One Last Flight

It’s getting harder and harder to drag myself to that airport, but off I go again.

It’s a Feast!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a fun time playing games and scrapbooking and of course, eating!

Above: Liz, Micah, Kaileb, Melissa, Carl, Tamara, Jack, Xander, Chloe, and Nadia.

Happy 31!

I had a great birthday!  Really, we’ve been celebrating all  month.  T and Cliff and Jack and I went out for yummy sushi at the beginning of the month to celebrate T’s and my birthdays.  My Mom sent my birthday gift early and we’ve been enjoying the partitioned vegetable dish and hors d’oeuvres tray.  Brent sent more tools for my tool box and Jack found me an out of print Occupational Therapy book that I’ve been wanting.

After Jack took me out for waffles, he went to school and I went home to finish packing for a trip to Colorado.  Jack’s dad met us at the airport and drove us home to a great birthday dinner: ribs, baked potatoes, mixed veggies (very yummy –check out the recipe blog for this one), homemade applesauce, and yummy chocolate birthday cake.  Liz and the kids came and we had a great time.  Liz gave me handmade Christmas cards.  So great!  Melissa bought me a church book that I’ve been wanting and Nadia made a woven hot-pad one-handed (she’s in a cast)!

Thanks to everyone for all the birthday calls, texts, tweets, and facebook notes!

Belmont Fun

We’re in the midst of the last semester of classes with just 2 more live weekends to go!  These are my classmates and good friends:  (L to R)  Stephanie, me, Beth, Stacy, & Stacey

We are Bruins!

Castle Cats

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once upon a time Sammy and Sasha were kittens and became good friends.  Unfortunately, Sasha was too “alpha cat” and would push Sammy around according to her princessy whims.

In another kingdom, far, far away, lived a princess named Andrea.  This princess was not snobby like Sasha.  She was the owner of a new castle.   This castle was fancy and fit Andrea to a tee.  The only problem was that her castle did not have a cat.

Sammy, being the gentlemanly cat that he was, was just what Princess Andrea and her castle were in need of.  So, Sammy and his king and queen (Jack and Tamara) made the long journey to visit Andrea’s castle.  Sammy fell in love immediately with the princess and took on the knightly task of exploring the castle.

Poor pushy Sasha was left, with her paws in the air, now that she had no one to give orders to.

Moral:  If you’re mean to your friends, you’ll end up with none.

Andrea’s New House

What a fun weekend! Jack and I drove out on Friday night to spend the weekend with Andrea and to see her new house!!! How fun! We helped trim up the front yard, take out some stray volunteer palm trees, hang light fixtures, hang pictures on the walls... We really got a lot done and had a great time. We had lunch at Red Robin and Jack made us chicken pesto pasta for dinner. Andrea made her traditional princess waffles for breakfast, but with a pumpkinny Fall twist. It was hard to believe the weekend went by so quickly and it was hard to say goodbye.

Pianisto

One thing that I have always loved is having music in the home.  I always loved listening to my mom and Jocelyn as they practiced the piano.  It was so nice to have piano for family home evening and Sunday evenings.  I always wanted to play the piano, so that I could bring music to my own home.  I’ve taken lessons on and off through the years and have never put enough effort in to be very good at reading the notes.  The Lord must have been looking out for me, because I got to marry Jack and he brings beautiful music into the home.   Jack likes to play piano for stress relief.  It is so nice when I’m working on homework and he sits down and plays.  It just sweeps all that anxiety and stress right away.

Dr. McPhee and Me

Our dear Dr. McPhee is not known as the most approachable guy. He is, however, our research advisor and must, on occasion, be approached. Yesterday we had some questions for him. When we were done, the following conversation ensued:

(you’ll probably want to click on the comic to enlarge it.)

Fancy Fall Fun

This weekend, instead of staying at a hotel, Beth invited us to stay at her house.  We had such a nice time!  We talked about school and we talked about life.  We made pizza and we relaxed in the hot tub.  Ohhh, how nice.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween! We had fun making Spooky Goodies and carving a Jack-o-lantern in prep for Halloween. Jack stayed home and handed out candy. I spent the weekend with friends in Nashville (Did I mention that I had school on Halloween?).

Get Together

Anondi and Joel came through Phoenix on their way moving Joel from Albuquerque to San Diego.  They crashed at our house for the night.  It was so fun to talk, play games, laugh, and of course, eat (Raviolis for dinner and pumpkin coffee cake for breakfast)! 

Turner Visit

Melissa and Carl came to town for a week.  It was great to be together and made us wish we lived closer together!

Carl helped Jack in the yard and Melissa and I worked on curtains!  We had yummy sushi and Chinese dim sum.

New Rug

 

We found a great deal on this floor rug for our bedroom.  It is huge and goes great with our bedding.  Now to make curtains and the room will be set!

Loving our Flowers

Jack picked these flowers from the yard (hibiscus and lantana) and put them in this stone vase that my mom and dad gave us for Christmas last year.  Doesn’t the arrangement look oh so nice!

Working in the Front Yard

 

We’ve been having so much fun improving the front yard.  First we completely changed the river walk.  Then we began planning.  Since then, we’ve planted 3 Red Yucca plants under the windows, 3 Mexican Birds of Paradise and one Yellow along the east fence, a yucca (that’s the tall one we’re planting in these pictures), a pygmy date palm, and 2 agave (an Octopus Agave and a Weber Agave).  We’ve also planted a Jasmine vine under the mailbox and a Jasmine bush under the living room window (here you see Sammy next to the Jasmine bush helping us work in the front yard.)  We’ve also put in some pink and some white Bougainvillea between the front yard and the dog run.   It’s been so enjoyable.

