Jayson and Kassi Madson

Surprise!-Jayson turns 28!

2012-02-09T15:34:00.003-07:00

January 21 was Jayson's 28th birthday. It happened to fall on a weekend that he didn't work or have much school stuff going on-which is super rare- so I decided we definitely needed to take advantage of that! That morning our new dishwasher was delivered to us-which we were both equally excited about (seriously). After they installed if for us-we hit the road to freedom!-well for a day! We headed downtown to eat lunch at Tucanos-which is an all you can eat meat, etc Brazilian place. Jay was of course in heaven-and luckily he had a free bday meal there otherwise it would not be worth the price to pay for me to eat lots of meat! It was super yummy though! We then headed to the Outdoor Retail Expo to browse around and see how much SWAG we could get for ourselves. We ended up with just over 2 bags full-it was great! We got a bunch of free socks, mugs, blender bottles, flip flops, outdoor stuff, etc. We will use a little bit ourselves, but most of it will go for Jayson's raffle prizes. After that, we headed home so Jay could study a bit before we met up with his family for dinner. We went to a little hometown burger joint down the road from our house-then went and shopped for a while. We were on a time schedule since I had planned a surprise party for Jayson. I thought for sure he had me figured out all ready-but luckily thanks to help of many people-we pulled it off! Greg and Sherri helped me kill time for a bit longer then we made it home.

(side note-our garage is sometimes stubborn and wont shut all the way and it had snowed)

We pulled into the driveway and there were footprints in the snow and our garage was half closed...he questioned both-but I blamed it on the neighbor kids and the stubborn garage-he bought them both! We both walked into the office (where I saw a bunch of people standing in the dark) but he did not. He turned around to watch the garage shut-make sure that dang thing went all the way down. I decided to turn the lights on, and as I did they yelled surprise! He jumped so bad and we all had a good laugh! (We had pulled it off!! I am sooo bad at keeping secrets-and his friends kept the secret also!) It was awesome! I had planned-through one of his school buddies wives-to have a bunch of his school friends and their families come and surprise him. It was soo fun to hang out and eat yummy food the rest of the night. The guys talked a lot about school and funny things that happen while they studied-it made me wonder how they even get any studying done!..? He has such a great time with them-I am glad he could hang out at our house instead of school! Needless to say-on my end it was a great birthday for Jayson. I'm pretty sure he enjoyed it also (I hope!) He sure is getting old but doesn't act like it at all-but I guess we are both guilty of that. Happy Birthday Jay!

Random

2012-01-03T17:38:00.003-07:00

I forgot to post these pictures with the family pictures! We (mostly Jayson) got a little bored while we were waiting for others to get their pictures taken so we started to see if we could master the latest trend of 'planking'..haha.

I am not strong enough to keep my legs up-Jay had to help a little--almost there!

Looking good from this angle!

Tyson thought he would try to help-but we were already laughing so hard at this point-there was no way we could make it work good.

Fun times...

Dec 23rd & 24th

2011-12-28T18:27:00.002-07:00

We may have opened our presents from each other on the morning of Dec 23rd. We figured we wouldn't be home after that, and also couldn't wait! We had fun cheating a few days early! On Christmas Eve we went to Logan with Jayson's family to shop a little and eat Chinese food. They have a tradition that they eat Chinese then go home and watch A Christmas Story. We had fun joining them! Sherri felt bad for us not having any Christmas Eve or morning presents since we had already had the Madson party and already cheated a few days early on ourselves, so she busted out a few fun gifts for us-we were super mad @ her, but she's a sweetheart for thinking of us.

Jayson, Sherri & Tyson waiting for our food

Greg, Kaden, Kassi (Kaden wouldn't smile-so we helped him)

Quayle Family Christmas 2011

2011-12-28T18:25:00.005-07:00

A week or so ago we made gingerbread houses with the Quayle's. We also played games and ate yummy food. On Christmas we ate more food, exchanged gifts, etc. Once again, we got spoiled and love spending time with our family!

Our cute little nephew was dressed as Santa. It was the cutest thing ever!

My mom made this beard beanie combo for my brother to give to Jayson with his gift. I may regret giving the idea to my mom...haha it is pretty funny/awful though!

The Quayle Family (minus Kade-see below)

Kade

Madson Christmas Party 2011

2011-12-28T18:20:00.004-07:00

The weekend before Christmas we headed up to Tremonton for the annual Madson Christmas Party. We had fun playing games, watching the kids do a nativity, eating food, and opening presents. We got spoiled and had a blast spending time with our family!

Watching the nativity put on by the kiddos

Opening presents

Playing Progressive Rummy

I have to add this so I remember how easy they were to make! Pretzels, hugs or caramel kisses, and m&m's! Yum!

A veggie pizza-yummy and fun! Chopped carrots and cauliflower around tree, broccoli tree decorated with carrot peels and tomatoes with a carrot peel trunk.

Winter Golfing

2011-12-11T19:54:00.002-07:00

Last weekend before we went to the Festival of Trees we headed to the golf course to play 9 holes. We had a free pass we had to use by the end of the year, and luckily it wasn't too cold! We had a ton of fun and both did surprisingly well. I am starting to like golfing more now:) Here's a pic of us all bundled up even though we both were actually pretty warm most of the time!

Festival of Trees

2011-12-10T11:06:00.005-07:00

Last weekend we went to the Festival of Trees. I don't think I have ever been, and Jayson hasn't been since he was younger, so it was definitely on our list of things to do this year! Plus-Jayson's class donated a tree, so that was pretty neat! They had all sizes of trees, gingerbread houses, wreaths, goodies, etc! We started off taking pictures of our favorites, but then we liked way too many! So here are a few of the pics we took -even though there are a ton! Although there were a ton of people there, it was really neat to go. I didn't realize that EVERY PENNY was donated to Primary Children's Hospital-how cool is that!!

A mini Grinch tree

A book tree-had to take a pic of this one for Jayson

The Misfits Tree

A Santa Tree with his helpers

Oreo Tree

'UP' Tree

Hunting/Outdoors Tree

'Cars' Tree

Micky Mouse Wreath

Snoopy tree and display

Jayson's tree his class donated

'A Christmas Story' Tree

Just a cute, fun tree

Another fun one

'Madagascar' Display

Waffle House

'UP' House

Rapunzel display

Thanksgiving Weekend 2011

2011-12-05T18:13:00.004-07:00

We headed up to Tremonton Thursday morning to start off our Thanksgiving festivities. When we got there we hurried and took family pictures. After that we ate a wonderful meal and hung out. Friday we helped Jayson's mom put up her Christmas tree then headed to Brigham to get our hair cut. Jayson lost a few pounds in hair, and I just got a trim. After that we headed to Perry to hang out. We helped my mom put up her tree then watched some more football and hung out. We are soo thankful for both of our amazing families!!

The Madson clan

Jayson's wonderful parents, with the creeper Jayson in the back ground...lovely

Having fun posing

Another fun one

Friday night we headed to Park City. We had purchased a deal that summer for $50 bucks for a 3 night stay @ a resort and a free $50 gift card for food. The catch was they wanted to take you on an hour tour to of course try to get you to buy a time share...we didn't mind the thought of doing that-what did we have to lose?? When we checked in late Friday night-we immediately were in awe at the resort's amenities list-then we went into our suite and were amazed. We felt like rich people for a few days! It was fantabulous! Between shopping, the sauna, steam room, hot tubs, pools, ginormous room, game room, etc we let nothing go to waste! Saturday afternoon is when we scheduled our 'tour' but little did we know they were booked on tours-so we didn't even have to do that! Within 5 minutes we had our $50 food gift card and headed on our way to play some more! It was a great relaxing and much needed break for both of us!

Our huge bed with the jetted tub inside the bedroom!

The bob sled track @ the Olympic Park

Jayson showing how big the tub was!

Halloween

2011-11-28T18:31:00.002-07:00

I just realized I never posted the rest of our Halloween. It's nothing too spectacular-but we've gotta blog it for our blogbook!
We had a normal day (school for Jayson, work for Kassi) then we came home and Jay studied while we watched some shows on TV and handed out candy. Super uneventful-but it was a good day.

Jayson had a Halloween Party @ school so I made him spiderweb brownies, I also made one to take to my work. yum!

This is the only picture I have in my 'costume' which most people didn't get it..but oh well. I have a green hat on with green ribbon braided into my hair (vines) and an orange shirt with the symbol on it (PI) and brown pants. AKA-Pumpkin Pie!

Brain jello we made for Jayson's party and another for my work

Jayson was the classic Ron Burgandy.

They had a pumpkin contest @ Jaysons party-so he made a grasshopper! -the legs and wings are zucchini & cucumbers, and the eyes are green tomatoes, the back is a giant zucchini & the middle and head are pumpkins!

Random

2011-11-22T20:17:00.002-07:00

A few weekends ago we got a call from Jayson's sister who said she was headed to Tremonton for the night and asked if we wanted to join her! Of course we did-and Jay happened to be home and available to come too! We headed up there Saturday evening until Sunday night. It was fun to just relax, hang out, play games, etc with everyone! Thanks for randomly letting us surprise you and stay with you Greg and Sherri!

We got on the subject of how little Tyson and Kaden were when they were babies and how Jay would just hold them and take naps with them in his arms. He decided to see if it would work now that they are growing up....not soo much!

Tyson enjoyed it!

Kaden was not liking it at all-Jayson had to pin him down!

Carving Pumpkins

2011-10-29T12:26:00.004-06:00

After the Pumpkin walk we headed to Tremonton to hang out and carve Pumpkins. Jay and I grew pumpkins in our garden this year, so it was fun to bring them up for almost everyone to have one to carve or color on!

Jayson with his Pumpkin Pi

Jay concentrating on carving his other pumpkin

Jay with his 'Witch over a pot' pumpkin

Almost everyone out carving their pumpkins-it was a beautiful day and MUCH less messy to do it outside!

Jay gutting his pumpkin

Me waiting for Jay to get seeds out of his pumpkin so I could cook the pumpkin seeds!

The kiddos coloring their pumpkins while I was looking up ideas for Jay

Jay studying his pattern on my phone

We had a ton of fun as usual, ate some yummy soup and hung out for a while. We stopped in Perry and hung out with my mom for a bit. She was home alone cuz everyone else was hunting. We love living a lot closer to family now so that when we can-we get to have fun with them!

Pumpkin Walk 2011

2011-10-29T12:14:00.002-06:00

Last Saturday we ventured up to Logan to go to the Pumpkin walk. We have heard great things and seen pics of it but haven't been, so we were excited to check it out!

At the beginning

Kass in front of the Rapunzel display

Jay as Winnie the Pooh

Posing as Sleeping Beauty and the prince

Kami is usually not into either of us much, but this weekend she actually liked us! We LOVED it! Jay always thought it was his beard that was scaring her away, but she kept asking what it was and touching it and was super surprised when Jay pointed out that her dad had one also-she was soo cute!

The boys in front of Gilligan's Island

Jay with Kaden and Carter walking on his feet-we all thought it was pretty fun!

Jayson and Ryan having way too much fun....

After the pumpkin walk we headed to lunch then the boys went back to Tremonton and me Kristen and Kami went shopping! It was a fun, relaxing start to our weekend!

Conference Weekend

2011-10-09T18:14:00.002-06:00

This past weekend we were able to enjoy watching General Conference. Some of the talks seemed like they were talking straight to us-love that! It was great to relax and listen/watch it all weekend long. Saturday we turned it on throughout the house and Jayson studied and I decorated for Halloween. We both tooks breaks and watched it together. He then headed to the Utah football game and I stayed home and chilled some more. As soon as he got home (which was like 10pm ish) we spontaneously headed up North. We made it to Tremonton pretty late then stayed up talking to Jayson's mom for a few more hours. We finally crashed and have a lame habit of not being able to sleep in anymore, so we were up bright and early! Sherri had already made cinnamon rolls-so she definiately got less sleep than us-she is amazing, as were her cinnamon rolls! We settled down and watched conference with them. Jayson studied off and on throughout the first session. We then ate a big yummy meal. By the second session Jay and I started watching it on the couch, and we finished watching it like this...we will probably have to read those last few talks! It was SUCH a great nap though:). After it was over we headed to Perry and surpised my family-and raided their kitchen and garden. My family didn't know we were even coming and still had amazing dinner ready, so we took advantage of that, as well as the full peach and plum trees. We stayed and hung out for a while, then made it back home to start another busy test week for Jayson, and busy lonely week for me!

Too close for comfort...

2011-10-01T18:54:00.003-06:00

A few days ago I turned 26-holy toledo still feel like I am 19! (except for always being tired-but I will blame that on work!) I am one year closer to 30 though-and I am not quite sure how I feel about it yet. This may be a 'selfish' post-but I was told that I have 1 day to feel special and can expect to feel special-MY BIRTHDAY! So here it goes! I started the day not knowing what to expect (the year before Jayson thought that it would be fun to pretend he forgot until late at night-NOT a good idea)-But as I crawled out of bed at 5:45 he wished me a Happy Birthday and gave me some Reese's Pieces and Halloween earrings! At this point it is already better than last year! Well I went to work and made it about an hour until someone found out it was my birthday (last year I had only worked there for 2 months and noone knew-so it was lame!) Well lunch time came around and they surprised me with a huge cake and a card that a bunch of my coworkers had signed, and a few of them also sang to me. It made it okay to be at work on my birthday for sure! I got home and Jayson gave me the outfit (that I had picked out) which I love of course! Just waiting for my boots to come in the mail and I'll be set! We then went out to dinner and got some ice cream. It was fun to relax and go on a date with Jayson-since our time together is somewhat limited due to his classes. We got home late and there were roses on our doorstep! My best friend Stacy and her cute little family had them delivered. It was definitely a fabulous ending to a fantastic day! Thank you everyone for your wonderful cards and gifts that were sent to me. Love you all! Thanks for making me feel special:)

4 Years!

2011-10-01T18:49:00.003-06:00

On August 16th we celebrated our 4 year anniversary. Well I guess we didn't really 'celebrate' that day-since Jayson and his dad spent the day on the roof shingling-then I helped when I got home from work-so we went out to dinner a few days later to 'celebrate'. These 4 years have gone by so quickly-and we are still goofballs like the above photo. Love you Jay!

Peach Days

2011-09-18T17:30:00.004-06:00

There are a few things we did in August-like head to St George (which is always a blast) we re-shingled our house and shed, and crammed as much as we could in before Jayson started school. Since he has started our lives have calmed down....a little...mostly in the traveling part I guess, because we are still super busy!

Last weekend was Peach Days and the night before we randomly decided that we wanted to go up! Early that Saturday we headed to make it to Kaden's soccer game in Logan, then went to Tyson's football game in Brigham-which he ended up playing my cousin Chayse's team. It was fun to watch them all play. They all 3 did really good! After that we went and ate yummy food at my grandmas then headed to the car show. My little brother Kolby had entered his car he has been working on for a few years-and still is. He wasn't going to enter it, but I guess they didn't have many kids in the 'Over and Under' category (where the car is over 21 yrs old and the person is under 21). It was pretty neat to see his car there. I am proud of all his hard work! Here are some pics to show his hard work:

Before

After

Kolby and my mom at the car show

Kolby and my dad at the car show

Side note: We grilled bananas the other day with peanut butter and choc chips, and then some with cinnamon and sugar, they are pretty tasty and fun to try!

