Mike and Celia Wazowski

Cabin Pictures

2011-10-04T10:12:00.000-07:00

We've gone to the cabin a few times this summer, it is so beautiful this time of year. It's green everywhere! These pictures are from a trip we took with Scott and Lauren in June

Anniversary

2011-10-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

Mike and I celebrated our two year wedding anniversary by doing what we do best...dinner and a movie! We went to our favorite restarant, The Cheesecake Factory. It was so yummy, and the banana cream cheesecake is to die for! Happy Anniversary Mikie, I love you!

Fun Pictures

2011-10-04T09:50:00.000-07:00

I found these pictures while going through old blog posts and thought I would post them :)

Mother's Day

2011-10-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, my mother has had a bit of a rough year. She is doing so great now and we are really enjoying our "new" mom. For mother's day my sister and I took her to her favorite store, Christopher & Banks, to update her wardrobe. It turned into a hilarious afternoon complete with a fashion show. My sister and I were the only ones who could pick out the clothes, my mom just stayed in the dressing room and we came back with more and more things to try on.

While waiting for my mom to emerge from the dressing room, Becca got a little jealous and wanted to be a model as well.

She also found a sign which had several ways to wear a scarf, so she tried them all!

After our shopping frenzy, we headed to CPK for yummy food. It was an awesome day spent with some of the funniest women I know :) Happy Mother's day!

Herb Garden

2011-10-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have had trouble growing herbs outside, I have found a solution! My sisters-in-law gave me an herb garden set for my birthday, it included little pots, seeds and signs. I was so excited to try it out inside to see if it worked. We've tried planting herbs outside with no success. After a little research (Google), we found the right potting mix (who knew you can't use regular dirt?) and fertilizer. In went basil, thyme, cilantro, parsley and chives. We put the pots in our south facing kitchen window and within days the seeds sprouted! We've replanted all of them at least once and have been enjoying freshly grown herbs all summer! One of our favorite things to do is pick a bunch of cherry tomatoes from our garden, quarter them, add some onion, and a little lime juice and salt, chop some fresh cilantro and mix it all together for fresh pico de gallo. Best pico de gallo ever! So for any of you have had trouble growing herbs, do it inside! Just make sure the spot you choose gets about 6-8 hours of sunlight :) Happy planting!

Mike's Birthday

2011-10-04T08:49:00.000-07:00

We had a whole weekend of fun for Mike's birthday! My mom always makes the birthday person's favorite meal and dessert, for Mikie it was home made chicken cordon bleu and black forest cake :)

Celebrating at my parent's house with some silly pictures:

Presents!

Saturday night we headed to one of our favorite places, Comedy Sportz.

Getting ready for the show with Scott, Lauren, Hannah and Wes:

Happy Birthday to my sweet and adorable husband!

Easter

2011-10-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

Easter at the Zarbock's is always an adventure! This year, Connie arranged different scavenger hunts for all of the kids. Everyone was divided into groups according to age and were given a clue to start off. It was so fun watching the kids get excited as they realized where the clue was leading them to, it provided lots of entertainment for the adults. Here are some fun pictures of the hunt:

Gotta get those muscles ready!

Connie with Elle, first and only granddaughter, such an adorable picture!

After the outdoor activities, we headed inside for a delicious meal (Connie Zarbock style!) and spiritual reflection on the Savior. It was a wonderful fun-filled day, Happy Easter everyone!

Vegas

2011-05-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

Mike and I headed down to Las Vegas in the middle of March for a mini vacation. We hoped for warmer weather but is seems like the crappy Utah weather decided to follow us...however it didn't stop us from swimming or spending time outside! We stayed with my cousin Stacia and her cute family. I loved hanging out with her cute little boy Taygen, he is the sweetest! We spent our time hanging out, shopping, swimming and eating. I didn't get too many pictures, but here are the highlights of our trip:

We went to this super yummy restaurant at the M hotel, it's called Hash House A Go Go. Mike ordered the fried chicken & waffles, I got a ginormous burger stuffed with goodness. The portions were a little out of control, but it was so good! I can't wait to try their breakfast dishes, apparently their pancakes are the size of a small town.

After Hash House, we headed to Treasure Island on the strip to see this Cirque du Soleil show:

Getting ready for the show to start:

It was an amazing show, I can't wait to see more! We had a super relaxing weekend and were so bummed to come back home. I love having family so close who live in such fun places. Thanks again Whiting family :)

New Recipe

2011-05-17T16:24:00.000-07:00

I made this for dinner last night...it was seriously good! I love Our Best Bites!

Mandie and Payden

2011-05-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

My beautiful cousin Mandie got married to her long time boyfriend in the middle of March. A few weeks before the big event, my family threw her a super fun bridal shower. We made a bunch of cupcakes, played around with a cricut, and came up with hilarious games. For the centerpiece of our favor table, Blake and Becca made this giant cupcake:

Most of my extended family were able to come, it was so fun hanging out with all of the girls! Here we are playing games:

The game below was super fun! Each candy bar had something to do with the wedding and wedding night. For example, the "100 Grand" bar is "What the wedding will cost," and the "Baby Ruth" bar is "What comes 9 months after the wedding." It was so funny to watch what people came up with!

We made cupcakes for everyone with Mandie and Payden's initials on them, and sent them home in these cute boxes we made with a cricut-most awesome thing ever!!

We also made this sign with a cricut...seriously, how do I not own one of these yet...

We had an ice cream sundae bar for refreshments, so good!!

My dad came and helped us hang the streamers with a ladder before the party. When we were cleaning up we realized he took the ladder with him. So, Becca and I pulled out our mad cheer leading skills and hoisted my cousin, Nicole, up to get the streamers down. We're pretty awesome.

These are pictures from the wedding day. It was such a gorgeous day, the sun was out and we had wonderful blue skies!

Some of us had a little too much fun waiting for the newlyweds to come out:

Mandie's dress was so gorgeous! They both came out beaming, what a happy beautiful couple!

Mandie's family:

After the sealing, we all headed to the reception venue to set up. It was at Noah's in South Jordan. Zach and Calvin had a really early day, so they took advantage of the extra time:

The reception venue was so pretty! They had such cute decorations!

Their colors were green and brown-such good colors for Spring :)

There was an ice cream bar:

Mountain Dew and Popcorn...Mandie and Payden's fav's:

Their cupcake "cake"

It was such a beautiful day and I'm so happy we were able to be there to celebrate with them. Congratulations Mandie and Payden!

My Birthday

2011-05-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

My birthday was quite an event this year. Since February 29 didn't exist, we celebrated over the whole weekend. Mike and I went to one of my favorite restaurants, P.F. Changs, for dinner then we went to a movie. It's pretty much what we do every Friday night, we just dressed nicer this time :) Here we are enjoying our mini dessert's:

The following Monday, we went with my family to Texas Roadhouse. It was so delicious, I could eat a million of their yummy rolls. I was a good sport and sat on the saddle while being sang to, but I will not be posting any of those incriminating photos even though my wonderful brother posted them on facebook during the drive home...

After dinner, we headed back to my parent's house for cake and ice cream:

This is where things really started to get crazy...while everyone was singing "Happy Birthday" to me, my mom tensed up and fell back on the kitchen tile where she stated seizing. I called 911 while my brother ran down the street to grab one of our neighbor's, who is a paramedic. My mom didn't stop seizing for a little over an hour. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital. We all followed and were put in the waiting room in the ER to wait for an update. Finally around one or two in the morning, they told us she would be knocked out for a while so we should just go home and rest. She ended up spending about seven days in the hospital, mostly in the ICU while they ran a bunch of tests on her brain. It was a difficult time for our family to see my mom suffer so intensely. The seizure didn't freak me out as much as watching her come out of it. She kept mumbling and twitching and moving her body into weird positions, it looked like she was possessed. It still terrifies me to think of her like that. It looks like she had a bad reaction to some medications she was taking. Luckily all of her test results came back normal. Including x-rays on her head and spine (we were nervous because she fell straight back on the tile and we weren't sure if she hit her head or not). Lately, she has been doing so great! It's been a little over two months now and she is back to her old self. She still can't drive, which is a little frustrating for her, but it's nice being chauffeured by my brother all of the time. This Mother's day was especially meaningful for my family as we all reflected on the trauma that happened at the end of February, I am so thankful my mom is alive and well! She is the best mom and I am so lucky to have her in my life!

Valentine's Day

2011-03-12T23:05:00.000-08:00

I was truly spoiled this Valentines Day! I got two beautiful flower arrangements, one from my husband and the other from my dad, both delivered to me at work. I only had one vase at my office, so I combined them to make one big beautiful arrangement! The roses are from my sweetheart, the lilies and other flowers are from my dad:

With the arrangement my husband gave me, he included an envelope for me to open when I was leaving to go home. I cheated and read it a little earlier than that, I was so excited! He had written a beautiful letter which included a face card with something he loved about me written on it. In the letter he told me I would find 51 more to make up a full deck. When I walked out to my car, I found a few cards taped in and around my car, there were also rose petals scattered everywhere. They made my car smell so nice!

I walked up to the front door, where there was another card taped to the door...

When I walked in, Mike had cards on the floor spelt out to say I heart U...so thoughtful and beautiful!

Arrows in cards leading to the kitchen...

Mike had a candlelight dinner ready, he was all dressed up too! I gathered up all of the cards and read 52 things Mike loved about me.

I admit, I got a little teary eyed, it was so romantic and beautiful! Mike had prepared a delicious meal with cheesecake for dessert! It didn't compare to the $25 gift card to Best Buy I gave him... I am the luckiest girl in the world to have such a sweet and thoughtful husband! I love Mike so much and am thankful every day for meeting him. We've been together a little over two years now, and we are enjoying every minute of our life together. After dinner we got to watch a movie of my choice, what a perfect way to end a perfect evening!

The Sunday before Valentine's Day, we headed up to Mike's parent's house for their annual Valentine's day dinner. All of the boys made dinner (which included a yummy fondue dessert), while the ladies got to sit around and chat. After dinner, the ladies gathered around the dinner table for the annual photo, baby Elle is our latest addition:

I really love this guy! We are so perfect for each other :)

Wintertime at the Cabin

2011-03-12T22:35:00.000-08:00

In January, Mike and I took my family up to the Zarbock cabin for some winter fun. We had a blast! We built a snow cave, had sledding races, went snowboarding and played a lot of games. I am so glad we have such a great place to go to get away from everything, there isn't cell phone reception or the internet, it is so wonderfully quiet :) Luckily it's so close! Here are some pictures of our fun weekend:

I don't think anyone in my family can take a picture with a normal face...

My brother and sister love to talk in this hilarious voice that drives my dad nuts, I wish I could include an audio sample with these pictures so you could fully understand how amusing it is! (although Calvin's facial expressions can give you an idea...)

Skyler and Zach getting ready to go outside and play in the snow:

There was about 4 feet of snow, which prompted Zach to build a snow cave:

Becca and Skyler are so cute:

Making progress on the snow cave...

