The House We're going to buy!

Hi everyone! Ashley and I are moving to the Portland area, and this is the home that we are going to buy. We're still in the closing process, but right now we don't foresee any problems, so keep your fingers crossed. It's in the Newberg, OR area. We love the area, and can't wait to get up there.

Girls' Weekend!

So, obviously from the previous posts, it's evident that Dallas has been having some exciting adventures! Here are some pictures of what I've been doing while he's gone...


Mom and the girls came up during their spring break while Dallas was gone on his first trip to China in April. We had a blast! I need to be better at taking more pictures. This is Brie and I when all of us went to the Kat Wok in Ashland to have the best Sushi ever! Even better than Mikuni's (for all the Sacramento people). It's awesome...

Brie and Brooke are getting to be quite the chefs. We made some fun meals and ate out some too, but this is Brie's fruit pizza that we ate in between giving each other facials and pedicures after our shopping trip. Muy delicioso! (That was for Heath).

I tend to keep pretty busy when Dallas is gone and occasionally my family comes up to hang out. It's fabulous! I also play on a city league volleyball team, which makes things fun and exciting, except I think I'm a little too competitive, but anyone that knows me, knows that no game is "Just a game." :)

Last weekend I flew down to So Cal for Alicia Ingall's wedding. We were roommates for a couple of years in college and she's the last of the original 4 to get hitched. She married David Woolsey on Friday the 4th, a week after she graduated with her Masters in Accounting. They were so cute and I'm so happy for them. Here's a few quick pictures of them after the ceremony.



Leesh with her two brothers trying to take a picture of them kissing her on the cheek.


It was bright, what else can you do!

Yay for roommies. We had a blast the night before and the morning of her wedding. She was so ready to get married, and it was fun to see the sparkle in her eye throughout the whole day.

SOOO...after all the craziness, Kristen came and picked me up and we hung out that night and Saturday. She just got back from a mission in March and I haven't seen her since August of 2005. Good times!! We went to Huntington Beach...I got fried pretty bad...lol...but it was AWESOME. Here is a picture before the sunburn. :)

Some More China Pictures!!

This was some of the exquisite cuisine that I was able to partake of on my last trip to China. Any guesses.... Well you guessed right, it's a pig's foot. Every time I tried to bite into it, it would squirt out of my mouth. Not the easiest chew :)

Now the Chinese have an incredible ability to potty-train their children at an extremely young age. This is their secret. The children wear split-pants (crotchless pants). Whenever the children start to use the restroom, the parents will make a whistling noise. At the same time, the parents will take the child to the side of the sidewalk, off the beaten path, over a drain, or anyplace that can be consider a potty stop. Very soon, the children associate this sound with going to the bathroom, and will make the noise until their parents direct them to a potty spot. Quite effective, even if it's still in the middle of the sidewalk. At least they are whistling while they work.
This is a park in Beijing close to the forbidden city. The ancient Chinese architecture is definitely unique. I'm always fascinated by the designs, and colors that were used long before the rest of the world.

Fun Translation

This is a picture above the toilet in my hotel room. The Chinese says, "Be careful, slippery floor." But I guess if you're going to slip, you might as well be careful about it :)

The Great China!

I'm currently traveling in China, and thought I'd post some pictures. I'll post more later about my trip to western China with the Muslim people that live out there as well. Below is a picture of North Korea. The bridge (left) is what connects the city of Dandong (China) to North Korea. This is where most all of their trade happens. You see trucks going back and forth. The reason there are two bridges, is because we blew up the first one back in the 50's. You see it stops about halfway across.

I make a lot of trips to farm, and this is a very common site. An over loaded vehicle with something hanging on it. If you look closely, there is a person driving this monstrous bail of hay.

This is just a big spider that I almost walked into while visiting some strawberry fields. Yeah, I was really inches away from kissing that thing on accident.


This is a typical restaurant in China. All the food is sitting on the floor when you walk in. You point to what you want, then they go cook it for you.



For any of you wondering what you are looking at... yes that is really pig snout :)

These are pigeons that we had in Western China. They don't eat pork, so we ate a lot of lamb, and pigeon.
Just because. Our cat likes boxes that are too small for her. She likes the challenge of squeezing into them.

The last couple of weeks have been so much fun!! Sadly though, we didn't take as many pictures as we should have. So, sorry, you'll have to read about some of it...

So, I'm not sure how many of you know who Bernadette Peters is, but she is an amazing performer. Dallas' company treated us to some pretty awesome seats the night she came to perform in Medford. After the show, we even got to to up to meet her and take our pictures with her. Beautiful woman who does not look 59!

Our next fun activity was going to the Cabaret Theatre for Valentines Day. Since we switch off every year, this year was Ashley's turn. We got to eat an awesome meal of Morroccan Pork, some yummy mashed potatoes and asparagus while watching, "Guys on Ice," a play about guys from Wisconsin who ice fish and discuss all important topics like their snowmobile suits and "the one who got away." It was all very fun and for those of you in Sacramento, the Cabaret Theatre is very similar to Garbeau's Dinner Theatre by Aerojet.

So, our week got even better! On Thursday night, Ashley took of for Loomis, to spend the weekend with the fam. Dallas got to speak at Southern Oregon Univerisity's Cultural Celebration on Doing Business in China, so Ashley went solo this time...

