Houston North Youth Conference

These last two days were spent helping out at Youth Conference. The Houston North Stake asks the Single Adult ward to be councilors during their two day youth conference. They put tons of work into it. Friday was spent participating in the Amazing Standards race. It was really fun and the youth loved it!

For those of you who don't watch the Amazing race this is the adaptive version. Each team was given a map of the course and one clue to start out with. At the completion of each task, which every team member had to complete or someone had to complete it twice, we would get another clue. There were 12 different tasks that revolved around the Standards of the Church. It was very clever. I don't remember what the names of all the clues were, but here are some of the task. They had to get all of the plastic spiders out of the spaghetti and on the table.
Be ye therefore clean! We had to dunk our hand in a bucket of mud and then using spray bottles clean someone elses hands off. You could not clean your own hand.
Pay 10% tithing. They had tiny bowls set out on the table. You can't see them to well. We had to stand behind a line and toss dimes into the bowl. Each team member had to get one dime in the bowl.
Be modestly dressed- Make a modest outfit out of newspaper and tape. It was very entertaining!
Kim and Stacie were also councelors. It was pretty hot outside, but the day passed by quickly with all the running around we did.

Day two of the conference was spent at the temple. On a very rare occasion President Bradford, the temple president spoke to the youth about the temple.

Here are some of the girls that were in our group! They were a really good group. When we got back to the church we had Standards Idol. I take from American Idol. They took popular songs of the day and we had to come up with new words based on the standards from th Strength of the Youth Pamplet. For example we had the song from Maroon 5 This love. We had to change the words to something about Media and entertainment. The songs were then performed by each group during dinner. They youth were great at cheering each other on. One of the Songs was a slow country song. Many of the boys went and grabbed a girl to dance while the group sang the song. It was awesome!

BIRTHDAYS

Well I may be getting older, but the birthdays are getting better! Let's see a few years in review.
Turning 27 was not the best birthday ever. In fact you could probably say it was the worst. In our house it still is a story to tell. It was horrible for about a 2 weeks time period. One of the many things that happened during the two weeks surrounding my birthday was that my car window go smashed in. Susannah was very nervous to come and tell me about it. I don't blame her. I also dropped out of graduate school because tuition was more then I could handle at that time. Looking back it is a very funny story, but it was not at the time.

In 2007 things got a lot better. I met a cute boy in the Sam Houston 2nd ward one night at family Home Evening. I was really hyper and thought I had embarressed myself pretty good. Not to bad I guess because he got my number from a mutual friend and asked me out on a date on my birthday. I thought I was going to spend it all alone, but instead got to go to a concert at the Woodlands Pavillon with Kurt. It was a lot of fun. When people got back in town we had a party at our house.

This year for my 29th birthday ( I know that sounds really old) The Bushman's did a great job of celebrating my birthday. I'm going to Hawaii in a week so we decided to celebrate Hawaii style. We had some really good food and lots of people came. I had people from High School, College and Houston come. It was kind of fun to see everyone from different stages of my life.

They did a great job with designing all the food. It looked beautiful and tasted good!

It was great to have so many friends around for the evening. Here is Susana Reyes and I. One of my favorite parts was that my cousin Daciana and her husband Mark came. We grew up together and did everything together when we were in elementary school before my family moved to Houston.Another fun suprise was that Brad came back to Houston. Alona and he were good friends before he moved away to Law School. He's back in Houston for a while and graced us with his presence.

What fun friends! From left to right Carla, Cynthia, Stacie, Katherine

Daciana's husband Mark got free tickets to see Chicago and Doobi Brothers in Concert. They had four tickets and gave me two of them. So I asked Nate to come with me. It was a lot of fun.
Daciana and Mark made friends with one of the staff members and we were able to go up to the stage when there was about an hour left in the concert. It was fun to be that close to the stage and they actually started playing songs I knew. The Doobie Brothers and Chicago played several songs together. One of the lead guitarist and singers of Chicago was trying to give a pick to one of the young boys standing in front of us. There was also a couple standing near who wanted the pick. I was watching them and afraid that they were going to get it. I noticed that it was next to the married couples feet, but they didn't see it so I bent down and picked it up. I gave it to the boy and was watching his face as he was admiring it. Daciana hit me and told me that he was talking to me. When I looked up the guitarist (Jason Scheff) Told me thank you.After the concert was over he came back out on stage and motioned for me to come here. So I walked up to the stage and he handed me a pick and said "Thank you for being good." I really wasn't big on having a pick, becuase I'm not that big of a fan of Chicago, but you know I'll keep the pick now for a good story.

