Kimono of awesomeness

So, for my History of Creativity class, I made a kimono for my creativity project. But not just any kimono, a black one, with the Harley-Davidson symbol and flames. It was Katrina's idea, and I brought it to life. We are a good team at stuff like this. If only we could get someone to write books based on her dreams. We could be rich. Could be... probably won't ever be. Oh well. Nice to have dreams. If only I had dreams that could make money.


This is the finished product. Katrina is the model. It fits her.

This is me whilst painting the flames. It was fun. Katrina helped out a bunch.

Rough Couple Of Weeks

So if the whirlwind trip to Seattle wasn't stressful enough, it turned out the week between the wedding and the CA reception was just as crazy. Both Chris and I had at least two to three midterms, I caught a nasty intestinal virus (with bad nausea) and ended up paying a midnight visit to the ER. (It wasn't a big deal, they just shot me up with morphine and sent me home.) Then there were some last minute changes to traveling so instead of driving we flew to CA which turned out to be a good thing! Instead of relaxing in CA we ended up helping with the reception and catching a cold from my lil' bro right when we both recovered from last week's illnesses. We also had to deal with some high strung people which made it all the more stressful.

The good side was, Chris and I were well enough to enjoy ourselves silly at the reception. We were the only few people dancing all night. The reception was beautiful and Jon and Aubrey were happy. Finally, we got to see family and Eric and Sharn came down for a couple a days for Thanksgiving! (Sorry Eric and Sharn that I was sleepy/sleeping most of the time!)

So now we're back at home. I'm recovering starting with thirteen hours worth of sleep last night. (I hadn't had the chance to really rest till then.) Our kittens are happy to see us and I think we're finally on the road to recovering/catching up. Chris and I think we need a vacation from our vacations. The last two were more stressful than just staying at home!

Jon & Aubrey

Congratulations to the newlyweds! Jon and Aubrey Howe were married at the Seattle Washington Temple Nov. 10 2007.

The parents on both sides were elated! (Sorry! Jon had his eyes closed on this pic!)

Here are the bridesmaids and flower girl with the happy couple.

Aubrey is struttin' her stuff!

Here is the sibling trio. They told us to act "natural" we didn't want to ruin the picture and be our natural goofy selves so we went for the "daydreaming" look. Jeff was the best man and I was a bridesmaid.

Luckily it wasn't raining (It did drizzle off and on). However, it was still only 50 degrees with a cold wind and for pics we had to go without coats for most of the two hours! Everyone toughed it out, including Aubrey's adorable little sister here.

The reception was at the Clise Mansion. It was a really beautiful and the food was great!

The cake was lovely.

It really was a whirlwind trip! Jeff, Chris and I flew into Washington late Friday night but had to get to the temple early the next morning. It was basically the wedding, reception and a dinner with the White's all day until almost midnight. We then had an early flight the next morning and finally drove home! We were so happy but at the same time EXHAUSTED!! (My muscles are sore!) Aw well, here's to the California reception starting next weekend! We'll be sure to update the blog then too!! We are so happy that Aubrey is now in the family. The White's are very nice people! It's funny that two out of the three Howe kids ended up marrying people from the same place in Washington!

NINJA CATZ!!!!....and Halloween.

So this Halloween Chris and I were disappointed to find out that we were the only ones dressed up in our classes! But luckily for me EVERYONE was dressed up at work! We had a handful of trick or treaters at night but our cats had the best costumes we think.

Yumi

The ensemble

Kenshin

Chris made these awesome Samurai Japanese headbands for them. They have their names and 'ninja' written besides the rising sun. They only wore them for a minute or so but still gave us ample amounts of amusement!! OSH!!!

We love the DS and so do the Mario Brothers

We think this Japanese commercial is really funny.

Oh for the love of Cheese! A Cultural Experience.

I've heard about this before but I couldn't believe my eyes at the actual thing! Apparently every year in Gloucester England they hold races where competitors chase a rolling cheese down a practically vertical hill as fast as they can while avoid getting injuries. The winner...get's a big round of Gloucestershire Cheese. The spectators on the other hand, get to watch crazy people tumble quite amusingly down a big hill. Enjoy!

Yumi Playing Fetch

Yumi has been playing fetch a lot recently. We didn't train her at all to do it but she just started one day. Anyway, just thought that you all would enjoy it.

