Christmas and New Years

A post better late than never. We had a great Christmas and New Year's this year and spent most of our time with Jason's family who were all in town for the holidays.

Holiday Highlights

Christmas Cookies

Christmas Eve Chimes

Temple Square Visitor Center--Julie with Brooklyn

1. Rasband cousin party at the DuPaix's home Fri. Dec. 23rd. It just doesn't seem like Christmas without seeing the cousins since seeing extended family has always been a part of the festivities since my childhood
2. Christmas Eve morning we went to Temple Square with the half of the Burninghams that were in town. We enjoyed seeing the sights in the visitor's center including the Christus statue, the "Plan of Happiness" presentation by the missionaries, and the replica of the interior of the Salt Lake Temple. Saturday morning there were hardly any visitors and I felt like we had the place to ourselves. We spent some time in the afternoon at Grandpa Richard's and then he treated us all to lunch at McDonalds. That evening we enjoyed hearing the Christmas Story read from the Bible and played Christmas songs on chimes.
3. Christmas Morning began early with lots of excited children waiting to see what Santa brought. Our big Christmas gift this year was a Kawaii digital piano that "Santa" delivered a few days early this year. I've wanted a piano for several years now and it's so nice to have one here in our apartment to play! We had a nice sacrament meeting in Alpine and then headed to my parents' home for a delicious dinner and time with my family. We enjoyed playing games with Katrina and Neal while their son Daniel was very engrossed with the new Wii he got for Christmas. I must say that I really did enjoy having Christmas on Sunday this year since it really helped me focus much more on the true meaning of Christmas.
4. Monday we were back in Alpine hanging out and playing games. That evening was the viewing for Jason's grandpa, Ross Burningham, who passed away the week before. At 91 years of age, his health has steadily declined this winter and he went into the hospital just before Thanksgiving. He was staying in a rehab center but his health was not improving. Jason and I visited in the rehab center the night before he passed away. We had a short, but good visit with him and I was grateful we were able to speak with him one last time before he passed away. Jason's parents and siblings went with him to the viewing while all the sisters-in-law stayed home and put the kids to bed. Jason said it was very nice.
5. Tuesday we attended the funeral. The arrangements were very nice and many people came to pay their respects. Jason's dad and his two living sisters spoke at the funeral. The great-grandchildren and some of the young grandchildren sang a primary song and I accompanied Jason's brothers and their wives singing "Because I Have Been Given Much." At the gravesite they had a touching military service and the ward provided a lovely lunch for our family afterwards. Later that evening we all attended a BYU basketball game in Provo.
6. Wednesday I went back to work for the rest of the week but Jason stayed with his family. His family had a neat opportunity to do sealings all together at the Mt. Timpanogos Temple with Grandpa Richards. They enjoyed a fun night of games after putting the kids to bed as well. Snorta and Bananagrams were probably the two most played games this Christmas along with Word on the Street.
7. Thursday they took everyone sledding somewhere up Big Cottonwood Canyon and I joined them to see the lights at Thanksgiving Point. (Note: To anyone who has never seen the lights at Thanksgiving Point I would say, I don't think it's worth it. It was somewhat cool but not worth the drive or the price for approximately 15 minutes of driving through some lights.)
8. Friday they watched the BYU bowl game and went out to Applebees. That night we all watched Kung Fu Panda 2, put kids to bed, and stayed up to play games.
9. New Year's Eve most of us went ice skating at Peaks Arena in Provo in the afternoon. Afterwards Jason and I met up with Reija, a high school friend of mine, and her husband who were visiting from California. Then we headed to another BYU basketball game and then over to Jason's brother Jeff's house in Provo for the rest of the night. We had good food and enjoyed dancing to Just Dance 3 with the X-Box Kinect before ringing in the new year with an interesting political and religious debate. --I could never see my family doing that. That's one difference between the Rogers and the Burninghams. :)

 My Christmas Present

Jason's Christmas

What Jason wishes he got :) j/k

Just Dance 3

BYU Basketball

Grandpa and Grandma Richards

Grandpa Burningham's funeral

Ice Skating

Ever Wonder?

