Boy, That Sure is a lot of Pictures

Finally, something blog-worthy. (As I said, I needed to get away!)

We took a long Easter weekend and headed over to Denver with our friend Brad. Brent and Brad went to the NCAA Basketball Tournament and I hung out with Julie, Jared, Katie and our newest nephew Cayden. I think everyone had a great time.

Here are a bunch of pictures of the 4 days.

Here we are (Katie, Jared, Me and Julie in the front) at Jared's school. (I'm sorry Jared, I can't remember the name of it...something about Rocky Mountains??) Jared is almost ready to graduate with a degree in animation. It was fun to see where he spends most of his time. And to have an opportunity to see what he's done. You're amazing Jared! I was very impressed.

This is our newest little nephew, Cayden. He's three months old and I just met him. The first day we met, he wasn't too sure about me. I'm pretty sure it was my hair. My hair HATES THE DRY WEATHER and WIND that it had that day, so it looked a little big. After I got my hair under control, me and Cayden got along just great! (He does smile a lot, but my camera has a stupid red light that goes off before it flashes and babies always look like this!)

On Friday, when there weren't any basketball games in Denver (there were games on tv, so we were lucky to get Brent out), we went down to "The Springs" (what Colorado-ites call Colorado Springs) and went to the Garden of the Gods. It's a great park with hiking and beautiful red rocks. And the day was GORGEOUS! Not a cloud in the sky!

This is the first view of Garden of the Gods that you see. Isn't it gorgeous? The snowcapped mountain in the background is Pike's Peak. Did you know that Pike's Peak is the most visited mountain in North America and the 2nd most visited mountain in the world? What's the first, you ask? Mt Fuji in Japan. Isn't it amazing what stays in my mind. The name of Jared's school - gone, the most visited mountain in the world - there it is!

If you ever find yourself in "the Springs", you really should stop by the Garden of the Gods. It's free!

It was a gorgeous day, but the wind was blowing. Julie was cold. I cropped this picture the way I did so you could notice the girl behind Julie with crops on. I think she even had flip-flops on. At least Julie had enough clothes on to be warm!

Here we all are in a scrunch picture - my favorite. (Brad, Julie, Brent, me)

Since both Julie and Brent are graduates of Tooele HS, go White Buffaloes, they felt they needed a picture on the bison. Julie said that it wasn't too comfortable. Well, yeah, it is made of metal. :)

Then we went to Cave of the Winds (also in the Springs) where we had to climb down this ladder to see the inside of the cave. Ok, that's just a joke. There are stairs now, but this is how people used to have to get in. I don't think I would care that much, what do you think?

Another picture from the Cave of the Winds. When you open my camera, it chirps like a bird - an annoying setting that Brent keeps turning back on. Anway, when we were in the cave, I opened my camera and this mom said to her daughter, "Did you hear the bat?" Ok, I was embarrassed, but seriously Lady. That's not what bats sound like!

Julie had a great time riding this bear. When Kyle saw the picture of Brent on the same bear, he said that the bear was naughty because he was growling. Silly naughty bear!

And finally, here's me in front of the Denver Temple. I don't know if I've ever seen the Denver Temple, but it was beautiful! After we took this picture, we went running back to the car - it was snowing and windy and really cold. But we did see the temple!

I just wanted to say thank you to Julie for keeping me company. I hope you like the outfit you got and I also hope you will eventually like your phone - I still want one. Thank you so much to Auntie Annie and Uncle Steve for letting us stay with them. They were so nice to deal with our late nights and early mornings. Thanks to Jared and Katie for dinner on Friday. It was great! Thanks to Jared for taking time out of his busy schedule to spend some time with us! Thank you to Cayden for finally deciding that Auntie Ashley wasn't so bad - once I got my hair under control. And thank you to the NCAA Basketball Tournament for giving Brent an excuse to go to Denver!

Anyone want to go to Portland next March??

Ok Ok

I have been on a kind of "anti-blogging" kick lately. There really hasn't been a reason, I just haven't felt like blogging. Here are a couple of the reasons I can think of:

1) I just don't feel like anything very exciting has been going on around here. Life is just life right now. I may need a vacation!

