Clothesline

David built me a clothesline. He used fencing stuff for the poles and then drilled some holes and used eye bolts to attach the string to. Then we cemented them in the back yard. It was all much easier than we thought it would be and I'm so excited for my clothesline.

We went on a walk yesterday and picked some wildflowers on the way home. They're pretty.

Isn't he so cute putting the string on. He even used fancy boy scout knots.


Ray Ray lounging.

Ta Da! I love the look of that. Can you tell we like green and orange? Yay for being all domestic. Loving it.

Michigan!

We went to Michigan for the Labor Day weekend. It was going to be a surprise for the whole family but in the end it only ended up being a surprise for my dad and my brother John. But they were both completely surprised and didn't suspect a thing. My dad actually called us on his way home from work and could hear we were driving and asked us where we were. Lied a little but but it was totally worth it when we walked in the front door an hour after him and he was so surprised. He just stared at us for a minute with this look on his face that he recognized us but couldn't figure out who we were. It was awesome!

In addition to seeing family we also got to visit with a few friends from home. We got to see Kourtni and Josh's new baby girl and bring them dinner. They were so great to have us over even though they had only been home from the hospital a couple days and had a sick toddler. We also visited the Aamodts and Carolyn Carey. Some of my friends parents. Love them. Had a fun time chatting with them.

We also went to see Eat Pray Love. I read the book a few months ago and really enjoyed it and i really enjoyed the movie as well. I felt like they did a good job giving enough time to the story and each of the locations. It was done very well. I enjoyed it. A lot of people really don't like this book and the reasons I've heard are that they think she just abandoned her family etc. Which is true to a point, she left her husband (they didn't have kids), but, and maybe this is bad, she wasn't happy and she was honest enough with herself and her husband to make that change even though it was hard. That's my opinion of the book anyway and i enjoyed her journey of self discovery and balance. I now owe David a good guy movie!

I was hoping that weather for the trip would be nice for a beach trip. It wasn't, it rained everyday we were there and it was pretty cold but we went to the beach anyway. The whole family came on Friday and we went to see the huge wave and the pier in Grand Haven then headed up to Muskegon for our windy picnic. The waves were very huge, people were surfing, and it was fun to watch the wave crash on the pier. Our picnic was good, we had hamburgers and hot dogs and s'mores and we all huddled around the BBQ for warmth.

This is how windy it was. David almost got blown away!

We did a little nature hike that overlooked the lake. John came with us and was a goof like he always is.


On sunday it was a little nicer during the day so we thought we'd catch the sunset after dinner with my Aunt and her family. No such luck. Another storm was blowing in so we didn't see the sun at all but I still got a couple of good pictures.

The first thing i did in michigan after sleeping was go buy apples at the apple orchard with my dad. We always used to do this when i was little so it was fun to do it again. Good michigan apple from the orchard are one of the thing i miss the most about living in michigan so we bought a half bushel, baked some pies and brought the rest home with us to utah. I will be making delicous pie tomorrow. Yum!

Monday was the day we flew home but our flight wasn't until 7 pm. In stead of hang out in Michigan for a few hours we decided to head to chicago that morning and enjoy the day there. I really like chicago. I think that if we ever moved that city would be on my list of places to look.

We went to Michigan Avenue and there was a free event going on in Millenium Park so we hung out there for a litte while, got some free ice cream and listened to the orchestra for a bit. Then we went across the street to the Art Institute and enjoyed that for a few hours. I went there a few times in high school and i always enjoyed it. We enjoyed it just as much this time. Art is pretty awesome and it's cool that people preserve it and protect it. I'm a fan.

It was a great weekend. But now we're happy to be home again too. Back to real life for a couple months :)

I should blog more...

I used to be a decent blogger and then i got a job where i actually have work to do and where there is pretty much no Internet. When i get home the last thing in the world i want to do is sit at a computer since that's what i do all day. I probably won't get better at the blogging thing until i have more time at home but who knows when that will be.

We're looking forward to the labor day weekend. I love long weekends they are a great time to spend with friends.

In other news we have been doing a ton of canning. We found a farmer's market stand to buy tons of tomatoes and then we tried making spaghetti sauce and we think it turned out pretty good. It was kind of a long process because you have to reduce your puree tomatoes and that takes a few hours of boiling on the stove. While we were waiting for the tomatoes to reduce i told David I'm not sure if i would make my own sauce again unless we really liked it better than store bought sauce. We'll be making our own sauce every year from now on. The sauce tastes so fresh. It was delightful!

We also made salsa. We love our salsa and we ran out of our homemade salsa in the middle of spring so we have been using store bought salsa and waiting for it to be tomato season so we could stock up a lot again. Well we sure stocked up! We bought a bushel of tomatoes and made three batches of salsa. We now have 30 quart jars in our pantry. Plenty to last us a year.

Even though canning is sometimes stressful and time consuming i feel so accomplished after I'm done that it's totally worth it! Also, you can't beat your own recipe just to your liking of your favorite treats! We have plenty of jars thanks to Carolyn and Susie so we will be trying to can even more as we move into fall. The other great thing about canning is that it makes my pantry look so lovely.

In other news we had our stake conference a couple weeks ago. Our stake president challenged the stake to do a Media Fast. He said you talk with your family and decide how long and exactly what that means for you but do it. So we decided to start that afternoon and go for a week. We had another stake meeting the next week so we figured it would be a good way to prepare. After we decided to do the Media Fast we kind of wondered what on earth we would do with our evenings since we usually watch at least one show a night. (Usually more.) I realized how dependent we are on TV for a no brain thing to do. Of course it's nice after a day of work to come home and not have to do or think anything but there's a point where it's too much. So to fill our time we canned, went climbing a couple times, went shopping for some cloths i needed and i learned to knit a hat. Also to go along with the Fast our stake president wanted us to have a Spiritual Feast. So we went to the temple. I read the Book of Mormon on my lunch break instead of whatever news stories look interesting like i usually do.

