This is just a fun video of Whitney doing her thing! Enjoy! :)

This is just a fun picture of Whitney after her bath time!! I will post more as soon as I can, but I thought this one was fun and wanted to get it up. :)

Wow. General Conference was A-MAZ-ING!!! I especially loved the Priesthood session and everything that was shared there. I am so grateful for the quorum of the twelve Apostles and the testimonies and even certain knowledge of things that they carry. Patience, Priesthood and the new Duty to God program were some of the things that were discussed, and we definitely feasted.
I have often heard that we should approach conference with questions that we have prayerfully selected and that we would like answers to. I usually don't do that, but instead just drink in everything I can from what the Brethren say. This time was different. I prayerfully selected questions that I wanted answered as I sat in the minutes before the Priesthood Session started, and as the session progressed, ALL of my questions were answered, and one of the speakers even addressed all of my questions himself! It was amazing and my testimony of Heavenly Father's love for each of His children individually was strengthened. He knows I'm here, and loves me, and wants to answer my worries and questions. I know that He will teach and help all who will call upon His name, and it is by His spirit that we are edified and strengthened as we participate in general conference.

Update

So I know I haven't posted for a while, but I have been way ridiculously busy as of late with work, seminary, school, being the ward ML, and husbanding. Speaking of which, we found out in December that Cathy is pregnant and the baby is expected to arrive in July. I am adamant that it is a girl, and Cathy thinks it's going to be a boy. We will see when the baby comes, since we, collectively, :) have decided to wait until the baby is born.

School is going well, except for Spanish, which demands way too much of my time! I am so grateful for how well I am doing right now, and I just hope to get by in those two classes with C's. I don't enjoy my abnormal psychology class because I feel like I'm sufferening from a different psychosis every weekend when I study. The other fun thing I learn about on weekends is natural disasters, like earthquakes, tsunami, and hurricanes! Going to church on Sunday has taken on a new meaning for me, and I always look forward to it!

My exercise lately has been pretty much non-existent! I realized yesterday that I have exercised 1 hour in the last 3 weeks, and by the time I do exercise again it will be 1 hour in the last month! Yuck. Who am I becoming? :)

I wanted to take a chance to record a sweet note I got from one of my students. I found it on my podium when I walked in one day and I hope I never lose it! Here goes:

Dear Brother B-
Last night as I was "feasting" my 9-year old borther came into my room. I was reading out loud (cause I understand better that way) and he asked if he could join. At first I was really hesitant because I was reading Jacob 5 and figured there would be no way that he would even slightly understand. But I had a "feeling" I should say yes, so I did. Brother Barrett, as we read the Spirit was so strong. I was able to explain the message and have (for the first time) a very spiritual experience with my brother. He shared his testimony with me and asked if we could read scriptures together every night. Thank you for helping me fully understand Jacob 5, and many more things in the book of Mormon. I nowget to teach my little borther, where my family does not have scripture study together. Thanks for teaching me and being the best seminary teacher that I have ever had.
-

This is definitely one of the reasons why I teach. I love to see the kids learn and grow and have cool experiences!

So every year each branch at America First does a Christmas card so everybody can say hi to everybody else. I got to help make it this year and it was really fun, and although I don't watch the office, I thought this was a great card and I couldn't resist hanging on to it forever! :)

The end of summer

We were up at the pond in Wellsville camping one weekend, and this was taken of Cathy's uncle Kelly right after breakfast.






Here is a shot of everybody's motor homes.







The clear, :) beautiful pond.




This is a shot of an intense faculty meeting before the school year started. As you can see, Bro. Kjar is deep in thought about what was just said.

Cool picture

This was on KSL and they were talking about this pre T-Rex that they found and how people are expressing their different views about how probable it is that our T-Rex evolved from this Raptorex. Enjoy!

Thursday Sept. 17--> Bee One Day!

Today was pretty good in both classes...except that one of my students got hit by a car right before school and in that class period I totally planned part of my lesson around her. Go figure she's the one who gets hit! :) She was driving her moped in front of the school and a car hit her. I don't know the whole story but she's ok. Thank goodness.

During second hour something funny happened today. I paused in the middle of my lesson to change it up and help my students get some energy. I had them all stand up and we reviewed everybody's name quickly. Then I told them that I was going to test them in different ways to see if they were paying attention and to see how well they knew the names of the others in the class. It all went pretty well in both classes, except for in second hour I asked a kid to name all the kids in the class that were wearing green. He hesitantly named a few kids who were wearing, like, grey and bluish grey, and then somebody said, "Evan are you color-blind?" Turns out he is. Joke's on me! I felt so bad and made sure after class that I didn't embarrass him at all! Oi vey!

Everybody check out the new blog link I have at the bottom of the screen for some sweet recipes!

