The Benner's Spot

6 Months/24 weeks

2012-01-15T20:54:00.002-07:00

I'm not a big fan of pictures now that I'm pregnant but I figure for our family I should put up a picture of me pregnant. Maybe one day I'll look back and be grateful I took them....maybe. This is my 6 month / 24 week mark. Oh yeah and I cut 8 inches off my hair, I love it!

Friday the 13th

2012-01-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

Today's Friday the 13th...no big deal, actually I quite like Friday the 13th since my birthday is the 13th and I've spent a few of them on Fridays. Today reminds me though of another Friday the 13th exactly 6 years ago...that was the night Michael proposed. I can't speak for him but I would definitely say that saying "yes" was one of the best discussions I've ever made!

Engaged! January 13, 2006

I love you Michael!

Our little girl is kicking

2012-01-06T10:44:00.003-07:00

People kept asking me if I've felt our little girl moving yet and I would tell them no. The majority of the time they always responded with disbelief followed by them telling me what it should feel like because obviously I should feel it by now ("It a little flutter", "like butterflies but different", "It feels like fingers running along your insides"). This was a little frustrating since this started when I was still around 19-20 weeks or so and my doctor says first time moms usually start feeling the baby between 20-24 weeks. Well over Christmas vacation (at 21 weeks) I've started to feel little movements, really quick and gone usually before I can even tell if they are actual movements, but fun still. So yesterday (22 weeks along) I'm sitting at my desk at work, inevitably in the post holiday haze of wanting to still be on vacation when our little girl decided she didn't want to be there either. I started to feel her move a little and I wanted to see if you could feel her movements on the outside so Michael could feel her too. I pressed on my stomach to see if I could feel her and received three swift kicks right on my hand. It was really cute! I'm so sad it happened at work though and Michael couldn't feel her. I tried to get her to repeat it last night but she's her own person and decided she doesn't perform on demand haha. Hopefully he will be able to feel her soon! It is still kind of surreal that we are having a kid but little things like this are definitely making it more real.

Our little Christmas

2011-12-23T11:37:00.032-07:00

Merry Christmas!

Every year since we've been married we rotate who's house we go to for Christmas. Since both our families live on the East coast it is impossible for us to try to see them both in the same year without getting insanely expensive or without us spending the majority of our vacation traveling. Each year before we go we always have our little family Christmas together. It is definitely one of my favorite times of the year! This year we celebrated on the 22nd. I took a half day at work to begin our vacation and we finished some last minute Christmas shopping then came home to celebrate. It is always hard shopping for Michael because he usually wants tech stuff which I can't buy for him because I have no idea what models, specs, or basically any technical detail to try to get him the right thing. If I'm going to spend that money I definitely want to make sure it's the right thing. I did get him a graphics card, well he had to buy it, but other than that I wanted his presents to be a surprise. I usually take forever to come up with a great idea for him but this year I was so proud I was able to come out with two ideas really quickly and he had no clue what they were! I got him a baseball bat (which I wrapped up in an old curtain rod box which was long and huge and he was dying to figure out what it was).

The other present was this game Mindtrap that he always talks about playing when he was growing up but we can never find or it's used, or too expensive, etc. He was definitely surprised and loved his gifts. I love when that happens! He was also really great at surprising me with my presents this year. He got me a pair of winter gloves (these I actually knew about because we found them together at Macey's), a winter hat which is really cute, and a Kindle which I was completely surprised about because I've never even mentioned wanting one. It was a great Christmas.

We also opened the presents my parents mailed us and our little girl got more than we did! They bought her these absolutely adorable Virginia Tech Hokie onesies and a matching zip-up sweatshirt and some toys. My Mom also had mailed me a box of things she's been collecting for us ever since she found out I was pregnant. They were wonderful gifts and our baby is definitely going to be one spoiled little girl. My Dad had my name this year and he got me this beautiful Willow Tree statue of a husband and his pregnant wife. I love it and put it on the bookshelf right away.

It's a Girl!!!

2011-12-11T21:28:00.003-07:00

Here is the profile picture of our little girl. Everything looks good and the baby is healthy. We are extremely excited!

80's Christmas Party

2011-12-11T21:26:00.001-07:00

It's Christmas season which means lots of treats, parties, friends and family. Also lots of trying to avoid traffic, malls, and pretty much all masses of people, something about the holidays especially in the stores makes people nuts!

So this year our work Christmas parties were pretty fun. Adobe rented out a hall up in Salt Lake and had a retro 80's Christmas celebration. It was pretty cool, they had a Mr. T impersonator who was pretty awesome (so good in fact he convinced one of Michael's co-workers he was really Mr. T and he was so convinced he actually contacted the party coordinator to prove to everyone it was really Mr. T haha), they flew in an 80's cover band from L.A. complete with red leather suits and all (they were great but I'm pretty sure I lost a lot of hearing that night, so loud!), and they had all these classic arcade and board games all around for you to play. The highlight of the night was a dance competition. They opened the floor up to everyone and slowly picked people to continue to the next rounds until they were down to the final three, Michael's supervisor dressed up as Michael Jackson, including the glitter glove (his even lit up). In the final round he had to do a solo dance and the guy rocked it, but about half way through doing the moonwalk he ripped his pants all the way up his leg, in true Michael Jackson form he just kept dancing which was so funny to see. He actually ended up winning the whole competition. It was a fun night!

For my work Christmas party we were supposed to go snowmobiling up at the Sundance Resort and then have dinner at one of the resort restaurants. We seem to be having an extremely warm weather and still have no snow which is nuts since it usually snows from October to May here in Utah. We had to cancel the snowmobiling which was disappointing, I've always wanted to go and have never been, but it's hard to go without any snow on the ground. So we just had dinner up at the resort's restaurant. It was amazing food! I always love these Christmas dinners because Scott will take us out to these nice 5 star restaurants that we could never afford to eat at. The steak was really delicious and we had a lot of fun.

Now on to more holiday fun. We are heading to Ohio to celebrate with Michael's family this year. It should be fun. Merry Christmas everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-26T22:05:00.000-07:00

This year Thanksgiving was quiet, really quiet. I've gotten used to hosting and having a bunch of my family come in but this year it was just Michael and I. Although it was different just the two of us it was actually really fun.

Thanksgiving is really the one day of the year I don't complain about cooking, I actually like it because I love the food and I feel like I do a pretty good job at it. We both really like turkey and are big dark meat turkey people so even though it was just the two of us we couldn't forgo getting a turkey, we did try really hard to find the smallest turkey we could but once you get below 10 pounds (at least when we were looking) you couldn't find a whole turkey just turkey breast so we ended up getting a 12 pounder. Yes we had lots of left overs and ate Thanksgiving food for about a week, it was beautiful.

For Thanksgiving Day since it was a small turkey we were able to sleep in before getting up to put the turkey in which was nice. We watched the Detroit Lions football game (poor Detroit couldn't take down Green Bay, far to many penalties and stupid mistakes) and then feasted. Being pregnant and not really being able to eat much at a time I barely got through one plate, but it was delicious none the less and like I said we had plenty of left overs so every few hours I'd go back and get more. It really was a fun day just hanging around with Michael and relaxing.

For the rest of the weekend we had fun plans. Kristin and Ryan were out with their kids to visit his parents so we went up Friday afternoon and spent the day hanging out and playing with them. It's amazing how big her kids are getting, I didn't even realize Owen was walking yet! And Saturday was a football day, we had Brandon and Lisa over for the Ohio State Michigan game and although the Buckeyes lost it was actually quite a good game. Overall it was a great holiday! Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Happy Birthday Michael!

2011-10-29T22:41:00.001-06:00

My wonderful husband is now 29! We had a fun birthday (well I think he did, if not he’s not telling me). I made him breakfast, we watched some football, went out to eat at his favorite restaurant, Red Lobster, and watch his Ohio State Buckeyes take down Wisconsin! It was a fun birthday with just the two of us. For his birthday this year he wanted an icecream cake so we got one of the Baskin Robbins roll cakes, chocolate cake, icing and icecream all rolled up into a log cake. It was really delicious! Happy Birthday Michael I love you!

Coming May 2012!!!

2011-10-16T21:44:00.001-06:00

Introducing Baby Benner! Expected May 9, 2012! We are most definitely excited, nervous, happy, anxious, you know all the crazy feelings that come when we realize we are actually going to be parents! This will be a crazy wonderful new adventure, wish us luck!

September BYU vs Central Florida football

2011-09-24T21:33:00.001-06:00

It’s football season! LOVE IT! I must admit we haven’t watched nearly as much football this year as we normally do but don’t worry we still make time for all the BYU, Ohio State, and Virginia Tech games. I was lucky enough to get some tickets from work to the BYU – Central Florida game. BYU just got off the embarrassing loss to the University of Utah so we weren’t really sure how they were going to respond to such a blow out. The first half was pretty slow, and we didn’t look so hot. We also got “lucky” enough to sit in front of some football experts, you know the kind who played football 15-20 years ago in high school and know everything about everything even though they haven’t played in forever and somehow don’t seem to clearly have a good understanding of the actual rules or even strategy of the game. It definitely made it interesting, they were really intense. The second half of the game was much more exciting! We even saw a kickoff returned 93 yards for a touchdown for the first time in over 15 years of BYU football. The special teams were definitely what kept us in the game. BYU won 24-17, Go COUGARS!

Yellowstone with the Benners

2011-09-10T20:51:00.001-06:00

Michael’s parents came out to visit at the beginning of September over Labor Day weekend. They had been talking for awhile about wanting to go to Yellowstone so we decided to take them for the weekend when they came out. I was at work and they were “supposed” to be buying camping supplies, I got this text message instead. Haha love it!

We drove up through Grand Tetons National Park, I had never seen the Tetons, they were really quite majestic like everyone says, it was a gorgeous drive. We brought all our food for camping and were able to stop at Jenny Lake in the Tetons and have lunch. It was very relaxing.

After that we headed north to Yellowstone. I love this place and it is always fun to take new people to it and show them some of the gorgeous natural features there.

We camped out for 2 nights (and unfortunately forgot to take a picture of the campsite but it was on the back end of one of the loops in Madison Campground and therefore was huge! It was a great site), hike to the Lower Falls, took about every turnout and mini-hike you could along the main loop and had quite an adventure.

I have to share one of my favorite stories from our camping trip. We were cooking Bratwurst over the fire at our campsite. Karen was cooking them on the grate over the fire and Mike and Michael were giving her a hard time about rotating them because they thought they would fall in, but we insisted they wouldn’t. Well the boys left to get some firewood and sure enough two Brats fell in the fire and covered with ash! Karen quickly picked them out and wiped the ash off so they wouldn’t notice and we positioned them so that the boys would have to eat them, devious aren’t we?! Well after they came back we sat down to eat, we are all going for our second brat and Karen starts laughing, she had gotten them mixed up and eaten the one that fell in the fire, how did she know? It was still ashy, oops!

It was freezing at night, Karen and I both had probably five layers of clothes on if not more, I even slept in my winter ski coat, hat and gloves, obviously I am not made for winter camping but thankfully I was prepared. After a fun weekend in Yellowstone we headed over to Rexsburg Idaho to visit Michael’s brother Adam and his wife Chele. We had a great BBQ in the park for Labor Day grilling out Brats and fish, went swimming in the Snake River (Ok Michael, Adam and Karen went swimming, it’s pure snow runoff from the mountains and was far too cold for me), and even helped Adam purchase a car. As always it was fun hanging out with family. After that we headed back down to Orem were I headed back to work but Michael and his parents had a few more days of freedom and fun. At least they seemed to save a lot of the really fun stuff until I got off work. It was a great visit! Thanks for coming Karen and Mike!

They moved away…

2011-08-24T19:57:00.001-06:00

Ben got a job! Great news for Ben, Sarah and their family, great news for my parents and Mark & Jessica, but such sad news for Mary, Michael and I! They moved back home to Virginia and it’s crazy how much I miss them! They are of course loving it and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but it is amazing how fast my nieces are growing up and I hate missing it, I’ve been close since they were all born and it is really different being so far away. Now my Mom on the other hand, she’s in heaven! We miss you Morrills!!!

Fun in Cincinnati

2011-07-27T14:19:00.001-06:00

Michael is a Reds fan and I am a Braves fan. Given our teams are in different divisions and only play each other two series a year it isn’t too much of a conflict but it is always interesting when they do. This year they were playing in Cincinnati and we decided we wanted to actually go to the games. Cincinnati isn’t quite midway between our two families but it is close enough that we were able to invite both to come. I especially needed my family to come so I could have more Braves fans to support my team. My Mom, Mark and Jessica ended up driving up and we drove down with Michael’s parents. We also met our friends Trisha and Trevor there, so the scale was tipped towards the Reds fans unfortunately. Saturday’s game was so HOT! I’m used to ninety degree weather, even 100s occasionally but in dry heat, I forgot how crazy 90s in probably 90% humidity is. The game itself was a lot of fun. We sat in the upper deck behind home plate and I loved the view. In MICHAEL’S words “What made the game even better is the Reds won the game 11-2!” I strongly disagree :) You should also know that Michael is forcing me to put up a picture of the score. I would have conveniently left that out. We had a lot of fun hanging out with our friends and families (although we probably shouldn’t talk about the stress of driving, almost running out of gas, overheating, ending up on a ferry in the middle of nowhere, etc.). We spent most of Sunday playing volleyball in the pool. The second game was that night. We met Trisha and Trevor for dinner at Johnny Rockets (excellent milkshakes) and then headed to the ballpark. Trisha and Trevor were even nice enough to use their children to get Michael a Reds nightlight but don’t worry Michael did let the kids keep one. The Sunday night game was a lot more intense. Our Braves fan power was really strong this time! Michael’s turn to narrate again… “It was a close game tied 3-3 until the bottom of the 9th when Drew Stubbs came to the plate. Sherrill threw out the 1st pitch and…. BOOM! Stubbs launched it over the right field wall! REDS WIN, WALK-OFF HOMERUN!”