On Friday she got to hang out with the fam and then Friday night went to see Placer Elementary's school play, "No Strings Attached." A cute play about Pinnochio. Here's a picture of the famous Simmons Sisters! Brie's wearing a wig if you were wondering.


The next day was Ashley's date with Heath. Since he was leaving the next day with Mom and Dad to go to the MTC, Ashley took him to Mikuni's for Sushi. Heath loved it apparently...
It was somewhat of a tearful goodbye, but watchout Argentina!!! Elder Simmons is gonna rock your world!! He's off to South America! What a stud. We should do a tribute to Heath on our next posting, eh? He's quite a man for a 19 year old. Anyone who knows him would agree.
And yes, totally random...we now have an organ too! While Ashley was gone in CA, the owner of the piano store where we bought our beauty down below, offered us a free organ. Being that we attend a church in which the organ is played, we figured, ah, what the heck, it's not every day you get a free organ. It took us a little while to figure out how to turn it on, (the guy didn't have the manual anymore), but now we're good...Zee kept trying to climb in the whole above the peddle so we'll have to work on that.

Well....other than that, we're just working away and keeping busy. We'll continue to keep ya'll posted. Love to all!

YAY!!!

Everyone, we finally got a piano!!! We are so stoked!! And, Ashley was even more excited that it somewhat matches our furniture. :)

So here's the story...We've been wanting a piano since we got married, but obviously they can be quite expensive. We started to save our pennies and keep an eye out for used pianos once we moved to Medford. Right before Christmas, Ashley got a bonus from work which made buying a piano more of a reality. So...

There is a piano store right down the street from us, so one Saturday we decided to just go get an education on pianos. After talking to the guy at the store for a while, he showed us some Spinet style pianos they had in the back. This one was beautiful and after we had him play it compared to the others, it was clear that this one was the best!! It's a Baldwin Acrosonic, which is supposedly one of the best Spinets ever made...at least we think so...:)


After some bargaining, we decided to buy it and they delivered it 4 days later. We've got a great 5 year warranty on it and if we ever decide to trade it in for something better, we get 100% trade in value....pretty dang sweet, eh? So, Dallas is brushing up on his amazing talent of playing Jon Schmidt songs, and Ashley is trying to learn them so she can be just as cool. (Rachelle, we may be giving you a call for tips). Anyway, we are so excited and all are welcome to come visit us and play it!

Here are some of the pictures we took at Christmas time with the Simmons family. Enjoy!!!

This kid likes to run around NAKED (he gets it from his dad), but didn't get to very often. We snapped a shot while we had the chance.

The whole Simmons clan. (Aidan loves to take pictures. We promise, just keep reading...)

This is Christmas Eve at Aunt Debbie's house, and Ashley thought it was a costume party (she was a pirate).

We love you Mom (We couldn't resist :0). Heath obviously received the favorite child award again... as well as his mission call to Argentina . As you can see, Mom is wearing everyone's presents and slightly emotional over Heath's. No tissues could hold back these tears, so a towel was called in for the job.

Christmas morning rocks!!! Just look how excited Brie is :) It was fun to have everyone home for the holidays.

We're lucky to have a temple in Sacramento now. These are some pictures after we attended with Heath.

Look at those studly men!

We told you Aidan liked to take pictures ;)

Our cat is a little crazy sometimes

We certainly love our cat. She keeps us entertained, and never ceases to surprise us. She recently jumped close to 6 feet up in the air! Pretty talented. She also loves to hide around corners, and jump out at us. This almost causes me to carry a gun at home, but I haven't yet. Another thing she loves to do is beg for food. If she sees anything go in our mouths, she immediately lets us know she wants some too. We don't usually share, but sometimes she gets sneaky if our backs are turned...

Zee's favorite thing to do when we come home is settle down on our shoulders. You can see she's perfected the art of it, and looks very comfortable.

For a few days there, Zee would love to play in the blinds by our bed. We thought it was funny until she would do it at night while we were trying to sleep. No worries though, a squirt bottle solved the problem quite quickly:)

One of my favorite tricks that Zee will perform is the towel rack trick. The first time she performed this, she just climbed the towel till she got to the top. Now, she just jumps and lands perfectly on the top. Pretty impressive, since she only has 2 inches to work with. She finds it quite comfortable I guess, because she always does it.

This picture isn't Zee, but we still enjoy visiting Zoey when we go home to California. She also enjoys naps, and long walks on the beach at sunset.

Our weekend with Brooke Kathryn Simmons Horse and Pony Lover Forever (aka Brookie)

This last weekend, Brooke came up to visit us. We made sure that we kept her very busy, and had a ton of fun.

In this picture, you can see a herd of elk. We were on our way to cut down our first live Christmas tree when we spotted the herd on the side of the road.

In order to find the perfect tree, we had to walk through some fairly deep snow. We all had a tough time trying not to fall in too deep.

Ashley wanted to cut the tree down. She had it cut clean within 2 minutes. She and Brooke carried it back to the car while Dallas tried to dig himself out of snowbanks.

After Dallas dug himself out of the snow, he got to pose for a picture with his extremely hot wife :) Hot Dang!!

To finish off the weekend, Brooke helped us make a gingerbread house. She has some pretty mad icing skills!