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