FHE Scavenger Hunt

For FHE tonight we had a little scavenger hunt. We had to choose items that represented ourselves, our spouse, our future together, our best marriage quality, our home, dating experiences, our engagement, our wedding, honeymoon, and married life. I have the sweetest wife ever!! She picked some very thoughtful items. We had fun talking about our past and the future!

Happy Halloween!

We went to our ward "Trunk or Treat" party on Wednesday and took our 3 neighbor kids with us! I went around with the kids while Curt handed out candy. School has taken over our lives, so when it came time to find a costume, (about 15 minutes before we had to leave), my scrubs were the only option available! Curt wore my awesome BYU Nursing scrubs (Not good for my self-esteem that they fit him, nevertheless he looked hot!), and I wore my cute ones that I never get to wear (hopefully I can when I get a real job!) It was funny taking the kids around..I had to remind them EVERY time to say thank you..and one couple in our ward handed out some peanut butter candy and our little neighbor boy said, "I don't want that." (Nudge, nudge, It's actually, "No thank you,")..ya oh well! I'm thinking parenting will give us endless opportunities for embarrassment!, and plenty of laughs! (No we are not having a baby soon..in case you were starting to get curious!) Halloween is much more fun with the energy of kids and we loved spending the evening with them!

Speaking of kids and halloween, my nephew is adorable!! I love when my sister sends me pics of Cooper!...He's the cutest pumpkin I've ever seen!

Fun Fall Festivities

Fall has been busy with school, but we have still found some time to have fun and keep up a family tradition. Our Fall General Conference tradition is to go up Provo Canyon somewhere and look at all the gorgeous colors! This year we went for a little walk on the path near Bridal Veil Falls

We also had a little different camping excursion during the past few weeks. We made a blanket fort in the living room and watched Night at The Museum. It was a lot of fun to remind ourselves that we need to have fun and remember that we can act young while we are young rather than always acting like old people :)

The Friday night before the Homecoming parade we helped the School of Nursing build their float. It was cold, but a lot of fun. Ash was going to be on the float, but they had extra people show up soTrent had ACL surgery the week of homecoming, so we went to the Parade & Pancake breakfast with him. It was a lot of fun at the parade and we had fun hanging out with Trent.

Not Ready For Winter

Ok, so I absolutely loathe winter! I can't stand being cold and ever since returning from my mission in Texas it seems like even 40 degrees is too cold. I'll readily admit I'm a wimp in the cold! So when I woke up Saturday to a little snow falling and freezing my butt of I was pretty upset. I like mild winters where shorts and t-shirts are everywhere. Ashley loves the cold because it signifies the coming of Christmas, but I think that a calendar does a great job signifying the coming of the celebration of the Savior's birth. I have spent three cold days contemplating PT school in Arizona, Vegas, or maybe even Texas. Unfortunately I don't think I could succeed in moving my family even further from future grandparents (No hint implied!!). Oh well, I guess I will suck it up and wear a coat. I just wish that the cold wouldn't come so quickly. I swear global warming can't be happening because the cold seems to come earlier and earlier each year.

We Thank Thee Oh God For A Prophet

General Conference is always such a spiritually uplifting 2 days! We're so excited to hear what our leaders have to say to us. Hopefully, we will come away from this weekend with a new determination to be a little better and try a little harder. Happy General Conference Weekend!

One Spectacular Return To Blogging!!!!!

Since Ashley works in the computer labs all the time I have been giving her the blogging responsibility (really she just does it without me even knowing, hence the Christmas countdown in SEPTEMBER!! :) Anyways, here's some of the latest in our lives. We finally bought our tent, and put it up in our living room, only to find a hole in the roof mesh, so we took it back and got another one. It was a great two days of "camping" in the living room. After our campout we went up to Bountiful to see my dad and grandpa. It was a fun trip up and let me say that Ash and I know how to Barbeque! Ash has been feeding me well and as a result I have gained about 10 pounds since we've been married. Most people say I needed to gain at least that much, but I'm not so sure it's a healthy time frame for weight gain! Oh well, I love the food!! We made strawberry jam this weekend after a killer deal at Ream's. It reminded me of making jam 5 years ago at the Murphey's and thinking my arm would fall off. At least Ash let me rest my arm once in a while :) Of course any project we undertake has to get messy and so I had to splash the red goodness onto my white Texas shorts...ugh! Not wanting to get any more of my own clothes dirty and in an effort to make Ashley laugh I squeezed into a pair of her scrubs! While definitely not my fit I got her to laugh and that's what I wanted! We ended the night having some delicious strawberry smoothies!! What a great month September has been. We have been very blessed and I am so grateful to have such an incredible wife! Ashley is the life of our home and always brings life to the party!! Enjoy the pictures from September!

