Taxan Greetings!

Well another week has come and gone and we are still alive here in Texas! Its been a bit hotter here than it has over the last few weeks, but we are still managing fine with our air conditioner turn on high and really cold.

This week was a lot of fun, I have done a lot of work with lindsey, I cant remember if I told you or not, but she quit her job at hobby lobby because she felt like she had gone back to the beginning and was miserable. instead we have decided that this would be a good time for her to get a website together and get a lot of her photography up on line and try to get a few small jobs taking photos here in San Antonio. She has a few contacts in the party business, and a few people have asked her to take photos for them. So its going good so far. So I have been working on building her a website that will host all of her photos, and be able to start to have an online presence and drum up a few jobs for her. Its been fun.

I also have been working on the simulation engine for a while, and pop I managed to extend the NSExpression class to support control structures, like if, also I am starting to do setting and retrieving variable values and loops. also scheduling events is built into the language, and it already works. its cool.

Also some rather large bit of news, we have been looking at getting a pet, Lindsey and me have been a bit lonely lately, mostly because we aren't used to being away from family or people that we know and not having structured time. So we checked with our apartments here in San Antonio, and we also checked with Cougar Courts in rexburg, because we didn't want to get a pet and then leave it in san antonio with some one. It seems that here any pet is fine, but in rexburg we needed to have a small pet that didn't need to go out side, thats what the rules are. So after reading and asking around for about a week and a half, we decided on a pet that would be fine here and in rexburg. We went and got a nutered sugar glider and named him Quetza, short for Quetzalcoatl. He is still a Joey so he depends on us quite a bit, and will for about two more weeks.

Its been fun these past two days with him, we have been playing with him, and he has started bonding with us, he still gets scared some times, but he is very very cute. He is nocturnal, so he sleeps all day and will probably keep us up at night when he gets older and starts romping around his cage. But we knew that when we bought him.

We also went to the botanical gardens here in San Antonio, they were a lot of fun. lots of flowers and plants and cacti, lots and lots of cacti. Apparently texas is somewhat of a desert. they also had a lot of green houses full of tropical plants. its was really cool and we easily spent the day there. Got a lot of photos of old houses that were in the gardens and a few pictures of bees as they landed on flowers.

Our lesson went well today, we were not eaten alive by the kids in our ward, the counciler to the bishop came and talked to us after wards to make sure that we weren't scarred too bad, and we weren't so apparently they are keeping us :)

Thats about all for us this week, we been working hard and playing hard. I start work in a week on tuesday, the 31st of may.

Love Daniel and Lindsey, and Quetza.

We had stake conference this weekend but before attending the Saturday night session Lee, Elijah and I drove over to Mill creek and took a little stroll up the mountain. We were looking for edible plants for Elijah's survival trip planned for next week. We found quite a bit of stinging nettle, sedum, yellow bells, and burdock that are still quite young. I had expected a lot more dandelions but was sorely disappointed. That stuff grows everywhere but there wasn't much at Mill creek yet probably because there was still a lot of snow on the ground. We saw Elk droppings and bear scat. (not edible)

It was very beautiful there with the running water and the trees with the ground covered with very colorful rock tinted with mine liquor. (Lee's term) There were lots of big and very old trees that smelled heavenly. And very little litter from human visitors. In fact we saw only two flip tops from cans and one old steel beer can.

Elijah and his friends plan on spending two days and two nights out there camped at the lake living off the land to help his friend Bradon earn a scout award that comes after the eagle.

Lee received an award from the university of a golden apple for his excellence in teaching there. He received this at the faculty banquet thursday night where we actually ate a very tasty meal. (The cooking has improved.) I'm very proud of him.

It promised to rain all week but all it did was cloud up and blow wind. When the sun comes out it is very nice. Elijah and I mowed the lawns and killed dandelions. There is lots of grass to dig out but the yard is looking very green.

The conference issue of the Ensign came and it has been good reading. So many wonderful messages and so many wonderful quotes I need to type in here but not today.

Update From Texas

Its another great day in texas, the sun is shining and we are having wonderful weather!

This week has been interesting, lindsey has been working hard and I have been filling the role of Househusband. Its been interesting, I've kind of liked it. I cook food for lindsey, I clean the house, I make sure everything is in order for when she comes home. Its really been a learning experience for me. I now know that I should always appreciate what she does for me because It will be a lot of work for her when I am working full time here in a few weeks.

I have been working a lot on my simulation engine lately, and my tan, both are going wonderfully, although my tan seems to be more white than anything else. I have been doing a lot of swimming in the pool that we have here with our apartment, and we have been using the hot tub at nights. It a nice place that we have here.