Brothers and Crawdads

So this weekend was fun and busy. School and work had been going well, but both Chris and I were looking forward to a break. Our friend Maria had been coming down the last couple of weeks wanting to go crawdad fishing. Jeoffrey, my younger bro also came down from BYU Idaho to chill for the weekend. So we were all up for an adventure! Of course, even though we did have fun we still watched General Conference (a worldwide church meeting broadcasted on tv).

We went to Strawberry Reservoir for the best chance to catch crawdads, but when we got there, it was FREEZING!! It was snowing and our rope for our trap would freeze stiff. We didn't bring any gloves or hand warmers either! But Chris was determined to try to catch some fish.

While Chris was braving the cold, Jeoffrey Maria and I were huddling in the car eating sandwiches and trying to keep our blood circulating.

Our crawdad trap wasn't catching any, so we would lure them to shore with a chicken drumstick on a string, then just pick them out of the water with our hands. This is Maria getting them.

Even though it was rediculously cold we still stayed for two hours outside and wouldn't leave because most crawdads would come up at night! Towards the end we were just scooping two or three at a time out of the water!

We brought them home and boiled them up with some butter. Not that much meat on them but they taste pretty good. We ended up catching 33 in total.

Jeoffrey also wanted a haircut. So we called up Jon and his fiancee to hang out.
Jeoffrey pretty much looks like an army guy now.
It was a good weekend. We hung out with family and got to catch up with a lot of people. All of us want to squeeze in another crawdad trip before it gets really REALLY cold! We'll see how it will work out!

J-O-B

So out with the old job, in with the new ones! Bath and Body Works was fun for the couple of weeks I was there. I do miss atmosphere and my co-workers, they were pretty cool.

Anyway, I'm now working for Timpanogos Elementary as a one on one reading tutor. I am able to get more hours and I'm actually doing something within my line of study! I'm also doing some tutoring on the side which is fun. I'm excited because everything seems to have settled in.

The same goes for Chris' work as well. He finally got steady hours and more pay on his lab research jobs. We're just really thankful that everything has finally fallen into place.

It's OFFICIAL!!!

Yes, the Howe family is anticipating a great event this year! We are going to have a sister-in-law!! (I finally have a sister!!) Her name is Aubrey White and she's from Bellevue Washington. In case your're wondering, Chris didn't know her before, but I think their families knew of each other. The wedding is going to be at the Seattle Temple November 10th with a reception there. Then there is going to be a reception in California about a week later. Since the date is coming up soon there is a lot of planning to do but the famiy is all estatic!! (Papa is debating whether to buy a summer house in Seattle or not.) I'm a bridesmaid!!! So yay!!!

Cute Dancing Sony Robots!!

It's amazing what kind of robots the Japanese are developing. But I really didn't know that robots could be such graceful dancers!!

What We Did During The Summer...To Now. EXTREME CATCHING UP!!

Here is a really fast synopsis of what we did this summer since our last post! Hope you enjoy the pictures.We were reunited with Kenshin!! He got HUUUGE!! And he's still barely a year old! But he remembered us and was really happy to see us as well.

We went fishing in Washington

Chris celebrated his 23rd birthday in WA and Oregon!

We saw big guns at Fort Casey at Puget Sound

We saw Andrew, Laura and Clancy and hung out!

I said good-bye to my daycare kids!

We stayed at Hood River, Oregon for a week.

We then drove down to San Hose and stayed with Eric and Sharn

They took us to San Francisco (Chris had never been before)

We ate STUPENDOUS chocolate yummies at Ghiradelli's

Once back in Santa Maria we got a new Siamese mix kitten named Yumi, she's the princess.

Kenshin was unsure about his feelings at first...

But he eventually warmed up to her

It's still a work in progress sometimes.

Eric and Sharn visited my hometown for a weekend

Chris and Eric had fun

We celebrated our 1st year anniversary! We stayed at the Radisson, where we had our reception!

Chris and I helped de-bullfrog the pond filter in the backyard.

We went fishing at the Avila Pier (Papa was the only one who caught fish)

We saw Cirque Du Soleil Corteo (it's about a clown) in L.A. With Bubbles, Bianca their friends and the family
(It's was awesome!!)

We drove back to Utah and learned how to make Korean BBQ.

Chris likes to baby Kenshin

The family came to visit so we took them to Cabela's.

They dropped Jeoffrey off to BYU Idaho.

Now it's back to the old school and work grind

But we still find time to play with our cats

That's about it for now. I'm working part-time at Bath and Body Works, Chris is working at BYU with a research job. I'm looking for another part-time job so we'll see how things will pan out. We're doing well and now we're done catching up with everything!