Homemade Bread

I always look forward to the weekends for many reasons. Among the top reasons is Malie makes homemade bread every week! What an awesome wife =). We figure it's cheaper than buying from the store, and not to mention tastes far better than any bread you can buy. So, here are some pics from yesterday's session.

TEAM HOYT

This is incredible. We watched this in my Exceptional Students class yesterday, and it's just ridiculous what these men do. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it's always worth watching.

So, grab some popcorn and probably a box of tissues for most of you, and go here.

Gypped

Ya wanna hear a funny story? Here’s one:

After going to IF to spend the $150 in Target gift cards people so kindly gave us, we excitedly brought our loot home. I was in the bedroom unpacking some box or another, and Mike started in on the Target bags in the living room. We had bought a Clear2O – the much-more-reasonably-priced equivalent of the Brita Water Pitcher. He opened the product’s box and called out, “What the? Malie!” I came to the living room, and asked what it was. He held up a wrapped wedding gift. “So?” I said, thinking it was one of ours. He held up the Clear2O box and showed me the insides. It was full of crumpled newspaper and, until a moment before, the wrapped gift which looked very much like a book.

I was like, “Wow! Someone really ripped Target off.” Then, as it sunk in, “How do we even prove this wasn’t us?” Mike immediately jumped on his phone and called Target. He explained what we found and they told him to bring it in sometime soon and they would refund us. (Thanks heavens!) A bit later, Mike opened our new storage ottoman to stuff a blanket inside and found it filled with a bunch of – get this – little girls’ school supplies. Hello Kitty notepads, .5 mechanical pencil refills, pink mechanical pencils, pens with big tufts of feathers on the end; you name it, it was in there!

So Saturday we took them all back to Target. (Not the ottoman of course, just its contents.) We walked up to Customer Service and unloaded. The kid was like, “Oh, that’s not cool.” His manager walked in and asked what was wrong. The kid showed him all the junk. The manager said they’d been have problems with people filling storage ottomans with stuff and then buying them. The wedding gift, he had to admit, was a new one! He called up another manager and told her it was time to start enforcing a “check-inside-storage-ottomans-at-register” rule. No kidding!

Finally caught up!

Finally! We are finally caught up with our blog entries. We present to you...our apartment! These first photos are what we came home to after the honey moon. Disgusting, I know. It took us three days to finally clean and organize this mess. Here are the before and afters.

The living room.

Again, the living room/entry way.

Mallory, sorting through the mess in the kitchen.

Let me just say, we love our bed! It's so hard to get out of it in the mornings. That's how you know if you have a good bed or not.

Our dining area.

The "study/library".

Our current living room. Pretty cool huh?

San Diego Zoo

"If we don't have it...it probably doesn't exist." That's the slogan of the San Diego Zoo...printed nice and large on a billboard featuring a picture of a unicorn (not that they have one...but, ya know!) This was a really cool Zoo, by far the best I have ever seen.
This is the entrance to the Zoo. Very nicely crafted, I must say.

This little guy was trying to catch some sun and sleep. He was so funny!

This was probably my favorite. I loved these guys! The orangutans were sharing their cage with some chimp-like creatures. So an orangutan and his mother were wrestling/playing around for a while and then all the sudden the chimp jumped in and started rolling on the ground with them as well! We actually got a video of this, but have had some issues uploading videos. Any suggestions?

Malie found herself a little friend.

Yep, the primates were really fun to watch.

These pandas were really cool. They are the only captive pandas in the world who have successfully reproduced, that's a pretty neat feat.

So...so similar....

Do it Malie! Touch it!

Good Idea: Display beautiful birds. Bad Idea: Fill the cage with 200 birds and neglect to clean the cage three times a day. These guys reaked so bad!

These were funny looking.

Happy over there in the shade.

These grizzly bears were in the corner looking at something, not sure what. At least we got a nice rear-view.

This is us in the Fern Forrest area...it was so pretty there.

"Eh, she's talking to me....like she knowsss me."

Mighty python!

Doesn't it just look sad??

Croicky! We go' ou-a selves a croc!

A two headed snake!

San Diego...the final frontier...

San Diego was amazing. Simply amazing. We drove over here straight from Arizona, and stayed for about a week. We did so many cool things! This is the first San Diego entry. Our second will feature pictures from the Zoo, which is a whole entry in itself. This was our official honeymoon. It was kind of nice to have it a few weeks after being married, I recommend it.

Kayaking in La Jolla (North of SD, where the temple is). We went on this cave tour and learned a lot about the area...like how drugs and alcohol (prohibition) were smuggled into San Diego from Mexico through one of the nearby caves. Also, the whole La Jolla cove is a National Ocean reserve. We went kayaking by some sea lions! We were only a few feet away from those guys.

I took Mallory out for a surprise date this night. I took her out for a dinner cruise in the San Diego Harbor! It was really fun! There was a four course meal, DJ and dancing, and the ocean breeze. It was a really fun night.

Here is Mallory on the roof of the dinner cruise boat, called The Star of San Diego. The background features the beautiful downtown San Diego.

Here is us about to board...

Looking at our boat before we got on.

This was really cool! The Star of India. This ship has been used since the 1800's for trading purposes. It was retired about ten years ago. It was being used for so long as a reminder to people of .

Looking out one of the windows beneath the deck. Arn't I an amazing photographer? Actually, with a view like this, it's difficult not to be an amazing photographer.

Mallory checking out some instrument...I think it was the compass??

Sunset in the San Diego Harbor from the deck of the Star of India.

All hands on deck! Myself at the helm.

Malie and I on deck of the Star of India.

Here is the front of the boat. Cool looking lady. Good luck perhaps?

Michael is just loving his ice cream...and so is his face.

Lanea and Kayla were in good spirits! You can see Michael passed out in the stroller haha.

Mallory talking with Harvey and Carrie

Mallory in Coronado. This town was beautiful! It's an island off the coast of San Diego, it's very exclusive. Looks like a very nice, though expensive place to reside.

Malie and I at Imperial Beach at Coronado.

This was our Sunday afternoon...a walk down the beach. After 8:30 am church, we were in our apartment almost all day playing as much chess and getting as much rest as we could. We decided we needed to get out and do something! The place we stayed was in Solana Beach, which is basically in Del Mar (North of SD).

We had the privilage of doing a session in the San Diego Temple. This was what it looked like after we got out.

And this is what it looked like before we went in. This temple is beautiful on the outside, but even more amazing on the inside.

Mallory and I overlooking the Pacific. We just spent this day playing in the waves and enjoying the beach.

Should I be jelous? MAYBE. The name of this store was "The Frustrated Cowboy". What kind of name is that???