February 29th

I know it's exciting that it's leap year and that we are able to have an extra day in February. But to me it also meant while growing up that I needed to wait one additional day for my birthday. I think I can feel the leap year more than other people when their birthdays come around! If this wasn't leap year, than I would be able to celebrate my birthday tomorrow :)

Mouse Party

If you are looking for a good, creative way to talk to your kids about drugs, and what they do to the brain, check out the website Mouse Party. I like this site because it's animated and let's you understand more on what the different drugs do to our brains to allow us to get that "high" feeling.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Saturday, I drove up to Sandy, Utah's South Towne Mall to attend a workshop on a new technique for teaching and performing "Vocal Improv." When I got to the site there was a man there on a small stage setting up a sound system, microphones, etc. He asked me if I sang. I told him I sang a little, but I'm more an instrumentalist. He asked if I played the guitar. I told him I did. He asked me to play his guitar on the stage so he could check his mics and the equalizer for the sound. So somehow I ended up sitting on the stage, at the mall, playing the guitar for a little over 1/2 an hour. Towards the end of this time, I began to play "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on the guitar. He was able to recognize this song through the chord changes and strumming technique I was doing. He asked if that was the song I was playing. Now at this time, he hadn't start turned on the microphones. He was still setting everything up. So I began to sing the song as I played. I began to laugh though as, at the beginning of singing the song, he turned on the microphones. This helped him as he wanted to check the sound on the microphones for the guitar and voice. It was just really weird for me to hear my voice be REALLY loud at the mall. In addition, I was able to attract a pretty small crowd standing around the stage listening to me sing this simple song. Luckily after singing through the song twice, he had been able to get the sound equalized.

Later that evening I had the privilege of taking my grandma out to dinner. I had not been able to do this for several months. It was so much fun just being able to talk to her again. She has some great stories and adventures from her life.

Road trip

Last weekend, I flew down to Arizona for the President's Day holiday. It was nice to get away from the Utah snow for a few days...

During the weekend I was hoping that my brother and his family would be able to come up from Tucson to see us for the weekend. But their daughter wasn't feeling well at that time, so they were not able to come.

Saturday, my parent's and I decided to drive down to Tucson to see them. I have not seen their home since they moved there. The road trip was a lot of fun. It was about a 2 hour drive one way. It was a beautiful drive as we we took the back roads, instead of the interstate. There was so many different cactus's along the highway. I couldn't believe how tall they were. My mom suggested that we stop and take pictures as a visual depiction of how tall they were. I think with me standing there, it makes them look taller as I am not that tall.

Notice the blue sky in the background...We couldn't even get the entire cactus in the picture because it was so tall. I call these trees "Dr Seuss" trees. They look like something he would have had in his stories. I don't know what they are called, but they were everywhere. My brother lives in a pretty, peaceful area of Tucson. I love how their home was decorated. Jessica has a great sense of style. While we were there, you could tell that their daughter, Eden, was not feeling well. After saying hello to her, she was put down for a nap. We had a short visit with them, but it was so nice to just sit and talk. I'm grateful that we had the opportunity to drive down to see them.
Here is a picture of me trying to walk in their apartment parking lot and take a picture at the same time. Notice how their is no snow present. We were told that we needed to walk "across the bridge" to get to their home. "Over the river and through the cactus, to brother's house we go...."
The entrance to my brother' s home. Steven, Jessica and Eden. You can tell that poor Eden is not feeling well. But she looked just as cute as always.
Here my parent's and I are getting ready to do the drive back home. I think one thing I really enjoyed about the trip was just spending time with them in the car. I seriously have some of the "coolest" parent's!!!

Don't Agonize. Organize

Over this past weekend, I had this strong desire and energy to just organize my home. This desire came late Friday night. I spent the majority of the night cleaning and de-cluttering my walk in closet. Saturday I spent the majority of the day working on other areas of my home. It has felt so good this week to not have so much clutter, and to just have my place feeling organized and clean. I was able to organize my closet and other areas in my home so that I now have places to store all of my 3 week food storage my parent's encouraged me to get at Christmas. In fact after cleaning the closet out, I now have more room to store more items if needed. Before this weekend, I thought that would have been the impossible dream.

Did you know...

The Grammy 2008 winner in category of the Best Musical Album for Children was....A Green and Red Christmas" by the Muppets.

Celebration morning!!!

Just so you are aware, I am not celebrating in the sense that my birthday will be in 25 more days.... but in the realization that I had a REALLY good morning. I have been advised to be vague on why I had a good morning, but I just want everyone to know that I had a good morning :) Other fellow Crohnnies, would be celebrating along with me.