This kind of weather...

...makes me want to go hooky-bobbing!

Hooky-bobbing is simple: grab a rope and some sleds/inner tubes, tie them to the back of a truck, hop on, have someone drive the truck around in the snow.

Thinking of this makes me so happy because:

1) SNOW is involved, and who else loved the snow today??!
2) Reminds me of Christmas (less than two months, folks!)
3) I get to hear my grown-up brothers-in-law screaming like girls
4) Seeing Benjamin riding on an inner tube looking like a powdered donut
5) It's always fun when you see sleds flipping upside-down and flying through the air
6) It makes me miss my in-laws, and I can't wait to go home for Thanksgiving! Hope we have snow then!

And, if you just need a visual....here it is :) Hope you enjoy!

"Tyrannosaurus Rex, the mighty dinosaur..."

"...he was king in the age of dinosaurs. He was more fierce....than........(a whole bunch of dinosaurs' names)................to name a few."

Oh man, I learned this dinosaur song in elementary school and for the life of me I just cannot remember all the dinosaurs who were less fierce than the T. Rex! If anyone (particularly those who went to Oakwood with me and sang this exact song) knows how this goes, I would greatly appreciate it because it is driving me crazy!

In fact, as I recall, we sang a whole bunch of dinosaur songs for some program - one of them went like this "Listen to the chorus of the stegosaurus, and the something saurus down by the swamp.......what a noise...it's the boys (and the girls!) of the prehistoric animal brigade," and the other one that I can remember is "Elasmosaurus, elasmosaurus, the giant of the sea." Ah good times, isn't it fun to reminisce about elementary school?

Well, there really is a point to all this....today my boys and I went to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point! It was so much fun, and James really enjoyed it! In fact his favorite part of the whole thing was this little room you walk through that is completely dark with millions of "stars" shining all around you. He was scared at first, but after we walked through it once we had to go back about five times. He also really liked the live fish that were in the little streams, and the model of the giant prehistoric shark.



My boys ventured dangerously close to this gigantic shark! James was actually mesmerized and sat in front of it forever, just staring at it.


There were lots of fun exhibits to look at. Imagine my disappointment, though, when I found out that the Elasmosaurus (you know, from the aforementioned elementary school song) isn't really classified as a dinosaur! Oh well, I'll get over it.


We saw lots of cool dinosaur bones, like this T-Rex! Makes me want to watch Jurassic Park or Night at the Museum...


MY favorite part was the humongous turtle. Apparently it was pretty much all intact when they found it, and is something like sixteen feet across. So cool!

Fire! Fire!

Haha, when I typed the title to this post I had to smile to myself because it reminded me of my cute roommate, Anna, from freshman/sophomore year. She's from North Carolina and has the cutest accent, and once some toast caught on fire in the oven and throughout our apartment were heard screams of "Far! Far! Far!" Ah, good times. But anyway...

...so on Friday Jonathan and I went on a date. Like, a real live date, the first one in awhile (that happens when you have a baby). We ate at Macaroni Grill (ah I love it!) and then went to the nickelcade (well I guess technically it was Nickelmania or something). It was pretty much awesome. We were about to take pictures in a photo booth, when we heard a commotion, and someone was telling us to get out of the photo booth. We looked out the window and there was a car ON FIRE. As in, flaming flames coming out of the hood ("flames.....flames...on the side of my face" - can you name that movie?). It was so crazy, everyone just stood there for a minute, watching, and then the flames got bigger and bigger, so we all ran outside. The car was parked right next to the building, right by the photo booth we were in. There were like four fire trucks that showed up, and some police cars, and we had to wait around because our car was blocked in by the fire truck.

It was a pretty exciting date. Now we just have to go BACK to Nickelmania soon and use up the rest of our nickels. And get something *awesome* with our 99 tickets.

