Wedding Pictures

We recently got copies of our wedding pictures! After posting to facebook and a couple of family websites, we are too lazy to post any on here. You can see them on facebook by going here. If you can't see them, then that probably means you're not our friend on there yet. Why aren't we friends yet? :) If you're just dying to see some, and you don't want to be our facebook friend (or you have nothing to do with facebook), let us know in the comments and we'll post some later. Enjoy!

One Month Anniversary!

Ok, so I know that that anniversaries are a yearly thing, and thus a "One Month Anniversary" doesn't really exist. But still, Lisa and I have been married for one very happy month!

So, apparently in the first month of marriage, everyone is supposed to ask you how you like married life. The first few times I would reply, "very good" and the like, but as time went on, I wanted to mix it up some and say, "it's terrible! I hate it so much!" I would just love to see the reactions and awkward pauses that would ensue from that. I don't think I could ever really pull that off though. Today at work someone asked, and I just about did it, but then at the last second I responded with a simple, "good." Finally, after work, someone asked me, and I said how I hated it so much. He, though, could, of course, tell that I was joking and laughed with me about it. So, I guess we'll just have to see if people still ask you that question into the 2nd month of marriage. And in case any of you are still wondering, we both like being married to each other very much. :)

A New Look

We decided to finally spice things up around here and put up a background. It took a little bit of time finding something we liked, but we think this works. We've also added a spot where you can join our Adventure Club (i.e. follow the blog). Hope you like the changes! :)

Spring Cleaning

Yesterday, Lisa and I had a most productive day. I've had a bunch of old junk lying around adding clutter for a long time. So, yesterday we borrowed her dad's truck and took a load of stuff down to DI. They took just about everything except for 2 computer monitors and an old TV. We really wanted to get rid of them, so we had to figure out the next plan. As we left DI, we realized that there were a couple of things in the cabin of the truck that we forgot to drop off at DI. So, we went to Savers and dropped off those things and asked if they would take the monitors or TV. They would not. :( I ended up calling my brother, because I knew he used to have a bunch of old computer junk. He suggested Best Buy, so we went to check that out. There, they charge you $10 to recycle it, but then give you a $10 gift card in return. However, they would only take 2 items. If we had done it right, we would have had one of us bring in 2, and then the other one of us would take in the other item. Oh well. We then tried Office Depot next door, and they charged $5 to recycle it. At this point, it was well worth the $5 to just be rid of it. It felt great and liberating to be rid of all that junk.

After all this we went on a bit of a shopping spree. We got a thing in the mail from Target that said we could get 10% off anything still left on our registry. So, we gathered up all the Target gift cards we got (Thanks everyone!!!) with a copy of our registry, and got all the stuff we still wanted. When it came time to pay for all the stuff, we started handing gift card after gift card to the person working the cash register. It was fun watching the total go down as she did it. In the end, we ended up owing $7.06. I think that's about as good as you can do. I was very proud of ourselves. :)

To end the day, we went to a most wonderful birthday party for a most wonderful friend of ours. We hope she had a good birthday.

So, we felt great about all that we were able to accomplish yesterday and to get rid of so much junk we had lying around. And then today at church we found out that the young women are looking for stuff for members to donate for a yard sale they are having as a fundraiser..... Oh well.....

My official tour of Hemet

For those of you who don't know, Dan and I had our reception in Hemet last Saturday. While we were down there, Dan gave me the official tour of Hemet and the surrounding areas. Below are some pictures from the totally awesome tour.

First, we drove by the house that Dan grew up in, though from what I've been told, it doesn't look much like it did when Dan was little.

Next, we drove through the Orange Groves. The Orange Groves were my favorite part of Hemet. I couldn't smell the citrus in the air, but they were really pretty and I enjoyed seeing them. Below are a few of my favorite pictures:

This is an overview of the Orange Groves. I like them!

This is a single Orange tree. :)

Dan showed me the spot in the Orange Groves where he ran out of gas one day on the way back from school. Then we went to the high school and Dan showed me where the field used to be. I got to see the Jr High and the Elementary schools too.

Then we drove around and saw the Stake Center and we eventually ended up at this memorial park in San Jacinto called, San Jacinto Veterans Memorial at Druding Park. They had something for most of the major branches of the military. It was pretty cool. Check it out.

This was for the army.

