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!

BYU Utah Final Play 2006

I can't watch this video enough. Nothing in BYU sports has brought me more satisfaction over the last 10 years than seeing us beat Utah!!

Thanksgiving in TEXAS! (click on pictures to enlarge)

We made Grandma Stahle's Rhubarb jam before we left for TX so that we could give it to Dallas' family as part of their early Christmas presents. Aunt Sharon did the hard part by providing us with the rhubarb juice, then we just mixed everything together and made the jam! It is really some phenomenal stuff. Grandma Stahle was a genius!!

This is the largest statue of an American Hero in the world! Sam Houston was the first president of the Republic of Texas. He retired to Huntsville Texas where Jay attends Sam Houston State University. We could see the statue from miles away when we drove into Huntsville. It's HUGE!!! Jay took us to visit the Sam Houston Museum, and took our picture at the statue. (See if you can find us).




We liked this sign and thought it would be fun to get a free ride until we read further.

This was Ashley's first experience with a real live Texas Longhorn. This was also a very mean longhorn, and kept trying to gouge us with his horns! That's why Ashley is Dallas' human shield in this picture :) Actually, he's trying to pull her away from the beast, but she wouldn't listen.

Greta was absolutely hilarious. We had a ball with all the nieces and nephews, but she was definitely the one with the most energy. Prior to this picture, her hair was up in cute little "puppy dog ears." Apparently she decided this was cuter!

Here are our studly 6 year old nephews Dallin and Jonas. During our trip Dallas' brother-in-law Jimmy, (Dallin's dad) taught some of us some pretty cool Jiu-Jitsu moves. The boys had fun practicing them on each other and trying to get the other to tap out.

The day after our Thanksgiving Feast we went to Alligator Park. It's a huge park with ponds and swamps where alligators just hang out without fences!! You just walk along a trail and if you're lucky, an alligator will be chillin on the bank. None of us were brave enough to touch one, but we got within about two feet of the ones on the banks. We saw little baby ones and ones that were over 6 feet long!

Honestly, has anyone ever been to a greyhound track? This was one of the most exciting things to do with 6 year olds. Every 15 mins or so, there was a new race. The kids would all pick their favorite dog (usually by which one pooped first or the most), and then yell their little hearts out. Jay even placed a bet, and won 40 bucks that he graciously contributed to the babysitting fund so the adults could all go play later that night.

Clara and Uncle Dallas snuggling because it was pretty dang chilly at the races

So after we left the kids to terrorize the babysitters, we went to downtown Houston for a night on the town. We enjoyed eating at Benihanas. Ashley practiced a psycho face, and I taught every one how to use chopsticks... I failed miserably.

Some Special Chinese Treats!!

Hi Everyone! I just returned from a quick trip to China. I was able to eat some fun things, and thought I would share what I ate from this trip and previous trips as well. Happy viewing!!