Have you ever wondered what I do all day at work? What is an instructional designer anyway? Well for any of you who are curious to know, I'll give you a quick overview and then show you an example of my work.

Typical Work Tasks

• Determine the training needs/knowledge gaps of a company
• Gather and/or sort content needed to fill that gap
• Write up a formal design plan
• Script the content and activites using our custom software
• Record and edit professional and in-house audio talent
• Coordinate with artists to create all graphic elements including the interface,splash intros., and graphics
• Coordinate with programmers to create custom interactions, features, and wizzards 
• Work with clients in person or over the phone on a weekly basis to monitor the progress of the project
• Oversee other instructional designers and review all work for quality assurance

To see a short marketing demo and a few sample course pages for a program I designed for Talaris, follow this link: http://www.parentingcounts.org/professionals/preview-training-program.php and click on "Launch the Preview."

12 Days of Christmas cont.

Here are the rest of the 12 Days of Christmas. We loved having these visitors come each night. We are so grateful for their friendship and prayers in our behalf and we have truly been blessed by their kindness and service this Christmas season.

Holiday Activities

The Christmas season is one of my favorite times of the year, but it can get pretty busy with all the holiday activities. Here are some of the notable ones we've participated in so far:

• Adult Christmas RS Dinner: I helped on the RS activities committee for this. We had a very nice dinner with a program of Christmas singers. In return for the nice dinner people signed up to bring parts of a nice Turkey or Ham dinner that we could take to the needy families in our neighborhood. People were very generous and we were able to assemble 13 dinners complete with a turkey or ham, potatoes, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, rolls, sprite, apple juice, and pie. I was in charge of collecting the food and boxing it that night to be delivered to the families.
• Ward Christmas Activity: The ward decided not to invite Santa to our ward Christmas party this year and instead we focused on the events leading up to and following Christ's birth. Jason and I were responsible for the "temple room" where we wrote a 5 minute script and invited a couple in our ward to be Mary and Joseph and another couple to be Anna and Simeon. Another ward member painted a large wall size version of the temple at Jerusalem from a picture we gave him. All the ward members came dressed as people from Bible times. It was a fun activity. The ward provided some dinner and we watched a re-enactment of the Christmas Story while the Bishop read Luke 2 from the Bible.
• Holiday Work Party: We have a yearly work party at Christmas where everyone participates in a White Elephant gift exchange. It gets intense at times and people really get into it. We had 60 people there this year and it took about an hour and a half just for the gift exchange. Before the gift exchange I sang in a small Acapella group from our office. It was a lot of fun and people seemed to really enjoy it. If you want to see some of the songs we sang you can look here on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JVWx17sNUI  and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmzx4BuSJyg
• Mormon Tabernacle Choir Concert: Friday Jason and I attended the MoTab Concert with Jason's parents and his brother Steve and wife Kirsten. I just stayed at work until they came and we met for dinner at the Macaroni Grill. I enjoyed the music, the lights, the scenery, and the company. The guests this year were Jane Seymour and Nathan Gunn. It was a very nice date night.

 I guess the other interesting happening of the month is that I got two new callings. Several weeks ago I was sustained as a ward organist for Sacrament Meetings. There are three other people with this calling as well so I will just play once a month. I played today and enjoyed playing the Christmas hymns. I don't know how to play the organ so I'm just playing the piano for now. Today I was also released as a primary teacher and sustained as the 2nd Counselor in the Primary Presidency. The Primary President is very organized and on top of things so I think I will enjoy working with her. This year has been a record number of callings for me. The bishopric has set me apart for 5 different callings this year not including an unofficial calling to help with the RS activities committee. Since we moved here last Fall I've served as a ward activities member, RS chorister, roadshow co-director, RS activity committee member, Primary teacher, Sacrament Mtg pianist, and now as Primary 2nd Counselor. It's been a busy year, but I'm happy to serve wherever I'm needed.

Twelve Days of Christmas

What fun! Someone decided to be our special Christmas friends and bring gifts to us each night for the Twelve Days of Christmas. They are all very clever and fun to get. I don't know who it is yet, but I am so grateful for their kindness and for something to look forward to each day. Here are the one's we've received so far.

