July In Pictures

July 4th- Stadium of Fire

Missy is way excited for the JONAS BROTHERS!!!
OH MY GOSH IT'S JOE!! :)





Leslee and I spent many days in the car, driving lots of places. Mainly SLC.


We went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house. Here is poor Moroni who was struck by lightning and now has a black arm and trumpet.


What a beautiful temple!

Who doesn't love stopping at Sears on their day off?


On the 17th (aka-the best day of my whole life) we went to the George Strait concert at the Usana Amphitheatre. It kicked A! Except for this part. See this long line we had to stand in? Yeah, 104 degrees outside baby. I think I lost twenty pounds in sweat. Gross.

See, we are not happy. But don't fret. It was totally worth it.
Now we're inside the amphitheatre! It may not look like it, but we did have pretty good seats. Though being surrounded by drunk people was a little strange...........

Here is the whole group! And a few drunk people behind us. :)
AHHHH!!! It's Gorgeous George!!! Isn't he the best?

This me being all giddy about the fact I was watching the love of my life singing on stage. :)



Now we're on to the next day when we had a BBQ for my Grandpa's B-day! This is me making cupcakes. Just call me Betty.

This is Leslee eating my cupcake batter. Smart girl.


So, for five days we watched my cousin's 10 month old baby girl. Her name is Athena and my family fell head over heels for this little cutie. She was the best baby I've ever encountered. She hardly ever cried, slept whenever she was tired, loved to clap her hands and drool and go for walks in her stroller. She ate her food like a good little baby (even the gross macaroni and beef with chicken crap). Long story short. I love her. I miss her.


My visiting teachers said she looked like she could be mine (a comment of which filled me with complete bliss because I wish it was true!) But I don't see a resemblance really. She's much too cute to look anything like me.



This is the day we went to the Zoo and a baseball game. Unfortunately, we couldn't take the camera into the baseball stadium, though I think I would have just taken pictures of the players looking attractive in their uniforms. :) I'm not going to post any animal pictures either. They're kinda boring. But here is cute little Thena in her stroller. Les likes this picture, she kinda has shifty eyes goin on.


Here is me pushing the stroller at the Zoo.

So instead of animals, how about I show you pictures of Les and I acting like retards at the Zoo playground! I'm in a turtle shell, which I may say was very difficult to get into due to the fact I was in a skirt. Les is in an egg though she kept saying "I'm in a womb."



Good news! We have a new washer and dryer! Aren't they pretty? I don't know how to work them yet, but they're Bosch. And I hear that's pretty good.

Now this is a picture of our new central air system! Yeah baby! Woohoo! No more swamp cooler for us. We're moving up in the world. Dang, new washer and dryer, new air conditioning system, a basement all to myself. Psh! And people think it's uncool that I live with my parents. I'm livin the dream!


These are my favorite. :) This is my "photo shoot" with Athena. Thanks to Les for helping with the entertaining.







So that's all the pictures I'll post. It was a good month. Thanks for stopping by! Peace.

My sermon for the night. :)

Ephesians 6:13-18

"Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

Above all, taking the faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit..."

For years upon years these versus have been almost a constant in my mind. I'm not sure what made them resonate like they have, maybe it was that song on the New Testament church CD. That guy with a deep voice sings it. :D The point is, I love them. Now here is my spiel:

Paul the Apostle told us to take upon us the WHOLE armour of God. Leaving any part of ourselves unprotected well.....leaves us unprotected. It makes us weak, makes us vulnerable to Satan's wiles.

Verse 13: "...that you may be able to withstand in the evil day..." Is there any day more evil than today? There is nothing more prominent in the world today than immorality. The first piece of armour Paul speaks of is the Girdle of Truth (chuckle if you must, I do every time I see the word). We have to keep ourselves true, morally righteous, clean, chaste, and so on. That is the most difficult task we young people have ahead of us, what with all the media garbage thrown in our faces wherever we go.

Verse 15: [Keep] "your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace". I love this part of our armour. I look at it in two ways. The first is missionary work. What better opportunity do we have in life than to teach others the gospel? Wherever we go, we must spread the gospel of peace. Second, if you just read it like this: keep your feet shod with peace, I think of it a bit different. In the footnote to this verse it says "Peace of God". Christ's gospel IS peace. "Build upon my rock, which is my gospel." D&C 11:24. We need a solid foundation to stand on. There is nothing more solid than the gospel of Jesus Christ. He must be our rock. If we keep our feet firm on the solid foundation of the gospel, no storm can move us.

