One Year Ago Today...

This handsome guy and I became husband and wife for time and all eternity!! It's crazy to think a whole year has gone by, but at the same time it seems like we've been together for a lot longer than we actually have. I personally think it's because we get along so well and that it's been so easy to be together, that it just feels like we've been together forever already, but I'm sure Kurtis has his own views on why it feels like it's been so long :). I'm so lucky I found someone who lets me be my crazy, LOUD self; who puts up with my snoring/weird breathing noises when I sleep, even though I know his own sleep is affected by it. I know it's cliche, but I do feel like I've married someone who I can easily call my best friend. I'm lucky I'm married to someone that I can tell anything and everything to and that I can be completely open with. I'm happy I'm with someone who is so laid back and that goes with the flow most of the time. He's such an amazing husband and I'm so proud to be his wife. This year has been fantastic and I look forward to many MANY more years to come. Happy anniversary to "my man"! :)

Yellowstone Quick Trip

The weekend of the 15th was a little busy for us!! We had the Focus Four Run for Kurtis' work (see previous post) and it went really well!! I walked a mile with my mom and sisters and Kurtis, the brave soul, ran 4 miles!!! He hadn't even trained and he ran it in about 39.something minutes!! Less than 10 minute miles!! For someone who just up and ran it, that's amazing! I was pretty proud because I know I would have been crawling half the time and my time would probably have been closer to the hour mark or so at least! After the run, they had a raffle and my family made out like bandits! We all won something! I won a Tom-Tom GPS system, and even though I know the directions to my work and back home, I still use it because it makes me laugh! Right after the festivites, we drove straight up to Yellowstone (and we used Mr. Tom-Tom to get us straight there ha ha). Unfortunately one of the main roads to get up to Mammouth (sp) where all the good animals are found, was closed for the season, so we couldn't even get up there in the short amount of time we planned on spending. We'll have to try and go up again and plan ahead so we have a full day to get up there so we can see some bears at least! We did see your basic Yellowstone animals - elk, buffalo, a chipmunk or two...but that's it, so we went to the Grizzly and Wolf Center in West Yellowstone. Although the bears and wolves are in captivity, we were still excited to see them. We stayed at Kurtis' grandparents' cabin and came back home Sunday, so it was a short trip, but fun! Enjoy the slideshow of Yellowstone!

Focus Four Run

Last year the company Kurtis works for (Focus Services) sent five of their employees to Guatemala. On August 24th of last year we receive a phone call from the guy from Choice Humanitarian who helped put the trip together. They were on their way to the village where they were going to build a school room when their plane crashed. We lost four of our friends and co-workers. It's hard to believe that it will have been a year since this tragic event. This tragedy was one of the hardest things we've ever had to deal with and really brought our company so much closer together.
A year later Focus and the families of John Carter, Cody Odekirk, Jeff Reppe, and Lydia Silva have decided we want to celebrate their lives. We have put together a four mile race and one mile walk to honor these great people and raise money for scholarships in each of their names for other Focus employees.
I'm hoping that by posting this anyone who reads this will walk to participate and/or help me spread the word. The race is one August 22nd at the George Whalen North Park in Roy which is located at 4200 S. 1900 W. The four mile run starts at 7am and the one mile walk starts at 7:30am. The cost of the run is $20 and the walk is $15. Participants will receive a t-shirt and water bottle then be entered into a raffle to win a lot of awesome prizes. If you are interested in participating you can register by visiting http://www.focusfourrun.com/. At that website you can register online or print out the registration paper and mail it in.
I hope to see some of you there!!

Ah...Beautiful Barbados!!

I'd like to apologize for posting this so late. We have a horrible internet service provider (who will remain nameless, but it's supposedly the largest 3G network...hmmm) and most of the time our internet is too slow to do pretty much anything. When that happens I get too frustrated and impatient to try and post anything on our blog, so this is why you haven't been updated on what we've been doing! Let me break it down for you...

First of all, back in May was Kurtis' birthday...on the 12th to be exact! We went out to dinner with my fam and we also went down to spend time with his parents and sister and bro-in-law and their son. It was pretty low key, which is what he likes. We're different that way - I'm a big fan of birthdays and he's not so much! Oh well, he's still fantastic even if he's not into birthdays!

At the end of May, we went on a vacation, just the two of us to Barbados! I've decided I'm super lucky to have found someone who loves to travel as much as I do and there's no one I'd rather be vacationing with! We went hiking up to the waterfalls in Willard with some friends the morning before we left on the plane! Nothing like making sure you're good and exhausted before a long flight! Barbados was beautiful...white sand beaches that felt like you were walking on packed flour and not sand, and beautiful teal colored water! That's definitely my idea of a vacation! The only thing we really signed up to do was snorkel with sea turtles, which was fun. We bought an underwater camera, but the pictures we got back pretty much suck, so you probably won't be seeing those! Other than our one little excursion, we pretty much just relaxed on the beach, ate good food, did some shopping (since the Barbados dollar = $2 US! Score) and (gasp) read a couple books! Both Kurtis and I read through two full, very interesting books during the trip. We both were amazed that we actually read so much on our vacation since both of us aren't really big book readers and neither of us had really read a book in a long time, but it sure was relaxing!! We ate some amazing seafood out there - HUGE shrimp, Swordfish, Flying fish sandwiches (seriously, you should try one sometime) and Mahi-Mahi, which they call dolphin down there. I'm not a big seafood eater, but since everything they had there was fresh, I actually loved it! It didn't taste fishy at all! We went to Crane Beach, which was #17 of the 21 most sexiest beaches on the Travel Chanel and it was sexy I will say!