Thanksgiving

Jason and I had a different Thanksgiving than usual this year. We weren't able to attend the feast of food with friends and family but since giving thanks is the most important part of Thanksgiving I still want to celebrate it by reminding myself of all the many things I've been blessed with.

What I'm grateful for:

• At the top of my list is the atonement of Jesus Christ closely followed by my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 
• Close proximity to temples and church buildings and time to visit them often
• An incredibly kind, loving, and loyal husband
• Loving and concerned parents, parents-in-law, and siblings(-in-law)
• True friends
• Good health
• A challenging job that I enjoy most of the time and that provides well for our family
• Opportunities to serve others through church service
• An apartment that is clean and nice and in a good location
• A good education
• Reliable cars
• Ease of communication through phone and email
• Enough food, clothes, and necessities to take care of our needs
• Uninterrupted sleep at night
• Hot water, electricity, heater, stove, microwave, indoor plumbing, washer/dryer, and carpet
• Contact lenses
• A laptop and internet access
• Free time on evenings and weekends
• The ability to leave the house in less than 5 minutes whenever I want to
• Good books and movies
• Free public libraries
• Modern medicine and technology
• Warm sunny days
• Mountains that are close

There are many people in this world who have almost none of these blessings although many who will read this list could probably say they enjoy most of these too. It's good for me to remember that even many of these simple blessings are things to be appreciated and not entitlements.

Catching Up

So, I'm still recovering from a hard drive crash, which is part of the reason I haven't posted in a while. Last week my computer started acting really funny. Fortunately I was able to back it up with my external hard drive before it crashed for good. Instead of purchasing a new computer, we decided to just buy a new hard drive. I've since transferred my external hard drive info. back to the computer, but there are still some things that are lost and gone forever, mostly some of my research from my master's degree program and other information that was saved within applications I had downloaded from the internet.

So here are a few things that happened since I last wrote:

While Melody was here, the two of us went to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point. Jason was invited by happy to pass on the experience since he had just gone a few weeks earlier with the YM/YW. Melody and I had a great time though. The weather was beautiful, maybe even a little on the warm side. Besides the traditional corn maze, Cornbelly's has a lot of other fun activities. We spent our time rock climbing on a rock wall, "caving" in the Speleo Cave, wandering through the themed corn maze (this year the theme was explorers and outer space), watching a live pig race, jumping on a jumping pillow, and finding great picture locations. We had access to the "scarey" events too, but we only went on one of the less scarey ones before we'd had enough. It was a lot of fun and we were both exhausted by the end.

For Halloween, we attended our ward Trunk-or-Treat and I dressed up for work Monday since it's a highly celebrated holiday at my company. We only have two company parties each year, one for Halloween and one for Christmas. Almost everyone at the company dressed up and there were some great costumes! Thanks to Keith and Kim for letting me borrow their costume.

I actually needed to pick up my computer from being repaired right after work and didn't have normal clothes to change into. I had some really funny looks and comments walking into the Apple Store at Gateway Mall wearing my very bright silver costume. It made me laugh and others as well.

Work has still been slower than usual for me. I've been working on several small projects, but I'm hoping things will start picking up again for me in the next few weeks. I did just give a company lunch break training on Learner Assessment yesterday. It was a 40 min. PowerPoint presentation. I was super nervous but it went really well and was well received by my co-workers and supervisors. What a blessing!

Jason is really close to taking his Calculus I final. This week he started Accounting 200 and he sent his formal request to the Post Baccalaureate Program for permission to take several classes from BYU starting Winter semester. He should find out whether or not he's accepted by next week so we're hoping for some good news.

Fall Activities

Here are a few pictures and activities we've done over the last month:

• Enjoyed watching General Conference
• Ate several yummy family dinner
• Made a classy decorative clock at a Relief Society activity
• Attended several institute forums with Jason
• Had dinner with friends in Provo from our married student ward
• Watched and listened to parts of several BYU football games

My sister Melody is in town for a short stay. It has been a lot of fun hanging out with her this past weekend. Saturday Melody came with Jason and I on a fun bike ride along the Jordan River Parkway. The weather was perfect and the bikes were great--(Thanks Mom and Dad B!) We stopped by Gardner's Village to see the Halloween decorations. It was pretty crazy busy there so we didn't stay long. My friend told me later that we picked the worst weekend to go because it was Witchapalooza weekend which is apparently always over crowded. The funny thing is that we couldn't figure out why there were so many people there because there didn't seem to any activities or entertainment going on.

