Sedona

We went up to Sedona, AZ on Thursday afternoon to stay the night and hike all day Friday.  Oh my goodness, it was beautiful!  I've gotta say, of all the vacations we've been on, this is definitely in the top three.  I realized I love to be outdoors where it's peaceful and quiet and breathtaking.  I already feel too old for the hustle and bustle of city life so this short little trip was divine.  It was hard to narrow the pictures down because every single one was gorgeous! Now if we could just afford one of the gorgeous mansions in the rocks...

Los Angeles

FACT: I've never been to California.

FACT: We currently live 6ish hours from LA

FACT: Chris and Erica live in LA-ish

FACT: We went to see them this past weekend

FACT: They need to always live close

After only five hours of sleep, Ryan and I hit the town on Friday morning. Our first stop was the Warner Brothers Studio Tour.  I am so fascinated by everything that goes into making movies and TV and how much they can do right their on their set.  

Top Left: This scene was used as part of Jurassic park when the Jeep is

 being chased as well as many other movies/TV that I can't remember.  

But they fooled us into thinking they're in the middle of nowhere!

Top Right: This city has been New York, Chicago, Gotham, Cincinnati and so on...

Bottom Left: This is Loralee's house in Gilmore Girls (I believe) but 

it's obviously only used as a facade.

Bottom right: Russel Brand's Rolls Royce Golf Cart

We then wandered through the prop areas.  If you are making a movie/show you can just walk through and put a label on what you want and rent it for the time needed.  They have a price per week listed.  I'd never really thought about how everything from furniture to lights to centerpieces and vases had to be thought out!

Top Left: Their sculpting department.  Who knew you'd need a sculpting department? 

They also had carpentry, metal work, painting, etc.

Ryan absolutely loved this next part.  These are the real cars, not replicas from Batman, 

Chuck (the Nerd Herd Car), the Space Capsule from Big Bang (LOVE that show!) and 

the General Lee from the original Dukes of Hazzard.

Our guide took us to see the Friends set before they take it off to the Smithsonian.  

Again, this is all the originals (or so they tell us).  Check out the giant/small laptop!

We got to see the Warner Brothers tower but sadly no Animaniacs.  The timing also worked out

perfectly for us to see the Space Shuttle Endeavour fly over on it's trip around Southern California. 

Talk about once-in-a-lifetime experience!

 

We tried going to the Griffith Observatory which is supposed to be really neat, but we didn't connect

the Space Shuttle with Observatory.  When we got there, they had closed it down to clear it out.  

They had thousands of people there to watch the fly-over and they needed to get them out 

before they could function again.  Bummer.

So on we went to the Hollywood Boulevard! 

After driving down Route 66 (Santa Monica Boulevard) we hit the coast and the Santa Monica Pier. 

Erica, Chris, and Hattie joined us for a beautiful sunset, dinner and some good friendship.

I love this picture in the bottom left.  

Ryan was trying to get Hattie to smile which made Chris and Erica laugh.  

Aren't they just the cutest family?

On Saturday we slept in, which was heavenly.  Bless Hattie, she's a champ for letting us sleep until 10! I needed it.  All day Friday I had a headache that developed into the worst headache I've ever had.  All I wanted to do was sleep it off but sadly it was still there when I woke up.  Thankfully, I have a very skilled husband who relieved the tension in my neck and back so it magically went away.  Those PT skills have come in handy quite often in this household.

We packed our beach bags and headed to Huntington Beach where Ryan was once again in heaven.

This kid is such a California boy at heart.  Except the water was much colder than what we're used to so we all opted to watch the National Championship Beach Volleyball tournament.

We are so grateful Chris and Erica let us stay with them and were willing to drive all over to spend time with us.  We're excited to see them and the whole Jensen clan at Christmas in Omaha!

On the way out of town on Sunday we stopped and had lunch with Ryan's Aunt Pearl.  She is his (adopted) mother's sister and she is something else!  She is a spicy little thing that even at age 74 always has a boyfriend.  I had never met her before but I'm glad I got the chance.  I also got as much information from her that I could about her parents and grandparents so I can do more family history.  I'm on a roll. :)

 

Next stop? Sedona this upcoming weekend.

Making Mom Proud, Part 3

I want you all to realize that I know I'm living quite the good life right now with no responsibilities other than to put dinner on the table every night.  I'm trying to take advantage of all this free time that I won't have again until I'm an empty nester. Being the perfectionist planner that I am, I want perfect stockings for my family.  I bought the fabric last year, but spent all the time making my advent calendar.  When I tell people at church that I've been making Christmas stockings, I don't think they understand the extent of my Christmas stockings...

