Temple Time!

Last weekend Matt and I ventured to Lyman again and then on to Utah to go to the Jordan River temple with Mike. It was a really great weekend and the temple was amazing as usual. Everyone was happy and cheerful that day, even my grandma who is cranky more than 80% of the time. :) It was just a really good day and here are some pictures.

Matt and I in Rik and Christena's car on the way.

Everyone who went to the session. Christena and I "kissing" Mike. He doesn't seem to like it. hee hee

Rik, Christena, Mike, me, Matt. Happy times. :)

Christena, my mom, and me after the temple. More happy times! hee hee us with our hubbies again, and Christena could NOT keep her balance. :) Matt and I in front of the temple.

Mike's Visit and Sobe Bombs

My younger brother Michael came to visit us for a few days. I felt kinda bad cause we didn't do anything too exciting and he had to sit here for a few hours by himself while we were both at work, but I think he had fun. We went to the mountains to build a fire and have marshmallows, played lots of games, and went jet skiing. I don't have any jet ski pictures, though. :( I was glad that Mike came up to visit cause he had never been to Laramie before and it was great to be able to spend some time with him since he's leaving on his mission soon.

Matt, trying to start the fire.

You can't really see it, but there is a huge boulder above Mike's head to the right.

I felt bad for the tree that Matt ripped up, so here I am hugging it. :)

Matt being annoyed with me while we're playing "the bean game."

Mike with his goofy grin while winning the bean game.

Also, I wanted to post this awhile ago and kept forgetting. A few weeks ago Matt and I went to the mountains in just about the same spot as these pictures, and taught his cousin Jared and his wife Megan the art of sobe bombs (thank you Rik). :D We tried three bottles and this is the only one that worked. It wasn't really great, but still pretty good. If you get bored, fast forward to about 40 seconds. :)

More About WORK!

Since I wasn't getting enough hours at the Open School, Matt begged his dad to give me a job within the family business: "Clark and Sons Lawn Care." My generous father in law was ok with it, and we assured him that I was experienced. In high school I worked a summer on the grounds crew at Little America and the next summer for Jack Bluemel in Lyman. But those were both crews made up of mostly girls, so this is totally different for me. We have Matt, his younger brother Kyle (who is a year younger than me), another brother Nate age 16, a cousin Brian (my age) who moved our couch and our washer into two different apartments by himself, and Jacob who is not related whatsoever and is 18. So I'm the only girl and totally out of my leauge. I have never worked so hard in my life, but it's nice to be doing some physical labor and I get to work with Matt almost all of the time so that makes it even better. Plus since I do have another job, I'm only there until lunch.
Anyway, so today Matt and I were pruning a yard. When I say pruning you probably think it's clipping a few bushes. OH no no no. This week Matt has already cut down 24 aspen trees and is working on a box elder tree today. So I started clipping down some lilac bushes and hauling trees and branches to the truck and trailer. In the two hours I was there, I pulled four splinters from my flesh, three branches from my clothes and hair (they really were stuck, honest), lost my shoe in the truck bed amidst all of the trees, and almost had at least three heart attacks while watching Matt work the chain saw.
This is getting long, but I have to tell this. So when you're chopping down a whole tree in someones yard, you're supposed to chop off the branches first, then the main trunk in pieces. So I'm dragging a large piece of aspen (hee hee) from the backyard and look up to see Matt half way up the tallest and fattest branch on the box elder WHILE running the chain saw on the SAME branch. Heart attack #1. Next he gets the saw stuck in the branch so he climbs higher, with no foot holds like a freakish monkey, and is yanking on the saw and the top of the branch at the same time and all the while periodically losing his balance. Heart attack #2. Next he has me climb the latter that's next to the tree (very tall) to hand him a tie down so that he can tie the saw to the tree so that if it falls it won't hit the ground. I get to the top, hand him the thing and he starts violently shaking the branch. Suddenly the saw falls, along with the huge branch, and the branch hits Matt, then the latter (which I'm on), then the ground with a boom. Heart attack #3. So when we came home for lunch, we had to mend three gashes in Matt's arm along with one across his right eye brow where he was stabbed by a limb. And he just went back to do more of this... Heart attack #4. :)