Good Friends

I have some of the nicest friends. The first week of December I got a call from my friend, Rebecca, asking me if she could come over during a study break about 8pm that night so we could catch up since it had been 2 weeks since we had seen each other. I said of course, and was in the kitchen finishing my dinner when she got there. She brought her room mate, and I thought that's wierd, she was just comming from school and would have been on her own. But I didn't think much about it. So she and i where talking in the kitchen, and then about 5 minutes later there is another knock on the door. I come around the corner to see banners that my roommate hung up saying CONGRATULATIONS and YOU DID IT!! My friends had organized a low key surprise graduation party! It was so sweet. We went and got ice cream and then came back to my place and visited. It was a small gathering of good friends, and I loved it. They kept making a numbered list of reasons why they loved me. They were stupid things like reason # 28, I like Kristin because I love her black hair. Or reason #102 she is funny. It was kind of ridiculous and made me a little uncomfortable, but mostly it made me feel loved which is never a bad thing. I don't have any family in Texas, but i sure am blessed with good friends!!

Grandpa's Funeral

I haven't written in a while, just because life seems to speed up as soon as Thanksgiving hits. And then the week before Thanksgiving I was in WA for Grandpa Allsops funeral. Grandpa's funeral was amazing. All of Grandpa's grandchildren where there, except for 3 serving missions. It was wonderful to be there all together as a family celebrating the wonderful man that was our grandpa. I'm so glad to have his example of enduring to the end. His last act in this life was taking the sacrament. He was strong and faithful to the very end of his life. I will never forget that powerful example. It was wonderful to see what a remarkable woman my Grandma is. She is full of faith and hope, and while she misses Grandpa, she has faith in the plan and that brings her peace. I look up to her so much. Here are a bunch of us sitting and just listening to her talk about grandpa while at the viewing.

I was really touched by the hymn choices Grandma made for the funeral. All the spanish speakers sang the first verse of Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel in spanish, and then everyone else joined in for the other verses. As i was sitting there singing "pon tu hombro a la lid con fervor", I couldn't help but think of my mom. She always loved that song, and I have many memories of sitting next to her in a sacrament meeting where we sang that song and my mother in her tenor voice singing those words in the spanish she learned from her mission. I never realized that she loved it because grandpa loved it. As i sat there singing those very words in the same language she always sang it in, it made me feel like she was there with us. We also sang I Know that My Redeemer Lives. It was an amazing arrangement, I don't think I'll ever sing or hear I Know That My Redeemer Lives with out thinking of the sprit that was there at my Grandpa Allsop's funeral as we sang those inspired words. What a great final song to sing as a memorial to my Grandpa. I think that one of the ways I know the words to that song are true is due in large part to the family I came from. The way both of my grandparents raised my parents and the way my parents raised us.I'm extremely grateful to the legacy of faith that exists in my family!

Here is a picture of my family at the funeral.Marnie, Me, Ashley, Scott, Amanda, Jake, Rebecca, Jonathon, Juliann, Dad, Judy

Here is a cute one of Me, Amanda, Marnie, and Juliann

My Grandpa was burried in the same plot where we burried my mother. Only about 3 or 4 spots over. It was nice/hard to be able to see my mom's grave again. Here is a picture of my Mom's tombstone. I love that we used the scripture in 2 Nephi 5:25. She lived after the manner of happiness. That was so true of my Mom!!

SAFARI!!!!!

This weekend I did one of the coolest things I have ever done in Dallas!! Just outside a tiny little town called Glen Rose (2hr. sw of Dallas), there is a place called Fossil Rim Wild Life Reserve. They have several hundered acers with a 10mile route that you drive through. Along the way you get to meet up close and personal all sorts of "wild animals". I put that in air quotes because clearly these animals are so used to humans they are not really wild. But I still have to say it was quite an experiance to get up close to some of these creatures. Some of them made me more nervous then others. The giraffe's where my favorite hands down!! Because they don't have top teeth we got to let them eat out of our hands. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagened that I would hand feed a giraffe! It's tounge really is bluish green like you always hear, and it feels like a wet bristle hair brush or something. Here is a picture that captures my first experiance feeding a giraffe! Just ingore the crazy face, I know I look ridiculous but I still love the picture because it perfectly captures the emotion of that moment! You can just see my thoughts. They went something like this, "Holy cow, thats an honest to goodness giraffe sucking on my hand!"

Here is my friend Kristi feeding a giraffe whose entire head is in the car with her! You can also see the crazy tounge in this photo.
Look at this face!! Giraffes are so cute and gentle! My new favorite animal!

Zebra's on the other hand have this shifty look in their eyes that made me so nervous!! It might also have been the signs every mile or so that said, Beware zebras will bite! Anyway i had a feeling that at any moment the zebra might snap and take a chunk out of my arm so I tried to keep my distance. But they seemed to love me for some reason. I have included a sequence of photos that fully captures my zebra experience.

