22nd Anniversary and Mother's Day

On Wednesday's Ashley has a minimum day and she always comes home and 

asks "What are we going to do" This usually involves finding a friend that is available and doing something. Today Kate and Ashley wanted to bring the dog and go to Sycamore Canyon...

The day was perfect for hiking...when it gets too hot its not much fun. Even though it's pretty dry in Riverside you can find some green. 

The girls decided that they wanted to take some pictures.

Funny girls...

Just kidding around.

That Saturday Ashley had a choir concert at the Riverside Art museum. 

I enjoyed watching her performance as well as some performances from other Riverside schools and then got to look around the museum. 

Ashley's friends...of course she changed out of her dress quick so she could be comfortable. 

I've been cramming to take the Art CSET. I've decided to go back to school and finish my credential so the CSET is one of the steps. I plan on working on the science one as well but thought it would fun to have art...and I thought it wouldn't be too hard. Wrong.

The more I study the more I realize I don't know! I figured out pretty quick that the study help for the test I bought on Amazon was worthless so I went to the library and checked out a bunch of books and started reading up. 

I also needed to have a portfolio. I was a couple short from what I needed so one of the days I pulled out my paints and painted a picture...

I tried to get the best lighting which was by a window.  I thought it didn't turn out too bad...

When Taylor got home he said "your colors are OK but the perspective on your glass is off"....(I could see it once he pointed it out)  Then Jeff got home and I showed it to him and he said "What is that thing...a bleeding heart?" ...ummm it's a shell. 

I guess I'm a little out of practice :(

We are sad that our neighbors and friends the Stubbs are moving to Texas. They had a combo going away and Alise's birthday celebration before they went. It was supposed to be at the park but since it was pouring rain they ended up moving it to the Thompson's house. 

They just had another baby too. Blake, he's a cutie. We at least got to bring him a present, a meal for the family and got to hold him. 

The night before Soli was leaving we did a girls movie night and saw Cinderella 

(which was good by the way)

The girls had just started getting emotional when we posed them for this picture. 

Saying goodbye to the baby too. 

We'll miss you guys!!!

Ethan Stubbs was the bishop of the ward for 3 or 4 months before they ended up moving so now we have a new Bishop. This is his get to know you fireside that was fun. 

Jacob and friends. 

Ashley and Kate (another Wednesday afternoon looking for something to do)

We just celebrated our 22nd anniversary! 

The time has gone fast.

He brought me flowers...

and we went to a nice dinner at Ruth's Chris.

Happy Anniversary Honey!!

The day of my big 6 hour CSET test I was studying in my car about ready to go in when I got sideswiped by an older man as he was trying to pull into the parking spot next to me. 

I'm looking at him in disbelief as his car is scraping down the side of mine. I started honking and waving at him and he was oblivious. 

I got out to talk to him and he was now so close to the other car next to him he couldn't open his door. He backed out to talk to me and didn't believe that he had hit my car. 

I showed him the white line running down my car and he tried to wave it off and deny that it was him... 

I pointed to his bumper that had my paint on it. 

He said "Oh well I got more damage than you" Then he took out a handkerchief and said "This will just wipe off" as he tried to wipe off the scratch marks.

Um I don't think so. I asked to get his information. 

So I walked into my test a little shaken up.

At least I was glad I was sitting in my car when it happened because the guy would've never thought he did anything wrong. 

The day after my test I was working hard to get the rest of the stuff ready for our Mother's Day fundraiser sale and Garage sale for the young women to earn money for girls camp. 

I had a marathon cookie baking day and ended up going to 3 different stores to make the rest of the bath salts. 

The day of the garage sale finally came and I was able to unload my hoarder garage!

Some of the girls helped outside and some helped inside with cookie orders.

We didn't have many big items but we had a lot of little ones and it added up.

We sold from 6:30 to 12 and then packed it up. 

Between both fundraisers we were able to make enough money for the girls!

That night we got to go to see Jenae in her school's performance of Suesical the Musical. 

It was fun to be there with family and support Jenae.

The next day was Mother's Day and we got to celebrate it with Jeff's family at his mother's house in Little Rock. My favorite part was having the kids say nice things about their mothers. 

Ashley's favorite part was holding the bunny! :)

Trip to San Fransisco, Sharp Nationals and Taylor's Birthday

A couple of pictures that I missed from Spring Break...

Ashley had her friend Jenna over one day and they made use of the hot tub.

Afterwards they watched Insidious which is a scary movie (notice that Ashley is covering her eyes) 

Ashley has been waiting for a friend who would watch it with her since most of them say that they don't like scary movies. 

A few days later we had Jenae and Jolene over. 

Again they were in the hot tub...

and then they watched another scary movie that they rented. Jenae deosn't like scary movies. 

When I came into the room 20 minutes into it they had every light on and Jenae had moved from the little couch sitting by herself to snuggling next to everyone else. 

I told Jenae we could turn it off if she wanted. She said "No, now I have to find out what happens!" 

Ha ha.

The weekend after Spring Break Jeff and I flew up to San Francisco early on a Friday morning so he could speak at a New York Life group up there. It's not often that I get to come with him on his speaking engagements so I was happy to be there with him.  He did a wonderful job, he was engaging and had high energy and I was so proud of him. 

After his speech he took lots of pictures with people and then we went to lunch with a smaller New York Life group and he spoke for 15 more minutes. 

