Crazy Summer!!!!!

Okay...okay...as many of you have pointed out it has once again been a super long time since we have made a post. We are sorry. Here is a quick recap of what we have been up to that has kept us from Blogging.

~PERU~
On June 28th (the same day Dave's parents returned from their three year mission to Mexico, don't worry we caught them on our layover in Houston) we were able to go to Peru with Mandi's family (Thanks Mandi's mom and dad!!). This was our 2nd trip to Peru. We had the chance to go last year with a group from Weber State and serve the people in the Northern Amazon Basin. This time we got to travel throughout villages in the Andes. It did not even feel like the same country as last year. The first time we were able to get by with our broken Spanish, but this year we had not prepared our Quechua (the native language of the Incas that many of the natives in the remote villages we visited still speak).
It was an absolutely amazing experience that we will never be able to express enough gratitude for. This trip once again reaffirmed for us how truly blessed we are. What made it even more amazing was to share that experience with more of the people we love!!
Some of the awesome Peru highlights:

~Two hour drives on steep, scary, dirt roads with hundreds of switchbacks.
~The Children!!!
~Brass Bands playing in your ears while you try to obtain a manual blood pressure.
~Playing soccer at 13,000 feet high
~Painting Faces
~Learning some Quechua (some is used very loosely there)
~Using the community toilets (if you can call them that)
~Free Echocardiograms (dave's ticker is lookin' good!)
~Trying to teach the children some english (Okey-Dokey)
~Broken Coccyx (stubborn Hemo!)
~Dallin, Estas Caliente? (Thank you Cammie, we will be eternally grateful!!)
~Homes with dirt floors and no running water, but a functioning TV and Stereo!!
~Listening to the flight of the Condor, again and again and again....
~Machu Picchu, Pisac, Ollantaytambo, "Sexy Womand" and all the other AMAZING Inca Ruins
~Alpacas!
~Peruvian Cuisine (Guinea Pig, Alpaca, nasty Ketchup and lots and lots of bologna sandwiches!)
~Mom calling all the Peruvian women "mamamama" and telling them to "escuchiscuchi"
~Mandi's "Spaznish" (Thank you ben) yo quiero una blanketa
~Convincing the children that Jessica was Barbie in the flesh
~Learning that 20 minutes peruvian time is really 3 hours
~Dave Winning the Pull up contest at the Ocean.
~The footless wonder climbing the steep rocky inca trails with the best of them (and showing many of them up!)
~Hours of Charades to pass the 18 hour day (Make sure Jenn is on your team!!)
~Trying to not get hit crossing the streets!

~Last, but not least...Barbie head.

Needless to say it was an amazing trip.

~The Move~

Soon after we got home from Peru we had to start saying our good-byes. Dave left his job at South Davis Hospital after 3 years of working as a Medic and Mandi left her (dream) job at Primary Children's Hospital (shout out to Same Day Surgery, Mandi loves and misses you all!!!!).

Two days after Mandi's last day at work, and the day after Dave's 30-mile trek with his brother Kenny we packed up and headed for Arizona.

So here we are. Dave has had his first week of lectures. Mandi started her new job at Phoenix Children's Surgical Center. We are living with Dave's super nice Uncle Chris and Aunt Pat while we wait for our house to close (looks like it will be the 12th, YEAH!!....To be continued on future posts). So far it has been a great experience. Of course we love and miss all you Utahns, but thanks to Dave's awesome family and our new friends, Arizona is starting to feel more like home.

We know, we know...it has been a while.

Okay so it has been a while. Or so we have been told, again and again and again (Justin this one is for you). So after great consternation here is a quick recap of what we have been up to.

August is coming quick and so we've been getting ready for our big move to Glendale. For those of you who are not aware we are headed to Arizona this summer for Dave to start medical school at Midwestern University. We have seen alot of great prospects for our new home some of our favorites include...

Gang Grafitti back yard with prison bar windows, Red Velvet Carpet and Rainbow house.

