Thanks Ashley!

So Carmen has been asking me how to make the background on her blog (ah -I mean OUR blog) different. She'd seen others with images and various different things and was wondering how we could do that. I looked at the blogger help and it as all on-line helps was NOT much help. So yesterday I just posted a quick question. Ashley pointed me at www.thecutestblogontheblock.com where I learned not only what size to make the background but how to get it to be the background. So what do you think of the new background? too many mickeys or not enough mickeys...

Thunder storm

So Thursday night we had a BIG thunderstorm. The news claimed that it had hurricane force winds above 100 MPH!!! It wasn't really windy here at our house but it was in other parts of the city (it blew the blow up roof off of ASU's practice field -yeah a blow up roof silly I know). In fact we stood out on the balcony and recorded some of the light show. Check it out.

Background

So if anyone knows how to add a background to their blog. Please let us know. It isn't as straight forward as I thought...

Talks in Church

So about a week and a half ago, Br. Strong (the first counselor in the Bishopric) asked James at scouts if we would speak in sacrament meeting. James said yes (UGH!) he then called me to tell me (double UGH! -he should have called first we or more importantly I could have politely declined).
Anyhow I resigned my self to my fate and started preparing a talk. James who has no faith in me taking more than about 12 mins basically prepared a half hours worth to speak on.
We showed up to sacrament about 20 mins early the Wagstaffs (the primary president) had the boys sit with them so we could sit on the stand -which was good for Jenny (the new beehive who was giving her first talk in sacrament meeting as the youth speaker) as I highly doubt she wanted to be up there alone.
Why is it that when you're assigned to speak there's never any ward business but it seems like the VERY NEXT week there'll be like 20 mins or MORE of ward business followed by a letter from the First Presidency and several items of Stake business? I know it's one of those does a tree falling in the forest make a noise if no one is around to hear it questions. But I had to ask.
So things were going along smoothly, Jenny got up and gave her talk. Then I got up. Now here's the deal I don't like giving talks they make me very and I mean very nervous. So I ALWAYS have the entire thing typed out -literally every word I plan to say during my talk is typed out. I get up and I'm just going along, and well I didn't notice so James will explain.
Well one of the elderly brothers appeared to just kind of knock over. There was some commotion in the audience as several members of the ward who are medical professionals by trade went to be first responders. The Bishop got up and asked Carmen to sit down. He then asked the entire ward to please sit calmly as they saw to making sure a member of the congregation was OK. So we all sat there real quiet as a ward, most people looking up at us with quizzical looks on their faces (as he was sitting in the back part of the chapel). Then the paramedics showed up. Now he's been laying down on the bench for at least 10 mins we've got no feel for what's going on -as a ward I don't think. The Bishop was wisely (I might add) letting the people in the ward with the appropriate training to do whatever they needed to do. When the paramedics showed up the Bishop decided that in the interest of letting them do what they needed to we'd adjourn. He said that the adults should go to the Relief Society room, the primary children to the primary room and the youth to either the young men's or young women's room. Although I was worried about the brother who'd passed out (it turns out he's diabetic and hadn't had breakfast and just sort of blacked out or something). I was kind of thinking "did we just dodge the talk bullet?" But alas I was mistaken the Bishop came over and said that we'd pick up where we'd left off in the Relief Society room. Dang! so close!
So we finished up our talks to a reduced audience -think the size of a regular gospel doctrine class as opposed to sacrament meeting.
It did prove to be quite an eventful morning though.

Cleaning the Church

So as our ward is the first (of three) ward to meet each Sunday morning this year, it falls on us (the ward) to clean the building every Saturday morning. James signed us up in priesthood -he also vol entered to be a life guard at the ward swim party that was last night -apparently he's been in primary so long that he now feels obligated to "make up" for lost opportunities to volunteer for stuff.
Anyways we took the boys, and they LOVED IT. If we could only get them half that interested in cleaning their own room...
when we were all done and were about to leave Br. Price (the High Priest who's calling it is to come and oversee and make sure that it gets done right) was talking to James in the hall. He then said "oh no I think that bird is stuck in here". Both of us looked over and saw something very large fluttering around the glass door at the end of the hall. As we walked down there two things became evident. First it was not a bird it was this.


Secondly to everyone's relief it was on the outside of the door. The boys (and that includes James) were fascinated by it, after all who do you think took a picture of it...

Need a battery

If the battery on your car has to go out, having it go out after church is about as good as that gets. There are lots of people willing to help you out. Although the nice thing is that if we had needed to, we could have walked home from church as we do not live that far away, about a mile. It would have taken about 30 minutes to walk it. I haven't had a battery die on me before. The funny thing was that we were able to get to church with no problem didn't even hesitate getting started. I thought your battery would give you some signs that it was dying on you. Maybe it was and I was not listing to my car. But James and I got a new battery on Monday and put it into the van. The car is working fine now. But the heat in Arizona is not nice to the cars battery. Most people say that you will change your battery about every two to three years. So I will have to see if the battery goes out before the life on the warranty does in three years...