Summer Highlights

We started with a cruise to Montego Bay, Grand Cayman Island, and Cozumel in June. It was amazing, keith is totally a fan of cruises and traveling now. He ordered more food than you can imagine, with a record of 11 plates one night. The beaches were perfect. Our favorite was the Grand Cayman and we want to plan many return trips in the future.
After the cruise I stayed with my sisters in Austin, Texas for a week enjoying time at Kate's house and swimming with my cute nieces.
Then camping in Cody Wyoming over the 4th of July, where we wandered through Buffalo Bills Museum with thousands of Guns and went to a Rodeo.
We took Jamie and Matt camping at the ranch and let Jamie shoot for the first time, I think she enjoyed it almost as much as Matt by the end.
Keith and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary at the beginning of August. We ate a fancy dinner at Tuscany in Salt Lake then went to Deer Valley and stayed at the Goldener Hirsch Inn, which was so cute. We hiked up a trail that took a lot longer than we anticipated and luckily were able to ride the ski lift down. We also watched the olympic skiers jump into the pool for practice.
It has been a busy and fun summer!

Deanna sent me some real pictures!

More Pics

Sorry there aren't any of Keith since he took them all with his phone and they are not very good quality either. I added pics of Keith's cute nephew who I couldn't get enough of this weekend.

Weekend Cowgirl

Week life in Salt Lake is nothing like weekend life in Chesterfield, Idaho. From Dental hygienist and business man to cowgirl and cowboy over night. I had work off Friday and Keith's family planned to take some family pics, so we headed out late Thursday night.
Friday and Saturday morning we helped Keith's dad herd some cows across the mountains on the range. We put on our full gear: my boots with spurs, hat that keith got me from Australia, and of course I am the only one who wore a down jacket all day. The only thing I don't have is chaps (properly pronounced shaps, i've learned).
I quickly learned a cow call and jumped right into the herding game. I mostly just pushed from behind of course, but i'm sure i helped some. :) Learning to control my horse was the hardest part for me. Keith kept telling me that I am supposed to control the horse and not let him control me. The horses like to stay together though, so when the others separated and left me behind the herd to push them along my horse kept stopping because he didn't want to go on without the others.
One time my hat blew off and no one was there to help me so I had to get off my horse by myself and then get back on with out the horse running away. Keith usually has to push me onto the horse, but somehow the adrenaline rush got me back on myself. Then after that, my horse was mad we were alone and that I kept making him move where he didn't want to go. Finally he just decided to run me off. I held on like crazy though with my head down so my hat wouldn't fly off and I kept trying to pull the reigns to the side so he'd have to turn and stop like keith taught me. It wasn't working though and I was sure I'd fly off any minute and break all the bones in my body. I was praying really hard I wouldn't die when I fell off, but finally I got my horse to calm down. I was really proud of myself for surviving it all even though no one was there to see it, but the cows and my horse. They were probably laughing inside at me. Keith said he was really proud of me and I was doing a great job with my riding.
The cows are huge and stinky, but the range is beautiful. The aspen trees were all yellow and orange. Keith and I got to ride up beaver canyon looking for cows. It was amazing. The beavers have built ongoing ponds with trees forming steps all the way down the mountain side. I've never seen anything like it. I can definitely see why Keith loves ranching so much, but I don't think I'm quite ready for it full time yet. I was done after a couple of hours when I was covered in mud and dirt was getting in my nose and the flies wouldn't leave me alone.

The Good Life

I don't know why I have a blog, obviously i am horrible at keeping up on it. My summer has been mostly filled with work, but we have enjoyed a few fun trips to Idaho to see Keith's family and a trip to Newport Beach with mine. Being out of school and working, this is the first summer where I feel like I get to live adult life. After work or on days off I can do whatever I want. Today was the perfect example:

Keith and I got to sleep in (His new job is demanding, but hours are flexible which i have a love hate relationship with).
I dropped him off at work (we left his car there the night before).
I went to the mall right next to his office and after only being there a little while Keith decided he didn't want to miss out on the fun and came to meet me.
Then we went to lunch.
Now I am laying down eating cookies in the air conditioning.

I know it won't last forever once kids come along, but for now I am really learning to enjoy my life.

