everyone!   Post some pictures!

Camden

Mom and Dad's Saturday Together

Mom and I decided to go for a drive today. We headed toward Jackson with our GPS on. The GPS said there was a museum in Jackson and you know how we like museums. When we got there to the museum it was closed until further notice so we headed to old town Jackson. We have always said we wanted to look in the little shops in these small towns and so we did. We spent about two or more hours looking and in one of the shops there was a brochure for caves and caverns in the area. We decided to go to Black Chasm Cavern which I had been to with Cam and the boy scouts years before.

It is increadible; you go down in the cavern about one hundred feet, to different rooms. There are all kinds of formations and this one even has underground lakes which you could see very little of. They point out that the formations look like a witch or a ice cream sundae and some of them you have to use quite the imagination. One of the formations look like a dragon and as a result they sell all kinds of gifts in the gift shop that appear to look like the formation or should I say what they think it looks like.

This cavern has one of the largest collection of helicites which are delicate formations that come out of the pours of the limestone and marble with a force (water pressure) that make them defy gravity. They don't go down but out in different angles See helicite in wikipedia).

The Picture is of Mom and I in front of a large curtain formation. We had a great time but forgot to bring the camera in the cave so I had to take it with my camera phone.

I don't know why we can't just all use Facebook.

THIS IS A TEST OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF MY BRAIN. THIS IS ONLY A TEST.
I really don't have any idea how to use this blog thing. So this will be an experiment. I am not going to lie, I may not check this very often at all. Facebook is so much easier and it only takes a second to find out how everyone is doing. I realize this may not be a popular opinion, but I am getting old and as I age I become less and less savvy with the computer.
Just in case I managed to figure out how to do this correctly, I will give a little update on the rest of my family to avoid having to make a second post.
Brian is still waiting on background investigations for the California Highway Patrol. Turns out that he is a liar after doing the lie detector test. They said he lied about never operating a car under the influence of alcohol. Interesting, since he has never had a sip of alcohol ever, in his life. He also showed signs of stress when he was asked about committing domestic violence. I think we all know who gets beat in this relationship. Just kidding. At any rate, they did not disqualify him for any answer. Brian believes it is CHP's way of getting you to tell the truth. Bottom line.
Taylin is doing the school thing. We had a great time at Back to School night. We checked out all the things she has been working on this year. It was very scheduled and she loved every minute of it. She has had a rought last week at school. She got a diciplinary referal for kicking her best friend in the shin on the play ground. We discussed the incident with Taylin and teacher and thought we had the issue solved. We also had her walk down and appoligize to the girl at her home. Appearently a note was sent home the following day that got lost in a slew of returned class work. Taylin missed all of her recesses on Monday because we failed to sign and return the referal notice. KICKING IS WRONG. I just wonder if I would have handled things differently.
Briley is her usual smiley self, most of the time. She is pretty much at the whim of my workout schedule. We have a daily routine of dropping Taylin off at school and heading to the gym. She loves playcare at the gym. She loves to color pictures there. We come home and she is glued to Dora the Explorer until her nap time. She has most of the Dora the Explorer shows memorized, even the Spanish words.
I don't realy know what they do in the evening, since I am at work. Which brings it to me. I work between 25-35 hours a week, depending on what I am doing. I am finishing up a Lifeguard Training course. I love to teach and it is fun, but it is draining especialy when the students do not put in the effort to ever crack the book open. I am trying to ween myself from the babysitting center to just lifeguard and teach swim lessons this summer. I have been training hard for my first ever triathlon. The practice race will be June 6th at Rancho Secco. 1/2 mile swim, 16 mile bike, and a 3 mile run. I know I can complete it, but I have not done any outdoor biking so it will be a challenge. I am just hoping to get it finished under 2 hours and 30 minutes.
That is pretty much it. I will have to post pictures another time.

Aunt B

We had Aunt B over last Sunday for Tacos and she seems to be recovering from her surgery fine. I did talk to her last night to see how her doctors appointment went yesterday.The Doctor told her that they had found cancer in most of her female organs and that she has to under go 6 Chemotherpy sessions to cleanse her body of any other cancer.
She has faith to be healed but her spirits were down last night not knowing how her body will react to the chermo. If we as a family would remember her in our prayers and maybe if you feel confortable calling her or writing a note to her expressing love and concern it would help her. She has friends but no one close except family and we need to be a part of her support right now if we can. I like you probably don't always know what to say or do but I have found that the spirit will guide us.
I do want to thank especially those who are close who have and will continue to share their lives and their children with her. I know she does enjoy being a part of our family.
Dad

Wicked

Wicked was so Wicked!

Last week Tanisha and I drove to San Francisco to see the play Wicked, and had one of the most amazing times of our lives, I'm speaking for Tanisha as well. We had both read the book (which was terrible) and listen to the music which we loved, and knew we had to see the play. It was everything we thought it would be and more. We left her house and arrive in San Francisco at 10:15 where we headed straight to the box office to purchase our tickets. I had decided before I left my house that we were going to get the best seats that were available for that showing. To our delight they had two seats in the middle of the orchestra section available..........row F................ right in the front and center of the stage. I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. I was excited for myself but really I was more excited for Tanisha. I had been to this theater before to see a few different plays but this was the first time for Tanisha.

We had a glorious day eating, shopping, purchasing souvenirs and attending the theater. What more could a person ask for. I'm so glad that she picked going to San Francisco to see Wicked for our day together, it was simply WICKED!.

Oh yea, we went to Arches National Park!

Camden's wonderful week!

Dear Family,

Things have been great for me this week.  As always work has kept me busy.  I work from 4 am to 12pm doing custodial work in a building on campus and other maintance and cleaning in a married apartment complex on campus.  Nothing really worth mentioning about my job, it's just to make money and pass the time.

I am very happy that the whole family has had an opportunity to meet Etta finally.  I'm glad that everyone really tried to make her feel at home when we went to California and included and apart of Kasondra's family when we went to Logan.  We had a fun double date on saturday with two of our former roomates that just started dating.  We played volleyball (which we practiced all week for and ended up losing!) and ate dinner.  After we had icecream, I had Etta's friends invite her along to a former-roommate pow wow sort of thing and I staged a little scavenger hunt for her.  She went to all the meaningful places that we have had fun at since we started dating, each with a flower or surprise there.  The last part of it was me blindfolding her and driving her to a park where we went on a date to once.  It was a really fun time, and she really enjoyed the surprise of it all (she had no idea I had been conspiring with her friends for a week)

Church this week was very good.  Temples were talked about quite a bit and I got a renewed determination to attend on a more regular basis.  All my meetings today helped encourage me to be the best latter day saint that I can be.  It was what I needed at the right time!  Elder Bednar also gave a insightful talk to the YSA not too long ago about avoiding excessive use of cyber space  and other forms of media that are harmless, but can be potentially addicting.  I am happy to report that my time spending doing those activities has decreased significantly and I spend more time reading and exercising.   The blessings are sweet when you live a gospel centered life!

New Family Blog!

Dear Family

I talked it over with mom and dad and thought that this would be great way of keeping in touch with each other and seeing what we are all up to in our busy lives.  Feel free to leave posts and pictures of events during the week.  Try to limit what you write to the "good stuff" so we have enough time to read everyone's post.  I really hope this catches on and becomes a great way of staying in touch!