Texas Trip

Here are the promised pictures from our trip to Texas last week. We had a lot of fun... can't wait to see everyone again!!

Charles doin his thang on the plane... 3 drinks!!!

Logan riding our luggage with "Pops"

Annie rocking out to my iPod

Annie and Chloe hiding from me... so funny!

The whole John crew

Doing their "tough as nails" pose- This is hilarious!!

I love Logan's face here!! This is when Annie was patting him on the back saying, "It's okay Ogan"

I couldn't catch them both kissing him at the same time... DANG!

I love this one!!

Good Smiles from Annie and Chloe

Annie was a little bothered by Chloe's hand on her leg, but it made a cute picture!!

My personal favorite of Logan :)

This is what you get when you tell Logan to "SMILE"

Cute Logan Posing

The annual Nobles family picture in front of the Lake Murray water tower

HAPPY NANCY JOHN DAY!!!

From the back- all of our names as they are said by the little kids

Nihao!

As some of you know, I am taking on an adventure this term trying to learn Chinese. I missed the first week of class for the family reunion, so now I am trying to catch up. I spent about 8 hours yesterday studying the dang characters. I got up 2 hours early and studied before class this morning for our quiz today, which didn't go too hot. Let me tell you... English is a piece of CAKE!! Today my teacher said: "Chinese isn't as easy as you guys think!" I wanted to say... I'm sorry, does anyone here think this is easy??? Anyway- its a fun challenge, I have a new found respect for Charles, thats for sure. I had him pray in Chinese last night, it took a couple tries for me to make it through without laughing. Its just so different!

Anyway- I finally feel like it is summer and I have a little bit of time to play with! It's great! We decided today to run a half marathon next month. Should be another fun challenge! We registered today and have about 5 weeks to train... bring it on!! I'll let you guys know how that goes. I think Kyle is going to do it with us too, so that should be fun. I have some pictures I need to upload from the reunion, I will get on that, I got some cute ones of the little kids I am excited about, and a killer booty shot of all of us in our nancy john day shirts!! We had a blast last week! It was so good to see everyone.

For the 4th we went and floated down the Provo River. I was expecting a similar experience to floating the rivers in Texas... boy was I wrong!! The water was 45 degrees!! It was pretty fun though, nice and relaxing! We watched the fireworks from our roof that night. They were really cool. It was probably the best fireworks show I have ever seen!

Anyway- I'll get some pictures up soon!

1 down... 2 to go!

Well, I am completely finished with one class, and have 2 that I will finish up today and then- VACATION! I can't wait. I had my final presentation for my english class last night. I had to do a 20 minute presentation on a research topic of my choice. I chose to do it on diet aids- pills, supplements and drinks- inspired by Courtney's latest medifast kick. My argument was that there is no quick fix to an unhealthy lifestyle. You have to put the time and effort into it if you want to be healthy. Weight loss is only a side effect of a healthy lifestyle. It was pretty interesting. I found out that a 23 yr old pitcher for the Orioles died of a stroke from some diet pills he was taking, and a 21 yr old air force pilot had a massive heart attack from the same thing. DONT TAKE DIET PILLS! The risks FAR outweigh the benefits!!
Anyway- I have a history paper I have been writing this morning that is due at 5 today. I will probably take that final today too, so I will be finished with that class. Then I have my Short Story final at 1 today. I will be glad to say adios to that teacher. He is very arrogant and close minded. We had to write the first 3 pages of a short story for our final assignment in that class. When we turned them in, he read the title and first word out loud. When he read mine, he said with his arrogant tone- Well that seems obvious...- I played out the scene in my mind of me attacking him, and it seemed to satisfy my emotions :). He drives me nuts!
We are so excited to go to Texas this weekend and see everyone!! WOOHOOO!!! Here we come!!!

The countdown begins...

