Who wants to go to Malaysia?

Before seeing these pictures, I thought yes. Now... not so much!! I couldnt resist sharing these pics we got from Spencer after his first week in Malaysia. He is serving in Bintulu. All of the old people there speak Iban. He says that all of the younger people speak Malay, but he will have to learn a bit of Iban too. He is in the highest baptizing area of the mission, and has 21 baptisms scheduled for the coming month.
His companion is native Malaysian. Im not sure if or how well he speaks English. He was in Singapore 4 years ago studying to be a Catholic priest when he met the missionaries.

Spencer said he even got to eat chicken heads twice his first week there. And by chicken heads, they mean the entire head, bones and all. Bon appetit?!?

Buffalo Chicken Enchiladas

Here is a recipe that you MUST try! TJ loves buffalo sauce, so it was a no brainer favorite for him. Click here to check it out.







Isaac refused to eat his, but smiled for the camera anyway. How did I get a picky eater????

I love my cousin

One of the biggest blessings in my life has been having a LARGE extended family! I am so grateful for wonderful cousins that I consider to be sisters!!

To see the other side of this picture click here.

Heidi (and her sister Anne) is the big sister I never had. She has always been there in my life from being our built in babysitter coming with us to Disneyland and on ski trips to calling pretending to be my mom and getting me out of High School so I could come over to her house and just chill. (I think I'm old enough to be able to admit this and not worry what my mom will have to say!!) Oh, and not to mention that every prank I ever pulled at girls camp, I learned from Heidi and Anne when I was like 5!! As I became a teenager, it always amazed me that she was ever interested in spending time with someone so much younger than her- even taking me to her high school football games. To this day I still know the Highland fight song, and not Cottonwoods!!

I am so excited for her to soon be a mommy x 4!!

Cinderella and Kate

I laughed so hard when I saw this picture.

When I watched the wedding and they got out of the car, I thougth to myself, these two are the wicked step sisters straight out of Cinderella. I had no idea they were even wearing matching outfits!

Happy Birthday Lil' Man!

Can you believe this little ham is ONE?

Isaac had a great birthday this weekend with grandma Barbara and uncle Spencer coming to town to celebrate!

On his birthday we drove up to Kansas City to pick up Spence from the airport. On the way home we stopped for some Birthday dinner.

Birthday Dinner times two that is... Spencers birthday is the day after Isaac's!

We didnt get home until about 10:30 that night. After a skype session with Gma Fran and Spud, this boy was not even close to being ready for bed (keep in mind 8 pm sharp he turns to a pumpkin) so around 11 dad started putting together his new cozy coop.

As soon as it came out of the box, Isaac was all over it. He liked it more before it was assembled than he did after. He climbed on in and was giggling and having a blast opening and closing the door and honking the horn.

On Saturday we had Isaac a birthday party where he had a Toy Story cake...

.. and even got to eat the whole top tier by himself.

Well he didnt actually eat the whole top tier, but he did manage to eat the FROSTING off of the whole top tier!

And then it was Spencer's birthday. Spencer's 19th Birthday, that is!

I hate that I vividly remember the day that he was born, and he is now that old. Geesh.

Spenny will be putting in his mission papers at the end of this month. So, feel free to leave a comment with your guess of where he will go. The person closest wins..... a big fat high five! Ok it sounds like Im joking, but we really do want to see who can guess where he will go!

So for Spencers last birthday "home", we were sure to make him breakfast in bed. Yes, that is an ENTIRE german pancake covered with whipped cream and strawberries. Unfortunately we had to cut spencer off after eating half because breakfast was served at 11:30 and we wanted to go to lunch before 1 :)

Naturally, when asked what kind of birthday cake he wanted, spencer told me to make him a cheesecake. Who wouldnt want cheesecake over birthday cake? He's lucky I like him!

It snows in Missouri?

After last winter, I would have answered such a question with a big fat NO. I have a hard time considering less than an inch per storm to be real snow. But I learned something last week. Yes, in fact, it does snow in MO. Its just a freak occurrence.
Last Tuesday we got over 2 feet in less than 7 hours. Now coming from Utah, my first reaction to the forecast is that 2 feet is nothing. Well that is true when you have an ample supply of snow plows and enough salt to cover every road in the state. But not the case here in the Show Me state. It took over 24 hours for us to even see a tractor (not a snow plow) come through our neighborhood and kind of clear a path. A couple hours later an actual plow came through, but decided it was not necessary to plow the circle in front of our house. (Oh, and instead of salt to melt the ice on the roads, we spread sand to give you a chance of having traction over the ice.)

