St. George

We went on a weekend-vacation to St. George with some of our friends from Salt Lake. I would say the highlights were eating at In-n-Out and hiking through some of the Narrows at Zion's National Park.
The hike through Narrows was beautiful! It was mostly ankle-deep water or you could hike on the surrounding banks, but some places were pretty deep:
Here is a shot of Dave and some of his good friends he has grown up with and/or roomed with at college (Michael, Morian, Ryan):
Here is all of us!
This is the point where we turned around. The water was Really cold and Really deep, so I hear. I didn't go up to the water fall.
Cliff jumping!

Nauvoo/4th of July

This past week, David had a few days off of school, so we took the opportunity to visit Nauvoo with some good friends, the Harwards. It was fun to hang out with them, and it made the 5 hour drive there and back go by really quickly. We had a great time! (Besides all the mosquito/bug bites.)

Isn't the temple beautiful? I can't imagine how hard it would be to leave such an amazing building after sacrificing so much to construct it.

We also visited Carthage Jail (about 30 miles away). It is always so interesting to hear the church history stories when you are actually AT the places where the history took place. It makes it feel like you are hearing everything for the first time. I love Joseph Smith.

I love the restored sections of Nauvoo. It is so fun to walk through the streets and visit the shops where couple missionaries are dressed to the times and give you tours of the buildings. I would have to say that the Scovil Bakery is one of my favorites (because they give you a little gingersnap cookie). I also love the Family History Center, because they show you how to make ropes, yarn, candles, barrels, tapestries, and all sorts of other good stuff (and they also give you ropes and candles and bread). Maybe I just like free stuff.

Here is David at his favorite place: the Browning Gunshop.

This is the Smith Family graveyard, where Emma, Joseph and Hyrum Smith are buried, along with Joseph & Hyrum's parents and a few other family members. In the background is one of their homes.

This is the Red Brick Store, also one of my favorite places to visit. Maybe because I always think of the McBride store from the Work and the Glory books when I visit, with all the barrels of food and candy and other paraphernalia from the time period. Is that cheesy?

In the upper room of the Red Brick Store is the place where they had the School of the Prophets, the organization of the Relief Society, the first of the endowment sessions, and where Joseph Smith III was confirmed President of the RLDS church (I think).

Hello to the Mighty Mississippi.

And finally, we LOVED the Pioneer Pastimes. The great thing about going to Nauvoo when we did is the weather was great (80s, where the week before was in the 90s) and we missed the huge crowd coming to the Nauvoo Pageant (which starts this upcoming week). We got personalized tours, didn't die of heat exhaustion, and got to monopolize the games at Pioneer Pastimes.

The Harward's kids had a blast there, getting dressed up in pioneer clothes, riding on sheep/horse dummies, playing "school" and "house" and just being able to run around instead of having to sit still during tours. It was almost more fun just watching them run around!

Here is David and Chris Harward playing "Graces." They were getting pretty good.

Anyway, it was just really neat to be able to visit Nauvoo and think about the lives of the early Mormons. It is even more awesome when we consider that we live in Omaha, very close to Council Bluffs/Kanesville, where the Mormons lived for a longer period of time than when they were in Nauvoo.

Happy Fourth of July!!

Sorry our 4th of July pictures are a little scary, haha. For the 4th, we had just gotten back from our Nauvoo trip, and Dave was still a little sick (he has been sick for 3 weeks now), so we took it easy that day. That evening, we went to a few barbeques, lit off small firecrackers with a bunch of neighbors, then watched the city fireworks in Council Bluffs from our backyards. It turned out to be a pretty rainy/cloudy day, actually, which is why I am wearing a coat in these pictures. I was freezing.

My favorite firecracker growing up was the sparkler:

We want to express our appreciation for our founding fathers, our veterans, our men and women currently serving for our country, and all patriotic Americans everywhere. God bless America!

26th Birthday (!), Macbeth, and a bee sting

Dave turned 26 at 2:06 P.M. Central Time yesterday. Woohoo! It landed on a Saturday, so we had a full day to party. We slept in a while, then opened presents because one of David's presents was tickets to see the movie Star Trek at a morning show. THANK YOU for the presents for David! He loved them.

We LOVED the movie! Afterwards, we ate lunch at Applebee's, one of Dave's favorite resteraunts, with a gift certificate I gave him for Father's Day. We did the 2 for $20 Applebee's deal, which got us an appetizer, two entres, and since it was Dave's bday, a dessert. What a deal.
Village Green had an Xbox Halo tournament from 2:00 PM--2:00 AM on Saturday. (It was originally only supposed to go until 10:00 PM, which I thought was still crazy long, but you know how those things are.) So when we got back from eating lunch, Dave went to play Halo and I helped a friend, Mos, get some egg rolls ready for a barbeque we had scheduled for dinner that night. The barbeque was delicious; afterwards, Dave had such a good time playing Halo that he went back to the tournament, while I went to a "girl's night" that had been intentionally planned for the wives while the husbands were gaming. We watched "Confessions of a Shopaholic"--I'm usually not that big into chick flicks, but I actually really liked this one!
Finally, at 11:30 PM, Dave officially blew out his birthday candles. What a day!


