Yellowstone Trip and why I HATE Volcanoes

This past summer we took a weekend to go up to my families cabin in Island Park Idaho, and while we were there we went to Yellowstone! This area of the country is beautiful and it is my favorite place in the world!

Here is us after watching Old Faithful which was as old and as faithful as always... Justin made fun of me because there was this little blue bird flittering around and I took more pictures of that blue bird than I did of old faithful... unfortunately none of them turned out or else that cute little bird would have been starring in this post as well!

Some beautiful, scalding hot pools of death! Looking at these pools reminded me that we were standing on top of a giant super volcano that is due to explode very soon and when it does it will destroy almost everything in the north west corner of the US...

Random Tangent:

You might wonder why I talk about Yellowstone being

a giant crater of death. That comment is due to my fear of volcanoes which was instilled in me at the early age of 9 after my Dad let me watch Dantes Peak with him.

I thought is was just going to be some documentary on a volcano that exploded once upon a time, instead it is about a volcano exploding and destroying a little town, and (SPOILER ALERT!) the sweet old lady grandma dies in the end from acid

water! I mean her legs literally get eaten off by acid... and then they leave her to die, alone in the woods... I shudder just thinking about it!

Seriously though... I was actually terrified to shower for months after watching that movie... I mean I would still shower and all, but I would only stand in the water long enough to get wet, and then I would soap down and shampoo and condition and all that outside of the water flow, and then I would jump back in and wash off really fast! haha needless to say my shower time was record breaking haha! Justin probably wishes my showers were still that short haha!

But just a word of warning to the few of you who actually get this far into my tangent... DO NOT SHOWER IF A VOLCANO ERUPTS NEAR YOUR HOUSE!!! THE ACID WATER WILL KILL YOU! you have been warned...

Anyways, now I'll get back to very fun Yellowstone post!

We saw more wild life on this trip than I have ever seen in Yellowstone, which is saying a lot because I have probably visited Yellowstone at least 18 times in my life... we saw buffalo (or bison), elk, A BEAR (first wild bear i've ever seen), and a bald eagle! Here is a picture of the bald eagle just chillin on a this dead tree with his bird friend!

And then we finished off the day hanging out with Justin's best friend Kyle Roeser and his wonderful fiance at the time Stella! (Roeser and Stella are now happily married and doing just fantastic!)

All in all it was an awesome trip! You just can't beat a fun filled weekend at the cabin! And as I said earlier, Island Park is my favorite place to be! So even with the dangerous volcano right down the road I would still choose to be there over anywhere else in the world!

January - June Catch up!!

I have been wanting to get these posts done for a long time and I am starting to realize that once the little guy comes I probably won't have the time/energy to do it so i'm just going to do a few posts to get caught up on this year so far!

This is the BEAUTIFUL cake that the lovely talented Jenae made for my 23rd birthday back in January! It is basically the perfect cake because it combines 2 of the best things ever... chocolate and strawberries!

Here is Justin and our friend Dan Neff posing with the Valentines day craft that Marie Neff and I made! The Neffs are awesome friends and we've missed them a lot since we've moved!

I was an Activity Days leader for the 8-12 year old girls in our provo family ward! I miss those girls so much! We had grand times together and it was probably one of the best callings ever!

Christopher gets home from the Dominican Republic! Justin and I got to travel down California to hear Chris's homecoming talk and for little Dallin's baby blessing!

Side note, this was the first time I had met Chris after Justin and I being married for a year and a half! haha It was a fun time!

We visited Hoover Dam! Living in Vegas I don't take the opportunity to be a tourist very often but in March we took the time to be tourists and take fun pictures! The visit to the dam was fun and of course full of some great dam jokes! My favorite joke is one Justin tells. It goes like this...

What did the fish say when he ran into the wall?

Dam!

what did the fish's friend say?

Dumb Bass!

We tried to take those pictures where you look like your are holding the bridge up in the air and Justin's photography skills are pretty good! He was able to guide my hands till I looked pretty convincing!

my skills on the other hand leave a lot to be desired! haha poor Justin's picture does not look as good!

I completed my student teaching and some long term subbing at Orem Junior High. This is my white board at the end of the school year, it acted as my "year book". The students were amazing and It was a great experience all around!

