Randomness

I've been meaning to update for awhile, but don't really have any huge updates to write about, so I'll just post some pictures of the random things we've been up to.

Fall...I love it and it doesn't come soon enough in AZ, so I got some decorations for the bar in our kitchen and we've had fun with them. I made pumpkin bread, too which is my absolute favorite "Fall-ish" treat. I got these wooden boxes with glass sides that I want to fill with different things for each Holiday and I love them! It makes doing a little decorating to spice up life way easy.

Canning...I've been trying to can some random things lately and I found a recipe for strawberry lemonade concentrate that was awesome! All went well with the strawberry lemonade and I should've stopped there, because this is what happened when I went to seal the grape jelly I made. Grandma's steam canner is no more...So sorry, Grandma!

Chicken noodle soup...Dustin will die, but neither of us felt very good on Sunday and I was craving homemade chicken noodle soup. I woke up to the yummiest soup ever and homemade bread bowls. He is amazing, but please, don't tell his secrets! :)

A baby gut...It's up and coming. I finally had to go shopping for clothes on Friday with my Mom because things just aren't fitting the way they used to. I almost made it to 6 months, though, which isn't bad if you ask me. Here's a picture at 21 weeks, even though it's not great because it was the day I was sick and not really in the mood for pictures.

Sunsets...this one is from my Grandpa's pond last night after a last minute trip to visit after conference on Sunday. Isn't it amazing?


(Dustin's addition) Meagan and I love nativities and this is our newest addition to our collection. It just came in the mail today, so we naturally had to check it out. Since we had it up, we thought we'd take a picture and share. Hope you enjoy it. We're excited!

Survey says...

It's still a GIRL! We had another ultrasound yesterday because on our last one they couldn't see the heart and face as well as they would've liked. Not that we complained at all! It's so fun to see our little girl squirming around happy and healthy! They said everything looks perfect and there still aren't any boy parts so pink wins! Dustin is so cute when he gets to see the ultrasounds because he just has the hugest grin on his face the whole time and says "WOW!" at everything they show us. Thank heavens for great husbands! I've been loving feeling her move more and more often and I always wish that Dustin could feel her, too, and this morning he finally got to feel one little kick! So much fun!

It's a...

It's a...GIRL!

Sorry...We're Open!

Gotta love Mexico!

Here are some cruise shots!

This is a funny sign in a hat shop in Cabo San Lucas. We got a chuckle over it anyways.

CRUISE'N ON THE SHIP

Here's our cruise ship in the background, Mariner of the Seas.

On board activities included ice skating, miniature golf, ping pong championships, basketball, ice -cream, eating, shows, rock climbing, napping, reading, chilling, and all-in-all just having a really good time.

Oh and did I mention eating?!

CABO SAN LUCAS

PARASAILING!

This was really fun! just a calm ride 150 feet in the air or so.

I really wanted to unbuckle and just go for a high dive drop into the beautiful blue ocean waters below. Somehow I figured they'd frown on that.

Some of the really cool views of the Cabo San Lucas harbor at the tip of the Baja Peninsula.

My beautiful beach babe just enjoying a little respite from the sun!

Isn't she gorgeous!

Enjoy clear waters and a little shade... What's not to like?

MAZATLAN

Taxis in Mazatlan - Truck style (above) and Water style (below)

Super Cool Beach Dudes and Dudette

And we even caught some sweet waves body boarding to prove our skills!

Look at us go!

Meagan even found her namesake sign - FUD!

Fun picture Meagan took while chillin' at the beach.

PUERTO VALLARTA

Zip Line Time!

This was a blast. Over 2 miles of zip line, 14 different runs,

the longest one at over 1200 feet long and the highest one at over 600 feet high!

Good Times!

Superman Style! This was the funnest.

Meagan and a couple of monkeys

Me and a really little monkey

Mom and her favorite animal in the world!

Not really... She's deathly afraid of snakes.

We were all so proud of her for this heroic achievement! Yeah!

Moving Up...

So as Meagan has already said, we have indeed moved up in the world; from the love shack all the way up to the love loft!

Here are a few pictures of the new place since we just got decorations hung up.

Here it is! Please notice the ceiling fans that go with the AC...Big Plus!

This is the living room with our fancy new table and couches

Here's the dining area and a look into the kitchen

Here's the Kitchen

And a look from the kitchen... yes we have my Mama and Baba masks from Africa set up to watch over everyone coming into the house. Cool huh?

The amazing arrangment of picture frames to the left is a recent accomplishment of which we are quite pleased. Now we just have to figure out what to pictures to put into them!

Lots of Updates!

