We Are Officially Bikers

Look how excited we are!
These are the mile markers

We decided that we needed to start getting in shape again, because we only have 3 weeks until we go' on our cruise, so...we bought bikes! We have had a lot of fun this last week just riding around the neighborhood. Today we decided to try Iron King Trail, it's just a couple of miles up the road, and it goes through the red rock and up into the hills, it's an 8 mile roundtrip ride, and we had a lot of fun. The girls really like riding in their trailer, and we stopped a lot to throw rocks off bridges, climb on the rocks, and look for mountain lions! Just as we were starting out, there was a sign saying that there had been a high number of spottings in the area, luckily we didn't see any, only antelope. Well, hopefully we keep up on the bike riding, and it doesn't become another one of our 3 week workouts, and then we don't use them again. There are a lot of trails right around where we live, so we're gonna keep trying them!

This is for you Jeremy

Slowly Catching Up

So, now I'm only two weeks behind in posting. We just got back from lake powell two days ago, we met Jared's family in Page, and we had lot's of fun. It was just a nice, relaxing trip and it was great to get away for a few days. We had some nasty storms that came through while we were out on the lake, which was a little scary, but we still had lot's of fun. Luckily, the girls have gotten used to the big storms, down here we get monsoon rains in July and August, so every afternoon we have big thunderstorms that roll through, they love to go outside and watch the lightning, thunder and rain coming down. They love the water as well, and they loved swimming, and making sand castles, and going out on the boat and riding the tube. We took the camera the first day, but that's when the big storm came, and we didn't get many pictures, then we forgot the camera when it was nice out. Oh well, at least we have good memories! We also just had family pictures taken, so I will post a few of those as well. Thank you again Grandma Davis for our fun trip!!

Finally Time To Update

We are finally settled in our new house. We love it, we have worked really hard to get it all ready, and we still have lot's of work to do. We love our neighborhood, we have really nice neighbors as well that are always asking if we need anything or if they can help. Our house was vacant for six months, so the yards need a lot of work, and as we were putting the front yard in, I think we had half the neighborhood over to thank us. Anyways, this post is going to be mostly pictures, so enjoy! I have had requests for a new recipe, so here it is:
Ice Cream Pie

One bag?? of White Oreos (they're new), or any creme filled cookie
1 tblsp melted butter
(crush oreos as fine as you can get them, drizzle with melted butter, and mix well. Press into 9" pie plate)
One container Cookie Dough Ice Cream (softened)
Spread this onto oreo crust
Cut remaining cookies in half and line the edge of the icecream to decorate
Drizzle caramel ice cream topping over pie
Freeze until firm

Warm Weather Fun

I love summertime! It's so nice to have warm weather and to be able to be outside all day. We had a lot of fun this last week. Grandma and Diddy (Cristi) came to visit. They drove down and spent the week with us. We had lot's of fun swimming, going for walks, going mini golfing, shopping..., it was a really fun week. We took Kyla and Haley mini golfing for the first time. Kyla had lot's of fun, and Haley was great as long as she was strapped in her stroller. For some reason that is the only place that she holds still, she loves to go anywhere in the stroller and she is just content to sit. Back to mini golf, we stopped keeping score after the first couple holes, because after we would hit the ball, Kyla would gather them all up and put them all in the hole, so I guess we just all had perfect games! We spent a lot of time down at the pool as well, it's been in the 90's, so just right for the pool..Kyla would swim all day if we'd let her, she just puts her little arm floaties on and swims from one end to the other. Haley loves the pool as well, and she has no fear of anything, the last time we went she was walking right off the edge and into the pool! We also bought a little blow up pool, and since we have rocks everywhere in our yard, we put the pool on the trampoline. Kyla and the guys (Brayden and Joseph, her best friends) loved it, they went up and down the slide, in and out of the pool for 3 hours straight. As for Jared and I, we're just trying to keep up with their energy. We're still working on getting paperwork together for our house, and it's all coming together slowly. We will most likely close on the 1st of July, and then we get to start painting, and doing yard work. We can't wait!! I'm going to try a few new recipes this week, so I will post them after I see which ones are good. I did make a raspberry-peach cobbler this week, and it was really good. So here's the recipe for that one:

Raspberry-Peach Cobbler

2 (15oz) cans Peaches (drained)
1 cup fresh or frozen/thawed raspberries
2 Tblsp sugar
1 Tblsp flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
Stir all of this together and pour in 9x9 greased pan

topping:
1 white cake mix
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 cube butter melted
Use a fork and stir together until it forms clumps
Spoon topping over Fruit
Bake at 350* for 30 minutes, Serve warm with vanilla ice cream

It's been a while

So it's been almost a month since I've updated anything, I guess it's about time to get caught up. Well, let's start with the most exciting news....we're moving again!! But, this time we are buying a house that we will hopefully stay in for at least 5 years,...we'll see. We are really excited about it. We have been watching the foreclosure market for a while, and they seem to be the only houses that are selling, everybody else is stuck on the market forever. Well, we came across our ideal house for the exact price that we wanted, so we couldn't resist putting an offer on it. Well, after a few weeks of waiting, we got it!! We'll be closing on it within the next few weeks, as long as everything goes as planned, then we are just going to clean it and paint, and we are ready to go. It's needs some yard work, and Jared is sooo excited to start that, he already has it all planned out in his head. We are really excited because it has grass, everywhere here the yards are just rocks, it makes for easy maintenance, but not the best play area. I'll have to take a picture of our house right now, so you can understand. The down side to all of this is that we are leaving our friends, they are all still in the same neighborhood (the one we live in now), we will be about 15 minutes away from them. It has been so much fun these past few years to just walk down the hall and visit, or just walk a couple of blocks away, so we are really going to miss that. But, we are still plenty close to do everything that we want to. Oh, and to top all of this off...we got asked to speak in church again for our last Sunday. We just barely spoke 6 months ago, because we just barely moved here. Apparantly we're just amazing speakers, HA HA!! So if anyone has given a talk recently on personal revelation, could you just e-mail it to me, that'd be great!!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

So we've been married for 5 years, I really can't believe it's already been that long. We had a really good anniversary, it was nice to just have a day to ourselves. (Thank you Jen!!) She got the privilege of babysitting 5 children under the age of 4, exciting huh! Their anniversary is coming up, so it will be payback time. We decided to go down to the Mesa Temple and do a session, we've haven't been to the temple together for quite a while. In North Dakota it was a 5 hour trip one way, and then when we actually did live by the temple for the summer, we had a brand new baby, now the temple is only a 2 hour drive one way (with good traffic), so we don't have much of an excuse now. We stopped and ate on the way down, and just had a good time being able to carry on an adult conversation. The Mesa temple is really pretty, it makes you feel like you're in Hawaii with all the plam trees and tropical flowers. We got stuck in traffic forever on the way home, but what's a little more together time....Our anniversary present to ourselves this year is taking a cruise, just the two of us this fall, so we've been working really hard to look half decent when we go! On the way down Jared and I were thinking about all the things that we've done in the last 5 years, we did things a little backwards, we bought our first house when we got married, then we sold it to help pay for school, and moved into an apartment, we've lived with in-laws twice, and we are now finally getting ready to get into our own house again. We've moved 5 times, we have two kids, we've had 3 dogs, and no longer have any of them, Jared graduated from college, and we're now settling into his career. It is so nice to be steady now, and know where we'll be and what we're doing. Don't get me wrong, we have definitely had a lot of fun these last 5 years!! We'll just see what the next 5 years bring!! I had to teach my quarterly relief society lesson on Sunday, and I taught it on the two talks given by Sis. Beck, Stand Strong and Immoveable in Families, and Mothers Who Know. It's always a great wake up call when I teach, because I definitely learn the most. I have been reminded of all the things that I have been blessed with and the wonderful family that I have.