Here is the display for the Airforce. This propeller was from a B-17 "Flying Fortress", a four engine bomber flown during WWII.

This was for the Navy. They had a lighthouse for the Coast Guard. On the plaque for the Coast Guard it said that their motto is Semper Paratus, meaning Always Ready. I thought that was pretty cool.

Well, that about covers the tour of Hemet! It was cool to get to see where Dan grew up and to hear all the stories about the different things that happened there.

The Honeymoon

For our honeymoon, we booked a hotel in Cedar City, and then hit some different parks down in that area. We had a most excellent time and had many adventures. I'll try to relate some of the more memorable ones.

Saturday
We already told you all about our adventure finding Costco. That was pretty much it for Saturday.

Sunday
Sunday we found a church close to the hotel to go to. When we got there, we were looking at the program, and it had upcoming birthdays on there. One of the names on there for that was Candace Togisala. Lisa has an aunt and uncle that are Togisalas. That's not a very common name, so we wondered if there was any relation. We looked around a bunch during sacrament meeting for any potential candidates. Well when Sunday School came, they introduced the teacher as Sister Togisala. We both looked at each other. So, Lisa talked to her before Relief Society, and it turns out she is married to the brother of Lisa's uncle Togisala. So, Lisa's dad's sister's husband's brother's wife taught Sunday School where we were. :) That was pretty cool to find a connection there.

Monday
Monday we headed down to Zion National Park to hike Observation Point. It was a pretty long hike, but at the end there is a great view.



Tuesday
Tuesday we went to Bryce Canyon. There was a bunch of snow there, so we couldn't do a whole lot of hiking, but there were still some great views there as well.





On the way back home from Bryce Canyon we decided to do some exploring in Red Canyon (which you drive through to get to Bryce Canyon). There were some really cool rock formations there, including The Camel:



Wednesday
Wednesday, we headed way down south to the Valley of Fire in Nevada. We went a different way than Lisa has gone before, so we were hoping to find it okay. Well, we were driving on this road for a while that seemed to be just taking us out to nowhere. We weren't sure if we were on the right road, and we didn't want to drive forever into the unknown. We decided that maybe we should just play it safe and turn around and go the way Lisa knew. It would take a long time, but at least we would get there. Well, we got to about here when we decided to turn around:

View Larger Map

Lisa was just about to flip the car around when she asked me if I saw that thing up the road on the right (It's hard to see in this image, but there was something up there). I saw it and neither of us knew what it was. We decided to go up a little further to investigate. It turned out to be the sign for entering the Lake Mead National Recreational Area. That was on the path of where we needed to be, so we decided to keep going. Sure enough, a little while later, we saw a sign to turn into the Valle of Fire. We made it! We figured it probably would have cost us around 2 hours to have turned around and gone the other way. We were very grateful we made it without having to turn around. At the park we got to see cool rock formations like Elephant Rock



We also got to see lots of petroglyphs





And there were even these cool color contrasts





It was supposed to rain while we were down there, but it did not. It was overcast all day, but no rain. Of course, this, the overcast day, was the only day we wore sunscreen.

Thursday
Thursday we woke up to tons of snow.



We figured it was about 9 inches. We couldn't find the snow brush thing, so I got to clean it all off with a frisbee. Well, then it was back down to Zion National Park for lots of fun stuff. We first hiked the Emerald Pools and saw cool waterfalls



This was our final destination on that hike:



After that we made a quick stop at The Court of the Patriarchs



Bonus points for whoever can name them. After that we drove up Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway. I had only done that once before, so it was really cool to see everything on that drive, like The Great Arch



On the way back from that drive we took a short hike to the canyon overlook right above the Great Arch. We saw some bighorn sheep on that hike, and it had another great view at the end



Friday
Friday we headed down to St. George and went to the temple there. That was really cool. Both of us just kind of wanted to get home at that point so no pictures there. :)


And that was our most awesome honeymoon. To look at many more photos from our honeymoon, you can go here. We had lots of fun. Try not to be too jealous. :)

Wedding Slide Show

We apologize for the lack of posts the last couple of weeks. We have been a little busy getting married and going on a honeymoon and all that. :) The adventures from our tour of a selection of the National Parks will be coming soon. In the meantime, here is the video that was playing at the reception in case you missed it. Enjoy! :)