Part One (Oregon)

While we were in Oregon we went up to Silver Creek Falls to go camping. It was really fun, but really cold at night. But we had lots of hot dogs and smores and playing in the fire - - we are definitely a bunch of pyros.

This was one of my favorite pictures, but you can't see just how beautiful it was. It's too bad, because I took several trying to capture what the sun was doing to the waterfall, but I never caught it. Oh well.
These are the North Rim Falls, the whole hike is about 12 miles around the whole park, but we didn't go to all of it we started at the South Rim and that is the main waterfall that you walk behind in the picture above, and the main North Rim waterfall is in the picture below.
This was taken as we started hiking. We didn't last very long, but we went and saw the main waterfalls, and took some pictures.


We also went out to the coast for a day, and we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Yum! We tasted a bunch of their cheeses, and so we bought some of the fancier cheeses. We also all got ice cream cones with 3 scoops. It was so good. We got all of the flavors from Tillamook mud slide to Marionberry pie. It was DELICIOUS! It was also funny because while we were there a whole bunch of college students came in too, and they happened to be the Chamber Orchestra from BYU. It was kind of funny, afterwards we gave them directions to Mo's and actually led them to Lincoln City and ate there ourselves.

We did some shopping at the outlets in Lincoln City and bought this kite, it was a really fun kite to play with and worked really well, until it got really windy - - I was afraid it was going to break. It was really fun. We went to Woodburn and shopped there, went to the beach, went camping at Silver Creek Falls, went to Enchanted Forest- though I left my camera at home so we don't have pictures of that. We celebrated Carter's birthday and drank lots of Italian sodas! It was so much fun. And we're in California right now. . . I'll post pictures of that later.

This is RIDICULOUS!

I just have to brag! My siblings are AMAZING! This was Curt's first year playing tennis- I tried to get him to do track his freshman year and he wasn't too happy with that. Well Curt passed up all of the varsity tennis players and is now the top ranked singles player at my high school. Melissa after much encouraging followed in my footsteps and did track. YAY!!!! Although she's going to pass me up as a sophmore, she is doing the hurdles, the triple jump, and the POLE VAULT! Districts was today, and Melissa placed second as a FRESHMAN in the triple jump and hurdles and placed third in the pole vault. She's going to be a prodigy! Maddie is doing club volleyball and is doing really well right now, she's playing in a 5th and 6th grade team and doing super well. And Carter is also playing a club sport, but he's doing basketball. On average Carter scores more than fifty percent of his teams points. You know the awards ceremonies where they hand out trophies, well Carter received two awards . . . the regular one everyone gets and Most Valuable Player. I'm excited to go to Oregon and watch all of them succeed in their respective sports.

Easter and Finals

Our Easter was pretty exciting. First, we had the best primary class we've ever had so far. The boys seemed to pay attention and learned how to say the word "resurrected" . . . well one of them did. And I officially love the prayers of sunbeams. I think they should say the prayers at general conference, they are so honest and sweet. This week Jack prayed that he was grateful for his tummy ache, and grateful that the Easter bunny came to his house. Then we went and had dinner with Mike and Ashley and had yummy pot roast. And talked for a long time and learned about how to understand a baby's cry.

This last picture is what we did on our first reading day and tax day!




It snowed!

A new cousin!

My aunt just gave birth to a little boy, named Benson Roy. Both family names . . . and we're so excited for them! I'm not sure what number he is in our family. We don't have pictures yet, but we'll go up and visit sometime this week and post some!

The Best Belated Valentines Day

Well James and I didn't do very much on the real Valentine's Day because we had a late one already planned. We don't have very good pictures to show, because they were taken with our phones, but it was AMAZING!!!


So we went to a Rascal Flatts concert. It was incredible. Jessica Simpson opened for them, she was pretty good . . . but Rascal Flatts- were fantastic. That was better than the Tim McGraw concert that I went to. It was really the best concert that I could go to because there isn't a song of theirs that I don't love! We were belting out the songs, and they were very entertaining. We had an LDS dad with three of his teenage and pre-teen daughters sitting in front of us. It was fun because it was totally a concert that was family appropriate. And it was really fun to see a dad enjoying the music along with his three girls. That's probably one concert that I'll want to go to again. Thanks babe, that was the best present!

What is IIAC?

Well I don't have a lot of contact with my dads family, but my aunt Alese just had I guess a still birth. She was almost eight months along and they found out that the baby had died so they had to induce labor and she had to deliver this baby. And we had a funeral for the baby last Tuesday. We found out that it was Idiopathic Infantile Arterial Calcification which was even more sad to find out. It is a really rare disease and both parents have to be carriers of this disease in order for the child to have it. But the veins and the arteries start to calcify and the heart basically explodes. It was really sad for them since they've already had a lot of heartache this year. We're praying for them as they're starting a research foundation for this disease the website is
dmefoundation.org

Primary

I don't know if I've mentioned on here before, but James and I are primary teachers in our ward. It's pretty fun, we teach the only primary kids in our ward which are a couple of boys. It is unpredictable because one of them is three and the other is four. It's amazing sometimes how much they know, and sometimes what they say. Today for instance, I was trying to give the lesson, while James was trying to keep them in their seats. The four year old came up to James and grabbed his finger with two of his and said "Skidoosh" for those who haven't seen Kung Fu Panda, I definitely recommend it, because it makes the actions and words of this four year old seem so much more meaningful. We love our calling, since kids really do say the darnedest things!