Utah vs. Michigan Basketball Game

The University of Utah played Michigan in basketball on Wednesday, so Ray and I got tickets and drove down to Salt Lake for the game. I'm a Utah fan so I wore red and Ray got all dressed up in his Michigan clothes. We didn't think that there would be very many Michigan fans there, but there was actually quite a few. Utah won the game 68-52. It was a lot of fun! The lady that took the picture of us asked us if we were from Michigan.. she obviously see's no reason for anyone from Utah to be anything other than a Utah fan :)

Gingerbread Houses

A couple days ago Ray and I went over to Alan and Emily's house and made some gingerbread houses (well, graham cracker houses). We started off by going to WinCo's bulk section and picking out the candy that we wanted to use to decorate the houses with. We made a mess and had a lot of roof cave-ins, but it was a lot of fun!

- The Supplies -

- Our House -

- Alan and Emily's House -

All grown up...

This weekend I went to Salt Lake to watch my little brother get sworn in to the Army National Guard. It's kind of a scary thing but we are all so proud of him. He heads off to basic training at Fort Knox in February. I still can't believe my little baby brother is old enough to be joining the Army.. crazy!

Freezing!

10 day forecast for Pocatello, Idaho.... (these are the high's)

Yesterday: 25 degrees

Today: 29 degrees

Saturday: 26 degrees

Sunday: 23 degrees

Monday: 23 degrees

Tuesday: 21 degrees

Wednesday: 24 degrees

Thursday: 29 degrees

Friday: 32 degrees

Saturday: 31 degrees

So basically it's not supposed to be above freezing here for over a week. It is so COLD!

God's Cake

My Dad sent me an e-mail today that I think is really cool and I want to share it with all of you. It is called "God's Cake"...

Sometimes we wonder, "What did I do to deserve this?" or "Why did God have to do this to me?" Here is a wonderful explanation...

A daughter is telling her Mother how everything is going wrong, she's failing algebra, her boyfriend broke up with her and her best friend is moving away.

Meanwhile, her Mother is baking a cake and asks her daughter if she would like a snack, and the daughter says, "Absolutely Mom, I love your cake."

"Here, have some cooking oil," her Mother offers.
"Yuck," says her daughter.

"How about a couple raw eggs?"

"Gross, Mom!"

"Would you like some flour then? Or maybe baking soda?"
"Mom, those are all yucky!"

To which the mother replies, "Yes, all those things seem bad all by themselves. But when they are put together in the right way, they make a wonderfully delicious cake!"

God works the same way. Many times we wonder why He would let us go through such bad and difficult times. But God knows that when He puts these things all in His order, they always work for good! We just have to trust Him and, eventually, they will all make something wonderful!

My cool parents and their cool projects...

Last month when Ray left to go to the Michigan game, I headed home to hang out with my family and help out at the Cedar Livestock and Heritage Festival. The livestock and heritage festival is this really cool thing they do in Cedar to honor and display the rich livestock heritage they have there. It is a two day hoo-haw with a concert, parade, tractor pulls, dutch-oven cook off, sheep dog competition, and more. It has been going on for about 4 years and my mom has been on the committee from the very beginning. The dream team (My Mom, Aunt Carol, and JoNell) have been in charge of the parade and the sweet shirts that they sell. It is a lot of fun to watch and I think that it is a really neat thing.. I'm so proud of my Mom!

The Dream Team

There is always an entry in the parade that consists of a whole bunch of sheep camps, some dating back to 100 years old. After the parade, all of the sheep camps are taken out to the Diamond Z Arena and displayed for everyone to see. This year, my Dad was so excited to be able to display his newly restored sheep camp, or "cow camp" as we call it (we don't have any sheep). He was given a really old sheep camp that was in really bad shape, and he took the whole thing apart and completely rebuilt it. I wish I had a "before" picture so that you could see the work that really went into this thing, but he pretty much built it from scratch, everything besides that base and the wheels. As you can see below, it is absolutely beautiful, and I continue to be amazed at the things my Dad can do.

Hangin' out...

Me and my Dad

This is my Grandpa's 1956 GMC that we used to pull the cow camp in the parade. I told him it was a cute truck, and he said "it's not cute, it's a work truck." That just proves what a hard-A he is :)

My Grandpa
(John Wayne?)

This is for Mindi...

Ray works at Albertson's so we not only get the preferred card discounts, but we also get another 15% off of any Albertson's brand item. Albertson's is having a big sale right now for Thanksgiving and they are giving their employee's an extra 10% off of their entire purchase, plus we filled a couple perscriptions there and they gave us a coupon for 20% off our entire purchase. So tonight we went and raided the place... Mindi, you will be so proud :)

Total amount paid: $151.78

Total savings: $199.94

Brothers Weekend

Last month Ray and his brothers took a weekend out of their hectic schedules and flew from all over the country to go to a Michigan Football game in the "Big House". They are all huge fans of the University of Michigan and this is the first time they have been able to go to a game, plus they don't all end up in the same place very often so it was good for them to get to hang out.

