Yellowstone 2013 (According to Ellie)

Mommy and Ellie are going to tell you about our trip to Yellowstone. We went with Daddy, Grandpa, Ellie, Mommy, Miriam, Grandma, Great-Grandma, and Great-Grandpa.

Captions on photos were written by Ellie.

I liked riding on Grandpa's lap on his wheelchair.

We took a family picture. Mommy took a lot of pictures. A bunch of pictures.

Here is Miriam, Mommy and part of Ellie's head. We liked seeing the geysers and the hot pools. We knew it was hot because we saw the steam coming off of it.

I liked looking at the river. Miriam calls rivers and other water "baths". She also calls water that you drink and milk "noi-noi." She thought the geysers were really cool.

We saw so many geysers. We liked Old Faithful, Beehive, Riverside, and Grand. The water shot up really high. Up into the sky.

We took lots of pictures of the geysers and our family. All of us are cute. (haha, I love Ellie's descriptions!)

We saw a lot of bison! A bunch when we were driving and a bunch when we were walking. (Ellie LOVED the bison! She loves to point out them in our pictures. On our drive home she kept calling all of the cattle on the sides of the road bison.)

These ones got really close.

I am cute. Miriam is a cute girl. She is so cute. (Confidence in her cuteness is not an issue for Ellie.)

I liked to dig in the tiny rocks. Miriam gave me lots of hugs. I liked to the pile the rocks on the benches and people's shoes.

Yellowstone is pretty.

Miriam liked to yell 'yellow' at the rainbow. I liked to yell 'blue.' (I don't think this really happened. :) )

Mommy loves Daddy. Ellie loves Daddy. Miriam loves Mommy.

The water is pretty and hot.

We saw lots of neat things at Yellowstone. Half way through this day, our family got lost from Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma and Grandpa didn't know where we were. (This is said in a sing-song voice.)

This is really pretty.

We went swimming. I liked going in the hot tub the best. (Yay for a hotel and not freezing while trying to camp like last time!)

We saw a deer. They live in forestes. :)

We took a picture of two Grandmas, Grandpa, and Miriam.

We saw the water at the bottom of the canyon. We saw two really, really big waterfalls. Both of them were really green. One was far away, and one was really close. (?)

We love our family! I love Grandpa!

Miriam loves Grandpa!

We love Yellowstone! We like to take family pictures and pictures of the deer. :)

From my journal: The next weekend (over Memorial Day) our little family and my parents and grandparents went up to Yellowstone for a couple days. It was so fun! Although I was shocked that despite arriving at the hotel at nearly 11 pm. The kids only fell asleep for literally the last five minutes of the drive. After a yummy breakfast (Yay, hotel!), we went around the Old Faithful area. We saw some great geysers go off (including Old Faithful, Beehive, Riverside, and Grand).  It was really a great day even though we got split up and Miriam was really tired by the end of the day. That night we took the kids swimming. We stayed in a really nice hotel room where we all were in one huge room and it was really nice to have a warm place to stay (unlike our last trip to Yellowstone!). I loved being there with my family. We pushed my grandpa around in a wheel chair because he is having such a hard time walking these days. Pretty sad to see his body failing. My kids were much more comfortable around him by the end of the trip, which is cute. The next day we spent seeing the canyon area of Yellowstone. It was really beautiful, particularly seeing the lower falls from Artist's Point. I also liked going really close to them. We drove back to my parents' house that evening and then up to the Pearson BBQ at Lee and Robyn's house. It was the best one yet (times ten!), which made us sad that it will probably be the last one that we attend.

That crazy moment...

...when you realize that your little girl is going to grow up someday. :(

Has it Really Been 7 Years?!

A few weeks ago, on the anniversary of the day that we met, John planned a surprise date for me. He had us go back to a few of the special places from our courtship and take pictures there. So sweet!

Belmont 28! We met on this doorstep when he and his roommates were introducing themselves to all of the girls in the ward. Oh the memories in this apartment! It is pretty funny to reminisce and think about how different we were back then. If I could tell freshman myself one thing about how to make life better it would be GET A FULL NIGHT'S SLEEP!   It is startling how much happier I am fully rested.