Now I debated showing this picture or not because it shows how anal/crazy I am and just how much time I have on my hands.  When I say I want perfect stockings for my family, I'm including my future-non-existent-children-I-don't-have-yet.  So besides Ryan, Ryno, and my stockings, I'm making five extra.  Go ahead, call me crazy.  Maybe I'm cursing myself, maybe it's bad luck, but I don't care.  We've talked about having 4-6 children so I settled on making 5 stockings with some extra fabric stashed to the side just in case.  It's my time, I will do with it what I want!  So here are the stocking tops (minus Ryan's - I was waiting on Husker fabric from my mom).

Pardon the quality of all the pictures, I took them from my iPhone because I was lazy.


I've gotta say, quilting is a lot harder than it looks! The concept is easy enough: you cut and sew a bunch of square/triangles together.  Execution? Not so easy.  My mom deserves a lot of credit for the amazing quilts she makes with matching corners! With 30 years experience, maybe mine will look as good as hers.

I made my stocking first, but I was a little hasty. You'll see later...
 

Ryan's was next.  Do you see the difference? Besides the obvious difference in patterns?
Let me help - PIPING.  I jumped the gun on mine and forgot I was going to do piping.
 

So what did I do? Took mine apart and redid it.  Yep, ANAL.  I also changed the cuff because I didn't want both mine and Ryan's to be green and he really wanted green. 

 

Don't you LOVE them? I sure do!!  

Oh and in case you're wondering, I got the idea from here.

But I used the template from here.

And what's a post without a few pictures of our cute puppy? He loves them, too.

This weekend did not go as planned, but at least it ended on a good note.  Remember how last weekend we were supposed to go to the water park but it was cloudy? Well, this weekend was our last chance to go before our Groupon expired.  The weather was gorgeous and our plans were set:  Big Surf on Friday and a relaxing Saturday before going to Roller Derby that evening.  

On Friday we woke up refreshed after a solid 8-hours of sleep, got ready, took Ryno to the dog park to get his wiggles out and hit the road.  We live near NOTHING so it was an hour drive to get there.  We showed up and were a little confused.  There were five cars in the parking lot.  We knew the kids were in school and the park would be less busy but five cars, really?  I had looked up the hours of the park but not the schedule. FAIL.  It was closed and we had just driven an hour.  Talk about frustrating, right?  We ended up going to a few sporting goods stores to look at bikes because we're considering giving biking a try.  First we will be borrowing our neighbor's bikes to see if we actually enjoy it.

SIDE NOTE: What do you married (or dating) people do with just the two of you? We're still trying to find things to pass the time that doesn't involve sitting in front of the TV.  I had never been in a relationship before Ryan so I don't know what type of couple-y things we should be doing.  Plus, we've discovered that how we spend our time is one of our large differences.  So please do share what you do to keep from getting bored!

Back to Friday, we just got a general idea of type and price range of bicycles and made the long drive home, rented War Horse, and had a lazy evening.  I woke up grumpy on Saturday so that made things interesting.  We debated if we make the long drive to the water park again (we knew it would be open) or if we lost the $26 we spent so that we could have a productive and relaxing day.  If we went to the water park, coordination would get tricky because we were meeting some friends at the Roller Derby and we wouldn't come home in between so we would be gross from sunscreen and chlorine.  I know that Roller Derby isn't a beauty pageant (well, it kind of is in its own unique way) but in my grumpy mood I did not want to go unshowered and gross.  When really, I was mostly concerned about my hair.  It's not at a length that I can just throw it in a pony tail and go so I knew it would be a mess after the water park.  To appease the crowd (Ryan) I decided to just suck it up and go.  

The water park was... different.  When did I get so old?  We got headaches from banging around on the slides and the sun was rapidly sucking our energy from us.  BUT, the food was cheap.  Winner!!  All ice cream novelty treats were only $1 as was a "scoop" of ice cream.  And by scoop I mean a whole cup.  YUMMM.  The hot food was also half off and I wanted me some $1.75 nachos! But we got up to the window and they were out of nacho cheese.  Bummer.  Ryan chose chili-cheese fries instead.  Well, because they were out of nacho cheese, this is what we got:

 It sufficed.

 When it was finally time to go we got as cleaned up as best we could in a water park "bathhouse."  I brought all the stuff to take a full shower, but I just didn't want to at that point.  My hair was okay so that was good enough in my opinion.  I at least washed my face and reapplied my make-up but that was as good as it got.  My clean husband did take a full shower and looked pretty darn good.  However, (and he's going to hate that I put this on here), he forgot to pack underwear. I laughed SO HARD.  And I'm laughing now.  

Wow, this has gotten long.  But I think I will be copying it onto my journal blog so I'm going to just keep going.  The Roller Derby did not disappoint.  How could it, it's a roller derby?  We met up with Sarah and Derek and we just love them. (Derek aka Parker served his mission with Ryan in Ukraine).  They are just so easy to talk to and we desperately wish they lived closer. 

See, my hair is okay, right?

