It's Official

A month ago today, we left our empty apartment in Arizona and headed to Utah. We were pretty sad to leave, but we were also very excited to close on our house and get moved in. We stayed at my mom's house that night and got up early to go to our closing the next day. Just two hours after closing we had the keys to our new house! Of course, we couldn't actually move anything in until our moving truck arrived which was still a few days out. We went back to my mom's house that night and celebrated our buying a house and my mom getting home from a two week vacation in England. The next day, Jake went back up to our house for a final walk through with the builder and I ended up staying with my mom another night. We stayed in a hotel near our house for a couple of days while waiting to get moved in and spent that time prepping and cleaning and putting together IKEA furniture! Once the moving truck arrived, we got to work unpacking and managed to get all of our boxes unpacked in two days.

Our first weekend in the house, we had our first house guests. We had a lot of fun with my mom, Lukas and Christy.

Creepy caiman

Jake loved these South American river fish

I loved this cute little brightly colored bird.. can you see him?

We were getting ready to watch the 4D Haunted Mansion movie and Lukas wanted to show off his cool smashed penny

Lukas and Christy inside the otter tank

I love how these things are always smiling :)

This guy looked just like the eel on the Little Mermaid

The next weekend was our anniversary so we headed for the hills; literally! We spent the night in Park City and had the most amazing dinner we've ever eaten and just enjoyed the beautiful scenery. It was the perfect way to celebrate 3 years.

The view from the patio of our hotel room

Taking a picture in the elevator on our way to dinner

Our private booth at Wahso 

The short rib pork ramen that was INCREDIBLE and we could have easily shared (you can tell how gigantic the bowl is by comparing it to Jake)

Coconut creme brulee

We love our new home and are happy to be settling in to our life in Utah.

Our First Home

It all started with a text:

I was running some errands after work when I received it and was very confused! My first thought was that Jake had interviewed for a job without telling me and had quit his current job. When I got home, Jake explained that he was offered a promotion at his current job in the office where he worked before in Utah. I won't go into all of the boring details about this job, and how it came to be Jake's, but it's a testament to how hard he works and how valued he is at his company. I'm very proud of him!

Everything started to move quickly after this day. We went to Colorado as planned the next week but came home a day early and flew to Utah the next day to spend a week looking for a house. The house hunting was unpleasant; everything about it makes me cringe. Let me just put this out there into the universe: if you want to sell your house, clean it. I can't even begin to describe to you the grossness of the places we went to. We weren't even looking at foreclosed homes either! Towards the end of the week, we were getting pretty discouraged and started to wonder if we'd have to rent a place until we could find a house. We'd changed our budget as much as we could, and we had a FANTASTIC realtor who was really looking out for us. We started thinking about what was more important; location or price. It doesn't help that we were looking in one of the most expensive areas of the valley, but that's where we wanted to be, and ultimately we decided location was the one thing we weren't willing to change. The day before we had to go back to Arizona, we went to see a home in a new development that was still under construction. We fell in love with the location (it's 5 minutes from Jake's office and right where we wanted to be) and the house was scheduled to be finished September 21st; perfect timing! The next morning, hours before our flight out, we went to the design center with our realtor and picked out our flooring, counter tops, cabinets, paint, etc. The whole week had been an emotional roller coaster, and to top it all off, it'd been cold and rainy every day we were there. We questioned ourselves numerous times about why we had agreed to leave our beloved Arizona, and we couldn't have been happier to get home. But, after a few days, everything started to settle in and we could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. We'd just purchased our first home, and we would be closer to our family. There are so many things we're going to miss about living in Arizona, and the pro and con list is really going to be skewed for a while, but we are looking forward to this opportunity and what it will bring to our lives. Even though we both grew up in Utah, Arizona has become our home, and just like we'd have to adjust to any other place we could move to, we'll have to adjust to Utah.

Now, for the best part; a few pictures of our new place!

Here's what it looked like when we left Utah at the beginning of August

Here it is a week ago 

We're hoping to be moved in by the end of September. Look out Utah, we're coming back!

Birthdays on Birthdays on Birthdays...

We love a good birthday celebration! We've had a few really great ones so far this year. First was my mom's. When Jake and I were getting our New Year massages, I told my mom I would take her to get one if she came to Arizona for her birthday. Who would turn down an offer to spend a couple of days in the sunshine AND get a free massage?! Certainly not my mom! Her birthday was on a Friday so she drove down on Thursday and I took the next day off work.

 I made sure to decorate all nice!

We spent the morning at the spa getting massages and facials

 then we went out to lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon shopping.

Jake and I made dinner and dessert that night to celebrate. We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing, eating, watching movies, and we had an Oscar party Sunday night with a fancy salmon dinner! It was a great time; I think you should let us handle your birthdays from here on out mom! Thanks for spending it with us.

