What We've Been Up To...

As most of you know, my sister Amy left on her mission. She left at the beginning of December to serve in the Peru Arequipa Mission. She is in the MTC in Lima right now. It was hard to say goodbye, but we are so proud of her and know she will be a great missionary!

We had a wonderful Christmas! (Except for the part that I had to work on Christmas day.) Chris and I celebrated our Christmas on Christmas Eve. Santa surprised me with a foosball table and a new comfy office chair. Chris got an I-Home and I made him a cushion for the window seat in our bedroom. We had a lot of fun spending time with our family over the holidays.

We had a sleepover with our niece and nephews over the holidays. We had an ice cream party, let them get in the jacuzzi and watch a movie, drank hot cocoa, played games, read stories, stayed up late, and took them sledding the next day. We had a blast with them!

This is a picture of what the table looked like when I got home from work the other night. It had been an awful day and I didn't get home until after 8. When I got home the table was set and Chinese music was playing. I got a phone call from Chris saying that we would be having some special guests over and that I had time to shower and get ready and we'd be eating around 9. Chris showed up with food from our favorite Chinese take-out place in Sandy, the Asian Star. The special guests he invited over were my parents and my brother. It was really fun and a nice end to a hard day. I just love my husband!

Our New Home

We are finally in our new home! As you can see I haven't kept up with the blog for quite some time now. The main reason being that all of my spare time has been consumed with building our house. After a couple years of looking for homes and making several offers that fell through, we decided to build. It was very time consuming and a lot of hard work, but it was all worth it. Our parents were nice enough to let us live with them the past couple of years, which is what made this a possibility for us. We really enjoyed the time we got to spend with them, but we are very excited to have a place of our own now. We started building our home at the end of May and we moved in this October. We've spent the last few months getting unpacked, decorating, and enjoying the holidays in our home. So, here are the pictures of whole process:

We broke ground at the end of May. We met with an architect and were able to draw up our plans with him. It was so fun to see our house starting to go up.

Our Uncle Tom helped us with the electrical work. He taught us how to run the wire, so we were able to do a lot of it ourselves. I did sustain an injury to my head, but luckily no stitches were needed. Our family was great to come and help us out.

Once the drywall was up it starting feeling more like a house.

Chris was able to help our contractor, Paul, out with some of the finish carpentry. In one of the bedrooms we did something called "bat and board" that ended up looking really nice.

Chris and I spent several hours at the paint store debating on our colors. Then we would come back to the house with the small cans of paint and test them out on the walls. We made a few changes and are happy with how all of our paint colors turned out.

Our house was finished at the end of September and then we just had to pass inspection. We had three final inspections before we passed and we were able to move in the first weekend in October. We appreciated all the family and friends that helped us move in.

We are so happy to be in our new home. Hopefully I'll have a little more time now that we're settled to keep the blog updated. We love having visitors over, so if any of you ever want to stop by just give us a call.

Disney Cruise

Chris and I were able to go on a Disney Cruise back in February. We were excited to escape the cold and enjoy the sun for a few days. Our only other cruise experience was with Carnival and this one definitely topped it, especially in the entertainment area. Our first day there we got to eat at the Animator's Palate restaurant. This was fun because as you enter everything is black and white. Then throughout the course of the meal the pictures around you come to life with color.

As far as the entertainment went they had live Broadway style productions each night. We got to see Toy Story-The Musical, The Golden Mickeys, and Disney Dreams. Toy Story was just okay, but the other two productions were amazing. They were compilations of several Disney stories that were very well done. They also had a movie theater on the ship that constantly had Disney movies playing. We got to see the movie Bolt in 3-D which was fun.

Our stops along the way included Nassau and Paradise Island in the Bahamas and Castaway Cay, which is Disney's private island. I enjoyed Nassau quite a bit because I felt like we got a really good feel for the culture there. We talked to one of the locals and asked where we could find good snorkeling and shopping. We ended up going on an outing with one of the locals on his little boat. It was just me, Chris, and the boat driver. He drove us out in the ocean quite a ways until we came to some coral reef. Then Chris and I got our snorkeling gear on and spent like an hour out in the ocean. The water was pretty chilly. We were just grateful the man didn't leave us because we were so far out from any land. When we got back we went shopping in the local market area. It was great because we got to barter with them and we ended up getting some fun souvenirs. We also got to visit the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island. It is a huge resort with an incredible water park. One of the slides you go down looks like a pyramid and has real sharks swimming in the bottom. You are of course safe because you have a clear plastic tube all around you, but it still seems a little frightening to me. Just as a side note, a few months ago one of the sharks actually jumped out of the water into the slide. The water park was closed at the time and the shark ended up dying because of the chlorinated water. Here is the link to the article if you're interested in reading more about it: http://snagwiremedia.com/atlantis-shark-commits-suicide/

We thoroughly enjoyed our day at Castaway Cay. It is the home of the Flying Dutchman from Pirates of the Caribbean. It was all inclusive; there were carts with fresh fruit, soft serve ice cream, and a barbecue lunch. We laid out on the beach and went snorkeling. There were all sorts of items that had been sunk, so as a result we got to see lots of fish. We even had an underwater camera that we got some pics with. Unfortunately those ones aren't digital though.

