anything you can do,

i can do better! this is what we did for fun on our hike up whiting campground yesterday. i think i won the prize for balancing the log on my chin the longest, and for not hurting myself. go team!

Eli's turning three!

Today's is Eli's last day as a two year old. If he can hold out a few more hours than he will have successfully bipassed the terrible twos. We're really grateful they never came and expect him to be just as wonderful as a three year old. Our plans for the big day tomorrow include a short work day for dad and a trip up to Indy for Chuck-E-Cheese as a family. He already had a small party with friends and family in Utah so we won't be doing anything too fancy but still want to celebrate. Eli is talking a lot now and surprises us with very adult sayings, like "my feet are killing me," "I'm so impressed," and "oh, darn it."
Dad (me) has decided to make him a picture similar to his b-day invite from last year where he is photoshopped into a picture with some of his favorite things (see bottom of email). He loved his picture last year so this may become a tradition.
In other news... Sharon is now skoot-crawling and loves her newfound independence. We don't so much, she is too excited to sleep which means mom and dad aren't sleeping much lately. Also adding to her desire not to sleep was her last tooth that just cut yesterday (#4), it took a full four days to cut from the time it surfaced so she's been pretty miserable.
Busy season. Class starts next week and I'm going to be busier than ever, holding down a full class load, charing forward with my research, and teaching Educational Psychology for Elementary School majors as well. I'm very excited to be teaching again but fearful of having too much on my plate this semester. I was also just called to work with the Young Men at church which means Wed. night scouts is back in fashion. Nat's also busy finishing up her book (she just has the cover art left)--it probably won't be published in time for Christmas, but you never know.

The End of a Great Week

Here we are at Grandma's house. It is Sunday and the end of Education Week, Dallin and McKay's Great Adventure and the beginning of a week where I don't have meetings, camp, Sharing Time, a body in every bedroom...just lots of tomatoes to bottle, lots of weeds to exterminate, a lawn to revive, a house with 3 bathrooms in desperate need of cleaning and all the commitments written down, calendared, and tracked from Education Week. Summer is sadly winding down and my bathing suits saw no action ---that is a first. My running shoes are parked, and the memorization of the Proclamation on the Family is overdue and quickly losing ground with what I have learned. Kira is here for a few more weeks and the two of us are hoping to go camping before she heads back to Tucson. Brooke and Kim are scheduled for 1/2 marathon in two weeks and are beginning to wonder if it will happen with Stake Conference beginning on the same day. Our lives seem to be on hold, we have much to think about from Education Week and just look at the excitement on everyone's face---anything is possible. MUM

Dallin's Mission Call

The winners of the guessing game are....Dallin, Bryce, Dr. Davis, cousin Alishsa and Aunt JoLyn!

Dallin and Bryce guessed the exact mission (Japan Sapporo) and Dallin is one happy camper. Japan or bust on Nov. 19, 2008.

TyandNat trip to Utah

We're now home and still recovering... that was a long vacation and we crammed more into it than we probably should have. But, we also had a blast. Here are a few highlights, you'll soon find a more detailed breakdown at www.tyandnat.com/blog. I've also created four slide shows found here: video 1, video 2, video 3, video 4.

Vacation one was our trip West. We spent a day in Lincoln, Nebraska and went to their Children's zoo and ate Runzas. Eli also had a great time at one of many Cabela's found along the interstate.
Vacation two was backpacking with my family in the Wyoming Uintas, at a place called Lake Alice. Of course, the best part of going West was seeing family and friends, most of whom were meeting Sharon for the first time and seeing Eli for only the second or third. It was really pretty cool seeing Eli start to understand what "extended family" is--he thinks Dallin is the coolest uncle ever. And, as cool as it was just being there with family, you can't discount how totally tubular it was seeing Eli catch his first fish. He was pretty excited (and his dad was kinda happy about it too). He also got to ride mules and got a free back ride the two miles in and out of camp. We left the mountain prematurely because Sharon couldn't sleep at all up there (which meant her parents couldn't sleep at all). She cut her first two teeth and that coupled with her being in a new environment didn't work too well. We went and recouped in SF where we went to church and also where we had Eli's 3rd b-day party with his Bloomington friends that are currently in Utah.
Vacation three was the gathering of the Barlow family. Every single one of Natalie's siblings (she has ten) made it to AF for the reunion. We had a great time playing games, meeting new nieces and nephews, family auction, and all this, of course, with lots of food.
Vacation four was the trip back via Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. We first went to Martin's Cove and Independence Rock in Wyoming (LDS church history sites) where we learned a little more about our pioneer heritage. We spent time at Mt. Rushmore, Wall Drug, and the Mitchell Corn Palace on day 2. All of these stops were short as we drove 7-12 hours each day. Day 3 we saw Carl Sandburgs home in Iowa as well as a train museum. We arrived home late on Wednesday and I was back to work Thursday morning.
And that about sums it up. We also had good visits with all our living grandparents, some former roommates and high school buddies, and of course got ice cream cones at Maceys.