Michigan's starting quarterback is Tate Forcier, so everyone always brings signs that say "May the forcier be with you." Well, Ray really wanted to be on TV so as you can see below he took a Darth Vadar costume and made a sign that said "Tate I am your father." Haha he is such a nerd.. The camera guy did actually film him, but it never made it to ESPN :)

Birthday's

Ray's birthday was October 28th and mine is November 11th... exactly two weeks apart, so we've been celebrating a lot of birthday's around here lately. Ray turned 25 and for his birthday we went to Pizza Hut for dinner (his absolute favorite food in the whole world) and then Alan and Emily came over for cake and ice cream and games.


It was my 21st birthday and my parents came up just to take me to lunch! I was so surprised and it was so good to see them! We went and ate at a little Mexican restaurant here in Pocatello and then I drove them around and showed them the town. They only stayed for a couple of hours but I was so excited! How cool is that, that they drove all the way up here just so they could see me on my birthday? Later Ray and I went to Lava Hot Springs and then ate at a Thai restaurant and then made chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

Birthday's are always so fun and it's kinda fun for us to be able to celebrate them so close together :)

Wanted: Big Green Garbage Can

So, I'm sitting in class today and I get a text from Ray that says... "Any idea where our big garbage can out front went?" I figured he would find it in a couple minutes, that it had just blown down the street or something... But, no... it is really gone. Ray remembered the last thing that he threw away so he walked down the street looking into garbage cans trying to find ours, but no luck. So, when I got home from school I called the Sanitation place to find out the number of our garbage can, and then I walked around the street trying to find our big green bundle of joy. Still no luck... Hopefully we find it because I really don't want to have to pay for another one, but I'm sure all of our neighbors are getting a kick our of watching us check out everyone's garbage cans :)

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!

The deer hunt is a pretty big deal in my family, every year on opening weekend all of the boys go up to our cabin at Hogsheaven and have a big ol' deer hunting party. So, since the boys always leave for the weekend, it has kind of became a tradition for the girls to go on a "girls trip". Usually it's just somewhere close like Salt Lake or Vegas, but this year our friend Bill Tillet let us use his house in Kerrville, Texas. Kerrville is a little under two hours away from San Antonio so we flew in to the San Antonio International Airport and checked out the Alamo and ate breakfast on the Riverwalk before heading to our destination.

- The Girls -

- The Mariachi Band -

After the Riverwalk we headed to the house... where the real adventures began! One of our original plans was to try and get tickets to a University of Texas football game, but they played in Dallas that weekend so we settled for the local high school football game... and yes, I'm being serious :) After the game we went to the YO Ranch steakhouse for dinner and we all ended up ordering soup and salad.. random.

-The House -

-The Kerrville Fighting Antlers -

The next day we went to a cute little German town called Fredricksburg. We walked down the street and shopped in all the little shops and ate a very yummy lunch. That night we all went to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willy and the boys. Just kidding.. but seriously, we went to Luckenbach and had a blast. We ended up at a Roger Creager concert (I'm sure you have no idea who he is, we didn't either).. while at the concert a whole group of guys in tuxes walked in and we eventually found out that one of them was supposed to get married that night but he was stood up at the alter... poor guy!

Me, Ashlee, and Tanya at the concert...

... and Bonnie and the poor guy that didn't get married.

The next day we went to another little town called Bandares. We passed a bar that had horses tied up outside... It looked like something in the movies.. and then we ate lunch at a funny little place where you had to sit on saddles to sit at the bar.



Then it was time to go home so we woke up the next day packed our bags and headed back to San Antonio. Me and my mom had a few hours before our flight so we stopped and checked out the Alamo. Then it was back to Utah/Idaho. We had such a good time and I can't wait until we get to go again next year!

Family Time

We got the chance to go home earlier this month for our new little nephew's baby blessing in St. George. We stopped in Cedar first and headed up to the mountain with my family to help bring the cows off of the mountain. I struggle at remembering to take pictures so I don't have from the blessing, but thanks to Tanya I have pictures from the mountain.

The blessing was really neat, it was absolutely beautiful up on the mountain, and it was so nice to be able to spend time with family!

- Me and Pearl -

- Ray and B.B. -

- My Dad -

- The Whole Crew -

After we were done getting the cows we went to see the new colts. Most of the time the baby colts are scared of people and will run to their mom's if you get close, but one little guy is the exact opposite. He loves people, and will coming running up the minute he sees you. You have to be careful though because he's a biter... If you turn you back for one second he'll get ya.

On the way there my cousin Tanya was telling us about names that her and my brother Casey had picked out for the new horses and Ray randomly blurted out... "Is it Jeff?" We all started laughing and the name kind of stuck. So here is "Jeff"...

Going in for the kill...

And playing nice...

