Jon's Birthday

Happy Happy Birthday


From All of Us to You


We Wish It Were Our Birthday


So We Could Party Too!

Welome to the Club... Glad you joined me in the realm of 29. :)

Photos from our Trip

Sisters - Aunty Kimber and Sandra

The Girls - Me, Nerina, Elanor, Tiffany

Aunty Kimber, Nana, Sandra

The Family - Elanor, Tiffany, Nerina, Me, Marsden

Sebastian, Daniel, Daniel, Jon, Ben's Photo, Anton

Harry and Sandra

Happy Engaged Couple #1 - Nerina and Daniel

Jon and his new neice Sophie

Happy Engaged Couple #2 - Sebastian and Elanor

The Kids - Nephews, Nieces, Sons, Daughters, Spouses

Unexpected trip to New Zealand

It is never easy to find out about a loved one passing away. Sometimes in that loved one leaves us unexpectedly and sometimes we feel that we have been waiting for the inevitable to happen. I think either way it is tough, but the first is harder.

About a month and a half ago now, Jon and I got a phone call from his family saying that his brother's plane was missing. Jon's brother, Ben, had his pilots license for small planes and was working on getting his instructor's license. Later that day, we received a follow up phone call saying that Ben's plane was found and he did not make it. It was quite a shock. It was very unexpected.

In a rush, Jon and I packed, bought plane tickets, and rushed to the airport in hopes of making it to New Zealand before the funeral. Due to the time differences, we had to leave essentially the next day or we would not make it. When you fly to New Zealand from America, you lose a day in traveling. So what is basically a 24 hour trip with changing planes, time delays, etc, becomes a 3 day trip time wise.

Our first plane out of Houston was a nightmare at first. Our plane was an hour late getting into Houston. Once we all got loaded onto the plane, it started thundering and lightning and raining outside, so they had to call in the ground crew for a half hour and we could not leave. Then we were in line for take off for another half hour. It was an intense flight, as we did not know if we would make it onto the international flight in time. I am pretty sure the whole flight we just prayed we would make it.

In LA we barely made the plane. I think if we had been 10 or 15 more minutes late, we would not have made it. That flight was alright, we at least were able to relax, as we new that we would make it to New Zealand on time.

When we had arrived in Auckland, we were greeted by a friend of Jon's family, who graciously let us borrow his car to drive to New Plymouth. It was a miracle for us to not have to put out more money for renting a vehicle, just as it was a miracle we could even get there.

Seeing the family was wonderful. The funeral was beautiful. There were no seats in the chapel left. In fact, many stood for the service. At the grave site, the Aero Club Ben had been a part of did a fly by, which was really touching.

We celebrated Jon's birthday while we were there. Both Jon and Ben's birthday, which was a little weird to be in New Zealand and not have them both there to celebrate their birthdays.

Even with being at the funeral, sometimes it feels that it was all a crazy dream. That Ben is off flying somewhere or studying and we will hear from him soon. Or we will see him next time we visit.

Ben touched many lives. I wonder if he knew. I wonder if we know how many people watch what we do. I wonder if we know how many people we affect as we meet them, greet them, smile at them, or do something for them.

June 26th - The day the girl got older...

Once again that time of the year has arrived where I gain that magically extra number to the end of my age. +1. Really, it doesn't bother me so much. Or at least it doesn't at the moment. Maybe when I hit 30 or 35 or 40. I suppose part of that has to do with the fact that I don't actually feel any older. Though I have noticed a few things that have changed. For example, I like going to bed a little earlier. It is harder to go out dancing until 1 or 2 am and then go from there to Denny's or IHOP before heading home. Sometimes I just want to stay home and do nothing. I get up earlier, instead of at 11 or noon. And then there is work... I work all the time. So I suppose I am actually growing up! Perhaps some would even call me an adult now. Yikes! Oh, and the bills, I hate bills. Can't we just not have bills to pay?? That would be the best birthday gift ever! Oh well....

Realism sets in now. My birthday was a pleasant one. We had some friends over, had a pool party and then plays games afterwards. It is wonderful to be in the ward we are in. It was nice to get the house and back yard cleaned up, BBQ, hang out by the pool, and just really enjoy being with friends and family.

