You'd think she was mine...

Do you think I have enough of Zoe on here yet? Me neither.

Boating

Amber and I

Dad takin' on the wake surf board :)

I had to get myself in here somehow!

Nate-O. He was such a good sport... he even let me drive!

My first attempt at wakesurfing. The video where I actually stay up is too long to put on the website. That figures.

This is my pathetic attempt at wake boarding. And yes, this is as good as it got... all 50 million times I tried to get up. Grrrrrr.

Nate

Nate and Amber - now you see why Zoe is so cute?

Almost time to go home ... a storm is rolling in and we are still messing around.

I can't remember what happened here... but it was funny :)

The storm clouds that were coming in fast.

My Bro and I

Weekend Family Fun!

More cuteness from Zoe Mae!

Here's Dan kicking Mom's trash at boxing.

We spent one evening up at Dan's parents eating yummy biscuit bubble and playing Wii with Josh and Riley. Riley kicked my trash at bowling. And then Josh got a Turkey and he was quite proud of himself. Too bad the video file is too large to put on here. :( He was cracking us up.

Dan and Zoe... she's wearing the Cubs hat that Dan just got for me.

Cute little stinker. She looks better in that hat than I do!

Zoe's fake laugh... she's into imitating these days. So funny!

4th of July

Dan and I, by the stream on an Apache Indian Reservation near ShowLow that we camped at for the 4th of July.

On our way!

We stopped at this gas station in the middle of who knows where and there were probably 10 to 15 of these Shelby's parked there...until we were ready to leave of course and then they all decided to leave at the same time... in a nice long line in front of us. I really didn't mind watching them all drive away though. Beautiful! I want one!

Trevor brought his game down all the way from Utah... but I'm not going to write down what he calls it. :) We've played it at our family reunions before too but I can't remember what we called it. Anyway, Dan and I took on Trevor and Jordan and beat them twice in a row - oh yeah! I'm afraid that's all I got to play though. :) The boys were having so much fun!

Besides, I was having fun with my camera ...

Kalee and I explored the stream while the boys played with their game.

These videos are of Dan getting payback for all the scars Jordan gave him when they were little. :) He was having a little too much fun trying to kill his brother though. haha

So the whole point of going up to ShowLow that weekend was to pick up Jordan, Dan's older brother. He caught a ride down from Utah with our friend Michael, and it was actually a surprise for Dan's parents. We were actually supposed to make it all the way to Eagar to get him but... the parentals were making that difficult so Michael was a sweetheart and brought him and Trevor to ShowLow for us. We met up at the Walmart and Jordan casually "bumped" into his mom in the store. It was great! They were so surprised!

We camped... played games... went exploring... it was fun!

The End.

More Zoe

Dan and Zoe

Dan and Zoe

Tickle Me Zoe

Dad's are great for all sorts of things... hugs, kisses, money, armrests...

Zoe and Amber came to visit me on Sunday for a little but while they waited for my brother Nate. And we had so much fun! I kicked Amber's trash at SkipBo and then Zoe entertained us for the rest of the afternoon. The cute little stinker is sitting up on her own now, and chewing on everything. :) She was getting quite a kick out of her mom throwing her up in the air and tickling her too. Crazy girl loves to be thrown around. I think she enjoyed flirting with Dan the most though. Haha.

Later that night, I got to babysit for a little while so Nate and Amber could go pick up my parents from the airport. I was kinda bummed when Amber said she would probably be in bed already by the time I would get there... but she wasn't! She was still having too much fun in the bath when I showed up, so I got to feed her a bottle and put her to bed. This was the first time I've had the opportunity to babysit Zoe, so I was really excited. That sweet little girl was so good for me too. She was all cuddly and smily the whole time.... even when she spit up all over me. :) She started falling asleep in my arms after she was done with her bottle, so I decided I wasn't in a hurry to put her in her crib just yet. Most of the time she doesn't like to sit still so it's hard to catch her in a cuddly mood - expecially if you aren't mom or dad - so I just ate it up. So much fun! That little girl has me completely wrapped around her little finger. She is so stinkin cute!

Team Punishment

We had a "team building excersize" for work today. Our team has been doing really well lately and to reward ourselves, we took half a day off and had a BBQ/swim party over at my coworkers house. She has this massive dog, a Great Dane... and it is like 3 times my size. He's a really sweet dog but he scared the crap out of me when I first saw him. I guess he's really great with people but he doesn't like other dogs much. He can put his paws up and peek over their 7 ft tall fence... and he ripped the face off their neighbors dog that jumped up on something and got too close to him. Yikes!


