Time to Catch Up!

I looked at my blog and realized it's been a while since my last post and SO much has happened! To sum up everything:

--we bought a house and moved in but are still "settling"
--We've dealt with about 40 scorpions since we moved here, me being stung by one on my shirt and taking another with me in my backpack to school
--Steven's done a bunch of wedding videos
--I started my LAST semester of school (classes that is, I have my internship but that's not school to me!)
--we bought a dog. I kind of wanted to wait until we were done with school but we saw this one and it all just fell into place. Her name is Bella (already named) and she's a yorkie/bichon mix. She has been the BEST dog so far. She's housetrained, doesn't chew, doesn't bark, is very cuddly, and adorable. She's lots of fun and has added some excitement to our house :o) It's funny how fast you get attached to these little creatures!
--Steven started more school (I think he's in his last year...kind of hard to tell when he doesn't go by semesters)

Anyway, that's a quick re-cap of what we've been up to. I'll post pictures when I get my computer. Steven has it at class on Thursday nights. Hope everyone is doing well!

We're Moving!

We're finally moving out of the apartments and buying a house! We're so excited this time has come and look forward to having a place of our own. We were so blessed with how everything worked out and couldn't be more pleased with the home, location, etc. We will want lots of visitors now that we have more room!

Living in the apartments has had it's advantages and disadvantages. Here are 10 things I will NOT miss about the apartments!

1. The garbage truck. I know we will have a garbage truck coming to the house but it will not be at 7:00 am on a Friday/Saturday/Sunday morning and he will not be picking up a dumpster that's RIGHT outside our bedroom and SLAMMING it down on the pavement, sometimes repeatedly if it's stuck on the lifter-thing.
2. Parking in a covered parking spot that's just far enough away from the door that it makes carrying anything inside/outside a pain in the rear.
3. Smelling the cigarette smoke from our downstairs neighbor
4. Sharing walls with 2 different families (one who likes to play Hispanic music very early in the morning)
5. Walking by the dumpster to get to and from my car to get inside. I've learned just to hold my breath--bleh!
6. The light to the tennis/street hockey court right outside our window that is very bright and makes a LOUD buzzing sound (not fun when trying to sleep)
7. Having to go down stairs and out to the bbq area whenever we want to bbq. I can't wait until I can just walk outside my back door and do this and not have to carry charcoal, lighter, lighter fluid, bbq, spatula, hot pads to carry the bbq back upstairs, the food, and the charcoal starter.
8. The paint--the apartment complex's way of "cleaning" when someone moves out is to just paint over everything so in the cupboards and drawers there is this nasty brown paint that everything sticks to (dishes, toiletries, you name it) . The best part is standing in the bathroom and finding long hairs that have been painted into the wall. Kind of gross?? Yes. I think so.
9. Speed bumps. I don't mind these so much when I'm driving but Steven likes to drive over them very fast and yeah...let's not go there :o)
10. Our little stacked washer/dryer. Where to begin with this? No wonder I started buying more clothes when we got married and moved into the apartments! I wanted to avoid having to do laundry because I knew it would take FOREVER if I started.

NOW...with all that said, there are probably more things I will miss than not. Here are my top ten things I WILL miss from the apartments.

1. Our ward family--I have loved this ward so so much and I love all the people there. They have become like family and if there was anyway we could stay in the ward without living in the apartments, we would.
2. The trees/grass. This was one of the things that attracted me to this apartment complex. There are huge trees everywhere! I loved taking walks/runs or even just driving down Fiesta (a small street by the complex) because it felt like I was back east. It made it so much prettier and more bearable. It didn't feel like one of those old, nasty, empty apartment complexes (sp?).
3. Going to friends' apartments and being able to walk there to get to them (same with visiting/home teaching!). When the boys would go play basketball, Megan W. and I would just walk over to Desiree's apt and visit and when they got home we'd walk back to our places. It made it so convenient for whenever we needed to borrow sugar, flour, etc. on Sunday when baking (thanks to all those who helped Steven out :o) or walking over to Joey and Camie's to borrow a movie.
4. The big green grass "field" behind our building and the many frisbee games Steven and I enjoyed there. I hated that the front of our building faced the tennis courts and stuff but loved that there was no one behind us but a big grass field.
5. Being able to call the front office whenever we had something go wrong with our water, electricity, air conditioner, appliances, bugs, etc. and having it all be F-R-E-E!
6. Being so close to a costco and walmart...although we'll probably save money not just running to walmart every time we needed something and making a thousand trips! And not being too far from the freeway was nice as well.
7. The fact that it was the first place we ever lived together and we'll never live here again (I know, I know-cheesy but I'm sentimental when it comes to this kind of stuff).
8. Being around so many people--I know we'd complain about the noise and stuff sometimes but noise meant people and people meant we were part of a little community who all had something in common. I know we'll be in a community in our house but we won't pass each other walking to turn in our rent or check the mail or when getting out of/into our cars.
9. The closets--I have loved the closets in these apartments because they are huge and can fit so much stuff!
10. Having our utilities paid for...the small and simple things we come to take for granted when living in an apartment complex.

