Grahams first day out, at the Franklin conservatory in Columbus, Ohio

Grahams first road trip to the Kirtland Temple. His ancestor Joseph Bates Noble helped build it so Graham got to breathe the air that his forefathers breathed. He was such a good boy.

Our first moment together. Graham Stirling Noble born November 2, 2009

How Great Thou Ark!

So we had a fun night with my sisters kids last night while she went and watched the batman movie. We wanted to help them out because they are in the midst of remodeling their house and their living room recently got thrashed in preparation for the additions to the house. We had a Noahs ark theme night. We bought a load of ice cream and animal related candy and decided to build an ark...

We started out with a graham cracker floor with frosting to hold the pieces together, katrina just couldn't help but taste our ark glue!

This was our ark building crew consisting of clockwise from katrina....Gabe, Payton, Talia and Jared.
Payton building the roof. You'll notice it has a pointed roof just like Noahs ark!We had the animals entering the ark two by two. We had gummi bears, animal cookies that had elephants and lions and tigers and bears, we had gummi worms, humans named mike and ike and mr goodbar... who we used as noah.
After careful construction with a team of experienced builders...

Voila! an Ark to survive the chocolate flood! We couldn't help that it looked suspiciously like a house. But you'll notice the deck, the pointed roof, the walkway into the ship are all pretty much exactly like what is described in the bible..ok not really but there were some similarities to the ark that was in EVAN ALMIGHTY which we watched to complete our ark evening of fun.

The chocolate flood couldn't bring down our ark!
We then had ice cream and used the destroyed ship to top our ice cream as we watched the rest of Evan Almighty. All in all it was a fun fun night. We added in guitar hero. Payton said it was related to the theme because Noah was a hero. We also played taboo with names of animals...Talia was able to get people to guess animals the fastest. We also did a name an animal game through the first couple letters of the alphabet! So yeah... use our idea for a family night and see if you can build a ship mightier than ours!

Happy Canada Day!

This post is to commemorate my time spent in Canada to honor Canada day which is today...July 1st. As we used to sing in our mission song.... Oh Canada I long for thee, Oh Canada so dear to me, no matter where I chance to roam of thee I sing...I'm coming home.

Rolling with the homeys in Hamilton.

Devils Rock, Temiskaming Shores 6 hours north of Toronto.

Temagami Tower, where we read King Benjamin's address.

The greatest picture I ever took on my mission!

The Toronto temple in Brampton!

I had the police called on me for this picture

Highway 11 runs north and south through the forest. I nearly died on this road many a time in the snow! The trees the lakes...take me back!

Hockey Night in Canada!

The trees! Bless the trees!

The first day in my first area in the cottage town of Bracebridge Ontario. Love it there!

two weekend trips

I was in san francisco a couple of weekends ago. I figured to pass the time inbetween seeing friends and going to a wedding that I would take a little boat tour of the bay. Its amazing how different the weather can be from one hour to the next in san francisco. It started off foggy like in the picture and by the end of the tour it was sunny. San Francisco is such a different city with its narrow and steep roads. I would kill myself if I had to drive a stick shift there.
You can see the clouds starting to break up already on the other side of alcatraz. I wish i would have done the audio tour and gone on the island again cause i enjoyed it so much a couple years ago. I loved hearing the stories about the prisoners. I've always been fascinated by the criminal mind. And i mean that in the least creepy way possible.
Lane Larson a good friend of mine got married in sacramento. I had to make the trip out because i didn't have many friends left that aren't married so I made the trek over there. I had a great time. They were so happy and it was great to see the Larsons who were like a second family to me in the years before and after my mission. And it was a great excuse to see my friend in dental school in san francisco. Next up is a washington trip. Havent been home since 05!
This was one of the houses we were looking in to buying in columbus. We are just hoping to get katrina a job first out there! This was one of our favorites. Very homey!

Its hard to tell but the columbus temple is tiny!!!!!!!! but its nice to have one close by!

All that Jazz!

Katrina and I at the Jazz-Rockets game 6 in the first round of the playoffs. The Jazz clinched the series that night and destroyed the Rockets in the second half. Since the Sonics are toying with moving I've somewhat adopted the Jazz for now as my basketball team. Katrina got the sweet hookup from Fed Ex cause she works in a shipping department. We got to eat in the sponsor room...and we stuffed ourselves silly and went out to some great seats. It was a fun night because they had a contortionist who fit himself into a box and they set the world record for the worlds longest trampoline dunk. There were lots of fireworks and balloons and people cheering like crazy. I will miss having salt lake so close. We love going up there. We even went up to a Salt Lake Bees baseball game last night with some friends who are also going to Ohio State.

Our view. We could hear players and coaches. We could see facial expressions. It was awesome. But the greatest part of all was that we got them for free!