Jackson, Mississippi

So we are now in Jackson and the summer is winding up fast! I feel like this summer has flown by! I can't believe that we are at the end!

Right now we are staying at a hotel called "Inntown Suites" and it is pretty nice. we have a mini kitchen! Yay! So exciting! :) so I will definitely be taking advantage of that while we are here. Last night, after Garrett got home, we went shopping. (Garrett's favorite thing to do...) We have a full sized fridge here which is so nice because we can plan further ahead for meals. :) But we didn't get home from the store until after midnight last night but nobody had really eaten all day and we were all hungry. So I thought that I could just whip up some rice-a-roni for everyone as a quick meal.

 well... it was 1 in the morning when we finally ate our dinner. I didn't realize it would take that long. Those poor guys! Tonight, I am making Fire Roasted Tomato Soup though. And I'm going to get the sandwiches all ready to grill ahead of time so that they can eat almost as soon as they get home. :)

When I have my camera memory card back, i'm going to post a few awesome pictures from our last area. :) I hope you enjoy them! One is of a castle and the other is of a trailer.. :)

These pics are from my phone and are both from our last area in Hattiesburg:

SHOPHIA NAILS SPA

This is a picture of the nail salon that was in our parking lot. I almost went a few times just out of curiosity... but I was never brave enough. There was jsut something strange about it... :) But it was kind of funny to see a nail salon in the hotel parking lot. :)

LIGHTIN' IT UP ON THE PICK-UP!

I was on my way to the laundry room when I saw this and I just had to take a picture. :) Awesome, isn't it?

Mississippi!

Okay, so right now I am sitting in a library typing this up because we don't have internet at the place we're staying right now in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. :)But I can't excuse myself entirely for not updating for so long because the Budget Inn, where we stayed last week while we were in Monroe, Louisiana, had perfectly good internet and I didn't get on even once to update. :)


It's been really fun going to all of these areas and meeting so many wonderful people. The budget in had the biggest, most comfortable bed EVER! I loved it! And now we're at the Regency Inn and it's nice also. Especially for the great price. :)


Neither of these places have stoves though so once again I'm using my crockpot. :) It's fun though. I made Chili soup the other night and it was good. I'll have to post the recipe for you. SO EASY!


Great news! Garrett is OFFICIALLY accepted to Florida Coastal Law School! We are so happy and excited! We feel so blessed and are looking foreward to the next three years in Florida. :)


We will be in Jacksonville wich is just about two hours north of Orlando where Craig, Sharelle, and the boys live. :) It will be so fun to be able to visit them and be so close! :) We LOVE that cute family!


My little sister Hayley left the MTC on Wednesday and is now with her trainer in the Mission field of Leeds England. If you want to read more about it and see pictures, my mom is keeping up a blog for her. :) (sisterhayleyb.blogspot.com)


Weyul, that's all I have to say for now. I know it's brief but at least you're caught up. :)


Ps-


You ahould watch this video! It is AMAZING and a true story! I LOVE it! Click HERE to watch it!

Shreveport

Okay, so once again I have waited far too long to update this blog! :) I have been out visiting my family back in Utah. My little sister Hayley just left a last Wednesday for the Preston MTC in England! :) I am so excited for her! She will be a fantastic missionary! I took pictures while I was there to post on this blog... but then I went and left my memory card in Utah. Grr! So I'll get it back at the end of the summer but that means that I probably won't be able to post as many pictures for the rest of the summer. Unless I buy a new memory card which I just might do.

Garrett served his mission in Alabama and we will be heading that way at some point to meet everyone and I WANT  PICTURES! :)

But for now I will just copy pictures of a few things from Google or take pictures with my phone. :)

Visiting with my family was so much fun! It was great to be able to spend that time with Hay before she left! I've never seen someone more ready to serve a mission! She really is amazing!

This is the day she left. Our family tradition is that we eat at the village Inn In Bountiful the morning of the send off to the MTC. :)

And here we are at the Airport. :) I stole these pics from Hayleys Mission blog. :) Thanks Mom! :) 

I also got to meet my new nephew! SO CUTE! His name is McKay. My Sister in law Sara, (who from here on out I will just call my sister and leave the "in law" part out) had him on Sunday, June 24th. :) He is so tiny and adorable! And Aaliyah is such a good big sister! It was so fun to be able to see everyone!

For the Independence Day holiday I was back here in Louisiana. We went to the store and the only fireworks that we could find were the ones that aren't really FIREworks... :) We could only find snaps and confetti. :) So we bought them and divided them between the 4 of us. Then we all went outside and started shooting the confetti at each other and tossing the snaps at one another's feet. :) Haha it was so much fun!

