A birthday and an anniversary in one day!

I think most of you know but Spencer's  birthday is the day before our anniversary. So each year around Christmas time it is pretty exciting and eventful. 

This year we paired the two celebrations together because our anniversary was on Sunday. So it was up to me to plan the day since Spencer planned my birthday. It started out with a surprise to our plans when Spencer's high school friend wanted to get together for a bit. We went out for breakfast with him and his girlfriend and it was really fun. 

This is Spencer's birthday hat he got at I-Hop. There was a guy going our making things for kids and when he found out it was Spencer's birthday he got busy. Pretty funny.

The next part of the plans was a little last minute but very fun. We decided to go play racket ball. 

We then enjoyed a scrumptious dinner made by Spencer's mom and then played games with his family. 

The next plan was a surprise up until that day. I found the idea online when I was hanging out in the apartment down here before Christmas. So the place is called Color Me Mine. There are two locations one in Salt Lake and one in Draper. We went to the one in Salt Lake. You go and pick a ceramic piece that you want to paint. They show you how it all works and then they fire it then in a week you go pick it up and its yours. We decided to choose bowls, cheaper and something we could use. It was so fun, but the funniest part is that we went in our PJ's. It was something they do each month and it just happened to be the night of his birthday. So the deal is if you show up in your PJ's then you get an $8 discount on each persons entry fee. Pretty good deal to me.

So here is the final product. Spencer's is the one with all the cool spec's on it and mine in the blue one. Spencer did this fun design inside of this bowl.

 Then for dinner we went to a yummy Japanese restaurant called Kyoto. So delicious and it made us want to go back to Japan for the great food. 

We were going to do some other things but the day filled up quick. It was great to have such a fun day with my lovely husband. I love him so much and I can't believe its been 3 years. Short yet long but the best 3 years of my life!!!

Fun with the family

I forgot that I had other pictures from Christmas break that I needed to put on the blog. We did so much with both families, but I was so terrible at actually taking pictures. 

One of the days we were there we went ice skating with Stacy, her girls, and mom. It was so fun.

Also, instead of a sibling gift exchange we go out to eat. This year we went to California Pizza Kitchen which was fun and delicious.

Utah Holiday Break

Although we moved down to Flagstaff in November, we hardly spent much time there. We came back for a week for Thanksgiving and then a week and a half for Christmas. We were so grateful to be with family a little bit more before the official move. 

The drive there was very pretty. These pictures are taken just south of Page, Arizona. You drive out of the canyon and you see this beautiful flat canyon in front of you and it just goes on for miles and miles. It is the start of the Grand Canyon.

We were very lucky to enjoy a lot of time with the Graehls and the Jackmans. We had a few fun family parties as well that were a lot of fun. Christmas eve was spent with the Jackmans. We enjoyed a delicious fancy meal, then had our tradition of drawing a name from a bowl and saying why you love that person. It is such a neat experience to be a part of that. There are always tears involved but that is what makes it so great. Then we enjoyed dessert and played a few games.

Makai was loving the camera that night. She is so so cute! Funny girl.

We slept over and opened presents on Christmas day. Lots of fun presents!

Then we headed over to the Graehls for a wonderful breakfast, presents, relaxing, putting together presents, then dinner and games at my cousins. But I also don't want to forget that we did spend some time with the Graehls on Christmas eve taking family pictures and going to see the Hobbit. 

 Barrett was hilarious, he didn't want to smile for the camera!!

 Millie was in need of a nap so Bre put her down on the couch all wrapped up and she pretended to sleep. That funny girl.

I love all of our family so much. They are so kind, loving and fun to be around. We already miss you guys so much being down here on our own. But we will visit and hope that you will too.

The new place

I am sorry it has been a while since I posted anything new but we just finally got our internet hooked up yesterday and every time I went to the library to check my emails and stuff, I kept forgetting to get the pictures uploaded from my camera to the computer. So here it all is.