Last year was pretty good, we will see how this year goes.

Tavia's Wedding

My best friends wedding... well one of my best friends at least. Tavia got married this weekend! Yay! I am so happy for her and Jeff. She posted some photos on her blog, but I got a couple without people in the background, thought I would let you see how beautiful she was!

Scottish Highland Festival

Jon and I ran down to the Scottish Highland Festival today. It was beautiful out - ok a bit hot, but it is Texas. As long as it isn't 100, I suppose it is supposed to be beautiful. Ok, it was about 85, so could be worse. It was a lot of fun though. We roamed the vendors, and wound up baby-sitting Candilicious Creations for a few minutes. The vendor and I had gotten to know each other a little a few years back at the festival, and I have bought a few candles from her. When we showed up, she hadn't eaten and asked if we could watch the booth while she grabbed something to eat. She is cute. For watching her booth, she gave us a free candle. We didn't get much else while we were there though. I did get a really cute dragon who we named Ember. He's gold, purple and gold. A royal dragon, I am sure. Ok, so he is cute and stuffed, so what? Adults can have stuffed animals too!

We also listened to the pipe bands and some of the other bands, and then went to watch some of the gaelic game competitions. We caught the caber toss, which was interesting. We learned that they are scored on how straight the log lands, not on distance, which is what we both thought it was based on! That was our fact of the day. After grabbing a bite to eat, it started getting really gray and dark out.

At that point we headed out and back towards home, stopping at Texas Roadhouse for dinner. It was really good food, and we only got partially soaked getting to the restaurant and back home. It was a blast. It was a great way to spend the day and get out. We have really been home bodies lately because of either work or money.

San Antonio

I got off for Friday and Saturday! Yay! Jon and I decided to head to San Antonio for the night. Friday night we drive towards San Antonio. We hit an odd bit of traffic outside of Houston on the way to San Antonio, but didn't see any wrecks or anything that we could tell may have slowed traffic so much. It put us about a half an hour to an hour behind on our schedule, but we got there about 9, so it was fine.

We checked into the Hilton Garden Inn by the airport. It was a nice hotel, but we found out later that night that the bed just sucked! It was really hard, but only one side had been slept in a lot, so it was lower than the other part of the bed. But because the bed was still so hard, you couldn't be in the middle without feeling like there was a hard board sticking up or something. We didn't sleep very well.

Before we headed off to sleep though, we went out to Cowboys Dancehall, my favorite country dance hall thus far. It happened to be a night where they had professional bull riding competition, so we watched that for a bit. It was fun, except when they fell right off of the bull, and it takes a while for them to reset for the next rider. Jon enjoyed it though, so I loved it. We also did a little dancing. Not as much as I had planned, but by the time the bull riding was over, we were both pretty tired.

The next day we headed off to downtown San Antonio to see the Alamo. We walked from about Market Square over to the Alamo. Had ourselves a little Haagen Dass Ice Cream Shakes or what not to cool down, and toured the Alamo grounds. The line to get into the actual building we think of as the Alamo was really long - probably due to Memorial Day weekend.

It was starting to get grey out, so we went off to find a place to eat and shelter while it rained. However, it didn't start raining until we were half way through our meal. We probably should have just gone straight back to the car, but it was really kind of fun that we didn't. I do like the rain. We ate at one of the restaurants on the Riverwalk. It started pouring rain midway through the meal, and we were glad we were inside. When we were done though, we had to wander back out into the rain - no umbrellas or raincoats. We ran from awning to awning until we got back to the visitor's shop in front of the Alamo. I remembered seeing rain parkas there.

We got a couple, but the rain had started dying down and we noticed the Alamo was practically empty at that point. So we went inside and looked at a few of the things we missed before because of the lines. We had been planning on going to six flags, but with the storm, they would have shut the place down.

Afterwards, Jon and I headed home and spent the remaining portions of the evening with my mother, grandmother and aunt. Aunt Kelsie flew down with Mamaw to bring her here. It was a good evening, they were all glad to see us and visit.