New Homeowners!

During the end of May and first of June, Doug and I moved into our new house. Doug's parent's had owned it and rented out the top and bottom. Now we live in the top and Doug's cousin Kira and her husband Jeff live in the bottom. It is a lot of fun to live right above them. We are also just a block away from Doug's parents house now and we love it. We see a lot more of the family now and that is always fun. Here are a few pictures of what we have been up to...

I know Shane was SO happy to be helping us move. Your the best!

We recrutied our family to help us move and they were great. The couches were quite tricky to get outside. We had to go through our kitchen and it barely fit!

My dad, the expert lawn man, felt we needed to put insecticide down. So here is Doug, so happy to be spraying bug killer around our lawn.

We cleaned out the garage and it was quite the adventure. Growing up our garage was always a disaster...some of you know exactly what I am talking about. So Doug and I have vowed to keep a clean garage. We found 75 gallon and 2 liter bottles of water hiding up in the rafter from the people that owned the house many years ago. That was fun to dispose of. Doug definitely got the dirtiest because he was the one willing to clean all the really dusty stuff up high.

My sister Aly had the great idea to paint our kitchen cabinets before we moved all our food into them. So, we undertook the large project and now that we are done, I am so glad that we did it.

We used oil-based paint and I had no idea how much harder it was to clean off yourself and off the brushes. I hate it!

A few of our drawers will not fit back in, so we still have to work on them. But all the cabinents are working great.

Here is the finished project...

I was lucky enough to find the paint to the kitchen in our garage (thank you Brooke and Ben). So I painted two of the walls that were wood and I think it looks great.

This is the Kitchen before the painting...

Before we moved in the roof was replaced. Doug's uncle Danny is a mater constructioner and did a great job. Doug, Shane, Danny, and this other boy did all the work. I went on my days off and had a great time working with the boys. Danny put me in charge of the nail gun and it was fantastic. It was a good thing we re-roofed, because why they were working, both Doug and Shane had the roof break on them and they fell up to their waist. Too scary for me.

Working hard up on the roof.

The weekend of May 30th (my birthday!) we took a trip down to Calf Creek. Aly was in town and we have all wanted to hike down and see it, so we finally did. My dad, Alyson, her friend Pearl, my nephews Nate and Caleb, and Doug and I went. It was a great group and we all had a wonderful time.

We couldn't quite find the right place to drop down into the canyon at...so we improvised and this was the place where we dropped down. Nate, my dad and Caleb did a great job of scouting out the right place, while the rest of us rested. We had to lower our packs down with rope, then lower ourselves down with the rope. It scared me, that's for sure.

Nate had slipped off the edge of the rock where we were lowering down with the rope, so we were all thankful that he was not hurt...he gave us a little scare though. Good thing he was holding on tight to the rope.

Our pillows consisted of a stuffed whale from Sea World and a orange dolphin...expert hikers!

Aly and Pearl hiking through the creek. It was so green and beautiful along the creek.

Once we found our camp, we dropped our packs and kept hiking to the lower falls. We were above the lower falls, so we could see all the campers down below. It was 140 feet high. This is Doug peaking over the edge, I was much too scared to get that close.

There were some technical parts along the way to the lower falls...All of us made it past this water hole without falling in except Doug, Pearl, and Caleb.

This is the edge of the lower falls--scary to think about falling off the edge of this.

To entertain ourselves at night we built this throne out of the sand and took funny pictures. These were the best two for sure!

I sure do love Aly and it was so great to see her. I wish she lived in Utah for good because I loved the daily contact with her. Aly is so fun, kind, and always to willing to help anyone. She is a great example to me and I sure do love her!

Primary and Steaks...

Doug was the steak sampler at Albertsons for a week in May, so he wanted to bring some home and cook it up for me. I have never been a big meat fan, but I have to say, he did a very good job and it was delicious.

You may notice that our kitchen is very small...sometimes cooking is difficult

in such confined spaces.
Doug and I have moved, so we were released from our calling as the 7-8 year old primary teachers. We were sad to leave these kids because they were a lot of fun. We did a new calling though and we will be the 12 year-olds sunday school teachers, so it should be equally fun and exciting. I love teaching with Doug at church, he makes it a lot of fun.

All of the kids LOVED Doug. When we left, one of the Primary leaders came up to me and said she was sad to see us go because Doug was so good with the kids and it's hard to find guys like that. I love how much Doug loves children, he will be an excellent dad someday!

