New photo shoot

Hop on over to my photography blog to check out one of my recent shoots with these two cuties.

Stuck in my head...

Can't get this song out of my head. Makes me want to do a little slow dancing with my honey in our socks and sweats....................................got to go he just came home :)



......................what are still doing here? Go snuggle with you honey.................mmmmmmm snuggle :)

Come take a walk with me through SLC

So Friday morning at 4am we crawled out of bed and made our way to the airport. A couple hours later we were in the very snowy Salt Lake City. It was a nice easy flight and a no hassle airport experience, my favorite kind.


We went right to Temple square and DJ wasn't even out of the car for 3 minutes before he was playing in the snow :)

Then we went to the family history library to do our very first genealogy work. DJ had tons of success and he left with a print out of his great uncle Giuseppe's military registration card with his actual handwriting on it clear as day! And I was able to find the name and birth years of some of my dad's relatives who we previously have had no information. It was so much fun to search all those records and I could have easily stayed there all day.

Then we rounded the corner and I got my first look at the Salt Lake Temple. Needless to say it took my breath away.

We did the tourist thing took our photo in front of the Temple. Ugh I have put on so much weight this year and I'm so tired of being sick. But I digress...

We went to the Worldwide Church headquarters and up to the 26th floor to look at the whole valley. We had a wonderful tour guide who explained all the sites to us from Immigration Pass to Inspiration Point. We were amazed to think about Brigham Young standing up there on the Mountain plotting out the streets and the building locations. We looked at the Temple some more.

And the conference center. Did you know that the reason the plants and trees on the roof top of the conference center are laid out the way they are is to honor the traveling of the pioneers from the forested east to the more desert lands of the west. It's kind of cool to think about how symbolic every single part of the church is where most of us wouldn't even think about why the trees were planted on the east side of the roof.

DJ was a great listener.

And we were told this was a very clear day for the valley, I'm glad for that since it was our first time in SLC.

Then it was time for lunch. Yummmmmmmmmmm can you guess where we went?

That's right, we went to the Lion House. Oh the food was yummy and comforting and we sure did leave with a couple bags of rolls........yummmmmmmmmm

Next we headed to the Bee Hive House. That was so neat to see all the period clothing and furniture. We saw Brigham's cane and his desk.

Check out the bed. You had to tighten the ropes under the mattress each night to keep the bed together - hence the phrase sleep tight.

And check out the sink. Can you imagine washing dishes in this bad boy?

Then we moved on to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. I kept looking up at the stained glass ceilings, they just had me mesmerized.

Then we were able to go sit in the Chapel where President Hinckley attended his Ward. Remind me and I'll tell you how my friend ended up attending Sacrament with President and Sister Hinckley and ended up getting a 10 minute private meeting with the two of them out of the blue. It's an amazing story!!!

Then it was on to the conference center. The photos are slightly blurry. I didn't have my low light lens on due to the need for a zoom lens while we were walking around. We got to walk right down to the to the very front and sit where President and Sister Hinckley sat while attending different programs. It was very moving.

The size of the confrence center was just unreal. For those of you who didn't know each level seats 7 thousand for a total of 21 thousand people. And did you know that fire code states the building must be able to be cleared in 20 minutes, and they can do it? Wow!

One of my favorite things to see was the fountain in the lobby. Our guide explained to us the significance of the fountain was to symbolize the inspiration received by the Prophet in the building. The waters leading up to the heavenly open light into the sky. These photos don't even do it justice.

We also got to see see an amazing collection of paintings. They were the original images from the Book of Mormon the missionaries hand out. They were so beautiful. And we saw the new First Presidency paintings, gave me chills. Then it was time for some shopping.

And we decided to go up to see President Hinckley's grave site. The guide at the Headquarters told us that it was open to the public and located at 4th and N. We drove up and realized as we got there that it was huge and we had no idea where the site was. So we just drove and figured if it was meant to be we'd find the grave. Well not to any of our surprise we drove right to the sight. If you enter off of N take the road up to a slight hill and make the first left. The sight is right under the huge sycamore tree. It was a wonderful part of the trip and I wish we could have had more time there. We saw so may grave sites I would have a hard time listing them all here. I can tell you the spirit was very strong on those grounds and you just had the strongest desire to sit and be peaceful.

Then it was dinner and Cafe Rio, yummmmmmmmmmmmm, some more shopping and finally we checked into the Hotel. DJ and I got to sleep in our first King size bed, and oh baby I'm buying one of those next time I come into a ton of money, that was great!!!!!!

