My father is now a Bishop!

Bishop McLaws

So last sunday we went to my father's sacrament meeting in the Adobe Villa ward.  Kristen and I met in that stake in the Mountain Park Branch.  So we know a lot of people and it was fun to see family and friends.

The sacrament meeting went well.  First the Stake President Dale Willis announced from the pulpit that Bishop Kerby would be released and Bishop McLaws would be called.  This was followed by a sustaining vote and a vote of appreciation for the past Bishop.

After the sacrament was passed, we all got to hear from Bishop Kerby and his wife, Bishop McLaws and my mother, and Bro. Gardner who had been called as 1st counselor.

It was a very spiritual meeting and very enjoyable!  Afterwards we all gathered in the Stake Offices to make the calling official.

The rest of the afternoon was spent visiting Mom Erickson, Bella, and the family once again.  We helped Mom Erickson set up her new VCR/DVD combo and then we had a delicious dinner with the McLaws side of the family.

All in all it was a great and wonderful day!

The fun stuff that we did this weekend was that we got to see "Captain America" which was a wonderful movie!  Kristen and I went and saw it in the morning on Saturday, we both sincerely enjoyed it!  After that we went and picked up my car from the shop because it was having an oil change, and we went to the Cheesecake factory!  We went there because all cheesecake was half off if you dined in.  It was absolutely delicious and we got the Orange Chicken to share.  Kristen got her Adams Peanut butter slice, and I got my Chocolate Tuxedo slice!

Later after walking around the mall, I went to work and Kristen came home and cleaned and got some time to relax! :)  She is amazing and I love her soooo much!  :)

Our amazing family cabin trip!