Park City

2011-09-18T17:07:00.004-06:00

On our way home from the cabin we remembered that Jayson's family was in Park City for the Triple Crown World Series. We each still had the next day off of work so we decided to call them up and go hang out! We made it just in time for the 'parade' where all the teams walked up main street. We then headed get food and back to their hotel where we swam and played games. We ended up staying the night with his family and getting up the next day to hang out and watch Tyson play baseball. They had games all week long, and Jayson was able to go to a few more throughout the week. He also was up there when they all decided to ride the Alpine Slide. Neither one of us had ridden it before, and I sometimes am a big chicken so I was kind of okay that I was stuck at work while they were all in Park City that day. Tyson's team ended up doing okay, but they didn't win. Although Tyson did win the Home-run Derby out of a ton of kids from all over the Western Region of the Country. Good for him! Here are some pictures that I stole from Greg and Sherri's blog and Jayson's phone.

Jayson riding up to the Apline Slide

After the parade Jayson and Kaden were a little bored and decided to use Kaden's Magnifying glass to burn flowers. They had fun with it all week long!

Cabin July 2011

2011-09-18T16:58:00.003-06:00

We are super behind on our blog-I kept using the excuse that we are missing a few pictures, but we will just have to post those once I get them.

Over the 24th of July we headed up the my families cabin in Island Park. My dad, and little brother were up there, and my older brother and his wife and baby were there staying at my great aunts cabin a few miles away. We had a blast relaxing, floating the river, fishing, going to West Yellowstone, building fires, etc! Last year when we went up we didn't have a boat-so we used that excuse as to why we didn't have any luck catching fish. Well this year my dad had his boat up there, and it didn't seem to help much! There were probably only a 2 or 3 fish caught between 7 of us (8 if you count baby Boston) in two days. So yet again, we pretty much got skunked! We had fun hanging out and playing cards every night until super late. It is definitely a place we wish we could visit more often! We didn't take very many pictures, and still need to find a few-but this is what we have so far taken from our phones!

In West Yellowstone

Jayson had to try on the awesome hats in a store in West

and pose by the bear

On our way home we drove past Mesa Falls. We didn't drive down into the best one, but from afar we got a pretty okay view that was gorgeous!

Ignore Jayson's shirt-it was a traveling day!

Go Green!

2011-08-15T20:44:00.003-06:00

Ever since we moved in last July we have wanted our own yard-with grass, flowers, fruits, veggies, etc! Well we finally had the time to get all of that accomplished! We had help pulling weeds last fall-so that we didn't have weeds sticking up out of the snow in the winter (thanks Madson's!). This spring we had numerous attempts of round-ups and weed pulling to get rid of the weeds again-but it just wouldn't stop raining-so we decided to give ourselves a break for a few weeks. Finally-the week after it stopped raining we ordered in a pile of dirt and got to work. We filled up our flower beds, around our foundation, as well as used it to even out our very uneven back yard. With thanks to both of our families we got rid of a lot of the weeds, moved dirt, tilled, and raked our hearts out. Every evening when we got off work we would work on it, and every weekend consisted of manual labor-it sucked. I don't know how I ever did landscaping while I was in High School! Anyway, here are some pictures of the process-as well as the finished product of our grass. We still have a few spots we need to finish putting edging, and need a few more flowers, shrubs, etc-but other than that we LOVE IT! We have a flower garden in the back corner, raspberries behind our shed, and a few plants of tomatoes, peas, corn, and pumpkins (which are taking over!). We love having room to have our own garden filled with color and food-not to mention our GREEN grass!! :)

October-ish 2010-a few months after we moved in

Jayson tilling up the front yard

Now onto the back yard

A view of the back yard from the dining room-ready for Hydro-seeding

Starting to Hydro-seed

All done Hydroseeing

From almost ground level-About 2 weeks after Hydro-seeding
-excited to see it growing!

Front yard about a month after Hydro-seeding

Back yard after the 1st mow

Currently looking pretty amazing!

Pictures do not even show to how great it looks-especially compared to what we started with!So you'll just have to come over and hang out to fully experience it's greatness:) We love being homeowners and being able to do what we want with our home and yard!

Crazies

2011-08-09T19:56:00.003-06:00

The Friday night before the family reunion we all went to Tremonton to celebrate Maddi's bday. We love it when everyone can get together, and bday's are always a great excuse. Kristen had cute party favor bags for the kids filled with fun stuff-including these glasses that the adults HAD to try on! We look a little crazy-but we had fun!

Behrend Family Reunion 2011

2011-08-09T19:38:00.003-06:00

In July we were able to go up to Pocatello for the Behrend Family Reunion. It was at Rose Park and we had a ton of fun just chilling with Jayson's Family. We got up there Saturday afternoon and ate yummy food then played golf and wiffle ball with the kiddos. It was fun to see everyone, and meet a lot more people! We stayed with Ryan and Kristen until Monday Morning so that we could go to Carters T-ball game then headed back to real life. It was a fun and relaxing weekend!

Ryan showing Carter where the ball went...don't remember if it was a golf ball or baseball..?

Grandpa Kolsen

Grandma Kolsen

Jay getting ready to pitch

We tried to make Kami like us-and I'm pretty sure we may have succeeded:) She's a cutie!

Kami and Carter loved the game of having Sherri help them put ice on Greg while he was sleeping!

Fishing

2011-08-08T18:02:00.001-06:00

About a month ago Tyson and Sherri were here for some of Tysons baseball games and practice. Well one morning Jayson didn't have to work, so him and Tyson got up super early and headed to Willow Pond in Murray to try their luck at fishing. I had to work, and Sherri stayed at our house and I'm sure she enjoyed the peace and quiet for a few hours. They ended up getting a lot of worms stolen and a lot of bites, and finally ended up with a catfish! They grilled it up when they got home and apparently it was...OK... They both had fun. I have to laugh at how Tyson is holding the fish though-pretty nasty but I Love it!

Fourth of July!

2011-07-13T16:51:00.003-06:00

Over the weekend of the 4th of July, we got to go up north and stay with family. It was a nice break for us. We got to hang out at the Quayle's and spend some more time with BBQ (Boston Brady Quayle) who is the newest addition to the Quayle side of the family. And congrats again to Brady and Amber as long as we're at it! He's a cute little stinker.

The Perry City parade sure lived up to expectations this year. Everyone who went ended up with waaay too much candy, and it was fun seeing the people in it (it didn't hurt that we got to watch it from Kassi's grandparents front lawn, also!)

We also went the rest of the way up to Tremonton and spent time with Greg and Sherri and family. Here are some pics of the boys playing Ticket to Ride out on the deck.

We went to a little neighborhood firework party down the street (still in Tremonton) and these were the treats that Sherri made and took to it. Nice, right??

Summer Concert

2011-07-13T16:47:00.003-06:00

We recently went to a free outdoor concert at the Gallivan Center in Downtown Salt Lake. It was a lot of fun. We got to see the band Parachute (who we have heard on the radio before), along with a bunch of other groups (who we hadn't heard on the radio before).

They have a little outdoor amphitheater with a stage and then a large grass area where people can sit and watch. It was nice to get outside and do something fun and relaxing. Thanks to Ashley for inviting us to tag along with her!

Apparently they do concerts for free there throughout the summer, so we may have to try and get back to another one soon!

New Flowerbed

2011-07-13T16:38:00.002-06:00

We have a new flowerbed sitting in front of our house!

This is a tire flowerbed. We're including pictures that basically show how we did it.

First you need an old tire. Fortunately for us, when we moved into our house, the previous owner generously left SEVERAL of them behind. (If anyone wants a tire, please just get ahold of us.)

So what you do is take that tire and cut out the inner circle on one side, making a wavy pattern, as shown in the picture.

The next step was easily the hardest part for us (slash Jayson). You have to take that tire and flip it inside-out. This involved a lot of sweat, skinned knees, and maybe (maybe) a few curse words from Jayson, but eventually we got the tire inside out and now it looks like this.

After you managed to get the tire to look like that picture above, you can put it where you want it to go in your yard (or in our case on the drive in front of the steps) and paint it. The teal/green and red were what we had to work with that day. It looks kind of cool, but we may repaint it later. Who knows.

See how the wavy pattern that we cut out becomes the flower petals when its flipped inside out? Neat-o gang! We like it.

Madson Family Weekend!

2011-06-25T17:03:00.004-06:00

2 weekends ago Jayson's entire family got together for a weekend of fun-ness! Most of them arrived at our house Thursday night and we grilled up some pizza for dinner. We had a ton of food and it was fun hanging out. Ryan, Kristen, Kami, and Carter stayed at our house and the adults played games until after midnight. We had a blast but were soo tired! Friday we woke up and made a quick stop at my (Kassi's) work. I told everyone if they wanted to they could come check it out, and since we had time, we all did. It is a pretty crazy place to work! We then headed to Lagoon right when it opened for the rest of the day. We had a ton of fun riding the rides and hanging out with everyone! Needless to say, we all crashed at 11ish when we got home! The next day was Saturday and Jay had to work. That day consisted of shopping, good food, watching Tyson's baseball game, good dessert, feeding ducks, and playing wiffle ball. After that, everyone went their separate ways and we went home and crashed again. It was SUCH a fun weekend, we loved it so so much and can't wait for more like it to come! We didn't take any pictures, so I have to steal these from Kristen and Sherri-we need to remember to take pictures more often!

This is after the log ride at lagoon, we had Greg, Jayson, Kassi, Ryan, Tyson, and Carter all in one log-people were laughing at us as we weighed the log down a ton and we were told numerous times that we were going to get soaked-and we did!

We took a picture of ourselves on Greg's phone-thought it was going to be a fun surprise for him-and he posted it everywhere-guess the joke is on us!

Jayson and Tyson getting on Bombora

Playing games

Dave and Kristen eating at Lagoon!

Carter and Maddi posing while feeding the ducks

Sherri handing out bread and cookies for the kids to feed the ducks with!

Ryan trying to push Jayson into the splash pad at Lagoon. We had a ton of fun watching Kaden, Tyson, and Carter try not to get wet-they pretty much went home in a towel. It was hilarious!

Riding Bombora

Eating yummy food at our house

Another Nephew!

2011-06-17T21:18:00.002-06:00

Meet Boston Brady Quayle. He is the newest addition to the Quayle family. We are so happy that Brady and Amber have a healthy, happy, super cute little boy! He is the first baby on my parents side, so they are now grandparents! (good thing they didn't have to wait for us to become grandparents right?-haha!) We love little Boston and are so happy to have another great nephew!

Way to go!

2011-06-17T21:06:00.003-06:00

Just had to document how crazy Jayson is-well I guess this doesn't really show his real craziness, just his ambition maybe. So this past year of school they have had this class president that no one really liked, and didn't really do anything for their school. So at the end of the year they were going to re-elect a new president. Once people found out that this same girl was running again, everyone told Jayson that he should run also. Well at the last minute he decided to try for it-and he pretty much won. So for the next year, he is the class president for the 2nd year students! He is pretty excited and is already busy getting ideas, and working things out to help promote and earn money for his school! He is such a champ! I am really proud of him for actually wanting to do that, and then actually getting voted in! This will probably make this next year even crazier for him, and us (I volunteered to help him out some!) so we'll see how it goes!

Fun Weekend!

2011-06-17T21:01:00.003-06:00

A few weekends ago Jared, Stacy, & Ryker came to visit for a few days. We always love seeing them! While they were here we went fishing, went to the movies, fed ducks, went shopping, played games, etc! We also went to the Kennecott Copper Mine. Little did we know that this was just down the road from where we lived. It was super neat to see. We couldn't believe how huge it was! I will post pictures of that soon. It was only $5 and that went straight to a charity in Utah, and since it is pretty close to our house, it was totally worth seeing! We had a ton of fun hanging, relaxing, and having a blast with great friends! Here is a picture of Stacy and Ryker going down the slide at the park we went fishing at. Stacy's sister and her family came too, and although nobody caught anything, it was fun to play with them all while we were waiting for the fish to bite! This other picture is while we were at another park feeding ducks. It was pretty funny that there was an area where the ducks would not swim, and when they would try to go there-they would spaz out! After watching this for a while, we realized there were fish there, biting the ducks! We literally saw the fish nibble on them, it was super crazy and funny! Guess it was their territory eh? All in all we had a ton of fun and can't wait to have more adventures with them in the future!

Girls Trip to Cali!

2011-05-22T16:46:00.008-06:00

A few months ago I was looking at flight deals for Jayson and I to go to California to get away. We knew we had a free place to stay thanks to having my friend Sharon living there. A little bit later she told me there was a deal on Disneyland until the middle of May=2 great reasons to get away! Sadly-Jayson still had school a few weeks after so he wouldn't be able to go if I wanted to take advantage of the Disneyland deal. Not to long after that-I found a great deal on a flight-and booked it! I was sad to be going without him, but it was really nice to get away with some of my girl friends from high school. The trip started as me, Sharon, and Jessica; then me, Sharon, and Ashley (Jess's sister); then ended with me and Sharon. (side note-Sharon's cute little boy Jacob was with us all the time also)
Thursday morning I flew into Long Beach, then we headed to LAX to pick up Jess. After that we went straight to Hollywood and Beverly Hills. (side note-I had never been to or done anything in this trip). It was fun seeing the Hollywood sign and the walk of fame as well as streets in Beverly Hills. We didn't see any movie stars, but it was still fun roaming around there! We went to eat at a place called Surfa's-which was pretty good-kind of expensive, and it had a different taste-but pretty good! (another side note-when we travel I am going to start putting places we eat for future reference!) We ended that day heading down to Santa Monica. We walked out on the pier and hung out at the beach for the rest of the night. It was kind of chilly and windy-but also so pretty! The night we ate at the Ocean Side Diner on Ocean Side Ave. It was a new place and was also really good!
Friday Jess and I got up and headed to Disneyland! I was sooo excited (like I said before-this was a first!) I was headed to the Happiest Place on Earth. We had a ton of fun walking around-seeing a few characters, riding rides, eating hand dipped corn dogs (pretty dang good) and Dole Whip (amazing). We ended the night with Disney Themed (of course) fireworks over the castle. It was one of my favorite parts. Super magical (I know that sounds super lame-but we both kind of got chills it was soo cool!) Favorites: seeing the characters, Toon Town, Space Mountain, fireworks, and probably etc I just can't remember!:)
Saturday Sharon and I went and had breakfast at a little diner by the small airport where her husband works. It was really good food and fun sitting there watching small planes and helicopters take off as we ate! We then went shopping and just hung out and relaxed for a lot of the day. While we were shopping we decided to be spontaneous and let the kiosk makeup ladies do our makeup! We liked it a lot while we were there-and of course they tried to get us to buy it! Thankfully neither of us made the purchase-because once we got outside to natural light-we looked like Barbie Dolls. The makeup was caked on like crazy-it was soo funny and so nasty! Probably won't try that again. That night we met up with Ashley and went to the Angels game. I am to the point where I definitely want to go to a baseball game if it is an option! (never thought I would say that-haha) But I love them!
Sunday we went to church and played games at Sharon's Apartment. Another fun relaxing day!
Monday Sharon and I went to Laguna Beach. It was so pretty! We went to a part of it that is off a resort so there was hardly any people and it was gorgeous! We ate at Ruby's diner-which was sooo good!! I had a sandwhich-which was pretty dang good, but Sharon's had cinnamon roll french toast-which was AMAZING. Holy cow I would go there just for that any day! We ended the day driving up the Pacific Coast Highway, stopped to see the Newport Beach Temple, stopped and toured the city of Naples, then I headed home.