We had a lot of fun with our friends and family (even though the games in my opinion could have turned out better). Thank you everyone for coming!

What we've been up to lately

2011-07-19T12:07:00.001-06:00

Summer has been trucking along way too fast as usual. We've been up to alot and yet I never seem to have my camera with me.

For our anniversary, since we did our London trip, we kept it low-key this year. We went out to eat at Biaggi's and then went to the Clarke Planetarium to a laser light show featuring music by Led Zeppelin. It was really cool, 45 minute light show to their greatest hits. I definitely recommend it.

For July 4th weekend we headed up to Idaho to visit Michael's brother Adam and his wife. I've never been up to the BYU-Idaho campus but Adam and Chele gave us a tour of the place, it is a really nice campus, Michael had seen it a few years ago and apparently they have made some major renovations since then, he was really impressed. We spent the weekend with them hanging out, watching Transformers 3, shooting zombies, and dodging Mayflies which were EVERYWHERE that weekend. It was a fun weekend and great to visit family.

Utah County has this new thing called the Pass of All Passes which is one pass to get you in unlimited times to the Seven Peaks water park, Trafalga (putt putt golfing) and all the Orem Owlz baseball games. We have been trying to take advantage of our pass and it has been a lot of fun. The Seven Peaks water park is such a huge thing around here but I've lived here almost 9 years now and still had never been. It was fun, a really small water-park compared to the ones I grew up going to, but fun nevertheless.

I turned 28 last week, crazy how fast the years fly after about 20. I hurt my knee a few weeks ago and have been limping around with a brace on my knee, it definitely made me feel like an old woman for my birthday. It was a fun birthday though. Michael and I went out to Tucanos (Brazilian restaurant) and ate way too much delicious food as is required everytime you go to Tucanos. Michael got me some Atlanta Braves gear and a 90 minute massage package, I'm excited for that! I think one of my favorite parts of my birthday is eating birthday cake for every meal for the next few days...mmm chocolate cake.

Anyway that is a quick glimpse into what we've been doing this summer. This coming weekend we are heading out to Cincinnati to go to a few Reds-Braves baseball games. Michael is a Reds fan and I'm a Braves fan so it is going to be interesting. We have some family and friends coming to the game with us and we are about split half Braves fans half Reds fans, it will be interesting GO BRAVES!

London Vacation

2011-06-15T00:41:00.003-06:00

Our 5 year anniversary is coming up at the end of June and we decided we wanted to do a big trip this year to celebrate. We decided it was time to go to Europe. This would be a sight seeing tourist vacation which is definitely different then most of our previous beach or hiking vacations but we were both really excited to go. It was a blast and completely worth it! I loved exploring the city, the sites and the country. London has an extremely extensive Tube (subway) and train system and we were able to get around the city and country all on public transportation. It was really an easy system to figure out after the first day, but it is amazing how fast pace everyone there is. I always thought we walked fast but Londeners seem to always be running by us. We stayed right by Paddington Station which was great because it was a major hub and everywhere we needed to go we could get to from Paddington. We did a lot, and I’m not exaggerating, most days by the time we got back to the hotel we were completely exhausted and I’m pretty sure my feet hurt for an entire week after we got back. We took over 400 pictures (don’t freak out no way I’m putting near that many on here). I can’t put all the pictures I want up here cause that would take forever but I’m going to go over the highlights of our trip.

We visited the Shakespeare Globe Theatre (this isn’t the original which burned down when they decided to fire a canyon as an effect during a show and a spark caught the thatch roof on fire) but this is a replica of the original. They still perform plays here ever night. The crazy thing our guide told us is that during Shakespeare's time they would fit over 1,000 people in the standing area only, it was tiny! Even today with the stage extension they will pack over 700 people in there. NUTS! The Globe sits right on the river edge and the HMS Belfast warship is permanently docked here. It is a beautiful ship. Right down the water from the Belfast is London Bridge and then the Tower Bridge which is pictured here, this bridge is usually mistaken for the London Bridge, but the London Bridge has been re-built many times through the years and is much more modern than this bridge. The Tower Bridge was built to mirror the architecture of the Tower of London. The Tower of London was first constructed in 1066. It has had many additions over the years and still is used today to house the Crown Jewels. The vault for the Crown Jewels was crazy, the Crowns of the royal family are housed there and the security was nuts, and obviously no pictures where allowed to be taken inside the vault but it was spectacular! The cool thing about the Tower of London was once you were in the gates it was it’s own city. It was filled with different buildings and houses used to protect the people over the years. It also housed a huge armory displaying the different styles used throughout the years and different gifts of armor given to the Royal family throughout the years. One of the crazy things about the Globe, Tower Bridge and Tower of London is they sit smack dab in the city center, so you have all these modern buildings right beside these ancient buildings. This is City Hall which sits right across the river from the Tower of London. On Wednesday we did a tour outside the city. The tour took us to Windsor Castle, the Roman City of Bath, and Stonehenge. Our tour guide, Tony, was hilarious. He definitely made the tour worth it and he was so proud of his tour license (apparently they are really hard to get in London and it is a big deal to be an actual licensed tour guide there). Windsor Castle is still used today by the Queen of England and the Royal Family. The Castle itself is basically it’s own city with many additions throughout the centuries. The Roman city of Bath is one of the oldest cities in England. The city itself is centered around the Roman ruins and have mandatory laws in place that all buildings have to be made out of the same type of stone as the Roman buildings and no buildings are allowed to put up neon signs or anything like that to destroy the ancient décor of the city. It was a really neat place to see. The Bath Abbey was gorgeous, it was fun to see the Gothic influence in the architecture. The last stop on our tour was Stonehenge. I have really been looking forward to going here. It really was a cool place to visit. It is way out in the country and we actually had to pass through some military training grounds, we were really disappointed that we missed the picture of the Tank Crossing signs, hilarious! Stonehenge really was cool though, it was so secluded and the site itself was really neat to think that it was built almost 4,000 years ago. If you ever go to London I definitely recommend this tour, well worth it. We went down to the House of Parliament and the Bell Tower for Big Ben (Big Ben is actually the Bell inside the tower, not the tower itself, I know I thought the Tower was Big Ben…good to know). While we were down there we decided to go for a ride on the London Eye Ferris Wheel. The views from 200 feet up in the Ferris Wheel were really cool. You could so for over 40 miles from the top. We went and took the tour of Westminster Abbey. Pictures aren’t allowed inside the Abbey but it was really gorgeous. We went over to St. Paul’s Cathedral which was MUCH bigger than I was expecting. Again pictures aren’t allow inside the church. We did the climb to the top of the dome, over 700 stairs to the very top! Here’s a picture of the view from one side of the dome. It was really neat. One of the other things I was really excited for was to go see a London Broadway show. We decided to go see “Love Never Dies” which is Andrew Lloyd Weber’s new sequel to Phantom of the Opera. The show was good (not as good as Phantom but that was to be expected) but the man who played the Phantom was amazing, his voice was spectacular! Saturday we took the train out of town to Wimbledon to see the where the tennis tournament is played and to take a tour of the grounds. It was interesting to see the courts, it is crazy they can play on grass like that. The tour guide told us that all courts are measured weekly to make sure it is never longer than 8 inches of grass. While we were out of the city we went out to Hampton Court Palace which was the summer palace of Henry VIII. The palace was really cool but the amazing thing was over 60 acres of beautiful gardens! We could have wandered around those all day. I’m having a really hard time picking one picture of the gardens, but this is one of my favorites so it will have to do. We also took our chance at the garden maze. It was fun, though by the time we got to the center and back it was way too crowded. Oh and I want a room like this! At the Tower of London and again at the Hampton Court Palace the King has a HUGE room decorated as his armory showcase, this was just one of the many wall decorations, all real guns and swords. We did a lot more, British Air Force Museum, London Bridge Tour Experience and Haunted Crypts, River boat cruise, etc., but I’m written far more than I planned and bombarded you with pictures so enjoy! (Oh and if you noticed all my hats, ponytails, and braids in all my pictures it because Europe like a lot of countries have a different power system then the U.S. We bought an adapter and converter for our appliances but my straightener apparently couldn’t handle it, we blew the fuse to all the outlets and my straightener started smoking, it is officially dead, I’m pretty sure the hotel staff just laughed at the stupid Americans, haha). One last picture, this is the cool hallway in our hotel, the Hotel Indigo-Paddington, it was a fun place to stay. We loved our vacation! Hope you enjoy all our pictures!

Korin’s wedding

2011-05-23T20:08:00.004-06:00

One of Michael’s friends who he grew up with in Ohio got married this weekend and we went up to Salt Lake for her wedding reception. We had fun hanging out with some of his friends from back home and catching up with everyone. Here are a few pictures from the night.

Heidi and I ended up having the same skirt on which was pretty funny especially since I think I bought it about 6 or 7 years ago from a thrift store.

Congratulations Korin!

This is for you Jayci!

2011-05-16T22:13:00.002-06:00

We went up to visit Sarah, Ben, their girls, and Mary this weekend. It was fun to hang out with everyone and play with our nieces. Ben is officially done with his PhD and is now Dr. Morrill! Congratulations Ben! We went hiking with Mary, Ben and Jayci. Jayci was so cute and would get super excited every time she saw a rock. I’m pretty sure she said “Ooooh look at this one!” about a few dozen times it was adorable. While up there Sarah and I went to a Yoga class which I actually really liked. I tried it again tonight at the fitness center here and I think I might start taking it once a week just as a relaxation workout, although I am not flexible enough to do yoga I like that the teachers will explain ways to modify the moves for us flexibility-challenge people. We went out to eat on night and Jayci and Lilly both wanted to sit with us in what seemed to be the world’s smallest booth. Lilly was really cute all weekend she is so attached to Michael. We woke up Saturday morning to her yelling down the stairs “Michael, Michael, Michael” and every time Michael left the room she would yell for him. Faye apparently found my picture taking boring and wouldn’t give me a smile, too bad, she has such an adorable smile! At least Sarah was nice enough to smile for me. Lilly loves stuffed animals. She has her teddy bear who goes everywhere with her, it reminds me of how my Pooh Bear went everywhere with me.

But most importantly while going up there I learned who are most avid blog reader is….Jayci my 3 year old niece! She was so excited to show us that she can get on the computer, open the internet, find our blog saved in their favorites folder and check it. Apparently she checks it multiple times a day and watches my piano recording everyday, so cute right?! She requested that I put more songs up for her to watch so I’m sure another one will be coming soon. I promised her that I would put up a bunch of new pictures up just for her. I love my nieces they are so cute! Jayci, I hope you like all the new pictures!

Latest cooking adventure

2011-04-26T19:34:00.003-06:00

Don’t worry this isn't turning into a cooking blog…we just haven’t been doing anything significant lately to post besides our food adventures. Our latest one was Southwest Stuffed Bell Peppers (recipe found here http://www.ourbestbites.com/2011/01/southwest-stuffed-bell-peppers/ ). These violated my 30 mins or less rule taking 35 mins to prepare than another 30 to bake but Michael really liked stuffed peppers growing up and this recipe sounded really good so I made an exception. I’m really glad we did they were really delicious. You definitely should try them out.
Word to the wise, and no matter how many times I’ve done this I never seem to learn (yes I have done this multiple times, 3 to be exact), after handling jalapeños WASH YOUR HANDS especially if you wear contacts and are stupid enough to go take them out right afterwards. Pepper juice burns…badly…and will stay on your contact lenses no matter how well you wash them and then re-burn you the next morning when you try to put them back in.

Cooking update

2011-04-17T21:23:00.004-06:00

Alright so our goal to do better on cooking real meals was a bust at first frankly because we didn't want to go grocery shopping...remember we grocery shop probably once every 6-8 weeks so going early to get ingredients to actually make stuff was problematic. BUT we finally went on Friday and you'll be so proud because we spent probably half the time in the produce section (well only half because we had no idea where anything was but for our sakes you should ignore that fact). Our refrigerator actually has some color in it which I am very proud of.

Friday dinner: Turkey, spinach & mushroom quesadillas
Saturday lunch: Turkey Pitas with Caesar dressing, spinach, cheese, croutons, and Jalepenos (for Michael)
Sunday dinner: Penne chicken with asparagus...yes I bought asparagus...never done that before or have any idea how to cook it but it actually turned out really good and added a great taste to the dinner...

I would declare week 1 a success, now on to week 2

Welcome Baby Faye!

2011-04-12T00:03:00.002-06:00

My sister Sarah had her third baby girl on March 28, welcome to the world baby Faye! We had the chance to go visit along with my Mom who was out here for the week to help with the grandkids. Faye is adorable! She looks just like her sisters and has a full head of brown hair, it is so cute!

We didn’t get many pictures and the few we did get turned out blurry but I’m putting them up here anyway, one so you can see how cute Sarah’s girls are and two because I was messing around in Photoshop with different effects and think they turned out pretty cool although I couldn’t decide on colorized or color boost so I did a few in each effect.

Congratulations Sarah and Ben, we are so excited for you and your growing family!

Hershey Eggs

2011-04-07T13:49:00.000-06:00

I am extremely addicted to these! They've been harder and harder to find ever year which is crazy to me since, in my opinion, they are the best Easter candy around. So when I saw them at Wal-Mart the other day I had to buy three bags just in case I couldn't find them again...we have already gone through 1 1/2 bags...oops. Like I said addicted.