Well this week was quite an adventure as we went up to my grandparents cabin in overgaard. All of the immediate family was there: Dad, Mom, Cheryl, J.R., Esther, Kristen, myself, Faith, Julia, Barbara, and John boy! we had a fantastic amount of fun and I will give you a break down of what happened each day! Monday: We drove up to the cabin. On the way out of town Kristen and I stopped for a free slurpee from 7-11. I had not realized that when they do those free slurpees on the date 7-11, it is a very extra small cup. After that we met up with the family at my parents house, hit the gas station for one last stop and then drove to overgaard. Overgaard is about 2 and ½ hours from Mesa. We did stop at Payson for some groceries from Walmart and then Kristen, Julia, Faith, and I went and got some breakfast from Mcdonalds. We soon learned that this would be a grave mistake....we all started to feel a little sick from the food within the next day or two. When we finally arrived at the cabin and unloaded all of our belongings, we had a delicious lunch of springroll wraps. There were many different things that could be used to make the wraps. We all thought it was funny that Barbara chose to use cheetos, chicken, and cheese in her wraps! After lunch Kristen and I went to take a nap for a few hours while others napped. or just relaxed. Then when everyone was moving again, we started our family merit badges. First on the agenda was LOOM A HAT! This was taught by Faith and since most of us had already loomed our hats, she taught us additional crafts and items that we could loom. One that my wife really liked was the pumpkin crafts. This used a smaller loom and was made up of orange yarn. She worked on it all week long and was able to finish up her pumpkin towards the end! It looks awesome! The next merit badge was CPR/First Aid who was taught by Esther. She taught about all sorts of emergencies and medical catastrophes that we are likely to encounter living here in Arizona! Upon finishing up the merit badges, we all gathered round for a great feast of Dads famous tacos. I did get a a slight burn while helping Dad to prepare it and everyone joked about the first aid techniques that we had just learned. After dinner Julia helped to demonstrate how to make gluten free peanut butter cookies which were most definitely amazing! She also cooked up some sugar free brownies...now I was not so fond of these as they were more like the consistency of corn bread. But as my brother said "if you are going to eat corn bread, wouldn't you rather that it be chocolate?" I guess that does have some pretty good logic. lol Tuesday morning we got up and ate smoothies and bagels at about 830 and then headed to the local fish hatchery. It was really cool and my Dad explained that the hatchery bred and grew the fish that were then used to stock the rivers, streams, and lakes up on the rim. We got to feed the fish and see fish of all different stages and sizes. Then we headed to woods canyon lake and had a delicious picnic lunch. Cheryl had put in all the necessary preparations and it was delicious. It was funny when Barbara realized that there was pudding and so she started yelling "pood-ing I need it"! After that Julia and I went crawdad hunting while Kristen watched Barbara and read her book. We really did catch a lot of crawdads and got to cook those up later on back at the cabin.  It was cool because when we started boiling them, all of there shells turned bright red! Dad showed us how to shell and eat them. They didn't have a lot of taste but for the most part they tasted a lot like shrimp. Unfortunately the fishermen didn't have any luck and so later on Saturday morning they went to try their luck once again. However there still were no fish to be caught. Anyways after having dinner and cleaning up, Cheryl did her merit badge over General Conference. She had us read off our trivia sheets that we had filled out previously.  With each correct answer we earned a rolo!!! She also helped us to recognize the prophets and apostles voices. Then Mom did her merit badge on temples. We all filled out a global chart to show where each one of the more than 130 temples are located. It was a really cool activity and helped me to learn quite a lot about the temples. Wednesday we got up early to go to the temple in Snowflake. It was such a beautiful temple and thanks.to my wifes foresight, we took a bunch of pictures outside on the temple grounds. Kristen, Mom, Cheryl, and I participated in Endowments while J.R., Julia, and Dad did baptisms. The rest of the family met us afterwards for lunch at the local Mexican restaurant. We quickly learned that the food was amazing but the service was horrible!!!! Our waiter completely forgot about us and the only reason we ate anything was because Esther bothered a waitress and let her know that after 15 minutes we still hadn't even ordered our meals. She quickly took care of the situation, took our orders, and had our food out quickly. Mine was delicious...I had the chili relleno! Afterwards we stopped at Dairy Queen for dessert!!!! Then we headed back to the cabin to relax and nap for the rest of the afternoon. After an awesome spaghetti diner was prepared and devoured, we participated in the Spanish merit badge and then we played a bunch of games for Julias puzzles and games merit badge.  The craziest game we did was thawing out a frozen t shirt!  This really took a lot of silly ideas: sitting on it, breathing on it, folding it, etc... Eventually we got it thawed out!!!! Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were a lot more chill. We were all pretty tuckered out so we just hung around the cabin, went for a birdwatching hike for Faiths merit badge and watched movies and played games. We did three more merit badges on thursday: J.R. taught about dutch oven cooking, Kristen taught massaging, and Mom taught hair cutting. Friday Dad taught how to make duct tape wallets and I taught story telling. Esther also taught the Book of Mormon merit badge and that finished all of the badges. Saturday we woke up, ate left overs and then drove home! All in all it was a great week and its too bad that it had to end!

