What busy time of life!

Blogging has not been a priority because life has gotten in the way. I don't think I'm more busy the usual it's just that I have not made my blog a priority. My friend let me know the other day in not too many words. So I'm really going to try and go back to blogging every Sunday evening.

The past few weeks have brought a lot of changes. I was release from my calling that I served in for the past 3 years and 1 month. That was the longest I've ever been in a calling! Now for whats new....Nursery Leader and Stake YW camp director. I'm excited about both! This year the girls are going to Orcas Island in the San Juans. What a bunch of lucky ducks including me! I just hope for sunshine on Wednesday because we are hiking up Mt. Constitution and I'm hoping for a good view of the islands and the mountains. Pictures to come.

Our 23rd Anniversary

What a fun day! We got to spend it with our friends Kyle and Amanda at the Vancouver BC temple. More to come about our adventures to Friday Harbor and Vancouver to celebrate!

Trip to San Juan Islands

We have had to pick-up all of our animals from somewhere other then Whatcom county (with the exception of 2 ewes)and everyone seems to come with a story.

Our first flock of sheep came from Montana. We sent Brendon off to the MTC and left 2 days later to make a 9 hour drive, spend the night, pick up the sheep and drove to my parents spent the night only to have a mother and lamb get out at our friends house the kept the sheep over night.

Our first batch of pigs came from Texas when a friend made the trip in about 72 hours only stopping to get 3 different litters of pigs. Then Craig had to follow suit and went and got about 24 pig from eastern S Dakota in about 5 days. Our last trip was to get more pigs from Walla Walla over Thanksgiving only to have a major flat tire on the suburban that turned into a four hour ordeal in 20 degree weather with my kids and 3 extra kids that belong to my sister.

We had been looking for a ram to breed with out Cotswald/Lincoln ewes. Craig found one at a monastery on Shaw Island (On of the many islands in the San Juans) The past 2 years we have gone to Whistler for our anniversary and thought why not kill to birds with one stone. Craig called the bed and breakfast made a strange request to see if we could bring a extra guest for the night-our lamb that we were picking up on another island. They were happy to help. We were pretty lucky that he was easy to get into the back of the suburban and thought he was going to be ok until he about jumped over the seat. I crawled into the back to try and keep him calm the rest of the ferry ride. Turned our keeping him in a pasture for the rest of the day, the night and part of the next day was just what he needed and we were able to ride home with out me in the back seat.

Notice the lovely heaving breathing on the back window. I did a thorough cleaning of the car when we got home! He's a really sweet ram and is already checking everyone out!

Anniversary Part II-Vancouver, Wicked and The Stanley Cup Riots

Last year we had a chance to go see Wicked after a friend had talked it up so much. Thanks Courtney! We went to Seattle and loved it! So when another friend found out that it was coming again to Vancouver we decided that would be part of our anniversary was going to Wicked again. We ordered tickets as a group, we got a great deal. Most of the people were from our church.

Who would know in Oct/Nov that the Stanley Cup game #7 would be playing that night just blocks away from the theater where we would be going.

We made out plans to ride the bus from White Rock(just across the boarder from Blaine, WA) not far from our house. Then we wouldn't have to deal with parking and issues getting out of downtown depending on the outcome of the Stanley Cup. Which we found out could have been just as bad if they would have won.

It took a little longer then we expected and riding on a bus with roudy hockey fans(I'm sure they had already started drinking) was interesting but we made it. We were a bit worried about were we had planned on eating, would it be full if they had a tv broadcasting the game? All bars along the way were packed and had people standing outside trying to watch the game. We lucked out with the place we had planed on going to, they had 2 available tables.

We had a fantastic dinner-authentic pizza and the best dessert. We headed to the theater but stopped to make sure how we'd get to our bus on the way home. Vancouver was loosing and the crowds were getting a little scary at this point but Craig reassured me we'd be ok. The middle picture is the crowd in front of a giant tv screen just to the west of the theater. They estimated 250,000 to 500,000 people were in the downtown area for the game.

The play started at 8 pm. At intermission around 9:30 as the lights went up we were told not to go outside "due to the events going on." We could see the remains of a burnt car right were all the people had been watching the game. We could hear loud booms from tear gas. We looked out the other window and saw a guy throw some kind of bottle on fire towards what we found out later were 2 police cars that they were setting on fire. More tear gas and black smoke coming from the burning cars. Then we saw another guy throw a newspaper box(the big metal ones) on the windshield of a car. We were then asked to move away from the window. I couldn't believe what were we seeing! Of course I started to worry, I had no desire to walk through any of that. I knew we had to go about 5 blocks to get to our bus stop.

I calmed down and decided to just enjoy the rest of play and we'd worry about it afterward. The play ended around 11 pm. We were told we had to stay in the building until the theater got word of safe routes to leave the area. About 1/2 hour later they announced the safest and open routes for driving. The Skytrain was running but there was no bus service out of downtown. Great, we had no way to get home. With cell phones we all gathered by the entrance and made a plan on how to get all of us home. A few others were in the same boat as us. We rode with some friends back to our car. The road that we left on ended up being closed and we were sent down a alley by the police only to have something thrown from a window above. We ended up getting home around 1 am. I'm so thankful for the safety in numbers. I hope never to be around a riot again. So sad for the people of Vancouver.

Good-bye to our favorite baby!

In April we said good-bye to our favorite baby and her parents. We will miss the Leon's. We had many sleep-overs with baby C including a few sleepless nights...at least for Mackenzie. We hope they are happy back in Utah and wish them the very best.

Spring Break

One of the days we took a day trip over to Deception Pass and we were in hopes to see the tulips blooming in Skagit County. The tulips were a wash because they were not blooming yet...too cold of a spring. But we had fun at the beach. It was a pretty warm but windy day, what should I expect at the beach. I found out that Kaden is afraid of heights. For being such a big talker about what he can do there was no way I was going to get him to walk out over the bridge. I have to admit it's pretty high but what a view when you walk out to the middle of the bridge.

What we've been doing when I haven't been blogging

Weddings:Christina and Sung

Craig and I took a trip in February for his sister Christina's wedding in San Diego. You would have thought we were still in WA with all the rain they got while we were there. Thankfully it stayed dry enough for pictures when they came out of the temple. We hadn't been to CA since we had moved and I was really looking forward to some warm days. In the end I was glad I took my coat because it was a lot colder then I'd hoped for.

Rest of our days in CA

We had hoped to do more in CA but time was short. We went with Brendon over to downtown Disney after the wedding dinner, only to have it dump buckets of rain so it was a quick stroll. We spent Sunday evening with Craig's family for dinner and watch a gorgeous sunset. Monday we had just enough time to go to the beach for a few hours before catching our flight home. I loved our trip to CA but realized why I still like living in the NW.....to many people, too much traffic and so many homes that are so out of our budget that we could never live in CA, especially with all those animals of ours.