The Results...

I know, I know. Sleepless nights? Anxiety over how our basement would turn out? I'm sure you have all felt it. I'm here to put you all at rest. We finished painting our basement on Christmas Eve (even though I did some touch-ups on Christmas...) And here it is...

In this shot you can see the new ceiling color. White. Yeah. super exciting. But you can also see how NOT white the walls previously were! Yuck.


We painted the kitchen first, and thus--everything was moved into the living room. :)


At this point the kitchen was done and we prepared the living room for painting!




The finished color! What do you think???


Haha. Just kidding. That was just the tinted primer. For a couple hours we had a watermelon living room. Pink paint, green tape. :) This is our friend Mark helping us out.


Finally--the finished product! We are still figuring out (okay, so it's really just me taking forever) where to hang our art and pictures and stuff, so the walls are still kinda bare... This is our office/kitchen space.


The sink area! Ah. My favorite part about this part is that there is no longer a two-inch strip of yucky yellow glue above the sink!


And the living room. And yes. No more gramma-lamp. Curtains are in the making. Pictures still pending. :)


You can see all our pictures laid out on the hearth.


Yum. Love love love.


I am so incredible happy to be done. It was quite the job! Mostly I'm just happy to have my living room back! :)

Heroes

If there was a superhero that went around saving flies from sticky walls covered in paint...

I would be that superhero.

Seriously. That fly owes me big time.

The Best Christmas Present EVER!!

I bought 7 gallons and one quart of paint today.

• 2 gallons white for my kitchen and baseboards
• 2 gallons of "New Brick" reddish brown for my living room
• 2 gallons ceiling paint
• 1 gallon tinted primer
• 1 quart white primer to cover all the patched spots in my kitchen

I'm sure I'll have enough--I'll let you know if I got too much. :) I wanted to show y'all what our place looks like now. I'm in the middle of folding laundry right now, so it's a little messy, but you'll get the idea.

This is part of our living room. The love sac is usually up against the wall, but we're hosting a gaming party for the priests in our ward in a couple days, and we need to project on to that wall (projector courtesy of the MTC...) That also explains my old sound system on the floor. You gotta have sound! If you look closely you can see the patch marks on the wall. I can't wait till those are gone...


Our sitting area. Complete with poofy chair and laundry bin. :) And hey! Check our our gramma lamp! We found that in the garage. Or storage room. Basically the same thing. Eventually we'll get matching lamps.


Another view of our sitting area, with our chunky monkey fireplace and the cedar chest turned end table that I made in high school.


Our office is on the same wall as the fireplace, just to the right. Yeah. It's pretty much in the kitchen. But there's enough room, and a hard floor, which is nice for our rollie-chairs. :)


Our kitchen. If you look super close you can see the ridiculously terrible job on the wall. They guy who put in the countertop didn't bother to properly patch the wall before hand. So there's about two inched of nasty dried glue along the top of the splash guard. And guess who gets to sand that down before painting!? You guessed it. There are several spots that were poorly patched, actually. I guess some people don't realize that the point of patching is to make it so you CAN'T SEE the spot once the wall is painted again. Hum. So yeah. I'm really excited for it all to be at least the same color, at least!


Kirby and I love our new place, despite our bitterness towards the sloppiness of the guy who did the kitchen. It just frustrates me that people call that "finished," is all.

So. Once the paint is done, we will be saving up for curtains and lamps. I already have our curtain rods--they were on clearance at Bed Bath and Beyond. :) Hopefully the painting will be done in the next couple days. We probably won't start until Kirby is done with finals, though. He really wants to help. So, if any of you have insider tips on painting, let me know! :)

Out of the ordinary? Not a chance.

So, I'm click clicketing away on my computer, when Kirby walks in the room and informs me that he doesn't need a haircut anymore.

He fixed the problem himself...



...



...



...with product. :)

Twilight...

Kirby and I went to see Twilight last night.



His idea.

Really. Not even joking. :)

Neither of us have read the book (although, I fully plan to), but we thought it looked interesting. And I loved it. It was really cool.

And to all of you who are hardcore fans and are offended that I saw it without reading the book--sorry. I actually intended to, but I haven't had the time yet. But now--I am even more excited to. I can't wait to experience the characters in greater depth.

