Kite Adventures

Let's go fly a kite, up to the highest height!

Dave and I bought a kite!  It was just a few bucks at Walmart, and we've already got quite a bit of enjoyment out of it, as you can see below:

Here is Dave, getting the kite ready.

It's a cute fish, and the flaps that move are its fins!

Moving out into the field before it's airborne.

You can just barely see it up in the left corner.

The tail that you can see is a school of smaller fish!  Fun!

We had a lot of fun just hanging around and watching it.

Another day we went to Walmart and got some more string to add to the length we already had.  But I didn't get any pictures of it higher up because we probably wouldn't have been able to see the kite in the pictures anyway.  It was way to high!

And, just for fun, here are the lyrics from the song in Mary Poppins:

Mr. Banks:
With tuppence for paper and strings
You can have your own set of wings
With your feet on the ground
You're a bird in a flight
With your fist holding tight
To the string of your kite

Oh, oh, oh!
Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height!
Let's go fly a kite and send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let's go fly a kite!

Bert:
When you send it flyin' up there
All at once you're lighter than air
You can dance on the breeze
Over 'ouses and trees
With your first 'olding tight
To the string of your kite

Londoners:
Oh, oh, oh!
Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height!
Let's go fly a kite and send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Let's go fly a kite!

Little Miss Muffet

I was killing spiders the other day, much to Dave's chagrin.  He has a soft spot for spiders.  One once saved him from almost certain death...Anyway!  He compared me with Little Miss Muffet, and the silliness went on from there.

[Curds and whey are basically like cottage cheese]

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating cottage cheese.
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her

[And said, would you share with me please?]

[And said, my what lovely knees!]

[And said, my what knobby knees!]

[And said, would you share with me, geez!]

Anniversary Weekend

If you look at the very bottom of our page, you'll notice that we have a ticker proclaiming that today Dave and I have been married for 369 days (Thanks Jo-Pete!).  That's right!  Sunday was our anniversary!

The last year has been a wonderful journey, and I wouldn't trade it for anything!  Okay, enough mushy stuff.  This post is to let you all know about the awesome things we did this weekend to celebrate.

First of all, on Friday I woke up to this beautiful bouquet of daisies by my bedside!  I adore daisies, and Dave loves to get them for me!  (Or at least he pretends to).

Later that day, Dave took me to get a professional massage.  I'd never had one before, and let me tell you, it was great!  I got it done at the Massage Cabin.  It's a massage practice in a home, and my massage therapist, Haruko, was great.  We didn't get any pictures of this experience but I'm sure I'll be back!

Next, on Saturday, Dave and I drove up to Bear Lake.  You may remember our bad experience floating down the Provo River, so we decided to take out a new blow up raft and try it out on a lake instead of a river.  We stopped by this place to get life jackets:

And then we hit the road!  I love road trips!

When we got to Bear Lake, we had this cute stretch of beach all to ourselves.  It was a gorgeous day at the Lake!

Here I am in our boat.

It turns out that it was a really windy day, and the wind kept blowing us back toward the shore.  So we didn't go out very far.  It's a good thing that we didn't start from the opposite shore, or the wind would have blown us all the way across the lake!  But aside from the boat, we had a lot of fun playing in the water and sunning ourselves on the beach:

It was a beautiful day, and we saw lots of birds flying around.

And of course, we decided to put the BARE back in Bear Lake!!

After we were done at Bear Lake, we headed down to Logan to stay at the Anniversary Inn.  And I'm sad to say that the only picture I got of the place was the heart-shaped tub!

I really liked this tub, and really I liked the whole place.  Our room was the Player's Clubhouse, and we had a foosball table and a putting green in our room.  The breakfast was great, as well as the sparkling cider and cheesecake that was waiting in our room when we arrived.  I would highly recommend the Anniversary Inn, whether it's your anniversary or not!
We came home on Sunday, which was our actual anniversary.  To celebrate some more we ate a few bites of our wedding cake, which we've been saving in our freezer for a year.

It was pretty good.  Originally, this cake was excellent!  A year later, the frosting really was the best part.

                                      This was Dave's reaction for the camera.  It wasn't really that bad!
All in all, it was a wonderful anniversary.  I am so happy that I found Dave and that I was wise enough to marry him.  He makes me so happy, and I hope that all of our years of marriage are as fulfilling as this first one has been.

Two Boat Accidents in One Day

Dave and Merry have a story to tell. It’s about a day when all we wanted to do was feel like sailors, and it just didn’t work.

[Preparing to float down the Provo River]

D: Uh, I don’t think our raft has enough air in it yet.

M: Oh, we’ll be fine. I can’t wait to get in the water.

D: Okay, let’s put it in the river.

M. Wow, these paddles aren’t really long enough to steer the boat!

D: They’ll be fine, let’s just focus on the bridge ahead.

M: We should be steering towards the middle of the bridge, away from those monster-looking bolts!

D: Paddle, paddle, paddle!

M: Augh!!!!

[Pop!!]

D: Well, that’s the end of that.

M: At least we were only in the water for 30 seconds. We can walk back to our car quite easily.

[A few hours later]

D: My dad bought a new sail boat. Let’s try again, and take IT out on the water.

M: Are you sure we should push our luck?

D: Oh, come on!

M: Okay!

[Down at the Utah Lake marina]

M: Wow, look at all of those sailboats! Which one is your dad’s?

D: That’s a good question. I’ve never been on it before.

[Finally in the boat]

D: This motor will not start.

M: Can’t we just sail it out?

D: Not out of the marina, you crazy! I finally got it started.

M: That boat’s coming towards us awful fast!

D: Yeah, we don’t want the wake to push us into these rocks. Turn the motor up a little.