I am SO ready for this term to be over with. I am taking my last 3 GE credits that I have been putting off for so long. They are killing me! We have 2 weeks left. That means... only about 5 class sessions left for each class!! I think it seems to be dragging on because I am so excited to go to Texas when it is over. We leave the day after finals are over, and I can't wait.
Other than school... life is pretty much the same old stuff. I am thinking about trying out for an A Capella group at BYU called Noteworthy. They have a sample of some of their music on their website y'all should check out. They won the international competition last year, they are amazing. Unfortunately, there are only 9 of them. They have 3 openings this year, and normally have 50+ people audition. I'm not getting my hopes up for anything, but I figure... what the heck!? It's my last year, I might as well give it a try. I am taking voice lessons summer term to hopefully get me ready for the auditions in the fall.
Charles has a birthday coming up!! I think I am more excited about it than he is, I'm not quite sure why, but I am. Anyway, nothing too new going on around here. Just livin the busy student life trying to make it!
Charles has been pretty funny lately. He has recently picked up on Sam's trick to make me laugh and started looking at me and crossing his eyes. He looks hilarious when he does it. Last night, I was crying- shocking... I know, and he said- "oh, hang on, let me get you a tissue. I think I saw that in a movie once. Girls like tissues when they are crying." I guess it helped because he got me laughing!
Anyway, just wanted to take a break from my paper and write something on here. Next time it will be more exciting!

New Ride...

Well, we finally sold our car this week, and found a new one. Pretty exciting!! Here are a few pictures of the car. It should be a good little car for us. Charles keeps finding little things wrong with it, but I just don't look for them, so I think it's great! Last night we got to go to the Jazz game... it was cool to be there, but sad they lost. We were on THE last row of the arena. Pretty funny. You can actually still see pretty good from up there though. I was surprised. They built it well! Anyway, the rest of our memorial day was spent taking pictures. It was pretty fun. I took engagement pictures in the morning and then we just went around taking pictures of everything. Maybe I'll throw in a few of those too. Charles is becoming my model... and I think he likes it. Every time he hears the sound the camera makes when it takes a picture, he strikes a new pose. It's pretty funny, but not all that surprising! Hope y'all had a great memorial day!

Photography fun...

As a lot of you know, I've been trying to figure out some photography stuff lately. It's been a lot of fun so far. We are gonna go up tonight hopefully and take some cool pictures in the canyon and stuff. I have been reading my camera manual and learning a lot, and haven't had a chance to use it yet since I started reading it. I'm hoping that I'll be able to get some better pictures by doing that. Anyway- here are a few of my favorites so far...

Pressure, Pressure...

Ok, I am getting harassed for not updating this enough! I guess I better fill y'all in. We sold our Rodeo this week, woohoo! Now we are on the hunt for a car. We have looked at a few this week, but have been pretty disappointed. We are going to look at an Avalon today that we are pretty excited about, hopefully it goes well and we are no longer car-less. Don't get me wrong... the scooter is great, but the weather hasn't been too great here. I think I got pneumonia this morning riding state street for an hour to go see two cars. Anyway- we had a great trip last week to Washington- we went to Sam's preschool graduation which was exciting. We took him to Tacoma to go to the zoo for a day. That was a lot of fun, but I think it wore him out pretty good, he zonked out in the car on the way home. For a little boy, he can snore pretty loud! We are officially half way done with the term! WOOHOO! That is exciting, I am ready for a change. I am taking Chinese 101 during summer term. Charles is already giving me lessons, I think it'll take some work, but it will be fun to know a little Chinese. Maybe it will make me sound smart or something. Here are a few pictures from our trip...
We bought some food so Sam could feed the goats, and he threw it at them, he didn't want to get their germs on him- haha!

Much Needed Vacation

I am counting down the hours till we get to leave for Washington! We are going to watch the boys while Charles' parents finish up their trip to the Holy Land! We can't wait to get a little bit of a break from our busy schedules and have some fun with the boys. We talked to Sam yesterday and told him we would be there soon and he told us he has drawn us some pictures and wants us to play legos with him. I am really excited! I will take some pictures and tell you all about our adventures in Wa. Woohoo!!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Emily got on to me for not posting... so I thought I would catch y'all up real quick. We are finishing our 2nd week of spring term today!! That means we only have 4 weeks left! Right now we are keeping ourselves very busy. We are both working 30-40 hours a week and taking a full load of classes. It keeps us on campus from 745 to 630 everyday. We are excited to get a break next week to go take care of Charles' brothers while his parents are finishing up their Israel trip. We are really excited to get a break from school and work for a few days.

