In between our little trips...

The past couple of months have been pretty dang busy! I went to spring term and just finished a couple of weeks ago. I worked with a group of refugees up in Salt Lake for clinical. Although it wasn't exactly what I expected, overall I learned quite a bit from this inspiring group of people. They all have experienced such great hardships that I can't even imagine and am grateful to have spent time with them. Scotty is also taking some online classes this summer. This summer is different than the last two and we are actually staying in Provo for the whole thing. We were both able to get new jobs this summer that we are pretty excited about. Scotty is working for a heating & air company that does a lot of new construction in the Lehi area. He is learning a lot of new things and this will be great experience for him if he decides to go down that avenue in construction down the road. I was also able to get a new job as a LPN at an assisted living community called Courtyard at Jamestown. The opportunity just came out of nowhere and I should thank Ash Bash for letting me know of the opening and recommending me. It has been a great learning experience and I feel that it will help fill a hole that I felt was missing on my resume for future job hunting as a RN. I took the LPN licensing test last week and PASSED (thank goodness) and I'm so glad I don't have a test like that looming over my head anymore (until I graduate that is). Although both of these jobs are really great experiences for both of us there have been some drawbacks in that our schedules don't always align and include the weekends which make going on vacations a little more difficult. But, nonetheless we feel very grateful and blessed this summer.


One of the fun things that we have been able to do lately is go to the Strawberry Days Rodeo while Danny and Kaitlin were in town. I was a little worried because I'm such a softy when it comes to animals but I actually really enjoyed it and would definitely go again!

So for now we are just staying busy with work but are counting down the days till we can get out of town and see family. We have the Tracy Family Reunion in Island Park in a few weeks and then the Anderson Family cruise in a little over a month, we CAN'T WAIT for both!

Newport Beach

When we realized neither of us had to work over Memorial Day weekend we jumped on the chance to drive down to Newport Beach to visit Brian, Lyndsay, and Chad. We always have such a great time when we visit these guys and appreciate them having us! While we were there we walked along the pier & watched people skim board, went to the swap meet, walked around Corona Del Mar, spent some time at the beach, and ate lots of delicious food! On Sunday night we played games with some of Brian and Lyndsay's friends and had such a fun night ...we both said that we hadn't laughed so much in a long time. Then you couple it with having a conversation with Lyndsay on Ambien and it REALLY was the most/hardest we had laughed in a long time! :) It was so great to get out of town for a few days, we only wish we could have stayed longer!

Such a cute little family...

Look at that adorable face!!...

Lyndsay tried to get me to face my fear of flying birds (if you don't know this about me, don't worry about it-it's really quite embarassing haha)....

Don't worry I had Chad to protect me though :)...

Thanks for having us Brian and Lyndsay!

Southern Utah Camping...

Back at the beginning of May we decided to get out of town and go for a weekend of camping with my brother and his wife. We all wanted to go to Moab and hike Arches National Park. This trip ended up being pretty hilarious with nothing really going to plan! We had been looking to go for a couple of weeks prior and so my brother looked online to reserve a campsite but everything was full for the WHOLE summer! We thought that was weird but were not discouraged because there was lots of first-come, first-serve sites available (over 200). So we decided to just leave Provo early in the morning on Friday and thought that it would be no problem finding a spot. So we packed up the car real tight and drove down...

Boy were we wrong!!! Moab was PACKED! Every single campsite that we thought we would be to stay at was packed. We even went to the Information Center and they assured us there was nothing available unless we wanted to camp pretty much in somebody's backyard and not have a campfire. Um, not have a campfire while camping?? Yeah, we'll pass. So we get in the car and start trying to figure out what to do. My brother had gone to this place that was about 1 1/2 hours away that had some slot canyons we could hike so we decided to give it a try.

When we got to the place, I got out of the car, started laughing and said, "This is NOT camping." I'm a little used to Idaho with pine trees and beautiful scenary, not dirt and rocks. I guess I should have expected it seeing as we were going to Southern Utah. ha. But it was actually really fun staying there that night and we were able to have a campfire so it was all good!

Yes, my brother is holding sage brush like a bouquet, isn't it beautiful?? :)

The next morning we still wanted to go back to Moab to hike Arches since that was the main reason for going but before we left we hiked the slot cannons. This actually turned out to be our favorite part of the trip. It was really cool!

Then we headed back to Moab and hiked Arches...

After a long day of hiking we were pretty tired and decided to start the drive back to Provo and camp at a campground just outside of Springville so that we didn't have a long drive the next day. We actually really liked this campground and plan to possibly return again sometime this summer. It was WAY more my style of camping with trees, grass, running water, fire pits, and bathrooms...

We had such a fun trip and we can't wait to go camping again this summer!