Time to Move on...

As hard as I tried to convince myself that summer would never end, here I am at the end of the first week of school, and thankfully, I can say I survived!..One week down, only 13 or so left of the semester. Maybe I shouldn't begin the end of semester countdown for a while...Curt is taking some tough classes (chemistry and anatomy), and supposedly this is the hardest semester of the nursing program (ICU), so needless to say we should both stay busy! Tyler went into the MTC on Wednesday...not my most favorite experience to say the least, but we're proud of him and know that he will be a great missionary! We live less than a 2 minute walk to the MTC..a bit too close for comfort! But I'll behave and do the good ol' letter writing, package sending stuff. It's nice to be in Provo so we can send packages to him often because they are cheap to send. It was fun to have my family here for a few days. With a 1 Bedroom apartment and 8 people in it, there is never a dull moment! But we wouldn’t have it any other way! We went out to eat at Zupas (delicious!), Olive Garden, and Jason’s Deli, a few of Tyler’s many last requests. With the family gone and school started and Tyler on his mission, I am trying to come to terms with the fact that homework, tests, and stress will now be a part of life everyday...but only for 8 more months!! Let the graduation countdown begin. There is finally an end in sight (at least for me...just don’t ask Curt about when he graduates J)!

Our exciting lives...

We celebrated our 1 month anniversary on August 19th by eating our wedding cake top! We heard from a bunch of people that it's nasty and gross at a year, and we were craving the cake (since we didn't even eat any on our wedding day, so we ate it! Curt wanted Funfetti for the top layer, and it was way good! Yum yum!

Curt had never hiked the "Y" so we decided it was time. It was my 3rd time hiking it, but for some reason, it was harder than I remembered..(must have eaten too much of that cake!) We forgot our flashlight, so we came down in the dark (there wasn't even a moon!). It was a great FHE activity, and decided it's time to start exercising a little more than once a month :)

My best friend, Lisa, got married on August 22nd in the Manti Temple. Curt and I were able to go to the sealing and it was beautiful! The reception was also very nice. Curt may have been a BIT bored while I was standing in line, but he's a trooper and stayed the whole time with me! What an amazing husband! :) We are so happy for Lisa and Denis! It was so fun to be a part of their happy day!

We thought we would spend a couple hours on Saturday painting some shelves for our apartment....and then 6 hours later we were FINALLY finished! Curt was nice enough to smile for the camera, even though I know he didn't feel like it! Our shelves look a ton nicer, and we were glad to get it all done in one day. We had to rush at the end since our friends Holly, Jeff and their daughter Emma came over for games that night. We had lots of fun with them playing croquet and eating pizookies. Thanks for hanging out with us!

And last of all, Curt finally got his golf clubs down here from Spokane!!! Thanks Trent! Look at that smile..Priceless! He couldn't be happier :) And Trent has his clubs down here too so hopefully they will have some good "brother bonding"

Wedding Slideshow Finally!

Top 10! (Lots of Catching up!)

I've been procrastinating posting, while I spend my time admiring other blogs wishing mine was as fun and exciting..(I work a boring job where I have MANY hours with nothing to do!) I finally decided that maybe I should play with it and learn more and just maybe I'll get better at it. Plus, I suppose Curt and I do have quite a bit to update on! So here's the top ten of what we've been up to lately!

1. We were married in the Salt Lake Temple on July19th, 2008! It was a beautiful day and everything was so perfect! We are so grateful for the support of family and friends who shared our special day with us!

2. We spent a week honeymooning in Cancun, and it was completely amazing! We spent lots of time in the pool, the ocean and checking out some sites. We visited Chichen Itza and went snorkeling. The resort was fabulous and we enjoyed every minute!

3. We spent 8 hours at the airport the day we were supposed to fly back to Salt Lake as we waited for the update on our flight...finally, it was canceled due to a smoke detector that wasn't working properly in the back of the plane. We ended up with a free night in Mexico and free meals, so it wasn't all bad! We got home on a Tuesday night, did laundry, repacked and drove to Spokane the next day, so it was a bit hectic!

