California Trip

So as we were driving up the California coast, our car broke down on he side of the road in a little beach town. Bad fuel pump. 6 hours later, back on the road.

Everyone on the train to the city

Chelsea with her loaf of sourdough

Me and my mom

Everyone in the city after shopping

Train ride home

The Beach

The Gals

Chels and I were having a chicken fight

'Nuff said

Great America

Emma was scared to go on Top Gun

Nate was so excited to be an astronaut 

This telescope is named Rachel!

Hot chocolate in July?!

Cousins

Very cute

Whelmed

"I know you can be underwhelmed and I know you can overwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?" "I think you can in France...."

- 10 Things I Hate About You

I have been "whelmed" to say the least. It's been a while- a long while- since posting. We have had a hectic life in the past 2 months. We went to Mexico and then came back for 2 days and then left for California to visit my family. It was so fun seeing cousins and relations! Much anticipated pictures to follow. After that we went to Idaho to visit our friends. We stayed with Susan and Nick and their baby Calvin! Nate commented that out of 26 pictures of the Idaho trip, 21 were of Calvin! :) He's just so cute!! We did lots of sewing projects and much lounging. We got back and we've just been working and school starts tomorrow! 

Also, my uncle passed away a couple weeks ago. His funeral is Sept 1... our 1 year anniversary. Killah. Nate can't go so for our 1st anniversary, we will be apart. Distance makes the heart grow fonder. ;) To add to the sadness, Nate's uncle and cousin from Cedar City were killed in a plane crash last Friday along with 8 others. It's been in the news a lot and wrecked havoc in Cedar. It was quite devastating to the family. He was very close to his cousin and we really enjoyed him and his wife. They are about the same ages as us and have been married a little bit longer than us. They were the cutest couple and just really sweet. She is about to have their first baby in a few weeks. Please keep the family in your prayers.

Since we are not going to be together for our 1 year, we celebrated it last night. Quite a celebration. :s I was planning this lovely dinner and dessert. But when Nate got home, dinner was ruined. So we went out to dinner at an Italian place, bad service by the way, but I was starting to not feel well at all and I thought I was going to throw up so I went into the bathroom there and all the toilets were out of order!! So I told the waiter and he told me to go to the mens! So I turn to the mens and there is a big sign "Out of order"!! How do you legally have 2 non-functioning bathrooms?! Anyway, I got progressively worse so we boxed up our food, ran home and I spent 10 minutes purging. It was about 7 o'clock but we got in our PJs and climbed into bed and watched movies.... LAME!! And I was still reeling a bit so that I didn't even want my dessert so I gave my half to Nate. He was happy to oblige. But it was definitely a memorable 1st anniversary. And for a present Nate got me a Goofy mug with a Goofy stuffy in it.. I kind of stared at it for a minute going ".... uh... thanks?" But the deeper meaning was that me were going to Disneyland!! Wahoo!!

I still have more to post but I have to go buy text books now. Bleh. Why do they cost a small fortune?? Oh well. It's all for an eduhmucation right?

Seashores of Old Mexico

So I'm sitting in bed, Rachel is still sleeping, and I'm looking out our sliding glass door onto the back porch, watching the Sea of Cortez roll in.  I thought this would be a good chance to update.

We came down to Mexico on Thursday.  The original plan was to meet in downtown Tucson, pick me up from work, and leave directly.  But this is the Allen family, we don't do things that smoothly.  So Rachel picked me up from work, took me back up to my parents house, where we waited for about an hour or two, then left.  We got about halfway to the border when Dad realized the taillights on the truck we were in didn't work.  Made for an exciting drive, with me driving in the front, and my brother Grant driving close behind us.  We thought we had it until we passed a sobriety check point.  We got pulled over very quickly after that.  I was very quick to tell the officer that it wasn't my truck!

We were worried about the weather down here, thinking it would be unbearably hot and humid (averages for this time of year are around 90-95 degrees, not counting humidity).  Fortunately, we were wrong.  It has been beautiful.  A nice breeze comes off the ocean, cooling us off.  High tides have been exceptionally high, covering the stairs leading down to the beach from our patio.  