Honestly, I didn't really notice that much of a difference during the fast. We just found other ways to occupy our evenings. But now that I've had a few days to reflect and now that we're back on the media i see the difference. I feel like i got so much accomplished last week. I never felt like i wouldn't have time to get things i needed/wanted to do done. I think that was the biggest blessing for me because i am constantly worrying about things i need to do and things i want to do and that i never have time to do them all. I realized that when i cut the distractions out i am not as stressed and i get more done and there's not the guilt of having wasted an evening. Ironically, Sunday night after we finished our Media Fast I got so stressed about all the things i had to do this week.

I learned that i don't have to watch TV to the extent that i have been and it's better for me mentally. So I'm going to try to keep the media to a minimum. I'll still watch a few shows this fall but I'm not going to have a show every night. I'm going to try and use my time more wisely and in turn get so much more accomplished. It was just what i needed. I would totally recommend doing a Media Fast and seeing the difference it makes for you.

The past couple weeks.

The past couple of weeks our garden has really started to produce. The tomatoes are from our garden and the zucchini is from my parents garden. My family minus Joel came to visit a couple weeks ago. They also worked very hard and got my Grandma moved back to Michigan with them. It was a big deal!

The sky just looked really cool in Provo one of the nights we were down helping clean and pack.

John. Need i say more?

This is my grandma, on the left, and her cousin Nancy. The grew up together and are good friends. Nancy and her Husband Collin came down the night before Grandma left to say goodbye. It's probably the last time they'll see each other and it was kind of bittersweet.

After my parents left then a couple days later Bridget came to visit and Susie came up to stay another couple of nights with us. We had a lot of fun with all of the family in town. We wish my family would have had a little more time to relax with us but that will have to wait until the next time they come.

Yesterday was Carolyn and Erik's 5th wedding Anniversary, Congratulations! Alice came and spent the night with us so that they could have a nice date. We had lots of fun with Alice. We made pizza for dinner. Watched The Little Mermaid and Sleeping Beauty. (The little mermaid is very long for a Disney movie! haha) True to typical Aunt form we spoiled her. We had cookies with our eggs for breakfast. And we went climbing for a fun activity. We've been wanting to take Alice climbing for a long time now. She did very well at it and i think she had fun! We will definitely have to take her again.

She did very good climbing. She would go up as far as i could still hold her if she needed. I was very impressed that she got the concept of moving her hands and feet up with the holds. And she did good walking down the wall. She's definitely meant to be a climber!

We had a lot of fun climbing! David and I haven't been in over a year and we definitely felt it! But on a happy note my hip didn't bother me at all so i think we can get back into climbing again for real! Too bad it took 2 years for my hip to completely recover but I'm glad it did!

After climbing we got some frozen custard at Neilson's. It was pretty good. It reminded us of our trip to St. Louis a few months ago. After that Alice was beat! She got a lovely nap on the drive home and she actually napped a little longer on our bed after we got home. I'm pretty proud that she fell back asleep. I don't think I've ever had a successful car to bed transfer with her before! Yay!

Watermelon love

Ray Ray loves watermelon.

Pioneer Day

We decided to go the the Pioneer Day Parade in down town Salt Lake. We went with a couple girls from our ward. Kimmi on the right is in the Sunday school class we teach and her sister Hailey is pretty cool too! Kimmi's twin brother Jordan was marching in the parade so we cheered him on.

So if you want to get a halfway decent seat for the parade you have to get there early. We got there at 7:30 and watched people while we waited for the parade to start at 9. Sweet bonnet. (If you want to get really good seats then you camp out overnight. Yes people really do that.)

And then the parade finally began!!! Kimmi told us that this parade is the 3rd largest in the country, after the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and the Rose Bowl parade.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf. He's in the 1st presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He's pretty cool. And he was pointing right at us!!! Yeah we're pretty cool too. :)

Temples dot the earth float. All of the floats had Mormon history themes. David and I decided that if you don't know anything about Mormon history than this parade would be pretty boring to you.

There were some pretty cool characters at the parade.

And there's Jordan! His band was number 97 out of 103. It was worth the wait. It was a good parade and i think we'll make it a tradition. We are Utahan's now. :)

Appointment Annoyance

Yesterday i had an appointment to get some blood drawn for some blood work. I chose the earliest appointment available so that i wouldn't miss much work. I figured I'd be in and out no problem. I got there 5 minutes early signed in and planned to wait for 10 minutes head in get the blood drawn and get to work. 20 minutes later another lady goes up to the receptionist to complain that she's been waiting a long time. The receptionist's response, well one of the doctors had an emergency and had to go out of town. So i went up after her and said i had been waiting for 20 minutes and i didn't need to see a doctor, just get some blood drawn. She checked with the medical assistants and i guess they were waiting to get my blood work approved. Which i believe should have been approved 2 weeks ago when i made the appointment with my doctor at my side explaining what needed to be done. Yeah.

OK doctors, i understand have emergencies. But the least the office could have done is call the patients and inform them that one of the doctor's had an emergency and the wait will be longer than normal. They could have given the option of rescheduling or coming a bit late. But no they didn't even tell people the situation when they checked in for their appointment. I know it's not the receptionist's fault but some common courtesy would have been appreciated.

So after waiting 30 minutes in the waiting room i got called back and the medical assistant took 2 minutes to draw my blood and i was on my way. Needless to say i am liking this office less and less the more i go. We'll see if the track record improves or if I'll be doctor hunting in a few months again.