Spa Night

Rukia had become quite the hairy, bear of a dog!




It was time for a haircut, poor girl could barely see past all that hair! We were feeling lazy and called around to see how much it would be to have someone else deal with the haircut/bath issue now facing us. $65 minimum. Boo! Eventually I will have to get my hair done and I am not spending my hair money on a dog, sorry Rukia. So we got some clippers and over an hour, and a lot of cheetos later :), we had a brand new puppy. She went from being a wild, bear, dog to a petite, girly, princess puppy.



And just so we aren't playing favorites...

Zion's National Park

Zion's was awesome. We left our house and 45 minutes later we were there! The last time we went hiking we had to drive HOURS in order to get anywhere worth hiking around. We were very excited that we could make this a day trip, I was equally excited that we didn't die anywhere along the way.


Hiking in the mountains is a bit different than hiking in the Midwest. First off you have to drive up mountains to get there. I am still not used to driving on the side of a mountain and I don't think I ever will be. There is something very unsettling about driving so fast so close to the edge of a cliff. Do these people not believe in guardrails? Not that they would probably do anything, but they would sure help me feel better. Second, and most importantly, you have to climb up actual mountains.


We started out on a trail but that didn't last too long. We climbed up as high as we could and then realized we didn't quite remember how to get back down :( Every way down looked like we were going to fall off a cliff. Chad's tone of voice changed as he walked around trying to figure out the way down while I was imaging us having to camp up there all night, crying, hungry, and cold. Not dramatic at all. After a few minutes, yup only a few minutes, Chad spotted our way down. The views were amazing and Chad had a great time with all the echoes!


The drive down the mountain was even worse than the one going up. Now we were on a crazy roller coaster, driving on ice and snow, and somehow we were supposed to be the ones in control. Blah! I needed a xanax. We tried going to a visitor's center however, that road suddenly was covered in snow and ice and led to no where. As we tried to turn around to get out we got stuck. It was 55 degrees in St. George and we were stuck in the snow in the mountains. We got out with a little effort and were back on our way.



The next trail we went on felt a little bit more like what I'm used to. We crossed a river and there were lots of trees and rocks and bushes leading up to the mountain. Everything was much more familiar, except for the cacti that was everywhere, and of course, the mountains. We saw some ancient writing on the side of the mountains, the skull and spine of some big animal and a bunch of goats! We are excited to be able to go back and explore the rest of this awesome park!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday!

Awkward:

• Hearing Penny meowing like CRAZY, then finally wondering where she actually is. We found her locked in our closet with the water heater. Whoops. She had only been in there all day. Even more awkward... locking her in the bathroom all day the next day. Bah!
  
• We've found where the previous residents of our lovely home liked to keep their weed. Every time we open the cupboard doors above the fridge we are assaulted with a lovely smell.
• Rukia still hasn't quite adjusted all the way. She cries, whimpers and barks in her sleep all the time. Sometimes it's funny because she wakes herself up and then runs around the house trying to find what she was barking at. Other times she just cries until I wake her up. Poor little girl.
  

Awesome:

• Zions National Park is 40 minutes from our house!
• Because it's my birthday month I get two free tanning sessions! Nice!
• Menchie's frozen yogurt and sorbet. It's our favorite right now. I love that it's self serve and that I can get a crazy amount of toppings.
  
• The giant tub of cheese puffs from Ashley and Patrick. Rukia and I are enjoying the never ending supply of cheese puffy goodness :)
• Our new camera! We've upgraded! Quite a bit. Instead of janky pictures from our phones we will be able to post some, hopefully, quality photos. We are excited to try out a new hobby, and there is plenty to photograph around here!

Midnight Snack

Around 10pm Chad and I got a little snacky. So we decided to make a cake :) This is our absolute favorite chocolate cake. We had it for my birthday just days ago and it obviously didn't last us too long. Of course we watched The Biggest Loser while eating our ridiculously large pieces of cake. No, we are not actively trying to become contestants. If you're looking for a midnight snack Patrick, our house is the place to be!

Chad barked at Rukia, scaring our poor little sensitive girl. She of course jumped into our laps so we could protect her from... us.

Mohawk girl. Yes, I have turned into that person that talks about her animals ALL the time. But come on, she's so stinkin' cute!

Someone's very excited about the cake!

