The Wild Side

You better believe it...we are owners of a snuggie. Doug got it for me, mainly as a joke because I am always cold. But now he enjoys more than anyone. If you have that yearning for the snuggie, feel free to stop on by and try it out!

We have loved the snow this past week. Doug was kind enough to do the snow shoveling...along with his little wolf hat. I hate this hat, but he loves it and claims it keeps his head very warm.

Our Christmas lights were the first ones up on our street because we were a little too excited for Christmas to come this year. Doug did a great job putting them up.

We have been dehydrating apples lately and Doug is so great to help with the work. Doug, Shane and Davey LOVE the apples, but they don't know when to stop eating them. I think they learned their lesson last time they ate too much...apples make the bowels move a little quicker if you know what I mean.

New Addition to the Family

Yesterday I received an early Christmas present from Doug, a bichon frise puppy! He is 3 months old and we LOVE him. His name is Bow... a simplified way of spelling beau.

His favorite treat is cheerios and his favorite spot is underneath our coffee table...hiding from us.

He is still a little shy around us, but he is definitely warming up. He loves to jump through the snow, but he blends in a little too well. A good thing about Bow is that he has gotten Doug and I excited enough to actually blog about something!

Some Halloween Fun

Ali and Vance introduced us to this and it's so funny, check it out here:

http://www.monstermashup.com/0a9ea0

The stars of the show are Doug, Tricia, and a little dog named Vance

One Quick AZ Trip

We had a Hall family reunion (my mom's side of the family) in Arizona last weekend. 13 of us went down to AZ from UT and it was quite the drive. The weather was hot...and when we got back to UT it was freezing. I actually thought for a brief moment that living in AZ could possibly be a possibility.

We went to an AZ Diamondbacks game and they played the Padres. It was a great game and a lot of fun with Aly and all the nieces and nephews. I have such a wonderful sister Aly and it was great to see her for a couple of days.

We only wish our seats were this close to the field. After the game was over and we were able to make it down from our top row seats and get a good look at the field. My brother Steven was so kind to treat us all to the game, what a great brother!

I think I have a wonderful and very handsome husband...

My cousin Andy roasted a real pig for the reunion food...this picture looks horrible, but the meat was really good. My sister Kristene just loves picking at things, and this pig was no exception. Doug just loved getting pictures of her picking away at the animal. I was to grossed out.

I was able to take a quick picture by the head (I am still wondering why they had to bring this part) It was really gross. That cute baby I am holding is my niece Joelle who is now 2 months old. She was blessed on the Sunday that we were all down there and it was great to be there for that.

My wonderful Grandpa Hall came to the reunion and I loved being able to see him. He definitely doesn't know who Doug is because Doug came into the picture after my Grandpa lost his short term memory. I think it's really funny to get questioned by my grandpa about this strange man who I am with.

Fall is here....

I am trying to embrace fall this year, instead of dread the cold weather and the loss of summer. Here are some things that we have been up to lately:
To kick off October Doug and I decided to carve pumpkins.

If you can guess what Doug's pumpkin is, there is a prize for you (Davey and Shane are excluded because they know). By the time I was done cleaning out my pumpkin I had no desire to carve it. So I decided to take the easy way out and try poking holes all over it. I think it will look good in the dark all lit up.


Now our crazy cat is not so lonely on the porch...This wonderful and odd cat was placed on our porch by Ali and Vance as a joke. Doug and I just can't find it in us to get rid of it.

Sarah is home! She is finally back from her mission to Oregon and I am so pleased to have her back in Provo. It is great to see her, talk to her, and have a friend to play with!

My sister Lana gave us a 5 gallon bucket full of peaches and this is the result. It was my first time trying to can anything alone..and it worked out great. Doug and I tried them and they are delicious.

I am pretty sure that I have a wonderful and helpful husband. He was more than willing to help me can peaches and it went twice as fast.