Train Whistles & Ice Cream Trucks

Have you ever gone on Craigslist and found your own apartment up for rent? Well, we did! Except it's not as crazy as it sounds, it is our old apartment, which we don't live in anymore. BUT, the pictures posted are of our apartment with our furniture and everything! I had a good friend email me, wondering if we still lived in Provo because she thought she saw our piano in a picture on Craigslist (she lived in our Provo ward and I taught her piano lessons) - so I took a little look and sure enough, there was our old apartment! Apparently our old landlord liked our cute apartment and kept the pictures that we posted online to sell our contract, and then used them again. I guess we shouldn't tell the new renters that we rented the place for about $150 less than it is going for now...right? :)

It was fun to look at the pictures again - I still miss that old apartment sometimes, we really loved living there! It was our very first apartment after we were married and it was located in the lovely area right between the train tracks and the freeway (I think I may have mentioned this in a previous post - about the knife thrower across the street and such). We have fond memories of the ice cream ("drug") truck (I can still hear that song in my head...), another strange and suspicious un-marked truck with a weird horn which we think sold produce...or something, the aforementioned knife thrower, our mailbox getting run over by a handicapped man driving a "stolen" car (it was seriously so crazy, he almost hit our car in the process!), the train whistle (which was incredibly loud but we got used to it and grew to actually love it!), waiting forEVER for the train to pass so we could drive home, riding the UTA bus to school with lots of interesting and crazy people (there was this one guy who rode the bus with me every morning who sort of mumbled/talked to himself and sort of to me - he wore these coveralls and carried a huge plastic bag full of aluminum cans, and he ALWAYS talked about the weather and the train while we waited for the bus...he was a bit crazy), lots of neighborhood cars with huge speakers playing Mexican polka music all night long, getting random knocks on the door by some interesting people (once this Hispanic guy came to our door and in Spanish asked Jonathan if we had any "gold"...hmm, not sure what he meant by that), trying to make our downstairs neighbors not hate us because of our piano (I can't say that I blame them too much, but we HAD to play it!), having our cute, elderly and I am sure well-meaning landlord drop in unannounced (in his defense, we liked him a lot and he was always very helpful and fixed anything that went wrong, and he reminded me of my Grandpa) - oh the memories.

Seriously though, we really do have great memories of living there, including our amazing ward where we met some really great friends (which I hope we will still continue to keep in touch with!) (not to mention our awesome game nights with the Thompsons, Clarks, Bastiens, etc.), my adorable and amazing young women I got to work with in our ward (not to mention the awesome leaders I worked with, Ashley and I could always find something fun to do, like raid the nursery for a snack...), our fun ward choir (which Jonathan conducted and I accompanied), our cute apartment (which was really very nice, despite the somewhat sketchy area it was located in...), having friends over to play games or watch movies (Janina and Matt! and Annie and Jordon! awww, we miss hanging out with you guys...), having Liz over for study parties, having Annie come visit via the bus every week, hanging out with Benjamin all the time (and doing fun and exciting activities such as throw hundreds of cards into a hat in our living room when the three of us were completely bored), and so much more.

I think that mostly it is fun to reminisce and I am just so excited to be moving into our own place very soon (hopefully! Jonathan has a few great leads and has a job interview tomorrow morning - once he gets a job we can start looking for a place to live!) and so excited to have a place of our very own again after living with my Grandma for over a year. It has been a wonderful year and we are incredibly grateful for the chance to live there with her, not to mention that living so near my family has been the best! But we are totally ready and excited to move on to our next great adventure! And we can't wait to get all our furniture and things out of the basement where a lot of it has been stored, and dust them off and make a new place all our own. And I bet it'll at least be as cute as our old one!

I am wondering, though, if anyone ought to warn the new renters about the knife thrower?

School Days

Remember back in the day when you would check out a textbook for the year (for free, mind you) and write your name in the front? Those were good times. Jonathan was helping Rebecca with her physics homework while we were home, and look what we found!

Notice anything about this picture? Yep, that's our buddy Charles. Apparently he had this book in '98-'99. Small world, huh? Well, yes actually - it is a pretty small world when you live in the country.

A Night at the Opera

Last night we went to BYU and saw the opera Don Giovanni in which Benjamin played one of the leads, Leporello. He did a wonderful job and it was all really well-done. He is so talented and it was so fun to see him in this role - his character provided a lot of the comic relief in the opera and (we think) he got more applause than anyone! Way to go, Benjamin!


Jonathan's entire family (well, almost - we missed you, Tessems! And of course Jared too, who is on his mission) was there along with some cousins, and my sister Liz came along with us, too. What a fun evening!

