Cooking rolls with Grandma

Fall Leaves

I've been in the middle of midterms but here are a few pictures I took the other day while golfing with Sam

Blogger app

Giving the blogger app a try- not sure why I hadn't thought to download it before, maybe this will make posting easier since blogger on my computer is really annoying me lately. Looks like you can't upload videos though... 

Trip to Salt Lake to see Trevor and Kathryn

We didn't go back to phoenix for Christmas this year, but I was able to take Rachel to Salt Lake the day after Christmas to stay with my brother, and my mom and dad drove up too.  

Then we went to see my cousin Carly - she was leaving town so we only got to see her and her family for a few minutes, but it was great to see her.  

 One day we went sledding and had lots of laughs

Love it when my dad is laughing so hard he is crying :)

We also tried building an igloo...this was as far as we got and then we were freezing and we realized we have no idea how they make the top part.  Maybe next year ha ha :)

Here's to 11 years

One day Rachel wasn't in the mood to ski, and she was invited to go to a friends house so I decided to take the opportunity to go skiing with just Sam, we had a lot of fun, went to a different side of the mountain than we had been to and I was having such a fun time I let one of the photographers take our photo and so I bought this one, and printed it on canvas for our anniversary.  It has been a fun 11 years, and I am so grateful to be married this man, he is so supportive, and silly, and responsible, and spontaneous, and he still makes me laugh.  It's hard to imagine what our future holds but I look forward to facing everything, and experiencing everything together.

Ok and just for fun- I found this picture from when we went skiing just a few days after Sam had proposed. 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! :)

Skiing

Here are a couple random pictures from the ski season. 

Many times this year it was too cold to take off my gloves to snap pictures, this was a random day that was warm enough to wear only sweaters so I snapped a bunch.  

I found that my hoodie pocket was the perfect place to stash snowballs and found it was so fun to throw them at Sam while we were skiing.  :)

Sam getting in on the action

payback  - Snowball to the face!! lol!

Snow day

  Nothing like waking up to a fresh blanket of snow, and sunshine.  It was a Sunday - and we had already slept through making it to church on time due to the time change- so I decided to go for a walk.  I love listening to the crunch of the snow under my boots.  Everything was so quiet, and I am glad that we went when we did because after church most on the streets had melted, and it wasn't a continuous blanket of snow anymore. 

  

Then after church we decided to do some sledding at the park down the street, not the biggest hill--but close enough to walk to and just steep enough to sled down. 

After making Cali pull us down the hill we decided it was time for Cali to get a turn.  

Ha ha! love this action shot of Rachel pushing Cali and I on the sled.  

 

Then Rachel begged me to bury her in the snow

Spring Break!

WAHOOOO!!!  I made it to spring break.  Hopefully taking this week off from school will give me just the mental break I need to be able to jump back into things on monday and finish the semester, without a mental breakdown....well, I mean...another one.  :)   This semester has been tough - for everyone, and supposedly it is maybe the hardest semester of our entire program, so that is both daunting, and comforting at the same time.  Number one - that means if we make it though this then maybe the rest won't be so bad.  It is also awkwardly comforting to know that all my classmates are having synchronized mental breakdowns.  For those of you wondering what makes this semester so hard - I don't have that many more credits, it is that I have my first 6 credit hour class, which is a core class in the program, and as you can imagine is very time consuming.  And while I learn a lot in this class, so I don't mind putting in the time to do well in it...there is this little thing called....ALL THE OTHER CLASSES!!   So while you are focusing on one class you get behind in another class, and it is this viscous circle - of always feeling behind and like there are not enough hours in the day.   Thankfully, I have found a groove which has allowed me to carry on, I am not Acing everything, but have been able to do a better job of studying enough to get B's on most tests...while keeping my sanity in tact - and this I consider a win! :) 

Ok - so on to the updating of everything that has happened since Christmas.  I decided to start with the most current and work backwards. 

To start off, and this seems to be a tradition of mine on every break I get from school - is to ponder life and all my hopes, and dreams - what is it that I really want in life, what really makes me happy.  I also would think that based on the amount of time that I spend thinking about this stuff....that I would have figured everything out by now.  After moving around to so many places, I do have the urge to settle down, and live the settled life...but I don't know where it is that I want to settle.  We will probably be here in Colorado for about another year...but after that--where to?  no idea really.  I miss living by family ...but there are things about Phoenix that made it not my ideal city, but all the other cities we have lived in had things about them that kept us from being able to visualize ourselves there long term either.    I also know that I have different needs and interests based on the time in our life, when Rachel was a baby there were certain things that made me happy about where I lived, (neighborhood parks, good playgroups, ...), as she got older I like having afterschool sports activities for her (gymnastics, guitar lessons, soccer...)  so I try to think about when what our life will be like in a few years from now,  Rachel will be going into junior high  -GASP!!!  What is it that I will be looking for in a dream city at that point?....again, no idea.   What about when she is in high school?? ugh.    What about when I start working - is it wierd to admit that while I enjoy school and dreaming about this future career....that I freak out when I think about actually working?! Last summer when I had an internship where I worked for just two weeks  - it was harder than I thought to get Rachel taken care of and then get off to work and then get home, and have both of us tired from being gone all day and neither of us wanting to make dinner.  My dream is to work part-time - so which city will give me a better chance at getting a part-time job?  Or maybe what I need is access to lots of good take out food?  Seriously...during this first day where I hoped to be giving my brain a break - this is everything on my mind.

And as for a sneak peak into how I spent my first day of spring break - that includes
Watched some tv
took a nice long shower,
blow dried and flat ironed my hair
put on make up
drove to Sam's work and took him out for lunch
called a few friends to catch-up
then drove around to find a peaceful place where I could channel some epiphanies. 

no luck with any epiphanies - but took these pretty pictures. of the view about 5 minutes from my house.
Feels nice to have nothing to do - and have time to enjoy the scenery  :) 

Christmas Morning

Santa brought Sam a pooping raindeer

Rachel got a doll and I sewed her and her doll matching pajamas, it may have taken 3+ days to do it - but it was fun. 

We also got socker boppers - and after we duked it out for a while, Sam had just as much fun doing this

The Fam

(Sam is wearing a snuggie Rachel got him, which for the record, makes a lot of static too- in case anyone else has been wondering what they are like)