San Diego Vacation

As many of you may remember, Jeph and I won a few free vacations and decided to see if the offer was valid, so we signed up to go over Pioneer Day. To our surprise, everything worked out great. We enjoyed a great weekend not too far from San Diego and just wanted to share a few pictures from our vacation.
Jeph enjoying the water at the beach.














Driving in our convertible PT Cruiser.














Dinner at Red Robin














Pics at the San Diego Temple. Since this was sort of like our 1 year anniversary trip, we decided to do some Sealings at the temple. It was a little different but a great experience to see such a beautiful temple inside and out! This was the 7th temple we've been to together!


























































And the awesome Pala Mesa Resort where we got to stay during our trip.














It's a good thing we won two of these free vacations so we can start planning for next year! We love those dealership prizes!

LEGOLAND

I look so excited in this picture, I think it was the kid in me coming out to enjoy a great day at Legoland!














Jeph and his new friends



















The coolest Mariachi band ever!














Enjoying a nice little boat ride through the park.














The Taj Mahal














A lifesize replica of a Volvo XC90














Here is a slideshow of some more way cool Legoland displays

San Diego Zoo

On our fun little trip to San Diego we had to stop by the famous San Diego Zoo. Gotta love the animals.

















Jeph and I looking our very best

















Giraffes

















Elephants













I'm pretty sure this was the highlight of Jeph's entire trip.













What could be more better than elephant poo paper?

CONGRATS MIKE & KIM!!!

Concerts!!

This past week we were able to hit up 2 different concerts and had a blast at each of them! For each of them we had some pretty cool couples accompanying us so we felt pretty lucky. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Laurie (my sister) and Ken. We knew this was the only way to get them to come visit us in Utah!











































Thank you Laurie for some of the pictures



Concert #2- Colbie Caillat and John Mayer!! For this concert we went with Jeph's brother Mike and his fiancee Kim (more pictures to come). With them getting married in 2 days, we figured this would be a fun wedding present for them. Congrats, guys!!

Sad News

As some of you may have heard, today the LDS church announced that effective immediately, no North American missionaries would be called to serve in Russia. Those already in Russia will finish their service but those that are currently in the MTC will be reassigned. The church reports that the Russian Government now requires humanitarian visas to be renewed every 3 months instead of the old way of once a year. With 9 Russian missions and approximately 90-100 Americans in each, this is simply too costly for the LDS church.
It is interesting to hear this announcement as just yesterday I had expressed to my family my concern that in the near future, missionaries would be pulled out of Russia. With the recent events that have happened and the official statement the Russian Government issued against the U.S. this past week, it is apparent that the mother land is still hostile and preparing to hear the Gospel.
I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve in Russia and meet those great friends that I was able to become acquainted with. Some of the strongest members are hidden in the smallest villages there and Satan is trying his best to keep the remnants of the lost tribes of Israel from hearing the word of God. I do not worry though, this will not stop the work. Because of the humble circumstances many members are in, the church is all they have and they will sacrifice anything for this work and its progression. The Lord has prepared many people to receive the blessings of the gospel and they will hear it one way or another! The work will prevail!

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700243183,00.html

Randomness

We had a great 4th of July this year but were dumb enough to only get these 2 pictures of the whole day. The day started off bright and early at the Murray City Parade because my friend Lacey was in it and because Jeph had never been to a parade before. Lacey was good enough to make sure we got some water and a visor when her float passed us on by. After the parade we knew that the most American breakfast would be a McDonald's breakfast so we indulged and took a nap while watching a series on the Revolution on the History channel. For lunch we had a BBQ with Jeph's family and then were off to Western Stampede rodeo with Mike and Kim! Jeph and I both tried to dress up the best we could and tried our best to fit in with the rest of the crowd.














Jeph enjoying his almonds















This is a picture of our new dining table! Mike and Kim bought the exact same table and after we saw it in their new place, we knew that we wanted something similar. Since they didn't mind us copying them, we went and got the same table for a great deal!



















Last week, was the 3rd annual Simmons Family Lagoon Day. This was the first year Jeph and I were able to attend and it was a blast! Stay tuned for the pictures coming soon!

Tim McGrawff and Kalai concerts

A few months ago, I came home from work and Jeph hadn't gotten home yet, but on the table there was a bouquet of flowers and two tickets to see Tim McGraw. I was way stoked because I do love country music but I figured the delivery had been to the wrong house since I know how much Jeph despises country. Especially because Jeph tries to tell me all songs are just like Tim's song about the BBQ stain on his white t-shirt song and called him Tim McGrawff, really thinking that was the guy's name. But come June 27th we did end up at the Usana Amphitheatre watching Tim and Jeph admitted to enjoying the show. He said it wasn't Dave but it was still fun.





























This is way late, but at the beginning of May SLCC had an end of the semester party and Kalai provided a free concert. So for our Friday Night Date we headed over to see Kalai play and it was tons of fun. It was a small crowd and we even went up to talk to him after and tell him we are related to the famous Mike Simmons who was the Assistant Engineer on his most recent album Crows Feet. He said Mike was one of the best he'd ever worked with and I believed him but Jeph thinks he was just saying that.

Before Picture

We found a picture from before we took over and changed everything. Here it is:













And Jeph was freaking awesome and installed the new recessed lights so here's that too:

The Kitchen

So Jeph and I have been spending pretty much all of our spare time in the kitchen lately, but unfortunately it was not to perfect our cooking skills, as many of you may have hoped. Instead we have been working on our construction skills. Yes, in our kitchen. We started by changing the wall color from off-white to mellow yellow, painting our brass chandelier black and buying new light covers that are a little more modern. Once we realized how bad the mellow yellow and our golden yellow cabinets looked together, we took on the big project of re-staining them to a lovely mahogany red. This took a lot more time than we were planning and it left our kitchen a disaster for a good week. In the mean time, Jeph found a great deal on a dishwasher and stove on KSL classifieds so we bought new used white appliances and sold our old almond colored ones on KSL. That's just the big stuff. The little things include the new hardware on the cabinet doors, a new faucet for our sink, taking out the florescent lights and putting up on of those pan holder things, and under-cabinet lighting. We also bought great track lighting from IKEA to go in our light box but after buying three different sets of the same track and none of them working out, we finally decided that tomorrow we will by the expensive lighting from Home Depot or Lowes. We finally realized that paying triple the price for lights that work will be worth it!

















Jeph and the old chandelier
















Old stove and dishwasher (note the old color of the cabinets, we forgot to take pictures before so this is all you get of that old color)













New stove and dishwasher!
















Our messy kitchen with no cabinet doors












Awesome new chandelier


















Overall finished look so far




















New faucet
















Future projects we would like to work on are the counter tops and donating our table and chairs to the newlyweds, Dave and Kim and getting something new. Good times!