Seminary! 3 September 2009

So I FINALLY started teaching today and it was really fun! I was so flippin' nervous, though! First period went well, but I help them a few minutes over and I am 95% confident that at least 87% of them were late to their next class. ;)

For the seating charts I did a little game with them where they had 4 minutes to organize themselves in first-name alphabetical order without my help. When they had accomplished that and all sat down, I passed around the seating chart and had them stand up and say their first and last name, and also something interesting about them. It was pretty wild! I have some interesting students to say the least. One girl in 1st period lived a few years in Central America and is fluent in Spanish. That will be fun. I'm going to try to figure out how to have her use her spanish in class and have a good time with it.

We watched the Restoration DVD and I had them write some impressions feelings they had in their journals. The Spirit was really strong during that part, and it was awesome! After that I had to wrap up because it was time to go, and as I opened the door to let them out another teacher was there to open it to have me let them go. I got a mini-lecture from the boss about that one.

In second period we did the same things, but the seating chart and saying names went quicker so it was good. The Spirit was strong again when the kids were writing in their journals. This time I actually let the kids out about 9 minutes too early, so I hope they didn't cause trouble over at the school when they got back. Bro. Fuller said if the school calls over and asks why some of the kids are being late and other kids are way early he was going to tell them that I'm just a druggie and not to worry about it.

August 30-Sept 2

Hmm... 50 points for anybody who can guess what this is and why it looks purple... :)


This is a shot of Sadie after she had finished her birthday cupcake and was strolling around terrorizing people with her chocolate everything.



These two are of my other cute niece at the birthday party, and her proud father who is holding her.

Oooohhhh...chocolate... :)

Ok. This is a rainbow that formed over our house Sunday night after dinner. It was really cool because we could see the rainbow clearly all the way across the sky. Some of the other pictures didn't turn out. I guess I got so excited that it was there that I wasn't holding steady as I was taking the pictures! :) It happens, right?

This is a picture of my (vampire) niece say goodbye as she left our house Sunday night. She is so cute!!

I guess she saw the camera coming and quickly tried to cover her face...

After dinner we played games, and as you can see, things get serious at our house when it comes to card games. Yes, if you were wondering, that is my water glass you see on the left side of the picutre, and you'll notice that I'm not sitting in my chair because I'M OUT!!! :(

My other niece had her first birthday on Sunday and we were there for all the action. She was so cute as she ate her cupcake all by herself. Her mom stripped her of her clothes because we figured she would get messy. I should have taken a before and after picture of this part because she got it from her chin to her hair and all over the table and the grass. It was quite entertaining to watch.

Anniversary!

Yay we're home again! We had a fun trip getting away for a day together and were able to do some really fun things. Tuesday we left for Salt Lake and first went to check in at our hotel. We stayed at the Airport Inn for one night, and it were delighted to have so much luxury for such a good price! :) After we checked in and dropped off our stuff at our room, we headed down to the gateway and had lunch/dinner at Tucanos Restaurant.

It was so amazing, and I can't wait to go back! I have never been to a Brazilian style restaurant and I love the setup of it! After lunch we went shopping at the Gateway, and then went down to temple square. We were going to see the new Joseph Smith movie, but we got there a little bit early, so we ended up walking around temple square for a little while and visiting the south visitor's center. After the movie, we went upstairs and ate at the Garden on the roof of the Joseph Smith building. The view was amazing, and we really enjoyed looking out over SLC while we ate our cake and ice cream! Wednesday morning we ate breakfast at the restaurant, and then went for a swim in the pool. The water was FREEZING cold, so it was quite the experience, but it's always fun to go swimming together and we had a good time. After our swim, we went back to our room and started to get ready to leave and check out. We stopped at the Bountiful temple on the way home and did a session there. It was so nice to be back at the temple where we got married. I still can't get over how beautiful it is in there, and how much I just feel at home whenever I go there. After we left the temple we stopped and checked on Cathy's dad to see how he was doing after his surgery. I went to pick up some lunch at Subway and brought it back for us to eat. On our way home later that night, we were driving behind another car and they ran over the tire of an 18-wheeler. We had less than a second to react to it, and ran it over as well. It dented our hood and mangled our front bumper on the driver side, as well as some other minor dings, dents, and problems. We're very blessed that it didn't come up into the windshield, however, and we are very grateful it did minimal damage. Pictures to follow. All in all it was an exciting trip!

Here are the pictures of the car. You can see that tire banged us up pretty good. They told us we had to replace the light on this side because it was too scratched up! Yikes. It could have been worse! :)

Anniversary!

Cathy and I are going down to Salt Lake today to celebrate our 2 year anniversary! Yay! I will hopefully have some interesting (and shareable :) ) stories to post. Just for fun, here is the first picture on my blog of Cathy and I.

The Beginning

Wow. So I finally broke down and joined the blogging world. I'm not totally sure what my purpose of keeping track of this is, but I'm thinking since I have job that allows me to do this, I can sort of keep this as an online journal. We all know how horrible I am at keeping a journal on paper.

So today has been interesting. I almost became a victim of road rage this morning. Some crazy guy was angry I cut him off, and he swerved into my lane to get my attention and show me what he thought of my actions. I'm glad he didn't hit me. I'm surprised, however, that his wife was in on the whole thing. Usually women are embarrassed in those situations. Go figure.