And for the record--Kirby enjoyed it, too! So any of you ladies who want to see it, but have reluctant husbands--tell them to bite the bullet and just try it! They will be pleasantly surprised. :)



p.s.... The movie was so much cooler than the promotion photos.

Hours and Hours...

What do you get when you mix a photographer with a newly discovered fountain of free photoshop actions?

Hours and hours of wasted time.

Okay, false. Not wasted. Just a lot of time spent weeding out the best ones! AH! I'm in heaven, really. Let's just say my entire desktop is full of little .atn files waiting to be experimented with. I will showcase my favorites on my photo blog! :)

My Feelings About Family

I have been avoiding writing a post about this, not because I don't know how I feel about it, but because I hate getting involved in political issues where there is little or no respect for my beliefs. But it's time. I need to share.

I will always defend the family for several reasons. First of all, the family unit, with a mother and a father, is instituted of God. Secondly, without a family, sealed for time and all eternity, we would have no purpose here on earth. I know we all have divine potential to become gods and goddesses, and that that is the purpose for our mortal existence. To achieve that end we needed bodies--thus, our mortal existence. But we also need the sealing power that our temple covenants provide.

I had a little spark of personal revelation the other day. I was thinking about the whole Prop 8 issue, and my mind eventually drifted to Latter-day Saint families. I chuckled to myself a bit about how we are notoriously known for our enormous families--and then it hit me. Each child brought into this life by a mother and father who love the Lord, is one more child that will be raised in the light of the Gospel. I had never thought about this before. There are so many homes where families are being torn apart, and where children are not safe, whether it be physically, emotionally, or spiritually. And for each child we bring to our families, the is one more child who is born into a safe haven. No longer will my perception of how many children I can handle be based on what I feel is a "nice round number." My view of parents, and what my role will eventually be as a mother, will never be the same. I think I understand a little better the daunting, yet beautiful responsibility that is parenthood.

Up until now the family was under attack, but indirectly. The media showed dysfunctional families as normal, acceptable, and almost desirable. Marriage was portrayed as an option, and often as a sign of weakness. A powerful force against the family, yes, but nothing like we have seen this past week.

It saddens me to see people who have no understanding of the sacredness of the family, shouting angrily outside of our temples. Needing someone to blame, they have turned their angry faces towards us because we stood up for the truth. We were strong and declared our beliefs honestly. But what saddens me even more are those in the church who are protesting. There were BYU students (members of the Church) who were rallying groups to go protest at the Salt Lake Temple. I have a firm testimony in our Prophet, and acting directly contrary to his counsel is not somewhere I would want to be. It brings the parable of the ten virgins to life for me. Up until now it has always been hard for me to imagine that half of the Lord's church would be unprepared at his coming. But now, as I come to a better understanding of what the future will be like for the Church, it is beginning to make more sense. It is so important that we cling to the Prophet's words.

I have a testimony of family. I love the Gospel, and I love the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I know it is the one church on the earth today with the complete truth. I love temples, and I know that the work we do there is vital to our salvation. I know we have a prophet on the earth today--Thomas S. Monson--and I am thankful to our Heavenly Father for blessing us with one. It would be terrifying to live in a time like this without a watchman on the tower. I am so thankful for the truth. Families are forever.

Another One Bites the Dust

Yup. My left hand is now minus one ring. Bummer? Yeah. Big time.

My diamond fell out of my setting. But before you panic--it fell out in my hand. Lucky? Probably not. Blessed? Most definitely. I figured we would be covered under some kind of warranty at the jeweler we bought it from, but apparently repairs aren't included--which, I guess, makes sense. That's what their "insurance" is for, right? PSH. Still, I figured the price would be manageable--after all, they just had to repair the PRONGS.

NOT SO.

Apparently I am incredibly rough on my ring? How? I don't know. They couldn't figure it out either. They asked me lots of questions, though...

What do you do for your job? Uhhh... photographer?
Do you sleep with your ring on? Nope.
Are you sticking your hand in your pocket all the time? Nope. I purposefully switched my chapstick to my right pocket when I got engaged to avoid such things--I hate when my ring catches on stuff.

No, I don't chew on my ring, no I don't use it to grind flour, and no, I don't use it to cut glass at my secret underground stained glass factory.

