New Years Eve

We have had this problem lately where we cant figure out anything to do! Mainly its my problem, because it seems to take all my energy to even get ready, but at the same time all I want to do is get out of the house!
We made an actual decision on Saturday and headed up to the Salt River! It was a beautiful day, and almost 80 degrees outside! Believe it or not Colby and I both wore shorts!

We hiked down to the river, and Colby did some fly fishing. He caught one! It was a suckerfish and not the trout he was hoping for, but a fish is a fish to me! :)

 This fish had the weirdest lips I have ever seen!

The rest of NYE was pretty uneventful, we had dinner at Dennys, and then went home watched a movie and were in bed by 10:30. I wanted to watch the ball drop in Times Square but they cut out right at midnight eastern time to the 10 oclock nightly news. I guess the news was more important!

Hot Chocolate and Giant 'Mallows..

Fall has finally arrived! I am so excited to be able to sweatshirts, boots and cardigans without sweating to death!
We took it easy this weekend! November is going to be a busy month so we decided to relax while we still can!
Friday night we enjoyed some delicious hot chocolate with one giant marshmallow!

We bought those GIGANTIC smores marshmallows for our camping trips and it was wonderful in the hot chocolate!!
Yumm!
Saturday I had a newborn photo session with Claire & Tyler! She is a doll! When I got home we went to enjoy the outdoors at the 41st annual Litchfield Park Festival of the Arts! There was so many neat crafts, arts, and miscellaneous things! We enjoyed some Native American music (pan flute & violin!) and walked around smelling all the delicious food!
Sunday we went to church, if I havent mentioned it before we were called to be nursery helpers. We enjoy playing with the kids for two hours and eating cheerios and other snacks! They are always doing something that makes us laugh!
After church we watched movies and cuddled under blankets for the rest of the day!
It was quite the relaxing weekend, now on to a busy week!!!

What have we been up to?

**Sorry for crappy camera pics**
Well August has really flown by! We started it off by heading up to Vegas and hanging out with my family! We enjoyed going shooting out on the dry lake bed and going cosmic bowling.. among other things! Im glad that we are so close to them now!

I was able to stay for the week and hang out with friends that I haven seen in a couple of years! It was so great to catch up and see everyones babies/toddlers!! For some reason we didnt take any pictures together though!
Colby has been attempting to fish and finally was caught some catfish at a local pond. It wasnt what he wanted but it was better than not catching anything at all!!

I have been working from home since June and have been keeping busy! I usually have two stalkers surrounding my desk at any given time.

We've been enjoying our pool and trying to go out and explore! We went to a pretty cool car museum a couple of weekends ago and this past weekend we went up to Sedona with the Coltons to explore. We went to Sliding rock state park where we froze our butts off in the ice cold water! We did some cliff jumping (not claire), I surprised myself and jumped off without much hesitation, but was shocked by how cold the water was. We hadnt tested it out before hand! Colby & Tyler braved the 40 foot jump, but once off the 25 was good enough for me!  We slid down the creek and went "hiking" upstream. It is absolutely gorgeous up there!

the cliffs we were jumping from.

The rock slide

We are planning on going camping sometime in the next couple weeks and cant wait to explore more of the AZ mountains and lakes! Colby cant wait to fish, I cant wait to take pictures.. :)

Well thats a quick little update! I cant get my SD drive to work or else I would post some other pictures, but I will just save them for next time!

Not much going on here!

Well we have been here over a month now and are pretty much settled into the house! After a very long delay, we have a bedroom suite being delivered on Saturday and I seriously can't wait.
We have been sleeping on the floor (on a mattress of course) since we have moved in and with our nice friends the scorpions rapant around here...well Im sure you can see why I am excited! Yes I will still check underneath the covers and my pillow every night but atleast I wont be on the floor!!

Colby has discovered that there is a serious lack of home improvement projects for him to do and isnt quite sure what to do with all of his spare time! Dont worry, Im working on finding some for him! :) Work is going great for him and he has discovered a new talent of grilling. He has been creating some delicious dinners for us the past couple of weeks!

We have been having lots of "monsoons" they arent called thunderstorms around here and with the crazy wind and dust clouds I guess I can understand why! A couple weeks a go we had a crazy huge dust cloud called a haboob blanket the entire PHX valley (which is massive by the way) It was I think 70 miles wide and tall enough to cover the skyscrapers! Tonight we had another one! These are supposedly a very rare occurence so I guess we should be considered lucky to have witnessed two of them.. I went out to get pictures of this one.

Isnt that crazy??
This is the grand canal that runs across the street from us. It waters all of the crops throughout the west valley. I believe we also have it to thank for the many critters we have found by the house!

Speaking of animals...

I found this baby lizard the other day, I have never seen one so small!! Isnt it cute! I wanted to keep him but decided to let him go so he might actually have a chance to live!

I have been busy trying to keep up with house chores and working. I am currently temping at Conair (hairdryers/straigheners) for the week and working from home doing back end processing for the insurance company my mom works for. So I am staying pretty busy!