Jonathan and I

Dad, Sierra, Andrew, Emma Jeane

Anna, Spencer and Joseph - you can see where James gets some of his funny looks...

Liz and I

Andrew and Sierra

Most of the group

Liz rode home to Salt Lake with us and was very happy to see our sleepy boy, who stayed with Grandma and Grandpa

Oh and p.s. in other news - I got whistled at at the gas station. I just had to share because it was really funny and that has never happened to me before! And Jonathan was even sitting in the passenger's seat of the car when it happened - I guess whoever it was didn't notice him. It was funny because I had my hair pulled back, but it was bugging me so I took it out and kind of shook my hair to straighten it out, and then I heard the whistle. It reminded me of this one time when my best friend Janina and I were driving somewhere in her car, and there was a car full of guys next to us kind of checking us (well, probably her) out, so she flashed her huge, gorgeous ring at them. That put a stop to that!

Uncle Benjamin

On Friday, Jonathan's brother Benjamin came over for a little visit and it was so much fun! When we were at BYU, we used to hang out with Benjamin all the time, and I would see him pretty much every day since we were both music majors. In fact, I knew Benjamin from some music classes long before I knew Jonathan! Anyway, we really miss seeing him so much and spending time with him!

James had just woken up from his nap and was very sleepy, so he had a nice little cuddle (which is very rare!) with Benjamin.



Benjamin is a great photographer and took some adorable pictures of James! (Man, I can't wait to get a nice camera like his! I take so many pictures, I might as well learn how to take good ones and have the right equipment so they turn out this nice!) It is so nice to have a photographer in the family! Here are a few of the pictures, you can see more on Benjamin's blog.

Fun with the Merrills!

On Wednesday we had a spontaneous little get-together with our good friends Annie and Jordon Merrill. Annie Connors (I can't just call her Annie, I still call her Annie Connors, even though she's married now and is Annie Merrill) is one of my bestest buds from college! Sadly it had been over a year since we had seen them (and they live in Salt Lake, too - what is up with that? We are slackers I guess) so it was high time to see them. They came over to our house and we played games. We played a rousing game of Cinqo, and then a round of Clue and then we played the Wii for awhile. Here are some fun pictures -

I love how my boys have the same face here -


Annie and Jordon -


Cute Annie -


Jenny Bay and Annie Connors! hehehe -


Jordon playing an awesome game on the Wii -


Jonathan playing the Wii -


It was a blast. I have to say that Annie and Jordon are such a fun couple to hang out with, we get along really well with them. It makes me happy that our husbands get along so well (since Annie and I get along so well, and since we always planned on being "married friends!") - they have a similar sense of humor and so hanging out with the Merrills is pretty much hilarious. We were laughing like the whole night.

And since I'm on the topic of Annie Connors (Merrill), I must say that I probably have more pictures of me with Annie Connors than with ANYONE, except maybe my husband - but seriously, I have got an ENORMOUS amount of photos of Annie and I during our crazy college days. Annie and I were roommates (I guess for only a semester - man, it seems like it was longer than that!) and then we both moved to Roman Gardens the next year (in different apartments - but, we were pretty much still together a lot).

Oh my goodness, I have SO many funny memories with Annie. Like how we used to roll out of bed at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings when we lived in Roman Gardens and go straight down to choir practice in our pj's, hair all messed up and looking all nasty. Everyone else was in their Sunday clothes and they would kind of look at us weird, but we didn't care. The really funny thing is that Jonathan was the choir director at the time. And this was way before we even dated! I wonder why he dated me after seeing me like this every week??

Or there was the time we studied at the library during finals week until the wee hours of the morning, and it got so late and we were so hyper and crazy, we took all these funny pictures and probably disturbed everyone else who was trying to study. We also made movies of us running through the library aisles like we were from Charlies Angels or something.

Anyway, I am just so grateful for Annie and her friendship, she is amazing! I am also so glad that even though it has been so long, we are still good friends and it is still so fun to get together.

And, for your viewing enjoyment, I thought I'd put an assortment of Jenny Bay and Annie Connors pictures. Enjoy!

