Because blog addresses are complicated

I updated my blog in case anyone would like to take a peek here.

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Inviting John?

How do we invite John to this blog?  I also want to say what fun it has been to have him home.  One of the things I like best, besides the fact that there's no leftovers, and someone tall can reach things for me, and James is so happily occupied, and Esther sassiness is diffused by him, one of the BEST things is to hear him SING!  Love it!

ROME on Cruise?!

I think we should do a cruise for our next ROME.  Throwing out that idea early.  I checked April 2016, departing from Galveston and going to Cozumel, Yucatan and Progreso Mexico, 5 days $350 per person. And maybe Joshua and John will both have wives???

bienvenido a casa!

Outside the Jackson Hole airport.  John was waiting by the curb.  

 A tradition of his mission is to have a suit lined with the Guatemalan flag and also personalized.  John's has in Spanish "No empty seats in the Celestial Kingdom."

It's good for Esther to have a big brother around.  Both John and Joshua did plenty of teasing, so fun to see!

Christmas Exchange List

Here is a list of who is who for Christmas. I think we decided that you can either get a gift for the whole family or just for the couple. Also if people want to leave a short list of things they would like in the comment section that would be helpful. And jerky, nuts, and socks are obviously on the list. :)

First column is where you find your name and the second column is who you are on.

Alan and Sheri and kids at home à Taylors
Tillerys à Tanners
Taylors à Daltons
Tanners à Joseph and Eliza
Daltons à Joshua
Joseph and Eliza à John
Joshua à Alan and Sheri and kids at home
John à Tillerys

Jared is not really on this list but I figure we"ll be contributing to a package for him. If I got anything wrong let me know so I can edit it.

Just so y'all can be excited for Christmas, here are a few pictures from last year.

A pile of hair, A few "mere scratches", and more

Well I thought I would give everyone a little update on my life. One of these last weeks I was feeling a little scraped up. This is a picture of my shoulder. I was diving into the pool at our apartment complex and I hit the bottom of the pool. :) I didn't hit too hard, but I scraped up my face and split my bottom lip. I knocked one of my brackets on my braces loose (the orthodontist had to glue it back on) and I scraped my shoulder a little. It sounds more spectacular than it really was so I have to show this little lame picture. 

I needed a haircut... but I wasn't going on any trips where
Dad, Joseph, Chrystal, etc could cut it.

I asked a girl from my ward to cut it for me. She worked at sport clips for a little bit before her mission. It took a little while, and I ended up with this nice pile of hair

You can't tell very well in the picture, 

but my hair is piled up in a little pyramid about 

6  inches tall. 

There was a TON of it. haha. 

I am done with my classes for the summer and I am getting ready for fall classes. :)

Random

When we were cleaning through Jared's room Esther found these and said, "Oh Look!  It's me and Chrystal!"

The Second Part of the Third Book in The Trilogy of Esther Erickson That Does Not Yet Have An Official Name.

And it came to pass that the title was much too long. So after many days of pondering, I, Esther, decided upon the title Adventure Number 3. And i beheld that it was a bad title still but according to the laws of the lazy i left it. And it came to pass that my title was as the Law of Moses, soon to be replaced by a newer and better title as soon as i think of one. And it came to even more pass that I, Esther, grew weary of writing in the language of my fathers..

Okay. Soo my part one i had emailed out to y'all. Hope you liked it:) Maybe ill do a little summary to get you refreshed and back on the edge of your seat. Or maybe you were dangling on the edge of a cliff and im about to push you back off so you can hang some more.

Just kidding, calm down.. Im sure your seat is just fine ;)

Anndd i dont really want to summarize so just go back and look at the email if you cant remember..

And while im venting.. My Tablet Wouldnt Work So Now I Have To Go All Old School And Do It On The Computer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh and this is me as a mermaid :) Not at camp this was just last week hanging out with friends. Theres your random pic for the day ;)


Okay soo back to camp.

This is Me, Hannah Seruynk, and Megan Larsen! 

This is all the YCLs cause we rock!! In between Hannah and Megan is America Ellison. She was in the bathroom when we took the first photo so she missed out.. But we are all doing the I Love You signs which fit right in with our theme. And it also makes a "Y" "C" "L" if you can figure it out.

Now, while all of you are making the sign and figuring it out, im going to keep explaining pics..

This is another pic of our awesome baseball tees

And this is one of our awesome YCL sweatshirts.