You get the idea. But regardless of why all--yes, ALL--of my prongs were either worn down to nubs, hanging by a shard, or broken completely, the repair ultimately has to made. However, I have a hard time paying an average of $30 per prong to fix my ring. Maybe I'm stingy. Maybe I have no concept of how expensive jewelry repairs normally are. But I can't bring myself to do it.

Thus--My anniversary band is riding solo for now.

Bedtime Tongue Twisters

Two nights ago Kirby and I were falling asleep and somehow we got on the topic of tongue twisters. Naturally, we went back and forth challenging each other to various tongue twisters such as "Peter Piper," and "Rubber baby buggy bumpers."

Eventually there was a longer pause between us and then we both said simultaneously:

"Grace has Bob's dead wife's heart!" (That's a tricky one--try it!)

And then Kirby said "Checkmate!"

I believe he meant "Jinx!" :)

My Little Homeless Husband

Yes, we are still alive. I've been super busy lately with photo shoots (four this past weekend and three the weekend before) so I haven't had much time to post on here. But this was just too cute, and I couldn't resist. Plus--it doesn't take much time to post a hilarious picture of one's husband. And then it will be back to editing photos... Same ol', same ol'...

Isn't he cute? This is the blanket he's crocheting. And it's.. maybe a fourth of the way there? We're excited. :)

My Hair

So. Back in the day when I "spiked" the back of my hair up, I had SOOO many people come up and ask me how I got my hair to stick up like that. Well, my friends, I finally have an answer that is so much shorter than explaining that my hair is extremely thick and naturally curly, etc. etc. etc. I thoroughly plan to print this out, business card style, so I can just hand it to people. If, of course, I ever do something fun like that again. (It'll happen. I have no doubts. I'm already feeling cabin fever coming on with my more conservative look.) I'll simply say, "Well, let's put it this way. This is what happens if I blowdry my hair upside-down." Then I'll smile and walk away. :)

CALIFORNIA!

So, back in the day, as in the last week of August before school started, Kirby and I took a road trip to California with our friends Mark and Amy. It was a blast. We took Mark and Amy's car (Mazda 3) as opposed to our older and less-comfy-for-the-back-seat-sitters Mazda Protege. The highlight of the trip was probably this:



But the whole trip was amazing--that oughta tell you just how good Wicked was! :) But let's get back to the beginning, shall we? And I should warn you--there were many favorites (as in... over 100, I think) and so I combined many into one image. If you want a better view, click on the image and it will enlarge nicely for you.

We began our adventure, well, in Utah. But the first place we stopped was in St. George for the night. Since we only had five or six hours left to drive, we went to Zions with our beautiful host--Amy's sister-in-law Ashley. It was gorgeous.


We had to be selective in the lookout spots we went to since we didn't have all day, but one of the spots we chose was the Weeping Rock. You can't tell from this picture, but there is water constantly dripping out of the top. And there are Ashley, Amy, Mark, and Kirby walking away!


We also saw this: A million-year-old nutcracker! Preserved in stone! :)


Two of these pictures weren't actually from Zions. Can you tell which ones?? The one of Mark on the stairs is when he reenacted a scene from The Princess Bride. Impressive, really.


This rock was on the trail to the Weeping Rock. It was split in half by a tree root! (Just in case you can't tell exactly what it is...) I personally think it looks like PacMan.


Warning signs can actually bring more danger...


These pictures are from the hotel. TMNT, and the reaction from a piece of fudge. One is from Disneyland (the giant ball--the highlight for Marka and Kirby) and one is from Zions. It wouldn't fit in the pictures above. :) Kirby is demonstrating his ninja skills. A.K.A. doing the water thing from The Count of Monte Cristo.


FOOOA! :) This one is worth looking at big-style. Even if it is just to see the "F". Mark is in that one--can you see?


In line for Space Mountain, trail mix, cupcakes, laughing, and a soggy foot. Priceless.


We met Wayne Szalinski (yeah. I had to look that one up) in 3-D fashion!


After a bit of confusion on the part of our husbands, we finally got this photo op sorted out.


The magical road that never ends! :)


This is the "Rocks" montage. I figured they all went together, right? Kirby and Mark had to go through an exhiliarating rock climb to survive. We found out how tough it is to be a bug (barely survived that one!), got yelled at for sitting on a rock wall (FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY, PLEASE GET OFF THE ROCKS!!!), and were refreshed by plummeting walls of water. Ah, glorious mist.


Yeah. I cheated a little. But they're really bad quality, and we bought the Splash Mountain one. Couldn't resist. Amy is trying to PRY her eyes open. :) And see the fake water? How it looks like it's splashing AWAY from us? Well, think again. That all went on Amy. Please also take note of the Buzz Lightyear scores. It was a sad day.


Did we enjoy the gift shops? What makes you ask that?


This was taken right after splash mountain--mostly to document the fact that Amy's only dry parts are her crotch region and the backs of her knees. Oops! Sorry Amy. (She was the smallest, so naturally she had to sit in front!) :)


We only spent two days in the parks, which ended up being perfect. The next day we relaxed the whole day at the hotel--bought Kirby a new wallet (he made sure I put that in there)--and then we drove over to L.A. for dinner and WICKED!! We parked in the underground parking for a mall, and then went up to see what they had in terms of food. It turns out 10 Years Younger (TLC) was being filmed at that very mall and we became part of it! Okay, so we just stood there for 15 minutes waiting for the "unveiling" of the lady, after which we cheered. But by that time we were hungry enough that there was no way we would be waiting around to guess how old she was. So if any of you watch that show (because I don't) let me know if you ever see me and Kirby at the reveal. I doubt we will actually be on camera, but you never know! We took off the the California Pizza Kitchen pronto.

Ironically, right around the corner (on the same block!) was the Chinese theater with all the handprints of Hollywood's best! AWESOME. We also met two batmans, two jokers, Robin, Jack Sparrow (who we saw having a smoke with the Terminator), Shrek, etc. etc. etc. The joker was really nice.


Then--WICKED. Oh man. So cool. I knew most of the music (okay, so all of the music they put on the soundtrack) but it was so amazing to actually be there and hear it in person. On the soundtrack you think, "Wow. Really good voice." But when you see an actual person pumping it out live--indescribable. If any of you ever have the chance--GO. It is worth every penny!


Friday was our last day. We spend the morning at the Newport Temple. We got there a little early, so naturally we took some pictures. :)


And some more pictures...


Lots and lots of pictures...


And that night we finished up in the hotel pool. Classic moments in here, lemme tellya.


Saturday morning we ventured home--no stop halfway in St. George this time! There was a lot of this happening...


But meanwhile... Kirby was rockin'. That's my man.

Ugh

I'm not exactly what you would consider a "girly-girl." Or maybe I am. But lets just pretend for a bit that I'm not. :) Occasionally, though, I get the urge to jump up and down on my tippy toes squealing "Ew! Ew! Ew! Ew!" (I have actually done this in my sleep--ask Kirby about it!) I had one of these momentary lapses just a few moments ago.

So, an hour or two ago I felt something funny in my left ear and thought in a panic,

"ACK! I'm being invaded!!!"

There wasn't really anything exciting after that so i forgot about it. But then I stuck my finger in my ear a minute ago to scratch an itch and there was something big in there! Not huge, but bigger than your usual crusty earwax blob. I wanted to scream, but didn't. I flicked a bit, and it fell onto my desk. It was a strange little thing. Kind of reddish in color. I'm actually not even sure if it was a bug. But if it was, it is definitely dead now, which testifies to the incredible bug-killing capacity of our earwax!

Family Scripture Study

Me: "And after they had been cast into prison many days without food, behold---"

Kirby: "You're gonna be pop-uuuuu-lar..." (from the musical Wicked)

Naturally, I waited until he was finished.

Me: "And after they had been cast into prison many d---"

Kirby: "It's not about aptitude! It's the way you're viewed! So it's very shrewd to be..."

Again, I waited until he finished.

Me: "And after they had been cast into p---"

Kirby: "Very very pop-uuuuu-lar... like me! LAAAA LAAAA... LaaaaAAAAaaaah Laaaah..."

Small pause...

Kirby: "I have musical Terets." :)

Earwax

I learned something new and amazing tonight as I continued my medical transcription course. I learned what the purpose of earwax is...

It serves as an insect repellent!

