Filipi

Clarissa blogged about meeting one of the Fab5 the other day in church so I thought that I would blog about who I met in the Temple. It was Filipe from the Biggest Looser. He is such a good looking guy. His wife was with him and she too is beautiful. He is still in good shape and is very friendly. As he walked past me he had to stop for a moment and I said, "Hey aren't you kind of famous?" He said, "Yeah I was on the biggest looser." I said that I knew and that he did a great job representing the church. I also told him that he had been in my house so many times that I felt like he should know me to which he laughed. His cousin Sione is married to Britney Figueroa who used to live down the street from us. They too are a great couple. I love it when good people from the church are in the media in a positive way. We can't get too much positive coverage.

Notice in this picture the Mesa Arizona LDS Temple on the wall.

I C BC

Look who Charmaine and I saw in Ames. Can you believe it? ____(Fill in the blank)____ was in the country showing their country side to all of us. Ye Haw! Just another reason I love Ames. All kinds of family show up there.

Why I love Ames

Last week Samuel and I were in Ames Iowa visiting Charmaine, Randal, Israel and Elijah. We had so much fun. I wrote on my blog about how I loved Ames and my sister Peggy wrote back and asked me why.

(This is the street that Charmaine lives on.)

Well, the obvious, it is were Charmaine lives right now but then also it is just beautiful. We walked everyday and I love looking at the beautiful change that is taking place in the season.

(Tree just starting to change.)

(One of Charmaine's neighbors.)

The last day we were there it was too cold for me to walk so I can't imagine what it will be like in the dead of winter but for the spring, summer and fall it is the place to be. Here are some pictures that illustrate my point.

(This is very typical architecture in Ames, my favorite.)(So many houses have a cute little summer porch too.)

So many things to love about Ames. Charmaine also blogged a few pictures and her's are even better. She is a much better photographer than I. Check it out.

Love to blog

I am just loving my blogs. I just wish more people read my blog about hearts. It is intended to reflect my feelings about love and the gospel of Jesus Christ. I check it everyday and hope to have inspired someone. Please feel free to pass it on if you want. Charmaine made a button link for me so you can use that too. Thanks for your help. By the way I am doing so well with walking. I walked 4.38 miles tonight in just 59 min. I am not loosing any weight but I like the walks. I hope I can keep going. The above picture is one of the green belts where I walk. This is really beautiful and green for Tempe, maybe not for the rest of the world but for here for sure. Love it.

New Blog Baby

I have started a new blog. It is linked to my Hearts button above. I was just really spending so much time updating my hearts page that I thought I should just go ahead and make it a blog. I hope it gets read. I love my pictures of hearts and I love sharing them. I have hundreds. Here they come.

Alaska

OK, I guess I have to write a little about our trip to Alaska. It was great! It was cold and rainy the whole time. Beautiful gray clouds, glaciers in the mountains, ice cold water falls everywhere, salmon in the streams, eagles in the trees, flowers, and best of all good company. We just had so much fun. It just makes me a little sad that it was so quickly over.

Here I am on the zip line and suspension bridge that we did. It was really fun and Samuel and I both got medals for finishing the trip. We didn't know until we were almost done that not everyone makes it to the end. I thought I would be scared but I would do it again in a heart beat!!
It is so strange that the only pictures that I have of Shelly and Dale they are kissing. Oh well, they are in love I guess. Imagine that. This was one of my favorite pictures on the ship. Although it is not Alaska at all, I do love the Caribbean.
This is the back sides of all of us looking at the Salmon in a stream. I don't know why I don't have a picture of the Salmon.
Terry and Connie Starks. They may not be kissing but they too are so cute in love. Terry always calls Connie, "Fox." This is one of my new Alaska friends. He was a little crabby because I was talking to him about dinner being that it was almost dinner time. Unfortunately we did not get to eat any of his kin on this trip. Some of the beautiful flower in Prince Rupert, Canada. I think this is my favorite shot. Sister Heward, (Dale's mother) Shelly and I all huddled under one little umbrella as we rested for a bit in the rain. Loved it!!! I can hardly wait to go again.

Check out my hearts

I have updated my hearts page so check it out. Love ya

How much can one Person love Primary?

Can I just tell you how much I love Primary. I have been teaching now for 3 years. I just love those little guys. Each year when it is time for my class to move on I am sure that I will not be able to love the next group as much as I have loved the current group but each year I love them just as much. Today I took my camera to church and asked each parent if I could take their child's picture and they said yes and so here is my cute class. Every child in my class is active and comes to church each week they are in town. These are all of my kids but one. She is in Idaho for the summer. I am jealous. Aren't they so cute. They are all so smart and range in age from 6 to 8. I told them they could be funny in a picture if they would be serious in one so you can see how happy they are to be serious and just what jokers they are.

Daddy's going Mac!

Everyone we know is going Mac! My father has even been talking about it so the other day on my birthday I asked Daddy if he would like to go to the Apple store and look at Macs with me. He said that he would like to go.

