November is Crazy! + a new puppy!

November has been a busy month! It’s been non-stop every day. First off I went to phoenix because my dad had a meeting at Petsmart HQ (that’s weird, I know) on our way there we had a tire blow out, that wasn’t fun. We didn’t stay long in Phoenix, right after my dads meeting was over we went to California for Disney land, church service and my dad had to attend a Vision Meeting for the church. I got to see the Bishop and District Elder again!! I had pictures but I'm not going to post them. It gets better, I was allowed to eat dinner with them too ☺ originally it was just ministers and wives of the Vision group dinner but when the Deccan from Phoenix couldn’t make it my sister and I were invited. It was a wonderful night out. The next morning my sister, mom, and myself drove to Anaheim to spend the day at Disney land again while my dad was at the meeting.

Back home again it was school as usual. Since Fluffy passed away we have been looking to get my Grandparents a new dog and we found one the Friday before Thanks giving. He is a cream and white Lhasa Apso male, his name in Tron. He is so cute!

    him playing with his favorite horse toy

Our family eats thanksgiving dinner the Sunday before thanksgiving because that’s when we have the thanksgiving church service, and it allows my family to keep our 20-year tradition of going to Disneyland for thanksgiving. Yup, we went to Disney Land again. This time for 5 days. We did something different too, we ate thanksgiving dinner there, they have this “Thanksgiving day feast” and oh my goodness it was a feast. I ate too much. Way too much. The food was amazing!

                                                      this was the dining hall with four buffet stations 0_0


After, my family and myself could barley walk so we went to see a movie and digest ha ha, we saw Arthur Christmas, such a cute movie! I loved it. I just got back Sunday (11/27) night. I'm glad to be back, I really missed Tron and my bed. Things are almost back to normal except for the fact that my Dad left for Utah Monday morning, for another meeting, so I wont be seeing him again for another week. But after that, things will be normal… except for Christmas is coming soon and I have to prepare the house for gusts and practice for the Christmas program at church. Then things will calm down... except for going on my grandpas birthday cruise and traveling to Canada for Day of the youth, then I’m back in California for a youth retreat… it just never stops. But that’s a good thing.

Finished my Book

The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a ‘complicated’ five star rating for this book. Ben tells a good story with a unique point of view not seen in many books set in this time period. The story has an obvious plot and the book is well organized. My main concern and issue about this book was that little effort was put into creating a connection between the characters and the reader, in my opinion this is a fatal mistake. If the reader does not care about the characters the reader wont care what happens to the characters and wont really enjoy the book. This rating is complicated because Conn Iggulden’s books are 5 stars hands down, and Ben’s book didn’t come near Conn’s in quality but it was still a great read, worthy of 5 stars only because of the plethora of books worthy of 3 or 4 stars under Ben’s book. The plot didn’t really pick up until the end, the last four chapters had me unable to put the book down, the rest of the book kind of dragged on. I do appreciate the length of the book, 525 pages, but he could of put more into those pages…

Another thing I didn’t really like about the book was that you had to use the provided glossary in the back. I love that Ben used Latin words just as the Romans would of used and he used them in the same context as the Romans, but he used them too much. I didn’t like reading a chapter only to have to stop at this unknown Latin word and have to flip to the back of the book to find the meaning. Sometimes I would have to flip back three or four times a chapter. Five or six Latin words would be ideal but seven pages of Latin words in the glossary is a bit much.

All in all I will be reading the second book in this series and then the third. Its good enough to continue the series.

My Photo Book

This is a photo book i made on shuterfly.com about my Europe trip that i had the privilege of going on this summer, i hope to get it made :) Enjoy!

(lets play "how many times you can spot Amber in her basketball shirt!")

Click here to view this photo book larger

Turn your favorite photos into a photo book at Shutterfly.com.

Back from service held in Phoenix

     I made it back from Phoenix; I love Phoenix J I would never want to live there, but I LOVE to visit. Great family time, these weekend trips. So I went up with Chris, a member of youth, and his mom and grandma, it was a pleasant journey, short too, only 2 hours. We arrived, checked into there hotel, hung out for half an hour, then my parents arrived from Vegas and picked my sister and I up and took us to check into our hotel. After we settled we went out for dinner (the café down stairs) we were having a great time at dinner, every one was in a good mood, then retired Priest and Sister Klien from El Paso walked in, so they joined us for dinner as well, we are all great friends with them, so we chatted a while and ate a good meal.

     After dinner my sister and I discovered the meeting place where all the Apostles on up were gathering for there mandatory dinner/lecture with the District Apostle so we hung out right outside the door and took our pictures with as many high ranked minsters we could. We only found two, we saw plenty of deacons, rectors and priests but most of the higher ups were already seated, we did find the Bishop Whited, and the Apostle Schmitt!

 i PROMISE you that i didn't plan on wearing my basketball shirt again! why do i wear it all the time?

     Come Sunday we had a beautiful service held by the District Apostle Kolb. Towards the end of service the fire alarm went off! Thankfully it was only a false alarm, BUT while we were evacuating the building I had the opportunity to shake the District Apostles hand :D believe it or not, even evacuating was fun, the Bishop is such a goof, he comes running over with my sister saying “Quick! Lets get one [photo] in front of the fire truck!” ha ha

     After service things settled down, I guess there was an apostle from back east that has never been to In & Out Burger and the Bishop was all “W-wh-what?!” so my dad took them both to In & Out :P 

After we were invited to the District Evangelist’s house for supper. Then we headed home again. Great weekend!