We are having a ....!! (I am sure you can figure it out.)

And then for those of you who do not like the dirty pictures (hope I can't get in trouble for child porn due to this picture), here is a nice profile shot,

Travels!

Recently Ashley and I have had the wonderful opportunity of visiting both of our Families. It was great to get to spend some time with all of our different family members over the course of a week and a half. We gathered for Labor Day in Texas with Ashley's family then were home for about 48 hours before heading to Portland Oregon for my littlest sisters wedding. Both were great trips, but it is kind of nice to be home and get caught up on school work again.

These were party favors from Bean's wedding. I thought it was a clever idea, my mom and sister did a fantastic job getting everything organized and decorating.

A couple of pictures of me with my siblings. For any of you who have not met them yet they are from left to right: Gordon, Joseph, Angelina, Keren and finally me.
Carolyn, my niece and Keren's daughter, was very quick to warm up to us this time. It was so good to see all the nieces and nephews on these trips.
Then of course there was a shot of my parents with the bride and groom. Over all I thought it was a great wedding. All the best to Angelina and Wayne. And I am certain my mom is relieved to be done with weddings, though now we need a new excuse to get everyone together again.

oh ya, I almost forgot, after the wedding Ashley and I traveled up to Olympia, WA to visit my grandpa. I was excited to finally introduce him to my lovely wife! We got to attend a kiwanis event with him. It was exciting to see him in an environment with something he had dedicated so much time to over the years.

But before we went to Oregon we had the chance to visit Ashley's family. We had a great time.

We saw Longhorns, the first I had seen, pretty awesome compared to your average dairy cow.

We saw lots of bugs. This praying mantis was on her Brothers door one night when we came over.
We had a combined Birthday Party. Ashley and her brothers all have birthdays within a few weeks of each other, it was a great time and little Sophia got her very own cupcake. Since everyone else was having a birthday they included me, it was far more than they needed to do but I got a pretty sweet whisk out of the deal so I am not complaining.
We played in the pool, here is Scott, Ashley's oldest brother, throwing Sophia, his daughter up in the air.
Here is Sophia with Uncle Rico, aka Tyler, Ashley's other brother.

So it has been a couple of months since I last posted anything here. Engagement was crazy but now things are settling down a little bit and I promised mom I would upload a picture of the Christmas village we got from her mom and set up for the first time. It is our only Christmas decoration that is up so far and I think Ashley did a fabulous job fitting it on our small shelf.

So after much thought we have decided on a date and temple for out wedding. I use the phrase "much thought" with alittle bit of sarcasm because it has only been two days since I proposed. But evidently 10 weeks is not much to plan a wedding so the decisions are coming fast and furiously. I put up a week attempt for Hawaii but we decided that while all our family has to travel anyway, it would severely limit some of our friends and possibly preclude them from attending, and we are an inclusive bunch, no reason to exclude many of those hwo are important to us. Alaska was not really an option though I would have loved to get married there, we settled on staying in Utah, after about 87 seconds of considering other options. So for those of you making travel plans December 4th at 2 pm at the Mount Timpanogos temple is where Ashley and I will be sealed. Information on the reception will be coming soon, I have been told we need to know that within a week.

So after thirty years of living the responsibilty free single life my forty years in teh winderness are drawing to a close. Last night I proposed to Ashley Ann Sanderson and she graciously said yes. While I will miss some aspects of being a carefree menace to society, I am anxiously looking forward to taking this next step and sharing my life with a wonderful young woman. Ashely and I are looking at a date in early December to get married here in Utah. So thank you to all the marvelous young ladies that got me through the rough years up until now and helped prepare me to spend my life with Ashley, your service is appreciated.

Volleyball and Hamburgers

So I remember now why I went so long without writing anything new for the blog. As a single guy sometimes it is hard to find things worth making the rest of the world aware of. Without children, or even a spouse, to add spice life runs its busy course without as many adventures. So now I am searching for a theme for the blog. I have thought about writing about politics and current events, but then I might alienate a couple of sisters who feel very differently than I do about most of those things, then I thought maybe I could do a cooking blog and choose one new recipe each week and write about my experiences with it, but that is kind of a lot of work, but I am sure you will see a few such posts in the future. So if you want a vote in what kind of material shows up on my blog let me know!

For the time being I will simply high lite my day yesterday. It was pretty fantastic, Adam, one of my roommates, and I have played in a couple of Men's doubles volleyball tournaments this summer. We are not really great but we have a lot of fun playing. Also we are very out of practice, pretty much the only time either of us play volleyball now is every 6 or so week when we sign up for another tournament. So we usually do not do very well. I think the first tournament we did not win a single game. They way the tournaments are set up they break you into pools of 4-6 teams and they have you play each team in your pool for two games, at the end they take the two teams with the most wins in each pool and form a tournament bracket. Since we rarely win we have never made it to the tournament at the end. But we get a t-shirt (most of the time, seems recently tourneys are getting cheap) and have a a great Saturday morning out in the sun and by 1:30 or so we are done and able to go home. Well, yesterday Adam and I had a chance to make it out of our pool and into the final tournament. We won 50% of our games, but there was one team that was undefeated and one other team that won 50% so we had to play them to see which team would make it in. By this time, about 1 oclock, we had been at the park since 9 am and it was a hundred and two degrees outside and no shade. We were tired. My legs just do not last long enough. We won the play in game but by the time we got to the first game in the tournament neither Adam nor I had any energy left. We no longer tried to get balls that were outside our immediate reach. It was kind of pathetic really, we still won some points on serve receive and had some good hits, but eventually the other team kind of ran away with it. SO after one game in the tourney we were out, but we did make it to the tourney, which was our main goal anyway. And now, Sunday morning I am almost wishing we didn't. That last game must have been just a little too much and now my legs are in full rebellion, they want nothing to do with getting out of bed and cleaning around the house or even walking out to the mailbox. I am guessing it will take a few days to bring them back around but it was a great day so I guess it was worth it, but I am going to need some conditioning before we have a chance of winning a game in the tournament. The other great part was afterwords we went to Five Guys to celebrate our make shift victory, the burger was very tasty if you guys are ever near one I suggest giving it a try.

Well, after a hiatus of nearly a year I am trying to keep my blog up again, the only problem now is I do not know where to start. Alot has happened over the past year so the abundance of things to write about and share pictures of was a bit overwhelming. So instead you get a few pictures from recent activities and my goal to keep this a bit more up to date. The two pictures I included here, one is Mount Vernon, very neat place and the other is detail from one of the benches in the national cathedral, I thought it was pretty cool. Anyway, check back soon. Have a fabulous week!