One of the new exciting things we are doing now is... Photography! I have always loved taking pictures, and always wanted to do something with it, just hadn't yet- until now! I decided just to jump into it. I started out offering it for free, just so I can get some experience and have something to show for myself before I start charging, but I think I'm to the point now that from here on I will be charging, but just a little bit. I have about 5 people wanting me to do their weddings this summer, so that's kind of fun. I am taking pictures of a little girl tonight, two families tomorrow, and another on Monday before we head out Tuesday. I'll post some pictures (if they turn out good). Before too long we will probably have a website up... trying to think of a name still. Charles wants us to do "No BULL Photography"... I think he's still a little bitter about a past photographer. Any suggestions for names? We will probably end up with Himmer Photography or something original like that. Anyway- watch out Annie, Chloe, and Logan... you're up when we get to Texas!!

Anyway- thats what is keeping us busy for now! We are still trying to sell the Rodeo- not having much luck though. We dropped the price this week, so maybe that will help- we'll see. I'll try to be better about posting! Hope everyone is doing great!

boot SCOOT'in boogie

Well.... as a few of you may know, Charles and I made an addition to our family this weekend. We bought a brand new, 2007, 150cc, shiny blue, ROCKETA scooter!! That's right folks... we cruise around town on our moped!! We got it Saturday, and I still can't ride it without laughing! Dumb and dumber anyone? It's pretty fun though, and very economical :) We are selling the Rodeo with hopes to find a Honda that gets better gas mileage because the gas on that thing is eating our dinners these days! We should sell it this week, we have gotten one pretty good offer so far, but have someone else lined up to come check it out on Friday, hopefully that goes well! Anyway- I really just had to post the pictures we took posing in front of our apt with the scooter.Some of you might be looking at that sliver of seat behind Charles... thats right... thats where I fit in (kind of) We have to readjust from time to time, due to my caboose, but it works out quite nicely!
By the way... I just HAD to get the white helmet... it just added too much to the whole outfit.

Brad... just so you know, I think of you every time we saddle up on this puppy!

Quotable Quotes from the Himmer Home...

We have decided that we need to start keeping a journal of funny things said... mostly by Charles because they really are just TOO funny sometimes. I thought I would share a few of the highlights from the recent weeks. I have to give a little bit of a description of the situations... but I think y'all will get a kick out of them.

As we were getting ready for bed one night, Charles went to swig some of the Listerine I had just bought. As he started to swish it around he went into the bedroom for a second and then came running back into the bathroom and spit it out in the sink, looked at the bottle of Listerine, and then at me and said in a panicked voice: "ADVANCED LISTERINE HONEY???? We need at least beginning or intermediate!"

We have recently been trying to eat healthier and work out more. After a few weeks of this I was telling Charles that I don't think I have a metabolism and if I do, it must go backwards because I didn't feel like anything was working. I was comparing myself to him... BIG MISTAKE! He accidentally looses weight all the time and I just find it! Anyway... as an attempted comfort he said: "Honey, its just that you are from Texas..." by the look on my face i think he knew he was in trouble so he followed it with... "What? Everything is bigger in Texas!" Again... he could tell he wasn't getting the expected response so he finished it with "I mean the portion sizes, honey, NOT YOU!" We have laughed about that one for a few weeks now!

One that I said that Charles thought was pretty funny and worth putting up here happened as we were eating dinner one night. He said something that made me laugh pretty hard and he said, "You know what I love about you? You have a great sense of humor, and you think I'm funny!" I responded with, "And what I love about you is that you think those two things go together!"

