Aloha oe

This is a picture of my latest group of Elders. They are dear friends of mine and I love them. It was a wonderful privilege to be associated with and learn from each of them. Like the hundreds of others I have spent time with at the MTC, they are the real teachers. Below is a scripture from the Book of Mormon that pertains to each of them and the type of lives they live. God speed, Elders!

Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men. Behold, he was a man like unto Ammon, the son of Mosiah, yea, and even the other sons of Mosiah, yea, and also Alma and his sons, for they were all men of God. Now behold, Helaman and his brethren were no less serviceable unto the people than was Moroni; for they did preach the word of God, and they did baptize unto repentance all men whosoever would hearken unto their words.

Alma 48:17-19

Isabelle is Getting a...

She can't wait to share:

Hair-bows

Her fetish with the color PINK

Beaded Necklaces

Her Wardrobe

Baby dolls and their accessories

The secret of how to wrap everyone around her little finger

A Disney princess collection

The ability to switch from one emotion to the next

Her parent's unconditional love

We woke up at 6:30AM this morning so we could drive the 20+ minutes to the hospital and meet with ultrasound at 8:00AM. We were in and out in a half hour. This time around we received multiple 4D pictures of the baby, a CD with all her ultrasound pictures, and a DVD of the process. When the tech started she asked if we wanted to know the baby's gender and we said yes. After a quick look, she said, "I think it is a girl. I don't see any boy parts. Let me check again." She moved the wand around and said, "It's a girl." Drew had the biggest smile on his face.

After checking the baby's growing body, the tech said, "Let's check and see if she grew any boy parts while we were looking at other things." She moved the wand around again and said, "Nope, still a girl!" Baby girl was sleeping with her hands next to or over her face for the whole ultrasound. The tech had to tap my belly a few times to try and get the baby to move her arms so we could get a good mugshot.

Last night I asked Drew what he was hoping for and we both decided there were pros and cons on each side and we would be happy with either gender. When we left the hospital, Drew said, "I have secretly been hoping for a girl the last couple of weeks but I didn't want to tell you in case you would get upset if it were a boy." I would have loved a boy, but I am really excited for a girl! I am mostly excited that Isabelle gets to have a sister so close in age - my family goes girl, boy, girl, boy, girl and the first four kids in Drew's family were boys, so I think it is neat to have a different family pattern already. Drew says that he has dreams that we have a big family of all girls. I don't know about that, but I am happy to be surrounding Drew with girls for now!

snowboards and goldfish

MLK day I went snowboading with my friend Paige... I think she should marry paul so they can both have PMS for their initials. We'll see. We went up to The Canyons and made a whole day out of it. It ended up being an awesome day. Beautiful weather... the snow was okay, no new snow, but it worked for us.

A shaka for the drive up.


respeck.

This is on the gondola on the way up
some dude told us a story about a naked skier and took this picture. Mahaloz, bro.
This is the lunch tree... peeps hung their cup o' noodles all upons the tree so we follow suit. we had fruit and samiches and some crackers.
this was us enjoying our lunch... note that i have pb&honey in my mouf at the time
this was on the south mountain. this is prior to paiges worst run for the day... she ate it hard about 10 minutes later.
waiting in the lift line... the further you got from the lunch the less you had to wait, as you might expect... longest we waited to get on a lift was prolly 5 mins. high speed quads and sixes... nice place to go when its a holiday cuz they have like a billion acres of runs.
minutes later while riding the lift... we met some cool peeps on the way up the mtn a few times that day... some mormons, some not...
schmee
action shot. i took the color outa everything but the trees in this pic, thought it was cool.
here is a closer shot with the color
this is a cool pic that you should probably download and set as your desktop background.
the orig.
more snowboarding
more and more...
now paige
beautiful clear skies
here she comes
so excited
a close-up on the last pic so you know that she really was excited
Yatta!
ouch
doh!
long shadows... it was getting later in the afternoon
abstact snowboarding art
glove respeck.
happy us.
now with the sun on our faces.. i got some sweet racoon eyes to show for it
in the first few pics while we were on the gondola i had my had on, but it came off after we got up there and realized there was no need.
my hair is the longest its been in years
i brought tons of goldfish so we could enjoy that junx after a long exausting day of boardriding.

this one has a deep meaning i haven't quite figured out.
the end of the day on the road home... this is the backside of timp. if you click the pic and look closely you can actually see the injun timpanogos laying down in the moutain.

Katie Runs High School Track

Katie joined the winter track team at her high school.

She runs the 4x200 relay race.

She usually runs the third or fourth leg.

Here are a few pictures of her race she ran at

an indoor track meet yesterday.

Here is Katie before her race.

Here is Katie during her race.

She is so fast even my camera couldn't keep up!

Here is a picture of Katie after running her race.

Wrapping Up The Holidays

Heidi made some sort of maple bar pizza thing.

It was real good, so it didn't last long.

Here is a picture of Isabelle with her bling, of course.

She doesn't buy 'off the rack'.

This outfit was made by her

personal designer... Heidi.

Izzy got a fold-up beach chair.

She had fun pushing it around

and sitting in it.

Cortez the cat sitting on the last Christmas box,

wondering where all the neat Christmas stuff went.

More Christmas

i posted these pictures on facebook so i figured i would mirror them all here for those non-fbookers. plus if you click on them you get higher quality than you do on fbook

here we have the whole clan minus sue

the kids.

me and the parents

me and the old man

me and moms

dad and isabelle playing

ohh my turn!

and this is provo before i left

some more provo snow

and a shot of my christmas tree in my condo