One Amazing Year, One Confusing Trip

Today is our 1 year anniversary... Can you believe it?! I can't believe how fast it went by. It is crazy how much things have changed, how much we've learned, how much we've grown, and how much more in love we are and will continue to be. Ray is so stinkin' cute and such an awesome husband... He pulled off a lot of surprises this weekend and made it so much fun!! Bear with me on this one, it will probably be kind of long.

The weekend started with a bouquet of sunflowers. He must have caught on to how much I like them by having to listen me talk about how fun all the sunflowers are up here every time we drive somewhere. I think at one point I actually said something like, "I would tell you that you should pick me some sunflowers, but please don't because they will have bugs all over them." So instead he had fresh, bug-free sunflowers sent right to our door. :)



Saturday started out like most of our weekends have since college football started… with a Michigan football game. Partway through the game Ray says, “Go get ready, we’re leaving at noon.” I was a tad bit confused but after a couple of questions I found out that were going to Salt Lake and that I needed to pack enough to stay overnight. I was really excited but didn’t have a clue what we were going to do once we got there.

Despite all my questions and my attempts to try to get him to say something that might give it away, I still had no idea what was going on when we hit Salt Lake. We stopped and ate at TGI Fridays, which was absolutely delicious, and then we hopped back in the car where I was told we had about another 40 minutes left to drive. Provo being the obvious destination at that point, but I had so many crazy ideas floating around in my head that I still couldn't formulate a reasonable thought of what it was that we were doing.

The drive to Provo was pretty eventful. Ray managed to convince me that we were going to Park City, that we were just going to stay at Matt and Annie’s house, that he didn’t have any plans and that we were probably just going to go to a movie... at one point he even had me convinced that my Mom had come up and that we were going to pick her up at a hotel. (I thought this one was a little strange considering that it was our anniversary, but I was excited nonetheless… you have no idea how convincing he is) You would think that after a year of marriage I would be able to tell whether he is being serious or not, but I can’t. We did, however, eventually make it to our destination which was Lavelle Edwards Stadium for the BYU vs. Florida State game. I actually prefer Utah over BYU and Ray obviously likes Michigan, but it was a big game and it was fun to be at. The stadium was PACKED! I seriously don’t think there was a single empty seat.

After the game Ray, once again, successfully convinced me that we didn’t really have a place to stay and that he just had me pack just-in-case we decided we wanted to stay somewhere. That was a little weird to me but I didn’t say anything because it didn’t really matter and the game was a lot of fun. So he asked me where I wanted to go to get some ice cream and we decided to stop at Maggie Moo’s in Salt Lake. After some really yummy ice cream, we jumped in the car and headed toward the freeway…. Or so I thought. I wasn’t really paying attention to where we were going but then we passed this building and Ray points to it and says, “Wow, what is that building? It looks like a church thing.” I didn’t really know what it was but he turned around to go look at it. I thought this was a little odd as well, Ray doesn’t usually do that. So we turned around and looked at the building and it wasn’t really anything special, but on the corner right next to it was this darling old house, so I said, “Wow! What is that?” At the same moment I noticed a sign that said Anniversary Inn and Ray turned into the parking lot. I was stoked! I couldn’t believe that he had found something like this all on his own. It was the cutest little place you’ve ever seen. It had around 10 suites in it, all with different themes. Our room was called the “Secret Garden” and it was SO cute!! They even brought breakfast to our room in the morning.








Ray did such a good job at making our anniversary special. It is my turn next year; hopefully I can make it just as fun. I love you Ray!! Happy Anniversary!

Go Blue!

So, Ray is hilarious. For those of you who don't know, he LOVES Michigan Football and has for a long time. They played their first game of the season on Saturday and Ray was so excited he could hardly wait. As you can see from the picture below he decked himself out in blue in yellow for the game and even broke out his cool Michigan cups. You would think that we were having a party or on our way to the "big house" or something. But we weren't. It was just me and him hanging out on the couch. He definitely takes full advantage of any chance he can get to support his team.

Pokey So Far..

School has been going for a couple of weeks now and so we have really started to settle down and adjust to life in Pocatello. The weather has been beautiful, everything is really green, and there are sunflowers everywhere! I love sunflowers, so it is fun to have them around every corner.

School starting also equals LOTS of homework. Ray has set up base on the couch and I have taken over the dining room table. Our evenings usually consist of one or two episodes of "Seinfeld" or "Law and Order" and then just silence and the occasional turning of a page. Oh, and we usually take a break to eat dinner... But we have decided that we lucked out by having our living room, dining room, and kitchen all merged into the same room so that we can still be in the same room while we study :)

Our schedules are pretty much opposite... On day's that Ray's classes start at 8, mine don't, and when mine start at 8, his don't. It hasn't seemed to bother us though, so either we've learned how to be extra quiet when we get ready, or we've just learned to sleep through the noise... I'm thinking its the sleeping...

All-in-all life in Pokey has been pretty darn good so far. We're making friends and having a lot of fun just hanging out with eachother. It's easy to say that when the weather is nice but I hear the winters are brutal up here so we'll see how we feel about it once it starts getting cold. :)