Fun filled April and May!

On my birthday Stephen took a half a day off of work so that we could hang out together. I decided that I wanted to go for a hike, so Stephen took me to a really neat canyon with lots of really beautiful red rock landscape and a big beautiful river. We also saw two very large eagle nests tucked into the cliffs. We hiked alot and took many pictures.

This past weekend Steve, Steve's dad Wayne, Steve's brother Jeff, Jeff's wife Cami, Cami's brother Andrew, and I all went camping in the Henry mountains. Wayne, Stephen, and I all went hiking, and Jeff, Cami, and Andrew drove around in their car and rode around on their ATV's. Wayne Steve and I all went hiking hoping to find some deer sheds but were not successful. We may not have found any deer antlers but we still had fun. We were also hoping to see some bison, but we only saw a couple of dead ones. I did find a realy cute little Horny toad and I held it for a while as we hiked. The Horny toad I found has very beautiful coloring, it has mostly yellow skin with bits of red in some spots. Stephen also took me to a spot where he had found a large peice of a dinosaur bone some years back, and it was still there. The peice of bone looked like it was probably the ball joint on the dinosaur's leg.

Jeff, Cami, and Andrew found two very large petrified trees! They also found a petrified stump of a tree which is probably a peice of one of the big trees. It's just so amazing looking at these huge petrified trees sitting in the desert!

Stephen and I have been hiking alot in the last couple of months. We love hiking and we have found a lot of elk antlers and some deer antlers. We have also seen many elk on our hikes. I absolutely love seeing wildlife in the mountains and I realy enjoyed hearing the owl hooting on one of the hikes we were on not so long ago. I found my first elk antler this year ( I realize that probably seems totally unexciting to most people but it is exciting to me ), and the best part is that I did't find just one, I found two, and they are a set! I was very excited about it because I had been trying to find an elk antler for a few years. I saw a big Bull snake on one of the hikes we went on and I caught it ; it's the first snake I have caught. Steve and I love finding snakes and holding them ( no worries we only hold the safe ones that arn't venomous)! Bull snakes are very docile snakes and I think they are quite beautiful.

Stephen and I went for a four wheeler ride Sunday evening. We went up in the mountains up above Steve's parent's house and then took a beautiful scenic way home. We saw a Bull snake on the dirt road we were driving on, so Steve picked it up and we held it for a while and then went and moved it to a safer spot.

I completely love the outdoors! My life feels so full and beautiful when I am out enjoying nature with Stephen! We see and experiance so many wonderful and neat things! I also absolutely love summer time. I feel like when it's summer time I truly come alive and my mood gets such a big lift!

Oh and about the cowboy hats that we are wearing in the pictures...... please don't make fun of us for wearing those because we only bought them to wear on hikes to help prevent us from getting sun burn while we hike for hours in the sun!

A fun weekend with Angela and Brian

I know I haven’t written in a while; I guess it’s because I have just been lazy about it. Some weeks back in March, Brian and Angie came to visit Stephen and I, and we all had a lot of fun. We all went to me and Steve’s favorite restaraunt called El mexicano, it has absolutely delicious Mexican food. We watched movies, we made cookies and brownies, we went hiking in Monrovian, we went hiking in the mountains above me and Steve‘s house, and we went and shot guns. Shooting guns was definitely one of the biggest highlights of the weekend. Brian was having such a great time and absolutely loving shooting clay pigeons and the milk jugs and bottles that we filled up with water. We were all having a realy great time but Brian just seemed the most excited about it.
We also picked some Brigham tea while we were hiking in Monrovian so we could make some for Brian and Angie to try. When Steve and I go hiking and we see a Brigham tea bush, we like to pick some and boil it and add a little sugar and milk to it. It is actually a very pleasant tasting tea and is very healthy.
I am really glad Brian and Angie decided to come and visit, it was extremely fun having them over to visit!

Disgusting smell!!!!

