Random thoughts and a couple of Layouts :)

I am sitting here are enjoying a bit of peace and quiet after a not so quiet day...it's quite lovely, really.

Not that today was a bad day. Actually, it was quite good...just not quiet! :)

We even had quite the jam session this afternoon. We were baby sitting an almost one year old and she was getting a bit fussy, so we busted out the homemade instruments and attempted to serenade her. We made quite the racket and sang all our favorite songs from church. I know y'all wish you could have seen/heard it, but well, we reserve that opportunity for a select audience...like babies who can't tell us to quit singing! :)

Anyway, just wanted to share these two scrapbook layouts posted above (not sure how to get them to the bottom of the post). I haven't done much scrapbooking in the last few months, so it was good to get some practice! :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Fun Date Night Idea! :)

How's it going there? Hopefully you are having a good week so far. Our week started out with a kind of crazy Monday so we'll see how the rest of the week goes from there!

Bryan and I actually got to go on a date two weekends in a row....isn't that crazy!?

It seemed a little crazy to us, we weren't quite sure what to do! So we started with dinner at a Chinese place we hadn't tried and while we were eating we came up with a fun idea: an ABC photo scavenger hunt of our town! It was a blast!

We went around town to some of our favorite places, or places that have been significant to us, and we collected each letter of the alphabet from the various signs:

Kind of cool! I want to figure out how to better fit them together without any of the black spots so I can print it and frame it for our wall!

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to go around town and remember all the fun things we have done and the memories we have had here. Can you believe it has been two years this month!? Wow, time flies!

I won't bore you with every detail of our lives, but here are a few:

B is for Braums, our favorite ice cream spot. We take every person that comes to visit us to Braums, and we have converted quite a few people into Braums lovers! And let's face it, we eat way too much ice cream, so yes, you will find us there many a Friday night!

C is for Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are quite involved with the ward here, and we are grateful the opportunities we have to serve and to learn the gospel of Jesus Christ here in Pampa. We are grateful for the good people of the Pampa Ward!

G is for Guymon, from Bryan's name on the sign outside their office. After undergrad and three years of law school it was a very happy day when we saw his name on that sign!

K is for this really cool wall, I know, wall doesn't start with K, but it is on the back of an old building and it is from an old radio advertisement painted on this wall. It is one of my favorite spots for taking pictures.

L is for Lovett Memorial Library, where we faithfully attend story time every single week because it is the happening place to be for kids every week. :)

P is for Pampa High School, where we spend many a fall Friday night, watching our high school football team. After all, we live in TX, and really, what else do you do here on a Friday night?!

Z is for PlaZa Restaurant, yeah, this one is a bit of a stretch, but it is our favorite restaurant for two reasons: 1 - the food really is yummy, and every time we go there we run into someone we know, which is why I love small towns. 2- it is the only restaurant in town where Grace will eat anything, therefore, it is our favorite!

So there you go, a bit about our town and what we do here!

And really, if you ever get to go out on a date with your spouse, try it out! It was a lot of fun to relive some favorite memories from the past two years!

I know I am partial...

....but aren't these kids cute!!?!

I certainly think so! So glad they are ours!

Joshua and Grace, Utah, June 2011

A few Cards

Hello again and happy Wednesday!

It has been a pretty good Wednesday around here. The kiddos and I got to go into Amarillo with Bryan this afternoon. He slaved away at work and the kids and I ran some errands in the big city.

Now the kids are in bed and it is wonderfully quiet around here!

Do you love bed time as much as I do?! :)

So, the kids have been unnaturally good at playing together, leaving me not quite sure what to do with myself lately. I actually cleaned the bathroom the other day because I was bored! I usually leave that lovely task until it is desperately dirty or we have company coming, so this was a little weird. Joshua even came in and, looking at me with a confused look on his face, said, "you're cleaning the bathroom?" Yes, Joshua, it has come to that.

Seriously, these two will play for a couple hours at a time, totally in their own world. I have always had this self imposed rule that I do very little, if any, crafting while the kids are awake. I figure I chose to be a stay at home mom so I could mother, not craft, so my craft time has always been after the kids are in bed or before they wake up. Well, since the kids are playing so well together and I can only handle so much cleaning and housekeeping in one day, I have kind of eased up on that rule a bit. :)

Here are a few of my latest creations:

Oh, and guess what, it is raining and thundering outside!

Two days in a row that it has rained! YAY!!!!

Patriotism

I started this post with a picture of my Grandpa Larsen. Today is his 85th birthday - - Happy Birthday Grandpa!