My 4 1/2 yr. old twin nephews think we are twins too because we look so much alike that they get us confused.

Gardner's Village

My funny story for the week is about food storage, specifically 72-hr. kits. We made a couple of kits two years ago for a ward activity. We've been trying to rotate out some of the food every 6 - 12 months depending on how long we think the food will last. We decided to eat a package of Ramen noodles from the kit the other day and it kind of tasted funny so we took all the food out and put it away with our everyday food so it would get eaten. The next day Jason grabbed one of the peanut butter granola bars and took a big bite only to discover that it felt like a granola bar in his mouth but the only flavor he tasted was Irish Spring soap! He saved it for me to taste later when I got home from work and told me to try it. I only broke off a small little piece but as soon as I started chewing it I felt like I was eating soap. After I swallowed, it felt like I had just washed my mouth out with soap. When I told Melody about it she suggested that we keep the rest of the granola bars to give to our kids when they say bad words, that way we won't be accused of child abuse but it will still have the same effect. :)

Trip to Southern Utah

September is a great time of time of year to visit Zion's National Park. We decided to take one last little trip for the year to Southern Utah. Jason had never been to Zion's and it's been at 15 years or so since I had been last. It was kind of a "spontaneous" decision we made a month ago, and yes, a month ahead of time is considered spontaneous for me--our other trips this year were planned 5 and 7 months ahead of time.

We drove to Hurricane Wednesday night after I got home from work and stayed the night there. Thursday morning we hiked Hidden Canyon and the Emerald Pools trails and then drove on the Mt. Carmel Highway for several miles to see the upper plateau. Both the hikes were fun and the weather was gorgeous for us--not too hot or too cold. We packed a lunch for the day and ate it at the top of the Hidden Canyon trail just before you head back into the canyon. We sat on a high shaded rocky overhang overlooking the amazing red sandstone cliffs. It was awesome!

We saw more of a variety of wildlife than we were expecting on our trip. We had several lizards, a snake, and a tarantula cross our path on the various trails, as well as a family of deer off to the side of the road during the two days we were there.

We stayed in Hurricane that Thurs. night again and drove back into the park Friday morning to hike Angel's Landing. Neither of us had ever hiked Angel's Landing before and we totally loved it. It was such a cool hike with amazing views of the whole canyon. The last .6 miles of the hike is out on a steep, narrow, rocky ridge that has a series of poles and chains so that you don't fall of the edge of the cliff a few steps away on either side of you. It was so much fun and the view from the top was incredible! Again, the weather was so nice and we were able to hike in shade for most of the way to the top. We ate another picnic lunch while enjoying the incredible views. (Jason's commentary: Did Julie mention that she had us prepared with so much food that I had on my back the bulkiest backpack on of anyone in the park? That's not an exaggeration either. Lots of people had little camel packs with water and maybe some snacks. However, I was hauling around enough food and water to have a gourmet picnic lunch two days in a row at the top of cliffs. I never saw anyone carrying around as bulky of a backpack as me. Julie would have been a good boy scout--be prepared, right? I've told her before that she should be Scoutmaster rather than me : )

After Angel's Landing we walked along the Riverwalk trail to the base of the Narrows, but we didn't go into the water at all. It was pretty packed with people going into, coming out of, and just sitting around this area. Maybe another time we'll actually hike all the way into the Narrows, but that is an adventure for another day.

That evening we stayed in St. George. We ate at Brick Oven Pizza, hit the outlets and found some great deals on clothes, and then caught the 4th quarter of the BYU v. University of Central Florida football game on ESPN just before Florida fumbled the ball on a punt return and we scored a touchdown to take the lead of a tie game. It was a great 4th quarter!

Saturday morning we did a session at the St. George temple and took tours of the Brigham Young winter home and the Jacob Hamblin home in Santa Clara before heading back home. We tried to stop in Nephi for ice cream at Frost T Freeze where my family always stopped whenever we drove through Nephi on vacation, but it has since gone out of business.Too bad, I think I'll have to make the Culver's in Midvale our new tradition--their frozen custard is delicious!

