Sobrinos y Primos

I just got some pictures of my nephews from my SIL Jocy (David's younger sister) and thought I'd share them with you all. I've posted pics of the nephews and niece (go Nora!) on my side and thought it only fair to show off the other side. Plus, they are adorable! Not to mention I am amazed at Jocy's stamina. Gabielito is the same age as Malia and the twins are now 9 months! For a few days there, Jocy had 3 boys under the age of one! And I get overwhelmed at times with my little Mali!?!? We miss them all tons and wish we could visit more often. Hopefully we can get them to visit us up here. It's warming up, I promise!!


Little Gabriel, Tony and Alex (just guessing on the order. I know Alex has a mole on his forehead but can't tell from the pictures).

My New Calling

So I posted the other day that I got the calling of Stake Primary Music Chorister. Well, after my Stake Primary meeting, I've been informed that is not really my calling. Silly me, I took the Stake President's word! Turns out that the official calling is Stake Primary Music Specialist. Umm.. okay. It was pointed out in the meeting that my calling was "made-up". I prefer "unofficial". This girl of faith believes it to be a calling of the Lord, despite it's unorthodox status. I guide the ward primary choristers if they need assistance and am in charge of the music for all stake primary activities (auxiliary training meetings, Priesthood Preview, Great to be Eight, etc.). I am super excited for it. We have an auxiliary training meeting next Thursday. I put together a children's choir from my ward to sing at it. Should be lots of fun. I am going to generate a resource list for the choristers. So if any of you have served as the ward primary chorister and have a favorite website that you used for ideas, do share. I was also thinking of getting together an email list of the choristers in the stake so they can share their ideas. I toyed with a blog for them, but am not sure if they are bloggers. I may be making it more complicated than it needs to be. All I know is that when I was the primary chorister, it would have been nice to share and get ideas from others. Especially since they are all preparing to teach the same songs. If you have any other suggestions, pass them along! So there you have it.. the duties of the Stake Primary Music Specialist!

Baby Animal Days

On Saturday we went to the American West Heritage Center for their Baby Animal Days. We went with my brother, Bart, and his wife, Lori, and their two boys, Max and Caleb. It was a great time and we loved spending time with them.

Here is Malia petting (yuck!) a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. She also pet a millipede.

Here are Caleb and Mali riding on some Bouncing Burros. That's really not their name, but I can't remember what they are really called. All I know is that they cost $25! Too bad, Mali would have loved one.

Here are some pretty lambs. This one's for you Grandma!

As you can see, Malia loved the lambs, too!

Here she is petting a little goat. She kept trying to stick her finger in it's eyes and ears.

Here she is with the chickens. These chickens were okay, but we saw some later that nipped at Malia and she freaked out. Of course that happened right after a boy came running by and plowed Malia and Caleb over! Rough moment. We recovered by petting baby ducks.

I'm not even sure what Mali was looking at, but I just thought it was cute how intently she was peering.

Here is Malia walking with Papa. David had just gotten off work, thus the uniform.

Here she is petting a HUGE bunny.

Caleb and Malia petting a baby Beefalo. He was very dirty. Kids didn't mind, though. Thankfully there were several hand sanitizer dispensers!

Checking out the llama.

"David for Sale"- hee! hee! And Malia's shoe.

Here is a video of Malia and Caleb on the Bouncing Burros. Fun for all!

Who would have thought?

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 61 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

There are 613,779 people in the U.S. with the first name Amanda.

Statistically the 80th most popular first name.

There are 30,385 people in the U.S. with the last name Mata.

Statistically the 1170th most popular last name.

One Word Tag

This one is kind of fun because you have to try and say it all in one word. I'm going to try really hard to be a rule follower... Here goes.

1. Where is your cell phone? pocket

2. Significant other? David

3. Worst bad habit? spending

4. Hair? brown

5. Favorite food? mexican

6. Your Favorite thing? love

7. Your dream last night? hair

8. Favorite drink? Water

9. Dream/Goal? Happiness

10. Room you are in? living

11. Your ex? none

12. Your fear? finances

13. Where do you want to be in six years? Iowa

14. Where were you last night? home

15. What you're not? patient

16. Muffins? Annie's

17. Wish list item? vacation

18. Where did you grow up? Iowa

19. Last thing you do? list

20. What are you wearing? jeans

21. Your TV? on

22. Your pets? fish

23. Your computer? laptop

24. Your life? challenging

25. Your mood? irritated

26. Missing someone? Iowans

27. Your car? dead

28. Something you are not wearing? makeup

29. Favorite store? Walmart

30. Your summer? eventful

31. Love someone? David

32. Last time you laughed? today

33. Last time you cried? yesterday

I did it! May not all make sense, but there it is. Do share ladies.

Word Verification

So just spent a too large chunk of my time checking all the blogs and leaving my stunning comments. I admit, I may be addicted to blogging. Yet the ability to communicate with all of my friends and family is a highlight of my day. However, there is one sore spot- WORD VERIFICATION. Maybe I am taking this too personally but, who fails this little test? Me, of course! Twice today I had to try again because I had typed in the wrong letters. It really trips a girl up when they put the v and w together. How sad is it that this is one of my challenges? Tell me I'm not alone in failing the WORD VERIFICATION!

Random Cell Phone Pictures

I needed to clear the pictures off of my cell phone and thought I'd share a few. Not always the best quality of picture. The cell phone is just so handy. These first 4 pics are of Malia playing with her cousin Caleb (Bart's oldest boy). Lori and I hung out last Friday night while Bart and David went to the Jazz game. It was good to hang out with her and let the kids play together. Don't be too concerned with the first pic. I happened to catch the one time Caleb was playing a little rough and pulled Malia's hair. Believe me, it's usually Malia being the bully and shoving! They have lots of fun playing together. Caleb had Malia laughing so hard. I don't even remember what he was doing, but she was seriously laughing. I'm glad they get to hang out.



Here's Malia painting her face with yogurt. She was also practicing her sad and happy faces. This was SO last week. This week she won't even eat yogurt. Wish I could keep up with her food preferences! Gotta love the bed head, too!

Here she is "helping" me with dishes. It takes three times as long to get them done and everything is soaked by the time we are done, but she has a good time. If I even turn on the sink, she pulls over the chair to "help".

I decided to try those little pink sponge rollers on Malia's hair. The results were.... strange. The ones all along the hair line fell out and the hair was bone straight. The ones in the middle got crazy curly and looked scary. Oh, well.

"Uht-oh, Mama". She brought me this baby this morning. I couldn't fix it because the plastic piece was broken. She was devastated. This was our first experience with Mama not being able to fix it. Not to mention I'm sure it was a little tramatic to have her baby's head come off in her hands!

So there you have it. All the excitement we've got here. I'm off to Salt Lake City today to go to a training session. I just got called as the Stake Primary Chorister. Fun, huh?