Happy Birthday Mike!

Here is my second birthday post for the day! My dad and my friend Mike share a birthday. I'm a day late for both posts, but I did see both of them for their birthdays.

Will and I met our friend Mike and his wife Michelle 5 years ago at a New Years party at their house. Oddly enough, they weren't the ones that invited us, but we all became fast friends. In fact, the 4 of us vacationed together last summer in Costa Rica and plan on another trip again as soon as we can do it. Granted, Michelle is due with their first baby in April, and we plan on having a baby as soon as possible, so it might be a few years. But I digress... it was Mike's birthday yesterday, and this post is for him!

Mike just turned the big 30!

Here are a few things to know about Mike!

1. He is taller than most people you will meet. He's 6' 6". Perfect to have around for reaching the things on the highest shelf in the kitchen!

2. He likes to play computer games and is quickly getting Will addicted to Halo. However, when he introduced me to the game the results were filled with fear and maybe I screamed a little... He came around a corner really fast and scared me!

3. He and Michelle have the coolest house, and we could spend forever there and never get bored. Between the Air Hockey table, the game systems, and the big flat screen TV, you could be in their basement for a whole day and never run out of things to do!

This is Mike & Michelle on a crazy suspension bridge in Costa Rica.

4. Mike and Michelle are pretty much our best friends in the whole wide world!

Happy Birthday, Mike!

Happy Birthday Dad!

So I thought I'd keep up with the birthday posts, and make a couple more. This one is for my dad! He just turned... really old. Well, I guess "really old" is relative, but he can get the senior discount, so I think that counts! I love him bunches and I think he is pretty much amazing!

Here are 5 things you may not know about my dad. (I would have done as many as he is old, but instead of making you scroll for 5 miles, I took it down to the number of decades he's been on the earth, rounded down to the nearest whole number!)

1. He likes projects. When I was a kid he remodeled our entire kitchen, made desks for 4 kids for Christmas, and built a table strong enough to throw a horse on, but with no cracks for spilled milk to get on mom's lap. Now that I think of it, he probably didn't like those projects, but he did a great job on them!

2. He found a project he really likes. And this one he has to be really good at, 'cause it will be a bit of a life or death matter when it's all finished! This is my dad with the plane he's building!

3. Dad is pretty quiet. Although since we've all grown up, we found out he has a wicked sense of humor!

4. Until recently, Dad didn't enjoy vacations with all the kids there. Something about crying and whining and general unrest amongst the children wasn't appealing to him. But this Christmas in Hawaii seemed to change his mind.

5. My dad is undyingly in love with my mom! He is a great example of what a husband should be like, and I'm grateful my husband is so much like him!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Happy Birthday Hannah

Although this is a day late, I thought it would only be appropriate to do a birthday post for my adorable niece, Hannah. She turned 6 yesterday!

With that in mind... here are 6 things you probably don't know about Hannah.

1. She cannot make a normal face when taking pictures... she also often looks like she has broken her neck when you snap said photos.

Example... no broken neck here... but goofy.

2. Hannah says very strange things you may never expect to come from a 6 year olds mouth or mind.

3. Hannah's picture is on my website 6 times in 3 different galleries. These were taken before the whole "broken neck-goofy face" stage in her life.

4. Hannah's favorite princess in Ariel, and she names every doll, animal, or toy she is given "Ariel."

5. I'm not buying Hannah a doll, animal, or toy for her birthday. I like Ariel (The Little Mermaid), but it gets confusing when she says she wants to see Ariel, and you don't know if she's talking about one of her toys, the movie, or Disneyland.

6. Hannah is the cutest kid in the whole wide world, and she'll tell you that, too!

Happy Birthday, Banana Head!

Reminders of warmer days

It is really cold here. Yesterday the weather said it would feel like -1 degree Fahrenheit. Needless to say, I'm freezing. Now that I think about it, Mark was checking the weather before we left after Christmas, and the world report showed it was colder in Salt Lake City than the South Pole.

So in an effort to remind myself that somewhere it is warm, here are a few more pictures from Hawaii. It'll be kinda like the slideshow that your great aunt Myrtle used to make you sit through after she got back from her month long vacation to Branson, Missouri, but more interesting. And a whole lot shorter!

This is us arriving. We got beautiful leis from Mom & Dad when we got to the airport, then went straight to Waikiki to have dinner with Mark & Ellie at Duke's.



This is the USS Arizona Memorial. It was pretty busy, but well worth the wait to get there. It is an amazing place. And people are wearing shorts... that won't happen here until June, at least!



At the Memorial, there is an amazing wall of all the names of those who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor.



Will and I ordered a strawberry drink in a pineapple at the Polynesian Cultural Center during the luau. I wouldn't dream of drinking anything colder than room temperature right now for fear of hypothermia.




We ran into everyone's favorite Knight Rider... well, I'm actually not a fan of "The Hoff" at all, but it's a funny story to tell! I would rather meet KITT than David Hasselhoff, but oh well. Don't you love the jacket around his waist... did he get stuck in the 80's? Maybe his fashion sense didn't progress... just like his career in acting. Also, I just noticed he's wearing more pink than I think I've ever owned.



I couldn't end on a picture of him, so I thought I'd include another flower picture. This was growing in Mark & Ellie's back yard, and I fell in love with it. I'm thinking it may be good enough for my next photo competition. Any input?

Sleepless in Provo

I've had an introduction to motherhood. Although I don't have kids of my own yet, I was given the opportunity last night to be a "surrogate mom" for a few hours for my sister (she got the flu). And I've made a few observations about motherhood.

#1 If you're given the chance to sleep... do it. You never know when you'll be up all night with a sick child (or sibling in this case).

#2 Regardless of how much sleep you got last night, if you only get 1 or 2 hours of sleep tonight, you will still be tired.

#3 I'm kinda grumpy when I'm tired. And somewhat less attractive.

For some reason, this doesn't change my thoughts about wanting to be a mom.

My new years resolution...

I started thinking about doing a blog about 6 months ago, but never got around to it... Mostly because I'm a procrastinator. I finally signed up for one 2 months ago, but never finished getting it put together, because I'm lazy and life happened. Then I realized that I can put this off as long as I want, because no one will even know I started a blog since I never told anyone.

Then the guilt of taking up unused space on the vast reaches of the internet got to me... well not really that, mostly the continued urging from Will to finish it. So here it goes! I'm resolving to finish at least one thing I started last year... My blog begins with Christmas 2007.

HAWAII!!!

Remember when you were a kid, and you got back from Christmas vacation and all your friends asked, "What did you do for Christmas?" Well, this is what I was doing on Christmas Eve. This is Hanauma Bay, on the lovely island of Oahu.

My brother, Mark, and his wife, Ellie, had us all come and stay with them for a week, and we had an awesome time!

We saw some fish.

And some flowers

And had a generally lovely time!


I'd go back in a heartbeat!

So I guess this is the first of my posts. Now that Will is back in school, I have a lot more time on my hands. Hopefully I'll be able to post frequently enough to keep this interesting.

Please comment! Oh and by the way, "What did you do over the Christmas break?"