speed racer for real

SPEED RACER

NUGGET HAIRCUT

salt lake update

I joined the Best Buddies here at the University and we had our first activity this weekend. I met my buddy, Brian and we went to a corn maze. It was fun, but real muddy and not so good for my cold. Anyway, I think Brian and I will have a lot of fun- he likes music a lot and he doesn't make fun of my singing!

School and everything else is going well. I've gotten an A on all my 4 or 5 tests so far...but there was one I took this week I'm a little nervous about. Work is pretty good. I'm finding out what parts of social work I don't like as much... Anyway, this other picture is just a cool picture me and my friend Ian took. Hope everyone is doing well!

Camping!

This weekend we went camping with some friends to a place called Valley of Fire. Much more pleasant than it sounds, it's named that because everything is red- the sand, the sandstone cliffs, etc. It's a lot like Moab and Arches Natl. Park in Utah. The girls had a ton of fun playing in the sand and climbing all the rocks. You can even see petroglyphs from the Indians who used to live there (from 300 BC to 1150 AD, to be exact). There's lots of little caves and nooks for the kids to climb in and play house. Caitlin was especially bold and adventurous, she was a regular boulderer by the time we left! Between us and the other two families, there were 7 little girls- no boys! It was sort of a Princess camp out! Unfortunately, our camera battery died after only a few pictures, but it was still a lot of fun!

This picture I took after church last week. I love Elizabeth's smile! I made Caitlin's skirt she's wearing and so I had to photograph it, I thought it turned out really cute (she thinks she's showing off her bubbles she got at a birthday party). Soon I'm going to make Elizabeth a dress out of the same fabric, so they can match. I'm finding this irrepresible urge to dress them in matching clothes! I hear this is normal with moms of two cute girls...

My boys in white!

Here's Dev and Troy before he got dunked! Devon has been reading his scriptures alot, I think he likes having his name on them, he keeps pointing it out to everyone.

A good place to eat and a funny office episode....

Hello Family!! i miss you all and hope you are all doing well. So my new favorite place to get treats is Great Harvest, they have a little store in downtown Rexburg and my friends and i like to make trips to pick up a pumpkin chocolate chip muffin or something like it, everything in the store is amazing! I'm sure you have all heard of it before, but if you havn't been there, i really recommend going and trying anything from there, you will be hooked! i went to lunch today with my friend Kyle and i tried a bubble ice...it's a smoothie and you can get it in any flavor, and in the bottom it has tapioca pearls. They give you a huge straw, which is kinda fun, so you can slurp up the pearls. It's really cool and pretty tasty. Well i didn't mean for this whole blog to be about food, but i guess you see what my days revolve around!! I think it's a problem that us Crowley girls have a problem with!! haha, well other than that life is great, i played in a 3x3 basketball tournament last weekend, it was so much fun!! I should be finding out about Europe soon, within the next couple of weeks, i'm pretty anxious!!
Tonight's office was hilarious. I loved when Dwight was explaining how his bed and breakfast is not classified as one, even though you stay and sleep and then have breakfast....Andy catching Angela that stray cat was also funny. I feel sorry for Michael that he had to work and second job; it made me laugh when he told the Indian man that medical school back in his country is only probably $40...and that he (Michael) would probably be chief of his country.....all good stuff!!! A great night of the office!!!

Halloween sweets!

Here are my spooky eyeball cookies I made for a Halloween potluck. I dipped vanilla wafers into melted white chocolate then dyed the rest blue and put a little in the middle and topped it with a chocolate chip. The blood shot lines were just a toothpick dipped in red food coloring. It was fun to make! What are everyone's costume plans?

WAshington!

Here are a few pictures from Washington this weekend. (We missed you Emily and Carrie). It was great to see the Whittles and everyone!

I ran into Darrell and Diane at the grocery store today- they seemed to be doing well and it was fun to see them.

Sushi and Black Widows

Why do I take pictures of my food? Rod and I love sushi. There is a restaurant here, Osaka's, that has incredibly good sushi. The best. But it's also expensive! So, when we need that sushi hit (and we find that sometimes a little sushi just hits the spot), I make some. It's really easy and a lot of fun (we leave the raw fish to the professionals, though. We love it in restaurants, but at home it's veggie, shrimp, crab, or cooked fish). So tonight after our date night, we picked up the girls from our friends, put them to bed, and put some sushi together.
Just some random info on our life in Vegas: this past summer, sometimes Rod and I would go in the backyard after dark to go "black widow hunting" as I call it. See, we spray for bugs like everyone does here, and it's been effective for the past few years, but this summer we noticed we'd spray and it wasn't making much of a difference in all the widow webs in the backyard. So the best way (and most environmentally friendly way) is to go out after dark with a flashlight, see them in their webs, and smash them with a shoe. In one night I did four. That's just a small dent in the number of widows actually around, but it's a little bit of rush just the same!

more napa ride pics

more pictures

napa bike ride

The latest Crowley activity... Carol Beckmeyer is in the hospital with a concussion. These women had trouble crossing the railroad tracks. All the women went down in one pile. Carol was unconscious. Your mother broke her arm and has four stitches. Other than that, the trip was great. Dinner in St. Helena.