Which, really, makes sense! THANK YOU, Heavenly Father, for thinking of the little things--namely bugs and spiders--that would love to crawl inside my warm, vasculated ears to lay their precious little eggs. THANK YOU for my brilliant body that produces its own bug repellent to keep that from happening!

I have heard the spider statistic many times--you know, the one about how many drowned spiders we end up ingesting by sleeping with our mouths open? Yuck. But still--that's just eating them. They wind up in your stomach and are digested by hydrochloric acid. Woohoo!

But the thought of a spider crawling into my ear and laying its eggs----AAAAAGH! I shudder to think of it! It is still weirding me out. And yes, thanks to my new knowledge I know that will never happen, thanks to my earwax--and yet.... the thought still makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry.

Uuuugghuuugh... (that is the sound of a shudder...)

Invested.

So, Kirby and I have finally gotten the guts up to invest. Sort of. Well, it is investing, just the baby step, though. We have invested in Vanguard's 500 Index Fund. And we've opened a Prime Money Market account. So... yeah. I feel all grown up and stuff. :)

A New Kind of Roller Coaster

So yeah, basically I have been slacking. I was going to continue with the trend today, when I read Natasha's post about having freakout moments just because of life. And I thought to myself:

Yeah. That's pretty much where I'm at right now.

Luckily, my current moment is on its way out (they tend to do that after a couple of days,) and I wonder, "Why was I so worried?"

I'm graduated.

That translates into a lot more time at home for me, which wasn't supposed to be a problem, as I was originally planning on having a little 2 1/2-month-old scooting around about this time. That (obviously) is no longer the case. Thanks to my second and third miscarriages, the roller coaster hasn't quite come to a complete stop. Emotionally, yes, but I'm doing great there. I've found that after the first one, it's not so much emotionally devastating as it is just disappointing and frustrating. The roller coaster analogy refers more to the "planning for the future" part of my life. I have to keep switching gears from "Prepare to be a mom" mode to "Maybe I should help provide for our family" mode.

Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't have given up my pursuit of a nursing major. At this point, I probably could have been out of the program by the time we have a successful pregnancy. And then I wouldn't have to brace myself every time I tell someone what I graduated in. Don't get me wrong--I loved majoring in Home and Family Living. I felt uplifted and fulfilled as I took and completed all (okay, so maybe MOST) of my classes. However, a lot of people have preconceived notions about HFL or MFHD majors. And I hate even the possibility of being stuck mindlessly into someone's stereotype. I hate feeling like I have to somehow validate my major by explaining the life events and changes that landed me in HFL, in addition to explaining how awesome my plans are with medical transcription, and how well my photography business is working out for me.

Maybe this is simply a personal insecurity. Maybe I feel this way because I used to hold a stereotype for people who graduated with a degree in Home and Family Living, and now--having completed the courses--realize how completely wrong and idiotic I was.

The other part of the roller coaster involved health insurance. As of the middle of August, I was pregnant (again.) And since I was currently with DMBA (BYU health plan,) and already pregnant, I couldn't get any kind of private insurance. So I assumed I would have to use the "extended coverage" option--it would cost about the same amount as being a dependant on Kirby's plan, but would give us the flexibility of being able to stop mid-semester when I had my baby in March. But get this--$560/month. So basically, all the money we were supposed to be saving from free rent would be going to my health insurance. Blah.

But wait! A financial ray of hope! If you take at least 2.0 credit hours as a postbaccalaureate student at BYU, you get the student pricing on insurance. $350/semester as opposed to $560/month. So I applied, was accepted, and planned to take a 3.0 credit class with Kirby--one that I had already taken, and thoroughly enjoyed. It was supposed to be nice and easy.

But then, I miscarried again. That in and of itself was a crazy situation. Maybe I will blog about it later. But that meant that I could now get private insurance. I wound up talking to this girl who was studying in the same part of the JFSB as me about her insurance, and she hooked me up with her agent. Everything looked great. For just over $100/month I could get awesome coverage, and it was, of course, month to month. Perfect.

Too good to be true? Yup. Back and forth, back and forth. I feel like I'm on a perpetual see-saw. It turns out that my three miscarriages basically mean that no one will insure me until I have a successful pregnancy. (Basically until I can prove that I am somehow not broken.)

Frustrating, isn't it? How being honest can come back and bite you in the butt?

