Our Memorable Trip Home

Where do I begin?
We arrived in Arizona on Thursday and had a great time visiting with my grandma, aunt, uncle, and cousin. Friday morning we headed to the lodge in Heber, which is about a 2 1/2 hour drive, we of course made a stop at Sonic for a cherry limeade :-)
The reunion was Friday and Saturday and it was awesome, we had games, firesides, socializing, and great food. I know Brian had a great time with all the guy cousins playing football and paintballing, is there anything better for guys than trash talking other guys while playing sports? I can't believe how large our family is growing, my grandma now has 13 great grandchildren!

So Sunday morning comes and it's the day we're traveling back home. Apparently a few people got sick on Saturday night, some kind of flu or food poisoning. Well lo and behold I throw up my yogurt and tangerine breakfast, every last drop of it. Then Kyle (my brother in law) decides he doesn't want to keep down his breakfast either. What a fun drive it was back to Phoenix, with all the curves and everything.
We stopped at Sonic and I didn't even get a cherry limeade, that's how sick I felt! So we get back to our grandparents house and in addition to Kyle and I puking, Jenny joins in the fun. Well, this is going to be an interesting flight home, Kyle, Jenny, Brian, and I are all on the same flight home. So my Dad drops us off at the airport and we make our way through to the security line-this is where it gets good. Jenny had brought a big ziplock bag with a paper bag inside of it. We're in line and she's standing next to a garbage can, ya know, just in case. Well the line starts moving and now she's in between garbage cans, so you know what's coming right? She starts throwing up in the bag (so glad she brought that!) while Kyle, Brian and I stand around to block her from everyone's view. As she is finishing up I start to feel like I'm going to pass out or throw up, not sure which one. I start heading towards the garbage can, Jenny gives me a little nudge since I didn't quite make it all the way there, and I begin puking in the garbage. So now the three of them are blocking me while I puke up all my stomach bile. At this point we debate switching our flight because holy cow this is ridiculous, but we just really want to be home. So we continue on, with a stop at the men's bathroom for Kyle to throw up. We made it through the flight somehow and to our bed's that night. What a memory our trip home was! It's pretty funny thinking back on it, but at the time I thought I was going to die of nausea.

Family Reunion

We are back from Arizona and our fun-filled family reunion. We seriously had a great time and I loved seeing everyone.
I'll have to update later, I have a pretty eventful story of our journey home :)

Lil Sisters

My little sisters had a dance production in June while we were in Shasta, so we didn't get to see it :( My stepmom, Anna, did take pictures though and they are just adorable.

Cassidy on the left, Abby on the right

Abby striking a pose, what a ham, I love it! :)
Little Cassidy being graceful

I wish I would've seen them perform, but I'm glad Anna took pictures and I know there is a video of it that I'll be watching for sure.

2 posts in 1 day, I'm on a roll!

I thought it was a crock pot, my bad

So a few years ago when we were back at our small apartment, our first place as a married couple, we hosted a poker party. I wanted to be the domesticated little wife so I got some food and drinks all ready for our guests. I wanted to make a cheezy-meaty dip for the chips and thought I'd let it simmer in the crock pot so it'd be warm all night. I hadn't used our crock pot before so I was pretty excited and felt like such a good little wifey.
I plopped the ingredients in the crock pot and turned it on. I thought it was weird that it only had a low and high setting, but whatever. I went to check on it and was disappointed that it was getting stuck to the bottom and just not looking very good. I had Brian come look at it and asked what in the heck was going on. My loving husband smiled at me and said, "Hun, this isn't a crock pot, it's a rice maker."

Ooops, my bad.

Rice Cooker:

Crock Pot:

2 Year Anniversary!

We are seriously so boring. I have nothing to blog about. I would like to write all the little conversations between Brian and I because we make each other laugh so much, but I don't think anyone else would find them that funny. Mainly because they are Friends or Office related, or it involves funny faces or gestures that are hard to portray through a blog. I'm not that talented of a writer.

Yesterday was our 2 year anniversary! 2 years baby :-) We decided to bring out our gorgeous champagne flutes for every anniversary, so we pulled them out last night and filled them with....milk. That's right, milk. Hey, we love our milk so what's more perfect than toasting with it? We had lots of expenses this month: Shasta, new brakes on the bug, car insurance (we pay every six months), so we decided to save money and not go out to eat. We had just as much fun at home with our milk.
Love you babe, it's been the best 2 years ever thanks to you.

The Armstrong family reunion is coming up and I'm getting really excited. My aunt sent out the sleeping arrangements and itinerary which got me all giddy, I'm excited to see the family! Our theme this year (yes we have themes at our reunion) is Pirates of the Caribbean, it's going to be awesome. My Aunt and Uncle built a beautiful lodge a couple years ago and that is where we have all our family reunions. It's perfect because we all get to stay in the same place, not to mention the lodge is AMAZING.
Seriously, check it out:
http://www.nzlegacy.com/dev/faith-and-family.pdf

Weather is still beautiful here and I'm loving it. It's been a little warm at night, but last night it finally cooled down which was nice. Our big all house ceiling fan works a lot nicer when it's cooler outside :-) We finally got a kiddie pool last weekend and it is awesome. Brian even sat in for awhile, reading for his class :-) Unfortunately MJ is not a fan. Pictures really would've spiced up this paragraph.

Alright, I'm boring myself so I'm signing off. 2 days until Friday, yes!

Lance

Well, Lance is making decisions in his life and decided to join the Navy Reserves. We were all shocked and of course scared, but so happy for him and oh so proud. Originally he wasn't going until January, but they called him Tuesday and said he'd be leaving next Tuesday for boot camp!
I know it's just for a few months but man I'm going to miss him. I'll also be stressing that they are being mean to him and that he's not getting enough to eat, do I sound like his mom or what? Can you tell it'll be good for him to be away from his many moms for awhile? He's just such a good guy, I don't like when people are mean to him.
We are having a BBQ on Sunday for him, I'm going to ask if Brian and I can babysit his Office DVD's while he's gone :-) Hehe.

Shasta Pics part 2

So one of the wives in Shasta, Kim, had an amazing camera and took awesome pictures. She got some great ones of Brian on the sky ski and both of us wake surfing. We had such a blast, I'm ready to go back now :)

Brian on the sky ski, he got air dude...

But then he fell
I'm a surf girl, that's right
That's my man

I have a bunch more but these were fun and reminded me how much I want to get back on the lake.

4th of July

We had a good relaxing weekend, BBQ'ing and watching the fireworks our neighbors set off. We went to Chris and Brandi's for the BBQ and sat outside afterwards. MJ is NOT a fan of 4th of July, she loves America but does not see the point in fireworks apparently. I enjoyed some of the fireworks and then joined Brandi and Austin inside so I could try and calm MJ down and keep her from barking her tail off.

Saturday we went shopping with the gift card and money I got for my birthday and had a great time. It's been soooo long since we've been shopping and I just had a blast. I got a few shirts and a necklace and earrings. That night we rented two movies and watched them BOTH! Yep, we were that lazy. It was nice, we made popcorn and chowed on candy.

It was hard coming back to work on Monday but somehow we made it through the day.

Brandi and Chris and Brandi's mom came over for dinner last night, one last time :( I have a separate post for our year spent with the Taylor's, give me a minute to compose myself though.