This first post is to explain all the craziness that happened in December. We found a home down here in Flagstaff the second week we were here in November. We put in an offer, they counter-offered, and then finally there was an agreement. Then we got it inspected and found some big things that needed to be replaced like the furnace and the roof. We got them to drop off $5k for the roof and to work on a few funny little things that need to be fixed like installing more smoke alarms, making sure all light fixtures worked, etc. The closing date was supposed to be for Dec. 20th just before the holidays. The appraisal took forever because the owners were rarely home and so our Realtor told us that it wouldn't close on time. That meant that we would have to pay money for our stuff to stay in storage a little longer than a month, that we would have to move the few things we had in the apartment somewhere while we were in Utah for the holidays so that we didn't have to pay rent while not even living there. I was starting to get stressed.

Two days before it was supposed to close, we got a call from our Realtor that it all was going to work out and on-time! I was so excited. We called to storage company to get them to come drop our stuff off and they said they were booked. Then, the day before closing, they called us back and said someone else dropped their appointment so we would get our stuff moved in the day we were supposed to leave for Utah. 

This story is already longer than I planned it to be, but as you might know our stuff got into the house, then 10 minutes after the movers left, we hopped into the car and drove to Utah. It was all crazy. 

The pictures here are ones that I took the morning the movers came with our stuff. They aren't the greatest pictures but it does show a little bit of a before picture and all the things they left for us.

 Nice open front room. 

 A beautiful dinning room table left as part of the deal we made with them. It is huge, with 8 chairs.

 The view as you come in the front door. Its got a little closet in this island thingy, then the front room is off to the left, the dinning room table in the back, hallways off the the right and down a little, and master bedroom is a sharp right coming in and going upstairs.

 The hallway that has a nice closet, bathroom, office, baby room and guest room.

 Huge weight machine they left for us. It's nice but really big and hard to move. Not part of the deal.

 Book case and desk. Not necessarily part of the deal but we'll find use for them.

 Downstairs bathroom. The terrible yellow walls were the first to go. An after picture will come shortly. The green sinks match the toilet and the shower/tub. For now they will stay but we hope to replace them. I think I'll paint the cabinets black. We'll see.

In the office they left this couch. At first I thought that we would just find someone in the ward that needed it, but as we started to move it we found that it was so so heavy. It was a hide-a-bed which actually is handy. So we bought a couch slip-cover to make it look a little better and we'll be able to use it when visitors come, because I know they will? Right? I sure hope so.

 (Ok, ok i know hide-a-beds aren't the most comfortable but hey, it will be better than the floor.)

  Stairs going up to master bedroom.

 The master bedroom is much bigger than what we had last time so it will be nice. The carpet isn't too bad but it will be replaced someday. Its like a gray/blue.

So go back to that picture that shows the stairs and door to the master, there is a little cut-out in the wall on the left. That is a little opening that lets us see the sky windows and the crazy view down into the front room and dinning room. If any of you have ideas or see anything cute on pinterest on how to decorate on top of those walls then please send it my way. I'm not sure what to do yet.

 So I should have take another picture of the kitchen but this is to show that all the appliances they left, which was all of them, nice and black, except for the fridge. So that will get replaced when we haven't gone bankrupt for working on other things in the house too!!!

 We got them to leave this couch for us as part of the contract. They told us that they were downsizing and didn't want to take everything so we were excited. They even left the end table and coffee table which are huge and nice, and a nice brown suede recliner.

 There is a nice outside covered patio and they pretty much left everything outside. Fire-pit, benches, patio furniture, plastic chairs, flowerpots, but the funny thing is this bench. We started to look at it and found that it is a Harley Davidson Bench with the wings and H D in the middle if you can look closely. It's pretty funny. There is even a Harley Davidson hat in the garage.

 So our garage doesn't look like this anymore. We spent a whole Saturday organizing it but this is all that they left in the garage. It was pretty amazing. Tons of paint, and crazy tools like chain saw, electric sanders, and a bunch of other things I don't know what they are.

 It was nice to get these organizing shelves, 4 ladders, rakes, shovels and tons of other things. Now the garage stuff was not part of the deal so we really got some nice stuff pretty much for free.

 These are some of the fun pots they left for us. I am really excited to landscape a bit in the summer to make the place look nicer.

So that is that. Hope that gives you an ideas of what we got. We are excited and have some fun plans to make things look a little better. I will keep you posted when they get finished.