Touro End of Year Party

We have l absolutely loved going to the parties thrown by the Physical Therapy Program at the end of each year! They've always hosted them at the Westin Resort at Lake Las Vegas, which is a GORGEOUS venue! They have a big pool, and this year the slide was opened, Easton pretty much lived on it the whole night, and even was ok with going up and down by himself! They have a yummy taco truck come to cater, and the lake has a beach front area with a big bonfire going, live music, paddle boards, and peddle boats available. It's always great to catch up with all the other student families and see how the kids have grown throughout the year.
Crazy to think that this was our last year at school, and so our last year going to the party...we will be SO happy to be done with school, and might just have to make a trip out there a new tradition as a fun staycation :) We will see! But for now...adios to school life, and WELCOME work and normal life!

2014 Graduating Class

Mom and Easton

mesmerized by the bonfire

peddle boat view of Lake Las Vegas, pretty nice eh?

roasting 'mallows with Papa

Easton loved being the driver of the boat....drove us around in tons of circle!

Crazy classmates. It's been fun to see Ryan gain such close relationships with all these people that started out as complete strangers!

The Touro 'BIG GAME'

Every year, Ryan's school plays a basketball against Touro University San Francisco. This year he tried out for the team, and of course made it. I have to admit, I kept teasing him about the whole thing up until I pulled up the parking lot and COULD NOT find a parking spot. I was beyond shocked at the turnout of this game! In my mind, I was picturing something along the lines of a church basketball game, with some of his classmates there to cheer, along with some of us families. I was so so wrong. They played the game at Findlay Prep High School, so it was a nice gym, but obviously smaller. However, it was equally as loud as any Utah State game, I had to yell to talk to my friend next to me, and Easton was a little timid because of all the commotion surrounding him. 

Ryan's classmates made Big Heads of Ryan, and surprised us with a Baby Big Head of Easton, it was so funny, and E loved them! 

The game was incredibly intense! Even Ryan said it was way more intense than he was expecting, and he was completely exhausted after the first half. They played so hard, and in the end they lost by only one point. You would have thought they still won because of the amount of sound coming out of that place! It was such a fun night, and makes me wish that Ryan would have played last year, and could next year, but instead he will be in the middle of rotations and getting ready to graduate! Can't wait for that day, it's exciting that it's getting so close to the end for us! 

Me and Easton cheering for the Papa. 

Ryan playing in the 'Big Game'

My boys!

Being awarded their medals

Easton hung out here at my feet for most of the game.

Check out his cute sassy baby bum. 

my life according to Coldplay.

This was a fun couple of minutes....try it! Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title.

your Artist:
Coldplay

Are you a male or female:
we never change.

Describe yourself:
easy to please.

How do you feel?:
bigger stronger.

Describe where you currently live
in my place.

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?:
violet hill.

Your favorite form of transportation:
parachutes

Your best friend is:
one i love.

You and your best friend are:
lovers in Japan.

What's the weather like?
daylight.

Favorite time of day:
sleeping sun.

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called?:
green eyes.

What is life to you?:
life is for living.

Your last relationship:
such a rush.

Your fear:
things i don't understand.

What is the best advice you have to give
God put a smile on your face.

Thought for the Day:
death will never conquer.

How I would like to die:
swallowed in the sea.

My soul's present condition:
viva la vida

My motto:
careful where you stand.

alice

saw it. loved it. will see it again.

I went to this with my older sister Michelle tonight, and we both absolutely loved it! Such a good movie, it's definitely one that I could watch over and over again. I do want to see it again in 3-D for sure! I recommend all of everyone to go see it!

get together :)

A couple weekends ago, I got together with a couple of my friends for a yummy lunch. Taylor was in town from San Diego for Dawson's checkup, and so Danielle drove up to meet us as well, and then Kari and I met both of them. It was so much fun to see all my cute friends all back together again! We had an amazing lunch at Elements, a yummy new restaurant here in Logan, and then afterwards Danielle and I did some shopping :)

BIG Bill #1 in Sportscenter's Not Top 10

Utah State made the #1 spot on the not top 10, Ryan thought it was awesome. And I think Ryan's awesome.

a new fave

Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson - New Music - More Music Videos

Best Friends :)

Every year around this time, my high school friends and I like to try and get together to catch up on everything. This year we went to yummy Sonora Grill in Ogden, and we all loved it!

I feel like all my friends are so amazing! It's so much fun to catch up and see what they have been up to. Marlee recently moved back to Ogden from Logan and is working at the hospital. Emily and her husband Tyler both started up another year of school at Weber State and recently bought a cute new house. And Allie graduated this past semester with her bachelor's and will be starting grad school at U of U on Monday!

Unfortunately, this year Kylie and Chelsea were unable to make it. Kylie started up school again at BYU that day, and Chelsea is out serving a mission in LA. Hopefully next year they'll be able to make it!

They are all so cute and fun and LOVE the times when I get to see them!