Adam and Chele’s wedding

2011-03-27T20:43:00.002-06:00

Last week we headed to Ohio for Michael’s brother Adam’s wedding. It was a whirlwind trip with lots to do but it was a lot of fun. It is always great hanging out with family, laughing over the most ridiculous things, and Mr. Freeze icecream of course. Adam and Chele got married in this gorgeous building that used to be a Catholic convent/school. It looked like a castle and unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the outside so you’ll have to take my word for it that it was pretty cool. Derek (Michael’s other brother) is on his LDS mission in San Jose, CA and wasn’t able to come to the wedding. We wanted to make sure he was at least there in spirit so we gave him a place at our table. Since Michael was busy being the best man I brought a different date to the wedding…meet Owen my adorable date. He was extremely excited as you can tell and even dressed up for the occasion (This is Kristin’s little boy just to clarify since a lot of people thought he was mine and Michael’s including some of Michael’s relatives which was definitely an interesting conversation). I unfortunately didn’t get any pictures of the actual wedding since my “date” decided it would be fun to see how well his voice echos in a cathedral chapel and therefore we spent most of the ceremony watching from the confessional doorway. The weather turned out gorgeous and they were able to get some really great pictures. Brooklyn was having a blast running around and playing…I think she loved the wide open spaces! Michael’s family got some wonderful pictures. Here’s one of him with his siblings minus Derek. I’m sure if Michael was here while I was writing this he would make me put the goofy pose up instead but since he’s not I get to put the one of my adorable husband and his family. I love it when he has to dress up in a tux. So anyone who knows Adam knows he is a gamer, a Halo maniac so in true Adam form they put a Halo figure on top of the Groom’s cake bazooka and all, it just felt right. The night was spent eating great food, catching up with family and dancing. It really was a beautiful wedding. We were only in town for 5 days and 2 of those were half days because of flights so it really was a whirlwind of a trip. But we made sure to hang out a lot with our family and entertain our nieces and nephews…or maybe it was more them entertaining us. Here’s Drew and Damon (Jaime’s twins) entertaining us with there dance moves, and Brooklyn and Michael showing us their fierce dinosaur teeth. Payton loved dressing up for the wedding and we had a blast dancing, although we were too focused on our amazing dance skills that we missed the cutting and smashing of the cake…oops good thing Michael made it out there with the camera. And Owen being really cute as usual. He really loved the camera and kept trying to take it from me. For awhile I turned the screen around so he could see himself and he thought that was hilarious, although it just made for a bunch of blurry close up pictures of his hand trying to touch the screen. Congratulations Adam and Chele! It was a beautiful wedding and a great trip.

Proof that I cook…

2011-03-14T23:06:00.002-06:00

It’s taken us almost 5 years to get tired of instant boxed foods. We don’t always eat it, we eat out occasionally too, and you know restaurants only use the highest quality foods in everything they make haha. I really don’t think we’ll ever get tired of Macaroni & Cheese, hot pockets, or DiGorno pizzas, but both of us are ready for some actual substance to our foods. Which knowing us presents a HUGE problem since we both hate to cook (I can’t speak for Michael but I’m pretty sure I should say despise to cook). It’s time for some variety. To prove this point we finally opened our last wedding present (yes it’s been sitting in our closet unopened for 4 1/2 years, if you’re the one who gave it to us I’m sorry to admit that to you). We opened our crockpot and learned to cook a pot roast, probably the easiest crockpot recipe ever but I have to take baby steps here. Alright for those of you who might be instantly concerned no I’m not going all Betty Crocker on you, I’m just coming to the realization that it might be best to go to the grocery store more than once ever six-eight weeks because there is this odd thing called produce that is actually quite good when used right. I know it’s a radical concept at our house but it is strangely filling and we kind of like it. We had friends over last Saturday for dinner and some games and we made this pasta salad and some homemade bread (see Mom I do use your bread maker…occasionally). This pasta salad recipe *rocks* and it called for more produce than I think we have ever bought at one specific time in our entire married (red peppers, limes, green onions, cilantro, garlic, tomatoes, olives, etc.). It seemed to be quite the hit and we made it again tonight…mmm real natural delicious food. I even made enchiladas last night (I know two real meals in a row…don’t have a heart attack) and we had a few extra so tonight we had enchiladas and pasta salad…and it only took about a half hour to make. Yes that is an enchilada in the picture, it’s slightly smashed and deformed since I apparently don’t have tupperware long enough to fit enchiladas, I had to get creative…who cares what it looks like as long as it taste good right? We’re (ok I’m) excited to have more in our fridge than just pop, lunch meat, eggs, cheese and milk. Maybe it will start looking like we actually own food when people open the refrigerator. Anyone have some easy recipe ideas?

*Note prep time must equal 30 mins or less or I promise it won’t happen, I’ll give you 45 if it’s absolutely amazing*

Piano solo

2011-02-20T19:30:00.001-07:00

For church this past Sunday they asked me to play a piano solo in sacrament meeting. I decided to do the Jon Schmidt arrangement of “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief”. I think it is a gorgeous song and I hope I did it justice. Anyway I thought it would be fun to record it and put it up here for those who might like to listen to it. I just recorded it on my piano and our home recorder so excuse the quality (and of course any flubs you my notice I didn’t want to record the whole thing over again for a few minor mistakes)

Promotion and Valentine’s Day

2011-02-13T21:28:00.001-07:00

. Michael received a promotion from his work a few weeks ago. He is now officially an Adobe System Administrator. Congrats babe!

. For Valentine’s Day (we celebrated on Sat. since we both have to work tomorrow) Michael planned something different for our celebration this year. We headed up to Salt Lake with out him telling me where we were going (yet me still giving directions…interesting how that works with out actually knowing the destination). We ended up at the Gateway Mall and Michael took me to the Clark Planetarium. It was really neat! I’m an astronomy buff so I really enjoyed the exhibits and the show we saw about the stars, planets, and constellations. We also went to Biaggi’s for dinner which as usual didn’t disappoint, that place is really good Italian food. I love celebrating Valetine’s Day, it is really fun to have another excuse to go out and have a special date with Michael.

Anyway I just thought I would throw out a random update. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Goodbye Tercie my love!

2011-01-31T21:23:00.003-07:00

I love my car. Tercie (a Toyota Tercel for those of you who may not know) has been with my family since my parents bought her new in 1994. Sarah owned her for awhile, then my parents again and then I bought her in 2002 (for the cost of repairs, thanks Mom & Dad) and she had been my wonderful loyal car ever since. We’ve been through college together (far too many adventures there to even attempt to list), married life, lots of road trips (even back and forth across the country 3 times), multiple snow storms, and a few minor accidents, but through everything she keeps on running and has never let us down, Michael’s Dad has even nicknamed her Phoenix because no matter what happens she just keeps going.

She is now at 258,000+ miles and can no longer pass Utah County’s strict emissions testing. We (ok pretty much just me not Michael) couldn’t see her go to the junk yard or be traded in to be crush, I love my car too much. Michael thinks it’s hilarious my attachment to my car but hey you have one car that you rely on solely for 9 years and basically live out of it at times, you become attached. It was no longer practical to keep repairing her and so we bought Ellie (my Elantra…yes our cars’ names are Tercie Tercel, Ellie Elantra, and Ace Accord…I can’t help it haha) but I didn’t want to get rid of Tercie so for the last few months she’s been sitting in our parking lot waiting for us to figure out what to do with her. Well excellent news! Tercie has now been adopted by my brother Aaron and his girlfriend Rachel! Yay!!! She has a home and hopefully will treat him as wonderful as she has treated me! I’ll miss you Tercie good luck in Denver!

(Well I was going to put up a picture of Tercie the day she officially became mine back in 2002 – king of a before and after type of deal- I climbed up on the roof of our house in Virginia and took a picture of my first car, but apparently that picture is in one of my albums back in VA and not here so you’ll just have to trust me that she was a lot shinier hunter green with no dents or rust)

Primary teacher

2011-01-27T11:22:00.002-07:00

A few weeks ago Michael and I got called into our bishop's office at church. Of course we didn't really want to go in because right now my assignment is to play piano every other week in Relief Society and Michael teaches Priesthood once a month, those are two extremely easy assignments for us, we have to do little if anything to prepare and rarely have to find someone to cover for us when we are out of town so if you have to have a calling that is the way to go. We really didn't want the bishop to change our assignments. Well we went in and they asked me to teach a Primary class. Just me, not me and Michael as we had hoped (ok truthfully as I had hoped since I don't want to teach alone). The problem with this is I've never taught a class before, never prepared a lesson, and don't have kids, so teaching a classroom of 5/6 year olds every week isn't exactly something I feel confident in doing. After going him a million excuses why I shouldn't teach, and him countering them all, I begrudgingly accepted the assignment.
This past Sunday was my first Sunday teaching and I got to meet my class. I'm supposed to have 8 kids but they told me it is rare for all of them to actually come, this week I thankfully only had three. They are a fun bunch of kids but I'm not going to lie the entire time was pretty much controlled chaos (I can't imagine what it would be like if all 8 were there). The lesson (well what I got out between them climbing all over the chairs/tables, interruptions, stories, and one little girl who insisted on pulling my hair to compare my brown hair to her blonde hair over and over again) I think went alright. We had some fun. I think it is going to take awhile to get used to the kids and figure out what works with keeping their attention and what doesn't. I have a feeling we are going to draw lots of pictures and play lot of games cause there is no way these kids are going to sit still for 45 minutes. Oh well here goes nothing...wish me luck...

Christmas 2010

2010-12-31T21:00:00.001-07:00

This year for Christmas we headed to my parents’ home in Virginia. It’s been five years since I’ve been home for Christmas and Michael has never been there for Christmas so we were really excited to go this year. We had a wonderful time! Almost everyone was home this year (we missed you Aaron) and it was fun to be able to hang out and spend some time as a family. When we were flying out it was really cloudy in Salt Lake. We took this picture out the plane window and just to put it in perspective those mountain tops are about 11,000 feet and we are flying above the clouds, it was an amazing view. We flew in Christmas Eve and woke up in the morning to a beautiful white Christmas. We spent most of the time hanging out at the house, playing intense foosball tournaments, playing lots of sports on a Wii my Mom borrowed for the holidays (Jayci learned to play on the Wii, she actually got quite good at tennis), crazy catch phrase, and eating extremely delicious snacks. Lilly would get so tired from all the fun she decided a few times to snuggle with me and Teddy and just take a long nap, it was sooo cute! Grandpa, my Dad’s brother Ed and his wife Greta and my cousin Amber and her fiancé also came down to visit one afternoon. I haven’t seen them (Ed and his family) since we got married. It was fun to spend an afternoon with everyone catching up and hanging out with Grandpa. It’s hard living so far away sometimes because it is so rare we get to see everyone. One of the things that we always do when we come home that I actually really enjoy is splitting firewood, I know it’s weird that I enjoy that, but it’s fun and it’s a piece of home. We were able to spend about 3 hours out splitting wood and I think we split more than enough for Mom & Dad to last the winter. We even recruited Jayci to work the leaver on the wood splitter much to Mary’s dismay haha. Keeping in tradition with visiting my house we, of course, went out and went shooting. My dad and Mark have some fun new guns and it was a blast trying them out.

I also got a chance to visit with some friends from high school although the snow cause church to be canceled on Sunday and I was said I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to but next time hopefully.

Lilly LOVED the fireplace, every time someone would open it to put more wood on the fire she would run to it and say “Fire, Hot”, we let her help us build one, she was really excited! Isn’t Mom cute, wearing a bid just like the grandkids! It was a great trip home, Merry Christmas!

Random Happenings

2010-12-21T13:35:00.005-07:00

December has been a pretty busy month getting ready for the holidays. We've had fun going out with work and church Christmas parties, going out with friends, and enjoying the holidays. I thought you might enjoy these random pictures of things that have been going on.

First off we had "Pie Day" at work for our clients. I'm sure most of you are wondering what in the world pie day is, well it is our Christmas gift for our clients. We send out invitations inviting them to come throughout the day to spend some holiday time with us, enjoying treats, Christmas music and catching up for the year, we also ask them what kind of pie they would like and then order them from Costco in advance. (By the way Costco pies are really amazing and HUGE if you've never tried them). This year we had to order almost 120 pies! My boss and I had to go pick them up from Costco, it is crazy the looks you get when you wheel two flat bed carts full of pies through the store. People just stopped in their tracks amazed at all the pies we had. I could barely push the flatbed full of pies and people kept stopping in front of me to ask what they were for I'm really amazed I didn't run anyone over or tip the pies off the cart when people would stop in front of me. I forgot to take a picture of the pies at the store but this is as many as I could fit in the shot as we unloaded the pies at the office.

It is also the beginning of the football bowl season. After a really rough start to the season BYU came back and made it to the New Mexico Bowl. We enjoyed watching them thoroughly beat UTEP. We are hoping Virginia Tech and Ohio State also win their BCS bowl games in January

One last thing. The last few days it has been raining/snowing constantly but the temperature has been around 35F so it hasn't been sticking, finally last night the temp fell below freezing and we woke up this morning with about 8 inches on the ground. It has been coming down strong all day but once again the temps are back up to about 35F so it isn't really sticking. I'm not a big snow fan but it always helps to us get into the holiday spirit and considering we are still in denial that summer is over (2010 has really flown by) it has been hard to get into the holidays. At least now we have somewhat of a winter wonderland. Hopefully it will be snowing in Virginia when we are there for Christmas.

