Our Prophet

President Gordon B. Hinckley, the 15th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died Sunday of complications arising from old age.

97 years old, isn't that AMAZING!

Now, I really have grown up with this prophet and feel a bond with him that I have never felt towards any other, although I know I'm young. I have mixed emotions about the passing of our prophet, but I truly am feeling joy right now for him.

I bet he was so excited to be able to rest after all of his hard work. I bet that he was so excited to see his beloved wife again in heaven.

My favorite memories of Gordon B. Hinckley are of times that I was closer than I have ever been physically to a prophet. At BYU Hawaii I was in women's choir and was able to sing with the choir for a ground breaking ceremony he attended for the construction of the "beautification" project of the road leading to the temple from the highway. I was within 50 feet and felt his presence. Later that evening I was at the Polynesian Cultural Center as he attended the Night Show. I also attended and sang at the graduation ceremony that he spoke at and felt honored to be able to sing for him. I was able to attend a General Conference in Salt Lake City where when he walked in the room, I got the shivers and just a good feeling inside.

I respect this man and all that he did for the world. I loved his talks. I know that he did great work here on earth.

"Hinckley, a grandson of Mormon pioneers, was president for nearly 13 years. He took over as president and prophet on March 12, 1995, and oversaw one of the greatest periods of expansion in church history. The number of temples worldwide more than doubled, from 49 to more than 120 and church membership grew from about 9 million to about 13 million."

"Hinckley became by far his church's most traveled leader in history. And the number of Mormons outside the United States surpassed that of American Mormons for the first time since the church, the most successful faith born in the United States, was founded in 1830." (Forbes.com)

In December

These are pics of Breanna that Rob's brother Rodney took while we were in Colorado in December. She was having fun playing with her cousin Jasmine and also her grandparents dog. She loves animals. Every time she sees one she just screams with excitement and then starts smiling so much!

3 days until Breanna turns one year old! How exciting is that!!

Rob just passed an exam last Saturday and is now a licensed real estate agent, I was so proud of him for finishing that! He worked really hard studying every night for about 4 hours per night while he went through the course and then prepared for the exam.

I actually just applied to the community college here in Olympia and am taking a class this Spring Semester to become a nursing assistant. I'm actually interested in becoming a nurse, but am going to see if I REALLY want to do that, because it would take 2 more years of school full time!!

So, my plan is to do this nursing assistant class, it's 6 credits - one semester. Then i can apply at hospitals to get hired. I'm interested in working on the mom/baby floor of a hospital for postpartum care. My goal is to get hired on as a nursing assistant part time at nights on that floor and then see if it's something I would really like to pursue.

If so, then Rob and I will see how we can work that into our family plan! Too bad I didn't figure this out when I was doing my Bachelor's degree :( Actually I was thinking about that the other day and I realized I do not regret one bit attending BYUH and getting my degree in Psychology. Not only did I love BYUH and my degree, I also met my husband there and never would have if I had transferred back to CSU. Attending BYUH was the best decision I ever made :) (But, too bad they don't have a nursing program!!)

More Wedding Pics

December Trip to Colorado

We got to go to Colorado for Dec. 14th through 19th and had a blast....We went for Michelle and Todd's wedding and had a lot of fun helping out with the reception decorations and everything else that went into the plans for the wedding day! Congrats to The Blacks, we love you guys!

here are some pics....

Christmas Traditions...

Does anyone have any interesting traditions for Christmas?

I love Christmas, it is just the best! It's so exciting for this to be our 1st Christmas with Breanna also! (Someone told us the best present we could get for her is the wrapping paper and boxes :)We finally bought ourselves a Christmas tree (didn't have one last year in Hawaii :( ....and I'm really impressed, I thought Breanna was going to destroy it, but guess, what, I was WRONG! WAHOO! She hasn't tried anything dangerous or destructive at all, which is very rare for her. I'm thankful that she's still crawling, not walking yet, because if she was, the tree starts at just the height that she would be standing....that would be a lot more tempting!
It actually snowed here on Dec. 1st, that was awesome! Big snowflakes, it was beautiful, we videotaped it because apparently it does not snow in the western half of washington all that often. (The snow did NOT stick though, sadly, b/c it stopped snowing and continued raining, it got all mushy, then just wet....we were going to build a snowman, yeah right!)

