May Camping Trip

Back in May a few friends and I went camping at the Whichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.  We had a blast!!  We rode around the park from place to place taking turns in the back of a truck.  Went on a few hikes, and even did some cliff jumping!  That sounds more dramatic than it really was, but it was a lot of fun!  Here are a few photos from the trip.

Rebecca and Christine in the back of the Truck

Erica, Sam and Lori at the start of our hike.

Some pretty wild flowers

I thought the moss on this rock was so pretty.

Some cool waterfalls.  Unfortunately those brave enough to get in discovered they are full of leeches and came out with leeches all over thier legs.  I stayed out thank heavens!

Here is our group at the top of the cliff getting ready to jump.  It technically was a cliff but it was only about 20 feet high so nothing to terrifying.  But it was still kind of a rush to actually jump off!

Here are some of my friends getting ready to jump. 

Here is a view of the little canyon we were in.  It was really pretty

Some of us had to hold hands and jump. 

Girls Camp

Here are some photos from girls camp.  We were the Coppell CAT Girls.  So for our skit we made cat ears and had whiskers.  It als involved a song sung to the melody of the once famous Spice Girls song, Tell me what you want.  It was actually really entertaining!  There was a boy trying to ask girls out on a sunday or to R rated movies and then the girls would sing  I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want.  I really really want a righteous priest.  Or  I really really want eternal life.  It was pretty cute.  This is a picture of us all after the skits back in our cabin.

One of the activities one day was a competition using shaving cream to make the funniest hair do's.  Of course it didn't end there.  It turned into a huge shaving cream fight.  I watched from a safe distance, but it was quite the sight.  Here is a photo of some of my girls completely covered.

Here is a group photo that we took on the first day in our camp shirts.  Aren't my girls the cutest! 

Dallas Blooms

I went to Dallas Blooms at the Dallas Arboretum a few weeks ago, while my friend Jill was visiting. I've heard of it every year but never actually gone.  It really is pretty spectacular, there are tulips in every color by the thousands.  It was gorgeous. I got some pretty good photos. I've uploaded some of my favorites for you to see.  There are a bunch of them so I apologize in advance!!  They aren't edited or cropped or anything, I'm still working on that part.  Enjoy!!

This is Ferdenand the bull.  He was over 12 feet tall. It comes from a really cute children's story.  I thought Penny might appreciate this!

These flowers grew in Chile like crazy! I've never seen them anywhere else.  It made me really happy to see them again!

Snow Day

Thursday the 11th of February, Dallas got pounded all day long with a foot of snow!! It was the biggest snow fall in the history of the DFW metroplex. Needless to say people kind of freaked out. Even though the roads never got very bad, people for the most part stayed off them, which lets be honest is safer anyway since no one here knows how to drive in snow or ice! Being on the roads with crazy Texas drivers trying to drive on ice is pretty scary! So on Thursday we were all sent home early to get out before the storm got worse. I suspect it was mostly because everyone wanted to go play in the snow with their kids that have lived in TX all their lives and never seen snow like this before. Over night there appeared an abundance of snow men, snow houses, and any other thing you could possibly make out of snow. There was enough snow that kids where sliding down hills on plastic bags as a poor man's sled. I loved it!! Every time I looked out the windows in my apt it felt like I was in UT. And then I'd look around and realize that nope, I'm in my apt in TX. It was so surreal!!

The next morning, I woke up about 5am freezing. Some time during the night our power went out. It didn't come back on till about 9:30 am. I've never experienced no power in the cold before. All the things you think of to do to warm up require power. If I had been in Chile, i would have bundled up and gone out back and chopped some wood to start the stove in the kitchen, (which i did my entire mission) but I live in America and we have and electric stove, and no wood to be found anywhere even though I do have a fireplace. It was a good thing we all had delayed starts because getting ready that morning took longer then normal. I did feel bad for my room mate who decided to brave the cold water to take a shower, then about 5 minutes later the power came back on and with in 15 min we had hot water again. I was planning on wearing a baseball hat to work that day, instead of showering in cold water. I had to do that as well for most of my mission, and it wasn't a memory I wanted to refresh!

When I got to work this is what I walked into see.


As I came around the corner this is what was sitting in my chair. A co-worker had gotten in earlier then everyone else and brought in a cart load of snow and decided to have some fun. He wrapped the chair in plastic garbage bags and then built a snow man in it. The snow man's name was Temp, because he was the temp for our office while everyone was delayed with the snow. Temp moved around the office. As people would come in they would find him sitting at their desk, on the phone, and then he would move to another vacant desk until that person came in. He has binder clips for eyes and nose, and these fake plastic pussy willow branches ,that came from a floral arrangement some where in our office, as hair. And the random sign from somewhere in the kitchen.

He even went for a ride on the elevator all by himself! Unfortunately he didn't make it back up the elevator to our office.

It was lots of fun. I'm grateful to have such fun coworkers that I really get along with. It is such a good place to work!!

Fun Pictures

This is entry is just a bunch of pictures. I'm doing a christmas present for my room mate that involves collecting photos of her friends in TX. And I decided to post some of them on my blog.

This is Thanksgiving Day. And my very first turkey!! Look how pretty it is. I was so happy with how well it turned out. And I finally got to use the platter that Jill gave me for my 30th birthday. My roommate even called her mom and told her that it was the best turkey she had ever tasted! Her mom then asked for the recipie.

This is my christmas tree. I inherited it from an old room mate that didn't want to move it. And over the last 2 years I have collected ornaments and ideas for it. I think it is lovely, and it makes me happy to come home at night and turn it on.

This is me and my roommates in front of the tree. I thought this was a cute picure of us. You can even see my new glasses. They don't look that bright normally, it must be the flash. From left to right, me, Christine, Alinda.

This is what happened last Sunday evening. We invited about 6 people over for dinner and it doubled to about 13 that actually showed up. Luckily, the chicken breasts were huge and we were able to cut them in half. Since there are three of us living together for the time being we happen to have a lot of doubles as far as furniture and appliances. When we realized how many were coming over we decided to make use of both of our tables. So we brought one in from off the patio and put them together and had dinner family style. It was lots of fun. This is after dinner when I recruited some of our guests to help me wrap caramels that I had made earlier. It was a really fun evening!!

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!!