Down Under 2008

Chris recently visited Australia for 10 days! This first picture shows one of many beautiful clams that were all over the place. They were bigger than me!
This next picture is of a Minkie Whale. There were about 5 or 6 of them that followed us around. They were 20 - 30 feet long and really cool!


This was a sea snake that was fun to chase around. He didnt want much to do with us, but he was very poisonous.

This turtle was awesome! I captured some great video of him. His shell was beautiful and he didn't seem to mind us at all!



This was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. I don't really get it, but I think they are drafting off each other. Really cool picture! Do you like his teeth?


Had to do the handstand!
Oh, how cute!
5 kangaroos eating their lunch!
I was taught how to throw a boomerang. Watch out!!! They come back fast!















The natives taught me how to dance. Do you like my moves?


I found Nemo!!!!!!!

This was Nemos cousin. There were tons of clown fish in Australia. They were so beautiful!















Watch this cool video of me swimming in the middle of these yellow fish!



We saw several sharks on our dives. They were cool to follow around and watch, especially at night when it is pitch black and their eyes glow green when you shine your flash light on them!
The potato cod were amazing. They were huge and just like puppy dogs. They would brush up against you and werent afraid to push you out of the way. They dove with us for a long time, like they were our dive buddys!
This is a hairy ghost pipe fish. Does that look like a fish to you? I only saw one. Hope he has a mate!
This guy looked intimidating! He is a Coral Trout. I liked his teeth. You should have seen them up close!

Funny Picture

I was going thru old photo albums tonight and found this picture of my cousin Derek. He is now a macho 18 year old professional snowborder. Time goes by so fast, this seems like yesterday.

HAPPY 4th OF JULY!!

We drove up to Provo on the 4th to go the the Stadium of Fire. I love the energy of events like that! We saw the Blue Man Group (from Vegas) and of couse Miley Cyrus. The fireworks at the Stadium of Fire are AMAZING!!! They go on FOREVER!! It amazes me everytime. We took my cousins MaKena and Aubrey with us, they were so cute! All the girls were dancing all over for the Miley Concert, it was hilarious. I did feel bad for Sophia though, it was so loud. She did really good and was so mesmorized by the fireworks.

The next day we went up to a Cabin in Brighton and stayed the night. It belongs to a friend of my Aunt and Uncle. It was GEORGOUS up there, and so cool! We went on a little hike around the lake and just enjoyed visiting with cousins. On Sunday we went to church up there. I was suprised at how packed the church was. It's good to know that so many people on vacation will attend church. It was such a fun weekend!

It was especially nice to be with Chris again. He just go home from 10 days in Australia on a dive trip. I'm sure he'll post pictures later.

Happy 7th Birthday Madeline!!!

We have been celebrating Madeling's birthday for 2 days. Since her birthday was on Sunday, we had her friend party yesterday. She is definetly a girly girl and has loved the Fancy Nancy books the past couple years, so she had a Fancy Nancy Bday Party. It was held at Bare Foot Gymnastics and was a ton of fun. I think us adults had just as much or more fun than the kids. We played games and had fun jumping into the foam pit. (Chris did his flips into it.) They did lots of cute games with the kids. Then today, we had everyone over for dinner and WII tournaments.

It is amazing to me that Madeline is 7. She has been such a blessing to our family! I remember the day we brought her home and our home turned into a piece of heaven. She has always had such a wonderful spirit about her. I feel so blessed to be her mother.

Olivia's Graduation!

Olivia graduated from Barefoot Montessori Preschool and will be attending Kindergarten this fall. Her graduation was really cute and very entertaining. Of course anything will a room full of 3,4,and 5 years is very entertaining! Olivia has a voice that carrys well, (to say the least) and you could hear her belting out every song. It was a fun day!

Branson, Missouri

Last week we returned from our family vacation to Branson! This was a fun vacation because it was so different from anything we have done. We went to lots of shows and went to a theme park for 2 days. The theme park was called Silver Dollar City. It was all based on life in the Ozark's. We saw lots of hillbilly's the first day and started to get disturbing. The second day I enjoyed more as I accepted that fact that people can look like that. They had really fun rides! Chris especially liked one called Barn Swing. It looked to crazy even for me and I love roller coasters and stuff. We drank tons of frozen lemonade as it was so humid. We stayed up late every night watching movies, then slept in most mornings. The shows we went to were: The 12 Irish Tenors, The Duttons, SIX, Broadway, Dixie Stampede. It was awesome and fun for our kids to have so much culture in one week! They also has crazy miniature golf courses. We went to one with huge dinosaurs and a big volcano. The resort had a really fun pool area and crafts for the kids. We found out that it definitely is harder traveling with 3 kids. This was our first trip through the airport with all 3. Sophia did not like the plane very much, which made me a little nervous, but we all survived and had fun. This definitely was a trip to remember!

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DEAL OR NO DEAL (Deal I hope!)

On April 5th, Mary, Melissa, Becky, Jamie and I all stood in line for 5 hours in a Salt Lake City RC Willey warehouse for our chance to audition for Deal or No Deal. It was a very interesting 5 hours to say the least. Who knew Salt Lake had so many "characters"! They gave us 20 seconds to make an impression on them. Mary and I made the first cut. Then I went thru two more cuts when the casting director reached under his table and gave me a yellow slip of paper. He said to be very descreit and to go to room C. Well in room C they scheduled me to come back on Tuesday with my supporters for a taping. They wanted to see us play a mini version of the game and tape it to show the producers.

Later I found out that there were 10,000 people who auditioned and they kept 100 of those! Well on Tueday me and my supporters (Mary, Melissa,Chris,Aunt Julie and Becky) went to the Hilton. They took me in the room first and interviewed me. Then my supporters came in and we had a blast playing the game. I won $500,000! Too bad it wasn't for real. The casting director said it can take up to a year to hear if we made it on or not. It was such a fun experience, now I just hope we get on!