We spent a big chunk of our time in the basement playing various ping pong tournaments:

On Saturday night the extended Zarbock family met at Soldier Hollow near Sundance. We invited my family to join us and we all headed down to sled all night. If you haven't been to Soldier Hollow, you have to go! It is so fun! You pick a tube, they attach the tube with you in it to a tow rope and pull you to the top of the hill where you get off and pick a slide to tube down. It's effortless fun!

After tubing, my family headed back to the cabin while Mike and I headed to his Uncle John & Aunt Kathy's cabin in Midway to spend time with the Zarbock family. We ate some good food and chatted with everyone until it was time for us to head back up to the cabin as well...We all slept really good that night :) Sunday brought more ping pong and games. We cleaned up and headed back down to Provo later that afternoon...

We had such a fun and enjoyable weekend. I can't wait to go back to the cabin in April to watch General Conference. It's so fun being up there when there's snow, it's fun in the summer time as well, but the snow makes it so much more peaceful :)

Color Me Mine

2011-03-12T21:51:00.000-08:00

Last month, we went with Calvin, Haley, Becca and Blake to Color Me Mine in Provo. You pick out a ceramic piece then sit down to paint it any way you want it, then then put it in their kiln and you pick it up finished a few days later! Such a unique date night activity! It's a little expensive but it's a fun way to explore your creative side. Here are pictures of us painting our masterpieces:

Calvin picked out a plate to paint a football field on.

Becca and Blake decided to paint a cookie jar:

I am painting a big Italian bowl and Mike chose coasters to put the BYU "Y" on:

The paint looks dull and not so pretty when it first goes on:

Calvin's football field is really coming together:

Blake putting dots on the cookie jar:

Everyone's semi-finished products, they're all ready to go in the kiln.

I didn't get pictures of everyone's finished products, but they all turned out so great! The colors come out really vibrant and bold, which makes it hard to imagine what the final result will look like. I really love how Mike's and mine turned out. We use these coasters all the time, they match our BYU blanket too!

I made this delicious cajun chicken pasta to put in my Italian pasta bowl:

It was such a fun night! If we go back, we'll choose smaller items, we really underestimated the time it would take to complete everything. I think we were there for about 4 hours. But if you have that much time to kill, go to Color Me Mine for a good time :)

Courtney's Birthday!

2011-03-12T21:15:00.000-08:00

It was my best friend Courtney's birthday on December 15! To celebrate, Mike and I took her up to The Cheesecake Factory for some deliciousness. It was seriously so good! They even brought her cheesecake out on a fun plate with her name written in chocolate syrup. We've been spending as much time as we can with Courtney as she is moving to North Carolina and who knows when we'll see her next...I'm so jealous of her, to move to a completely different place and culture is so intimidating to me. She is so brave and handles herself so well in those situations. We're definitely going to try and make it out there this summer to visit. Anyway, here are some pictures of the fun evening:

Of course we had to sing to her!

Happy Birthday Courtney, we'll miss you lots!

Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years

2011-03-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

Mike's family throws two Thanksgiving parties each year, one on Wednesday and one on Thanksgiving day. This makes it easy to celebrate with both families each year. We spent Wednesday celebrating with the Zarbock family and eating so much delicious food! It's so nice to be able to devote whole days with our families on these fun holidays. We spent the evening going around the room saying different things we were grateful for, it's such a wonderful way to bond with family. On Thanksgiving day, we headed to my parent's house. We got the house all set up, cooked for hours and sat down to gobble everything up in minutes :) My grandparents were here, my Aunt Aimee and her family, and a few other family and friends. We made our traditional clam dip with chips, which we ate while staying up late to play Rook with my grandparents. We all went home and fell into our Thanksgiving food comas. Here is my parents Thanksgiving table:

Mike and I getting ready to eat all the yummy food:

Promptly after the Thanksgiving festivities, we set our Christmas decorations:

I love Christmas time the most, all the decorations, songs, family activities and cozy nights make it my favorite holiday.

We even got a stocking for little Max. Sadly, we sold Max right before Christmas. We felt horrible because we were never home and didn't have the time to train him and give him all the attention he deserved. It was hard, especially so close to Christmas. He went to a really loving home with two little girls who will just adore him and give him so much attention and love. We still miss him every now and then, but it's so nice knowing he's in a better home. Plus, I'm not cleaning up dog hair all the time :)

Every Christmas Eve, the extended Zarbock family gets together for a night full of good food, talents and beautiful music. Mike and I are enjoying the festivities:

We spent New Years with my family and friends. We played games, drank a lot of Martinelli's and laughed until midnight. A wonderful way to end 2010! 2011 is looking to be an interesting and promising year! Happy New Year everyone :)

Countdown to Christmas

2011-02-22T10:54:00.000-08:00

I wanted to make this year's Christmas season really meaningful to Mike. Since he has been home from his mission he has had to work on Christmas Eve and other significant holiday's and this is the first year he has had off. So I thought I would try 25 Days of Christmas! I bought this cute advent calendar:

And behind every little door was an ornament to put on the tree and a slip of paper with a Christmas themed activity. The activities ranged from this fun play at the Hale:

Going to the Festival of Trees:

Attending various Christmas parties:

And the Elf Hunt at Gardner's Village:

Kissing under the mistletoe :)

Some days he would get to open a gift that went along with the activity:

Other activities included listening to Christmas music while driving around to see Christmas lights, donating food to the Food & Care Coalition, delivering Christmas goodies to family and friends, sleigh rides at Thanksgiving Point, and reading Christmas stories. Some of them were free, others were not, but all of them really helped to bring in the Christmas spirit. On Christmas Eve we spent the evening with the Zarbock family; talents were performed, yummy food was eaten, gifts were exchanged and the evening ended with Mike's Uncle John playing a beautiful rendition of "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" on his guitar and his Grandpa reading the story about Christ's birth in Luke. When we got home Mike opened his last gift, footie pajama's to match the rest of my family. What a wonderful holiday season!

December: Salt Lake City Temple

2011-02-06T14:30:00.000-08:00

During the first weekend of December, we visited our last temple, the Salt Lake City temple. We walked around Temple Square, drank hot chocolate and had a wonderful session at one of the most beautiful temples. When I was little, my grandmother would bring us down to temple square to watch General Conference at the old tabernacle:

Looking at the lights on temple square has always been a fond memory of mine, my family used to go every Christmas season when my grandparents lived near downtown Salt Lake City. They are so pretty, it really brings in the Christmas spirit walking around up there.

Poor Melissa is nine months pregnant in this picture, she has been such a trooper through the year as we completed this goal. The Wayt's welcomed baby Linc Christmas day, a few short weeks after this picture was taken:

We popped in the Joseph Smith Memorial building for a bit to get warm:

It's been such a fun year completing this goal and driving all over our beautiful state!

Chocolates

2011-02-06T14:20:00.000-08:00

Every year for as long as I can remember my mother has made chocolates. Over the years, it has expanded to include friends and neighbors and during the first weekend of December we all get together to chop, dip, stir and wrap hundreds of chocolates. It all starts with over a hundred pounds of chocolate:

Here are some pictures of the madness:

We use tempering machines to keep the chocolate at a consistent temperature:

When the chocolates are done, they are brought into the living room where they counted and put into batches:

After two full days of chocolate chocolate chocolate the end product is over 15 varieties of yummy truffles, nut clusters, cherries and carmels. A wonderful gift for friends, neighbors and colleagues right in time for Christmas.

Temples

2010-12-13T14:45:00.000-08:00

Well we did it! We visited each of the Temple's in Utah this year, it has been an amazing goal and one we're proud to have accomplished. Here is a map of all of the places we've been:

Our last Temple...Salt Lake City-a truly amazing experience!

Now we just need to think of something to do next year! Any ideas?

November: Logan Temple

2010-11-15T15:50:00.001-08:00

Last Saturday, we went on another day trip-this time we headed North to Logan. I love Logan, it is such a quaint, historic and beautiful city. The temple is gorgeous, it is so fun to go to temples that have been around for years-this one has been operating since 1884! It was the second temple built in Utah and the only temple dedicated by President John Taylor. It was a little chilly, and poor Melissa is about to pop but we all still had a great time in Logan!

I love this picture of Melissa, she only has a few weeks left-baby Linc is almost here!

After our session we headed downtown to eat at the historic Bluebird cafe. It did not disappoint-the food was delicious and they had yummy chocolates!

We only have one temple left to visit-Salt Lake City. We've been waiting all year so we can go when the lights are up at Temple Square. We have had some amazing experiences and these trips have bonded us together as forever friends. I can't believe the year is almost over, Thanksgiving is next week and Christmas is just around the corner. Happy Holidays everyone!

November: Vernal Temple

2010-11-15T15:46:00.000-08:00

The first Saturday in November, we day-tripped it up to Vernal to visit the temple there. It was a beautiful drive and Vernal is actually a cute town-and a lot bigger than we anticipated. We drove straight to the temple for our session and pictures. The Vernal temple is the first and only temple that was built from an existing building. It was the Uintah Stake Tabernacle from 1907 to 1983 when the building started breaking down. The temple is even labeled 1907 and 1997 to represent the two dedications. It's such a unique and beautiful temple. The temple workers and other Vernal residents were all so nice and inviting. It was a great experience.

After our session, we went to Cafe Rio-yes Vernal has one! And before heading out of town, we stopped at this ginormous dinosaur to take pictures:

Halloween...yip yip yip yip yip

2010-11-15T15:40:00.001-08:00

Okay, this is seriously like my eighth post today and it's on Halloween...which was over two weeks ago, but now I'm caught up on my blogging, wa-hoo!

As some of you know, Mike's family takes Halloween pretty seriously-which I love! I love dressing up and seeing everyones costumes, plus there is so much candy and yummy treats! This year, Mike's family decided to dress up as Sesame Street characters for the Annual Despain/Zarbock Halloween party. It took Mike and I a few weeks to finally decide what we wanted to be...after we saw this video we just knew....

...we wanted to be the Sesame Street aliens! I googled instructions on how to make the costumes and bought all of the materials-they were so easy to make. Here are some pictures of the costume making process:

Almost complete.....

And here we are at the party-our costumes were a hit!

Here is the entire Zarbock/Sesame Street clan. We have everyone there-Bert, Ernie, Oscar the Grouch and Molly was "Brought to you by the letter Z"...

yip yip yip yip yip yip...

Mike's adorable parents-The Count and The Countess:

And here is the extended family picture-we had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a football player and cheerleader, Avatar people and Santa Claus!

Running to the donuts:

If you look closely you can see Mike and I at the very end...

This is our nephew Boston, he was so cute! I think he ate about 8 donuts...

Mike and I got in a powdered donut fight...which I totally won...

Pumpkin cookie decorating:

This is Mike with his sister Betsy...this was a serious basketball match-you can see the determination on their faces. By the way, Betsy totally killed Mikie-I think she more than doubled his score.

