I FINALLY have a little brother!!!

As you know, I am the youngest of 5 boys and so I never had a little brother. I always looked at my brothers and thought, "if I had a little brother, I'd be so much nicer to him and he'd think I was the coolest instead of thinking he was a jerk like you guys." I never felt deprived of having a little sister because (well, who wants sisters?) I had my next door neighbors who I considered to be my little sisters. Even when I married Venita, I inherited two younger sisters-in-law but her youngest brother is a year older than me so that didn't solve the problem.
Meet Aki, my new, long awaited little brother. No, L-Bizzle didn't have another baby, I decided to volunteer with the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. Having personally experienced the effects that good mentors can have in a kid's life, I decided that BBBS would be the most rewarding way I could volunteer in the community. He's a way fun kid and I can already tell that we're gonna have some good times together. Here are some pictures of our trip up to Ensign peak this past week. He made it up to the top in about 10 minutes (when we went with some friends a few weeks ago it took us about 30 minutes). Needless to say, with how active he is, I have my work cut out for me!

Ensign Peak

Last week we decided to hike Ensign Peak for FHE. We invited our only hangout friends Mike and Kim and Austin and Stephanie to go with us. We had a great time and especially loved how the pictures happened to turn out. Then we headed to Denny's for a good ol' fashioned 10:00pm breakfast/hot cocoa run. Thanks to fun friends for hanging out with us and making it an awesome evening of fun and laughter.

Congrats Chanae and David!!!

We're glad to have our house back!

Shady Chapel Concert at Kilby Court

My cool friend Jordan from work started up a band called Shady Chapel and invited us to one of his concerts. It was fun to experience the atmosphere of Kilby Court and enjoy some good music. We enjoy listening to Shady Chapel and if anyone is interested check 'em out on myspace. Jeph really enjoyed that Jordan looks like Johnny Depp, the bassist looks like Michael Moore, and the other guitarist looks like Napoleon Dynamite!

The whole lot of us: me, Jeph, Mindy, Paul, Amber, Jordan, and Jordan's wife.
Me and the chicas from work: Mindy and Amber.

Happy 95th Grandma Simmons

Grandma Simmons is still looking hot at her 95th birthday party. What other 95 year old shows up to her birthday party sporting high heels?
Mike and Jeph and their lovely guitar duet with special guests the lovely ladies.
Jaelyn put together this awesome lap quilt from the family.
Us with the special birthday girl!

Valentines Day

Jeph and I had a fantastic Valentine's Day. Jeph showed up as a freaking hot cowboy in a tux (Lucky Me!!) and made an excellent rib dinner. It was pretty much awesome!



Then I surprised Jeph with his v-day present. As you can tell, he was not very impressed to find the first part of his gift consisted of a lot of scraps from some of his favorite tee-shirts. Sorry babe!
Luckily I have an extremely talented sister who just so happened to turn the remainder of those scraps into a pretty awesome tee-shirt quilt! Thanks again Mel!
I am so glad Jeph ended up liking his present, because there is no way I could make up for destroying all of those DMB shirts!

Jeph's Other Birthday Celebrations

We got to enjoy Jeph's favorite Boston Cream Pie with the Simmons clan for Jeph's birthday!

It seems from the cards Jeph got for his birthday, when people see bathroom humor they think of our sweet Jeph!
And some cool gifts:

MARCUS!

The Saturday before Jeph's birthday, we decided to hold our first celebration by going out to dinner at Texas Road House with some friends. We had a blast and enjoyed yummy food with Mike and Kim and Austin and Stephanie.

Then we went to a friend Marcus' 35th birthday party at Classic Skating. It was so much fun to see Marcus and enjoy his annual birthday dance solo. We enjoyed it so much we thought we would share some pictures and a short video clip.

Russian Olympians

One lovely Sunday, Jeph and I joined his mom and step-dad at church and the presiding bishopbric member announced that their stake would be hosting the Special Olympians from Russia for a week before they went to compete in Boise, Idaho. Jeph's mom was so excited about Russians coming and that Jeph and I just happen to speak Russian that she volunteered to house two for an entire week. It was fun for Jeph and I to be around Russians again and to pull out our old rusty language skills.
Andrei Kirilenko was kind enough to buy each Olympian and their host a ticket to a Jazz game and Jeph and I got to act as their hosts and go with them. We had a good time and even took them down to get a picture on center court after the game.




We had a blast with the speed skaters, Fedor and Alexander and all their other Russian friends!

Finally!!!

Way back in January we got to go to the amazing Draper Temple open house.


I went on morning with my parents, my baby sister Chanae, and her fiance David.

Jeph and I had a blast on our tour with Mike and Lynn and Mike and Kim.