Hannah...

So there is this missionary in our ward who is Polynesian. Ever since you wrote on the blog that you thought Polynesian men are sexy I've been thinking you should meet this guy. He's a really nice person with a great personality. His family lives in Provo and he goes home in a month. His name is Eld. Padekin (I'm not sure of the spelling). I'll try to get a picture of him and post it for you to see. He gave a talk on Sunday and the whole time I looked at him and thought of the two of you dating. I had to giggle to myself. :)

I hope your new job is going well. We miss you and wish you could come home this summer to visit.

Hair Cuts!

We all got hair cuts today and thought we'd share them with you. Granted, Lexi and I don't have our hair properly styled, so you can't really see what it's suppose to look like, but this is how short we went. I cut the boys hair and then took the girls to the salon. I'm not brave enough to cut girls' hair yet. The stylist thought it was funny that we all chose short cuts.

We also got fish today. We have 21 feeder fish. We are hoping to grow them a bit bigger and then put them in our pond. We hope they will help clean it up bit.

Catholic?

I gave the closing prayer in Relief Society today and the end of the prayer went like this. “This is our payer and we say this in the name of the Father…(pause and think, well that wasn’t right)…in Jesus name amen.” After the prayer I open my eyes and see everyone looking at me weird and so I made a joke of my mistake and I said, “You know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” My joke got a good laugh and I probably won’t be saying the prayer in Relief Society again anytime soon. My friend jokingly asked if I was a Catholic in my previous life.

Tonight’s Dreams, Tomorrow’s Memories

On June 20th I attended the Prom. There were a few girls in my ward that had never been to a prom so they decided to have one of their own. They (as in Rachel, Sofia, and Victoria) decorated a cultural hall for the event. There were 8 “couples” that were in attendance. Only some of the couples were on actual dates, they just wanted to make sure that there were even amounts of girls and guys. We were all assigned different food to bring for our dinner before the dancing, and Nick and I were in charge of ice cream and brownies. So after we had dinner, which was served to us by Rachel’s brother and sisters, we dance for a couple of hours. It kind of reminded me of youth dances, but it was a lot of fun nevertheless. It was a small enough group that we were able to really enjoy each others company. I had a really good time but I was so tired at church the next day. I can tell that I am getting older when a couple of hours of dancing that ends at midnight just wiped me out.

More updates

We had some slightly bad news a couple days ago. We found out that not only does the work we recieved the loan money for have to be finished before Aug. 5th, but so does ALL the other work we started. So we have a lot to accomplish before then, while Charlie plugs away at his first masters program class. Needless to say, we won't be having any kind of vacations until the all the work we've started is finished. So we hope there will be some time left in August to do some vacationing. Charlie has been working very hard though, so we can make our deadline and has made some more progress towards the end results. I thought I'd share them with you guys.

Charlie has set the cupboards and they are screwed to the walls. They are ready for countertops now. We've decided to go with the full slab granite countertops because they will save us time. So the following pictures are of the kitchen as it is and the two examples of the types of countertops we like. I know the pictures are hard to see, but I was wondering if any of you had any opinion about which one to choose. But you better hurry because we are going to order tomorrow.

The next pictures are of the opening that was between the dining room and the family room. Charlie has put in french doors there and walled in the rest of the opening because it was too big for the doors. Only one side of the door is up right now because Charlie is finalizing the door sill for it. He had to custome build it because the opening was just so odd. I think he did a great job. I really like the touch the doors add. I will lighten up the stain on them though when I get the chance. Lucky for us, Bishop Pangerl gave these doors to us. He had them sitting around and wanted to get rid of them. He also gave us a door for our front door. We just have to take it some where to have them hang it on a frame. It's a really pretty door and I can't wait to have it up.

Finally, I don't know if you remember what the upstairs bathroom looked like from my previous post, but if not, here it is again. Charlie put the floor in over the last two days and it's all ready to grout now. We're pretty excited about that because when the floor is finished we'll be able to put the toilet and sink in and make sure the plumbing works. When it works we can put the ceiling in the kitchen back together and finish putting up the cabinets on the walls. It's kind of a chain-reaction job.

Work

So I finally found a summer job about 2 ½ weeks ago. I am doing grounds work on BYU campus and I am enjoying what I do. For the first week and a half the weather was cloudy and rainy but it has definitely warmed up now. We cover a certain area on campus and I have been able to mow, weed whip, mulch, cultivate, weed, prune, and other such things. It is nice to have the opportunity to learn how to do all these different things so that I will be able to take care of my own lawn some day. This job also allows for some real good exercise that can actually be rather exhausting and I am able to get a tan, at least what amounts to a tan for me :)

House updates

I know I've been promising pictures for forever, so I thought I should actually post some. Here are the major things we've done so far. If I posted pictures of everything it would take too long.

