18 Months!

So here goes...my first post. Today marks the day of 18 incredible months next to the girl of my dreams! Every day I find myself thinking "My wife Rocks" she is so good to me and I never knew it was possible to love somebody so much. She makes me laugh almost constantly which helps with the stress of finishing up school.
We are excited for the 4th of July! We are running in the 10K that morning and then we are going to watch the parade! I am already scoping out potential spots along the route where we will have a good view. I mean what is better than a front row seat to see the the Payson High School band and the pooper scoopers!
We are gearing up for the Hobble Creek half marathon in August! We are pretty excited and it is fun because we push each other on the long runs! I really am enjoying running, I never thought I would say that! All I am missing is some of those ridiculously short shorts!
So there it is my first post! I feel so "in the loop", It feels good to join the blogging ranks!

Happy Birthday...again!

Like I said, more was to come for Jen's birthday. We did a little pseudo-surprise party, with just the fam, it was great. The decorations were fabulous...as you can see. We're not too exciting, but we like to think that we're a lot of fun. At least she was surprised, right?

Sargie loved the balloons. About every 3 minutes he would get one under control and POP it. He's great entertainment. We ate a little grub at Red Robin, then we did some Miniature Golfing. All I can say is that it's been awhile. After watching the U.S. Open and watching Tiger putt with ease, I think that I'm better at swinging a putter than I really am. I guess skill is required, not just visualizing it. Oh well, we had fun. It was a perfect summer night. As you can see, it was a little windy though...

We are so excited for Melissa and Ryan to come up next week. There will be plenty of good times to document. Hooray!

Face-lift!

Ok, as you can see, our blog got a face-lift. I have to make a shout-out to Kate Lowe for helping me, now I know where to find cute templates! Anyway, I'm pretty excited, I feel like I can be part of the blogging world now. I might get a little excited, so our template might be changing again soon. It's always nice to have a change.

I have to show off Sargie. He was a little thirsty...

It was probably one of those times where, you just had to be there. He's so funny.


While I'm here, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEN!! Sorry I missed it yesterday, but we still have some plans in the making to celebrate her birthday, so there will be more on that a bit later. But yesterday we were able to go out to lunch with Nanny to help celebrate Jen's birthday. We had a fabulous lunch at the Pizza Factory. We love being with Nanny, she's just one of the girls.

80's Madness

Here we are, back in Provo. After taking Ambien, and sleeping on the red-eye flight from Maui we were able to come back full force into our routine. It was nice to see little Sargie again; Jen, Dave and Crissi took good care of him. Ry and I took our test Monday morning, but we missed the sunshine too much, so we went swimming to reminisce the goodness of last week.




My friend Caity's birthday is on Wednesday, so the girls threw a surprise party for her last night. For Cheryl's birthday a few weeks ago we had a Mexican Fiesta and all had fake mustaches, but for Caity we celebrated...the 80's. I took advantage of the chance to wear fabulous neon colors and sport the side ponytail. It was fun to see all of my friends, listen to 80's rock, eat snacks, take pictures, and be a little goofy. It's nice most of my friends are still around and we can get together every once and awhile. Good times.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

(This picture was taken like 2 years ago, but I had a small selection of recent pictures with me with my daddy.)

A Carefree Life!

What a week. Words cannot express. But this can ...

Isn't that so so beautiful! My parents said we had to do 2 things for them while we were here, 1. eat a shave ice (which we haven't gotten to quite yet) 2. watch a sunset. And I'm pretty sure we can cross off that second request. It's amazing how one sunset can bring so much happiness, peace and love ...



and this is why I do not want to leave! As our vacation is coming to an end, I've noticed we didn't have as many pictures as I thought we would have taken. And then I remebered that we spent 96% of the time in our swimsuits, and who wants to see a picture of that? Not me.



We had so much fun though playing on the beach, taking naps at 10:00 in the morning by the pool, reading while drenched in tanning oil, and basically not having any kind of schedule at all! But then reality hits, and we are still in school and we have a test the next morning after we get home ... sad, but true.


The other day, I honestly can't say which day because they all seem to blend into one, we drove down the Olivine Pools. So cool. They are these pools that have been formed by the coral reefs on the coast and the waves splash in and form these natural pools. Like I said, for your sake and mine, we'll keep the pictures we took there out of sight. Well here's an action shot, just so you get the idea of how awesome they were! It was a bit cold, and salty, but worth it. I guess there was "supposedly" a sign and we weren't "supposed" to hike down the cliff to the pools, but we weren't the only ones there, and it was worth it.

We also had one of the many wonderful meals at Hard Rock with the fam.

We had an amazing view of the ocean from our table, and loved eating greasy American food, listening to 80's rock, and having a fabulous time. Let's face it, dessert is always the best part, especially when it's brownies, ice cream and hot fudge.

We have also had many Scrabble battles, Scum games, grilled dinners, walks on the beach, fresh cookies, shopping sprees, and also some awesome snorkeling. We also loved sleeping long hours and not having one thing on the agenda!

Life doesn't get much better than this!

ALOHA!!

Yes, it's true, right now I'm sitting on our deck looking at this...

Not too bad huh? It is a beautiful Sunday morning here in Maui. We were able to go to church this morning to the Lahaina 1st ward and sat with the other 100 mormon tourists. Ryan's cousins are all here too, all of Uncle Dick's kids, and their kids. We came with Ry's wonderful parents as well as Jane Anne and Josh. We were greeted by this true-blue polynesian, from head to toe; he loves his job I'm sure of it! We are so excited to finally take a break from school and work, which has and will consume our lives for 13 more months, but who's counting?

The night before we left we had some fabulous fajita's at Joe Vera's Mexican Restaurant, we are now big fans. The best part was the never ending chips and salsa, that's the benefit of authentic Mexican food. After dinner we went to our house and played a little croquet, it seems that Ry and I need to practice a little on our swing...but that's ok, we were good hosts and let our guests win.

Well, updates from Hawaii will keep coming, don't worry, you won't miss a thing!

The 3 F's

Family, Friends and FOOD! This past week we've spent some quality time with family and friends. Last week our lovely Nanny turned a young 85, but looks 65, and my aunt and cousins put together a fun little party to celebrate her birthday. We had a fabulous lasagna dinner, along with the "sinful" Costco chocolate cake. We then were able to spend some time talking with Nanny and learning more about her and her childhood. She's one amazing lady. Happy Birthday Nanny!

For family night, Dave and Crissi invited us over for a BBQ, I'm not a huge fan of hamburgers, but they were very delicious. Dave was an amazing grill master. We ate and relaxed out on the back porch enjoying the weather of a perfect spring night. Dave then shared with us a lesson he got from primary... it was very... simple, but great. We love you Dave!

After a week of studying and taking midterms, which wasn't too bad considering finals are only a few weeks away, we decided to have some fun. First, Ry's mission companion got married, so we went to his wedding dinner and were able to attend their sealing in the temple as well. Keith McMullin, the second counselor of the presiding bishopric, did their sealing, it was very beautiful.

Last night we had some fun with two couples from our ward, Brittany and Tristan Perdue, and Jared and Erin Packard. They are all so much fun to be with. We went out to dinner to Chili's, we all stuffed our faces because we had to wait way too long to be seated and were starving! Then instead of spending a whole bunch of money on dessert, we bought the stuff to make homemade ice cream. The Perdue's got their ice cream maker and we came back to our place for mint oreo ice cream and watched a movie. It was so nice to relax a little bit and eat some good grub. We did stay up a little later than usual, so that Sunday afternoon nap is looking pretty appetizing right about now, Ry's already beat me to it.