Feel free to glance through the slide show of pictures at the bottom of the blog, but the pictures don't really do justice to the beautiful places we saw.

Many Languages

I haven't written for awhile. Things are good but seemingly "normal" so I don't always know what to write about. Jason took his second Calculus test today. He said he felt really good about it so that probably means he aced it. After his test, he came home and made a yummy curry dinner for the missionaries. I got home 15 minutes after the missionaries left, but at least I still got to enjoy the yummy dinner.

Right now at work I'm in charge of incorporating the translations for a course I designed into 16 languages: Spanish, German, French, Portugese, Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Thai, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and Russian. What a big job that is! We have run into all kinds of formatting issues just to get the languages imported, but then once they're imported they must all be uniquely adjusted to accommodate the new language.

Here are a few interesting facts about these languages that you might not know unless you've been working with them a lot like I have.

• Thai: Who would have known that this language only uses spaces between sentences and phrases. This has been an especially difficult challenge because some sentences are so long that they don't fit across the width of the screen but you can't wrap the sentence on to the next line without changing the meaning of the sentence. We've had to go back to the translator for this problem.
• Chinese and Taiwanese: These languages are really hard to tell what you've added or deleted in tracked changes because there are so many strokes in each character that you can't see the horizontal line through the middle to know if it's been deleted or added.
• German and French: These are some of the longest languages which means adjusting margins and shrinking graphics to accommodate it on almost every page.
• Arabic and Hebrew: These languages are read from right to left so we have to re-orient the page layouts so that the activities are balanced and make better sense.
• Russian: In Russian, "personal information" should be translated to be "personal data" because if it's not, and your whole course is about personal information you end up having to do a LOT of changes after the fact.
  

Hopefully I designed a good course, because if not, 65,000 people that speak any one of 17 languages will not be very happy. :)

I bet you can't guess which language all of these words belong to?

español, Deutsch, française, português, русский, 中国, Bahasa Indonesia, 日本, 한국의, ελληνικά, ไทย, עברית, العربية

A Day in the Life of my Husband

So five days a week while I'm away at work my husband sits at home all day. No, he's not eating bon bons and watching TV, he's working, or should I say learning. Learning is his full-time job right now and here is his table full of tools.







Jason's routine:
--Wake up around 6:00am
--Run 5K around the surrounding neighborhoods as fast as he can, usually in just over 20 min.
--Shower, eat breakfast, and make his amazing wife a lunch
--Read the scriptures
--Do math and then more math and then more math

A few interesting and amazing things about my husband you might never know unless you've lived with him.

He doesn't like to waste anything, including scraps of paper so he uses small pieces of paper, often used envelopes, to figure out his math problems. He's writes so small you'd need a magnifying glass to read it if you're over 40. :) See the sample to the left. You'll notice how small the writing is in comparison to the printed letter and how completely he covers all the white space. Isn't that cool?








Now to anyone else, especially me, this would look like garbage, meant to be thrown away. But not to my husband. This is his eraser. It broke off of his pencil several weeks ago and he doesn't want me to throw it away yet.








This last object is his new favorite tool-- it is a microphone and earpiece that plugs into his phone so that he can now do the dishes when I call to talk to him during my lunch break, when he talks to family members in the evenings, or any other time he's trying to multi-task. No point wasting time just talking when you could be doing something else at the same time. :)

Sometime you'll have to ask him about his determination to reuse all of our sandwich baggies. I've been accused more than once for throwing away stashes of used plastic baggies that I find in the drawer. We've compromised a little by making rules about which baggies can be used again and which ones have to be thrown away. I bet most of you have never had that conversation with your spouses. :)

As you can imagine with all of Jason's efficiencies we save a lot of time and money. His frugality has been both a blessing and occasionally a frustration in our marriage, but I wouldn't have it any other way! He is a great example of the pioneer motto: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!

