Yellowstone!

We went on a quick weekend trip to Yellowstone a couple weeks ago after I was done with school. We went with my friend Amy, who was a terrific tour guide because she knows Yellowstone like the back of her hand, literally! Kenyan and I decided we need to do more trips like this because it's only 4 1/2 hours away!

The last time I went to Yellowstone was with my Grandma and Grandpa Johnson....that was like 20 years ago, and I believe my brother was there too. I don't remember a lot of Yellowstone so I had a lot of fun and we saw so many animals: grizzly bear, black bear, black bear cub, bald eagle (loved that!) elk, brand new baby elk, coyote, and lots and lots of buffalo. Amy always talks about the baby orange buffalo and how cute they are-she wasn't kidding! They are so fun to watch...one literally hopped on all 4's going across the road. Kenyan and I were a little nervous when they started getting really close to the car, but finally decided to trust Amy when she said we'd be ok. :) Love ya Amy!

Weekend Trip!

Several weeks ago Kenyan and I drove to Cali for a quick trip. Our destination: Camarillo, to see my favorite little sister, Brittany, in the play "Annie." We had lot of fun Beej! She took us to the Santa Monica pier-that was a first for both of us. I love going new places! We drove the PCH to get to Santa Monica and drove through Malibu. We're thinking about buying a beach house there, (lol) there were plenty for sale! Then we went to this yummy ice cream place in LA called Diddy Reise. Wow! You get to pick 2 cookies and the kind of ice cream you want, and $1.50 later we had the best ice cream sandwiches ever!

Brittany did great in "Annie." She was perfect as Grace, Daddy Warbucks' assistant. I was very impressed with the whole play-they did a great job with the costumes, props and scenery.

Thanks to Heather who let us use her house as a pitstop along the way, to and from. We left Vegas at 5:30 in the morning so we could spend a day in Disneyland. (I love Disneyland! And Kenyan didn't fight me, just couldn't believe we'd wake up that early!)

More Mazee

Introducing...Mazee

We have had Mazee for a whole day and we can't get enough of her! (And I think Kenyan likes her a whole more than he'll actually admit.)

I gave into the whining & whimpering last night and went and laid next to her in the laundry room for a minute til she fell back asleep. Then I slept on the couch and set the alarm to wake me up every 2 hours to take her out to the restroom. She did pretty well.

We've had a few accidents....surprise, surprise. :)

We took her to Kenyan's sister's house last night and she met Kodiak, their chocolate lab. We have one tough puppy-she totally held her own and kept following Kodiak all over!! She sure is tons of fun!

The Newest Member....

We have a new addition coming to our family.....tomorrow (so obviously, I'm not pregnant.) We are getting a puppy! I am so excited! She is a schneagle. (Isn't that fun to say?!) A schneagle is a schnauzer/beagle mix. I'll get some pictures up as soon as I can. The picture below is a picture the seller had posted of her:

Mr. Do-it-Himself/Amazing

I love Kenyan-he never ceases to amaze me. He got me a ceiling fan for the family room-which I was very excited about!

He installed it one day while I was gone, without any help. He says it wasn't a big deal and that it's just a ceiling fan....but I still say, "He's amazing!" I love it, and it fits our room perfectly! (FYI: I always knew that ceiling fans could go different directions, but I didn't know that you are supposed to set it a certain direction for winter and summer. Did you guys know this? I found this out while reading the end of the instructions for installing-such a silly thing, but I had no idea!)

Another reason why I love Kenyan: Kenyan brought home a beautiful Japanese scroll from his mission...almost 8 years ago. I wanted to get it framed for him for Christmas, but we found out that it would cost a pretty little penny. Michaels said it would cost over $1,000!!

So, Kenyan decides....he can build a frame for it himself. And guess what, he did!! For how much you ask? Around $80! Take that Michaels! The final product:

The picture doesn't do it justice, but you kind of get the idea. He had to make it slightly deeper because the scroll has a thick rod at the bottom in order to roll it up.

Last year we had a fun time ringing in the New Year our own "Rockin' New Year's Eve" style. We decided we liked having a theme to go with so this year we went Western.

We found this new game called "Bang!" If you have never played it, I highly recommend it! It's a little confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, it is a lot of fun.

Here's some pictures of us ringing in the new year with a "BaNg!"

Bernice & Sean-I love Bernice's skirt!Aren't we cute? (Except for my face, I'm not a very good outlaw.)Marci & Jeff-Yee haw!Josh & Crystal....supposedly they were "not informed" of dressing up...hmmmm.BANG!!

Let me ask if any of you are like this...Kenyan and I are constantly wondering what to have for dinner almost every night. Then we end up going back to the grocery store every night to get what we need for dinner. Just a pain to be running back and forth all the time.

So, the other day when I was at Target they had a pad of paper that had every day of the week listed on one side and a grocery list on the other side. Easy concept-but I didn't want to pay for it, so I made one for myself. Starting today, after getting the grocery ads in the mail, I tried to plan out meals around what was on sale and what we already have in the pantry or food storage for the next week. We will get our grocery shopping done tomorrow and be set with dinner for the next week. We are also going to try and buy a few extra cans of food each time we go grocery shopping to help build our food storage. We have "officially" started a food storage now that we have a place to store it and we started to stock up on the last case lot sale. Any other great ideas for food storage? I had a great time remembering dating cans of food for my mom after she went grocery shopping and I was doing it for my own food the other day.

My Dinner/Grocery List...Hopefully I can keep this up!

The start of our food storage...it's not a lot, but it's a start. Necessities: Yellow Death (AKA mac & cheese) and Ramen