2) I've been having some, let's say, problems with one of the leader's in YW's and I'm really upset by it all.

3) I started taking classes to become a medical transcriptionist. Apparently that takes up my blogging time.

4) I just don't feel like anything very exciting has been going on.

5) The sun has decided to visit us here in the Pacific NW and I just want to be outside.

6) I just don't feel like anything very exciting has been going on.

Maybe it's all of them put together. So, here's to catching up. I can't really remember what I've said so I'm just going to go with this year.

Yesterday was my love's birthday. He is now officially in his mid-thirties, or so Court informed him. I don't know how he liked that, but hey, age is just a number, right?

I got him these knives for his birthday. Soon after he opened them, he started making "Psycho-esk" movements and I decided that maybe that wasn't the best gift. Did someone say he was in his mid-thirties?

I also drove about 1/2 hour to get him Panda Express for dinner. He was excited and so was I. I mean, I got some for me too!

Saturday was Brad's birthday, so we went over to play some Guitar Hero. Well, Brad and Court played really well, while Brent and I never even finished a song. I'm a little addicted though. I really want to finish a song! I mean, seriously! We decided that playing the piano really helps with Guitar Hero.

Brent is pushing to get the basement done. It has been in a state of construction for about a year now and we're getting really tired of it!!! It's nice that we can just forget we have a downstairs though. But it will be SUPER nice to have it done.

With the money he earned on TDY in Connecticut, Brent bought an air compressor, and a new cordless telephone, but that's not the story. Anyway, I just had to laugh when I looked downstairs and saw his get up to spray texture on the ceiling. (We had popcorn ceilings until a couple of weeks ago.) He had put newspaper on everything that was not suppose to be textured. And an old sheet so it didn't come upstairs. It was funny.

At Christmas when we were at Ryan and Marcela's, I took this picture of Reyes. It was so cute how she would go running to the window every 2 seconds and just talk to the outside. Fer Cute! (The YW have been teasing me about saying that lately, so I've started saying it on purpose.)
The other day I was over at Court's and she got a package with new church clothes for Kyle. I was trying to help her get him in the new clothes and he kept saying to me, "I don't want to be white! I want to look like Buzz Lightyear!" He's nutty. I hate to tell you Kyle...you are white.

Aaron has started to smile! Well, not in this picture, but I still think it's cute. He still doesn't really like me to hold him, but he'll smile at me when someone else is holding him.

And finally, spring is starting to make it's presence known up here. The crocus are out in full force. The iris are starting to bloom and I bought my first bedding plants of the year....

Happy Spring! (I know some of you are still in places where there is a lot of snow. Just remember, spring is coming. I promise!)

Have a great day!

After Much Thought

I've been going to post this for a while, but I've been nervous about it. I've decided to just do it!

Ok, so ..... we have an announcement to make. After much thought and prayer, we've decided to not adopt. It has never gone well. We have never felt 100% good about it. And we both feel SOOOO much better about it now that we've made the decision.


What we've been worrying about is telling all of you. We don't want you to feel sorry for us. We are really happy. We both feel that there is something out there for us, it just isn't a baby. It's ok. There are some thoughts of, "Well, now what," but we're figuring that out slowly but surely. (There will be more on that in later posts.)



Thank you so much for all of the love, support and prayers. We have a wonderful life. We love each other. We love our 8-1/2 nieces and nephews, our 4 sudo-nieces and nephews, our friends kids who we get to hang out with, and the young women who give us a taste of having teenagers. Most of all, we love our Heavenly Father. We know that He loves us and is there to help us. It's been an amazingly easy decision. I prayed so long for Him to heal me and He has, just not the way I thought I needed.



I hope you know how much I love the plan of happiness. I can't even imagine what my life would be like if I didn't know it. It is my life. I know that there is something after this life and that is so comforting to me. Because eternity is so much longer than this life.

President Gordon B. Hinckley

As I was sitting at one of my many Young Women meetings tonight, I found out that President Hinckley died. It was amazing to be surrounded by the youth of our ward. We got a chance to sit and talk about President Hinckley and how much we love him and will miss him. It was a great BYD.

