Levi's Birthday

In addition to going to the Water Park for Levi's birthday, on his REAL birthday they had us over for an AMAZING dinner. We had salad, garlic bread, homemade lasagna, and a homemade ice cream cake to top it all off! She did a great job on everything and this is what her ice cream cake looked like. She said that it was really easy to make, you just had to do it quick before it melted. Anyways, I just wanted to let her know that anytime she wants to cook lasagna for us we will be more than willing to come over. :) It was delicious! Thanks Stephanie...and thanks Levi for having a birthday so we could come over haha.

What's on Todd's hand?

You may be wondering why Todd is trying to look like a bowler. Well Todd had a little accident. We went to the water park with the Vogel's for Levi's birthday party. It was really fun despite Levi yelling "It's my birthday!" every couple of minutes (just kidding about that not being fun). I got a little bit of whiplash from one of the rides, but Todd got a much worse injury. Him, Levi, and Rob decided to go on a 3 person tube ride together and were messing around trying to flip the tube and they successfully flipped it, but as they did Todd hit his thumb on the slide really hard. He hurt and it started swelling and bruising up pretty badly. Here is a picture that you can kind of see the bruising but not too well. It was a lot worse in person. Well this was on a Saturday and Todd waited until Monday to go to the doctor to see if it would start feeling better. He could move it so no one thought it was broken. We got x-rays and it ended up being broken in two places. His first concern was that he would not be able to play halo. Ridiculous is the only word that can explain it. He has been using it as an excuse to not clean dishes and do other things. If he doesn't want to do something he goes, "Michelle, my thumb..." that's it. Just "my thumb" is supposed to explain everything and be an excuse for everything. It hasn't worked THAT often...but he really hasn't done the dishes. :) He has to go to a hand specialist to make sure that it will heal properly, so we are really hoping that he doesn't have to get surgery! I did warn him at the water park to not mess around. Oh, and before he found out it was broken he was playing Halo anyways, despite the pain...so I kind of didn't feel sorry for him. Does that make me a bad wife? I don't think so.

Next Event

The next thing that I have pictures of was Todd's induction into a cult. Just kidding. It is a society for computer nerd's I think. It's called Upsilon Pi Epsilon, and I was cracking up during the induction ceremony because of the things that were being said. You had to be there, but it was funny I swear. So here he is when they all had to repeat after one of their teachers. They had a hard time remembering what their teacher said so it kind of sounded like mumbles...they tried.

Where do I even begin?

So these past two? three? weeks (how long has it been since I posted?...forever) have been crazy and filled with lots of fun/interesting things. The first thing that I remember is Todd's "graduation banquet" that we went to on June 6th. He is not quite graduated YET, but we decided it would be ok to go to this one since the next one isn't until December. It was really fun. I was excited to go for the free meal. There was a chocolate fountain for the appetizer (we all thought that was a little strange and mixed up). Then for dinner we had fruit, salad, veggies, chicken stuff, rice, thai beef curry and rolls. It all was so good, and it's always so much better when it's free and prepared by somebody else! Todd got a certificate and a pen. Here are a couple of pictures of him. 1: him with his teachers, but it was hard to get a good picture with the lighting so it is awful. 2: Us at the end of the banquet. 3: Todd with his goodies, he's so cute.

Today and tomorrow I will be posting a lot I think! Stay tuned...

Congratulations to Todd!!!!

Once Todd graduates (in August) he will be teaching two IS classes at the school. He will be a recent graduate teaching a senior level class. Pretty impressive! Well, he will only be working 6 hours a week with that job, so we decided that he needed to get another job. He got one today!!! Todd is now the Associate IT Supervising Auditor for BYUH. I am so proud of him for applying and being qualified for the job. He starts on Monday most likely. I don't really know what he will be doing, but it sounds like a great job. I will let you know once I learn about it. We are excited to be able to start saving a lot more money.