Cinnamon Rolls!

Cinnamon Rolls is our General Conference tradition. We have them for breakfast on Sunday. It's a great tradition! My roommate Emily's mom would make tons and tons of cinnamon rolls for the Sunday afternoon

session of conference and all their kids would invite everyone they wanted
to come eat cinnamon rolls and listen to the
last session of conference. It was a lot of fun, especially since they have 10 kids, so that was a lot of people and a lot of cinnamon roll consumption!

I thought that was a very cool way for her parents to encourage watching General Conference together and to enjoy some grubbin' cinnamon rolls, so we now enjoy cinnamon rolls on General Conference Sunday (just us- maybe when our kids our older we'll invite people over to enjoy them too, but for now Rod's a little possesive of them. He insisted I not give half of them away to people like I did last conference).

Also to help the kids be good so we could actually enjoy conference, they did some pumpkin painting with watercolors. Lizzie felt very grown up to

be doing what she's only watched Caitlin doing before.

Also, a side note, our Primary Program was last Sunday (I was in charge this year) and it went great! Ok, so that's mostly before the music was awesome, the kids really did a great job, but there were no last minute disasters or anything like that. And all the kids who had talks did great! I was seriously impressed with the kids public speaking abilities. One of the moms told me she was telling her daughter she did a good job, but she should have looked up more. Her daughter says, "But mom, she said we only had to look up twice!" Which is true, I told the kids giving talks to try to look up twice while they were speaking. Apparently she thought I meant it as a absolute number, no more, no less!

Where are you?

Okay, so I was noticing that we havne't had a post for a while from Carrie and -shocker- Mom and Dad! It's NOT hard mom! :) I know, I know, sometimes there's just nothing that exciting to add. Let's see....Audrey has been doing good in the bathroom department, Devon is LOVING Cub Scouts, Cameron is one of the best reader in his class (according to his teacher) and Alex is still eating, sleeping and pooping (now that's what I'm talking about!) Troy is super busy with his intership and fish....and I am just busy doing mom stuff. Although Beverly and I did go shopping today!

general conference

Me and Em had a great time at conference! One of the best things was on our way into the conference center- there were protesters like usual, but there was this guy dressed in red and black with a pitchfork, saying (referring to the protestors) "hello....i am satan. these are my street preachers."


Anyway, I really enjoyed Elder Ballard and Elder Holland's talks. It was an interesting theme this afternoon. And then Elder Wirthlin was very touching. I'm always impressed with how humble he is. Well, I hope you are all having a great weekend! See some of you soon!

Smiles from Alex!

Here are finally a few smiley pictures of Alex! He is a very sweet baby and I am really enjoying him. I just hold and snuggle him while the other ones yell at me and tell me they hate me.....so I am truly enjoying him before he turns to the dark side! We are really excited to see mom, dad, Kate, and Trav next week. Sorry we don't live closer to you Carrie or Em, we'll miss you :(

Girls Night!

Here are some of my friends in Sunnyside, the girl on the end next to me and I planned a surprise birthday party for our friend (sitting in the middle) who turned 30. It was a lot of fun...The only hangup was when I talked to her husband about it being a surprise, I made it clear that it was for GIRLS, he decided to join too-So it was us and then one man who apparently didn't mind having dinner with a bunch of women. Weird....Troy would rather have his eyes poked with needles than go to that!

Later this month is another birthday, and we are going to have a spa-themed party while we watch The Bachelor :) and eat Bon Bons!

Emily The ART major!!

ok, so currenlty my major is a BA in Art with an emphasis in Art History and a minor in Humanities. So you're probably thinking Emily, what the heck, you are not an artist, why are you majoring in art? Well, let me explain myself. There is a humanities Europe trip next spring. They go all over Europe basically for a month. This trip is precisly the think i've been looking for, it seems like it'd be perfect for me. So, i need to turn in my application and a letter of intent but i know that my chances of being accepted are higher if my major has something to do with this trip. So, i'm not telling a falsehood, it's just that i'm really never going to be an art major, but i kinda need it to make it look like this trip will help with my career. Is that wrong?.....Well, i find out the beginning of November if i'm accepted or not, after i find out if i can go or not i will probaby change my major/minor. I'm leaning towards a minor in Biology, so i can start swinging towards marine biology but as for my major there are too many things i like. But i'm taking a career exploration class and that is proving useful! so, i just though you'd all like to know what my dreams are!!! The winter semester is sill up in the air as far as what i'm going to do. My options are going home and working, staying up here and working and taking some night classes, moving in with kate (she dosn't know this yet) and working, heck moving in with anyone and working!!! i know everyone would just LOVE to have emily for four months!! haha..well if you have any free time and you want to learn more about this trip i'm talking about the website is www.byui.edu/travelprograms/humanities well i love you all! brooke, when i called devon on his birthday i can't believe how old he sounds! haha brett was with me and he said hi to devon and dev said, 'ben?' haha i thought it was really funny..