Thankful.

Thankful is the word of the season. I don't know if I could be more thankful than I am this year. Darrin and I went to St. George to my sister and her husband, Mindy and Jesse's, house for the Thanksgiving holiday. We were surrounded by family, cute kids, good food, slightly warmer weather, and plenty of Martinelli's :)

I think one of the best things was being together with my two sisters and my mom. I don't think I realize how much I miss seeing them until I do get to see them.

Jesse's family has the wonderful tradition of going around the room before eating Thanksgiving meal and having each person say what they are grateful for. This is when I felt how much I really am and should be grateful for. I had a hard time not just bursting into tears.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm grateful for my sweet husband Darrin, family, friends, the wonderful season, and baby on the way. :)

California 7/2010 and other stuff

For a sort of replacement honeymoon (because we got married on a Friday and I had to get back to school on Monday) we decided to make a trip to California. This trip also had two other goals: 1) see family and 2) visit some temples we haven't been to.

The trip started with the St. George post I did about a month ago, where we visited my sister, and went to the St. George temple. The next leg of the trip was Los Angeles, California. My brother and his family have lived there for a few years and I haven't gotten to visit them very often.

On the first day in Los Angeles, Darrin and I explored downtown. We saw a few scary areas, but we also saw some things that were at least a little exciting for us:

Here is Darrin standing outside the Staples center-where the Lakers play. Darrin wanted to go see if Kobe Bryant was home, but we never made it inside.

On our walk downtown, we also visited China town. We went to a bakery and got some Chinese treats that Darrin has been missing like Mochi and pineapple bread. Here we are at the entrance of China town.

Our next stop was the Getty, an art museum in Los Angeles. My brother had taken his wife there for her birthday and she recommended it. It was pretty cool. We really liked the gardens outside too.

Jeff (my brother) and his wife, Jackie took us and their kids to one of their favorite beaches-Zuma beach. It was a pretty cold day, but we still managed to have fun. This was Darrin's first time at the beach! We built a sea turtle, can you tell?

Here is cute Vanessa. I regret that these are the only pictures I got of my brother's family. I guess we'll have to go back soon. :)

After having fun in Los Angeles (and going to the temple), we took a drive down to San Diego. Neither of us had been there before and we're both glad we went!

Our first stop was the zoo. Wouldn't we fit in a safari?

Here is Darrin outside the polar bear cage-one of our favorite exhibits.

Next stop: San Diego temple. Even though it was under construction on the outside, the inside was soooo beautiful! Probably my favorite celestial room ever!

On our last day (or so we thought) in San Diego, we went to Sea World. It was a lot of fun, but we don't know if we'll go back because it was so expensive!
The Killer Whale Show:

We ended up staying in San Diego an extra day because our car broke down-I was not happy. Luckily, Darrin knows how to cheer me up. Because we stayed longer, we got to go to a beautiful white, sandy beach and collect some shells two times.

Our last trip of the summer was in August, to Idaho and West Yellowstone, Montana. Darrin had never been to Yellowstone Park (while it seems I grew up there), so I had to take him. We also went to a show at the Playmill Theater, Beauty and the Beast. Amazing. As always.

Here we are waiting for Old Faithful to go off:



And here she is! The wind was being annoying and making all the steam get in the way of us seeing the actual water. Oh well.

That was our summer. Now Darrin is super busy with the accounting program and I am busy teaching my sixth graders science!

St. George & Angel's Landing 7/2010

In July, Darrin & I took a week-long trip. In a way, we were making up for the honeymoon we never got because I had to get back to school right after we were married. The first stop on our trip was St. George. My sister, Mindy, and her husband, Jesse, live there so we got to spend some time with them and their little boy, Lincoln.

On a Saturday, we drove into Zion's National Park with Mindy & Jesse. We decided to do Angel's Landing, a famous hike in Zions. It was a really hot day, but we still made it. On Angel's Landing there are some cliffs that drop off so at parts they have chains that you can hold on to.

Here is a picture from the top, you can see how small everything looks down below.

Here we are at the top-We made it! :) Jesse, Mindy, Darrin, & Me

We ate a snack at the top to keep us going so that we could stop in some shade on the way down to eat our lunch. I thought it was funny that Darrin chose a Butterfinger as his snack before lunch.

Here is Mindy, eating a little bit more nutritious snack.

Darrin and I at the top. It was so pretty up there!

After St. George, we headed to Los Angeles, where my brother and his wife and three kids live. We did a lot of driving on this trip and going through the Mojave Desert was hot and bright. Darrin needed a little shade for his eyes and so I let him borrow my flowery sunglasses.



