Summer is OVER...

Steven and I continued our "end of the summer" tradition of going to the lake. This year we went with Steven's parents and brother Wes and his girlfriend Shawna. It was a great way to spend some time with Steven's dad before he left for Africa again for 2 more months. We all met at Apache Lake and stayed at the resort there. We had SO much fun! I still didn't get up on the stupid wakeboard, which makes me so mad BUT, we just bought a girl wakeboard that is a lot smaller than Steven's huge one so I will hopefully be successful next time we go! It was so nice to de-stress from our crazy summer, and was a good last hoorah before we started school again.

The lake was beautiful!

Steven and Wes

Steve and Ann

Oh Wes...

Pretty Shawna!

I took a little spill...

My arm ended up getting caught around the rope. This picture is of my rope burn right after my little incident.

This picture is of the massive bruise on my arm and back the next day. A week later, I still have huge bruises and they look a whole lot worse... I'm such a klutz!

Steven borrowed a Sky Ski for the weekend and fell in love with it once he figured out how to use it!

Goodbye Washington!

We are driving back to Seattle tonight to pack up our apartment and then come tomorrow morning we will be Arizona bound! And, 26 fun driving hours after that we should be back home. =) We have had such a fun summer, but its been a hard one too. We are glad its over and are so excited to go back home, start another semester, and be close to family again.
Thanks to all of the wonderful friends we have made this summer! We will miss you!

FOOTBALL IS COMING AND I COULDN'T BE HAPPIER!

The Little Things

Today Steven and I stumbled upon a Sonic in downtown Spokane so we stopped and got lunch and drinks (my favorite!). It totally made us homesick for the seemingly "simplier life" of Thatcher. We always had little Sonic dates while we lived there. It got us talking about how ready we are to be done with the summer and to go back to our normal lives. This summer has been so crazy! The day to day grind gets stressful and wearing. We are so grateful we've had this opportunity, but we are definitely ready to be done with this summer. I don't think I've ever been so ready to go back to school! Steven's job leaves very little time for us to be together so I've become very grateful for the little things that he has done throughout the summer to show me that he loves me and recognizes the sacrifices that I have made so he can do this crazy job. Just a few of my favorite things have been:

• Last night when he was so tired and sick, but still was willing to let me drag the huge tv thats supposed to be in our hotel living room into the bedroom so we could lay in bed and watch a movie together.

• When I went back to AZ for a few weeks and he made sure that there were flowers waiting in my room for me when I got there.

• The simple fact that he let me leave for 3 weeks!

• The time he surprised me with a lobster dinner that he cooked himself.

• The texts that I get several times a day that say "I love you".

• The way he sticks up for me when the guys we work with are rude or disrespectful.

• When he says "thank you" for dinner or clean clothes, etc.

• The way he snuggles up to me in the morning when he wakes up and keeps shifting around trying to appear like he is "accidentally" waking me up.

• When we are finished with dinner and he says "lets go get a Mcdonalds ice cream cone". He knows I love that!

• And, that he has worked so hard for us everyday this summer.

It is so hard some days to feel that I have a purpose in my life right now. Its hard to stay patient and supportive. There is no way that WE would make it through this job without all of the little things that Steven does to make me feel special. This is just my little way of showing my appreciation. I'm a lucky girl!

Oh Boy!

So my life right now consists of work. Work consists of answering phones all day while being bored out of my mind, but mostly it consists of a bunch of crazy boys. Thank goodness I have the other awesome wives out here to keep me sane. Here are a few examples of the "fun" times we have with our boys...

The other night Steven came home and made me come outside with the camera to see these HUGE slugs that one of the guys found on a house he knocked on. I've never seen such huge slugs!

Steven was super sweet and decided to torture the poor thing by pouring salt all over it. It didn't live much longer...

A bunch of the guys also decided to grow mustaches. They were sick. I wouldn't let them in if they knocked on MY door! They all colored them in with mascara, black markers, etc to make sure they looked good in pictures... This is Steven's buddy Anthony who begged to use my mascara; I gave him a Sharpie instead...

THANK YOU STEVEN FOR NOT GROWING ONE! =)


And, here they all are showing off their manlihood by doing 4-man pushups. Boys... The married boys were sure to show up all the single guys though and WON.