Grandma Warner

TJ's Grandma Warner passed away this last week at the age of 83. Her funeral was held this past Saturday in Spanish Fork. It was a nice service and TJ was asked to dedicate the grave and did a great job. She will be missed.

The Latest and Greatest

TJ and I just returned from a family reunion up at the Heber Valley Campgrounds with my dads family. We ate a lot of food, played games, watched "Staples American Idol," paddled around the lake, completed a challenge course, and had a good time visiting everyone. There are nine kids in my dads family so we had quite the group, and lots of laughes.

Before we went to the family reunion on Friday, we went to Bear Lake with TJ's family. Every year we camp and spend a few days on the lake. The weather turned out nice and we enjoyed a tasty raspberry shake.

Last Saturday I met two of my friends from high school at Paradise Bakery for breakfast...Kandice, (me), and Kellie. It was fun catching up and telling old stories.

absence makes the heart grow fonder...right?

Since we last posted, I have graduated with my Bachelors of Science degree in English with an emphasis in literary studies. I technically finished all of my classes last December but Utah Valley University only has one graduation ceremony a year, so I walked May 1. My family, and TJ's parents were kind enough to come. The ceremonies began at 8am and went until 1pm...needless to say it was a long morning. President Monson spoke at the graduation {which was wonderful} and while I was listening to him speak I felt a kick to my back. I turned around to see a girl lying on the ground passed out. Well the guy next to her quickly came to her rescue while we awaited the medics arrival. After the girl was taken away, the guy that came to her rescue said that the girl warned him that she often will not get enough oxygen to her brain and will pass out! After all of the formalities had ended we all went to Brick Oven in Provo to have a delicious meal. It was such a great day and I am so glad that I was able to accomplish this goal. I must add that my grandma {Gram} made sure that she was at my graduation at that early hour. She was such a motivation for me to complete this goal and a huge influence in deciding to go into English. {p.s. although I am an English major, this does not mean I am good at using proper grammar or spelling... please forgive}

The day before graduation my mom spoke at BYU's Womens Conference and did a great job. My immediate and extended family as well as many of my moms friends attended this session of the conference.

Over the past couple of months, TJ and I have been doing interviews with his grandpa for his personal history that I am trying to put together. We both love hearing his stories and getting this chance to ask him all sorts of questions.

This past week after TJ had gone to work, I had began to clean my upstairs bathroom sink when all of a sudden the pressure of the water went crazy, so I turned the water off. BOOM! Yes there was a large explosion...large enough that it blew my upstairs bathroom cupboards open and shut my bathroom door. Then, I heard a rush of water down on our main floor...crap...I ran down stairs with some towels and found my water heater emptying on to our kitchen floor. I was rather reluctant to open the closed that has our water heater in it because I was worried there would be a fire from our gas line. I opened the door and tried to figure out which handle turned off the water, so I called TJ with an "emergency" call to find out which was the right shut off. TJ came home to evaluate the situation and to help me clean up the water. {side note this is the third time we have had major water problems in the last year} After some evaluation we discovered that part of the bottom of the water heater came off due to the pressure valve not working...we had to buy a new water heater. Thanks to Joel and his handy skills TJ and his dad were able to install a new one!

That is what we have been up to...how about you?

{my wish}

oh how i wish this was my desk...

in my london apartment...

What a fun few weeks!

These past few weeks have been full of family get-togethers and fun vacations. We have celebrated a million family birthdays these past few weeks but the most important was TJ's 28th birthday! (in the near future I will devote a post to my honey but for now we need to do some catching up) We...went to the Warner company party, ate dinner at The Roof with the Staples, participated in "Back to Bethlehem," celebrated Christmas, talked to Elder Tanner Staples, celebrated many family birthdays, went snowmobiling @ Bear River Lodge, went to Hawaii, had Maren over for a sleepover. It has been an amazing few weeks! TJ's birthday morning...opening presents

Claire eating her 1st birthday cake!

Gram and I at the family Christmas party... TJ and Nate looking awesome in their wigs.

Snowmobiling @ Bear River (thanks Trina for letting me borrow some snow gear)

Hawaii was amazing, it was my second time and TJ's first. TJ and I decided to take a trip to Hawaii and leave right after Christmas. We flew into Oahu and Nate Call (one of TJ's best friends) picked us up. We stayed at the Call's house while we were in Oahu and cannot thank them enough. We had a great time with them and cannot wait till we see them in Feb. In Oahu we had some great authentic Hawaiian food at a local place, went snorkeling (probably our favorite activity), Visited Pearl Harbor: USS Arizona, and USS Missouri, took a submarine dive, and went to our first Luau at Polynesian Cultural Center. We celebrated New Years there and boy was that an experience...the loudest and smoggiest one yet! We stayed up talking to the Call's till 4am and then caught a flight to Maui. In Maui we went shopping, went on a snorkel cruise, another Luau, drove the road to Hana, hiked and rented a Convertible...loved it! We were sad to leave the 80 degree weather but Utah welcomed us home with a nice breath of freezing air. We hope that we can go back again but hopefully without the continually farting man on the airplane. :-)

FINALLY!

After a long four years I am finally graduating with my Bachelors Degree in English. I am happy to say that I am done with these books from my last semester. YAY!

Washing Machine Nightmare

This morning was an absolute mess! I decided that I would put in a batch of laundry just before I left for work this morning, so I did the usual. Gathered the clothes from our laundry basket in our bedroom, transported them downstairs to the washer, and put them in the washing machine. About an hour later, I realized that the cycle had finished, and I thought I probably should put the wet clothes into the dryer just before I had to go to work. I opened up the washing machine's lid, and I noticed that there were a lot of white clumps all over our dark wet clothes. Now, occasionally the laundry detergent will clump up and not dissolve into the wash. I thought this was the case, so I went to the kitchen, grabbed a pitcher, filled it with water, and poured it over our clothes in the washer to dissolve some of these clump. As I poured the water in, I noticed that none of the clumps were dissolving. I reached my hand into the washer and picked up one of these clumps. Sure enough, it wasn't laundry detergent, it was PAPER!! Yes, my friends, we had a washing machine full of dark clothes and tiny pieces of wet paper everywhere! It was caked on the side of the washer and our clothes. I started to pull out the clothes and the paper was on the inside and outside. It was a mess to say the least.

I'm sure that all of us have accidentally forgot to take a piece of paper from our pocket, and washed it. It gets every where inside of the pocket, right? Well, times that by 1000 and that is what the inside of our washing machine looked like. If I had to guess, I bet there were 10 sheets of paper bundled up in our laundry when I put them in the washer. Where did they come from, I have no idea. Emily was on the couch doing some homework, and I told her to come look at this mess. Both of us couldn't believe it, and Em started to laugh about the situation. We put all the wet clothes in a laundry basket, took them up to the bathroom, and dumped them in the bath tub. We had to rinse every piece of clothing individually inside and out. It probably took us about 45 mins. to get 95% of the paper off our clothes. After we were done rinsing our clothes, we put them in the dryer. I had to leave for work (which I was late to), and Em had to leave for school. So we don't really know what our clothes are going to look like after they are done drying but we are hopeful that it won't be bad. Anyway, that is what happened this morning.