It's Christmas time!

It's come again, and I finally have a little time to post something about the Holidays. We have been pretty busy with school and Miss preparing for her recital. Here we are just a week until Christmas so here are some pictures from our Christmas tree hunt.

Here is Canyon enjoying himself, I think he ran up and down the mountain a hundred times. Poor guy made himself sick he had so much fun.

Here is Miss carrying our tree. I didn't want to get sap on my hands, jk I helped carry her parents tree down because it was bigger

Here we are with our tree.

We got a big tree this year thinking that our ceilings were taller than they were. We had to cut it a little shorter, but it looks good in our new home. As soon as I am able I will post a picture of the tree in our house.

Thanksgiving

As I reflect on the last year of my life, I realized how much the Lord has blessed my life. It has been a trying year, but I have received an abundance of blessings. Preston got into business school and graduates in less than a year. We were also able to purchase our first home without any financial assistance from family. We couldn't feel more happy about the neighborhood and the home. I feel safe to raise my children here. We also were blessed to rescue our dog Canyon. He has brought us so many smiles everyday. Last of all we are grateful that after trying for over a year to get pregnant that we were able to even though I had a miscarriage. I can't wait until the Lord blesses us with one of his children.

Pumpkin Season!

Fall is one of my very favorite times of year. I love pumpkin and so I have been experimenting with pumpkin recipes. I made my first pumpkin pie which was yummy, as well as muffins, and a frozen pumpkin dessert. My husband also thinks I am crazy because I love to eat it plain right out of the can. Let me know if you have any good pumpkin recipes!

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Mayor

I just had to put this picture on here! It makes me smile! Apparently I won too!

3 Years!!!

Can you believe it? Miss and I have been married for three years. Time flies when you are having fun. So this year was a little different... Miss and I didn't really get to celebrate it until last Saturday. We went to dinner at a really good sushi restaurant, and then went for some delicious ice cream. So this will be the second year in a row that we celebrated by eating sushi. If we aren't careful it will become a tradition. April took some photos of us up at the cabin.They turned out pretty good!

This is Miss's favorite. I am not really smiling though, because I had just gotten shocked by the lamp on the post. It left a big black mark on my hand.

I love this picture of our rings!

This one is my favorite....

In September the Foster family had a reunion up at the cabin. It was a lot of fun to see everyone. It seems like the Foster's get together less and less. I guess I can't complain too much, we hardly have time to do anything with our busy schedules. Well here are some of the pictures from the event.

I love my grandma!

The grandparents

the family

The whole Foster family

Canyon!!

Miss was so excited about getting a home that as soon as our offer was accepted it was off to the animal shelter to get a dog. So.. we got a puppy. He is now about 7 months old and a lot of fun to have around the house. As for puppy things, he is actually really good. We have only had a couple of accidents, and his chewing spells are fairly brief. We sure love him. I now introduce you to Canyon!

He is definitely a puppy

He loves watching and listening to Miss practice.

He loves scoping out the kitchen for scraps too.

but he does have his moments when its time to leave or go to bed.

Oh the life of a dog!

This seemed like a good pic to end the post with.

Lake Powell

Well I am finally taking a turn to blog. It's been awhile. This past Summer we finally got the chance to return to one of my favorite vacation spots. My family used to go every year when I was growing up, and It has been more than 13 years since I last went. Miss and I were looking forward to it all Summer.

We went with my family and the Smith family. We rented a boat and 2 wave runners. Instead of house-boating or camping we booked a few rooms in a hotel in Page. It was a new experience, but a lot of fun.

This is at a lookout point above Waweap just as we arrived from our drive

We only spent three days on the lake. Those three days really only felt like 1. While we all had to take turns on the boat we got to spend our time waiting on the beach goofing around. Here are a few photos of the fun we had on the beach.

We made a cool sand castle

I made some decorative sand art with just my big toe. Who knew I had such talent in my feet?

We even made a pyramid complete with a sphinx and a obelisk

We got to spend some quality time on the lake as well. We wake boarded, water skied and tubed. There was no end to the fun, well at least until I lost my glasses after getting thrown off of the wave runner. Next year I am buying a pair of chums. Well I guess on the bright side, one day in the future when people are digging for artifacts they will come across a nice pair of Ray Bans lying somewhere at the bottom of the lake.

Here we are posing in front of our rental boat. We definitely need to get one of these.

Every day I was really careful to put sunblock on every exposed part of my skin, but apparently sunblock does not stay on me. Every day I got more and more burned. I was constantly loading up on sunblock only to get more burned. Miss got burned as well. She didn't put sunblock on her legs the first day and got one bad sunburn that took weeks to go away.

Miss and Aimee suffered a similar fate. The sunburned swollen lips. That's got to hurt!

Here is the the family posing on one of the wave runners. We did have a beautiful spot.

The whole crew. A great bunch to spend time with.

No trip would be complete with out an adventure, and ours was in need of one. On the very last day as we were leaving the lake we got the chance to experience one of Mother Natures finest acts. A raging dust storm. Right as we were heading to the marina and boat ramp we saw a huge wall of dust heading our way. The wind was blowing and the waves were huge. I was driving one of the wave runners with Miss and Jake behind me. We fought the waves and the lack of visibility to get to some safety at the marina. As we got there we jumped off and ran for some cover. To make a long story short here are some of the highlights of the adventure in bullets

• Miss, Jake and I tip over after swearing to ourselves that it would never happen again (we tipped over every day that we were there. We made for a bad combo on the wave runner)
• Getting pelted with sand
• Racing to go check on the wave runners that are now separated from the boat.
• Helped Italian family off their boat
• Watching one of the ladies on the boat getting the top part of finger chopped off, when trying to help
• Jamon and Tessa (the medics of the family) helping her to safety
• Securing the wave runners from further damage

I am glad everyone from our family was safe. it was a pretty crazy storm that lasted a couple of hours.

Here is a picture of the storm about to overtake us. It was an amazing sight.

Miss and I at the hotel. Sunburned and ready for a drive home.

Before I close out this post I want to mention one of the coolest parts of the whole trip. Miss has tried for years to get up on water skies or wake board and could never quite get up. A little every day Miss would get in the water and try and try to get up. I knew she was getting a little discouraged, but she was always just so close every time. Well I am proud to announce that on the last day on the last couple of tries Miss got up and stayed up for a couple of minutes. She probably could have stayed up longer if her arms weren't so sore from all of the tries. I wish I had a picture of her up. It was so awesome to see her hard work pay off. I am super proud of her. Next year it will be so easy for her. I cant wait.

Well this was a long post. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed being there. I cant wait to go again.

Good bye Lake Powell!

Miscarriage

Preston and I have been trying to get pregnant for over a year now. We want a little baby so bad. We have been very nervous that we would not be able to get pregnant because my mom as well as his mom had a very hard time getting pregnant. I found out two weeks ago that we were pregnant, but that I was miscarrying the baby. (they think I was about 5-6 weeks) I found out the day that I left out of town for a work retreat and it was so hard, not to be able to talk to anyone about what was going on (at that point my doctor didn't know if I was miscarrying until they did the blood work) My HcG counts are still above what they should be after a miscarriage, and so I have had to have my blood drawn four times now. (which my insurance doesn't cover...) Because the miscarriage happened the night before we moved, I have been an emotional mess, as well as physically tired from the stress of moving/getting the dog as well as the miscarriage. I guess the silver lining in all of this, is that we were able to get pregnant.

Car Accident...

I can't believe I haven't written about this yet. It's probably because it makes me very, very angry. So on July 7th, waiting to turn left out of a gas station parking lot, a gentleman backed into my car. Well I called his insurance that day, and the adjustor called me the next day. However, the gentleman that hit me went out of the country for a month. Fantastic. And because he did not report the accident because no damage was done to his vehicle, they are refusing to fix my car until they speak with him. Which apparently he still is unavailable to speak with?? And so I drive around with this awesome dent... My car has been hit THREE TIMES in less than two years none of which have been my fault. (remember the hit and run? or the golf ball incident?) The total amount that the insurance companies have spent fixing my vehicle since I have owned it, is more than I paid for the car.

Dog Lake

When Angie called us to see if we wanted to go on a hike to Dog Lake, I assumed that there must be more than one hike called Dog Lake. However, it turned out to be the same hike that we had already gone on earlier this year, except we approached it from Millcreek rather than Big Cottonwood Canyon. It was a beautiful day, and it was fun to be able to take Keisha, since dogs aren't allowed in Big Cottonwood Canyon. It was a shorter hike (5.8 miles roundtrip), and was a great way to start the morning.

I love this picture of Keisha running along the lake. She is starting to like water, but won't get deep enough where she has to swim. We tried throwing cookies further and further in the lake, but she just waited for the waves to bring them closer to where she wouldn't have to swim to grab them...

It was so much fun to have my dad come with us!

Ang, and I! We were like sisters growing up. We used to go on hikes all the time when we were little. Somehow she would always fall in Cecret Lake when we went :-)

My uncle and my cousins. Keisha actually is facing the camera! Dogs are so hard to pose for pictures, and she just happened to be in the way when we took the picture.

Home Owners

Last week after waiting three months for our offer to be accepted on a short sale, we found our perfect house! We love it! We realized that things always happen for a reason, and that it was a blessing that the short sale didn't work out. We saw it on Wednesday, made the offer on Friday, dropped off a check on Saturday and today found out it's ours. Less then two weeks until we close and it's official. I can't wait!

Family

I can't believe how my extended family has grown in the last few years with great-grandkids, weddings and boyfriends. This is just some of the extended family that was at my aunt and uncle's surprise 25th wedding anniversary party.

Melo

We would like to welcome our replacement for Sunny to the family. Melo (pronounced me low) According to Preston it is a combination of mellow and yellow, although I still haven't quite figured out how that works... I decided to post this picture to show that he is quite the climber. He will climb almost anything. He doesn't stop on your shoulder like most birds, he will climb all the way to the top of your head. It is pretty amusing. So far they seem to be getting along pretty well.

In Loving Memory of Penny 1996-2009

Yesterday we had to put our dear sweet Penny down. She is the first dog that I remember picking out, and remember her life from that first day until the last. As many of you know Penny in the last year suffered from osteosarcoma (bone cancer) and that was why we had to amputate her leg in March. However, after the biopsy, there was a 90% chance that it had spread. At the beginning of June, she lost the ability to use her other back leg, and it caused her to have to drag her back end around, and involved carrying her outside to go to the bathroom. Because she dragged herself around, she developed rug burn, where the fur had rubbed off. It was so sad where she would drag herself all the way down the stairs when my dad was taking the other dog for a walk. Then within the last week she was not even able to chew a tiny cookie, and so yesterday we took her into the vet to look at her tooth. (my dad had started making her scrambled eggs for breakfast) After the vet examined her mandible or jaw, he realized that it was in fact the cancer that had spread to her face, and was causing her to not be able to chew. At this point it was agreed to not let Penny suffer anymore. She was a wonderful dog, and will always be my Petsmart puppy.

One of my favorite things was waking up with Penny snuggling next to me on the bed.

She loved to listen to me practice and teach. I will miss her!

Red Butte

My best friend Steph and I have started a lunch tradition this summer. Some of my favorite lunches have been going on picnics. We went to Red Butte a few weeks ago. It is so beautiful up there. I love our lunch tradition. It is so fun to see Steph and Sophia. I love her little sunglasses. She is growing up so fast!

Federation

This year was my first year participating in the popular music festival Federation. I only entered two of my students that were transfer students because I just wanted to get get my feet wet the first year and see how I liked it. I was a little nervous when preparing my students for the festival since they had received superior ratings the previous two years (the highest rating). If they received a superior rating for a third year, they would receive a gold cup. Needless to say, I felt a little pressure when choosing their pieces and helping them learn them. I also had them skip four levels since I felt that they had surpassed the material from those levels. However, they are both wonderful students and are very artistic and musical. They not only impressed me, but the judges as well. Good job girls!

4th of July

My favorite holiday of the year is the fourth of July. There is just something about the magic of summer nights, bbqs and fireworks. We also have been lucky enough to be able to go up to the Foster cabin and the Oakley Rodeo as part of our fourth of July tradition.

I love that they hung the parking sign for the rodeo on the tractor.