This last one might only interest those who have read Fablehaven. There is a prison in the series called "Zzyzx" and I was happy to find another place named the same thing going through the desert. No wonder he named it that...

More to come on our trip: Los Angeles & San Diego

Part dos

Above is a video of our cute niece, Maia. We got to have her stay at our apartment overnight when her parents went on a getaway for their anniversary in June. Before we put her to bed, we watched a little Tom & Jerry on Netflix. She thought it was so hilarious. Every time one of them got hurt she laughed at least this hard. We had to get a video of her cute laugh.

For the 4th of July, Darrin and I went to Idaho Falls. They always have a big fireworks show, among other things, so we decided to go. I didn't get pictures of everything we did, but here are some things we did:

-Ran the annual Freedom 5k: My sister, dad, Darrin, and I ran it together. I hadn't run in a 5k race since high school and it was fun.

-Went to the annual 4th of July breakfast: A woman in my parents' ward holds a breakfast in her backyard for the whole neighborhood and 2 wards. It is so generous of her! (and yummy!)

-Had a barbeque in the backyard

-Went to the annual fireworks: It is put on by a wealthy guy and he likes to top other fireworks shows around. We sat further away this year so it wasn't as good as usual.

-Roofed our shed: Darrin was so nice to stay extra long to help my dad and brother-in-law put new shingles on our shed.

Here is my mom with my cute nephew, Matthew. He is so fun to be around and his personality shows more and more each time I see him.

Hannah, my oldest niece, with my sister (and her mom) Angela in the background. Hannah likes to be silly and I thought this made her look a little like a duck.

Princess Hailey. She is a very girly girl and very quiet. She is growing up so fast!

Matthew showing off his "smile" for the camera.

Matthew and I. Matthew calls himself "Eye-oh". Darrin and I picked up some of his language while in Idaho and continue to use it.

Thanks Mom and Dad for a great time!

summer fun: part uno

Never in my life had I even seen a gun in real-life. Pretty pathetic, eh? Especially considering I am from Idaho-a place full of hunters. I was determined not to go my whole life like this, so I got Darrin to take me shooting. I knew he had taken at least one other girl shooting for a date, which made it that much more important that I got to go with him too.

We set off up Spanish Fork canyon with Darrin's old roommate, Nate and his fiance Laurel.

You can tell how excited I am to be there. I think Darrin is just excited for me :)

Me, Darrin, Nate, and Laurel

Darrin showing off his skills with the pigeon thrower. I'm not too sure why he looks so angry...probably because I kept taking pictures :)

I didn't know how good of a shot Darrin was until this outing. His first time with the gun he shot all five of the clay pigeons. (that's my husband!)

And, I couldn't leave without evidence that not only did I see a real-life gun, but I shot it. Right after this picture was taken I shot the clay pigeon-the only one hit by either of the girls that night... I never said I would be good at it.

I had a fun time and my shoulder didn't even hurt afterward. I did learn how much I dislike earplugs though, those things are impossible.

More to come: Our trip to Idaho, St. George, and California...

good news!

I just wanted to say how proud I am of Darrin because he...

Made it into the BYU Accounting Program! WAHOO!!!

I'm so proud! Good job Darrin, I love you!

(see below for our latest adventure)

here comes summer

Summer officially started on last Thursday at about 3:50pm for me. At 12:45 earlier that day, all my students RAN out the door (it didn't make me sad though...) and I had to finish cleaning up my classroom. So I guess I survived my first year of teaching. The thing that keeps me going is what every other teacher says: "You'll never have another first year". All I can say is Hallelujah!!! I had a rough year, but I can honestly look back and see times that I really did love teaching. Did I love it all the time? Absolutely not. But...I believe each day will get even better.

One of our first summer activities was going to Kennecott Copper Mines. They are just west of Sandy. I saw them all the time when I was at school. This is something that Darrin and I had wanted to do for a while, so we went on Saturday. After we drove up there, we came back through Sandy and stopped at Frogurt, a frozen yogurt place with lots of flavors and toppings. It's pretty expensive but one of my students got me a gift card so it was perfect! Darrin was really funny because he got a lot more frozen yogurt than he had planned on (he claimed he didn't know how to slow it down) and so his was really heavy. He got really giggly because of all the sugar. It was just him and me and one worker in the pretty huge place. It was a lot of fun, we haven't laughed that hard in a while.

This is what Kennecott looks like when you are driving up toward it. I'm sure most of you have seen it if you look west after you go north of the point of the mountain.

Here's Darrin looking at the pamphlet they gave us.

You can see how windy it was when we got up there. My hair was going crazy!

This is the mining pit from the visitor's center at the top. It is one of the biggest mining pits in the world. The little dots everywhere are giant trucks hauling the rock up and down the pit.

