Sedona

Saturday we went to Sedona, AZ with our good friends Mal & Tim. It was gorgeous!! We have decided to start a tradition of going somewhere new in Arizona each month.

We had fun playing car games on the long drive there :), walking around all the cute little shops. We ate cactus fries which I actually thought were delicious, but no one else liked them. Got ice cream and headed over to see Montezuma's Castle....

I actually thought it would be a little hike, but you pretty much just drove up to it. It was really cool. Mallory and I really wanted to sneak up there and go exploring.

On the way home we went shopping at the outlet malls and to end the great day Greg got pulled over....

Luckily he is amazing at getting out of tickets and only got a warning :). We are excited for our next adventure.

Takoma's Spring Break

My brother Takoma came to visit us for his spring break this past week. Sadly I don't have very many pictures cause he is so uncooperative when it comes to getting his picture taken. We had a very active week.... laser tag. in and out. jet skiing. tennis. hiking camelback. suns game. cafe rio. easter celebration. We were excited he was able to come visit us.

Its Offical

Its getting hot again. My car is starting to get more uncomfortable and for the first time since October we have turned on our AC. The past few weeks though have been glorious. I wish it would stay like that forever. I have hated being stuck inside an office all day, any second I get I am outside. Now is the perfect time to come visit :) cause shortly it is going to be the hot where you don't want to be outside.

Dogsitting

This past weekend while our family was out of town we made sure their dogs got love and attention and had so much fun doing it. We discovered all their cute little personalities.

{Kodi} miniature australian shepherd (light brown), who we nicknamed Winnie the Pooh. He definitely required the most loving. One night after we dropped him off at home for the night he dug a whole to get out of the fence and search for people to give him some loving. Luckily the neighbor found him and returned him safely home.

{Hallie} miniature australian shepherd. She was a little scared of us at first but quickly warmed up. It took at little longer for her to warm up to Greg so whenever he was around she came and took cover near me. She was also in heat so we had the chance to practice our diaper skills with her :)

{Chloe} white maltese AKA little princess. Whenever we tried to get her to run outside she just stood by the door begging to go back inside and when we took all the dogs for a walk she put her butt down and made us drag her until she figured out she wasn't going to get her way, haha.

We had so much fun and we can't wait to have a dog of our own.They made us laugh constantly. And to top it off we were staying at my Uncles Toms house so we had cable and we were able to watch the Oscars and The Office yay!!

Arizona Homes

So as much as I love the people here in Arizona that we have become great friends with and the family we have so close..I'm not a big fan of Arizona. I would much rather live close to the mountains or the ocean. Even after experiencing the winters it hasn't won me over. One major thing I dislike are the houses. They all look the same and since I don't really like that style well you get my point. So since Greg sometimes gives me the feeling that we are going to be here for a while if not permanently I started looking for houses that would win me over and let Greg maybe keep thinking that :) and I found this adorable townhouse.....

Isn't it so cute? I love brick!!! I love this house it is so unique and much more me then this....

Autumn in AZ

So its Autumn in Arizona and it doesn't look anything like this......... :(
and it is slightly depressing. It still feels like summer and looks like summer, the only thing that is different is I'm in school. We are missing the beautiful colored leaves and the cool weather where its not freezing yet, but nice to cuddle up in a sweater and a blanket next to your hubby. Ugh just talking about it makes me smile :) It is getting a little cooler here in AZ though which is exciting. It is still pretty hot from 11:00am-4:00pm but at night it feels good. I'm also so sick of my summer clothes. I realize that I need to stock up on more short sleeve clothes because my closet is half summer/half winter and since there really isn't a winter here, well lets just say I'm getting sick of summer clothes. Tonight I'm wearing my first long sleeve t-shirt since probably April and oh do I love it. Hopefully I don't regret it when I walk outside.