Roommate Dinner

Alona and Susannah treated Seana and I to dinner at "On the Boarder". We had a lot of fun.

One of the favorite conversations was about having a bunch of clothes we needed to donate to Good Will. I said "I've got a bag in the back of my trunk that looks like a dead child." Seana replied, "Well, as long as it doesn't smell like a dead child, you're okay." It doesn't sound that funny now, but we laughed for a good long time about it. It had everyone laughing for a good while as we walked into walmart after dinner.

Summer Time!!!!

No more pencils! No more books! No more giving dirty looks!

I have some fifth grade helpers that gave up their recess every Friday and sometimes other days to come help out in my room. They would read stories, sing songs, and help out at snack time. They are amazing young ladies and we'll miss them next year.

On the last day of school they wrote wanda and I's name in legos before saying goodbye.

The Amazing Race FHE

For June Family Home Evening the Bushman group was in charge. We decided to do an Amazing Race. Each group of four had to complete different task starting with scoring a goal against the mexican, learning words in Tagalic, complete a sudoku puzzle, Boxing Adam on the Wii, a dart game and then putting the 12 Apostles in order of senority. It was tons of fun.

True to Amazing Race style we had a fast forward. The group had to do sumersalts all around the church. Once they completed the task they could advance to the last task.
We learned the Saturday before the race that it was an impossible task for anyone to complete.
They kept rolling away despit the odds agaisnt them. Needless to say they were all very nausus and dizzy after it. Their efforts paid off though. They one the race and each member of the team got a gift card to Chilli's
Complete sudoku puzzle.

Boxing against Adam.

Stealing Phones

This seems to be a favorite past time at our house. I normally don't join in, but I couldn't help it this time. We had just come home from dinner and a movie when Adam stole Susannah's phone. Three against one he didn't stand a chance! Our friend Ryan was taking the pictures. I think he was having a ton of fun capturing the moment.

Susannah posing for the picture.


Cousin's and Sister's stick together

Garden

This has been a great year for Gardening! My mom and Dad helped us build a garden in Alona's backyard. The three of us split the cost of building it and had a great time! Now I know why we are commanded to plant a garden. You get such satisfaction out of it Here we are planting the

garden.

My dad went down to Lowe's with us and helped pick out the right wood and then helped us carry home all of the dirt in his van. We actually ended up sending him and mom back for more dirt while we went and got the plants. We put newspaper at the bottom of the garden to help protect the garden from weeds. It worked for a good while.

Here are the fruits of our labors- black berries. Actually we have had tons of fun picking them and then sharing between the three of us the first time we pick somethin. You get a very small taste of what it is like.
Strawberries The plants are quite bigger now, but the strawberries are small and don't last very long. I hear that next year they shoul be bigger and taste better. The first few were really sour.
Zuccini- The plant struggled a little and several zuccini died before we actually got to pick one. The plant now is about to go the way of all the earth. For a while it took up almost have the garden.

Tomatoes

We have three plants, the cherry tomatoes have grown the best, but we are getting a few big ones now and they are great in our salads and on Hamburgers. We had a BBQ not to long ago and it was fun to serve vegetables from our garden.

Peas

Like I said we share everything. Susannah and I picked the first pod together while Alona documented and then we each ate one pea.
Look at all those Tomatoes!!!!!

BlackBerries!

Our first Zuccini!!!! Yeah it is fun! Actually I'm sure


Our first zuccini it was pretty big. We pick the last of them today and planted pumpkin in its place. I'm very excited to see if we could have our very own pumpkin to carve at Halloween

Now we have a fun basket of vegetables sitting on our cupboard.