Honestly, we're out of gas.

Halloween. One of two holidays that can be celebrated for an entire month. It is also one of my favorite holidays, though I seldom do anything of worth on that night. I don't trick or treat, I haven't been to a party or notability in years, and am often left disappointed after the evening itself. Yet I still look forward to this day and celebrate the macabre as best I can.

We decorated this year and though our village pales in comparison to that of my parents, it suffices for our needs and wants. Here you can see what we have done for our Halloween village.

And a close up of the village.

So we had our decorations up for most the month of October. We gathered lots of candy and put them into our Halloween candy dishes and I put together a playlist of Halloween music that could be played when we turned on our village lights. Some of the songs really only had a nebulous connection to Halloween, such as a mention of the color black, or reference to a wolf, or spider. But if you want a couple hours of music, you need to open your mind a bit. It can't all be Dead Man's Party and Thriller. So I mix in some No Doubt's Spiderwebs, some more Oingo Boingo, some Warren Zevon, and Duran Duran.

The night before Halloween, our ward held the traditional Trunk or Treat. If any of you don't understand the premise of a trunk or treat, it is like trick or treat, but instead of kids coming to your house, you all park in a parking lot and decorate your trunk. Kids wander around the parking lot and get candy from each trunk.
We decided to dress up for this trunk or treat. Melissa didn't want to wear the Tinkerbell costume, so I was off the hook to wear a matching costume. She dressed as a pirate and I decided to do a Michael Jackson theme. I thought maybe dressing up like Michael from his Smooth Criminal video, but it would have just been a suit and a hat. Not good enough. So I thought about his Thriller video. I didn't have the red jacket, so I went with the wolf. Here we are in our costumes.



And here is Melissa with another sister in our ward standing in front of our trunk. We threw together some decorations for that night. The best thing is that wolfman figure. Thanks Matt.

Then on Halloween night, we went over to Tiffani and Cameron's for a bit. They dressed up as Little Mermaid characters, and went trick or treating. Melissa, Cameron and I stayed at home and passed out candy while watching Oregon dismantle the Trojans of USC. Go Ducks!!!

Then Melissa and I decided to go and see Michael Jackson's This is it. Great movie. Here is a picture of Tiffani and her kids.

Again the title is a quote. This one should be easy.

Highway 50, West

So a few weeks back, we had tickets to U2. They held it at University of Phoenix Stadium. No that is not where the college University of Phoenix plays. From their commercials, I think their mascot is a phoenix. The University of Phoenix Phoenix's. Makes sense. The stadium is actually where the Arizona Cardinals play. Very nice looking stadium. The theory for the concert was that it was to be a 360 stage, but it wasn't. It was more like 220 degrees. We would have had great seats had it been truly 360, but as it was, we had decent seats.

So we parked our car and started walking into the stadium. Then we see this big police escort and a black suburban pulling in. The window was down and there was Bono sitting in the car, looking out the window. We look up and he smiles and waves at us. Pretty cool.

Here are some shots of the concert.

Pretty goo seats right? Actually I cropped the image, so it looks closer than it is.

This guy was dressed as Bono and was waving to the crowd. People actually thought it was him.

Here we are.

And here are some more pictures of the concert.

So the title of this post is from one of Melissa's favorite movies. The character is an irishman. Take a guess.

Yeah, we'll be prepared. Prepared for what?

Many of you may think that the only time Melissa and I go on vacation is when we go to Disneyland. Well, you are wrong. This last weekend, we went to Disneyworld. Rather than take a family cruise over Christmas, my family decided to take a trip out to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. We were missing one member of my family in my sister Kelsi, but her excuse is that she is in the Halloween show at Universal Studios in California. But she was missed.

We did have however, plenty of people to bring along with us. Both Tyson and Kira brought along their friends of the opposite sex. So with spouses, close friends, kids and all we have a group of 24. For many of you that may seem like a lot, but for me, it is just a normal family vacation. A group like that would take up many hotel rooms, or just one house. We rented a house not far from the resorts.

