Lots of Changes!

I wanted to put a few pictures on here of things that have been happening in my life!  For the last 4 1/2 years I worked at a food place that served pretzels and frozen custard and things like that.  But things have changed!  I now exclusively work at a place called Florence's Exquisite Candies! (it used to be called Mom's Kandy Kitchen)  They serve the best chocolates I've ever eaten.  It's a terrible place to work because I just eat chocolate all day long.  Here are some pictures of shop.  They redid all the decorations about 5 years ago and it's super cute. 

This is one of the back kitchens where they make caramels and fudge.  It gets very messy....

This is where they dip the chocolates.  It's fun to see them all covered in chocolate and making all the clusters!  Oh yeah, and I made those chocolate suckers on the counter there.

They wanted to make this part look like Italy, I think they did a pretty good job!

The front counter!  This is where I spend most of my time.  That case is full of chocolate!

This is a random tree that has lots of little candies in all the nooks and crannies.

This is probably the most popular decoration!  Since we use Swiss chocolate they decorated this like the Swiss Alps.  Everyone loves the castle, especially the little kids!

David also had the annual Halloween concert at the college.  It's the one concert where the whole orchestra dresses up in costume and it's basically a mini play.  There's usually a plot and the conductor is the main character.  They played Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.  The plot of the concert was like A Christmas Carol but for Halloween.  It was pretty funny!  Part of the cello section dressed up as characters from The Wizard of Oz and David got picked to be the Wizard.  Here's his costume!

The day before Halloween we had a rehearsal with the Idaho Falls Symphony.  They told us that we could dress up if we wanted and about half the symphony did!  As part of Crochet Olympics (something me, my sister, and Mom still do) I made this hat.  It's supposed to be the Treehugger from the movie The Lorax (I've never actually seen the movie) and I think it turned out pretty good!  It got quite a few comments and most people loved it.  I wore it to work all Halloween too!   The week before in Crochet Olympics, we did wrist-warmers and Lisa had to do some with kitty paws on them, so she crocheted some ears and a tail and was a cat for the rehearsal!  Her costume was really good!  It's been an interesting few weeks around here and hopefully it will keep getting better! 
 

Weekend Fun

This weekend was pretty fun.  Friday morning, Lisa, my mom, and I decided we wanted to go pick huckleberries.  If you're not from Idaho, you've probably never seen one.  They're kind of like blueberries, except smaller and EXTREMELY hard to pick.  Here is a picture of the ones I picked last week:

This little bowl that I'm holding in one hand took me about an hour to get.  Huckleberry picking is not about size, but about enjoying nature!  Well, on friday we drove around for a long time looking for any sign of huckleberries, but we were not successful.  We did find a lot of cows and almost got run over by one!  But no berries.  Huckleberry picking is pretty popular around here and all of the bushes were very picked over.  We did have a lot of fun laughing and joking and enjoying being with each other.  Hopefully next year will be more fruitful!

Looking for any sign of the berries!

It was fun, even though we came home empty handed.

On Friday, Lisa told my mom and I that she'd never been on a small hike that our family always talks about.  I don't know how she's never been on it, but we decided on Saturday night that we needed to go on it!  We wanted to go at sunset because it's really pretty when you reach the top and can look out at the river and farming fields with that beautiful setting sun.  Unfortunately, because of some health issues, my mom couldn't come.  But my 2 sisters, their husbands, and David and I made it up to the trail and had a lot of fun! 

I know you love this picture, Lisa.  This is your excited face before we started Cress Creek Trail!

This is the only picture I had of Joni, but I was very impressed she made it all the way to the top at 31 weeks pregnant!

As you can see, the first part of this hike isn't very hard.  The paved walkway makes it accessible to anyone!  Farther up it goes to a dirt trail and is more of a real hike.

This picture isn't so much about David, but I thought the sunset behind was really nice.

I love this shot.  My handsome man, beautiful country, and a colorful sky!  It was a good night!

Sunday was an exciting day for my mom and Lisa and I.  In honor of the Olympics (and also because we needed more motivation to finish projects) we started our own crochet Olympics!  All we did was pick projects for each other at the beginning of the week and we had to bring our finished project to dinner on Sunday.  I think we did pretty good!  My mom did the spider, I did the turkey, and Lisa did the snowmen.  I think I might end up making the snowmen because I thought they were so cute and looked pretty easy! 

As you can tell, the unofficial theme was holiday decorations.  This week we're doing jewelry and I think it's going to be pretty fun!  All in all, it was a good weekend.

Family Pictures

A couple of weeks ago my brother and his family came up from New Mexico to visit.  While they were here my dad wanted to get a family picture since we were all together.  It's the first time we have all been together because my younger brother was on his mission when Joni and I got married.  It was a lot of fun, we giggled and yelled and made good memories that day.  I'm glad I get to see my family all the time and it will be sad when David and I move away, but I just figure that when we move away they all have a new vacation spot! 

We wanted this to be pretty casual so all the family pictures were set-up and taken (with a tripod and the timer on the camera) by yours truly.  I don't think they turned out half bad!  The last picture Was really fun, I had to set up the tripod on a little deck, hit the trigger, run around a tree, over a stream, and up some rocks, all in 10 seconds!  Here are some of the after-pictures pictures.  We were all hanging out and talking and my mom was snapping pictures.  This is us when we're all by ourselves!

Nathan thought this was hilarious.  David (my bro) tried doing this with his other son, Zach, but that didn't go so well....

This is Emily, David's wife and Nathan's mom.  I love this picture because there is more than meets the eye...if you look in the background, you can see Nathan loved the water so much he wanted to take a swim!

My mom wanted a kissy shot.  Lisa and Tyler were all ready for this one!

Joni and Chade.  They'll have a new addition to their family coming this October!  She hides it pretty well for being 5 months along!

David wouldn't do a kissy shot with me, so I smashed his face.

But he smashed my face right back so I guess we're even.

I really like this photo, except Zach looks scared out of his mind...

This is my favorite picture.  All 13 1/2 of us!

Pottery!

My sister Lisa, Mom, and I all took a pottery class for the past couple of months.  Once a week we would go up to campus and for 3 hours we would talk and laugh and maybe make something once in awhile...:)  I was a little apprehensive because I took a ceramics class (basically the same class) my freshman year and I was horrible at it.  I don't know why, but I couldn't do a single thing in that class that didn't look like a 5 year old had done it.  But this class was much better!  I made a swan that I never quite finished because it kept disappearing (I'll have to go back there today or tomorrow to look for it one last time...), a flower pot that Lisa kept calling a diaper pail, and some pots that I threw on the wheel!  When I took ceramics last time I was never able to successfully throw a pot on the wheel.  I didn't even want to try this time, but my mom got me to do it and I did!  I was very proud of myself.  Here's a picture of my flower pot.  I think it turned out pretty well! 

I don't have pictures of my pots, so I might add those later.  I'm glad I had this class because I was getting bored just staying at home and going to work.  It was fun having class with Lisa and my mom and being able to develop what little talents I have!