We had a small fourth of july program on Friday, but the main event was the "carnival" last night.  My niece, Danie, 7 years old, organized the event.  It started with a booth on Chinese jump rope, which then lead to my 5 year old nephew Riley teaching us about sea animals from a book his mom bought off Ebay.  Then it was my brother Daniel's turn, his booth was to list big words.  But the highlight was the pinata.  Usually this even is left for the children to participate in, but we got creative with age limits this go around.  I am proud to say I busted the thing open.  But it was kind of twisted with legs coming off, then the torso... I think the fun pinata became a creature of nightmares after a little while.

Rachel says my blogs are too long, so I'll stop there.  Pictures will come when we get back to town and load them up.  But for any Watkins relations reading this... every few hours, Rachel will stop whatever fun things we are doing, grab my hand and say "This time next week I'll get to see my mom!"  So here we come, California!

I got a letter!

One of my best friends Doanld, is on his mission in Peru and has been for almost 2 years! It has been a very emotional time for me firstly because he was gone for 2 years and also because in the 2 years, I've recieved ONE letter. ONE. I wrote maybe 75 letters and I only got one. So I have been really upset about it this whole time but my dad called me on Sunday and said that Donalds mom called and said that she had a stack of letters for me!! For some reason all of his letters were returned to him so he just sent them home. A whole stack!! And then yesterday I got a letter from him in the mail. He also included a picture of him and his companion on P Day in a field with llamas... of course. It's Peru what else do you do on P Days?! :) So I'm very very happy right now. He gets home August 13 and I can't wait!King of the Mountain in Peru

Another Weekend Behind Us

So this weekend was one of the best weekends ever.  Saturday morning we got up and went to Rachel's nanny people's house so that I could help the father take down the daughter's bunk beds.  Apparently the six year olds had thought it would be fun to jump off the top bunk and face plant into the ground.  I know it makes me a bad person, but when I heard why I was taking the bed down, I really had to fight not to laugh.  

Afterwards we went house hunting some more, mostly to help us overcome the disappointment.  We made an offer on a beautiful 1900 sq ft house, but there was some co

nfusion between our agent, the representing agent, and the representative of the grant program we are getting money from.  Tucson is doing a revitalization drive right now, so we are getting $20,000 to put as a down payment, on the city's tab.  But because of the confusion, the house agent threw out our offer.  Hope is not lost, but it was a bit of a setback.  

After that, we went and saw Get Smart with my family, and it is awesome.  A nice movie where you can sit down, shut off your brain and just laugh.  Highly recommend it.

Last night we celebrated our friend Jay's birthday.  As a birthday present he got himself Rock Band and we spent some time playing it.  I will admit, in the past I have laugh

ed at people playing it, commenting on how ridiculous they look.  I never wanted to be one of those people.  But I am now a believer.  I play a mean bass, and can do a pretty good drum solo!

All for now.  We are getting pretty excited for our month of vacations.  First week of July we are going to Rocky Point Mexico with my family to a beach house there.  Then, we'll be back for two days, then off to San Francisco to spend a week with Rachel's family.  Then we come home for two weeks, then we are off to Idaho for a week.  Oh boy!

Busy

So it's been pretty hectic around here for me and so I have been really bad with my blogging... I love that "blog" is now a verb. Anyway, I got not only 1 new job but 2 new jobs! In the mornings I nanny 2 delightful girls Gracie and Katie (twins). I get them ready and then take them to camp. Then I dash over to work with our friend Jarrett. He is a realtor and has a very busy life and I am his assistant. I'm kept pretty busy there. Then in the late afternoon, I have to go pick up the girls from camp and either take them home or to their many activities ie. Kumon ( a math and reading center), the salon for hair appointments (yes, the SALON!!)...

Here we are at Wendy's with the girls VERY FIRST FROSTIES! Can you believe it?? What is childhood without a frostie??

For Memorial Day we went swimming up at Nate's parents house and had a BBQ. The niece and nephews were there and swam for 4 hours! Tired kids afterwards.