And this is a tire from one of those GIANT trucks!

playing catch up

A lot has been going on and this is my attempt at catching up on all that happened. I'll try to do it in order, but I'll try not to make it too long :)

First, since spring started appearing in Provo a while ago (and has since disappeared, reappeared, disappeared, etc.), Darrin and I wanted to plant some seeds in pots to see how we do at the whole gardening thing. Since planting the seeds they have grown a lot and no longer just look like the picture below of dirt in pots, but I was proud of our little garden.

We also wanted to do something fun one Saturday night, so I got some craft paint and we painted the little pots that we planted our flower seeds in. It ended up being really fun. Below you can see the results. We are pretty happy with our colorful pots.

Next, on April 22nd and 23rd, I graduated! Yipee! It was a little lame because my name wasn't even on the program (I postponed graduation to keep BYU insurance until August so my name will be with the August graduates). But, it was still nice to have a little closure. I forgot to take a picture of me in my cap and gown, but it wasn't a big affair, so it wasn't a big deal not to have pictures.

The very next day, April 24th, we celebrated our 1 year anniversary! I can't believe how fast one year went. I love Darrin even more than I did the day I married him. It just makes me that much more excited to be with him year after year until forever. For our anniversary we went up to Logan for the night. On the way we went to the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy for Darrin's birthday. I made him touch a stingray :)

Making for an eventful weekend, the 25th was Darrin's 24th birthday. One of the presents I gave him was a remote control boat. Later that week we took it for a test drive at the little pond by Heritage Halls on BYU campus. The water there is nice and clean, not like the pond at the bottom of the hill. Here Darrin is trying his new boat out:

While we were there, we saw baby ducklings. I thought they were so cute so I followed them for a while and got a bunch of pictures. Darrin was more interested in his new boat :) This picture reminded me of one of my favorite books when I was little, Make Way for Ducklings. It made me really happy, to say the least.

And, to end my super long post, last weekend Darrin and I went to Kodachrome State Park for his Kenyon side family reunion. Darrin and I didn't end up staying very long because my parents had come to town, but the time we did spend there was very fun. We went on a small hike through a slot canyon. A creek made its way through a somewhat tall canyon and we followed it. We had to jump over the creek several times, which made it a pretty fun hike. This picture is of Darrin's little sister, Natalie, and his dad, Randy.

I can't resist the silly pictures, even when it makes my nose look ginormous...

Darrin liked to make his jumps a little bigger than the rest of us by climbing on the walls and jumping off of them. Makes for a pretty cool picture.

One of his favorites: the Spiderman stance.

A great picture of the slot canyon, it was like this most of the way. It was really pretty and the color of the rock and mud was so pretty. The mud was bright orange, not a color you would think to see in nature, other than on flowers.

Well, hopefully that wasn't too long and if it was, you shouldn't have looked at the whole thing. I am a bad blogger, but I'll do better...maybe.

Oh Boy...

I do love my boy. He is so nice to me. He is so much more than I deserve.

Last night I had an awful headache. It was probably the worst one I have had in a long time. The medicine didn't even work. As soon as Darrin got home from work he gave me a back and neck massage and then sent me to bed. When I woke up he brought me dinner and was so sweet to me.

Boy, do I love him! Thanks for being a sweetheart, sweetheart :)

More Drawings!

Here are a couple more drawings we have done with the oil pastels Darrin got me for Christmas. It has become an activity that we like to do together and maybe we'll keep improving while we're at it.

Darrin did this one above of the apple. He did great! Every time we use the pastels he gets even better, what a natural.

And I did the one above of the calla lily. I love these flowers so I wanted to at least try. It is hard doing white things because the white won't go over other colors, so what you see that is white is the paper.

Valentine's Day

A couple weeks before Valentine's Day, Darrin got me some flowers and on the card he asked me to go to our stake dance for Valentine's Day. It was cute of him, especially knowing how he feels about dancing. The Friday before Valentine's Day, I had a really bad sinus infection, I couldn't sleep because my face hurt so bad. Luckily, we got to the doctor on Saturday morning and by Saturday night I felt so much better and ready to have a good Valentine's Day.
We went out to eat at Mimi's Cafe-yum! Then we went to the dance. Below, are some pictures we got before we went. It was a great first Valentine's Day as a married couple-Thanks Darrin!

Here are the flowers he got me, so pretty!

A couple pictures before dinner. Doesn't he look cute?

And the picture they got of us at the dance. It was a pretty good turn out. I was afraid I would feel over dressed because my mom sent me a dress I had worn at a high school dance, but luckily, many other girls had the big fancy dresses, so it turned out perfect! We had a lot of fun and got some fun pictures from it.