Even though we put in a lot of travel time, 30 hours in the car, we had a fun trip to Utah. Mom warned me about going over the Kaibab because we ran into a little weather but I thought it was warm enough that we would only run into some rain. It turned out to be a little more than rain.

We ran into all kinds of weather on our trip. We had dust so thick you couldn't hardly see. We had rain and snow and we had sunshine.

Can you believe it's been 14 years?

There is this poem that I used to listen to in an EFY song when I was in High School. Here are the words:

Their first touch at seventeen was in the park
And the moon was full
She was beautiful to him
And her hair was long and her eyes were blue
And her skin was warm
And she turned to him
And he thought he knew what love was

Another touch at twenty-two on their wedding night
And the stars were bright
She was beautiful to him
And her hair smelled sweet and her lips were full
And her skin was warm
And she turned to him
And he thought he knew what love was

And then again at twenty-five when the baby came
And the sun was high
She was beautiful to him
And her hair was damp and her fingers shook
And her skin was warm
And she turned to him
And he thought he knew what love was

Later on at fifty-four sitting on the porch
All the children gone
She was beautiful to him
And her hair was gray and her forehead lined
And her skin was warm
And she turned to him
And he thought he knew what love was

Their last touch at eighty-five was by her bed
And the moon was full
She was beautiful to him
And her hair was thin and her eyes were closed
And her skin was cold
And she turned to him
And he knew that he knew what love was

After sixty eight years of laughter and tears
He knew that he knew what love was.

That song pretty much explains my experience with Jacque (obviously we are in the middle of it). After each phase in our life I look at her and think that I'm pretty sure that I know what love is.... but then the next phase comes along and I love her even more and think that before I didn't really know what love was. She never ceases to amaze me. I know I've found my sole mate. And while 14 years seems like a lot compared to today's "standard", I know that we've only just begun.

I love you Jacque.

jared

A couple of weeks ago I got an assignment from our bishopric to research the conversion story of our family and present it during Sunday School of our ward conference. Thanks to the awesome family history binders that mom made for us a few years ago, I figured it would be a cinch to complete. The binder has conversion stories from several of our family lines and I intended to just pick the most interesting one and be done with it.

Although there are a lot of really great stories in the binder, once I got to reading them I thought that it might be nice to do a little real research of my own and see if I couldn't add to the binder. I have always been interested in the Rasband family line and there never seemed like there was a lot of information about how the Rasband family was converted. So, I decided to do a little searching. Several weeks and literally dozens of hours later (yes, I caught family history fever) this is what I found.

' SUPER SIX'

Despite your request to put off your birthday until further notice, I can't let the day go by without celebrating how special you are. :)

Do you know where Teddy Bear's got their name from?
Do you know the 6 steps to finishing a Teddy Bear?

Ariana and I learned all this and more during our fieldtrip to the Stuffington Bear Factory in Phoenix.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ANDI!!!!

I know some people probably wonder what I do all day..... So I thought I would share some photos I took yesterday of one of my latest projects to get built. This project turned out pretty nice. It's on the west side of Albuquerque by Hobby Lobby. I was the project manager for the project. I love to see our hard work actually come to fruition.

Enjoy!



more photos on the next page.....

It's finally completely installed.

Many of you know about the big bean bag I found
but we didn't realize that it was pregnant.