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latest blog

so it has been quite a long while since I posted on my blog.....but I promise I have a really good reason!!!! The entire month of June, I was extremely busy working on two classes at ASU. They were very intense courses that moved along at a rapid pace. To give you an idea of what my days were like, I would wake up at about 8 am, go to work at about 9 am, be there until about 6 pm, come home and eat dinner with my wife, clean up and put things away, do homework until about 11 pm, get ready for bed, and finally go to sleep just so I could wake up and do the same thing all over again! In other words it made me very busy and that was pretty much how it went for me all through the month of June. The classes I took were Spanish classes...I took Spa 428 which was about literature in Latin America from 1880 to the present. I also took Spa 472 which was about the history of the discovery of Latin America from the civilizations of the Aztecs and Olmecs to the present. I sincerely enjoyed the history one and I was able to earn an A+ while I did not enjoy my literature class and even though I put in a lot of study time, I earned a B- in that class. I think that shows that even though someone might put forth a lot of effort and work, if it is not an enjoys le subject because the understanding or knowledge does not come as easily as other subject knowledge might, it can be difficult to be successful and earn satisfactory grades. For this reason I am very happy that I chose a degree about the language that I sincerely enjoy: SPANISH!!!! Even though there are a few classes that have been difficult for me, for the most part it has been a very enjoyable degree! :)Anyways I will move on to explain what Kristen and I recently eperienced...a week ago Saturday, we had the opportunity to go to Africa!!!!!! It was amazing! We visited Kenya and other amazing countries and lands....ok so we didn't really go to Africa but we did go to" Out of Africa", which is an amazing wildlife park north of Phoenix, near to Camp Verde. We decided to attend the wildlife park because we had scored half off tickets via our e mails. When we first arrived and made our way through the gates, we were admitted onto a safari tour where we got to feed carrots to a giraffe, look at many unique animals from Africa, and we all got to see Humphrey!! He was the camel that likes visitors :)It was fun to see the giraffe named Kebo and he liked us visiting so much that he stuck his long neck inside the bus so as to get some more snacks from the bus driver!!! After the safari tour we got to go see boom-boom the rhino, lions, tigers, lemurs, grizzly bears, and other fun animals! I imagine that there in the heat, many of the animals were tired and thirsty and so for that reason...they were pretty much all hidden away! we did get to be up close to a few of the animals...the porcupine, the iguana, one of the cool birds, and a big snake!!! Plus after we had hiked up to the Arena, we got to see Tiger Splash!!!! Tiger Splash involved a white bengal tiger who chased toys and balloons and eventually jumped several times into the large pool, making big splashes!!! we also got to see the Grizzly bear cubs as they played with their caretakers and went swimming several times. they were lots of funand really behaved like loveable dogs! it really was a lot of fun but it was very very hot!!!! After we finished at the wildlife park we drove to our camping site at clints well. the camping site that we planned on using turned out to be full so we ended up going to a different site just a few miles behind where we had planned. it was an awesome site!!! it was an established area but it was definitely not full and we got a spot that had no one around! we had plenty of water and supplies and we had a good time playing scrabble to the light of our new propane lantern. it was great until all the bugs started coming out and they started flying into the lantern...then they would bounce off and hit our game board. Finally a big nestle came out and when he bounced off the lantern he landed on his back on our game board and he couldn't flip over. I tried to help him but I think I picked him up too high and then we dropped back down on the board, he must have gotten knocked out! Because then he wasn't moving around at all until about 15 minutes later when we finally went back to bed.The following day after waking up and eating breakfast, we headed down to the lake that was nearby. it was potato lake and I decided to go swimming in it because im basically crazy!!! the temperature was really nice and it felt good to be in the lake bit then I stubbed my toe really bad on a big stone. I thought for a while that I had actually broken it. Luckily it was just jammed and healed properly after e couple of days! After all of that we went to another camping site to meet up with some of our extended family. they camped a little bit east of payson in a designated campgrond that we actually had to pay for. it was a decent price and it included some amenities. All in all it was fun and we finished off the weekend with a bbq at my parents and then watching 4th of july fireworks!!!!! well that's me getting back to the blog finally and next week I will be able to comment and share our family vacation at the cabin! :)

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Awesome San Diego Anniversary

Our Anniversary!

So we just had the most awesome anniversary in San Diego.

To start out on Friday May 20 Kristen and I drove to San Diego.  We left about 7:30 in the morning and had a relatively uneventful trip.  One thing that definitely surprised me was how many cops and border patrols that we saw.  We must have counted at least 50 on the way there. 

We had to pass through 3 different border checks because I guess that the highway is just really close to the Mexico border so they have to constantly check that there are no illegal aliens or substances being transported.

We arrived in San Diego at about 1 p.m. and drove straight to the San Diego temple for our first planned activity.  After stopping at McDonalds to change into Sunday Best, we headed to the temple and went inside to worship.  It was one of the most beautiful buildings that I have ever seen!  Most of the light inside is natural light from the sun because they have so many windows in all the rooms and hallways.  It was so pretty and had so much glasswork and chandeliers!  My favorite part was the indoor garden up on the 4^th floor.  It was in a courtyard of sorts so it received sunlight and it was separated from the visitors by only a sheet of glass.

After finishing worship we took lots of pictures outside near the gardens and lawns.  Many people had gathered to celebrate a few weddings of young couples, so we had to compete for the good picture spots.  A few visitors took our picture for us. 

After the temple we drove to our hotel.  We had booked a stay at the Days Inn near San Diego airport and Sea World.  They gave us a great room with a King size bed.  Since Kristen and I only have a Queen size bed at home, this was a nice treat and helped us to relax and sleep peacefully!

