*On the one picture with the brown and white dragons I did it with the dodge tool and different brushes. My second picture ever done. I am still very proud with it!! Dragons names are Jake and Vixena*

*The one titled ‘Let Go’ I did in Febuary. But finished the highlights and foreground (not back) like yesterday. I liked the foreground style  form a video on youtube so I tried it out, it worked out great! It is on a filter called glass, I really liked it. The dragons name is Sunna. (Grandma LaRene should known whose name it is. He He)*

*Spyro comes form a video game I adore. There is two images that I used in this picture, the sky and sand. Tried a style and turned out great! Layers where softened to look like so. Took only one day to do. ^^*

*The dragon in the dance lights is mine. I liked to make it look like SuZair was dancing. Another one dayer.  I loved the name form grandma LaRene’s book ‘Stones’ Quest #1′*

I don’t love the way I shaded. I dislike how the smudge tool and blur tool works. Just gotta work with what you have. :shrugs: I do sketches before line art. Basic Colors. Dark Shading, then light. Details, next background.

Questions are always welcome. I can do requests for FAMILY ONLY or good friends. Just my type of things I draw. I will try my best to put more on here.

Emily ^^

As a family we went skiing the other day.  We had a lot of fun.  Something that we wanted to start having more of was hobbies and activities as a family that we do together.  A family that plays together stays together.

Here are a few shots of the fun.

Jolyn and Emily attempting to get up.

Blake taking a moment

Abby taking a moment

Blake doing the Pizza

Abby doing the Pizza

Jolyn watching the kids

Emily doing very well

Partial Group Shot after skiing

She usually leaves around 7:00 to 7:30 am in the morning and comes home just in time for the kids to return from school.  That leaves me to stay home and make sure the kids are off for school and then to get myself off to work.  I can say that I have become pretty good at making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids.  They don’t always like what is on the school menu.  Actually most the items on the school menu are pretty disgusting.  I think it is sad when home lunch can be better than school lunch.

One thing that I have not become good at and that is doing girls hair.  Thank goodness our girls are old enough to do their own or there would be a pony tail shooting one way off the left and the other straight up on the right.  I can do my boy’s hair.  I ask him if he wants it to be a mohawk, spiky, or combed to the side.  I am down for three styles.

As a family we took one incredible trip to Nauvoo, Illinois.  It was probably one of the best trips we have ever taken.  We surprised the kids the morning of with a Nintendo DS and a bunch of games.  This was one of the magic tricks to make a 43 hour drive bearable.

Us at the Rockies game

Our first stop was to Jolyn’s Uncle Bob and Aunt Marion’s house.  We spent two great days with them.  They took us to the Denver Museum and a Rocky’s Game.  It was our first Major League Baseball game, and it was awesome.  We also visited with Doug and Lisa and saw their awesome home movie theater.  Lisa was claiming Doug was being too geeky, but I totally digged it.  I guess that makes me geeky too by Lisa’s standards.  =)

Kids at the Omaha Zoo

After spending time in Denver, we moved on to Omaha and visited my little sister Clyda.  We met up with John and her at the Omaha Zoo, which is a really neat zoo.  We then went and saw a pageant in Kainsville that both John and her were in a few years back.  It was a real cute pageant about the pioneers coming to Winter Quarters and making a go of things after being expelled from Nauvoo.

John and Clyda took us to a restaurant called Ricks where we had dinner on the Missouri River.  They had this huge public pedestrian bridge that they just finished recently.  We crossed the Missouri River on foot and had the grand opportunity of standing in two places at once.

Being in two places at once

We spent some time at Winter Quarters and had a tour of the visitor center there and walked around on the temple grounds.  It truly was a special place, and to stand where they stood at the grave sites was humbling.

We then drove on to Nauvoo.  While crossing Iowa, I got pulled over by a highway patrol.  He says he clocked us at 73 and then at 94 and then back at 73.  He wanted to know if we had any electronic devices in the car.  My kids at the time were chatting with each other on their Nintendo DS and apparently they affect police radar.  He gave us a warning, but I think what saved me was we were obviously a Mormon family, with Utah license plates, going to Nauvoo and my wife was sitting in the front knitting.  She was making a gift for John and Clyda and her Aunt and Uncle.  The officer had no question that there was anything fishy about us.