The Sound of Music

Well, things have been a little reversed lately, work is slow and weekends are busy. We’ve been up to a few fun things lately. Last Friday we went to a theatre production of The Sound of Music at the Sundance Resort as a late celebration of our 3^rd anniversary. It was so fun and a perfect setting for the play. The mountains are just gorgeous right now and so is the weather. Plus, Jason was such a great date planner and had all the details planned out and taken care. It was awesome!

We both totally enjoyed it. The Sound of Music is one of my favorite movies, one that I don’t get tired watching time and time again. In fact, right after we finished the play, it only made me want to go watch the movie even more.

Unfortunately we didn’t have a copy, so Sat. morning I started looking on the internet to see if I could get a good deal. Jason peaked over my shoulder and asked what I was doing. I told him I was going to buy The Sound of Music. He tried to persuade me to wait until Christmas or something, but I didn’t really want to wait. He disappeared down the hall and reappeared a few minutes later with a Christmas gift bag. He handed it to me and said, “Merry Christmas, or Happy Anniversary, or something.” I opened the bag and inside was a copy of The Sound of Music. It’s a good thing he saw what I was doing, otherwise we would have been the proud owners of TWO movies.

We actually watched the movie last night. It's been many, many years since I've watched it. It's amazing how well I remembered the lines and how much of the scenery I'd forgotten. It's pretty refreshing to watch something that portrays children and teenagers as sweet and innocent instead of little devils and miscreants. Not to mention it celebrates large families, the power of uplifting music, and the importance of marriage between a man and woman.

Hooray for New Babies

One very waited for event has been the birth of my two nieces, twins to be exact. They were born on August 15^th. They were called Baby A and Baby B for several hours until the names were finally decided—Lillian Dianne and Amelia Ann. They are tiny and adorable and so fun to hold. These adorable girls joined my sister and her husband and their twin 4 1/2 year-old boys. I’m so glad we live close to my sister so we can hold these babies often!

This picture shows us holding them at the hospital when they were about 16 hours old. Unfortunately I can't remember who is who in this picture. I'm not even going to try and guess. :)

Ward Campout

The end of Summer seems to be coming too quickly. I love the warm evenings, the late sunset, the family get-togethers, the fresh fruit, and the relaxed atmosphere. Jason and I have been burying ourselves in our work and the time just keeps slipping away.

This weekend we went to a ward campout in Wanship, a little place a little further East than Park City by Rockport Lake. We headed there directly from my work on Fri. and found ourselves in a complete traffic jam on I-80 for about 40 minutes. At least 15-20 of those minutes we were at a complete stand still. Our experience got even better when we arrived 15 min. before dinner and tried to set up our tent only to discover that the tent only had one pole. Fortunately the night did get better. We had an amazing steak dinner prepared by some professional camp cooks and some friends of ours offered to let us stay with them for the night at their nearby family cabin. We took them up on the offer and stayed up late eating my favorite junk food and playing Phase 10. The comfortable bed was much better than the tent would have been, but now I'm left feeling that I having filled my camping craving for the summer.

The rest of the weekend we spent hanging out with my family since my sister Katrina and her family are in town as they drive through on their way to their new home in Idaho. They're actually renting for 6 mo. as they build a home of their own. We're excited for this new change for their family, but moving across the country in such a short time under short notice is a difficult and overwhelming task to say the least.

Work Blessings

I've had some important work deadlines in the last couple of weeks. I'm so glad that I was able to make all my deadlines and be proud of the courses delivered to our clients. So far, the clients have been really pleased too. I enjoy the challenges of my work, but it's a tricky balance between good stress and bad stress. I feel like one of the greatest blessings to me at work is one of my co-workers and friends. She used to be in my ward 8 mo. ago and I heard she was looking for a job. I told her we were hiring at my work. She applied, interviewed, and got herself hired. She was assigned to a very big parenting curriculum project that I was leading and I helped trained her. Although I hardly knew her when I told her about the job, she has since become a trusted and valued friend and co-worker. Her creative and thorough work has helped lift my work burdens on more than one occasion. I'm so grateful for her help and friendship.