Mom & Dad Weekend

Greg's parents came into town last weekend to spend some time with us. We are so grateful for Greg working at US airways, we get to see our families so much more because of it. While they were here Greg's dad, Kim helped us fix our cars since one was hiccuping and the other caught on fire. :) He is our HERO!
While the guys were fixing the cars Greg's mom, Karen taught me how to make some amazing pizza dough and use my kitchen aid for something besides just mixing cookie dough. We had tons of fun. It motivates me to want to cook more.
My auntie Kathrono :) plans what she is going to cook for the whole month and gets all the non perishables in one big swoop and then each week goes and gets veggies and stuff. I think I'm going to start in October. It is going to be a big step because as of now Greg and I eat Mac and Cheese, microwave soup, cereal, you name anything that only takes two minutes to cook and we probably eat it. So I think its time my poor husband deserved a decent dinner on a regular basic. I always make an excuse that I will do it more often when I'm a stay at home mom, but I don't think that will happen all of sudden :)
Here is our beautiful pizza we made, it was delicious and tasted tons healthier than a normal pizza.

On Saturday we wanted to go hiking so we headed to Payson to go hike fossil springs. We drove the two to three hours to get there and it was RAINING!! I love the rain, but not when you want to go hiking. So we turned back. That is the second time that has happened to Greg and I so I think we will be avoiding Payson for a little while. When we got back into town we didn't want to go home because we had been driving for over four hours and without a destination it just didn't feel good. So Greg's mom really wanted to go to this place called Nordstroms Last Chance, it is where everything goes AFTER Nordstrom Rack it has crazy good deals on designer products. So we plugged in "Last Chance" into the Garmin and headed to the store. Well we ended up here....


Haha we were getting a little skeptical when we were driving in farm land. So all that driving and we finally just ended up going home jumping in the pool and showering for the day :) We decided to google the store this time cause you obviously can't always trust the Garmin. We finally found the store and got there an hour before it closed. It was fun. I found a cute belt for only four bucks. I think the trick though to finding more stuff would be to go early in the morning, I can't wait to go again. To end the night we ate at a great Mexican restaurant across the street.
We decided that every time Greg's parents came into town we would make it a tradition.

Sadly before we knew it they had to leave. Weekends are never long enough. We love you guys!! Hope you come visit again soon.

Strawberry, AZ

To start our memorial weekend we went hiking and walked around the small city of Strawberry Arizona with the Low's.

The cute little Low family

We hiked to a natural bridge. It was a really hard hike :) ....well we thought we would be hiking for at LEAST a mile, but you basically drove to this area and than just hiked down. It was really pretty and there was what looked like a refreshing area to swim but you weren't allowed. So we were going to drive to Fossil Springs where Greg and I went on the fourth to go swimming, but it started raining.

So we decided to just walk around the small town of Strawberry. It was really cute we went to a bunch of antique shops, got ice cream and went out to eat at a little family owned restaurant.

Brady was so cute begging for ice cream and Erin was nice enough to share :)

I love that Erin is sticking out her tongue as well.

Sisterly Bonding Continued

After I got back from Georgia Greg's sister Valerie was in town for work so we got to hang out with her for a little before she headed off to North Carolina. A couple days later Greg's other sisters Cortney and Kelsey came to visit :).

We took them to go see the Mesa temple....

They took us out to eat at the amazing Cheesecake factory..... Thanks girls!!!

Then before we knew it we had to take them to the airport.... We miss ya girls!! Thanks for spending your vacation with us. We love you!

mOnSooN SEasOn

Monsoon Season has started and I think it is my favorite time of the year in Arizona. Although the only other time of year I have experienced in Arizona is the deadly heat, so that doesn't really count for much. It started on Sunday night we had a huge dust storm and lightening that lit up the whole sky. It was pretty cool. Then last night there was another lightening storm and it rained all night long (I have missed the rain). I have never heard lightening so loud before it was amazing.

Fossil Springs

Greg and I had tons of fun on our long fourth of July weekend. We had the Low's and Wither's over on friday night and we played games, ate watermelon and had fun talking. On the fourth of July we got up early and went hiking with my co-worker Shannon, her husband Brenton and some of their friends. It was gorgoeous! We hiked to Fossil Springs which is near Strawberry, Arizona. We hiked down about four miles and just in the middle of no where is the springs. You would have never guesssed you were in Arizona. It was amazing!