Visit from the Benners

2010-12-13T21:44:00.002-07:00

Michael’s parents came out last week to visit with us for a few days (it is my parents’ year for Christmas so they wanted to come visit us before the holidays). We had a really fun time with them. We were able to go see Michael McLean’s Forgotten Carols, which is a wonderful show. We also went out to eat a bunch, saw the movie Unstoppable, went Christmas shopping and more. On Sunday we heard about this Inter-faith Nativity display up in Midway, UT. It was supposed to be one of the biggest around and since Karen adores nativities we though it would be fun to go up and see that. It was amazing to see all the different designs of the nativity scene. They had sets from all around the world and it was fun to see the cultural influence of the different sets. In one of the rooms they were taking free pictures of people dressed up in the nativity scene. We decided why not, and since I didn’t remember to take any pictures of the Benner’s entire visit our nativity picture is the only one you get this post. They had the costumes all set up, placed you and before we had a chance to even decided if we were supposed to be smiling they snapped the picture.

Karen and Mike thanks for visiting we had a wonderful time!

Thanksgiving 2010

2010-12-02T21:40:00.002-07:00

This year for Thanksgiving we were lucky enough to have most of my family in town. Aaron and his girlfriend Rachel drove out from Denver (on mostly ice, so glad they made it), Sarah Ben and the girls came down and Mary came over so we had a full house. It was a lot of fun to hang out together, eat Thanksgiving dinner which is the best dinner of the year and enjoy each others company. At one point we even webcamed hooked the webcam up to the t.v. and where able to chat with my parents, Grandpa and Mark and Jessica who had all gone over to Mark’s house. It was fun to have everyone together. Dinner turned out delicious (well in my opinion, I just assume everyone agreed) and we had fun eating Thanksgiving left overs for the next week or so. I could have done without getting up at 7a.m. to stuff the turkey but I suppose sacrificing once a year for delicious food is worth it! Here are a few pictures from Thanksgiving, Mary has more and hopefully when I get around to getting them from her I’ll get some more posted up here. Happy Thanksgiving!

New Car

2010-11-10T21:20:00.001-07:00

We bought a second car, this one is for me, even though Tercie is still running (somewhat) we were ready to get a reliable second car that had heat AND A.C. We would like to welcome “Elle” Elantra to our family!

Yes I technically stole this picture from a website but the weather hasn’t been cooperating and when I finally took one of our car because of the dirty rain it was covered in spots but you get the idea. It’s a 2008 Hyundai Elantra, about 36,000 miles on it, 5-speed manual transmission, and fun to drive. I’m loving driving my new car!

Michael’s rock climbing birthday

2010-11-01T22:34:00.003-06:00

Happy Birthday Michael!!! This year for Michael’s 28th birthday I decided to take indoor rock climbing at a local place called The Quarry. We’ve only gone once before but when he was in high school he used to go a lot so I thought it would be a nice surprise and definitely something he wouldn’t be expecting.
<--- Spidey-Michael
My sister Mary is in a rock climbing class so she came with us to show us the ropes and kick our trashes at the hard climbs when we are barely scaling the wall on the easier routes. It ended up being A LOT of fun! I really like rock climbing and we all did pretty well (although the next day was something quite terrible, man we are out of shape). Michael was really surprised and although he was quite hesitant at first (I suppose in the future we should go climbing BEFORE I take him out to dinner at Red Robin) he had a great time and got to the top of the wall 4 or 5 times, I was quite impressed.
<---Spidey-Rachel
Also for those who might be confused about the wall and all the colorful tags under the rocks, each color represents a difficulty of climb, you are supposed to find your color and only climb on those rocks marked by that specific color, that way they can have various routes and difficulties on the same walls.
Spidey-Mary --->
It was a fun time, thanks Mary for coming with us! Happy Birthday Michael! I love you!

Derek’s Mission Send off

2010-10-25T23:35:00.002-06:00

Michael’s youngest brother Derek left on Wednesday for a 2 year LDS mission to San Jose, California. Before he entered the Missionary Training Center (MTC) he came out to stay with us for a week. We had a lot of fun eating out, hanging out, road tripping to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, even Adam came down for a few days to hang out before Derek left.

The Grand Canyon was amazing as usual. Derek hadn’t been there before and we went on a random Friday in the middle of the work day. It was awesome because there really was no one there, we had all the viewing areas to ourselves which meant for great pictures and a really relaxing trip (Mike & Karen I promise he really isn’t on the edge as it looks, his feet are resting on rock). The Grand Canyon really is amazing pictures just never do it justice, it is too hard to capture something so vast and so unique in a picture.

After the Grand Canyon we headed west to Las Vegas. As we are driving to Vegas Michael and I are starting to get suspicious of where exactly our GPS is taking us. We had driven the route before and we definitely weren’t heading the same way but we figured hey maybe the GPS has a shorter route we didn’t know about last time. Well as we are driving we start seeing national Park signs and apparently our GPS decided the smart way to route us from the Grand Canyon to Vegas was to take us through Zion’s National Park, through a National Park that cost $25 to drive through at approximately 20 mph. Whoever programmed it to think the smartest way is an extremely costly toll road driving painfully slow was quite wrong. Needless to say we turned around and went back the way we knew (not after trying to diligently convince the Park Ranger of our GPS error to let us drive through for free, she didn’t buy it).

Once in Vegas we met up with Sarah, Ben and the kids where Ben was working at a Snake Show. We were all excited to take Jayci and Lilly to the M&M factory on the Strip, well apparently the M&M factory is actually 4 floors of M&M gift shop heaven, but to two little girls it was chocolate heaven, they really loved it! I also have to add in this picture, I’m not sure who had more fun jumping on the bed, Jayci or Derek, it is a pretty close tie. Vegas was fun, the fountain show at the Bellagio is really cool to watch and they do different ones every 15 minutes, I’m not sure how someone gets in to choreographing for fountains but they do a pretty awesome job.
After spending the week with Derek Wednesday came around and it was time to take him into the MTC. He didn’t really seem nervous at all about going which is pretty impressive. The were doing construction on the MTC buildings so we decided to get pictures in front of the Provo Temple and the mountains for a better backdrop. We are very proud of Derek for his decision to serve a mission for the Lord. I know he will be a great missionary and will do an excellent job serving the Lord.

GOOD LUCK DEREK!!!!

Not a photographer

2010-10-12T19:05:00.003-06:00

As the title clearly states I'm not a photographer...but I like to take pictures. And every now and then I've been in the right place at the right time and nature has taken care of the rest. These are some old pictures I took with my old 35mm film camera back in Virginia that I just recently stumbled upon again. I really like them so I thought I would share. I did have to scan and touch up some scratches on them but other than that Mother Nature deserves all the credit. Enjoy.

San Diego Sept. 2010

2010-09-14T01:56:00.006-06:00

Michael’s brother Derek got his mission call! He leaves in October for 2 years and is going to San Jose CA to serve as a missionary for the LDS church. To celebrate we took a family trip over Labor Day to San Diego CA. It was quite a fun filled action packed trip. We left Tuesday night driving through the night in time to pick everyone up from the San Diego airport the next morning. We had a great time.

Day 1 was spent getting around San Diego, checking out the hotel pool, walking around the city, and just catching up with family who we haven’t seen since Christmas.

Day 2: SeaWorld! We saw a ton of animals and the shows were really great. I especially liked the dolphin show, those animals are amazing! SeaWorld was great, I definitely recommend it!

Day 3: We are off to see more animals by checking out the San Diego Zoo, one of the largest zoos in the world! I was extremely excited to see the Panda Bears!!! They are my favorite animals since I was a little girl (since Pooh Bears don’t count) I was really excited to finally see them in person. We saw the mom and baby Panda Bear and they are so so so adorable! The cub was hard to find, he was actually sleeping up in the trees above us, if I didn’t know better we would have thought it was just a stuffed animal thrown in the tree :) Our poor family had to wait forever for Michael to finally pry me away from the pandas, I’m pretty sure I could have stayed there all day and been perfectly content. Ok one more picture…they are just to cute :) We did actually see other animals I promise, we even rode the skytram a few times that takes you above the entire zoo, it was really neat.

Day 4: We spent relaxing at the pool and at the San Diego LDS temple. It is a gorgeous temple to bad they were doing some remodeling on the front (at least there were plenty of trees to try and hide the scaffolding) it really is a gorgeous building.

Day 5: In the morning we headed off to the Wild Animal Park (complete waste of time in my opinion) most of the exhibits only had one or two animals and they were always either inside or hiding in the shade so we spent over an hour there and saw some ducks and flamingos…we got so frustrated we just ended up leaving. At least on our way out we saw a trainer telling stories about one of the cheetahs and got one cool picture. After the park we headed off to a San Diego Padres baseball game. They were playing the Colorado Rockies. For me I love professional baseball games and have been lucky enough to have gone to quite a few but this was Michael’s family’s first time at a Major League baseball game. They loved it (thankfully right?!) It was a lot of fun! To bad the Padres weren’t able to pull it off in the end but at least they kept it interesting.

It was a great whirlwind trip to San Diego and we had a wonderful time hanging out with family! By the end though I’m pretty sure we all agreed with both Brooklyn and the polar bear below…

Looks like we actually need a vacation from our vacation to recuperate :)

Weekend in Denver

2010-08-24T19:46:00.002-06:00

This weekend Michael and I headed out to Denver, CO to visit my brother Aaron and his girlfriend Rachel who moved out there a few months ago. It was a wonderful weekend! We explored the city, the mountains, the zoo, and went to a Rockies game when they were playing the Braves (yes we did make sure to schedule our trip out for when the Braves were in town…don’t judge me :) I’m a big fan)! Sunday we had the chance to drive up Mt. Evans on the highest paved road in America. The road topped out around 14,000 feet and then climb up to the summit at 14,258 feet! Talk about an absolutely breathtaking view! It is amazing to look over the Rocky Mountains like that! We were basically standing in the clouds! There is just something I love about being that high and dangling my feet off the edge. It is a great feeling! To put it in perspective this was right above 14,000 feet, when I went skydiving it was at 17,000 feet, basically strap a parachute on and jump off the edge! Woohoo! Here is the geological marker marking the summit of the mountain. At the top we even ran into these different animals, they were so kind to let us snap some quick pictures

After exploring for awhile we headed down a few hundred feet to Summit Lake for a picnic lunch. What better place for lunch then the edge of a lake surrounded by the Rockies. Look closely at the top center of the mountains and you will see what’s left of a glacier, they close the summit after September 7th each year because of how early it gets snow. A few weeks later and we would have been taking our pictures in a few feet of snow.

Monday we were able to go to the Denver Zoo which was actually a lot bigger than I was expecting and quite impressive. We took a lot of pictures but I’m just going to put up a few of my favorites.

Monday night we headed down to Coors Field to see the Braves play the Rockies. Aaron and Rachel were of course cheering for the Rockies and I went as a true Braves fan :) I think Michael had a hard time staying neutral between all the trash talking :) GO BRAVES! Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be and the Rockies ended up winning 5-4. At least it was a really fun game.

We had a great weekend in Denver. Thanks Aaron and Rachel for having us!

Yellowstone

2010-08-12T21:14:00.002-06:00

This past weekend we went to Yellowstone National Park with my family. My parents drove out and then Sarah & her family, Aaron and his girlfriend Rachel, Michael & I, and Mary were all able to meet them at Yellowstone. It was a great family vacation, we had a lot of fun. We took a ton of pictures and really had a great time. If you’ve never been up there I definitely recommend it. The park was really crowded when we went but well worth it, plus Michael and I (and Mary one day) were able to sneak off and do some hiking which was absolutely gorgeous and most of the time we were the only people around. It is really amazing to see the geyers, hot springs, and even a bison that close in the woods. Again if you go I definitely recommend hiking, camping in the park, and enjoying the gorgeous scenery! It was a great trip! I was going to narrate the pictures below but they are pretty self explanatory. Enjoy :)

Rachel's 27th birthday

2010-07-13T22:12:00.001-06:00

Happy birthday to me!!! Lots of chocolate cake, brownies, cookies and icecream, really what could be better :)

Fourth of July Squaw Peak Hike

2010-07-05T21:59:00.002-06:00

For the Fourth of July weekend this year Adam and his girlfriend Chele came down to visit. We decided to follow our annual tradition of hiking Squaw Peak to watch the fireworks shot off from BYU stadium below. It was as usual a gorgeous hike and we had a lot of fun with them visiting. Enjoy some of the pictures from the night.

Mexico!

2010-07-02T21:40:00.005-06:00

For our four year anniversary we went to Mexico, to Playa del Carmen about 45 minutes south of Cancun. We stayed at an all-inclusive resort (which is awesome by the way if you’ve never been to one) called the Grand Sunset Princess. We absolutely LOVED it! For us it was exactly what we wanted, gorgeous resort, private access to the pool, a minute from the beach and excellent food, it was a wonderful relaxing vacation and I would love to go back. Also I am warning you in advance we took lots of pictures and I can’t just pick a few so enjoy a bunch of them :) *Also remember you can click on any of the pictures and scroll through a slideshow if you want to see them bigger*

We found out afterwards that there was a tropical storm that hit right by us, we never really saw much of it just lots of grey clouds like in this picture, lots of wind, and some random 15 minute downpours. But overall the weather was great, the storms kept it cooler and never lasted longer then 15 minutes (besides one day which was spent relaxing anyway).

We had a Junior Suite with private pool access, which means our balcony has stairs directly into the pool! The pools here were awesome and ran around the entire resort! We could get in at our porch and swim around the whole place which was really neat, I definitely recommend it. And we got lucky enough to be on the end right by the beach and away from the main loud pools so most days we were the only ones in the pool. Our room even had a Jacuzzi for those rainy days or days when you didn’t get enough relaxation by spending all day in the pool or at the beach :) We were actually right on the Caribbean Sea and the water was a gorgeous clear blue/green. One of the first days we were there, with the storm off shore, they had the beaches red flagged for no swimming which gave us the opportunity for some great people-free pictures.

The clouds look really cool here.

