Thanksgiving '12

For Thanksgiving, we drove down to St. George to spend time with Loren's family. Once we got there Wednesday afternoon we chatted with the family a bit and then took Mary to the park since it was so beautiful outside. I think she enjoyed herself :)

 

Later on we all played Dice, when Danny and Bri (Loren's brother and his wife) drove into town from Phoenix! After dinner we played Beyond Balderdash--such a hilarious evening! Shame you can't capture those family time moments but it was a cherished night :)

The next day, Loren, Papa Stone and I went to Kanab (small town close-ish to the Grand Canyon and Lake Powell) to clean their vacation home before another family came into town that day. It was a B-eautiful day!

After a few hours of traveling and cleaning, we made it back home to help out making a dish or two. Here's the lovely newlyweds fixing the mashed potatoes. Check out the muscles on these two! ;)

After a yummy meal, we played Mexican Train dominoes! It was a really close game, well not for me, but half the group was neck and neck!

Poor Loren--I made him change into his nice clothes for Thanksgiving and pictures. He was a good sport and doesn't he look dashing? :)

The next day we said hi to Loren's old boss who's going on a mission with his wife to Bulgaria! Then we hung out to "play" with the family's chickens!

Making sure the chicken didn't poop on him, hehe.

The lone white chicken!

Along our trip, we made a short stop at Cedar Breaks National Park. I've never been so it was an adventure :) It was a gorgeous day, albeit brisk and windy!

Luckily for us, there was a couple there at the same time so we took pictures for each other. I like those making "deals."

These were our "model"/we're enjoying nature pictures.

This is a picture that I took, turned Black and White and somewhat, actually very amateur-ly edited, and submitted to a Utah BW contest on Instagram. No luck getting picked. Oh well.
   

That Saturday night we had a date night with our BFF couple, John and Eva Fisher, who are visiting since their relocation in June to West Palm Beach, Florida for his job. We got delicious Zupas (take out, since we left their baby with her parents--first time they've gone somewhere without him! Big step!) and played a game called Carcassone. Think Settlers of Catan but without resources to make things. It was fun but I'm not the best at strategy games. Although our third time playing I got second! 

Eva and her cute niece, who's the spitting image of the adorable young daughter in We Bought a Zoo.

Sunday came around and we went to Eva's home ward so that her son Keith could be blessed. Loren was invited to be in the circle, which was so nice. Here's the pair of them now! Loren will make a cute daddy some day :)

After another round or two of Carcassone, we talked and said our good-byes. We'll see Eva again in May--yay!! As we were heading home, we saw these awesome lights! I love Christmas!

And that's a wrap! Our Thanksgiving was short but so fun filled! I loved about every minute of it!  The only down side was my cat allergies from the weekend turned into a cold/sinus infection that lasted the whole rest of the week! :( I even stayed home from work one day because I couldn't shake it and didn't want to get the kids in my class sick; although they might have exacerbated the illness. Staying home was really helpful to getting over it and it turned out great for me because my co-worker said it was a day from hell. Glad I missed out on that! ^_^

Conference Weekend & March

Two days ago, April 2nd, marked the one year anniversary of when I got engaged! It's crazy that it feels so long ago when time seems to be flying by. I've been married for almost 8 months (on the 12th) and it's been nothing but bliss! Well, besides school and work always getting in the way of "us" time. But that's the price you pay as a newlywed college student :) Isn't he so cute?

This past weekend we went down to St. George to visit Loren's family. Unfortunately, I hardly ever take pictures when I'm there. We did fun things, I just didn't document all of them. Poo. Well after we got there, we had some lunch, talked for a while and then I purchased this baby!

I've been toying with the idea of getting a sewing machine since I've been in my sewing class. Luckily for me I found it on Craigslist from a woman who lived in St. George. This really worked out since we were already going to be in St. George this weekend and even better, she dropped the price so I only paid $40 for it! My mother-in-law Patty came with me to the woman's house to make sure it was a decent machine for the price and she approved. This alone made the trip down there great! But there was more fun to come with the Stones :) Later that night we got Thai food--yuuuuummmmy!! The options for dinner were Mexican or Asian cuisine. That's basically like choosing between my dad and my mom; and that's a tough choice. We decided to go to Benja's Thai (& sushi bar) restaurant that I've seen plenty of times but just never went. Thank you for the date night, Patty and Dan, it was delish!

Saturday, we had "Waffles and Apostles"! We had a waffle breakfast before we watched General Conference to listen to the words of our beloved Apostles and Prophet Thomas S. Monson. You can check it out here. After we watched the first 2 sessions, the men went off to watch the Priesthood session while the girls went shopping! Then the guys joined us for Cold Stone ice cream--great way to end the day!

Sunday was great too! More good talks and yummy food. We even got our taxes done--woot woot!! Unfortunately we have a leak in our radiator so we couldn't leave as early as we wanted. Even worse, we left late and ran into some bad weather :( First it was just super fast wind, then some rain, then swirling snow! Legitimately swirling right at us. It was so distracting. We barely made it 30 mins out of town when we decided to return to the Stone home in fear that we'd get into an accident. When we left the next morning, this is the beauty we were greeted with, on our engagement anniversary!

Visit southern Utah and check out the red rock!

In other news, during the previous weeks, we went to a Vocal Point concert!! Last semester I was obsessed with the tv show The Sing-Off so it was so fun to see these guys in concert! It kinda stunk because some of the guys from the group on the tv show were no longer in the group. But they still sounded great! Here's a picture I wasn't allowed to take...oh well.

And we also went to Tucanos to celebrate my birthday. That's a fun little tradition we've got going on. They have a birthday club where it's a BOGO free meal deal. That makes for a happy (and fat) couple :)

Another time we babysat my nieces. Here's an adorable picture of Katelyn, where you can also check out my new bangs :)

For St. Patrick's day, we had Mexican food, not corned beef and cabbage. My full Irish grandfather must've been disappointed in me that day. But we discovered our new favorite Mexican restaurant, called "El Azteca"! We ate yummy green lime and cilantro chicken enchiladas and amazing green horchata! Even better, they have a salsa bar with a sweet but slightly spicy salsa--mmmmm! 

Shamrock crispy--how festive

Well, those are our adventures. Until next time!