I had a ton of fun with all of my friends! Next time hopefully Jayson can come with me though!
Prepare for a plethora of pictures about my adventures!! (in no particular order)

A view of Naples-it was so cute!

The Newport Beach Temple!

Not a very good picture-but this was while we were in Long Beach-watching the people para-sailing and it was cool to see the big cargo ships out in the ocean since that's part of what I do for my work!

The tide pools at Laguna Beach

A view of Laguna Beach

At the Angels Game

There was a parade at Disneyland down main street which was really fun to see a lot of the characters

At Laguna Beach

Outside of the Angel's Stadium

Outside Disneyland

Jess and I at the 3-D Michael Jackson movie (hilarious!)

Sitting on Mickey's Chair

Goofy and Max during the parade

In Toon Town

Toon Town trying to lift some weights

Posing in Toon Town

Outside the Castle!

Driving Mickey's Car

At the Angels vs Indians game

Another view of Laguna beach from the resort

Me, Jess, Sharon, and Jacob on the Santa Monica Pier

Gettin ready to shoot some Aliens on the Buzz Light year ride

Jess, Peter Pan, and Me (we were both way taller than him-it was funny)

Jess and I in front of the castle

In the submarine getting ready for Nemo!

Another view in front of the Castle and Walt Disney with Mickey

Jess and me on the Jungle Cruise

Can't wait to go back!

Easter Weekend

2011-05-22T16:35:00.003-06:00

Over Easter weekend my mom and I threw a baby shower for my sister-in-law Amber. They are expecting a baby boy at the beginning of June. It was fun to make lots of fun foods, as well as see a ton of family. We can't wait to meet our new nephew here soon! Here are some pics of the 'baby rattles' I made for dessert. I was really worried since I had never done anything creative with food. But thanks to my family-we got them all decorated in no time and they sort of looked like rattles...I guess? :) I also had to add a picture of the diaper cake I made-just so I can remember what to do next time I want or need to make one! We spent the whole weekend at my parents. We had a fun time relaxing and playing games.

Recent Happenings

2011-04-19T17:53:00.006-06:00

Here are a few pictures to describe the recent events taking place in our lives!

This isn't the greatest picture, but we are growing plants! There are a variety of fruits, veggies, and flowers sprouting up getting ready to plant outside!

We are loving the warm weather and grill every chance we get! The other day we made grilled pizza. Every time we make it it's amazing! This time we tried bread sticks also-they turned out perfect! mmmm soo good!

We finally decided to try making the bathroom look better. This is a picture of it before we moved in (we had painted the walls, replaced the fixtures, etc when we moved in)

Here is a 'during' the process picture of when we painted the cabinets and countertop last weekend.

And the after photo! I couldn't find an 'inbetween picture' but it looks MUCH better anyway eh?

Tyson has a lot of baseball games and practices down here recently so we've been able to go to a lot of those. It is always fun seeing family and watching sports! This last weekend it was beautiful weather and we enjoyed watching Tyson win both of his baseball games.

Jayson and Kaden had fun wrestling during the games

After we went out to eat and had some fun posing!

We spent almost the entire weekend outside and got some fun tans/sunburns. Ohh how we love the warm weather!

Playing Catchup

2011-04-02T17:16:00.003-06:00

Well for this post, it looks like we will be covering several different happenings in the last little while.

First is this awesome green calzone. We had decided to cook some dinner one night, and so Kass whipped up some dough and set it to raise for a while. When I got the thing out to start making my pizza/calzone, it was all green! Kind of a surprise, but then I remembered that it was Saint Patrick's day the next day, and Kassi was being festive! It was fun. Also, the next morning when I was ready to head out to school, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and found a jug of green milk in the fridge. She's such a sneakster.

There's that calzone, but it looked much more green in person than in this picture.

We also decided to try and be brave and try to expand our cuisine of things that we actually cook ourselves. So we tried out making a frittata (spelling?). I had tried frittata one time at a great little italian place in Park City a while back, and we thought maybe we could get it down. It is pasta with egg and other things baked into it, so it comes out solid, and then you pour your sauce (alfredo in our case) over the top of it. It was much more filling that regular pasta, and kind of fun to try something new.

So that's the frittata with some roasted asparagus in the side. It was solid.

Kass also had a chance to hang out with some friends recently and went to dinner at a place here in Salt Lake called Buca di Beppo's. I guess it was pretty good, but all the portions are gi-normous. Here is her with the ice cream dish they all shared. It makes her look like a little person holding a regular ice cream sundae!

We also got to hang out with my sister, Kristen, and her kids the other day. They came and spent some time with us at the house, and then we all went out to eat at the Cheesecake Factory. (Weird how almost all of these things I'm talking about involve food.) Here is Madison posing on the floor. She is a drama queen, just like Mommy.

We took a quick 3.5-day vacation during my Spring Break from school and went down to Saint George to visit friends. We got to meet the Deiberts' baby girl and the Bakers' baby boy for the first time. So that was a lot of fun. All of our friends are doing grown-up things, its great. We took a walk during the great weather part of the trip with the Gillins and took a quick picture off the side of the trail.

We got a game of bowling in down there with the Gillins and with Jared's sister and her husband. It was way fun, and Kassi whooped up on all of us! And she made sure to get proof. :)

Yesterday was April Fools Day, and I played a little prank on Kass. I called her up after my big test (Friday) and told her I didn't pass and that I would have to study all weekend to get ready to try and re-do it on Monday. She believed it (kind of, she was a little suspicious with it being April Fools and all) because I had two other tests and two other assignments that were kinda tough during the week. So it seemed a little bit credible that I had come up short Friday. But nope, I actually snuck by on my test, and when Kass came home from work she was surprised with a totally clean and picked up house. I did dishes, laundry, vacuumed, all that jazz. How awesome am I??

And last but not least, today (April 2) Kass and I got to go hang out with my mom and watch my little brother Tyson's baseball practice here in Salt Lake. We went out to eat with them afterward at The Pie, which is a pizza joint that is pretty awesome. After we got done with lunch, Kass and I stopped at the Home Depot and picked up some new bushes to plant in our yard. Our yard is a little bit of a weed-desert, so it will fun to show before and after pics of that too.

The little bushes will grow up eventually. And here below is a picture after we cleared our a corner of the yard. We'll put a couple of these bushes in front of the boxes to try and hide them a bit.

Eventually this summer, we plan on putting landscaping, trees, grass (who does that??), maybe a fire pit, and some other stuff including a garden. It will be a fun summer project. So just be patient and give us some time to work on that, and we'll keep updating!

Update

2011-03-09T19:39:00.003-07:00

Haven't updated for a while, so I thought I'd give ya the down low on our lives lately. We are pretty boring nowadays-Jayson goes to school, works some, and studies every second he can. Sometimes I ask him how in the world he has the motivation to keep going! He is amazing. I may have given up long ago...haha but maybe not if I was in the middle of it like he is, but he is such a trooper! With him being 100% committed to his studies, it makes me 100% bored! He does take breaks and hangs out with me-so I am thankful that he usually NEEDS breaks (or else he says his brain will explode I guess?) or else I would go crazy! He is doing really good. He has been working in a hospital for a few weeks now and isn't quite sure how he feels about that. Good thing there are many career options for pharmacists, but only time will tell what he ends up wanting/liking to do! He has been enjoying working retail at both Target and Walgreen's, besides the fact that he is busy and on his feet the entire time, he likes working with people and interacting with customers to help them out. I am still enjoying my job. I am keeping busy, mostly because they keep adding things for me to do. Which is better than having nothing to do! A few weeks ago we spoke in church for the first time since we've been married, and it went pretty good. I took about 7 minutes (only because I read really slow and talked about how we met for the first 4!)- Jayson took the other 30 minutes:) Good thing he is such a good sport! As much as I was soo terrified to speak, I enjoyed it. Probably because I know I won't have to do it anytime again soon, and because I love hearing Jayson speak about things he has such a great knowledge and cares about so much. We can't wait for the warm weather to come! We have been brainstorming for months about what our yard is going to look like. We both can't wait to plant a garden, grass, and Jayson really really wants a dog....yet I am still vetoing that one.

Here is our cute little niece Kenzie posing with her 'pretties'. They came over for dinner and games a few weeks ago. It was soo fun to see them!

2 projects I have been working on lately. The first one is a stand I found and painted. Not to sure about the color still, but it fills the void in the corner of our kitchen area, and also helps us add live plants! The 2nd one is a 'sunburst mirror' that I made out of a circle mirror and skewers!

Patience is a Virtue

2011-02-13T13:24:00.007-07:00

The reason this post is titled 'Patience is a Virtue' is because I try my hardest to be patient, but I am not. I get ideas, ask Kristen if they will look good, she gives me advice and more ideas, then I ask her when she is coming this way so she can help me, and when the reply isn't soon I think of more ideas to be patient while waiting for help!

Well my patience was gone, and I (we-Jayson helped!) tackled 3 projects this weekend. Saturday morning I headed to Home Depot and Walmart to pick up supplies-and the rest is history! Our house has so much potential, and I am loving giving it a makeover slowly but surely, and very cheaply!

Project #1-paint the bathroom light fixture.

We have never been too fond of our bathroom light fixture-Jayson wanted to buy a new one-I wanted to 'redo' it. We compromised and decided to try redoing it, and if it didn't turn out-we'd get a new one. Well we both think it turned out pretty ok-MUCH better than before for sure.

Before

After-don't mind the touching up to the wall paint we have to do now!:)

Project #2-repainting our bedroom ceiling fan

We figured since we already had the supplies out-we'd go to town on this too! I am not sure how I feel about it quite yet, but we do know that we definitely are going to invest in a new glass fixture.

Before

After

Project #3

That morning after I got supplies, We tested a few colors on a slab of countertop for a few minutes-decided that you can't really 'practice' what we were going to do, and since it looked pretty good on the slab, we decided to go to town on our real countertops!

Here are the supplies we used, I just didn't get a pic of the the brown paint nor the sponge. All in all it cost us about $35-40 bucks to redo our countertops....Check it out!

Here is the before anything was done picture..compare to the end photo:)!

After cabinets were painted

Priming the countertops

After 1 color-yellow

2 colors-yellow and orange

3 colors-yellow, orange, red-we got a little worried at this point-it looked crazy!

4 colors-yellow, orange, red, tan

5 colors-yellow, orange, red, tan, brown

The 6th and final color on the side- black- compared the the rest+lots of improvement!

All 6 colors-complete! Wow what a transformation huh!

Close up-not the greatest pic, but you can kinda see the pattern and colors

MUCH BETTER! We covered it with a bunch of coats of the Polyacrylic and will probably not put anything on our counters for atleast week, but it was soo easy, kinda fun, and SOO worth it! The original idea came from PrettylilPosies. Faux granite is the way to go when you are cheap and want a project:) I will let you know if it doesn't work out when we start to actually use them!

We pretty much LOVE it!

Next weekend-fix all the places that now need 'touch up paint' from the past projects!

2011-02-12T19:40:00.003-07:00

Last weekend Jared, Stacy, and Ryker were supposed to come here from St George, but unfortunately they all got sick so they couldn't make it. We found plenty to do even though we missed them! We finally bought a ceiling fan (Christmas Gift Card!) and installed in on Saturday. Thankfully Jayson's brother drove all the way from Pocatello to help us! Just kiddin, he was already in town and was nice enough to take an hour out of his day to come help! Here is a before, during and after picture. Our old one was super outdated, one light didn't work, and the fan only worked when it felt like it! We love our new one!

That night we went to the Jazz game with Greg, Tyson, Kaden, Ryan, and Carter. I didn't take any pictures, but we had a blast! Even though they lost, it was fun to go. Neither one of us had been to a Jazz game in years. And it turns out it was one of Jerry Sloan's last games. Pretty crazy.

The next day after church, we drove up to Tremonton for a Super Bowl/Birthday Party. Carter's 5th Birthday is only 2 weeks away, and since almost all of us were there anyway, we had a party. It was fun eating lots of yummy food and hanging out all day with family!

Here is Kami-who isn't too fond of either one of us-especially Jayson. I might be growing on here though since I played with her all day-I hope so!-but we'll see.

Here is Carter enjoying his presents. Score for a bday party 2 weeks before your actually bday-talk about an entire birthday month!

Another Spontaneous Adventure!

2011-02-09T18:32:00.007-07:00

A few weeks ago on Wednesday, we were talking about how we were both in a rut, and needed to get out. We were sick of the cold, sick of school, sick of work, etc! That night we decided that we were going to head to St George for the weekend! We called up our friends to see if they had plans, and on Friday after Jayson passed his test-we hit the road! It was beautiful in St George, 65 degrees and lovely! I walked around with jeans and a t-shirt and I couldn't have been happier! We sure do miss everything about that place! Friday night Jayson and Jared watched Ryker while Stacy and I went to the grocery store. Saturday Jared had to work, so we went and enjoyed the outdoors while he made $$! Stace and I went and got our eyebrows and nose hairs waxed (yes thats right- you should try it-it doesn't hurt at all and it does wonders with stuffy noses!) from Janessa-who was about 35 weeks pregnant with twins-and happened to have them the next day! She was such a trooper and so nice to do it on such short notice! We then grabbed Jay and headed to a pond @ the St George Golf Course to feed some ducks. They were ALL over, it was soo fun to see them go crazy over a piece of bread and come up right next to you! We only brought a few buns and thought we'd be set. Little did we know these ducks were insane-the people next to us had 3 loaves of bread and I don't even think that was enough! Needless to say we had a blast!

We then went and got a SWIG (a yummy drink place) and visited our old friends @ Sprint (and Jared @ work there). After that we went to a park and walked around on the trail for an hour or so. I hoped to get a tan it was so nice outside---but that didn't quite happen, maybe next time! On Sunday Jared and Stacy made us a yummy dinner and we hung out for a while later, then headed home that afternoon in hopes to beat the storm that was coming! We made it home about an hour before we got snowed on, so it was perfect. We had soo much fun and wished we could do that every weekend! Thanks for letting us crash with you guys on such short notice and being amazing friends!

Here is Jayson and Mr Ryker in his overalls we gave him for Stacy's baby shower. They were a little long-but we had to see him in it before he grows out!