Okay. So Wednesday morning started off like any other. It was really pretty too and a clear blue sky. The YCLs were assigned a ward to eat breakfast with and give a devotional to as well. America and I went to 3rd ward. She introduced us as Sister Erickson and Sister Ellison :) It was a nice touch. Then we did certification. Megan and I and a couple other girls were over the 4th years. We played Cat and Mouse (no not ours Joseph. this one is also known as Missionary Tag). We finished certification up and then it was lunch time! YCLs ate with their home wards for lunch. I totally chowed down on the watermelon cuz at the ycl camp we had like all junk food for snacks. After lunch was scripture and journal time. I wanted to go to the dock for mine so after helping clean up i started to leave. But i found some applesauce packet things (yes the kind you feed to babies..) and America loves them haha so i grabbed a few and went by her camp to share the love ;) She was really excited! And she wanted to come along so we went out on the dock together and did our scriptures n stuff. Then we talked for a while. It was getting pretty hot so we wanted to "accidentally push" each other in. But it wasnt free time yet... so being the good, never rebelious, always law-abiding, not very fun ycls that we ALWAYS are... ;) We decided not to haha. Actually we just thought it was prob best to limit our rule breaking haha. Anyways... so after that it was classes!! We had a craft/tie dye station and a zumba station. America and i had matching things to tie dye but we were gonna do that the next day.. (or so we thought). So we did zumba. I had always thought zumba was like a dumb-downed, simplifed version of yoga so i wasnt ever really interested. But it is actually super fun!! Its like dancing and working out but more fun ;) It was Me, Alexis, America, and another girl who actually takes zumba classes in the front row. So we were all into it and rockin it. I think someone was taking a video ill have to track that down sometime haha. After zumba it was free time!! We went swimming. Hannah joined us later because she wanted to work on her talk some more. She was supposed to give a 12 min talk that night for our fireside thingy. She had already been working on it for like 3 weeks but she wanted to make sure she was completely ready. Shes so cool :) This was her last year and shes going to BYU Hawaii in the fall! Swimming was really fun tho. We were having pushing in wars on the dock (i always won so dont worry about bringing dishonor to the family name, or the cow.. ;) ). And i got to show off with a few back flips.. ya know the usual haha. After swimming Me, Jessica Goodmansen, Megan, Karalyn Mcguire, and America washed our hair in the spigot. (It took me forever to spell that.. ) When we got back to our camp, the leaders were kinda freakin out. The priesthood had told them that everyone should go to the pavilions because of a storm coming. Our leaders were like "Okay everyone change and go to the pavilion right away!! Get out!!! (etc.)" So we had to strip real fast in our tent to get out of our swimsuits and change to warm clothes. America and a few other girls were like "Why cant we just stay in the tent? Its not that bad..." But everyone still went. I admit America and i were dragging our feet a little.. We changed a little slower and even swung by her ward's camp on the way there to stock up on snacks to bring with us.. Just a few essentials like a whole tub of gold fish, granola bars, red vines... when we made it to the pavilion it was just starting to rain. Right when we walked in it was pouring. Then an old man was snoring haha jk it was thunder! The wind was crazy too and it was crazy to see the rain on the lake! Some of the 1st year girls were scared so Sis. Jensen started us singing to help. Americas 2 younger sisters were hanging out with me and we were like whoah this is so cool its like a movie! Right about then we watched a tree top break, and then fall. Everything was like slllooooowwww mmmooottiiooonnnn...and then it hit. From our angle we couldnt tell whether or not it hit the YCL tent. Then we saw more trees fall. After it had calmed down a bit Pres. Nicholes showed up and said he had a message from the other pavilion. He held up his phone and played a video of all the other girls yelling the camp call. "HI LOW MINNIE MINNIE COW COW MMM CHOW CHOW PENNY WOW WOW WHOOO HOOOO!" It was awesome:) He said they had all been yelling that trying to get us to do it back and we couldnt even hear them! So he recorded us doing it and went back to the other pavilion to show them. Sister Davis, the yw stake pres, said we had to wait 30 min after the last roll of thunder before we could leave the pavilion. Some of the leaders started making contraction jokes when we had to keep restarting the time. Finally they let just the YCLs go see their camp..... 

