June Video

Okay, so I finally finished our June video. I know, I know. I'm behind. But considering how busy I've been, I'm pretty proud I got this done. I also lost my June video tape in Africa, so it's only pictures. Sorry.

I also chose the song for a reason. The day before Zeke died, Geneava made Maralee a CD to listen to while she came back up from Moab. While she was driving through Spanish Fork canyon, this song came on. The scenery was just so beautiful, she said she just felt like the Lord had put this song on the radio at that moment just for her. I loved it before, but I love it even more now.

Oh yeah, I had a Birthday

So I turned 26 last Friday, which, by the way, was also the day after President Monson's Birthday...I was pretty excited to learn that.

Bart took me to Happy Sumo for my birthday. It was yummy. He also got me a bunch of cake decorating stuff and a virtual gift certificate for a digital scrapbooking website. I am pretty excited. I'm taking my time deciding what to buy.

My mom called me and asked me if I felt old yet. I said, "Not really, I feel remarkably like I did yesterday." Then I asked her if she felt old now that she had a 26 year old daughter. She said yes...te he he.

I remembered that I had a birthday today because I got to go out to lunch with my friend Richele. We went to Happy Sumo. Yeah, I've been craving sushi a lot lately.

It was fun going out to lunch and catching up. I haven't seen her since like April...when we went out to lunch for her birthday. Thank goodness for birthdays!

Class of 1998

So this weekend was Bart's 10 year high school reunion. Yep, that's right! 10 YEARS! He's old. ;o)

They had a lunch and a dinner.

The lunch was nice because everyone got to bring their families. They had a bounce house for all the kids, which Addison loved. The look on her face in these pictures really does not do her emotions justice. She ALWAYS wanted to be in this thing. It didn't matter that bigger kids were running into her or that once it wasn't in the shade any more it was blasted hot, every time I talked her into getting out and trying to eat some lunch, she was wanting to go back after one or two bites.That is, until one of the girls figured out how to turn the water spigot by the drinking fountain on. Then she forgot all about the bounce house.

The dinner was nice because it was only for couples, so we were able to visit without having to worry about kids. Bart loved seeing old friends, even though some of his closest friends weren't there. I even had a good time visiting and making new friends.

There were two couples there that live in Spanish Fork that we've never even gotten together with. Hopefully that will change soon. :o)

I Heart My Palm Centro

So I'm not a big fan of buying new things. Whenever Bart tries to convince me to buy some new clothes or a purse or shoes or something, it's seriously like pulling teeth..with the exception of maybe scrapbook stuff or fabric. But, I am SO GLAD he talked me into getting a new cell phone. We wanted a planner function, and thanks to the discount he gets because he's a government employee, we could get this $170 phone for $50 each.

I use my planner ALL the time, so I was worried I wouldn't like the one on the phone. I was wrong. I LOVE it!!! I can set an alarm for everything that I have to remember. I can use the repeat function so that I don't have to enter the same things in over and over. And it has a task list and will show me my schedule and task list on the same screen. Now it's true that outlook can do all these things, but in order to get your alerts in outlook, you have to be on your computer. Now I just have to have my phone near by! AND it's like 1/12 the size of my old planner. I LOVE it!!!

And, the crowning glory of this phone, we purchased pocket quicken for it so that I can enter purchases into quicken as I'm making them and those purchases will automatically be uploaded to quicken when I sync my phone. I just tried it out on a purchase for some face wash I made this morning. It was seriously the highlight of my week. (For those of you that find no appeal whatsoever in this please remember, I am an accountant). I LOVE my new phone!!!

How My Daughter Says "Otter"

So I was snuggling with Addison today while she was watching Baby Einstein's "Neighborhood Animals." An animal would come up on the screen and she would point to it and say it's name. I was feeling all puffed up with pride for my daughter's intelligence.

An otter came onto the screen, she pointed and yelled, "Otter Pop!"

Now, let's see....

Yep, practically the same thing.

P.S. Since when is an otter a neighborhood animal? I haven't seen any otters wandering along our street.

Watch your Words

So today as we were getting into the car to take Amy back up to Provo, Bart saw two grasshoppers doing something that should only be done in private.

He goes, "Look, there are two grasshoppers doing the nasty." At which point Addison promptly said, "Hopper! Nasty!" I so glad those were the words he chose and not something that could be potentially embarrassing if blurted out later.

Tabitha had her baby!

So my friend Tabitha had her baby on Tuesday. When she had Benjamin, we got a picture with our friend Haas and her two kids. This time Haas didn't make it down, but we got a picture of us & our kids.

She hates the way she looks in this picture, but I think she looks pretty freaking good considering she was in labor for like four days! You're AMAZING Tabitha!

The Follies of Big Birds

I was looking through my pictures and I realized there was a few more things from the Masi Mara that I wanted to share.

First of all, Ostriches make bad parents. This is a group of young ostrich siblings. (One hen can lay over 4 dozen eggs at a time). Our driver informed us that normally the parents are with the young ostriches, but if they sense danger, they'll just run off leaving their kids to fend for themselves. Fortunately we didn't see any predator attacking them, but I felt bad for them anyway.
Here are the irresponsible, cold hearted parents.
And we got pretty close to some vultures...nasty.

More Serengeti Pics

Isn't this a cool looking bird?
This lioness is pregnant. She's posing for a belly picture.

Aren't Warthogs Ugly?

I LOVE this giraffe picture.
This was the smallest elephant we saw.
As we were watching the baby elephant, Bart was looking at something in a bush by the car...I wrote it off as him taking another scenery picture. Nope, he was looking at a bat.

