Wow! What a weekend...Thanksgiving-it's long

I must say we had a very busy past few days. This Thanksgiving holiday was filled with a lot of love and family. It was a great day but also a very hard day. My beautiful sweet Grandmother (my mom's mom) Mona Miles Nebeker went into the hospital about four weeks ago to have open heart surgery. My mom has been up here for the past three week's taking care of her and spending the entire time in the ICU at McKay Dee Hospital. My Grandma was constantly getting better and then worse and it was quite a roller coaster. My mom and aunt Joni have been up there and decided to get away for the holiday and let my Grandma rest. My Aunt Joni changed her mind and went back up to the Ogden to spend the weekend up there and watch over my Grandma. Well my Grandma just wasn't getting better and her body started shutting down. She passed away Thanksgiving afternoon. I know she is much happier where she is but she will be very missed. She was such a wonderful Grandma, she loved all of her Grandchildren very much and we miss her a lot. Luckily we had a lot of family around to comfort us on a very hard day. We kept her in mind all day and tried to enjoy the holiday. We did get to do some fun things the rest of the weekend to get our mind off of it, especially my mom.
Zac, Kara, Lola, Blake, Blake's gf Julie, Logan and I flew to Arizona on Wednesday afternoon and were picked up by my parents and Ryan and Lani. My dad rented a 15 passenger van in California so we could all ride together from the airport to my aunt and uncle's. It was quite funny to have a huge van pull up to the airport and all of us pile in. Very memorable indeed! Wednesday evening we just relaxed and spent time with the family. My cousin Marcus got home a few weeks ago from his mission and we finally got to see him. I was so excited! It was a lot of fun seeing him. Thursday morning we went down to the park in Benson and played a game of football. It was mostly guys that played and I took pictures. It was fun to watch all the "older" dad's and uncle's run around trying to get back the skills from when they were in high school playing football-I don't think they got it back! After that we got ready for Thanksgiving dinner, got the bad news about my Grandma, relaxed and tried to stay calm, watched Zac deep fry the turkey and catch the grass on fire, ate a ton of food, watched some football on TV, played the Wii and did some crafts.
Friday we got up and drove to Tombstone and Bisbee Arizona. We had a GREAT day! It was nice to have something to keep us busy so we didn't start crying! Tombstone is a very very old town where there used to be many cowboys, bars, showdowns and just a bunch of old western stuff. Bisbee is an old mining town about an hour south of Benson almost to Mexico. My Grandpa Fenn worked in the copper mine there so it was cool to spend some time in the old town and see where my Grandpa did some work. The town is SO unique, it didn't feel like we were in Arizona at all, it's tucked down in this valley and is quite beautiful. We had lunch at a hotel my parents stayed at on their honeymoon and spent some time walking around the town.
Saturday we went to Karchner Caverns again but went on a different tour than the time we went in the summer. Caves just amaze me, it's crazy how long it takes for everything to grow in there. Incredible. That afternoon we took family pictures since my whole family was together and it's gonna be awhile since everyone will be in different places for Christmas. They turned out very good-I'll post some later. Kara, Natalie and I made some butternut squash curry soup that evening and laughed and talked the whole time. My family stayed up late that night just laughing and talking and getting counsel from dad (as usual :)).
This morning Logan and I got up and left with David, Natalie and Amanda at 6:00am. We drove ALL day and saw some pretty cool things. We drove over the Navajo Bridge and stopped to look over the side. Totally creeped me out! We finally got home after about 12 hours of driving and are now getting ready for a long week of homework, work and school.
We had a great weekend, and loved spending so much time with so much family. This weekend is my Grandma's funeral so it's gonna be a hard one. We love her very much and miss her.






Blake's game face!



Can you see Logan in the background? Lovely hat he has on!!



Thanksgiving-"we're having a hard day"



Most of the guys there for the holiday, I can't find my one of us girls.



Zac got the 2nd turkey all ready to deep fry-it was very very tasty. The other turkey was cooked in a pit BBQ all night, DELICIOUS!



Tombstone, AZ-Mom, Lola, Dad and Logan






You gotta drink Sarsparilla when you go to Tombstone



"where it all started!!" ;)



Bisbee, AZ



Bisbee



Bisbee Copper Mine




Navajo Bridge







David and Logan


I just have to add in that my Mother is the most amazing person I know hands down. She has been back and forth from Utah, California and Arizona taking care of her mother and our family. My Mom is so strong, I love her so much for doing all she did these past few weeks. She and my Aunt Joni spent as much time as they possibly could with my Grandma and I admire them very much. I am very very blessed to have a wonderful mother, I love her so much.