Anyway, here are some pictures and video of our fun day. Not everyone got in the pool... just the crazy ones and they played basketball the whole time. One of the girls tried to stay dry but our manager picked her up and jumped in the pool with her. She should have known better. :) And it is also Brian's birthday on Sunday - Happy Birthday Brian! So we had a yummy cake for him too.


It was really hot and I got too much sun... but not a bad way to spend a Friday afternoon! I had fun getting to know some of the crazy people I work with a little better. I seriously have the coolest team!

Here's a clip of everyone that was there.

JJ's backflip off of Kort's shoulders

Amy takes a swim....

Zoe Mae

I figured it was about time I posted some pictures of my niece on here. Zoe Mae Waters is over 5 months old now and she is just getting cuter and cuter. We can't believe how fast she is growing. Just last night we had dinner over at Nate and Amber's for Fathers Day, and guess who was the entertainment for the evening? I think we sat there and watched her for over an hour. She can sit up now on her own and she seems pretty determined to figure out how to get mobile. She'll be crawling everywhere before they know it. These are just pictures from her baby blessing back in Feb. I need to collect some more and put some on here... but it's a start!

California

So one of my good friends and roommate from college, Michelle Condie, recently came home from serving a mission in Rancagua, Chile. Yay! I have missed that girl so! I got to go visit her this last weekend before she moves away to Colorado... :( All of my good friends live so far away. Or maybe I live so far away from all of my good friends? Hmmm.

We had a great time this weekend though! On Friday night Dan , Kalee and I drove down to Fullerton, CA and stayed the night with our friend John Mark Geiss and his family. They were so nice to let us come and stay with them last minute like that.

Saturday was a crazy day, even though we started it as lazy as lazy bums can be. It felt so good to sleep in. Michelle and another friend of ours, Luke Hanzon, joined us for the Cubs vs. Dodgers game that afternoon... damn those Dodgers. We lost. But it was fun anyway! We sat up in the nosebleed seats on the visitors side next to a bunch of crazy (and drunk, I might add) Cubs fans. I think they drink more in CA or something because I have never seen that many cups of beer sloshing around an AZ D-backs game. One guy was so drunk, he almost spilled himself down the stairs along with his beer. He had to sit down a couple times before he made it to his seat. Oh wow. But it was sunny, and warm, and a beautiful day for a baseball game!

Michelle's brother Scott had just returned home from his mission the week before so some of their family and friends met at Huntington beach for a BBQ. We had the yummiest shishkabobs (how do you spell that anyway?) and potato salad, yummmmm. Thanks Sister/Lisa Condie! I can never decide on what to call your mom, Michelle. :)

As soon as we got to the beach, Dan and I jumped in on a game of football with Michelle's fam... yeah, I've never really played football before so... that was fun. :) Actually Dan pretty much dragged me into it but I'm glad he did. And! There was another girl on our team that was as clueless as I was! So when we got into our first team huddle and Matt started throwing out different ideas and strategies... we could look to each other for that reassurance in knowing that we were not entirely alone even though we had no idea what he was talking about. Matt then asked me if I wanted to be the one to rush the QB... (at this point I still hadn't figured out that it was 2 hand touch and not tackle football) and I just looked at him like he was crazy. But all I had to do was hold my position for 5 alligators (counting 1 alligator, 2 alligator...etc) and then run as fast as I could at the QB and tag him. I liked that position except that I had to count the alligators out loud. I am not sure if anyone noticed, but most times I was concentrating so hard on the guy with the ball, that my alligators came out as algilator, agillator or even atilgator. Maybe that's how I managed to tag Michelle's dad when he was in as QB... he must have been distracted by all my atilgatoring and didn't know where to throw the ball. I will have to remember that strategy for future football adventures.

It was a good thing we played football before we attempted the waves because if I wasn't so hot and sweaty, it would have taken Dan throwing me in the water to get me all the way in. It was so cold!!!! I went numb after a minute or so and then I couldn't feel anything... which didn't help much as I was getting washed out to sea and trying to stay afloat. It was really fun but those waves beat the crap out of me. I survived for a while... and even enjoyed getting the crap beat out of me until the cold made it past my thick layers of fat and I couldn't control the shaking anymore. It was pretty much freezing the rest of the night until we got in the hot tub at John Mark's house later. We had a campfire and that helped long enough to make s'mores and have fun talking with everyone for a while. I wish I wasn't such a wuss when it comes to being cold. I hate being cold. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it.

As cold as it was though, it was so fun to spend time with Michelle, Luke and all of her fam while we had the chance. I was really excited for Dan and Kalee to meet everyone and we had a great time! I was happy that we got to see as much of Michelle as we did. I wasn't expecting her to take that much time away from her family and I really appreciated that. :) I just wish we could have been down there longer! We went to church on Sunday with John Mark and then drove back to AZ in time for bed. Quick trip, but it was just what I needed!