Escape to warmer weather

So, we were able to go down to Southern Utah this past weekend! It was super fun! We went with two of David’s mechanical engineering buddies from school, Tyler and Zach, their wives Lacey and Tara and Tara and Zach’s baby Porter. We had a ton of fun! I hadn't even met any of them before, so I thought it might be a little awkward, but it wasn't at all! It was way fun and it didn't seem like we had just met at all, but like we’d been friends for a long time already. We drove down on Friday night and got to David’s parent’s house around 10:30, so we all got settled in and then played some games together. On Saturday we drove up to Kolob Canyon and did a super easy hike and enjoyed the pretty scenery, the perfect weather and the good company. After the hike my mama made us an awesome lunch, so we went into Hurricane and ate lunch and then everyone went shooting. I stayed home with my mom and I watched Porter, Tara and Zach’s baby, while they all went shooting. After that we headed back to New Harmony and made a big spaghetti dinner and played games the rest of the night. Sunday we watched Newsies before church. We went to Sacrament Meeting and to our good luck it happened to be the week of the primary program! So it was super fun to see all the little kids singing. We headed back home again and just hung around the rest of the day, watched another movie and then got all ready to leave. We headed out around 5:30 or so and got home around 9. It was a super fun weekend, but I’m definitely tired from all the stuff we did. Especially because I'm extra tired these days, and I usually go to bed around 10:30 or 11, and all weekend we didn't get to bed until 1 or 2 in the morning! But it was totally worth it! I’m pretty well caught up on sleep now, so it’s all good. 

Me, David, Zach, baby Porter, Tara, Tyler, and Lacey.

Such a pretty view.

All of us (minus Porter who was already in the car)  in front of the house before heading out.

We are Practically Professionals at car buying now

So, remember how David and I got a new car over the summer? Well, we were able to drive it for about a month before it got totaled. Yeah, not really the ideal situation for us… It was pretty inconvenient actually. I was driving home from work one day and some 21 year old kid smashed through a red light into me. Thank goodness no one was hurt, but come on, he could not have been paying attention at all because it was 12:30 in the afternoon, perfectly sunny, and the light had been green for me for several seconds already. Anyway, it smashed up our car pretty good and as we predicted, it was totaled.

I had several witnesses that were kind enough to stick around and fill out police reports stating what happened. The kid got a citation and I had to get a ride home with the tow truck guy. It took 8 days for his insurance to get us a rental car, so that was super annoying, but we are blessed enough to have people who were able and willing to let us borrow a car so that we could get to work and school. They didn't even have anyone look at our car for like 10 days after the accident and then we found out the next day that it was indeed totaled. Luckily for us, they actually offered us more money for our car then we actually paid! We were able to talk them into letting us keep the rental car for more than the original 3 days that they were going to give us, they added an extra week onto the end since they didn't give us one for the first week after the accident. Well, long story short, we got another new car! We hardly had any time to look at cars, so we test drove 2 different cars and bought the second one. We feel really good about it, it’s been about a week since we got it and we both really like it so far. We decided on a Ford Focus, it’s a 2003 that only has 53,000 miles on it! It’s been really well taken care of and I think it’ll be a really good car for us that’ll last a long time. Yay for new cars! Now here’s to hoping we won’t have to buy another one in the near future!

I'll put up a picture of our new car later.

Vegetable Quiche

Ok, so I have such a good quiche recipe, I love it! It’s just a vegetable quiche, but it has such a good flavor and it’s totally good for you! I don’t know if the rest of the women’s husbands in the world are like this, but when David found out there was no meat in this recipe and it was a vegetable quiche, he sighed and didn’t sound very excited. But let me tell you that he loved it! Trust me, it’s good.

I didn’t take any pictures of it because I didn’t think about putting it in my blog until after the fact, but I will make it again soon and be sure to take pictures this time. It’s really easy and you can be creative and put whatever you want in it! So here it is:

Vegetable Quiche

6 eggs, beaten

1 cup milk

1 cup grated cheese

1 cup cooked vegetables (I used a bunch, I put in broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, green peppers, tomatoes, and onion, it was super good)

salt and pepper (I also put a little it of garlic salt or whatever else I thought sounded good in it)

Grease a pie plate or pan; sprinkle vegetables and cheese over the bottom, beat together the remaining ingredients and pour over vegetables. Bake at 350' for 35 minutes; knife inserted in center should come out clean (mine was moist though from all the juices from the vegetables). Let it sit for about 5 minutes before cutting. 

David and I like ours with sour cream and we dip it in, it's really good and adds a little bit of a creamy flavor. That's it! Super easy, delicious, and healthy! 

