Body For Life

So Mark and I have decided to enter a fitness competition. I'm sure some of you have heard of it, but it is called Body for Life. Basically, you follow their workout plan, try at least one of their products, send in "before" and "after" pictures and see if you can win. There are two grand prize winners (boy/girl) and they get $25,000 each. Then there are some other categories like groups or families. And they get $10,000 split between them. So, Mark and I are entering both individually, and as a family with his brother Steven and his wife Samantha. I think it will be good for us even if we don't win. But its a pretty cool thing, It's not really geared towards losing weight as much as just getting more fit and toned. So it's a 12 week program every day except for Sunday. So you guys should all check it out and do it with us! but hurry, it starts today. To sign up you just go to their website and enter the challenge.

For Allison

Allison, so you sent me this puzzle a while ago, and since i had a break from school i decided now would be a good time to tackle it. Anyway, here it is.



Just to boost your morale, this puzzle was extremely difficult. I would never do it again. I like ones that are paintings or kinda "cartoony" instead of actual pictures like this. Especially with all this coral crap, it all looks the same.

But i stuck with it... just for you!

Also, thanks to Wendy for giving me some help! i couldn't have done it without you!

Yummy Brownies

So Mark's sister Wendy has moved down closer to us, so to welcome her we made some brownies, but not just any brownies... Batman brownies. We forgot to take a picture, so we had to use a phone camera, so this is the best we could get.

Chicago

So we actually got to go on a vacation this weekend! Mark's dad let us use his frequent flier miles to get some tickets to Chicago. Mark's brother Doug lives just outside of Chicago in Kenosha, WI so we thought this would be a great opportunity to visit him. So here are some pics of our great weekend. Doug picked us up from the airport and we stopped by the Chicago temple.

I thought this was the most unique temple i have every seen. It seemed liek it was designed to blend in with everything else. You cant see it in the pictures, but on the side the roof actually has shingles on it. weird.

This picture is in tribute to Mark's dad. He likes to put his leg up in pictures.

In front of the temple

On Saturday we took the 6:50 a.m. train into Chicago. We took a cab to the Chicago zoo, for those of you who have seen he movie "Return to Me" this is the zoo that is in that. It was actually really cool. The zoo is free and it is jam packed with tons of cool animals, and its right in the middle of the city.

The Lions

Mark the monkey

After the zoo we took another cab over to the Art Institute of Chicago (the one they go to in Ferris Beulers day off) We took some pics by this cute little garden/park right next to it.

On Sunday we took it easy and rested up after our big day in the city.

Mark and Abi buildng a tower

On Monday Mark, Doug, and I went to Six Flags. Cheryl and Wendy opted out, but we had a great time!!

This was our favorite ride. Its called Vertical Velocity. You sit with your legs danging and all of a sudden it bolts forward at 65 mph. Then it shoots up the right side tower. (you can kinda see that it twists as you go up. Then all of a sudden you are going backwards, again at 65 mph, and you go up the left tower backwards, so you are looking straight down to the ground about 200 ft., then it does it all over again. The second time you go up the left tower though, when you get the the top it stops for about 3 seconds so you are just dangling up in the air. It was so awesome!!!

I guess i have to mention the downer of the day. After we did Vertical Velocity we decided to go on the new Batman Dark Knight ride. The wait was 2 hours. There were so many people there were just KNEW it had to be good. So when we finally got to ride it, it was basically the biggest disappointment of my life. It probably would have been more exciting to ride tea cups. So if anybody ever thinks that it has to be good because the line is so long..... dont do it.

That night all of the girls did mud masks. Abi was pretty freaked out about it. She walked into the bathroom when i was putting it on and stared at me with the terrified look on her face. I said "Abi, am i scary?" and she whispered "yes." and then she started backing away slowly. It was so funny.

Mark didnt like it very much either

That night the girls (Wendy, Cheryl, and I) went ot see the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. It was fun to have a girls party.

The next morning we went to the Jelly Belly factory. Mark couldnt even wait to go in.

On the tour


This was the sample lady. She could give you a sample of anything you want! it was great. Except for Mark, Wendy, and I decided to try all of the Harry Potter flavors. (the nasty ones) Some of them actually made me feel sick for a couple hours. Some of them that i remember were ear wax, baby wipes, toothpaste, black pepper, pencil shavings, vomit, moldy cheese, and rotten eggs. You would be surprised with how accurate they all were. By far the worst one was vomit. They even had that acidic taste in it. I gagged about three times after i spit it out. It was pretty horrible, my stomach was kinda mad at me for a while after that.

So all in all, it was a GREAT GREAT time. We had so much fun with Doug, Cheryl, and Abi and aer so gratefull they let us come stay with them. We love and miss you guys!!

Callie's New Job

So I FINALLY got a new job. I am the new secretary for Frederico Landscaping . It's pretty nice, i just do basic accounting (make sure his records match up with the bank's), write up proposals for different landscaping jobs, and other random things. It's pretty sweet because it works around my school schedule and pays more than the last one.

Sun Valley

So Mark and I just got back from our annual Sun Valley ID trip with his parents. (If you're interested you can look in my blog history for pictures from last years trip) We were so excited that we got to go again this year. We didnt take many pictures, but here are the ones we did take.

This is the night before we left when we were packing up, i had to try on the camel back to make sure it fit all right!

Mark and I on our way to go swimming at the awesome pool that was there at the resort.

We spent lot of time just hanging out with Marks paretns and his two sisters Wendy and Melinda who got to come up this year too.

Mom

Callie

Melinda and baby Ian

Dad

On Saturday Mark and i rode the ski lift up the mountain again. Except for this time, we rode up and hiked down. muchos fun. (by the way, notice i remembered to wear shoes that couldnt fall off this time.)

Look at the beautiful view!!

Mark trotting down the mountain

Dorky Callie

Mark trying to blow this massive dandelion

We found a cone on the side of the trail to prop the camera on, and this is what we got.

So we didnt get very many pictures, but we had sooo much fun. Very relaxing and wonderful. While we were there we also got to see an awesome ice skating show that featured a lot of "famous" people who have won Olympic medals and other contests. The main "guest star" of the shoe was Johnny Weir, i had never heard of him but he was really good, even if he was a little "femmy". these are the two songs we saw him do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPL94rBJhO8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjF6Y5ivRLM

Anyway, it was a great trip and now we are so sad to have to go back to everyday life... oh well, we still have our chicago trip next month!!

Old Pictures

So Mark and i have been looking through old pictures to try to fill
all the frames that we have. It's pretty pathetic, but we have a
bunch of frames that are already up on our walls that still have the
cheesy pictures in them that come from the store. So i thought i
would share some of the ones we will be using.