Family in front of the Nauvoo Temple

I have to admit that Nauvoo was the best part of the trip.  In the end, the kids kept saying they didn’t want to leave.  They really have made some neat improvements there, and it is something else to actually see the temple where it once stood.  We did all the activities, saw the pageant, saw some incredible art of Christ, was entertained by a show or two of culture river music and drank in the spirit of that place.

The kids really wanted to go into the temple, but obviously could not due to their ages.  We made a commitment as a family that when Blake returned from his mission that we would return as a family and go through together.  We were sad to leave, but eventually we did.

Us at Carthage Jail

We ended the Nauvoo experience by going to Carthage Jail and seeing where the prophet Joseph Smith was killed.  Emily was so moved by the spirit that she was crying a few times.  I couldn’t of been more pleased with the whole experience.

We went back to Omaha and spent another day with John and Clyda.  Then we went back to Bob and Marian’s house for another stay.  Then we went to Vernal for Jolyn’s high school reunion and then we reached home.  In total it was 10 days of travel.  I would do it again in a heart beat.

I took over 200 photos from the trip and made a video that is close to 20 minutes, so the few you see here do not do our trip justice, but at least you have a post on our blog for the first time in five months.

One of the events in the rodeo was to release farm animals and let the children attempt to capture them.  If the child captures the animal, they get to keep it.  Our three city kids went out with their country cousins to go capture some animals.  I honestly didn’t think they would actually capture anything, but at the same time I had a bad feelings.

Well, within minutes, Emily came walking up to the fence holding a chicken.  We were totally shocked.  We told her to go put it down so that someone else can capture it.  She walked away and we thought we were safe.  All of a sudden, we saw Blake walking towards us with a chicken, next we saw Abby walking towards us with a chicken.  Finally Emily came walking towards us with the same chicken as well.  She decided not to put the chicken down.

Here we were a city family with three chickens.

Blake with Rocky

Abby with Shadow

Emily with ZeeZee

Well, we left Genola the next day without three chickens.  We left them with Jolyn’s brother.  They said that they would find a good home for the three chickens.  Their neighbors all have chickens.  My mother-in-law still starts laughing uncontrollably when you start talking about the night.  The pictures come from her.

We had a wonderful weekend out in Vernal.  We helped Jolyn’s mom build two large flower beds in front of her house with stones that went three high.  We brought in a bunch of dirt and put in some new window wells.  We raised the dirt about a foot in these flower beds.  It looks nice and when she gets some plants in there it will really change how her house looks.

We then went out and pruned some old apple trees.  We think these trees are around 75 years old.  We burned the green branches and had to get the fire pretty hot to do it.  Put it this way, I was standing four feet away from the fire and a puff of smoke hit my face and singed my eyebrows and eyelashes.  That is a hot fire.

The next day, a friend of ours called and asked if we could help brand his cows.  So we drove a while out of town from Vernal and helped him brand 90 calves.  We parked our van in a coral where we release the mother cows while we brand the calves.  I don’t know why, but the cows sit there and lick our white van.  Do they think it is ice cream?  I had to stop and wash the van on our way back into town.

Here are a few pictures of the branding.

(My favorite is Kaysville Ponds, what is yours?)

Arches at Sunset	East Beach	Kaysville Ponds
Mountain Storm	Underwater Adventure	Waterfall

If you have a word of wisdom or gambling addiction, you do not want to go on one of these conventions.  Investment and Annuity companies wine and dine us, literately.  Once or twice a day, we had bar tenders at our command and could order anything under the sun.  This is when I get my feel for Orange Juice and vitamin C.  A good bar will keep the best Orange Juice.

One wholesaler from DWS did take us to a really nice steak house and to the Cirque Du Soleil, which is an interesting show.  This steak house had baked potato bread, which was heavenly.

After being pampered, wined and dined for four days, I came home late Friday night and had to get up early the next morning to go do service at the Layton Bishop Warehouse.  I have never done this before and it was a neat experience.  It was so humbling to be in Vegas and then serving people.  I’ll take the serving any day.  I met some of the neatest people as well.

If you haven’t had a chance to work in the Bishop’s Warehouse, I highly recommend it.

You know this is going to show up in her wedding video in the future.

The next morning we asked her how comfortable she was and she said it was very comfortable.  No she has not seen “I am Legend” where Will Smith’s character slept in the tub because he was afraid of the zombies outside.