The Arizona Heat

So we've been here 3 weeks now and I've learned 3 things about Arizona, all having to do with the heat.

1) My mom brought us a chocolate bar one of the first days we were here. By the time she left an hour later it had already started to melt on the counter. Now we keep our chocolate in the fridge or eat it as soon as we get it. Back when Trent and I were dating I thought it was so weird that he kept his chocolate chips in the freezer, but now I understand why!

2) I know I've been out in the heat too long when I get sluggish. I start to walk really slow. Trent and I were laughing about this b/c we were thinking, "Wouldn't you want to walk faster to get out of the heat?", but sometimes we just can't do it..haha.

3) When Trent and I are outside together it's usually too hot to hold hands.

Anyway, here are a few random pictures:

These are my new jellies and I just love them! And I got them for $5!

I also got a new cowboy hat in preparation for the dude ranch. We leave Sunday for Colorado for a family reunion this next week. I'll have to write about it when we get back :)

And this is just a cute picture of Haddie baby. She was on our paper towels so I had to get a picture with her :)

Have a great week!

Our New Home!

I thought I'd take you all on a little tour of our new home :) When we moved here we fully intended to move into a one bedroom apartment - we had booked it, finished all of the background checks, signed all of the paperwork, and everything. Once we started moving everything in we realized there was no way we were going to fit everything in! We made a run to the front office and they thankfully had some two-bedrooms available. The switch went very smoothly and we are so grateful we went for it!

Here is the outside. We are on the second floor.

This is what we look out on! A little man-made pond! Trent and I are making a habit of taking a walk around it every night before we go to bed (this picture only shows about half of it).

This is our lovely living room. We really can't stand the pure white walls throughout the apartment (boring!) so we are in the process of brainstorming some ideas of how we can bring some more color in (ideally without painting).

This is another angle. You can see the front door in this picture.

Here is our cute dining room! You can see our balcony in the background.

Obviously this is the kitchen :)

And the other side that looks out to the dining and living rooms.

This is just the hallway.

Our bedroom. After taking this picture we realized just how white our room is. We're hoping to put a cute wall decal up to add color. I'll have to take pictures when we do that :)

Just another angle.

Our bathroom.

The laundry room.

And lastly the guest bathroom. And yes we do have a guest bedroom, but it wasn't cute enough to take a picture of yet :) We would love visitors if anyone is ever down this way. Definitely give us a call!

Hope you enjoyed my little tour! We are loving our place! In an upcoming post I'll have to let you all know what I've learned about the heat since we've been here :)

My Birdies!

So we've been here, Mesa, Arizona, for two weeks now! I promise I'll post pictures of our new place soon (which we love by the way!), but first I wanted to post this!

Before we moved down here there was a bird's nest in the tree in our front yard, which happened to be right below our bedroom balcony.

One afternoon Amy and Andrew were over and I decided it was time to peek in (I don't know why I hadn't earlier) and this is what we found!! So pretty, huh?!

A week later I had my sisters come down from Idaho and I invited my cousins in Provo over for a final get together/sleepover. I was excited to show them the nest, and when we peeked in we found that three of the eggs had hatched!

Trent was worried the fourth egg was dead, but the next day I found it had hatched. This is kind of a dark picture, but you can see all four of them in the nest, all snug as a bug :)

As you can see, at this point they didn't really have feathers yet and their eyes are pretty bulgy.

I would check on them everyday! I think this little birdie was hungry!

In these last two pictures you can really see their feathers coming in! Are they not adorable??

I miss them! I hope they're doing okay and behaving themselves and learning how to fly :)

A Good Laugh :)

So last week Andrew (cousin), Amy (sister), Trent and I were chatting about funny YouTube videos. Amy and I had to show Trent and Andrew this water mattress prank video that we discovered a few years back (I don't know what language they're speaking). Then we kept browsing for funny videos and we found the skunk one below. Watching both of these, Amy and I were laughing so hard we were crying. I hope you get a good laugh out of them :)

I have to admit that I watched this skunk video again before I decided to post it and I was in our bedroom, by myself, laughing so hard (Trent is downstairs watching reruns of Smallville)!! Haha..I just love it!

