Merry Christmas!

Hey everyone! We hope you all had a great Christmas... we sure did. We stayed in town for the holidays because both of our families were here. We spent very little time at our home. We spent the bulk of the day bouncing back and forth between the Murphy's home and the Reynders' home. We loved being able to spend time with both families, and with each other.

If you want to... feel free to take a look at our Christmas album on photobucket. I think you can just follow the link at the bottom of the slide show we created.

Well, have a happy new year!!! Here we come 2010!!!

We're having a BABY!!!

I'm sure that most of you know this already, but i wanted to officially post it for all to see... David and i will be parents in June 2010. The due date is set for June 12th. We are so excited! I am 14 weeks along and feeling great ;) I have been really lucky... I haven't really been sick at all... We are going to find out what gender the baby is, but we probably won't know that until the beginning of January. We will let you know when we know... Well, we love you all... have a wonderful Christmas!

Happy Times!

Sorry it has been a while since David and I last posted anything. We did have a fun Halloween... We dressed up as Where's Waldo and his girlfriend Wenda. We actually won the best couples costume contest at our ward party... wooohooo! That was a great accomplishment :) Mama Reynders made the shirts for us, and fixed up the hats a little. She was quit a big help in convincing David to dress up. He wasn't to keen on the idea at first, bu he had fun with it. My stockings were the hardest part. We had to use red duck tape and apply each stripe individually.
Well... We are excited for Thanksgiving. It is one of our favorite holidays. We will be staying in town, since we both had classes yesterday, Monday, and today. My mother's side of the family does a huge reunion every year here in town. We are excited to see all sorts of family and of course food! We wish you all a happy Thanksgiving and we will try to post more often. Love you all!

1 Year Anniversary!

This last week David and I went on a cruise for four nights on the Carnival Paradise Ship. We visited the Catalina Islands and Ensenada in Baja California Mexico. We had a great time shopping, site seeing, eating free food available 24 hours a day, and relaxing. We both tried to get a tan too, but we are so white that we weren't too successful, though I think we might have gone from florescent white to neutral white... Anyway, we had a wonderful time. The Crew on the ship was wonderful, the service was great, and the food was to die for. It is something we would definitely enjoy doing again.

Camping the Murphy Way...

Two weeks ago, David and I joined my family in some great traditional Murphy camping fun. We camped on the Dinky Creek camping grounds in a tent for three nights! We had fun hiking, swimming, eating, and hanging out. We had a blast! It was especially nice to have the whole family together. My dad is a truck driver so he isn't home too often but he was able to make it. Also, my sister Vanessa and her husband Ryan were able to come down from Canada. It was great to have everyone together again.

Hey there everyone! Summer has been great so far... last week was the Thorley Reunion. This is an annual event where everyone from my mother-in-law's side of the family gathers for an extraordinary reunion on the Thorley Mountain. It is a beautiful place to be... I was so excited for the reunion I must have lost at least 3 nights of sleep over it. We had a great time hanging out with family and getting to know each other better. There was great food, fun, entertainment, and projects to do. We had an absolute blast!

Right before the reunion, the immediate Mark and Jo Linda Reynders family had a little reunion. That was a lot of fun too... The last day of this reunion, all of us kids and our husbands and wives went on a hike. We hiked through the Subway in Zion National Park. It was a great hike. We had to jump in some nasty water, repel about five times, and go up and down steep mountainsides. After that hike we were all dead tiered. We had a lot of fun though. We weren't exactly sure where we were supposed to be going and the trail wasn't marked that well, so we had fun trying to figure everything out. The only directions we had were telling us to scamper, and look for the hoodoo or something of that sort... they weren't very helpful. Here is a little video that david put together from our hike...

Summer Has Begun

David and I successfully finished another semester of school, and since we work for the school district we have a little 2 week break from work. Both of us are attending summer school and working summer school. We started our summer by taking a trip to Arizona to witness the sealing of Tom and Megan Thorley for time and all eternity. It was a beautiful thing to witness. We had a great time visiting with family and friends. One of David’s old missionary companions, Heath Wilcock, lives in Mesa, Arizona so we were able to meet up with him and his wife Emily at the wedding reception. They are a great couple, it was great to meet them and listen to David and Heath reminisce about their mission in the West Indies.

