LEGACY

LAST NIGHT PRESIDENT GORDON B. HINCKLEY PASSED AWAY. As Keith and I heard the news from several friends and family that called us, we took a moment to think about the great life that Gordon B. Hinckley lived. What an example of truly living life to the fullest. For Keith and I, he was the first prophet of the church that we felt we knew really well since we were older when he was called. He will be missed, but we are so happy for him to be with his sweet wife again. There are great pictures and videos of President Hinckley on the church website. Here's a link to that:

http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/#current

With this we pose the question: What will your legacy be?

"You did not come into the world to fail. You came into the world to succeed. You have accomplished much so far. It is only the beginning. As you move forward on the trail of life, keep the banner of faith in self ever before you. You may not be a genius. You may not be exceptionally smart. But you can be good, and you can try. And you will be amazed at what might happen when in faith you take a step forward."

-Gordon B. Hinckley

I Want To Ride My Bicycle!

Yesterday I was able to go mountain biking with my parents. Thank you to Ann for lending me her bike. Next time I'll bring a BIG FLUFFY seat! We biked somewhere between 8 and 10 miles. Very beautiful day! I love Arizona! I used to bike this area more often when I lived with my parents. Next time Keith will have to come too!

What is this? My guess is either a coyote or a javelina. Eeeek!
We found this not too far into our bike ride.

This is the beautiful Usery Mountain. Nice and close to my parents house, so we can ride straight out of their garage.

Awwww...Cat Peaks Trail...sounds so nice. This one was the toughest trail of the day. I haven't been out for a while, so I was forced to walk on a lot of the steep and rocky hills of this trail. Yes, literally forced. My legs just wouldn't go any more! It was beautiful though, and I saw a couple horses on it. They didn't seem to have any problem.

Lemon Cake Anyone?

Last night we had my family over for dinner and I made this delicious lemon cake for the occasion. In my opinion, it's the ideal lemon cake for lemon lovers, and it looks pretty. Having four layers of cake with lemon filling and frosting, it takes a while to make, but it's well worth it. I bet the recipe for the actual cake part is good, but I just use a boxed white cake. I found the recipe online a few months ago. Here's the link to the recipe:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Lemon-Cake-with-Lemon-Filling-and-Lemon-Butter-Frosting/Detail.aspx

Let me know if you try it.




We also had a fun date night on Friday with our friends, Paul & Marisa. The evening started off at the driving range and then we enjoyed some great Mexican food at Tia Rosas. They have really good seafood tacos! Lemon cake would've been really good after that!

Christmas 2007

The past two weeks have been a wonderful time of celebration and family. We celebrated our 2nd anniversary at The Raven Golf Course in Phoenix. The weather was perfect and the golf course was so beautiful! I love living in Arizona!

After playing at the park during the day with my family to celebrate the birthday of our niece Raya, we spent Christmas Eve with Keith's family. We enjoyed a service project at the park setting up all-natural bird feeders, and then had a yummy dinner. We ended the festivities with a family Nativity, and then sent the kids off to bed.

Christmas Day was wonderful also. Keith and I enjoyed opening gifts at our home in the morning and then going to his parents house for a yummy brunch, more presents, and games at the park. Very fun times. I need to work on my catching skills though.

Christmas Night was spent at my parents house with all my siblings and my cousins from Peoria. Food was fabulous and we even enjoyed a drum concert from my Aunt on boxes. She really does play the drums very well, but we didn't have drums, so we gathered about 5 boxes of different sizes and let her at them while we sang Christmas songs. You'd be surprised at how great the "box drums" actually sound! If I can figure out how to edit video, I'll post the drum concert here.

We were able to help with running the hosting at the temple lights this year. We were in charge of 5 nights throughout December and last night was our last turn. It was so nice to spend so much time on the temple grounds, especially at this time of year.

This Christmas season has been great! We loved spending so much time with our families and having our siblings who live out of state come down. We hope your Christmas was just as blessed.

Keith Is The Man!

CHECK OUT THIS PICTURE! (Actually it was a video and we just paused it at this point.) As you can see, on the right side of the picture, there is a huge wall of dust that's about to devour Keith, but he had to hit "one more." So he did and just as he hit the golf ball, that huge bolt of lightening struck right behind him. Couldn't have asked for a better shot! Keith would want you to also know that this was his longest drive ever (due to the wind behind him and the ball hitting the cart path, which then launched the ball even further, it went over 400 yards! Amazing!

Here's To Two Great Years (and counting)!

DECEMBER 20th MARKS OUR TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY! The first song on this blog (Greatest Story Ever Told) is the song we danced our first dance to at our wedding reception.

I couldn't have gotten a better husband. He's such a hard worker and talented in so many ways that I am not. We definetly balance eachother out and make a great team. We are blessed to be able to spend a lot of time together, compared to most other couples we know. We enjoy golfing, visiting family, working out, washing our cars, trying to teach me tennis, working on our house, going on dates, snuggling on the couch with Barro's pizza at the end of a long week...

Keith has some secret surprise planned for our anniversary. All I know is that we're going somewhere overnight, and it's close by. Hmmmm.... I got Keith an anniversary gift already, but I can't say what it is or he'll see it here.