Valentines Day in Bryce Canyon

A month ago I entered yet another giveaway, this one by Maverick Adventure Getaways, not expecting to win. Imagine my surprise when I won an overnight stay at a hotel, dinner and tickets to a concert! The giveaway didn't specify where the overnight stay was, just that it was over Valentine's weekend, so I was a little surprised to discover it was four hours away! I had never been to Bryce Canyon, but I had seen the beautiful pictures, so it was a happy surprise.

After dropping off our girls, who practically threw them themselves out of the car to spend the night at Grandpa and Grandma's, we headed down to Ruby's Inn at Bryce Canyon. We were so excited to be there and start exploring and doing that we didn't even take a picture of the Inn, which was beautiful. It's a HUGE place with a log cabin feel, it's own grocery store, post office, restaurant and beautiful swimming pool, among other things. We found this picture, which shows early visitors to Bryce Canyon, while waiting to get seated in the restaurant, and it made me grateful I had air conditioning and a comfy ride on our way down there.

It isn't often that I see a sign translated into multiple languages, without Spanish being one of them. Judging by the conversations ebbing and flowing around us in the restaurant and other areas of the hotel, people from all over the world were staying there that weekend.

After our awesome, and free, meal at the hotel restaurant, we headed over to the concert across the street. The tickets were for a Ty Herndon concert. It was in a much smaller building than I had expected, a place where they do dinner theater, which made it more personal and super fun!

Ty Herndon gave a great performance, and I would go to another of his concerts in a heartbeat!

The next morning, after an invigorating swim in the pool, we headed to Bryce Canyon. 

Bryce Canyon was inspiring. Such a huge expanse of red rocks in odd, beautiful shapes stretching across the horizon!

 We had a wonderful, super romantic weekend! Who knew that without kids around I could sleep through the night?

It was great to spend time with the love of my life and just get time to focus on us.  I have an awesome hubby who was ready to drop everything with 2 days notice to spend the weekend with me! We love exploring new places and having adventures together! Thanks Maverick Adventure Getaways for the weekend!!

Fairy Tea Party

The most beautiful fairy at the Fairy Tea Party

Every Spring our local library has a Fairy Tea Party. We decided to take Thing One this year, as she is old enough, and we thought she would enjoy it. Scott waited in line for a couple hours early on a Saturday morning to get the tickets and we are so glad he did!

The library transforms a ballroom into a little girls fairy dream.

The library director played the part of the Fairy King with a court of fairies. Ballerinas performed excerpts from Sleeping Beauty and everything was incredibly magical. (It kind of made me wish I was a little girl again) Thing One loved watching the ballerinas perform right in front of her chair (Scott picked a good table!). All the little fairies in attendance promenade and get to meet the Fairy King. 

 Thing One got a purple wand at her place setting and really loves it. Thing Two inherited my blue wand when we got home and she has developed similar adoration of her wand. 

After the tea party the fairies could walk through a room filled with the cutest, tiny fairy houses and at the end, trade in their magic coin for a book. The library director says the purpose of this fairy tea is to help little ones develop their imagination and be able to envision the things they read in books, which I think is pretty awesome. This was Thing One's favorite part, as you can see from her face....

This girl is a wonderful addition to our lives. She has the best giggles, smiles and hugs. She is so caring, she looks out for others all the time, and wants everyone to be happy. I love this girl so much!

Resolutions and Updates

I've been absent from the blog for far too long! Really there is no excuse. Everything with the Air Force has been more than up in the air and I just didn't want to even think about it, let alone write about it!

Here's a quick update (as part of my resolution to post once a week) of where we are and what we are up to.

We had applied for a waiver early in the summer for Scott's eyes, as he is partially colorblind and the post they had slated for him required full color vision. Early October we finally heard back that they wouldn't approve the waiver (understandably, I suppose) and they were going to put Scott's application back into circulation to see if other areas of the Air Force were going to have openings for the coming year that would be a good fit for him. The info about the waiver denial came in the first part of October and the end of December we finally heard back, sort of! The recruiter contacted Scott to say that the Air Force had some jobs they wanted to offer him but wanted to make sure he was still interested, after more than a year of hurry up and wait :) before they did all the paperwork of a formal offer. Umm, hello, yes! Yes, we are!!

So, we are still waiting, but with more of an idea of what's coming our way and perhaps a little more patiently. We had started to look into what else to do after graduation since we hadn't heard anything for so long but now we feel are back on track a bit.

Despite all the hurry up and wait we are still pretty excited about the Air Force and a little nervous to see what the job offers are. Who knows where we will end up?

Tool Cake

Chocolate cake, orange buttercream filling and homemade marshmallow fondant. All I have to say is, mouth watering! I wish I was the one who got to eat it!

Five Years and Still Going Strong

This past week was our fifth wedding anniversary! Yay! It almost seems surreal that so much time has passed. I didn't really believe people when they said it would fly by, but it has. It reminds me of the mission; there were many days that would drag on endlessly, but then before I knew it we  reached the end of a month, or the end of a transfer (6 weeks). 

For this anniversary I was a bit stumped on what to get Scott to show him how much I love and appreciate him. Then I happened across a post on pinterest about doing anniversary gifts by the hour and I knew that was perfect. There were a handful of small things that Scott had mentioned needing/wanting that would fit this idea. 

The basic idea is that they get to open something every hour for 12 hours. I timed Scott's gifts to be opened at 5 minutes after the hour since it was our 5th anniversary. Corny, I know!

For about 2 weeks I picked up little things as I came across them and managed to get most of his gifts during normal shopping trips with my kiddos. 

The gifts were mostly small things and I tried to come up with clever/funny sayings to go with them. 

A few examples: 

• The first gift was a small package of grill wipes from Home Depot and a package of his favorite sour candies. 
• The fourth gift was a can of Tire Slime to fix a flat tire (see tag below). 
• The big gift was Chromecast paired with some swedish fish. (see tag below)

We had a lot of fun opening Scott's presents and he even laughed at my corny jokes and word plays. If you would like more specifics of the small gifts I used for this idea, email me!

Scott was in charge of everything about this anniversary and he surprised me by taking me to spend the night at Little America in SLC where we spent the first night of our honeymoon five years ago. It was a wonderful surprise and I was overwhelmed with the memories that flooded me as we walked into the hotel lobby. After checking in we headed down to the lobby for some late night desserts and saw a couple checking in who had obviously just come from their wedding reception and it made me smile. 

I have the most amazing husband in the whole world. He is so perfect for me. No one understands me in quite the same way, encourages and loves me or picks me up when I fall quite like he does. I love you Scott and I'm still over the moon excited that you want to spend forever with me!

We had a wonderful, leisurely weekend while the girls played at their grandparents house. They got to spend time with Scott's parents and his aunt who happened to be in town and I got to sleep in, use the bathroom ALL BY MYSELF(who knew that was possible anymore?), and eat my food without little fingers in my plate! 

Happy anniversary Scott!

I included a few flashback pictures of our wedding day! As you can tell, I had a hard time deciding which ones to include....