One Brave Husband

Doug was very brave and let me cut/buzz his hair about a month ago (yes, it does take me this long to post about it). We had to get creative with a garbage bag to keep the hair off him...but it didn't really do the trick, he was still covered in hair.

I of course had to have a little fun, since I knew all the hair would be coming off anyway. I think Doug looks quite funny and he was such a good sport!

And here is his new hair cut! The best part was once we had his whole head buzzed he could show me all his scars that I have never seen. Brooke denies it, but Doug blames all the scars on her, and he does have some quite convincing stories to go along with them!

The fun of Rock Band!!!

Shane introduced us to guitar hero and we loved it! Doug and I decided to buy rock band so that we could rock out at our house and not disturb his parents late at night while playing shane's. Well Doug has gotten quite good at the drums and I am not really excelling at any of it, but I sure do enjoy playing it. Everyone feel free to come and play any time! We love the company...

As you can see, I am not quite as "into" it as Doug is...

Park City Getaway

A month ago I realized that my dear husband needed a break from life. He has been quite busy with school and work...non-stop. I brainstormed a lot of different ideas and realized that a little weekend getaway would be perfect, during his short week break between summer and fall semester. I didn't tell Doug I was planning anything, which made it really fun. My dear Aunt Barbara and Uncle Clark were quite generous and let us stay in their condo in Park City for three nights.

The day that we left I thought Doug would figure I was up to something. I had packed all his stuff the night before while he was at work, so a lot of his things were missing that morning. He was talking to me at work and he said, "I can't find my shoes, do you know where they are?" and "I have no idea where I put my razor..." I thought it was so funny and I tried to act as dumb as possible as to where all his stuff had gone.

I had to kidnap Doug Tuesday night, with the car completely packed and we were off. He was very suprised and had no idea what I was up to or where we going. As we started up provo canyon he suspected we were going to Colorado...but he soon realized our final destination.

We had a such a fun and relaxing time. We slept in every morning, went shopping at the outlet mall, toured the olympic park and saw the amazing ski jumpers. We went and saw the movie "500 days of summer" which we both enjoyed. We also went and did a session at the SLC temple, which was really great because Doug and I have never been inside the SLC temple before. It is beautiful.

Shane and Becca joined us on our last night, which was wonderful. We went out to eat, strolled down main street, and went swimming. In the morning we rode down the alpine slides. If you have never done that, you should! You get a beautiful ride up the mountain on the ski lift and a very fun and fast ride down. Sadly, I forgot my camera, so there isn't one picture. I will work on that next time!

Fun Times with the DS-i

Doug loves playing with his new Nintendo DS-i and here some of the funny pictures you can take with it. We haven't been doing much more than school and work lately, so there hasn't been much to post on...so this is making me feel a little better about keeping current on the blog.

Doug and I have now been married for over 7 months...it doesn't seem that long at all. But don't they say that you start to look like your spouse? I guess this picture is living truth.

Austin loves taking pictures on the DS-i...even when it makes her a pig.

Doug has been in school at UVU since we were married. This summer has been especially crazy for him. He took an anatomy class during a block, so it was extremely condensed. I have been amazed at the amount of time and effort he has had to put towards that class. I am so impressed with how much he can do each day and still be happy when he comes home. And it seems as though his brain is actually growing in size! What a great man I was able to marry!

He is so happy that in only one more week this summer semester will be over and he will have a 10 day break before the fall semester starts. Another exciting thing is that Doug officially applied for UVU's nursing program and we should find out if he got in by December. It seems like way too long to wait...but we will be patient. If he does get into their program, he would start in January.

The many colored faces of Shane...

Katrina trying out the different things you can do with the DS-i while

we were visiting family in California.

The first thing that attracted Doug to me was definitely his luscious lips!

I guess it's not true that you grow to resemble your spouse because Doug's parents have been married over 25 years and they were less related than Doug and I were. :)

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!