I just love President Hinckley. I loved his fun sense of humor. I loved how much you knew he loved you. I loved what he said and how he said it. Whenever I taught in Young Women's and there was a quote from President Hinckley, I would say, "You guys, I love President Hinckley." After a little while of that, they would say, "You love President Hinckley!" It was funny.

I know that President Hinckley was a prophet of God. And I know that the next prophet will be wonderful, but I'm sure going to miss President Hinckley's voice in the next conference!

Ok, I Guess It's Time

I don't know where January has gone. It seems like it was just barely Christmas, and now it's almost February. Crazy!

I ended up not being on the jury that I was called in for. I was juror #38 out of #41, so I was pretty sure I wouldn't have to sit on the jury, but as they were dismissing jurors, it got a little stressful. I did earn a whopping $32. Amazing!

I have a bunch of pictures to explain our last month and a half. I'll start in December...

Court's newest baby was due on the 27th of December, so I thought I would miss meeting him before we went to Utah, but Aaron had other plans. Court went into the doctor on the 20th, I think, and the doctor thought that Aaron was upside down. So, the next day they went in to have him turned and start the labor. It ended up being too busy at the hospital to induce her, so they had to come in on Saturday. That meant that we got to play with the kids for the weekend. We had some pretty fun adventures, but one night we just sat around and took some pictures of the crazy kids. They love this! The little posers!

This next picture is of Kyle, but it has a story behind it. The girls were dressing up like "princesses" so all of a sudden, Kyle screams out, "I wanna be a princess." Imagining the pictures, I told the girls to take him back in their room and dress him up in the gear. After a couple of minutes, I hear Kyle SCREAMING at the top of his lungs. He comes running out with a "princess" dress on saying that he doesn't want to be a princess anymore. He must have felt silly because he did look kind of silly. He went back in the girls room and came out like this.

Guess boys really are boys from when they're little.

After all this fun, it was time for a little fake nap...

I don't think Kyle really got the idea of being asleep.

After much waiting and stressing - at least on the part of Sarah - Court and Brad finally called and said that Aaron was here! Hooray. So, off to Silverdale to meet the new little guy.

What a great looking family. Sarah and Chloe had a great time holding their new little brother. Kyle had a great time opening all the doors and getting into everything. Boys!

On the way home, Kyle said, "Ashie, have you seen my pack-a-pack?" (Translation: backpack) To which I said, "No." Thinking this would end it. Oh no. "Ashie, have you seen my pack-a-pack?" After about 10 minutes of this, I said, "I think I threw it away." Kyle thought that was HILARIOUS, so we began again. It was really funny. He never did find his pack-a-pack.

Since Aaron was coming home on Christmas Eve, I made him a little Santa hat for Christmas. It turned out pretty cute.

Christmas dawned bright and green up here in Western Washington. We had a yummy breakfast, opened our presents, went over to the Brown's to say hi and open some presents and that's when the heavens opened. Normally that would mean rain around here, but not on Christmas. It started snowing! A white Christmas after all. But, we had taken my car over to the Brown's. They live on a little hill and my car had a hard time getting up that hill with the slushy snow. Now, Ryan and Marcela, where we were having Christmas dinner, live on a HUGE hill.... We decided to go home and exchange the car for the truck. It was kind of interesting getting up the hill by our house too. Look how pretty...

They don't have that many snow plows around here. And, instead of putting down salt, they use sand. Both melt the snow, but the sand acts like little ball bearings and makes it even more slippery. No wonder no one can drive in the snow here.

Since my internet it still acting a little bit weird, I'm going to leave the rest of Christmas for the next post. Sorry fo the abrupt end, but I'm not good at being patient with the computer.

Have a great day!

I Know, I Know

I know what your thinking. "It's been a long time and all I have to look at is a post about poop." Well, that's true. But here are my excuses.

Last week the internet wasn't working. Well, that's not true. It would work for a second then stop working, then work for a second, ... causing me to throw the computer out the window. Luckily, the window wasn't too far off the ground, so it's back to working this week.

This week, I have jury duty. I've been hoping that I wouldn't get called in, but sure enough, today I had to go in. So, I was hoping that they would excuse me today. Nope, have to go back in tomorrow. I have to do my civic duty, but it is such a pain!