Next we had Jake's birthday. It's become a tradition for me to surprise him every year with something fun. This is mostly because he won't ever tell me what he really wants to do. This year I surprised him with a weekend getaway. His birthday was on a Saturday so I told him to take half a day off work on Friday. When he got home, I had him open his first "early" gift. A trip to Sedona! We packed up and drove the two and a half hours to Flagstaff where we would be staying and went to dinner and a movie when we got there. The next morning, I had a trolley tour planned as our first stop in Sedona.

 We used the Red Rock Magic Trolley and really enjoyed our hour and a half tour. We were able to learn about the town's history, see filming sights for many famous westerns, and were shown the best place to watch the sunset (which we had already planned to do). After the trolley tour we ate lunch and found a hike we wanted to go on. The weather in Sedona in March is usually pretty mild, mid to high 70s, but this day was particularly warm. By the time we started hiking it was already 85 degrees! We chose the Devil's Bridge hike which is about 4 miles round trip if you don't have an ATV that can take you to the trail head, which we didn't.

Getting to the top was worth it. 

We didn't go up to walk across the bridge because it was pretty crowded, but I'm sure the view from up there would have been amazing. After our hike, we found a little nature walk we could go on that was mostly shaded so we could keep cool. 

Cactus flower

This was growing out of a cactus. It was a really smooth, soft wood

We still had some time to kill while waiting to head to our sunset watching spot so we went back into town and had birthday dessert from the local fudge shop. The smell in this place is so heavenly and addicting! I'm pretty sure sometimes I have dreams about it. We got to our sunset spot a little early to walk around and find the best place to sit.

It's amazing how quickly the sun sets once it's in the right position. We snapped a couple of pictures but we mostly just wanted to enjoy the moment. 

Afterwards, we went back in to town and had dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. The food was good, but Jake was a little too adventurous and tried some cactus tacos for the first time. His dinner basically consisted of beans, rice, chips and salsa after that. When we got back to Flagstaff we had just enough time for Jake to open his presents before his birthday was officially over. He'd asked for some very practical things such as work out clothing, and he also wanted a meditation cushion. Overall I'd say it was a very successful way to celebrate Jake's 31 years of life!

This next birthday is particularly special because it just happens to be mine! How should I celebrate the final year of my twenties... well, I left that up to Jake. My birthday fell on a Friday this year and Jake's younger brother was staying with us for a couple of weeks during that time. Jake took half a day off work  so he was home to surprise me when I got off work. The three of us went bowling (something I always ask Jake to do with me and he always says no), had dinner at my most favorite pizza place, Sal's Gilbert Pizza, and then played some arcade games just like a kid on their birthday should do!

Taking a selfie at the pizza place

Second attempt: Jake bailed last second

 Aaron is a much better picture taker than us!

We had dessert at Bahama Buck's which is a shaved ice place that we love. I opened gifts that night and got a lot of fun things like clothes and a FitBit. I also got a lot of cards from so many people I love; it was a great day!

Birthday flowers from my brother and his family

We continued the fun on Saturday by going shopping to spend my birthday money and to a movie. It was a great weekend; I'll leave my birthday outings in Jake's hands any time!

The most recent birthday we celebrated was my nephew's 6th! His birthday was on a Thursday so we drove to Colorado Wednesday afternoon and stayed until Sunday morning. We always have so much fun with this kid and his parents. Unfortunately, my brother had to work out of town so we didn't get to see him, but grandma V was there and we packed a lot of fun into our 3 days. It's a 10 hour drive from Arizona so we arrived pretty late on Wednesday. When we woke up Thursday morning I gave my buddy a big hug and told him happy birthday and he said "I've had 4 happy birthday's so far"!

My bud

Jake kept the birthday boy distracted while Christy, my mom, and I decorated with Plants Vs. Zombies decorations.

His other grandma came over in time for pizza, presents, and cupcakes in the afternoon, and then we went bowling. I'm a much better bowler with bumpers so I won the first round, and the birthday boy won the second round.

Cupcake mustache!

This is his "spare" face 

On Friday we went to a trampoline place and exhausted ourselves. We had way too much fun there. Maybe even more than the kids! Saturday morning we had a water fight with some water balloons that were way too small to pop, but we had a great time with them.

That afternoon there was another birthday party for some kids so Jake, my mom, and I headed to a movie to kill some time. We went to see Mission Impossible; my mom has never seen any of them! We left early Sunday morning and traveled through some pretty spectacular rain storms to get home. 

Those are all clouds; there were no mountains at this point because we were back in the desert. The darkest clouds I think I've ever seen!

We enjoyed our time in Colorado so much and can't wait to go back again soon!