So in the rich tradition of family blogging, I present to you a photographic represenation of our trip. You may notice there are very few pictures of me. That is because I was mostly holding the camera. If I had the pictures that my Dad took, there would likely be more of me, but since I don't, just imagine me behind the camera lense. So without futher adu, I present The Cullimores', a journey through Disneyworld.

Here is Melissa with our neice Danika. Notice her pacifier (binkie?) is upside down. That is a favorite game of my family. We turn their binkie upside down multipe times, then force them to turn it back. Then after a few times, we turn it all the way around, and try to trick them into turning it upside down themselve. Then we laugh and laugh. Gullible toddlers.

One of the reasons we chose this time of year to go to Disneyworld is because they were holding their annual Halloween party. Adults are typically not allowed to dress up when entering Disney parks. However, during their Halloween party, it is acceptable and expected to dress up. We attended the Disneyland Halloween party last year and my parents wanted to do the Disneyworld part. So we all got dressed up and ventured out to the Magic Kingdom on Friday Night.

Here is the Alladin faction of our group, which includes my brother Tyson, his girlfriend Jessica, my brother-in-law Tommy, my sister Teisha and their child Tennyson. Tennyson is dressed as Abu.

Here is the Alice in Wonderland faction. This is my brother Kirk's family. Kayla is Alice, Kynda is the Cheshire Cat and Kapri is the White Rabbit. I would assume you can guess the others.
My dad dressed as Sully from Monster's Inc. Little Danika is Boo and Daxton is Mike. This was our Monster's Inc faction.
Here is one of the only pictures I have of me. Me and Melissa dressed as . . . you guessed it, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. Melissa wouldn't let me dress up as Tinkerbell, so I went with Peter.

At the Halloween party, the park is open as normal, but there are special Halloween parades, and additionally, there are trick-or-treat stands. We all got lots of candy.
We also stopped by ancient Japan on the trip. Here is Melissa in front of a statue of a Samuri warrior. Oddly enough, Japan is located entirely inside Epcot Center.

I thought this was cute. Danika loved having a baby around. She would hold Tennyson all day if we let her. She was always trying to hold him or touch him or hug him.
Here is Melissa at Animal Kingdom. In the background are Vampire Bats, also known as the flying fox.
More pictures at the Animal Kingdom. This is perhaps my favorite park in the Disneyworld resort. It's like a zoo, but mixed in with rides and Disney magic. There are some water buffalo in the back and some gazelles, or something.

Here is part of our group on the Asia River Rapids ride at Animal Kingdom.

Melissa is sitting next to Kynda and my brother Kirk. We are riding a shuttle to one of the parks.
My brother Tyson and Tanner, Kira's friend, got to participate in the backlot tour at Disney's Hollywood Studios. They were crew men on a ship during Pearl Habor.
This is Melissa favorite Star Wars character. She likes his horns on his forehead.
Melissa seems to be holding Danika a lot. It wasn't necessarily the case. Everyone took turns helping out with Danika, Kapri and Tennyson, but for some reason, I only have pictures of Melissa holding Danika.

And here we are in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle. It was a four day trip, and there are lots of pictures, between the 24 of us. But this should suffice for now. I've been reprimanded by some of you for taking too much time off between my posts, so I am trying to rectify that. This only took me 5 days to get up. We will also try to do some interesting things that are worth blogging about.

The quote above is from a Disney movie, so feel free to take a guess.

Some of the Romans have far worse manners than I

So we took a trip to Disneyland a few weeks back. Much of my family was going. We hadn't planned on going, but when we found we wouldn't have to miss any work, and it was just a weekend trip, we decided we could go. We spent Saturday and Sunday in Disneyland.

Here is Melissa with our nephew Daxton. We were all riding the Jungle Cruises. That is one of my favorite rides.

Here is Melissa with our other Nephew Tennyson. This was his first trip to Disneyland, of course, he's not quite 6 months old.

