Something Profound

Don't you ever just wish you had something amazing and profound to blog about, but you can't think of anything? Me too. Let's see... Nope... Nothing. Well, maybe. Here's a good quote that I remembered recently:

"God does not begin by asking us about our ability, but only about our availability, and if we then prove our dependability, he will increase our capability." (Neal A Maxwell)

This was one of my favorite quotes in high school. I even bought a cheap little ring to wear to remind myself to be "available." I had a lot of neat experiences because of that quote. However, I sort of... Forgot about it. The ring I had got old and I stopped wearing it, and somewhere along the line, I just forgot. It's so easy to get caught up in what's going on in your own life and kind of forget everyone else. Anyway, I hope that I can be better at "being available" again. I think when we focus on just being available to serve God, it isn't so scary to serve or do those hard things, because it reminds you why you are doing them.

As for the less profound, life is good here. We went to a fun Jack-o-lantern party at a friend's house the other day...Which one is Brandon's and which is mine?

We also worked on our house a little bit:
Before:After:
Eh? New light fixture and NO MORE WHITE walls there! As you can maybe see, it's not completely done, but it already looks so much better (We think so anyway).

Our jobs are going well. Brandon is starting to feel like people are finally starting to trust him more and be more excited about his ideas, which is really exciting!
I really enjoy teaching voice lessons! I am a little sad that it is only temporary. The good thing about it being temporary is that I will get to be home and see Brandon more when it is over (I will be there until November 20th). I miss having the whole evening at home.
My piano teaching job (teaching piano to groups of 3 and 4 year olds) is... Interesting. I enjoy teaching voice a lot more. But sometimes it is good for a laugh.

We are doing good and enjoying the nice Texas fall weather when it isn't raining. It's much cooler than the summer time, but not as cold as Utah, which is a good thing!

Fun Fun Fun!

Last weekend my parents came to visit. We had a very TEXAN time, and fun was had by all (at least that's what they said). We were able to go geocaching, to the Texas State Fair, geocaching, to the Mckinney Oktoberfest, geocaching, and more.

Anyone who knows my parents knows that they LOVE geocaching (Basically, it's treasure hunting with a GPS. There are Gazillions of geocaches hidden around the globe). We were able to see some neat places in the area as we found some geocaches with my parents.

This was my dad's favorite find. We were in a spooky old graveyard and it was getting dark. He was crawling around in a bush looking for the cache, when he threw something out at me and said "look at the SIZE of that rat!" I of course jumped and squealed out of fear (I'm really weirdly scared of Texas critters and bugs, they're just so different to me...). It turns out that the rat was actually a container that held the cache. Needless to say, he was extremely proud of his find.

The state fair was quite the experience. Apparently, fried food is the cat's meow at the state fair. You can even get fried butter. Seriously. We settled for fried peaches and cream and fried peanut butter cup macaroon. The fair was really big (of course, it's Texas) and nicely done. We spent a lot of time looking at car shows, and took this picture for Brandon's mom... We think she will think it's extremely awesome.
Or extremely ridiculous, maybe. I think the wheels were my size.

Then, we saw these people. They just appeared out of nowhere, and they were doing some crazy and really cool acrobatic/dance things. I know this picture is blurry, but they guy on the ground is doing the limbo, and the stick is about a foot off the ground. Crazy.

BIG TEX. He is the Texas State Fair mascot, I think. He's pretty famous and sooo cool. We are pretty lucky he would pose for a picture with us. And the miniature train conductor guy. He's pretty cool too. The train broke right before these pictures; the engine decided to take off without the cars.

The next day we went to Oktoberfest in historic downtown Mckinney. It was kind of an interesting German celebration. Lots of people even dressed up for it (think milkmaids, tights, and green hats with feathers). We spent most of our time looking around the shops at antiques. We also found a magic shop that was pretty fun. They made business cards float and pennies shrink.
Brandon and my dad competed in a barrel race. Who do you think won? And don't you love the braids?
Here is one last picture for Brandon's mom. This is a shop in Mckinney. It didn't really look that exciting from the outside, though.We are grateful my parents could come visit. We had a really fun time, and we hope all y'all (people really say that sort of thing here, crazy, huh?) will feel welcome to visit too.