Anyway, we really are excited to move into our house tomorrow and we look forward to all the new opportunities (that's really just code for responsibilities) it will bring us!

A Weekend Getaway to Payson

Some friends in our ward offered us their cabin in Payson for the weekend and it was a MUCH needed getaway. Steven and I have been so so busy between my two jobs and summer school and Steven’s full-time job and nasty statistics class. So, needless to say, I was very excited to get away.

We left Friday morning and stayed until Sunday afternoon. We barbecued, sat in the hot tub, watched a lot of HGTV and Discovery (we don’t have tv here at home), went fishing at 2 different lakes with no success, went to the Strawberry Festival in Pine, and just relaxed. It was so nice getting away but only being an hour from home. I can’t wait to go fishing again. It’s been way too long since I’ve been and it’s fun. Anyway, we didn’t take many pictures but here are a few.

This was our second attempt at the local lake in the park

Fry bread at the Strawberry Festival--only Steven can eat junk like that and get away with it :0)

Putting the worms on the hook.

Willow Canyon Lake outside of Payson. It was REALLY windy and cold.

The view from the lower deck of the cabin

Quick Recap

My cousin was just saying "no one updates their blogs anymore" and I realized that included me. I got really busy the last couple weeks of school and now that I'm not in school I don't want to do anything I feel like I have to do (i.e. blogging) but...I'll do it anyway. I never even finished our pictures from New York but oh well!

Just a quick run-down of what we've been up to:

--school! Only one more semester to go. I get to brag and say I finished this semester with a 4.2 GPA!! I worked my butt off for that so yes, I'm proud.

--We went to the Gila Valley temple open house and it's beautiful

--We had a new family member join us! Brooke and Travis had a little girl on May 6th and her name is Macy Ruth Fenn. Such a doll.

--wedding videos! Steven's been staying busy doing those and has 2 more lined up. If you know of anyone getting married that wants a video done, send them our way. Steven's great but of course I'm a bit biased. Actually I just think he really has a good eye for it.

--family, family, family! We've been fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time with family lately. My dad was called as a stake patriarch so my entire family was able to be together for that a few weeks ago when he was ordained and that was a really neat experience. It also happened to be the Father/Sons campout that weekend so the girls got a night together while the boys partied it up in the freezing cold somewhere :o) AND we celebrated Josh's birthday as well! He's an old man now.
Then we got to go up to Flagstaff to celebrate Alli and John Rocky's graduation (John Rocky is Steven's cousin) and spend time with the Carbonneau side of the family. Congratulations to the both of them! They worked hard for it I'm sure.

We've been staying busy to say the least. Steven started up another class at UOP and between that and him editing wedding videos I don't see him very often (oh and add 13 hour work days to that on most days of the week). I'm relaxing a bit before my summer class starts. I'm hoping to get a life-guarding job this summer at ASU Poly and I'll also be working towards my ACSM personal training certification as well so I won't really get a break this summer but I'm glad because if not, I'd be too bored!

Anyway, here are some random pictures from the past couple weeks and they're backwards as far as the order goes.

Gila Valley Temple

Macy Ruth

Carson or "love man" as he's called in our family

The reason we don't have smart phones :o) This is probably all I'd see of him

The graduates (and Macy trying to steal some frosting which she succeeded at)

Macy Ruth Fenn at the hospital--beautiful baby girl

Another beautiful niece (Mackenzie)--aren't her eyes gorgeous? I love taking pictures of her!

