Saturday, August 23, 2008

Date Night in Italy

We had dinner at Gloria's Little Italy in Provo last night. We absolutely loved the atmosphere and the yummy authentic Italian Food. We got there around 6pm and without a reservation had to wait for 25 minutes. The only thing we would have changed is that we would have made a reservation. When we left, the parking lot was full of people eating gelato while they waited 45 minutes or more for seats.
Jay liked it so much, he hugged the host on the way out. . . the guy said, "See ya Jay. Thanks for grabbing my side." We decided that when we go out to dinner, we want to start going to new places. . . .anyone have any suggestions for next time?

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Oh How Lovely Was the Morning

If you had to choose a favorite. . . sunrise or sunset, which would you choose? Today I would choose a sunrise. Here is a picture of one from Friday morning. This is the beautiful Spanish Fork valley. The absolute best part of my day is when I come over the Santaquin hill in the morning. My breath catches in my throat as the sun begins to shine on the valley that lays before me. I am filled with a sense of hope. Hope for a new day - a new beginning. Nothing on Heavenly Father's beautiful earth quite compares to the early morning sunrise for me. I am so blessed to live in Utah and have the distinct pleasure of commuting each day past this gorgeous site.
~Em

Friday, August 8, 2008

Mighty USC Trojans


Just want to remind everyone who the best team in college football is.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Monday, August 4, 2008

Family Home Evening.


Family Home Evening this week was a fun little celebration of our second amendment rights. One of the reasons we love Nephi is that you can drive five minutes to the local outdoor shooting range and practice shooting for free. Here Elijah enjoys shooting his very accurate scoped 22 rifle. I’ve seen him hit quarter-sized targets at fifty yards.

There goes Emily shooting the AK47. Undoubtedly taking out some of her frustrations from a hard day at work. She really didn't want to do this but I made her do it anyway. Probably fulfilling some long ago fantasy of mine. She's so great. Jay

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Jokester Jay

One of my favorite things about Jay is his humor. It charmed me in the beginning and I still find myself laughing until the tears roll down my face!

Here is his latest idea for a practical joke. Every year in Nephi, we have a big county fair. It's a pretty big deal. The locals all enter their prize animals, from pigs to cows to chickens to bunnies. It's a typical county fair, but it means more to our locals because there isn't much else to do around here. It's a farming community, so farm animals are a big part of life. There are also artsy entries, crafty entries, and garden entries.

To enter an animal in the fair, you have to pay a fee, put it in a cage and write up a tag so that everyone knows whose animal it is and what kind of animal it is.

Last night Jay tells me that he is going to enter one of our chickens in the fair. I knew he's been wanting to do this for a while, so that didn't surprise me. What caught me completely off guard was which one he wanted to enter. We received a few chickens from a neighbor that were picking on each other. . . .I won't say much more than that because you can see for yourself:


When he told me this was the chicken he wanted to enter, I was baffled. . . this was supposed to be a "best in show" kind of a thing. This poor chicken shouldn't even have its picture taken, much less be in a contest of any kind.

Then Jay tells me that he's going to put it in the fair and on the ticket, he's going to write someone else's name. We spent the next few minutes laughing so hard picturing the chicken among all the beautiful specimens that people work so hard on. . . . and then the tears rolled down our faces when we tried to picture what would happen next based on who he had picked (for those of you who know our neighbors, it was a toss up between Jamison and Will. . .. can you imagine!?)

I convinced him not to do this. . . . while we would have a lot of fun with this, I explained that because the county fair is such a big deal here, people tend to take it very seriously. . . and while our neighbors have great senses of humor, it could backfire pretty bad. . . . but we had a fun time imaging it all!