I've now loaded all the trip photos into Picasa at: http://picasaweb.google.com/tylerbchristensen

Disgusting yet funny story

So I came home from church and saw that the barrel cactus are starting to bloom. I got my camera to take pictures. While I had my camera out, I decided to take some pictures of my garden. I had a question for Mom about these weird pellet like things that I have been finding in my garden for the past few days so I thought I would take of picture to show her what they look like. Also, all the tops of the green pepper plants are being eaten by something. While looking through my garden, I saw one of those nasty, big, green caterpillars with the spike on one end (refer to picture). I killed two yesterday and one a few days before that. These things give me the heebi-geebies! I figure they are not good for the plant so I got it off and was ready to kill it like had the other ones. I just smash them with a rock. Well I held the rock up a little too high because when I let if fall, I got splashed with caterpillar guts! It went all over my legs and my scripture case! I was pretty grossed out but at least the caterpillar is dead.

Well the end is near. Our community health project is basically done. All we have to do is present it to the public health nurses and some other people who I feel we misled them to believe that we were actually going to implement the intervention (Health education classes for youth and their parents) that we came up with. Oh well. I graduate on Thursday and then I am headed home to Utah for a few weeks. I still have to take the certifying exam before I can become a real nurse and then I start work in October.
I hope I didn't gross anyone out too much!

Did you hear about Dallin?

My Uncle Dallin is anxiously waiting for his mission call. I'm pretty excited to see where and when he is going. He is my favorite uncle right now and so I am asking you to put in your guess for where you think he will go. He took Japanese in high school and at BYU. He likes eating lots of veggies--not. He does know how to handle chopsticks. My grandma is posting a map with everyone's guesses. Good luck from Sharon.

Mission call guesses

So, my papers are in Salt Lake at church headquarters awaiting assignment. According to Dad (based on years of experience), I will probably receive my call on Thursday the 14th. This next week everyone needs to make their official predictions of where I will be called to serve.

Dallin: Japan Sendai
Bryce: Japan Sapporo (I would have guessed this, but Bryce said it first)
Dad: Mongolia Ulaanbaatar

Here's a link to all of the current missions in the world if you need it: http://www.mission.net/cgi-bin/mission_index.cgi?action=show_current

Just leave your predictions as comments to this post.

Special Memories of Dallin and Bryce

Notice Donna showing off in the background. Ask her how many fish she caught! I thought that since this week was a get ready for camp week and enjoy Ty and Nat and Eli and Sharon week and not a lot of news week that I would share some favorite entries that I sent to McKay way back when he was on his mission in Taiwan.
April 22, 2001
Last night Bryce was figuring out what he wanted to wear for Beach Day at school. He got my sandals and retrieved the lava lava from the dress ups. He was going to get his sunglasses and was so excited. He got up this morning and put on his floral shirt and Hawaiian shorts and that was it. He wears that outfit all the time to school. Dallin said he would wear the lava lava and Bryce hid it because he thought it looked dorky and he didn’t want Dallin to embarrass him. So Dallin just wore his Hawaiian t-shirt and floral blue shirt over it and that was it.
I was working on camp stuff on Thursday and Dallin came in and started drawing this person that is on skateboards…he looks like a big raindrop with a face and legs, etc. so Bryce comes in and sees what he is doing and he starts to draw the guy also. For almost two hours the two of them were drawing together and helping each other with ideas of shading, coloring, etc. Dallin cut his out and glued it on cardstock for a frame. He was quite pleased with his finished picture. It was just fun to see them head to head getting along.!


Dec. 17, 2001 Bryce spent a few hours last night wrapping Christmas gifts for everyone. He is pretty funny. He made some things really quick and wrapped some clothes that he didn’t want anymore and put his school picture on the presents he made for the girls. The clothes are for Dallin…he had him try them on before he wrapped them. He then went home teaching with Dad and made sure Dad knew not to talk too much and sure enough. .after 15 minutes, they were home.

I will post another memory next week!