My project.

I found some sturdy fabric at Walmart for $1.50 a yard so I bought two yards and decided to make some cloth shopping bags. Not only am I sick of plastic bags, but you get 5 cents back for every reusable bag you bring to the store. I looked at them online and then modeled them after a bag I had. I got six bags out of the two yards and I think they turned out pretty cute. 

Bike Ride

We decided to go on a bike ride. there is a lot of construction around us (it's been going on since we moved in) so we put our bikes in the car and drove down to the canal. This is the same canal that we run on. When we were training for our marathon we would run south on the canal, all the way to the end. Sometimes we would have to back track to get our full mileage in. We tried the other direction, but at 3:30 am running in the dark under the freeway was a little sketchy. So we decided to ride our bikes the other direction and see what we were missing. 

We found out we definitely picked the prettier direction. But it was fun and a pretty ride. Too bad the pavement ended and it was a little bumpy for a street bike. Good thing I got new bike tires for Christmas. They sure made it an easier ride.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We like Valentines Day. It is one more excuse to go out and have fun. We received a gift card a few months ago (Thank you Bethany!), which we decided to save and use it for a special date. So we went out on Friday.  We actually got "officially" engaged on the Friday before Valentines Day four years ago. So we like to do something big on the Friday before, this also helps to avoid crowds. So anyways here we are going out to dinner at Macaroni Grill. It was really good. We enjoyed going out to a nice restaurant for once. I think this is the first time since moving to Mesa that we have gone out to eat at a place without ESPN playing on the T.V.! It was great. We also went to the temple this morning with some friends. It was really fun. I told Jeff that I wanted a poem, chocolates, and flowers for Valentines Day. But really just a poem. Jeff's not the type to really write poetry. And he doesn't usually do what I tell him to do, but this time he did. I thought it was pretty funny so here it is. He actually made me a copy that had some pictures for the background, but it would take longer to put that up here (and we are wanting to leave on a bike ride.) Sooo, here it is. 

My Valentine

I love the way you smile so big

You make me laugh so heartily

You’re my all-American quarterback wife

Who sits on barstools and feels like ice

At buffalo wild wings and hopes

And prays that BYU wins so a happy husband she may see

You put up with all my shenanigans

Even if you want to kick me in the shins 

My life would be in disarray

But my wife always saves the day

You are the nicest person I know

And would not trade you for the world

Not even a BYU football game

The hikes, the rides, the walks, the talks

The very, very rainy marathon

These are some of my memories

I hope you will be my valentine for life

Studying?

A lot of the stuff Jeff is learning in school is hands on. Which means he needs to practice on someone. That someone is sometimes me. He made me do it the other day when I was looking at the pictures on the camera. Normally he does all this without his book. But this time he was looking something up, and I got bored. This is what he looks like when he is studying. You can see that he needs a haircut. But he is studying too much to get it done. (If you look closely you can also see that he has a bit of grey hair. The grey hair doesn't show as much when he has shorter hair.)

Exploring

We went exploring up in the Mountains last Saturday. It was funny because one of our friends drove by and saw us, He then called and asked if we were lost. We weren't, because we didn't really know where our destination was. Our mountains are not what we are used to be we did find some cool places to go hiking. Which we need to take advantage of now while it is only 85 degrees and not 120.  

We decided to take a couple of pictures this was right by the sign that says Phoenix. It was apparently used to show pilots where the city was before there were air traffic controllers. 
We have been having fun out by the pool, running, and biking, playing at the park and all of those kinds of things while the weather is nice. 

Flowers

When I got back from my loooong trip. All ten day of it. I told Jeff to meet me at the airport with flowers. I was surprised when he actually did (Remember I got in close to midnight after Jeff had been studying and taking tests all week.) But I was very excited that I got a dozen pink roses. The only bad thing...We don't have any vases. So we had to use our plastic pasta container. It actually didn't look that bad. In fact, Jeff asked me where I found the vase. 

Filing.

We have moved almost every six months since we have been married. Fun in ways, bad in others. Every time we move, we get our filing system set up and all the paper work organized. And then we move and everything changes. This move we did not have access to our little file boxes, so nothing got taken care of. We are planning on staying in this apartment for a couple of years until Jeff is done with school. So I (with the help of a couple of Christmas presents) decided to get everything super organized. This is what it started out with. Two small file boxes and one huge pile of unfiled papers. 