One of the nice perks was the all inclusive food. The resort had all you can eat buffets for Breakfast and Lunch then 10 fine-dining restaurants for dinner. They had all different types of cuisines from around the world, the ones we went to where the Swedish Fondue, Argentinean, Italian, Seafood, and a Mexican buffet. The food was really good (although we ate WAY too much) and the desserts were delicious! One interesting thing was Michael ordering the Red Snapper at Las Olas (Seafood restaurant). It was served like this…yes that is the ENTIRE fish fried up to eat. It was even looking at us, I was VERY thankful that was Michael’s dinner and not mine (and yes he did eat the whole thing minus the gills and eyes in case you are wondering). Another awesome place was La Vaqueria (the Argentinean restaurant). Argentineans are famous for there amazing beef. We actually liked this place so much we went back a second time instead of going to the French restaurant. How could you not like a place that brings you this when you order a T-Bone steak?! Alright enough about the food. Just a few more pictures of the actual resort and I promise I’m done.

The entire resort was lined with these cool statues. They would light them up at night to show you the walking paths.

These are a few of my favorite ones.

We had an amazing time. Happy 4 year Anniversary!!!

Camping

2010-06-23T13:05:00.003-06:00

This weekend we headed down south toward Manti to do some camping with JaRele and Dustin. We spent the weekend four-wheeling, eating lots of s’mores and cookies

can’t go wrong with that :)

*Like our ghetto grill? We used an old grill on the grounds and built a fire inside...it worked great!

Mountain biking on Antelope Island

2010-06-06T20:13:00.007-06:00

Saturday we decided to go mountain biking. Since we just finished getting Michael’s bike fixed we decided we wanted some easier trails to test it out on just in case something went wrong. We had been hearing about Antelope Island, a wildlife reserve on this big island in the Great Salt Lake and had wanted to check it out so we decided it would be a fun place to go biking.

We packed the bikes in the car and incredibly they actually fit although only if we stacked them on top of each other, took off the front tire, and folded down the back seat, and slid them in the perfect way…yes we will soon be investing in a trunk bike rack.

We had barely started on the trail when we received the stare down from a coyote, we never saw another person on the trail and apparently this coyote didn’t like us disturbing his territory. The first trail we took was along the shoreline of the Island and the view of the Salt Lake was incredible, I’ve never really been to the Great Salt Lake or even realized how big it actually is but it stretch on forever! It is gorgeous! We made it about 2 miles on this trail when the path turned in to boulders. When it got to the point that we couldn’t ride around the rocks or even between them because the openings were too narrow for the pedals to fit through, we tried carrying our bikes over the rocks but after about a quarter of a mile carrying our bikes we decided to turn back and find a new trail. Although the end of the trail was annoying the ride was really fun and the view was incredible.

After lunch we decided to head out on a different trail in the backcountry of the island where the bison, antelope and other wildlife live. As we started out on the trail we noticed a huge swarm of seagulls above the trail, but we couldn’t tell why they were there. We decided to quickly pedal through so that we didn’t get pooped on. As soon as we got to that section of the trail we realized why all the birds were swarming around. The trail was covered in grasshoppers! As we were riding through they all starting jumping away and were bouncing off our legs, bikes and arms, it was a crazy grasshopper gauntlet! After surviving the grasshoppers we continued up the trail and found a few bison grazing along the trail. It is amazing how big these guys are in person! They just stared at us and then went back to grazing, thankfully they determined we aren’t very threatening. Once again we were the only ones on the trail and we quickly found out why. This trail was about a 2.5 mile ascent up the mountain which is tough as it is but to really throw you off the trail is full of sand pits, some 10-20 feet long, to completely stop any momentum you might have had going up the trail. Thankfully the view was 100% worth it! It was absolutely gorgeous up there! Overall I would say my first real mountain biking experience was a blast! Although I could have done without the mosquitoes, biting gnats, boulders, sand pits, and awful sunburn I got despite the sun block I put on, the views were great and well worth it!

5K Run!

2010-05-30T19:37:00.002-06:00

The time for our 5K is finally here! We said back in January that we had decided to run a 5K as motivation to help me start running and we chose Memorial Day weekend as the perfect time for the race. Yesterday Michael, Sarah, Steve (Ben’s brother), Megan (Steve’s wife) and I all got up bright and early for our 8a.m. 5K race. I’ve got to admit I was pretty nervous, since I’ve never been a runner or even done any running at all, well besides the mandatory yearly mile in middle school/high school, I was nervous about running 3.1 miles straight. I’ve been practicing and Thursday was the first time I made it all the way through without walking (It seems I can make it two miles on a consistent basis but adding that third mile always gave me a major side stitch were I would have to walk a tenth of a mile or so to get it to go away).

It’s 8a.m. and we are getting ready to run our first 5K! The race really was a blast! There were over 220 people in the race and it was crazy when that cannon went off and the whole pack charged out into the street. The weather ended up being gorgeous, a nice 60F and sunny, which was a major improvement from the forecast of rain.

Here are Sarah and I after the race, it was really fun! The guy who won the race actually ran it in 18 minutes, crazy impressive! There were some hard core runners in the race too. I thought I had a pretty low point when this granny past me near the beginning, turns out she finished it in 25 minutes! She destroyed all of us!

Here we all are after finishing the race! Michael came in first out of our group with a time of 27:10, Sarah came in a close second with 28:24 (which was awesome and about 2 minutes faster than her previous fastest time) and Steve came in third right over 29 minutes! Meg did great with 35 minutes and I came in right over 37 (alright that’s not very impressive BUT I did it without any walking which I was super proud of!).

We all had so much fun! We’re even talking about maybe doing another one at the end of the summer, since we know what to expect, know that it is really fun and maybe even shave down our times which hopefully would be easier for me since I now know I can make it that far without dying :)

Weekend with Adam

2010-05-25T15:25:00.005-06:00

My brother Adam came down for the weekend from Idaho to visit. It was a lot of fun to hang out with him and take him around Orem/Provo trying to convince him that he needs to transfer to BYU. We were able to take him shooting since he has never really been before. We also invited one of our friends Brandon to go as well. One of my co-workers told me of a couple of places to go shooting on the west side of Utah Lake. I have been in Utah for almost 10 years and can honestly say that I have never been to that side of the lake before. Not sure why not, it was beautiful and we found a perfect place to shoot where apparently everyone and their dog goes shooting. It was actually kind of sad because other people have littered the place with empty shell casings and all kinds of trash. The sheriff actually came by to see if we were picking up after ourselves since so many people haven’t. He told us that if it doesn’t shape up, they may end up closing the place. It’s really a shame when some people ruin it for everyone because they are too lazy to do such a simple task of cleaning up after themselves. Hopefully it never comes to that and people start to realize that they may lose the place if things don’t get better. Anyway, apparently Adam has never shot a handgun before so we took our Glock 22 .40 caliber, Ruger SP101 .357, and a brand new gun we just got for Rachel, a Ruger LCP .380. The thing is tiny and tons of fun to shoot. Adam actually did really well for his first time. We also decided to do some shotgun shooting as well. Apparently Adam went skeet shooting for the first time last week up in Idaho for a family home evening activity. Now that is what I call an FHE activity! He said he had a blast and wanted to go again. It was a lot of fun. We are too cheap to own an actually skeet thrower so we use one of the hand throwers. It actually works surprisingly well if you throw it right. Brandon was a pro at it and said he didn’t mind doing it so we had him throwing most of the time.

After skeet shooting, we decided to have some fun and put the pistol grip on the shotgun. The result was HILARIOUS!!! Apparently Adam wasn’t listening when we told him to go with the recoil instead of holding it as tight as you can so that you don’t break your wrist. I think he learned his lesson after the first shot, although he still couldn’t really hit anything with it :) I guess you have to see it to fully appreciate it.

Anyway, thanks for a fun weekend Adam. Hopefully we can do it again sometime soon.

Michael’s bike

2010-05-16T19:55:00.002-06:00

Two summers ago we moved to our condo but right before we moved when we were still living south of campus in a cute for newlyweds but quite shady apartment complex, we kept our bikes chained up to the bike rack outside the complex and one evening when coming home from…somewhere…we noticed Michael’s back bike tire had been stolen. Come on really? The back tire? The bike was chained up through the front because we never imagined someone would go through the trouble to steal the back tire, to do that you have to disconnect the breaks, remove the chain, and release the tire, requiring at least a few tools, so someone must have been pretty desperate for that tire or just really wanted to tick us off. Sadly for two years Michael’s bike has been sitting on our balcony without a back tire until yesterday. Finally! After two trips to the bike shop, two trips to Wal-Mart, new rim, wheel, gears, chain, break wires, etc., costing more money then we wanted to spend, and acquiring handful of new tools, Michael’s bike is now fixed. Hooray!

We are now ready for some sweet mountain biking adventures! I can’t wait to take our bikes down to southern Utah and go mountain biking through Zion’s National park and some of the awesome red rock canyons in that area.

Next task to find a trunk bike rack that fits over our spoiler…

Egg

2010-05-02T19:41:00.002-06:00

Sometime Friday night the conversation turned to this

Michael: Did you know if you squeeze an egg in the palm of your hand you can never break it?

Rachel: Yeah right I’ve never heard of that I think you made it up

Michael: No really it’s true

***Debate***

Michael: Here I’ll prove it to you

We then went to the kitchen to test this theory. Michael squeezed the egg and it didn’t break but I didn’t believe he was really squeezing that hard so I tried…I couldn’t break it, so I made Michael try it again promising he would squeeze as hard as he could…

CRACK!!!!

Experiment result: Egg yolk ALL over the kitchen, us, the floor, sink, stove, walls, etc.

Verdict: Hilarious!

*Note: Apparently if you apply even pressure around the entire egg it will not crack BUT if you apply pressure more forcefully in one area, maybe one finger is pressing harder versus even pressure over the whole egg, the shell will crack*

Quick visit from the Van Durens

2010-04-25T19:27:00.003-06:00

This past weekend Ryan, Kristin and Brooklyn were in town for Ryan’s grandpa’s funeral. Although it was a quick trip to see Ryan’s family they were nice enough to sneak away for a few hours and come down and visit us. Although it took Brooklyn a little while to remember and warm back up to us since we haven’t seen her since Christmas, afterword she was as happy as can be and I’m pretty sure she would have played chase around the house with Michael all day if her parents had let her. We had fun hanging out, went out for some breakfast at IHOP with our friend Gabe and then headed to Thanksgiving Point to meet up with Matt (Ryan’s brother) and his wife Jenn to take Brooklyn through the dinosaur museum. We, of course, forgot our camera and were going to steal pictures from Ryan, but since he didn’t bring his camera either Jenn was so nice in letting me get pictures from her, THANKS! We had a blast running through the museum with Brooklyn and seeing her excitement over every little thing (who knew display cases, rocks, and even polls were so exciting).

Look at all these rocks! Aren’t they awesome!

I had to hold onto her because she was looking at the goldfish in the pond and had already tried to climb over the poll and go for a swim :)

Look at that shark Mom! It’s huge!!!

Cheese!

Brooklyn was definitely done with pictures by the time we left :) But we tried to get some good ones anyway

We were so glad they were able to sneak away and come to visit! We had a great time! And next time we see them their little boy will be born :) Crazy!

Bye Bye 4-day work week

2010-04-21T13:41:00.003-06:00

I know, I know, we've been slacking once again and need to update. We even have stuff to update about like Ryan, Kristin & Brooklyn visiting and going to the dinosaur museum but I just haven't gotten around to it (well actually that was this past weekend so I'm not too much of a slacker on that on yet, but it has been about a month since an update)

On Monday our staff received some bad news from my boss. He is doing away with our 4-day work week and having us all go back to working 5-8 hour days. I completely understand his reasoning from a business point of view, it is hard to run a 5-day business week when your employees are on a 4-day work week, but I really liked my long weekends, having that extra day for errands and I like the ten hour days (I hate them every morning when my alarm goes off but that is a whole different issue). Plus since Michael works a 3-day work week it was great both of us having long weekends. It was really nice to be able to take trips on weekends without using vacation hours and having 4-day weekends anytime there was a Monday holiday, but no more :( At least it was nice while it lasted but I think I'm going to have a really hard time adjusting back to a 5 day work week. I've gotten spoiled and don't want to go back.

Weekend at St. George

2010-03-27T17:35:00.002-06:00

Sarah is 30!!! Crazy how fast time flies by. For her birthday this year, since it was a bigger birthday, Ben decided to surprise her with a trip down to St. George with all of us. We decided to head south for the warmer weather and the awesome red rock scenery and southern Utah didn’t disappoint.

We decided to stay in Cedar City and then head down to St. George for the day Saturday. We found this great playground by one of the schools to spend some time playing with the girls. I think Ben, Michael and Lilly are having a blast on the swings :)

The slides seemed to be the big attraction! Don’t let Lilly fool you she’s having just as much fun as Michael is on that slide!

After lunch we headed out to the Chippewa Trail in Paradise Canyon for some hiking. The red rocks in Southern Utah are amazing and really fun to hike. We even saw lots of animals for Jayci, birds, a dog, a rabbit, lizards and even a horse although Jayci was much more apprehensive of the horse when it got close and she could see how big it actually was!

The girls loved hiking! We had a great weekend enjoying the warm weather, the hiking, hanging out at the pool and eating all the junk that comes along with a road trip! Happy Birthday Sarah!!!

Mary's moving?

2010-03-17T17:20:00.002-06:00

On Tuesday Mary came down to check out Provo College and visit with us. She is thinking about moving down this way (DO IT MARY!) and wanted to check the city out. We had a lot of fun driving around the city, hanging out, of course going out to eat, oh and devouring all the brownies (Triple Chocolate Ghirardelli brownies YUM...we were VERY weak sorry Michael about not leaving you any). I think it would be a lot of fun to have some family down here with us, I've been out here for 8 years now with the closest family a few hours away so it would be a fun change to have someone closer. We will see...