24 And Counting

So I am the bad husband for not writing about this yet, but I wanted to make sure I had adequate time to do the wonderful birthday surprise justice.  Just more evidence for how fantastic my wife is.  

The Friday before my birthday, Rachel called me at work and told me we needed to be a shuttle service for one of my nephews, which kind of disappointed me because I had been hoping to go see a movie that night.  So I was walking out to my car and there was Rachel with my nephew and dad waiting for me.  We go the kid's car seat put in my car, and started driving north.  But as we were heading out, Rachel let me know we should get on the free way and head to Phoenix.  She had surprised me with a hotel reservation in Phoenix.  Other than my nephew crying like crazy and us having to wait forever at my brother's house, it was a great start to a fun weekend.  We had dinner at Claim Jumper, a steak house kind of chain.  If there is one near you, go.  It was beyond delicious.  The highlight was the dessert, a red velvet cupcake with this really good white cream cheese frosting.  Oh yeah.

We got up in the morning and went to see Prince Caspian (Rachel didn't seem to enjoy it too much, but I thought it was amazing).  Then we went to GameWorks, a huge arcade basically, and spent some time there.  Rachel is very proud that she beat me on a tennis game, but I remember dominating in our Nascar race.  We also went to see a 3-D Imax movie about the Grand Canyon.  Apparently we need to be better about conserving water, so everyone, go turn off your leaky faucets!  We ended our time in Phoenix by going to the Rainforest Cafe (never had been there before, kept jumping during the "rain storms") and a quick walkthrough of IKEA.  I think we have our whole future house decorated.  

Overall, my birthday was amazing.  

Mother's Day etc.

This weekend has been very exciting. 

It's getting hot, hot, HOT! The sky is cloudless and unforgiving

but things are starting to come to life. The question is how long will they survive?!

My African violet I thought was dead started to bloom!

Look! Clouds!

My strawberries are blooming!

I went to a very interesting concert of Kitran music at a Yoga studio with a family I babysit for. Kitran is a kind of Sikh music.. from what I could piece together. It was very pretty music... kind of odd culturally but... I'd go again. It was this husband/wife duo called Shantala. It was chanting and call and response songs. First song went on for 45 minutes. Long show. But this family I was with bought me a beautiful necklace made of paper in Uganda. 

I loved it!

Also this weekend I got some lovely presents in the mail from some lovely friends.

Susan sent me a framed scrapbook page of us, a box of Annie's mac and cheese(the best!), and this great card she said reminded her of me. And it does to me too!

And when we still lived in Rexburg, my sweet friend Jamie was teaching me how to do stained glass. I never got to finish my first piece so she finished off the edges and sent it to me! She is an amazing artist! Check her out!

Mothers day was nice because we have a really young ward with looooots of new babies so it was fun to see all the new moms. A man in our ward gave a really excellent talk basically calling the men in our ward to repentance about the way they treat their wives. Pretty intense but really good. And the bishop stood up and said he grew up in the era where to show someone you really really cared, you didn't get them flowers, or chocolates... you got them a mix tape! We all laughed so hard when he said that he wanted to get us all mix tapes but his counselors advised him not to. So he did something like it. He gave all the women a CD of General Conference talks about the importance and role of women. It was a very thoughtful gift. Also there's a guy in our ward who owns an ice cream parlor here in town called Penguin's and he brought in hundreds of cups of frozen yogurt in like 6 different flavors with toppings and everything! I enjoyed that I got Mothers day loot without the Mother part! :)

IRON MAN!

Nate and I just got back from the opening night of IRON MAN!!! We have been waiting for this for a while now and it was soooooo worth it!! 

It. Was. AWESOME.

4 thumbs up from Nate and Rachel

IRON MAN

Tagged

So Shayla made up her own tag and I am one of her tagees! Is that a word.....? Here we go:

A picture of what I look like right now:

(I'm eating a Skinny Cow!)

A picture of what I feel like right now:

(Arizona is so flippin hot!)

And three people I am tagging: Susan, Jamie, and Chelsea. Have fun!