We had a great Halloween this year and I can't wait for the rest of the holiday's to get here. What a wonderful time of year!

Pumpkin Carving FHE

2010-11-15T15:35:00.001-08:00

Mike and I had our traditional pumpkin carving FHE a few weeks before Halloween. Here are our awesome pumpkins, all clean and ready for stabbing and carving!

Pulling out all of the goo...it's Mikie's favorite part :)

Mike is always so creative with his pumpkins, my creative skills end with triangle eyes...

My finished pumpkin:

We picked up this cute Halloween bowl at Sam's Club this year...I kept it on our counter to hold our apples, until the big night when it was filled with candy :)

Mike, Max and our finished pumpkins:

I couldn't get a good picture, this one is kind of blurry...but you can still see the awesome effects! Mikie's looks so good! Happy Halloween everyone!

Haley's Birthday

2010-11-15T15:33:00.000-08:00

It was Haley's birthday on October 9. We had a big family dinner, then Calvin brought Haley back over for a surprise dessert celebration! Calvin invited all of Haley's friends and her family to come over sneakily to surprise her when she walked in. Here are all of the neighbor kids waiting on the cuddle bag in anticipation:

Here is Haley walking in, she was so surprised!

We're all singing Happy Birthday...which she loves :)

Blowing out her birthday candles:

Happy Birthday Haley and props to Calvin for being able to keep it a surprise!

Fall Harvest

2010-11-15T15:31:00.000-08:00

We pulled out all our dead plants and harvested the rest of our garden now that the warm days are over. Our garden produced a lot of yummy food this summer. We had a TON of raspberries, our plants grew so tall! We also enjoyed lots of carrots, peas, green beans, beats, green bell peppers, tomatoes and zucchini! Our garden looks so bare right now, but I can't wait to replant all of our favorite vegetables next spring!

October: Oquirrh Mountain Temple

2010-11-15T15:28:00.000-08:00

In October we headed up to South Jordan with the Wayt's to visit the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. It is such a beautiful temple! After our session, we went outside to take pictures. As we were standing in front of the temple on the hill we looked out over the valley and we could see the Jordan River Temple, Draper Temple and if you looked really hard you could see the area where the Salt Lake City Temple is. What an amazing place and time we live in, to be standing in front of one temple and see 3 others! Amazing.

Anyway, here we are enjoying one of the last warm nights of the year:

Office Renovation

2010-11-15T15:24:00.000-08:00

I've been working at the same desk for about 5 years now-and I finally decided to decorate my workspace. I figured why not brighten up the place I spend 11 hours a day in? Anyway, I wanted to show it off, so here are some before pictures:

Such a boring and plain workspace!

So I added a few canvas prints...

Upgraded from a cork board to a magnet board with a beautiful red frame:

Added some decorations to my hutch:

I put in a matching red (magnet board) shelf and straightened my poster of John Cusack from the best movie ever...Say Anything. I also added a coat rack so I don't have to throw my coat and purse on the filing cabinet, which I moved down the hall...

And Voila! A workspace I enjoy coming to each day :)

Don Juan Diego's Birthday

2010-09-23T12:21:00.000-07:00

It was my dad's birthday on September 22. The whole family met at Los Hermanos to celebrate. He LOVES being sang to...really, he does. The best part about going to Los Hermanos for your birthday is the free fried ice cream, it is so yummy!

Calvin & Haley, they are so adorable :)

Zach and Becca looking happy:

I don't know what's happening with my hair, but Mikie looks cute!

Our family friends, the Goforth's, brought this cake over. Lisa's mom made it just for my daddy. It was seriously delicious.

And it was so so pretty!

My brother, Calvin, got my dad these glasses since he is now getting old. He also refuses to get his eyes checked, Calvin thought these would help. Here is Mikie sporting the new eye-wear. Notice the bar that runs along the top of the frames, that's how you know they're classy.

Skyler's turn with the glasses, also sporting his "fat face" which really freaked his mom, Lisa, out:
It was a great day, and we had so much fun celebrating with the family and spending time with everyone. Happy Birthday Dad!

September: Monticello Temple

2010-09-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

For our monthly temple visit, we traveled down south toward Moab to visit the Monticello, Utah temple. It was a beautiful ride down, we went through Spanish Fork Canyon which was filled with autumn leaves, it was gorgeous. I wish I would have taken some pictures, it was so beautiful. We stopped to eat in Moab at a rustic little steak house, it was pretty good. Dave tried a burger with duck bacon on it-he said it was good, I didn't dare to try it.

After filling our tummies we drove for about another 50 miles and made it to Monticello. It was pretty dark and late when we arrived so we drove straight to our hotel to go to bed. We stayed here:

For being a small town hotel, it was only a little scary and run down, as seen by the following photos. You can't really tell here but the wall is purple:

This was our shower...a little gross.

Notice the cart is missing a wheel, luckily the desk is there to prop it up or the mini-fridge would fall over!

Despite the freaky hotel and the horrible beds, Monticello was a cute little town. There is nothing around it, and for lunch we ate at a local restaurant-a Taco Bell inside the Conoco station. The temple was beautiful, a little small, but put in a great location and surrounded by flowers. It was a gorgeous day too, around 80 degrees.

Melissa's belly is getting so big. Baby Linc will be here the beginning of December, so we have to hurry and get the last four temples in :)

Our original plan was to drive about 40 more miles past Monticello to see the Four Corners Monument. It is the only place in the United States where four states touch each other (Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado). When we finished our elegant meal at Taco Time, we asked the clerk at the gas station how to get there. He informed us that it was closed...because they put the monument in the wrong place. So any of you who think you've been to the four corners monument, you probably haven't :) We were bummed, especially because we don't plan to make this trip again any time soon. Since there was really nothing else to do, we headed home. Because we made the trip down in the dark, we didn't see this gem of the highway between Monticello & Moab:

Because we were in flip-flops and traveling a 6-month pregnant woman, we hadn't planned on stopping in Moab to visit any of the arches. Wilsons Arch was right off the highway and not very high up, so we stopped to check it out. If we had better shoes we could have gone all the way to the top, but we got close enough to make it worth it:

It was a great mini-vacation and I can't wait to hit the last four temples with the Wayt's. This goal has been so much fun!

Cherry Hill

2010-09-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

My family has been going to Cherry Hill every summer since I was a teenager. We always have the best time and this year was no different, except it was Mikie's first time! It was the best weekend, my best friend Courtney was there, the Hardin Family and some of my siblings friends came too. It was a little windy and rainy but that didn't stop the fun. Mike, Courtney, Morgan and I made some of the best tube trains going down Cardiac Canyon, we laughed so hard and almost had a few dislocated shoulders from not wanting to let go. It was the best weekend. We also found time for mini golf and batting cages. Max even enjoyed himself, he wore himself out meeting new people and playing with my parents dogs. Anyway, here are some pictures:

Becca (far right) is a fierce mini golfer...if you go with her, wear closed-toe shoes and a mask....and maybe shin-guards too.

This is before we went to get our tan on, just ignore the pastiness...

This is my brother Calvin. He is 6'9". He wanted to go on the kiddie rides.

Meet Max

2010-09-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

Mike and I have been talking about getting a dog ever since we got married. I've always been the one to say "No" for various reasons-I don't want my house destroyed, puppies are annoying, they pee everywhere, I don't want to be tied down, etc... Well, about a month ago we decided to go to a pet store to be around some puppies thinking that would get rid of the desire to actually own one. Yeah, that was a BAD idea, after visiting a pet store in American Fork and the shelter in Lindon, I thought I was winning on the puppy war. We had discussed maybe taking a day or two to decide if we really wanted one as we headed to another pet store in Orem. Previous to this escapade, Mike and I had talked about what kind of dogs we wanted, our top choices were a bulldog or a pug. So as we walked into the pet store and the clerk asked if we were looking for anything specific, I told her we liked pugs and she mentioned that they happened to have one. She took us back and showed us the most adorable 4 month old pug puppy I have ever seen. We brought him out of the pen and played with him and immediately decided that we wanted him. I mean, who can really say "No" to a puppy! We brought him home and set his little space up in the kitchen and had a lot of fun playing with him and taking him to my softball game, he calmly went to bed, as did we...then we woke up the next morning and realized that maybe we made a bad impulse decision. We don't have time for a puppy, or the patience to potty train him, or the money really. So after a few days, we decided that the best thing to do was sell him. It was going to be hard to give him up as we had grown attached to him and he really is the cutest thing, but it was for the best. Well, apparently we're supposed to keep him a little longer because after posting him the restless bugger fell and broke his leg. So now we have a gimp dog. On the bright side, it has been very entertaining watching him get around. His cast hasn't slowed him down a bit! We might still try to sell him once he's healed, so if any of you know anyone looking for a super cute pug, we have one! And he's litter box trained, which it so so nice. So, for the moment, we are dog owners. Here's some pictures, you can see how easily we got attached, I mean just LOOK at this face:

This is how he sleeps now, he seems fine and comfortable with it, it's just funny to see:

August: Bountiful Temple

2010-08-25T07:58:00.000-07:00

We were slackers for the month of July. Both us and the Wayt's had so much going on during the month that when the last week came and we called around to the temple's close to us, both were closed for cleaning until August. So, we're now a month behind, but have two planned for the month of September. (We're road-trippin' it down to Monticello, wa-hoo!)

For August, we chose to visit the Bountiful temple. This is the temple that Mike and I were sealed in and we haven't been back since that beautiful day. We reminisced as we walked the hallways holding hands, and then stood in the beautiful Celestial room looking at the eternity mirrors and talked about the feelings we had while sitting in that room over a year ago getting ready to enter the sealing room. It is such a beautiful temple and it was a wonderfully warm night to go. On our way back home we stopped in downtown SLC for some yummy tacos at a taco stand, they were so delicious, a great way to end the evening! Here are some pictures:

Full Moon Lift Rides at Sundance

2010-08-25T07:56:00.000-07:00

For our Family Home Evening activity this week, Mike and I headed up Provo Canyon to Sundance for the full moon lift ride. It was kind of cold, but so fun. If you haven't done it before, you have one more chance to do it this year, click here for more information. The ride is about 45 minutes long and is so pretty, you just curl up next to your special someone with a blanket and stare at the stars as you silently glide up the mountain. It's the perfect end of summer date activity. They even sell hot chocolate and snacks at the base of the lift so you have something to keep you warm. I couldn't get Mikie to take a serious picture, so here are some goofy ones:

Summer is winding down, which makes me sad. I love warm weather and being outside. Mike started school this week, he's a senior this year so he's pretty excited to be nearing the finish line. We are heading up to Cherry Hill this weekend with my family for our annual camping trip, I'm pretty stoked-it's always a good time.

Movies at the Park

2010-08-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

For Family Home Evening this week, we met my brother and his girlfriend at Rock Canyon park for "Movies in the Park". Monday's showing was "No Reservations", a cute chick flick that I love and decided to drag my sweet husband to. Before the movie began, they had Karaoke. The only songs they played were by Taylor Swift, which both boys knew the words to and sang so beautifully for us :) Just kidding, they aren't fans of Taylor Swift and they mockingly sang along to each song, it was still amusing though to watch them sing every word to "Love Story".

It was a beautiful night to sit under the stars and watch a movie, the only downside was sitting on the steep hill and slowly sliding down the whole night. We left around 10 so I could get to bed on time, and because we had perma-wedgies. Despite that however, it was a great night and I would recommend it to anyone who lives in the Provo/Orem area, next week they are showing "Enchanted", it's free and entertaining (just make sure to sit at the very top or bottom of the hill). Since every blog post is more interesting with pictures, here are some:

Funny Face Time!

If you're looking for fun date night/summer activities, we're doing this next Monday night, if you want to come with us just let me know, it's going to be amazing! Happy Summer Everyone!!

Fun Date Night

2010-08-12T15:27:00.000-07:00

Keeping in line with my tradition of doing 3 posts at once, here is my final one for today. I told Mikie that I wanted each of us to plan a fun date night that does not include going to a movie theater or drive-in, since we do that all of the time. Last Thursday, I got home from work and I was ushered into my bedroom and told not to come out until Mike had finished putting some last minute things together. He brought me out to the truck with instructions not to look at anything in the truck. We had to stop at Macey's to grab some more things, and Mikie revealed his secret date plan-we were going camping. I was so excited and surprised! I love camping and this would be my first time going this year and my first time with my sweet husband! We made our way up Provo Canyon to Hope campground. After finding a prime spot, we began setting up camp. We wanted to get the tent put together before it got too dark, it was so warm and beautiful outside!

When it started to get dark, we set up our fire. It took awhile to get going, but then it was so warm and big!

We sat in our new surprise camping chairs, that Mikie bought just for this outing, and warmed ourselves by the fire. We also made some delicious s'mores! I love camping and we had such beautiful weather outside. It was a little cloudy so we couldn't see the stars very well, but we were in shorts until 11 ish, so it wasn't too cold or windy.

Around 4 a.m. it started raining, and it was so loud on our tent that I couldn't sleep. My wonderful husband packed up camp and we headed down the mountain in the wee-hours of the morning to sleep in our own bed. Despite that little inconvenience, it was such a fun date! I have my secret date planned for Mikie, I just need to figure out when to do it...Hopefully it will be up to par with the camping trip :)

We have had a great summer so far, I love being outside in the warm weather. We have another camping trip coming up in about two weeks. My family is heading up to Cherry Hill, I can't wait! If we only had a Lake Powell trip planned, our summer would be complete. August has and is going to be a pretty busy month for us, before we know it Fall will be here! This year has gone by so fast, and we have had so much fun!

Raspberries!!!

2010-08-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

Our garden has been so fruitful lately. I've gone out a few times in the last couple of weeks and came back with a bowl full of raspberries. Our raspberry plants are about 5 feet tall and they keep growing and growing! They are so sweet and yummy. Our tomatoes are finally turning red too. We've had a few beets and some carrots. I had to transplant our squash and they took a week or two to adjust, hopefully we'll start to see some grow.

We also planted a green bell pepper plant that is growing so well! We accidentally took one off, but there is another one growing and it is getting pretty big.

I love having a garden, it has been pretty amazing watching seeds grow into nutritious and yummy food. If only I could figure out how to keep flowers alive. We planted some in a big pot in our backyard and despite all our attempts, they all died. Is there some kind of secret for flowers that I don't know about?

Birthday's & Babies

2010-08-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

Mike's dad's birthday is on July 24, so the whole wonderful state of Utah gets the day off to celebrate it! We all met at The Pie in Sandy to celebrate it this year. It was so so yummy! Here we are enjoying the delicious pizzas:

Mike's sister, Betsy, had her baby girl on July 19. She is such an adorable and beautiful baby, and always has the cutest bow/flower on her head. Congratulations Long family!

Here is Mikie with Elle, this picture may or may not make me a little baby hungry...he just looks so cute holding a little baby!

Bear Lake & Zarbock Family Reunion

2010-07-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

Mike and I headed up to Bear Lake at the beginning of this month for the Zarbock Family Reunion. We had a great time! Friday morning we plugged in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows on audio and made our way up to the beautiful lake. We got up there around noon, just in time for all of the fun! We spent the day on the boat, playing in the water and enjoyed a fun game of baseball on the beach. The sky was so beautiful we had to take some pictures:

Here is the Zarbock clan:

Later that night, we headed into town to the Pickleville Playhouse for some really good food and a show! This year the play was "Crazy For You". It was so awesome! The actors were so funny and the play was hilarious...it was a fabulous end to our evening. Here we are about to head into the playhouse. The number on the back of the shirts is how many Zarbock's there are now, we added two more from last year, we keep growing and growing!

The next day, Mike and I snagged the wave runner's and played around a bit before heading over to the other side of the lake for the Despain Adventure. Everyone hops into a boat, or on a wave runner and we all head across the lake to Garden City and get some pizza at a local pizza place. After pizza, Mike and I went to my favorite place at Bear Lake, La Beau's, for a delicious raspberry shake! Here we are heading out on the wave runner's:

Later that afternoon, we popped in Harry Potter again and made our way back to Provo. We had a great time and are so glad Molly was there to capture it all on camera :) Can't wait until next year!

4th of July

2010-07-14T16:07:00.001-07:00

I know this is my fourth post today, I've been a little behind. We have had the busiest and most fun-filled month! Our fourth of July was pretty awesome. Softball tournament started on Friday, July 2. Our first game was at six, and it was about 97 degrees outside...we lost. It was so so so hot and we were so tired. It's a double elimination tournament, so we had to play again at eight. Our eight o'clock game went much better. The team we played was really fun and even though we spanked them, it was an enjoyable game for both sides. This put us in the loser bracket for the next week where we would have the potential of playing three games. Saturday morning we headed to the Zarbock's for a BBQ and water fun. It was so cute watching Mikie and the rest of the adults take on the nephews in a water gun fight. After the BBQ, we headed down to Provo to ride with my family over to the Stadium of Fire. My dad was so excited to see Carrie Underwood. I don't know a lot of her songs, and I'm not a huge fan of country music, but this was probably the best Stadium of Fire I've been to. The music was great, we had really good seats, and the fireworks were awesome! It was especially entertaining to see one of the fireworks shoot off into the crowd and hit someone :) It was a great day, and it only took us 10 minutes to get home!

Sunday we had a BBQ with my parent's neighbor's, the Paz's. We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting outside on the lawn and talking with the family and neighbor's. I love this part about summer, why can't it be summer all of the time? Later that night, I took Mike to see all of the people that sleep outside on University Avenue for the parade, my brother and his friends included. I had Monday off of work, so we had kind of a lazy day. We went grocery shopping, then decided to hit a movie, which is what everyone else had planned as well. The movie we wanted to see was sold out, which turned out to be for the best because we had to head up to the Zarbock's cabin to jump Mike's dad's car. It was such a beautiful drive up the canyon. When we got back, we had Dave & Melissa come over to watch Avatar. I love that movie! After the movie, we headed over to my parent's house to light some fireworks. We ended up taking a bunch of long exposure shots with sparklers, some turned out really awesome:

We had a great holiday weekend, which was followed by another awesome weekend. It was the Zarbock family reunion at Bear Lake the following weekend, pictures to come!

It has been one of the best summer's ever and I don't even want to think about it ending, there are still so many places I want to go; Lake Powell, Cherry Hill and camping up Hobble Creek. Maybe we'll both get a decent tan this year :)

Harvesting!

2010-07-14T15:06:00.001-07:00

Our garden has been growing so well! It's been so amazing to see all of these huge plants that once started out as tiny seeds. We planted tomatoes, squash and cucumber's a few weeks ago and they have already sprouted and are growing big vines.
Our raspberry plants are about 5 feet tall now, this picture is a few weeks old...

Green Beans: Our peas are so sweet and yummy! Every night when I get home from work, I go out and pick a few to snack on:

Raspberries:

A few days ago, we had our first harvest! I can't wait for our squash and tomatoes to come in, home grown food is the best!

We also finished our backyard, we still need to get a window well cover, but other than that it's all done. We love being outside, it's been so fun eating dinner on our patio set, or drinking lemonade and doing crossword puzzles in the sun, or hopping in our pool! I love summer!!

June: Manti Temple

2010-07-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

We headed down south this month to visit the Manti temple, we coordinated our visit with the Manti Pageant since most of us haven't been before. Our original plan was to get a hotel room and stay over night. Well, after checking for hotel availability about a month before our trip and quickly finding that everything was booked, we decided to make it a day trip. We left around ten in the morning and drove straight to the temple to do our session, we made it just in time for the noon session. It was such a sunny and warm day, after our session we took a bunch of pictures outside. The temple is so beautiful!

When we got done, we headed over to a burger place in town for lunch. It was really yummy...until a girl on the table next to us decided to start clipping her nails...we quickly left. Since we were going to be there the whole day, we drove to a grocery store to stock up on goodies for the pageant. It was the last day of the pageant and I was worried it would be packed, we planned to be in our seats around 6 and stay until the pageant was over. We found some delicious snacks, this was Dave's favorite:

It was still too early to head to our seats so we pulled out some mitts and a ball and played catch for a bit, then sat on a blanket underneath a huge tree to play UNO...the Wayt's totally dominated us. A bunch of people on main street had set up booths outside their houses for people attending the pageant, we decided to walk around and check them out. We got some delicious frozen lemonades and icee's. Then we found the best booth in the world, they took 6 strawberries, put them on a skewer and drizzled them in milk and white chocolate. It was so amazing, I would go back just to get another one:

There was also a vendor area set up close by where you could buy shirts, CD's and fair food! We got funnel cakes and twisted potatoes. So yummy! After filling our stomach's with scrumptious and totally unhealthy food, we headed over to our seats. Here is the view of the temple and "stage" from the seats:

The pageant didn't start until 9:30, so we played Battle of the Sexes and Phase 10 to pass the time. We had a great time laughing and goofing around until the pageant started.

The pageant started and we realized that spending the whole day in the sun combined with all of the food we had eaten made us super tired...and we still had the almost two hour drive back...with traffic. So we made it about an hour and left. What we saw of the pageant was pretty cool and hopefully we'll be able to see the full pageant some other time, maybe with better planning so we can stay overnight. It was such a great day, we all had so much fun. These temple trips are turning into some of the best memories we've made this year, six down, six more to go, wa-hoo!

Mrs. Aly and CBQ Come to Visit!

2010-07-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

Last month, my cute cousin, Allison, and her sweet hubby, Carsten, came down from Idaho to visit. We had so much fun while they were here, we went swimming, saw a movie, hit up 5 guys for some yummy fries, introduced them to Glee, had a BBQ, caught some rays and stayed up all night talking. I just love them! I stole most of these pictures from Mrs. Aly's blog, so thanks for being so diligent about taking pictures Aly! Here are the highlights:

We miss them already, please come visit again soon!

One Year Down...

2010-06-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, Mike and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. I can't believe it has already been a year, the time has flown by! We have had the best year! We've been on lots of fun trips, bought a house, planted our first garden, and watched a bazillion movies :) Because we just got back from Florida, we wanted to keep our anniversary weekend pretty simple, so we headed up to the Zarbock's cabin in Timber Lakes for a few days. It was so beautiful up there, we spent our time 4-wheeling, watching 80's movies and eating lots of yummy junk food. Here we are heading out on the 4-wheelers, we saw so many beautiful cabins!

Saturday night, our actual anniversary day, we headed into Heber to have dinner at the Claim Jumper. I thought it was the same restaurant they have in Las Vegas that I LOVE. But sadly it wasn't, their entire menu was on the back label of a bottle. Despite that disappointment however, the food was really yummy!

My wonderful mother saved the top tier of our wedding cake for us, so we grabbed it on our way up to the cabin. When we got back from dinner Saturday night, we pulled it out to try it. It still looks pretty good for being a year old:

After peeling back the massive layer of fondant, we dived in:

We each took our first bites and...it was so good! I'm pretty sure the fondant made a great barrier against all the elements in the freezer. It was so yummy and moist. If we hadn't just eaten a huge meal, I'm sure we could have eaten a few more bites, but we were pretty stuffed.

Since we didn't shove the wedding cake into each other's faces at our wedding (it was chocolate...duh!) we got a little crazy at the cabin and had a little food fight with our cake.

It was an awesome weekend, and I am so happy and lucky to be with Mike. He is the best husband in the world!

May: St. George Temple

2010-05-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

Less than a week after returning home from Las Vegas, we made the trek down south toward warmer and sunnier weather again! This time we headed here:

How can you not love this temple? It's gorgeous! And it was so warm and beautiful outside, I really can't wait for it to finally start warming up here in Provo. The drive down was really windy, it took us almost 4 hours to get down there because of it. We stopped at the cheese factory in Beaver to get some yummy squeaky cheese and ice cream. Some of us were a little tired on the way down:

My amazing grandparents let us stay with them while we were visiting. After settling in a bit and catching up, we all headed to the theater to see Date Night. It was the second time Mike and I had seen it, but it was still funny. I think Tina Fey is the best! Saturday morning we headed to the Bear Paw for some delicious breakfast. I had the chocolate brulee cream stuffed french toast...yeah...it was seriously so good. If you're in the area, we definitely recommend going.

We had to wait a bit for our table, Dave rode this to pass the time:

After stuffing ourselves, we made our way to the temple. It was the first time most of us had been inside, it is so beautiful.

We all had a great time, it was a quick and fun getaway and we came home right in time for it to snow...boo. I have to check the weather every night to see if it will be decent enough to bike to work because the weather is different every day. I can't wait for the weather to become more consistent and we can just enjoy being outside all the time.
On a separate note, I came home to the best surprise Monday night. Mike was putting together a new barbecue in our backyard! The smell of hamburgers on the grill definitely reminds me of summer. We've used it every night so far! We're almost finished putting our backyard together, just a few more pieces :)
Next weekend we will be celebrating our first wedding anniversary. I can't believe how fast it has gone! We have had the BEST year and I can't wait to spend eternity with my best friend who is also the kindest, most handsome, thoughtful and cuddliest guy ever. I am one lucky woman. By the way, have I mentioned that I can't wait for summer to get here?

Vegas Baby!

2010-05-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

May has been good to us so far. We were able to spend time with both of our mother's on Mother's day, which was a beautiful day by the way. I love that summer is so close! We made fruit pizza's to take to both houses, mmmmm fruit pizza :)

We also celebrated lots of birthday's this month, my brother Zach turned 18! He's also graduating high school this month. My littlest brother is all grown up! We went to Texas Roadhouse to celebrate. He was THRILLED to get up on this saddle, don't let him tell you different. It was also Mike's twin sisters, Katie & Betsy's, birthday on the 13th. Happy Birthday everyone!

Last weekend we popped down to Vegas for my cousin Stacia's baby shower. While we were down there we visited the Paris Hotel to eat at my favorite restaurant. While we were waiting for our table, Mike and Becca made some new friends:

The restaurant is called Mon Ami Gabi, it's amazing. If you sit on the terrace you have a great view of the Bellagio fountains and you don't see the crummy people walking on the strip. Plus the food is SOOO good!

After dinner, we walked over to the Bellagio to show Mikie the fountains and the inside of the hotel where the atrium is. It is so beautiful in there!

We had a great little visit, Mikie was able to meet more of my family while we were there. We ate delicious food, shopped and hung out all weekend. It was a great mini vacation.

Mike and I also finished planting our garden last night. We added tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini and cucumber. We also planted some beautiful flowers in our pots. As soon as we get our patio set, our backyard will be finished. It has been pretty amazing to watch our little plants grow, I can't wait to head out to the backyard to grab a tomato or two for dinner.

We're heading down to St. George this weekend for our monthly temple visit. I can't wait! More deliciously warm weather here we come!

FLORIDA!!!!

2010-05-06T08:44:00.000-07:00

Mikie and I went to Orlando, Florida the second to last week in April. Mike's family invited us just a few weeks before that and it was such a steal so we decided to join them! We had so so so much fun! We went at such a great time, the weather was perfect and it wasn't busy anywhere we went. Our flight to Orlando left on Friday, April 16, at around 5 p.m. Besides the screaming infant in the seat ahead of us, who was only our-screamed by her scolding mother, the flight was really mellow, not too bumpy. We landed around 11 (Florida time) and picked up our sweet rental car:

We packed all of our suitcases in the back of our little Nissan Versa and headed to our condo in Kissimmee. We were the last to arrive, Betsy, John, Katie, Jaden, Amy and Janae were already at the condo waiting for us. We stayed here:

When we pulled in, we were stopped at the security desk where the guard asked us who we were coming to see. We told him what unit we were staying in and he asked for Mikie's name so he could call the unit to make sure we should really be there. Mike clearly stated, Mike Zarbock. The guy repeated something back like Mike blehsumbuck, and Mike was like "No, it's Mike Zar-bock." The guy repeated it back correctly, got on the phone and when the person in the condo answered, we heard "Hello, we have a Tim Zarbock here." Oh man, at least he got the last name right after all that! Since it was around midnight everyone was sleeping, so we went straight to our room, unpacked and fell asleep. The next morning, Saturday, we all woke up around 10-ish and headed to Epcot:

I didn't know much about Epcot besides the giant golf ball, so I was pleasantly surprised when I realized all that it entailed. Basically the front of the park has rides and a few Disney stores to check out but the rest is a big half circle of different countries around the globe. Each country has employees who speak the native language, a ride or movie about that country, food, and other activities specific to that country. We tried to get food at each stop, we sampled Lefse from Norway, Crepes in France, Gelato in Italy, Eggrolls in China and Funnel Cake from America. Here we are in Norway:

China:

Going on a ride:

Some of our favorite rides at Epcot were the Test Track and Soarin'. When you exited the Test Track they had a big show room full of new cars. Here is Mikie sitting in "Bumblebee":

Sunday was a relaxing day, we played shuffle board, watched a movie and ate pizza. Katie and Jaden had to leave really early Sunday morning, so on Monday there were just the 6 of us when we headed here:

Disneyworld's, The Magic Kingdom! Once you purchase your tickets to the park, you have to take a ferry or the monorail to the actual park, we opted for the ferry:

Getting closer to the Magic Kingdom!

Just inside the park:

We went EVERYWHERE at Disneyworld. It was probably my second favorite day while we were in Florida. We went on all the really good rides like Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Thunder Mountain...twice! Of course, we couldn't resist the Enchanted Tiki Room:

When we got out of the Tiki Room it started to rain, really really rain. Everyone who didn't pack poncho's were scrambling for shelter. This kid was standing under a stream of water from an umbrella, I think he would have been content even without the poncho....

Luckily, we had looked at the weather report and knew rain was coming, so we came prepared with our 88 cent poncho's from Wal-Mart! They held up great, and we used them to our advantage on Splash Mountain, even if it was "cheating".

You can't go to the Magic Kingdom and not ride in the tea cups! Mike had us spinning so fast, I thought I was going to be sick...

Riding the Carousel:

We played and played all day then headed to Main Street to do some souvenir shopping. We were all pretty tired as we rode the monorail back to our car. It was such a fun day!

Our condo complex had a few pools and hot tubs throughout the development. Whenever Mike and I got home after a "park" day, we would change into our suits and jump in the pool to wash the day off of us. We love swimming and it was so warm and beautiful there we couldn't resist. I'm pretty sure we went swimming everyday. Just down the road from where we were staying was a Wal-Mart. It came in quite handy! During one of our many stops there, we came out of the store and heard this really loud squawking sound. We realized it was coming from these birds:

We saw the coolest birds in Florida! Tuesday was another relaxing day, John and Betsy flew out in the afternoon, so it was just the 4 of us: Amy, Janae, Mikie and me. We decided Tuesday would be a devoted pool day. We were laying out for about 40 minutes when we saw a little kid totally throw up in the pool, so we gathered our things and headed to the other pool that wasn't tainted by throw up. They had Karaoke set up at the other pool! So of course, we had to participate. Janae and I got up first and gave an amazing rendition of Shania Twain's "Any Man of Mine", shortly after our applause ended, Mike got up and sang "Don't Stop Believin" with Janae and I as awesome back-up singers. Thanks to Amy for taking these incriminating photos:

Wednesday morning, Mikie and I headed to Universal Studios:

Although Universal Studios isn't nearly as fantastic as Disneyworld, we did get to see a glimpse of the new Harry Potter park at Islands of Adventure, too bad it wasn't open when we were there, I guess we'll just have to go back :)

The biggest Hard Rock Cafe is at Universal Studios-Orlando, so we made that our last stop of the day. We ordered drinks in souvenir glasses, they were so yummy!

Thursday was our beach day. Wa-hoo! I love beaches, and swimming, and being in the sun. This was the BEST day on our vacation! Amy had called the launch center earlier and found out they were doing a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral that night so we headed to Cocoa Beach. Although it wasn't one of Florida's prettiest beaches, we had a great time. It wasn't crowded and the weather was perfect!

We layed out all day and watched all the crazy people and birds go by.

Around 4-ish my Uncle Skip and his family came to join us. My Uncle Skip brought a few surfboards and tried to teach us to surf. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of those embarrassing attempts. The waves were really small so we mostly just layed on the boards and let the waves carry us to shore. We played in the ocean for a bit then headed to shore where we found out my aunt had seen a few spinner sharks about 20-30 feet ahead of us. That's when we decided we had had enough ocean for one day. Here are some more pictures of the beach:

Around 7:30 we headed to Jetty Park to watch the rocket launch. The launch was scheduled for 7:52 and we had stopped at Wendy's to grab some dinner so when we pulled into the park we had just a few minutes before the launch. We got out of our cars and started walking toward the pier to get the best view. When Amy called, she was told that we would be able to see and hear it from miles away and we were so close, so naturally we were anticipating watching something awesome. As we started walking my uncle pointed in the air and said there it goes. "That's not the rocket" we said...well we were wrong. Here is the rocket:

If you can't see it, it's the tiny dot in the upper left hand corner. Eventually we did hear it, but we did not feel it...it was still pretty cool to see though. And we did get to see some dolphins swimming in front of us:

Mikie and I with the Johnson's. This trip was the first time they met.

We got back to the condo and showered and washed our clothes, we were covered in sand. Some of us even got a little sunburned from our amazing beach day. We all slept so good that night, we were rocked to sleep by the gentle waves that we still felt crashing into our bodies. Friday morning Amy had to leave to catch her early flight, the rest of us slept in a little bit. After cleaning the condo, Janae, Mikie and I checked out and headed to the Premium Outlets to do some last minute shopping. We spent a few hours there then headed to the airport to catch our flight around 4. Amy had bumped her flight so she was there waiting to fly home with us! We had the worst flight home! It was so hot and the plane was packed. And of course there were screaming kids right in front of us. We encountered some of the worst turbulence I've ever felt. And as the plane was taxiing toward our gate, the pilot informed us that in the 34 years he has been a pilot he can count the number of times on one hand that the food cart (weighing more than 300 lbs.) has come off the ground and that flight was one of them. It never felt so good to be back home. We had the best time and were so happy Mikie's family invited us to go! Hopefully we'll make it back there some time soon!

Backyard Phase 3: Finish laying the stones

2010-05-05T09:37:00.001-07:00

Well we finally finished laying down all our pavers and cemented them in last Saturday. I am so happy with the way it turned out! I am really looking forward to summer when we can spend all our time back here...bbq's, relaxing, and enjoying our home grown veggies! Here is the "before" picture:

Laying down the last bricks:

The finished product, the "after". Just ignore the hose laying across the middle of the picture :)

The above picture was taken while we were waiting for the paver sand to dry between the cracks so it doesn't look as pretty as it really is. Once we get our patio set I'll take a better picture. All of the stones have such pretty colors and it looks so good! We really appreciate all the help we had, we couldn't have gotten it finished so fast without you!

Must have done something right...

2010-04-29T08:39:00.001-07:00

I went to check on our garden right before we left for Florida and saw that our peas are sprouting! I was so happy! When we got back, there were so many more plants that had sprouted, our beats, carrots and beans are also coming up! I love that we can finally see what took so much time and work! I can't wait to start picking peas and beans and tomatoes, now if only it would warm up so I don't have to worry about them freezing.

April: Mount Timpanogos Temple

2010-04-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

Finals and our trip to Florida made it hard to find a day to visit our temple this month. Because of time constraints we had to go to a more local temple, luckily Mt. Timpanogos is so close...and beautiful! We had a wonderful time at the temple, even if it was snowing :) Next month we're going to travel down south to St. George where it's warmer, I'm so ready for summer!

Backyard Phase 2, Yummy Food & Mikie's Birthday Weekend!

2010-04-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

We had such a fun and busy weekend, I'm having a hard time recovering at work this morning :) Friday morning we decided to start Phase 2 of our backyard, we headed out to Lowe's around 2 p.m. to find a cobblestone/paver pattern we liked. Once we found it, we sat there with our calculators trying to figure out how much we would need. We loaded up the truck with these supplies, and headed back home to start what we thought would be a small-ish project:

Yeah right, by the time it was too dark to continue working we were only about halfway done. We started by leveling out the dirt:

We then put down a paver base and started building our puzzle:

Once we started to see the pattern forming, I was really pleased. It looks so good!

This is basically where we stopped Friday night, we ran out of some of the bricks, I guess our calculations were a little off...

Saturday morning I got up early, around 9 a.m. :), and made Mikie breakfast for his birthday. We wanted to get started on the backyard again so we headed back to Lowe's. We loaded up our truck a second time and headed home to finish. After a few hours we were still only about 3/4 of the way done and we had to start getting ready for lunch, we were meeting some of Mikie's friends at Tucano's for his birthday. We had so much fun at Tucano's, the food is so so so delicious, mmmmm pineapple.... They came and sang to Mikie, he was a good sport and stood up and danced around to the beat of the drum.

One of Mikie's friends made a bet with me: If I ate a chicken heart, he would ask for one of the waitress's phone numbers...I ate the heart. It was gross. Luke almost got out of asking for the waitress's phone number, until I asked our waitress to send her back to our table where we all stood in a circle and watched Luke get her digits. It was a pretty awesome ending to our fabulous and yummy lunch :)

After Tucano's, Mikie and I headed to the movies! We saw Date Night with Steve Carrell and Tina Fey. It was pretty funny, I love Tina Fey's comedic style :) After the movie, we went shopping to get a few birthday presents for Mikie, his brother and nephew who have birthday's this week. When we got done shopping, we met my parents at TGI Friday's for a late dinner (we were still way full from Tucano's):

Mikie got more birthday ice cream, and singing:

Around 10 we headed downtown to Comedy Sportz for some late night entertainment. We were way tired after eating so much delicious food, working in our backyard and lack of sleep the night before, but we made it there with our eyes barely open. Once the players came out and the show started, we couldn't stop laughing. I think it was one of the best shows I have seen. One of my favorite lines was during the game "Good News, Bad News." The audience yells out different activities and the players take turns stepping out with "Good New is..., Bad News is..." Someone yelled out "Kissing on the Jumbo-tron", one of the players stepped out and said, "Good News is you got kissed on the jumbo-tron, Bad News is you call one of your body parts the jumbo-tron." So hilarious! After the show we drove straight home and crashed, we had to teach Sunday School in about 9 hours. It was such a long day, but we had so much fun! I hope Mikie enjoyed all of his birthday festivities :)

Sunday afternoon we headed up to Alpine for more birthday fun! We were celebrating Mikie's birthday along with his brother, Zak, and nephew, Boston. Mikie got a bunch of cool stuff from his family, including some new items to take on our vacation to Florida on Friday! Wa-hoo!

Boston got a motorcycle from Mikie's parents, he's only 2 and he caught on pretty quick how to step on the gas!

After playing outside with the new toys, we sang "Happy Birthday" to the birthday boys:

Here is a cute picture of Mikie with Boston in their birthday hats:

During dinner we started making plans for our Florida trip. We're going to Disneyworld, Universal Studios, a water park, The Epcot Center and the beach! I can't wait for Friday to get here!!!!

Last weekend, before we left for the cabin for conference weekend, I decided to make some french toast for dinner. I LOVE french toast and there was a concoction I wanted to try. It was seriously so good, I had to share! I took a loaf of french bread and cut it in half. On one side I spread cream cheese, on the other strawberry jam. I dipped it into eggs with cinnamon and put it on the skillet. I poured some hot carmel syrup straight from the stove over the bread and topped it off with strawberries and whipped cream. It was like warm heaven in my mouth. I stole the carmel recipe from my friends facebook page, all it is is 1 cup cream, 1 cup brown sugar and 1 cup karo syrup. I put it on medium heat and boiled it until the sugar had dissolved. So so yummy!

Back Yard Phase 1: Assemble the Box Garden

2010-03-30T07:25:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, Mike and I decided to start working on putting together our back yard. I really wanted to put in a box garden and we have the perfect place for one! Our back yard is a little small, but it's ours and we love it. We called my Dad Saturday morning and he came to help us plan it out. After sketching out our plans, we headed to Home Depot and purchased the necessary supplies. It was such a beautiful day to work outside!

We have a rain gutter that puts water right into the path of our garden. So our first step was to dig a trench to lay the pipe down that would distribute the water from the rain gutter to the ground below our garden and just past the fence:

We quickly found that our dirt was FULL of rocks. Every time we put the shovel in the dirt, we found a new big ugly rock. Good thing we put in a box garden, I can't imagine the time it would take to clean out all the rocks and mix in the dirt to put a garden in the ground!

Once the pipe was buried, we started working on assembling the box:

We tried to be as precise as possible, measure twice-cut once!

Once the box was assembled, we leveled out the dirt where the box would go:

We put down weed guard, to stop weeds from growing above the ground and into our beautiful garden dirt, then put the box on top:

We filled up the box with a mixture of compost, peat moss, miracle gro and fertilizer. Mmm, what a wonderful smell!

My wonderful mother and I began planting, we put in beets, beans, peas, raspberries & strawberries. YUM!

Everything is in and watered, now grow!

I've been checking our garden every time I come home to see if anything has sprouted :) We really couldn't have put any of this together without our amazing families. My parents and siblings rushed over to help us put everything together and I learned a lot from my amazing mom about gardening. It was such a beautiful day, I even got a little sunburned. I can't remember the last time I was so excited to have a sun burn, it means summer is coming! We are also planning on putting in a few flowers in some nice big pots once we finish our yard. Hopefully in the next few weeks we'll get it all done. I love sitting and eating outside as the sun sets, and now we'll be surrounded by a garden that hopefully will produce lots of good fruit and vegetables.

Here are some awesome things we are looking forward to this Spring/Summer:

-Heading to the cabin this weekend for General Conference

-Going to Orlando, Florida in a few weeks with some of Mikie's family. I am so excited! I have never been to Florida and we'll be there for a whole week!

-Softball season starts at the end of April, wa-hoo!!

-Finishing our back yard

-Summer BBQ's and pool party's

-Trips to St. George and Las Vegas

-Our first wedding anniversary in June

-Lots of bike rides and picnics

-New babies: Jessica, Betsy and Stacia

It has been so fun to ride my bike to and from work every day. Every day it gets a little warmer and a little sunnier. Summer is my favorite season and I can't wait for it to get here, long sunny days and warm weather YAY!!!!!!!

March: Ogden Temple

2010-03-21T13:17:00.001-07:00

Since the announcement of the Ogden Temple renovation, we've been wanting to visit that temple sooner rather than later.... so we headed up to Ogden yesterday morning for our March temple visit. We got up there around 11, it was one of the most beautiful and sunny days so far this year!

After our session was over, we wanted to grab lunch at a place only Ogden could offer, we ended up at Union Station where we ate at the Union Grill. It was soooo delicious! The fries were so yummy and we got to sit next to the window and watch the FrontRunner go by.

Next to the restaurant, there were a bunch of trains for people to climb on and read about. Some of them were built over 70 years ago! Even though we were in our Sunday clothes, we couldn't resist the urge to climb and look around:

This was one of the oldest trains there, it was built in 1937, it's amazing to think they had the means and knowledge to create something as extraordinary and huge as this:

You can't tell in the above picture, but Mikie is in the train looking though that tiny window, here is a close-up:

Mikie standing next to one of the train wheels, this train was seriously huge!