Sound Choice Christmas 2009

Last Thursday, we went to my dad's Christmas Concert with the group he sings with, Sound Choice. I remember going to these concerts ever since I was a little girl, I hadn't been to one for a couple years, and being there on Thursday was so much fun and brought back so many memories! They did a great job! Here they are singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"

(it's a little blurry, my filming skills are a lotta bit rusty.)

And the whole fam, minus Annie and Jack...we missed you!

Mormons on the Tonight Show!

This was on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien the other night, and I thought it was so funny! enjoy!

the Cooley's

this last week our friends the Cooley's came from DC to stay with us and visit their family for the holiday! It was so much fun to get to see them and be able to spend so much time with them! The first night they were here, we all headed up to the USU vs Boise State football game, USU got creamed, but it at least we all had fun together...freezing and cuddling up!


We also went to see New Moon together, ate at Angies, Chilis, Ruby Tuesday, Texas Roadhouse....we ate a LOT and had fun the whole time! Tanner had his 24th birthday on Tuesday, and to celebrate we went to the USU vs Idaho State basketball game, and then Ruby Tuesday's afterward, here is the crew...



They left on Friday after we all got together for one last lunch together, :( we will miss them, but hopefully see them soon! (If anyone wants to start donating to a "Ryan and Anna want to go to DC this summer" fund...we'd much appreciate it!)

...follow the yellow brick road...

tonight we had a Relief Society activity that was so much fun! We didn't know exactly what we would be doing when we got there, this was the invite:


When you walked into the church, there was literally a 'yellow brick road going around the church. and when you went into the gym you walking into Kansas. We had a yummy home cooked meal, by Auntie Em :) (pulled pork sandwiches, BBQ chips, salad and lemonade)


After dinner, we all followed Dorothy around the yellow brick road and went to 3 classes taught by none other than the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tinman!


The Scarecrow spoke about how when we do our visiting teaching, we need to have a brain, and know what we are doing, and why we are doing it. Not just for ourselves, but because it is our calling as women of the church to serve our Father in Heaven and fulfull the calling he has given us to support one another.

Next stop on the yellow brick road was the Lion. He (She) spoke about having courage to go visiting teaching. That no excuse is a good excuse, we all need to have the courage to meet some one new in the ward, and make a new friend! She even wrote an adorable poem to go with it:

"What makes you pick up the phone and call? Courage
What makes you go visiting teaching at all? Courage
What makes you go meet someone you don't know?
What makes a friend from a foe? Courage
What makes you take the time to visit? Courage
What makes you no give up when it doesn't work you planned-dist? Courage
What makes you listen to the still small whisper?
That will end up helping a sister?
All this combined will make you a great visiting teacher!
COURAGE!"

The last stop on our adventure to Oz, was the Tinman. He (again She though) talked about how we need to have a heart, and sincerly care for our sisters that we teach. It was amazing the example that she used. She asked if any sisters had been having a bad day today, one girl raised her hand, and the Tinman asked her to come forward. She asked her "how are you?" and really listened to her answer as she explained, and then turned to us, and got choked up, and said, "Everyone, I am so excited to introduce you to MY sister. She is amazing." It's so true, how excited do we get to talk to our own immediate families, but when we ask how anyone else is, do we really listen to their answer? It was a very powerful message. She taught that we are all sisters, and family, and come from one Father, and we need to be actively engaged in each others interests and be truly careful towards one another.

After we finished up in the Tinman's class, we headed into Oz! While we were in all of our special classes, the presidency had transformed Kansas into Oz, complete with a rainbow of cupcakes and balloons! It was such a great night, and was topped off with a special message from Bishop Price!



I feel so blessed to be in my ward, I love all the girls so much and have so much fun anytime I am at church!


Here is a picture of all the cute characters! We had the bad witch and the good witch (Glenda) who followed us to each class on the yellow brick road giving us words of discouragement ("don't go there" "you don't have time" "it's just 'assign a friend' not real friends") and then encouraging words from Glenda ("don't listen to her!" "you'll receive countless blessings!" etc.) They were all so cute! And all did an AMAZING job playing their roles!

weekend with the girls :)

This past weekend I went up to Park City with Ryan's mom and sisters. I must say, I have been very blessed to marry into a family that i adore as much as my own! We all had such a great time together!

We started the weekend off with the long drive to Park City, I must say though, that the drive went pretty quick considering we were talking the whole way up so it passed the time nicely :)

Kristin, Lauren, and me (the backseat gang)


Julie (the DD), and Kim

Once we got into Park City, we hit up Main Street first. We were all surprised at how cold the weather was so we went into a lot of little shops just to warm up. We found ourselves in one shop in particular that we were happy we found, it was called "Mountain Body" (website here). What intrigued us into the store was the sign advertising a cosmetic deli...never heard of one? well neither had we! In case you were wondering, this is what one looks like:

It has a bunch of different kinds of masks for face, and hair, etc. They are all made from herbs and organic things and you buy it in little tupperwares and pay by the weight. Well we all decided that since we were having a girls weekend, we HAD to do facials! So Kim got a tupperware of the "Mother Earth" mask. :) The sweet employee working there, also treated us to a hand treatment, it included a bunch of creams, scrubs, and lotions, and when we were all done, our hands were so smooth! We were all blown away, I don't think my hands have ever been that soft!


