Andy's campfire story

While we were in Idaho for Christmas, we had the chance (with our video camera) to record various things at Christmas.
One of the treasures we caught on tape was Dad Bradbury (Andy) telling us all a story about an experience at Cedar Badge last summer, and I wanted to share it with you all.

If you've got 3 1/2 minutes, take the time to watch this. It's fairly hilarious! I love Dad's stories! They're always so colorful and interesting! For those of you who don't know, Kime is Andy's brother-in-law, married to his sister Care. And Cedar Badge is a Boy Scout youth leadership training program.



Please excuse the rest of us laughing and interrupting... Although I think it adds to the feel of being there...

Another yuck!

As a little note, I finally got the rest of our pictures from Christmas sorted through and put up! Whew!

We did have a wonderful time with our families! See you all another time! :)

Onto this other yuck...
The other morning, (according to the data in the camera, it was April 5th) Hal went to go out the door to go to work. And came back in asking me for a stick. I'm like "what?" But I got him a broom and asked him what he was upto. He opened the door to show me this giant spider web stretched across our front walkway. On our porch was a huge spiderweb! And all I could think was with web, comes spider! And that's one big web!
No this isn't a real picture of the web, but the green lines are an approximation of what the web looked like, size-wise. The color is probably wrong, since I'm pretty sure the web wasn't fluorescent green.

Anyways, I turned and ran back in for the Raid. I was thinking that as Hal gathered up the web onto the stick, the spider would probably be nearby and we would see it and could spray it with the bug killer spray. What I wasn't counting on was quite how large and vicious looking this spider would be! The instant Hal started disconnecting the web from the posts - which broke with a small pop sound, kind of like snapping thread does - the spider dropped. I shot at it with the Raid and missed. It dropped to the ground, and then I had to find it! Luckily it was just right there and not a hard search, and I drowned the poor sucker in poison...
Then after it was sufficiently poisoned, I got the camera for Hal, and he tried to take a couple of pictures, but he was already late for work. After Hal went off to work, I got back out the camera, and got a couple of sticks to try and pose the spider with. That bugger was still alive and wiggly! So I poisoned it again. Maybe overkill, he was probably in the last moments of dying, but I don't take chances with ugly spiders. After he's stopped wiggling, I took this picture of him...
Isn't he ferocious looking?! I swear they always look bigger when they're alive and wiggly, too!
Ugh! Spiders!
Anybody know if this bugger would have killed us if he'd managed to lure us into his web? ;)

We think he liked our front door because the mosquito hawks (apparently also known as a crane fly) swarm our front door at night. Mosquito hawks look like great big mosquitoes, but they're not mosquitoes. They don't drink blood (although I've been told --falsely, I might add-- that they eat mosquitoes). According to Wikipedia, they apparently eat nectar "if they eat at all." While they're not harmful, they really are irritating to me (and they creep me out), so I'd be happy to have the spider eat them, but NOT ON THE FRONT OF MY HOUSE!!!

Ugh! Spiders!

Vacation all I ever wanted....

On Christmas Eve, after opening presents with Dani's parents and siblings in Victor, we headed to Rexburg to be with Hal's parents and siblings. When we arrived at the new house in Rexburg, we got to tour the house, since we hadn't seen it yet. (It seems like every time we visit Hal's parents we get to see their new house. Crazy, huh? They were remodeling their house in Blackfoot a few years ago, so it really was different every time we went. Then after we moved to Texas, they moved to Rexburg. So, yeah, it always is a new house!) Anyways, it seems to be a great house! It's big and gorgeous!
This isn't the best picture of the house, but it's the only shot I've got, so it'll have to do! :) I do love the trees! Icy trees are gorgeous!

And they are just around the corner from the Rexburg LDS temple! Hal's Dad (Andy) walks to work at the BYU-I student health clinic everyday, and he gets to walk by the temple. He says it's always gorgeous!
One morning when Hal and I were up before everyone else, he went out to walk around and take some pictures. Both of these last two are from that early morning walk.

On Christmas Day after we were all up, Ryan found the pickle (brief explanation: for some reason, at the Bradbury house, Santa hide a pickle ornament on the tree somewhere, and whoever finds it gets a special prize!), we got to open Santa presents, eat yummy crepes (made by Holly and Mary) for breakfast, open the family presents (the Bradbury family got a Wii), then get ready for the day, pack up, and head to Blackfoot to spend Christmas afternoon with Cindy, Kelly, and kids and open more presents!
Ryan got these from Santa... Hmmm... I love it!

Mary gave Holly the most fantastic book I've ever seen! It was huge!! It was like 16 pages long and all about squirrels. Seriously, an amazing book!

Hal's parents gave all of us adult children living on on our own gift cards to "Emergency Essentials" so we could built up our food storage/72 hour kits/emergency preparedness stuff. Hal and I now have over $200 of (mostly food) emergency preparedness stuff sitting in our living room needing to be assembled into back packs. But we have it purchased! That's a step in the right direction!