Those are my excuses for not blogging for awhile. Take them or leave them.

:)

Merry Christmas!

We would like to wish you a ....

We hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas day! We love you!!

Adventures in Babysitting

First off, I have to say a few things. I am not a parent. I love kids, but I don't have any - well, besides Brent of course. As a non-parent, I've noticed that parents can talk for HOURS about poop. I've never had a poop story before. Now I can join in!

Another thing - Courtney had her baby on Sunday. His name is Aaron and there'll be more about him in another post. Seriously, it's a good poop story.

And because of the graphic nature of my poop story, I apologize in advance for some of the words that are going to appear in this blog. If you are a non-parent, like me, and a bit squeamish when it comes to poop, I would recommend not reading further.

So, because of Courtney's baby-having, we became the instant "parents" of 3 kids this weekend. It's really fun, usually. Ok, on to the poop story.

I get to Court and Brad's house early in the morning on Saturday so that they can head on up to Silverdale to bring this newest member of their family into the world. Court and I are discussing things to do as the instant "parents" of 3 kids.

She says, "Oh, and Kyle hasn't pooped for a couple of days. Give him some medicine. And, did you read John's blog about the potty training?"

"Yeah," I say.

"Well, let's just say, don't put the poop in the toilet...it will clog." (You've got to read John's blog.)
HUH? Who signed up for this? I signed up for good kids who basically take care of themselves and only need me to play with.

So, I give Kyle some medicine and hope that it takes a couple of days to kick in.

If I was only so lucky.

Look at that little face. Isn't he just adorable? You would never think something so... Back to my story.

Suddenly, Kyle disappears to do what we all know he's going to do. He's in his room with the door closed for way too long. Opening a door after a 2 year old has poop is not one of my favorite things about kids!

Anyway, he's finally done filling his diaper and now ... well, now it's my turn.

I just can't be too graphic. I've been trying to think of someway to describe what was in his diaper. Let's just say...it was the size of a soft ball. Literally. How could that much stuff come out of such a tiny body? Seriously, it's a tiny body. He's been really into running around in nothing but his diaper and he's a skinny little thing! It was all I could to to not have dry heaves.

Then, the topper is, I'm telling Court about this when we go see them and she says, "Yeah, his regular poops are huge too."

Is it because he's a boy? I haven't changed as many boy diapers as girl diapers. Is it because he has too much fiber in his diet? Is it just because he thinks it's funny? I don't know the answers to these questions, but...at the next dinner party when the parents start swapping poop stories, I'm bring out the soft ball poop story. This is going to be awesome!!

Musings

I'm sitting here looking at my HUGE list of things that need to get done before Christmas and thinking about last night. I'm the first counselor in the Young Women's in my ward. There have been good times and there have been a lot of bad times. We've been having some "growing pains" and I get frustrated sometimes. But last night reminded me why I keep at it even when I'm frustrated. We went caroling. We did this last week as well, but we didn't finish our list - such is life when you live in a ward that is bigger than a block. Anyway, we had a great time. We laughed, we sang, it was great. I just love all those girls that I serve. They are amazing! I'm so thankful for my opportunity to know them. They are awesome!

I took one of the girls home last night and she asked me about patriarchal blessings. We had a great talk about what they are and what she needs to do to get one. I'm so excited for her to have that opportunity. It will be great for her!

I have to admit - I feel like I have spent most of my life "catching up" with the Mormon lingo. I think that there should be a Mormon to English dictionary. I feel very behind all the time. But you know what? I'm really not. I can answer all these questions the girls come up with. And most of the time, the answers are pretty good - if I do say so myself. It still amazes me. But I know that most of the time, it's not me answering the questions and that amazes me even more. How cool is that?

I remember one time we had an activity when we were going to all read the Book of Mormon together. (We were trying to read the whole Book of Mormon before camp.) Anyway, it turned into a question and answer time. Another one of those times when the Spirit was there and we all felt it. It was so cool. What an awesome experience!

Young Women's is one of the hardest callings out there. But I just love it. I know that's normally when you get released, so I hope that's not going to happen. But, then I'll love my next calling and miss these amazing girls. If you ever get the chance to work with the youth, do it. It can be frustrating and tiring, but it is so worth it.