Crazy Hair

2011-02-09T18:32:00.005-07:00

So Jay's hair seems to always be out of control-usually I like it longer, but not tooo long. I had been trying to get him to let me trim it just a little for while, but that never happened. Well we finally got a calling in our new ward-1st one for Jay and 2nd one for me since we've been married-we teach the 9, 10, & 11 year old boys! Well a few Sunday's ago one of the boys commented that Jay looked like Willy Wonka-the old school crazy one. haha! We both had a good laugh about that, but I knew this would help me persuade Jay to cut his hair! Plus, he had graduation pictures the next week-and I figured it was a great time to chop his hair! I don't have any before or after pics, but here is a during picture-which I'm pretty sure you will be able to get a view of the before and afters from it! It's shorter than both of us love, but his hair grows like crazy and it looks MUCH better than before!:)

A side note-now the kids in our class say he looks like Jack Johnson.... we'll see who he looks like next!

Cabinet Re-Do!

2011-01-26T17:23:00.006-07:00

Ever since we moved in we knew that we wanted to make the kitchen look just a tad better. Our tile floor has a few cracks (a later project-want wood/fake wood-floors!), our counter tops are blah (another later project), and our cabinets looked like this!

They had done a somewhat okay job staining them, but left drips on quite a few of them, and we never were really fond of the color. One weekend when Jayson passed his test so he had the weekend off, we started! Here are some pictures before so you can get a good idea of how much better they look when they are done, and when we finish all the projects!

View from the living room

View from the Office

All of the doors taken off

We sanded them just enough to get the drips off and make them smooth, then used an oil based primer that goes over anything so we didn't have to sand for days on end! Here are the outsides primed.

Priming the doors in the garage

Painting the doors in the garage, along with spray painting knobs and handles we got for a steal!

Top cabinets all finished, starting to look much better!

This is how we lived, it was a mess, but since there are only 2 of us, it wasn't too bad!

Finally a finished product! Don't look at the cluttered kitchen or the super off-white/yellow looking counter tops, just the cabinets!

A close up of some drawers and cabinets.

It probably would have cost us a couple thousand dollars to get brand new cabinets, so seeing this break down makes it even more worth it!
Paint-$21 dollars
Primer-$8
Knobs, handles, and a few new hinges-$30
Paint accessories-$10
Look and feel we get every time we walk into our kitchen-Priceless

We pretty much love it! It was such a pain, but soo worth it! Now onto the next project-painting our countertops-yes that's right-painting! We probably won't start this project for a few weeks, but we're brainstorming! We ideally want granite, but might try painting for only $40 rather than $1000 and see how that goes! I am going to try to paint them to look like granite. Wish us luck and let me know if you have any great, cheap, easy ideas for anything!

Jayson is getting old!

2011-01-24T19:06:00.004-07:00

Jayson's 27th Birthday was this past Friday. We had a ton of fun celebrating all weekend (in between him studying and us finishing our cabinets-pictures coming soon!) We both had to work, (I made money, he worked for free-the story of our lives), but when we got home he opened his presents then we went out to dinner. I had wrapped his presents and set them out for over a week to make him jealous, and kept everything a secret, it may have drove him crazy, but it was worth it cuz we had fun! The next day Jayson's family came over and gave him their present. It was super clever, we loved it! The card said to save it for a rainy day, and he opened the present and inside was an umbrella. His mom kept telling him to open it-and Jay kept saying that it was bad luck inside! But he finally opened it (above his head per his moms request) and it rained money!

Getting covered in Money-don't we all wish it would rain money all the time!

After that, we all went out to eat and had a blast with good food and great company!

Jay got this birthday wish from our friends in St George-how cute!

I had fun celebrating Jayson s birthday weekend, and I believe he did too! Thanks everyone for the birthday gifts and wishes!

Christmas 2010

2011-01-13T20:03:00.003-07:00

This year we kind of cheated (I'm pretty sure we've cheated every year so far) and opened our presents on Christmas Eve instead of waiting until Christmas Day. We set the mood by turning our tv to the 'yule' channel to see a burning log fire and hear Christmas music. It was pretty cheesy, but we had fun! We set super low budgets for ourselves because: 1-we always try to outdo each other with $ or the amount or size of presents, 2-we just bought a house, and new windows, and have Jayson's tuition loans chilling on our back!
Jayson got me some new kitchen knives-which we needed badly and I have been wanting some for a while now! (yes-I admit I'm starting to feel grown up since I wanted and liked getting knives for Christmas!) He also gave me a new sweater (which he picked out and I love!) and some new jeans.
I got Jayson some new jeans, a Dunder Mifflin T-Shirt, and the blanket that I made him!
We also got ourselves a few seasons of 'Arrested Development' as well as 'How to Train your Dragon' (our new favorite movie!)

We don't have any pictures of those festivities-but here is Jayson's finished blanket! See here for the process of making it!

I had to show how I 'tied' it. I tried to make it look like the stitching on a baseball...not bad I guess!

Needless to say we both LOVE the blanket, it is super warm and super neat! I'm so glad I didn't give up!

On Christmas Day we slept in then headed up to see our families. We stopped in Tremonton first to check out what Jayson's brothers got and see his parents for a bit. We played a game of "Madson-opoly" and then headed out. Next we stopped at my Grandparents house for some good food and white elephants. We ended up with a mini crockpot and a puzzle of SLC...not too bad for white elephant gifts! After that we headed to my parents house to exchange gifts. We didn't do much because we did service gifts for someone in my parents ward, so that was fun being able to do more service for someone in need! We got more Home Improvement gift cards as well as other fun stuff from my parents! We had fun hanging out, playing games with everyone we love all day long! It was such a great Christmas, we're ready for next year!

Dec 18=Party Day!

2011-01-08T13:13:00.005-07:00

This year December 18 happened to be the day that we had a ton of Christmas parties, and we had so much fun at each one!

Every year since I (Kassi) was little we made ginger bread houses. We had a ton of fun making our little house out of graham crackers and candy! My brothers are more into the 'architechtual' part of the house building and there were still working on theirs when we finished ours! My brother Kolby made a replica of my parents house-it was pretty impressive! Here is our masterpiece. Such a great tradition I hope we continue with every year!

After that we headed over to The Peak for the annual Quayle Christmas Party. We had fun eating good food and catching up with family we harldy ever see! My aunt Maurine put together some 'Minute to Win It' games that we all had a ball trying! The first round we had to move a vanilla wafer from our forehead to our mouths by only using our facial muscles-it was pretty hard but way funny! Here we are all lined up ready to go!

Here's me and Jay working our faces!

The next round we had to keep 3 balloons up in the air for a minute. This turned out to be nearly impossible! Although a few people were able to do it-including Jayson! (mostly because one of the balloons was statically clinged to his hair)

The next round we had to fly a paper air plane into the striped tube thing-which again was also very hard-but once again-Jayson succeeded, as well as my cousin Kody. So those 2 were able to move on to the next and final round!

The last round there were 9 cups in rows of 3 filled with water on a table. They had to bounce ping pong balls off the table and into the cups and get a tic-tac-toe to win. Both Kody and Jayson were able to do this, but Kody did it faster, so he won! My Grandma even tried it out after they were done and did a pretty good job! It was a ton of fun for both the participants as well as those party poopers who were in the audience!

After that we headed out to tremonton for the annual Madson Christmas Party. It was so much fun to get together with Jayson's brothers and sister and their families! We hung out while others wrapped presents! We then headed to drop off a bunch of chrismas gifts we had all gotten for a family in Tremonton. We filled 2 big boxes full of presents and food and it was so fun giving the gift of service and Christmas to a family in need! After that we headed back to eat yummy food, unwrap presents, and play games.

Jayson decided this year that we should do some type of Christmas program or share traditions or services that each family does each year. We started off with Jayson's parents and his 2 little brothers who put on the nativity for us. It was so cute to see them all dressed up like Mary, Joseph and a wisemen while Greg read the Christmas Story from the Bible. Kaden then played us a song on his xylophone.

We did ours next and Jayson had made a tree with ornaments that we passed out to everyone having them write what they were thankful for on each ornament. He then told everyone that this is just a regular pine tree-but then at Christmas time we decorate it with ornaments and that this is a good way to remember what you are thankful for at Christmas time.

Kristen and Dave shared a tradition that they did, and Maddie and Kristen sang a song. Ryan told about a service story in which they do know in their home to remember what Christmas is all about. All of this was so perfect and set a great Christmas Spirit, a few tears were even shed of how wonderful this part of the night turned out. We will never forget it!

We then proceeded to opening presents! A ton of toys, babies, guns, etc. were given to all of the kids-they had a ball! We got giftcards to buy Jayson a ladder and a new ceiling fan that we want and need! We also got a neat wall hanging that spells 'Madson' out of different things, as well as clothes and a few other things. We were so excited! We love giftcards-we really do-and got spoiled!! After we thought we were done opening our presents Tyson ran to get one more thing-it was a meat-sicle! They had kept them in their freezer from last year when we give them to everyone! GROSS!! It was hilarious, so of course-Jayson tested one of them out-and all of us, including him gagged big time!

We all got Jaysons parents games this year. We made Jaysons game (that he made up and we play every year) so that we can play it a little easier from now on. Kristen had made 'Madson-opoly' which turned out pretty neat! They also got 'Ticket to Ride' from us and Ryan, as well as others from each of us. We played games all night long! It was such a fun way to start the Christmas parties a week early!

This picture was taken on Chrsitmas day with Jaysons family-we love you guys!

Much Anticipated Weekend!

2010-12-13T19:02:00.006-07:00

We have been looking forward to this past weekend for quite some time now, and it definitely lived up to our expectations. We were super busy but had a blast! Jayson's brother and their family had planned to come up to see the lights at Temple Square, as well as our friends from St George! Luckily-we were able to spend time with both of them and pretty much want them all to come back!! Friday night started with our ward Christmas Party. There was good food and it was fun to get to know people more. We then headed to Sandy's house to meet Jared, Stacy, and Ryker there. Jayson finally got to meet little Ryker (who is already getting so big!) and we hung out with them for a few quick minutes. We then found out that Ryan, Kristen, Carter, and Kamdyn were almost to Temple Square, so we headed out to meet them there! Temple square amazes me every time I go (which isn't too often) but it is soo amazing! The lights are incredible. Since we had both put up lights at Hogle Zoo this year, we appreciated it even more! (Although Temple Square BLOWS the zoo out of the water-yet everyone should see both!:) We had so much fun walking around with them and taking fun pictures. Since we didn't get married in the Salt Lake Temple-we had never had a chance on this platform-so we waited our turn and got up to take some fun shots! Here is our favorite:)

Saturday we made some yummy breakfast then got ready to go take pictures and head to IKEA. We had planned on giving our parents updated pics of ourselves with their Christmas presents, (parents: pretend to be surprised!)-but we kept putting it off! Jayson's sister Kristen A. was going to take them but we never could find a time that both of us weren't crazy busy besides when it was dark! Luckily Kristen M. has an amazing camera too and since they were here on a Saturday-we took advantage of the day light and got some pics taken. The guys were good sports, and we had a ton of fun. Here are a few of our favorites:

We went to IKEA also, and enjoyed getting lost in the maze....until I decided that it was a bad idea to wear heels! I never wear high heels because I am already so tall, but Jayson got me boots for a late birthday present and I really wanted to wear them. Next time we'll start with only a few minutes wearing them rather than a few hours! After that we ate some Cafe Rio then went back to our place while Kami took a nap and Carter rested and watched The Grinch. Kristen, Dave, Maddie, Kenzie, and a bunch of their girls stopped by for a few minutes to say hi-it made our house really small, but it was fun to see everyone! We played a few fun games then Ryan, Kristen, Carter, and Kami headed home. After they left we headed over to Sandy's meet up with Jared and Stace to head to Temple Square again! -Can't get enough of that place or our family or friends!- It blew us away once again and was way fun to hang out with them for a few hours! We ended the night eating some Chinese food and saying our goodbyes once again.

We were pooped and slept in til 9:30 the next morning! We had such a blast with everyone and can't wait to see them all again!

Another Project

2010-12-01T19:34:00.002-07:00

Jayson has (had) a ton of shirts from baseball and he wasn't really wearing them. Well I decided that we should probably do something with them for some kind of memory. I pretty much am always bored and doing nothing since he is always studying-so I decided to see if I could figure out how to make a blanket out of them! I started cutting up all the shirts a few weeks ago and sewed them all together. It was a little difficult since they were all different shapes and sizes-but I pieced them together the best I could. I got an old sewing machine from our cabin that wasn't being used, so this was a HUGE help so I could do it at home! I used a bunch of old jeans that my mom had for the back. I am almost finished with it and we both love it! Here are some pictures of the beginnings of the blanket-stay tuned for the Christmas post to see the finished product! (Since it is part of Jayson's present he can't have it now!)

Can't Wait!

2010-11-17T19:40:00.004-07:00

For the 1st 2 years that we lived in St. George, Jayson's brother and their family lived there too. We had soo much fun with them! They moved to Pocatello and we hardly see them now! Carter was such a hoot-so much fun to just hang out with. We only hung out with Kami for a few weeks after she was born, but she was a cute little stinker! Since then we see them a couple times a year-and that is just not cuttin it! We found out the other day they are coming to visit-and we can't be more excited, we miss these guys! Can't wait to see you!

Mr. Carter

Miss Kamdyn

and I guess we are happy to see Ryan and Kristen too! :)

Can't Get Enough!

2010-11-14T18:44:00.005-07:00

That's right-we can't get enough of St. George-we miss that place! We also miss our friends and now we can't get enough of their new little guy!

Last weekend Jayson and I had planned on going to Saint George to meet Mr. Ryker. Well the trip if "we" turned into I. Jayson got sick and also had a test to take on that Monday-needless to say I had an extra day off work and wanted to still go-so off I went! It was so fun to hang out with Jared and Stacy and their new addition. He is such a cutie. It was fun trying to figure out how to take care of a child! We had fun just hanging out, making some yummy food, going shopping, taking care of Ryker, etc! We all missed Jayson a lot-and he was super sad he wasn't able to go-stupid sickness!! Here are a few pics of my adventure-what a cute little family! And no-nothing against Ryker cuz he was an angel-but we still aren't baby hungry! :)

(Lindsay took this picture-I can't take credit-super cute!!)

Halloween 2010

2010-11-01T17:35:00.002-06:00

We didn't do too much for Halloween, we almost didn't even dress up. Somehow Jayson has rubbed off on me (yet again) and I really wanted to dress up! So we rounded up some of our random outfits and became a ping pong player and a basketball jock. Jayson is in an old tanktop of mine-as well as my BOX ELDER basketball shorts. I had to make sure to let you all know that he was in awesome Box Elder Bee attire for the night! While I was a Snow College I took stats for the mens basketball team, and I happened to get one of their old warmup outfits. It was super old school, and it finally got put to good use! Needless to say-we had a fun night hanging out with ourselves!

Sunday we finished out the Halloween weekend by making fun treats. We had inside out caramel apples---they were sooo good, mummy-fied hot dogs, eyeballs and fingers in dip. They aren't quite as cool looking as the pictures I was trying to go off of-but we had fun and it was all super tasty!

Before we cooked the caramel apples

On a side note:When we moved into our house there was a hottub in the back yard-pretty sweet eh? Not really! It was not in usable or easily fixable. So we have been trying to get rid of it for a while now. Someone finally came and hauled it away for us! They wanted to bury it in the ground to make fish pond-pretty clever-except who knows if it will hold water! At least it is out of our backyard-yay!!

Pumpkins and Snow

2010-10-26T17:37:00.005-06:00

Can you guess what happens when you have been married to Jayson for over 3 years....

Yes that's right-I added a handlebar mustache to my pumpkin for the finishing touches. Look what he is doing to me!!

And here is Jayson's Masterpiece-the tongue sticking out the best! It's a pumpkin throwing up-lovely huh!

The Masterpieces

Oh-and this is what we woke up to yesterday-SNOW!! I was sooo mad! Which is weird-because I love snow! Just seemed to make my day rotten for some reason, (probably didn't help that we had no heat!-see below). Next time it snows I hope to be in a better mood-which is probably tomorrow! Can we please move back to St George? :)

On a side note-the day before and the day of this storm-our furnace didn't work-yes we kinda froze! But it is now fixed working and our house is warm and cozy.

Gardner Village

2010-10-23T19:24:00.005-06:00

We have been hearing many good things about Gardner Village-so last night we decided to check it out. Apparently it was 'Witches night out' which we weren't aware of. There were sooo many people there-and about 3/4 of them were dressed as witches. It was so fun!

Here is one of the crazy witch outfits-some people went all out-we loved seeing all of the different kinds of witches. From an Elvis witch, to a Sand-Witch (sandwich)-we saw them all!

Playin baseball with a witch!

50th Wedding Anniversary!

2010-10-23T19:19:00.003-06:00

Last weekend we were able to go to Kassi's grandparents 50th wedding Anniversary! (Last year was her other grandparents' but we weren't able to make it from St George, so we were glad we could go to one of them!)

The whole family-minus a few from North Dakota. We had such a fun time and it was great to see everyone!!

Kassi's family-everyone is getting way too tall!

The cute couple!

We only have 47 more to go! ..and more of course! :)

Another taste of Jayson's Life

2010-10-23T19:09:00.005-06:00

Jayson goes to school about 9 out of the 10 days within a 2 week period. One the 10th day he works 8 hours (for free) in a Walgreens pharmacy. He goes to school from about 7:30-3:30 those 9 days, and studies about 4-5 hours each day when he gets home. He also works 1-2 nights a week (for $$) in a Target Pharmacy. All in all-he is a busy guy!! I came home from work one day and found him in the office studying like normal-but not really normal because he was on the floor! Apparently he got sick of his chair. haha gotta love it! PS-Once again don't judge the mess, this is where he LIVES mostly-and he doesn't like me to mess up his organization:) Pharmacy school is super hard, but he is doing great! He has passed all of his tests except for one (which he got 85%) and he also got 105% on one-amazing! It takes a very dedicated, smart, amazing person to do what he is doing-only 1.7 years left of classes, and 2.7 left of school! Love you Jay!

About a year ago I posted a very similar post-check it out here
Kinda funny how similar they are and how much weirder Jayson is getting! :)

New Windows and Good Times!

2010-10-23T18:59:00.003-06:00

We knew before we bought our house that we would have to replace the windows soon, there were about 5 that were cracked. Our screen door didn't work so well either. Since it's getting colder we decided we'd better get on top of it! They were installed last weekend and we love them. I couldn't find any before pictures, but here are the afters! That same weekend Jayson's awesome family spent the night at our house to get up the next morning to help us clean up our yard. We had a bunch of weeds and it just needed some butchering. They were so willing to come and help, thanks guys!!

Some of our new windows-and in the background we only have dead-ish grass now, no more tall weeds!!

Our cute house:)

We order Bountiful Baskets every few weeks and love all of the fruits and veggies we get from it! I found a recipe for fruit salsa and tried it out-it was amazing! MMMmm! If you haven't checked bountiful baskets out before-it's a great deal and you get lots of yummy and healthy food. Sometimes there random things to try-but we get adventurous or give them away!! We got a few parsnips this week...super random, but we're gunna try to be creative!

Baby Ryker

2010-10-23T18:54:00.003-06:00

I've gotta blog about this because we have the bestest friends ever and we can't forget this moment! They had their little guy on October 13th and we get to go meet him in a few weeks and can't wait! Here is Ryker Jared Gillins, so adorable! Congratulations Jared and Stacy!

Frightmares 2010

2010-10-23T18:39:00.005-06:00

I had never been to Frightmares @ Lagoon before, and I always hear such good things about it! So when I got tickets from Jayson's family for my birthday, we were pretty stoked to go check it out. We had a lot of fun at the shows, riding the rides, and being with family! I wasn't so much into the scary stuff, but we had a ton of fun!

A ginormous dead guy with Jay, Tyson and Kaden

A carved pumpkin display that was pretty neat

Sherri, Tyson, Jayson, Me, Kaden and Mr Chainsaw dude

Lovely picture waiting for a show to start

Jayson's family with another chainsaw guy

While Jayson and Sherri rode the rocket, Kaden and I decided to ride the Flying Aces-he was the driver and I was terrified! (I'm a pansy and proud of it!)

Jay and his mom riding the rocket

Posing with the witches dressed up!

CIRCUS!!

2010-10-01T19:17:00.005-06:00

Last Saturday we went to the Circus. Ever since I heard they were coming to town I have wanted to go soo bad! We found a steal of a deal on tickets-and I finally talked Jayson into going! Neither one of us had ever been to a circus so were weren't quite sure what to expect-though I was soooo excited-I felt like a little kid! We both LOVED it! There were definitely some cheesy parts-but I guess it's for kids right. We went early so we could go to the Pre Show and go down on the floor to hang out and see a few things up close. That was pretty cool! Our pictures aren't the best, but they are better than nothing!

Here are the Elephants doin some stunts!

Elephants, lamas, horses, etc!

This was SUPER CRAZY! They had this ball and put 3 motorcycles in it and they all just went in circles for a bit, then they kept adding 1 motorcycle at a time-getting up to 7! I was freaking out thinking they would run into each other, but holy cow they made it! It was nutso!

Tigers doin some tricks. Some of them were pretty stubborn and for a second I thought a tiger was going to turn on the trainer-they did NOT want to do their stunts!

More elephant stunting!

And some more-super Neato!

You can't really tell what this is-but its tons of people jumping on trampolines-in different patters and doing tricks!

This was pretty amazing! These guys would jump on these bouncy poles and do flips and stunts and land right back on them-extreme gymnastics!

Here we are with our clown noses!

During the Pre Show we were down on the floor watching the elephant paint a picture!

I got to try on a circus outfit!

The stilt men doing some tricks

The finale of The Greatest Show on Earth!

First half of September!

2010-10-01T19:01:00.003-06:00

A few weekends ago we headed up North to hang out. We stopped at Peach Days for a couple hours. I couldn't believe Jayson had never been to Peach Days! Growing up-it was the best thing ever, now I am not so much into it-but I had to show him what it's all about. We saw that last 30 min of the parade-which was pretty awesome considering there were sword fighters! We laughed for so long about these guys! There were also some pretty classic 'floats'. We walked around for a few minutes-and that was enough for us! We grabbed some food at my grandparents, then headed to Tremonton!

The sword fighters!

Jayson posing in front of an army tank

Since we missed Kaden's ordination to become a deacon over Labor Day weekend, we wanted to try to make it up to him by taking him out and letting him choose something awesome to do! He wanted to go see a movie, but the one that he wanted to see wasn't playing-so we decided to go to the fun park in Logan. We started out by bowling, which I (Kassi) won! (thanks to my Snow College bowling class I'm sure!) We also played laser tag, which was way fun-yet I got last, Jay got first and Sherri got 2nd! They were way too good! Then we played some arcade games and had so much fun. We always have a blast when we hang out with our families!

Here is Kaden bowling up a storm!

Changes

2010-09-17T21:34:00.002-06:00

I think we are the kind of people who like change, we seem to adapt to new things pretty easy we are spontaneous and usually love most changes! Well, recently there may have been too many changes!

First of all-we bought a house=higher monthly payments (because we were getting a screamin deal on rent in STG, yet it's cheaper than renting in SLC), fixing up, painting, decorating (putting holes in our newly fixed/painted walls), making it our home=kinda stressful!

2nd-Jayson started pharmacy school=LOTS of student loans taken out (which we are starting to become okay with because we have both gotten this far in our lives without student loans, and we know it always pays off!), Jayson isn't working much, he's always studying, which means I've half way lost my partner in crime for now!

3rd-we moved=new neighborhood, new ward, no friends, traffic (which WE HATE)

4th-I got a new job. About 2 weeks after I had transferred to Sprint in West Jordan, a customer actually randomly offered to have me come in for an interview for a position that he had at his work. I went to the interview and they hired me right then. We went on vacation-then I started my new job. I now work at Sims Metal Management. I am the shipping coordinator etc. I do lots of odds and ends as well as keep on top of shipping to everywhere in the world. It's pretty interesting. My favorite part is I am home by 5 everyday, and I never work weekends!!

Well pretty much this has caused A TON of stress in our lives, I've freaked out millions of times and I think (Jayson hopes) we are finally getting to the point that we are managing our new lifestyle and I am managing my stress a little better!:)

Saint George Showering

2010-09-13T19:59:00.004-06:00

We spent Labor Day weekend in St. George. (yup, we can't get enough of that place!) We went to hang out and have fun, and also threw Stacy a baby shower! Ever since I saw this picture of Jared and Stace, I just had to post it! They are going to be the best parents and have the cutest kids!

We arrived Saturday afternoon, and went and hung out at Jared and Stacy's until the baby shower. Jared also got showered with a gift from Jayson-a chew toy for both Jared and Ryker! (we gave Jared a stick of beef, and Ryker a teething ring) It was pretty funny-we just couldn't leave the guys out! Stacy and I headed to the shower while Jayson and Jared watched football and hit at the batting cages, and whatever other man things they could think of. Alicia and Lindsey helped me throw the shower...they pretty much did everything, and it turned out super cute! I was sad I couldn't help out more-but it was kind of hard being 4 hours away! There was yummy food, games, friends, and fun! Here are a few pics:

Stace smelling what kind of candy bar is melted in the diaper-it looked pretty nasty, and was probably the only diaper she will WANT to smell!

The yummy food-the diaper cake for decoration/gift was soo cute!

It was so fun to see the friends that we miss so much. We were so thankful for them for letting us crash at their house for the night before we headed back home Sunday afternoon. We might have to make this a regular occurrence!

White Coat Ceremony

2010-09-08T20:49:00.003-06:00

A few weeks ago the University of Southern Nevada had their White Coat Ceremony for the Class of 2013. We heard that this was kind of a big deal-but weren't quite sure what to make of it. I was able to take work of to go do it, and since school hadn't started yet, Sherri came too! When we took a look at the program we thought we'd be there for hours! Luckily-the people who spoke were short and sweet. At the end all of the incoming students lined up to receive their white coats. It was actually pretty neat-just a fun sort of way to welcome them to pharmacy school. They all took an oath, then waved goodbye to us for the next three years! Lovely! 2013 sounds so far away-yet I'm sure it will fly! Jay has been going strong for a couple weeks now, and its pretty tough, but he's studying a ton and learning lots! (so am I!-he teaches me stuff to help him learn) He had his first test today and passed-phew! He has another on Friday so wish us luck!

Here are a few pics of the White Coat Ceremony

walking down the isle after the ceremony

Standing up to recite the oath

3 Years and Counting

2010-08-22T19:58:00.007-06:00

Last Monday was our Anniversary. We both can't believe that it has been 3 years! We have had our ups and downs, ins and outs, but we grow each and every day. This year for our anniversary we got the pleasure to get our plumbing fixed! The day before we were trying to replace our knobs in our bathtub and it didn't quite go as planned. Needless to say we had water everywhere! Thanks for our wonderful friend Teea, her dad came and helped us get it fixed the night of our anniversary!! The next day we went to a movie and finished celebrating in Park City a few days later.

In the past 3 years we have:

1. Moved 3 times (St. George, Washington, West Jordan)
2. Kassi has graduated with her bachelors degree
3. Jayson got accepted into pharmacy school
4. Bought a house
5. Went to Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, Las Vegas, Hawaii, Chicago, Island Park, Yellowstone, Zions, Grand Canyon, Park City, and China Town
6. Kassi went to New York
7. Jayson went on many baseball trips and helped coach Dixie State Baseball
8. Had about 3 problems with the civic and about 8 problems with the malibu
9. Had about 6 jobs between the two of us
10. Kassi got her tonsils taken out
11. Have our own-couches, washer, dryer, tv, bed, fridge, bicycle, grill, xbox, and wii
12. Jayson has had about 15 different facial hair stylings, and about 5 hair cuts
13. Been fishing about 13 times and caught a total of 1 fish over 6 inches
14. Jayson taught Kassi how to golf (and she's improving!-slowly but surely)
15. While in St George we went and saw Thriller, Five for Fighting, and Footloose at Tuacahn
16. Went Ice Skating in St George
17. Made 1 Snowman
18. 1 Mouse stuck in coils of fridge
19. Have many unforgettable friends
20. Gained 2 more nieces and 1 sister in law
21. Gained and lost about 30 lbs (Jayson)....Kassi can't figure out how to gain any
22. Been through 5 temples
23. 2 caterpillars eat 1 tomato plant
24. 2 of 2 house plants die
25. 8 sleepovers with mattress on living room floor
26. Too many days over 100 degrees
27. Jayson has thrown his back out 3 times
28. 2 Halloween parties (4 awesome costumes)
29. Two traffic tickets
30. 1 hunting trip (had the 2nd just barely)
31. 1 demolition derby
32. 1 all-nighter
33. Seen the Cubs, Whitesox, Indians, Padres, Rockies, Dodgers, Marlins all play
34. Went to sea world, blue man group, shark reef, pineapple farm, snorkeling, old faithful, bogey boarding, pearl harbor
35. Went to about 10 museums and zoos
36. and much much more!

House-After Pics

2010-08-21T16:20:00.005-06:00

Here are a few of our House-After Pics. We painted the main level and upstairs, got the carpets cleaned, and then deep cleaned the entire house! It was quite a project, and we are still working on the basement, and getting rid of odds and ends, but we are mostly settled!

view from the front door towards family room/dining area

view from dining area to family room/entry

another angle from dining area to family room

Our closet-which both of us made from scratch. it was pretty fun and turned out great!-it is now covered by a curtain, lessens the cluttered look-but we had to show off our masterpiece!

Master bedroom

taken from kitchen

There is a lot more to see, so since we lessened the travel time by 4 hours, you will just have to come visit to see the rest!

Park City!

2010-08-21T15:47:00.002-06:00

My aunt has a time share in Park City that nobody was able to go to, so we took advantage of it on Thursday night and went and had some fun! We drove up after I got off work on Thursday and went and checked into our room then went and ate some yummy food. We went to an Italian bistro and decided to be spontaneous and try something new! Both of our dishes were pretty dang good! We toured Park City a bit and walked up and down main street, got an icecream then called it a night. 6am came way to early Friday morning to get up and go back to work! It was a fun random getaway! Thanks Juli!

Project

2010-08-21T14:41:00.003-06:00

My grandma always has lots of little nick nacks and fun things. Well last year she had a bunch of stuff in her basement that all us grandkids could pick through and have whatever. Well I found this window frame thingy that I thought was cool, but wasn't quite sure what to do with! Well in June I finally had an idea, well it wasn't my original idea, I stole the idea from a random blog, and made my own version! I ended up painting it cherry red then sanding it and staining black over it, it turned out really neat! Then with the help of Jayson, Jared, and Stacy we broke a mirror and put it back together in the frames! We each took our own frame (since there are 4) and went to town! It's kind of different, but I love it!! I didn't take a before picture, but here is the during and after! I'm not the craftiest person, but I felt very accomplished when we were finished with it!

Now that it is hanging in our house we randomly find designs in the mirrors, its pretty fun!

Here is an Iron Man design-with Jayson lined up in the mirrors as iron man!

Island Park!

2010-08-12T21:30:00.015-06:00

When I was growing up we would ALWAYS go to our families cabin in Island Park at least once or usually twice a year. It is one of my favorite places to be. It is so beautiful and there is so much fun stuff to do, we always catch lots of fish, go river rafting, head to Yellowstone, as well as relax and hang out! ...Well I haven't been for almost 5 years!...Until now! We finally planned a trip up there and had a blast. Jared and Stacy came with us and we had soo much fun! Here is an overload of pictures (that were taken with our phones-couldn't find the camera-still in a box somewhere from moving!)

The first day we got up there about 2pm and unloaded the car and headed straight to get our fishing licenses. While we were getting them Jayson ventured off to the next door store to look for some lures and what not, and decided to take his chances on the Idaho Lottery. He bought one for $5 that you scratch off about 5 different games so you have a lot of chances to win. It must had been his lucky day because he won every single game-which equaled winning $55 bucks. So we walked out of there with a $50 profit...not counting the money we actually spent of course! It was pretty crazy, who does that?! Jared decided to try his luck since Jay got so lucky, and he didn't win anything! I guess that's why we do this almost never!
We headed to McCray's Bridge to fish. Jayson broke out his awesome float tube for the first time while the rest of us fished from the bank. We ended up not catching a single thing! I don't even think anyone got any bites. We decided maybe it was just to hot since it was early evening when we went.

Here is Jay getting out of the river with his float tube

If you look close enough you can see in the distance Jared on the right on the edge of the grass, and Jay on the left in the water

That night we decided to bust out the dutch oven and make some chicken, potatoes and carrots. Well all of us have had dutch oven food tons of time, but have never actually cooked it ourselves. Needless to say-we had hot dogs for dinner instead!

The next day we got up early to try fishing at Island Park Reservoir. We brought a raft for Jared and Jayson to try out the middle rather than the shore, which is what Stace and I did. Well they had fun paddling in the raft while we hung out on the shore. We thought for sure we had timed it right-it was early morning, overcast, and the guys weren't on the shore. Well once again none of us got anything!!

After a while we gave up and went back to have some breakfast/lunch at the cabin. We then took a nap and relaxed for a bit before we tried a couple more lakes and rivers in Island Park. I'm pretty sure Jayson took all of our good luck cuz we got swamped! Not a single bite either day! We had lots of fun though! We also floated down the river that runs in front of the cabin-that was a blast trying to paddle away from the trees and rocks!

The next day we went to Yellowstone. We had fun stopping in West Yellowstone to look at some shops and eat, then spent the rest of the day in Yellowstone National Park. We looked for animals like crazy, ended up seeing some elk, a buffalo and a wolf. We also went and checked out Old Faithful and some more little geysers.

Here is Jared and Jayson posing with the cowboys in West

Jared and Stacy

Jay and Kass

...and of course-Jayson and Jared-How cute!....?

Here is a pic in Yellowstone river next to the road, love it!

We were told by our server in West to go on the Fire Hole drive while we were in the Park. It was soo beautiful-I'm so glad we asked! Here is the water fall there

Kass and Jay while we were checking out the small hot pools and geysers. They were actually really neat!

Old Faithful!

Us in front of a small geyser

The 4 of us eatin some yummy ice cream waiting for Old Faithful to erupt

On our way out we saw a bunch of people pulled over-so of course we checked it out. There happened to be a couple buffaloes in the distance that we watched for a while. This one rolled in the dirt for a bit-that was pretty cool actually! This picture was taken through the binoculars with our phone

Now you can get a feel for how far they really were-Kass is eating it

And here is Jayson holding it with 2 fingers!

That night we stopped at Big Springs to check out the huge fish in the water (so they all would believe me that there actually WERE fish in Island Park! haha) It was pretty-here is the little mill be the spring

Jay, Jared, Stacy, and Baby Gillins looking over the bridge for the fish

All in all we had SUCH a good time. Fun being with friends and fun hanging out and taking a relaxing yet adventurous vacation!! Can't wait for next year!-Hopefully!

2010 Heat Stroker Baseball Camp

2010-08-08T20:21:00.003-06:00

This post is also very late-but definitely worth it. One of the weekends in June Jayson helped with Dixie's Heat Stroker Baseball Camp. He has done this for the past few years and always has a good time. It is from 6pm to midnight for a few nights in a row. This year I went and watched for a while and also helped serve the kids dinner. The last night they were teaching the kids how to slide....or at least that's what they said they were going to do. They pretty much just had a ginormous slip n slide for the kids to try out! The kids went to town on this thing and had a ball, little did they know one of their coaches would participate! Jay surprised us all when all of a sudden he started running toward the slip n slide. I got it on video just in time-it was so fun! If it wasn't midnight I probably would have tried it myself as well! You can't really tell-but Jay slid a little further then all the kids-landing in the dirt!! From this picture you can see dirt and grass in his beard and shirt-haha

Shark Reef!

2010-07-31T12:07:00.005-06:00

So this post is coming to you verrrry late. But a few weeks ago we and a few of our great friends from the Saint George area all went down to Las Vegas to the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay and to the World Buffet at the Rio!

It was an awesome trip, and we had a lot of fun. The shark reef sure had a lot of sharks, but they had a bunch of other interesting things to see, too. There were lion fish, sting rays, an octopus, an albino alligator, all sorts of stuff!

This is a picture of the sawtooth something-or-other. It had a 2-foot long thing that looked almost like a beak sticking off its face that had serrated teeth all along it. Hence the name I just gave it. Saw-toothed something-or-other.

Here is me and Kass sitting in front of the shark tank underground. The lighting wasn't great so its tough to see into the water behind us.

One of the rays that we saw.

The beautiful but dangerous Lion Fish. At least its dangerous to other little fishies, anyway.

At the World Buffet at the Rio where I tried crab (the kind that is not spelled with a 'k') for the first time. You can see our friend Caleb behind me digging into some crab too. He must have pounded about 20 crab legs! 3 or 4 was plenty for me.

And here is me and Kass again, this time in front of the stairs to the Shark Reef place. It was a great Saturday!

On the way home my friend Jared and I also got to try our luck at the State Lottery when we stopped in the little town of Beaver Dam, Arizona. Needless to say, neither of us became multi-millionaires from the experience.

Homeowners!! Stories and before pics!

2010-07-15T22:20:00.005-06:00

So most of you already know because you have helped us paint, clean, pack, unpack, move etc....but we have moved!! We bought a house in West Jordan and are finally moving on to the next stage in our lives as homeowners! So far it has been quite crazy, but hopefully it calms down soon. We made all the deadlines within 2-3 days to get the $8000 tax credit before it went away, so that made us even more happy!! It was quite a headache getting this house because we still lived in St George through this whole process, and it was a short sale so there were quite a few hoops we had to jump through-but we had an amazing agent that helped us along the way and it finally worked out! Here is the story of making this house our home-SO FAR-

We planned to drive up the night of Wednesday June 30th until July 1st to clean the house and prep it for painting. Apparently Jayson's car didn't like that idea because about 15 miles before Cedar City his radiator hose got a hole in it! We proceeded to fill the car with water for the coolant, duct taped the hose, and headed to a Checker Auto in Cedar. We made it just fine and went in a got a hose and more coolant and asked the guy if he would show us how to replace it. He said he'd be happy to do it for us and so we went out and watched him go to town on Jay's car. After what seemed like forever he decided that the tools he had weren't quite cutting it. The clamps on the bottom of the hose were jammed and he would then have to pry it apart. After about 5 min of working with a crowbar we hear a pop....and were so excited because we thought he had just got it off and we were almost back in business! He then proceeds to say 'I think I just broke your Radiator-yup I did, I just broke your radiator'. I was like oh that sucks, lets go get a new one and fix that too-little did I know the radiator was just a little more work that a little hose. The guy offered to buy us a new radiator-which saved us $150-well I guess it didn't really save us-because we weren't planning on any of this happening! But thankfully he purchased a new radiator for us and we called around to get someone to fix it! It was about 8pm by now and noone would fix it for less that $150/hr and said it'd take about 2-3 hours-Gross! So we decided that this House trip would have to wait. Our bestest friends ever-Jared and Stacy-came up to Cedar to rescue us and take us back down to St George. Then the next morning out amazing fix-everything friend Caleb went up with Jay early Friday morning to fix it!

Friday night after work I got a ride with one of my awesome co-workers up to West Jordan to get an early start on the house until Jay got there Saturday afternoon-July 4th. My family came early Saturday and helped clean and fix holes in the walls and get ready to paint. Jayson's family arrived that afternoon to help also! I was sooo glad to see them all since I had been there by myself super overwhelmed of all we had to do! Jay arrived that evening and by the end of the night we had most of it completely cleaned and all of the walls painted! (except for the basement-which we will do someday) We got A TON accomplished that day and we were both so thankful for our awesome families for coming to help! The next day Jay and I got up and painted the doors and baseboard until we got sick of it and decided to head out.

Sunday night we went to Entrada to our friends' grandparents house which was immaculate! We played games, ate snacks, and watched a movie. Then me and Jay slept in their Casita(sp)- while the other 4 of them slept in the extra bedroom and the theater room of the house. The next day we made breakfast and went swimming. It was so much fun to have one last fling with our wonderful St George friends!

That week we packed, and packed, and cleaned, and played, and packed and played some more. I had a few break downs at work and at home and luckily Jayson is so amazing to put up with me and I have such great friends who came and helped me pack! For a few nights Jared and Stacy would come over and help and we would grill hot dogs and marshmallows-camping indoors!:) While Stacy and I would pack-the guys would play Call of Duty until we had full boxes-then they would haul them to the garage. We would also take breaks to hang out and play cards too. Soo much fun and it helped take my crazy stressfulness away! We don't know what we will do without our St George Family!

Friday morning we loaded the moving truck-and thanks to Jared and Caleb it went pretty fast! That night we had planned to help Jay's work do a 'lights out-lock in' thing where kids from 12-15 yrs old would come and pretty much be locked into the Community Center from 8pm-8am that night and would just get to hang out and play all night long! Jay and I helped out with it until about 2am and then we went home cuz they had enough help! That was fun-yet I would never let my kids go to one of those things! Anyway, the next morning was MOVING DAY! We got up at about 8am and finished loading the moving truck and got ready for the day. We planned to drive the truck and my car to Nephi, leave the truck there and head up to Manti to go to the temple. Our friends Jared and Stacy had been preparing to go through the temple and get sealed ever since we met them. They are 2 amazing people and are going to be the greatest parents ever to their little boy who will be here in October! It was really neat to go to a live session in the Manti Temple and be there when they took their endowments out. We then headed straight to their sealing which was also super neat. The spirit was so strong-it reassured all that were there of the joy and love in forever families! My favorite was when they went to kiss over the altar and Stace could barely make it because of her baby belly bumping into the altar! It was super cute! We were soo stoked for them to be heading that direction in their lives. We honestly don't know what we are going to do without them!

After we said quick goodbyes we ran to our car and headed back to get the moving truck and continue our adventure to West Jordan. We arrived at about 8 where Jayson's sister and her family had just got done vacuuming our carpets (we had gotten them cleaned that week) and Jayson's brother and his family pulled in to help also! We unloaded the truck pretty quickly and then Jayson's parents showed up at about 9ish to help finish! We would have been there all night if it weren't for all of them!! We made it somewhat liveable before they all left. Jay's brothers family stayed over night so we could play some more and they helped us get more stuff unpacked and put together! It was so fun to be with them again, we used to hang out all the time when they lived in St George-so we had tons of fun playing cards, the wii, and cars with Carter! That night I took Jay back to Nephi to meet Jared and Stacy to take him back to St George-while I went back to West Jordan. Jay stayed in St George this past week working and checking out of our townhouse, while I was in West Jordan working and getting rearranged in our new house! I have been working a ton and came down with some type of a cold so I haven't been very motivated to do much in WJ. But thanks to Jay we will probably get our full deposit back from STG because he is doing such an amazing job cleaning there! Now that I am finished with the beginning of our moving NOVEL-here are some of the before pictures-none of them are super exciting! The house just needed some good cleaning, painting, and mostly LOVE! I will post after pictures in a few days/weeks!

The bathroom

Kitchen

Master Bedroom and closet

The view from the front door to the kitchen-yes those carpets are CLEAN now!

Summertime Grillin!

2010-07-01T17:07:00.003-06:00

For our Future Mothers/Fathers Day presents for each other we bought ourselves a grill! We absolutely don't know what we did without it! Here is one of our many dinners that was delicious!

More NYC Pictures

2010-06-20T17:59:00.006-06:00

I got some more pictures from Kristen and Sherri-so enjoy!

Kristen and me riding in our stretch limo

Me, My awesome Mother-in-law and sister-in-law. The best Travel Buddies ever! (besides Jayson of course!)

The guy from Candy Land!

Stayin' Alive with Mr. M&M

Ready to bite off the toy soldiers hand made of jelly beans!

Smile!

Hanging out with the Soldiers outside of FAO Schwartz

Posing with the Harry Potter Hats while in FAO Schwartz

t
Eating a hot dog from a street vendor

The Castle in Central Park

Kassi and Kristen enjoying Central Park

Being Crazy people

Stuffing my face in Little Italy

Enjoying less traffic while crossing the street

Posing with the Statues in Battery Park

Hangin out in the Subway

Getting ready to smooch this guy. Don't you wish you could do this with your bottom lip!

Chopped

2010-06-20T17:41:00.004-06:00

I have always had long hair and I love it. It is almost like my security blanket-yet I always want to chop it off! The very few times that I do cut it, I pretty much hate it! For the past 5 or so months I have been SOO sick of my hair, and kept building up the courage to cut some of it off. We finally a time when we were going up North and could stop at my aunt Juli's (she's pretty much the only one that I will let touch my hair). I told her to chop it, yet not too short. Between me, Jayson, and Juli, we all picked a good length and went to town. We ended up cutting about 8 or so inches off. This was about a week ago and my hair and me are still in a love/hate relationship...! My hand shows where my hair used to be, soo crazy. We'll see what happens next! If you have any suggestions or ideas let me know! (keep in mind my hair is crazy thick and I am not much in to 'upkeep'! Thanks

NYC DAY 5

2010-06-13T13:29:00.003-06:00

The last day in New York we went to the Empire State Building and checked out the amazing views from up on the 109th (I think) floor. It was spectacular to see the city from the other side (the Top of the Rock was more uptown, and the Empire State Building was more downtown). After that we all ate at Carnegie Deli. It was such good food-GINORMOUS sandwiches and amazing Cheesecake! I am not a big fan of cheesecake, but once I tried this-ooo lala it was amazing! Utah Cheesecake just isn't good AT ALL anymore!:) We hung out around there for a bit then decided to run up the Yankee Staduim. After a few subway transfers we made it to the Bronx. It was kinda sketchy, but I'm glad we went. It was cool to see the Stadium, as well as the place where the old stadium had been. We weren't able to go into the stadium because they were setting up for some concert thing. We couldn't stay long because we had to be back at our hotel to catch our ride back to the airport! We got back on the subway and made it back just in time! We took our stretch limo (which was cheaper and much more safe and non-barfy) back to the airport. We boarded the plane right on time and after waiting on the runway for atleast an hour, we took off-and still made it home in time!

