In Love

i LOVE this swimsuit. They have it in a coral color as well which I would consider getting. The only problem is this swimsuit is crazy expensive and I can't get myself to pay that much. Even though I do have birthday money left over there are so many other things I could get. I have three options:
1. Buy it and maybe regret it later. .
2. Don't buy it and be sad and always think about it.
3. fall in love with a cheaper one.
So I need your help. If anyone has any suggestions as to where I can find a one piece similar or just as cute please let me know.

Oreo Truffle Experiment

For FHE on Monday night we decided to experiment with a recipe I found on Better Homes and Gardens, which is one of my favorite websites. I get daily emails from them with awesome recipes, cute decorating ideas and one day garden ideas that will be useful. If you are interested in making the truffles here is a link to the site: Oreo Truffles Recipe

So this was the goal.... they were fairly easy to make but mine didn't turn out quite as pretty as theirs.



If you are interested in making these I would suggest a couple things that I think I will do next time to get a better turn out. If you have a blender use it to blend up the Oreos before you add the cream cheese. Also I would recommend covering the whole Oreo ball with chocolate. I think that way they would look prettier. We had a lot of fun, its a fast and easy recipe, and they taste delicious.

Birthday Celebrations!

This past weekend we wanted to get out of town, to do something for my birthday. We were thinking about going to DC, or San Fran but in the end we decided to go to Salt Lake and visit my Dad and the family. Nothing beats spending time with family. It was a great trip. My brother Takoma who I haven't seen since we got married also came down from Wyoming to hang out with us. I was so excited to see him and wanted to take pictures but there is something wrong with teenagers they don't like having their picture taken. My sister Lauren is the same way I just don't get it. My dad and I tried so hard to sneak in a picture but we always just got this.......

After a million attempts to get a picture I was giving up. Then out of now where, I think he felt bad after a while, he decided to let me have one....what a nice brother :)

On Saturday we met up with Tom, Marie, Megan and Bailey and went up to Park City to go on the Alpine slide and their new coaster ride. The alpine slide has kind of been a tradition for my

birthday and like always it was SO much fun.

Later on we went out to our favorite Gelato Cafe...why is it our favorite one? B ecause they have great gelato and an amazing table that we love playing "I Spy" on....

My goal one day is to make one of our own.

They put a new piece in every week and if you can guess which piece it is you get a free gelato. My sister guessed the new item. That just tells you how often we go there. :) My little sis Mari starting pouting when we got there because someone else was at the table so we hung out until it was vacant.

After gelato we played games until about one in the morning. There was an annoying fly buzzing around and I guess...I just found out that my dad is a pro fly killer. He swatted the fly and it hit Greg on the forehead and died. :)

On Sunday we went to church, came back for linner and took a bunch of pictures before me and Greg had to head to the airport.

Being goofy.

On Monday night Greg and I went out with the Lows and Withers. We went out to eat and bowling. It was a blast.Some how I was an amazing bowler that night I must have just had a special birthday touch.

The girls and guys competed against each other and sadly the boys won so as a result the girls have to perform a belly dance or something...which I technically never agreed to because I was in the bathroom. :) ..Maybe the guys will forget. Cross your fingers. We love our friends!! Thanks guys for the great night and making me feel special!!!

On the 28th Greg planned a special day with just the two of us... it was tons of fun.

Thanks everyone for all the birthday wishes!!

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.

Happy Birthday Mari!

Today is my baby sisters birthday! She is six and growing up so fast, I can't believe it.

Happy Birthday sweetie pie!!

We are so lucky to have you as our sister.

We love you and Miss you SO much!

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.

Road Trip Across the Country

As soon as Greg and I were able to fly I took advantage and flew down to Georgia to see My sister, Lauren, My Mom, and Greg .We had tons of fun!!!We....

• Celebrated Laurens 15th Birthday
• Went through our storage unit and looked at old yearbooks.letters, pictures, Grandmas jewelry....
• Ate at an amazing Mexican Restaurant
• Drove to Florida
• Went to the Beach
• Shopped at the Outlet Mall
• Ate treaties....can't leave that out

I also went down there to pick up a new car. My "Costa Rica" Dad offered to give me his 1999 BMW if I promised to graduate in December so when I went down to Georgia I also picked up the car in Florida. I stayed with My mom for a week and on Friday morning me and Lauren started driving to Arizona. We made it all the way to Houston the first day, which is where Greg flew in after work to meet up with us and help drive. On Saturday we drove to El Paso and on Sunday we made it home. Sadly Greg got his first speeding ticket (turns out BMW's have a more sensitive gas pedal compared to our Ford Focus, lol). I won't tell you how fast he was going, but it was fast. Luckily we have jobs. Once we got to Arizona Lauren stayed with us for a week. We...

• Made Grandma Salsa and Tacos.....so good.
• Went miniature golfing
• Played the Wii
• Watched movies, Lauren and I were craving to watch You've Got Mail so we searched for it and watched it.....ugh and we went to one of the stupidest movies EVER. I'm not going to tell you just in case one of you saw it and loved it and also to save me from embarrassment. We were a little bored and going to a movie in the hot weather was the only thing we could think of.
• Laid out at the pool and ate otter pops

After my lil sis went home Greg and I flew to Salt Lake and had a very eventful weekend. We had a wedding to go to, a funeral, a birthday to celebrate, and a mission farewell. I flew in a little earlier than Greg to make it to my good friend Lisa's wedding reception, sadly I wasn't able to make it to her wedding and luncheon, but I'm so glad I was able to make it down for the reception. Lisa was one of my old College roomies, we lived together for two years. She looked Gorgeous!!! I'm so happy for her. They left on their honeymoon the next day to California. Congratulations, We love you both!!