Here is John's old apartment. Continental 13! Aside from the obvious changes (like a wife and daughters) I am glad to consider the changes of how much healthier he eats now and how much less Simpson's he watches. :)

We also visited the place that we first said I Love You! It was outside the church that we went to. We were sitting on the steps, looking at the full moon, and he said that he felt like he should tell me something, and that it was overdue. Then he said, "I love you." Such a sweet memory.

First "I love you" spot!

Then we went up to campus and went the JSB where I used to work. Crazy how many people have retired in what I consider a blink of an eye.

Is it too much sharing to say that we made out in this elevator a lot? :) 

We watched the fireworks from behind the old president's house on the fourth of July. Great view of Stadium of Fire, and we had the place to ourselves.

We finished up our date with a grasshopper milkshake at the Malt Shoppe.

Then we played some pool in the Wilk! We played pool on our first date.

I won't say who won, but John's face in this picture might be an indicator. :)

Thanks for such a fun and romantic date, John! I love you!!!

From my journal: That weekend John went to Phoenix, AZ to interview. He had a good experience there and was really encouraged by their treatment of him. He later found out that he was their top candidate, and we started to get nervous.

That weekend was Mother's Day. We went up to Ogden on Saturday and had a nice dinner at Kayla's house. John and my Mom surprised me with the Blendtec blender that I have been wanting for a long time. The next day John surprised me with Pancakes and blueberry sauce (he actually hand-juiced oranges for that--husband of the year!) We stopped by his parents house and had a fun visit. I felt so loved!

That week we got an offer from Honeywell down in Phoenix. Great news, but a little disappointing in that it was only $72,000 a year. We thought and prayed about it, and surprisingly were told that we were going to get an offer from Navair in Ridgecrest CA. So really surprisingly we had two offers on the table at once. Well, we knew that the Honeywell one seemed better from the beginning. It just felt more comfortable from the start. We wanted a little more money though. So he emailed the HR person just to say that there were two pretty similar offers on the table and could they increase theirs to make the decision simpler.  After a day or two of nerves, they called back with an increased offer to $75,000. Holy cow! That isn't that much of a difference really, but it sure made us feel better about it. So, it is official! We are going to move to Phoenix in a couple months when John graduates. We did go to the temple and pray about it a ton. We feel that we had a very clear answer to our prayer. Phoenix is where we are supposed to be moving right now. It really was amazing! Even back when he was interviewing there I prayed about the jobs a lot and I had a really amazing experience where I felt true peace over the future. It was incredible! 

Now I am still nervous about moving there. I don't want to have the same experience that we did in Texas. Also, I am super nervous about John being gone from me for the first time in a full time job. Also, I am super nervous about not having any friends or family down there. Also, I am super nervous about the bugs. Scorpions and cockroaches--EWW!!!! However, it is really good to remember the spiritual experiences that we had and that we know this is the right place for us. The main thing right now is that we are trying to figure out where we are going to live. This is so stressful. It will have to be okay though.

I Love to See the Temple

We are so blessed. We drive along I-15 to visit family fairly regularly. As we drive our sweet little Ellie loves to spot all of the temples. There are so many is such close proximity! It is so sweet to see the delight of a child getting so excited about the temple and asking to go visit it. One day it hit us--we should take them to visit it. The next Monday evening for Family Home Evening, we decided to take our girls to the Provo temple to walk the grounds. It was such a fun little trip that I wanted to document it.

They girls just loved it. Of course, they couldn't help running around on the grounds. It made me wonder how that compared on the reverence scale to running in the church building. :) 

I love our little family! The doctrine of eternal families brings me such peace and comfort in this crazy world.

The sun was shining in our eyes as we were facing the valley, but I still loved the pictures of our two little girls.

Miriam's favorite part was the fountain in front. She kept calling it a bath and was hysterical when we went inside to see the waiting room. Needless to say, we didn't stay long. 

I actually got her to look away from the water for this picture.

Eliza loved all of the flowers and and ran from bench to bench to look at them.

Our whole family!

I have always loved the view coming out of the Provo temple to over look the valley. It is stunningly beautiful!

This has been our temple for our whole marriage. We love it. But I am sure we will grow to love the Mesa temple too! They are building two more temples in that metropolitan area, but I would imagine the Mesa one will be the closest.