Greg and Brenton


We explored a little when we got to this area and climbed trees, jumped off this little cliff into a pool of water between the first and second waterfall. We swam under the waterfall and in the cave below that you can barely see.

We swam here and played on the rope swing.

We hiked a different way out and right before we got to the cars we reached this other area where the springs were coming down. It would be a great spot to come and swim if you didn't want to hike. I definetly recommend hiking to the Springs someday it was so much fun. The only thing I can recommend is drinking a bunch of water. I was really scared I would faint or get sick, but I didn't at all and I was so proud of myself. We are so excited we found fun hiking buddies, we are looking forward to planning more trips, hopefully before the summer ends we will hike the Narrows. To end our fourth of July we drove home and were able to see fireworks all across the valley. It was a great end to a great day.

So it has been a while since I have blogged so here are a few little updates.....

- we got a couch!! so we don't have to sit on the floor anymore to watch a movie, we love it.

- I got a job working for my Uncle Tommy. I'm a receptionist at his company that does other companies payrolls, benefits and stuff like that. I love it, the people I work with are so friendly and laid back. Shannon is the one training me and we have become friends instantly. We have so much in common and during work half the time we are just talking about all these things we want to do together.Having good friends at work always makes things so much more enjoyable.

- I also found out that I got accepted to ASU! I still don't know if I'm going to go there though because tuition is so much more expensive compared to BYU, but at least I have a backup.

Memorial Weekend

For memorial weekend some of our good friends, Orlando and Lindsey, from good ole Provo came to visit us for the weekend, we had tons of fun. We are so glad that they were able to spend their weekend off with us. We laid out in the sun by the pool.

Orlando and Lindsey are big San Diego Padre fans and on memorial day they were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks so we got tickets to go to the game. Greg got discount tickets through work and so we were a little worried we wouldn't have good seats, but we were really close. It was tons of fun.

The Padres won sadly for us because we are diamondback fans now that we are residents of Arizona :), but it was a really good game.
On Sunday we hung out at the house and played games, took naps, and the boys got addicted to the "tank game". Every time they died they had to start at the beginning level they were having so much fun it was cute to watch them. On their last night we cooked a nice steak dinner and......sat on the floor to eat haha. We don't have furniture yet except for our bed and so we were eating on the floor, it was a good memory.

We loved having Orlando and Lindsey stay with us for the weekend, thanks guys for taking your time off to be with us, we loved having you!!! We had a great weekend and we are sad that it went by so fast. We are so glad to have you guys as such good friends and can't wait until we vacation together in Cali.

Our Oasis in the Desert

We are now residents of Arizona. Everything happened so fast. We didn't really get to say bye to very many people which is sad, so if you were one of them we are really sorry it is not because we don't love you. I was always so excited to get out of Provo, but now that it has happened it makes me sad. We miss everyone so much, now that we are not there we realize how many family and friends we had so close by. Arizona is great though. We arrived at our apartment in Chandler on Friday the eighth and started loading up the apartment with our junk. We were so surprised with how much stuff we had, especially for only having a one bedroom apartment.....that was furnished. Once we got here we went out to eat and came back to go to bed because we were exhausted and who would have guessed our air conditioning wasn't working so we called emergency maintenance and they had us stay in a hotel. The air conditioning wasn't fixed until Monday :) so that wasn't fun. Monday Greg went to work for his first day of work and I stayed home unpacking boxes. I will hopefully find a job soon and plan on finishing up my last semester of college at ASU.So here is our new life. Our little Oasis in the Desert. We are excited to start new memories. Memories of having dinner picnics on the floor :) and having old friends come visit, getting to know my Dad's side of the family better, making new friends, getting lost, furniture shopping, and being on our own. We will keep you posted. WE MISS EVERYONE!!