Into the New Year

Hope you all had a nice weekend friends! I have a hodgepodge of pictures to share with you. Matt and I both took a few days off to celebrate the New Year. One day we used a bunch of coupons to get all this food for free! Matt was in heaven!!!

We were pretty tired out from all of our celebrating over the last month so we kept it really low key on New Years Eve. We headed over to our neighbors' house for a fun evening. They got a new game, Power Grid. We were all worried we wouldn't be able to stay awake until midnight. But that game kept us occupied for hours! 

We rang in the new year with confetti throwers and champagne.

We barely made it in time to celebrate because no one could get the champagne bottle open!!

Matt has been helping one of his relatives, Blair, build us a china hutch. It is finally finished and now nicely displaying our china in our kitchen! 

I love it so much!! Who wants to come over for a fancy dinner and cocktails?!?

I found a few more projects for Matt to work on. We have been working on cleaning out our closets in the house and moving things to the garage. The empty boxes found their way up to the attic and the extra space was filled in the garage cabinets. He also hung up our folding chairs and tables.

And built a shelf to hold more stuff.

No worries, he had fun. So much fun in fact, he felt he deserved a new tool set!

While he did that, I enjoyed a day at the new OdySea Aquarium with Jenny and Abby. We had so much fun!

At the aquarium, they built an enormous tank that allows anyone (that wants to pay for it) walk around in the water with the fish and sting rays. It looked super cool!!

We got to touch all of these things! Jenny and I were scared, and Abby just liked splashing her hands around in the water!

So many Nemos!!!!

The jellyfish tank was also really cool!

My favorite part was a ride we did towards the end of the day. It reminded me of the moving carousel at Disney World. You sit in a movie theater style auditorium, and then move around in a circle to see four or five different displays. Well instead of learning about imagination and inventions like you do at Disney, this was the place to see all the big sea animals! We started by talking to one of the divers in the first tank.

Then we moved on to see the sea turtles. They liked to stay towards the top so it was hard to get a good picture.

Then we moved over to the sea lions. They looked much more athletic than the ones we usually see lounging at La Jolla Cove!

And we ended with the sharks!

We had such a blast and ended our afternoon at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory! A perfect day!

New Year's and Back to Reality

We headed to Omaha for New Year's to see some good friends. We first stopped in Lincoln to catch up with our old pal Megan. It was so nice to catch up with her for a few minutes! Then we drove to Omaha and caught up with Andy and Rebecca. Time flied when you are spending time with good friends!

We made a quick stop to see Matt's grandma and also got to see a couple of his aunts and uncles and his sister as well. It was a nice little surprise! Then we headed to our besties, Patrick and Angela to ring in the new year! As we pulled up, fireworks were going off. It was such a fun surprise!

We headed to dinner then back to their apartment for fun and games. As always our time with them was way too short!

We then met up with my grandparents to drive them back down to Arizona with us. It was a pretty fun drive!

We are now getting back to our normal life. Matt and I went to a basketball game at Grand Canyon University. We spent some of the evening at a hors d'oeuvres with some GCU royalty. The game was crazy intense! Every game is practically sold out, and the fans get crazy into it!

I am very much missing the magic of Christmas, but it has been nice to find the fun in the ordinary, too.

I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore

The time has come. No more class, ever!! I start fieldwork rotations Monday. As you know, I am doing mine in Phoenix. Therefore a move to another state was needed. This marks our third state as a married couple within one year. We wanted to visit all 50 states but maybe we should change our goal to live in all 50 states! Nolan and I made the trip, on Matt's and my anniversary. I got KFC for my anniversary dinner, I did not complain! Hopefully though, Matt will still take me out sometime ;). The highlight of the trip was the cow crossing the highway in Kansas.

Thank goodness that didn't happen in Texas since the speed limit was 75 on a two lane highway. We made the trip in 24 hours and started apartment hunting as soon as we got here. Matt and my dad got here the next day. My aunt, uncle and cousins were here so we celebrated Christmas on New Year's Eve. The guys went golfing New Year's Day, and we headed to the Fiesta Bowl that night. It was pretty cool. We got free chips and salsa, and not all the seats were full so we each got at least two bags.

We also ate at Rustler's Rooste. It was pretty fun. I had not been there since I was young. They have live music, country dancing, a steel slide, and it's on top of the mountain so you can overlook the whole city. We also got cotton candy to finish off our meal.

Everyone else went home so we spent the next day furniture shopping. We got some great design ideas. I took my first trip to a real IKEA; I think I will be back often!! We move in tomorrow so I will post photos of our new place once we get it ready. It may be awhile since I will slowly be decorating after work!
Hope everyone is off to a great new year!