Another Good Quote

"Common-looking people are the best in the world; that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them."

-Abraham Lincoln

Quote

"Do not pray for tasks equal to your abilities, but pray for abilities equal to your tasks. Then the performance of your tasks will be no miracle, but you will be the miracle."

-President Thomas S. Monson

Under Construction

As you can see, I'm working on the look of my blog. Unfortunately, the computer is not working the way I want it to, so before I throw it out the window, I'm going to leave it boring for a little while.

:)

Catch Up

Ok, so it's the last week before Christmas and I'm pretty busy, so...I'm not going to be blogging much. I'm planning on typing up some great quotes, so check back for those.

I haven't been as good at blogging lately, so I'm going to catch up. That way you can look at some great pictures. Just for fun, let's start with the newest pictures.

On Saturday, Brent took me out to dinner for my birthday. He ended up having to work on Saturday, so I took the foot ferry over to Bremerton and met him at Anthony's. Anthony's is a great seafood restaurant that I love! Dinner was very good and fun.

After dinner we went over to the Harborside Fountain Park. They had decorated it for Christmas. I LOVE looking at Christmas lights and it's become kind of a tradition. This year was a little different from the last couple of years. It was FREEZING and RAINING, but fun to see anyway.

The day after Thanksgiving, Ryan, Marcela & Reyes came down for dinner. We had a great time. Reyes was in love with Brent and would follow him around everywhere. She's getting really friendly and fun to be around. I think it's the cutest thing when she sucks on her thumb. For her birthday we gave her a similar blanket to this one that she loves. So when she saw another one with the knots on the outside, she was pretty sure it was time for bed. It was cute.

Here we are at Thanksgiving. We had dinner with Court and Brad and the kids. The dinner was great. And I think I made the best pumpkin pies ever! As always, Brent made rolls. They were awesome!

I think this pictures is hilarious. The girls were making Indian feathers on their heads. Kyle couldn't quite figure it out, so... Makes me giggle.

While we were waiting for dinner to be ready, Brent started throwing marshmallows in the girl's mouths. Kyle thought Chloe wanted him to put one in her mouth. If you look on Chloe's chin, you can see the marshmallow that Brent threw at her.

At the beginning of November, Court and I took a girl's day and went to Time Out for Women in Tacoma. It was a fun day. And on the way home we got some Panda Express. What could be better? (In this picture we were both trying to have our eyes open. It turned out a little scary. Sorry)

So, it's almost the end of 2007. It's hard to believe. It's been a good year. Hopefully 2008 will be even better! I'll see you all then! (Except for the quotes...as I said before.)

Wow, Where Has the Time Gone?

So, yesterday was my 32nd birthday. Where have all the years gone? The young women kept asking me how old I was going to be and when I said 32, they would invariably say, "You don't act like you're 32!" What exactly does that mean? I'm going to take it as a compliment. Thanks girls!! The crown is from a Christmas cracker that Kyle wanted to try. It's great, isn't it?

I had a great day! We thought that Brent would be working a lot this week, so we planned on having the main celebration on Saturday. Brent's stuff ended up taking less time than they thought, but we're still going to do the bulk of the celebrating on Saturday. It will be great.

Brent made me a pumpkin roll for my birthday cake. It was his first time trying it and he did an amazing job! It was so good. Court, Brad and the kids came over to help us eat it. Even the picky Brown kids thought the choice of cake was great. Thanks Love!

My cousin Jennifer sent me the cutest e-card. It had a "birthday carol" in it. I'm going to write down the words and you have to imagine singing them to "Carol of the Bells"...

It's your birthday
hip hip hooray
Look what I baked
The birthday cake
(Happy Birthday)
Here is your song
It's not too long
-I can't figure out what this line is-
another year
Make a wish and blow out all the candles

Hee hee! Makes me laugh! Have a great day!

P.S.

We are going to Colorado in March to enjoy the greatest month of the year by partaking of the madness that is the NCAA Tourney! its serendipity baby!

And Ashley wants me to add that it will be nice to see family and the new nephew, blah blah.....