Vacation/Reunion Highlights

Sat. July 16th

• Flew to Houston, TX at 6:00am and finished some last minute work assignments in the Denver Airport in between flights
• Greeted by a humid heat wave at the airport doors in Texas followed by a niece and two nephews who were totally excited to see us and mostly importantly, show us their bedrooms. 3-yr-old Will talked non-stop on our hour-long car ride home. :)
• Played front room basketball, Piggie and the Cookie (a type of tag), and swam in Tim and Lisa's pool

Sun. July 17th (Happy 3rd Anniversary to us!)

• Attended Tim and Lisa's ward in Kingwood
• Drove 3 1/2 hrs to New Branfels to meet the rest of the Burninghams at the T Bar M Resort. We needed two cars, so Jason drove Tim's Corola and we took Cali with us. She enjoyed looking at pictures and playing with my new iPad
• All the Burninghams stayed in a two 3-bedroom condos. Jason and I had our own room with a connected bathroom which was really nice--others weren't as lucky. Despite the tight quarters, we had a good time in the condos

Mon. July 18th

• Rented a boat at Canyons Lake 30 min. away. It was really, really hot! Jason and I went tubing one time. Lake Temp. was probably 72 degrees. We had Drew and Grant with us on the boat and poor Drew was scared to death we were going to sink, run out of gas, crash, drown, etc. He was worried the entire time and kept asking to go back after the first 2 minutes!
• Played some on the beach after the boat, washed off the sunscreen and accidentally got fried in the sun
  
• Met up with many of the Richards family for dinner at the Resort. After dinner we talked and lots of us watched Tangled outdoors on a big screen and ate popcorn provided by the resort.
• Stayed up late talking and playing Scum and Bananagrams with Mom and Dad B., Steve and Kirsten, and Andy and Kimra.

Tues. July 19th

• Floated down 1 mile of the Guadalupe River with the Richards. It was going so slowly that we had to paddle ourselves with our arms. We all enjoyed the three short sections of "rapids" where is was so shallow we were almost dragging on the ground. I was glad to see that even 84-year-old Grandpa Richards floated down the river with us.
• Stayed up late and played Habla Chancho and the Signs game

Wed. July 20th

• Went to Schlitterbaun with some of the Richards cousins--mainly Nate and Andrea and Whitney and Cody. It's the world's largest water park and likely also the world's most crowded water park. We went on three rides in 6 1/2 hours and spent about 4 1/2 hours waiting in lines. I would not recommend it to anyone else. We did like the lazy river attraction and flowed 10 times faster than the Guadalupe River.
• Enjoyed a nice BBQ beef and chicken dinner with the Richards family and watched a cool slideshow of all the families. Afterwards we took pictures and played games in the game room.

Thurs. July 21st

• Drove an hour to Sea World in San Antonio. It was really hot but not as crowded as Schlitterbaun. We went to all the main shows and the 5 main rides there. We didn't wait more than 30 minutes for a ride, and most of the lines were fairly short. No one thought the shows were as cool as they used to be. With some recent animal/trainer accidents, the trainers didn't even get into the water with the Killer Whales or Dolphins and the animals didn't do anything super cool in the water.
• I like the Journey to Atlantis ride. We got 12 of us into one of the rafts and went down the big hill into the water and it was a lot of fun with all of us there. The other rides were pretty fun too.
• Both children and adults were hot, tired, and hungry and we all left by 6:30pm to go eat dinner outside the park and go to our hotel room.

Fri. July 22nd

• Toured San Antonio by visiting the Alamo, Tower of the Americas, and the Riverwalk. We ate dinner along the Riverwalk and then watched a Latino dance/singing show called Fiesta Noche del Rio. It was well done although I'm not a big fan of Mariachi music
• It was so hot that I thought I was going to die at certain times. I felt bad for the parents that were constantly having to carry their hot children around as well.

Sat. July 23rd

• Attended a temple session at the San Antonio Temple with half of the adults
• Ate lunch afterward at a nearby park before splitting up to head home via car or airplane
• Arrived at the SLC airport about 9:20pm only to find they lost Jason's luggage. We didn't get home to our apartment until close to 11:00pm.

Overall we had a great time. We're grateful to everyone who came and helped out and especially to Tim and Lisa B. and Susan W. for planning all of the activities, food, and accommodations. I don't know if it's bigger and better in Texas, but it's definitely hotter!