Saturday

This past weekend we decided last minute to head up to the mountains and go to the lake (s) on the Mogollon Rim. It was so nice! It was supposed to be 103+ in the valley and it was only 65 on the rim! Thats the nice thing about Arizona, a short 2 1/2 hour drive away the temperature drops 30+ degrees!
We decided to take the dogs, we havent taken them anywhere like that ever! They had a great time getting dirt all over me, barking at all the other dogs that were up there, and pulling me around on their leash! It was funny for onlookers I am sure, a big pregnant lady walking two dogs on a hiking path that is not even. I slipped and fell on my butt once and am lucky it wasnt more than that! Colby eventually switched me for the dogs and I carried his fishing pole.  :)
He didnt catch anything but we still had a great time exploring a different (and much cooler) part of the state!

There was a wildfire that had just started as we drove up and had grown quite a bit by the time we drove back down. It made the sun look pretty cool through the smoke. You could see the flames (in the distance) from the road, but they had cops so we couldnt pull over.

I had Colby take a picture of me in all my loveliness but all three of them were focusing on a tree behind me.... Oops! :)

Recently

Well we have been busy most of December too! Colbys parents came to visit the first weekend in December, of course, it was the coldest weekedn we have had so far!
We took them to the Mesa Temple Christmas lights and to a Christmas festival in Peoria!

Yes we are both wearing our winter coats, thats how cold it was!!
It seems like we constantly have something going on, but everything has been poorly undocumented!!
We had a fire in the backyard the other day because the weather was so nice! We trimmed all of our trees and bushes and have enough wood to last us a while!!

One thing AZ does not lack of is beautiful sunsets! They always amaze me!!
Another thing that I love is all the fruit trees! Every where you go you will see trees filled with oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruits! They are so pretty!

Dont they look delicious!
Oh and for good measue and because they havent been on the blog in a while,
Krone - and his new sweater and really bad bed head!

Kazzi looking innocent as usual

We are so excited for Christmas! We are heading up to Vegas to celebrate! It will be nice to spend it with family!

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!

We made it!!

We made it to Phoenix (glendale) after a very long (35 hours) ride in the budget truck!! We did it in two days, which was a little crazy! The trip went pretty smoothly! The dogs were wonderful! They both laid on my lap almost the entire trip! The worst part was the last 4 hours of the trip! It is basically all coming down mountains. So it was dark, we were driving a budget truck, pulling a car, and running off very little sleep after waking up at 430 central time that morning! But I am here to blog about it today! :)

We love our house! We were a little crazy and bought it without ever seeing it in person. We trusted our realtor and he did a great job! Its in a pretty good neighborhood, across from a park, and is huge! It feels much bigger than our last house even though its only 200 more square feet! It has 4 beds/2 baths and a pool that is already getting lots of use!

It has fresh paint and brand new carpet in all the bedrooms! So no painting for us!! It does need some updates but nothing needs to be done right away! It was clean and ready for moving in!!

Here are a few pictures of the pretty much done rooms!

We do have one room that we are not quite sure what to do with. It is technically the Formal living & dining room but we have no need for either of those. Its a long room and is in the front of the house. Any suggestions??
We have all of our bookcases but since we already have two couches we dont really need another one..

So one thing I was worried about was the dogs and the pool. See Kazzi, poor thing, just isnt that smart. He is so sweet and cute, but no brains! I didnt think he could swim! Well he can!!! Its a good thing too because this morning he was running around the pool and slipped in! It scared him to death and I grabbed him out but I couldnt help but laugh!
Krone wont come near the pool.. but Kazzi has decided that he really like relaxing in it as long as someone will join him..

I mean does it get any cuter than that???

Dont worry Krone is adjusting well too! You can usually find him relaxing or chasing kazzi..

Well thats about it for now! It has been the longest week ever but we are adjusting to the changes and enjoying spending time together before work starts next week!

It was a White Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year! We were spoiled as usual and so blessed! We are so grateful for our wonderful families and all that they do for us!

What did we do for Christmas?

Christmas Eve
-Family Pictures
-Eat
-Sing at the retirement community
-Eat
-Stare in amazement how fast kids open presents and how loud the Howards are :)
-Open presents
-Eat
-Rockband 3

Christmas
-Eat
-Wii
-Attempt to take pictures
-Eat
-Play dolls with Kyrah
-Dont Break the Ice
-Rockband 3
-Eat :) haha
-Watch it snow
-Drive home in 3+ snow

Day after Christmas
-Church is cancelled because of the 7+ inches of snow
-let dogs run free in the snow for 5 minutes
-take pictures of snow and of previous
-give dogs baths to melt the "snow balls" **not what you think, see pic at bottom!!**
-Almost die in attempting to get to Brittany's
-Breathe
-Arrive at Brittanys
-Go Sledding
-Play games
-Head home and think of how blessed we are!

Well thats about it in a nutshell... here are some pics of the snow!

See Krone's legs? The boys get these "snow balls" that cling to their hair! it is pretty funny, but they are super hard to melt! We had to throw them in the tub to get them all melted, I know they didnt mind the warm water! :)

busy busy!

Colby has been busy!

He finished our floors! All of them! The only floor related item left to do is to put the quarter round molding around the edges! They are gorgeous!!

He finished our tile! He tiled both the upstairs bathrooms and the downstairs laundry room! The dogs were "helping" me with the laundry...

We got new knobs for all of our cabinets! It makes a world of difference but it still doesnt make our "pinkish" cabinets look any better! :) I can't wait until we paint those suckers!

and because he is cute!

I get to teach the relief society lesson tomorrow. That is my new calling and it is my first official week teaching and I am a little nervous. It was a talk from the Ensign which means I had to make up my own questions! Those lesson manuals are good for something! :)

In other news, My photography business has really been picking up! and I am so excited about it!! I have tried to revamp my photo blog page to make it look more professional! And I learned how to make my own logo using photoshop! Woohoo! I am hoping that it keeps getting busier! My goal is one photo session a week!

12-23

Day 12-Colby killed our friend.. and was brave enough to get close enough to get this picture...

Day 13-watching me get ready so he can go down stairs.

Day 14-The sky was so blue today. This picture doesnt do it any justice.  It was gorgeous!

Day 15- Colby and I refinished the desk I bought. We tried to paint the knobs but I dont like how they turned out... Ideas appreciated!

Day 16- I thought the one of Kazzi was hilarious and Kroners is just a handsome dog. He had just got a bath before this picture was taken!

Day 17-Colby and I went fishing but ended up catching the turtles instead.

Day 18-The Geico Skytypers wrote a message across the whole sky advertising for the air show and to salute the 9-11 heroes!

Day 19-Love my V-Dub <3

Day 20- Baked a Pizza after church. It was delicious and soo easy to make!

Day 21- Colby has been working on the tile in the master bath.. Almost done!

Day 22- Went to the Spring Garden Bakery to try cupcakes... they didnt have any so I bought some Vegan muffins instead. I loved the Blueberry!

Day 23- The Sunset on my drive home today.

So I will be better at posting each day. Its too hard to play catch up.