The other pieces of armour I could go on and on about too, but I don't want to start boring anyone. But I do want to say something about the Shield of Faith. "Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked."

No protection you have will do any good without faith. We believe in that the first principles and ordinances of the gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We can keep our faith strong by doing those things we should be doing. I don't want to sound like a child in primary, but what better answer to 'what should we be doing?' is there than the typical primary answers? Going to church, reading our scriptures, saying our prayers (As we're told to do in verse 18!), going to the temple, etc.

The point is, the church is true. The Gospel of Peace is the true gospel. I know it. God loves me, Christ loves me and there is nothing that will make them change there minds about that. If we lose a piece of our armour and make mistakes, as we all will, what greater gift our we given than the gift of repentance?

Well, that's it. I hope I didn't ramble on, I just needed to write my thoughts down. I hope it wasn't too weird that I basically bore my testimony on my blog.......

Anywhoo, life is good! I wish all of you well! Peace!

Art City Days and such

Well another week over, another week to come. That doesn't sound very positive, but I don't mean it to be negative. This weekend was actually quite cool. The carnival was in town for Art City Days. Saturday was our traditional Saturday. We had the parade in the morning, thanks to Bryan and Megan for coming! Their cute little boy David livened the whole thing up for me. He's a keeper. Here's a pic of him at the parade showing me some of the great taffy he picked up off the ground. :)Here's their other little Cutie Sammy-


I didn't get any real nice pictures of the parade, so I'm not going to post any. :) Anywhoo, After the parade it was off the the Nance Family BBQ. I played Daddio in ping pong and held my own, though I'm sure he was just going easy on me. It was nice to see the fam. Especially Grandma. I love that woman. After the Par-tay, it was back home to watch a great Thunderstorm. After the rain stopped I took the camera out and snapped some pictures. They turned out pretty well, though they would have been better if I had a Macro Lens. But alas, I do not.

The pictures above were actually taken before it rained. :) Hence, the dryness of the flower.


After that my fam took a quick trip to the carnival and I bought a pretty bracelet. :) Saturday night Bryan, Megan, their kiddies, Pop and I braved the wet cold and went to the fireworks. They were awesome.

So that was my weekend in a nutshel. For now, Peace!

Remember that time........

When I didn't have a job? When I came home from school and didn't have to do anything but play? When I'd call Traci and be like: Can you play? Then we'd do something cool, like crash a 4-wheeler into my fence. When I watched awesome shows with the sibs at seven in the morning like Ronan Warriors and Littlest Pet Shop? (It always pays to have some variety!) When there was no pressure in relationships because I was too young to even be allowed a boyfriend? When It was totally cool that I knew nothing about politics because I was suppose to be stupid? (Because when you're young, it's not stupid to be stupid.) When cell phones didn't exist which meant I could get a good nights sleep without twenty people sending me text messages? When being responsible for your own life was something you looked forward to? When living with your parents wasn't something people looked down upon? When The X Files was still on TV? When ten dollars was like a million? When I could come home and play with Stomper? When my Dad had a mullet? When Camcorders were as big a car? When my neck didn't hurt so much? When I didn't have to shower for three days? When I didn't have to shave my legs??

My Fantabulous Week in Review.

