Tom's Birthday

It is Tom's birthday. He is twenty eight years old (man, he is getting old). Here we are decorating Twinkies. The Twinkies are Tom's birthday cake. Not the best birthday cake, but they were fun to decorate.This one is Tom's a car. Savannah had fun with hers. I am not sure what it is suppose to be, however Savannah calls it a bus.

This one is mine. It is a very beautiful church.

President Kimball's House

This is the house where President Spencer W. Kimball grew up. He grew up down here in Thatcher, Arizona.

Scorpions

Here are some pictures of some scorpions we found. Sorry the images are so blurry, however, you can still see about how big they are. The one below is one that I found in the house we are living in. Scary! At least we are going home soon, that way we won't have any more encounters. This scorpian is one that Tom found by his desk at work.

Grand Canyon & Thanksgiving

After going to Sedona, we went to the Grand Canyon. It was amazing. Someday we would like to go back and hike down into the Canyon. We didn't do alot of hiking this time because it was freezing cold. I was wishing I had brought a coat down to Arizona, instead of just a jacket. Below you can see the Grand Canyon crack through the landscape.

Here Savannah and Olivia are bundled up and, of course, Tom is in shorts. He doesn't feel cold at all. Just kidding. He is, amazingly, just a little cold.

Here Savannah is playing with Ginny at my Aunt Brenda's house on Thanksgiving. Savannah and Olivia had a blast. There were alot of little cousins to play with. Oh yeah, Savannah is wearing a doll dress. She is so silly.

Olivia and Savannah are playing under the stairs, in a play closet of kids.

Sedona Arizona

On our way up to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving, we stopped in Sedona, Arizona, to see the beautiful red rock canyons they have. Sedona is a very pretty town, however, it is a tourist trap like Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There is one thing that we didn't do while we where in Sedona, and that is ride the natural rock water slide they have there. It would have been to cold to get wet. Below is an example of the red rock stones they have all over Sedona.

Here is Savannah posing for her photo:

Here we are walking on one of the trails in Sedona:

Olivia is trying to do a puzzle. She didn't get very far. :)

This is a church in Sedona. They don't use it for services, it is just for visiters to come and see.

Straight Hair

Over Thanksgiving my Aunt Brenda straightened my hair and my cousin's wife, Janay, cut my hair.

Twilight

Of course we (well at least I will) will be going to see Twilight. Hopefully, I will be able to see it over Thanksgiving break in Vegas.

Halloween

Halloween was pretty fun here. It was a bit of a change from being up in Cache Valley. The weather was quite warm down here. A good portion of the houses that we visited for Savannah to go trick or treating we didn't even have to knock on the door; a lot of people were just sitting out side while trick or treaters came around. We first went to the ward's trunk or treat, and then went around to a few houses. Savannah had a lot of fun.
Here is Savannah and Olivia in their costumes:

Here is Savannah and Olivia checking out their haul:
Here is Tom's attempt at a Darth Vader pumpkin:Here is Elise's pumpkin:Olivia being cute as usual:Here is Elise's pumpkin she painted. Pretty impressive!!:
Here are Savannah's pumpkins:

Kidney Stone

Thursday morning turned into quite the adventure. Tom woke up at about 2:30 and was having a little pain in his abdomen. He went back to bed thinking nothing of it. Then at 3:30 he woke up again, the pain was worse, and within a few minutes the pain was becoming quite unbearable. We decided it would be best to take him to the hospital. Elise drove him there, luckily Elise's parents were visiting at the time, so we didn't have to take the kids with us. Once we got to the hospital they asked a bunch of questions and gave him some pain medication. That helped make the pain so it wasn't so unbearable, but it was still quite painful. They took a CT and found that the cause of all the pain was a kidney stone. They then gave him a little bit of morphine, and after a little while sent him home, telling him the stone would probably pass within 24-48 hours. They said the stone was only 3mm, so not a really large one, but a large enough one to be quite painful. Apparently the ureter (tubes between the kidney and bladder) are only about 1mm in diameter. Some pain medication was prescribed. We returned back home at about 6:30, and Elise was going to go to Wal-Mart to get a hot pad, and find out when the pharmacy opened to get Tom's prescription filled. On the drive home Tom's pain went away, and he thought it was just because he was sitting just right or something. Once we got home Tom went to the bathroom, and out came the stone. Luckily it all happened in a short 4 hours, and didn't last for the 24-48 hours the hospital had said. Before leaving for the hospital Tom had said a prayer that everything would work out for the best, and it turns out that it did. Tom was planning to take the day of to deal with the stone, but since it came out at 6:30 he decided he would go to work because he felt good enough to go. Of course he felt good enough to go to work, he was on some type of pain medicine and morphine. So, Tom went to work. Luckily he doesn't operate any heavy machinery and his company doesn't do random drug testing. Just kidding. :) Hopefully he doesn't get another one in the future, because it sure was not fun. If anyone knows of anyone else in the family that has had a kidney stone, please let us know. It would be nice to know if his stone could be linked to hereditary by any chance.

