Christopher turns 2!!!!!

Christopher turned 2 years old August 9th. Here's a few pictures of the birthday boy! We took him to the zoo a few days before and then made a zoo cake. He really got into the singing and the cha cha chas we add to the birthday song.

Homecoming

It's been so long since I've attempted to blog, but we really love seeing what the rest of you are up to that I thought I'd give it a shot again. It was homecoming for IFHS this past week and the dance was Saturday and Kendall had his 1st date!


These are all the cute girls in Jordan's group. Their group had bread pudding for dessert. Here's Jordan and his date Megan Taylor. She's in our ward and a really cute girl. We've all been coaxing him to take her out for a long time now :)!

Here's Kendall's group, they came first and had a Sundae bar with lots of fixen's on top.

Kendall's group.

Kendall and his date Taryn Brown. She's on the cross country team with him.

Islands of Adventure

During Spring break, my mom and I went to Florida with my high school band. It was really, really fun. We left the high school at 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning and took a bus to Salt Lake. Then we took a flight to Orlando Florida, went to our hotel, had a pizza party, and went to sleep.

The next day we went to Islands of Adventure. It was soooo fun. It had tons of intense roller coasters and other cool rides. My favorite was the dueling dragons coater. It is one of those coasters that is attached at the top so that your feet hang. It is so cool, fast, loopy, and scary. There are two coasters that run at the same time, so that during the ride, it looks like you are going to hit the other coaster but you go up or down instead. We even got front row seats on this ride, so it was especially scary.
The Jurassic Parks was cool looking. All the plants in Florida are a lot cooler looking than any thing we have here in Idaho, so the Jurassic Park section really looked exotic.
The Spiderman ride and the Incredible Hulk ride were more of my favorites. Spider man was a 3D one. You almost felt like you were really fighting the evil villains with Spiderman. Bricks would fly straight at my nose, and right when they were about to hit it, they disappeared. There was fire, water, everything.
The Hulk ride was just really intense. It starts off on a gradually incline. As you are looking forward, you see that the top is still a while away, so you relax...then, all of a sudden it shoots strait up. It is soooo fun. We went on that ride probably four or five times trying to get the perfect pose for the cameras.

MGM

On Thursday, we went to MGM Studios. The Tower of Terror was my favorite ride. It tells a spooky story, and after you are scared silly, it drops you. Then shoots you straight up. Then drops you again. I wish we could have gone on it more than once.

This next picture is us in front of the Rockn' Roller Coaster. It starts off going from 0 to 60 in 2 point something seconds.

Around lunch we had to get ready for our festival. Everyone changed and then warmed up on the bus. We played at MGM and did so well that we even got an "excellent" trophy.

Here's the Buzz Lightyear ride. You got to shoot at target for points. After the festival, we went to Magic Kingdom.

Kennedy Space Center & Cocoa Beach

On the way to the Kennedy Space Center we saw a ton of Alligators in the ditches...there were tons!! When we got there, we got to have lunch with an astronaut. It was pretty cool learning about all stuff they do with no gravity. Then, it started raining...hard. All of the Floridians were huddle under the eaves, while everyone from IF was playing in the rain and getting soaking wet.
The only day with clouds was the day we went to the beach. We went to Ron Jon Surf Shop first; then we went to the Cocoa Beach. Ocean water is discusting. It's impossible not to get the salty water in your mouth, but the waves were really fun and big. We also found a dead sea turtle that was half rotted. It was pretty exciting.

Animal Kingdom and Organization Freaks

This is the group of boys that shared a room together. Jon, Justin, Andrew, and me.

And here are the girls that we hung out with:
At Animal Kingdom my favorite ride was Mount Everest. Can you see it. All the rides at Disney World were mild compared to Islands of adventure, but this was one of the more intense one's. you went backwards in the dark. it was kind of scared because of all the jerks and sudden drops/rises.

Organization Freaks:

It all started when we wanted to see how many pairs of shoes we brought, so we lined them all up.

Then we lined everything else up: rubik's cubes, wallets, instruments, yo-yos, etc., etc., and etc. (we also had to make sure we were all wearing socks.)

And finally when Mr. Burger came in for Room inspection, we were all sitting on the bed with scriptures. Jon read Mosiah 4:27 which says, "And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order..." as Mr. Burger walked in. He got a huge kick out of it. He told our story on the bus on the way to Epcott and in School, the day we got back.