We are spending Christmas here in Washington, not going to be with either family, so we really need to do some fun stuff and create our own exciting Christmas. I want to be a lot more impressive than last year, it was just really hard to get excited about Christmas in 80 degree weather (not that I'm complaining, I would give anything to be there again :) But, I was bad at starting out our family traditions, plus Rob's parents were there so, we really didn't do it "alone".

So, my family always did the 12 days til Christmas, which I loved, and want to carry that tradition on. They also cook a special bread called pitica (Bad Spelling) which I will make this year, but besides that.....still trying to come up with some great ideas.

Anyone willing to share??

Seattle Cruise 2007

Celebrity Mercury

Our cruise was wonderful!! We had so much fun, but I have to admit I was relieved to get home. Breanna napped in her stroller the whole 4 days, which she NEVER naps in! She would not nap in the room with her play pen, but oh well! We survived and had a blast.

The first day was Seattle so, of course, we just drove up to the port, and then had to do the whole security thing to get on ship. My little baby had to be "patted down" which was quite interesting, but something we'll always remember. I'll also remember Rob refusing to move away from security when they told him to "make room" while Breanna was being patted down. He said, "I'm not leaving, that's my daughter." Such a good dad! But, they called the supervisor and he had to leave :( (Are you kidding me, they could have been a bit nicer about it).

We got on board and as we were stepping on ship they were handing out glasses, which we took, til we realized it was Wine in the glasses :), so they luckily had orange juice that we switched to....but that was the beginning of the "Royal Treatment".

I have been on cruises before, but never as "high" as we were on this one. We were on level 9, which was awesome b/c in most cruises, the higher the room, the less sea sick you'll get. And we had a good size room, which they are tiny rooms, and a BIG window. My parents never have gotten us a window room, we're usually at the bottom of the boat :) (No complaints though, I'll do anything to go on a vacation, and believe me a room w/out a window is NOT a sacrifice :)

My parents got an AWESOME room. It was a Sky Suite, the deck/veranda was as big as the room! It was amazing and made the cruise very enjoyable for sightseeing off of the deck.

We went walking around downtown Seattle after we tried to have Breanna take a nap, yeah right. But, she did nap the whole time we walked around a noisy, car filled, people talking, construction noisy city!

We sailed away around 5:30PM and that was really cool to see Seattle and the whole coast with the city lights for awhile. Every night there was a really fancy dinner that we went to and survived with Breanna! It was definitely testing her patience, the whole dinner would take about 2 hours and 15 minutes. But, it was worth it for us, great food, appetizers, salads, soups, entrees ???, and desserts (and we could order ANYTHING and more than one thing from each category). Let's just say we didn't lose weight on the cruise! It was awesome!

It was the smoothest sailing cruise ever, we were in the Puget Sound so there was barely a wave the entire time, I am one to get sea sick and I didn't even think about it once.

The next day was Vancouver, BC. This was so much fun. We went downtown, to Stanley Park (a beautiful city park, kinda like Central Park in NYC) and through neighborhoods, down by the waterfront, and shopping. Busy day, we walked ALOT and Breanna slept in the stroller again :)

After dinner each night my dad took Breanna to this lounge that had a piano player and the lady would play songs for Breanna and my dad would dance with her, it made my heart melt.

There were shows each night after dinner, there were 2 different times, so Rob and I switched off and went to the early and late shows alone so that we could have one in the room while Breanna was sleeping. (I was lucky and got to go with my parents, Rob went alone). But, the last night my dad babysat Breanna so we could go on a date ALONE. So fun! My mom took a shift after the show so we could stay out a bit longer, we had a blast. They took time during the day too with Breanna so we could run around the ship a bit, go to the hot tubs, or go exploring on our own. It was great to have them there for company and for the time they spent with Breanna.

The 3rd day was Nanaimo, BC. A very small town in British Columbia. Maybe we didn't figure out where the cool stuff was, but it was not that great of a town for being a tourist :) It is a beautiful location though right on the water with a few cool historical buildings. We had fun, but enjoyed Vancouver and Seattle better.

I have to try and figure out how to get more pics on here. My dad has the pics on his camera and uploaded them to a website....but I want to download at least a few onto here.

Until then...that's enough for now, I'll write more about it if I think about anything really cool/interesting or funny that I forgot about the cruise.