At the wedding I was also able to see my other roommates who I have lived with ever since I came to College, Amy and Jolee. We had so much fun catching up and hopefully we will plan a trip to hang out together soon. Love you guys and miss you!!

On Saturday we went to the funeral which was really touching. I loved hearing about the message of hope and how we don't have to worry or be sad because we are going to be able to see our loved ones again someday. I'm so grateful for that knowledge and I think that the faith that comes from the knowledge makes the trials of life bearable. We also were able to celebrate my Step Mom's birthday. We went and saw The Night At the Museum 2, got gelato, ate dinner at Marie Calendars, and once we got home we had a pumpkin dessert :). It tons of fun!On Sunday we went to Greg's Cousin Ben's farewell. Ben is going on a mission to Mozam Bique where Elder Nelson was attacked recently and also a certain number of citizens are eaten each month by lions ( he mentioned this in his talk). GOOD LUCK BEN!!!

We Loved seeing our family and friends!! We miss all of you and love you tons!!

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.

One Year

On May 10 was our one year anniversary, time really does goes by fast, but at the same time I feel like we have been together forever. Once Greg gets his flying benefits we hope to plan a little weekend getaway. Life has been great being married we have grown alot together. It is such a great feeling to always have him by my side. I am excited for eternity. LOVE YOU baby!!

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!!

Visit from my Mom

I have been horrible at posting and today I finally caught up. I forgot to post about when my mom came to visit though. She came the week before classes were over. Which was perfect because I was done with all my projects and didn't really need to start studying for tests yet. She came for a week just her and it was tons of fun. We didn't do much, but it was tons of fun to just have her visit. We watched movies and ate treaties like all family visits :) we couldn't leave that out. She also came to one of my presentations for my Phonology class it was fun to have her. On Friday Katherine, my mom and I and the kids went shopping up in Park City iall, who doesn't love shopping, it was tons of fun. Before we knew it she was already getting ready to leave it was fun, but went by way to fast. Hopefully now that Greg has a job with US airways we will be able to afford to visit family more often now.

Graduation and Moving

So Greg is officially done with school YIPPEE!! All of you who don't know he received his Bachelors degree in Business Finance. He was pretty depressed about graduating because he hadn't received a job yet, but the afternoon after he was done with all his finals he received the best call ever. US airways called him and offered him a job as a senior financial analyst. Oh my gosh it was the best feeling ever. I totally thought he was kidding when he told me. We were really hopeful that he would get this job but didn't really think it would happen. Fifteen people were up for the job and he got it.
Wow does Heavenly Father really answers prayers. I don't know how many times we have prayed to receive a job and our prayers were answered at the most perfect time. This has been one of the biggest testimony builders for me. If you truly believe Heavenly Father is watching out for you and constantly keep faith and trust him you will be so blessed. I think this is the best job Greg could have received and I remember getting so upset thinking why is he not getting hired, but come to find out the best job for Greg was going to come when it needed to.
I'm truly grateful for such a hard working husband. I could see myself getting so discouraged and giving up, but he kept going, working so hard to not only find his dream job, but provide for his family. He got discouraged a lot of times but never lost faith. So the job is in Phoenix, Arizona. We are going tomorrow to find a apartment and will be there until Wednesday. Once we sign all the papers hopefully we will know when Greg is going to have to go down there and we will start moving. I'm really excited for a change and moving forward in life, but I'm really sad we won't be close to as much family anymore and sad we have to leave all the friends we have made here. We love you guys and will miss you more than anything!!!

Eliza baby

Over this past weekend Katherine and Jason went out of town so we had a lovely weekend babysitting my one year old cousin Eliza. She is the cutest thing ever. We had so much fun with her. She is one of the best babies. We only had one unpleasant experience, there was a little explosion in the diaper and the Pj's but that was about it.
Since Greg was graduating this past week while we had her, we took her along, she was so good. Everyone was saying "oh your baby is so cute! What's her name? How old is she? It was fun pretending to have a baby for a weekend :). My Dad, Ana and my little sisters came to the Thursday commencement and the whole time my sisters were constantly wanting to hold her and feed her, they are going to be the best Aunties. On Friday we went out to eat with Greg's family and everyone was so entertained by her. I think they are ready to be aunties, uncles, grandparents. Greg kept saying we really need to have a baby. So... we will keep you posted.

Her cute little scrunchy face she makes.

Laughs for Life

Greg has been able to be a part of a organization called laughs for life their purpose is to raise money for a charity called Tiny Tim and Friends that helps HIV + orphans in Zambia, Africa. To raise money they made a joke book and so far it has raised over 8,000. All that money goes straight to help the kids and pregnant women that are HIV+. With the money they are able to provide medicine, shelter, education and food for the kids and pregnant mothers. The medicine enables them to manage the virus so that it does not shorten their life span. Pregnant women as a result of taking the medicine do not pass the virus onto their unborn.

On April 14th to try and raise money and encourage people to buy the book they organized a night with Divine Comedy and Laugh out Loud, two BYU comedy groups. It was a ton of fun and was a for a great cause.