Next morning we went up to Logan for the wedding. It was a beautiful drive.

And the Logan Temple is so beautiful I just couldn't stop thinking about coming back up and going through it as soon as possible.

Here are a few pictures of the former Sister Price. These two are so perfectly matched and I am so happy for them!!!!!!!

Then it was back in the car just before the storm came back through. It was so beautiful!!!!

We came back and went to the University mall in Provo to shop and well just hang out together. Then we went to dinner at Zupas. Might I say if you find one of these lovely little spots treat yourself to the Thai chicken salad, oh mama is it good!
Sunday we got up and enjoyed a little time together before running off to Sacrament with our friend. Yes I can officially say that I have experienced a BYU college singles ward. It was an experience for sure. I felt the Spirit and the talks were good but I missed all the sounds of a family ward and all the tiny hugs I get every Sunday, it was so not Sacrament to me.
After church we dashed to the airport and said goodbye to our friends and SLC.

And we met a wonderful Brother at 32,000 feet. He is the President of one of the Church's colleges in Virginia. We shared a nice talk and he shared wome wisdom with us. It was a great end to a great trip.

I'm glad we are home. We enjoyed our time there but the time just reaffirmed to us that AZ is our home and where we need to be right now.

We're back......

...and it was amazing, and we're tired. So I'll post all the highlights of our trip tomorrow including this one which is still affecting me.

Yikes!

So I'm sitting at my desk at 4:30pm today winding down my day. I had just completed processing some arrest warrants when I heard a loud group of footsteps rounding the corner accompanied by the familiar crackle of a shoulder mounted police radio blaring out dispatch orders for "Court Room 2, repeat Court Room 2". Well I make eye contact with 5 of Surprise's finest as they run past me towards the courts. Turns out there was a defendant that had made a comment to one of the Courts clerks that he had a gun and planned on shooting the Judge. Yikes! They had him in handcuffs and back through our office to get to the PD in about 5 minutes flat! We had just been talking today too about how we hoped our guards did their job right cause our window wasn't bullet proof and we were for sure the ones who ticked off the most people. So needless to say it was a bit of an exciting afternoon - and you all know that I loved every minutes of the action.

By the way - does anyone know how to fix the spell check on blogger? Mine won't work?

Met the Man

And they are so unbelievable perfect for each other. These two made me laugh so much during the shoot. They were dancing and joking and smooching, it was all just so wonderful. I was so happy to see my friend Christy that in love and to see Les just as happy as she was if not more so. When I get the rest of them edited I'll share some more with ya'll. And holy hot chick would you check out Christy's hot, hot, hot new hair; o' la la.

Now why didn't I think of that?

Hahahaha - Brilliant right?

A little Sista Love

I just had to make a quick post about tonight's amazing enrichment activity at my ward. We all came together with a bag that contained 3 things which described ourselves. We sat in a circle and introduced ourselves by sharing what we brought. Then we went around the room and said something we loved about the woman to our left. It really brought the most wonderful spirit into the room and everyone was feeling the love. Then the amazing and talented Amie and Christie sang my most favorite song from Wicked. Oh it was so beautiful, brought tears to my eyes -the music, the words, the voices - all just so beautiful.

Then came my favorite part of the night. We all made a little plate of yummy goodness (in case you don't know yet us Mormons can do yummy goodness with our hands tied behind our backs) and the chit-chatting began. I looked around the room and saw sisters all talking and laughing. I saw them moving from group to group sitting on the floor, standing together, moving the chairs to see each other. I was overcome with the love in the room and it warmed my soul to see the sisters all mixed and matched sharing and talking, to hear the song of laughter in the room was just amazing. I just left feeling so happy to have this amazing group of women in my life and honored to call them friends.

So thank you Christie for your dedication to you calling and the love you share so freely with us. Thank you Amie for all the practice you put into that beautiful song, it was amazing as always. And thank you to all the truly wonderful sisters I am so blessed to call my friends.

Tag - and released back into the wild

A. The rules of this game are posted at the beginning.
B. Each player answers the question about themselves.
C. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, and then leaves a comment on their blog letting them know they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog to get the directions.
Questions:
10 yrs ago:
5 Things on my list of things to do today:
Things I would do if I suddenly was a Billionaire:
3 of my bad habits:
Places I have lived:
Jobs I have had:
Things most people don't know about me:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My answers:10 yrs ago: I was in the home stretch of my Sr year in High School. I was preparing for college, planning my to-do's for DJ's Jr prom and my Sr Ball, putting the crunch on the yearbook as the Sr editor, working 30 hrs a week as a photographer at a local studio and being a typical hot headed 18 year old.