Just in case you want to indulge in your own midnight cake:

1 cake mix
1 pkg instant chocolate pudding
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup oil
as many chocolate chips as you want to chop up!

Mix it all together and throw it all into 2 round cake pans and bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes

For the ganache pile as many chocolate chips as you can into a tub of cool whip (between the cake and the ganache I usually use a whole bag). Microwave for 30 second intervals, stirring well in between. 1 1/2 - 2 minutes usually does the trick. Stir well and cool in the fridge until your cake is ready for you. Spread some of your ganache in between the layers and let it drip all down the sides of your masterpiece. Share with friends or keep all to yourself, we will be doing the later :)

Hope you all had a fantastic night!

Creative Curtains

Chad and I have been wanting to turn these tablecloths from Target into curtains for a long while now. Now that we have a window they will fit on we ran out and bought them!

This was the quickest and easiest project Chad and I have ever done, ever. Of course since it was us though we had a quick setback. We got our tablecloths home and the yellow that we loved was slightly orange in one of them. Boo. Back to Target we went to find a matching tablecloth. After that small setback we were back in business and 5 minutes later, BAM! Curtains done!

Before

After

Best Monday Craft Project ever. Chad and I love to decorate our home. Does anyone else have any fun home decorating projects they've been up to?

The top 6 things we miss most about the Clarkston Ward

In no particular order we miss...

• Kaylie's crazy enthusiasm in wanting to answer every single question. She was always our best singer in sharing time!
• Gage always telling us how much he loves us, how we're the greatest and constantly giving us hugs. He was quite the self esteem booster :) Oh, and him occasionally asking if we had any gum. 
• Gavin sitting back looking at all of us like we had literally lost our minds. He would make faces sometimes like he had walked into crazy town and needed to get out ASAP. After 2 years though he finally seemed to jump on board the crazy train with us!
• Brooke and her refusal to sit on an actual chair. The table was her seat... at least she was sitting! She was Chad's spell checker and would always organize the rest of the class to hide in the dark classroom and "scare" us as we came in each Sunday.
• Tyler was our newest addition and fit right in with us. He quickly became Chad's best friend and was always by his side.
• Joel was constantly drawing and is quite the artist. Much like Brooke he could NEVER sit still, although he could manage to stay "in" his chair. He would be upside down, backwards, hanging off, I think he was actually a Chinese contortionist!

Déjà vu

We are big believers that while your birthday may only be one specific day, you really should be celebrating for at least a week :) So that's what we've been doing! Last night we continued the birthday celebration with presents!

Present #1 was a Jillian Michaels yoga dvd. We've been attempting to do yoga every morning and hopefully this will help, our other options are P90X and P90X-2. They are way too long (1 hour and 1 1/2 hours) to try to fit in before Chad's classes so hopefully this one will help us be more successful, it's only 1/2 hour! Plus we're addicted to the Biggest Loser and it's somehow wonderful hearing Jillian yelling at me.

Present #2 was a surprise, a tanning membership! I know, I know, I'm gonna get cancer and all that jazz... Chad bought me a tanning membership last year though and I LOVED it! I was brown and beautiful and hello?, 15 minutes all to yourself, laying in a warm bed with nothing you have to do and no distractions? All women should love tanning. Am I right Noelle? So excited about that one!

Present #3 was more shoes! A lot of you have seen my shoe collection, it's pretty expansive, but I haven't gotten new shoes in a long while, unless of course you count the barefoot running shoes I got for Christmas :) whoops. That's more athletic "gear" though, right? Chad got me some cute new shoes to replace my gross, old, I'm a six year old girl shoes that have hearts all over them. They are as much a present for me as they are for him too.

After all the exciting presents we went out for sushi and killed time before we went and saw a movie. We tried getting pretzels from Costco but we got there 10 minutes before they closed and they didn't even have pretzels! What? bummer. Who closes at 8:30 anyway, random time. So we went to the "mall" to find pretzels instead. I guess we were spoiled by having a bunch of malls so close to us, especially Great Lakes where we could walk around the mall and shop to kill time before seeing a movie there. It's a sad, sad mall here. Very small, very disappointing. They did however have pretzels! Score 1 for the crappy mall! After finally finding some pretzels we went and got more junk food to sneak in and saw the new Mission Impossible movie. It was a fantastic night, thanks Chad!