Instead they left us a 15 foot span between the end of our driveway and the plowed part of the street with a nice ridge of ice where the edge of the plow leaves a wall of snow.

So this is what I saw when I looked outside thinking I would be happy to see plowed roads... um.. not so happy.

Now you'll have to look real carefully to see this one. Its the bench in our front garden. The tallest part of it comes up to about my hip. If you look REAL CLOSE under the window you see a black line that is half in and half out of the shadow.. well that is the top of my bench.

Last week my mom was supposed to fly into Kansas City to be here for Isaac's birthday on the 3rd. By the time she got to Phoenix for her layover, her flight to KC was cancelled. So she was stuck in AZ. Luckily Anne now lives there and was able to put her up for the night and show her a good time. By Wednesday 2 more flights she was scheduled to be on were cancelled and finally (because the city of her layover was closed down) they decided to take her flight directly to Kansas City. So this left us with a dilemma. We could not get out of our driveway. Our neighbors had already tried driving out of their driveway through the un-plowed circle with their full sized truck and just ended up stuck. So we began the 4 hour task of digging out our driveway and the street! To make my sob story a little more sad, I should also add that it was -10 degrees while we were doing this... and remained that way ALL week!

The good news of this storm is that TJ's work closed down for 2 days, so we had some good stuck-in-our-house-so-we-have-to-be-together family time!

Ohio or Bust

Last month TJ, Isaac and I drove (9 hours) to Ohio to visit Miles (Cousin Anne, Meg and Brett were there too.

One of TJ's favorite TV shows is Man V. Food on Discovery channel, so naturally he was dying to go to Thurman Cafe which was featured on the show. For anyone not familiar with this program, it takes exceptionally large portions of food, or exceptionally spicy food for a restaurant to be featured on this show. Thurmans large portions, but could have done spicy with their buffalo wings.

Enter the Thurmanator (picture on left with my hamburger (that i could only eat 1/2 of) sitting on top a pile of fries on the right)

the menu description of the burger is-- Bottom bun, mayo, lettuce, tomato, pickle, banana pepper, 12 oz hamburger patty, bacon, cheddar, another 12oz burger patty, sauteed mushrooms and onions, ham (and there was lots of it) mozzarella and American cheese, top bun. Served with fries.

And who won in this challenge between man and food, you ask?

Man.

Hey, at least he didn't eat the fries... right?

The next day the boys did a little of this

While the us girls did A LOT of this...

with these 2 munchkins who look so adorable in their Halloween costumes, we had to dress them up early and take their pictures together! (Miles was NOT on board with this idea!)

Thanks to Megs and Brett for letting us come visit, and to Anne for always bringing along a good time (and being a good sport in putting up with us and learning to make baby blankets too!!)

Happy Halloween

I bet you never knew (a few of) Isaacs grand parents had such crazy moves as these... (click here to see Betty, Jim and Joani in action!)

Happy Halloween!

Love, the cutest Lobster in the world!

We {HEART} Visitors!

Last month TJ's family came to visit! We had such a wonderful time while they were here! We spent the week traveling to Nauvoo, and then onto St Louis.





Here is the whole group (the whole family minus TJ's younger sister and brother) in front of the Nauvoo temple.

Kami, Elliot, Izzy and Deacon









Isaac LOVES having people around. He spent the entire week just extatic to have more than his mom to play with him!

We took a horse drawn buggy ride. Isaac loved it so much he slept the entire 45 minute ride... but awoke just in time to have a photo snapped with the horsies!

Carthage Jail

St Louis has wonderful museums and a zoo that are entirely free. So we love to go there and explore the city! The penguin exhibit is by far the best thing at the zoo, not to mention the best penguin exhibit I have ever seen. You can literally reach over the glass wall and touch the penguins (although I dont think its encouraged).

These cute cousins are just 3 months apart, but this is the first time they were together that Isaac didnt seem soooo much younger than Deacon. That will surely change once Deacon starts walking!

We finished up our adventure with a KC Royals game. They played the Twins, so it was good to go to a game that the Royals could actually win! We love having 4 pro baseball and football teams in Missouri. (Especially when fun teams like the Red Sox are in town.)

Thanks so much to the Hansen's and Brinkerhoff's for coming all the way out to "Dissouri" to come see us!!