Dallas has been wanting to go to the zoo for a while now. We decided to make his dream come true by convincing Caroline that she wanted to go to the zoo and calling it her birthday party. Perfect plan!
We started off with the bird show. The girls LOVED the talking parrots. Can you spot the bird?
The bird show exits right by the carousel. Upon seeing the carousel, Brooke was bound and determined to have a ride. We splurged:
The zoo had moving, roaring dinosaurs scattered throughout the park:
What was the girls’ reaction to the dinosaurs? Pure terror:
Spencer’s animal encounter:
The day before we went to the zoo Brooke drew pictures of several of the animals she hoped to see. She insisted we bring them with us because she wanted to show the animals. This is her tiger:
Can you guess this one? It’s a giraffe. Brooke’s a little abstract at times:
The girls couldn’t take their eyes off of the giraffe. Not even for a picture. It’s okay. I’m sure one day I’ll want to remember what the back of their heads looked like:
Now the obligatory “Are you as big as a gorilla?” pictures:
September 23, 2006 I woke up to find this sign hanging in our kitchen:
Dallas had a tally on his Pocket PC of how many days we had been married and he made a little celebration in honor of our thousandth day. So sweet. We had been suspecting I might be pregnant, so he thought it would be fun for me to take a pregnancy test on this most auspicious of days. Positive! Brooke was on her way!
Weeks later Dallas was reading parts of his journal to me and we got to the part where he wrote about this day. It said something like, “Today I made a big sign to celebrate being married for 1000 days. I actually forgot to do it on the real thousandth day so I did it a couple of days later but Rebecca will never know the difference.” Ha! Naughty husband trying to trick me and then exposing himself in his own lie!
Dallas and I went to St. George and visited the temple:
Here’s Dallas getting ready for Halloween. He wanted to go as Bob from the movie What About Bob?. I loved that idea. We bought him a goldfish to wear around his neck and he made a T-shirt that said, “Don’t hassle me, I’m local.”
No one knew who he was, but that’s typical when it comes to his costumes. I went as Amelia Bedelia and no one knew who I was either. Oh well.
We ended up hating that stupid goldfish. We bought it on a Friday and the family costume dinner was on Sunday. I was worried it would die before then. The pet store said we could exchange it if it died that soon. Well, little Gill ended up living way beyond Halloween. We put him in a bowl and thought it might be nice to watch him swim all around.
No. It wasn’t nice.
Gill had a horrible habit having to do with pooping. If you don’t want to read more, avert your eyes. I cannot be held responsible for any possible scarring you may have after hearing this story.
Little Gill would poop a huge string of poop and it would stay connected to him. It would get so long that Gill could chase it similar to a dog chasing his tail…and it would get so long that Gill could eat it. We were beyond grossed out by our newest family member but had no humane way of getting rid of him.
Until Dallas’s friends came by with their little son. We showed Caleb our cool fish and talked about how awesome it was and how he should ask his parents if he could have him. Bwah ha ha! It worked and before long Caleb was the proud owner of a disgusting fish and we were happy to have our counter space back.
(Unfortunately, Gill didn’t take to his rehoming very well. He died the next day. Oops! Sad to get Caleb excited about a new pet only to have it die on him hours later. I think his parents felt so bad about it they bought him another fish.)
Moving on. Here are my parents in costume. They went as white trash:
Ben stole the show in his Napoleon Dynamite costume. My aunt, Nani, also gave a good showing in her costume:
My grandparents:
Jacob, Laurie, Natalie, and Emma:
Ben stayed in character all evening:
We went to a football game. I’m writing this years after the fact so I can’t exactly remember which one…but I’m sure my brothers and Dad know exactly which game this is and who won and what the score was and how many passing yards each team had, etc, etc, etc.
I’m pretty sure it was the BYU vs. U of U game (the sea of red is giving me that idea) and BYU won (our smiles are giving me that idea).
Yep, definitely must have been a win to see this guy so happy:
After doing a candy window last year by ourselves Dallas and I just decided to help someone else this year. We helped glue candy on this cactus:
Dallas was on set at the LDS Motion Picture Studio as they were filming the Joseph Smith movie:
Dallas painted our closet door in our first apartment. I was a little upset by this considering we didn’t own the place, and I was pretty sure our landlords didn’t want a depiction of the sky, a house, the ground, and China on their door forever but Dallas assured me it would come right off. It did:
For my birthday Dallas and I went to the temple. When we got there, Dallas realized he had “forgotten” his recommend. We had to go all the way back home. When we entered our apartment I knew something wasn’t right. It was the weirdest feeling. I could see little things were out of place. I went into the kitchen. Our friends and family popped out and yelled, “Surprise!” Dallas had given me a surprise party. So sweet…but still such a weird feeling to walk inside your house knowing it’s not how you left it.
I was turning 24. Dallas had to get creative with the candles:
One night there was a huge windstorm. Afterwards Dallas and I were in our apartment and the lights started doing strange things. They’d get brighter and dimmer every few seconds. We couldn’t figure out what was going on. It was a Sunday so we decided first thing Monday morning we’d call the power company.
We didn’t last that long.
As we were walking home from church was saw smoke. As we walked closer we realized it was coming from the general direction of our apartment. As we turned onto our street we saw firefighters and trucks dousing our backyard.
Apparently the windstorm had knocked a tree onto some power lines. One of them broke and was swinging freely. Every time it hit another power line it would create a huge fireball that fell to the ground. That’s why our lights were pulsing brighter. One such fireball ignited the backyard and burned it all up, including the neighbor’s trampoline. Luckily that was the only casualty and nothing else was damaged and no one was hurt.
For Halloween Dallas was his usual creative/obscure self and went as The Son of Man painting. Call me and my family uncultured because we weren’t familiar with this piece of art but now that I know what it is, I love the costume. I was still teaching first grade and decided to go as Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus books/movies:
Dallas went fishing and came home victorious…and that’s no fish tale:
Dallas’s mom was in charge of Provo’s Children’s Celebration of the Arts – a day where kids could go to the park and do all sorts of art projects. It was such a fun activity. Dallas and I enjoyed helping out:
Jacob’s family came for Thanksgiving. Here he is with Emma:
And Natalie:
My family all went to Las Vegas to see BYU play in some bowl game out there.
I’ve never been one to want to go crazy dressing up for Halloween. Then I became a schoolteacher and realized that even though I was an adult with a grown-up job, I would still be needing to find a costume each October.
My second year as a teacher I had the idea to dress up as Viola Swamp from the Miss Nelson books. Miss Swamp is the evil substitute teacher who whips Miss Nelson’s class into shape when Miss Nelson is absent. It turns out that Miss Nelson was really Viola Swamp and acted mean to teach her naughty class a lesson. I had so much fun pretending to be Miss Swamp. My first graders were almost positive that it was still me dressed up as Miss Swamp…but there was still a tiny element of uncertainty. Months later my students would occasionally bring up Halloween and say things like, “We know it was really you. It was. It was really you…wasn’t it…?”
And so a tradition was born. Once a month my Grandma hosts a dinner for all of her children and their families. My Mom and Grandma had heard all about my costume and wanted to see it in action so they made the October family dinner a dress-up affair and it’s been that way ever since. Everyone really got into it:
I think you can pretty much tell what everyone is supposed to be except maybe Dallas who is Nephi and Sarah who is Sonic the Hedgehog.
Here are some other family members in costume at the dinner:
