Our Third Anniversary!

Aaron and I got to celebrate our anniversary a little early this year since we were going to Ohio on our actual anniversary.  On the 24th Aaron took me out to Ruth's Chris Steak House!

I was so happy when Aaron told me that we were going somewhere that I could get dressed up for!  I love getting all dolled up for my husband!

 We had a wonderful fancy dinner!  I had some of the best food I've ever tasted and the company was great!    The restaurant even gave us a free dessert for our anniversary!  We got the crème brûlée because I'd had it before at another restaurant but it was minus the burnt sugar at the top so I wondered if it really was crème brûlée or not.

Look how cute!!

They wrote "Happy Anniversary" on it with chocolate.  It was so delicious!  I loved every bite and I've been craving it ever since!

After dinner we walked around downtown Salt Lake and found ourselves at the Salt Lake Temple.

 It was great to sit down with Aaron and talk about the day we got married and how wonderful it was.  We are so lucky to have found each other and become best friends.

I'm so thankful for all the things that the church gives to me but one thing that I was grateful for that night was the knowledge that I get to be with Aaron for the rest of forever.

Cub Scouts: First Hike!

Aaron and I LOVE scouting in the summer.  LOVE IT!  Winter in Utah for scouting is rough because you are stuck inside to work on all of the "sit down and shut up" activity pins.  It is hard for the boys and it is hard  for us to keep it interesting for them.

But finally SUMMER!!

On Saturday we had our first summer hike with the scouts!  We met up at the church and there was only one boy who showed up (out of 5).  We asked him if he wanted to still go on the hike even though it was just with Brother Reinert and I.  He said that he still wanted to go and so we brought our dogs to flush out our group a little more.  Pippen makes any group better.

We hiked up Taylor's Canyon.  It was amazing for Aaron and I to see the difference that a year made.  Last year everything was lush and green and the river the trail follows was full and coming up to the trail in some places.  This year, only a few spots had running water and they were ending pretty quickly getting soaked up into the ground.

Aaron helping Bambi to a drink of water from the only stream we could find.  The  dogs were pretty thirsty.

Another big difference was the amount of whining on this hike.  This boy does sports pretty much all year so he is pretty fit.  He talked almost the whole time but it wasn't whining.  We were actually talking about what we were seeing on the hike and different things that he had done so far this summer.

At one point, this boy nearly stepped on a snake and we all freaked out a little.  I don't want to be responsible for a kid dying....a weird thing that I'm particular about.  But the snake didn't move.  It was half way on the trail and it wasn't moving.  Our scout poked it with his foot and it still didn't move.  I decided that the adult thing would be grabbing its tail and dragging it off the trail.  I bent down to grab its tail and its tongue flickered out of its mouth.  After that, we decided to leave it alone and we kept hiking.

We went on a few side trails this time since this wasn't a very structured hike.   We had a lot of fun exploring and talking about "The Outdoor Code" of the boy scouts.

The hike was pretty uneventful but what is noteworthy is that we only had to take one break while we were on the hike.  And that one "break" was for talking about Cub Scout stuff that we have to talk about and exploring.  It was awesome that we could play around in the woods and not need a crazy amount of breaks to rest especially when we consider that it was the warmest June 23 on record at 101 degrees.

I'm so excited for our next hike and for day camp in July.  It should be pretty awesome.

Home Improvement: Medicine Cabinet

While Aaron was gone for a week (yeah...it was his turn to be away from home for a week) I cleaned like crazy.  Well...not crazy....but more than I had in the past year.

When Aaron and I are both working and I'm in school, we keep the house functional...but not really organized or show room quality.

In my cleaning frenzy, I was going room by room and putting things in the room that they are suppose to "live" in.  After awhile I noticed that the bathroom looked like this:

Oh....and under the sink too....I didn't stage this picture.  I opened the door to take the picture and all that stuff fell out.  I almost put it back in and then thought....what's the point?  I wanted to show you.

So when Aaron got back from his business trip, I asked him if we could start talking about getting a cabinet to put in the room or a medicine cabinet....something...anything.  Our biggest problem with our house is the amount of storage.

Luckily Aaron couldn't agree more when I showed him the bathroom.

"Oh my gosh!  Where did all those bottles come from?!"

"They were spread pretty evenly throughout the house.  Remember the Advil you were looking for?"

"Yeah?"

"We have 3 bottles.  We need a better system."

 So on Saturday we headed to Lowe's and bought a medicine cabinet.  Before we could put it up, I had to get everything off of the glass shelves and take them down.


I let Aaron do all the hammer stuff because if he messes up, he can just be angry with himself instead of me.

Looking good and empty up there.  Those shelves were the first thing that we put in this house.  At first I didn't want to take them down since it feels like we just put them up. It is crazy to think about the fact that we've been married for 3 years.

(Look at the hand towel holder.  It is the last time you are going to see this.....due to a classic case of not measuring twice and cutting once...so glad that Aaron is the one making the holes and not me.)

We didn't put the cabinet up till Monday when Aaron got home.  It was way to heavy for me to lift up on my own, for one thing, and like I said before, I'm not going to be the one putting holes in our house.