Scotcheroos

We have a friend, Spenser. My cousin Andrew lives with Spenser in Arlington Place Town Homes (where Trent and I live) and it's been so fun to have them close, especially if we ever need an ingredient, or flashlights when our power randomly goes out..haha. Most recently we needed to borrow Spenser's truck to go pick up our couch that my cousin and her husband were keeping at their place while we've lived here (this place came almost fully furnished). Anyway, I wanted to make Spenser a little treat to let him know we appreciate him, and that we're not just using him, so we decided on Scotcheroos. Well, I got up this morning around 9:15 and Trent had already made them..haha! He is so funny! I love that he truly enjoys baking :)

I made Trent take this picture! Doesn't he look happy?!

After we dived in! So delish!

I thought I would put the recipe up for any of you who don't have it. I actually got this recipe from my cousin Michelle, Andrew's sister :)

1. Pre-measure 6 scant C. (a little under full) of rice krispies

2. Pre-measure 1 C. peanut butter

3. On med-high heat cook 1 C. sugar and 1 C. light karo syrup. As soon as it starts to boil, remove from heat. DO NOT let it come to a rolling boil.

4. Add peanut butter and mix

5. Add rice krispies and mix

6. Pour into 9x13" pammed pan, wet hands to prevent sticking and press into pan

7. Cover with 1 C. butterscotch chips and 1 C. chocolate chips, put in oven at 350, JUST long enough to melt chips (just takes a few minutes for them to get soft enough to spread). Then spread and cool.

Hope you like them :)

Hermana Livingston

So I've been meaning to write this post since Thursday, but have been finishing up my final internship notebook, which, by the way, is all turned in! Yay! Relief! My internship and the final notebook was the very last thing I had to do to finish college, and we walked in April, so now I am officially DONE!

Anyway, this last Thursday I decided to make cookies for a good friend, Jessie Livingston, who is in the MTC (stands for Missionary Training Center - I'm sure anybody who is reading this knows that, but just in case!). She was called to serve in San Diego, Spanish speaking. Back in March I wrote a post about Devil's Food Cake Cookies and Jessie tried them out and just loved them, so I made those for her. So Thursday morning I whip up the cookies and am all excited to go drop them off for her, wishing I could be there when she received them. After running several errands, Trent and I finally made our way to the MTC to drop them off at the front desk. Well it turns out, they do not allow for deliveries to be made at the front desk anymore. Trent said while he was in the MTC people would drop off freshly baked food all the time. Frustration! Luckily they said we could have them sent for free through UPS, but we had already missed the final delivery time of 2:30.

Fast forward to Friday afternoon. I was working on my internship notebook so Trent agreed to drop off the cookies at UPS. About an hour and a half later Trent walks in the door and I ask him how it went? He says, "Not so good" and that he had locked himself out of the car. He didn't have his cell phone with him so he couldn't call me, we only have one car anyway, so he walked all the way home! That's a good 3.5 miles and it was a pretty warm day. A few hours later Trent revealed that while he was walking home he got "dive-bombed" like 3 times by a bird. I was laughing so hard picturing this! Apparently the bird was trying to protect something! We both had to laugh and think, "If only Jessie knew what we had to go through to deliver her those cookies :)"

Precious Time

There are two primary t.v. shows that define summer t.v. for me - So You Think You Can Dance and The Bachelorette! These shows make me so happy!

This last Thursday was the first night that the new contestants on SYTYCD performed. This year is a little different, in that the show brought back a whole bunch of previous contestants, "all-stars", who will be paired up with the new contestants during this season. Thursday night all of the dancers split into their style of dance and danced together, if that makes sense.

This is the contemporary group and Mia Michaels was the choreographer. This dance struck me in particular b/c lately I've been really aware of time and how I feel my life is just flying by. Mia explains it perfectly. Time really is precious.

Note: So just after I published this post, I realized that the video is cut off (at least on my Mac). I'm bummed b/c it kind of ruins the overall effect of the dance. If you want to find it on YouTube it's under "SYTYCD 7 - Billy Bell & Alex Wong, Mia Michaels Routine." Sorry, I don't know what the deal is.

Speaking of how time flies, Trent and I move down to Arizona in exactly two weeks! Crazy! It's quite bittersweet. I feel super excited to have a whole new start down in Arizona, but I also feel sad leaving because so much has happened the last 4 years I've been in Provo (plus I'll miss all of my family here - sisters and cousins - immensely, and our ward - such a good one!).