Happy Halloween!

Last week was our annual Halloween party hosted by my sister, Lisel. It was so much fun!!! Most of us dressed up and each year the costumes are getting better and more fun.

The food:

Dessert Table

Food Table

Trish and I made these gummy mummies cupcakes

Trish and I also made these edible eyeballs which were delicious!

These are pumpkin bread bowls for our soup

My sister, Lisel, made these awesome Jell-o worms

The costumes:

All of us in our costumes

Me and Trisha riding her broom

The wicked witch of the west (Elphaba) and the scarecrow (Fiyero)

My dad is a train conductor and Logan is a pirate

Tyler and Shayne came as Bert and Ernie

CJ and Tania always come up with great costumes, this year they came as two fatties

Little Ammon is the crocodile from Peter Pan

Zach is an Indian from Peter Pan

Landon as Captain Hook shoving worms in his mouth

Caleb got to be Peter Pan (all the kids had taken off some of their costumes by the time we got there)

Logan is a pirate

Mom was Uncle Fester

Lily is the cutest Tinkerbell I've ever seen

Who knew that Halloween could be so much fun as adults too? I know now and it's becoming one of my favorite holidays!! I can't wait to wear my costume one more time for our ward halloween party this saturday. Hopefully, we'll win the costume contest!!!

3-Hour Tour

Finally Trisha and I had a day off together and it was a great day. For those of you who have asked us, "What's in Vernal?" I will answer that for you. We went on a drive up Vernal avenue and ended up at the following places.

Steinaker Lake (10 minutes outside Vernal)

Me trying to put my glasses in my pocket and Trisha trying to tell me that the camera is going off. Looks like a little modern dancing...

Us again at Steinaker

Red Fleet Reservoir (20 minutes from Vernal)

Trisha posing by the State Park sign

A view of the lake from the highway

A view from a lookout point, looking back on Vernal

Flaming Gorge Dam (1 Hour from Vernal)

Sweet old-fashion cars in the parking lot

The dam and fall colors on the trees

Me and Trisha in front of the dam

A view of the Gorge

A bridge just before Flaming Gorge dam

Trisha enjoying nature and lovin her life!

Trisha posing on the edge of a cliff

Self portrait

Me posin

A view down the lake

This picture represents our drive

The gorge and the bridge

Beautiful day!

As we discover more and more things in our backyard, we love Vernal more and more. It has a lot to offer!!!

Stupid Lady!

For the past week my store has been resetting the shelves throughout the store. To do this, Associated Foods hires out lots of people and they all converge on the store and get it done in a few days. I got to work on Monday and found that for the next four days we would be blessed with an obnoxious, know-it-all in front of the pharmacy doing all of the shelves for the vitamins. She was constantly flapping her jaws and always found a way into everybodys business. She kept telling people all about vitamins and where they come from, how to take them and of course she would add in her two cents at every given opportunity. She never ceased to talk about how she had to pee, she yelled at other workers when they asked her to help them with something and my favorite of all is her asking us if we had a microwave in the pharmacy so that we could make meth... hmm... Of course I was extremely annoyed with this lady so when I got to work on thursday morning and saw her I was not very excited. A few hours into my shift I went out to help a lady who had asked me about acidophillus. This customer asked me a question and before I had a chance to respond, in popped Miss Know-It-All with her comments about this that and the other. I turned to her and asked her if she had any training to back up her full mouth. She gave me a dirty look but kept flapping her jaws. The customer and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes while she tried to continue talking to the wall. After she left I was able to answer her question but the drama doesn't end there! Miss Know-It-All came back to the pharmacy counter placed a piece of paper down and told my technician, "This is for your pharmacist. Just something to think about." I looked at my technician and we knew this was gonna be good. I walked over to the counter picked up the handwritten note and read the following,
"If you believe that your information is more accurate because you spent a lot of money to get it, you are still too young and arrogant to use it wisely :)"
Yep it even had a smiley face on it, isn't that nice?! Well to you Miss Know-It-All, I would much rather be young and arrogant than OLD and FULL OF *%<@

Life in Vernal

Trisha has posted some pics of our first place in Vernal. Go check them out here!!!