Jen & Cher

Well this definitely was the week of reuniting with best friends - my best friend from junior high and high school was in town this week and today we spent the afternoon together! We went to lunch and then walked around the Daybreak subdivision (what a neat place!), where her parents just moved, and chatted for a few hours. It really was so much fun!


Cheryl and I met in 7th grade and immediately became best buds (seems like we had most of our classes together that year!). I'm afraid we were slightly notorious for giggling uncontrollably (especially while trying to recite a poem about crickets in English class) and passing notes to each other during class (or throwing notes and accidentally hitting someone in the head). We had nicknames for all the guys we liked (or didn't like), many of which randomly were names of fruits or vegetables - that way we could talk about them freely without anyone knowing, of course.

In fact, we were once bored (I think it was in 8th grade) and so we wrote a story on the sidewalk around my block with sidewalk chalk, one word per square of cement. The story was about us (princesses, I believe) and the guys we liked at the time (very cryptically disguised with nicknames, of course); it also made mention of the "Evil Ms. [blank]" (one of our more...interesting...teachers) and it also mentioned Ms. Weight (who was our fabulous English teacher at the time, who we loved and she even loved us, despite the giggling).

Well, one day we were sitting in English class and Ms. Weight picked up a paper and started reading. Cheryl and I looked at each other in horror - it was our sidewalk story! We tried to stay calm but we were so completely shocked and confused. AND the guys we liked were in our class - both of them. Talk about the most awkward/random/crazy experience ever. After the bell rang we waited until everyone else had left the room, then we walked up to Ms. Weight - I'm sure we had the most confused looks on our faces. It turns out that a woman who worked in the school office lived in my neighborhood, and had been walking her dog when she came upon our story. Noticing the teachers' names, she walked around the block and wrote down our story, and then gave it to Ms. Weight (who was the good teacher in our story - thankfully, she did not give it to the other teacher). I think my favorite part of this whole crazy experience was when, after Ms. Weight had explained how she had gotten a hold of our story, she pulled the paper to her chest, like she was hugging it, and said, "I love it!"

Well I think I really could go on and on and on (no, I really could....) - about leaving Christmas trees on boys' doorsteps with notes to their mother; asking guys to dances by leaving my dog on the porch while we were "hiding" very noticeably in the corner by the garage door (and trying desperately not to laugh out loud); making lame videos (which we thought were hilarious, and they probably still are) for countless school projects; Cheryl calling a pesky guy (with me quietly listening in via a 3-way call) in 9th grade and using a script that my Dad wrote for her in order to get him to quit calling her and asking her out (the best part was when she said "and plus, that would be a SOY violation" - to which he replied, "yeah, that's true" - when he really had no idea whatsoever that my Dad meant a "Strength of Youth" violation); the same pesky boy talking to Cheryl on the phone and Cheryl writing a note to her Mom asking her to make up some excuse to get her off the phone - so her Mom yelled, "Cheryl! It's time to go to the Army/Navy Store!"; kidnapping footballs belonging to one of our guy friends and holding them for ransom (with 4 of our other girlfriends) in order to make our guy friends take us out on a date.....(by the way, old high school pals'o'mine - I'd love to hear any of YOUR fun memories of high school - just leave it in a comment!) - anyway, the point is, I have got so many fun and hilarious memories with Cheryl, we really had so much fun and I am so grateful for such a wonderful best friend. She went to college in New York and now lives in Virginia with her husband Dave, who is in the Navy - so we haven't seen each other much over the past few years, but I love that when we do see each other we can get together and it is just like old times (except not nearly as hyper) :) I love ya, Cher!

Here are some pictures from today -




And, I know I posted some "blast from the past" pictures of Cheryl and I recently, but I just could not resist a few more (typing up all those memories just forced me to look through some old pictures, and they are great, so I had to share some...)

Homecoming, our senior year

graduation - ya gotta love the tassel in my mouth...

this one night we were craving chocolate pie - so we bought one and ate it - yum!

ok, so these are priceless, but it's also kind of one of those "had to be there" times - we are not all pictured here, but here are the gals who held the footballs for ransom (man, were we really that desperate to go on dates?) - it was me and Cheryl, Kathleen, Stefeni, Joanna, and Jenny

fun times :)