Life above the Mortuary

     Brooke and I moved into our new apartment a couple of weeks ago! It's pretty spacious compared to our last place, and is a lot nicer overall. We actually have some sunlight, so that's cool. So the deal is, we live above a mortuary and take calls in the evening. We had to go through an interview process, and once selected we received training on how to deal with people who just lost loved ones. So we're basically evening secretaries. When someone dies, they call us and we take down the information of the person. Then we send a director out to the address of the deceased to pick up the body. Most people ask us if anything creepy has happened yet, and so far... not really. Only one thing did creep us out a little. The other night we went through the side door into some offices downstairs. When we came back Brooke noticed the front door was open, and she was pretty sure she had closed it. I made fun of her and told her not to be silly. The next day in our bosses office, he asked us if anything weird had happened yet. We responded no, not really. Then he asked if our front door had opened on its own yet!!!! So it sounds like it's happened before, but we're not worried about it. It'll make for super good stories some day. Anyway, that's our life now. Love you guys!

Family Qualities

This evening Brooke and I had a cool Family Home Evening. We made a list of a few qualities of our In-Laws, and Brooke's was super sweet. So I wanted to share it with all of you!

A few things I love about Genevieve
1-Shes is THE most humble persons I've ever met
2-She has ALOT of wisdom and experience
3-She gets excited about the Gospel
4-She never gets mad or grumpy
5-She really loves and worries a bout all her children
6-She's a great cook
7-She loves me! and it makes me feel very special and included
8-She is so strong and has learned to be independent
9-She loves the Savior and our Heavenly Father

A few things I love about my brother/sisters-in-law
1-They are all unique and great in different ways
2-Mindy is so kind and gentle (sky too), I feel like I can really trust them
3-Autumn is really fun and funny, and Chris is a good man and gentleman.
4-I love how Autumn plans things and takes charge, she reminds me a ton of my sister and I love her for that.
5-Heather is so well rounded! I love that she does all kinds of things and is so ambitious.
6-I love Amber's devotion to her family and job.
7-I love Dave's positive attitude and that he stays young.
8-I love that Heather was so kind and helped us so much at our wedding and that she is a talented photographer.
By Brooke Mann

Week 2:) Sunday came and went without a new post! I planned to never miss a Sunday!  I was able to attend the temple in Billings Saturday with some other Relief Society Ladies and it was great. It's funny how good you feel after attending a session. It is such a peaceful place and giving service always makes you feel great!  I am attending the Family Search Sunday School class and this is week 3.  We are learning how to upload and label photos to the site. I wish I was better at technology. There are classes several times a week at the family history center and I will probably have to go there for some 1 on 1 lessons. I have tons of family pictures now that I can add.

Heather, are these the people in the old picture we found that you needed so you could repair it?
They are Thomas Price Smith and Suzanna Fish Smith.  I think these are the people? If you don't have an account at family search you should get one. It is free.  I'm addicted:)

Sailing in the Bahamas

So while on our honeymoon, Autumn and I found out we are not even close to being sailors. We were sitting on the beach one day watching all these couples jump on catamarans and take them out in the ocean. They'd zip around with ease and come back smoothly into shore, smiling and laughing. We had taken a ride with one of the activities instructors earlier in the week and it looked super easy. We started talking about how fun it would be to take one out ourselves so we went up to the activities desk.
"Do you guys know how to sail?"
"Oh yeah! We took the lesson and we got this! Super easy"

Turns out Sandals isn't very strict about who they let sail....

So Autumn and I go down to the water and tow our boat off the beach. All smiles!

And we're off! With the wind at our back and full of confidence we go zipping off the shore a hundred miles an hour straight out into the ocean. We're laughing and saying how easy it is and we should get one of these for the lake in Montana on the 4th of July! This is awesome!

Well we start getting pretty far off shore and I decide to turn the boat to start heading back in. I turn the rudder like the guy showed us and all of a sudden the sail comes whipping across the boat and about takes both our heads off. The boat tips all the way to one side and about dumps us in the water so we both leaned hard and it came back down with a thud. We both laughed thinking this was pretty funny and a good story to tell later but then we realized the boat wasn't moving.  No big deal right? We're pros. I got this....

Turns out going back into shore is MUCH harder than going out. We had zipped out in about 3 minutes. Well it took us about 40 minutes and a rainstorm to et the boat back to shore. Those laughs and thoughts about getting a sailboat went out the window as fast as they came up. We finally got the boat into shallow enough water that I could just jump out and pull the boat in. Once we finally dragged our boat onshore, everyone was either laughing at us, concerned that we weren't going to make it back, or taking pictures.

That was the last time we went near a sailboat. 

Welcome

Thank you Brooke for setting up the blog for the family:)  I hope everyone will have a great time posting pictures and stories and thoughts and wisdom and jokes etc.  I love you guys! Have a great time!

I love it when you can have a conversation with a friend or family, and both parties are edified by the interaction. Technology is one thing that may detract from those special moments, and even diminish relationships. Even worse it may diminish our relationship with our parents, siblings, spouses or our Heavenly Father.
"How sad it would be if the phone and computer, with all their sophistication, drowned out the simplicity of sincere prayer to a loving Father in Heaven. Let us be as quick to kneel as we are to text."
        Ian S. Arden

Randall and I (Brooke....his wife) are just visiting mamma Gen in Cowley and thought we would help her set up this family blog. For the first post of this blog, here's a photo of our two Mann (wink wink) family.