Welcome Elaina!

I just got off the phone with Clint. Andrea is recovering, and they are proud new parents of Elaina Katherine. Totally awesome! We love you guys.

Welcome to the family Elaina...

Overheard at the Tanner Household

I walked in from a dance rehearsal a few minutes ago and overheard this conversation that Grant was having on speakerphone with a credit card customer service man,

"Well, Thaddeus, tell your manager that I think you're the man!"

"How about you tell her yourself?"

"Okay, put your manager on the line & I'll tell her!"

He then talked to the manager for a while, telling her how excellent of a customer service man he was. Who does that? Grant Tanner.

Things We Love

1. Getting a paycheck! Grant is on his fourth week of work at Fidelity Investments and it's going well! We are especially grateful to have a consistent income again. So much so that I've had the song "Just Got Paid" by NSYNC stuck in my head for a while now. Good one.

2. Quailman! We're on disc four out of eight in our Doug collection. Our favorite episode was "RoboBone" because it had both Quailman AND the Beets. Quailman: "The superhero who always wears clean underwear over his pants!"
3. BBQ Pizza! We found a great recipe a few months ago and have deemed every Saturday night "Pizza Night." Yum!
4. Blossoms! It's been a very strange last few weeks with the weather in Texas. But the blossoms are appearing and its beautiful! We are trying to enjoy the good weather before we are liquified by the heat this summer...
5. The BYU speeches website. You can download any devotional, forum, and other speeches given at BYU for free. I have been listening to them on the way to and from school. My favorites include, "Decisions Determine Destiny," by President Monson, "Forget Yourself," by Gordon B. Hinckley, and "The Nature and Character of God," by Andrew Skinner, my roommate Suzie's dad!

Also, I think having to grade so many students on their citations is making me feel a little guilty for posting pictures without citing them. So no, I did not use MLA or APA or Turabian, but in case you were wondering, here are the links to my images:

http://www.vocemeconquistou.blogger.com.br/image_2_quailman.jpg

http://lh3.ggpht.com/katie.bashford/Rw4QXCpQCyI/AAAAAAAAAtU/frOvoUe0rlk/CPF+BBQ+Pizza.jpg

http://freshandvintage.typepad.com/my_weblog/images/2008/04/19/blossoms1.jpg

http://speeches.byu.edu/images/podcasts/2.jpg

http://www.nsync-fans.com/images/nsa_cover.jpg

The McFarlands Visit!

This weekend Lindsay and Taylor drove down from Wichita to visit us! We had lots of fun showing them around. It's my spring break and I'm finding myself a little too lazy to write so here is our adventure in pictures:

Taylor was dying for some Texas BBQ so we went to the Feed Store in Southlake.

The cute soon-to-be parents

The owner of the Feed Store asked us if we wanted to feed the cows.... Yes!
This is my pregnant sister feeding a pregnant cow :)
You had to hold the potato (or roll) up above their head. They would stick out their long, nasty, super wet tongues and slurp it down!
She was hungry

Then we went to visit the Dallas Aquarium!

This is right before a bird flew by and almost took off Lindsay's head.

Grant liked this fish tunnel. They had fish from all over the world as well as lots of birds, bugs, and other creeping creatures.

I think they are checking out a turtle here

We were in the shark tunnel during feeding time! It was really hot and sweaty because of all those people... yuck

But we got to see the sharks being fed! It was very cool.

Then we walked to the Grassy Knoll where JFK was shot. Grant stepped on my shoe and it broke so I walked around downtown with one bare foot.

At first, I think this picture is cute because they're kissing. But then I remember that the President was possibly shot from this location and I can't decide whether it's cute anymore...

These are just the pictures from Saturday. We also went shopping, to the temple, ate out at various restaurants, and played games. I'm too lazy to write about it all so you can read about it here. We're so grateful to have family close and are glad Linds & Tay got to come visit! In three weeks we'll be visiting them for Easter so more family visit posts are coming!

Lost, Found, and Smiling

Earlier this week we did our bi-monthly grocery shopping. We go to Sprouts for produce, Costco for various bulk items, and Walmart for everything else. After 1.5 years of marriage, we finally went through our first toilet paper batch from Costco, so we had to buy a new one. It was so huge that we left it in the car when we brought all the groceries in.

Later, around 4:00, Grant went out to put some air in my car's tire. He got the toilet paper out intending to bring it in when he was done. Around 11:30 that night he remembered... oops. He went outside and no toilet paper! Grant was sure it was stolen. Normally, I'd be upset about 20 bucks worth of groceries being stolen. But toilet paper? I laughed for quite a while.

Two days later, when we were sure it was gone for good, a little boy in our building knocked on the door and asked if we were missing some toilet paper. (What a strange question to ask someone...) I got it from the boy, buried under the covers of the bed and Grant had the best surprise ever- 36 rolls of toilet paper!

It's the little things that make life worth living :)

Early Mornings, Fish Disease, and Childhood Glory

It has been an eventful week! On top of Grant starting his new job, which is probably post-worthy on its own, there are three other noteworthy transpirings (and yes, I know that's probably not a word):

1. Today, Grant went to church with just his scriptures and left with all of the seminary manuals... Yep, he's going to be an early morning seminary teacher. And this is not your regular early morning seminary-- this seminary starts at 5:45 AM. Oh snap- that'll be an adjustment. Grant is not exactly an early riser... Luckily he only teaches every third week.

This isn't the Grapevine seminary... but close enough...

2. Howard is diseased. Being the qualified veterinarians that we are, we diagnosed Howard with Ichthyophthirius multifilis. This is also known at the white spot disease, hence the picture. He hasn't been very active lately, mostly sitting around on the bottom or at the top of the tank. In addition he hasn't been eating and when he swims it's always in fast, darting motions. We purchased some "Quick Cure," aquarium salt, and have started heating his water with a candle warmer (sophisticated, I know). He's certainly improving.

3. For various reasons, Grant and I are a little late on our Christmas presents to each other this year. So this week, I got one of my presents. For school last week, I wrote a paper on Doug, one of my favorite television shows growing up. Grant was so clever and bought me the complete series of Doug! It includes over 100 episodes of the show from both Nickelodeon and Disney! You can guess what we've been doing with our spare time lately...

Doug is the best... really