The theme is Celebrate Today at Disneyland. They had a parade, and it was one of the weaker parades I've seen at Disneyland. But the kids gat to get up and do a sort of conga line.

I didn't want to spend the money on buying the picture of just us on the Tower of Terror. So I just took a picture of it. We are in the bottom left corner.

Then a few weeks later, we decided to go again to Disneyland to see the Halloween decorations and the Halloween firework show. They had just put it up. It was pretty crowded for a day in the fall, but I'm assuming that because this was the first Halloween week, lots of people had the same idea as us.

So here we are in front of the Golden Gate Bridge at California Adventureland.

Because we had just been there, we got burned out pretty quick. We did everything we had planned, but we wanted to see the fireworks. We had about 2 1/2 hours to wait for the fireworks. Going back to the hotel would have been pointless, so we decided to hang out at the Tomorrowland Terrace. There we found a Ska band playing. They played 3 sets that we saw. I was stoked. I love Ska bands. I wasn't sure what year it was, maybe we hit a time vortex and travelled to the early 90's. But regardless, it was pretty sweet.

This is the band we watched. Suburban Legends. Notice the horn sections, that's how you know it's Ska.

I'm a loser. I broke up with the hottest girl in school, my friends all sold me out... and somebody in there just called me a fag!

So Melissa noted that most of my last post featured me. I decided to make up for it by having a nothing but Melissa post. It cover's the same timeline, but it is just Melissa.

Here is Melissa at Lake Pleasant. As I stated, she did get in the water, but not behind the boat. We actually spent a lot of time just swimming in the lake.

Here is Melissa and Tristen playing the bean bag game. I forget what it's called, but it involves throwing bean bags at a plank of wood with a hole in it. You score points by landing the bean bag on the plank or getting it in the hole. We regretfully did not win the tournement. I forget who did, but I think it was Timmy and his brother Sean.

We stopped by the Grand Canyon on the way home. It is big. Sometime, we will actually go into the canyon and spend some time there. This time, we just got out and took some pictures.


We went back up to Salt Lake for the weekend of the 24th. I was going to audition for So you think you can Dance, but I didn't wake up in time. Plus there was that parade and all sorts of other problems. So for those of you who were looking forward to seeing me win the fall season of So you think you can dance, will have to wait.
But we also had the whole family in town. My younger sister was blessing her baby, and we all came in town. It just worked out that way.
On the night of the 24th, we visited with Melissa's family and then went back to see some fireworks at my parents house. There were no pictures of Melissa at her parents house, thus I present you with no pictures.

Here is Melissa and our neice, Danika, watching fireworks on my parents front lawn.

Later on we all decided to have random contests and such on the lawn. Hand stand contests, walking on our hands, and other stuff. Here is Melissa and some of my family making a human pyramid.

So now I have two posts in such a short time. People might start to expect it. I'll do my best.

Also, the title is a quote from the same movie as the previous post. Annie, can you figure it out? Or can any of you?

Somebody? More like Nobody!

Finally after months of planning and waiting, we finally moved. I was working in Phoenix and we were in talks to rent a house. We had submitted a couple applications but we did not expect to hear anything anytime soon. Thursday morning I found out that the owner of one house had decided to rent to us. I finalized everything on Thursday and picked up the keys on Friday morning. I flew back up to Salt Lake on Friday and we worked to finish packing on Friday. We called up some people and loaded up a truck on Saturday. On Sunday evening, we were at our new home in Phoenix.

Two of my brothers and my friend Timmy.

Melissa and her mother packing up our old place.

So we made it to Phoenix in mid-June. We are still in the process of unpacking, but for the most part we are settled in to our new place.

Then on the fourth of July, we celebrated our nation's birth by boating with my sister's family on Lake Pleasant. Here is a picture of me out on Lake Pleasant. Melissa got in the water, but chose not to get dragged behind the boat.

