Wedding slideshow

This is a video I made after finally scanning in our wedding pictures a couple months ago while Christian was on a big tour, in honor of our anniversary, which we then proceeded to forget. Oh well! :) Enjoy the pictures!

P.S. I normally don't like country music, but I had to make an exception with this one...

Adventures in Picking Fruit

Christian and I got to celebrate our anniversary yesterday, thanks to Auntie Yaya, Marmie, and Boppa watching the kids for us! We got to Oak Creek at about 9:30am and spent about an hour and half picking blackberries, coming away with almost two gallons of berries! (I'm just freezing them right now and will hopefully get more creative with them later "when I have more time") At one point in the morning I heard Christian make a manly squeal and assumed he had found a big spider in one of the thousands of spider webs in the blackberry canes. I started feeling a little proud of myself and my boldness in reaching past those spider webs to get the beautifully ripe berries. Of course I wasn't actually seeing spiders, so in retrospect it wasn't really all that bold. :) I hollered out to Christian, "I feel like living in Doney Park has made me braver since I know that at least none of these spiders would be black widows! (we have lots on our property) He chuckled and said he was very proud of me. I started sort-of following behind Christian at a distance, thinking that maybe I was finding berries he had missed. I was comparing myself to Ruth gleaning in Boaz's field (it seemed to me like Christian was leaving a lot behind) when I decided to make my way up a little hill. Almost at the top of the hill I heard a loud "BUZZZZZZZ", looked down and saw a probably 15 inch long rattle snake!!!!! To my credit I actually jumped back from the creature while shrieking, instead of jumping over it like the last two snake encounters in Africa. And I managed to hang on to my almost-full container of berries! Christian came back with me to our depot of berries not too far away and suggested I stay put for awhile and calm down while he continued the berry-picking. Sounded good to me! Within a few minutes I heard Christian's manly squeal again- yep- he came across the snake again, though he thought he was avoiding it. So he made his way down and around the Snake Hill and found a gold mine of a berry patch, so he convinced me to come help him take advantage of it, my heart pounding the whole time. But it was worth it. Wouldn't have been worth it if we had actually been bitten of course. On our way back to the car we ran into a gopher snake that was probably 2 feet long. It was almost as if God were chuckling at my pride of conquering my fear of the spider webs and saying, "Ok, how about snakes?" :) Later in the day we were picking peaches at a friend's house in Camp Verde and the trees were covered with HUNDREDS of June bugs, that sound very much like rattle snakes when you're already feeling paranoid. So Christian did all the picking while I caught the peaches and put them in the crates in between shrieking and diving for cover every time a fresh group of bugs took off flying. I'm sure the neighbors enjoyed the entertainment, if they were peeking through their windows. :) Later in the afternoon we went for a bike ride around the wetlands at Kachina Village and got caught in the rain and then hail. All in all, though, we loved the chance to be together and will remember and laugh at that day for years to come! No, neither one of us managed to remember to pull out the camera! Sorry!

11 Years and Senile

Yesterday was our 11th anniversary!!! Grace was kind enough to remind me of that fact this afternoon. Fortunately both Christian and I had completely forgotten, so we can just laugh about it instead of just one of us feeling guilty. Christian's been feeling like crud for the last two weeks with some virus probably (of course I'm ready to send him in for MRI's and blood tests, etc. :) ) and I was pretty busy getting things ready for our Cultural Diversity night for our church's missions weekend and trying not to stress about the things I still need to do to get ready for our upcoming family trip to Zion.... My heart rate's up just thinking about it all now! Anyway, the dinner went really well, we had 92 people show up to hear from 4 missionary families and lots of food left over. Today were the men's breakfast and ladies' tea and tomorrow's a full day as well! Monday we'll actually get to celebrate our anniversary, if we can get the whole childcare thing taken care of. The plan is to hit Oak Creek Canyon again, though earlier in the day, for some blackberry picking. Which is MUCH funner without kids complaining about all the thorns, etc. :)

Oak Creek and Rapunzel

 Elijah with Faith and Gary. Happy birthday, Faith! :)

 Marmie and Judah

 Food and soda- the best part of a picnic, in the kids' opinions... :)

 Andy was banished to the toddler table :)

 Buddies and cousins- the way it should be :)

 Once we crossed the super-slippery rocks, we enjoyed a perfect shallow spot for the little ones.

 Kale'a, world's cutest 7 month old

When we got home Christian and the kids harvested our garlic. I was having too much fun braiding to stop and make several smaller braids instead of one ginormous one.  :)

Family Party

We had the twins' birthday party last night, with "just" family. It was so much fun all being together again for the first time in a couple years. Almost as good as Thanksgiving! Except we had french toast for dinner and not turkey. :)

 I love that our family loves to hang out together!

 Elijah made the girls red, felt swords- definitely from the heart of a 4 1/2 year old boy. 

 Anne made them a card as well as a paper cornucopia filled with paper hearts she had cut out. Wow, the inborn difference in genders is amazing.

 Peter made them bracelets made with buttons

 

 I amazingly refrained from singing the Toy Packaging song by Sara Groves.

 

 Berea sports the new origami headband from Auntie Grace.

 Gary and Faith decided to buy the biggest thing they could, just because they love us so much (hahaha). :) It's a big hit with all the kids and buys me some time at least. :) 

The funniest moment of the evening was when Tirzah dropped her shorts/panties and sat on the 3 1/2 inch wide potty belonging to her new dolly and was fully preparing to let loose! Fortunately we caught her in time and took her to the big potty! Funny girls. :)