Still Loving Arizona!

I don't have too many pictures of this week! Marc is loving his job, he had a sale on his second day and found us a yummy new frozen yogurt place to go to! It's called Red Mango! They have them in Utah and Idaho, so keep a look out for them! They use real frozen yogurt and one serving has only 90 calories! Plus they have fresh fruit and cereal you can add! Talk about DELICIOUS!

We have been having fun swimming at his parents and just spending time with our families! I have been going to Jazzercise with my sister in law, Danielle, 3 days a week and really feel like I am getting into better shape! Now, to get Marc back into an exercise routine again...

On Thursday I went with Whitney and Danielle, my wonderful sister's in law and their cute kiddos to a splash park in Fountain Hills. The kids had so much fun and neither of them were afraid of the water! After playing in the water we came back to Cave Creek to Danielle's and ate lunch, then the 3 of us and the kiddos headed to the Anthem Outlets! I haven't been there since I did back to school shopping in High School! There are so many new stores! It was a lot of fun! The kids were pretty good too, until the end. I think they were a little tires of sitting in strollers and being in the sun. But it was well worth it for some amazing deals on clothes!

On Friday Marc and I decided we needed some M&M time and went out to eat. We were looking for Pei Wei, but couln't find it. So we ended up at Jade Palace. A little more pricey than we wanted. After we got home we realized we have coupons that we could have used! But it was well worth it to get our Chinese fix in!

Saturday, we decided that we wanted to go exploring. There is a new shopping center near I-17 and Happy Valley. Marc had never been, but I had gone at Christmas with my mom. We decided to go check it out. There are some name brand stores and a bunch of little boutiques. I guess the ecomony hit some of them a little too hard, all that was left were the name brand places. We did find a Pita Pit though, so now we have a little tase of Rexburg here! We ate lunch at Chipotle which was so yummy! Then we walked around some more. The place was pretty empty. We went to a yummy Gelato place called Paciugo. It originated in Italy and the owners brought it to the U.S a few years ago. I had been, but Marc hadn't, and we saw them on Food Network a few weeks ago and put that on our to eat list! They have some pretty yummy flavors which makes it hard to decide, but luckily they let you chose 4! We ended up with Mango, Wild Berries, Dark Chocolate, and my favorite Mediterranean Sea Salt with Carmel, I know, strange, but just try it! When we got home Ben and Danielle were cleaning out the garage. We decided to play with their little boy to help them work faster. Marc took him on the long board, he loved it! Actually that is an understatement! Just look at how happy he was!


Sunday we went to dinner at my parents! We love hanging out with our family and eating yummy food! We are so glad to be back and be able to spend so much time with our families! Tonight we are all getting together with Marc's family for dinner and swimming! Don't worry, we still love it here!

Marc's First Day on the Job!

Today Marc officially started his first career after college! He is working for a direct mail advertising company selling advertising. We are so blessed to have a job so quick and so close to home. We really struggled with what to do but learned that if we put all our faith in the Lord we will be blessed. We thought about some other options that wouldn't have him work until mid-september, this just seemed to be the best fit! We are excited to see what things com our way! Here is Marc before he left this morning. We are living with his brother and his family for a little while until we can decide where we want to live. This was in their kitchen just before he walked out the door!

We are so grateful to have such wonderful family that has helped us over the last little while through prayer and other means! We know we need to be close to them and we love spending so much time with them! Next thing on the list, find Melissa a job!

More Graduation and The Move!

We got a few more graduation pictures from Marc's parents. I had to put them up because we didn't take that many pictures anyway! There is also one of all of us in Jackson Hole!




I am so proud of Marc! He really worked hard! He didn't want to walk at graduation at all and I am sure the blazing heat didn't help, but it gave us all a reason to celebrate!

A few days after graduation we really hit the packing and cleaning! I didn't take too many pictures, mostly because it was pretty stressful. The night before we left to get the truck and pack up to leave, we went to Bajio for one last farewell meal. Not such a good choice! I am pretty sure I got some type of food poisoning! I was up sick most of the night. To top it off, I had bad allergies with big puffy eyes! We woke up and ran down to Idaho falls to get our moving truck and car dolly. I am glad that as sick as I was, I was with Marc. We had to go to Idaho Falls since all the truck rental places in Rexburg were out! It was pretty easy to find, but when we got out of the car Marc realized that he left his wallet on the counter at home! We had to call our apartment manager to get his driver's license number off our paperwork. Then they had to run a credit card instead of using the number he gave them, so we used mine! I don't know how he would have been able to get it if I weren't there! It's not like he could just run home and get it, that would have taken another hour and a half! We finally got the truck and headed home. There were 3 people there to help us load when we got home! It only took 30 minutes to load! Talk about awesome! We had a few straggling things that we needed to put in the truck at the end, but we got it all done and the apartment clean with just a few minutes to spare! We went and said some last goodbyes to friends, then hit the road around 5pm.

