Henderson Updates

Hello world. I thought I'd update you on things going on in our little world here in Rexburg...

*Jason started working at Walmart last week and he's been working a lot of hours. He's a cashier at the super walmart in Idaho Falls so its a bit of a commute, but its a good job. Its been pretty boring here with him gone all the time with the car, so I've been watching a lot of TV and organizing things a little bit around the house.

*We got a Sam's club membership! Because Walmart and Sam's are owned by the same company we get a membership for practically nothing. It was so fun shopping there the other day. We got some good deals on stuff we buy often like toilet paper and tissues. We're set for a LONG time on those! lol And if Jason has his way we'll buy a big screen tv sometime in the near future...NOT. We saw one like right when we walked in the door and it was only about 300 bucks. Not bad, but definitely not something we need at the moment.

*We've been working CRAZY hours for our janitor job. We have to be at work by 3:30 in the morning and don't get off until noon. The hardest part is fighting the urge to take a nap when we get home. Its so hard!! The problem is that if we take a nap we'd probably sleep for like 5 hours, and then it'd be a little hard trying to get to bed by 9 if we wake up from a nap around 6. As sucky as it is, we're making more money than we normally would, and with all the vacations we've been taking its nice that we can still afford to pay the bills.

*I'm really excited to have my cousin Kelan come stay with us for a little while! I haven't seen Kelan since before his mission, and he's starting school up here fall semester! His family used to live in Texas and now they live in Virginia so he staying with Jason and I while he gets settled. Now I just need to work up the courage to ask my boss for some time off while they're here.

*We went and saw Toy Story 3 last Friday night, and it was fun! I'd been stuck in the house all day while Jason worked in Idaho Falls, and then he got off at 10 and we saw the movie at 11:10. We snuck in some taco bell, which was hard to eat while wearing 3D glasses, but it was still a fun date night. =) I laughed, I cried, and I even screamed at a few parts. That movie was intense!!! I screamed at the part when the monkey went crazy and started freaking out. lol. Next on the list for the cheap theater is Despicable Me. I hear its hilarious!

*Going back to school shopping tomorrow! Even though I'm grown up and in college, I still like to have new clothes at the start of school. I'm planning on dropping Jason off at work and hitting the mall and Ross tomorrow in Idaho Falls. JC Penny's and Old Navy are having good sales and I'm excited to buy some new jeans. I love getting new jeans!! I also need to get Jason some more blue polo shirts to wear for work. I'll let you know how I do, I'm good at finding the deals!!  =)

Christmas in July (well technically August)

Today for some reason I have Christmas on the brain. In church today my mind was wandering about possible christmas present ideas and I started thinking about a painting I wanted my friend to do as a present for someone. Then I started thinking about all the pretty paintings there are of Christ done by LDS artists like Simon Dewey and Greg Olsen. I used a lot of their artwork when I  made this video last December, and thought I'd share it with you all as a reminder of how important it is to keep Christ in our hearts all year round. =)
Turn up the volume and enjoy!!

Trip home

We had such a fun time in California visiting my family!! I wish we could've stayed longer, there was so much more I wanted to do. We drove all day Wednesday in a rental car we shared with Suzanne and Ryan and got to my parents house around 5. The boys spent most of the night playing Wii with Nathan, and I introduced my parents to my new favorite game Racko. They were hooked, and I actually got sick of it by the end of our trip.

Thursday my mom had to work so the rest of us got up and played some tennis at Alan Witt Park. This was all Nathan's idea, and it was fun. Apparently he's getting really into tennis, so we'll see where that goes. We played for a bit then hit the showers and met my mom for lunch at In-N-Out. Then we ran some errands and went home and Nellie, Ryan, and Evie showed up! We all visited for a bit and then Jason and I went to our favorite sushi place for dinner...DELICIOUS!! I miss good sushi, living in a land-locked state is no bueno. Then the whole family went to the mall to do some birthday shopping for Nathan. After that we came home and wrapped presents at lightning speed and then Nathan opened them and we had cake. (we did this a day early because his real birthday would be spent in San Francisco. Jason and I got him a Tim Lincecum shirt and split the cost of 

Mario Kart for the Wii.