We then went inside and played spades with some brand new 3D Star Wars cards. :) It was pretty fun. :) Even though I am really bad at that game. :)

So now you are caught up. :) When I left for Utah we were in Alexandria. Now we are in Shreveport. I will post pictures from both hotels. :)

Garrett took this picture for me from my phone. :) This is the place we stayed at in Alexandria called the Alexandria Inn. It was a good place to stay. There was no Kitchen but we did have a fridge and microwave.

This is the place where we are staying now. It's just like the first place we stayed. It's the same hotel line. (Crossland)

This one DOES have a mini kitchen! Yay! I made Miso soup last night. Mmm!  Maybe I'll make rice tonight. :) I have to take advantage of having a stove! :)

On to Alexandria :)

Wow! This summer is FLYING by!!! :) I can't believe it! We are now in Alexandria and it is getting pretty warm. :) I like it though. I love the south! :) The hotel we are at now doesn't have a kitchen either. So once again I am using my crock pot. :) I made sweet and sour chicken last night and then cleaned it out and had oatmeal ready this morning, :) I am loving this crock pot!! :) I took pictures of our last two places that we have stayed. The first one in Baton Rouge was called The Crosslands and it was a nice place to stay. It had a nice mini kitchen with a fridge, a microwave, a stove, and cupboard space. They provide dishes too but we just used our own. :) Our landlady Cappy was AWESOME!!! we love her! We took a picture with her too. ...it's not a great picture of me... just ignore that. :) I basically rolled out of bed, finished loading the car, and we hit the road so I look... so pretty... haha. But isn't Garrett adorable?! :)

The next place we stayed was called The Airport Inn in Kenner. It was good. We had a lot of space in our room which was nice and we had a fridge and a microwave. It wasn't necessarily the cleanest place... haha Garrett and I just always wore our shoes around the room unless we were on the bed so it worked out just fine. :)

So here is our room. There was plenty of space. :) And that door over by the bed leads into the main office so I felt pretty safe. :)

I wish I would have gotten a picture of our room at the Crosslands but I didn't think about it until  we had already left.

This is the pool.... :) Well, it's where the pool used to be. :) Right now it's filled with dirt but I hear that they are going to get it back up and going. 

We were there for a week and then we moved here to Alexandria. :) The place we are staying now has a real pool.! :) I'll have to take some pictures of it and post them too. But now I have to go and do the Laundry so I'll catch up with y'all later! ;)

Cajun Pride Swamp Tours

Wow! Sorry I've been away for so long! :) Life has been great down here in the bayou's. :) I'm lovin' it! I've been going out to sell with Garrett a bit lately and it has been so much fun. He is so cute to watch as he's giving a demo. :) He's sweet too because he tells me I'm his lucky charm. :) He even has me do a little bit of the talking. :) Im sure he does it so much better than I do but it's still fun to talk to these people and to be talking to them about such a great product is even better!

I'm also learning a lot about cooking and it gets easier for me every day! :) I'm going to add a label on here for any recipies I find. Right now my best friend is my crock pot! :) Whoever invented that little guy is awesome! :)

I also got to go and visit my cute nephews in Florida for a few days. I'll post some pics of them so you can see how ADORABLE they all are! I loved spending time with them! They are a really neat family and it was good to be able to relax with them and spend time getting to know them better. :)

Mason dumped a bunch of sand on Russel's head... :) 

Apparently Russell didn't mind too much. :)

The boys were making a sandcastle. Gavin was running to get some more wet sand. Aren't they all so adorable?!

That's Mason and Russell putting more sand in the bucket. Russell was using the shovel earlier but every time he lifted the shovel all of the sand fell off before he could get it to the bucket. I think he finally gave up on it and decided just to use his hands. :) So cute!

Gavin bringing more water to the castle and Russell having the time of his life! :)

While we've been down here we've gotten to do some fun things too. Yesterday we all went on a swamp tour and looked at the alligators! :) It was sooo cool! I took some pictures with my cell phone (both of our camera's just happened to be dead... frustrating!) :) But the phones did a pretty good job capturing a few things close up. :)

These Gators are some of the smaller, younger ones. We saw some that were 12 feet long!

He was feeding them raw chicken. ...And marshmallows. haha

My husband is so CUTE!

 

This alligator is three years old! I guess they grow really slowly but they live for about 150 years!

 We also saw a bunch of raccoons and birds and snakes and lizards! :) And the guy that gave us our tour was awesome and told us a ton of interesting facts about the place. He actually grew up on a swamp and still lives there now.

We also saw a one year old gator but he didn't pass that one around. (Darn it!) :) I would have loved to have held it! :)

I think he said that you can find them on youtube if you look up cajun swamp tours. :) I think you get to see the raccoons and everything. :)

Tonight we are going out to dinner as a team so I'd better get ready! :)

Till next time!