Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Church Ball

Need I say more?


By the way, he was safe at 3rd.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

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!).


Sunday, June 28, 2009

"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.



Wednesday, June 24, 2009

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?

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

I love...

little brothers (and amazing brother-in-laws!). The "little" brothers never cease to amaze me with how strong they are when their worlds are constantly being rocked. You guys are such great examples to me! I love you Seth, David and Dillon! Keep going strong!

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

School Work

So I'm finally trying this blog stuff. Since Meagan usually covers the fun stuff that we do together, I don't have much to report.  But since I just finished another semester I figured I could post some of the images that I have rendered for projects that I've worked on.  

These are renderings that are used to illustrate the ideas and designs that we develop for our projects. This last semester the project we worked on was to design a town center and Main street beautification.  These are some of the images I produced using sketchup (a 3D modeling program) and Photoshop.






These images are ones that I did for a project last semester as just a fun, goofy design for a Disney competition.




Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Spoiled Rotten!

I have to brag on Dustin again, although I'll probably get busted for posting this. Even though I'm not a Mom yet Dustin treated me like absolute royalty on Sunday. He gave me the most perfect Mother's Day. I woke up to the smell of cinnamon roll cake (which is DIVINE) baking (don't tell his secrets, though!). He gave me the most beautiful bouquet of orchids and an awesome orchid corsage to wear to church.


Dinner was even better than breakfast as he experimented with some of his dutch oven recipes in the kitchen. Here was the menu:

Chicken stuffed with pepper jack cheese (my favorite ever) and green onions, then rolled in Ritz crackers...


For the sides we had garlic mashed potatoes with garlic and parmesan cheese. Then we had acorn squash stuffed with cream cheese (another favorite of mine), bacon and green onions. Nothing good for you about this meal, but it was heavenly! The best part was that he made it all up on his own and cooked it all by himself!

For dessert I made my first ever fruit pie to take to my Mom. Unfortunately the berries started to bleed on me, but I still think it turned out pretty good for a first attempt. Man, why do we like food so much?! :)

Dustin is definitely a keeper! I cannot even imagine life without Dustin. He makes me the happiest I have ever been and each day gets even better. These past few weeks as I've been struggling with work and things he has carried me. I love you, Dustin!

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Saguaro

Today for my random picture taking fun the subject of choice was the Saguaro cactus. You might be thinking that I have no life posting all these pictures of random cacti and you're probably right...I've had the last five days off and with all the Saguaro cactus in bloom they were too pretty not to take pictures of. :) Here are some pictures if anyone is interested in my quirky hobbies...






Friday, May 1, 2009

Dud's Delights

Randomly I come home from a long day of work to a fun suprise from Dustin. Today made the top of the list. We keep talking about making yummy smoothies, but haven't gotten around to it. When I came home from work I found Dustin standing behind a homemade bar set up in our kitchen (made out of a piece of lumbar and 5 gallon buckets) saying "Welcome to Dud's Delights". He made our very own smoothie shop complete with menus, a homemade barstool (thanks to a big dictionary), mood lighting, and state of the art one on one service. How awesome is that? The smoothies were superb and it was so much fun to have a unique date night with one of Dustin's random creations. I love Dustin! He is so wonderful to me!






Tuesday, April 28, 2009

We're Officially Offical Now :)

Okay, so I know I just barely started this blog thing with my other blog, but I want to have a blog that Dustin can add to and stuff (if he ever gets around to "working on it"!), so this is going to be our "official" blog (if there is such a thing). I'm probably not going to be adding to the other one much anymore so all of you avid bloggers can add this one instead of my old blog to your list. :)