On our way to the airport we stopped by the new T-Rex restaurant in Downtown Disney. It is kind of like the Rainforest Cafe, but it is all dinosaur themed. The food was really good and it was a fun environment. About every fifteen minutes the animals all came to life and put on a little show.

Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day this year I made Chris' favorite, chicken cordon bleu, from scratch. I also cooked up some asparagus and used my cousin's recipe for lettuce wraps, which I must say tasted very similar to P.F. Changs. They did take a bit of time to make though. My brother Dave joined us for dinner which was fun. Chris surprised me with my favorite color of roses and a cheesecake. We had a very enjoyable evening.

David's Homecoming

This posting is very late in coming. My brother David got home from his mission in November. It was such an exciting day for us and one filled with a lot of emotions. I think David described it best when he compared the happy reunion at the airport to what it might be like when we reunite with our family in heaven. It was so neat to see how much David grew spiritually on his mission. We have enjoyed hearing his teaching experiences and what Iowa was like. He has made us several Iowa specialty dishes since he's been home. This past week we got to meet one of the girls that David was able to teach and baptize. It is so fun to have David back!

Havasupai

Chris and I went to a place called Havasupai for our anniversary this year. It is located in the Grand Canyon on an Indian Reservation and you have to hike in 10-miles to get to the campground. We backpacked in with all of our camping gear and food. It was probably the most physically exhausting hike I've ever done. I had worked the whole day before and when I got off work we packed up the car and drove through the night. We arrived at the trailhead about 8:00 AM and started the hike. Unfortunately this meant that we were hiking in the heat of the day. When we got to the Indian village to check in we were pretty exhausted. I could tell I had blisters on my feet and we still had 2 miles to go. We took our packs off and set them on a bench while we went to check in. I looked out the window and saw some little Indian kids raiding our backpacks. I ran out to stop them and they scurried away. Evidently they were after the fruit snacks. We loaded our packs back on and made it down to the campground. The last two miles were the hardest. It was so hot and we had just had it physically. We were both low on sleep and everything ached by this point. When we got to the campground we set up camp in the first open spot we saw. Then we got our swimsuits on so we could cool off and clean up in the water. The waterfalls were gorgeous. Havasu Falls was our first stop. It was close to the campground, so we spent the most time there. After we swam for a little we went back to camp and both fell asleep. When we woke up it was already dark. We made some ramen noodles and instant mashed potatoes, which tasted absolutely wonderful. Then we went to bed for the night.

More Havasupai

The next day we were so sore and stiff when we woke up. I guess that hike was just a little more than either of us were used to. We went to three of the waterfalls that day. We went to Navajo Falls in the morning and had it all to ourselves for a while. We spent most of the afternoon at Havasu Falls. There are several pools at Havasu and a lot of small cascading falls. One of the small cascades works as a slide which was entertaining. I loved sitting at the top of the small waterfalls. I was able to get some sun, but the water kept me cool. It was perfect!

Later on that night we hiked down to Mooney Falls. This one is more of a challenge to get to. You go into a little cave and when you come out of it there is a steep area to go down where you have to hang on to a chain so that you don't fall. At the base of Mooney Falls is another small waterfall that has a rope swing. Chris had a lot of fun swinging on it and landing in the water below. I didn't go off the rope swing, but we did jump off the falls together.

The next day we went back to Navajo Falls. Chris had been to Havasupai a few years earlier with his friends and they went cliff jumping off of some of the waterfalls. I told him that I wasn't too thrilled about the idea, but when we got there a bunch of people were jumping and it seemed to be pretty deep. The plan was he would just jump once and I was going to take a picture. Well, he finally got to the top and there was this girl who was just standing there, but couldn't get up the courage to jump. She was taking forever and before I knew it Chris jumped from a different spot than where everyone else had been jumping. I did snap a photo, but it wasn't that great because I thought he was going to wait for this girl to jump. When he swam over to me I told him that the picture I got wasn't the best and if he wanted me to get a good one he could go again. Unfortunately, this time when he jumped when he came up out of the water he just gasped when he looked at his hand. Sure enough, his wedding ring was gone and on our second anniversary to the day. I shed a few tears, but there was not much we could do. It was at the base of the waterfall he'd lost it and it was so deep there. Chris had hiked back into the village that day too, my feet just weren't up to it. He got me some bandaids for my blisters and also brought back some frozen Propel botels, they were such a treat. We saved the Propel for our anniversary dinner along with spaghetti and some more instant mashed potatoes. It was so good!

The last day we were there we got up at like 4:00 AM and packed everything up to hike in to the village. We had decided we'd take the horses out from the village since I still had pretty bad blisters and it would save us a lot of time. While we were waiting for the horses to get there we found out that the helicoptor ride was more affordable than we expected, only $10 more than taking the horses. We ended up making arrangements to take the helicoptor out rather than the horses. Neither Chris or I had ever ridden in a helicoptor before. I got to sit in the front next to the pilot. It was a beautiful ride that overlooked the Grand Canyon and only took us about 15 minutes. On our way home we stopped in Las Vegas and got to visit our friends Emily and Dustin. We also got to go to our favorite restaurant, Trevi, with them. We had such a fun time.