Here we are driving into Utah! Sorry it's blurry! We had to document our departure from Idaho!

We had loaded all our furniture to take to Salt Lake. We didn't want to store it while we are here so we sold it to my cousin who is getting married in October! We got in around 9 and had to hustle to get their stuff out and loaded in the pickup so they could take it to their storage unit. Then we unstacked all our boxes, we were only taking up about a 5x5 square in out 16 foot truck! We decided that night that instead of forcing ourselves to wake up we would sleep until we were ready to get up. We woke up around 9 or 9:30 and after quick showers and a trip to the gas station we were on the road again around 10am! We passed the new Oqurriah Mountain Temple in Salt Lake. I took this picture from the freeway.

This is a picture from the news story released in June when the Temple was struck by lighting! We would kind of see from the road that it hadn't been fixed yet.

We drove all day long and took some pretty pictures. Here are a few from the trip. There is one that looks like we were taking a picture of the dead bug on the windshield, we were actually taking a picture of the bug that wrapped around the antenna when we hit it!



We were so excited to finally make it into Arizona we had to take pictures! Here is us crossing in and the lovely view of Lake Powell!


We finally got to his brother's house around 10pm. We pretty much crashed and played with family the rest of the weekend! We love being home!

The Craze=Crazy Night!

There is a new place that just opened in Rexburg called "The Craze". It is supposed to be like a Fiddlesticks or Crackerjacks for all anyone from Az. It is all indoor, the people bought one whole building so they have a pretty sweet set up. We wanted to check it out before we left town, so we went and played miniature golf with our friends, Clint and Shaylen last night. Luckily it was only $3 because that is about all it was worth. Here is a picture of Marc golfing. I only got one, it wasn't worth it to take more, and if the picture looks funny, it's because there were blacklights, I shouldn't have used my flash!

After our 9 hole mini golf, we walked around the place. They have a little sandwich shop with some pretty interesting names, like the USS Rexburg, and If the first one breaks! They also have laser tag apparently it is the biggest and only 2-story in Idaho, but Marc and I were pretty sure Laser Quest is bigger! It is pretty cool though. They let us walk around before a game started. The room is supposed to look like a "Lost City". They had BYU-Idaho Art Majors come in and paint. It looks really cool. There are tons of fog machines, and mirrors that the lasers can bounce off of. Before you go in, there is a video they make the players watch that explains how the equipment works. They hired a professional company to come in and film it, they hired professional actors, anyway, it is pretty funny, they made it to sound like a battle prep video! There is a window at the top of the Laser Tag arena that you can watch from. We watched one whole game, it was pretty funny. You could tell who had never played before! As we were walking out we looked at the arcade. Yea, we spent money, but not too much! The boys played some racing game, while Shaylen and I worked our Magic on Deal or No Deal. The first round we won 101 tickets! Here we are with our tickets!


We had so much fun yelling "No Deal", and picking cases that we played 3 more rounds, one in hopes of winning 400! But we pressed our luck a little too hard. The boys played with us too, but they didn't really get into the screaming! After playing we had a total of 155 tickets, so of course we had to go cash in. We went the the very small and unimpressive prize counter and got, 2 ring pops, an airplane, and 5 pieces of candy! We had a little fun with the ring pops...





We were joking about how we felt like we were single again and being crazy! I am pretty sure we were the only married people there, but there weren't that many people there anyway since school is out! After our adventure there we decided to get ice cream. We went to BRC's a frozen custard place, but they were closed, it was 10. So them we decided to got to Artic Circle. On the way there we decided to go to Walmart and just buy a big thing of ice cream and share. Some how that turned into pizza. We decided it was cheaper to go to Little Caesar's and get a $5 pizza, we pulled up and, GONE! Don't worry, their just remodeling! So we went to Broulim's and got a Craigo's take and bake. Finally we had our food! Clint and Shaylen came over here and we baked the pizza and ate while the boys played video games. A little after 12 we were all so tired we had to call it a night. We had so much fun being silly and getting away from packing and cleaning! Now on to all the hard work!

Graduation, Jackson Hole, and News!

I am pretty bummed, I didn't get very good pictures of Marc at Graduation, his parents did, so we will have to wait until we get the pictures from them. I did get two ok ones. Here is Marc after Convocation, it was so hot! The Auditorium was FULL, and it was a record hot day here, high 90's, everyone was fanning themselves with programs and lining up at drinking fountains! Here is my College Graduate hubby!