Here are more pictures of us playing around. It was a beautiful day and we had such a great time in Ogden!

Happy Birthday, I'm 6 & 1/2!

2010-03-09T12:46:00.000-08:00

Being born on leap year has its ups and downs, as a child I hated getting teased about "not having a birthday" but now that I'm older it's kind of fun, it's an "interesting fact" about me that became useful at the beginning of my school semesters... This year I had my 6 & 1/2 birthday, I'll celebrate my 7th birthday in two years when I turn 28. My sweet husband planned an awesome birthday dinner with a bunch of my friends and family. We were supposed to go to The Cheesecake Factory (my favorite restaurant), however, when we got up there around 4:30 to put our names down for a 6:30-7:00 eating time, they told us they wouldn't be able to seat us until 9:30-10:00! Ridiculous!!! So we drove down the street to Red Robin. It was such a fun night, I love being surrounded by friends and family! Here are some fun pictures we took:

The Friends: Gash, Courtney, Andy, Sommer, Dave, Melissa and Hannah

The Family: Dad, Mom, Skyler, Calvin, Zach, Becca and my Mikie

The Hardin's: Josh, Morgan and baby Bradley

Becca stole my camera at some point during the evening and took a lot of interesting pictures that were fun to see later on that night, like this one :)

I had a great birthday weekend, I spent it doing the things I love with the people I love. We rode bikes, slept in, watched a lot of movies and ate a lot of yummy food. Thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday, you're the best!

My brother, Calvin, was born on March 5, so a few days after my birthday weekend, we celebrated Bubby's 24th birthday! Calvin's girlfriend, Haley, and my sister, Becca, spent a few weeks planning an awesome surprise birthday for him. They decided to recreate Calvin's 6th birthday after watching him get nostalgic watching home videos. So, last Thursday us girls went shopping all night to get everything we needed for Friday night. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wasn't an option at Zurchers, so we decided to go with a football theme. It turned out pretty good! I spent most of Friday making different cakes and salads. My dad took Calvin out shopping after work on Friday night while the rest of quickly gathered at my parent's house to set everything up. Here is the house after being decorated:

Here is the football cake I made, I think it turned out pretty cute:

The food table:

My cute husband barbecuing

We got everything set up then waited around for about 20 minutes for Calvin to come home, here is Crystal, Becca and Haley:

This isn't a very good picture, but we got Calvin good! He was totally surprised!

After dinner, we went outside to hit the football shaped pinata. We had to put the rope over a street light, Calvin is 6'8" so it's hard to find things taller than he is :) By the way, if you want some good entertainment get some young adults, blindfold them, turn them in circles, then tell them to hit at a pinata. We were laughing so hard, it was so funny. After a few unsuccessful tries by almost everyone, it was Becca's turn. She hit the pinata where it attaches to the rope and the pinata fell. Rather then tying it up again, we "pitched" the pinata to Calvin who hit the pinata with a broom stick, which upon contact made everything shatter into pieces and there was candy all over the road. Everyone went at it like little kids. Here are some pictures:

After the pinata, we headed back inside with our goodie bags bursting with candy. Next game: Musical Chairs. This is also a fun game to play with adults, who knew people would become so competitive over a children's game? We had a great time shoving and sneaking to get a chair before the music stopped:

We only lasted about 2 rounds before everyone was too bruised, tired and dizzy to go on. To settle down we played Signs, the game where everyone has a sign and you pass it to people sitting in a circle. I love that game every time I play it. Finally, it was time to sing and blow out the candles:

Here are some random pictures taken some time during the night. I forgot to bring a coat so I had to borrow my mom's huge, but warm coat:

It was an awesome, hilariously entertaining night. Happy Birthday Calvin!

Valentine's Day and Early Birthday Presents

2010-02-22T11:42:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day turned into Valentine's Weekend this year! Thursday night I came home to these:

So pretty! I love my thoughtful husband!

Saturday night Mike and I went with Mike's sister, Katie, and her husband Jaden to The Bombay House for some Indian food. Despite waiting for nearly an hour to get our food, it was really yummy and spicy and therefore worth the wait. Mike tried the Rose Milk...he said it tasted like perfume...not recommended. Everything else we tried was really flavorful and delicious though. After dinner, we headed to Comedy Sportz for some live entertainment, it was a pretty good show, it's always a good time :)

Sunday afternoon we headed up to the Zarbock's for the annual Valentine's dinner. Connie (my mother-in-law) is amazing, just look at this table! The men prepared all the food so the women could take a night off. It was so yummy, they did an excellent job.

Here are the traditional photos of the Zarbock women, the normal one and the "shocked" one:

Mike and I are a little chubbier this year....but we're also a little happier :)

After dinner and some awesome homemade "fried" ice cream, Mike and I headed here:

I walked in the room and there were flowers and some sparking grape juice on the table:

We slept in Monday morning (President's Day=Day Off!!!) and ordered room service. It was so fun! I have never ordered it before and it lived up to all of my expectations :) After checking out of the hotel, we went to the Gateway and saw the movie "Valentine's Day" it was okay...I probably won't see it again, but it was worth going the first time. After the movie, we went to my favorite Mexican food restaurant, the Red Iguana. It was amazing as always...if you are ever in downtown SLC, you have to try it! It was a delicious end to an amazingly romantic weekend. I love my husband so much and appreciate all that he does for me :)

This year, Mike and I are really trying to be more healthy, we have been pretty good so far. Lots of fruits and vegetables, less eating out and more exercise. When we bought our house, I was so excited to be so close to work, I told Mike that I would love a new bike for my birthday so I can ride it to work as soon as it warms up. I've been browsing here and there looking at townie or cruiser type bikes, I love the Electra brand which Bingham Cyclery carries here in Provo. Friday morning, Mike and I headed over there and came home with these babies:

We LOVE them, we've already been out riding a few times despite the snow and wind. They are so comfortable and fun. I can't wait to start riding mine to work, I even have a bell on my bike! I am so excited to go on fun rides and picnics this summer, it just needs to hurry up and get here! Happy Early Birthday to us!

February: Draper Temple

2010-02-22T08:31:00.001-08:00

So far so good, month two and we have been keeping on track with our Temples 2010 goal! Saturday morning, Mike and I headed up to Draper with my brother Calvin where we met Dave and Melissa. I received my endowment at this temple, so it was a beautiful experience to go back and remember my first time. It is a gorgeous temple, one of my favorite's. Here we are freezing outside:

(Calvin-notice his awesome temple "bag")

(Dave & Melissa)

We had originally planned to go to the Vernal Temple this month, but unfortunately it didn't work out. It looks like the Vernal Temple will be our March temple!

Chicken Alfredo Pizza

2010-02-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

Last week I was craving Chicken Alfredo Pizza, so I googled a recipe for it and found this yummy gem. We modified it a little, adding almonds and spinach and substituting homemade alfredo sauce for bottled, and then baked it for about 35-40 minutes instead of 20. It was a really easy recipe to make, plus we already had all the ingredients at home! Here is the final product:

The crust turned out perfect thanks to our pizza stone, plus it stayed warm! This pizza was so creamy and delicious, I just had to share the recipe :)

January: Jordan River Temple

2010-01-27T08:22:00.000-08:00

On track for our Temple's 2010 goal, Mike and I, along with Dave and Melissa headed up to the Salt Lake City temple for our January Temple. We got all the way up to Salt Lake to find the temple was closed for cleaning. Learning lesson: call Temple's ahead of time to make sure they're open. After turning around, we decided to change Salt Lake to December so we can see the Christmas lights. That decided, we headed south to the Jordan River Temple in South Jordan. This temple is where my parents were sealed 27 years ago, so it was a cool experience for me.

(Dave and Melissa, cute couple!)

After the temple, we headed to TGI Friday's, I think we all had forgotten how yummy that place was. We cleaned our plates, it was so good! Here are Dave & Melissa next to Mike Myers as we wait for our table:

Looking forward to February: Vernal!

Date Night

2010-01-27T08:04:00.000-08:00

My wonderful husband surprised me with a date night last Wednesday. He sent me a text in the afternoon telling me to be dressed to go outside when I got home from work. As soon as the clock changed to 6, I sped home and quickly changed, then waited for Mike to come home from school. He asked me if I knew where we were going, and as we drove toward the east side of Provo, it dawned on me. We were going ice skating! We haven't been in over a year, I was so happy! However, when we walked in we realized that every mutual activity for Utah County must have been ice skating as well...it was packed with people. Sadly, we had to leave and plan it for another day. The night was not a bust however, we went to in-n-out (so yummy!), then to nicklecade. It was so fun playing arcade games all night. We collected our tickets and traded them in for laffy taffy's and fun dip :) On the way home we stopped at 7-11 for slurpees. It was such a fun date! I love my fun, spontaneous husband! Here are some pictures:

(Mike totally beat me in this game, he's just so fast!)

(This is that addicting game where you have to push the button as the light passes through the rings...we lost a lot of nickles on that one)

(Me riding a motorcycle! ha ha...you have to play the driving games at an arcade, it's just a rule.)

Honey-Do's

2010-01-27T07:51:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, Mike and I finally completed putting our house together, it only took 4 months! I've been dying to have light dimmer's installed in our kitchen/dining room, finish our guest bedroom, buy some bookshelves, and get those last few decorations for empty walls. Since it was a holiday weekend (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), I had Monday off, a 4-day weekend to work on our house. Yes! We went to Rod Works (my favorite store), Home Depot and Ikea. We got a lot of great stuff, and thanks to sales, gift and punch cards, we saved a lot. On Saturday we got to work, Mike installed all of the hard stuff, ie: the light dimmer's, he did a great job and I love that I can dim my kitchen lights, I just LOVE it!

We now have a hospitable guest bedroom for anyone that wants to come stay with us:

I've been wanting bookshelves in our living room for awhile, I have lots of pretty books I wanted to display...plus our DVD/Blu-ray collection kept growing, here is how they turned out. I have to admit, they look pretty good!

I finally feel that our home is finished :)

Goals

2010-01-19T09:04:00.000-08:00

Now that Mike is home more, I wanted to make going to the Temple a more regular occurrence for 2010. I discussed this idea with a friend and we decided it would be an awesome goal to visit each temple in Utah, one per month, for 2010! There are 14 Temple's in Utah, we are excluding Mt. Timpanogos and Provo since they are so close to us, and we plan to attend these Temple's regularly. I am so excited to see all the beautiful and historic Temple's this wonderful state has. It will also be fun to plan mini-vacations for St. George and Logan :) This month we will be visiting the Salt Lake City Temple (and a local taco stand) with Dave and Melissa, I am so excited!

By the way, if any of you are interested in joining us for our monthly adventures, let us know, the more the merrier! (Ahem... Mrs. Aly and CBQ)

Snowboarding and Sledding

2010-01-14T16:09:00.000-08:00

Last weekend Mikie and I took my family up to his cabin near Heber in Timberlakes. We had so much fun! We took up snowboards and sleds galore! The first night we stayed up playing games by the fire, and drinking hot chocolate. We went to bed early to get enough rest for the adventurous day ahead. We spend all morning/afternoon on Saturday sledding, crashing, snowboarding and wiping out! Here are the highlights:

Zach man in all his gear, he's ready to go!

