Thanksgiving Trip

We made it to Arizona tonight after 10+ hours of driving, including an extended stop at the Glen Canyon dam as we looked for the keys to our rental car that were lost while eating lunch and walking around the scenic viewpoint:

(After re-tracing our steps and combing through the rocks and sand we finally found the keys under the seat of the car.)

30 Rock

In the absense of any exciting or post-worthy news from the Lloyd family, please enjoy the following clip from last night's 30 Rock:

Singing Babies

Rachel got this Singing Babies DVD for Christmas last year and it has become one of her favorite "shows" to watch. It features digitally altered babies heads with adult mouths singing nursery rhymes as the babies sit there with their eyes glazed over. Rachel loves it, I think its a little bit creepy. What do you think?:

Our budding artist

You may recall yesterday's post about how Rachel was reading the Ensign to her babies. We were such proud parents. Until we saw what she was actually doing with the Ensign and her babies:

Is it normal for little girls to cross out peoples eyes and draw goatees on their dolls?

Baptists at our BBQ

I saw this movie years ago, but we recently got it from Netflix and watched it again.

If you haven't seen it, ignore all of the people telling you that it is dumb and see it anyway:

Reading Material

Rachel has two new favorite things to read.
The Ensign:

And a Honeybaked Ham catalog that we recently received in the mail:
She's especially attached to the ham catalog, which she carries around with her, constantly insists that we read to her and actually slept with last night.

We've just made history as a country:

Congratulations and best of luck to our new President.

Where were we then?

It's time for another installment of Where were we then?
This is what we were up to roughly five years ago:

Tori (from the Provo MTC):

November 10, 2003
Today, I'm a full-time missionary!!! President Thomas Williams set me apart last night with my Dad and Nathan (brother-in-law) standing it too. Dawn recorded my blessing:
{I wont share it here}

November 16, 2003
Here I am!!! The MTC is awesome! My first day was exciting, and from there, I just dug into the language and gospel. It's hard, because . . .it's hard spiritually. Being humbled and knowing I know nothing is hard to accept and hard to catch up. I have two companions, Hermana Tays and Hermana Ogden. I'm not too friendly with either sister. I'm learning!!! Our district is awesome!

November 29, 2003
Wow! The MTC keeps me busy! Everyday just runs into the next. I'm learning a lot, but I'm not doing all that I can. I really need to get on top of everything . . .There is an Elder. He is fond of me. It is nice, but I'm a missionary and want to give my might, mind, and strength to the Lord. I want to give my heart to the Lord. I always worry that an opportunity will pass me by, but I need to have more faith in my Savior that these matters will be taken care of. I think Tyler Lloyd is going to have something to do with my future. However, I'm going to leave that matter up to the Lord.
I worked in the Referral Center today. This is the closes work to the field that we have here at the MTC. Basically, people call us to get a free item that the Church advertises, or sometimes we call people to check if the item arrived and if they would like to hear from the missionaries. We are already beginning the process of converting. I love the MTC and I hope that I get my act together.


Tyler (from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia):

4 November, 2003
We found Anatoli. He got sick. He pretty much went right to the hospital after his baptism and was there for a week. We have a meeting with him tomorrow at the church and if he doesn't make it, we are just going to take a taxi down to Aniva (even though it is illegal) and give him the Holy Ghost.
We had a good fast Sunday yesterday. Tatyana bore her testimony and it was a really special moment for me to see how much she has changed over the summer since joining the church. After sacrament meeting, we watched a tape of one of the sessions of General Conference from last month. It was the first time that most of the members had ever seen conference and the first time that they all watched a session together like we do back home. It was a neat experience.
The school kids here are all on vacation this week, so Sergei (our priest and only active young man in the branch) wanted to work with us. It was a real good experience for him and he seemed to enjoy it. I hope that he serves a mission. We made him lunch at our apartment and he ate a burrito for the first time in his life.
Tonight we were about town and it started raining and raining. I was completely soaked through, and fell up to my shins in mud. I got home and took off my shoes and socks and there was mud on my feet from the inside of my socks. I can't wait for all this rain to turn to snow!

Happy Holidays!?

In case you weren't aware.....

It's already Christmas. This as evidenced by the banners we saw and the carols we heard over the speakers as we shopped this afternoon at Wal-Mart:

It seems that they must have carted Halloween off sometime last night as we were all trick-or-treating and set stage for the holiday season to begin.