7 Years Ago...

... from this very day, Colten took me out on our first date. It was to the Homecoming Dance our Jr. year at Enterprise High School

The asking... It was September 11, 2001 (9/11) and my volleyball team had just gotten home from our game at Beaver (which we won of course!) around midnight. Posted on my car window was a piece to a puzzle and it told me to go to another location to find the next piece. So I took two of my friends with me, Annie Bracken and Kaydee Woods and we went on the scavenger hunt. It was a lot of fun and also scary too in the middle of the night going all over the town, outside of town, and the cemetary of all places. Finally I got all of the puzzle pieces and put it togther. This is what it said...

And this picture was on the front of the puzzle. This picture was taken when we were probably 11 or 12 at a rollerblading party for our sunday school class.

The Date... September 22, 2001. A really big group of us went 4-wheelering up to the top of the aspen tress on Flat Top. We all carved our names in the tree. Then the boys made us dutch oven potatos and hamburgers. I think other people would laugh at our date but it was awesome for us small town folk. It would have been more fun for Colten too, if I would have wrapped my sweet little arms around him. I wanted to... but I was also really shy.

The Dance... Well it was decorated with a sunset and a big waterfall but I am not sure what the theme was or even if there was one. Colten was a perfect gentleman and when he took me home that night I was actually pretty bummed that we rode with another couple and they were still in the car. So... I got a good night hug. But that hug was pretty good!

Here is our picture from the dance. I am not a huge fan of this picture. Don't ask what was going on with my hair because I have no idea. No one told me I looked stupid when I left the house! I do remeber thinking that I was going to be so much taller so I took my shoes off and bent my knees a little, then told Colten to stand really really tall. Look it worked!

And look at us now... Happily married for 16 months!!

The Train Game

One of our favorite things to do now is play this game called, A Ticket To Ride. Our friends from Cedar had this game last spring and we played it with them and had a lot of fun. Since then, Colten bought me this game for my birthday and we always like to play it.

Tonight we were being lazy (since it is Sunday and thats what we like to do) so we played "the Train Game" as we often call it.

(The Gunner Thumbs Up!)

IT'S WORKING. WHAHOO!!

So I have been having problems for exactly one month. My entry a month ago was on Colten's birthday and I had a slide show posted there from when we went to the train tracks. Well I deleted the slide show and ....... Now my page is Normal. I am a much happier person. I told Colten I was giving up on blogging but now I don't have to! (I'm really sure he'll appreciate that.)

NOW because I went through some blogging drama and difficulties I somehow deleted all my other blogging contacts. So if your name is not on my list of other bloggers (sorry I forgot you) and you want it to be you better leave me a message so that I can add your blog address to my page. Thanks.

I need Blogging Help!

Does anyone have any idea why my side gadgets won't come up on the side and instead they are down at the very bottom???? It's driving me crazy and I don't know how to fix it. I have tried going to customize and layout and then moving my page elements but nothing works. If you go to my older posts then its the normal layout but for some reason it's not working right now.

If you have any advice... I'm clueless.

Teaching Has its Moments

This is my 5th week of school (and counting). Things have been going really well. There are times when I think... I really get paid for doing this? And of course other times when I think opposite of that. Colten and I are adjusting to living in La Verkin. We are liking our ward so far, in fact we had a family invite us over to dinner last Sunday and we had a great time getting to know them and their family better. Life seems to be going good and everyone has treated us awesome, but its just not the same as being in Cedar where we had so many friends and did so much fun stuff. Now its just the two of us together alone each night (which actually is fabulous when we get to really be together). Most of the time I don't get home from volleyball practice until 6 or sometimes 7 so we only have a few hours to really see each other. Boy do we both love the weekends. And speaking of the which... tomorrow is FINALLY Friday.

So this past week at the middle school it has been Spirit Week. Each day there has been a different theme to dress up to and show your school spirit. We did PJs, crazy hair, favorite athletic team and the most fun... RETRO DAY!! I tried to get into this one and I had to take a picture. I was "trying" to be an 80s Rock n Roll chick. I bought the shirt at family dollar and it turned out pretty successful. I tried to get my hair curly and really big but it's just so thick that I couldn't get it big so it was flat.

