Sunday, September 27, 2009

Funny Things in Life

I haven't been posting as much lately, mostly because we haven't been doing much. I have been volunteering for all of the extra work hours I can, so I've been able to help at health screenings, 5K, and performing site inspections in the past few weeks which means other than our Utah trip, Tim and I haven't been too adventurous. We still love teaching our Sunbeam class at church. Today was an especially funny day, so I decided to start writing the funny things down to share.

I do have to mention that our ward is unique in that we have an apartment complex that houses employees of the Department of State (I've learned that this means they are the ambassadors, etc. in embassies of other countries). We constantly have kids moving in and out while their parents are between assignments. So far this year, we've had kids move to Egypt (a boy named Moses moved there, ha!ha!), Vietnam, somewhere in South America, and most recently Uzbekistan. Only three of our sunbeams have stayed consistent (and two are twins...guess which two) although we've always had at least six.
  • A new girl (not pictured) moved in last week and was sitting in primary playing with a little hole in her tights when she ripped them completely apart. It was like she had a sock and separate leggings. She was on the end of the row, so I didn't see her until a teacher from the other sunbeam class motioned to me that she was crying. I had to take her out and we decided to discard of the entire thing. She had a new pair of tights this week.
  • Today in primary the song leader (who was actually Michelle Prince!) was having a boy choose a picture of an apostle to see what song was on the back. The boy was taking a long time, so Michelle just picked one he was looking at and he said, "but he looks weird!"
  • A while back we were learning about preparing to go to the temple and the teacher asked for some ways we can prepare. A boy raised his hand and very excitedly said, "we can pack our own suitcase!" Yep. That's right!
  • Today we were having the kids choose some situations from cards I was holding out. One of our girls got up to pick one and Tim said, "Pick a winner." She very carefully chose one and then got a big frown on her face and said, "Did I pick a loser?"
Thats just a few, but I'll keep writing the funny things down!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Weekend in Utah!

We finally had the opportunity to take a vacation (now that the summer is over). I had been waiting to go for what seems like forever, so I was excited! We flew to SLC to visit grandparents, stayed a night at TJ and Kristen's, and spent Labor Day weekend in St. George before driving back up to SLC to leave. It was a lot of traveling, but we got to visit a lot of family and get my fill of nieces and nephews!
Kate and Jonas (above) and Makayla and Will (below)
Mom and Dad got us tickets to see Aida at Tuacahn. I highly recommend it!
My nieces and nephews are cuter than yours!
We celebrated Makayla's 4th birthday with a Unicorn Party. Look closely and you'll see we all got to wear unicorn horn and tails. My favorite picture is the one on the bottom row of the back of Jonas. He is made such a cute unicorn!
We finished our trip with a dip in the pool at Grandma's condo! The weather is already cooling and cloudy in VA, so I was glad I soaked up the St. George sun.
Grandma and Grandpa Lotz (I didn't get any pictures with Tim's Grandparents, but we had fun with all of them)I'm already ready to go back!

Monday, August 24, 2009

Our First Experience as Parents...

Tim and I had been wanting to go to the National Zoo since we moved here, but Zoo's are so much more fun with kids (we thought) and we don't have any. His home teaching companion needed a babysitter one Saturday, so we offered to take their two cute children to the Zoo. It all started out well until our Zoo time cut into nap time. We knew it. It was our own fault. Little Joe-Joe stopped having fun and threw a couple of tantrums in the middle of everyone on about the hottest day of the year. Luckily, we made it to see the main attraction, the elephants, and Sadie was an angel the entire time. All I can say now is that I'm glad parents get the chance to build up to the toddler tantrums. ...I have a lot of building to do.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Tim's Blueberry Picking Trip to Georgia

Tim and his parents took the 10 hour trip down to their land in Georgia to pick blueberries a few weeks ago. They ended up with 28 GALLONS of blueberries! I've loved making blueberry scones, muffins, cookies, etc, and I've been very popular at work :)





Other than that, not much is going on. I went to my very first ever big fitness conference and, of course, got sick. We've both been working a lot and looking forward to the next few weeks and months when we actually have some trips planned!



Monday, July 27, 2009

Janeen and a Luau

My good friend and college roommate Janeen finally came out for a visit! I took a day off work and rode to DC for some museums and fun! We started out at the Natural History Museum where I saw the diamond Tim gave to me before I donated it to the museum for display...because it was so big and rare.
Later we went to the Holocaust Museum. I didn't want go to through the entire exhibit, so I looked at an exhibit on Hitler's Propaganda (2 pictures below). One picture shows a game board for children in which the entire point is to drive Jews out of the country. It was really interesting...and crazy.
When I got done with the other exhibits, Janeen and her other friends were not finished, so I decided to go to the Smithsonian Castle. It had the most random things inside such as the original 3 seated American Idol desk, and a pile of "Smithsonian treasures" from the new Night at the Museum movie! After seeing all of the other Smithsonians, the castle is sure a letdown.In the evening, we all ate dinner in Old Town Alexandria and took a Ghost Tour. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for coming Janeen!
Saturday was our sister-in-law DeAnne's birthday. Scott (Tim's brother and DeAnne's husband) wanted to go all out with a luau, so we celebrated hard core.
Tim even hollowed out 15 pineapples and saved the tops so we could put smoothies in and drink from the cool straws (look closely below-it's actually a smoothie cup!)
We all ate delicious Hawaiian-themed food before we got rained out.
The awesome decorations of the "Party House" aka Aubrey's party house.

Happy Birthday DeAnne! Hope you had a great one!

Monday, July 13, 2009

Shenandoah and Old Rag

Ever since we moved to Virginia, I've wanted to go to Shenandoah National Park. We finally found a hike and chose a day to go and hike Old Rag, the name of the mountain we climbed. And when I say climbed, I mean climbed!
It was about a full mile of rock climbing that looked like this...
And this...
It was over 9 miles round trip, and as we were climbing the rocks at about mile 4 it started to rain. The rocks were slick and we thought we had reached the summit about four times before we actually did, but once we really reached the summit it stopped raining and we had a great view.
This is why they call them the Blue Ridge Mountains...


The back way down the mountain was much easier than the way up (though the ranger didn't tell us this before hand). I was surprised at how different the scenery was. Tim even found some water...
And I did too!
Hooray for hiking! It took much more effort to find a place to go here than in Utah, but we're glad we did!

Friday, July 10, 2009

My Cute Funny Husband

Tim is such a good husband. It was a really hard past year with him looking for a job for so long, but he never let it affect our time together. He kept busy by taking online classes and even earning money from small projects, and for the past two months he has been working for the University of Chicago Dept. of Population Economics. The office is a satellite office about 6 miles away from our apartment and he often rides my old bike to get there so I can use the car to get to work. I really appreciate all he does, but he does have some funny quirks...The other day he was planning to take out the trash after he made me a delicious dinner (because he's so sweet...and lost a deal :). As he was taking all of the trash bags out, he mentioned how he never remembers to but the liners back in. I told him it was fine and I was glad to refill the cans if he took the trash out, but he insisted he would get in the habit of re-lining the trash cans. A little while later, I went into the bathroom and found this...
No liner. I thought it was funny, so I went to check our bedroom and found this...
Hmm. Next I checked the kitchen. Tim had run out for an errand, and I found this...
Oh well. He had good intentions. Actually, he did refill the liner to the kitchen garbage. We're making progress!

I just thought this picture was cute because I'm usually the first one up in the morning, and I like to have my yellow blankie by me in bed, but when I'm up, I sometimes throw it over to his side. This is usually what happens...
He'll probably be very embarrassed about this post, but he is such a good husband! I love you, Tim!