We are located just on the edge between the nice part of town and the bad part of town, so we enjoy the cheep prices that come with the bad part of town, and we also have a lot of good people that you find in the good part of town. Our apartment complex is large and has a lot of retired people, mentally challenged people, and working people. We feel safe here, its a good place to stay for a few months.

We have been riding the busses around San Antonio a lot. we are taking advantage of the month passes that we bought, and we are going to continue to buy them because of how convenient they are for us. the bus stops right in front of our complex, and it takes us to the super market or even as far as the down town river walk. A bus a block away drops me off in front of USAA, and takes me back home at night as well. and we can manage to get anywhere we want just by riding the busses.

The busses can also get us to the Zoo, we went there on Tuesday. It was a large zoo, and we both liked it a lot. There were a lot of exhibits that you could get in close to the animals, well at least the nicer ones. they didn't let anyone in with the lions or tigers or bears, oh my. but we went into a lot of aviaries and played with parrots, and had a lot of finches, crazy looking chickens like things, and a large variety of birds to be around. The zoo is also is nesting grounds for a bunch of wild herons and another swampy bird that I cant remember what kind it is. Unfortunately they like to nest by the hundreds in the tallest trees over the busiest paths. So yes we were almost pooped on because we were not paying attention. gross.

we saw little tiny antelopes, a strange zebra giraffe thing, geckoes, kangaroos, snapping turtles, sea horses, butterflies in a conservatory that you can walk through and have them land on you, ocelots, and manny other strange and slightly tamed animals.

All in all it was a great zoo to visit, and we were able to see why it is one of the best ones in the nation.

As for slightly tame animals, there are none of those living in our house, just very wild cockroaches, that seem to have some sort of sick fascination with scaring Lindsey. Needless to say, I have bought hotels for them to stay at and some spray on body wash for them that I think that they will like. Hopefully they wont stay for long.

Lots of Love

Daniel and Lindsey.

Ode to broccoli by Angela and Jeff on their blog will make you laugh!

Dear Family

Wow, y'all actually saw a tornado in the Rexburg area? I wonder if that has ever happened before... We've had a lot of tornadoes here in Texas. There were a couple that touched down in the Cooperas Cove Area and the Kileen area. One of them actually passed over Gatesville without touching down, and then started heading back towards us. Luckily it turned away before it got close enough to be a threat. There was a bunch of pretty sweet lightning.
Also, that humongous amount of wind that we had... two weeks ago? Well, it was a 'Heat Burst', as they call it down here. It's when a thunderstorm collapses and releases all of that stored up energy into the air (at least that is what I gather from what I have been told), which causes a temperature spike for a couple of hours and strong winds. It spiked the temperature up to about 90 degrees F. It had been a long time since one of those had happened, and apparently the one before last caused a temperature spike to 140 degrees F. At least that's what I'm told.

It's raining today, apparently across the majority of the mission. We really needed the rain. It's about 50 degrees outside right now.

Anyways, we've had a lot of ups and downs this week. Elder Randle left for the Colleyville Zone, and I got a new companion: Elder Smith. He's from the Twin Falls area. He's a really great missionary and wants to see this area move forward as quickly as it can. He's got a stutter, but that doesn't stop him from testifying of the truth that he knows. The first day we went tracting we got many return appointments, which hasn't happened in the history of this area for quite a while. I was amazed at how strongly the Spirit testified to his words.
Unfortunately, Satan has also been working hard. Nearly all of our appointments have punched. There is one that has a lot of promise. They are an older couple living near our apartment. He's a pastor at a local church, and her mother was a member. We met her first, and she didn't really open up until we prayed with her. Then she started asking us about baptisms for the dead, and she got really excited about the subject. When we came back for our appointment yesterday, she feeling rather ill, which her husband informed us on, but she swayed to the door to apologize and ask us to come back later when she was feeling better. Just by looking at her I could see how badly she was feeling. But I could see the determination in her eyes to talk with us.

Have you sent that package full of clothing, Mom? I haven't received a package yet. If you did, did you send it to the Gatesville address or to the mission office address?

Thank you for the $50 dollars in my bank account; I will use it wisely.

Yes, Morgen, it is always painful to run in Texas; you can't step anywhere without landing on a pair of spurs. ;) Oh, and could you tell Emily for me that I haven't been hit by a tornado? Thanks!

Love,
Elder Barney

I was pleased today that the indexing program is now working on my computer. Every time Salt Lake City changes something it stops working on my machine. This time I just waited a while while they fixed all the bugs.

Josh and Morgen came over and we played Masons and Carchoson(?). Then Daniel and Linsey called and we had a nice visit.

Brother Campbell asked if I would meet with a member of the Bishopric and I was feeling bad that I would not get to teach RS anymore but it turned out that they just wanted me to talk in church in two weeks about what a blessing it was to have the aaronic priesthood in our home. So I am still teaching in RS for 3 more months.