Then the next weekend, we had planned a camping trip with some of my friends. It was up in Utah, in the Manti-Lesalle National Forest. It was quite a drive for us, but we had previously decided to go, so we went. We left on a Friday Morning and got there in the afternoon. We had a fun time, fishing, felling trees, playing games, etc. Of course we did the traditional camp out things, such as smores, and being scared of bears.

This was a rainbow that came out after a few hours of rain we suffered through.

This is one of the fish that I caught. Just about everyone that fished caught something. All in all, we had a good time. We missed a few that should have been there, though they mostly had good excuses. Ed and Mikaela were in Boston, Jay and Arrion were expected another child to be born anyday, and Stoker, I'm sure had something.

We hope that they will all be able to join us the next time around.

Also for Annie, the title is a movie quote. Tell me what it is from.

Never give up, Never Surrender!

So it looks like our last post to our blog was on January 8th of this year. We were blogging about Christmas. That is about right. We have done nothing of note since then. Most of the pictures I've taken have been of houses, as we are attempting to purchase one. I spent a few weeks away from Melissa in order to prepare for the Arizona bar exam (I spent that time in Arizona). And then when I got back, we didn't really go out and do anything. I guess I could have taken pictures at the movies we went to see, but normally the theaters frown on that. But we finally did something on Memorial Day.

We went to the Zoo with Melissa's brother and his family. The Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake is a Utah staple, but after having visited other zoos around the country, I find that the Hogle Zoo is a little small. It still has quite a few animals, and this year it is advertising Madagascar. It was a greenhouse with some bugs, a tortoise and some sort of Mongoose creature. If you are going just for the Madagascar exhibit, prepare to be disappointed. Here are some pictures.

Melissa and her brother and kids, walking along at the zoo.

This is Melissa just outside the Elephant exhibit. They have actually redesigned quite a bit of things since my last visit. I barely recognized it.

This giraffe was able to use his behind as a pillow. Sometimes I think we all have that dream.

Melissa loves the bird show. It is her favorite part of the zoo. We were able to get decent seats for it. The birds would fly about a foot over your head. Here is an owl that is coming right at me.

This is me and Matt's family looking at some sort of pig creature. You can't see the pig creature in the picture, but he is just on the other side of the fence. It is kind of like the pig monster on Galaxy Quest.

So after a day at the zoo, spending all that time in the sun, you would think we'd be done for the day. But no, we have evening plans as well. A few weeks ago, I was made aware of a buy one get one sale on tickets to a concert. No Doubt was playing at the E Center. No Doubt happens to be one of my favorite bands, and since they haven't been together in a while, I wanted to see them play. I was actually trying to win tickets from the radio stations, but wasn't able to. Next best thing is paying for them, I guess.
We had floor seats, so for those of you who don't know, that means, general admission and you stand the whole time and try to crowd the stage. We actually had a really good view of the concert. We were close enough to see the spittle coming off Gwen's lips while she sang, close enough to smell the band's sweat. (I guess it could have been anyone's sweat, I did smell a lot of it in the pit, but it smelled kind of hot, so it must have been Gwen's.)

Here is Melissa inbetween the Paramors and No Doubt. It was actually a good opening band.

I had the camera and went a little crazy taking pictures of the band. But look how close we were.

Gwen was staring right at me. She was basically posing for this picture.

Here we are at the concert. We are both wearing glasses, we are such dorks.

And a couple other pictures of the band. Like I said, we were pretty close to the stage. This was a great show.

So what holds next for Thayne and Melissa? We will be moving to Arizona soon. When? I don't know, but I am preparing to have my office open by next week. Doesn't that mean we are moving by next week? I wish. We still need to get into a house. With the housing market where it is, you think that people with jobs would be able to get right in, but you'd be wrong.
Hopefully the next post will be soon and will be about our moving. Time will tell.

Has it really been that long

So I guess it's been a while since I've posted anything on this blog. As you can imagine a lot has happened. Basically a half a year. We had August, September, October, November and December, but normally people don't really do anything in those months, right?