We went to a Jazz vs, Mavericks game in Salt Lake City with Alyssa, Blake and Chris! I will tell you that it is a fun experience to go to an NBA game with a group of people who are cheering against the home team... haha Alyssa and Justin were pretty vocal about their love for the Mavs which brought us a lot of funny looks!

So anyways... those were just a few pics from earlier this year that I wanted to get on the blog! I'll post pictures from after we moved to Texas laters!

Happy Halloween!

So right now we are pretty busy with work stuff and baby stuff and life stuff so we didn't have any huge exciting halloween plans, no parties, no costumes (unless you count me wearing lensless 3D movie theater glasses for work... which I don't really count...), and I actually had to work at REI on Halloween night, so in that respect we were pretty boring this year! So because I had to work Halloween night I had a little private Halloween party the night before! Justin hung around for a little, but he was really tired so he went to bed early and I had a fun filled night doing some of my favorite Halloween traditions!

Tradition #1: Pumpkin Carving

This years pumpkin turned out much better than my last years attempt in my opinion (If you can't tell the big pumpkin is eating the little one)

Tradition #2: Drinking Apply Cider!

This was delicious... however I decided afterwards that hot drinks late at night are not good for my prego squished stomach... I had major heart burn after! haha oh well it was for traditions sake!

Tradition #3: Pumpkin Seeds!

Homemade pumpkin seeds! These are the best, you just wash off the seeds from your carved pumpkin and bake them with a little butter and salt! YUM!

Tradition #4: Watching Hocus Pocus

No Halloween would be complete without watching this wonderful treasure from my childhood! Everything about this movie is just fantastic! From the funny one liners to the music! When I was little I can remember running around with some little friends pretending to be the Sanderson Sisters! haha anyways here is a little clip of my favorite song from the movie!

There's Gonna Be A New Sherif In Texas!

This past week I was blessed enough to get to travel to my hometown of Las Vegas NV for a baby shower that some AMAZING ladies from the Summerlin Ward put on for me! Here are some pictures form the shower, and I can't take credit for them because they were all taken by my beautiful little sister Kelly!

The shower was at one of my old Young Women's leaders houses, Erin Truman, and she went all out! The theme was western because Justin and I are living Texas right now, and the whole thing was just fantastic! Her house was decked out in cowboy decor but it literally looked like that was how her house was normally decorated! She did an amazing job!

When you left, you passed this mirror area and got your own Sherif's Badge (star cookie cutters!) to take home! So cute right?!

The food was TO DIE FOR! There were Texas Sliders (pulled pork sandwitches), Baked Beans, Pasta Salad, delicious Friut, Cowboy Cookies, Texas Sheet Cake, and IBC Rootbeer! All of which are some of my favorite foods!

But most of all it was so fun to just be able to see all of my wonderful friends and family from home who I either grew up with or who helped to raise me as I was growing up! Honestly though... everyone who was at the shower just felt like extended family and I was so overwhelmed by all of the love and support I felt from everyone there! Unfortunatly I only have a few pics of everyone who came!

Here is a big wide shot of the shower and all the pretty ladies!

Jamie Miller!! She is the best!

Sister Jensen, Aunt Joni and my cute cousin Jamie!

This my wonderful Grandma Robison

In the end a fun time was had by all!

And my little sister Katie found a new favorite baby blanket! haha this is a blanket that Jill Nielson made for my little guy! But Katie immediatly snatched it up and then proceeded to pass out on it, on the floor, for a good 45 minutes!

So anyways, a HUGE thank you to all who helped with the shower, all who attended, and all who wanted to attend! Again I feel so loved right now and when I get a little nervous about becoming a mom and all that that entails I just remember all the amazing people in my life and I know I'm not alone, and that I'll be able to make it!

Story of a Pregnant Lady!

I have had a lot of requests to update my blog with prego pictures so here we go! Unfortunatley I did not take specific pregnant pictures during the earlier weeks of my pregnancy so I had to go back to a few pics and doctor them up a little bit to show my belly!