Josh blowing out his candles for his b-day

Carson LOVES playing in trucks

The boys getting ready for their campout

and lastly, just a random picture of a lemon that was huge! One of my teachers gave me a bag full from his backyard and I couldn't believe the size. We got a full quart of juice from 5 or 6 of them.

New York, New York Part II

Tuesday 03/16/2010

--we went to Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. That took most of the day because we waited in line to get on the boat, to get in the statue of liberty, to get back on the boat to go to Ellis Island, and then at Ellis Island to go back.

--when we got back we stayed around Battery Park and watched some kind of cool/kind of lame street performers

--we walked around Wall Street...that's kind of all you can do there

--went to the World Trade Center site and saw a neat site: lots of army men waiting around before getting deployed. I had heard from a lot of people that seeing the WTC wasn't all that great because it was just a bunch of construction but seeing those service men sitting there and being near that site was a neat experience. It was hard not to get a tiny bit emotional.

--went to Chinatown for dinner...kind of a scary place at night if you've never been there (which we hadn't yet)

On the ferry out to Liberty Island

She was beautiful :)



















The subway became our best friend--I was a little nervous at first to use it but we took it all over the place

Someday I'll finish blogging about New York...

New York, New York Part I

We went to New York City for a whole week for spring break and it was great. Instead of posting one big long annoying post I'm going to break it up into sections.

Here's a quick summary of the first few days:

Saturday 03/13/10


--we flew into New York and had the worst turbulence I've ever experienced in my life. We couldn't even see the ground until we actually hit the ground which I started thinking would never happen.
--we got to our hotel, were pleasantly surprised with how nice it was
--we went out for a bite to eat and decided we'd have pizza. It was expensive but delicious


Sunday 03/14/2010

--woke up and had no hot water
--we took our first taxi ride to the bus station then realized we could have walked it was so close. 10 blocks is a lot closer than I thought. oh well, we had to do a taxi ride at least once!

--took a bus to the Newark airport, rented a car and drove around Jersey visiting people from Steven's mission (he served in the New Jersey Morristown mission, Spanish speaking, from Oct '03 -Oct '05). We had lots of fun visiting people. Wait, I take that back-STEVEN had lots of fun visiting because he could actually understand what they were saying :o I just sat and looked like i knew what they were saying. Just kidding...sometimes they could speak English so that was fun

--The roads in Jersey are RIDICULOUS and I really don't know how people live there. That first day there made me really count my blessings and made me LOVE Arizona more than I already do

--On Sunday I got to experience Dominican food, peruvian food and something else but I can't remember right now what it was. It was all delicious and I had what seemed like 5 dinners that day (not really but close)


03/15/10

--we woke up to no hot water...again. Steven went and talked to the manager who gave us free breakfast for our entire stay which ended up being worth about $250 but I think a hot shower would have been better

--we rode the subway for the very first time. I was very nervous at first, not for safety reasons but sometimes I'm claustrophobic and I was worried that being underground would freak me out. It was cake and very fun.

--we went to the American Museum of Natural History and we were bored to tears. It's really just a bunch of stuffed animals so we left.

--we walked through central park for the first time even though it was a bit cold and rainy. It was still fun

--we visited Grand Central Station and did the whispering thing (if you don't know what it is, just look it up--I don't feel like explaining it right now). I loved the architecture and everything about it.

-St. Patrick's Cathedral was AWESOME. Some stuff was a little creepy but for the most part it was such a gorgeous building

--we walked down 5th avenue by all the fancy-schmancy shops and stopped in Tiffany's...of course. I was too afraid to ask to try on any of the jewelry but it was still fun to see how ridiculously huge some of those diamonds were!

--we ate expensive (wait, it's New York, isn't everything expensive??) but really good Chinese food

--the water in New York is surprisingly better than Mesa water
--New York has toilet paper thinner than tissue paper

Steven and Santina (one of his converts)

Us with the Molina family

Steven with Lynda, Luis, and Gian Franco

First time on the subway

This was before I went into the museum...my face afterwards wasn't this excited :)

some creepy lizard at the museum





Central park

Strawberry Fields



Grand Central Station



Whispering place



St. Patrick's Cathedral








Our hotel