The last Derby we went to was in a large arena at the State Fair Grounds but this one was much more intimate.  We could smell the sweat and see plenty of booty up close and personal.  That Roller Derby, it never disappoints.  The first bout started off competitive, but within about 15 minutes it could have been considered abuse.  When it was finally over, the winning team won by over 100 points. Ouch. Will we go back again? You betcha (if there's another Groupon).

Routine

Every morning the alarm goes off at 6:30ish and Ryno then sits by the bed and starts whining.  He won't jump into bed with us until we acknowledge him (thankfully).  We have a family cuddle and we all start getting ready for the day.  This dog is a smart one.  He knows that once Mom (that's me) puts a bra on, it's time to go.  He starts prancing around the apartment nudging us towards the door until we finally all leave.  I take Ryan to work where Ryno practically shoves him out the door because he knows the next stop - the dog park.

I found the dog park on our first day here and it took no time at all to become Ryno's favorite spot.  It's closed on Wednesdays and he gets all sorts of confused when we come home after dropping Ryan off instead of going to the park.  This boy loves to run.  As you'll see in this video, as soon as we open the gate he takes off and hopes that everyone chases him.  Sometimes no one does, and other times he can have about 5-6 dogs on his tail.  He's quick though! He can outrun almost all of them and he does.  After the first go he'll sniff everyone and usually plop down in the shade for awhile until he decides it's time to do it again and takes off sprinting.  He sure loves this place.

Sorry if the video is a little boring.  I don't narrate if I can help it, I hate hearing my voice on tape.

"Waterfall" Canyon Trail

On Friday we were supposed to go to the water park but it was RAINY.  Seriously? It's been nothing but hot and sunny here for the whole month and now it was cloudy and drizzly.  Hence, no water park.  But I wanted to make use of our weekends so I found a hike that is only 30 minutes away.  Besides, the cooler weather is much more my style for that kind of outdoor adventure. There will be no hiking in triple digits for me.  And yes, it has still been triple digits until this point.

As we headed out, we realized we were driving into this. We were really hoping it wasn't as bad as it looked.  In our opinions, it looked pretty bad.

 Once we got there, it was actually a beautiful 80 degrees with occasional sprinkles.

These little guys were EVERYWHERE.  I'm sure most of you have seen penny frogs, but these were half the size, if not smaller.  I couldn't get anything near them in the picture to compare because they were so quick.  But, their bodies are only 1/2 inch long.  They're just itty bitty!

This guy was NOT itty bitty.  I was trying to take picture of the frogs and I turned around to see this.  My skin still crawls even looking at these pictures.  Again, it's hard to get a comparison but he was 8-10 inches long and just his body was an inch wide.  Gag.

 

This is the waterfall...

We forgot we live in the desert.  It only falls after humongous rain storms.  Oh well.

 

Somebody wanted to climb all over the rocks but forgot he was on a leash and almost took me or Ryan out multiple times.  Stinker.

These cactus are my favorite! I get genuinely excited every time I see them.

  

Somebody now loves the car.

Making mom proud pt. 2

Today I'm the proud mama. My little boy is all grown up and now lifts his leg when he pees.

Making Mom Proud

Thanks to the wonderful sewing skills of my Mama that she passed on to me, 

I made this skirt yesterday. Woot, woot!

 

(And yes, I am standing on my bath tub due to the lack of a full-length mirror)

She wouldn't be so proud of the aftermath though...

Salt River Tubing

I've been going through all of our old pictures and I'm way behind on posts so once again I think I'm just going to give up.  I know, I'm home all day. I'm sure you're thinking I have nothing better to do with my time.  But you're wrong! And really, I just have no motivation to blog.  Sorry gang!

When everyone asks us how we like Arizona, I say one thing. "It's hot." Because it is.  And I don't do heat.  Seriously, I can't handle it and I don't know how anyone does.  So if it's going to be hot, you should be around water, right? Right.  On Saturday we went tubing down the Salt River with our friends Chris and Erica Jensen (be jealous Kristina!) and her family.  They are a riot and it was a blast! They are professionals when it comes to this whole tubing thing so all we did was show up and share our beef jerky and peanut m&m's.  We had instant friends after bringing those gifts. 

 The scenery is slightly (okay much) better than the Niobrara River in Nebraska.

 Ryan and Chris

 I hate the heat, but I love cactus.  

I might get giddy every time I see "real" cactus with arms and everything.

 Wild horses!

 We need shorter friends.  We always look like little people.

 Alright, this might be the best picture from the trip.  

This would be Erica's sister Christine. PASSED OUT.

But serving a very important purpose as a cup holder.

Chris and Erica also stopped by on their way out of town yesterday AND we are going to see them in three weeks in California.  Too bad we don't always live this close!

Bath Time = Crazy Time

Our dog is ridiculous sometimes.  

Like after a bath.  

The water in his ears must influence his brain because he is CRAZY! 

This was even the tail end of his freakout.  Enjoy!