Thank You

I would like to thank everyone who partook in the fast for Chad and I this Sunday. Your faith and prayers are very much appreciated. May Heavenly Father bless each one of you for your very kind and selfless efforts. I feel the love of Christ and Heavenly Father so strong and feel richly blessed by so many things in my life. I feel so graciously blessed with mine and Chad's families. To be graced with heavenly children is very important to me. It is the single most thing I desire - to have a role as a mother - to know that I am a special heavenly daughter to contribute much in these latter days and also to bring forth spirits into the world. I look forward to bearing a child soon. I can't help but to think of how special the spirits waiting for Chad and I are that it is taking time for them to come forth into this world. It is giving me a great opportunity to prepare myself to be an amazing mother and teacher of the gospel to them so that they will be fortified against evil, as quoted from my patriarchal blessing. I'm grateful for the faith of you all. Being compassionate for others and knowing of their needs is a great way to bring a family together and I'm glad that this opportunity came to be so that I may feel of your love and prayers. I hope that I'm always aware of the needs you may have. Thank you very much and I love you all. Love, Chad & Mandy

Four Generations

First of all, I would like to say Happy Birthday to my grandma who recently turned 82. In this picture are four generations of my family. From left to right - my grandma, my mom, me and my niece. From 12 - 82 years of age. My grandma is a wonderful lady. She has so many great stories to tell. She is a genius with the bible and knows it better than anyone I know and loves to discuss it. My mom says that I got my "God gene" from my grandma so I guess that means that we are spiritual. Hopefully I got her physical genes too because she is still very healthy with no major health problems. She still works out at the gym and is always on the go whether it's taking some sort of belly dancing class, gardening in her bathing suit (gotta get those sun rays) or painting a picture. She's a very talented artist and a vibrant person who has a passion for life. She makes me laugh because she's so different from the typical grandma.
My grandma was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Her dad was born and raised in Newfoundland, Canada and her mom was born and raised in New York, New York, USA. Her dad was a self-made multi-millionaire who owned his own company called the Magor Car Company http://www.signaturepress.com/magor.html & http://www.signaturepress.com/mgrrev.html. He was very prominent and a well known man in Montreal. My mom has endless newspaper clippings of my great grandpa from always being involved in the community and giving his time and efforts to various causes. My grandma tells us stories of the mansion that she and her family lived in and how the girls couldn't leave their house without gloves on (meaning they always dressed up). Her family was voted the best dressed family in Montreal. Grandma was set to have lunch with the queen of England when she turned 16(called a Coming-Out Party) which was a formality among the very wealthy. Sadly, she didn't end up meeting with the queen because of occurrences with the war so she met with the Governor General instead (still good enough for me!). The mansion she lived in has recently been turned into a dormitory for a university. I have yet to visit Montreal and go see her old mansion... what an amazing experience that will be! Not to mention, I love old buildings and architecture so I'm very excited to see it!
This is a picture of my grandma when she was younger...

4th of July, Friends and Good Times!

We had a fun-filled, busy 4th of July long weekend. It's the Tuesday after and I'm finally recovered! It felt good to hang with friends all weekend and have so much fun that it felt like we hardly got any sleep!

The fun started early Friday morning at 6:00 am (4th of July) with a 5k/3 mile run with the Las Vegas Running Team. It was a beautiful sunny morning as usual but was already 107 F at 7:00 am when we started the run! The heat made the run so much more of a challenge! I had a headache for 2 days from running in the heat! It felt great though. I love running and it was nice to get out with some friends and run with them. We went with a couple that we know through dental school, Sheena & Allen, and had a great time. Sheena and I had fun giving Chad and Allen a hard time because they had to register as "Clydesdale's" because they both weigh over 200 pounds... sorry Chad & Allen. Good times!



After the race they had food for the runners but for some weird reason they decided to serve us a bbq at 7:30 in the morning... gross!!! We were looking forward to fruit and bagels and such but instead they had cookies, hamburgers and hot dogs! Who wants to eat that in the morning let alone after running for 3 miles?? It was rather disgusting and of course I couldn't eat but Chad partook of a greasy hamburger. I still get the shivers thinking about it. After recuperating for a half an hour we all went to Denny's after for some real food. We are going to do a race again but I think we'll wait until the fall when it's a little cooler! Apparently it's humanly possible to run in such heat because we survived but it's a good thing we didn't think too much about it before we ran.

Friday afternoon we went to a bbq/pool party with some other friends we know through dental school (Allyssa & Brian). Sheena and Allen and their cute baby also came. At night they put on fireworks that were amazing. Oh ya... Mike(also from dental school)met us there but his wife couldn't come because she was in Washington.




On Saturday we went to St. George, UT which is an hour and a half northeast of Vegas. Some other friends, Kellie & Ryan (also from dental school) invited us to a Les Miserables play at the Tuacahn Theater. The theater is outside and the temperature was perfect... we had a blast. Another couple from dental school came, Kimber and Jeff.


Sunday came and we topped the weekend off with having Allyssa & Brian over for dinner. They wanted to introduce us to some friends of theirs who are from Idaho and just moved here so I invited them over for dinner also. We had a good time and made some more new friends!

We are loving it in Vegas and the more people we get to know and hang out with, the more it's starting to feel like home. There's nothing like being surrounded with really good people who genuinely care for us and have fun with us. We are really going to miss Vegas when we leave but almost everyone we know here will be leaving Vegas also once dental school is over. It's great that we'll know people from Arizona to Washington and many states in between and will definitely keep in touch with everyone after we have moved. Chad and I are grateful that we were meant to come to Vegas at this time and we are cherishing our time here... not like at the beginning when I couldn't wait to move already only 2 months after moving here! Things are going really good and we feel very blessed to be here.

Astronomy

Not sure if you know but I have a passion for astronomy. I am absolutely in awe of this video and so I just had to post it. Every time I watch it I find that my mouth is open at the end of it. Everything about space absolutely fascinates me. I think it's amazing that man has the ability to develop technology such as the Hubble Space Telescope so that we can further explore discoveries such as the Ultra Deep Field - which represents the farthest we've ever seen into the universe... it is comprised of over 10,000 galaxies! I know I'm a geek but this video makes me cry... in a good way of course. There is no end to the possibilities... space is a reflection of God's infinite wisdom.