We left Arizona around 5:00 am Sunday morning and made our way to Lancaster to attend church with the Blair family. It is always great being around the Blair's, Aunt Martha is the best. We love her to pieces. Not only because she made us a delicious dinner and homemade ice cream... but because she is always so kind and fun. While we were in Lancaster we visited Poppy or Coach Reynders. This was actually the first time I got to meet him and talk with him. He is such a cute man, I could feel his sweet spirit just being by him and talking to him. We also went to the hospital and visited Grandma Reynders. She always makes us laugh; it was great to see her again.

Before this wonderful trip, David and I got to see our sisters graduate from Buchanan High. Janet and Nicole are now all grown up and moving on to bigger and better things. Because of this exciting event my sister Vanessa flew in from Canada, where she is living with her husband, and my dad was able to make it home too. It was great to have the entire Murphy's together again. Yesterday, I drove my dad and Vanessa to the Oakland Airport. We had a little time between when my dad left and when Vanessa's flight was to leave, so we spent some time at the Oakland Temple and in the Visitors Center there. We had a lot of fun.

Oh... Our first flower in our garden bloomed! Yeah! Here is a picture ;)

Pioneer Treck

Life is GREAT! David and I have been busy with work and school, but we are still loving life. Last Saturday we had the opportunity to be a Ma and Pa over a company of 80 youth, for a quad stake Pioneer Trek. There were about 500 youth in total that came and participated. The event lasted all day... we went about a mile pushing handcarts and stopped for some fun stations. There was a station about the saints sacrifices while building the Nauvoo Temple, how the saints would have killed and prepared a chicken, how to use a bow and arrow, we learned a dance that the saints would have done, we sat and listened to stories of great pioneers, and we learned how to cook biscuits in a dutch oven. After we went to all of these stations we headed out with our handcarts. We then stopped to see a reenactment of the sweet river rescue of the Willie and Martin handcart companies. It was amazing! I posted the video at the end of this so you can watch if you would like. After the reenactment we headed onward with our wagons for the place we would end our journey and receive a delicious meal. We had a wonderful time. It was great to feel a little sense of what the pioneers endured and appreciate the sacrifices they made. Well that is all for now. We love you all, and hope all is well with you.

Happy Easter/ Birthday

On Saturday my mothers side of the family all got together for an Easter family reunion. It was at a park, so we got to play lots of fun outdoor games. It was really nice to see all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. We had an Easter egg hunt, we died eggs, had an egg tossing contest, played some football, ate great food... it was amazing!

Sunday was even better! David and I had the opportunity to sing in the ward choir. We did a special music program. We had three speakers who spoke about the theme of each song we sang. Everything tied together so well; it was wonderful.

Since Sunday was also David's birthday, we went to the Reynders' home to celebrate. David really wanted me to make clam chowder for his birthday dinner... but not any clam chowder, he wanted his mom's clam chowder. So, JoLinda taught me how to make the best clam chowder ever. It was delicious. We opened presents, ate delicious cake, and played some fun family games. We had a great time. Spring break was sure fun, but now it is time to come back into reality and go to school and work...

We love you all! Have a great week!

Flower Planting & The Zoo

Spring Break

This last week has been wonderful. David and I both were off of school and work. It was nice not having to run from school to work and back and forth... We were able to catch up a little with some of our school work. We also went through a lot of trouble to try to get our car to pass smog so we can register it.

On Wednesday David and I planted a garden of flowers. We bought three different kinds of flower bulbs. We hope they grow, we are afraid we planted them a little too late. I sure hope they grow. We have been wanting to plant flowers ever since we moved in. Anyway, that was a lot of fun!

We went to the Chafe Zoo on Thursday. It was a lot of fun! We went with a couple in our ward, Jeremy & Danielle Snow. They live in the same apartment complex as us, and they both graduated with David. We love them, they have been good friends to us. Our main reason for going to the zoo was for me to complete a lab for my Biology class... so I was busy writing down information about various animals. We still had tons of fun. After a couple hours at the zoo we got lunch and played games with the Snow's for a couple more hours.

On Friday David and I worked on homework until five o'clock and then went to dinner and a movie. I got a $50 gift card to some restaurant from the girls I coach and a pair of movie tickets. So, David and I decided to go out on a free date. It was nice to just go out and spend time together.

We Are Still Alive

Hello there! All is going well with the Reynders family. We are keeping busy with work and school. This semester has been a little more difficult for us. As you probably know, this is David’s first semester at Fresno State. He is in three hard science classes, each with their own lab. He has to spend many hours studying and preparing for his classes. I am taking eighteen units at Fresno City, so I am pretty busy with school work too. Hopefully this is my last semester at Fresno City; I applied to Fresno State University with hopes of attending there in the fall. I hope I get in; Fresno State is cutting the amount of students that they are allowing in next semester, because of all the budget cuts.

