Brick of Mormon Stories

So this is a book that Mark's brother Steven wrote (along with his nephews Taylor and Matthew). It is a bunch of stories from the book of Mormon. Basically how it works is he has a brief synopsis of what happens, followed by the actual scripture quote. But, the best part is the illustrations, which are all pictures of the scenes built in Legos. It's pretty awesome. Mark and I have been trying to do better at our scripture reading, so every night we read some of the actual Book of Mormon, and then we read a story out of the Brick of Mormon. It's really fun. So you all should check it out. Here is the link to a sample of one of the stories in the book:

Nephi Builds a Ship

Also, you will notice that there is a link on the side to his website where you can learn more and purchase the book. (if anyone feels inclined to put a link on your blog we would really appreciate it. Steven is really trying to get the word out!)

Anniversary Weekend!

So it's official!! We have been married for one whole year! To celebrate, we stayed in Midway, Utah at Mark's cousins cabin. This is me waiting in the car for Mark to get us some drinks for the 30 min . drive there.

Mark started a tradition this year. He is going to get me one white rose for our anniversary for every year we have been married. So this year i got one, on our 50'th I'll get 50. cute huh. and i thought pretty practical, because by that time, maybe we can afford it!! So here i am with this years rose.Us taking a cheesy picture while we are driving there

We thought this would be a cool picture, but it didn't turn out so well because you cant really see the mountains. But oh well.

I put these on in the wrong order, but you'll get the idea. These are the inside of the cabin. As you will see, it looks a little strange, but it's way cute. The people who built it (I'm not sure when, but a long time ago.) immigrated over here and didn't have a lot of money, but for some reason they had some telephone poles, so they built it out of those.

There isn't any insulation in this little house, so it was FREEZING!!! it was even snowing for a while when we were there, and it was just about the same temperature inside as outside. But there was a fireplace, so we stayed on the couch with blankets and hot chocolate for most of the time.

Mark locking up the garage

View from the porch

The baconator

Yummy!! Mark's a great chef!

This is me with the gift Mark got me before i opened it. In case you can't tell, he wrapped it with one of our wedding pictures! isn't he SOOO sweet?? We never got a picture with it unwrapped, but Mark got me my first ever Nixon watch!! it is so so cute!! If you are really interested you can do a search for the Nixon Loft watch. (i got the blue one)

So the next morning we got up and went to some outlet stores in Park City. I got this snow jumpsuit for a GREAT deal. It's normally $289.00 ($306.00 with tax) and we got it for $32.00!! ($36 with tax) We are some pretty cool shoppers. In case you can't tell, its too big for me, but with a deal like that how can you pass it up?? I may look like an astronaut, but I'll never get cold playing in the snow again!!

Mark got this cute shirt at Gap for $3.99! what a silly stud!!

Mark already had this shirt in maroon and loves it, so he was very excited to get another one in a new color.

That night, after dinner we used our new Fondue pot i got as a surprise for Mark. It was so tasty and romantic!

I'm kinda a dork and kept getting chocolate all over my face, so Mark couldn't resist pulling out the camra. It was just so yummy i couldnt help it!

So that was pretty much it, we had a great relaxing time and are so grateful for Rachelle and Morgan for letting us stay there! It was awesome!

Callie's New Obsession

So I have found a new obsession to keep me busy during "down time" at work (and to procrastinate studying). I was thinking to myself the other day, what ever happened to that great game-of-the-past tetris?? it used to be everywhere, and now i never see it. So i found a site (freetetris.org) and i have become quite the tetris master, i if i do say so myself.

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!!