Well, we'll start off with Monday. Monday was the day I anticipated the rest of the week.
Tuesday was the BIG DAY. On Tuesday book 5 of a great series I read by author Rick Riordan was released. The series is called Percy Jackson and The Olympians. (Yes, they are children/ young adult novels.) Basically I'm in love with the series. It's all about Greek Mythology which I happen to be obsessed with. So anyway, this book that came out on Tuesday is the final book in the series. I was pretty nervous to read it. But oh man. It was the greatest book I've ever read. I love Rick Riordan. His books pretty much solidified my desire to write. And the Percy Jackson series are just the type of books I want to write. I can't wait.
Wednesday was the day after I read that fantastically great book. I was pretty tired since I stayed up until three A.M reading it! But also, I had lunch with Traci. It was SO good to catch up with her. I love her to death. I hope she has fun in Hawaii!!
Thursday was also a big day. It was STAR TREK day!!! We waited in line pointlessly for four hours to see the 11:00 p.m showing. No one even started lining up until ten o'clock! We thought it was going to be massive chaotic crowds, but alas, we were first in line. A girl from a BYU newspaper was in line after us and she was writing an article about the premier. She interviewed my family and me. It was pretty funny. My dad has a tendency to go a bit wild. His interview ended up being almost 45 minutes long.
Anyway. The point is: Star Trek was phenomenal. It was nothing like the original series to be honest. It was much better. The acting was good (And the cast uber attractive), the effects were good, the story was good (although I always go a little psycho with time travel story lines. My minds tends to go around in circles until I'm exhausted.) All in all I give it a 10 out of 10.
Friday was just a boring Friday until Mark and Lu arrived from Logan. They confirmed that they will be having a little boy!! Gah, I'm so excited. From this time forward he will be known as: Little Nephew Ruddiger.
Also on this exciting Friday night, I checked to see if my grades had been posted. To my shock I actually passed Biology. I honestly did NOT think that was going to happen. Mind you, I passed with a C, but still. It's passing. I got an A in my Myth Lit class. That was pretty obvious though. I say with no hesitation that I kicked butt in that class.
Saturday I enjoyed taking family photos for a cute family. During the afternoon I just hung out around the house. Then in the evening I went again to Star Trek. :) This time we had a group of 11 people. It was a blast. The movie was even better the second time! Zachary Quinto, I'm in love with you. Unless you are playing a scary serial killer in Heroes.
After the movie we went to Red Robin for some great food. All in all, good day.
Today(Sunday) I spoke in church. I will admit I had more than a few of people with misty eyes by the time I was finished. :) At home, I cooked dinner for my mothers day gift to mine mum. I made my kick A fried chicken, mashed potatoes and corn. I did it all on my own and it turned out delicious. I'm a pretty good cook come to think of it.

So now here I sit, watching Tom Cruise hotly fly fighter jets in Top Gun. I think I'm going to do a little writing and then go to bed. I really don't want to go to work tomorrow. I need a vacation. (Bryan when you read this please don't take that personally!)

Hopefully my good day streak will continue. As always, Peace!

First and Foremost

-Here's a shout out to Bryan! "Hey B-man! S'goin on?"

Here are some pics of Barkley and Sisco that I took today. Also, I discovered my 401K from Allens still has three hundred bucks in it! Retirement here I come!!!!

This picture pretty sums up Barkley's whole existence. Looking over his shoulder in fear of my wrath! Mwahahaha!

I couldn't get any good pictures of the wee one. She's def which means I can't get her to look at the camera. Oh well. As always, Peace!

Sour Patch Watermelons (Artificially Flavored of Course)

Well, the weekend was a great weekend. After two months of waiting the Rescue finally came! It was a blast. I drove with Nay, Bobby and Jeremy up to Trax and we mosied on up to the University of Utah. The Trax ride was interesting. An Oriental woman sat next to me and admired my cell phone. You'd think she'd never seen one! Which is ironic seeing as how it was her people that invented everything technological. (I did not mean 'her people' in a racist way.)

Anyway. Right when we arrived at the President's Circle, we started our march! It took forever, I think I heard someone say it was a three mile march. To me it seemed like twenty. Jeremy was kind enough to keep me company on our excursion and he can tell you that I may or may not have complained a lot. But I really was enjoying myself. I see complaining as a pastime. Like baseball. I told him that walking that three miles took care of all my exercising for the whole week. He told me that it did not. :( Whatever. Unless you have a degree in physical fitness Jeremy, I'm sticking to my theories.

We finally made it the Gallivan Center and set up camp. My little group and I had not eaten all day so we high tailed it over to a Carl's Jr. just on the corner. I ordered a Bacon Cheese six dollar burger. It was huge, and delicious! I'm usually not one for eating beef. But man that was one good tastin cow.

Speeches and cold rain filled our Saturday evening. Thankfully I had Nay to keep me warm. Thanks for snuggling with me Nay!!! Senator Bennet came and "rescued" us. I didn't hear his speech sadly. I wanted a hot chocolate (please see earlier comment about it being very cold.) But by the time we made it back, Senator Bennet was leaving.

So then the people began to dispurse. We left around nine-ish, took Trax back to my car then drove home. I may or may not have completely run a stop light on said trip home. Good thing there were no cars coming the other way!!! So anyway. It was a great turn out and I'm so happy I was involved with something great.

Now it's Monday and I'm sitting here eating Sour Patch Watermelons. They make my tongue feel weird. Does that stop me from eating them? No. But the good news is, is that I signed up for an Aerobics class next semester! Hotness here I come. I am going to be looking SO good. ;) That or I may die of a stroke during the first ten minutes of class. We'll just have to wait and see.

I have one more final left on Wednesday. It's biology which means I will fail, but I've come to terms with this fact and have moved on. Still no word on the score for my bird paper..........

Anywhoo. I'm off to bed, or maybe to clean my fish tank. So for now, Peace!