This is the bathroom upstairs. I know the first picture actually looks nicer, but that is the before picture. We took out the window and have walled over it. Our contractor put in a tube light in the ceiling so we could still have natural light in that room. It is awesome. We are thinking about putting one in the hallway upstairs too because it just adds so much light. We weren't going to re-do the flooring. There were some tiles that Charlie had to take out in order to get the toilet out. Who ever did the floor tiled around the toilet instead of underneath it (like you are suppose to). We were just going to fix the tiling around the toilet, but Charlie found some mold. We were going to just take up the part of the floor that was molded, but the farther Charlie took it up, the more he found so he just took the whole floor up. He found that the floor had actually been built up from the original floor. We thought that was weird. So he now has to re-build it up and then re-tile. It became a way bigger project than we originally planned.


We put our room in the family room and have the family room in what was the master bedroom. Because of that, we had no door to our room. Charlie put that up on Saturday. We didn't have drywall to finish off the wall next to the door, thus the curtain. He plans to finish it up today. It will be nice to have a door that locks.


This is the kitchen. We gutted this room and just started over. I really like the way it's turning out. We don't have counter tops yet, and there is still a hole in the ceiling. We had some leaking issues from the tub in the upstairs bathroom and had to take down part of the ceiling in the kitchen to find the problem. We figured we should keep it down because the sink and toilet aren't back in the upstairs bathroom yet. We want to make sure those work O.K. before we put the kitchen ceiling back together. It's a work in progress, but at least all the parts function. I'm so thankful for a stove and dishwasher that work. We are pretty sure we know what counter top we want to go with, but that probably won't happen until the bathrooms are complete.

Finally!

I finally have a calling at church. I have been waiting just for anything. Well anyway I was called as the Fairmont Ward Family History Director. I love family history and I have been helping people with it every since I have been here (a whole 2 months). There is a family history center but it is non functioning, so it will sort of be like starting all over. I will need to set, with the help of the high counselor, the days and times that it will be open. I will also need to figure out, with the help of the Lord, who will help out in the library. It is exciting and almost over whelming at the same time. I went into the room yesterday and to me it is a mess so the first thing I will do is get things organized and clean off the desk. I hope, no I will get started on it this week. It's just a little hard at times with the younger children. I know the Lord wants me to have this calling so I know he will help me out. Take care everyone. By the way I am : - ( about the Redwings, what a let down.

few pics from the zoo

I went to the zoo this past week and just wanted to show u a few pic I took. it rained for about 5 min but over all it was nice.

Long time no read...

Since I haven't posted in a while I thought I should play some catch-up. Bare with me and all the pictures.

This is Lexi's science fair project. Her hypothesis was that the longer the barrel of a marshmallow gun, the farther the marshmallow would fly. She actually found that her second longest barrel, not her longest, shot the marshmallow farthest.

This is Merrit at Ecology camp trying to start a fire using flint stones and natural fiber. It took a long time, but, with persistance, he finally got it. He was so excited! He had such a great time at ecology camp. This is one aspect of the kids' school I will miss when they start going to Flushing schools. This camp is just awesome!

These are some of the kids at the annual school fundraiser their school does. This year they put on a school carnival. They had parents or other relatives sponsor different games or booths. One family brought in the horses from their family farm for the pony rides and one sponsored the moon walks (these were Jaxson's favorite). It turned out to be a really fun night and the school raised about $2500 profit. That was pretty good for them and next year they will have all the games made up so they will make even more money without that upfront expense. I'll miss this part of their school too.

We put in a garden this year (even though we don't actually have anything in it yet) and we had to cut out the sod in order to do it. We rented a sod cutter from Home Depot (our home away from home) and Charlie cut up the sod. Then he rolled it up into these rolls. I thought they looked like giant snow balls and so challenged the kids to make a "sod" man. They took me up on it and this is what he looked like. I hope you can see the details in his face. It was hard work to make him. Those rolls are soooo heavy!

This is Makayla just before she was baptized. She actually invited several kids from her class at school and four of them came, although only two made it to her actual baptism. She was so excited to share it with them though. She is such a sweet spirit and good example of a missionary for me.

Makayla is really into Pokemon right now (go figure) and so she wanted to have a Pokemon themed party. This was the first activity we did. All the kids made Pikachu hats to disguise themselves as Pokemon so they could go and find Pokemon (cards) that were scattered throughout the room to capture. They seemed to enjoy it.

And now I'll toot my own horn and show you the blanket I made for Makayla for her baptism. I made one for Lexi and partially made one for Merrit too. It's become kind of a tradition for us that I hope I can continue better from now on. I still have a couple more squares to iron on to Merrits and then tie it to the back and then bind it and Makayla's and I'll be caught up (probably just in time for Chelsea's).
Sorry for the length of this post but I'm glad that I'm pretty much caught up now.