Life goes on

Ok well, it’s been like 2 months since I’ve written anything in my blog so I guess I better start updating. It seems so weird to be updating things from July still when we are almost done with September now because it feels like forever ago, but I better do it anyway. I probably won’t be super detailed on the old stuff though.

Ok, so the last thing that I mentioned was how much I wanted to go to the beach. Well, we did! One Saturday we drove to Annapolis and went to the beach. It was really fun, we found a spot that was not very crowded at all and we went swimming in the water and played in the sand. Unfortunately it took us a while to realize that the reason it wasn’t very crowded around us is because we were in the non-swimming area because of jellyfish. Yes, and too bad we found out the hard way when David got stung on his ankle. So we moved down where all the rest of the people were and I swear there were more jellyfish there because we saw a bunch of teenagers scooping them out of the water using a Frisbee. So after that we were pretty much too paranoid to get in the water anymore and we were done with our beach day. 

We drove into Annapolis, which is a charming and adorable little city by the way, and we went in search of the 6 pound milkshake place that David had seen once on Man Vs. Food. We found it! It’s a little place called Chick and Ruth’s. We saw plenty of 6 pound milkshake remains, but decided against getting one ourselves since it was just the two of us and I knew that I wouldn’t help very much, so we just got a "small" milkshake (which was still huge) and some food. The milkshake was delicious and the food was great, they had the best homemade pickles I’ve ever had! So, in short, I got my beach day and we topped it off with some great food! It was cool because just a few months before we dipped our feet in the Pacific Ocean at Alki Beach in Seattle and then we went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean just a few short months later! We really did go coast to coast!

We sold our car in Gaithersburg before we headed home to Utah! I know it was quite a risk to take to buy a new car in Utah in the hopes of selling our old one in the few short weeks before we left, but we did it! It all worked out. We didn’t make as much money on our car as we were hoping, but who ever really does? We were just glad to be rid of it.

So instead of driving home, we got plane tickets to Vegas and flew back across the country.  My family picked us up at the airport there and then we made a 3 hour drive to Big Bear Lake, California. We had an amazing vacation there with my family. It felt so nice to be with them again. I hadn’t seen any of them for about 6 months and I had missed them. David and I had so much fun! We were able to relax, hang out and joke around with my family, we went to gelato a few times, we went shopping, boating, on an alpine slide and a water slide, we went mini-golfing, bowling, to the zoo, on walks by the lake, and hot tubbing… Basically we had a lot of fun! And I got to be with my family, so that was awesome. We also celebrated our one year anniversary while we were there. I can’t believe it’s been a whole year! It’s been such a great year, I married my best friend and I love spending all my time with him.

After the week in California, we drove back to Utah and spent a few days in Southern Utah at my parent’s house. While we were there we mostly just hung out with my nephews and family some more. David went dove hunting with my dad and he had fun, although he felt pretty bad killing the doves. I went through all my old boxes that were still in the garage and got rid of most of it and decided what I wanted to keep. Finally we drove up to Provo and moved into our new apartment… Well, after we got there and found out that we were locked out and waited for about an hour. Either way, we got into our apartment and now we love it! It’s about twice as big as our old apartment and it’s awesome! We have a dishwasher, we have our own sinks in the bathroom, and we have a whole second bedroom to put whatever we want in. We have more than enough room for all of our things, so we are sure enjoying the space.

We both have started school and work again and it’s crazy how busy we are. I’m working at Tristar again as the receptionist and going to school full time and David is working as a math TA and a research assistant and is also in school full time. David will be graduating in April and I will graduate in December, so that’s something to look forward to. Right now David is getting ready to take the GRE and apply for Grad school. There are several places that he wants to apply, but we haven’t narrowed it down yet, he has until December to apply, so we have some time.

David and I both had our birthdays this month, so we’ve been celebrating those too, David got me some slipcovers for our couches and some new pillows and we love them! I have been wanting these since we first got married and now we finally have them and David loves them just as much as I do, they greatly improve the look of our apartment. We celebrated my birthday with Maile and Michael and it was super fun, we went to Texas Road House and had an awesome dinner and then went back to our apartment to watch Harry Potter and then got ice cream at SubZero, yum. It was a super fun night. We have yet to get David a birthday present because I’m a bad wife, and also because I’m letting him pick his own present and he hasn’t found one in our price range yet, so I’m not that bad of a wife! We’ll get him something soon when he finds the right thing. Oh, I did make him bacon though, so I did good there. We celebrated with David’s family for his birthday, they took us out to JCW’s and then we went and walked around Thanksgiving Point, after that we got cheesecake and went home to relax and eat it, we watched “Clue” and then David and I went home to go to sleep, it was a good day. Anyway, now we’re pretty much caught up!