Freecycle Gifts

We have been the lucky recipients of some really great gifts from freecycle.org. Here's a nice new bike for Travis we got tonight.

We also got this wheel barrow and a window air conditioner tonight. We gave the air conditioner to some friends.

Now here's some past items we've received. The boys love this 4 wheeler.

We also got this huge play structure. It helps our boys get on and off of the trampoline.

We got this bike a while back as well.

This lawn mower has worked well for us too.

One of Brian's favorite gifts the Power Tower to allow him to do pull ups, dips and leg lifts.

Bleach Juice

Angela was in charge of sharing time in primary today at church. She was teaching about baptism. So she brought in an object lesson. She brought bleach and food coloring and water. You start with a clear bottle of water, add food coloring (to represent sin) and then add bleach to clear the water again (to represent baptism).

After church, Travis came to see what his mom was doing. Angela was busy cleaning up and had her back turned to Travis.

Travis then said to his mom "Mom, what kind of juice is this?"

(The bleach Angela brought to church was in an exercise water bottle, the kind you squeeze to get water out.)

Angela said "that's not juice Travis, it's bleach."

Then Travis replies "I don't like that bleach juice!"

Angela turned around and saw, to her shock, that the water bottle with bleach had the spout out, meaning that Travis had drank some! We rushed Travis to the drinking fountain and had him swish water in his mouth and spit it out and then drink more water. At home he ate bread and milk (recommended by a mom at church for just such a problem). We don't know how much bleach he drank, but probably not much due to the type of bottle. Towards the evening, Travis was obviously not feeling well. He wasn't eating much and was very tired. His temperature was 97 but he was saying his tummy hurt. Well after a bath, Travis threw up. He went to bed fine so we'll see how he does tonight. I guess we don't recommend that "bleach juice" either!

Geocaching - Dad and Travis

Travis and Dad went out geocaching this afternoon. It was nice and quiet out there. We also had a nice cloud cover that kept it quite cool. We went to search for the two caches marked on the map below. You can tell that we were down in a canyon.

These next two photos were taken on the knob just above the "o" of "Pueblo" (where it says Pueblo Canyon) on the map above. From this knob we could see many of the canyon mouths. It was amazing to see the elevation changes. This is essentially in the center of our town. You can see from the map that there are streets on every side.

This photo of Travis was taken while we were on the trail coming back. He's showing two of his toys that he got from the caches. He got 4 cars/trucks and a whistle. It was nearly a mile hike total including some fairly steep terrain. Travis always does well though.

Oh yeah, Brian had cut Travis' hair last night, so you can see his new haircut. Here's a video of Travis blowing his new whistle.

Happy 7th Anniversary to Us!

We celebrated our 7th anniversary today. Yesterday we went out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants in the area, it's a New Mexican food restaurant. Then today Brian grilled steaks, hotdogs, corn on the cob, and sausage (if you haven't ever grilled sausage you MUST try it, it's sooo good). The steaks were Jamaican Jerk flavored and tasted very good.

Travis helped to take this picture of us today.

We thought we'd post a few of our favorite photos from our 8 years together (1 year of dating). Here's one of our favorite wedding photos at the Portland Temple.

Here's a great photo of us on a log ride in Busch Gardens of Tampa Bay, Florida.

Here's a great photo Brian's sister Marci took of us.

Here we are on our graduation day (B.S. degrees).

Here's our engagement photo.

This has got to be one of our favorite photos of all time. We nearly used it for our engagement photo, but unfortunately Brian's face is partially blocked by his jacket. Angela sure looks hot!!

Here was a fun photo from early on when we were dating.

We're at the Pippin family cabin here playing pool.

Here's one of our mutual favorites: Jelly Belly Beans. We used to visit the factory in Northern California every year and buy their belly flops (rejected by the factory for normal sales due to their odd sizes).

Rainbow

We had a huge rainbow (actually a double rainbow) that we just had to get a photo of. The boys liked it too.

Dried Apricot Leather

We went as a family to pick some apricots at a friend's invitation. Brian then pitted the apricots, blended them up and then dried them in our dehydrator to make homemade Apricot fruit roll ups.

Trampoline Fun

Our boys love to jump on our trampoline. In the last few weeks Lucas has started to hold his own while they both jump. Before Lucas wouldn't want to be on the trampoline if Travis was jumping. Here some recent video of them jumping. Lucas was having a bit of a hard day due to teething so he wasn't quite as up for jumping with Travis. He usually takes his spills quite well and keeps on jumping. This is often an evening ritual with Dad to go out and jump for a while.

Our Boys' Favorite Pastime

So we have some very active little boys. Our home teachers came today and Travis and Lucas were running around and riding their little bikes around our front room. Our home teachers said "I guess they're excited their home teachers are here." The thing is that that is very normal. These boys are constantly running around and jumping and just full of energy. Their favorite thing to do is to climb onto one end of the couch (with the help of the fire place), stand on the couch arm, and then jump off onto the cushions. They take turns and do this over and over for as long as we'll let them. Here's Travis seeing how far he can jump.

This was a new wrinkle, holding hands and jumping off together. OK really it was Travis pulling Lucas along with him.

Our little Lucas loves to belly flop onto the cushions and just laughs and laughs about it. They have had a few minor injuries from this activity but it doesn't stop them.