Weekend with the Fam

2010-03-12T11:52:00.002-07:00

This weekend we went up to visit Sarah, Ben, their girls, and Mary. We had a fun weekend hanging out, playing, and of course eating out. Here are a few pictures from the weekend.

Jayci makes the funniest faces :)

Every morning Jayci would come downstairs, crawl in bed and announce it was time for me to wake up and play, so cute! (Do notice she also took over the pillow and most of the bed haha)

Girl time! Poor Ben and Michael are totally out numbered when we all get together.

Valentine's Day

2010-02-14T18:51:00.003-07:00

This year of course everyone knows Valentine's Day fell on a Sunday. We decided to go out Friday night and celebrate (actually we were going to go Saturday but since we are procrastinators and forgot to make early reservations so we needed to go Friday to get in the restaurant). We used to have this great Italian restaurant Ottavio's in Provo that we loved to go to for special occasions but they went out of business a few months ago so we had to find a new place. We wanted to go up to Salt Lake City and spend an afternoon in the city and have dinner there so we found this restaurant called Biaggi's Ristorante Italiano. Wow! It was amazing Italian food. If you like Italian and have one near you I definitely suggest going it is worth it!

Michael also got me flowers :) so cute

On Saturday we went out for icecream since we figured it was Valentine's Day weekend and isn't that a good enough excuse for icecream? I mean honestly what isn't a good excuse for icecream!

And for actual Valentine's Day we attempted to cook a real meal! (I know you are all pretty shocked and you'll be even more shocked to know that cooking a "real" homemade meal once every week is something we have actually been working on doing, so far so good, the food is great, now if only both of us didn't hate cooking so much...) Anyway for Valentine's Day we had Tilapia and Mushrooms which was quite good. Tilapia is a pretty good non-fishy fish and since I pretty much hate all seafood I was nervous but it had great taste and I think we'll actually make again.

Happy Valentine's Day 2010!

Pop cans

2010-02-08T10:29:00.004-07:00

Superbowl anyone? We're all stocked up and ready to go!

Michael has discovered the throwback Mountain Dew, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper and is loving that they are once again made with real sugar

Post-Superbowl

Ok he didn't really drink all of those during the game, but we constantly have a wall of pop cans on our counter, usually it gets to be 3 cans deep, 3 cans high before we crush them, anyone else think Michael drinks way too much pop?!

Dinosaur Museum

2010-01-31T16:05:00.005-07:00

This weekend we met up with Sarah, Ben and their girls at the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point. Jayci LOVES dinosaurs and we were excited to go with them and see how excited she would be! What we didn't really think about is the fact that it is a dinosaur MUSEUM meaning bones and skeletons not the dinosaurs Jayci loves on her cartoons or in her books. I was the one holding her as we walked through the beginning and her death grip on my neck was HILARIOUS! She definitely didn't know what to think about the dinosaur bones! At least by the time we reached the kids play area and the fish she had warmed up!

It's funny we all forgot out cameras but Sarah got this shot with her phone, the bones scared Jayci to death but she was all about Jaws :)

We had fun guys thanks for inviting us!

Running a 5K

2010-01-27T09:03:00.007-07:00

Over the past year (or two) I've been dabbling at working out, 3 good months here then a bad month, 2 good months then vacations which are always bad for working out, etc. you get the idea, basically I'm pretty good at working out one, sometimes two, times a week that might work for maintaining weight but isn't good enough to build up endurance or actually IMPROVE your physical fitness. Even though I like working out, like the energy and how I feel when I do work out I also really enjoy the laziness of doing nothing.

I've found my biggest problem is motivation (isn't this everyone's problem?), I don't have a workout partner or any particular goal to work towards so the motivation just isn't really there. Michael's also been dabbling in starting to run again (he used to run track in high school) so we finally decided enough is enough. We love doing physical activities (hiking, biking, swimming, etc.) so physical fitness is important to us and working out is something we both like and enjoy (most days) so we're going to get our butts off the couch and go for it.

So this year for Christmas we both got running shoes and the Nike+ sensor that goes in your shoes and sends the info to your IPod to track how far/fast/many calories burned during your workout. Now I've never really been a runner, my ankles turn in so it really hurts to run but I've found out they created this nifty things called Arch Supports for your shoes (yeah I know what your thinking...where have you been Rachel these have been around forever) so with actual running shoes and arch supports running is actually fairly enjoyable.

The whole point of this post is that to motivate us to keep running and not be just another temporary good month or two we are training to run the Memorial Day 5K race on May 29 with my sisters and whoever else would like to join us. For real runners I understand this is the wuss' race but for me, who's never really ran in the past, this is a big deal. I'm really excited! We've been running now for a few weeks and I have A LOT of work to do before May but that's the whole point right :)

Wish us Luck!

Lots of posts

2009-12-31T21:39:00.002-07:00

Alright so I've been slacking on updated our blog for the past few months so forgive the blogging overload. Below are posts about Thanksgiving and our 3 different Christmases. We are excited for the New Year and to see what 2010 will hold for us.

Happy New Year!

Christmas in Ohio!

2009-12-29T21:01:00.001-07:00

This year for Christmas we headed to Ohio for Christmas with the Benner family. We were really excited to head out on vacation and relax with the family. We had a lot of fun eating out, goofing off, chatting for hours, playing Apples to Apples, going to the Toledo Zoo to see the lights, playing with the kids, and of course eating tons of goodies!

Christmas morning! Everyone is excited and ready to tear into the presents!

We really enjoyed all of our presents. We even got some great new fleece pajama pants which have been great in this freezing cold weather.

Michael got an Ohio State hoodie which he was really excited for! Go Buckeyes!

Brooklyn loved her new toys, especially her little saxophone, she'll soon be a professional

We really had fun watching Payton, Drew and Damon open their presents, Christmas really is a lot of fun with little kids around

We got Oscar a dog snuggie for Christmas as a practical joke it was hilarious we had been making fun of the snuggie all week so it was even better when Karen opened Oscar's gift

We never ended up getting a picture with the entire family but this one has most everyone, Merry Christmas!

P.S. Drew got some Hulk Smash gloves for Christmas, I think Michael enjoyed them more then the kids :)

Our little Christmas

2009-12-18T21:29:00.001-07:00

We spent the beginning of the December with my family for the Atkins Christmas, and we are heading to Ohio next week for Christmas with the Benner family so we decided to have a little Christmas with just the two of us before we went. For Christmas this year Michael got a Shiatsu massage computer chair, a .40 Glock (well that was for both of us), and running shoes. Rachel got some running shoes, dress shoes and some new piano books. It was really a nice little Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Atkins Christmas

2009-12-07T20:16:00.003-07:00

For Christmas this year we are heading to Ohio to spend the holiday with Michael's family, but my parents decided to come out and visit the first week of December so we all got together and had an Atkins Christmas. We went up for a long weekend to Sarah and Ben's to spend time with everyone and we had a lot of fun. It was really nice to spend some time with my sisters and parents just relaxing and playing with the kids.

Mom & Dad loved playing with their granddaughters! Jayci and Lilly definitely were spoiled for the week.

Jayci LOVES playing with her blocks. We must have built at least 50 towers just to knock them over and start again. She really enjoyed the towers when we would build them so tall I would have to pick her up just to put the next piece one.

Lilly loves Uncle Michael she felt he the best place to take a nap.

One afternoon Ben, Michael, my Dad and I decided to go up Logan canyon and shot some of Ben's new guns. Imagine up in the mountains when it is about 10 F outside with the wind blowing down the canyon. I thought I was going to freeze! We only ended up staying outside for about an hour but it is alway fun to go shooting.

Also while we were visiting Sarah and Ben had the opportunity to have Lilly's baby blessing. It was a beautiful blessing and Lilly looked so adorable in her blessing dress!

We had a great time eating lots of peanut butter balls, preacher cookies, and just enjoying being with family. Thanks for visiting Mom & Dad!

Thanksgiving 2009

2009-11-28T19:58:00.002-07:00

This year for Thanksgiving Michael and I hosted. Sarah, Ben, their girls, and Mary all came down to enjoy the holiday, football, and all the great food. We had a lot of fun! When we went to the store to buy our turkey we were looking for a 14-16 pounder for 5 people but the store was all sold out of the middle sizes and we ended up getting a 21 pound turkey! So so so much food it was beautiful! We had all the great Thanksgiving food: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, pumpkin and chocolate pie. We all stuffed ourselves super full but it was well worth it in my opinion.

Unfortunately we were too excited to eat the delicious food we forgot to take a picture of the finished turkey, but as evidence of the meal

Even Lilly took advantage of the turkey Thanksgiving coma :)

Jayci LOVES everyone reading her and made sure to bring us plenty of books in her new book-bag to keep us all entertained.

Although we missed not having all of our family around I'd say we had fun having family down for a great Thanksgiving!

Michael's 27!!!

2009-10-29T21:51:00.004-06:00

Michael is 27, wow he's such an old man (haha being 9 months younger has its advantages, we'll see if he comes back and edits that comment). For his birthday we had a long relaxing weekend of football, great food and chillin at home.

On his actually birthday we went out to Texas Roadhouse where he claims they have the best "fall off the bone" ribs ever, had cake and ice-cream, and he got a new ITouch (to replace his IPod which was stolen over the summer).

With the help of birthday money from Michael's parents we bought a grill for our porch. We LOVE it! To test it out we went to the store and found 2 huge T-Bone steaks on sale for just $10 for both of them so we had to have them! They were delicious and a great way to break in the grill.

We had a great weekend! Happy Birthday Michael I love you!

Benners visit to Utah

2009-10-20T13:00:00.006-06:00

This past week we had the opportunity of having Michael's parents out to visit and we had a blast, alright we had a blast and we HOPE they had a blast :) Michael was able to get all of work off and I got most of my days off so we had a great vacation. We were able to do a ton of different things but unfortunately only remember to take pictures on a few of them. We got a chance to hang out with family friends, eat at the new awesome 5 Guys Burger, go to a live session at the Salt Lake Temple which is gorgeous inside by the way! Absolutely amazing! It is so hard to imagine pioneers in the 1800s building such a magnificent building. We went out to Tucanos (Brazilian all you can eat meat restaurant that we love) and had an adventure walking around Salt Lake barefoot which is the result of not thinking about walking around a city all day in 2 inch heels that rub blisters on your toes. We did a lot of other little adventures but our two big adventures were a hike to Stewart Falls and then a hike to Bridal Veil Falls. The fall is one of my favorite seasons and being up in the Utah mountains during the fall is breathtaking.

Friday we hiked in American Fork Canyon up to Stewart Falls. It was a fun hike and it ended up being a warmer day (about mid 60s) which made the hike even better.

Enjoying the beautiful fall colors (notice the snow on the mountain at the top)

Coolest hikers on the trail haha

We can see the waterfall! Almost there...

The boys took a break while Karen and I hiked up to the upper falls

The falls were gorgeous, we love this hike!

After the hike we took Karen and Mike out shooting at a local shooting range (we aren't really rednecks...just happen to enjoy a lot of redneck hobbies), it was really fun and I was quite impressed with how good a shot both of them were for never having shot our guns before.

Sunday we decided to relax and go down to Bridal Veil Falls. It is a nice hike at the base of the Provo Canyon and in the fall it is amazing. We try to go down there every fall and take pictures. There were a ton of families down there with the same idea as us.

There were so many places for good pictures! The river makes an excellent back drop.

I'm not sure why we are leaning our heads the same way but I still like this picture with all the trees in the background.

The girls were always climbing things :)

Father and Son, this is a great picture of them

Cute family moment

This last picture is one of my favorites! This is the hiking path and the scene is so beautiful with all the fall leaves!

We had such a good time with them visiting! Thanks for coming!

Lilly's so cute!

2009-10-04T20:09:00.004-06:00

This weekend Sarah, Ben, Lilly and Jayci came down for a visit. Ben came down for a business conference so we got to spend a lot of time hanging out with Sarah and the girls. We had a lot of fun playing at the park, eating out, and of course watching football. We got a few pictures of Lilly, she is so cute I love her hair :)

Lilly won't look away from the football game for even a moment, such a true fan :)

Happy Lilly!

Snake River Rafting Aug '09

2009-08-29T19:15:00.005-06:00

This weekend we went up to Snake River, right outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming for some white water rafting. We went up with Sarah, Ben, their girls and some people from Ben's lab where he works. Ben's professor has his own raft and we going to take us down the river twice. Since Sarah and Ben have Jayci and Lilly now we decided the boys would take the first run while the girls watched the kids and then we would switch for the second run. Although the rapids weren't nearly as big as we are used to (compared to the New River Gorge in West Virginia, only some of the best white water on earth) we had a GREAT time. It was fun to be out for the weekend and on the river, I could honestly be on the river/lake/ocean everyday and be perfectly happy.

This rapid is called the "Big Kahuna" they have an overlook where you can watch people go down. Sarah, Jayci, Lilly and I went to hopefully see the boys go down. Although we apparently just missed them we saw a lot of rafts go by, much to Jayci's delight, and the view was gorgeous.

Jayci watching the boats, the blue ones seemed to be her favorite

Is it Dad's turn yet?

Cute :) Lilly was very excited about the boats can't you tell?

There are local cameramen who take pictures for you to buy, these are obviously just the samples but you get the idea. Ben is in the front left and Michael's in the back right

Girls turn! Sarah is on the right middle and I'm sitting in the middle at this point. We played this game were in calm water someone stands on the edge of the raft as everyone else spins and moves it around and you try to stay on as long as you can. Since the Snake River is mountain water it is freezing all year long so Ben was the only one willing to play on the first run and i was the only one willing on the second run, and yes the water was freezing but it was worth it!

Anyway we had a lot of fun. Thanks for taking us Sarah and Ben!

