Sedona

My parents came to visit last weekend and it was so good to see them! Between eating lots of sweets, watching Celtics and Suns games, the highlight of the weekend was a trip up to Sedona. Ever since I went through Sedona the first time, I knew my parents would love it and I was right! We did some shopping in town, but what I really loved was checking out a few native american historic sites. Our first stop was Montezuma Well.

It was really cool, its a natural well where some native american tribes lived several hundred years ago. At this site, you can still see lots of cliff dwellings. Here are my parents looking down into the well.
My parents looking out over the well. Their was a path down that led you down past more dwellings and up close to the well.
This is up close to one of the dwellings. Its hard to see from the picture, but this "doorway" leads into a very large living space.

The cool part of the site was how close you could get to everything.

Adam my mom and I at the bottom of the well.

Here Adam is checking out the "drain" of the well. This water goes out of this spot at a rate of 600 lbs a day! The ancient residents of this area built a 1 mile ditch to irrigate their crops and it still works and thrives today! It was nearly overflowing when we were there.

Every time I turned around, my mom was climbing on something!

Yep, as soon as I walked away, turned back around, my mom was halfway up this tree.

The other place visted was V Bar. This site was sooo cool! It's a cliff covered in about 1,000 petroglyphs. They have someone on site that tells you all about them and what they know about some of the symbols.

One of the walls of the site was used for their Calendar. There were special rocks that allowed shadows to be casts on the sides of the rock and when the shadows hit a certain spot on the wall they would know when to plant, harvest etc. It was soooo cool!
I highly recommend a visit to this site. V Bar and Montezuma Well are only a few miles from each other. It doesn't cost anything, all you need is the Red Rocks Pass for your car (Montezuma Well is Free!)

Pretty in Pink

I helped throw a baby shower for our YW President, Katie. It was a lot of fun! Katie is a big 80's fan and her favorite 80's movie is Pretty in Pink! How perfect for a shower! I added just a few 80's touches here and there and really played up the pinks throughout. I ran out of time and didn't get very many good pictures, but here's what I got!

This was the dessert table. I hung pink cassette tapes for the backdrop and made up lots of pink treats (tapes were from goodwill that I sprayed pink and labeled with songs from the 80').
This was the main food table... Only got a picture before all the food showed up!
This pictures isn't the best, but these cookies were yummy! They are strawberry white chip, the special ingredient is Strawberry Nesquick! I just used my favorite chocolate peanut butter chip cookie mix substituting the strawberry for the chocolate (and cut out some of the sugar since the strawberry is already sweetened.
These were mini brownies with cream cheese frosting and sprinkled with pop rocks!
Pink lemonade cupcakes

Here is a close up of the tapes.

Congratulations Katie! We can't wait to meet your new baby girl!

Happiness is...

Having this thing rented!!!

After a year and a half on the market for sale, we finally gave in and turned to a renting option. Lucky for us our property managers found someone in just over a week! The funny part is they apologized for it taking so long.. Really? Are you kidding, after having to make mortgage payments on it for nothing over the last year and a half, an extra week is nothing! What a temporary relief! We would still have preferred a sale, but this is sooooo wonderful for now!

Loving a Bargain!

Several months ago I started couponing and I pretty much love it! I even have Adam in on it, he takes care of all the freebies you can get online and I clip all the Sunday coupons. I don't have too much time to be ultra obsessed and go to every different store with the best deals, so I really just focus on two: Fry's for groceries since its the one thats closest and where we always go anyway and Walgreens for all our hygiene and household products. Right off the bat I took the advice of friends and set up my couponing binder and its made it so much easier to know all the coupons I have and to match to the adds. So far I know we've saved a ton of money and got to try some fun products we normally wouldn't buy, but hey when they are free why not!

I was so proud of my last shopping adventure to Frys. Now I know some of you who coupon will probably say I could have done it for less, but I was very proud of my savings. OK, are you ready? This whole table of food:

Would have cost me $134.40 if I would have bought everything at normal price but without cuopons.... HOWEVER, I am smarter than that so are you ready for the final price????? $39.53! !!! Can I tell you how thrilling it is to hear a cashier tell you you saved $94.87. Thats a savings of 70%!!!! Hello! Here's a closer look at the goods:

Notice all the fresh produce and also there is a $10 pork roast. Considering that coupons are rare for fruit and veggies (although I did have a coupon for the Cuties and a $3 off produce coupon) I think I did pretty fab with all my purchases!

And this picture shows all of my FREE stuff! Thats right all of that stuff was FREE after my coupons matched with the store sales! How sweet!

If you don't currently coupon, well you should! There's deals to be made!

SUNS!

Last Friday night we got a surprise phone call from a member of our Stake Presidency offering us tickets to the Suns game that night. Of course we said YES!!!! We were in the middle of dinner and had to eat pretty quick to make it out the door in time, but it was so worth it!

We were in the upper level, but who is going to complain when they are free? Plus they were second row on the top, so still pretty decent seats!

We had soo much fun and it was a great game! Amare was unstoppable that night and we even saw the Jazz Coach, Jerry Sloan get ejected from the game for shoving the ref. It was hilarious!