4. We had an amazing reception in Spokane, complete with snow cones, ice cream cones, the most spectacular cake ever and tons of friends and family! It was in my backyard, and was beautiful!! We're so grateful for the all the time that our families put into making it such a wonderful night!

5. Happy Birthday to my amazing husband! Curt turned 23 on August 8th! We celebrated his birthday by...going to Manti for my old roommate's wedding! We went to her sealing, which was really neat! We also went to her luncheon, and then to her reception that night in Orem. So basically, we celebrated Elisha and Greg's wedding more than we celebrated Curt's b-day. But..we celebrated his b-day on Sunday, so he didn't totally get ripped off! We fell asleep as 9:30 that night watching the Olympics...so I guess we are officially lame married people...haha


6. We had to say goodbye to my sister, brother-in-law and nephew last Saturday night :( Alyssa, Spencer and Cooper left Monday morning on their cross country drive to State College, Pennsylvania where they will spend 4 years while Spencer gets his doctorate at Penn State. It was really hard to say goodbye, since we have been together in Provo for almost 3 years. Curt and I now have a vacation fund, so hopefully we'll be able to go out there at least once (probably only once since our change doesn't add up very fast!) while they are out there. Even though State College is in the middle of nowhere, it is only a few hours away from so many cool places that we want to see like Washington D.C., New York City, Philadelphia, etc, so we are looking forward to that hopefully someday! I told Curtis that I'm going to give myself a trip out there as my graduation present in April..but since we're married now, I suppose we should discuss our finances together! :) Plus, it would be so much more fun if we both went together, so let the savings begin! (Saving money is not my strong point so it's gonna be a challenge!)


7. On a rainy, thunderstormy night we went to the Salt Lake County Fair for the first time ever! As sad as this is, we went only for the food. My best friend, Lisa and her family run the "Tiger Paws" booth at the fair. They sell Navajo Tacos, honey butter tiger paws, and cinnamon sugar tigerpaws. The deep fried-ness was amazing, and I prefer not to think about how many calories we ate. They were sooo delicious and we were happy to finally experience what Lisa had been telling me about for years! Thanks to the Gardner's for the delicious food...you guys are amazing!

8. We celebrated Curt's b-day on Sunday, complete with Curt's dinner request of Philly Cheese steak sandwiches (which actually turned out good..always a nice surprise!) and Turtle cake with ice cream. We turned on the WebCam and my family back home sang to Curtis with me with the candles burning. (I really didn't want to sing alone, so I was happy that my family joined in on the party!) We spent the day watching the Olympics (after church of course), which Curtis wanted to do. It was a fun day and we had lots of fun celebrating his birthday!


9. Saturday was busy, with a new sister breakfast and a USNA social we had a full plate, but we still found time to run to Target and get Curt a banana chair (it's his dream come true). Then we went to Bountiful to spend the afternoon with Grandpa Barnes yesterday! He's such a funny man and we love spending time with him. Even at age 86, he is very meticulous about his lawn and carefully waters his lawn and plants. He took us out to dinner (again, for Curt's b-day..I guess Curt is in the spotlight here!) and we went to McGrath's Fish House at the Gateway mall. He asked Curt several times if he wanted a new pair of jeans from Lucky, but Curtis (for some crazy reason!) said that he didn't need them. Instead, we went to Kohl's and grandpa bought Curt a new pair of gray pinstripe dress pants, a yellow button-up shirt, and a blue polo (none of which go together..we have a little bit of fashion sense!) We spent the night watching the Olympics with grandpa...and I must say that marathons are not that exciting to watch. But since Curt enjoys watching track and field, I suppose I must sacrifice a little and endure it! We also did a little shopping ourselves and Curt got this banana chair...he loves it, and even thought it might not fit the decor of the room, if it makes him happy then why not let him have it right?! (At least for now that's how it works..we'll see if time changes that :)

10. We had an awesome Sunday dinner with our friend Scotty and his family! The food was delicious and we were amazed to hear that most of it was home grown in their garden. After the feast we had a tour of the garden. It looks like a lot of work to me, but Ashley looked like a kid in a candy store. I'm thinking that we're going to need to buy some extra land with our home so we can have a garden!! We finished off the night with some cake and ice cream, ladder golf, and NERTS! Scotty sure knows how to put on a party!