Sandy, South & West Jordan

I was able to join my family at the Jordan River temple open house on Thursday morning before I needed to head to the Sandy Expo Center to help set up for the Let's Create Expo.

Pieces of Portland - Friday

Friday I should have been out seeing more people, and looking back I feel like kind of a slacker. I showered, hung around Jeremy's house for a bit catching up on emails , facebook and twitter. I figured it might be hard to see people on Friday because of work and going out of town for the holiday weekend.

Ate at Noodles & Co with my friend Crystal and got to meet her fiance Josh who was really nice.  Also a surprise to me was that Crystal's mom Kim showed up! I haven't seen her in forever long! It was a nice reunion and the restaurant let me use my birthday coupon for a free meal even though it was expired. Sadly there are no locations for them in Arizona.We got this picture together (above) and my camera, well I don't know what happened, but Kim has more of the all of us on her camera so I am waiting to get those to put on here.

Next, after getting lost numerous times and finally ended up taking surface streets, I found the Portland temple and spent some time just walking around, reminiscing and taking some pictures which I thought turned out really well. I like the pictures where the sky got included because it looked neat that day!

Next I hurried over to West Linn for dinner which was luckily only about 15 min away. The Starr's, who were a senior couple in the mission when I served, had invited me over for dinner along with a girl from their ward and also the elders. They had made such yummy food, chicken, potato salad, carrots, and cornbread with vanilla ice cream and blackberries from their backyard. I got myself into a food coma!

We went to tour the new church building that was recently built. Their first Sunday in it is on the 12th. We walked all around the outside trying the doors but they were locked. However, the very last door we found was UNLOCKED! So we went in and gave ourselves a person tour.

 The stairs in the second picture [click to enlarge]  lead up (of course) to a storage type room and all the air ducts, etc. I have never seen this before so it was kind of neat to find!

Here I am with the Starr's before heading out. I love them so much and have lots of good memories of them. How I wish I could rewind time some days but I'm so glad we are friends still and get the opportunity to meet up once in awhile!

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Headed over to Hillsboro to visit Adrianna, Josh & Charlene. Charlene was sick though so I didn't stay too long but it was nice to visit them! I'm especially excited because they are moving to Arizona soon, to Chandler. They are such a fun family & I am excited to enjoy them here before I have to move to Utah in the spring. 

 So Jeremy has this manikin (I called it a she-akin) in his house for a project. He wants to paint her.But for now she hangs out by his work desk. My friend Rachel (black) and Libby (blue) we picked them up on Friday evening and got ice cream with toppings from Safeway and hung out at Jeremy's playing Skip-Bo and watching YouTube vids til 1am or so. Yawn. A great end to a relaxing Friday!

What a Crazy Week!

Working as a pageant warrior for the Easter pageant was very time consuming and hard work but like serving a mission, it was totally worth it. I got to help with parking in the handicapped section and the gravel lot, work at the missing children table, help with trash and one of the neatest things, help hold the curtain right up on stage on the nights it was windy! Here are some shots from the temple pageant:

Ben, Ashley, Hillary & Hillary Hillary was lost so I stayed with her..hehe

Easter pageant crowd - last night! me & my friend Ben from Tucson

my good friend Brennen brought me Subway because I was cold and hungry and on a dark street corner...lol

It was cool because the last couple nights we got a general authority to speak to us , the first night it was Elder Anderson (newly called at Gen Conf!) and the other night it was Elder Mash I believe...or something that rhymes with that name. Hash? Nash? Anyways it was incredible to hear them speak and be in their presence. I feel so blessed that the pageant warriors were allowed to attend the devotional which happened every night Tu-Sat for the members of the Easter pageant cast.

During the last few days of the pageant my friend Carli who I met when I served as a missionary in Oregon came to visit me and see the temple pageant. She and her daughter Gracie stayed with me for a week! It was interesting sharing my room with 2 people because I am not used to that but it worked out okay. I didnt get to spend too much time with them because right after work I was headed to the pageant but on Saturday we went shopping at Last Chance in Phoenix (a clothing store) and on Sunday we ate dinner at a mutual friends house.

In the morning before church I went to Al & Sara's house - friends of my cousin Paul & his wife Rene and we had brunch which there was tons of good food - waffles, rice, ham, pasta salad, fruit, hashbrowns....and then the adults hid eggs for the boys to find. It was so fun and I hated to leave but in the afternoon Carli dropped her daughter off with a friend & we went to the Gable YSA ward for Sacrament Mtg and Sunday School.

After dinner at the Hoopes' house where they had very delicious food, I went home to chill and try to get things cleaned up. My roomies are not so good sometimes about keeping things picked up so I vaccumed, mopped and wiped down. Phew. I hate hate hate having a messy place and even more so people that keep it messy. Carli did a fairly good job of picking up after her & Grace though.

Monday we ate at Costa Vida with Carli's friends Beth & Jimmy and their daughter Kennedy. I really liked the food here and my friend Steve came and hung out with us a bit and took this gangster shot of me with his camera. Hehe After eating Carli & I picked up my friend Alex & we went to the institute to hang out and play pool, etc.

All in all it was a great time working at the temple pageant and I am sad to have it over but it was very time-consuming and demanding. Thanks to all who came to see it! One night there was 17,000 people who attended! It was fun to have Carli visit and meet her daughter Grace and be able to do some fun things with them.