This is our tent.. I had been sleeping on the left side so my stuff wasnt directly under the tree... but still

Another pic of our tent

Lots of people were coming to look at it. So i kinda felt like a celebrity. Yeah look at that tree, right on my tent too... No no autographs please;)

This was probably the saddest one... our dutch oven pizza all over the ground!!!

Yeah if we had been anywhere in our campsite.. we woulda died..

Another tree pic

This is Sis. Davis snappin pics

Another tent.. This one was actually in my home ward. So i was a double hobo!! Whoo! 

So i was planning on stayin with America's ward since they had plenty of room. But after a lot of talking and some praying the leaders called camp off and we all went home! There was another storm coming later and we didnt want to get caught in another one. We were all pretty sad to leave. They said there would be some firesides.. but we all knew it wouldnt be the same. But we didnt want another storm so we left. 

Thursday night we had a fireside. Hannah got to give her talk, and we still went around to the different stations as planned. I was a group leader so i took my group around. Friday night we had the thursday skits (or talents) and then the friday night games. Megan and I were the YCLs were in charge of friday, and let me just say that was going to be party day! We had ALL the fun stuff planned for then. Testimony meeting was supposed to be saturday morning. But we did it wednesday night just with your wards. The skits friday were really fun:) I got to eat nutella like a pig in ours... youll have to look it up on Facebook. and then the games were awesome!! Since friday was Christmas theme, so were all our games. It was called "You gotta Wanna" based of a general conference talk. Very good message. You can look that up too. ;) We had to make it all fun and then tie it in to the savior and how we "gotta want it" to make temple blessings and the celestial kingdom worth it. 

Santa Clause beards..

TP X-mas tree

And "chubby snowman" aka chubby bunny 

After it all we got to open our valentines boxes (our milk jugs) and read the notes by ourselves. Then pres nicholes talked about zions camp and how it had seemed like a failure too, but it really wasnt because all the men who were willing and obedient were called as apostles later. It was a good bitter-sweet happy ending:)

This is my valentines milk jug :) I let America and her sister Glory decorate it after i wrote my name in purple.. It kinda explains everything haha

This is Mirror lake, before we left. <3

Annndd thats it!! Any questions please call my secretary... or mee..... haha. Thanks for waiting! 

THE END

Famous Dancers

In case you didn't catch it on facebook here's a "Summer Classic".   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLeK_CVr7Uk&feature=youtu.be

Happy Birthday Chrystal!

I thought about you on your birthday lots!!! What did you do? I hope it was a fun one!
take care
Nicolina

House Listed at long last!

We met with Jack Schwartzmeyer last night.  He's so good to work with.  The market has softened a little he said, so instead of 45 days, he's predicting 60 days we'll have an offer and then it's about 45 days for escrow.  100 days puts us the first of November, the 13th actually, Esther counted it out.  The next step to get to SV is for Dad to find a job he can take remotely.  We appreciate your prayers for that.

It's been quite a journey for us, for me personally anyway.  Learning how to trust and have patience with my faith.  Feeling the consequences of neglecting things, without getting too down on myself and just moving forward with hard work.  I'm glad for the things I've been learning.  I know there will still be more learning as we go through the additional steps before moving.  Right now we need to practice keeping the house in a constant state of being presentable for showings.

We so appreciate all of your faith and prayers for us.  We love you!!

 The trim is gray, the shutters rust, brick colored.  I actually chose a brick and matched the color of a swatch to that brick.  Jack says the shutters really make it pop, and he was impressed.

I like the white pillars over the dark blue that it used to be.  Our pansies in our hanging pots are struggling a little.  Esther thinned them and added fertilizer, I dead headed them.  I was wishing for Nicolina to come teach me how to do it all.  I think of all the talents and skills of all my children.  We do so appreciate all the help we have already received from so many of you.  We are truly blessed with amazing children!

Mountain Day

We haven't had much time in the mountains this summer.  We took off fairly early Saturday morning.  We went to Upper Glidden Lake.  Esther took most of the photos.  She's training her photographer's eye.

 I'm trying to learn how to write around photos on this blog.

James catching a fish!  He, Esther and Dad all caught several, but some got away and some were too small to keep. 

James went swimming for his lure that got snagged.  He said the water was cold, but I think it refreshed him.

We took some time to shoot the BB gun.

 We also picked almost 2 quarts of huckleberries on our way down.  Some weren't quite deep purple, but still were tasty.

 Indian Paint Brush