I was so excited to see Jayson at the airport. I had a BLAST! Thanks to Greg and Sherri for making this trip possible! Jayson had fun helping out his dad and brother in law with the kids as well as doing some house stuff for us and checking out the Air Force for a Scholarship he might apply for! We headed home Tuesday night about about 11pm, and after stopping to take a few naps we pulled into St George about about 530 AM. I was quite the adventure, but we both had to work that afternoon. I loved New York, and can't wait to go back again and take Jayson with me!

A view from the Empire State Building

A view of the Chrysler Building with a bridge in the background from the top of the Empire State Building

Inside Yankee Stadium

Outside of Yankee Stadium

My HUGE sandwich-which this is only HALF of it. I shared it with Kristen-and neither one of us finished it.

A view from the Empire State Building

All of us chilling at the Carnegie Deli

NYC DAY 4

2010-06-13T13:04:00.006-06:00

The 4th day we decided to try going to the Statue of Liberty again-and hopefully taking the correct ferry this time! We headed downtown to Battery Park again to catch the Statue Cruises to head to both Liberty and Ellis Island. We had to go through airport type security in order to board the Ferry over there....we had not expected this, nor did I think anything of it when I got dressed that morning. I had worn a tanktop under a zip up shirt. Little did I know they would make me take off my zip up shirt to wait to go through security. I was super embarrassed and uncomfortable just hanging out in my tanktop and garments....luckily everyone with us were good sports in standing really close to me as to not draw too much attention! We first went to the Statue of Liberty which was soo cool! It was huge and so neat! We headed across to Ellis Island after which was pretty cool also. They had a lot of cool visual items for kids to get an idea about immigration statistics from back then and now. They also had items that people had brought over with them as well as stories that they told. Some kids brought over huge suitcases that were empty-because they didn't want people to think they didn't have anything. It was a pretty neat experience. After that we headed up to Times Square to see if we could get a hold of some more Broadway tickets for a good price. We ended up getting Phantom Of the Opera tickets. I had never seen it before, so I was pretty excited. I ended up liking it a lot, but still actually liked the movie better, and Mary Poppins was definitely my favorite broadway by far!

Inside the building at Ellis Island

Posing in front of the Statue of Liberty

Kristen and I being statues!

It was so neat!

Our Ferry-the correct one this time!

NYC DAY 3

2010-06-13T12:10:00.007-06:00

Day 3 was Sunday, so we decided to head uptown to the Temple. It was pretty crazy that it was just in the middle of all of the huge sky scrapers. It was beautiful and pretty neat to see. After that we headed to Central Park. This was also pretty nuts to see. It was HUGE, and once again-in the middle of the huge city. It was soo pretty and peaceful, there was a lot of people taking a stroll and hanging out. They had a lot of baseball diamonds with games going on, a lake that people were playin in and rowing their boats, there was also a resevoir in the middle of the park. It was so fun! We headed to the Museum of Natural History after that, Museums seem the same everywhere I go, but it was cool to say I've been in that one. It was also pretty neat to see all the stuff that was in the movie-Night at the Museum. After that we went across Central Park and went up in the Castle in the middle the park to get a great view! We then headed to the MET (Metropolitain Museum of Art). Another cool museum, with neat art-but once again I am lame and it didn't fascinate me too much. After that we decided to be brave and eat a Hot dog from a street vendor. It was pretty dang good, and nope-we didn't get sick! haha! We then went to a cafe along a street to get some real food. We then headed down 5th Avenue to check out the shops all around. We went into FAO Schwartz and checked out the sweet toy store and had fun watching the 2 workers play music with their feet on the BIG PIANO-they did a pretty amazing job! We ended up not being able to go down one road we were planning on because there had been a bomb threat-gotta love New York! After that we headed to Rockefeller Plaza. On our way there was were checking out Trump Towers and hear a recognizable voice-looked up and Kristen and I had just about ran into the one and only Donald Trump! He was on his way to shoot the Live finale of the Celebrity Apprentice. I'm pretty sure if we wouldn't have heard him talking or not been paying attention either Kris or I would have ran right into him! He had the smae ol nasty hair along with nasty orange makeup on, I can think of many other famous people I would have rather seen that close up! We felt pretty cool though-seeing someone rich & famous! Once we got to Rockefeller plaza it was neat to see the stuff you see in movies, and all of the flags around it and well as the skating rink area. Someday we'll have to go back again in the winter to ice skate there and see the big tree! After that we headed back to Time Square to check everything out there. On our way we had to stop at Grand Central Station. It was huge and super pretty! Now I can watch the movie Madagascar and say -I've Been There!! :) haha. Times Square was super crowded but pretty dang neat! We went into M&M world and Toys R Us, as well as a few other shops. That night we headed back to our hotel to get some New York Pizza for the 2nd time this trip-its pretty tasty!

Looking up at the Temple

Trying to take a picture of Times Square-but Kristen jumped up and got in the way! haha it was way funny

Times Square

Just about to go into M&M world at Times Square

Grand Central Terminal

The view of Central Park from the Top of the Rock-Neato huh!?

At the Museum of Natural History

Outside Rockefeller Plaza

This was on the roof of the MET, you could walk all around in these sticks

Outside of Rockefeller Plaza-like on 30 ROCK!

A view of the lake and the baseball diamonds in Central Park

The Huge Ferris Wheel that went through all 3 floors-you could even ride it! (its sideways)

This was right under Times Square

The piano players at FAO Schwartz

Chillin in Central Park

On top of the Castle in Central park checkin out the view!

Looking up at us through the trees

Modeling to show how HUGE the park was!

At the Top of the Rock-I have no idea why I am making this face

Outside of the Met. There were a ton of people hanging out on the steps watching some street preformers

NYC DAY 2

2010-06-13T11:41:00.006-06:00

Day 2 of New York we did A TON of stuff! We woke up early and headed down to catch the Ferry go to to the Statue of Liberty. When we got of the subway we saw The Staten Island Ferry-and didnt think anything of it and rode it to where we thought was going to be the Statue of Liberty. We started to pass it...and then we ended up in New Jersey! Haha! So we got back on the same Ferry and went back to NY, it was pretty funny, yet everyone else did the same thing! Apparently it was the cool thing to do-and it was free, so even better! We found out later that we were supposed to take the Statue Cruises to Liberty and Ellis Island-which by the time we figured that out-there was a 2 hour wait in that line. We decided we'd try again another day! We then headed over to China Town, the SOHO district, Little Italy, Wall Street, Ground Zero, etc! It was way crazy but fun to see all those places. The day ended with going to see Mary Poppins on Broadway. I'll be honest, I wasn't very excited to go to see it at all, but I tried to be a good sport and make the best of it. Little did I know--I LOVED IT!! It was soo amazing, so funny, I was pretty much in awe most of the time. After the show we were able to get a backstage tour because Kristen knew someone who was a stage manager for it. It was pretty neat to go on stage and check out all the props and how they do mostly everything!

Me and Kristen on Stage after the show

Sherri and Kristen walking down the streets of Little Italy-we also ate there and it was AMAZING food!

Headed to Mary Poppins on Broadway!

Tryin on some sweet glasses in China Town

Sherri and Kassi at Ground Zero. This was soo sad, and pretty crazy. All the feelings of when I heard about this happening all came back to me. They are a huge mural on the side of a building for a small memorial for those people. We couldn't look around too much because there is still a lot of construction around there because they are in the process of building the Freedom Tower, which will be right where the 2 towers were, that is gunna be even taller that the 2 previous towers I think.

Posing at Battery Park

Hanging out on the Subway

Excited to ride the subway

NEW YORK DAY 1

2010-06-13T10:57:00.005-06:00

For Christmas last year Jaysons family gave me a flight and hotel stay to The Big Apple. We finally found a time to go at the end of May. Jayson and I left on Thursday and headed up North to check out some houses that we had made offers on (our tentative Eagle Mountain house keeps getting postponed-so we were keeping our options open!). We found a few we liked and kept those offers in, while pulling the others that we didnt like. That night we headed to say hi to Kassi's Family then later we went to Tremonton to say hi and sleep there. We woke up bright and early to head out of town! Jayson was nice enough to drive us all to the air port. He dropped me, his sister Kristen, and his mom off, as well as his moms friend Becky. We met up with Becky's friends and Kristens mother in law when we got to our gate. We had a nice flight to New York and once we landed and got all of our luggage this is where the many adventures began! We met up with our van service that was taking us to our hotel in Manhattan. We were so excited to see all the sights, but we hardly got a chance-because our driver was CRAZY!! I swear we almost got in about 20 car accicents in a 40 minute drive. We were in and out of 4 lanes in seconds, cutting every other car off and going really fast then stopping every other second. We thought we were gunna die! It was quite hilarious yet super terrifying!! I was sitting in the very back seat in between Kristen and Sherri. After a little while Kristen started getting a little car sick...then A LOT car sick...next thing we know she is handing us her stuff that was in her purse and then she started barfing in her purse. UGH!! It was sooo nasty (sorry Kristen) I had my head buried in Sherri's shoulder with my ears and nose plugged as I gagged. I was getting pretty car sick myself-and this was not helping! Luckily we made it to our hotel without any more barfing!

We checked into our hotel while Kristen cleaned herself up. This was the beginning of DAY 1!

After we got settled we walked to the Subway to get our passes and then headed down to catch a Ferry to get a tour of New York from the water! Jayson and I had done this while we were in Chicago and loved it, so I was pretty excited. We went down the Husdon river then up into the East river. The guy told us where to look and what it was. We saw the beautiful skyline of both New York and New Jersey, went under the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Washington Bridges (which were all super awesome), we saw anything and everything from the water as we went along, it was definitely a good start to the trip!

Kassi, Sherri, and Kristen hanging out on the plane

View of New York from the Hudson River-if you look close enough you can see a huge rectangular net that is a golf driving range, crazy!

It was super windy on the boat, but the view behind me was pretty sweet

Kristen and Kassi posing

Brooklynn bridge-it was Massive and sooo neat!

Another view of NYC from the Hudson River

Cinco De Mayo

2010-05-09T21:13:00.002-06:00

For Cinco De Mayo we had a Sprint work party. It was sooo much fun! Jayson made a chili pepper shaped pinata and we all brought Cafe Rio burrito items and chips and salsa and what not. As it got dark we started playing glow in the dark wiffle ball. It was soo much fun, we are going to do it again this week! Here is Jaysons masterpiece and then some of my fun co-workers spinning around the bat before hitting the pinata!

Zion National Park April 2010

2010-04-27T17:35:00.003-06:00

Last week was 'Free National Park Week', and since we live so close to a pretty sweet park, we took advantage of it! We drove up Sunday after church at about 3, so we were able to make sure it wouldn't be too hot while we strolled through Zion National Park. We took Jared and Stacy with us and had a blast! It was a nice Sunday afternoon drive, and we went on 2 really quick, easy hikes and had a picnic. It was really relaxing and perfect weather.

Kassi and Jayson at the Weeping Rock hike. It was really neat because the rocks were literally weeping...super neat!

This is all 4 of us sitting on a rock after checking out the lower emerald pools hike.

Kassi and Stacy chillin in front of the cool waterfall.

A cool rock formation with holes all over in it

We had a special guest with us-little Baby Gillins- Stacy was such a trooper carrying around a little one also! We are so stoked for them!

Us by the Weeping rocks

Minute to Win it

2010-04-27T13:57:00.003-06:00

Lately we have been watching this game show "Minute to Win It" on Sunday nights and decided that the games look pretty neat, crazy, and fun! So a few weeks ago we decided to have our own 'Minute to Win it' game night! Here are some pics of our fun times.

Caleb, Jared, and Jayson chillin while Jared is about to bounce a golf ball off a 2 different tiles and land it into the cup of water.

Chris was the only one who could get 5 apples stacked on top of each other, it was pretty hard. We also tried stacking 3 golf balls--not so easy.

This is Alicia and Jared trying to get a cookie from their foreheads to their mouths using only their facial muscles. It was pretty funny to watch!

Alicia and Stacy posing after they sniffed their cotton balls into a cup!

Jayson, Lindsey, Chris and Caleb getting ready to move cotton balls from the ground to their cup using only their noses!

We had a lot of fun, and we may just try it again since there are hundreds of games and you use everyday items so its a cheap, fun, and easy date night!

Concert and House Update

2010-04-18T11:01:00.002-06:00

For Valentines day Jayson got us tickets to the Five for Fighting Concert here at Tuacahn. We were both pretty excited, yet I wasn't quite sure what to expect. We went on an April night and it was beautiful! The band came out and the main guy started playing the piano and busted out singing. It was amazing!! I knew a couple of their songs and always enjoyed them, but seeing them live was soo soo good! He sounded amazing, his voice was so super cool, and he played the piano while he was doin his thing. He also told stories of how he wrote a lot of his songs, and what they meant, they were all really neat. We ended up buying a couple of their cd's and jammed out to them on our way up North the next day. Here is a pic of the concert, its taken by my phone, so it's not the greatest...but we had a blast!!

The next day was Saturday and we left early to head up North to pick out our options and colors for our new house! It was somewhat stressful, but I told them not to give us TOO many options:) I am soo soo excited to move into it, I can't wait! Too bad we have to wait until atleast July!

Outdoor Fun

2010-04-04T15:34:00.003-06:00

Last Sunday after church we decided to go for a bike ride. We had heard that there was a pretty cool trail just down the street from where we lived so we checked it out. Once we got there we realized it was pretty steep, so we parked our bikes and walked down the trail. There ended up being a waterfall, fun little animals, and more! It was a gorgeous day and it was fun to just explore a little! We didn't go very far because we had plans to go to the park with our friends.

Once we got to the park we played a little wiffle ball, frisbee, and threw a baseball around. We loved it!! We then went to their house for some yummy food then started watching 'LIFE' on tv. It is an amazing set of documentaries of our planet earth and all of the living things in it. The 4 of us LOVE it. We are getting smarter and smarter every day!:) Well after a bit Jared realized he didn't have his wedding ring on and we all started to panic wondering when the last time he had it on. We then went back to the park to start looking for it! After a few minutes of wandering around like puppies in the grass, a nice old man asked us what we were looking for. We explained what had happened and he said that he had a Metal Detector and he'd run and get it. About 15 minutes later he arrived with his metal detector. He was the nicest man ever and both Jayson and Jared took turns running it while Stacy and I would search closer when it said there was potentially something there!...Needless to say after another half hour we didnt have any luck. We decided to go back and look in our gloves (I had already looked there) again and the cars and their house. We arrived back and Jayson stuck his hand in one of the gloves and the ring fell right onto his finger! We were all sooo relieved! I felt so bad that I had missed it the first time, but then we wouldn't have gotten to try out the metal detector right!? haha. We are so thankful for our amazing friends and the great weather down here.