Beach Vacation '09

2009-08-28T09:16:00.006-06:00

For this month's vacation (OK we spoiled ourselves with lots of vacations this year) we went to Garden City Beach just south of Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. We went with the Benner family for what is becoming a traditional every two year beach vacation, it's a week at the beach who are we to argue with tradition :) This vacation was a lot of fun to hang out with the entire family, especially since we live 2,000 miles away from everyone. But vacation also ended up being plagued with lots of bad luck, well at least everyone survived and now have some good stories to tell.

It was our nieces and nephews first time at the ocean and we had a blast playing in the waves and building sand castles with them. I think they really loved it!Brooklyn is so excited to be on the beach. It was really funny when the waves would hit her feet cause she would look down at the water, see it moving, loss her balance cause the floor was moving, and fall over, so cute!

Michael's Uncle John and his family came with us, they brought a volleyball net we set up a few days and played some mad volleyball on the beach! It was really fun and quite interesting because Jaime's 3-year old twins insisted on playing also, especially Damon my little shadow for the week, it just added an extra challenge to the game to not run them over

Rinsing off after a great day in the ocean, this picture is Hilarious!

Karen (Michael's mom) had her birthday while we were at the beach and for her present we all chipped in and took her and Mike para sailing! It was really fun! We had a smiley face parachute and they took as up over 500 ft. and out about 2 miles off shore. You could see the ocean go on forever it was really cool!

Waiting out turn to go up...

Awesome!

On Sunday morning it looked like a storm so Michael and I were only planning on being out for about 30 minutes, well the storm blew over and we ended up being out for about 6 hours with NO sunscreen on...yes this was our first whole day at the beach and we got extremely sunburned, so bad on our shoulders and backs we ended up having to wear shirts the whole week

Hurricane Bill was heading up the coast when we were there and Thursday and Friday we had some massive waves, now granted a few miles up the road at Myrtle Beach they closed the beaches down because of the rip tide and strong waves but that doesn't stop us and we were out loving the big waves! Mark and Jessica came down on Thursday to ride the waves with us, Kristin and Ryan (everyone else were over at the Nascar go-cart park). Jessica and I got caught in the rip tide once and I think all of us got at least a few cuts and bruises from being slammed on the bottom but it was a blast and we got great pictures :)

We had some awesome rides on the boogy boards, look at my hair, hilarious!

Look how tall that wave it compared to Michael and Ryan

I LOVE this one! Kristin and Ryan getting annihilated by the wave!

The beach really was a blast and this shark was by far the coolest store entrance ever

And no beach trip is complete without seeing the sunrise over the ocean

Alright so now you've seen all the happy fun pictures and you are wondering why I said we were plagued with bad luck. Besides the a for mentioned extreme sunburn, Jessica and I being caught in the rip tide, and all of us being slammed around by hurricane produced waves, Adam's car lock broke setting off his alarm in a store parking lot, but he forgot the remote to turn it off, ended up having to disconnect the battery and leave the car there over night until the problem could be fixed, Karen was wiped out by a massive wave loosing her sunglasses, Brooklyn spiked a high fever of 103F and was pretty sick for a few days, everyone except Heather at one point or another got stung by a jellyfish but not only did I get stung I had TWO jelly fish wrapped around my leg stinging me over and over again until I was finally able to get them off and get out, my entire leg swelled up and a week letter I still marks from their tentacles and a massive rash all over my leg (we decided pictures were to gruesome to put up), Adam Kristin and I were picked up by the current then tossed and slammed around by a rouge hurricane produced wave which thankfully didn't pick up our 8-year old niece Payton, ending our swimming for the week, and then to top everything off driving back to Ohio on Saturday I was driving Adam's car with Michael, Adam and Chele in the car. A metal bar (we think it is a crank handle from a semi or trailer) shot through my windshield spraying shattered glass all over everyone and hitting the seat right beside my arm, extremely close call and really lucky not to get hit or hit another car as a result.

The bar that came through the window is sitting on the car hood in this picture

Vacation was a lot of fun but I'm pretty sure something was out to get us. Chalk it up to the Benner Vacation curse (although they swear it has never tried to kill anyone before, I guess I'm the lucky first one for that). At least we had quite an adventure.

August Update

2009-08-24T12:00:00.002-06:00

August has been quite a busy month for us, lots of adventures.
My niece, Lilly was born on July 29th (congrats Sarah & Ben). My mom came out to visit them for a week so we took a long weekend and went up to visit my sisters, mom, Ben and our wonderful nieces. It was a lot of fun hanging out with family and adoring our two little nieces. I can't believe Sarah and Ben have two kids! I was just getting used to them having one and Jayci is almost 2 now! Time goes by so fast!
Starting at the beginning of August my boss let us begin a four-day work week (4-10 hour days instead of 5-8 hour days) which I am sooooo excited for! We still stay open 5 days a week so we rotate working a Friday once a month, but I'm loving the 3-day weekends! I could really get used to this.
On the 14th we took off for a 10-day vacation with the Michael's family. We flew into Detroit a day early to hang out with them and then took off driving to a beach just south of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for the week. This vacation was filled with quite a few adventures (fun and dangerous alike) and we will be posting about it as soon as I get around to sorting through the pictures and relaxing from our vacation.
Anyway our over-stuffed summer of vacations is coming to a close but we had a lot of fun on all our adventures! Fall will be really nice and we are of course really excited for the football season to start.
Stay tuned for our vacation post.

Stewart Falls & Cascade Springs

2009-07-28T19:03:00.005-06:00

This last Friday July 24th was pioneer day and for those who don't know Pioneer Day is an official Utah state holiday and therefore NO WORK!!! We originally had camping plans for the weekend but instead we decided to stick closer to home and explore some of American Fork Canyon. I have to admit sometimes Utah confuses/surprises me. Every time I think I've got UT all figured out, hot dry summers, freezing snow field winters, and BROWN everywhere, we go somewhere different and UT tricks me again. It really is quite a diverse state with the red rock and gorgeous canyons in southern UT, the gigantic mountains, the salt flats, brown flat valleys, and then we go hiking through gorgeous green canyons with mountains looming in every direction and find a 200 foot waterfall. It was quite a nice surprise to find such a pretty waterfall so close to home.

The hike to Stewart Falls was really great, I definitely recommend it.

We've actually had quite a bit of rain this summer, well in UT's standards more than about 5 days of rain per summer is quite a bit, but I was impressed how green it was out in the mountains

Quick breather, why weren't we stopped in the shade?

First glimpse of the waterfall

We climbed up to the upper falls, only a few people were up there which was much nicer and the mist from the falls felt great!

On Saturday we drove out and then hiked down to Cascade Springs, after hiking out to Stewart Falls I have to admit the actual Cascade Springs was quite a disappointment, but the drive out through the canyon was gorgeous.

Apparently the trail at Cascade Springs is an "Interpretive Trail", yeah we didn't know what it meant either. Basically they've set up these board walks to take you around the springs and surrounding area and have different signs explaining what you are seeing, the different plant life, history of the area, etc. Although it was interesting it was mostly a drive, short hike, on the Saturday of the holiday weekend so the place was packed with FAR too many people.

The springs

So our holiday extended weekend was filled with outdoors fun. Summer is going far too quickly though! I wish it would last a few extra months we love being able to be outdoors so much!

Road Trip June 26-July 5

2009-07-09T21:48:00.011-06:00

Last week for our anniversary we took off on a cross country road trip. Sweet right? We left Friday June 26 around 7pm and didn't get back until Sunday July 5. It was quite the whirlwind trip traveling through 15 different states, total mileage 4,860.5, visiting a lot of different places and seeing a lot of family and friends. It was a BLAST!

Friday we took off and drove through the night to Mount Rushmore in Hermosa, South Dakota. If you ever want to know what total alone-ness and darkness feels like try driving state roads in South Dakota at 3am. We hadn't seen another car or light for that matter for hours. It is trippy. We arrived at Mt. Rushmore right before opening at 7am and since we were there so early we practically had the place to ourselves. It was pretty cool to see!

After Rushmore we took off for Michael's family in Ohio. It was another 18 hour drive from Mt. Rushmore and with a torrential downpour in Chicago and the 2 hour time difference we rolled in around 5am. We were pretty exhausted but figured it was worth it to drive straight through to be able to go to see Derek ordained to the Melkezedek Priesthood and spend time with his family.

Kristin and Ryan's little girl Brooklyn is adorable! She was a good sport for finally giving us a smile.

Monday morning we all took off for Cedar Point where we also met up with our friends from BYU Jacob and Whitney Lauritzen. If you've never been to Cedar Point it is probably the best roller coaster park in the U.S. It has some of the tallest, fastest, craziest coasters in the world. The new one, the Maverick, takes you up (i think) 300 ft. and drops you at a 95 degree angle so you are actually coming down upside down it's nuts! We LOVE it!

Tuesday was our 3 year wedding Anniversary! Happy Anniversary! I can't believe it's already been 3 years! For our anniversary we headed down to Cincinnati to catch a Cincinnati Reds baseball game versus the Arizona Diamondbacks with our friends Trisha and Trevor from BYU. We had so much fun at the game. We had the best seats I've ever sat in, only 4 rows behind the dugout, we were lucky to find those seats. It was really cool to be that close to the field and just relax and chat at the game. And although the Reds had quite a poor showing it was still really fun! After the game we headed over to Trisha and Trevor's place, stayed up way late chatting and had a great time!

We had Michael and Trevor put their "Rally Caps" on for a Reds run in the eighth inning hoping to inspire them for a great come back, that didn't quite work but it was fun anyway!

Wednesday morning we took off for my house in Virginia. We made a quick stop over in Nitro WV to have lunch with my Grandpa which was fun to visit awhile and then on to my house. I've got to say my Dad was pretty excited to see us, we brought with us his surround sound system that he had Michael order. He was very excited to get it put together right away. Needless to say most of Wednesday night was spent putting that and his new AR-15 semi-automatic rifle together.

While the boys were hard at work Mom and I spent some time on the porch enjoying the gorgeous VA weather.

Thursday we went up to Natural Bridge (one of the seven wonders of the world). I didn't realize it was over 500 million years old! We hiked around and then went through the Natural Bridge caverns. It was pretty cool actually I really liked seeing it.

Thursday night Dad had a shooting outing planned for us. The back of the truck looked like it had enough guns and ammo for a small army. We went out shooting with my parents and brothers Mark and Aaron. It's really a fun adventure. We shot the AR-15 Michael and Dad put together and were so proud they got it together correctly, we also shot Dad's new cannon of a revolver the Magnum 44. You could actually see the fireball shoot out of the barrel when you fired it! We did a lot of target shooting with all the different hand guns and then some skeet shooting with the shot guns. Aaron tore us all up on skeet shooting, I was quite impressed.

Friday we headed down to Wet-N-Wild Emerald Pointe Water park in N.C. We spent they day down there with Mark and his wife Jessica. We had a great time and only got mildly sunburned, I was quite impressed that we actually remember to apply AND re-apply sunscreen, I guess after tons of bad sun burns I'm slowly learning my lesson.

And then Saturday morning we headed back home to Utah. We drove through the night on July 4 and got to see some fun fireworks in Topeka Kansas to celebrate the 4th.

It was a really great vacation! We love road trips and had such a fun time with family and friends!

P.S. The fifteen states we went through were: Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado

Blah

2009-06-18T15:55:00.002-06:00

Some days or even weeks just feel like blah, I think it's cause vacation doesn't start until next Friday and I'm too impatient to wait that long...

Maybe if the rain would subside for a few hours we could go out and play. We tried to go up and hike to Mount Timpanagos caves this past Saturday, we started the gorgeous drive from Provo Canyon to American Fork Canyon (about 17 miles of amazing scenery through the mountains) but by the time we were about halfway there the rain was pouring so hard we could barely see the road. Oh well, we are going to try again this weekend, but I just checked the weather and it is supposed to be sunny tomorrow and rainy again on Sat. and Sun. doesn't look to promising. I love the rain but I think it should conform to my schedule (ha don't we all?)

Oh well, back to work

Four-Wheeling and Tennis

2009-06-08T10:25:00.007-06:00

This weekend we went out four-wheeling for the first time since last summer. It was a blast. The water and snow had cause a LOT of damage to the trails but the four-wheelers were tough and could take it and we only came close to tipping a few times, no harm done :) I'm stealing the pictures below from JaRele's blog since we left our camera in the car.

JaRele and Dustin on the trail

Checking out the view and the trails

The views are always so awesome up in the mountains, no one around for miles and miles

Lunch break

JaRele showing off her guns :)

This is were we reached the end of the line, we could have taken it but if we didn't want to risk not being able to get back and the round trip trail is about 4 hours and you come out pretty far away so we didn't think JaRele's babysitter would appreciate us getting stranded, maybe next time!

We had a blast!

Oh yeah and this is by far the sweetest car EVER!!! HAHAHA

For the rest of the weekend we mostly spent it playing tennis which is always a blast and watching the semi-finals and finals of the Tennis French Open. We watched Roger Federer go for and win his 14-Grand Slam Title, tying Pete Sampras for the most in history and be one of the few men in history to complete the career Grand Slam (win the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open). I love watching him play he is really awesome, it is amazing how calculated all his shots are and how quickly he gets around the court in anticipation of his opponents shots! It is great to see history in the making!

Canyons Vacation Day 3 and beyond

2009-05-30T12:47:00.005-06:00

Day 3

Day 3 started out a little rough having to pack up camp in the rain and mud, but after getting everything taken down and packed up we set out for the Grand Canyon North Rim. When we finally made it to the Grand Canyon we parked, looked out over the side and realized the whole thing was fogged in. It was pretty sad! We decided to wait it out since it was pretty windy and hope it was clear out soon. And luckily it did.