Friday was AWESOME! Suzanne, Ryan, Nathan, Jason and I drove into SF and had some fun. First we went to visit my grandpa Farmer's grave in the National Cemetery, then we went to the pier and had lunch at this amazing place that I can't remember the name of. I had the most delicious crap cake sandwich, and I plan on going there again. We walked around and bought some candy then we headed over to the Giants game. That was fun, except they lost. But at least we got to have garlic fries.

Saturday we went to Jelly Belly to buy some treats and then we had a late lunch at BJ's in Vacaville. We got to have pazookies, and they even put a candle in Nathan's. After that we went home and had a game night that included apples to apples and phase 10. 

Sunday I woke up early and went to choir with my mom because they were singing "God be with you till we meet again" as the closing song and I wanted to sing too. It was great visiting my home ward and seeing so many familiar faces. Some of my aunts, uncles, and cousins were there too which was great. Nathan got ordained just before the third hour and that was so cool to see. After church the whole family came over for lunch and 

we played games and talked. 

Overall Sunday was a great day, and the whole trip was so much fun! We left early the next morning and then Jason and I got back to Rexburg early Tuesday morning so Jason could start his new job at Wal Mart in Idaho Falls. Whew!

Happy Birthday Nathan! (Yesterday)

My little baby brother turned 12 yesterday...CRAZY! I swear just yesterday he was this crazy chubby baby with curly red hair running around. He's grown up so fast, and I can't wait till tomorrow when he's going to be ordained a deacon!

 

I had that baby picture on my MySpace for a long time. Its so funny!! He was the cutest baby. =)

Now he's almost as tall as me...oh well.

A little taste of CA

So I've been meaning to post these pictures, but haven't gotten around to it till now. A few weeks ago there was a HUGE fire a few miles away from Rexburg, and it looked pretty bad...similar to the one in Napa a few years ago. This is what it looked like from our Apartments...

Then a few blocks away at the church...Jason looks scared.

(Mostly because I told him to act like he was.)

The Sun looked pretty cool...

And it was pretty crazy how if you looked one way there was clear blue skies...

The crazy thing about this fire was that it looked super intense, and I was dreading walking to class in smelly smoke-filled air when I woke up the next day, but to my suprise there was ZERO trace of the fire in the air! How weird. In CA it seems like forever until things get back to normal, but its so stinking windy here the smoke disappeared. I guess living in Idaho isn't so bad after all. =)

Camping with the in-laws

We're back from our camping trip!! We just spent a week with Jason's dad's side of the family and it was great...but tiring. Here's what we did...

Monday:

Jason's family came and picked us up in Rexburg and then we headed off to Bear World. Its only like ten minutes away, but Jason and I have never been. We went and drove through this little "wildlife preserve" thing where they just let bears run around...sometimes right up to your car. Jason's cousin and his family were in the car behind us, and they saw a bear grab onto our bumper and try to hang on as we drove away! And you can see in one of my pictures that bear is trying to open the sliding door of the van! Pretty crazy.

After we were done driving around we stopped and looked in the gift shop and went into the petting zoo.

Once we were done with that we drove to Lava Hot Springs near the Utah border, where we camped at a KOA and set up our tents. After that we went to a water park with CRAZY tall, steep, windy water slides and had some fun there. I didn't take my camera there for obvious reasons, but here's what the slides looked like:

I went on all of them except the yellow one. I just didn't want to walk all the way up those stairs...there were A LOT! Once we were done there we headed back to camp and had hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner.

