Kristina Chernikova is living with us this year as most everyone knows. Here she is with Talia and Abbigail. They think she is great and so do we.
Kristina is attending Declo high school this year and is a member of the FFA. They were able to attend the Eastern Idaho State fair in Blackfoot. She thought that was great and she even rode the mechanical bull.
For Declo's homecoming
week, they dressed up differently every day. This Kristina with Caleb Searle on their crazy day.
This is our talented family playing rock band last summer. Notice the high level of concentration on each of their faces. In case you don't recognize everyone. It is Chelsea singing, Hyrum and Devon on guitars and Sarah at the drums. It was a fun time.
This is our water sliding party also last July. It ended with everyone watching the little boys play in the puddle of water on the plastic tarp.
I loved this action shot of Nate and Chantille holding Cooper and Carson. The boys loved it, I think.
Talia is in 6th grade this year and participates in cross country. She is getting to be a pretty good runner. She took 7th place in this race.
This is how Talia looked on Crazy day. Her school had spirit week a few weeks ago and this one was crazy day. Chantille helped with the hairdo but Talia did the rest.
This is my lovely hanging basket of flowers that are full of snow. My guess is that they won't bloom any more.
In this picture you can see Dad's pickup that got stuck trying to get up our driveway last night. Did I mention that all of these vehicles are four wheel drive? Those light yellow strips at the top of the picture are our neighbors corn field. The corn is the only crop that shows above the snow.
HI FAMILY!
It's time to sign up to run the Zeitgeist. It's going to be Saturday, November 1st. Whoever wants to do it should go to http://www.zhalfmarathon.com/index.htm and register there. Let us know if you're up to the challenge. Hyrum, you'd better get exercising, or I will run you into the hill.
Take care everyone!!
-DEVON
Erik and I went to the controversial BYU vs. UW game on Saturday. It was a beautiful, sunny day for football.
Below is a picture of the score at halftime. 14-14.
Here is the final score. BYU-28 UW-27. What a heart stopper of a game. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. You might notice many of the UW fans have already left. They were quite upset. It is still a major news story around here. If you have been living in a bubble, here is what happened. BYU scored to make it 28 to 21 and gave the ball back to UW with 3:30 on the clock. UW drove and we should have recovered a fumble once and had them stopped because they went for it on a 4th down and 10 to go. And they made it!! Then they were on the 3 yard line and the UW quarterback juked and jived his way to the end zone, celebrated a little too much and landed a 15 yard penalty for the PAT. Which then BYU blocked to win the game! WAHOO!!
Here is the happy BYU crowd and the depressed UW crowd. Also the football players are coming around and giving high 5s to some people. It was an exciting game. I am so glad that we got to go. Also my old boss was there and we got to hang out with her, because she is the one that hooked us up with the tickets.
We went to the beach on Labor Day. It felt a little more like a parking lot. There was a lot of traffic (cars, horses and scooters) driving on the beach. It was crazy. We both had never seen a car drive on the beach before. We even did it. 
One of the 2 whole sand dollars we found. Erik got really excited every time we found a large chunk of one. After about 1/2 hour of finding many pieces we found this whole one. We walked a long the beach for about 1 mile or so. The water was cold. But we still stuck our feet in it. 
It was beautiful. It was sunny and around 65 degrees. It took us about 2 1/2 hours to get there. We packed a picnic and ate that on the beach. We also played card games, which Erik thought was silly, but I liked it. 
There we are at the beach. This is not fake. 
Our shadows still exist! This is proof that there is sun in Washington. We even got sun burnt on our legs, because we rolled up our pants. All and all it was a great day. Goodbye.
Here he is being very enthusiastic about his new glasses. Notice that they are not rimmed glasses! 
Here is a side view. He has never had glasses that go straight back, so it is a little weird for him. He likes them and I think they look great on him. I hope all is well.
HI FAMILY,
I put a bunch of pictures on my facebook. Since it seems to take forever to put pictures on the blog, I'll just give you the address and you can check them out.
It is:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003798&l=d979c&id=1379615591
Erik skillfully cutting my cake up for my birthday. He baked it himself! He did a great job, it was delicious. 
Here is what Erik was creating with my cake. He has done this every year since we have started dating! 
Erik put 25 candles on the cake, I am only 23. How rude. I couldn't do it in one blow, because of the massiveness of the cake. 
YAY! A bread machine. It doesn't only cook the bread, it kneads it too. (Erik didn't know that!)
The day after my birthday we packed up to enjoy a weekend in Burley. We had a great time. We played on a really large slip and slide on Saturday, but because I was playing I didn't take any pictures. Hopefully, mom will post some. This picture is of Coral. I asked her to smile for the camera, but she wouldn't. So she got this ball to smile for her. 
Carson, who is now 1, and Cooper showing us their musical abilities. It was great to see them both and I can't believe how much they are growing. 
We had a birthday party for me and dad and all those August birthdays (Carson, Talia, Abbigail, Cooper, Quinn, etc...) Those are Jon's arms. He and Quinn, Wendy, Jacey, Parker and Paige were there and of course Grandma and Grandpa. 
Here is our birthday cake. Nate baked it. It was great and it took a lot of time. Thanks again Nate! 
Monday, the last day we were in Burley we went to Shoshone Falls. 
We had a picnic down at the falls with stuff we bought at Costco. 
Saturday I did something that I have never done...wax a car. Here is Erik demonstrating the proper wax on technique. 
Wax off. Notice the difference between the two sides? So that is what we did this weekend. It was a lot of work good thing Erik did most of it. Oh and a bird pooped on it at church today. RUDE!! 
This is where we went on the 4th of July. If you look at the map you see a little green thing poking out into the water. That is the Dungeness Spit. We walked along that small bit of sand, all the way to the end. It took 6 hours, but it was a lot of fun. 
This is a very happy tree that we found along the way. There was a lot of driftwood around the beach. It looked similar to the last pictures we posted, Ebey's Landing. 
This was the final prize at the end of the 5.5 miles, a lighthouse. At the top of the lighthouse were some binoculars and we could see Victoria, BC! It was pretty good. That is it right above my head. 
Here is the lighthouse. The light house use to be at the end of the spit when it was build in the 1800s. Now there is about a 1/2 mile past the light house. The spit grows an average of 15 feet a year. Crazy. Soon it will stretch all the way to Canada! 
This may just look like water, but in the water are some small black dots. Those small dots are harbor seals! It was really fun to watch them hang out and splash around for us.
Here is the beach that we walked along. We saw lots of crabs that were dead and broken seashells. 
This is the hill that we climbed up. We started walking up the dune/hill then made a loop down and finished our hike on the beach. I don't know why Erik is leaning, but he is. 
This is the path down to the beach. We saw a bald eagle about 10 minutes into our hike, so that was pretty awesome. I also almost stepped on a snake, but I didn't notice it! Erik did, however! 