Welcome to the World Cayden!

On Friday, December 7th, Brent's brother Jared and his wife Katie welcomed little Cayden Merle to the world. When Jared called us, we were at our ward Christmas party so I had to tell everyone that we had a brand new nephew. I am so excited to meet him in March. And Brent will be really excited to play with him when he can talk. Brent just doesn't really like babies. We love him anyway though.

Don't you just love that hat? Who could possibly have made that cute hat? Ok, I'll admit, it was me. It turned out rather cute. I was so worried that it wouldn't fit him because it looked so small, but .... it seems big!

Congrats Jared and Katie! We love you so much and are so glad that Cayden is here healthy and happy!

Wait - Where are those Plans for the Ark?

I know I'm a couple of days late with this post, but life hasn't stopped.... more on that later.



This past weekend was a CRAZY one for us here in Western Washington.



It started on Saturday. We woke up to snow. It doesn't snow very much here, so it's kind of exciting to see it. All told we got about 2", but it rained in the middle of that, so we would have had more. Here's a picture of the trees behind our house. They look aweful pretty.

Sunday dawns to a bit more snow. Here is Western Washington, people aren't used to snow. Plus it's really hilly, so the roads can be dangerous. (Although everyone they talked to on the news said, "I can drive in it, I'm just afraid of everyone else driving in it." Seriously, everyone isn't good at driving in it and I'm pretty sure all those people were just fooling themselves.) Brent had meetings at church at 10a, so he started to leave at 9:30 when the phone rings. On the other end of the line is one of the bishopric saying that they're not going to meet until 10:30 and if he doesn't feel comfortable driving, he doesn't have to come. (This member of the bishopric is from here and so is naturally afraid of the snow.) Brent hangs up the phone and makes a snorting noise. He says, "I can get to the church because 1) I have a 4 wheel drive truck and 2) I can drive in the snow and 3) it's only slushy out there." He's so funny.

So, off to church Brent goes. Last year there was a day similar to this when they did cancel church. Apparently during bishopric meeting, the bishop asked each person there if they would be uncomfortable having their wives drive in this weather. When Brent told me the story, this is how it went:

Bishop: What about you Brother Linton?

Brent: She'll be fine.

Wow, there's a lot of love and caring in those 3 little words. When I was bugging Brent about the conversation later, he ammended his answer to the following:

Brent: Ashley's a good driver, she knows how to drive in the snow, so I'm not worried about her driving here to church.

I personally think the first one is closer to what he said.

Anyway, I kept waiting for Brent to call and say that church was canceled. But, the call never came so I went over there. The other two wards in our building had canceled, so we were the only tough ones that day. By that time it was raining and the roads really were just slushy, but I learned something that day. If you're the only ward in the building, it's really quiet!

We get home from church and are fixing dinner and hoping that the power won't go out. The wind had kicked up at this time and whenever there is wind there are power outages. Our power went out just after dinner - luckily - but then came back on after only a few minutes. We were happy. I mean, I would have missed Amazing Race.

By the end of Sunday, it had started to rain....and rain...and rain.

Monday dawns to some SERIOUS downpours! People are starting to worry about flooding. I'm starting to worry that it's never going to stop. I took a video of the rain from our back deck. You can't see if very well, but you can really hear it. It did this for nearly the whole day.

So, in 48 hours, we got 13" of rain. For those of you who are visual learners like me, that's 13 FEET of snow in a 2 day period. It was INSANE!

Every river in Western Washington flooded. There was just no place else for the water to go. There are sinkholes EVERYWHERE - including over by our post office. In Grays Harbor County, there were 36,000 people without power and you couldn't get to the city of Auburn at all! ALL THE ROADS WERE BLOCKED! Either by downed trees or mud slides. The city of Tahuya was completely cut off when the bridge was taken out. About 1 miles of I-5 was completely underwater - about 10 feet on Monday. Now it's down to 4 feet. Getting better. The detour for that 1 mile stretch of highway is over 400 miles. It is INSANE! There were pictures on the news of salmon swimming up the street. And, Gorst, which I've complained about before was completely underwater thereby cutting Port Orchard off from Bremerton. Luckily, they kept the foot ferries going so Brent had someway to get home.

