Being overcome with the Spirit!

So Kristen and I enjoy our weekly visit to the temple.  We make plans to go every saturday or nearly every saturday and we are trying to take advantage of this time that we have since it will not be as easy or convenient once kids come along.

Yesterday we had an eventful experience!  During our worship in the temple I happened to glance up and see Kristen's head tilting farther and farther down.  I thought she was maybe just resting so I gave her hand a soft squeeze to try to get some kind of a reaction out of her.  She didn't respond and her head kept tilting down so I paid more attention and noticed that all of the blood was running out of her face and she was looking ghostly pale.  By this time I knew that she was about to pass out and I quickly alerted some nearby people that I needed help.  One man by the name of John came over to support Kristen while I got closer to her and then he and I assisted Kristen in sitting down in a nice chair.  At about this time Kristen got some blood back and said she was feeling very hot and weird and then she asked me "did I pass out?".  I responded in the affirmative and told her that she had nearly fainted and that I would explain everything a little bit later.

All in all it was a little bit scary for me.  Luckily I had a good idea of what to do and was able to quickly assist her before anything traumatic happened.  I kept joking that maybe this had happened because she is pregnant, but a pregnancy test yielded nothing but negatives!

Snow, snow, and more SNOW!

So one of the things that I miss the most from my mission is the SNOW!

I love that weather is nice here in Arizona because it was really frustrating to deal with crazy weather especially when we had to go tracting or contacting in it.  But I do miss the snow anyways!  It's fun to play in, it looks awesome, and it's just a nice break from the heat.  Well yesterday I got my wish!

Kristen and I went with her siblings and their families up to Flagstaff to play in the snow!  Her brother Stephen had heard of a great location where there are some really nice hills.  So that's where we planned on going!  We spent a good part of last weekend collecting gear from our families that we would borrow for our trip to the snow.  We borrowed jackets, boots, gloves, scarves, etc.

Then yesterday at 7:15 we all met up at Mom Erickson's home and carpooled from there up to Flagstaff.  First I got to say hi to Bella and that was nice.  Kristen and I rode up to Flagstaff with her brother Dan in his vehicle.  We kept his daughter Sam company on the drive.  Together we did about 5 crossword puzzles from my crossword book, watched 4 movies including Despicable Me TWICE, and took naps.

We arrived to where our instructions said to go and wouldn't ya know we were in a parking lot of a ranger station and the station was closed!  So we bagged that idea and headed a few miles up the road to find it on our own.  We went to a location called Wing Mountain.  It was super crowded and we were in long lines of cars on the way in and out.  We found some good hills, walked around a bit, went traipsing through untouched snow, built a snowman that we then transformed into a snow bunny and Kristen made a few snow angels.  It was all in all a great day and though we did get sunburned a little bit, that was the extent of the damage.  There were no injuries or accidents among our crew.

I think my favorite part was when we did a train of 4 people each on their own saucer sleds and went down the top of the biggest hill!  We got soaked because some of the snow towards the bottom was melting and it was spraying slush everywhere.  Oh and I did see two kids going down in the same sled that shot right into the middle of a 1 foot deep pond.  They came out soaked from head to foot and were dumping water out of their sled!

We headed home and saw Bella once more, dropped off the borrowed snow gear, and came back to our apartment!  It was a great way to end our winter break!  Now we are back to the books starting Tuesday as the new semester picks up at ASU!

So long winter break, we can't wait for summer! :)

Christmas Un-decorating and Book Club

First off I just want to say how indeed blessed we are!  Kristen interviewed for and received employment with the Kids Club.  It is an after school program put on by various schools in the Mesa school district.  She did great and we have no word yet as to which school she will be working at, but we are EXCITED!

In other news: This weekend was a good one as we started it out by serving!  We went to help the volunteers take down the many strands of Christmas lights on the Mesa temple grounds.  We showed up right before 7 am and received a delicious breakfast: orange juice, doughnuts, and Egg Mcmuffins!  Then we went and started taking Christmas lights down.  We didn't really know where to go so we just started taking some down on the east side of the Temple.  The Stake President that was assigned to that area soon showed up and said that he was happy for the help.  It was cold and the lights were rather stiff as they had been up for more than a month.  The work went rather fast and it wasn't difficult, but one tree in particular gave me a lot of grief.  It was very difficult to un-decorate as the decorators had clearly put a lot of time into it and had put about 10 strands of lights in and around it.  It was difficult to untwist all those strands.  But all's well that ends well!

Following that we went into the visitors center and changed and then attended an endowment session!  It was very full!  There was not one empty seat in the whole session!  But it was great to be back in the Temple!

The rest of the day went by rather quickly.  We drove out to Mom Erickson's to find snow clothes for next weekend when we go to the snow.  We saw Bella, talked with Stephen and picked oranges, tangelos and lemons from Mom's trees out back.  We brought some over to the McLaws' and also found some snow clothes to borrow from them.  After that we stopped at some Goodwill stores on the way home to look for a game of Scrabble.  We didn't find one but we did find Wheel of Fortune!  That was definitely a great find!  It is from 1986 and is in great condition!

That evening was Book Club at Cheryl's home.  We had dinner first and that was quite a collaboration of dishes of all types.  Each individual was to bring something that started with the first letter of their first name.  So we brought hershey's Kisses for Kristen and chips and Salsa for Steven.  Then after dinner we discussed the book "The Life of Our Lord" by Charles Dickens.  It was a great discussion that ended up strengthening my testimony of the Saviour and his life.

All in all it was a great weekend and today was our Ward Conference where many wonderful messages about love and Marriage relations were shared!  I sure do love the gospel and I know this Church is True!

New Years 2010-2011 according to Kristen

So we started out the night by eating dinner made by the gracious Mom Erickson.  She made us yummy salad, spaghetti casserole, cinnamon rolls and French baguettes.  Then we hung out while Stephen got himself pretty and Jacob and Jennifer packed their car for their return trip to Utah the next day.  Um...

Um...We all headed over to haha Becca haha haha and Eric's house to play some GAMES!  That's the best part of New Years Eve.  We are thankful that they let us into their house cuz I can get kind of loopy at night.  We had snacks like meatballs, and wieners in rice(those little wieners that you eat sometimes with rice), Chips, more chips, and Salsa, M&M's and Caramel popcorn with some Sprite and Lemonade on top.  We played games like...like such as...jk....um....haha what did we play...Partini, and the Great Dalmuti, and haha what else did we play?? There was one more...BABE HELP ME PLEASE...oh Battle of the Sexes...where Jennifer dominated for the girls haha...We also watched the best of Chris Farley on SNL on our cool DVD Steven got me for Christmas.  We turned on the show to watch the ball drop or whatever happened right before midnight, or whatever happened on channel 15 midnight..hahha...and we cheered our Sprite glasses because ;( everyone forgot to bring Martinelli's.  And Steven gave me a big smooch at midnight!  He also grabbed some pots and pans...a pot and a spoon...haha....and banged them together outside while people lit off fireworks.  It was freezing to say the least.  Then we watched a few more minutes of the TV where that stupid singer girl, her name starts with an F...was dressed in nothing basically and had green sunglasses and lipstick and just looked silly...Frisky, Frosty, or something...then we took everyone home and we got home safely and then we went to bed...Steven didn't want to watch the office ;( before we fell asleep, but that's ok.  The next paragraph

The next day on January 1 we attended a baptism and filled our tummy's with Red Robin and undecorated Christmas ;( and now our house is back in order and there's a happy wife and that makes a happy life! :)  I heard that quote "a happy wife makes a happy life" from something recently...THE END!  Time to watch the Office and add pictures...not in that order!