It is very fitting that I write this post on his birthday. After all, when I think of patriotic people, he is one of the first people that come to my mind.

He is a veteran of World War II. He wasn't old enough to join the armed forces until the very end of the war, but he enlisted in the Air Force as soon as he could. If I remember right he was trained to be a right gunman on a B-29. As he told me once, by the time he got out there, the war was pretty much over and he mostly did "clean up work", as he called it. It was still dangerous, though. I remember him telling me about one time when he and a fellow airman were walking through a field surrounding an airbase (I believe in the Philippines) and all the sudden there was an explosion under the feet of his buddy. He has stepped on a land mine that hadn't been disturbed during the war. It injured the man pretty good, he was covered in blood. Grandpa picked him up and carried him back to the base to get help. Once the man was being helped, Grandpa sat down and looked down at himself to find he, too, was covered in the other man's blood. Then he fainted. :) (This is the part of the story where Grandma interjected with tales of how Grandpa would always faint at the sight of blood, so easily, in fact, that he couldn't even be in the delivery room when their children were born). But Grandpa said that time at the air base was different. It was one of those moments when adrenalin and duty to a fellow soldier kicked in and you just did whatever need to be done. I love that story. Grandpa is one of my heroes, and I love the example of patriotism that he has always shown me.

I love the Fourth of July! I think it ties with Christmas as my favorite holiday, but for some reason, I find the Fourth of July to be the hardest holiday to be away from the home, family, and community I grew up with. And this year, I finally figured out why.

Growing up, our holiday traditions evolved over the years. They were always fun and memorable, but they were not necessarily the same year after year. Except for our Fourth of July traditions, they were always the same.

This Fourth, Bryan was asking me what I had done on this holiday in the past, and I realized that every year in my memory, we did the exact same thing. It was small town, full of family, and patriotic. Fireworks with family, blaring "I'm coming to America" from the radio. Small town Parades, hot dog BBQ's by my Uncle Corey, the best hot dog griller around. Food, volleyball, and swimming in the river up the canyon. The same exact thing year after year, the only change being that the crowd that joined us grew larger from year to year. Even my poor volleyball skills stayed the same, year after year!

Then we moved to Texas and I have found that the Fourth of July is the day I have the hardest time not being "home." We are working on some new traditions of our own though, and they are good, just take some getting used to. After all, 28 years is a long time to do the same thing year after year. :)

So here is what we did this year:

We started with a flag raising, bike parade, and lunch at the church. We were a small group gathered, but I love seeing the flag raised and seeing everyone decked out in their red, white, and blue. It is a sight that always thrills my heart a little!

And then...

we went to the Zoo and the Science Museum.

I struggled with this a bit, becuase while we had a great time, it didn't seem like a Fourth of July-y activity. I almost felt like I was being a bit irreverant...like because it didn't involve a flag or a hot dog BBQ, it wasn't appropriate for the holiday!

All fireworks shows in the area had been canceled due to the drought conditions, so we ended the night by trying to watch fireworks shows people had posted on you tube...not quite the same as the real thing!! But you know, it was still a really great Fourth, and we had a great time as a family. My kids still wore their red, white, and blue, and they still got to put their hands over their hearts and pledge allegiance to our flag. And I discovered something:

A love and allegience to this country can still be passed on from generation to generation, even without fireworks and hot dogs. It's what I teach my kids about being patriotic everyday, not just one day a year, that really matters.

We LOVE America!!

This is what answered prayers looks like...

Did you know that answered prayers look like dripping rain and a dump truck half-full of rain water? Well, that is what they look like here in West Texas.

We have been in severe drought around here...actually most of Texas is. Plus we've had triple digit temperatures almost everyday and high winds. Some people are saying this is the worst drought this area has had since the 1800's. So our church has been fasting and praying for rain.

And...It's working!

We got good solid rainfall for about an hour two nights last week, and it was heavenly! The first time it rained during the night so I didn't actually see it. But Sunday evening it came rolling in again and this time the rain started falling before we went to sleep. I couldn't help but stand out on the porch and watch it for a while. The sound, the smell, and of course the moisture, were so refreshing. How I have missed the rain!

We'll keep praying for more!

Hi ya!

Welcome to our new blog!

I am so excited to have this new place to share our happenings with y'all! Running two blogs was getting to be too much, so I decided to just start fresh and consolidate everything into one! So this is our new place on the web. As the description on the sidebar says, you'll find it all here: our family, our faith, our hobbies (okay, mostly mine :) ), and everything in between.

WELCOME!