Poll Results

The final results of the first official poll are in. Results were looking pretty scary initially, after two votes only 50% were correct!! In the end the results were much better, 5/7 got the correct answer, 71.43%! Not to bad, a C average. We are in Safford, AZ.

How was conference?

So what did everyone think of conference? Leave some comments and let us know your thoughts. It is always great to listen to the prophet and general authorities speak. Now if we could all just do a little better at following their council...

Guestbook Added

We now have a guestbook on our blog. Feel free to leave a comment and say hi! It is on the right side of the page.

Priesthood Session

The priesthood session of conference was really good. It seems that the leaders of the church really want us to focus on fulfilling our callings to the best of our abilities. They especially seemed to talk a lot about being of service and fulfilling our responsibilities to our families. We all need to do all we can to show our love for our spouses and our children. I always enjoy conference weekend, there is so much for us all to learn, and be reminded of.

Update

To answer a comment from a previous post, the house we are staying in is a three room home. It is a pretty old home, and the outside is somewhat in shambles, but the inside isn't too bad now that it is cleaned up. The windows are single pained, and it is right on the highway, so the traffic is a bit noisy at times. But all in all it isn't too bad of a place to stay. The weather here is hot and dry, with lows in the lower 90. Hopefully it will start cooling down here soon. The nice thing with the hot weather though is that many of the air conditioners here are kept in good repair. When inside everything is nice and cool. We look forward to watching conference on TV this weekend. Savannah and Olivia are as cute as ever. Olivia has had a fever the last few days, but appears to be getting better. It looks like she might be starting to teeth. She is also starting to crawl just a little. She won't do much, but she will move a few inches forward if there is something she wants.

Slideshows

We have now uploaded a bunch of pictures and added slide shows for them. Feel free to watch the slide shows, or click on them to see the slide shows at a larger resolution.

The House

Here are some pictures of the house we are staying in. It is pretty old, and as I said, it was really dirty, but we have cleaned up the inside so it is pretty nice now. The outside of the house is pretty junky, but we will leave it that way.

First Night

The first night when we arrived in ---------------- we were in for a few surprises. The place was pretty dirty with dust and dead bugs everywhere. The most eventful surprise was what Tom saw crawling next to the couch that night. See for yourself:

This was of course after the centipede was long since dead. Elise wouldn't even look at it, and never saw the actual thing. She hasn't even seen this picture yet, but soon she will when she views this post. Needless to say we did some extensive cleaning, and finally after a full day of cleaning on Saturday the house is looking pretty good.

Trip to Arizona

Our trip down here to -------------- was pretty uneventful. Savannah and Olivia got a bit grumpy as was expected, but it wasn't too bad. On the way down we stopped at looked at Montezuma's Well and Montezuma's Castle. At Montezuma's Well we saw a stick bug. That was kind of neat since we hadn't seen one before.

We also saw a couple of Indian ruins at the well. Here are a couple of pictures of them, one on each side of the well, as well as a picture of the well.

After going to Montezuma's Well we went to Montezuma's Castle. Here is a mockup model of what the inside of the castle would have looked like back in its prime.

Here is Savannah in front of the castle and shows what it looks like now.

First Post

Well, we now have a blog. We'll see how often we post to it. We just got down to Arizona where we will probably be until just before Christmas. We are down here for Tom to do some work automating a haul truck in an open pit mine. He really enjoys the work.