So, back to square one. Sort of. I was already enrolled for my class, so it was back to square two. :) Since I am already covered by DMBA, they can't kick me out.

I emailed that agent back, though, to ask another question. What if the doctors know what the problem is, which means they will have it taken care of next time? He said he would check on it, along with a little extra blurb about some agency that would insure me for an 25% increase to the price.

And that's where I am now. You know what I know. And I am sick of it. I will probably end up taking this class, and crossing my fingers that maybe--just MAYBE--we will actually have a baby before my cheaper insurance options run out. I am trying my best to keep my hands, arms, feet and legs inside the cart at all times. I am clutching my restraining bar, and am hanging on for dear life. But honestly? Couldn't we try a new ride?

Moving Pains

Okay, so really, it's awesome. Aside from our house being totally torn apart, of course. And it is. But it is so exciting! We will be moving into a place, rent free, but even more exciting--I CAN DECORATE! Walls will be painted. Furniture will be bought. And hopefully we will stay sane! The whole thing has really been stress-free for me--Kirby loves to pack (mostly because of how excited he is to move... oh, and rip out the hearth...) so he has been doing all the packing! He is much better at it than I am, mind you, and we both know it. He organized our two extra closets in the office, and they were perfectly packed. Very impressive. Everything is organized, and labeled in their boxes, and all that is really left is our bedroom (mostly our clothing), all of our kitchen stuff, and our computers and the stuff littering our desks. :) So crazy. Our living room is barren and mildly depressing. Our closets are empty. My studio equipment is packed away.

BUT--here's an exciting thought! We will have two bedrooms in the basement we're moving to, and rather than put our office in the extra bedroom like we have it now, the extra bedroom will be solely my studio! No more taking down lights, no trying to match anything with that ugly green carpet! And I had a brilliant idea! I am going to paint each wall a different fun color! I have seen some studio shots where the person is just in front of a colored wall--pink, purple, blue... And they are really cute! So I will probably do one pink (because if I want to, that's also easy to change to purple, etc. in photoshop,) and a blue one (easy to change to green), and perhaps an orange one. The fourth wall is really a closet and I think I will try and hang my backdrops in front of that. Then my props will be in the closet, fairly easily accessible, and I will have just expanded my background options by three colors. Really more than three, when you think about all the possibilities Photoshop creates.

Joyful tidbit--Kirby and I bought end tables today. We went up to IKEA and wandered around their dizzying showroom (don't get me wrong, it was awesome, just a lot to take in!), and then left mildly impressed with some of their furniture. A lot of it looked cool, but didn't feel particularly sturdy or quality-y. On our way to stop at Smiths on our way home from Macy's (where we finally bought Kirby much needed Sunday apparel--new pants, five new shirts, four ties, and six pairs of nice thick black socks--they will be his first matching pairs of socks since I have known him! Yeah we splurged. But it was sorely needed.) we saw the RC Willey Outlet store. :) So we ventured in. And in the clearance section we found two matching end tables that we fell in love with! And they were only $40 each! AND they were good quality, and only a teensy bit dinged up, and did I mention beautiful! They are in the corner of our kitchen, awaiting the moving van, so the pictures will have to wait. :) But they will come.

AND--at RC Willey we loved just about every kitchen table we saw, at affordable prices, I might add, as well as some cool desks! And desks will be the next furnishing items we buy. But patience is a virtue, right? Basically, all in all--we are stoked. And we can't wait for Wednesday to come! :)

Summertime Fun and O-RE-GON

Our friend Brad recently got a motorcycle, and, naturally, Kirby now wants one. Or did. For a day or two his hankering was quelled by something we saw on TV. It was one of those shows that shows painful looking boo-boos or something. Anyways, it showed this motorcycle accident where a car ran a red light, and creamed the motorcyclist. So, at least up until today he had changed his mind. But then Brad came over and they rode his bike around... again. SO, chances are that desire is inching back. But anyhoo! Kirby took me for a ride around the block a few times outside of Brad's apartment. This was back before the TV show reality check when Kirby was still trying to convince me how safe and awesome they are. :) Don't I look tough in that helmet??? This set of pictures makes me sad, too, though. Those cute khaki shorts are now ruined. Well, they may be salvageable, but as of this moment--RUINED. Stupid curb that wasn't dry, and wasn't labeled as "almost dry." Boo I say.