Here we are applying the hand treatment


And all of us before we left our new favorite store

For dinner that night, Julie had a coupon for $25 a meal at Red Banjo Pizza, so we headed up there. It was really funny cause we had a spend a certain amount to be able to use the coupon, so we ordered 3 appetizers, each a dinner salad, and a huge pizza...all between 5 girls, and we ate it all! I didn't think we'd ever be able to eat all the food we had, but somehow we did! It ended up being a great deal, for all that food it was only about $6 a person (great deal for Main Street dinner in Park City 'eh)


After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to check in. We stayed at the New Park Hotel and Resort. We had a 2 bedroom suite, and none of us really knew what to expect...well lets just say we were NOT let down! We had one room with a queen size bed, leather couch, fireplace, huge bathroom, and mini kitchen, AND THEN another door joining into the 2nd part of the suite, which was even more impressive! It had a huge HALLWAY, washer and dryer, bedroom with a king size bed, an even bigger bathroom, with double sinks, jaccuzi tub, and then a living room with a full kitchen (big fridge, stove top, sink and dishwasher included), another leather couch, and fireplace, there were a total of 3 flat screens in the whole place AND a private deck with a hot tub on it! SHEESH! We sure felt like queens! First we decided to hop into the hot tub out on the deck, we didn't realize that it was smaller than normal hot tubs, and by the time we were all in, it was definatly overflowing!




haha, we were all hugging our knees and we we figured it was a better fit for maybe 3 people tops. So we headed down to the main hotel hot tub, sadly it was broken, so we just went back up and started our masks.



These masks were so dang funny to us! We were all laughing so hard at each other wearing them, and we couldn't believe how much they tightened up our faces, so we couldn't even smile normal while laughing, which made us laugh even harder! It was a memory I'll never ever forget! Once we took them off, we played a couple card games, and ate a ton more treats (spinich articoke dip, apples dipped in carmel, chocolates from Rocky Mountain Chocolates, popcorn, cream sodas....the list goes on and on!)

The next morning, we took our time getting ready and eating some more (muffins, pears, apples, bananas, juice...we didn't go hungry on this trip!) and then we were off to the outlets to start our shopping adventure. We got there at about 11:30, and by 2:30 we'd only been into 5 of the stores, and already were stopping for lunch. We went to a place called Souperman, and had some yummy homemade soups, they make them really healthy by not adding any salt or flour to any of the soups.



Once we were done with lunch we headed back to the outlets, the only photo we got while shopping was in Motherhood Maternity, we were doing some shopping for Kristin, and while they were looking around, Lauren and I were sitting on some chairs and I decided to try on a belly that they have in the dressing rooms,

...so this is what I'll look like when I'm pregnant I guess! Haha I felt so silly wearing it, and we all got a good laugh!

Well, we finally got around to almost all of the stores, we probably only missed the last 10-15 shops. We got kicked out of the last one. Literally. We were in the dressing room and the lady from the store came back to remind us twice that they were closing, and when we left, they had to unlock the doors for us!


As you can tell, we DEFINITELY had too much fun shopping, we were there for about 8 hours and this is what we came out with...the trunk was seriously overflowing!

We're going to make this fun little trip a yearly tradition, and we just might have to stay an extra night so we can make it to all the stores next year! We had so much fun, and I really can't wait for next year!

Jazz game

Last Thursday, Ryan and I had an incredible opportunity to go to the pre-season game opener for the Jazz vs. the Denver Nuggets. My uncle is part of the 100 Club, so he has 4 court side season tickets next to the opposing team bench, he wasn't able to make it down for the game, so he offered two to my grandparents, and the other two to us! We were so excited to go! As a part of the 100 Club, we were able to eat an AMAZING dinner before the game on the top floor of the Energy Solutions Arena with incredible views, and during half-time, we got to go into a VIP area below with tons of chips, popcorn, nachos, drinks, cheese and crackers, etc! We were stuffed by the time we left!

During the game, our feet were literally ON the court! In fact, during one of the timeouts, Ryan stood up to stretch his legs, and the security person asked him to "please sit back down, so you aren't in their huddle"! It was crazy! Before the game started, the Nuggets were all sitting on their bench, and Ryan looked over and found that he was sitting right next to Carmello Anthony! haha!

It was such a fun experience, and we had such a great time spending the whole night with my Grandma and Grandpa, they are such fun company! And thanks SO SO SO much to my Uncle Chris for letting us use your tickets and go to the game!


fun date night!


the Jazz being announced


Grandma, Grandpa, me and Ryan


a pretty good view??? I say yes.


Birdman :)


see...I told you our feet were ON the court!