Intruders

We've been seeing a lot of bugs in our house lately. Maybe because we don't clean as much as we should all the time, or we've been moving furniture recently, or because it's been getting hotter. I don't know, but we saw this and that we had another visitor in our shower . . .

Doesn't that look like rats?! Nope, it's just the hair that was clogging out drain.

 Now we know why it's called a rat's nest. 

Some of Our Favorite Boys

We're the Wolf Den leaders in our ward. We have to much fun with our boys. This week, we made homemade ice cream! Here's a shout out to Reese, Braxton, and Cameron. =) We're looking forward to Day Camp this coming week, and an outdoor cookout in two weeks. We sure love those boys! Plus also, we have two boys who've started coming once they got back from vacation-Brady and Wesley. Good, smart kids.

Cameron is licking his out of the bowl, Braxton is letting Jacob shake his up, and Reese is just showing off. =)

Only Jacob's and Braxton's turned out ice-cream like.

Recipe: 1 cup half and half (or other thick milk substitute)

2 Tblsp sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Place ingredients in small Ziploc bag and place that inside a bigger Ziploc bag with ice. Shake shake shake. Then eat and enjoy! =)

We Gonna Find You!

I don't normally cruise YouTube very much, but a friend showed me this that came out a couple of years ago when I was on my mission:

Yeah, that's pretty entertaining, but here's the rill funny part:

Seriously, I think it's SOO FUNNY!! Every so often, I'll pull it up just to listen to it and laugh. My favorite parts are "You are so dumb. You are really dumb." "We gonna fiiiind you, we gonna fiiiind you!" 

Hilarious.

Some of Our Favorite Girls

Last weekend, we had our nieces Natalie and Evelyn over for a sleepover and fun activities. We sure love those girls! I was at work when they first came, but Jacob helped them make a wonderful flower bouquet for when I got home. With lovely notes, too. Oh, and cupcakes. But they were all gone before I remembered to take the picture. And Jacob had made them the night before, so, they were already half gone anyway.

Notes say: well .. .I dunno about the first one, but the second one says "Yar funny!"

I love you, yur my frite ant, meke yur mark!
Clearly, I'm their favorite aunt. =)

close ups of the flowers

Then the plan was to go to BYU Campus to watch a  free outdoor movie, but because of rain earlier in the day, it was cancelled. So for Plan B, we Redboxed KungFu Panda 2, and watched it from our tent. Oh, the girls had a blast!

It was really cute trying to get them to go to sleep. Their sleeping bags couldn't be touching each other, and they had to use the bathroom about 3 times before going to bed, and there had to be just enough light. 

Then for breakfast, we went to our workplace, the Cannon Center. They liked going to the "Eat Whatever You Want" place.

Then we stopped to visit and feed Great Grandma Smith. We sang Primary songs to her from the mic hooked up to the digital keyboard. 

We just love those girls to pieces, and we're so glad that we had so much fun with them! I guess it takes a special bribery sleepover to official become the favorite aunt and uncle. =)

Someday

Someday we will be music teachers.

There's a lot to learn in the meantime.

So we practice .. .and practice . ..and practice some more.

Here's Jacob's latest piece he's conducting:

We've listened to it at least 40 times today. And you know what? It's still just as beautiful. I even made Jacob dance to it with me.

Meanwhile, I had a dream last night that when it was my turn to conduct in front of the class, they all had their backs to me, and then some people didn't have their instruments, and they weren't looking at me or following tempo or anything. It was awful. Then, my teacher has the audacity to say to me, "I don't know if you noticed, but that was a pretty poor performance." Well, DUH!! Of course it was awful! But then I felt really bad when he said that my conducting has really digressed and gone downhill. =(
Luckily, I woke up.

Now we're off to class to conduct our peers. Hopefully we'll do well!

Em-BAHR-rassing!

Do you ever wear something that makes you feel embarrassed? There's the typical unzipped fly, the inside out shirt, mismatched socks, or any article of clothing worn backwards, the noticeable stain .. . .you know.

Well, Jacob had this certain of article of clothing (well, a few of them) that made me embarrassed when he wore it. Any guesses? I'll give you a hint: if he were still 5 years old, I'd probably let him get away with it.

Yup, that's it. Clip-on ties. Seriously. Clip-on ties!! I know he knows how to tie a necktie, and he doesn't have any arm/wrist injury that would prevent him from tying a knot. I gave him a hard time every time he tried to wear one; I even clipped one on to the trashcan as a warning of what would really happen if he tried wearing it again. Of course, if Jacob were writing this post, he'd go on and on about how sometimes he doesn't have time to tie a good tie. And how good the designs are, and how you really can't tell it's a clip-on tie when you wear it right. . . . yeah yeah . . .