After becoming acquainted with our room and unpacking a little, we drove out to a little restaurant called Urban Chicken.  I had received a great deal in my e-mail which allowed me to buy $20 worth of food and drinks for only $10.  On our way there we got off at the wrong exit and had to navigate our way there.  I was not exactly sure of how to find the place so we stopped and asked a few college age kids if they knew where the restaurant was.  They explained to us how to get there and helped us to navigate that part of the city.  The kid that was the most helpful was wearing a “Scottsdale, Arizona” shirt.  We thought that was kind of interesting. 

So when we found the place high on a hill and drove down to a parking spot on the side of the road, the manager informed us that they were very busy.  He said that the coupon had created a lot of business for them that day and they had not been prepared for the heavy influx of customers that they had received.  He told us that we should come back another day or that we would have to wait about an hour for the food to be ready.  We told him that we were from out of town so it would be difficult to come another day but we informed him that waiting would not be a problem. 

While the food was getting ready for that hour, I finally had an opportunity to do what I had wanted to do since we had arrived in San Diego.  Kristen and I walked down to the pier and got to be right by the ocean and look at the bridges and buildings around the shore.  That was really cool!  

We returned and retrieved our food and then went back to the hotel.  We knew that it would be a big day the next day so we wanted to eat and get to bed as quick as we could.  We finished up the delicious chicken meal with roasted vegetables, red mashed potatoes, and rice.  Then we cleaned things up and hung out for a little bit at the hotels heated pool and Jacuzzi.  After getting back to our room, showering, and getting ready for bed, we hit the hay.

Saturday we woke up about 7:30 a.m. and got ready for the day.  The hotel provided free complimentary breakfast so we went down to the kitchen to see what was offered.  They had pancakes, scrambled eggs, and hash browns.  Also after retrieving that hot food, they had toast and muffins in the dining room as well as juice and milk.  In short, we ate very good and got a good jump on the day with full stomachs.

We then headed over to the main office to catch our shuttle to sea world!  It left a few moments after we got there and only had to go about 3 miles north and then we were there.  We arrived just in time to scan our vouchers, print out our tickets, and enter the gates.  After entering we quickly made our way to their main roller coaster “Journey to Atlantis”.  We were the first ones there but the lady informed us that they were experiencing technical difficulties so we would have to come back!  So we went with plan b and started exploring the park.  The day was full of fun and excitement!

In one day we: went on an arctic exploration, viewed the polar bears, hung out with the penguins, saw awesome man eating sharks, viewed the many species of the fresh water aquarium, walked along the north portion of the park, went on the sky ride over the bay, touched sea stars in the tide pool, explored the salt water aquarium, rode the wet rapid ride with some other guests, watched the “pets rule” live show, made our way to Shamu and saw his live performance, split a large double cheeseburger and fries, attended the sea lions live showing, rode the sky tower that soars more than 300 feet in the air over the park, went to a free Spanish concert put on by “Prince Royce”, went to the awesome Blue Horizons dolphin showing, finally rode the “Journey to Atlantis” ride,  saw the otters and the sea lions tonight show, got an opportunity to experience the new sesame street 4-D attraction, and then ended the night with the “Shamu rocks” extravaganza!  It was a fun filled day and we were very tired when we finally climbed into the shuttle and headed for the hotel.  We got to sleep as soon as we could!

Sunday we drove to find the San Diego ward building and attended Sacrament Meeting.  It was nice to sit in the chapel and partake of the sacrament and hear the talks that had been prepared.  There was a very sweet spirit there and the people were very friendly!  The talks seemed to be directed to us, one was on the blessing of having a small child in the home and Kristen and I are definitely excited to start trying to have a baby in about 6 months.  The other talk was on showing gratitude to your spouse which is definitely perfect since we were celebrating our Anniversary.

After church we went back to the hotel to nap a little since we were pretty tuckered out from the day before.  When we woke up again in the early afternoon we headed out to the beach!  This was definitely one of my favorite things because we drove to Mission beach and found a parking spot, strolled out onto the beach, walked along the shore wading in the tide for a few miles, layed on the sand to relax, and formed an amazing sand castle complete with towers, mote, and wilderness! 