I didn't take any progress shots since I was in the middle of the action.  Oh...and you might notice that I photo shopped myself out of some of the photos.  I was looking gross and you didn't need to see that.

On top of the toilet is the container that I was keeping our stuff in while we put this all up.  Classy.  Don't you love the baskets?  One basket is just for Aaron's morning stuff so he can pull the whole thing out and put it on the sink next to him.  The other two baskets have hotel soaps, shampoos, conditioners, mouthwash....basically anything that we grabbed complimentary....and now they are complimentary for our guests in our home.

Oh, remember the hand towel hanger?  Don't worry, we can a replacement that I actually like better.  The other one was WAY too low to use....I would usually use a bath towel on the other side of the sink because it was the right height.

It is so pretty and I LOVE that you can't see all of our products on display anymore!

A place for everything and hopefully everything is in its place.

The Garden: Half Way Into Summer

I've been avoiding writing about my garden...because it went so badly.   Every time we left the house for a longer than three days, we would lose something and we had a lot of death due to over feeding.

The green beans were doing wonderfully and I gave them something to climb on and they loved it.  And I over watered them and they all rooted and died.

But I replanted some and since it was so warm, they got to live outside.  But...it was a little too warm.

Yeah, we aren't going to get ANY beans this year.

*Take Home Lesson For Next Year:
Plant in late March and Don't Over Water!!  Provide them with something to climb on early on so that they will thrive!!

The only things that have survived from the original planting include:
The Zucchini:

The Parsley:

ONE Tomato:

Sad news....I took this picture the first day that I planted it in the ground about a week ago.  This plant is...like 3 and a half months old and is TINY!  And then....it DIED!  Yeah, dried up in the sun and died.

*Take Home Lesson For Next Year:
Buy a plant from the store and stick it in the ground as soon as possible.  It has NEVER been worth your time to plant tomatoes.  Get them at the store...I won't judge you....Katrina....

Other stuff going on...
The Basil that we bought is still alive!  YEAH!  I haven't killed this one!

The Tangerine plant that we got still has the fruit on it...and it is very slowly changing.

I have no idea what to expect from this tree....it is one giant free flying experiment.

Okay, we also planted more sunflower seeds, after they died when we went to California.  Well, I planted two seeds and got one.  Oh well.

*Take Home Lesson for Next Year:
Plant toward the end of March AND if you leave town...make sure to have someone water them.

Chives:  Totally awesome.  I've been eating these with my totally Paleo Egg Drop Soup.  So far, chives are one of my best investments.

Mint:
Still more or less alive.  It went under the raspberries because it needed some shade to protect it and keep it safe from the warm Utah sun.

 Oh...and my spearmint, I don't think that I ever showed it to you....but it was amazing and now it is dead.  Well...not dead but it needed some shade.  It fried while I was in Texas.  I put it under the raspberries to live as well.

See them hiding under my huge raspberry bush!

My favorite plants ever have got to be the Lucielle Raspberries (named because of the dear sweet woman who planted them).

I want it documented that I ate my first three raspberries today.  About 3 or 4 weeks ahead of last year!  It must be the warm weather!  I'm not going to complain.

Blueberry Bushes:
I've eaten NOTHING off of these ever.  And I've been working for berries for 2 years.  Last year we got them through the summer and I was hoping that this year they would be tougher.  Unfortunately the summer heat was tougher this year.

After two years, I know the signs of burning bushes.  Moses has got nothing on me!

Please ignore the crazy weeds.  I need to get our cub scouts back there to finish up the work for us.  But anyway, I put up a tent for the blueberry bushes so that they can have more sun protection.

A new addition....Garlic:
They started sprouting after I bought them so into the ground they went!  They are doing pretty good but I'm pretty bad with root vegetables.

And that is my garden.  Some good/some bad.  Some learning and some succeeding.  I will update you again at harvest time.

Texas: After Graduation

After graduation, we stayed up till 4 in the morning.  No joke.  We watched some movies very loosely while talking and catching glimpses of other shows.  So at 4 am, I went to bed and knew that I could sleep in as long as I wanted the next day.

At 9:30am, I heard my brothers talking right outside the bedroom.  I heard their voices and though, "Oh man....how late did I sleep in?"  Yeah....9:30am and they were up to go work out.  I'm too old for that crap.  I can't stay up till 4am and wake up to WORK OUT at 9:30am.  I probably got another hour of sleep before I had to pee so bad that I had to get up.  So yeah....about 6 hours of sleep.

Daniel and I decided to go to the beach!!!  He hadn't been to the beach for almost a year and wanted to get out there.  I had only been to one beach in the Gulf of Mexico and it looked like trash....so I wanted to see what these kids were swimming in all summer.

It took us 2 and half hours to get to Galveston beach.  Daniel's friend, Allen, shot this pictures a couple days earlier since he is working at the coast right now.

Photo Credit: Allen Vo

Yeah, it's a space ship.  Not THE space ship "Enterprise" that NASA Space Center wanted (Oh gosh....so much drama about that!  You can read about it here.) This is a replica but the traffic jam it caused getting to the Space Center was insane!  I think that they should have moved it at night but they didn't and it totally messed up traffic AND I didn't get to see it.  Lame!!!