M: The motor just died!

D: Oh [bleep!]!! We’re on the rocks.

[Splash!]

M: I can’t get the motor started again!

D: Well I’m in the water keeping us off the rocks! You have to do it!

[After the motor has started and the boat is finally off the rocks again]

Harbor Police: Ma’am, you’re going to have to help him back into the boat.

D: I can’t get back in the boat. You’re just going to have to go on without me.

M: Dave, you get yourself back in this boat right this minute!

[With Dave back in the boat]

M: Well, let’s take her back into the marina and call it a day.

D: That would be easier if the rudder wasn’t broken!

M: Well, you’re doing a pretty good job steering with the outboard motor.

D: But every time I get it to idle slow enough so that we can get into the slip, the engine dies.

M: We’re just going to have to swim it in. Here grab onto this rope and jump in.

D: It’s a good thing we were wearing our life jackets!

The events you have just read are true. They took place on Pioneer Day 2010. Names of individuals have been changed to protect their identities.

Family Reunion

We had our Powell Family Reunion here in Utah this year, and it was a ton of fun!  Many of the activities took place at Janice's house (whose basement we live in), so we were involved with the reunion as often as we were home.  We were both working full-time during the reunion, so most of the things we did with the family were on the weekend.

The highlight of the reunion was the pig!  Some of you commented on the fact that we posted earlier about our pet pig.  Our family members were told that Dave loved the pig more than he loved me.  Well, that wasn't entirely true.  Dave loved the pig more than I loved the pig.  And that was because the pig was a butchered pig that we picked up from a meat-packing house and roasted in the ground for the reunion!

Dave roasted a pig for a church activity a few years ago, and has wanted to do it again ever since.  We were going to roast a pig for our wedding reception last year (it's been almost 1 year!), but it ended up not happening.  So Dave was really excited to do it for the reunion and practice his pig-roasting SKILLZ!

The pig was a success, and even though it was a lot of work to cook it, it was pretty fun.  All of my cousins and their kids were really interested in looking at the pig, before and after it was roasted, and it just brought a fun atmosphere to our Saturday dinner.

Some other highlights from the reunion were:
1. taking naps!
2. seeing lots of my family in church.
3. saying hi to cousins that I haven't seen for a long time.
4. playing TONS of games!  I am a game person, and while Dave is kind enough to play games with me when I want him to, he doesn't really love games as much as I do.  So during the reunion I could always find someone that wanted to play a game with me.  Some of my favorites are Banaanza and Ticket to Ride.
5. Introducing Dave to lots of new family members.  He's pretty good about remembering names, and during that week he met a lot of folks.  I was way impressed!
6. Seeing my nieces and nephews!  My sister Jill's youngest, Gabe, was just a few weeks old when Dave and I got married, and that was the last time I saw him!  So he'd grown a lot and it was fun to see him.

It was a fun week!  We are glad to have the house back to its usual peace and quiet, but we are already looking forward to the next family reunion!

My first speeding ticket

Yes, I got a speeding ticket about 2 weeks ago.  And yes, it was the first one ever in my 10 years of driving.  It was my goal to never get a speeding ticket!  So I guess it should also have been a goal to not ever speed!  :D

I went to pay for the ticket yesterday, and (since I at least want my official record to be perfect) to pay for traffic school, which will erase my ticket from my record.  I HATE spending money on things that I won't use, or things that are a complete waste of money, and paying for this ticket felt just like that.  Of course, I've learned from this experience, and I've been extremely good the last 2 weeks at setting the cruise control and not giving in to the temptation to speed.  But I would much rather have learned this lesson without having to pay for it.

After paying for the ticket, I went to the counter to pay for traffic school.  It's going to be a 3 hour class in the evening.  I picked the day in September and waited for the dispatcher behind the counter to charge me and get me my receipt.  She had been working on it quietly for a minute or two when a man came up to the counter, also looking to pay for traffic school.  The other dispatcher talked with him about it, took his credit card, entered his information, and got his receipt for him, and all of that took about 2 minutes.  And I looked back at my dispatcher, and she was still entering information into the computer.

I was surprised to see this man walk away with everything complete, and then still have to wait for about 3 minutes for my dispatcher to finish the process.  Apparently, I should have chosen to approach the other one.  In other words, I chose...poorly.

However, there could be an explanation for the circumstances.  Maybe she was trying to get a little schooling in early, and was trying to teach me to not SPEED through the process of setting up traffic school.  :D

Adoption

I have two family members and one friend who are trying to adopt.  And I just realized how extremely hard it must be to wait for someone to choose you as the parent of their child.

So, in order to help with that process, I'm going to post about my friend Rachel and how she's trying to adopt.  If you know someone who is giving their baby up for adoption, please read on!

Rachel was one of the girls I lived with as a freshman at BYU.  She liked to have a lot of fun, and made life in our dorm very exciting!  I haven't really seen her much since that time, 8 years ago, but I've kept myself updated through her blog and a few mutual friends that we have.

Rachel is married and living in Buffalo, NY.  She and her husband Ryan both love kids, and they have volunteered in an orphanage in El Salvador every summer since they got married.  They are unable to have children of their own, and would love to adopt.

They just recently had their profile put up on LDS Family Services' website, which is the organization that they are adopting through.  The adoption agency is affiliated with their church, but the birth parents do not need to share their religion, nor do they need to live in New York.  And they would love a child of any race or background.

Check out their profile and pass it on to your friends if you think that they may know someone who needs this information.

Here is the link to the profile: https://www.itsaboutlove.org/ial/profiles/24585097/ourMessage.jsf

I hope that sometime soon, Rachel and Ryan are connected with the right people so that they can adopt.