I guess they were pretty active months. That's why we didn't blog, we didn't have time. I swear. I mean blogging takes soo much time, that we just are too busy. That's the story I'm sticking with.

Anyway, in the last few months, we did a trip to Disneyland, a Cruise, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and another trip to Disneyland. I was sworn into the Utah bar, Melissa is still working, and we are still living in Utah, sort of.

Here are some of the pictures we took in Disneyland, with our new camera. We got a camera for Christmas, the Nikon D90. We are pretty excited about that.

We also set up a nice little Christmas Village in our place. Here is a picture of our village.

More things Done in July

So after the weekend of the Fourth, we still had a pretty busy July. The next week was the Cullimore Family Reunion. We had double booked ourselves that weekend with the reunion and a camping trip with Jeff, Tristan, Timmy, Harman and a couple others. We did what we could to attend both. We spent Thursday night and Friday in Filmore at the reunion. Then Friday night until Sunday we were camping near Huntington.

The camping trip was fun. On this camping trip, I felled a tree, I caught fish, I killed and gutted a fish, and I started a fire without matches or a lighter. Quite a trip. Here are some more pictures of it.

Also some more things done in July. The following week my office held its summer party. We went up to the Bear River Lodge, up Mirror Lake Highway. We stayed two nights there. Actually Melissa and I showed up later than everyone else, because we had to see the Dark Knight on opening day. But we got there and did some four wheeling. That was pretty cool.
When all you have to protect your eyes are sunglasses and you are on dirt roads all day, your face gets dirty.
Also since we were near the Bear River, we decided to do some fishing there too. Even Melissa got in on the action, and Melissa caught a fish too.

I decided to do some night fishing one night. I went out to the river and first cast in, I got myself a little trout. The second cast in, my lure got stuck in some rocks. I tried to pull it free, but to no avail. I had already lost one lure when it got caught in a fish's fin and he swam away with it, so I didn't want to lose another. But the water was really cold. I debated on what to do for quite some time. I thought I could just cut my lure and call it good, but I really didn't want to. So despite my better judgment, I rolled up my jeans, took off my shoes and socks and ventured into the cold mountain water. It was about up to my thighs. I didn't have any one else there to take a picture, so sorry to everyone that wanted to see my thighs. I walked more than half way across the river and then pulled my lure loose. Happy day, I didn't need to cut my line.

Also I took the Arizona Bar exam at the end of July.

July 4th Weekend

I know, two posts in the same month. Crazy. I'm actually trying to be better about this. And if anyone is interested, I've also posted on my personal blog, with my preseason rankings. The link in on the side over there.

This last weekend seemed pretty full. We had a lot going on. Of course we were celebrating our independence and the invention of freedom. So how is that creation of Philadelphia celebrated? By sending up Chinese explosive into the air. But it is the tradition.
On July 3, 2008, last Thursday, we joined many of our friends at the Oakley Rodeo. We attempted to dress the part, so we wore our boots and our best looking cowboy shirts and our hats. I wish we would have taken more pictures of our group, but we didn't. Here is a picture of one of the bull riders though.

On Friday, the Fourth, the actual birthday of this country, we accompanied my family to the Stadium of Fire. And who was headlining the Stadium of Fire? None other than Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana herself. Of course there was also the Blue Man Group and Glenn Beck. Then at the end there was the firework show. There were probably more fireworks set off than at any other place in the country.

This is us at the Stadium of Fire.

A giant flag.

And here were some of the fireworks.

Then on Saturday we planned to go to the zoo. We ended up going to This is the Place Heritage park. We spent a few hours there touring some of the old buildings and trying some of the activities. Melissa petted a goat, and we both participated in a pie eating contest. The pie was actually just whipped cream, and the goal was to find something inside the pie. Melissa took second place, and I too a little longer.

So that was our July fourth weekend. We had a good time and the rest of July should be pretty entertaining. We have a camping trip planned, an office party, and then I get to vacation by myself in Tuscon for a few days.