The dogs are starting to like it out here, as long as I take them across the street to the park (aka GRASS). Krone is protesting the rocks in the backyard and will only go if I take him across the street, I honestly dont blame him. Kazzi of course could care less...

We are trying to go out and explore the area, but its hard to be motivated to go outside when its 110....
I cant wait for the fall when we can enjoy the weather! We did go out one evening so I could take some pictures of the flower fields and saguaros..

Anyways, now you are up to date and informed of our lives!

Wow!

I know I brag a lot, bug Colby never ceases to amaze me with his talents!
We decided to tile around the fire place and went and searched for tile at our 2nd home (Home Depot)!
We found the perfect tile and the perfect accent tile! Although the H.D. we were at only had 3 of the ones we wanted and 2 of them were broken. So we headed off to another store which was definitely in the ghetto. (I didnt even know it existed!) They had 13 tiles and we needed 11. The guy told us we should go ahead and buy all 13 just in case because these certain tile sell like hot cakes! We decided not to but regretted it the next day! How did that guy know!!
Here is the little suckers that sent us on a scavenger hunt!

We got the rest of the tile at the store and then headed home!

Accent corners

Marazzi Montagna Belluna if you were wondering the color :)

Colby started working on it yesterday morning around 9 and didnt finish until 2! It normally takes just a couple hours to tile an entire bathroom to put it into perspective. He soon realized that he needed one more  6 X 6 piece and 1 more little bronze accent piece..
He headed back to the original home depot that had that 1 good piece and found it hidden under some boxes! Lucky! When he went to the register to check out the cashier couldnt get the 6 X 6 tile to scan into the system and her nails were preventing her from typing in the numbers. Colby then attempted to type in the numbers but she pressed the wrong button and cleared everything out. Oops! She got impatient and told Colby to just leave with the tile. He was confused and tried to tell her no but she said to go ahead. I told him it was a little kickback for buying so much stuff from there!!
Anyways after hours of hardwork, blood, sweat, and maybe tears (just kidding) Colby finished the tile work and now just has to grout it! I can't believe how beautiful it is!

After he grouts it we will put threshold aroudn the edges to make it look finished but anyways, I am just so impressed with it!!

Thats all for now, I will post more when it is completely done, I just couldnt wait to show it off!!

Tis the season...

...to be grateful! I have just been feeling so incredibly blessed lately. There isn't one particular reason and I am not going to post 1 reason I am grateful a day (we all know how that will turn out! :)  )

I love my husband!
I love my family!
I love the gospel!
I love my life!

I posted them on facebook but just in case you havent seen how cute Colby and I are together.. :)

 Isnt he gorgeous!

look a post with no pictures of the pups!

Next post I will put pictures up of the master bath and the re-decorated living room and office!! yay! It's amazing what a little paint can do!

Grandfather Mountain

Besides sucking at follow through life has been pretty busy. It seems like I have been going non stop doing stuff for the past month! I'm not complaining! I love being busy and have missed it terribly!! This past Sunday we headed up to Grandfather Mountain which is right next to the Blue Ridge Parkway. The colors were beautiful! The colors would probably have been better this coming weekend but oh well!
We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the country! This is something you can't experience in Las Vegas! :)

the master is at it again!

Colby finished the tiling of the master bathroom floor yesterday. It had been done minus the sealing so we finished that part together! Finally something I can do! :)

It makes it look like a completely different bathroom! There are still a lot of things to be accomplished in here but its a huge start!

Lucky Number 7 and 2 amazing years

Today is day number 7 of my little project! Yay!

I just got back from my evening walk/run. It was still hot out and I am now drenched in sweat. Gross.

I call this tree and light pole



ON a much better note...
Today is Colby and I's two year anniversary. It's unbelievable to me really that I have been married that long. It feels like just yesterday!
I learn something new about him everyday and love him oh so much! He is my world and I am so grateful for everything he does for me!
 Happy TWO years Colby!

Cruisin'!

**THIS IS REALLY LONG**

Well we just got back from our wonderful cruise the other day! It was the BEST and most Relaxing vacation I have ever been on! I am ready to book another one for next year!

We headed down on Friday night after Colby got off of work and made it there around 9 in the morning. We couldnt start boarding the ship until 1230 so we decided to get some breakfast and headed back to the port so we could get in line to get on the boat.

It didnt take as long as we thought to get on board and we started to explore! The cruise ship was massive and I know we still didnt get to see everything there was to see on it!

We played a round of mini golf and went to a game show they held on board and I made a fool of myself by going to be a contestant! I did win a ship on a stick though so it was worth it. (a plastic gold ship trophy) We then ate dinner and then went to bed since Colby had been up since 9am the previous day!

