Long Lost Friends Are Found!

Where do I even start I have had a most wonderful week. You could ask Shaye, I couldn't sleep at night I was so excited! It was like Christmas. What was I so excited about you ask?!? Well I had a most special visitor coming this week that I haven't really seen in YEARS! My most wonderful friend Joni Martin and her two beautiful kids came to stay with us! Seriously I was so excited I could hardly stand it! I haven't really spent time with my dear friend Joni since we graduated 7 years ago! After Graduation she moved to Logan for school, got married and has been living in California for years now. I also went many different directions and it is just so hard to keep in touch with everyone. Anyways she really was such a dear friend to me all through high school and it was so so nice to catch up. It is amazing to me how those special people in your life that you just connect with no matter how much time and distance comes between you, you can just pick up where you left off and still be wonderful friends! We played with her cute kids at the pool and around the house but the best part was when everyone went to sleep and we stayed up chatting to no end! It was just like old times, we had fun remembering  the old days of dance competitions and high school boy friends and the silly things we thought were so important. It was so wonderful and we plan to get together again since we only live one hour apart while we are living in Cali. Here are some pictures of our happy  reunion:)

Here is the beautiful Joni and her sweet kids Oliver and Eliza playing down at the pool.

Everyone sitting around my house visiting.

Trajen always loves to make new friends and he was so cute with Oliver. He brought over the movie "Cars" to share with the kids and the boys shared this chair. It was funny, at one point Traj put his arm around Oliver as they sat there a little awkwardly, neither one of them knew what to do. So cute:)

This was the best part of the night. Just like old times we made some delicious brownies to snack on while we chatted:)

The next morning we took the little kiddies to the park to play. Here they are taking a break to enjoy their fruit snacks. Everyone loves to snack with friends:)

Here is me and my favorite little guy. I must say that it has been so fun for me to be out here with Mikkel and Trajen this summer. They are so nice to let me play with them everyday. I love it when he says he wants to come to "Ashley house", (even though he really likes to come to my house cause Shaye lives here too:) They like to have pillow fights and play hide and seek. We just love him!

Sorry about the little Traj tangent, this post was about Joni:) I'm so glad you came Joni. Please, please come again! And we will come down your way soon. I am so grateful for wonderful friends!

Six Flags and Jelly Belly

Last week I was lucky enough to get to go to Six Flags with a bunch of wives out here. It was so fun and the best part, it was free! Some of them have session passes and they were able to bring a friend for free. It pays to have good friends right?!:) It was really nice of them to take us and I had a great time. Here are some fun pictures of us enjoying the rides.

You got to love waiting in line. Actually we never really waited in line. One of the wives brought her little baby so we had a stroller and we did the baby swap. It was a wonderful thing, we just kind of went to the front of the line and said we were doing a baby swap. I'm sure the workers were wondering why it took 6 people to take care of one baby but they let us do it and it was great. Rides are always better when you didn't have to wait in line. 

Here I am before the first ride of the day. Some how I wasn't prepared for how bumpy the rides would be. It was fun but I did come out with a headache. I guess I'm just getting old:)

Look at us on the front row ready to scream!

Another fun thing last week was our trip to the Jelly Belly Factory. Trajen loved this place for some reason. All the kids did, it was pretty funny. I had been to the one in Chicago, which I actually liked better. There you rode on a little train and here we had to walk around the tour. It is always better to ride:) We had a good time though and ate plenty of jelly beans!:)

Our Summer Life

It's now been a week or so since our arrival to California and we are all settled in. Shaye is busy back working hard everyday and I am enjoying the summer life:) I'm not going to get a job out here this year since I came out later and we will only be here for about six more weeks. So lucky for me my sister Mikkel is here and I can hang out with her and Trajen and it seems that our days go by quickly and we are always doing something. It has been great and we have already done some fun things. 

Last Saturday a bunch of us wives took a trip to the Oakland Temple, which is only like 20 minutes away from our house. We had a great time. I want to go every week! I really should at least that would be something good and productive I would be doing.

The temple is located up on a hill with an awesome view! There is an over look where you can see the whole city. This is all of us wives in front of the over look, so you really can't see it.

So that is the city in the distance but you really can't tell from the picture:)

Here we are in front of the temple. Me, Whitney, Ashley, Hollie, Mikkel and Christine.

That weekend the whole office got to go to a baseball game in San Fran. It was a fun game and the Giants won! It was a beautiful day surprisingly, everyone thought it would be really cold cause it had been all week. We were pleasantly surprised, it was prefect!

After the game Shaye and I decided to see a few sights since we were already down town. We went down to the Pier and walked around in the different shops. It was so crowded so we didn't stay there very long. We did see the bushman though. If any of you have been to San Fran you have probably seen the man that hides behind a bush and scares people for fun and some people give him money. It's so funny to me cause this is like this guys career. I saw him there doing the same thing like 3 years ago when I came with some friends and he is still here! I wonder how much money he makes sitting there scaring people? There was also a cat guy with a sign that said "Pet my cat for $1." And people actually do it, crazy! Anyways, here we are in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. We are having fun in California!

