gingerbread men.

gingerbread men have invaded our house, or at least Austin would claim this. gingerbread cookies are my favorite, and probably Austin's like 5th favorite cookie; hence I made a ton! all sorts of gingerbread men came out of the batch, because lets face it- decorating the same little smiley face guy with two buttons over and over again gets pretttty boring, so i decided to have a fun party in decorating my guys.

here are some of my favorites:

From Top Left to Bottom Right: zombie, pirate, regular joe shmo, mummy, and harry potter!

the raptors.

This year my intramural soccer team won! 

We got the coveted shirts that read "champion" really big on the back, so we can publicly display our awesomeness wherever we go. 

Champion quality, obviously. 

gobble til ya wobble.

Although Austin and I had many generous offers from friends to join them and their families for Thanksgiving, we ended up celebrating the day just the two of us-- and we were really excited about it! It was a very nice relaxing day for us, and thankfully we had no emergency disasters in the kitchen! We were very impressed with that.

I tasked Austin with the turkey:

And thanks to Austin (and Martha Stewart) it came out great!

I made the 2nd most important part--pumpkin pie!!

And thenn, we really enjoyed ourselves...

We loved our sweet gravy bowl!

Happy 1st Thanksgiving!

pumpkins.

can you guess who carved which pumpkin?

Austin was very excited about his pumpkin guts

Homemade Halloween Lights!
the one on the far right is Austin's interpretation
of a spider falling on my head haha

Happy Halloweeeen

Fall Break.

Austin had a little fall break from school and also had some time off of work (which is a miracle to get both at the same time) so we decided to take a small trip to California. We stopped along the way in Vegas and stayed at the Luxor- bomb diggity! We had lots of fun exploring the strip and climbing on stuff to take some sweet pics!

Pharaohs Lap 

Goats in Egypt?

New York ,New York

Paris

Mandalay Bay

Lions at MGM- so cool! except they were taking a nap
so this is the best pic i could get--
the underside of them sleeping

We experienced the most delicious buffet at the Paris Hotel! 

It was seriously so incredible we ate for like over an hour- seriously. 

The desserts were obviously our favorite part. 

After all this goodness we then continued on to the lovely state of California and visited with my family for a couple of days. We got to spend a lot of time together and had so much fun just hanging out and going to soccer games! 

One of the highlights was going to the legendary Lombardi Ranch! I've been going to Lombardi Ranch during Halloween season since I was a little kid and was so excited to relive my childhood with Austin- as for his excitement to do this, not so much- but we had a great time!

Austin, Janessa, JT

Jail!

Happy Halloween!

Our Life As of Late.

Austin represented his ROTC program at the Ranger Challenge competition at the Air Force Academy in Colorado. The two day competition is comprised of various physical and skill-based events testing university teams against one another, so they basically send the best of the best from their programs. Check out these sweet pics:

Austin was picked to be the team captain this year- so exciting! Thats him in the front!

This is Austin going across a 'rope bridge' as one of the events

Austin throwing a grenade

Grenade in the snow!

Hard Core

Their team took 3rd out of 15 universities competing--so awesome! As you can tell Austin is pretty hard core and amazing at what he does; don't worry if you can't recognize him in some of these pics its probably due to the mole-stache he grew out for the competition.

While Austin was in Colorado, I did a 5 miler with my sister as apart of the October Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We ran in support of our mom who has been diagnosed with three types of breast cancer at a stage 2 and will start chemo treatments soon. 

We love you mom!

Labor Day

Camping Again?

Yes, we are loving the warm weather (dreading the upcoming death of snowy winter) and try to do things outside as much as possible while we can. This time we went up into the Uintas by Strawberry Reservoir.

Our campsite was a little bare and less than ideal, buttt we had our own space a good distance away from any other campers so we loved it just the same.

The surrounding views were gorgeous, we were pretty close to the top of the mountains- we figured we were about 3,000 feet higher than we usually are in Orem. The clouds started rolling in Monday morning- as you can see in the background of our picture- which made for a quick pack-up of camp.

We chose this camp site because it is close to one of our favorite mountain biking trails-Willow Creek. A plus side to the pro-longed, overstayed winter this past year, is the increased growth of scenery.

Last year when we rode this trail things were pretty dead, which made for an easier ride with lower water at the creek crossings and clear, bare trails.

Fall 2010

This year all we could see was green in all directions, making a beautiful ride that was a little more difficult with overgrown paths and higher water creek crossings. Buttt, very pretty to look at.

Fall 2011

 Needless to say I fell alot; once even onto some thistles which Austin had to help me pick out of the bum of my shorts (good thing I was wearing my padded ones). Nonetheless we rocked it, here are the highlights:

Austin brought his fishing pole and caught a 'little' fish in the creek along the way.

Creek crossing-Doh!

A little 'flower' my bike picked up along the way

On the way home we stopped at one of our favorite places, Daniel's Summit for some good country mountain food as a great end to another successful holiday weekend!

Mom, I promise this picture isn't 'inappropriate'

The Fourth

To celebrate our Fourth of July weekend we went camping up in the Uinta Mountains

Our campsite was pronounced 'Du Shane'- don't get too creative here people

 We were patriotic and even brought a small flag to put outside our tent! Check out our cool site, and the raging fire I made...with a little bit of Austin's help :)

Because of the never ending winter here in Utah, the water was really high and we got to see these really cool waterfalls!

In the upper mountains there was about 3-4 feet of snow still!

Check out his leg almost all the way in the snow!

There was a hike Austin really wanted to do in the upper mountains but it was all covered in snow. But through his perseverance we tried to do the hike anyways. We made it about 20 yards or so...until Austin fell through a bit of snow and decide the hike 'wasn't such a good idea' 

We also went mountain biking, in the lower greener parts. It was beautiful!

Right before I 'bumped' those rocks at the bottom

Fun Fact: chewing tree sap turns it into gum! As taught by Austin's Grandma Sloan

We also got to snatch a peek at a mama moose and her baby in the wiiiillllld!

Looks like we found ourselves a new favorite adventure spot! We couldn't believe this was just a little over an hour away from Orem; we will definitely be going back soon!