The most interesting thing is the mode of transportation down there. Bus rides are only $.75 per person BDS, so super cheap and we decided to go that route instead of rent a car and try our luck at driving on the wrong side of the tiny roads AND on the wrong side of the car. Now, when you hear bus rides, I'm sure you picture a big bus, which they have, but they also have something extra, and if you look at our slide show you'll see what I'm talking about. They have small vans - smaller than mini vans, to also transport people along with the bus system. In the "vans" they would pack with about 16 people not including the driver and the dude taking the money! No joke! All you had to do when your stop was coming up was raise your hand and they'd just stop and let you out - sometimes right in the middle of the road and stop traffice! The best part was they all blasted their reggae music loudly and some were pimped out with tinted windows and blacklights that would blink with the beats to the music! At first we were a little scared to ride in them, but after our first ride that we survived, we took those most of the time. One fantastic ride was made even better when I noticed our "bus" driver had an empty beer bottle sitting next to him! It was amazing!! Really though the people there were really nice and we were only offered ganja a few times! I hope you enjoy the first slideshow, which is full of our vacation photos!

After we got back we were able to go boating for the first time this year! The only brave people to get into the cold water were Amanda and Kurtis and Kurtis was the only one who did any wakeboarding during that trip. Hopefully we can get back out there soon so I can get some boarding in! It was nice and warm and a lot of fun! I have a random slideshow on here too (the second one) - some pics of our hike to the waterfalls, Kurtis wakeboarding and some of our dogs. Dozer has been having some allergy issues and the vet put him on a steroid, which made him gain 10 lbs in a month, bringing him to a grand total of 96 lbs!! I about died when I read the scale! We're trying to get him to lose some weight because the steriods made him gain fat, not muscle. We take our dogs on a lot of car rides and so some of our pics show Dozer's usual stance with his head out the window! They keep us entertained!

We did take some photos from the 4th of July, so hopefully I'll get those posted soon, but there aren't many! We had fun hanging out with our families over the 4th weekend, even though both me and Kurtis have been dealing with sickness lately...ugh!

Birthday Cheer!

Today is Nicole's birthday, so if you haven't already, leave her a comment or call her and tell her how wonderful she is because she deserves it. Nicole is the most wonderful, selfless person that I have ever met in my life and I still have no idea how a person like me was able to marry someone like her.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!

Yes. We are still alive!!! It's funny how life gets soooooooooooooooooo busy sometimes. The last few months have been just that. Outside of work, school and passing sickness back and forth we haven't really done much. Kurtis' classes this semester are pretty demanding and it seems like he's always doing homework. Luckily we got a Wii a while back along with Rock Band 2. It's a nice break for him every once in a while. We also got a Fit last week with a gift card that I got from work. It's pretty much amazing. I am more than ready for spring to get here. I thought we were well on our way but today we got slammed. Our dogs love the snow though. Dozer will run back and forth and randomly dip down and eat the snow. It's pretty funny to watch. Poor little Daisy is too short and fat to get around most of the time. Here's a vid of them outside today. Kurtis got home to about a foot of snow.... UGH



Much of our life consists of these two.... they are pretty funny. This month marks our 6 month anniversary of being a legit family! Yippy!!!
Sorry this post is so short... get over it. I am!

Pictures

Since it's been so long since we've last posted anything, we had a great Christmas and New Year for the most part. I didn't have to work from Dec 24th until Jan 5th, which was so very nice! I slept in every day (while Kurtis had to get up early for work) and I tried to clean most of our house. Kurtis was sick over the holidays with what we think was the flu...it's always horrible when you're sick, but I think it's even worse being sick over Christmas, but he was a trooper. My parents got a Wii for the family for Christmas so Christmas day was spent playing Rock Band 2 and eating. Kurtis and I had to use my dad's truck to get home that night because of all the snow that had fallen and my car wouldn't have made it. Whoever decides to have the snowplows out decided that since north of Ogden was so windy and since it was snowing so bad they would just stop trying to plow the freeway so it was an interesting drive. New years we went down to my parents to hang out with them and my siblings for a New Years Eve party, which was way fun! The pictures we have here are of Christmas day playing Rock Band and the last two Saturdays where Kurtis and I went up to Hardware Ranch (by Logan) to look at the elk and the Jazz vs. Detroit game that we went to as well. Kurtis is now back in school for the semester and has some pretty hard classes this time around, but I'm sure he'll do just fine. We're both done with our associates degrees and now he's onto the hard core accounting classes. I don't think I could do it!!

Amanda as our lead singer!

Amanda and Missy playing some guitar and bass

Jeff trying to concentrate hard playing the drums

My dad even got into the action!

Kurtis and I are getting to be pros at this game

On the way up to Hardware Ranch

This is up at the Ranch. There were so many elk I couldn't get them all into one pic!

The elk on it's back legs was about to fight with another elk. I was so excited I captured this!

At the Jazz game... I happen to be an Allen Iverson fan, but I cheered for the Jazz don't worry!!

The kid behind us kept kicking the backs of our chairs the ENTIRE game!!!