February

Lately:

My parents came for a visit over President day for a week. We got so excited we bought a new bed so they would actually have somewhere nice to sleep instead of the air mattress. (Keith's dad says he would rather sleep on the floor than that mattress.) So now when family and friends come to visit we'll have a place for them to stay. My mom had to find housing for AJ at BYU for next year, which took a couple days of looking to accommodate 5 boys together. We also did a lot of fun shopping and she helped me find bedding for our new bed. It is so cute! My dad went to the dental convention with me on Thursday and Friday. The convention wasn't that great but it was fun to have my dad with me. Jake and my dad skied a lot and we frequently had dinner with relatives. We also enjoyed watching the Olympics in the evenings. Keith was pretty upset over some of the men’s skating outfits with jewels, sparkles, sheer tops, pink corsets, and feathers. We laughed pretty hard with Jake about it. We loved watching snowboarding with Shaun White outdoing all the rest.

Matt got into BYU's MBA program! We are so excited to have Jamie and Matt in Utah with us and AJ next year. It is always so fun to have family nearby. Jamie always motivates me to sew and is a fun shopping partner.

I started my new job a couple weeks ago and things are going well. My office is just down the street a couple of minutes, which is so convenient and the office is newly remodeled. My doctor and the staff are really nice and wonderful. I don't think i could ask for a better place to work. I am pretty exhausted every night still. Hopefully i get used to it soon. Right now it is 3 days a week, which is perfect, but soon it will be 5 days a week. Hope i can handle it.

We had a V-day love party at Whitney’s house that was super fun. She always makes delicious chocolate dipped strawberries and sugar cookies. We played games and had a fun valentines!

Our Netflix and Lost obsession continues. We are on season 4 now. I think we need to limit our tv time so we aren't wasting our lives away each night. Also a treat is usually associated with our tv watching which isn't going to be good for us either. :) But Keith did teach me about Tim Tam slams last night. They were really good. You bite off the corners of the cookie (we used Andes chocolate mint cookies) and dip them in hot chocolate. Then you suck the hot chocolate through it and it melts deliciously as you pop it in your mouth.

The earthquake in Chile gave us a scare, since AJ is there in Rancagua on his mission. All the missionaries were accounted for and no injuries were reported. We got a letter from him today and he said he was in a nice safe area and his building withheld it all fine. He was bit by a dog though this week and we hope he doesn't get rabies. He said they gave him some shots and antibiotics. Scary!

I went to a party this weekend where we all had to share things we learned from 2009, and I learned to make zipper flower accessories for it. They turned out pretty cute. Look at: http://www.marthastewart.com/article/zipper-flower-pins

Here's pictures of our new bedding:

Christmas and New Year's

I can't believe it's 2010 already! December and Christmas flew by. Keith only had Christmas and New Year's off from work so we hurried up to Idaho to spend as much time with his family as possible on those two weekends. I spent the month baking treats and Christmas shopping between work days. When we finally made it to the ranch we enjoyed many fun family activities.

On Christmas Eve we made it in time for the ward Christmas party, where we we able to join the family in singing some cowboy Christmas carols. It is so fun to hear Keith sing because he gets really into it and isn't afraid to sing loud. He even adds special touches like instead of the ring we had to repeat in one chorus he sang ring-a-ling-a-ling several times and actually made it sound good. He is funny. Christmas morning was filled with many great gifts and happy smiles. We had a delicious Christmas feast in the afternoon after playing with all the gifts (which with the Crandall family means shooting all your new guns). Keith and Clay couldn't have beamed more as they tried to show each other up with their shooting skills. At night we told stories and laughed with Keith's siblings. We also had a fun day of ice skating. Keith and I have perfected our paired skating skills and are now ready for competition. :) Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera so we didn't get any pictures. We ate lots of food and treats and hot chocolate! It's not a holiday without the treats!

New Year's Day was again filled with shooting since Keith bought a couple boxes full of clay pigeons (which I learned are not actual birds, but are round fluorescent orange discs that can be flown in the air with a funny chair contraption). I found it was a little above my skill level to shoot something that is moving, but I had a better record than all the boys at shooting Keith's new 9mm gun (for those who are not from utah or idaho and no very little about guns this is the kind in the movies like oceans 11 that are small and scary guns people use to kill each other). So you could say I am adapting pretty well to the ranching lifestyle. We did some other activities other than shooting like playing card games and watching movies. Also it snowed so we played in it and Clay pulled Deseret and I around on a sled with the four-wheeler. It was pretty neat to watch Keith's dad use a big tractor to plow away the snow from the driveway all the way to the road. We went to the hot pots in Lava Hot Springs while it was snowing, which was way fun! As we were leaving to come home (literally in the car backing out of the driveway), Keith's dad saw a rat out by the barn and shouted to Clay and Keith to get a gun. You wouldn't believe how fast Keith and Clay ran out each with a gun in hand loading the bullets in crazy fast mode. It was a race. I don't know who shot it first, but I know they both shot it enough times that no one would doubt it was dead. It was hard to come home to regular life again, but we sure had a fun holiday time!