My dad pulling Zach behind the 4-wheeler, look what happens when you go around a corner really fast:

He whipped him right into this snow bank, we were all laughing so hard!

Becca had the brilliant idea to pull Skyler and Calvin behind the 4-wheeler while both of them were still hooked into their boards, well, they fell...on top of each other, their boards got stuck together and we were all laughing to hard to help them up, I think Becca particularly got a kick out of it :)

This is a much better way to be pulled back up the hill:

Zach loves the snow, he was so fun to watch! He was also our snowboarding instructor :)

Becca strutting her stuff on the 4-wheeler:

Go Calvin, go!

How to snowboard:

Step 1: Stay really close to the ground so your center of gravity is way off, causing you to fish-tail. It's also a good idea to tie a pink scarf around your waist for fashion purposes.

Step 2: Head straight toward a stranded snowboarder yelling "Get out of the way, I can't control this thing!"

Step 3: Land right on your knees, causing intense pain, and lay flat on your back trying to think why snowboarding was a good idea:

Ha ha, even though we all biffed it a few times, we still had sooo much fun!

Go Skyler!

We're all pro's now!

Aww...so cute :)

Minus the few bumps and bruises and getting a car stuck and me having a minor panic attack about a possible missing husband, we had a ton of fun! Thanks Zarbock's!

Happy New Year!

2010-01-03T15:45:00.000-08:00

December was a busy month for us, as it is with most people when it comes to the holidays...we started off by celebrating our six month wedding anniversary, I can't believe how fast it came! It was also our one year anniversary from our first date. We've spent most of this month reminiscing, lots of, "Remember what we were doing this time last year..." It has been an amazing year, topped off with our first Christmas together. My mom, sister and I had plans to fly to Houston, Texas on Christmas day for Miss Aly's wedding. Because of this, Mikie and I celebrated our first Christmas on Christmas Eve. Mikie had to work until six that night, when he got home I had candles, sparkling cider, Christmas music, and pj's at the ready :) We spent the rest of the night opening presents and watching Christmas Vacation. We spent Christmas morning with my parents, then my dad took us women up to the airport for our flight. We arrived in Texas Christmas evening and headed to Friendswood to meet up with our family. We spent the next few days preparing for the wedding, going to the temple, playing Rook, and making over a hundred cupcakes! Stephanie and Stacia threw one of their notorious lingerie parties for Miss Aly, which is quickly becoming a tradition among all Johnson granddaughter brides. We played naughty games, received naughty prizes and Allison made out pretty well with all of her new "clothes". Here are some of the pictures from the bachelorette party and The Quinton's reception:

This is the only picture I can post from the bachelorette party, the rest are too scandalous :)

The Hot Chocolate Bar! First, chose your hot chocolate (regular, mint truffle, etc...)

Pour it into one of these personalized cups made by Mrs. Aly's sister, Stephanie.

Use a chocolate/carmel covered spoon to stir

Stephanie and Stacia also put together quite the topping/mix in display for the hot chocolate, including marshmallows, butterfingers, whipped cream, and lots more! It was so yummy!

My mom helped make these delicious cupcakes:

It was a great trip filled with lots of laughter and reminiscing, it's always a good time when you're surrounded by family. The only thing that would have made it better was for my husband to be there. Good thing he finally quit Best Buy, I see him all the time now, yipee! We also had a few pregnancies announced this Christmas, congratulations Stacia & Clint and Betsy and John! So many babies are coming in the next few months, baby Woodward is first (coming in April)! We flew back right in time for New Years, which we spent with my family. 2010 is looking like a fabulous year!

I Love This Time of Year

2009-12-23T11:09:00.000-08:00

We have had quite an eventful week, filled with culture, family, tradition, and.... movies! On Friday, Mike and I were able to finish our Christmas shopping, yay! While we were out and about we stopped at the theater and saw this:

It was pretty good, always a good story to hear at Christmas. Jim Carrey was a pretty good Scrooge. Later that night we met my family at Los Hermanos for good Mexican food then went and saw this at the Covey Center:

The cast was a little small but I still enjoyed the performance. I know the music really well and the story, but this was the first time I have seen The Nutcracker live.

Saturday we went to a family Christmas party in Sandy, we exchanged awesome white elephant gifts, caught up with relatives we haven't seen in years, and held my cousin's new baby who is so so so cute! After the party ended, Mike scored major points by taking me to see this:

I have been DYING to see this since I saw the first preview a few months ago, I have such a wonderful husband! He even got us a raspberry shake to share while we watched the movie. By the way, the movie was fantastic, very funny. Who doesn't love Hugh Grant in a romantic comedy? I even heard Mike laughing a few times...

Monday night my family introduced Mike to one of our Christmas traditions, taking the carriage ride at Thanksgiving Point through the lights. This year we met up with the Rudd's and the Danny McAllister family. It was a little cold, but so fun! We drank hot chocolate and took pictures while singing Christmas carols on the carriage ride. I love holiday traditions! Here are the highlights:

Getting ready to board the carriage

Me and the love of my life

Becca, Haley and Calvin

Haley and Calvin

After the ride was over, we headed over to the cafe and ordered hot chocolate and dessert, yum! We even got to see some reindeer!

Best. Guy. Ever.

See the reindeer in the background?

Christmas!

2009-12-12T11:51:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since we've updated out blog, we've been pretty busy this holiday season! Thanksgiving is awesome when you're married, you get to go to two houses! We spent the holiday eating delicious food, sleeping and shopping. Although it didn't feel quite like Thanksgiving because we weren't in Las Vegas, which is where my family has gone for the past few years. However, we still got to spend it with family and friends and that's what is most important, right? Hopefully this is the last holiday season Mike works retail, he had to be at Best Buy at 3:00 in the morning for black Friday and I didn't see him until 6 later that night. After Thanksgiving, we had the annual Chocolate weekend. We gather between 10 and 15 women at my mom's house where we spend all day Friday and Saturday making centers, wrapping carmels and dipping delicious chocolates! Unfortunately my body decided to make me susceptible to a head cold so I couldn't join in for all the back aches and fun-ness of Saturday's dipping and counting. Luckily I still get to enjoy the fruits of everyone's labors, I got my share of the chocolates on Sunday after I was feeling a little better.

Christmas is my favorite time of the year! I love all the colors, smells, music and togetherness this holiday brings. The day after Thanksgiving I began listening to Christmas music and haven't stopped since. I love having my own house to decorate, it's been so fun shopping for new Christmas decor. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

This year I got my craft on and made this centerpiece for our table, I think it turned out pretty cute!

We also got our first stockings:

Check out the cute Santa Mike's mom got for us, so cute!

I have been soooo excited to set up my own Christmas tree, we bought a 7 foot tree at a Michael's sale on Thanksgiving day and it sat in a box until we finally set it up last weekend. I am pretty happy about the way it turned out, it really is Christmas time! Here's the tree progression:

Ta-Da! Final product!

I can't wait for Christmas to get here! I just need to find time to finish our Christmas shopping now. And get ready for Miss Alli's wedding at the end of the month, it's almost here Allison! Merry Christmas everyone!

Halloween

2009-11-11T11:07:00.000-08:00

For Halloween this year, Mike and I dressed up as Mario and Luigi, the Super Mario Brothers! It was quite a hit! Here we are at the Annual Zarbock Family Halloween Party:

(It's hard to tell I'm smiling with the mustache)

We're off to collect gold coins and stomp on some mushrooms!

This year, Mike's family dressed up as superhero's (we know Mario and Luigi aren't super hero's, however they are SUPER!). We were such a colorful bunch!

Here are the rest of the families, everyone looked so good!

(TCU Fans, boooooo!)

Sadly, we don't have any photos of the donut eating contest, which I totally beat Mikie in :)

This is such a fun family to be a part of, I can't wait until next year, it is so fun to dress up!

Carving Pumpkins!

2009-10-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

As a Family Home Evening activity this week, Mike and I carved pumpkins for Halloween. It's been a few years since I have carved one, and even longer for Mikie who I don't believe has ever carved one! It was fun to watch him scoop out all the goop from inside the pumpkin :) We listened to music as we stabbed and gutted away...

The final product, Mikie's Batman looks so good!

I am so excited for Halloween! Mike and I have our costumes all ready to go, I can't wait to post pictures of us wearing them, they are pretty sweet.

As a side note, I have been to my first BYU football game! I've lived in Provo all my life, was raised by a father who loves football, and I have two brothers who played. It took me marrying a football player who also loves football to finally get me to go to a game. Mike has been very patient with me as he has tried to explain the game to me, while I ask a bazillion questions. I have found that football it a lot more interesting than I thought it was, and I have come to enjoy watching games both in person and on TV. My mother-in-law bought me my first BYU shirt, which I have proudly worn to the two games we have been able to attend. This is us at the BYU/CSU game.

Halloween Video

2009-10-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

I LOVE my husband! I got an email this morning with a link to this video, it made my day! I had everyone at the office around my computer laughing this morning :)

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

(The characters are Mike, Zach, Calvin, Me and my Dad)

2009-09-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen Fox's new show, "Glee", you should tune in and watch it tomorrow night. It is fantastic! Here's a clip from last week's episode:

I highly recommened tuning in on Wednesday nights to watch it :)

We're Homeowner's!

2009-09-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

We closed on our house earlier today, yay! Hopefully we'll get the keys today or tomorrow, the sooner we can quite our long commute, the better! I'll post pictures as soon as we're all moved in and settled.

Our New House!!

2009-09-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

Mike and I are currently in the process of buying a house. We've been under contract for about 3 weeks now, mostly waiting for the completion of our home. Hopefully we'll close next week! When we submitted our offer, everything was finished except for the flooring and countertops. We were able to choose everything! It has been so much fun watching as it all comes together. Here are the swatches of what we chose:

Living Room:

Kitchen:

Bathroom:

With Flooring and Countertops:

Laundry Room:

With Appliances:

Here is a video tour of our house, we are so excited to move in! We are still waiting for the blinds and mirrors to be installed, but everything else is finished. We have a fabulous clubhouse with a pool, theater room and gym! You can see in the video that our backyard faces the pool, which is pretty sweet. I'll post pictures once we move in, yay!

Just another day at the Russell house...

2009-09-14T07:26:00.000-07:00

Sunday dinners are always entertaining, especially when Dan shows up (One of Calvin's mission buddies). The rule is, everyone new has to dance, typically for one to two minutes, to a song of Calvin's choosing. Here are the highlights from a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully this won't sway you from being a guest on Sunday nights, you only have to do it once, and then you get to enjoy watching everyone else go through it!

Hopefully if all goes well...

2009-08-24T19:59:00.001-07:00

....this will be ours in a few weeks!