Trolley Ride

One of the first excursions of our trip was a ride on the famous San Francisco Trolley out to Fisherman's Warf. We all were pretty excited about it as you can see in this picture of Matt and I.

Christy was really excited about this picture!

Riding the trolley was a lot of fun. Matt and I got to stand on the footboards on the outside of the Trolley and after a minute the guy got mad at me for having my backpack sticking out too far.

Christy Meshelle and the Con-Man (Conner) were sitting just inside the trolley from us.

I think that the Con man liked this new experience.

Here are some good pictures of the view of San Francisco.

Above is a good view of Downtown San Francisco down the hill from the Trolley.
Below is "the crookedest street in America" I forgot the actual name.

We had a pretty fun Trolley ride.

The big road trip... San Francisco Here we come!

Recently, Christy and I were invited to go to San Francisco with my brother Matt and his wife Meshelle so that I could attend a Law conference with him. Although I never did get to go to any of the conference with him, the trip ended up being a great chance for Christy and I to get away and relax. Some of the best part of it was the road trip. Originally we were going to leave at around 7 am and drive all day but, as the night before came around, we realized that we were so excited to get away that we ended up leaving around 12 am and driving through the night.
Kyle did most of the driving through the night, with a few hours break while Christy drove, and then Christy got up around dawn and drove until we got to the big California cities.

We ended up making this freakin cool little bed in the back of the car so that when one of us wasn't driving the other one could be sleeping. This ended up being a great thing for Christy's pregnant legs... (she seems to have quite the case of edema with her pregnancy and sitting in a car for a long time can be really bad for that).
This is a picture of what the weather started being like when we got into the San Francisco Bay area.
I thought this was a super cool part of the bay. Christy thought it was kinda boring.
Here's another example of Christy's comment on our previous blog about how we've got this weird habit of taking pictures of each other when we are driving... I was probably telling Christy about one of my philosophies and that's probably why she was so bored that she took this picture.

Nate's Tiny Little Shorts

So, I know it may come as a surprise to many of you, but we are actually going to be adding some more posts to this board, and it hasn't been a month yet! The bad news is that we left our Camera in Kyle's shorts the other day and it went into the washing machine and got ruined. I don't believe that we are going to be able to replace it anytime soon, so posts after today will probably need to be writing only for a while. The first of today is about Kyle's little brother Nate and the awesome Parade he was in.

As a pre-story to understand how Nate was in a Parade, we should explain how Nate became the Student Body Treasurer at his Jr. High School this school year (2007-2008). Following his "tiny little shorts campaign," patterned after the NBA finals commercials with Dewayne Wade and Charles Barkley and including posters with Nate wearing a pair of tiny little shorts, Nate got the most votes of any of the kids running for office.

In most situations, this would be reason to believe that Nate would be the Student Body President. Nate thought otherwise though... He wanted to enter Student Government with style. In his interview with the teachers, who determine which position they will appoint the winners to, Nathan told them, when being asked if he thought himself more of a leader or a follower, that "the last time (he) was a leader things kinda fell apart, so probably more of a follower."

A few days later he found out that he was the new school treasurer.


Well, since he was in SG, he got to be in the Spanish Fork Fiesta days parade. If you look in the picture above you can see him with his hat crooked on the back of the firetruck. As the truck was coming up, Kyle made sure to yell at the top of his lungs "Nate show us your tiny little shorts" two or three times. (Nate and Christy weren't too happy with Kyle after that.)
After Nate went by the parade included a number of cannons and guns. Here are some pictures of how Nan, Kyle's little sister, and My parents neighbor Jacob handled the sound of things.
Now, Jacob was born in Haiti, where noises of cannons have a different significance than they do here in America, but my question is, "what's Nan's deal?"...
I guess old habits just never die. (Don't you think her hat is super cool too...)

VA Family

We got to spend a little extra time with my sister Jackie and her family during our vacation. We drove up to Busch Gardens for a family trip and my brother James was supposed to join us at the park the next day with his girlfriend and my dad. His car ended up having some pretty big problems and it broke down as they were driving up to Williamsburg. We had to spend an extra night and a whole day trying to figure out what was wrong with the car. In the end, we had to just drive back to Roanoke, pick up a truck and a car dolly. Then my dad, brother and brother-in-law Tony all drove back the 4 hours to get the car.

Here is our nephew Ayden. We were waiting for everyone to finish showering so we could go get started at Busch Gardens. He was very patiently waiting and watching tv. He and his sister Arieanna were watching Disney Playhouse or something like that and following along with Mickey as he tried to help Donald find his missing lion.

Here they are watching Mickey.

Ayden really likes to get his picture taken. Can't ya tell?

At the end of each episode, there is a song that the kids watching can dance and sing along with. Here Ayden and Ari are dancing together.

More cute dancing.

Before we could go to Busch Gardens, Ari had to get her hair off her neck. She didn't want to let her mom do it so I asked if I could and this is what we came up with. She loved the little side ponytail and they went perfectly with her diva sunglasses.

Here is the one and only picture we took while in the park. The kids rode this ride two times; it was so much fun. They were pulling on the reigns and telling the horses to 'gettyup'.

While the men tried to fix the car, we used the hotel swimming pool and used our time wisely. Here is my oldest niece Jossie holding her little brother Ayden.

Arieanna doesn't know how to swim. This is how she looked most of the time. All the rest of the time, she was yelling at Kyle or I to come get her and take her out into the deep end so she could be near her sister and aunt Taylor. We tried to teach her some techniques for swimming but she didn't really catch on. Hopefully she will soon.