Pre-Thanksgiving Get-Together

Last weekend (Nov 6-8) we went to Salina to get together with Logan's family. It was just kindof planned for us to come down for Sunday dinner but Logan and I showed up on Friday afternoon and Brandi, Roudy and Presley showed up a little later. So we decided it was a Pre-Thanksgiving Get-Together. We had SO much fun! It was nice to see everyone since we won't see most of them til Christmas since we'll be with my family for Thanksgiving. I only have one picture from the weekend but it shows basically what we did that whole time! I did work on a school project and my Mom's Christmas present (can be seen at postsofinspiration.blogspot.com in a few weeks) so we didn't just rock out that whole time. Brandi and Lorri were our main singers and they did a fantastic job. Logan was the drummer, with Brandi drummin' it up for a few songs. And Taylor and I mostly played guitar and bass. We ate lots of good food and just relaxed all weekend. Logan and I went for a bike ride on Saturday morning and enjoyed the beautiful weather. We ended up being gone a lot longer than planned but it was totally worth it. I took some really cute pictures of my niece Presley for my photo class and a few of Logan for my portrait project. All in all it was a fantastic weekend and we had a great time!

Logan sticks his tongue out everytime he plays-he didn't notice until we told him! Taylor and I look bored, but I promise we were having fun!

Halloween? That was yesterday?

Well this year Logan and I were pretty much totally lame about Halloween! We didn't think of any costume ideas, didn't make any plans and ended up doing nothing! Well not nothing completely, just nothing to do with the normal Halloween festivities. Yesterday afternoon we met up with Zac, Kara, Lola, Blake and Julie for some lunch and afterwards got a delicious churro at Costco (seriously they are huge too, but not as good as Disneylands). Then we just cleaned up the apartment and surfed the internet. When we realized our ward party was on Friday and there wasn't much else to do we decided to go to the temple. Mt. Timpanogos temple is so beautiful, I love that we live like 3 minutes from it. We ended up having a great night regardless of the fact that we didn't do anything related to Halloween at all.
We have a busy week ahead of us and this was a nice weekend to relax and get pumped up for another long week of school. Thank goodness this semester is getting towards the end, we're ready for a new semester with new classes. We're excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas (we will be festive for these!). Thanksgiving will be in Arizona with my family and Christmas will be here in Utah with Logan's family. Can't wait!

New blog

I started a new blog besides this one, it's called Posts of Inspiration...check it out here. It's just a blog for me to post things I've made/done lately to keep me motivated! Without a job I sometimes feel like I don't do much so this blog is inspiration to keep going! I'll keep updating it, I have quite a few things to post from the beginning of summer til now. Enjoy :)

Little Sahara Sand Dunes

On Friday and Saturday we met Logan's parents and Taylor at Little Sahara Sand Dunes just west of Nephi. We had SO much fun, even though it was a quick trip we really had a great time. The first time we went to the dunes in Kanab I thought they were huge, but then we went to these dunes. They were MUCH bigger! I was quite surprised. Logan said he broke me in on the first trip so this time he didn't go easy on me. We were flyin' all over those dunes, some of the time I was hanging on for dear life...but it was still fun. Thanks again to Lorri and Lynn for taking us out, we had so much fun with you :)


This picture was taken with our camera on the car and a timer-that's why it's kindof crooked.



Logan just relaxing and enjoying the warm weather.



Sand Mountain-it doesn't look that big but it's HUGE! You can see the small four-wheelers at the bottom just starting up it

Alpine Loop

After church on Sunday Logan and I went for a drive up American Fork canyon on the Alpine Loop. I only wish there were more places to stop and take pictures, the road is so tiny and there are very few turnouts. We managed to find a few good places. The weather was beautiful and all the parking was free because it was Sunday! I am so grateful we live in a place that you see the beautiful Fall colors. I think the changing colors are in my top three favorite things in nature...yes for sure!

Us with Mt. Timpanogos behind us


This picture doesn't do this tree justice, it was the reddest tree I have EVER seen, I just can't get over how beautiful it was.

New addition to our apartment and Hogle Zoo

Last Saturday Lynn, Lorri, Brandi and Presley came up for the day. They first delivered this BEAUTIFUL instrument to our apartment, I honestly couldn't be more happy. Thank you so much Lynn and Lorri for this wonderful wedding present, and for hauling this giant thing up here! I've already been playing it a lot!



After five guys got it up to our third floor apartment we went to the Hogle Zoo. We had such a fun day, there were so many animals I never thought would be at the Zoo in Utah. I thought it was too cold for most of those animals. I just wish we would have gotten a picture of all of us together, I'll be better about that next time. Anyway, here are a few pictures from the day.



They have peacocks just roaming around and Presley liked chasing them!



The zoo had a lot of cute baby animals and even though it's hard to see, this is an adorable little tiger.



Us with the giraffes, there was a baby one of these too, but I didn't get a good picture-so cute!



I don't know why I liked this guy so much, maybe because a RED panda is so amazing! Most of the animals were napping when we were there, but at least we could still see them!



The new baby elephant sleeping, they just named him Zuri.



Here is another beautiful peacock, I wish we could have seen one with it's feathers out.