About a half hour after Convocation was Commencement, luckily the College of Business and Communication is huge, so we stayed in the Auditorium. As Marc walked across the stage he got to shake hands with President Clark, the school President, President Eyring the VP and the other President Eyring's son, Bishop Edgely of the Presiding Bishopric, and the head of both the Business and Communications Departments as well as the Chair people for both departments. Long list, I know! But it meant that all of the keynote speakers for graduation were with him! Here is him after getting his diploma cover... *diploma to be received by mail upon verifying that the student fulfills the graduation requirements for his or her degree. :)

The day after graduation, we went to Jackson Hole Wyoming with his parents. We took some pretty cool pictures on the drive, it is so pretty! We also found some really pretty flowers outside the restaurant we ate lunch at. We couldn't pass up the chance to capture them!




We took the typical Jackson picture in front of the antler arches...

Marc was also pretty excited when he noticed his parents rented Caddy in front of the Caddy resturant...

We also met some interesting friends, here are a few pictures of us with them, I'll let you tell me what you think...


On the way home from Jackson, Marc was officially offered a job at his dad's company, so a week from this Monday he is starting! We are leaving this week, and moving down, we still are undecided on an apartment, but luckily we have tons of family to mooch off for a little bit! We are sad to leave Rexburg where we met and lived the first year and a half of our marriage, but it will be fun to live closer to our families. We have missed them so much! Hopefully we can start our family there and raise them the Arizona way!

Second to Last Weekend in Rexburg!

Marc's brother went to EFY last week, we picked him up at the end of the week, and headed to Yellowstone. We decided to go towards the North end. We had heard that there was a river that we could swim in, so we set out looking for it! When we got to the park we found out it was a free weekend, so we didn't even need to use our season pass! After getting into the park, we were driving about 5 mile an hour or stopped for about 20 min! We were thought that maybe there were so many people there and thought about leaving, but that was not what the hold up was about! From the west entrance, there is an Eagle's nest in a tree. Everyone was stopped because the eagle was in the nest! When we left later that day, it was still there! Here is the picture Marc got from the car of the Eagle, it had it's head down so it looks like a bump!

As we were driving, we got slowed down again, this time for construction, we were still going pretty fast, but there were cars right in front of us and right behind us, and cars in the next lane stopped. We saw a squirrel off to the side of the road, it darted out just as I was coming close to it. I couldn't stop or swerve because of traffic, I ended up hitting it and wanted to start crying! I have NEVER run over an animal ever! The boys said they looked back and saw it twitch! I felt so bad! After I was not as freaked out anymore we stopped to stretch and take in a pretty view. Here is a waterfall we found and a picture of the boys!



After a couple hours, we found the river. It is one of the few places you can swim in Yellowstone. It is called Boiling River, it is where two rivers merge one that carries all the steam pot runoff, and another that carries all the snow runoff, the water was fairly warm! The boys played around for a little bit, Marc was excited because he can take his cast off from time to time. I put my feet in, but the water was really shallow and not really warm enough for me to get all the way in, here are a few pictures of the river and the boys being boys! We also saw this rainbow that was in a circle above the river, the picture turned out pretty good!



After that we went to Mammoth Hot Springs, the rocks are really white because of the sediment. It was really fun, but a long walk! There was a fun little town right near there too. After we ate lunch we saw an elk that was at the door to the ranger station and was kicking the door! We didn't get pictures of that one, but there was another one hanging out in the round about, they aren't really scared of people and wander around. We also had a little chipmunk friend we gave a carrot to while we ate lunch. We also went on a little hike to some paint pots, here are some pictures of that too!




We had a lot of fun, but were all sun burnt and tired! We just hung out the rest of the night and watched movies!

On Sunday we made pizza for dinner. I had some yeast I needed to use before we move, so we decided to do something my family always did. My mom had a hard time making pizza since we all wanted different things, so she would get tons of toppings out and we would use pie pans to each make our own personal pizza. So we did that, we used chicken and BBQ sauce and all pretty much made the same pizza, Marc made thin crust, Stefan made deep dish, and mine looked like a mountain! here are some pics of us making and enjoying our pizza!



We had a pretty good weekend, but now we need to really get ready to move! Marc graduates Thursday and his parents are coming Wednesday. Friday and Saturday we are going to Yelowstone and Jackson Hole, then moving next week! It is crazy busy around here!

Graduation Announcement!

I realized about 2 weeks ago that we should send out a graduation announcement for Marc! I didn't send any out when I graduated and I regret it! I told him we should send one out for both of us and put the date I graduated but that seemed a little cheesy! I am posting this because we have friends that we don't have addresses for so here it is! It is hard since we both design, we have very different opinions, here is what we ended up with!

We are so excited to be moving soon! We have our apartment there and are anxiously waiting for the day we can leave. We really have loved being here as much as we complain, but we are excited to be so close to both our families!