4.0 California Trip

I am behind on the blogging, so I was just going to skip this trip...but there were some great pictures and stories, so I couldn't. Doug got a 4.0 (his first ever) this last winter semester at UVU. Because he did so good, we took a celebration vacation to San Diego and Los Angeles area.


Part of Doug's family live in Yorba Linda, CA, so we visited them for a few days. It was very relaxing and wonderful to see everyone. His aunts, uncles, and grandparents and very welcoming and I sure do love them. Because we were in the LA area, I decided to fulfill my lifetime dream and go to the Price Is Right game show. Sadly, this picture is the best I could get because they take your cameras from you. It was so fun to see the filming, even though Doug and I didn't get called up on stage.

The San Diego temple was a wonderful experience. I was amazed at how large it was.

Doug loved the gorilla's... as you can see.

They had the most horrible reptile house that Doug made me go through. I have never seen so many snakes in my entire life and I finally had to run out because it was just too much for me.

Our favorite part of the zoo was this polar bear because he was so active. He was jumping off rocks into the water, swimming all around, and enjoying his femur bone snack!

I kept trying to lure the animals with my leafy greens. Some got really close to me because of it, but others, like this llama, didn't care at all.

A nice photo with one rhino sniffing another ones bottom...

The things they did with dolphins and seals at Sea World was amazing.

Doug, me, and Davey after going the Shamu show. Doug and Davey insisted that we sit in the "splash" zone. I didn't think we would get that wet, and I was 100% wrong. We were soaked.

This may look like an innocent animal...don't believe it. It was soak hundreds of people in seconds. My favorite part was when the trainer stood on the nose and it shot the trainer into the air. What a great job that would be.

Sea World was wonderful and very entertaining. As we were leaving a debate started about if Shamu is still alive or not. I hate to break it to all Shamu lovers, but Shamu is dead. This news was broken to us very matter-of-factly by the janitor at Sea World.

well this is my 1st blog post so no one make fun of me(including grammar and punctuation). This is a picture of Tricia at work at primary children's hospital, i figured because there is nothing more important to me than this beautiful girl, i would blog about her. Tricia is right now working the night shift(that's from 7pm to 7am) and i have to sleep alone. i love Tricia so much, and when she is not here it reminds me how much enjoy her company. we have so much fun together, i think a perfect match. i think that i am the most lucky person in the world. Tricia and i are buying a house in Provo, we move in on the 1st of June. all this week I have been working on putting a new roof on it with Danny Sommers. i think i will make another post with those pictures. my favorite time working on the roof is when Tricia was up there working too. i love every minute i can spend with her. i think that Danny will agree with me when i say that Tricia is a very good roofer. she threw all the shingles on one side of the roof herself. we are just loving our life.

Reception Fun

I can't figure out how to rearrange the pictures in order, so they are a little out of order and sequence. We had our reception at the White Willow Reception Center, it was wonderful!

My old roommate Kira caught the bouquet and she is now engaged to be married. Maybe it is true that whoever catches it will be the next to be married...

Before we cut the cake my dad told me to not stuff the cake in Doug's face...Sorry dad.

I love this picture so much. These are great friends from BYU-Idaho.
Wes, Megan, Griffith, and Catherine.

Doug's brother Shane kept putting his sparkler right in my face and I was so scared to pass him. Luckily we were able to escape.

My nephews Braden and Preston enjoying the sparklers.

They did a great job of decorating the outside and inside of our car. It was also snowing a lot when we left so after a mile of driving we had to pull over and scrape off the snow, toilet paper, and all the other decorations... sorry to the people who had to clean up that parking lot!

We loved having Doug's grandma and grandpa there. They drove all the

way from California for the wedding.

I feel so lucky to have such wonderful in-laws. They are so welcoming and loving.

This is one of my favorite pictures from the reception. All my nephews were gathered around my brother Russell checking out his beard. They love and admire his bachelor life.

All of our nieces and nephews...minus Kade because he was not very happy and didn't want his picture taken. I loved getting one picture with all the kids together.

My dear sister Aly. She came up from Arizona with all my other siblings. I loved having them here so much. Thanks!

Ben and Shawn enjoying the delicious cake!

Missy and Aubrey worked at Einsteins with Doug and I. We have known them from the beginning of our relationship and are still good friends.

I love this picture of my parents, they look pretty happy. They are probably pretty happy to finally have an empty house after 8 kids!