The Serengeti

Okay, now we're in the Serengeti again. So right after we saw the alleged black mamba, we were driving and the driver saw a snake on the road. It was an Adder! That brought up our poisonous snake count up to three...if you count the black mamba that we actually did see on the way out of the park. And our guide said we wouldn't see any...Silly guide. :o) (That's a tick on it's head...gross huh?)

And now that I think about it, I don't think I told you about the first snake. It was our last day in the Masi Mara. We were driving back to our lodge and the driver slammed on his brakes and yelled, "Cobra!" Sure enough, a HUGE cobra was slithering across the road.
The Serengeti was much flatter than the Masi Mara, but it had these huge rock formations all over. You can totally see where the inspiration for Pride Rock in the Lion King came from.

I can't think of any especially unique stories from the rest of the Serengeti, so I'll just post a bunch of the pictures we got.

Our lodge was basically built into one of those rock formations I was telling you about, and there were tons of Rock Hyraxes all around the Lodge Grounds. And as a side note, the closest living relative to these small, rodent-looking creatures is the elephant. I can see it, can't you?We also had to be careful because there were vervet monkeys everywhere. If you gave them the chance, they'd run right into your room.
I have more pictures, but I haven't uploaded them yet, so you'll have to wait until my next post.

The Olduvai Gorge

Okay, so I realized this too came before we got into the Serengeti. On our way there, we stopped by the Olduvai Gorge, often referred to as the cradle of mankind. It's where they found the first specimens of Homo habilis, dating back to about 2.5 million years ago. I didn't realize we were going there. When I was in elementary school, I LOVED learning about Lucy and all the remains they found of man's early ancestors. It was neat to actually be there.

The Elephant Mud Bath

Our first day in Tanzania we went to Lake Manyara. The coolest thing we saw there was an elephant mud bath. The poor elephant was in so deep we thought he was stuck. He really looked like he was struggling for a while, but then he got up and walked away. It was pretty impressive.This was also the first place we saw the blue monkey.

The Black Mamba

Okay, so this post is a little out of order. I forgot that we went to Lake Manyara before we got to the Serengeti...but I didn't want to have to go get all the pictures again, so you'll have to live with it. :0)
As we were traveling into the Serengeti we stopped at a look out point to eat. We ate at the bottom of a hill, and then hiked up to the top to see a beautiful view of the Serengeti. As we were coming back down Bart noticed a snake trying to get into a hole in the side of the path. I was worried it was a poisonous snake, so I stayed back and encouraged Bart to do the same. Bart said, "I think it's just a garter snake," He thought the snake must be hunting, so he got out his camera to take pictures. But it wasn't a small animal the snake pulled out of the hole, it was another snake! The snakes started wrapping around each other. They were mating! I decided they probably wouldn't strike while they were mating, so I pulled out the video camera and got some video of it too.

Right after I turned off the video camera, there was a loud popping noise and one of the snakes just disappeared! It was so crazy. I blinked and he was gone! I finally persuaded Bart to come down the mountain with me (I didn't want to risk finding out unwittingly where the other snake was).

When we got down, and showed the pictures to our guide and asked him what kind of snake it was. He said, "WHERE DID YOU SEE THAT?!?! IT'S A BLACK MAMBA!" Garter snake my foot!!! I was so mad at Bart. We both felt very unnerved at our close brush with such a poisonous snake.

Later we asked our guide if we could see one of his books that had some snakes in it. We looked up the picture of the black mamba...yeah, we're pretty sure the snake we saw wasn't the black mamba. We think it was an African Sand Snake. I wish I could have found a picture on the Internet, but it looks exactly like the picture in the book.

On our way out of the park we had lunch at the same look out point again. One of the girls on our trip wanted to see where we had seen the snake. We went up to the top to show her. On our way down we saw another snake...fortunately much further away this time. That snake, however, looked exactly like the picture of the black mamba in the book. Bart's camera was in it's case, so he wasn't able to get it out quick enough for a picture. Oh well.

A Budding Artist

So Addison has taken to drawing like a fish takes to water (pardon the cheesy cliche). In church on Sunday we brought crayons and let her color on the back of the fliers. When it was time for her to go to nursery, she refused to let go of one of the crayons and kept demanding, "Paper!" (Which sounds a lot like papa).

I let her hold the crayon and thought once she got into nursery and saw all the toys she'd forget about drawing. Nope. She just kept yelling, "Paper! Paper!" And then started crying. I finally caved in and asked one of the nursery leaders if it was okay if she colored for a while. She said it was fine, so I left her with a piece of paper, crayon in hand. She was one happy camper.

I have taken pictures of some of her art works to show the world our budding young artist. (I should have scanned them, but I was in a hurry. I'll have to do that later).For all of you who are aware of the developmental stages of children, she has even started labeling her pictures. Whenever you ask her, "Addison what's that?" She will invariably tell you, "A Nose." I can see it....

She also thinks that since she likes drawing, everyone else must like drawing too, so she will give you a crayon and demand that you draw. When you ask her what you should draw, she says, "A nose."

This one was a collaborative work between Bart & Addison.

I think this one is my favorite so far.

And this one is definitely my least favorite.

Yep, Bart called me at work today to inform me that Addison drew on our window seal. When I got home and saw how much she had drawn, I wondered what Bart was doing while Addison was drawing. Which reminds me, we put up molding and new shades in our windows. And by we I mean Bart & my mom. Didn't they do a great job! (This picture really doesn't do it justice. It looks great!)
So, do any of you veteran moms have advice for me on how to remove crayon from window seals?