The Grand Canyon was really neat to see especially coming from Bryce where we thought Bryce was huge and awesome the Grand Canyon is so much bigger and really amazing to see.

Here's the view from the North Rim Lodge, it's still was a little hazy but it's better then complete fog.

This was Michael's first time at the Grand Canyon

He was so excited to be there he decided to dive right into the canyon :)

I on the other hand settled for just chillin' on the edge and enjoying the view

It really is such an awesome place, I can't imagine what the Indians or pioneers thought when they stumbled upon this giant hole

We went for a quick hike along the Rim edge for some better views, you can even see the South Rim which is only 11 miles away how the bird flies, but over a 300 mile drive around the canyon to get there!

We had a blast on our vacation! We spent the next day and a half relaxing (and re-cooperating from the hikes and horse ride) in St. George by the pool.

We also got to test out the overly hyped In-N-Out burger restaurant. I'd say between Burger King and In-N-Out, Burger King wins hands down. I never thought a place could put so much chocolate in a shake to completely ruin it and everyone who knows me knows this is crazy for me to say but I apparently was wrong it was an awful shake.

We also got a chance to see the new Star Trek movie and it is awesome! Even if you don't know anything about the old ones, which we didn't really, it was still a great movie, go see it!

Oh and have fun driving here! 80mph? Craziness!

We had a blast on our vacation and hope you enjoy the pictures!!!

Canyons Vacation Day 2

2009-05-28T21:46:00.008-06:00

Day 2
*Note if you missed Day 1 scroll down and take a look at the previous post :)

For Day 2 we got up early for a horse ride through the Canyon. We were really excited for this, alright I was really excited for this, cause this was my first horse ride. I was able to ride The Kid who's claim to fame is that last year when President Bush and his wife came out The Kid was the First Lady's horse, while Michael rode his half-brother The Man. These two where quite inseparable which worked perfect for us. Our guide, Cowboy Hank, did a great job of taking us through the canyon.

Getting all ready to go, little did we realize that we had to descend 1,000 feet down the canyon wall and the horses INSIST on walking on the very edge (apparently that is the best footing) but it was quite nerve racking riding down.

Whew we survived the descent now it's all smiles and picture taking on the canyon floor. Our horses were great and we had an awesome ride!

After our horse ride (and a nap to re-cooperate) we went for a hike through the canyon and a lot of the rock formations. It is so cool to be down on the canyon floor and see how majestic the rocks are and how amazing the views can be.

Hiking through the naturally man-made door as Cowboy Hank called them

Chipmunks were everywhere in the canyon and we finally got one to stay still long enough to get a good picture, thanks little buddy!

Peak-A-Boo!

"Wall Street" as this part of the canyon was called was filled with these narrow passages with rocks that stretched up to the sky

This was pretty much the biggest tree I've ever seen. It grows between a narrow passage between the rock walls which only gets direct sunlight for a few hours a day. Apparently the Douglas Fir's prefer the cooler temperatures and can grow to be huge in places like this.

OK I have to admit the hike in the canyon floor was well worth it but hiking the 1,000 feet in elevation change out of the canyon was quite a workout. Thankfully there were lots of cool views for us to conveniently stop and take pictures.

Enjoy Day 2 and stay tuned for Day 3, next stop The Grand Canyon

*Technical Note we realized some people are having problems with the ShadowBox slideshow, you have to wait for the entire page to load for it to work. Also the arrows to scroll through all the pictures are in the bottom right hand corner*

Canyons Vacation Day 1

2009-05-27T19:22:00.004-06:00

For an extended Memorial Day vacation we took off on Thursday for Bryce Canyon national Park, the Grand Canyon, and St. George. Since we took about a million pictures I'm going to spare you the pain of scrolling through them all and pick a few of our favorites. Also since each day was a new adventure I'm going to do a few different posts to walk you through our trip.

Day 1

We spent the first day at Bryce Canyon National Park in Southern Utah. It is amazing that we were still in Utah when the red rock makes everything so different. The Canyon was amazing, there really aren't words to describe how cool it was but I do suggest if you get the chance to go. The hikes are fairly easy and well worth it.

So what happens when you hike at 9,000 feet?

You get AWESOME pictures from on top of the world!

This is looking down into the Bryce Amphitheater, the pictures just don't do it justice. This particular part of the canyon is called the Silent City.

This was taken in Red Canyon entering Bryce. The rocks are huge and very majestic looking (although apparently other tourist feel the need to be your parents by rudely reminding you to stay on the path, but whatever we got good pictures).

Michael's conquered the canyon!

Don't look Mom I'm sitting on the edge! This was a gorgeous hike on the Rim trail which circled the Amphitheater. The views were gorgeous from every direction.

Once more on top of the world and looking cool.

Notice the rain clouds in the background. Thankfully the rain missed us each time we were hiking, but it poured at night just to ruin our roasting s'mores and enjoying the campfire.

Testing out our camping gear which we got for Christmas. It all worked great! No leaks and we kept warm for the most part.

Anyway stay tuned for Day 2 to come shortly and remember to click on the pictures to get a full size shadowbox slideshow.

Canyons Vacation

2009-05-26T13:48:00.003-06:00

We needed a vacation, let's be honest everyone always needs a vacation. As a result we took an extended Memorial Day weekend (Thursday - Monday) and went to visit Bryce Canyon, the Grand Canyon and St. George. We hiked a lot, rode horses through the canyon, camped, saw amazing views, etc...

And of course in my post-vacation stupor of wanting to still be lazy and on vacation I haven't got the pictures onto the computer yet so I'll be posting them soon.

Now if I could only find the motivation to be back at work...

Visit from Mom

2009-05-18T15:53:00.008-06:00

My mom was able to come out and visit for a few days. She flew in on Wednesday and Sarah, Mary and I were able to all get together in Salt Lake and go out to lunch at Olive Garden (LOVE Olive Garden) and then she was off to Logan to hang out with Sarah and Mary. On Friday Michael and I were able to meet them at Red Robin (also LOVE that place too) and bring Mom, Sarah and Ben down for the weekend. We had quite the adventure getting home from Layton (about an hour drive normally) when Ben had to dig a razor blade out of their tire and he ended up driving on the doughnut spare the entire way while we followed him. Let me tell you driving that far at 45mph on I-15 isn't excellent fun, it's quite torturous to go that slow on the Interstate when most people are flying by you between 75-80mph. Also I don't get the retarded drivers who see your emergency flashers are on, get right up on your tail and fly by honking their horns. Are flashers are on idiots! Anyway Saturday my work had a client BBQ at the park and I was the designated grill master so we spend the afternoon at the park enjoying the sun, hanging out and then off to Brick Oven for some excellent pizza dinner. It was quite a short visit when we had to leave at 4am to get Mom back to the airport but we had fun. Thanks for visiting!

*Also note pretty much every picture was taken on Mom's camera so until I get them from her you'll have to settle with the one below

*Sarah is about 7 months along with little Lilly Allene I'm excited for another niece soon :)

The slackers that we are...

2009-05-11T15:24:00.008-06:00

Alright we are slacking and haven't posted anything in a few weeks, but then again honestly nothing very interesting has been going on to blog about, so actually you should be thanking us for not boring you to death :)

Yesterday was Mother's Day and it is sad that we aren't closer to be able to celebrate with our moms but we love you both and appreciate everything you have done for us. It is such a full time job to be a mom and we know it never ends. Thanks for always being there. We love you both!!!

The last few weeks have been pretty uneventful. The weather has finally turned nice for spring and we have been enjoying being out for walks at the park and playing tennis, although it will take us awhile to get our skills back after the winter off. We went to visit Sarah, Ben, Jayci and Mary last weekend and had a blast. It of course rained so we didn't get to play as much as we would have liked but it's always fun to just hang out sit around and talk. Jayci is getting so big and is adorable to play with.

Friday we went to see the new Wolverine movie and I've got to admit I was kind of disappointed. I mean it was good but I thought they could have done so much more with it. Oh well what can you expect, they never make your favorite shows as a kid as good as you think they should be.

Saturday we went out to Tucanos (gotta LOVE that place) for JaRele's birthday. We ate WAY too much as usual and loved every minute of it. It's just so good.

Oh and here are some Happy Birthdays for our April and May family birthdays! Happy Birthday Jessica, Ben, Mom, and Kristin!

My Sister-in-Law Jessica

My Brother-In-Law Ben (the first picture is definately a classic)

My mom

And Michael's sister Kristin (I just couldn't post the first picture without it's companion haha)

Rock Climbing

2009-04-26T14:38:00.004-06:00

JaRele was able to get some free passes to The Quarry for some indoor rock climbing this weekend. So we had a fun time climbing with her and Dustin.

I haven't been rock climbing in about 10 years and Michael hadn't been in about 7 years. Needless to say we were pretty weak but we had a blast. I forgot how much I love it and we will definitely be going back.

Even Jacob wanted a turn climbing while we were doing a refresher course with the instructor on safety (although he was a good sport about it I think the harness and being suspended off the group freaked him out a little bit)

*I was a little concerned when I saw this picture considering Michael was supposed to be keeping me from falling

This was the hardest wall we tried. Even though you can't really tell in this picture it is slanted out so you are holding yourself up the whole time instead of being able to lean into the wall. Dustin made it to the top of this one, Michael made it about 2 feet from the top and slipped off and well I made it about halfway up oh well I'm weak.

*Ok I was concerned about Michael's picture when I was climbing but then I have one of me doing the same when Dustin was climbing haha ooops

It was also JaRele's first time climbing. She did great although Jacob didn't give her a chance to climb that much. Next time :)

Our camera ran out of memory and it was difficult to take pictues while belaying the other person so we have a few pictures but unfortunately I wasn't able to get any of Michael actually climbing or at the top since I was his belayer and figure his safety "might" be more important than a picture :)

But you'll have to take my word on it that both Michael and Dustin both made it to the top of the walls, Dustin made it a few times which was quite impressive for his first time climbing. I never made it to the top because I tried the hard walls first and by the time we got to the easy wall (I know we did it backwards) my arms were to dead to make it...but next time!!!

Easter Weekend

2009-04-13T11:45:00.006-06:00

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had fun celebrating and didn't eat too much candy :)

We had a fun Easter weekend. On Friday we filled our Easter baskets(although that resulted in two days of torture for Michael not being able to dig in until Sunday) with all kinds of candy especially Hershey Eggs which are my favorite. Saturday we dyed Easter eggs and gave in and opened one bag of Hershey eggs, ok I had a weak moment, they're just too good. And Sunday of course we celebrated Easter by digging into the candy and going to church to celebrate the true meaning of Easter. We had a lot of fun and unfortunately ate too much candy yesterday that our great Easter dinner ended up consisting of pizza rolls and Hershey Eggs :)

*Remember if you want to see the pictures in a Shadow Box slide show just click on one*

Working hard on our eggs

Almost done!

And of course the beautiful finished products

And just like two kids Easter morning with the baskets filled with treats

Michael couldn't wait to dig in

Alright a serious picture

Smile :)

HAPPY EASTER!!!

General Conference

2009-04-06T13:32:00.004-06:00

This weekend we had the opportunity to attend the Saturday morning session of our church's General Conference (this is a semi-annual conference for our church broadcast to members all around the world and is broadcast from the LDS Conference Center here in Salt Lake City). Our friends had two extra tickets so we had the opportunity to go with them.

Although getting there was quite the adventure, sprinting 4 blocks in 3 inch heels through the wind and snow is NOT recommended, the conference session was quite nice and uplifting.

Because of the cold miserable weather we didn't really take any pictures, pretty much the last thing we wanted to do was stand out in pose in the snow, but here is a before shot of us dressed up and ready to go

and one of JaRele and Dustin waiting for Conference to start.

Thanks for the tickets you guys, we had a lot of fun.

P.S. On the way back we found an OPEN Fazoli's! After spotting the sign and quickly cutting across 4 lanes of traffic we were able to enjoy some wonderful garlic breadsticks. Now we know there is at least one Fazoli's still open (for now) about 45 minutes north of us, that will have to be quite the craving to go there, but hey it's there at least!

Another BBQ

2009-03-29T21:19:00.007-06:00

This last week was cold, snowy weather again, but we had planned a BBQ at the park for Saturday before it had gotten so cold. We waited and hoped all week that the weather would cooperate and the forecast was for 54 F and windy. Well Saturday morning came, still kind of overcast but in the 50s so we decided to go ahead to the park and if it was to cold we would head back to our place. The weather was really nice for us actually, the sun came out about 30 minutes after we got there and the wind finally died down and we had a really fun time grilling burgers, throwing Frisbee and just hanging out with some friends. Can you tell we are all warm weather people and very anxious for the cold weather to be over for the year?

Our Grill master

Caught red handed! Dipping into the snacks before time to eat how dare you JaRele! haha

Adam, Dustin, and Michael testing out they're flier/frisbee skills

Ooh I want to try too!

Bekah and JaRele soaking up the sun

Jacob was having a blast on the grass and he loved the dog at the park, can it please be nice so we can go back again?

We're ready for you warm weather! We had a blast BBQ'ing and unfortunately another storm blow in today and the cold and snow is back. At least Mother Nature gave us a few hours break to enjoy the sun, we'll take it!

P.S. Michael added a cool Shadow Box feature to our pictures so you can click on one, enlarge it and scroll through this post's pictures as a slide show without ever leaving our blog page. Click on one and try it out it's pretty neat.

Bunch of birthdays!

2009-03-27T09:44:00.007-06:00

March is a month of a bunch of birthdays in our families, we seem to have a lot of birthdays cluster around March/April, August and November, odd.

Anyway we just wanted to give a Happy Birthday shout out to our Brother-In-Law Ryan, our adorable niece Brooklyn, my sister Sarah, and Michael's sister Jaime! Happy Birthday everyone!