Magic Kingdom

Here's the famous castle. Magic Kingdom was packed full of people. It was crazy!!!! At night they had a cool lights parade. They had a whole bunch of Disney characters dress up in lights. It was pretty brilliant. This picture doesn't do the parade justice.
After the parade, there were fireworks. I never saw the fireworks at Magic Kingdom, but I did see the show at Epcot. It was really cool...cooler than IF fireworks!! The show was shorter but a lot more intense, coordinated with the music, and had lasers and fire.

Epcot

My favorite park was Epcot. It was more of an educational park, but the part I liked about it was that behind the lake, they had different countries: Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, U.S.A., Japan, Morocco, France, U.K., and Canada.

It was sooo fun to see what these countries are kind of like. When you walked through each country, the plants, architecture, and workers changed. In Norway we ate some pastries and hugged a troll.

In China we saw these amazing Chinese acrobats. They looked really young. There was a lady that was on one of those tall unicycles. She put bowls her feet one at a time and threw them up on her head. After she threw/stacked 4 bowls on her head, she threw a cup and a spoon up there. It was amazing. Then there were these two twin girls who did body contortions while holding themselves up with one hand. Then there was a group of boys who did a whole bunch of intense jump rope tricks, complete with front flips and and the worm.

We also met Mulan.

In Germany I watch a glass blower work on a glass globe thing. It was pretty cool.

JapanCan you see the Eiffel Tower?United Kingdom...we saw Mary Poppins here!

In Canada there was this band called Off Kilter. It was a rock band with a bag pipe. It was really cool sounding. We even bought one of their CDs.

My favorite ride at Epcot was Soaring. It was like you were in this huge hang glider that was flying over different Californian landscapes: the Golden Gate bridge, the ocean, an orange orchard, a golf course, etc.

When we got to the airport on Sunday everything was going fine. The airplane was there ready to load. Everyone went through security and got on board the plane at five o'clock. The plane started moving. It went faster, and faster, and faster, then all of a sudden it slowed to a stop. The captain got on the intercom and said that the right jet engine didn't start. He said he would try again and if it didn't work they would have to have a mechanic look at it. It didn't work. We pulled into the docking bay while the mechanic looked at the engine. It turned out that they needed a part that wouldn't be able to get there until eight. We un-boarded the plane and waited, and waited, and waited. They ended up taking the plane to a hanger and dissembling the engine and putting it back together. (Mr Burger called the head guy of Delta and he said that that was the first time in 10 years where they couldn't fix that problem out on the runway) We ended up leaving around 11:30PM, arriving in Salt Lake around 3:30am, waited for our bus driver for 45 minutes, and then home to IF. It was a big adventure. We didn't get to IF until six a.m. our time. We were supposed to go to school that day, but Mr. Burger excused it!!

AH....Finally done

This is my first oil painting I've done!!! It took me forever. I spent all of one weekend and then stayed up till two so that I was able to get it finished. I feel so free now that I don't have to work on it ever again.

My painting was one of five to get Best of Show in the art show this semester. I had a headace this day....can't really tell though.

This is my first project I did this year. All the students had to get a photo they took or someone else took and either do a pencil drawing, pen and ink, scratchboard, or watercolor. This is my first watercolor.

Christmas

We're trying to catch up a little. So much has happened and there's no time to blog it seems. Jordan posted a few pictures and I will write a little about them. These next two pictures are from a trip we took to Salt Lake. We went down there to attend the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Symphony Christmas concert. It was my first time in the Conference center and wow what a place! They had a guest singer from Norway-her name was Sissel and she was just fantastic. Very beautiful voice. The next day we went to the Gateway and took Heidi and Nathaniel to the build a bear workshop. They both chose the same animal-a leopard. Nate got a elf costume for his and Heidi's was a girl Santa dress. They loved doing that and thanked me over and over!


In the Gateway mall there is a sports store that has this great climbing wall. Kendall, Jonathan, and Nathaniel all climbed it. This picture is of Nate- he surprised me on how far up he went.
Here's our picture of Mike, Celestine, and Samuel when they came to see us. We had so much fun in what seemed like such a short time. We miss you already!!!! Look how tall Sammy is and how short I look :)!!!!
We had to rush and celebrate Jordan's birthday this year it seemed. Both Kendall and Jonathan had a band concert that night and all three of the boys had piano that day too. Happy 17 years old Jordan!!! He had his traditional Caramel Chocolate Pecan Torte-a super yummy Martha cake by the way.

Check out this picture enhancement by Jordan. We had a breakfast casserole, deluxe hot cocoa and flaming grapefruits Christmas morning! We all got new winter hats this year.
All the kiddies in their new pj's

Playing the new roll the piggy game

Grandma and Grandpa Hatch stopped by.