Our Move/Vacation/Traveling Adventures

I don't even know where to start it has been awhile since my last post and A LOT has happened. Shaye returned from Cali and we finished packing up our apartment with the help of his Mom and Mike we got everything into one U-Haul and headed back to Cedar City to put our stuff in storage. We still don't know where we will be moving to after the summer but we liked where we stored our stuff last year in Cedar so we just took it back there. So a big thank you to Monica and Mike for all of their help. They are real professional packers and do such a great job, we are lucky they are always willing to help us:) So after the move we headed to Kanab to enjoy some time in Southern Utah before heading back to California. Let me tell you we had A LOT of fun and Shaye certainly got his outdoor fix. As you will see in the many many pictures to follow we spent a great deal of time around a fire, ate LOTS of marshmallows and had tons of fun! We first went to Kanab so we could be at graduation to see my sister Emily and Shaye's brother Brendon graduate. It was a fun time, Emily was the Senior class pres. so she gave a little speech and our cousin Dalton was the Salutatorian so he got to speak too. Anyways, there are many pictures to follow so enjoy:) 

These were are first mallows of the trip. The night after graduation we made smores in the back yard at my parents house.

On Monday night we decided to make tinfoil dinners for everyone. So we headed up the canyon behind my parents house for a nice little family night. The dinners turned out great, (which they always do when Shaye makes them he is a pro tinfoil dinner maker:) This is Nate and Shaye gathering wood for the fire. Nate was loving all of our outdoor activities. 

More marshmallows, I think Nate ate the most mallows of all!

Me and Mom enjoying the nice evening watching the boys cook us dinner, it was great!

One afternoon we took Nate and Jennica for a little hike up Peek-a-boo Canyon. It was great fun. Nate gathered tons of sticks and was trying to build a fire. He is so smart, as long as he keeps the fire outside:)

Southern Utah is so beautiful, I love it!

Shaye and Jenn trying to catch fish in this little stream.

This really was a nice little break for us and we were able to see all of our family. We went up to Beaver for a couple days and went 4-wheeling with Grandpa Chuck and Connie. They took us all over Beaver mountain and we saw some wildlife which made Shaye happy and we also saw some pretty scenery, which made me happy:)

We took a little break to explore in these rocks at the top of the mountain.

This picture doesn't even do the the view justice but behind us was just beautiful, thanks Chuck and Connie for taking us!

Now for our next adventure we went with my family up to the Heaton Ranch up by Alton. My parents have some nice friends in the Heaton family that let them use it for the weekend. My family really doesn't do the camping thing so this was perfect. We were out in the woods but we had beds to sleep in and most importantly, bathrooms! It is such a nice place. The cabin is huge and there is a fun little pond behind it with a little row boat. There are also two zip lines which were tons of fun. There was also a volleyball net set up which we put to use in a very exciting game, well maybe not too exciting. Lets just say you could tell that none of us had ever really played volleyball, but it was fun!

Here's Nate and Shaye going for a little ride around the pond.

Everyone tried out the zip line, even Dad! If you can't tell he was having a great time.

Me and Emily enjoying the cozy fire.

Friday night we had some more family come up and join us for dinner and fun. My aunt Kristi and Brooklyn came up with Grandma Brown. Also my uncle McKay and his family were down for the weekend so they all came out for the fun. We had such a great time with lots of laughs and some great food of course!

Here's Nate taking the love birds for a ride:)

All the girls around the fire.

The sunset was beautiful above the mountains and then there was this full moon.

Here's everyone around the fire.

Brandon decided to take this little boat out and challenge the kids to a boat fight. Unfortunately for Brandon he found that his boat had a hole in it. Soon he was standing with his feet completely covered in water trying to get back to shore.

After a long day of playing everyone was tired.

Mom was so tried she just climbed in her sleeping bag sitting on the couch.

Dad wasn't tired, the night was still young.

Brandon ended up sock less. His socks were soaked from his boating adventure so he thought he would put them on the stove in the house to dry them faster. Well he doesn't recommend it, as you can see they were burnt to a crisp!

The next morning we had a great time playing volleyball, fishing in the pond and playing horseshoes. This is Dad and Shaye playing horseshoes, Shaye was the winner. He beat Dad and Brandon, he has a hidden talent for horseshoe throwing, who knew!:)

After all of our outdoor fun it was time to begin our trek back to California so Shaye could get back to work. So we headed out but made a few more stops:) We stopped to spend a couple great days with Grandma Alta in Vegas. We had so much fun visiting and making our way around Vegas. Grandma Alta's friend was able to get us some free tickets to a couple shows. They were mostly people that are trying to get started in Vegas. One of the guys we went to was a magician and he was on America's Got Talent a few years ago so he was pretty good.

Here we are with Grandma Alta. Thanks so much for all the fun, it was great!

One evening she took us miniture golfing on this really nice golf course. It was the nicest miniature golf course I'd ever seen. It was lots of fun and a perfect night, the weather was great!

We had such a great move/vacation/trip. Now we are in California and just trying to get settled. Shaye is back working and I am cleaning! Our apartments are SO SO nice but there were several single boys living here before we got here so if you could just imagine what it was like. Now it's clean and looks great and I am really enjoying it!