It was a CRAZY DAY!

Here's the best part. We got through it ok. On Tuesday, our garage was a little damp, but I'm pretty sure most of that was from the cars. We didn't have any flooding and we didn't lose power. I had to finally stop watching the news because it was making me sad. A lot of people have loss their homes or at least, they have to do a lot of clean up. We were blessed!

Once again, this was a pineapple express weather system. What do the Hawaiian Islands have against us?

Hope the weather isn't as crazy where you are. It's definitely dried off here, but we did get another inch of rain on Tuesday. I think we might be in for it this winter.

Have a great day!

Hooray!!

A few weeks ago, we found out that my Grandma Cherryl has breast cancer. Luckily - if there is anything "lucky" about breast cancer - it was the least aggressive kind you could get and it was very small. So, they decided to do a lumpectomy. That happened today. I've been wandering around my house this morning waiting for the call that everything went well and she was fine. That call just came in. The doctors are very optimistic that they got it all and she will just have to go through a week of radiation to make sure. HOORAY!

As you probably know, this last couple of years haven't been too good for grandparents in our family. My Grandpa died last year, my Grandma earlier this year and Brent's Grandpa in September. You can probably guess that I was kind of a wreck lately. I'm so thankful that everything is looking good.

Court recently gave me this picture from 1994. (That's the year we graduated from high school.) Grandma looks pretty much the same.
And here she is now...

I love you Grandma! I so glad you're doing well!

Isn't It Amazing

Yep, it's that time of year again. Amazing Race is back on! This is my all time favorite reality show! I love the places they go, I love the things they see and do and I especially love yelling at the TV to tell them how to do it better. (Although last night, I decided that there is absolutely no way I could ever be on Amazing Race. I would just be a basket case the whole time!)

I thought I might share my thoughts on who is going to win and how the different teams are going to do. I am, after all, an Amazing Race expert!

Ari & Staella

Ah, these guys are the best! Ari said that he would do whatever he wanted to do and he didn't care about karma. Well, the first place they flew to was Shannon, Ireland. Two of the teams had called ahead for taxis so they would be waiting when they got there. Ari and Staella got there first and stole one of the taxis. Brent was then cheering for them to be eliminated first. The last thing they had to do was put peat in baskets on donkey's backs and lead the donkeys back to where their cars were. Ari & Staella kept screaming at the donkey, so the donkey stopped moving. It caused them to be eliminated first. Hmmm....I guess being a good person really does help. I am POSITIVE these people are not going to win.

Azaria & Hendekea
These guys are a brother and sister team - who usually do well - and they're engineers. Brent is totally cheering for them! I think they will do well. Top three for sure.

Jennifer & Nathan

These guys are dating, but not for long, if you ask me. At one point in the FIRST LEG, Nathan said to Jennifer, "You are the WORST at this!" They are not going to do well.

Kate & Pat

These guys are not going to go far. I'm sorry. This is a young person game. They just won't be able to keep up. And, they kind of bug me anyway.

Kynt & Vyxsin

WHAT? These guys really surprised me. They did well. They bug me A LOT so I hope they get eliminated sooner rather than later. What will they do when they run out of makeup?

Lorena & Jason

This is my second favorite team. If Lorena calms down a little bit, they will definitely be in the top three, if not win.

Marianna & Julia

These guys said that they are willing to use their looks for help. I hate it when people do that. I'm actually surprised that they didn't get eliminated first, but just wait for next time. See ya!

Nicolas & Donald

This is a grandpa and grandson combo. The grandson said that his grandpa was cool because he swears all the time and talks inappropriately about women. That's what I like in a grandpa. They won't go far.

Rachel & TK

These guys are who I think will win this time around. They are easy going and respectful! Go Rachel & TK!

Ronald & Christina

These guys are cute. They're not going to go far, but they're cute. And from Tacoma!

Shana & Jennifer

These are another team that says they'll use their looks to get what they want. Whatever. Good luck guys - you're going to need it!

As you can tell, I am very into Amazing Race. It's exciting! And I can see places I want to go someday!

Have a great day! Tomorrow - some Halloween pictures!