Off to the mall we went. (I bet my father hasn't been to a mall in many years.) I love the Apple store. It is all just right there. We took a long time looking at the computer that we thought would be the best. We asked a lot of questions and played with many of the features and then after about an hour, Samuel came and joined us in the pursuit. It seemed great. After about 2 hours of looking and questioning, Daddy decided to buy one. I am so jealous! Actually I think he decided after about 30 min. but I felt obligated to make him take longer. Anyway Daddy got a Mac, took it home plugged it in and the Internet stared right up. Great!!! Here we go. Well anyway to make a long story short, after a few dozen calls, Daddy and Samuel pulling there hair out and having Terry Starks come over and help with further set up it looks like it is going to be a good situation.

(Daddy pulled out more hair then Samuel did;-)
You may not know this but there is a lot more to switching from a PC to a Mac then just wanting to do it. Daddy really had to face some challenges, go out of his comfort zone and preserver. I hope that it will all be worth it. I will be saving my pennies nickles dollars and dimes until I can afford one myself. But for now, Daddy is the one with a Mac at our house.

My new mantra is this, "all technology that has ever been invented is for the building of the kingdom of God." Whenever I get frustrated in my techno world I just try to remind myself that what I am doing is good and not mischievous and that it will work out if I keep on trying. I love keeping track of my family on line, I love doing genealogy and having the church's site as my home page and I absolutely love preparing my primary lessons on the computer. I have found that I can google anything and that also means "be careful" but what a great resource the computer is. "Keep on clicking!"

Men Hard At Work

So here they are. Daddy, Samuel Sr. and Samuel Jr. hard at work. We have had so many major leaks at our house. I think that this is the eighth one where we have had to dig up pipes and replace them. That pipe that the Samuels are holding is one that was placed next to the pipe stand to stabilize it I guess. The man that we bought this property from did everything big. That pipe that was just strapped to the water pipe, went into the ground about 4 feet and into concrete. He did a good job but the pipe broke anyway.
The water here must have been leaking for quite awhile. The normally very hard ground was really soft and full of water so although it was easy to dig it was very heavy and sticky. Samuel Sr. was planning to fix the problem himself but when we heard that Daddy had been digging to see if he could find the leak I about freaked out. I could just see my father succumbing to the heat and so we all went out and got busy.
The project ended up taking all of us, I guess. Both Samuels diggings and fixiing, me watching and running the occasional errand to Home Depot and of course taking pictures. And Daddy, running back and forth getting what ever tool the men needed and giving much needed advise. Daddy was standing for about an hour and I finally insisted that he sit in the shade on the bridge which he did but not without some protest.
The hole ended up being about a 3 foot square but part of it went down to who knows where. At one point Samuel stepped in the hole and then pulled his foot out. The sound of the water rushing out the hole to some unseen reservoir sounded like a toilet flushing. Daddy and I just looked at each other like "what the heck!" We had a good laugh.
Well all in all, I think it was a good day. I'm sure we saved hundreds of $ doing this project ourselves. No one was hurt or got sick from the heat. We fixed multiple problems and we had a great time visiting with each other. It seems the only time that we can get Daddy to really visit with us is when we have a big problem that needs fixing. We are so blessed to have Daddy living here with us and I am glad that he now has water once again.

New way to comment

I am trying a new way to leave a comment. You do not need to have your own blog account to leave a comment. If you want to leave a comment all you need to do is go under the post that you want to comment on, click on comment, write a comment, sign your name in the name box and then leave me your e-mail and that way I can contact you. Your e-mail address will not appear anywhere but will be forwarded to me. You do not need to leave your URL address but please do if you are new to visiting me and you have a blog. That way I can blog stalk you. This process only works from here on though. It will not work on older post. But please be sure to read my older posts and feel free to visit my kids also. They are so clever and you can get an idea what they are doing. Thanks, Susan

New buttons that I want to share.

Did you notice the buttons under my header "beautiful things... " and "hearts"? My girls have all been helping me get my blog just the way I want it and so I have been working hard to get it up and going again. Back to the buttons, Charmaine programed them for me and I just love them. Please take a look and enjoy a little glimpse into my life. I have a lot of fun with the talents that my daughters are teaching me and I hope that you will also follow the links of my family members. The girls are so clever and we are also trying hard to get Samuel married. (That's for fun and for real.) Anyway enjoy it all. Be sure to check out my older posts if you have not been on in a while.
Love, Susan

Up date.

I really didn't get to finish my blog for Christmas the way that I wanted to. Just after writing it we all got sick. It started with the general evacuation type flu. That was fun, lost of washing and I'm sure that we will have a terrifily high water bill with all the flushing and baths. Then we all got the cold and aches type flu. For me that was even more fun, I just stayed in bed for 2 days. That started for me on Friday and the next Wednesday was Joyces wedding. Well somehow we got it all done. I just ordered all the food and my wonderful Karen helped a great deal with serving, setting up and running around. It turned out beautiful. Once again, I don't have pictures because my camara is broken. How ever I did get some Christmas pictures of the grandkids from another camera.

Here is a cut picture of the kids putting on the Nativity at our Ollerton Family Christmas Eve eve party. We had about 105 family members in attenance.

Katie and Lacy in a rare quiet moment.

Chantal's children in the pj's that she made, I had to include a picture of Brian by himself because he is alway goofing around and I rarely get such a cute picture of him.