But I had a icee!! Please enjoy this HORRIBLE photo of myself.  I was trying to show how weird it is that the top of the icee is blue but I had red coming out.  But this just looks like I have a red straw.

This is just of the icee to show the awesome-ness.  Wow....I suddenly realized that I'm very easily amused.

Anyway, we got to the beach!!!  It is insane to me that I haven't had my feet in the ocean since we went to California with my family a year ago!

Since there were only two of us and we had stuff, we took turns hopping in the water.  Daniel is one of those heads out there.

Daniel would dive under the water and then pop up and I would try to take a picture so I had no idea where he was going to pop up in the frame.  This was the best one.

While he was out there, I started taking pictures of the birds and the scenery since that is what I do...even if I just have a point and shoot.

As I was taking pictures of the birds around me, something hard hit my shoulder and bounced off.  I look down and see this NONSENSE!!!!!

Yeah, that's a chicken bone.  I looked around and there was NO ONE near me.  I was trying to figure out who could have dropped this one me when I look up and see all of these birds flying over me.  Then they dived down next to me to grab the bone.

I tried to scare them away because I wanted to show Daniel what happened!  I mean, who would believe me that a bird threw a chicken bone at me!

Anyway, then we went to the pier.  I like this picture of me because I look skinny.  It is the only picture all day that I look that slim so I'm totally going to make it HUGE so you can all admire me!  I've lost 15lbs since last time I was at a beach.

This is a picture to prove that Daniel and I were there together!

Look at that nerd!  Where is he from that he throws up a thumbs up in all his pictures?

YOLO!!!  We found this in the sand and it was funny because in one of the graduation speeches someone quoted "The Memorable Drake".

My turn in the water!!!  See?  I'm back to looking chunky.  Black is not slimming on me.  The water felt wonderful after walking around in the sun.

My favorite bird and I!  Seriously, these birds were EVERYWHERE and they were not scared of people at all.  I like it when animals have a healthy respect for humans.

Street art?  Yeah....we are going to go with street art.  I wish that I had had the time for some travel photography of this area.  It was a pretty interesting area.  Hurricane ripped but....still bustling.

Then I got a Sno Cone!!!  One reason why I LOVE being an adult!  If I want a cup of sugar and ice, I don't have to ask anyone for permission to get it!  It also came with that free lei!!  I felt like I was a little kid at a carnival!

A final shot of the beach.  We had to hurry back so that we could go to Markus' graduation dinner!

It was another 2 hours getting back to the house but we listened to music and talked.

We went to Texas Roadhouse for Markus' celebration dinner.  It wasn't a crawfish boil like the rest of us got but I guess it was still good.

I only got one picture.  And it isn't even of Markus.  It is Markus' friend while we were waiting to be seated, he went to sit on the birthday saddle.  Weird teenagers.  I was never this weird. ;)

I went to bed at 1am....you know, since there was church the next morning.  In my defense, I was talking to my loving husband.

My mom came in the room at 7:30am to tell me to get in the shower.  I asked her what time it was and she said 7:30am and I think that my exact words were, "Oh no.  That is not happening."  I got up at 8:20 and I still got to church on time.

It is so weird not teaching Primary.  Not necessarily bad but just weird.  That's the schedule of events that I'm use to and I like singing time.  Seriously, singing time and sharing time are awesome and so I missed that while I was in Relief Society.  But it was cool being in a class for grown-ups.

After church, NAPS!!!  Yes....I was so tired and I really needed to catch up on my sleep.  It was sad not having my favorite nap time snuggle buddies with me.  Namely Aaron (the most important of all snuggle buddies), Pippen, and Bambi.  I had a giant stuffed teddy bear but it just wasn't the same.  Still a good nap though.

We all slept for three hours!!!  Insanity!  I guess that we had all had a pretty long week/end.

When we finally got up from our naps there was a party for a kid on Markus' basketball team.  The food was pretty awesome.  I love me some country BBQ.  There was dancing and not to be racist, but I felt a little too intimidated to dance.  Besides my family, there was only 2 other white people and they weren't dancing either.  We just enjoyed watching this kid's family moving on the dance floor.  They were a really fun family and they seem to really like my parents, which isn't a huge surprise to me.

At home, I finally got to take some pictures of my dad.  I'm doing some work on my photography this summer and one of the exercises that I had to complete was making a meaningful portrait of someone you love and/or admire.

This one is of my dad's hands.  I love it because he has done so much good work for his family and people in his sphere of influence with his hands.  And they have blessed every one of his children many many times with those hands on our heads.

My dad has traveled all of over the world and collected so many things in his life.  But the most important things  he has acquired have been his children.

I'm so glad that I had such a good example of what a man should be in my life.  I know that his example is what lead me to Aaron.  My dad is such a great man and I'm so proud to be his daughter.

I hope that you enjoyed what you saw.

That was pretty much the end of my trip.  More visiting with family up until the moment that I got dropped off at the airport.  It was an awesome trip and it was great being able to spend time with my family and to celebrate Markus and all he has accomplished.  I can't wait to see them all again when they go on summer vacation to Utah.