And I just have to say: Holly gave me the most fantastic shoe laces EVER for my new shoes! Bright pink! Yay! Seriously like the best present ever! :)

This is Jell-O (the hamster, not the people). Mom was trying to intimidate Jell-O with the cow, pulled from her toy box (full of zoo animals). I believe she's mooing in this shot. Not incredibly flattering, but it was absolutely hilarious, so I had to share! (Between you and me, Jell-O isn't praying, she's washing her face.)

In Blackfoot, we got to hang out with Cindy (who, unfortunately, due to her pregnancy felt awful!) and family at the Blackfoot house - they moved into Hal's parents house in Blackfoot when Mom and Dad moved to Rexburg. We got to talk/hang out -which is always my favorite part of any family get together! Just chatting and laughing!
We also played the Lancaster's Wii (they got one for Christmas from Kelly's Dad), played Snorta, (which I find an awesome game! It's got animals!), exchanged our presents to each other, ate dinner, and played Curses (which was absolutely hilarious! I tried to get it on video, but the microphone wasn't turned on, so... sorry! Nothing to see here! But Hal was some sort of Elmer Fud, French, pirate or something...) It was a lot of fun!

Cindy and Kelly gave Dad B a Snuggie and he promptly wrapped it around himself and tried to fall asleep on their love sac. It was cute!
Hal's nephew (who's 4) got some transformers for Christmas, and Ryan (who was almost 19) spent a while trying to figure out how to do them all. I think he found them frustrating. And a little hard, but that was probably because he was afraid he was going to break it if he forced the pieces together...

Kelly had to work on the 26th, so Cindy and the kids came up to Rexburg for the day and we got to hang out some more! We got to play "Ticket to Ride," played the Wii, Mom and Dad went for a walk with Cindy's kids (while I would have loved to walk, it was soooo cold outside! Amazing how cold it is in Idaho after being in Houston!), and we made ice cream! Mary got an ice cream ball for Christmas, and we made two batches of ice cream with it. It was tons of fun rolling back and forth!
Hurray for homemade ice cream!

On Sunday we went to church, and then I have no idea what everyone did all afternoon. (I had a migraine, so I slept. And woke up with a headache still. *Sigh*) But I expect that they played Wii some more! I think it was Sunday night that we watched "Stalking Santa." It was hilarious! Strange, but funny!

On Monday Hal, Mary, Ryan, and Holly all went snowboarding up at Targhee. They had a lot of fun, it sounds like! Hal took lots of pictures of the beauty of it all! But I'll leave it up to him to edit and share them!
This was a picture they stopped to take on the way into Teton Valley... *Sigh* makes me homesick!

I went down to Pocatello for the morning to see my nieces (and their mom) for a bit more. (I didn't feel like 2 hours the week before was enough!) We played, and giggled. I got to watch E, who had just turned one at the beginning of December, walking all over the house - she wasn't walking the week before when I'd seen her briefly! Wow, kids grow up fast! Skyler (my brother) came home for lunch so I got to spend some time with him, too. :)

Note: Can I just say Hal and I have adorable nieces and a nephew? I may be biased, but...they are!

After I got back from Pocatello, Becky and I went shopping! Yeah! Craft stores! :)

Dad and Mom decided it would be fun to take us all out for dinner before Hal and I flew home, so we all went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner after the "kids" got back from snowboarding.

It was super yummy! We had a blast, laughing and talking!

As an additional bit of information, I have a love of fry sauce... so before we left, on Tuesday, we stopped by Arctic Circle so I could have some fry sauce. Well, I guess I had a few french fries with my fry sauce.

And then we flew home, where our ferrets were waiting...

It was wonderful to see and talk to our families! We've missed everybody tons! Can't wait 'til next time!

Happy Easter!

We were hoping to have our photo shoot and get these posted before Easter, but we didn't get around to it before, so we did it today!

Happy Easter!!!
Our bunny rabbits and hatching chicks say Happy Easter, too!
Doesn't this one of Cocoa look like something you'd see advertising a pet costume? Perfect!

And just for good measure, a few more of our favorites:



I know it may look a little mean to hang Rocket upside down, but he actually likes to hang looking at the floor. (We keep a good hold on him, don't worry!) Not sure why he likes it, but he does... Silly boy!

Believe it or not, our wiggly ferrets didn't actually want to hold still for their photo shoot! They kept trying to wiggle away from/out of/shake off their outfits. *Sigh* Ferrets will be wiggly animals I guess...

But me being much bigger and tougher (and having already decided it wouldn't hurt them and also might be amusing for me) they had to pose anyways!


Note: Just for your information, there's something fairly thrilling about cutting the sides and ripping the stuffing out of stuffed animals... Who knew?!
And if you already knew that... why didn't you tell me?!