1. Our first meeting. I'm trying to keep my distance, I'm practically on the drivers side of the car.

2. Zebra decides to get a little closer and begins to invade my personal space. Plus he's sticking his tongue out like he wants a lick. And look at those eyes, they look a little crazy!!

3. I've made some peace with the zebra, he seems to have backed off a bit and I'm a little calmer. Still really nervous to take my eye off of him though.

4. Laughing nervously, praying he'll go away and leave me alone with out incident.

5. More nervous laughter. I'm really terrified at this point. The camera just missed it but the zebra kind of nuzzled my shoulder for a second. I'm trying really hard to maintain my calm.

6. I finally give up all pretense and duck and cover.

Here are the rhino's we saw. Quite the animals to see in person!!

The ostriches were great. They move really fast so, they were kind of hard to get good photo's of. We had one that poked his (we took a vote and decided he was a male, although he could have been female) head in every single window of our car as he circled around. We felt like he was judging us and that we had been found unworthy because he just walked away when he was done with us even though we were feeding him.

This is my favorite photo of the day!!!

I love this one too!!!

First Look

This weekend I finished all my squares for my quilt and was able to lay it out and see how it would all look together for the first time!! I'm so happy with how well all the 92 different pieces of fabric all fit as one cohesive piece!



I'm nervous that I'll ruin it when I sew it together but, I will just become friends with the seam ripper. Hopefully it will turn out better then my first attempt and putting a quilt top together. Mom and I started it right after my mision and then I took it to college to finish it. When I brought it home to show mom she said "Oh, Babes, we can do better then this", and then took the entire thing apart so that we could start over. Except the summer started and I got a job and we never did. I still have all the blocks in a bag in my closet that have been sitting untouched for years now.

Progress Report

I finished cutting out all of my quilt blocks last night!!!! I'm so excited about the awesome pieces I was able to find! Here is a photo of them all together!! I don't have the neutrals in a photo but they are all creams and ivorys and really great! All very different and will look great with all my colors!


And here is one of them all spread out with some of my favorite pieces of each color on top! The purple, blue and teal all look the same in this photo but trust me they are quite different!! I'm going to do a lot of sewing this weekend so next week i'll actually have some sewn blocks to show!

My new project!!

I have been wanting to make a quilt for quite a while. (I just used two q words in one sentance how often does that happen?) It is fall, and I felt like making a quilt during the fall would help me feel close to Mom! Plus I've wanted to work on a project like this for a while. It gives me something to work on in the evenings so I can feel productive. So while I was over at Murdock's I took advantage of Amy's awesome resources to find a pattern. I already knew I wanted to use a flying geese pattern and I wanted it to be colorful so when I found the following pattern I was thrilled!

I have made some changes to the colors and the arrangement of the colors. Instead of doing black on the bottom I'm going to use brown, and I'm adding more green and a golden yellow color as well as some teal so there is less red. I graphed it all out to scale and then colored it last night for my FHE! There are 128 "geese" So I'm doing exactly 16 triangles of each of the 8 colors I'm using. Brown, purple, blue, teal, green, gold, orange, red. I think it will be really pretty! Plus it's a square I already know how to make, that is really simple. I'll keep you posted on the progress!

Conference and Cinnamon Rolls

My conference weekend was wonderful! It was a beautiful fall day in TX, which means that it cooled down to the low 70's and was cloudy and drizzly outside! My favorite time of the year. I watched Saturday's and Sunday morning sessions at home. I love the spirit that conference brings into my home!

After the afternoon session on Saturday I decided that it was perfect cinnamon roll weather. So I set out to make a batch of Aunt Charmaine's awesome cinnamon rolls. I have serious issues getting bread to raise so this seemed like a risky venture to me, seeing how cinnamon rolls have to raise twice. But I figured why not, so I set to work. It only took 4 1/2 hours (note the sarcasm), but they turned out amazing!! I have to say, I felt like a grown up, like I had really and truly become a woman! I invited some friends over to help eat them, and while we were sitting around talking the lights in my apartment flickered twice and then went out for about 2 hours. It was quite fun. We sat around my living room lit only by my ghost and jackolantern tea lights and shared our favorite conference talks from that day and attempting to tell scary ghost stories.

Sunday afternoon I went over to the Murdock's to have lunch and watch the last session of conference. I love being there! It really was like being with family! My favorite part of the visit happened during lunch. The conversation somehow arrived at wondering who between Amy and Chris would win at arm wrestling. So of course the table was cleared and the debate was promptly put to the test! Chris won, but Amy held strong for quite a while. I plan on going and visiting again soon.