5 things on my to-do list today:
- Finish entering the warrants for the people who failed to appear at court yesterday - done
- Go to Walmart and pick up some cleaning supplies and a new mop and some razor blades for the hubbs - done ($90 later -ouch - stupid cleaning supplies - I want a house elf)
- Cook dinner - kinda done - going out with mom and bringing home dinner for the hubbs
- post a new blog entry so I can keep my friends, lol - done
- read scriptures with the hubbs - will be done around 10pm

Things I would do if I suddenly was a Billionaire: pay off all our debt, buy the best personal trainer and chef possible and a great plastic surgeon, open my own photography business taking family photos in Maui for people who want vacation photos (don't' you think that's a great idea?), adopt 5 babies.

3 of my bad habits:
1) eating when stressed (ditto)
2) letting the laundry pile up
3) Not calling people back - I just hate the phone after being on it all day at work & I have a horrible time hearing people over the phone - I don't know why because every time my hearing is tested they say it's perfect but on the phone I really struggle to hear people - so I tend to do most of my communication either in person or through email.

Places I have lived:
1) Concord, CA (San Francisco)
2) Thousand Oaks, CA (Los Angles)
3) La Mesa, CA (San Diego)

Jobs I have had:
1) Photo lab tech
2) baker
3) veterinarian assistant

Things most people don't know about me:
1) I started working at 15 and have held a job ever since
2) I have an extreme fear of being in water when I can't see the bottom of where ever I am - ever in a normal clean swimming pool at night - if there is no light I'm not getting in
3) I was originally a double major in college and am only 6 classes away from a B.A. in psychology but dropped the second major so I could graduate before I turned 25 because I had a major stress induced breakdown that I was still in school (I started college before I graduated high school, actually had to take time off of a college class to go to my graduation for H.S., so I had been in school for roughly 20 years and therefore entitled to the breakdown).

Now I tag : Jamie, Meggers, Carrie, Shelly & Sher and anyone else who would like to jup on in the fun!

It's scrap-a-licious

Here are some recent scrappy pages of mine. These first three were done at a crop and on my B'day at Amie's house. I really love the "10 random pieces of ME" LO.

The following LO's are my submissions to the virtual crop I partcipated in this past weekend with Amie. Friday we got together at her place and were joined for a while by Christine & her SIL. It was a blast that lasted until the wee hours of the morn. Then Saturday I hopped up at 11am, made some homemade spagettite sauce and some meatballs, pulled out the scrappy good and went back to work. I scrapped through 5 movies and loved every minute of it all. My mom came over for dinner and the three of us hung out while I continued to scrap away the night. So here are the creations.

The challenge was to use chipboard in a different way then just inked or painted. I heat embossed the chipboard skull and the chipboard letters. I over heated the skull on purpose to het it to bubble and look distressed. Under it there are about 6 photos of the house and the pumkins we carved so I could keep it to a single page LO. And the letters are done to a vinyl shiny look.

This was a mulitiple photo LO where the challenge was to use the same photo at least 3 times.

The challenge here was to use at least 10 embelishments. I tried to push myself further and use some elements I don't often use like sewing (2008), pre printed journaling, arrows and I floated a transpercy over the stickled ? to give a layer look where the picture should have been in a LO.

This LO challenge was to use stamps. I stamped the word family then embelished it with stickles. I stamped then heat embossed the swirls on the bottom left of the photo. I then stamped the swirls on the upper right and embelished them with stickles too.

This challenge was to use transpencies. I used an overlay on the dog and made my own transperency with stickers on the right.

This LO challenge was to use pink & red and use the word love. (I really LOVE this LO)

This challenge was to use layers. I layered the papers and then the flowers.

This was a challenge to scrap someone or something that inspired you. I scrapped the amazing Amie's amazing hands playing the piano. And I lifted this LO from one of her's in her honor. I had so much fun doing this one! It's now going into a frame for her (don't worry I revealed it to her already). I choose to scrap Amie because of how she helps me to see the positive when I'm struggling to do so. She pushes and encourages me to keep trying when I feel like I can't. She is constantly trying to better her many talents by trying new things all the time. In short Amie makes me want to be a better person - love ya girly. And the phrase has become my favorite of her Amie-isms.
Here is her original LO.

This challenge was to scrap something with hidden journaling. I really like this page too. (Photo credit to the amazing Melanie Wellman)

Here is the journaling.

Don't miss our trip to Tuscon in the post below!