Zavoral Villa!

This week has been awesome!! Highlights involved serving samples of SPAM at the LA County Fair and a day trip to Sandy Eggo (San Diego). Every year, the LA County Fair includes a SPAM cook-off where brave citizens attempt gormet meals with SPAM. While the judges taste and rate each dish, Hormel sales representatives serve samples of SPAM and handout SPAM t-shirts, pins, and food. Jeremy and I were on a team of four people preparing and promoting the samples. We cooked SPAM Terryaki served with rice. It was actually really good. Here's the simple recipe: Buy SPAM. Open it. Cut in chunks. Put in skillet with terriyaki sauce and chunked pineapples. Heat until SPAM is crisp. Serve over rice. Enjoy!! (If you don't have terriyaki sauce, a nice alternative is soy sauce and brown sugar). In payment for our catering services, we got into the fair for free and spent the day enjoying dog shows and magic shows. I figured out how the magician did his "mind tricks" while I was on ...

Just thought everyone should know that BYU has climbed up the polls to the #8 position in college football (according to the latest AP poll). They're 4-0 this season and have the longest winning streak in the country. They beat UCLA 59-0 a few weeks ago, too. Now sports writers are paying some attention to our conference and maybe we'll get a game or two on national tv or something. Now all we need to do is give food poisoning to the other seven teams ranked ahead of us and we've got a shot at the national championship. ~Jeremy

Patience and prayer always pays off! Our planned profit for the month of August after bills, savings, and trips was $17, so Jeremy and I are thrilled that I now have two part time jobs!! My first job is with Garden Grove Unified School District as a substitute three days a week. So far, that has been fun. All the schools in CA have hallways outside, which reminds me of the schools in Thailand. Oh the memories!! On Tuesday, I subbed for a second grade class and one little boy melted my heart. At recess he held my hand and jabbered on and on about his trip to Disneyland. When he told me about the space ride with the movie to make it feel like you are in outer space, he said "And do you know what?! We really went into outer space!" Another kid said "Nuh-uh." To which he replied "Yes sir! It was REAL!" Then he talked about Tinkerbell in the parade. "I think she lost her pixie dust because I saw a big wire coming out of her back." I got a chance to ta...

For Labor Day, our parents from Colorado came to visit us!! It was their first trip away from home since my Dad retired this summer at age 54! Highlights of their visit included: fancy restaurants for EVERY meal except on Sunday, expensive golfing (very fun and pretty), boogie boarding with the best waves and low tide, I sang at church and my neighbor came with us, bike riding along Huntington Beach, nice long chats, games, piano playing, Crystal Cove and Laguna Beach. When the tide was low on Monday, we went back to Crystal Cove to see the sea anemonies and crabs. Guess what unexpected visitor we saw?!? An OCTOPUS. It was 2 ft away from Jeremy, and he actually was standing next to it for almost ten minutes and didn't even know! It was brownish red and very camoflaged. The head part was the size of a nerf ball and it of course had eight tentacles, about 1 ft long each, but they were coiled up a bit so I'm not totally sure about their real length. We saw it sleenk under the rock...

Knock, knock, knock.... Creeeeeek. (An over-weight, bearded man scowls from behind his door). Jeremy: Hi, we're walking the precincts today to encourage people to vote on Proposition 8. My wife and I live nearby. Guy: Oh, hi. (He steps closer to us and lets his dog out to lick our hands) SarahLynn: Have you heard of Prop 8 before? Guy : Uh, a little. Which one is that again? Jeremy: It's the proposition about protecting marriage. Guy: Oh really? What's wrong with it? SarahLynn (trying not chuckle): Well, back in 2000, 61% of California voters said that they wanted a law that said "Marriage is between a man and a woman in the state of CA." Recently, some San Francisco judges said that the law wasn't constitutional. So now we want to help put in our state constitution to say that "Only marriage between a man and a woman is recognized in the state of CA." Guy: Oh yeah. I'll vote for that. You know it says that in the Bible. Jeremy: Yeah, we ...