Something my sisters and anyone who has ever had the curse of sharing a bed with me can relate to... I remember Courtney and Lori telling Charles about how cuddly I am at night and how they could never get me off of them, I'd always have a leg or arm or something bugging them while they tried to sleep. I remember Charles saying he was excited for that before we got married because he loves cuddling. Well... its been about 3 and a half months now and he is singin a different song. He told me today that I "box out" in the middle of the night- elbows out and everything. I guess its just the little basketball player in me. He said that he tries to push me over so that he can have some room and I take that as "he wants to get closer, huh?" He has to maneuver around the elbows to the back throughout the night so he can get some sleep. I think its pretty fair actually... I make sure not to take up more than 80% of the bed! He's a skinny boy!

Hope y'all got a little laugh out of that... I know we have!!

FORT NIGHT

Well... there hasn't been a whole lot going on lately, at least not much that was blog worthy. Here is one of our date nights from a few weekends ago. We decided to built a fort like we used to do as kids and make cookies and watch NEWSIES! Andria gave it to us for our wedding and we hadn't watched it yet, so we decided to make an event out of it. There is one picture of Charles with a heart cookie I made for him... what you don't know from the picture is that this is after he dropped it and it crumbled. He spent a few minutes (after laughing hysterically) to patch it up for a picture.

Sportsman's Warehouse

Dad sent us a coupon to the "friends and family" night at Sportsman's Warehouse. We didn't have much to spend, but we decided to go check it out anyway. It was the weirdest thing... as soon as we walked into that store, it was like we were taken into a whole new world. We all the sudden just could not speak normally. We started talkin' funny, and didn't have no good grammar. We just fit right in. The whole time we was in that store we was learning things we ain't never learned before. We's checkin out the hunting gear and I found a few things I liked just fine... this was Charles favorite. I thank the arnge makes the deers come out or somethin.

Now... unfortunately, it was a little out of our price range, but I thank... if i'm REAL good this year, Charles might git it fer me fer Christmas next year ;)

Thanks for the fun FHE Dad!!! We love you!

Party night at work!!

We have had our big tests the past three weeks at work, it is the busiest part of the semester. Andria and I had to go in and work late one night, so Charles came along to do some homework. Our work isn't the most exciting thing. We had to put together about 200 test packets and stuff them in envelopes, make the test rosters, and get listening tapes ready. Now... Charles thinks I made this blog to point out all the funny things he does... and after the camping experience, the bad things he says. This time... I thought I would highlight one of the great things about him! He can make any dull moment a blast. Here he is in the conference room at work with his homemade "party hat" livening up the night and lightening the mood.

Here is his "YAY!! WHOO! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!" face

dead serious doing homework

Rascal Flatts

So... as many of you know, this year I became a proud member of the Rascal Flatts "Dog Pound" fan club. Yes... that's right, I love them. I think our first month of marriage, Charles got a little offended at the frequency of which I told him about my Rascal Flatts dreams. They are my favorite, I have been trying to tone it down since Charles has pointed out the obsession. I realized when I sent in an email to the "Super Fan" contest... things were getting out of hand. We did, however, benefit from the obsession last Friday with awesome seats at their concert. As our Valentine's gifts we got tickets... yes, my husband is a good sport. We didn't know where our seats were until we got there Friday, and ended up on the 17th row. It was a blast!! I think I liked it more than Charles, but it was a lot of fun to be there together. We got our groove on, sang our hearts out, and lost our hearing... but here are some pictures to show the fun we had.

Before they came on... I told Charles to "look excited"

Their entrance... pretty sweet effects!

The marvels themselves... nominated for SIX academy of country music awards this year!!

They had this cool moving platform that moved from the front of the arena to the back, went right over our heads!!

This was their little stage in the back
Sangin...
The encore... Life is a Highway... we snuck up closer!
After it was all over... Charles held back the tears just for this shot :)

We had a lot of fun, the show was really elaborate, they had some pretty sweet effects, like fireworks, confetti at the end in exploded in the whole arena, and the moving platform. They had a huge screen behind them and the stage was surrounded by little screens that went off of each other. I don't know if that made sense, but it was tons of fun!!! Now... time to start my Flatts anonymous program... wish me luck!