Our Happy, Busy, Full Life - IN PICTURES!

 Rascal and his boy!

 Backyard BEFORE pictures.

The Mighty Ben has removed a major shrub, ALL BY HIMSELF!!

 Backyard DURING pictures!

 We interrupt this backyard renovation for an anniversary celebration trip to Bryce Canyon!

 I took this picture so that I could show our children just exactly what Daddy was doing just before he fell off the cliff.

Some of the plant-life was more cooperative for photos than others.

Oh yeah!  That's my man!

Can you see the sundog?

Isn't this a WAY cool picture?

Salty Dog.

My self-portrait on Salty Dog.

A little piece of paradise!

James is/was WAY more brave than I.  Who knows what might be down there??

Grammie and Grandpa with the grandkids at our niece Natalie's baptism.

 More DURING photos.  (Contractor time is different from regular people time.  "3 weeks" actually means about 2 1/2 months.)

Sadly, I lost my wedding ring this summer.  So, for our 14th anniversary, we went ring shopping.  I chose the one on my middle finger.  It's a beauty!

We interrupt this backyard make-over again, for a trip to San Francisco!

We ate here, mmmmmmmm!

And here, mmmmmmm!

And here, WOW!!

We interrupt this trip to San Francisco for a summer flashback:

poor, sweet Brianna fell and cut her eyelid this summer.  Once she stopped screaming, she was incredibly brave.

Who's crazy kids are these anyway??!

This is my awesome oldest brother, playing lead guitar in his awesome band, Kindle Creek.

If you haven't heard them, check out www.kindlecreek.com and take a listen.

Recycling in action.

A fun autumn Sunday hike at our nearby ski resort.

Messy!

James took me on a FANCY date!  (Don't we look like a couple of high schoolers on our way to Prom?)

Ben at piano lessons. 

The orange jetski is one of ours.  The other one is it's identical twin.  (Not sure which was born first.  Don't say anything, but I can't tell them apart.)

HAPPY FALL!!

Not the Sharpest Knife in the Drawer

When I was on my mission, there was a man in line at the soup kitchen where my companion and I were serving a meal who declared that I was "a couple books short of a full Bible." He went on to say, "You's missin' Axe and Duterominy."  Unfortunately, I've proven him right MANY times over the years. 
Tonight, I was playing a game on my cell phone: Shape Shift.  I've already deleted it twice from my phone because I waste WAAAY too much time with it whenever I open it up.   It consists of a screen made up of many boxes; the boxes can be one of four colors, and on each box is one of three shapes (circle, square, or triangle).  You move the boxes around by choosing two boxes with the same shape on it (i.e., a green box with a triangle, and a yellow box with a triangle) and the game will then switch their places on the screen.  When you have 4 boxes of the same color touching, they explode and disappear, and new boxes are fed in from the top of the screen.  Silly, I know, but something about it is highly addictive.  Maybe it's the explosions, or the consequent explosions that your initial explosion can cause, because as the exploded boxes disappear, everything above it shifts down to fill in the gaps.  If that shifting causes more boxes of the same color to connect, they too will explode.
 In "Classic" mode, you have the added excitement of bombs inside some of the boxes, with timers on them.  If you fail to get three (or more) boxes of the same color to touch that bomb's box, before it gets to "zero", then you lose and the game is over. 
As I was playing, I had a bomb quickly counting down to zero, and I was getting a little frantic trying to get the right color/shape combination over to it before it hit zero.  Ben, who was sitting next to me observing all of this--and who, to my knowledge has never played this game--says, "You don't need to get all stressed out about it, it's not a timer.  It just shows how many moves you have left to take care of that bomb. Did you see it go from 5 to 4 when you did that?"
Excuse me?  Who has played this for too many hours to count??  And who has just been observing for five minutes??
Patronizingly, I responded, "No, it is a timer, and if you don't take care of it before it goes off, you lose.  It has nothing to do with moves."  I go on to explain, slightly more patiently,"It's not in seconds, though.  You have to keep your eye on the bombs, because sometimes they count down fast, and sometimes they count down more slowly."

Um, ... ya, after a few more minutes playing, with his observation starting to penetrate my thick skull, it became apparent: he was right.  How could I have never figured that out??  It must have been in explained in "Duterominy."

First Day of School

Brianna was SO excited for her first day of kindergarten that she couldn't go to sleep last night.  She finally came down stairs two hours AFTER her bed time.  I held her and we chatted a little bit, mostly in whispers.  I told her that if she didn't go to sleep, Kindergarten could never come.  I kissed her and sent her on her way up the stairs.  She returned almost immediately and handed me a folded up note, which she explained in excited whispers was very important.  She then proceeded to tell me what the note said:

I will repent ... tomorrow.