Ayden had the cutest little swim preserver. It was like a wet suit. On the top half, there were tons of little floaties and then the shorts were on the bottom. It was really snug on him but so dang cute. He kept hollering at me to come to him so he could jump in from the side of the pool. It was really great to see my nieces and nephews. It was even better this time because they remembered who I was and they even remembered Kyle from meeting him at Christmas.

Washington D.C.

So while we were in D.C. we didn't take very many pictures. Here are some of the ones we took. I don't know where most of these were or the names so I'll just put them on for you to see the pictures.

These last two pictures were taken at the Arlington National Cemetery. We were on a tour bus and didn't get off so these are the best pictures we got.

Trip to VA

So we didn't do a very good job of taking pictures of us while we were visiting my family in Virginia. Here are some of the random ones we took:


We were on our way to Washington D.C. and I was tired of driving. I pulled off at this McDonalds and Kyle switched places with me. I just wanted to get a picture of him in his army shorts. He absolutely loves them!

As we were driving, we saw this trailer for Jimmie Johnson. Because Matt and his family lived in NC for a little bit, Kyle thought it would be fun to take a picture to show them. So they could see the trailer of a real nascar driver.

When I was in Young Women's, we used to stop at Woodstock every time we went to the temple. It was always my favorite part of the trip. I took this picture just because it reminded me of some fun times when I was younger.

It was boring waiting at the airport to board the plane that would take us from Salt Lake to Raleigh. Right before we left home, we went to the library to get a bunch of books so we could have something to do during the time we were at my parents. We didn't actually do much reading but Kyle tried to get started on a book at the airport. Here he is concentrating really hard.

Mom had this cake made for us to eat at the open house. It was a great night. Things were really relaxed and I got the chance to introduce my amazing husband to my family and friends. I hope he enjoyed it as much as I did.

Don't ask me why, but we have developed this habit of taking a picture of each other when we are driving. Here is one from the start of our drive to D.C.

Memorial Day continued

So I'm still trying to figure out this posting thing. Sorry about that.During the time that we were all playing PIT together, we kept trying to get Jake to play with us but he didn't want to. This is what he wanted to do instead. If I remember correctly, he did eventually come and play.

Here Kyle and I are comparing our pregnant bellies with one another. This was the end of May so I was only about 3 months. Who has the bigger one?

Mom and Dad relaxing out on the deck looking out at the beautiful scenery.

Here we all are playing PIT. It was really fun to get everyone in on the action (except Dad, he doesn't like the game so he hasn't played yet). If someone came around and didn't know what PIT was, they would be surprised and wonder why we were yelling at each other. For those of you that don't know, the game is based off of the stock market. The players try to get all the cards of one kind by trading with everyone. Sometimes you have to get really loud to be heard over everyone else.

Kyle had a lot of fun with this little boy. He was there with his mom and little brother (daughter and grandsons of moms friend). Kyle wanted to do some exploring and get out of the cabin so he took the boys on a hike. They were gone for quite a while and each came back with their own walking stick. I don't remember what the bucket was for though. He's going to be such a good dad to our kids.

Jake rigged himself up a fishing pole to go down to the little creek behind the cabin. Surprisingly, he was gone for maybe 5 minutes and then he came back up the hill with something inside his little bag. He helped the little boy catch a baby frog or toad. They kept it in a pot of water until the poor thing turned over on its back and barely moved.

It was a great time. We really enjoy being this close to family where we get the chance to see and do these kind of things with the younger kids.

Memorial Day

Mom and Dad have this friend who let them use their cabin pretty often. Right after school got out we were invited to come up and help them as they stacked a whole bunch of wood underneath the deck. We ended up having lots of fun and getting some really cute pictures.



Here I am looking really excited to be there. Just kidding. School had just gotten out and I was looking forward to a little relaxation. I think this was after we had done a little work on the huge stack of wood.

Lydia was really fun to watch work. She got into this little rotation where she would grab pieces of wood and shuck them down the hill towards the area where we needed to stack all the wood.

Once we had gotten all the wood but away, we didn't want to do anything. Most of us ended up going to bed really early and then waking up the next day to spend most of the day playing games. Here Kyle is trying to teach Lydia and Mom's friends grandson how to play PIT. It was very interesting to watch. Lydia is really funny when she plays. She tries to collect as many of the different kinds of cards as she can and will hold on to cards that she doesn't even need. Its always fun to play games with her.

I believe this was shortly after we had finished with the wood. Everyone was way tired. Here Mom and Dad are taking a break after all their hard work.

Because we have a King Size bed at the house, I have been having a really big problem sleeping in a smaller bed and sharing. I can never manage to get a good nights sleep with all my tossing and turning. This was the morning after we had worked outside and I didn't sleep very well. After getting up to take an allergy pill, I wanted to try to go back to sleep. Kyle had other plans. He decided to take this picture and show people how happy I am in the morning when I get woken up.

Slackers

So we have been really, really bad about posting. We apologize to everyone who is trying to keep up to date with us. There will be some posts coming up pretty soon that show all the fun things we have been up to during the summer break from teaching and school.

Two Months Later

So,

It's been nearly three months since our last post and I feel kinda bad. Right after Christy's Parents went home we both got a second Job. We're working for Firstline Security as Contract Coordinators. (Basically we approve or send back legal documents related to the sale of Security systems) We took the Job mainly cause we could work together in the evenings after our other jobs and make $10.75 an hour.

Pretty much between this job and our other jobs our lives are consumed.

Otherwise we have just been having fun. I hope to post some more pictures on our blog in the next week or so... we have some from our trip to Virginia and DC, as well as some other random ones from throughout the summer.

Christy is definitely getting pretty pregnant. We get to find out what Sex our baby is on the 25th. So, if you still look at this blog by any chance, look forward to our next post!