My friend Sarah got married on the 23rd of July, which was a blast. I got to go to the sealing, which was beautiful, and then I got to hang out with these great girls waiting outside!


The last week of July Kirby and I drove up to Oregon, and we successfully put the 100,000th mile on our car. Mind you, we got the car used. But still. A momentous occasion nonetheless!


Once we got to Oregon we spent the entire time hanging out with family. We spent a good portion of our time at Tyler (Kirby's little brother) and Amy(Tyler's wife)'s place. Now, picture in your mind what an awesome house would be like...

chickens? check.

go-cart? check.

mini bikes? check.

BBQ? check.

hammocks? check.

plasma donation lounges? check.

fruit orchard? check.

mini lake? check.

riding lawn-mower? check.

family? CHECK!


This is Kirby's mom, Yani.


And here are the girlies! Megan (top left)--Kirby's little sister, Amy (top right)--Tyler's wife, and that crazy one who can't seem to look pleasant in her pictures--ME! :) But you knew that.


Some pictures of Tyler. On the left he's sitting in one of the plasma donation chairs with a sleeping chicken. Apparently if you hold them upside down they fall asleep. So he did. And it did. Maybe all the chicken blood flooding its tiny little brain causes it to shut down. I wonder... In the middle is Tyler riding the lawn-mower, swingin' his rusty machete. No, he's not crazy. The machete is for chopping branches out of the way when they are mowing... where there are branches. And on the right is on the way to Sand Lakes (more about that later). He's looking hard core in his sunglasses and camel-pak. (If Tyler actually sees this he may or may not yell at me for spelling that wrong. Because I may or may not have spelled it wrong!)


My incredibly charming husband. Maybe I should just buy him a helmet. Who needs a bike!? In the lower right picture you can kind of see the dirt nose and mustache all the riding through the orchard gave him. Pretty rugged. Hot-rugged. :)


And we can't forget Steve! Kirby's dad didn't seem to want to take the go-cart for a spin, but after a little prodding, he hopped in, and--LOVED IT. He didn't want to get out! And when he did get out after several laps around the orchard, he still wanted in on the fun. So he hopped on the riding lawn-mower to chase Kirby and Tyler down (they had the go-cart and mini bike respectively.) Needless to say his attempt failed, and resulted in him getting lapped several times. But what do you expect from a lawn mower vs. a go-cart?


This is Megan's boyfriend Brad. Mmm... those burgers were so good!


And you can't forget Joey! Megan and Brad's adorable little 6-month-old boy. Ironically, he's as big as our other nephew Gregory who is a 13 months! :)


Kirby took me for a spin in the go-cart and you can't tell very well from this picture, but I was hanging on for dear life for most of it! We were going pretty fast, and that thing has no suspension. TALK ABOUT BUMPY! And when we went around the mini lake down the road there were blackberry bushes and the briers would whip past and scratch my arm up. I felt pretty hardcore. :)


We went to Sand Lakes to take the quads, go-cart, and mini bike out. It's part of the Oregon Coast that is especially for that kind of thing. Unfortunately, the go-cart and mini bike didn't really work in the deep, loose sand, but Megan and Brad had both of their quads, so we took turns and it was a blast!


It was so foggy at Sand Lakes! By the time we went home it looked like this! (See the bottom two pictures.) And check out that marshmallow farm! :) hahaha.


Happy birthday Megan! We celebrated her birthday when we got home from Sand Lakes with a delicious german chocolate cake. Devilish. After which all the kids went to Sheri's because we never got dinner. It was there we had some of the nastiest restaurant food of all time. But Tyler sure liked putting it in his mustache. :)


And last but not least--our Oprah experience. At some point during the vacation we were sitting in Kirby's parent's kitchen and for some reason or another, Tyler picked up the Oprah magazine that Kirby's grandma gave his mom and began reading an article about dumb things men do. Or something like that. Basically Kirby and Tyler were a bit miffed at this journalist and decided to get back at Oprah. :)


Phew! You survived! (If you're reading this, at least.) This post was mostly so the family back in Oregon could see some of the pictures I got, but I think they're fun (and funny) for whoever wants to see, so thanks for looking! :)