These Pictures do not do them justice...not even close

But seriously we do have some great prospects...we will let you know what we get in the end. Here are a couple of the homes that we loved when we were there last weekend.

Though we have been super busy with our moving plans and house hunting we still have had time for some great family parties!

In April while the men folk left us for their priesthood meeting the girls held our First Annual Princess Party. It was everything you could have imagined and more! Including a three foot wall hanging of Sleeping Beauty (Mandi's mom could use some Grandaughters!).

Pictured below Princesses: Eliza Freestone, Cindy Johnston, Jessica Johnston, Jill Freestone, Emma Freestone, Nancy Freestone, Katie Freestone, Mandi Freestone, and Sleeping Beauty.

This month we partied superhero style in honor of Jack's 5th birthday. Not only was there super food, super costumes and super guests there was also super arm wrestling, super leg wrestling and everyone's favorite super bum wrestling (which is even more awesome than it sounds!).

The Birthday Boy!!

Super Mom Batgirl and Batman Clark Kent and Superman

Best looking Superhero ever!! Dave as Radioactive Man.

Carter as Spider man, Grandma as cat/cheetawoman, Benson as Batman, and Superman Jack.

Mandi as Mighty Mouse with Radioactiveman and Superman. Dallin and Cami as quasi-bat people and their spider child.

So there you have it...A Post!!! We won't wait so long for the next one!

A tribute

This post is dedicated to Granddad. Because he is awesome.

Granddad just celebrated his 85th birthday last month. That day he bowled a 299. For those of you who don't know that is ELEVEN strikes in a row with the last shot dropping nine of the ten pins. While many people would be upset that the last single pin didn't fall Granddad was thrilled and says he "still has something to shoot for". Like we said he is awesome.

On Tuesday the Jazz dancer's preformed with their fathers. Jessica, our sister-in-law, invited granddad to dance with her. They only practiced a couple of times before they preformed and granddad was a little nervous. In fact he said he didn't sleep well the night before and woke up at 2am going over the moves. As you can see from the video the midnight practice payed off and he did great. And we are eternally grateful to Mandi's brother Justin for talking him into wearing the jersey without a shirt underneath...the sweatbands on the arms are a nice touch as well.

We have thousands of fun, endearing and hilarious memories of granddad and look forward to many more.

These are a few of our favorite things

Dave and Mandi would like to share with all of you some of their most favorite things....

~License plates with acronyms or semi phonetic spellings AKA vanity plates (a name so appropriate)...gr8fun
~When people bring their children to films not catered to young minds or short attention spans.
~Tip Jars at a cafeteria style restaurants or fast food joints...unnecessary guilt trip.
~Politics!! Particularly the incoherent elderly that are voted into office time and time and time and time again. Dave and Mandi are convinced that Hatch and Bennett will be elected to office years after their deaths...and at that point they will be just as effective as they are currently! Our favorite career politician is 90 year old former KKK Klansman WV Senator Byrd (click image to see clip).

~TV Medical shows...did you know a defibrillating shock can save just about anyone!? it's true!
~Finding mystery fluids on their scrubs at the end of the day.
~The seemingly exponential rate that stupid people are reproducing.
~Narcissistic parents, because it is they who truly deserve the attention.
~When class becomes story telling forums (it is important that the class knows about your wife’s UTI).
~Internet shopping sites that send you the wrong item (the speedo is very flattering).

~These are a few of our favorite things...we would love to hear some of yours!

In the Beginning...

Welcome friends, family and possibly others who have ventured here by fate and good fortune. This is our blog. Our lives are riveting journeys filled with adventure, intrigue, suspense and above all love. Since few have such fulfillment in a lifetime that we have in a day we felt it was our duty to share ourselves with the world. So now we welcome you to our lives. Do not hesitate to become enraptured with our stories and live vicariously through us...we know we would if we were you!

Side note: We love getting Christmas letters that are written in the second and/or third person, keeping the true author a mystery and allowing for unabashed bragging. Therefore we will be following those examples in our blog. We suppose you could make a game of it...guess who wrote what!