You should see them at the grocery store....

Happy 29th Birthday Angela!

Angela turned 29 on July 21. Brian had to stay home from work that day because he had a really bad sore neck. Brian did manage to make a nice Birthday for Angela though. He had the boys make these cards for their mom that said Happy Birthday.

Then he and the kids put up Christmas lights in the window that said "29."

We went out to eat for dinner here in town and Angela got a free banana cake dessert. Brian didn't get a gift for Angela because we decided that our Paris trip was our birthday gifts and anniversary gifts this year. Travis and Lucas gave Mom $30 to buy new exercise clothes.

After the boys went to bed, Angela got a surprise party at 9pm. 6-7 of her friends showed up and knocked on our door at 9pm (Brian's idea). Angela answered the door while talking to her brother Scott on the phone and they all yelled "SURPRISE!" They ate cake and ice cream and talked until 11:30 that night. Angela was really surprised that Brian was able to do anything. All in all she had a great birthday.

Angela's Morph to Carrie Underwood

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity

Our trip to France

Brian had the opportunity to attend two conferences in France in June/July. The first conference, from June 23-27 was held in Aix en Provence. The second was in Paris from June 30-July 4. Angela joined Brian in Paris. She flew out on July 1 and arrived July 2. We then flew home on July 9. Brian's parents, Vance and Carla, came out to Los Alamos to stay with our boys so we could have this great vacation together. We saw it as a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit a beautiful city and not have to pay for all of the trip out of pocket since Brian's work covered his flight, hotels and food. We visited many many places and walked a ton. The next few posts will show various pictures we took on our vacation. It may be good to start with the photos Brian took in Aix at the bottom of the blog and then work your way up the blog chronologically through days 1-7 in Paris.

Days 6 & 7 in Paris

Maybe by now you're tired of seeing photos from our trip. On day 6, we visited Sainte Chapelle, Notre Dame, Jarden du Luxembourg (gardens), Sainte Sulpice, Hotel de Ville, the BHV (a large shopping center), dinner in the Latin Quarter, and some window shopping. On Day 7, our last day there, we visited Opera Garnier (the opera house that the Phantom of the Opera was based on and it was one of our favorite places to visit), Galleries Lafayette (the world's first department store is 8 stories high and is in many buildings now), street shopping, Rur Cler (a small French neighborhood with cool shopping including an olive oil tasting shop which Angela loved), Port de L'Alma (where Princess Di was killed), the Petit Palace, and then did a boat tour of downtown Paris along the Seine River. Here's one of the amazing halls in Opera Garnier.

Here's Angela near the grand staircase of Opera Garnier.

Here we are above the Seine River.

We had a great time in France, but were glad to come home. It's nice to not have to worry about the language and to be with our boys again. Good thing Brian's work paid for his flight and part of our hotel stays, otherwise it would have been too expensive for us.

A meal in Paris on Day 5

Here was one of the really good meals we had in Paris. Below is Brian's dinner, duck sausages with some really good mashed potatoes and gravy.

Here's Angela's meal, some peach flavored duck steak strips. The meal also included some cheesy pasta that Angela really liked.

Here's Angela dessert, called Profiteroles.

Here's Brian's dessert, a melody of sorbets (peach, apricot, and strawberry).

Look yummy? Well this meal costs about 40 Euros or $63 US dollars (for both of us)! The food may taste really good there in France, but think of the quality meal you'd get in America for $63.

Day 5 in Paris

Sunday was one of the busier days in Paris in terms of seeing many things. It was free museum day in Paris (the first Sundays of the month are free museum days). We started the day by going to church in downtown Paris. You may not believe it, but going to church was one of our favorite highlights of Paris. The ward has French speaking meetings and English speaking meetings. It was so neat to join with a large group of mostly tourists and have church. It was cool to really see just how similar the church is all around the world. After church we visited the Pompidou Center which is a modern art museum. The outside of the building is what's really unique about this building. It's the inside of the building on the outside. All the pipes and stuff that's normally hidden behind the outer walls is exposed and it makes the building very colorful.

We then went to the Rodin Museum. Here's Brian posing below The Thinker statue.

This pose is a famous pose that Brian's dad makes when he's in deep thought, so we thought it would be funny to compare it to The Thinker's pose.

We then went to the Musee d'Orsay. Here's Angela in front of a famous Renoir painting (Le Moulin de la Galette).

Here's Brian in front of a famous Van Gogh painting ("Self Portrait" is the name).

We then went up to see this large mirror ball called the Geode up by some science center. If you look closely you can see Brian on a bridge in front of the Geode with a white shirt on.

We then stopped at the Parc de Monceau to see this cool set of pillars.

Day 4 in Paris

Day 4 was spent at the Palace of Versailles just outside of Paris. It was expensive and in the end wasn't so worth it. It's very pretty but it can be tons of walking and it gets a bit old. You can see palaces and museums and gardens in Paris for free and it would suffice. Here we are in front of the golden palace gate.
Here's Angela in the Hall of Mirrors inside the Palace.

Here we are in the garden area outside the palace.

Here's Brian in front of one of the fountains.

And here we are with a more global view of the garden area. Lots and lots of fountains to see. This was really an all day trip and it wore us out.