On Friday night, I dragged David to a Shakespeare play with me. Omaha has something called "Shakespeare on the Green," where every year they put on one or two Shakespearen plays outdoors and give free admission to guests. It was a little similar to Cedar City's Shakespearean Festival. That night, they performed "Macbeth." Macbeth hears a prophecy from three witches that he will one day be king, and with the encouragement of his wife, he murders the current king to make it happen--the rest of the play deals with their disintegrating sanity and efforts to cover up their crime and keep their slipping hold on the crown. We both enjoyed everything--the weather was perfect, and we had great seats.
One other story: on Wednesday, David got home early from school, so we visited the zoo for an hour or two. While we were there, we were admiring the bee exhibit (kind of like an ant farm in a glass case, there is a huge glass case enclosing thousands of bees and honeycomb), and I noticed that there was an escaped bee flying around the room. It just happened to land on Dave's shirt, and while he was frantically trying to get rid of it, it stung his arm! We don't know if it was a killer African bee, or if David also had a mosquito bite near the same spot as the sting, but his arm swelled up HUGE. This is a photo of his arm two days later:
You can't see it really well, but the redness had gone from his elbow to his wrist. And the day before, the main red area was REALLY red and swollen. I could see Dave's pulse on the sting site. He's doing better.

The Bob Bridge and Winter Quarters

Happy Father's Day on Sunday to all you husbands, fathers, and grandpas! We love you!
Right now it is extremely hot & humid, so we stay indoors next to the A/C. But here are some recent outings: (Omaha is the neatest place)
The "Bob" pedestrian bridge. Only bikes and pedestrians allowed; this is a great bike path, and it's fun to just stroll across and look at the mighty Missouri. On either sides of the bridge (Iowa side and Nebraska), there are parks and nice places to enjoy.

Dave exploring a tipi (or teepee) on the Nebraska side of the Bob bridge. It commemorates the exchanges between the explorers from the east and the Native Americans.

Dave testing out the fountains (also on the NE side). He didn't get wet, but there were a few other kids completely thrilled at getting soaked by the water works. This reminds me of the water fountain display at the Gateway Mall in Salt Lake.

Here is me and Dave at the Omaha Winter Quarters Temple. It is actually one of the top 10 places to visit in Omaha. It is a beautiful temple and there is a really special feeling all around the temple, the cemetary, and the visitors center.

My dad and David gave me some herbs to grow. They are just beginning to sprout.

I wanted Brooke to see my flower pots that she gave me for graduation! So pretty! They usually look even better, but we have had thunderstorms every night for the past few days, so they are a little droopy.

I haven't shown a picture of the outside of our house yet--here it is.

Me VS washing machine

Our washing machine's hoses have been leaking since our first laundry day. This past week I decided to rip out the carpet underneath and install linoleum. My prior experience with flooring consisted of buying a rug to go in our bathroom. So this was a big step for me.

Keep in mind, that I don't have ANY tools, not even measuring tape. I cut out the carpet with a butcher knife. By pure luck, I cut out the carpet exactly 4 by 6 feet; I bought 24 squares of foot-squared linoleum tiles and it fit perfectly.

The carpet, green matting underneath, and the cement were all wet. I wasn't utterly clueless on how to install linoleum; I looked up a website on the internet and got a lot of help. I was supposed to do a few wet-cement tests, but I just left a fan on the floor for 24 hours before I put anything down. (I also got a lot of suggestions/answers from Home Depot.)

Here is the cement completely bare and starting to get cleaned. Before I glued on the linoleum, I had to fill a few holes in the ground with cement-filler. Broke open the cement bottle with my knee and filled in the gaps using my bare fingers.

Installation day! This was pretty fun. The worst part was doing the sealing along the baseboards, which I did, once again, with my bare hands.

I was the biggest penny-pincher when getting all my materials from Home Depot. It was great because the whole process cost me around $50 and the cheapest tiles actually matched the surrounding really well. On the other hand, it isn't the best job in the world, but for my first try, I am really satisfied with it. Our washing machine hoses still leak, but I'm working on those, too.

A week of firsts . . .

While I am still job-hunting . . .

I painted a piece of furniture for the first time. I had to call my furniture-decorating-savvy sister-in-law Talane to ask how to open a can of paint. Some good mistakes/lessons I learned: Make sure you buy the right color of paint the first time. Never paint in a favorite shirt. Make sure the paint brush is completely dry when you do the second coat.

Considering all the mistakes, I think it turned out okay!

I'm not sure if I haven't made whole wheat bread before, but I for sure have not made whole wheat bread straight from the wheat kernels to flour to bread. I used my Bosche machine with a whole wheat bread recipe that came with the Bosche.

DELISH. I think I ate a whole mini-loaf by myself right out of the oven.

I feel like the Little Red Hen making the bread from scratch :)

I also made STRAWBERRY JAM for the first time away from family. SO yummy! No wonder--12 cups of sugar in 12 jam jars . . .

. . . it goes really well with the fresh bread! And I'm excited to use it with pancakes/waffles, toast, dinner rolls, biscuits, etc etc etc . . . today for lunch I was perfectly content with my PB&J sandwich.