This is kinda a funny/gross picture but its for posterity's sake people so don't you judge me! :) Justin and I found out we were pregnant the morning of our BYU graduation. But my brother Nate was staying with us at the time and we didn't want him to know yet so we took this picture later on! How much later on you ask? haha... I'm too embarrassed to say...!

This pic was taken at week 12, right after the Mavericks won the NBA Championship! And we were also moving to Dallas a few weeks later so this poster seemed fitting!

The next picture I have is from our annual Lake Powell trip in July. Here Justin and I are in my families yearly Rainbow Bridge picture and I am just at 16 weeks pregnant! The baby bumb is starting to show!

This one makes me smile! This is my cousin Nikki and I doing our "We're Pregnant!" pose in a goofy family picture! I was just at 20 weeks when this picture was taken and in this dress I feel like I look HUGE! haha

Here I am at week 24

(Sorry for the bad lighting)

And this was taken at 29 weeks along!

A few more things I wanted to write down just for my sake so I don't forget them:

First trimester craving: Jamba Juice's Strawberry Surfrider, Pomagranate Passion, and Razzmatazz smoothies! Fruit sounded so good to me all the time! I was totally fine with this craving though cause fruit is healthy!

Second Trimester Craving: McDonalds cheeseburgers! OK... not so healthy... but its just the simple cheeseburger, no double double or Big Macs! AND, one cheeseburger is only 300 calories so that's not so bad! haha (this is what I have to tell myself every time I order one... which I try to limit myself to 2 per week, and I normally only have one per week! That's pretty good right?!)

Third Trimester Craving: To be determined!

Llama Face!

I almost forgot about this little gem of an experience in my BYU Tribute post! So one day my sophomore year I walked out of the Marb and there was a llama and you could take pictures with it! So here is my llama picture!

I know you are all jealous! I think they got the llama from the Hindu temple in Spanish Fork if you want a similar type picture! But your llama would probably not be as handsome as my llama... just saying!

BYU Tribute

Since Justin and I recently (4 months ago... relatively recent) graduated from BYU I thought I would take a few minutes to write about some of my most memorable classes and college experiences.

Entomology

In entomology i learned how to catch/identify/preserve bugs. Before this class I did not care for bugs at all! However, entomology gave me a greater understanding and knowledge of bugs and I now consider them to be pretty amazing/fascinating organisms!

Here is my prized Jerusalem Cricket

Here is my bug collection!

I got all these bugs with a lot of help from family and friends!

(300 bugs total, 18 Orders, and 100 Species! I think... )

Plant Identification

In this class I had to learn and identify 200 different species of plants in the provo area. Although I can't remember most of the plants and names now, it was a cool feeling to be able to identify any plant I saw for a good couple months!

I don't have a picture of anything from this class... but one day when I was out looking at plants in order to study for a test I took this little beauty below! Y-mountain after a summer shower!

Canyoneering

Canyoneering was not a required class, just one of those crazy classes you take for fun! For this class we took a trip to the San Rafael Swell and canyoneered down Eardlly Canyon. 3 repels, and ice cold pools to swim through!

The water was so cold we had to wear 5mm wetsuits and dive gloves. At one point when I was doing the last and tallest rappel I lost my footing on some slick rocks and I flipped upside down! I thought this experience was awesome, but I think I almost gave my professor a heart attack haha!

Evolution

This was probably my favorite class at BYU for many different reasons. First of all, my professor Byron Adams was HILARIOUS! My favorite of his quotes "I want to teach this class like Jesus would teach the class. He wouldn't be all up tight about stuff, it would all be like Love and Hot-tubs" haha maybe you had to be there.. but he was pretty hilarious! My second reason for loving this class is because Evolution was taught at BYU and I was able to see how Evolution and the gospel work with each other and not against each other! If you are ever interested in discussing this topic just give me a call!

There are so many other classes that I took... these were just the most interesting and best that I can remember! I figure I should write about them now before I forget about them completely!

If at first you don't succeed, try try again!

Anyone who knows Justin knows that he has some mad wakeboarding skills! He is pretty impressive, and that might be the reason why I married him... just kidding... but it was definitely a perk!

He can do all sorts of tricks and is far more impressive than me... One of his most impressive tricks is his backflip which he lands pretty consistently!

