San Antonio trip - Day 1 at Six Flags Fiesta Texas

We went on a quick little weekend vacation at the end of the year because I had saved one vacation day that needed to be used up. We decided to go to San Antonio. I really wanted to go to Six Flags and ride the roller coasters. We had wonderful hosts, thanks for letting us stay with you.

We started by going on the Bugs Bunny log flume, because it was really hot. You can see Elena got a little wet as we were waiting to get on Superman. We also rode the rest of the big roller coasters, except for The Rattler, which was closed for the day.



We also went on the Bumper cars



At the end of the day it was hot, and we were a little queasy, so we went to the water park for a little bit. I didn't know they closed earlier, so we didn't get as much time as we would've liked.

At sunset, isn't she beautiful?



We even tried some of the carnival games. We did it for the fun of it, not because we thought we would win. (I really wanted to win the ring toss grand prize though, Rock Band 2 special edition).





These roses were our consolation prizes for not being able to scale the ladder.



We were pretty tired by the end of the day, but had a lot of fun.

Happy Birthday, Kara

I can hardly believe it's been one year. I can hardly believe how cute she is. Kara has a great smile, and even better, she uses it often. Here's some video of her on her birthday morning, with Elena and I entering to sing happy birthday, and then her eating her french toast with buttermilk syrup.

The world premier of Kara and the piano.

I can't believe I haven't done this sooner. But here is the world premier of Kara's first time with the piano...

Can I get some applause?

When you teach yourself to clap, what do you do? Well, give yourself some applause, of course!

Day at the pool (one of many to come)

We had our first day at the pool, not ours, but Mike and Mindy's, who have now left us for Utah. They were so kind as to take some pictures while we were there. The water was a little cool, and there was a breeze, so we mostly did some wading, but it was a fun first experience.

Blueberries

We went to pick blueberries Memorial day weekend. We had quite a good time, and found out that Kara REALLY likes blueberries. She'd dive in for Elena's bucket, and then dive in again. Then she learned to pick them for herself.



Here's some video of her dipping into the bucket...



Here's Kara picking them for herself


Guess what... Kara likes chocolate. Imagine that!

Goodbyes

We've had a lot of goodbye's in our ward lately. It's interesting, because a few months ago, all the talk was of how fast the ward was growing and how long till we thought it would split (with subsequent sad thoughts of who we might lose).

That has given way instead to many people moving out of the ward, and moreso than the people that we expected to (finishing residency, school, etc.). We've had people move because of lost jobs or new jobs. This week we had two goodbye parties. I only have pictures of one, I will work on getting the others (hint, hint, you know who you are).

Here are a few pictures. The rest from the event are up on the picasa web album.

From Silverlake Goodbye May 30 2009

From Silverlake Goodbye May 30 2009

From Silverlake Goodbye May 30 2009

Bluebell Fun Run

Each year there is a Bluebell Fun Run. There are many people from our ward who are runners, so we had quite the turnout. It's a bit of a drive, up in Brenham, TX. It's put on by Bluebell Ice Cream (free ice cream sandwiches there) and it's for the local high school.

We got up and got going, but it was really rainy (you'll see in the video)



On our way back, we stopped to take some pictures of the bluebonnet fields.

From Bluebell Fun Run

From Bluebell Fun Run

From Bluebell Fun Run

From Bluebell Fun Run

From Bluebell Fun Run

Trip to DC this summer

Any old friends out there living in or near Washington DC? We would love to see you. This summer we are spending a month in DC. Any favorite places we absolutely have to go to?

New Computer

Anybody who checks this blog ever may have noticed that we have been MIA. (Really, was Elena ever here enough to count as being MIA though?) Our old laptop (bought in 2004) was great and has served us well over the years, but is painfully slow for doing anything of any large scale.

Well, I've been eying parts for a new computer for quite a while, so I picked them out from Newegg and put it together myself. It should be able to handle some video editing.

I was going to put the specs up, but Elena doesn't want too much information out there on the web. I told her that we don't update our blog enough for anybody to be stalking us using it.