Work is going great for both of us. David is still working with the upper grade autistic children and I am working with the children in seventh through ninth grade. We have learned a lot about autism and continue to learn about it each day we go to work. We really enjoy the kids and staff that we work with. These jobs have been great for both of us.

We have plans to attend summer school this summer and to work in the summer autistic program. We hope we can fit both in this summer schedule. We are also looking forward to going to Tom and Megan’s wedding this summer; that will be a lot of fun.

Christmas 2008

Happy belated Thanksgiving and Christmas! We had a wonderful holiday season. We spent Thanksgiving here in Clovis, Ca. The Reynders spent Thanksgiving in Utah with the rest of the Thorley clan, so we spent our Thanksgiving with my family. Every year my mothers side of the family has a huge gathering for Thanksgiving. We do a pot luck dinner, so we always have a lot of food. I made two pumpkin pies that we brought and shared. We had a great time hanging out with my family.

Christmas was also a lot of fun. We woke up around 6 am and did our own little Christmas at home. We opened the gifts that we had gotten for each other and rummaged through our stockings. The rest of the day was spent bouncing back and forth to our parents homes. First, we went to the Murphy's home, my parents home, and had breakfast and played games, and exchanged gifts. Then we went over to the Reynders' home and broke through the posters that we made the night before (there are pictures of this). We then played games and hung out. We also exchanged gifts there. Mama Reynders made a delicious Christmas lunch for all of us. It was great! We hung out with Robert & Paige, and Annie & Adam, it was great seeing them again. Then we went back over to the Murphy's and had a great Christmas dinner provided by Mama Murphy. We had a wonderful Christmas!

Prop 8

Hooray! Proposition 8 passed in all three states! Woohoo! I know that this was a little while ago but... we want to document all that occurred last year. David and I had a great time helping in all the efforts for proposition 8. We spent some Saturdays walking precincts and handing out fliers... but our favorite memory of our prop 8 efforts was when we went out and put up yard signs. It was a Sunday evening and we had just had dinner with the Reynders. Janet, Scott, Kate, David, and I all decided that we should go out and put up the 100 yard signs that David and I had in our trunk. So, we put together all the signs and headed off to place the signs along some major roads. While we were putting up signs we got nothing but positive feedback... people were honking horns and shouting out their windows, "Yes on 8!", but just as we were finishing up, an angry young boy drives by and shouts mean things at us. We didn't think much of it, we were done so we just hopped back in the car. As we were about to pull out back onto the main road, the boy sped up the side of us and cut us off and started shouting things at us. He had made an illegal U-turn to come and shout at us for putting up signs and told us that they would all be gone tomorrow. He then sped off, once he saw he wasn't going to get any response from us. We went back to the Reynders and shared what had happened and just laughed about the whole situation. It was a great experience to be a part of such a noble cause and to defend the true definition of marriage. We are glad that the voice of the people was heard on this issue.

Halloween 2008

Halloween

We had our first Halloween together this last October. We didn't do too much but we wanted to document this happy day. Our ward had a Halloween party before Halloween day. We didn't know what to wear, and David didn't really want to dress up unless we had something really neat, so we ended up just wearing matching pajamas... lame, but our ward still loves us. Then a couple days before Halloween we carved our pumpkins. I'm really sad that I didn't take a picture of them; they actually looked really good. Anyway, on Halloween day, after work and school, David and I ordered a jack-o-lantern pizza to celebrate. We then went trick-or-treating... well kind of... the old Lady living next door to us, saw us walk by her door and was so excited to hand out her candy that she opened her door and stopped us to give us candy. We then went over to my parents home and I got a couple hand fulls of candy. We then ended up staying at my parents house and watched National Treasure. We didn't do much, but it was fun!

WOW! It has been a while since we last wrote! Don't worry... we are still alive. We want to document some of the things we have done since September.

I now have a new job, I am an instructional assistant at Granite Ridge Intermediate in the autistic program there. I now do the same thing David does for work, but I am working with kids who are a little older.

We both finished a great semester at Fresno City College. David is going to be attending Fresno State in a couple of weeks and I will start my last semester at Fresno City in a week. School and work keeps us both pretty busy (hence no blog posts since September).

Now I will write several posts to try and update you on our lives.