Old McDonald's

Angela and I love birthdays. We love our niece and nephews even more though! :) Recently we took one of them out to "Old McDonald's" for a birthday Happy Meal. I forgot how happy those little burgers and drinks make a kid. After about half a drink and half a hamburger we decided what trip to McDonald's would be complete without some play time on the playground! Our little nephew was happy to run around, though he'd probably have more fun if siblings were with him. Too bad... it was his day to be treated individually though. If any of you are thinking about how to treat nieces or nephews that live close by, just do like we did. It's a surefire winner doncha' know. My mom says that he mentions it every time she sees him or talks on the phone with him.

Before I end this post I have to mention the little girl that came up and just stared at me. She didn't smile. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me --3 feet away. I kept wondering when she was going to walk away. Eventually her little expressionless face slowly came down with a pouty lip. Then her eyes teared up slowly. The mouth opened and she slowly started to let out a quiet cry. Then the mom runs in and picks her up and carries her inside the restaurant. I don't know why I always make kids cry but hopefully something will change before our little girl arrives. I don't have the way with kids that Meghan Romney does. Read that post if you get the chance. It's a cute story. The link to their blog is on the right side of our page.



While taking our nephew out, Angela and I decided it was a great idea. He sure loved it. We learned a few things too. Like "Oh yeah... you sometimes have to remind little kids to eat because they easily get distracted." We know we have a lot to learn but we're having fun thinking about things like carrying around even MORE hand sanitizer and making sure our little girl experiences the fun things kids love --like Old McDonald's.

1st Birthday -- with Halloween Feel

One more of our adorable nephews turned 1 year old! Cherie did such a great job on the cake even if all the little guy did was eat the spider's eyes. We all got a big kick out of it. He kept touching the chocolate sprinkles on the top of the cake and quickly moving his hand away, turning his head, all in showing us that he was not comfortable with digging in. It just didn't feel right texture-wise we guess. Good job anyways Cherie! Angela and I both thought it was a masterpiece.


You can see that the monkey was able to celebrate his birthday with cousins on his dad's side of the family. All of their costumes were so cute and creative.

It's The Great Pumpkin Angela Brown/Winterton!

We all had a wonderful Halloween this year. Even baby got dressed up! Actually, more impressive is that JAY even got dressed up this year. Can you guess what we are??

Did you guess Bed Bugs? No? Okay... well, I suppose you may have guessed Cuddle Bugs or maybe even Love Bugs. Any of those we would have said "Yeah, you got it" too.



Angela made this fabulous cake and felt like it was kind of a decorating disaster. She just didn't have the appropriate decorating stuff I guess. But we did have Toblerone chocolate pieces for the eyes, and we both agree --it was dang tasty. Funfetti cake is our favorite!!!

Prop 8 "tag"

Please allow me to NOT get carried away about something here. Many of you know that marriage is being threatened in California currently. On November 4th the state of California will vote to amend the constitution to state that marriage is defined as between a man and a woman.

I believe that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and is central to his plan for His children. I truly believe that we must protect the institution of marriage.

In California we (we being of course those of us in favor of marriage between a man and a woman) are working hard to do what we can to protect the institution of marriage. Many have personally made phone calls to registered voters to tell them about Proposition 8-to give them the facts, find out how they plan to vote and do a little persuading where needed. In Utah, we can also help make calls.

Elders Ballard and Cook of the Quorum of the 12 and Elder Clayton from the 70 spoke at a fireside about the importance of this amendment and, here is the fun part, asked the young people of the church to use the internet to spread the word and help gain support for this cause. I can do that and so can you! So, I am posting this on my blog and "tagging" ALL of you to post it on yours. In your own words or use mine, I don't care but it could have a ripple effect if you all post about this on your blog and then ask others to post on theirs too. Or use your facebook or myspace accounts or email or whatever you can do.

Here are a few facts:
Proposition 8 (vote YES!) does not remove any rights from the gay community. It simply defines marriage as between a man and a woman. This truly isn't anti-gay. We aren't condemning them, we are simply stating that we believe in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. We can still love the people out there who are gay, but we don't have to embrace their lifestyle choice.

Should the amendment not pass, children can and will be taught in public schools about gay marriage and worse, homosexual sexuality.

Churches who refuse to support gay marriage could lose their tax exempt status and the churches with adoption agencies could be forced to adopt babies to gay couples. (Or quit adoptions altogether.)

(All of the above statements were said tonight by the General Authorities.)

What you can do?

Remind anyone you know in CA to register to vote and vote YES on prop 8 on Nov. 4th

Spread the word on your own blog, facebook, myspace, email, anywhere-you never know where the ripple could go and how it might help

Donate money to the Protect Marriage Coalition here: http://www.protectmarriage.com/ They are working on commercials currently that the polls are showing ARE affecting voters in a good way! But they need more money. This is an easy way for people outside of CA to help.

Pray for the amendment to pass.

If you want to educate yourself more on this issue, the church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) has set up a website with vidoes and information for everyone: http://www.preservingmarriage.org/

In fact, read their words there because I am sure they said it better than I can.

At the close of the meeting those in California sang "Let us all Press On".