The next day was a full day at sea, we had lots of fun just relaxing by the pool, walking around the boat, eating..., and going down the waterslide! This was the formal night so I had to go in and try to completely towel dry my hair since there wasnt a blowdryer in the room ( I later found out that all I had to do was call guest services and they would bring me one..oops!) We went to dinner and found out they had switched the group from the day before and brought over 2 new couples! We are so glad they did! We had the funnest table! We all became quick friends and hung out everyday after that.

ice sculpture in 15 minutes

Monday we arrived in Grand Cayman. The water on the side we docked on was beautiful and clear! Colby, Tyler, Claire, and I walked through the shops and walked a little ways to find a beach we could hang out at until our snorkeling session started! We eventually found one after being honked at 10,389,430 times by taxi drivers offering to drive us to a beach. We didnt want to get all the way wet so we just walked around in the shallow waters. Since we were in the bay there were no big waves.

We headed back to the docks to meet with our snorkeling group and got honked at another 23,058,235 times offering to drive us to the beach... We even stopped at a gas station  to get some drinks and a taxi driver followed us inside to offer us a ride! They are pretty pushy over there!

We had to take a van ride to the boat that would take us to the reefs and to where the sting rays were. The driver of our van was singing gospel songs with a really thick cayman accent. We tipped him he was so good! Once we got to the boat it was a 40 minute boat ride to the reefs. We saw tons of Mangrove trees and Iguanas! The Mangrove trees were neat but make the water a greenish color and leave it semi murky. It wasnt as pretty as the other side of the island, and definitely not as pretty as Cozumel the next day! Snorkeling was awesome I got a little sea sick with all the action from the waves though but it was still neat to see all the little and big fish, a barracuda, and 2 stingrays! There was apparently a shark in the water that bit one of the stingrays earlier in the day so the rest of the stingrays were hiding and wouldnt come out to eat.

They boat captain told us how the Native Island People would go fishing and stop in the shallower water to clean and gut their fish. They have done it for hundreds of years and now the sting rays associate the sound of an anchor for meal time. So they all come up to eat! Pretty cool I thought!

How many can you see??

Anyways after waiting in a ridiculously long line to get back on the tenders to take us back to the boat we went in took a nap and got ready for another delicious dinner! I think we went to some show or something afterwards but I cant remember...

Cozumel was Tuesday. It was AMAZING! We rented a scooter from a sketchy mexican man and drove around the main freeway on the island. It goes in a big circle and follows the coastline for the most part.  We stopped at a small beach and did our own snorkeling and collected shells and dead coral. I almost found a fully in tact Bonka?sp Shell but it had a whole in the very top so we didnt keep it! We kept driving and stopped to eat at a little Reggae Hut that sold mexican food...The tacos and chips and salsa were delicious! We watched to ocean waves for awhile and headed back on the scooter. We checked out some deserted turtle nests that had recently hatched, saw a cool black iguana, a bald eagle, countless lizards, and a dead crab. We tried to go see they Mayan ruins however we only had $6 cash on us at this point and it was going ot be $13 so we werent able to go in. We saw some smaller ones on our way to San Gervasio though which was cool. We headed back tried to bargain with a old man for a blanket, since we only had $6 and the blanket was $23 we didnt get very far. We kept on and ended up getting one for $5 from a lady down the road. It wasnt cool and hand woven but it is still nice! We got lost once we got back into the city which was a little crazy. So. Many. Scooters. There was even a family of 4 on 1 scooter! craziness! We  eventually found our way to the main road and hung out at the shops before heading back towards the ship.

We decided we wanted to get back in the water before so we stopped on the side of the road and went down to the water. This was a rocky, squishy beach.. not a sandy one. So we got in with who knows what squishing between my toes and started to swim. It didnt last long. The water started to get really deep really fast and I got nervous a shark was going to get us and we were going to be lost forever!! ok not really but there were some really big bright blue fish and i was worried about a shark (Colby was too but he wont admit it ) so we headed back, turned in our scooter, and walked back on the ship. We were the only ones at dinner that night because the return time from the island wasnt until 730. After that we went to take a nap that turned into me sleeping the entire night and colby going to hang out with everyone by himself!
**My camera wasnt working this day unfortunately...)

The last day on the boat was fun. We got to sleep in, lounge around, Colby won the ping pong tournament, played a few games on board, and then played farkle and monopoly deal with Caleb and Lauren. I actually won a game for the first time ever! we relaxed some more, went to dinner, then decided we had to kareoke! Which was a blast! We went to the comedy show afterwards which was alright and then went to bed because we had a long drive the next morning!

Playing games

                                                      Colby being intense at the ping pong table

Katie, Trent, Lauren, Caleb, Jacob, Kathry, Me, Colby, Tyler, & Claire on the last night! 

 

The dessert I had every night.. Im sure it was really good for me too.

Colby and Jacob singing My Sharona!

Disembarking was even easier than embarking! We were off in less than 15 minutes. We had a pretty good drive back minus no air conditioning and having a blowout on the freeway.. We survived though!

I cannot wait to go on another cruise! It was by far the best vacation I have ever been on and So relaxing!!  Im not going to lie... I started to look up cruises for next year the day after we got home... haha!

I have some funny videos but blogger wasnt behaving.  Plus this post was probably long enough!! haha!!