That's why he's not writing this post. =)

He just could not part with those ties. But thanks to a profound suggestion from my Uncle Mike, we came up with the perfect solution. Jacob would donate his ties to DI if I donated an article of clothing (of his choosing) as well. Here's what he chose:

You know, I really don't see why he never liked this jacket. It's pretty cute, I think. But on closer examination, I discovered this . . .

Yup, sweat stains on the collar and sleeves.

And something else I realized only a few months ago as we were looking through pictures for our wedding album . . .I've had this jacket since junior high.

Yeah, it's time to give it up.

"But, honey, maybe we should save them for sentimental reasons. Years from now, we'll joke about those ties and that jacket, and it'd be fun to have them"

That's why I made this blog post.

Plus also, if you ever want to see how cute the jacket really was . ..you can always look at Jacob's proposal video . .. I was wearing it on the day he proposed. =)

Flying High!

Our friend KJ recently got his pilot's license, and he's working on getting flying hours to advance to the next level. So .. .we got to go flying with him!! It was so awesome! We flew over Provo, BYU Campus, etc, all the way to Timpanogos. We saw some destruction caused by the forest fire in Alpine, and then we flew down over and into Heber for a touch and go landing. Then we looped around back to Spanish Fork where we started. It was soo fun!! Jacob got a little sick, but he enjoyed it, too. =)
So in case, any of our other readers are pilots looking for flying hours . .. count us in!!

Before take-off.

Jacob's ready to go!

It was my first time, so they let me ride up front. Way awesome!

I meant to include the wing in this picture .. .as proof that we were actually on a plane.

You don't see a view like this every day.

Jacob and Carissa chillin' in the back. =)

Fruit Snacks

At the store last month when we did our monthly shopping, I let Jacob pick out what kind of fruit snacks we should get while I looked on the other side of the aisle for something. Sometimes I'm kinda iffy about fruit snacks. Let's face it: fruit snacks can be gross sometimes.
a)if there are any blueberry flavored (or sometimes mixed flavored) ones, they usually taste gross.
b)if they are a really thick texture that gets stuck in your back molars . . .gross.
c)if you feel like you have this never disappearing film of sugar on your teeth and the roof of your mouth .. .gross.
d)If they are shaped in famous Disney, Pixar, dinasaur or other superhero designs .. .well, they usually taste gross. (nothing against Pixar . . .I just feel bad eating Tow-Maters, is all . . .)
e) if they contain weird opaque white or mango-, rose-, or puke green- colored ones . .. .yeah, gross.
That's why I told Jacob that he could pick them out, without bothering to give him my list of requirements. I figured that if I didn't like them, he would, and they'd get eaten.
But, oh man. He picked the best fruit snacks I've ever had!!
Check it out!

Not to steal from the advertising on the packaging, but . . they have 100% Vitamin C, 40% fruit juice, 80 Calories AND . . .GREAT TASTING FRUIT CENTERS!!


We love these things! And our cub scouts do too . . .They ask for 2 or 3 packs of them at every den meeting. Needless to say, we've already run out of our box of fruit snacks. Oh well, maybe we should go back to regular fruit snacks . ..like apples and strawberries and stuff.

Beat Box Bass

Well, I'm not normally one for posting and sharing YouTube videos, but my friend posted this, and I thought it was hilarious. We got a kick out of it. Now we just need to find one like it for tuba . . .

I think my favorite sound is snapping the mouthpiece cap on the mouthpiece. Unique sound that just about every clarinet player recognizes. =)

The Smolder

I saw something smoldering the other day. I know there are fires going on and such, but I wasn't really near any of them. First what I saw was just a smolder . . .(10 pts)

Then, I really began to worry when I saw this . . .

Yikes! This could be something dangerous here! Oh wait . . .

It was just my husband.

Good thing it rained today!

I L O V E Y O U

Scrabble is not my favorite game. In fact, it's probably pretty high up there on my list of least favorite games to play, ever. Sometimes I feel bad for Jacob because he likes that game so much, but I never want to play it. I've volunteered it a couple of times, but . .. eh, still don't like it.
But I suppose the game can be used for something, right?
The other day when Jacob was at work, I left him a message on the table . . .

So, I left him a love note in 4 different languages. (including Texan!) I was pretty proud of my 79 points.
But of course, he had to outdo me again . . .

Yup, not only did he use ALL the letters, but his message was so big, it took four pictures to get it all. Ain't he a C-U-T-I-E P-I-E? =)