A lot has been happening with us lately and I have failed miserably at updating...it happens. This will be a quickie with lots of writing because I am posting from Dustin's work computer and it has no pictures and I'm waiting on our computer to be set up, so here it goes.

I have no idea who knows and who doesn't at this point, but Dustin and I are EXPECTING! We are so excited! We are due February 4th so we're almost 16 weeks. Luckily I've gotten past most of the being sick and everything and all is going well. We got to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time a little over a week ago and it was so fun! The next big event is we get to find out what we're having on August 31st. So soon! It seems crazy! I haven't started to show at all yet, but my brother keeps asking about when I will get fat and have to wear maternity clothes (he wants to know if it will happen before he leaves on a mission in November and I assured him it would) so I will be sure and keep you all up to date on the progress on his behalf.

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to cook dinner and a scorpion came crawling out of our silverware drawer right next to my hand and I sent Dustin a text that I'd had it with the "love shack" and it was time to move. I love the shack because we made so many good memories there, though. The scorpion was kind of the last straw, but needless to say that we decided to up and move and a week later, here we are in a nice air conditioned apartment down the road. Silly you might think, but we are in HEAVEN so far (we'll see how long that lasts when we get the electric bill). We're still in a mess of boxes because our next news is that we went on vacation the day after we moved...

My parents took our family on a week long cruise for one last family vacation before Seth leaves and it was AMAZING! We just barely walked in the door so I'll post pictures and more about it later, but we had a blast. My favorite was para sailing in Cabo San Lucas and Dustin loved the miles of zip lines through the jungle in Puerto Vallarta (I don't know how to spell them). We stuffed our faces and were plain flat LAZY for a week. It was a much needed vacation...

I think those are the main points for now. More to come!

Church Ball

Need I say more?


By the way, he was safe at 3rd.

4th of July Festivities

We had a pretty low key 4th of July celebration this year, but it was still a lot of fun. To start off the day, Dustin put up a flag pole on the side of our house so we could be more patriotic then he made us flag pancakes for breakfast. We had Dustin's sister, DawnSheree, and her family along with my sister came to join us for the festivities later on in the afternoon. We went swimming, ate lots of great food (including homemade root beer, stuffed cream cheese jalapeno burgers, and homemade ice cream!), watched the fireworks from the roof of our house, and enjoyed a fireworks show that the boys put off in the yard. All I can say is that we were grateful to have our nephew Garth here to remind us how exciting the simple things in life really are! He was so excited about the fireworks!

As I've been thinking about the different freedoms that I enjoy it has really struck me how blessed we are to have the freedom to worship as we choose at this time. My mind keeps thinking back about the pioneers and the sacrifices that were made to make their trek West so that the Gospel could roll forth and prosper in our day. We truly are so blessed! The sacrifices we are asked to make don't seem much like sacrifices at all when I think about the marvelous blessings we receive in return for our diligence...

I didn't take many pictures on the 4th, but here are a couple. The first is of Dustin's snazzy flag. The others are the boys making root beer and DawnSheree's cute chubby baby (I hope you don't mind me sharing these, but they're too cute!).

"Go Big or Go Home!"... as Steven would say.

These are some pictures of the latest project that Meagan's Dad and I have been working on. We put together a little garden for our two families and promptly the quail invaded and ate all our corn!!! So using some materials we had on hand (and a few we didn't) we constructed our Anti-Aviary and now have a regular bird-proof garden house! And our second attempt at corn is planted, hopefully sprouting in the next two days or so. Pretty sweet huh?

Oh and just in case you are thinking that we're a little late in the season to get our garden going, you're right. However, according to the community food bank planting guide for Tucson, AZ (we only work with super official documents) we are just in time for the second growing season.

Obviously we're right on time. We'll keep on telling ourselves that anyway.

Bricks and stuff.

This morning Dustin had to work and I have the day off so I decided to go on a little adventure. I went up to this place by our house called Sanctuary Cove with full intentions of taking some pictures of flowers and other pretty things like that while taking a little hike. Well, what did I find to take pictures of instead? That's right. Bricks. I don't know why, but I kind of had fun finding cool things to do with something that usually isn't very "cool". I know, I'm weird. Here are some of the results of my craziness. If you click on the picture you might be able to see what I was trying to do with the focus and stuff so they don't just all look blurry.








Our big news is that Dustin is now the proud owner of a BBQ grill thanks to Father's Day. We have been wanting a grill FOREVER and I finally decided it was time to break down and just do it. We (meaning Dustin) cooked steaks for our Father's Day on the new grill and they were SO yummy! The lighting on the picture isn't great, but I still love Dustin's awesome outfit!


And, I have to add a picture of this awesome view of a sunset we had the other day at our house. What's better than an AZ sunset?