Jayson enjoying the beautiful view while on our walk

Me in front of a mini waterfall on our walk

Here is Jayson with the metal detector and Stacy and Jared trying to find the ring.

Update

2010-04-04T15:11:00.004-06:00

Nothing much has happened since our last post, except for the fact that we have been swamped with making decisions, finding places to live, and having fun!

A few weekends ago Jayson's family came down for Tysons baseball games and UPA. It was way fun having them around for a few days, they got to enjoy the wonderful sunshine that we will soon miss so badly here!

We will be moving up North this summer so that we can get all ready for Jayson's pharmacy school. We have been apartment hunting for weeks after we found out we'd be moving. After a lot of disappointing hunting, we decided to look into buying a house. We did some figuring and decided that it will be just as much to buy as it would be to rent, so we went house hunting! That was super stressful and very disappointing yet again. We finally found some townhomes that are being built in Eagle Mountain. We went over the plans with the builder, then drove out there to check it out-we loved it! It is kinda in the boonies....which made it almost better! We loved the area and everything about these town-homes so we jumped on it! We are now just waiting for them to be finished. Next weekend we get to go pick out colors and customize our own, which we are so stoked for. Even though they are town-homes, it will be OURS! We cant wait to be at least 4 hours closer to home, even though we are deeply going to miss St George and our amazing friends here, as well as the weather!

Here is a picture in front of our footings

Blue Man

2010-03-07T21:51:00.005-07:00

For our anniversary (in August) we decided that our present to each other would be to go to Blue Man Group in Vegas. Well 6 months later we finally found the time to go. We drove down to Vegas Saturday afternoon and hung out at the Venetian for a few hours before going to the show. Neither one of us had been before so we were both super stoked because we had heard from multiple people that it is amazing. WE LOVED IT!! Here are some fun pics of us in the theater and after with the band and a Blue Man. We happened to get a screaming deal and sat on the end of the 2nd row in the 'poncho' section. Luckily we didn't get paint or anything on us, but we did get to wear pretty cool ponchos.

Jayson in the theater posing with his poncho

Kassi chillin with the 'fake' Blue Men

Waiting for the show to start

Kassi with a 'real' Blue Man

Jayson with some of the band

We are in!!

2010-02-14T11:44:00.004-07:00

Warning: This post will have no pictures, and it will be pretty long, but I have to tell this story so we can remember it years from now!

Tuesday, Feb 2, 2010 Jayson had the opportunity to go to Henderson, NV to interview at the University of Southern Nevada for their Pharmacy program. We were super nervous/excited because this was his first interview for school. They have an extension in South Jordan, UT so we were hoping it went well so that we could be able to stay in Utah for the next stage in our lives. He came home that night feeling pretty good about the interview. He is an amazing all around guy and we were confident that once he got a chance to portray himself in person rather than just on paper he would be golden! Yet, we were also super nervous because it is pretty tough to get into pharmacy school. They told him that they could call him soon, yet there were many more interviews scheduled and that the last accepted students will be notified as late as May. That just sounded so far away and we just kept hoping that we would know what our future would be like before then. A few days later the University of Wyoming, in Laramie invited him to come for an interview. We then proceeded to search for deals on how to get him to Laramie! We bought a Greyhound Bus ticket and planned to go to SLC for the weekend while he went to Laramie for part of it. We got the ticket in the mail and were all set and excited to spend the weekend up North and increase our chances in getting into a good Pharmacy program.

Tuesday Feb 9, 2010 we were at Jayson’s basketball game that he plays on with a bunch of guys at his work. I had his phone with me on the bleachers and a number called him that I was not familiar with. I had this weird/good feeling that it was something important. I listened to the voicemail and it was a professor at Southern Nevada calling, and Jayson was supposed to call them back. The next 8 minutes until half time were the longest 8 minutes ever. I was freaking out inside, because I hopefully knew what this call was for. As soon as it was half time I proceeded to run to Jayson with his phone telling him to call them back right now! We went out of the gym and he called him back. He talked to the professor for a few minutes with a huge grin on his face while he talked with him. I was jumping up and down with excitement as I heard them give Jayson a choice as to which school he would like to go to (which we weren't sure if they would give him the option) and he then told them that he would prefer the Utah campus. I wasn’t sure if he would accept the offer right then and there, but he did! I guess it felt right to him, and it was totally OK by me! We were giddy with excitement, yet decided to not tell our families right away. We were going to wait until the next weekend while we were up North to surprise them since Jayson was not going to be in WY. By the time Wednesday night came around, we decided to just call our families and tell them. It was so fun to hear their reactions since we haven't lived close for a long time. Our favorite was when Jayson’s little brothers didn’t really seem to realize that he got into Pharmacy school, just the fact that we would be living closer. Tyson then started yelling with excitement telling us that they were partying right then because we will live closer and asking his parents if they could come visit us when we moved. Haha, it was soo cute!

Thursday Feb 11, 2010 Jayson received another phone call from the University of Utah inviting him to come for an interview. Unfortunately, Jayson had to turn them down, which was hard because he really wanted to go to the U, yet we felt good about our decision. The University of Southern Nevada’s program is a year shorter so we figured we would get finished a little faster and get on with the next stage in our live a little sooner. We would have also had to put down a non-refundable deposit for USN, which we would have lost of he got into the U, and also would have possibly jeopardized us in the timing to possibly lose our spot with USN, and not get into the U. Even though this was hard for us, we know that it is the right decision.

So as of right now we are going up North next weekend, just to PLAY (and look for a new place to live I guess)! No more going to Wyoming, no stressing about any more school interviews, etc. (So if anyone needs a round trip Greyhound bus ticket from SLC to Laramie let us know!) We are so stoked to know what our future brings. We will be moving to the South Jordan area in May/June-ish and Jayson will start his 3 year Pharmacy Program at the University of Southern Nevada!

Ice Skating

2010-02-10T20:46:00.002-07:00

We went ice skating a few weeks ago with a few of our friends. Even though it was a smaller rink and the ice was kinda melty in a few spots, we had fun for the 25 minutes we stayed! (haha we got kinda bored cuz it was so small and there were a lot of people there!) We ate dinner and played games after and had so much fun!

Here we are trying not to fall!

Posing for the camera like real figure skaters! haha!

Good times and Better sleep!

2010-01-28T16:04:00.002-07:00

We are so grateful to have such great friends down here in St George since we don't have any family around, they are like family to us. We hang out with all of them and have such a great time going to movies, dinner, playing games, talking, etc. We honestly don't know what we would do without them!! Lately the guys just want to play Call of Duty on the xbox, which is usually fine for us girls because we just talk and hang out the entire time. But we decided that we should try to be more productive and maybe switch it up a little, so Lindsey broke out a puzzle which all 8 of us worked on at one point or another. We stayed until around midnight and didn't even finish it, but had so much fun! Here are some pictures of us all hanging out and we plan to go ice skating in a couple days, so be tuned for more awesome and probably hilarious pictures!

Here is Jayson and Jared working on a puzzle.

Jayson, Jared, Caleb, and Chris working hard on the puzzle

Lindsey, me, Alicia, and Stacy taking a break from our puzzle. We have so much fun together!

One night we set up 2 xbox 360's to duel out Call of Duty with the 8 of us, this is Jared teaching Stacy how to use the controller. We ended up not being able to link up all 8 players, but we still had fun!

Jared and Jayson posing for the camera while setting up their new TV stand. If you have every seen the movie 'Starsky and Hutch' this will make a little more sense, they are nutso!

On a side note, we have had a triple hand-me down bed ever since we've been married and it was always on our list to get a new mattress someday. We were planning on waiting until we move, but found a great deal and were ready for a better nights sleep so we jumped on it. Even though you have no idea what our previous bed looked like, here is our new one and we love it!

Jayson's Birthday!

2010-01-24T11:42:00.002-07:00

Thursday was Jayson's 26th Birthday, and we pretty much celebrated all week long! It started the weekend before while Jayson's parents were here, we had just about every restaurant we went to sing to him, then we had a birthday celebration with presents, cake, and silly string! We finished his birthday celebration on Thursday when we went out to dinner with our friends then went to their house and the 4 guys played Call of Duty while the girls hung out! I can't believe how fast time flies. We are so thankful for our families and friends for making the week so great!

Here is Kaden and Tyson blasting him with Silly String while he blew out his candles

At the Coca-Cola Factory we found a Happy Birthday Coke bottle

Kaden and Tyson wrestling with Jay

At Brick Oven after then sang to Jayson for his bday

A day in Las Vegas

2010-01-24T11:13:00.007-07:00

Last weekend Jayson's awesome family came down to visit and enjoy the sunny beautiful weather down here in St George. We had so much fun with them, like always. We played outside a lot (since it was about 60 degrees and blue skies), played the Wii, hung out a lot, then went to Las Vegas on Saturday. Here are numerous pictures of our events!! Thanks for a great weekend Greg, Sherri, Kaden, and Tyson!

Outside of the Harley Davidson shop, notice that I am the biker chick with my hot guy on the back:)

Inside the picture at M&M world

Here is Tyson, Jayson, and Kaden playing on the huge touch screen computer thing at the Hard Rock Cafe

Jay at M&M world in front of their wall of TONS of M&M's....mmmm

We saw a duck wandering around at the Flamingo-Jayson decided to see if he could catch it...he wasn't fast enough though.

We found some awesome hats while we were on Fremont Street.

Hanging out at the Flamingo

Outside of the new City Center

This was made out of canoes and kayaks, it was pretty weird but cool.

Waiting at the Bellagio for the Fountain Show

Chirstmas Time

2010-01-10T15:02:00.006-07:00

For Christmas this year we we able to work out schedules out so that we could spend most of our time up North visiting families. Since we did that, we totally cheated and had our own Christmas morning on the Monday before Christmas. We had already gotten our big gift a few weeks before that during a Black Friday Sale (online-no we didn't brave the crowds). We love our new TV! Jayson has wanted one for years, and we finally got one, even though I really could care less what the picture looks like or if we have HD, honestly, I can hardly tell a difference! :) We opened the few little presents we had gotten each other so we didn't have to take them all up North. It was the beginning of a week long Christmas!

We went back and forth between the Quayle's and Madson's and had so much fun. We got spoiled by both of our families for sure! Here are some pictures of our goods.

We had to put this picture so we could remember how excited our nephew Carter was when he opened a batman costume. He is soo cute!

For the Madson party we exchanged names, and Jayson and I happened to get Ryan and Dave (Jays brother and brother-in-law). We have been planning on what to get them for months!

*for a side note, there is an ongoing joke with the Madson guys in that they love how manly any type of meat is, and everything that comes along with that. I few years ago they decided that they need to come up with some sort of meat-popsicle, aka their own meat-sicles*

Anyway, Jayson and I made some meat-sicles for each of them to go with their Christmas Gifts. They were sooooo nasty, but also hilarious!! They all even tried them (while the rest of us gagged and were crying we were laughing so hard).

Here is Ryan with his 3-pack which included a Steak-sicle (grease filled with steak chunks) *we showed my brother this one and he almost tried it-thinking it was cookies and cream-SICK!*, BBQ Beef-sicle (frozen BBQ beef), and Chili-sicle (frozen chili). He looooved them!

Here is Dave right before trying to Steak-sicle and BBQ Beef-sicle together. mmmm/sssiiiccckkk!

We gave Greg 2 bonus Chili-sicles which he devoured!

Gettin a little behind...

2010-01-10T14:47:00.002-07:00

So we are a little behind, judging as how we have Christmas-related pictures and activities to post... Oh well!

We built Gingerbread Houses at our friends' house, Caleb and Alicia. This seems to be a tradition that we have started, but we have built our candy creations in a different place every year! Who knows where it will happen next year??

Here are Chris and Lindsey building their masterpiece.

And here is Caleb and Alicia with their wonderful piece of work.

And in this one here, Caleb, Jayson, and Jared are seen playing the Wii, while the girls clean up the mess. Why does it always work like that??

It was a lot of fun seeing the ways all of us decorated the houses and how we put them together. We even built a tree from a pretzel stick and marshmallows this year! It was lots of fun. Thanks to Alicia, since we stole these pictures from her!

Better late than never

2009-12-15T19:42:00.002-07:00

We got school and work figured out so that we could go up North during for a few days over Thanksgiving. Even though it was a quick trip, it was way fun to see everyone, we miss you all very much! We had dinner at the Madson's on Wednesday night which was amazing! Then on Thursday we had dinner at Grandma Quayles, which was also amazing. Mmm we love Thanksgiving, especially since we got Thanksgiving dinner twice!! Because we were around we had the wonderful opportunity to take family pictures. Here is the Quayle family! Happy Holidays everyone!

...And the Results are.....

2009-11-23T20:48:00.004-07:00

So over a month ago Jayson had the wonderful opportunity to take a 5 1/2 hour test called the Pharmacy College Admissions Test -aka- The dreaded PCAT. After taking the test, we were informed that it would take 4-6 weeks to get the results back. Well ever since the middle of October, we have not so patiently been waiting for his scores to come back in the mail. And.......you guessed it...... the results are in!!! He got in the 97th percentile!!! For those of you aren't quite sure what that means, pretty muc only 3% of the people who took the test did better than him-aka-he did incredible!!!! Wowzers, we are soo soo stoked!! I don't mean to brag, but he is amazing. It pretty much is better than we could have hoped for!! I am so so proud of him and all of the hard work he does to someday make our future great!! Hopefully this increases the chances of us getting into a pharmacy school that is closer to family and we are crossing our fingers for scholarships!!! We feel so blessed and are so thankful for all of the love and support that we receive from our family and friends.

Halloween 2009

2009-11-01T17:24:00.003-07:00

The much anticipated Halloween costumes finally made their debut last night! Jayson absolutely loves Halloween and has had this costume idea for a while now (hence the massive hairy growth on his face). We had lots of fun getting creative in putting together our costumes. If you can't tell by the picture, Jayson was the Burger King, and I was the Dairy Queen.

We had a Halloween Party and had lots of friends, food, and fun. This is us playing the 'flour game' trying not to knock over the tower of flour!

Caleb and Alicia were the winners of the best costume, they looked great!

Chris and Lindsay were Johnny Lingo and his Million Cow Wife!

Jared and Stacy were the hunter and deer. We could not stop laughing at Jared for soo long, loved the antlers! haha

Us Girls

A few days ago we carved our pumpkins, and here are the finished products. Jayson's was a pumpkin throwing up guts, and mine was just a random face one. Notice Jared and Stacy in the mirror taking our picture-weirdos.

This is Alicia trying to get the skittle out of the pile of flour that she knocked down. No hands allowed, what a mess!

Jayson also made the flour tower fall and had to get the skittle with his face, gross!