We Lived In Our Car For Two Days

Well, kind of. Last weekend we drove to Utah to go to a football game and visit family. We didn't get any time off work so we knew it would be a quick trip.

We left Friday after work around 3:30 Arizona time and headed to Kanab, Ut. Our first stop was in Flagstaff for dinner. I was extremely excited for scenery that included mountains and trees instead of cactus.

We got to our hotel around 11:00 Utah time and found a bunch of bikers awaiting our arrival ;)

Saturday morning we drove to my mom's house for breakfast, I took this along the way, just enjoying more mountain/fall scenery.

Two excited football fans before leaving my mom's house

We drove to Lehi and met up with 9 of Jake's family members for dinner, then headed to the game.

After getting to our seats I realized this was the first football game we had attended since getting married so we took a picture to cocommemorate.

The game ended around midnight and we had a two hour drive to my mom's house. It took us about half an hour to get to our car and on the freeway so we were home and in bed by 2:30. Sunday morning we woke up, had breakfast, showered, and got back in the car to head home.

We took a detour through Kanab National Forest and Jacob lake on our way home since part of our highway is closed and we didn't enjoy the detour we had taken through Tuba city on the way into Utah Friday night. We got up to 7000 feet and that made for some spectacular scenery again!

We got home, started laundry, and collapsed on the couch by 7:30 Arizona time after spending about 21 hours in the car over the last 2 and a half days. Even though it was mildly exhausting it was a lot of fun to see family and go to the game and road trip together!

Still Eating Clean

We're still experimenting with clean eating recipes from emeals and they're getting easier to make and tasting even better as well. Here are just a few more that we've fallen in love with...

Grilled chicken and garden bounty salad

Pork salad with nectarines and pita bread

Pot roast quesadillas. One great thing about these recipes is some of them carry over to another day. With this one we made pot roast one night and used the left over for this.

Minted strawberries (one of my favorite sides)

Corn chowder and strawberry salad

Spaghetti and meatballs; roasted red pepper sauce instead of marinara

Chicken cordon bleu and salad

Baked avocado (this was last night)

This is how our plates look when we're done lately

We decided one day to find a clean recipe for chocolate chip cookies and found one here

We tried it out and it seems strange to begin with but when you taste them they're actually really satisfying and it blows my mind how simple and easy they are to make.

We really are enjoying experimenting with these recipes and seeing everything come together. Most of the time we have no idea what dinner will look like or taste like and there have been a few nights where one or both of us will trade that dinner for cold cereal. But we feel great and have a lot of fun cooking together so we're going to keep on doing it!

On a side note, this is how the cat feels about all this ;)

It's Just Too Hot Here

I was working one morning when a co-worker asked me if I knew the back window of my car was shattered. I had no idea what he was talking about and it took a few minutes for him to convince me he wasn't joking. My first thought was someone had thrown something at it or something had fallen on it, but when I got outside to look at it there wasn't a spot where everything began and spread from.

This is what I saw

As you can see, the window was in fact shattered and in danger of falling through! It was like a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. I had no cracks in my back window, no chips, no logical explanation as to why this would happen except that we had experienced temperatures around 105 to 110 for the past 3 months. So I have to blame this on the unforgiving Arizona heat! Curse you!

Visiting Colorado

In August we decided to go visit my brother and his family in Colorado. We flew out Friday morning and stayed through Sunday.

We were there a week after this little guy's fourth birthday so we made sure to celebrate with presents!

My mom was there that weekend as well and she went with Jake and I to see "Turbo" with Lukas. He loved it and was so good during the entire movie. When we got home Jake and I were instructed to play tag with Turbo, aka Lukas, and of course we couldn't catch him because he was Turbo.

Here are these two being tigers (I swear Jake is his favorite person)

This was one of the rare trips where my brother wasn't working so we could spend a lot of time all together. Our nights were spent playing cards and the days consisted of playing army, watching Rocky and Bullwinkle, arm wrestling, playing tag, playing with light sabers, and our last day there we walked around downtown where they have some fun sculptures.

We had a great weekend with everyone and look forward to seeing them again soon!

We Are Keeping it Clean

A few weeks ago Jake and I decided we really wanted to make a change to our eating habits. We didn't eat completely unhealthy things (so we thought) but we knew we could do better. After a bit of research we found a website that would allow us to easily change our diet; emeals . We chose clean eating and signed up for three months to start. We just finished our first week. Mostly everything we made was delicious and easy; it's important to note that every single thing we make is made from scratch. Including any sauces or dressings. Here are the ones we documented:

Grilled chicken with roasted red pepper sauce and spinach arugula salad with vinaigrette dressing

Grilled salmon with asparagus and barley salad

Grilled pork chop with sauteed veggies and creamed corn

Orange chicken with grilled bok choy

Scallops and pesto with yellow squash and sweet onion

Beef and broccoli with brown rice

Our last meal of the week was chicken caprese salad sandwiches with sweet potato fries but I was picky about the way the fries looked so I didn't photograph it. However, it ended up being our favorite meal. Our fridge certainly looks different now and over half of our shopping list is produce.

Here's to the next 11 weeks!

Let's Get Crafty

Last month I decided to find a creative way to store or keep all our wedding cards. I hate keeping them in a box because it just seems silly, so I searched the internet and found this blog post

It took me a couple days and some help from Jake and we ended up with a book of wedding cards.

I love my duct tape binding!

I've never been very good at crafts and honestly it's mostly because I'm too lazy, but I enjoyed making this and I love that it's not perfect. Maybe there will be more crafts in my future!

New Beginnings

When we moved to Arizona I became unemployed for the first time in 5 years and wasn't really sure what to do or how to do it or what I even wanted to do. Luckily enough for me, I was able to take my time and find something I enjoyed. I didn't want to find a job, I wanted to find the right job. I wouldn't have been able to do that without Jake's support, and that means the world to me. He knew I wanted to be working but never rushed me into finding something. I love him even more for that :)

Spending 6 months unemployed was not what I expected, it was not what I wanted, and it was not easy. I'm the kind of person who really needs to be occupied and contributing and feeling a sense of accomplishment. Being home every day was not giving me any of that. Everything moves a little slower here in Arizona; I applied for at least 2 jobs a day for the first month we were here and didn't start getting calls for interviews until another month or in some cases 2 months later. I had a few good interviews and I had a LOT of help from my amazing former manager who introduced me to people and really brightened my spirits.

Two weeks ago I accepted a job offer and am going back to my roots so to speak. I will be working at a credit union just a few minutes from home and I couldn't be more excited about it. My first day is tomorrow! I want to say thank you to everyone who listened to me complain and freak out and helped me find my way, and I want to thank Jake for sticking with me and being patient and taking care of us. Here's to new beginnings!