Called to Serve....

Daniel got his mission call! He will be serving in the Cape Verde Praia Mission!! And...he will be speaking Portuguese!!

Before Daniel opened his call, he was telling us that one of his roommates just got his call to a place called Praia, Cape Verde. We were all surprised when he found out...same mission!

I thought for sure Dan was going to some kind of Korean speaking mission. I definitely had not considered he'd be going to Africa and speaking Portuguese!

We are all super excited for him! I am also very excited because Lance and I are planning to teach our children Portuguese (Lance speaks it and so does his dad). Now we are all even more motivated to learn the language. :)

 Daniel getting ready to open the call...notice all the Korean dumplings we were making?

 I thought he'd be going somewhere where they use chopsticks...

 Daniel with Daniel, Josh and Trevor

We had to get out the map!

I'm so proud of my little brother!! :)

(How Stuff Works, Inc., 2012)

Westminster Chamber Orchestra

Lance and I got to play in the Westminster Chamber Orchestra as community members. It was a lot of fun to go to rehearsals together and we really liked the conductor, Brandon Derfler. I played the violin, and Lance played the trumpet. (his BLUE trumpet!) Here are some pics from our concert on Monday night! If anyone is interested in joining the orchestra for fall semester, let me know and I 'll get you the info you need! :)

32 weeks pregnant!!

My mom was really excited that I was on the posters/programs. (That picture was from my first year playing in the orchestra back in 2009!)

Getting Back into the Blogging World...

Alrighty, it looks like it has been over a year since we have been on our blog! I think it's about time to change that! We started this blog while we were living in China as a way to keep our family updated (not that we really kept on top of it there either...) and now that we have a little baby girl on the way....we think it's time to get the blog back up and running!

Our Florida Vacation

When we returned to the U.S. from China, we had a chance to go on a little vacation!

We started out in Orlando where we saw a dinner show called Arabian Nights. We also went to a place where Lance could practice some high dives. After Orlando we went on a short cruise to the Bahamas! The weather was cold, but we still swam and relaxed on the beach. After the cruise we stayed i

n Fort Lauderdale where we played on the beach and saw Tangled in theaters (awesome movie!!). We drove down to Miami to see a Cirque du Soleil show called Kooza, which was so sweet! We made friends with an elderly man named Joe who had been on the same cruise as us and was staying in the same hotel. He was really nice and he had some cool stories to share with us.





Our trip was a lot of fun, but the entire time we were really excited to go home to Utah! It had been months since we'd seen our family and friends...so we were anxious to get home!

Back in the U.S.A.!

Lance and I are back in the U.S.A.! We are in Florida right now where we are enjoying eating salads and sandwiches and getting water out of drinking fountains. Last night I saw stars in the sky for the first time in a long time...how exciting!!

We were able to go to church today. It is such a blessing that no matter where we are in the world, we are able to find a church to go to.

On Saturday we went to a person's house in Orlando who has a high dive structure and swimming pool in his backyard. Lance practiced some high dives, and I did my first trick off the diving board. Here's some pics of that.

China says,"Church is cancelled"

*Ok, Samantha says that she is done with blogging for a minute so now it is my turn :s He he

*In our dive shows we do a mass dive where 13 people all dive into the water at the same time (for those of you who don't know, our pool is TINY, we can bearly fit 13 people in our pool) the dive I do is called the JAVELIN. I am on the highest perch on our dive structure and I am holding another diver over my head (Anya is the lucky diver who fills that spot) we then dive off together and I toss her in the air and she does a back flip while I do a front flip and we land in the water only inches from each other and the other 11 divers going into the water at the same time (well that is how it is supposed to go) yeah. . . just the other night I landed on her. I threw her too late and when I did my front flip instead of landing in the water first I landed on Anya first. She has recovered quite well though and we are back in business.

*PITA'S!!! We are thrilled. We found a store that sells Pita bread. We went on a pita stuffing extravaganza. Sloppy Joe mix, Mexican style shredded chicken, tuna, egg salad and a new one we just created we, call Sloppy Luigi.

*Today at church I had one crazy Sunday school lesson. Brother and Sister Thomas are recent converts to the church. She is from Spain and speaks very little English, he is from the U.S. and does his best to translate for her. Brother and Sister Martimbianco are from Brasil and they speak hardly any English and then there is Sister Virginia, she is Chinese and speaks very little English and has another sister from the branch translate for her. All of them are in my Sunday school class. So, I got so tongue twisted and lost in my own lesson. I say a part in Portugues, then I say it again in English and wait for Sister Chen to translate it to Chinese and Brother Thomas to translate it to Spanish. We'd read a verse in English and then again in Spanish and Portugues. HA! it was great but I was a little lost.

*Alrighty so at church today the branch President got up and announced that the Church would be closed for the next 7 weeks. Guangzhou is hosting the Asian Games starting in November and during that time we arn't allowed to use the building we have been using for our meetings. ? How strange is that? Chinese government officials will be staked out at the church building during the Asian Games to make sure we don't try and sneak in. Yeah, so we are not sure exactly what we are going to do yet during those 7 weeks.

China Update!

Here is an update on some of the adventures we've had since our last post:

*Russians love cheese and sausage..... We followed a Russian to the market where she buys cheese and sausage and came home with a freaking WHEEL of cheese weighing about 6 pounds. We cut it into 5 wedges and stuck them in the freezer...but we are already down to our last wedge of cheese.

*Lance and Sam recovered from a case of the bird poo flu. Expect to see it in the U.S. this winter.

*We had a night time visitor that would leave treats on our balcony. He had whiskers and a long tail and he squeaked when he saw cheese. Lance flung him off our balcony with his lacrosse stick, and our visitor has not returned.

*A bear thought Lance looked like cotton candy in his blue puff ball costume and took a swipe at him. Lance barely escaped from being a mid show snack.

*We like to eat at a pizza restaurant called Tomatoes. One day we had leftovers so we had them box them up to take home. They kindly put them in a 7 Eleven bag along with plastic gloves and chinese soup spoons..... ?? Napkins? Of course not!

*Sam is now babysitting a little Russian girl whose parents are performers in the circus. She is the cutest little girl. She doesn't speak English and all Sam knows in Russian is how to how to say Mickey Mouse. Needless to say, they get along just fine. :D

*Sam had a birthday! She was excited that she got to go swimming in October and on her birthday. She and Lance and some of the other circus monkeys went out to eat at Oggi's Pizzeria. Sam and Lance got a humongous calzone. It was delicious.

*General Conference was on the 2nd and 3rd, but the Guangzhou Branch got to watch Conference on the 9th and 10th! We all met at the church to watch the sessions and ate potluck in between. Thank you technology!

*We went on a lightning vacation. We went to Hong Kong on the earliest bus leaving Guangzhou at 7:00 am. We miraculously made it to the Hong Kong Temple in time to catch the 11:00 session. And....we bought 25 loaves of bread (which we have already completely devoured) and caught the 2:30 bus back to Guangzhou, making it back just in time for the circus.

*Ratattouie is based on a true story. We were eating at a Chinese restaurant when the biggest rat we have ever seen (and we've seen a lot of rats here) walked out of the kitchen and into the pantry. Most restaurants have cats they keep on guard duty to catch any rats, well the cat that was on guard duty at this restaurant took one look at the new "chef" and ran and hid under a chair. Not even kidding, the rat just walked out of the kitchen and into the panty and the cat bolted and cowered under a chair.