A month or so back we got to go with some family to Lake Powell and Justin was again very impressive! This year Justin's goal was to land a 360 which he has not done since before his mission. This trick is not the hardest to do, however when you crash you pretty much die! So I was way impressed with his determination and perseverance throughout the week! He did end up landing the 360, which was awesome to see and he was WAY stoked!

Now as far as I am concerned Justin has just always been a great wakeboarder! However as some of the following pictures show, hundreds of crashes and pain go into perfecting every trick on the wakeboard!

This summer my Uncle Terry came out the lake with us and taught Justin how to Barefoot, which is basically where you crawl out on a bar hanging over the water while the boat is going 34+ mph and then you ski on your bare feet... CRAZY! But it is awesome to watch Terry do it, he is way good! So here for you enjoyment are some picture of Justin learning to Barefoot!

Justin excited for his first try!

After he crawled out onto the pole...

And he's down! First try is a no go...

After only a few more tries and Uncle Terry getting out to show us how it was done Justin was able to successfully barefoot!

Justin had just enough time to yell out, and I quote, "I'M DOING IT!! IT'S WORKING!!" before he caught a toe and crashed big time!

Haha this crash was the best... the funniest... and I think it's the one that hurt the most! Needless to say, he was done after this one!

Justin celebrating his success!

So after seeing these pics you might ask yourself "Why put yourself through all that pain?!" In the end I think he would agree that all your crashes and hard falls are worth it once you land the trick! All in all, it was a successful week for Justin at Lake Powell, and I am still always so impressed when I watch him do his thing out on the water!

Living on the Edge of Glory!

This summer at our Lake Powell trip my wonderful and talented Stone cousins decided to make a music video documenting our week! They worked really hard and I think they did an amazing job!

My favorite part is when Justin falls off of the boat when all the cousins are jumping off the back! haha if you havn't seen it, look for it! It's good stuff!

We're having a BOY!!!

WOW I am waaaaay behind on my blogging but just in case anyone had not heard our great news we are having a baby, and on Friday we had our first ultrasound! I was at 17 weeks so we were not sure if they'd be able to tell the gender of the baby yet but we had a great ultrasound tech named Marlo who was able to poke around and find just the right spot to tell!

Justin thought we would be having a girl, and I thought we'd be having a boy (because I'd had a couple dreams with a baby boy in them... not that that means a whole lot or anything... but I just had a hunch). But we were both just so excited to find out what we would be having and that our baby was healthy so what ever the gender ended up being we would have been thrilled! I just don't understand how some people can wait the whole 9 months and be surprised at the end... I am just not that patient I guess because that wait would kill me!

This was the first shot of the baby that we saw! Isn't the little alien cute! He looks like Justin already! haha just kidding Justin! But seriously... at this stage babies look a lot like the aliens from the last Indiana Jones movie! But don't get me wrong, I love him so much already and I started tearing up when I saw his cute little face!

The next thing we found out is that he is very healthy as of right now... no abnormal issues or anything, so that was such a relief! I think that I stared tearing up again when I found that out!

Next thing we know we hear Marlo the Ultrasound Tech say "Well that is a hundred percent Boy!" And at that point Justin got a huge smile on his face! Haha I am pretty sure that this is Justin's favorite of all the pictures we got. Haha so funny! I think that it is a Male thing to want at least one Boy so that your last name gets passed onto future generations or something like that... Suffice it to say this little guy already has a proud father! I was just so happy to find out that he was healthy, but I must say it all seems more real now that the thing inside of me is a HE and not an IT!

There are a couple other things we found out. First, he has long legs for his body size (probably the second thing that Justin is most excited about... he is convinced that all our children are doomed to shortness). And second, that the due date is now December 22nd instead of the 23rd (Sorry Jenae!)! Which is awesome because it brings it one day farther away from Christmas! In case you don't know I have a fear that he will come on Christmas which I think would stink for him growning up... but I'll have to discuss that one on a different post!

Here are a couple more pictures we got! This one is of his feet My dad thinks he has 9 toes... 6 on one foot and 3 on the other haha... so we'll have to keep an eye on that! And the next picture is of our little boy waving hello to the world!

Justin and I are both so excited and happy about our little boy and we can't wait to get to meet him in 4 months and 3 weeks!