Happy Hibiscus

Arizona Diamondbacks

       Last night Jack and I got to go to the Diamondbacks baseball game.  We went with 2 other couples from the ward.  One of the girls got promotional tickets from her work, so we decided to go and have fun hanging out! 

     (We didn’t win, but we did have fun.)

New Trees!

We went to the nursery a few weeks ago and picked out three trees for the back yard: a pecan tree, a lemon tree, and a tangerine tree. The trees were delivered this morning, so we worked as fast and hard as we could to get them in before Jack had to leave for school. (I was home sick with a cold, but the trees didn't seem to care about my sneezing on them as much as my patient's would have.) We had fun planting.

The Mamas and the Papas

Here's a fun song that my mom always wondered if I was making up. No one's getting fat 'cept Mama Cass.

Something fun.

Since I'll be at school next weekend and will miss Jack's birthday, we decided to celebrate together last night. We both worked all day, but I beat him home and was able to set up the table with presents and cake. I bought tickets for the Ricardo Arjona concert and so, after a dinner at the Olive Garden, we headed down town.

We had 2 surprises: 1. When we got to the arena, the man at the door told us that the upper balcony (where we had our seats) was closed and that we would be relocated. At the relocation desk, the gentleman said, "I hope you don't mind, but we're going to be seating you on the floor this evening" (with a smile in his eye). So, we were in the 27th row from the stage after paying for the least expensive tickets! 2. Before the concert started, I got a call, that we had won the guitar signed by the artist! We had entered by texting "ARJONA" to some AT&T number that was up on the screen and actually won!!!

The concert was great and we had a great time!

Jocelyn's Favorite Desert Plant

Red Yucca!

We planted our first planting for the "fall". I hadn't really noticed these plants until Jocelyn came to visit this summer. She said if she lived in the desert, this is the plant she would plant!

After finding a good deal at the nursery, we bought and planted three red yucca's along the fence on the east in the front yard.

Our red yucca are young and don't have any blossoms this year, but we're still excited!

New Haircut

While doing my paper work for the day, I was talking to my friends at work and I decided that today was the day to get my haircut. So, I went home, got online, found a picture of a couple of styles that I wanted to combine, and went to the hair salon. Jack came with me for moral support. : )
Next time, I'd like to take the back up a little higher.

My Last Semester Starts!

School starts back up this weekend. It's hard to believe it's the last semester!!! This semester we are going to be studying the aging process and a lot of neuro rehab (strokes, brain injuries, spinal cord injuries). Neuro is my favorite!

Here’s my live weekend schedule.  I am a Year 2 student!

Our Hopeful Garden Plans

Click drawing to enlarge.

Jack and I have been talking about how we want to plant the yard --what we want, where to put it, and when to plant it.

Per Aunt Suzanne's suggestion, we are hoping to plant in the fall. We have been working on digging up the pool in prep for demolishing the top foot or so (it's a buried pool that sticks out a bit above the grass).

Tonight we plotted out with a little more detail what it is we want to plant and where. We even sketched it out. One step closer.

Things on the shopping list:
Grandpa Cowles' Tangerine
Paper Shell Pecan
Ever-bearing Lemon
Date Palm
Grammy's grass (this is Jack's grandma)

Sammy Massage

Our sweet little Sammy. When I’m so tired, he likes to tell me to lie down on my stomach so that he can give me a massage.  Then he walks up and down and all around trying to work out all those school stress knots. 

Actually, Jack tells me to lie down and then thinks it’s great fun to trick Sammy into giving me a “massage” by making him reach to be pet.  Sammy doesn’t like to not be touched, so if he sees a hand, he’ll go to great lengths to be touched by it.

The Girls to the Rescue!

When Jack hit that deer, we were about half an hour south of Flagstaff. After calling AAA and the car insurance company, I called Toni Holland. Toni (Hermana Jones) was my second mission companion. She and I had a lot of fun together. Toni and Jared and their 4 girls (Nichole, Melanie, Jennifer, and Sarah) live in Flagstaff and came to the rescue! Toni found a recommended collision center, picked us up there, took us to their house for the night, fed us breakfast, gave us Jared's car the next day while we took care of business, and sent us back on our way! What a whirlwind all within 24 hours.

Weekend Get Together

Melissa Gonzalez and her baby, Mikey, came from Utah to visit for the weekend. Melissa and I were mission companions in Virginia and have been best friends ever since. It was great to get together and to meet her little baby!

Top Ten of our 1 year Anniversary

1. Deer attempting to make itself our new hood ornament-- instead totaling Jack's car.
2. New car- 2004 Toyota Prius (we're really enjoying the hybrid.)
3. Grand Canyon camping- very relaxing and very beautiful
4. Remnant shooting stars from the Aug 11 Perseid Meteor Showers.
5. Cherry pit spitting contest.
6. Ladder ball- Jack made the frames for this game out of PVC pipe and we had a lot of fun.
7. Mormon Bridge, Spades, and Yahtzee.
8. S'mores by the campfire.
9. Reading from the Farseer Trilogy together --this is what we do when we actually have time to relax.
10. Coming home to enjoy 1 year old freezer burned wedding cake.