Tuesday:

I don't have many pictures from tuesday because that day was mostly filled with driving to Jackson, WY and then white water rafting. Here's some pictures I got off the website of the company that took us rafting:

Luckily no one in our group flew out, but it was pretty intense at some parts. I was pretty scared in the beginning because I don't really know how to swim, but when it was over I was glad I went. We got to see a bald eagle while we were on the river, and I realized that I'm pretty lucky that I feel comfortable holding my mother-in-law's hand. =)

After our whitewater trip we came back to camp and roasted hot dogs on the fire for dinner and just sat and talked. Then it started to rain and things got a little crazy because some people didn't put the rain fly's on their tents and we had stuff laying out everywhere. Luckily the rain stopped after not too long and we all went to bed.

Wednesday:

We all got up pretty early and went on a hike in the Teton National Park. We hiked around Jenny Lake and then up to a place called "Hidden Falls." The hike was fun, except I didn't relize how intense my new family is about hiking at a fast pace. I stayed in the front most of the time on the way up, but that resulted in blisters on each of my heels because I didn't want to stop to pull up my socks. If I had done that, they would have left me in their dust. Oh well. So after we got up to the falls we stopped and ate a bunch of snacks and took pictures.

On the way back down I took it a little slower and that was fine. We were a little more split up going back and I was in the last group. It was nice because i got to walk with Jason's aunt Gina and her son Ryan and get to know them a little better.

On our hike we saw a deer that almost tackled my 11 year-old sister in-law Heidi, a moose from a far, and a marmut (looks kinda like a beaver/squirrel).

After the hike we drove back to camp and raced to the showers. I got there first and got cleaned up and then helped Heidi and my new cousin-in-law Kelly comb out there hair. I was able to get to know Kelly a little better when she let me do her hair in pig-tail braids. =)

We all just hung around camp for a bit and then Jason and I went into downtown Jackson Hole with his brother Mason, and Jason's cousin and his wife. We just looked around in gift shops and had some fun until we met up with the rest of the family for dinner. We went to this place called "The Bar-J Chuckwagon" where we had dinner and watched a show. It was pretty funny, there were a bunch of cowboys telling jokes, singing and playing all kinds of instruments. After that was done we all drove back to camp and went to sleep.

Thursday:

We left Jackson and drove to Yellowstone. We spotted a buffalo on the way to camp which was pretty cool. When we got to our campsite we set everything up and had some lunch while we waited for everyone else to get there. Once the rest of the family arrived we relaxed for a bit and then decided to go see Old Faithful. When we got there we had about an hour to kill before it was scheduled to go off so we went and got ice cream. Then we sat and waited...and waited. Once it went off we walked around and looked at all the "hot pots" which were pretty cool, but stinky. Then we just drove around and stopped at a few other hot pots before going back to camp. We had yummy tin foil dinners and then went to sleep.

Friday:

We had big, yummy breakfast with sausage, bacon, eggs, and pancakes and then it was off to see more sites. I was moving a little slower with blisters, a sunburned neck, and heat rash on one of my calfs, but I survived. We did a lot of driving which was nice on my feet, and we were able to see more animals. We got to this small town called "Mamoth" and were able to see a bunch of elk laying in the shade of some houses. We also saw some buffalo throughout the day. Towards the end of the day we went and saw a pretty waterfall and then drove back to camp. We all just hung out for awhile and then had some yummy chicken Jason's aunt Debbie cooked in her dutch oven. Then we all had some smores and headed to bed.

Saturday:

After waking up to thunder and cloudy skies, we all woke up early and got camp picked up at lightening speed. It started raining for a bit, but not bad enough to keep us from getting out of there. We all said our goodbye's and drove home to Rexburg. Jason's family dropped us off and we all went out to lunch at Craigo's, which was heaven after being in the wilderness for a week! Then they headed off for one more night of camping at the Lava Hot Springs, and I hit the showers and took a nice long nap. =)

Even though I'm not a big fan of long camping trips, I had a lot of fun! It was great getting to know my new family and getting to spend time enjoying Heavenly Father's beautiful creations.