Pumpkin Carving

Well, Jodie and I decided to carve our pumpkins yesterday. We've been wanting to carve them for a little while now, but I'm glad that we haven't because the weather got a little warmer and some of the pumpkins around here have withered away a little. But anyway, we decided to carve our pumpkins yesterday. So, here we are all set up:

Here we go getting started at cleaning our pumpkins out.

Getting a little messy...
We don't have many pictures between this point and Jodie's final product because we had messy hands. So, here's Jodie's pumpkin. One of my favorite parts was the stem with the face, they just seem to go together.For mine, I saw a picture online of a cool pirate ship, so I decided to try and duplicate it. So, this is about the point that I was at when Jodie finished with her pumpkin; needless to say it took a little while, but it was fun. I can't say I've ever gotten this into pumpkin carving before.
So, here's a little further along.
Here's the finished product, I thought it turned out pretty good.

Here's a close up view.
Here's both of our pumpkins in front of our house. We decided to light them and do a trial run of it.
So, here's the final project. I thought they turned out really good and we had a lot of fun.

Well, I hoped that you all enjoyed the pictures and Happy Halloween everyone!

Fishies

Well, Jodie and I have been wanting to get a fish tank for the past few months. So we saved up and we finally bought a fish tank. Now, its pretty simple and small, but its fun to have the fishes swimming around. We have it set up in our room, so its fun to wake up and watch the fish swimming around. However, going to the fish store and looking at some of the fish, holy cow, those things can add up pretty quick. But anyway, here's our 4 fish, not seen in the picture are two little hermit crabs. Not much, but it definitely fills up our little tank.

The other piece of news that we have is that yesterday we went to go see Body Worlds in SLC. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's a museum exhibit of human cadavers. It was very fascinating to see the human body in action; proof that our bodies really are amazingly complicated and intricate machines. Another thing that made the experience even better was while we were waiting in line to buy our tickets, a man came up and asked if we were going to buy tickets, and so we replied that we were. He then said, "Well, here's one to start you off." So he gave us a ticket and a voucher for an audio tour guide. So, we just bought one student ticket and shared the audio thing and it worked perfectly. It was very nice of the guy. We don't have many pictures from the experience because photography is forbidden within the museum. So, here's the one picture that we have. I took this in the lobby, they had a skeleton that was projected on the wall that would display text messages that were sent to a certain phone number. As messages were displayed, he would change poses. I thought it was a pretty clever idea, so here's that one.
This other picture is a little blurry, but still worth posting. We had Jodie's brother Shaun come over to watch conference with us on Sunday morning. We had breakfast together and then sat down to watch conference. Towards the end of the afternoon session, we took this picture. We love ya Shaun, but couldn't resist putting it up. Although, in his defense, he opened his eyes after we took the picture. The hardest part was trying to keep a straight face afterwards.
These last two I thought were kind of fun, random pictures. The other day, this car pulled into our parking lot at work as I was running some mail over to the office next to us.
This one is classic of insurance bureaucracy and how ridiculous it can be at times. This check we received in the mail; a grand total of one cent. Kind of sad I thought because it is not even worth the value of the stamp, ink, or probably paper used to print the check. Oh well.
Well, there's some pictures for ya, hope that you enjoyed.

Conference Weekend

Well, Jodie and I were able to get some tickets to go to conference this weekend for the Saturday session. Our Bishop gave us four tickets and asked us if we could try to take two of the mia maids with us to conference. So, we got everything all set up with them and one of them got sick friday night and the other didn't want to go without her. So, we had two extra tickets to conference and invited Jodie's brother Shaun to come with us. So, we left Saturday morning and watched the morning session in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and then went to the afternoon session. It was a lot of fun and the only damper on the day was the weather, it rained non stop on Saturday. Oh, we also had lunch in the Garden room on top of the JSMB between sessions; it was a lot of fun because Shaun hadn't been up there before either. But here are some pictures of the day.
Today for conference, Shaun came over again and watched conference at our house. By the time conference finished, the sun was finally starting to come out again. So, we decided to all go take a drive up Provo Canyon and see the trees. It was really pretty to see all the colors, especially right after the rain because everything was very clean, especially the air, so the colors were very vibrant. Here are some of the pictures that we took.

ok, so in those two pictures, you don't see much of the vibrant colors, but I had a request from a certain, unnamed individual who wants more pictures of us in our blog. However, you can kind of see the trees and colors in the background and a little better in the next picture.
Here's Shaun and Jodie.

These pictures were from just below the reservoir, heading up Provo Canyon. We decided to turn back and go up to Sundance/Aspen Grove.
It was really pretty going up this canyon, lost of yellows and reds, with the occasional snow on the mountain. These next three were at Aspen Grove.


At this point, we turned back to go to Sundance. Here are some that Jodie got while she we were driving down.





Then at Sundance, we got this picture.
Shaun took this picture after we left, very pretty scene.
Here's a little bit of the ski resort. This was actually the second snow storm we've gotten up on the mountains since this summer. Kind of scary because we both are hoping for as little snow as possible in the valley this winter.
Well, there are the pictures from this weekend. Hope you all enjoyed and are proud how quickly we got the pictures up - hopefully we can keep this trend up.

Twilight Report...and other stuff...

This first picture is from last year- I had it on my phone and it made me laugh....


Well, we moved into a new school building in April. It was in the middle of the last term so it was pretty crazy- hence the very bare walls. Anyways, this is my classroom. The school ordered a podium for each classroom- the students hated them. They felt like we were all preaching down to them all the time. Well...at least until they came to my room....then it became a joke! I am barely taller than the podium and so the students could barely see my face when I would stand behind it (which wasn't often). I came to class one day and found my podium on top of my front table where I usually teach. They begged me to teach from it- so we made a deal, I taught from there and they would do their entire assignment. The best part was when the campus supervisor peaked into my class and had to do a double-take. Maybe you just had to have been there...but it was classic.

Another quick side note. The student in the picture is the one who was a body guard at a club...for those of you who know that story. (Basically he tried to be tough with me and I did not take it- he backed off real quick....it was great!) Anyways, for one of my observations last year I had to video tape myself teaching. It was pretty entertaining watching it because the camera was set up in the back of the classroom and he sat between myself and the camera. Periodically I would disappear behind him- I was standing, he was sitting. :)


The Twilight Report.....
.....that's right, I finally read it!


Well, I'm sorry to report that I am not going to run out and join all the big fan clubs...but here's my story....

...first, some background. There are two genres I do not enjoy reading- fantasy and romance. Hmm...vampires and wolves....and Bella's love story. That pretty much explains how I felt about the first half of the book. Although I thought it was well written, the content made it very hard for me to get into. (Like Shaun said, sometimes I need to be more of a girl.) Anyways, I was getting to the point of giving up when one of my students turned in a very detailed book report about the book. Of course I read it and found out how it was going to end. So then I had to read on to see how all the fun action would play out. Once I got to the fun action- running away, adventure, and killing- the book became much better and I actually got hooked. I was excited and relieved because I didn't want to let all the Brems girls down. So, although it was hard for me to get into.... I ended up enjoying it.

Will I be continuing on? Well my same student wrote a detailed book report for the entire series, including Breaking Dawn. I think Twilight will do for me. But I am glad I at least know the jist so I understand whatever everyone is always talking about! :)


Mark kicking back on his precious chair. Every man has to have their special chair....