A few days ago I was cleaning the house and went to put something away in me and Stephen's bedroom. I walked over by the bed and noticed that it smelled realy bad around that area. I kept trying to figure out what it was causing the awful stench, but couldn't find anything that was stinky in the room. I decided to forget about it for a while. Later that day I pointed it out to Stephen and he said it smelled like a dead animal. I then realized that yes, it definetely did smell like a dead animal....yuck!!!! We looked so hard trying find the souce of the stench and still couldn't find it. Stephen finally thought to look in the shelf that holds our sheets, blanket's, and pillow cases. He searched through the bedding and couldn't find anything, but quickly realized that the smell was coming out of the vent below the shelf! A mouse or some other small rodent must have found it's way from under the house into the vent system! Stephen then told me that he remembered hearing something the other night that sounded like a mouse running on paper. Steve got up and looked around to see if there was a mouse in the house, but couldn't find one and went back to bed.

Stephen and I are realy upset that there is a mouse in our vents! As anyone that has smelled a dead rotting carcass knows, it does not smell pleasant at all, it's down right awful! Stephen has tried to find the mouse ( or other small rodent ) in the vent, but it is too far down for him to find. Now instead of just the bedroom stinking, the entire house does when the heat kicks on. We try not to have the heater on much due to the smell and keep the vent in our bedroom closed. We have been spraying febreze all over and even pouring it down the vents, which actually helps quite alot. I have been lighting scented candles too.

We were thinking we would have to wait out the smell until it goes away but now we think that maybe we can suck the mouse out of the vent with my father inlaw's shop vaccume. Hopefully the shop vaccume idea works!!!!

Number 4 tag

I got tagged. This is the fourth photo in the fourth picture folder on my computer. This is one of the paintings Stephen has done. I actually think Steve said that he isn't finished with this one. He has painted a couple others so I will put pictures of them up for you to see sometime.

I tag Lisa, Shawn, Emily, and Brian.

A trip to the vet and irritated eyes.

Last Friday Stephen and I took Mandy to the vet to get her vaccinations and to get her teeth cleaned. Mandy's breath had been smelling so bad so I decided to take a look at her teeth and they were definetely in bad Shape! They had brown and yellow crap on them and even a little bit of black on some of the small front ones! Now her teeth are all cleaned off and healthy again and she just had a couple of realy tiny teeth pulled. I am going to buy dog toothpaste and be dedicated to brushing her teeth because I don't want them to get that bad again.

After Steve and I picked Mandy up from the vet we noticed that her eyes were bothering her, she could absolutely not keep them open. It seemed like her eyes were stinging and burning or something , and she couldn't sit still she was just so uncomfortable. Her eyes didn't get better till the next day. I felt so bad not knowing how to help her out with her eyes, it was awful! I tried wiping down her face with a wet rag because I thought there might be something on her face irritating her eyes ( I didn't know what else to do ) but it didn't work. Stephen and I think it happened when Mandy was sitting in the kennel right outside the vet office ( she was there when we went to pick her up ) . The wind was blowing fairly hard and we think something in the air was irritating her eyes. We know the vet didn't do it because he is a great vet! In fact when we got home it seemed like Stinker's eyes were bothering him a little bit too.

The picture I posted of Mandy is one of me and Stephen's favorites of her. The thing she is holding in her mouth is a chew treat. It's such a cute picture of her, I love it!

Chili explosion

Yesterday I had to eat dinner alone because Stephen had to work late, so I decided to heat up a cup of Dinty Moore Chili. Well I put it into the microwave and set it for 2 minutes, like the instuctions said. As it was heating up I went to go get an elastic for my hair and when I came back to get my Chili, I saw that it had exploded in the microwave! Steve reminded me later that our microwave has a much higher wattage than alot of microwaves so you cook things in it for a much shorter amount of time. It was quite a mess to clean up!

Wrestling!

I just wanted to share these video's because I think they are fun. On the day that I recorded the one with Steve and Mandy, Mandy had been wrestling with Steve. I got the camera to record the wrestling but unfortunately she kind of stopped. I Still put it on here because even though she isn't wrestling she is still fun to watch and it's fun to listen to her growl. The one with Mandy and Stinker is realy funny and entertaining, they love playing together!