After the beach we went to olive garden for our anniversary meal.  The food was pretty good but it was really expensive!  Honestly I think that Macaroni Grill is a better deal for the money and the quality of the food!  Plus the breadsticks at Olive Garden were very sparse and they only brought us a few every time that we asked.  However at Macaroni Grill we always get their delicious bread!  Anyways the food was pretty good and we got a picture together.  Then we headed back to the hotel, hung out at the pool, showered, watched our wedding and honeymoon DVD’s (although the portable DVD player that we borrowed from Stephen really didn’t work that well for one of the DVD’s), and ate our wedding cake that has been frozen for the last year.

Then we went to sleep and got up Monday morning at 7:30.  We woke up went down to breakfast, went back to our room, packed up, dropped off keys at the front office and checked out.  We then drove to the San Diego zoo for our last big event of the weekend.  The zoo was amazing!  It’s no wonder that the zoo is world famous!  They had every animal and I mean every animal!  I wouldn’t be able to name them all!  Some of my favorites were the lemurs, fossas, meercats, polar bears, koalas, kangaroos, monkeys, gorillas, echidna,  and reptiles.  We loved the petting zoo where I got to pet some goats and feed them some hay.  I was not particularly fond of the insect exhibits but they were cool.  We covered basically 97% of the zoo and we were definitely a little worn out!

After stopping at Jack in the Box for some food, we drove home to Arizona and got home at 11:15 at night.  All in all it was an awesome trip and it was great to celebrate our first anniversary!  We were tired when we got home and after getting ready for bed, I went straight to sleep!

Happy Anniversary Kristen!  I love you! J

Finals are OVER! :)

So it has been a few weeks since I updated my blog, but believe me it was not because I was procrastinating.  I have spent the last few weeks doing everything I possible could to finish up end of the year projects for my classes and also to study for my 3 finals that I had today! 

I think that all went well...I am not sick, or dead, and I don't have rashes all over or anything like that.  So all signs point to that I am in great shape!  So now I will just have to wait to see what the results are on those tests!

So the latest news to report on is that Kristen and I will no longer be going to Rocky Point for our vacation.  Aren't we crazy???  This vacation orginally was supposed to be a tour of my mission in Iowa and Nebraska, then we decided to start house hunting here in the valley so we decided to tone down the expenditures for our vacation and only do a quick 2 day thing to Flagstaff or the Grand Canyon.  Then I was finally able to convince Kristen to let us go to Rocky Point Mexico.  That was all fine and dandy until a few days ago when my boss who is an avid supporter of Rocky Point mentioned that we might not want to go.  I told him that we had heard that from everyone and even my own brother said that we would probablly get decapitated if we went.  My boss laughed and said that this was serious though...he said that a few days ago they had issued an alert for all travelers to Mexico and for the first time ever they had included Rocky Point in the alert. 

So we went home and looked things up and then decided that instead of going to Rocky Point we should go to San Diego and go all out as a End of the Semester present/Anniversary trip/Early Graduation present!  So we found a great package deal with Days Inn and Sea World tickets and San Diego Zoo tickets.  We will also be visiting the San Diego temple before we return home.  We are very excited for the trip and hey at least this way we should stop getting warnings about getting decapitated or other crazy things.  Whether those things are true or not is neither here nor there because we are going to San Diego!  :)

So I will have to report on how things go with that!

At least finals are over and Kristen and I appear to be in good shape...Hello Summer Vacation!

Date night and book club

Friday night was date night!
We had an awesome deal on pizza from papa johns and i got a free rental coupon for the blockbuster express so we rented tron!

First when i got home from work we watched the latest episode of The Office which is the one where Will Ferrell joins the cast as the new manager of the Scranton branch!
It is still hard to tell how well he will mesh with the other characters but im sure we will see more of him in the coming episodes.

Then westarted our movie: Tron! It was definitely an awesome flic! Though it was a bit different from the original one released in 1982.

Some of the things i really liked was the fact that they used the same actor for the main character, Jeff Bridges. He plays the role of Kevin Flynn who is a genius in computer programming and in fact he invented two of the most common video games in the 1980's. One of those was Tron.

