VICTORY

That's right, I won the contest! Ha! I appreciate the votes and campaigning...Ty and I will get some very nice dinners as a result! Special thanks to my mom, who sponsored me, and my aunt, who arranged for the emergency hair appointment and hosted the Halloween party where it all started.

Life is so random.

I was on TV today

...and it was really fun! You can watch the whole thing if you go to http://studio5.ksl.com/?nid=23&sid=4539170 (if I were more savvy, I would make that a link, but for now you can just cut and paste!) You can vote from there, too. My live appearance is much better than my picture, so make sure you check it out!

I will be giving out a limited number of autographs. Ha!

5 Minutes of Fame

Well, I got such a reaction over my Sarah Palin that we sent a photo into KSL. And guess what? I am officially one of the 5 finalists! I will be featured on Studio 5 this Friday at 11:00!! There will be an internet vote after the show airs....so if you're in Utah and are home on Friday, tune in to channel 5, and in true campaign spirit, vote for me! (I think out of state voters will be able to vote, too...hint, hint!)

McCain & Palin '08

Tonight we had our family Halloween party. There was a guest appearance from John McCain and Sarah Palin....

Not bad, eh? Watch out Tina Fey!!

Halloween Baby Shower

Last week I hosted my first baby shower (with some help!) for my good buddy Jennie. The invitations we sent out had said "Jennie is going to be a Mummy..." so Jennie, being the hilarious butt she is, actually dressed in full Mummy attire! It was awesome! Here are some of the highlights...

Bobbing for baby turds

Chugging baby bottles

Feeding the Bebe

The other pregnant ladies...

STONED

Well, we had another first (and hopefully, last) in our marriage last week... Tyler's first kidney stone! He went into the emergency room last Monday with crippling pain. They told us the stone was on the verge of passing, so we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally the little boogar passed on Friday night. Poor Ty was so miserable and so, so doped up on narcotics...it took him a few days to get back to normal even after the little guy passed.

We do not need to do that again.

Thanks so much to our good friends and family who helped out with phone calls, rides, blessings, medical advice, tire changes (yes, my tire shredded on the way to work in the middle of all this), and everything else. It's hard to believe something so small wreaked so much havoc on our lives!

Critters

We have tons of animal life around here.

We hung a hummingbird feeder right outside our window. They are constantly coming up one at a time, almost like they are waiting in line!

Roadrunner

Little miniature frogs are all around the lake. We caught some and put them in an empty cashew jar. In retrospect, it may have been wise to wash the jar out first. Almost all the little frogs we caught died within 10 minutes from the salt. We are bad people.

This frog (Kirby) just hopped into our living room one night when Ty opened the front door!

Lizzy warms himself on a rock by our garage every morning.

There are tons of these guys. There are also TONS of bunnies!

When we want to play, we open up our window, sing the song from "Enchanted," and out they come!

Downsized

We recently were asked to move out of our nice, big house because they needed it for a new faculty member. We were very disappointed. People have asked, so here are some pics of our old house:
They had us move into a suite that is part of another big guest house on campus. There are 2 other suites, but they are empty for the whole summer, so we have the house to ourselves. Here are some pics of the new place:

This is my favorite room--the indoor patio. It's one of several huge rooms with panoramic views of the city.

I guess life's just hard sometimes. :)

Love on the Rocks

There is the coolest little lake with rock formations right by our house here. We go there for walks on Sundays and happened to be there for the sunset last time.

Who's Old Now??

Happy Birthday Ty!!!

Sedona

We went to Sedona today.

We liked it so much we decided to build a house there. Using mud.

Ty worked very hard to make it seem "homey."

Those are actually the Montezuma's Castle ruins (no real relation to Motezuma, we learned). Yes, that is my ruins-seeing shirt, and yes, my hair is always in a pony tail here--it's hot!!!

Ty really liked it there. He is going to work really hard at school so that someday he can be a real life junior ranger.

We also got to see Sedona's REALLY cool red rock formations. The pics don't come close to doing them justice, but....

(Pictures of just the two of us smiling get old after a while. I know. We tried to change it up just a little.)

The Catholic church has a chapel sticking straight out of the rocks--it is totally crazy! You can't tell from the picture, but it is really high up!

Inside the chapel (there was, of course, also a huge gift shop downstairs).

It's monsoon season here, which usually means a couple hours of rain each day. However, the usual rain in the forecast turned into a massive thunderstorm that NEVER let up. By the time we made it down from the chapel to the car, we were soaked. And very sad.

We had planned on camping there overnight and going to Slide Rock state park in the morning (a natural water slide park), but there was some serious lightning and precipitation. So we walked around a while, had some dang good BBQ, and headed home.

This is what the sky looked like as we got close to Prescott.

We were sad to cut our trip short, but it was a fun day!

Anniversary Weekend

We were at Tyler's family reunion during our anniversary, so we celebrated a little late. We headed down to Phoenix for the weekend. First we caught a Diamondbacks game. It was cool to see the stadium. The roof was closed because it was Africa hot outside, and it was different to be watching the game totally indoors. It reminded me of the many games I went to with my dad (go Rangers! Someday it will be your year!)...good memories. Then we stayed overnight and had sparkling cider and rice krispie treats in bed...very fancy! The next morning we woke up, had breakfast, and went to the Mesa temple. It was very beautiful...lots of southwestern flair, and lots of cool cacti outside! We had planned to go tubing down the Salt River after the temple, but ran out of time because the temple took a little longer than usual (totally worth it, though!) Instead, we had some delicious Mexican food at Rosa's (thanks for the recommendation, Kristi) and then went and saw Dark Knight (the new batman movie), which Ty has been waiting for desperately! After the movie, he spent the rest of the evening running around our house with a black blanket around his neck for a cape. Luckily, he had also gotten a batman toy as part of his anniversary present. I'm married to a 10 year old, and I love it!

The sign next to his batman toy says "101 reasons my husband is a super hero." (Ty had just gotten back from the gym.)

The cacti outside the temple...Ty had trouble keeping his eyes open, even though he was the one taking the picture....to his credit, it was very bright out there!

The Mesa Temple

Fine Dining

Go D-Backs!

Slippery Slope

We had the privilege of attending the Harris family reunion a couple of weeks ago. One of the highlights was the big, huge slip & slide. The boys (there was no distinction between the 40 year-olds and the 8 year-olds), with the help of a little creativity and a lot of dish soap, found a lot of ways to keep themselves and their audience entertained! Shockingly, there were no injuries!

The Races

Yes, they are all going to go down at the same time! This was before they decided to have everyone stand at the bottom while one person slid down and tried to knock as
many "pins" over as possible.

Ty had excellent form... (ignore me yelling at him to wave at the end!)

Ty and Steph Get their Groove On

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

Flagstaff

Some of you may know that Arizona tends to get a little roasty toasty in the summer. To beat the heat, we headed up north to Flagstaff for the weekend. We walked around the downtown area...turns out there was a Pride festival going on....very interesting...and then camped overnight. The next day we went and some Pueblo ruins at Wupatki National Park. We liked them so much that we decided we will name our first child Wupatki.