Let us all press on in the work of the Lord, That when life is o'er we may gain a reward;
In the fight for right let us wield a sword, The mighty sword of truth.
Fear not, though the enemy deride; Courage, for the Lord is on our side.
We will heed not what the wicked may say, But the Lord alone we will obey.

Vote YES for Prop 8

Aspen Grove

I said I'd post some of our silly pictures we took on our Alpine Loop trip. I'm sure you've all been dying to see them, so here they are! :) I was thinking how fun this place would be for a family reunion. The kids would love it. I mean... we did! If any of you want to know where it is, you can't miss it. Just take the footbridge that goes over the road to the east side of the road. It's all over there.

Mom, Dad.... we need you to bail us out... again.


"What makes the red man red?" (Disney's Peter Pan)

It is STILL possible to get into a starter home on a college student's income.


"Okay, geez!"

Angela: "Hey, we've had lockers right by each other all year?"
Jay: "Yeah. You're cute!"


Angela really had to go to the bathroom. We found this fake outhouse and boy was it ever a mean way to tease a pregnant girl who had to go.

Alpine Loop

Autumn is my favorite season. Angela and I have been dying to drive the Alpine Loop again this autumn and were so glad that we did. We went last year and loved every second of it. It was really romantic and I remember how the air was cool and clean smelling. This year, there was a hint of campfire smoke in the air as we first started and that really made me want to go camping. We decided we will have to take the baby camping as soon as we can. But yet again... this year, everything was wonderful and our expectations were greatly exceeded.

You can see how gorgeous the scenery is at this time of year in the Provo area. It really is breathtaking with all of the fall colors. Bridal Veil Falls is always fun to see and Angela really laughed at me while we drove by. She thought I was pretty daring sticking my camera out the window to snap this picture.


When we finally started heading up the hill towards Sundance and Aspen Grove we found a nice little place to pull off and take a few pictures. There are a ton more than what we're posting but we thought we'd post some of our favorites.

We took some other fun pictures at Aspen Grove later. We'll have to post those another time though.

The New Olympics

Ever wanted to be a part of the Olympic fun and not have to subject yourself to such torturous training? Simple, just attend the opening ceremonies. Or if you'd rather not go to a communist country, risk getting stabbed or contracting salmonella from a dead chicken hanging in a restaurant window, you could hold your own opening ceremonies AND events right from home.

We held our own Olympics this year and recommend 4 easy steps to creating your own stress-free fun. When everything is over, the clean up is a lot less of a headache, you aren't endlessly ridiculed for how much you burned on flashy fireworks (I know... punny), and you threw in quite a few Olympic events at the same time. Way to be efficient, eh?

So here is how it goes:
1- You need to have the parade of nations. Create some flags on small sheets of paper and staple them to some high quality drinking straws. March into the room using whatever order of whatever alphabet you want. We go A-Z here in Provo, so Angelatopia marched in first.


2- You need to light the torch --and not burn down the stadium or wood product platform.

3- You need to prepare yourself and your opponent for the biggest loss of THEIR lifetime.
Eat some food.


Create some athlete numbers on paper that look really quite authentic. Just use Crayola brand markers. Angela had a little "one" added in there for good reason. Not just cause we both wanted number 1 and I thought of a clever way to give her number 2.

4- Now you're ready for awesome fun.
The events we played were as follows:

• The egg roll (as pictured below), where you roll an egg with chop sticks to the finish line.
  
• The rice race, where you race to see who can pick up the most grains of rice one-by-one in a given amount of time.
  
• The fortune fling, where we ball up our fortune and flick it across the room. Go for distance.
  

The overall reaction to the Olympics? --Humility on Jay's part. Angela won 2-1. But we all left in peace.

Funny thing is, her fortune read "You will soon be awarded a great honor."My fortune read "You deserve to have a good time after a hard day's work."

I did have a good time too! "Peace."

"Lookie here, I've got a bite"

I went fly fishing with my friend Paul on the Saturday before Labor Day. I had a spectacular time, and I thought I'd show off what my fly fishing skills brought. After all, those skills had been locked up in the tackle box ever since I used to fish for blue gills with Brett Basinger way back in the days.

Now, I thought about stretching the fishy out in Gimp and bulging him out a bit too to look a little more... large, but I'll have you know, I resisted the temptation to edit the image.This is the real, entire, non-edited and completely unadulterated image of that fish in 32-bit color (just in case you were wondering).



Incidentally, the bigger fish tried to eat him, and I could have caught TWO fish in one cast but all the bigger fish could do is gum his way along for a ride (since he had no teeth). I tried to talk him into it but he said "Whatev'r."

Part of the fun of fishing is the stories you can tell afterward. The stories that are truthful and made up. They are truthfully made-up, right?

One last story that I'd like to share is that I caught another fish earlier that day --a little larger too-- by the fin! I'll let you decide if you think that really happened.

Angela's Graduation

"All that hard work for this fake diploma?? *sigh* You're killing me Smalls! Oh well... at least it's over."



I'm so proud of Angela. My sweetheart graduated from Brigham Young University this August with a B.A. in International Relations. She graduated with special recognition as Cum Laude and was also honored as the president of the International Relations Honor Society (Sigma Iota Rho). Way to go baby!