You would be surprised how good some of us teachers can dress up!

Happy 23rd Birthday Colten!!

Today is Colten's 23rd Birthday! He finally caught up to me. Happy Birthday Colt, I love you. :)

We celebrated Colten's birthday last night by going out west of Enterprise to watch trains and have a dutch oven dinner. Colten and I and Paul and ShaRee left earlier and started making dinner then Colt's parents, Lee and Charlene came out a little while later. We had a great time.

When we first got there we were acting a lot like kids all excited to put our few pennies on the tracks in hopes a train would come by. Then since the olypimics are in full swing, we had our own competition by racing down the tracks. We had to balance on the track and Colten won by dominating us all. About thirty minutes before dinner was ready we saw the light change to green (which means a train is coming) so we ran through the tall brush, scraping our legs and all so that we could go to the other side of the tracks and sit up on the white cliffs about the height of the top of the train to watch it come by. After waiting for 30 minutes and no train came we went back over to the cars and dinner. We decided dinner wasn't quite ready yet and could now hear the horn of the train. Once again we booked it back over and made it just in time to watch the train go past. I think everyone had a great time and we couldn't figure out what is so cool about watching trains but it's a lot more exciting than it sounds.

Our New Place

We moved to La Verkin and are renting a nice little home. Here are a few pics of the house. I haven't put ones of it now because our crappy furniture would make the house look worse.
It is a really nice place and we are lucky to be there. The only down side is that Colten will have to commute to Cedar but that's the choice we had to make.

SMART CAR

Colten and I have decided that since economic times are so bad we needed a car that will get us great gas mileage. So we decided to buy a Smart Car. It is Awesome!





HA HA Just Kidding!!
It's really my brother-in-laws Dad's car. But it was really fun to drive! I have never had so many people stare at us while driving down the street.

Older or Younger

Colten has had a goatee pretty much since he came home from his mission a year and a half ago. I like facial hair but everyone needs a change. I talked him into shaving it all off. Which way do you like it better?

WITH

or

WITHOUT

Part 1 (OREGON)

I haven't blogged forever and I really don't have a lot of time to catch up, but I am going to do it little by little.

So to start out with, Colten and I had been planning a trip for a year now to go visit Colten's sister, Lara, up in Oregon. I had never been up there and so we had been saving for the past year to do this trip. We stayed a week and we had so much fun and did lots of awesome things. The best part was just getting to see Lara and Ian and their kids. We don't get to see them very much because they live so far away. :( Anyway, Colten is also interested in a Medical School up in Portland so we decided it was a good thing to go up there and see the area. We loved it! It is so beautiful. Sometimes I wonder why our ancestors settled down here in the desert when it is so green and beautiful up north in other places. Oh well, we still love our home in Southern Utah. Sorry for all the random thoughts.

One day while we were up there we went to the lake and went boating. The temperature was around 75-80 degrees with the water being about the same. It was a nice day, a little chilling when you're all wet and out on the lake but mostly pretty good. Here are a few pictures of boating.

This is my handsome husband, Colten showing off his skills wakeboarding. (Also notice how sweet the background is behind him with all those pine trees.)

...And this is ME showing off my wakeboarding skills. Oh oops!... I don't have any wakeboarding skills and thats why I am under the water. Ian's dad made fun of me being a PE teacher who couldn't even wakeboard. Oh well, I guess we can't all be talented at everything!

So I decided this was more my style riding really slow with the kids on the tube. We had a great time!!

Colten and Ian had a good time on their new tube. They caught some pretty good air at times.

Then we got Mark, Ian and Colten all out there on the tube while Lara drove the boat. I took video of the whole thing and got all 4 of their awesome wrecks. If I was better at this blogging thing I would know how to put video on here but for now you'll just get still pics.

This day was awesome. Thanks Ian and Lara for taking us with you!