Birthday Weekend

For my birthday, Keith took me to one of my favorite restaurants, My Florist, in Phoenix. I love this place. They have the best food, and the best entertainment. We had a great time together and we ate A LOT of food! They even brought back our favorite dessert.

We rolled home after that one. My parents threw a fun birthday swim & BBQ party for my cousin Michael and me on Saturday night. Phil did a great job grilling the kabobs and Mom did a great job making everything else!
Kylie really enjoyed her icecream dessert!I got to hang out with my sister on my birthday day after going out to breakfast with a couple friends from our ward. (Thank you ladies!) We worked out and went swimming. It was so nice and relaxing. Then my friend Shari and her two girls came over to wish me a happy birthday. It was a great day!

WE'VE GOT TALENT!!!!

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Northern AZ

This past weekend we enjoyed being in northern Arizona. We couldn't believe that it's almost June and we were driving through a snow storm on the way there! Keith was invited to play on our brother-in-law's (Kevin) softball team in the Show Low tournament. He had a few really good hits, and mostly had a blast being able to play with such a great team.

This bridge into Pinedale is so cool! It reminds me of a bridge back east near Liberty Bell.


We stayed at Mom & Dad Jackson's cabin in Heber. They came with us to lunch on Sunday at the White's cabin (more like a beautiful house!). The White's work with Keith as ward missionaries in our ward. We enjoyed a yummy BBQ with them.


Isn't this chair so cool? Keith saw it and pulled over right away. It's just off the road in Pinetop.

On Monday we went to watch our brother-in-law, Skyler, play in one of his softball games in Pinetop. The fields were in such a beautiful area. There was this great lake that we walked around.

Check out this cool bird! I don't know what kind it is, but it is so amazingly beautiful!

CAST YOUR VOTES!

This is for all you American Idol fans.

I think we all knew that Syesha was going home yesterday. She handled herself very well. She is a good singer and I think she'll do great in the future, whether on Broadway or in the recording studio. She's got talent for sure.

It's David vs David now...Popularity vs Great Talent. Who didn't see this coming? I almost wished they would have called Syesha as safe last night just to shake things up. But it will still be interesting to see if the fact that David A. has millions of young girls (that all got cell phones for Christmas*) voting for him will carry him through. Don't get me wrong, I think he's an excellent singer, but Cook has got it down better. Cook has better stage presense, he has a distinctive genre, and he's more experienced. I can totally see myself listening to his CD over David A.'s.

So for the sake of my little poll on the right side of my blog, PLEASE VOTE. I'm curious to see what others of you think. Also, if you do vote for David A. I would like an explanation from you posted in the comments.

Thank you all, and have a fabulous day!

*I know this because I teach the 14&15 year old young women in church, and they really did almost all get cell phones for Christmas! Wow, I couldn't have even fathomed that idea when I was their age, and really it wasn't THAT long ago. I could go on about that, but I won't. I'll just say it's WIERD, but as long as they don't have them out during class or at activities, then that's okay.

IT WAS JUST STICKS!

My parent's next door neighbors are in a rose society. They have beautiful rose bushes that are covered with amazing blooms. They let my mom borrow a video showing how to prune and take care of rose bushes. I watched it too and couldn't wait for the right time to get to work. So a few months ago the time came. I stripped off all the leaves from the previous year, and cut the canes at the right spots and did everything the video showed. Keith didn't quite get what I was doing, and thought that our rose bush looked sickly. I just told him to wait. I should have taken pictures of what it looked like at the previous stages. Sure enough, beautiful, healthy foliage started growing and then we had dozens of buds getting ready to open, and now it's covered with roses! Ta-da! It worked! How satisfying; I love gardening!

IT'S GETTING HOT!

Now as the temperatures are rising here in the valley of the sun I'm starting to get that reminder of why I like to travel away from here during the summer. Am I too young to be a snowbird? I've got a few of the qualifications: I golf, my neighborhood looks like an old folks community,....well that's all I can come up with. Still I think that it would be lovely to go settle into a small town in Colorado for the summer and come back here when it's nice again. The problems that turn me off from pursuing the snowbird life style are that I'd probably start driving really slow, I'd fill up all the doctors offices and the hospitals, I'd have to make it to the restaurants for the early bird special, I'd eat less (but I could pay less!), I'd have to start complaining at the bank and the grocery store, and I'd have to learn to drive an RV. Hey, I'll just stay here for the summer to get a vacation from all the snowbirds! Good bye snowbirds! Don't let the high gas prices keep you from driving those RVs home!!!

(No snowbirds were hurt in the making of this post. If you are a nice snowbird, then don't include yourself in the blame for the general snowbird population.)