Sucks!

You know what really sucks? Waking up to a phone call from your manager at 9am asking you where you are! I guess today wasn't my day off :( I was 2 hours late opening the pharmacy. not good.

Beware! Long post ahead

The fun is over and its time to work. I'm glad I don't have to work tomorrow and I decided to spend the evening updating my blog (it's about time).

JUNE 27, 2009: THE WEDDING

Trish and I got married two months ago and it was an amazing day! The weather was great, she looked beautiful, we had tons of family/friends there to support us and we loved the parties!

Our first dance

Our nieces and nephews

Leaving in a limo

Our wedding cake was made by my aunt Brenda and decorated by my aunt Jan and uncle Jon. We loved it, it turned out so great!

Our wedding cake on Trisha's face. Who did that? rude...

The siblings

The Cheney family

The Sorenson family

The sexiest wedding picture ever!

Dipping

June 27-July 2: HONEYMOON IN LAS VEGAS

Our honeymoon in Las Vegas was a ton of fun. We spent a lot of time by the pool, walking up and down the strip and drinking virgin margharitas (I love those). We also went to the Bodies exhibit, watched the Tournament of Kings and the regular shows at Bellagio, Treasure Island, etc... It was so much fun!

Us at the Tournament of Kings

July 8- July 14: LAKE POWELL

Lake Powell is definately heaven on earth and I was so excited to go!!! It was full of relaxation, skiing, boating, cliff jumping, sun bathing, swimming and hiking. My family does this every other year for a week and we love it. I think Trisha liked it too, especially because she actually got up and skiied for at least 2 minutes :)

The beautiful sky of Lake Powell

This is why it is heaven on earth, check this out!

Trisha skiing

Me skiing

A night hike

Cliff jumping

Trisha reading a book on the houseboat

July 18, 2009: OPEN HOUSE IN CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of this event but it was a fun party! Trisha's family (especially her mom) put together an amazing open house. We had lots of friends come from Boston and I had some friends from Atlanta that also came up for it. It was great to meet and talk with people that Trisha has known for a long time. I also spent some significant time talkin with Trisha's high school friends, who are great! We spent almost a week in North Carolina before we started making the cross country tour in Trishas car

July 23-24, 2009: PIONEER DAY

Hands down the best holiday of the year! My family has a long time tradition (since my mom was a kid) of going to the parade route the night before and spending the night on the parade route. It is always a fun experience. We stay up all night, play cards, eat junk food, make a midnight run to 7-11 and sleep through the parade cause we are so tired.

July 26-August 13: EUROPEAN TRIP

We spent 17 days in Europe. We flew into Zurich, Switzerland and spent 5 days visiting with Todd and Christina and Natalie (Trisha's brother and his family) as well as discovering the country of Switzerland. One day we went on a hike in the Alps, another day we went to a historic swiss village. We found some furniture that belonged to Trisha's ancestors as well as visited churches and homes where my ancesters resided. We visited the beautiful lake Konstanz, waterfalls and had lots of fun.

The long plane over the Pacific, we were so excited to get to Europe

Me on top of the world in the alps (right next to a herd of cows, I might add)

Trisha and I hiking up the Alps

An old cottage in the historic village of Ballenberg. Its similar to "This is the place state park" but its all about Switzerland.

The palace at Lake Konstanz. There were also some beautiful gardens all around it. Christina's mom and dad took us to dinner at a little restaurant right next door and it was fantastic! So pretty and fun!

The view from the Alps on our hike

Trisha trying on a sweet swiss hat

Trisha and I building castles out of blocks
The Reine Falls in Switzerland
Fraunfeld, Switzerland

A stove that belonged to Trishas ancestors. It was on display in a home in Ballenberg

Swiss cows

Natalie trying to wake up Trisha

Todd and Christina, Thank you for hosting us and showing us around the country. We loved every minute of it!