Since we didn't have a car we relaxed in our room and took a nap (after waking up at 3:30 that morning) and waited until we were being picked up for dinner. 

Dinner was a great restaurant and I'm sad I didn't get a picture with our wonderful hosts. They were a sweet couple and I was glad to get to know them. The restaurant faced the bay and they said you could see the spot we saw in the news where the plane that didn't quite make it to the airport crashed.

Saturday morning was our day to ourselves. We took the Bart to the airport and dropped off our bag and then went into the city to explore. 

We had to walk from our Bart stop through the city to the water's edge. We were glad we did because there was vendors, crafters and artists all set up for an event that day. 

There was a lot of cool interactive art displays. This one Jeff is stepping on a square which activated a fountain behind him (on the right)

We bought a few wire puzzles from a guy who was making them as we watched. We recorded the solution on our phone in case we couldn't figure it out later :) The kids liked them.

We ended up at a park with this huge permanent art installment. I wish I would have one of us stand in front of it to give an idea of how big it was. 

 By the time it was lunchtime we made our way to Fisherman's warf. 

When we are in town our favorite food is the street food. I get the clam chowder bread bowl. 

Jeff gets the crab cooked while you wait. Super fresh and good. 

We ate our lunch balanced on a concrete step with lots of other visitors listening to a street performer and watching for Seagulls eyeing our lunch.

More exploring brought us to these Sea Lions basking in the sun. We laughed at their fighting over a little spot of dock when there were open docks all around them. 

We went down to Pier 39 and looked in some of the shops and then signed up for...

a double decker bus tour. 

We missed the first bus and had to wait 1/2 hour for the next one and by the time we boarded we didn't have enough time to do the whole tour loop before we had to head back onto the Bart to get to the airport. (It seemed like waiting and riding on transportation ate a lot into our day!)

We saw what we could and were happy we had a great tour guide to tell us about the city as we were driving through it.  We actually were really lucky that we caught the city on a a really warm day. 

I've actually never been in the city with it being as warm as it was! 

Here is the entrance to their old docks where it would take two weeks to unload and load shipping containers. Now it's done in a day and this is obsolete. 

We saw the older parts of town,

and learned about the history. 

We saw the newer parts of town,

and learned about the cities growth. 

They had these painted hearts around the city. This Star Wars one was quite popular.

The capitol building.

We hopped off the bus at China town since it was near our Bart stop and explored some. 

There were interesting shops and cheap souvenirs and we picked up a few things for the kids.  

Walking to the Bart station I realized you never knew what you were going to find around the corner. We stopped at a park to use the restrooms and felt like we had stepped into China. There was a traditional Chinese singer performing and the park was literally packed with people playing card games using cardboard boxes as tables.   

This is an opera singer being recorded for something.

We made it back to the airport on time to find out our plane was delayed. So we had a leisurely bite to eat and then flew home to the kids happy for a quick trip together. 

The next weekend Jacob and Jeff drove to Vegas for the Spark National Cheer competition. 

Jacob and the Mascots were competing along with the Cheer and Pom teams.

Tons of people there and it lasted all day and into the night.

Jeff said they did a great job. 

There weren't any other mascot teams but they still had to earn a certain amount of points to place high. 

They ended up getting first place along with the rest of the cheer and pom teams.  

Jeff originally had visions of hitting a buffet and maybe a show with Jacob. That was out the window because the whole day and into the night was cheer stuff, Jacob got to bed at 12:30 after their ice cream social. A fun experience for him. 

This is some of the stash that Jacob brought home from Nationals. Between all the gifties, medals and rah rah stuff he came home with quite a haul. 

While they were in Vegas I was hosting the Zook family. 

Angela and Robert had a wedding to go to so Ashley and I got to hang out with Ian on Saturday. 

We wanted to do something fun so we took him to John's Incredible Pizza. When we walked in the door he said "Do they have Peanut butter and jelly here?"  Nope but I got him to eat some pizza. 

We played games, some more fun than others. 

(Some seem like they just eat your credits in two seconds)

His favorite was the rides! He had no fear. If the roller coaster would have been open he would've been on it in a heart beat. 

He was happy with the other rides though. 

Before we left he discovered the joys of Icee's. 

We called it blue soda since he didn't know what it was. He wanted more but I thought he would be up all night on a sugar high so I had to cut him off. 

The next day the Zooks came to church with us and then after church and lunch we made Koolaid playdough (Haven't made that in a long time) and slime. 

Ian is happy but he was silly for the picture. 

The Zooks left about an hour before Jeff and Jacob got home. Just missed them. 

For mutual we've done a couple of fun things lately. This was a "speed friending" night where the girls from both wards got to know each other better. 

This was our human Hungry Hungry Hippo night that turned out to be a big hit. I saw a video of it on the internet and now there are all kinds of copycat videos. So now we've done it too. 

Ashley helped her team but didn't try it but everyone else did and liked it.

Taylor had a birthday this last week. 

He's 19!

He doesn't like cake so I made him and apple pie and we sang to him the day before since he was working on his birthday. 

A couple of days later he decided the beard was getting annoying and decided to shave it off. 

He took it off in stages so I could take pictures of how he would look with various facial hair. He said the smiling mustache picture made him look like a creeper, ha ha. 

On Thursday we went to Famous Dave's to take Taylor out to dinner. The only bad thing was that Jacob had a Calculus final that went until 8:00 so it was a late dinner. 

Happy Birthday Taylor!! We love you!