OBsessed

The Portuguese Sweet Bread turned out really well, and it was Todd's favorite so far. I made more bread today. It's just so easy; I love it! This time I made Hungarian Cinnamon Swirl Bread. It is reallllllllly good. I used the bread maker just to knead and mix the dough. Anyways you are probably all sick of hearing about the bread I am making so I will move on to BIGGER and BETTER things.....

Things we are looking forward to these next two weeks

1. Going to the water park for Levi's birthday on Saturday

2. Going to Todd's graduation banquet Saturday (good food!!)

3. Being done with Spring Term

4. Going home to visit (hopefully!!!)

I am now a proud owner....................................................

.......................of my very own bread machine! I have been looking for one on craigslist for awhile and I found a great one for $20. It is everything I wanted :) It has a horizontal pan, so the loaves look like they came from the oven, which is exactly what I was hoping for. At the time, I didn't even know they made horizontal loaf pans. Anyways, I have been going crazy baking with it. Yesterday I baked a cheese bread. Definitely wasn't the greatest but it is still alright. It doesn't seem like it rose correctly, so I had to try again this morning. I baked chocolate chip bread and I absolutely loved it. Todd said that there were too many chocolate chips for him, but that's just because he wasn't in the mood for chocolatey stuff at that point. (Too many chocolate chips? Yeah right! There can never be enough!) Because Todd wasn't satisfied with that, (just kidding--because I wanted to) I decided to bake another loaf tonight. I am making Portuguese Sweet Bread. So we will see how this one turns out. I haven't taken any pictures, but my chocolate chip bread looked exactly like this:

Trials & Faith

We all have tough times in our lives, and these were some quotes that I used when I gave a talk in church last month. I think these are such good quotes because it makes us remember why we have trials and what we can gain from them.

• Carlos C. Revillo: “Though we cannot escape difficulties, trials, challenges, and afflictions, living the gospel of Jesus Christ will give us strength and an assurance of promised blessings that can be obtained in no other way. When we allow the spirit of the adversary to be with us, it keeps us away from the joy and comfort and satisfaction that are guaranteed to the righteous. True happiness may be enjoyed only when we live worthy to have the Spirit of the Lord with us.”
• Sherri Dew: “…the right question in the moment is never why, it is what….what am I to learn? what am I to do, what am I to understand?”
• Orson F Whitney: “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God.”
• Robert D. Hales: “At these times only faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement can bring us peace, hope, and understanding. Only faith that He suffered for our sakes will give us the strength to endure to the end. When we gain this faith, we experience a mighty change of heart and we become stronger.”
• Gordon B. Hinckley: “We take one step at a time. In doing so we reach toward the unknown, but faith lights the way. If we will cultivate that faith, we shall never walk in darkness.”
• Harold B. Lee: “Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you but on what happens inside of you. It is measured by the spirit with which you meet the problems of life.”

Homemade bread made easy...

Yea!! My old landlord doesn't use her bread machine ever, so yesterday I asked her if I could borrow it. They are going on vacation soon so I get to keep it for at least 3 weeks! I am looking for my own to buy off of craigslist or someone moving around here in the meantime. Last night I started baking some bread at 8:00 pm since we had to try it out. 3 hours later and after doing NO work we had an awesome loaf of bread. My sister Brooke tried to make bread here a couple of times, but I don't think she knew the order of ingredients that you are supposed to use. I would have messed up, but I downloaded the manual for it and you have to put liquid, then salt, then dry ingredients, then yeast on top of the flour. If you don't do it that way then your bread doesn't rise because if the yeast and salt touch each other too soon then the salt will be deactivated. I thought that was interesting. I am going to be baking bread like every day for the next 3 weeks :) Also, I can delay it so that when we wake up in the morning we will have a fresh loaf of bread for breakfast. It reminds me of home and my mom's bread, without all of the kneading that I had to do before.

This isn't my picture, but this is how it ends up looking. I think it looks funny being so tall...and I wish it looked more like my mom's. Mom's do it best!