To Walk Where Jesus Walked

This is an original road where Jesus walked

Last month X and I spend two weeks with her family in the Holy Land. I've been so busy since getting back that I haven't had a chance to blog about it yet, but I hope to get on it soon. With over 700 pictures to sort through, it is going to take some time, but I'm going to try to do it in chunks so it isn't such a massive novel of a blog.

See you soon! Shalom.

I'm Famous!

The other day I stumbled upon this link. I was surprised to see a blurb about me on the GE website! You never know who is going to see what you write on your blog. Keep an eye on my TOP 5 Blog for an upcoming post about the dangers of blogging.

Christmas Tree

Can you believe this is OUR tree? We got a new (used) tree from the classifieds this year, and we bought some nice ornaments from Target. Growing up we've never had a "nice" tree with matching ornaments, and it was always something I've wanted to try. Let us know how you think it turned out!

Father Candy

I just had to post this picture of the candy poster X made for me <gulp!> LAST YEAR for Father's Day. :)

Click here to enlarge

Sorry for all these belated posts, I just want to get through them all so I can go onto more recent things.

King of the Tube

Over the 4th of July we were able to go boating with some friends in the ward. We have two lakes within 30 minutes of our house, so a lot of people in the area have equipment to do all sorts of fun water stuff. We enjoyed water-skiing, wake-boarding, tubing, and canoeing. I even got to drive the boat!

Towards the end of the afternoon things started to wind down and we got a little bored. Me and Kyle (another guy from our ward) decided to have a little fun and to play "King of the Tube" (think King of the Mountain, but the winner is the last one still on the tube).

Kyle and I prepare for battle

We struggled mightily to try to knock the other person off. At this point we were having fun. This is the last time I think either of us smiled that day.

As things progressed and we still hadn't knocked each other off, the boat driver started going faster and hitting harder waves. At one point we were turned completely vertical and we hit a huge wake. CRACK! Kyle and I slammed into each other sideways, and we both let go. I had the wind knocked out of me (isn't that one of the worst feelings ever?), and it was at that point that I was grateful to be wearing a life jacket! It wasn't clear who let go first, so we decided to call it a draw.

The end of the battle - for now...

That whole week I could barely move. My side hurt so bad, and it hurt to move between any sitting, standing, or laying position. After a week of pain and not feeling any better, I decided to go to the doctor to make sure I hadn't done anything really bad. The doctor told me I probably had some broken ribs, but that it was pointless to get an X-ray because there is nothing they can really do for it. The next week at church Kyle told me that his ribs were broken too! So let this be a lesson next time you are tempted to play "King of the Tube" - don't do it unless you want to be in pain for the next 6 weeks!

Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza 2010

Happy Halloween everyone! For those of you that don't remember, two years ago I posted pictures of the pumpkins X and I carved for Halloween. I really wanted to turn it into a yearly tradition, but last year we were so busy with the Murder Mystery Dinner that we just didn't have enough time to get any done. So I had to make up for it this year! I don't have any novels to tell of inspiration-invoking pumpkins this year, but I still had fun coming up with unique ideas to carve. Since X wasn't around this year, I still got her involved by having her help me come up with some of these ideas. Hover over each picture below with your mouse to see what the pumpkins look like when they are lit!

Red M&M

Yellow M&M

Hunchbart

Jelly Belly

Several people have told us about a free tour of the Jelly Belly factory in Northern California, so on our way back from our trip to San Francisco we just couldn't resist stopping to check it out. We're both pretty inquisitive in regards to how things are made (we love watching shows like "How it's made") so we figured this would be pretty awesome. We weren't let down!

Outside the Jelly Belly factory

X standing in front of the creepy Jelly Belly mascot

All of the pictures inside the Jelly Belly factory are made out of (you guessed it) jellybeans! Most of the pictures are made up of over 10,000 individual jellybeans!

A jellybean buffalo nickel

Three jellybean presidents

Two Jelly Bellies (after we ate all those jellybeans!)

We weren't allowed to take pictures on the actual manufacturing floor, but we were able to see the whole process. Unfortunately we went during the weekend so nothing was actually running, but it was still cool to see all the machinery and each stage of the jellybean. We also got to try out some of the new flavors they are working on, and also some of those horrible trick jellybeans (think earwax, dog food, and rotten egg). With all the free jellybeans that you wanted to try, who wouldn't love coming here? We would just recommend if you are interested in going that you go on a weekday so you can see everything in action!