Next we moved onto Paris for 4 days. I love Paris and I made Trisha visit almost everything I could think of in Paris. We walked nearly 10 hours every day and we were warn out completely by the end of the fourth day. Everything went so well and we had a great time discovering Paris!

The Eiffel Tower. We climbed to the second level (668 steps) and we felt like we were above the entire city. It was really cool.

Trisha and I in front of the Eiffel Tower

The Winged Victory in the Louvre. We actually went to the Louvre two days and saw some pretty sweet art pieces. This is a cool one.

These are my favorite paintings in the Louvre! They are called Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.

Who knew I was a work of art?

Enjoying my Coke and some roadside Kebab in Paris. Lovin life

Me at the famous upside down pyramid in the Louvre

Trisha and I on the stairs of the Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart) watching the street performers

A view from the evening boat ride through Paris

Trisha from the second story of the Eiffel Tower

Paris in its intricate glory

My favorite building in Paris- The George Pompidou

The cathedral of Notre Dame

A cool mural on the tunnels of the Metro
The statue of Liberty in Paris
The coolest bridge in Paris
The bridge and the Grand Palace in Paris

The final leg of our trip was visiting my favorite city in France. It is a city where I served on my mission for 7 months. This city is special to me because the members of the church there are incredible and they have become some of my most cherished friendships. They are accepting and loving and service is a part of their everyday lives. The people of St. Quentin have taught me how to love and express that love as often as opportunity permits. I told Trisha before we got there that this was not a big city, it does not have a lot of tourism sites and it is not really beautiful to most peoples standards. The week that we spent there was all about people!

Trisha and a baguette. mmmm
St. Quentin, ici, St. Quentin
Pascals Pizzeria "Bonjourno Pizza" And yes that is Trisha doing a crazy pose. Ask her what she is doing...
Me eating escargot (snail) that I asked Pascal to put on my pizza
Pascal at his pizzeria
Me and Georgette. My French grandma. Although it was kind of sad to be at her house without Andre there, it was so good to see her and spend lots of time with her. One of my favorite things about her is eating at her house. We had several meals there and each one was made entirely from things grown in Andres garden. It was delicious!
Trisha totally won this game of mini golf. You can tell by her swing how good she was
This is the hole where Pascal thought it would be really funny to knock my ball out of play. I was so ticked off. Don't worry I still won the game
Us eating dinner one night at Pascals house. We did this a lot and we would play cards and watch awesome French tv. He is such an amazing guy. He would give everything he owns for his friends and family. We loved spending time with Pascal, it was always fun!
Playing cards on sunday night on Georgettes back porch
The Seube Family. President Seube is the Stake President of the Lille Stake in which I served the last 10 months of my mission. Their family is strong and fun.
The center of St. Quentin. Every year they turn the center into a mock beach and it looked pretty fun actually.
We were fortunate enough to see the Bonamy Family just hours before they left on vacation to the South of France for two weeks. Their family has grown so much in the last six years; it was great to see them again. They are a sarcastic bunch so it was always fun to go to their house and joke around with them. Nothing has changed there and it was fun once again to spend time with them.

Boards!

After weeks (almost a month) of fighting people to get all of the pieces of my application sent to the right people, I finally recieved notice that I could schedule my board exams! I've been waiting for this for 3 weeks now and thought that it would be such a great thing to get out of the way. I always had in my mind that I would get it all done before the wedding and vacations but it is too late for that now cause there are no more spaces available, so this means that the anxiety and nervousness will continue for another 3 weeks :( However, I have scheduled dates now so I have something to look forward to and this gives me more motivation to study knowing how much time I have. I am taking the law exam on June 23rd, just hours before Trisha flies into Utah and I am taking the national exam on July 7th, just 4 days after our honeymoon. Not ideal but it was the only option. I ask for Trisha's forgiveness now and ask for some moral support and prayers as I prepare for these huge tests!!!

In lighter and happier news: I cannot wait to see Trisha again and I am so excited for our wedding which is going to be an incredibly fun start to our life together!!!