And like everything it has to get worse before it gets better. I was smart enough to get this cleaned up before Jeff got back from school so he never saw it like this. I was really hoping that no one would stop be, because this is what you would see with the door open. 
When we moved to Mesa, we knew we would be here for a while, so I wanted to find a little file cabinet. I searched Goodwill, Savers, D.I. and yard sales, until I found this one. It was in the best condition and the cheapest (even has the key with it), only $5. I got it the end of October and it has been sitting next to our desk just waiting for stuff to be put into it. 
Thanks to some file folders and a label machine we got for Christmas, I felt obligated to get everything cleaned up. And It is soo much nicer now. Everything is taken care of and easy to find. 

Washington

I went up to Washington for my Grandma's funeral. It was a little crazy getting everything worked out so that we all could get there, but it all worked out. The viewing was a little interesting. In the funeral home they had another viewing going on at the same time. But it was for a young black guy. When people arrived, you could definately tell whose viewing they were there for. The funeral went very nicely, my sister Cameron, and my dad were the ones who spoke and they both did a great job.

It was really cold the whole time I was gone. It is really weird to have to get my coat out of storage to go on a trip. But, it was nice to see some more snow and get to wear all of my winter clothes that I don't get to wear. It was also fun to spend time with most of my family. Isaac and Julene weren't able to make it, but I was able to spend time with everyone else while I was there.

Catching Up...

I have been meaning to update my blog but...I went out of town...Jeff studied alot (on the computer)...I would get sidetracked surfing the Internet...and really because I am lazy and it seemed a little overwhelming to type everything out. I really did have some adventures. It all started out on the 11th of January. I got a phone call that my Grandma (my dad's mom) had passed away. My grandparents live in Washington State, and I live in Arizona. Making it difficult to drive to the funeral. There was no way that I could take our only car here and make a 24 hour drive by myself. Flying would cost around $1000. A little out of our budget. We really felt like I should go, so we looked into any other option. It turned out that I could get a flight to Utah for under $100. That was doable. So I flew to Utah on Monday night.

Too bad it was a crappy flight. I had to fly to Las Vegas, and then up to Salt Lake, arriving at 11:30 pm. Thanks to my brother in law Lance for picking me up from the airport. While I was flying, my sister Bethany was driving to Utah from Colorado. The next morning (Tuesday) I met up with my family and we drove up to Washington, a twelve hour drive. Because Bethany and I had both hitched a ride we had a packed van with 5 adults, 2 kids, and a toddler bed we were taking up to my sister. It was a long drive and we were all tired by the time we arrive at my sister Cameron's house in Washington.

We then attended my Grandma's viewing and funeral, spent another day visiting with Cameron and her family, and drove back to Utah on Sunday. When I left Arizona, we didn't know how I was going to get home. Jeff looked at the options and we decided that I would drive out to Colorado with my sister (7 hour drive), Bethany so that she wouldn't have to make the drive alone. I would stay with her for a couple of days and then fly back home out of Denver, Colorado. It was actually the cheapest flight we could find.

I was gone for a week and a half. I left Arizona and traveled through Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado before getting back home. That was 6 states in 10 days, a whole lot of traveling if you ask me. This might seem like it was all about the traveling, well trust me, it felt like a whole lot of traveling. So check back tomorrow (those who bugged me about posting more) I promise I will get some more up quickly, and they might just be a little more interesting.

Superbowl!

After church and all of our meetings were over, we went over to some friends house to watch the superbowl. As we are now huge Cardinals fans, it was a dissappointing end. But it was tons of fun to watch. It was even better because I bet that the Cardinals would go to the superbowl...way back before the playoffs even started. The end of the game was exciting, and made it harder to watch them lose. Still, we had a fun evening.

Groundhogs Day!

On a more recent note, Happy Groundhog's Day! Now Punxsutawney Phil's shadow was not seen, so six more weeks of winter. But.....the groundhogs in the South and Southwest all saw their shadows. Does that mean that winter is almost over here? I sure hope not. The last few weeks we have been seeing temperatures in the 70's. Today the car said it was 81 degrees (at 5:30 when I left the gym). Last Saturday, Jeff and I spent the afternoon out by the pool. With the sun shining and no breeze, we got hot. So we ended up walking down to the gas station and splurging on Slurpee's. They were really good. But it was pretty warm. It is only February. We can't afford to have to start cooling down our apartment yet. Therefore, I hope we get six more weeks of winter.