Our Baby Girl

Yesterday we had our ultrasound. Our baby is strong and healthy. We already love her so much! We can't wait to hold her. Here are the pictures from the ultrasound. The way that her little arms come together makes it look like she is praying.

Dates on a Budget

Dating should not end after you get married! Dates give Jay and I something to look forward to each week. Dates don't need to be expensive; they just need to occur regularly and be something out of the ordinary (if you watch television every night together, that isn't a date). However, it gets difficult to keep thinking of new things to do. To help our family and friends out, I have listed a few ideas below. If you have any ideas, we would love to hear them!

• Take photographs of each other or the outdoors. Don't worry if you don't have a great camera, just say "cheese!"
• Go on a picnic
• Build a fort out of couch cushions and tell each other stories
• Paint/draw a picture, you'll be amazed at how much fun it is to witness each other's creativity
• Take a blanket to the park and gaze at the stars
• Bake cookies and share them with your neighbor
• Dream shop-Jay and I window shopped for appliances and it was really fun!
• Give each other foot massages
• Go for a walk, ride bikes, or roller-blade
• Spend an evening at Barnes & Noble. We spend hours perusing the books and seeing who can find the funniest or most informative selection.
  

Photography Phun!

Angela and I have developed a tremendous love for photography lately. We by no means consider ourselves professionals, however we are indeed hobbyists of the truest sense. We have gone on some amazing dates and seen some breathtakingly beautiful scenes. Additionally, we managed to capture some of those scenes with our camera. Someday we hope to get a really great camera for photography. --You know the kind! But for now, we are just having fun anyways. Angela probably tries to think about what she'd like to see on a postcard or calendar. She commented last Friday while at Barnes and Noble how we oughta make a calendar and sell it. I'm more about what would make a good desktop background I guess, but I'm not opposed to trying to make a bit of money either! :) Tell us what you think!

Are we on our way?

By the way, these pictures look best if you click on them and view the larger size.

Angela photographed the amazing spiderweb on the bridge along with the incredible blossoms on the trees in DC.

Baby Name Contest

Alright, this contest is for all family out there. Friends, you really can participate too. Here is what you have to do to win a prize --and trust me, these aren't stupid prizes either. Anybody who is a kid or kid at heart would just eat these prizes right up! :) So of course all family members, including nieces and nephews, are allowed to enter. Parents, please help your children post under your blog ID (but with something so I know who to credit the suggestion to).

Steps to enter the contest:

1. You must go here and sign up for a blogger ID so you can post on our site. So sorry, we don't accept anonymous comments.
2. Come back to our site and post a comment under this thread of your favorite baby names that fits each of the following categories (get creative, have fun, and just get "carried away" in laughter). A prize will be given out for the best recommendation in each category.
   

• What girl name should Angela and I choose?
• What boy name should we choose?
• What funny girl name should be chosen for our baby?
  
• What funny boy name should be chosen for our baby?

______________________________________________________________
Chuck Norris Winterton is not funny and will not be accepted. Multiple postings are acceptable. Multiple "recommendations" are acceptable. Due to increasing cost of postage and effect of global warming on arrived state of prizes we cannot guarantee condition of said prize. We reserve the right to choose the best "recommendation" for each category using our own judgment. We will not provide justification/explanation for our choice in any category. All rules must be followed or names will not be accepted into contest. No fighting. The use of NameVoyager in generating ideas of "recommendations" is allowed.

Looking out from Lookout Pointe

For those of you who haven't had a chance to check out our place yet, I have posted these pictures to give you a little look at it. We love it here and will stay until I graduate and we move to wherever I get hired.

This first picture is of our complex up on the mountain by the 'Y' trail head. We've got a nice place on the bottom where we can cook out on the grill whenever we feel like it and bring groceries in from the back so we don't have to keep hiking the stairs numerous times with large loads.

This is Ricky the Raccoon, our new friend. He comes to visit us and uh... eat our food. We've gotten pretty close too but are always very careful not to do anything that will make him feel threatened. We feed him raw eggs, ham, chicken, and whatever else we think might be bad or a little on the old side. One time we thought we made him sick on some old chicken lunchmeat. We didn't think we'd see him again but he did end up coming back so looks like he is one of those forgiving friends. :)

This is what the view is like from our complex. It's not the greatest picture so far as lighting goes, but it's still rather pretty. We love the view, but the best by FAR is the view of the mountains you saw before (that faces the opposite direction).

Picnic in the canyon

Angela and I had our date last week in the canyon. We brought things to start a fire, roast hot dogs, and then snap a bunch of pictures --since we are really getting into photography (pictures soon to come). We managed to find somebody to finally take a picture of the two of us. :) It was a great date and I think Angela did a great job at the planning of it.

First Posting - Why we named our blog what we did

For the purpose of enlightening our family and friends as to why we named our blog what we did I thought I better provide an explanation. George Strait's song "Carried Away" is special to Angela and I. It describes our love and our life together. It also describes our happiness in life and really... where we want to keep life--right in that feeling of being "carried away."