Grandma and Grandpa Whiting Visit

My grandparents on my mother's side came to visit a while ago.  It was so great to see them!  We celebrated Grandpa's birthday and he told us a lot of cool stories about various things.  My favorite story was how he met Grandma.  Although, he and Grandma disagree about some points of the story.  Grandpa also told us a story about potato sandwiches.  He is a great storyteller.  We had some delicious soups for dinner, for dessert we had an amazing carrot cake (made by Wendy) and yummy flan made by Alysa.  It was great to see everyone and be together.  Oh!  We also had an epic DI trip.

A few weeks ago, Cameron's class was asked how their grandparents impacted their life.  Unfortunately, he never had a good relationship with his grandparents so he couldn't answer.  However, I have been blessed to have a great relationship with all of my grandparents.  They have had a great impact on my life.  I cannot tell you how much they have blessed my life.  For Grandpa's birthday we each shared something that made him special or why we loved him.  I said that he always took time to make every person feel special no matter how old they were.  In all stages of my life he took time to show that he cared about me.  I am so blessed to have such amazing grandparents.

Love,





Courtney

Valentine's Day 2014

This year we decided to stay in the Thailand room at the Destinations Inn.  It took me a loooong time to choose which one I actually liked.  (I have a difficult time making decisions sometimes.)

We had a nice lunch at Olive Garden before we went to the hotel.

The hotel had this cute little cafe area.  

Here is the view from the stairs.  The shower is right next to the door.  It was an aromatherapy shower, which was amazing!  There was this button that you could press for it to produce steam.  Otherwise it was just a normal shower.

Here is the projector/tub.

This part of the room had a really pretty mural with branches that jutted out of the edge.  It was a cool effect.

I love this sink!  

Here is a better picture of the mural with the branches.

Cameron standing at the cafe.

I love how they put the step pyramid type thing on the wall above the bed.

The area under the bridge is covered with water!  It was so awesome!

This was the breakfast that they provided.  It was yummy!

Oh, this is what was behind the projector.  So pretty!

Our fourth Valentine's day together :)

This was the control that changed the lighting.  It also adjusted the level of the lights strung around the umbrella/canopy.

We had an amazing time!  It was great to get away from the stress of school and work.  Can't wait to see what next year brings.

Love,

Courtney

More Conversations

We got released from our Primary calling a few weeks ago, but were called in to substitute today.  We got to teach our old class!  It was great to see all of them and how they've grown.  They also supplied us with some hilarious conversations, so here goes:

Primary Leader:  Primary Kid 1 how do you love your family?

Primary Kid 1:  But I didn't have my hand raised, I didn't!  I didn't raise my hand!

Our whole class:  Trying to one-up each other with airplane stories

Primary Kid 2:  My Dad's a pilot.

Rest of the class:  **chirp, chirp**

(We were drawing pictures of our families using a tracing of a hand.)

Primary Kid 2:  My Dad has a frowny face because he's grumpy.

(Seriously, the most frowny face I have ever seen on a crayon-traced finger)

Primary Kid 1:  Why?

Primary Kid 2:  He yelled at me.

Primary Kid 3:  Can I get a drink?

Cameron:  If you hurry REALLY fast.

(Primary Kid 3 rushes out of the room and comes back with water dripping down her chin).

PK3:  I hurried really fast!

'

(Cameron showed the kids a "magic trick that involved two pennies, a piece of paper and his tie.)

Cameron:  Look!  The penny disappeared, it's magic!

Rest of the class besides PK3:  **shock**

PK3:  Nobody has magic

(She also figured out the rest of the tricks in Cameron's "magic" repertoire)

This isn't a conversation but I thought it might be a good setup for Other Primary Kid's behavior.  In our ward, the Primary president knocks on the classroom door 5 minutes before we are supposed to end our lesson.  OPK decided to knock 30 minutes before the actual time class was supposed to be over.  It was ward conference so we thought that maybe we were ending early to make more time for stake business stuff.  We packed up our class and headed downstairs, only to see that no one else was waiting in the hall.  We went back upstairs to see if the other classes were still there and caught OPK knocking on all of the doors in the hall.  Needless to say we spent the rest of class playing telephone.  

Primary Leader:  What can we do with our ears?

OPK:  Cut them off.

(She preceded to do this with every body part mentioned, but varied in the way to destroy the particular appendage)

Cameron's Art Project

For his humanities class, Cameron had to take photos that showed different concepts and techniques in art.   He did such a great job that I wanted to show off his pictures.

This picture was supposed to show the concept of framing.

Leading lines.  The teacher showed this as one of her examples.

The rule of thirds.

This picture was painted by Cezanne.  This part of the assignment was to recreate the painting.

Here is Cameron's take on the still life.  I thought he was very creative.

Cameron loves this class!  He is experiencing all types of culture and art.  I can't wait to see what his next creative assignment is!

Love,

Courtney

Voice Impressions

I came across this amazing video of some vocal artist impressions to the song Let It Go from Frozen.

I know some of you are so sick of Frozen that you can hardly stand it, so for you I post this amazing lady doing impressions to a different song.

That is all.

Love,

Courtney

Trip To Bushido With Heidi

Last Saturday I went with Heidi to a restaurant called Bushido.  If you don't know anything about it (like me) you can read about it here.  It was a really neat way to experience a little bit of Japanese culture.

Really cool fish tank with HUGE goldfish.

HUGE!

Heidi reading the menu while we waited (for a long time) for a table.

Me with the menu.

This is called Udon which you can read about by clicking on the link.

Heidi eating her Udon.

Wasabi!  Yum!  

These things are called tempura.  

They had a beautiful water feature/pond thing in the middle of the room.  It was beautiful.

I love the bamboo shoots in the water.  

Going to Bushido was awesome!  I loved the food there, it was very different but delicious.  What's the craziest food you ever tasted?

Love,

Courtney

Days of Valentines Past Part 2

I really thought that I already posted about this, but apparently not.  If I did and I'm just crazy, please let me know.  This year we stayed at the Destinations Inn.  We chose the Paris room because, well, I love France.  

This cute dresser thingy hid the mini-fridge and the microwave.

One of the coolest features of the room, an Eiffel tower shower.

The view from above.

This was the cute little cafe table that had cider and glasses.

I love this fountain, seriously.  So pretty.

The room had gorgeous murals all over it.

The view to the bed.  The flowers are so pretty. 

Me standing in front of the cafe part of the room.

The mondo tub that had a cool light thing in it. It made the water change colors.  They called it chromatherapy I think.

They brought us this yummy breakfast in the morning.

A side view of the middle of the room.

The pretty mural.

I took a picture of this because I wanted to remember that everything in the room was remote controlled.  The projector, the lights, and the music were all controlled by remote!  So awesome.  This year we are staying in the Thailand room, so look forward to that post!

Love,

Courtney

Days of Valentines Past Part 1

I was going through some old pictures and realized that I never posted about Valentine's Day 2012 and 2011.  So, 2-3 years later I am going to post about them, starting with 2011.  Feel free to skip :)

This was in our first apartment in Rexburg.  It was teeny tiny.  And yes, those are snowflakes left from Christmas in the background.

Squished face selfie.

Cameron made the entire dinner by himself.  It was so yummy!

Sigh, yep that's a Christmas tree.

Cameron bought these because we had them on our honeymoon.

The setup.  Speaking of setup, Cameron told me that we were going to a special restaurant and drove me around Rexburg for about 15 minutes and brought me back home.  

Making the food.

Cutting up chicken with kitchen scissors.

All done!

Chicken Alfredo, YUM!