The other thing i really liked was how there were a lot of parallels to the gospel of Christ, specifically in the plan of Salvation.

In Tron, there were two master builders inside the virtual world. One of those was Tron and one of those was Clu. Tron sought to follow the rules and allow others to choose their path but he was there if they wanted to follow the rules and he would support them.

Clu sought to build "the perfect system". He wanted to force people to be perfect and if they rebelled, he enslaved them. He went so far as to attack the creator: Flynn. Two different times the creator was saved because Tron, the good builder, sacrificed himself.

Ultimately it was a really good movie, it was very clean, there were no curse wordbs, and no sexual references. Its hard to find a film such as that in these days.

The other fun event this weekend was book club. We got together at Cheryl's house for a light dinner and a chance to discuss the book we had read "The Hourglass Door". It was a really good book dealing with the paradox of traveling through time and involved love, war, treachery, teenage drama and of course exotic and foreign concepts. Kristen and I enjoyed it so much that we are currently reading the second book in the series.

Well i think that sums up our friday and saturday. Today i have some home teaching to do and then some homework to finish up. Only 2 weeks of school left! :)

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The Best Birthday Eva!!!!!!!

So let me begin by just saying that this was the BEST BIRTHDAY WEEKEND EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!

First off on Friday I found out that I did an excellent job on my Spanish composition paper.  That was quite a relief because that class has been extremely tough!

Next I came home to my wonderful wife who had lovingly decorated the table with all sorts of birthday presents.  She put many things on the table: a new tent, a new fishing pole with tackle box, 2 dvd's: elf, and napoleon dynamite, and other great presents!

We finished packing for our trip to Suhuarita and then went to Jo's BBQ grill and got my free b-day meal.  Kristen and I really enjoyed the meal and we got some lemonade and root beer with our delicious meals.

Then we left on our trip down south...we got stuck in a traffic jam because of a major crash right at our ramp to the I-10.  Our drive went well and we arrived just about on schedule.  The kids were very excited to see us and they wanted to play with us.  We played wii with Jarom and Makayla and then Mark got home from work and we all ate Papa Murphy's pizza!!!!  It was delicious!!!!  After that we had a surprise b-day cake!  Kristen had arranged that surprise without me even knowing.  She is amazing!!!

To finish off the evening we watched Tangled with everyone and then went to bed.

We got up around 8 am the following day and after a quick breakfast we went to the zoo even though it was raining.  We really had a good time there because it didn't get too freezing and since we had umbrellas we really didn't even get that wet.  Also we got to see nearly every single animal except for the sun bear which I guess is usually hiding anyways because she is really old and likes her cave area where she can rest.  And we didn't see the Tapir either.  But we saw nearly every other animal including a quick glimpse of the anteater which was a lot bigger than I imagined that he would be.

After all of the fun at the zoo, we stopped at the jack in the box for a quick bite to eat before heading back to Mesa.  We got back home around 3:30 in the afternoon and had a moment to do some last minute errands before going home to unpack.  After unpacking and making sure that things were all in order we headed out to the last b-day surprise: BOWLING!!!!!!  Kristen had scored some really great deals on some games of bowling, so we got to play 2 games.  She won the first but I won the second.  Overall I was the winner with total points :P  but only by 6 points lol.

We went to eat dinner at Macaroni Grill which was really tasty!  I had never been there before, but I definitely want to go back some time soon!  Our server was Monica and she was really nice and since it was my b-day dinner she brought us a big piece of chocolate cake to share.  The meal was delicious too!  I had a pene pasta with shrimp and chicken!  It was full of flavor and went great with the complimentary bread!

Overall it wasn't a good b-day...it was a stupendous b-day weekend!  Today we got to go to baby Peyton's blessing and I was asked to stand in the circle.  I finally got to meet Mike Stephens as well!  He and my father go way back as they were roommates at BYU and Mike was my father's best man!  So that was good to finally meet him.

Well it's back to the books as we have just a few more weeks of school until summer break!!!!  We are definitely looking forward to the break, this has been a rather stressful semester and it looks like next semester will hopefully be a little easier for both of us! :)

Adios!