Pioneer and Indian Road Trip!

My cousin got married last weekend so I figured we would turn the drive into a mini road trip. We recruited my sister and her husband Jon into coming with us and had a blast.

Our first stop was Cove Fort. Cove Fort was built in 1847 by Ira Hinckley and his family (President Hinckley's grandpa I think). The Fort was used to give travelers a place to rest. It was restored and turned back over to the Church in 1988 by the Hinckley family and was dedicated in 1992 by President Hinckley.

During the tour we learned that the Hinckley family and probably all early settlers were very resourceful and didn't waste anything! For example - A worn out dress would be cut into shreds to weave into a rug. When the rug wore out it would be cut up and burned in the fire - after it was burned the ashes would be mixed with animal fat and lye to be made into soap. If we were only half as resourceful as they were I'm sure we'd save thousands of dollars a year on stuff we don't need.

This is a picture of the four of us in the interior of the fort. You can see the lava rock they used to build the fort behind us.

The tour guide told us how the door ishollow and was filled with sand to stop bullets or arrows from penetrating. She also told us that the Hinckley family was so well respected by the Native Americans that they never attacked the fort.

Next on our stop was Fremont Indian State Park. This place is cool if you are into rock carvings, pictographs or petroglyphs.

The artifacts from the Fremont Indians weren't discovered in Southern Utah until 1983 when surveyors were sent out to check the area before I 70 was going to be built. They discovered a cave of rock drawings and later a huge city.

It's kind of neat to think that stuff is all around us just waiting to be discovered - even in Utah. The Fremont Indians lived in Utah around 1500 AD or so.

We went on a short hike and saw some of the carvings.

If you look right above my head you can see some more.

This was one of the homes they found. You can actually climb down inside and look at it. The Fremont Indians lived in underground dirt homes.

There is also a museum and visitor center at the park. Jon and Nicole made friends with some of the woodland creatures.

After a long day of site seeing we went to my cousin's reception (she had the reception the night before the wedding...weird I know :)

These are our cute grandparents. I am named after my grandma Rosalie :)

We got up early Saturday morning to do initiatories before my cousin's sealing. Once we got there though we found out they don't do initiatories until later on Saturday. They let us go and do sealings with the temple workers who do them between sessions. It was really neat to be able to do sealings with my sweetheart, sister and her husband. Everytime I do sealings I think about how cool it will be when we adopt a baby to have them sealed to us. They will be able to receive all the same blessings that children who are born the their parents receive.

My cousins sealing was really neat to. The Manti temple is absolutely BEAUTIFUL inside. It's definitely one of my new favorites.

It was a fun weekend of traveling, laughing and visiting with family. I'm hoping maybe the next cousin to get married will decide to get sealed in the Hawaii temple or something so we'll have an excuse to go there :)

Everything you ever wanted to know about the last 3 weeks of our lives...

Man life gets busy!

These are the highlights of the last 3 weeks of our lives. If you click on the link it will take you to the post :)

• We got our countertops refinished (no more iron burn on them)


• We had 5 people walk through our home (we had 3 in the first week and a half it was on the market)


• I successfully completed my school semester (woo hoo for online classes)


• We received news a birth mom was interested in us (err...more about that later)


• We welcomed a our first nephew into the family (hooray for a boy)


• I got a beautiful new computer

All Shiny and New

One of the most distinct features of our house was our custom iron burn design countertops. When we first walked through our house we spotted the iron burned and cracked up. Seriously, who irons on the countertop and leaves the iron sitting there face down long enough to do this?

We planned on replacing the countertops this summer but with deciding to put our house up for sale decided now was as good of time as any to say good bye to our old designer tops.

We found a great company that just refinishes over your existing countertops. The benefits are it reduces land fill since they are not throwing away your old tops (I'm all about going GREEN when possible) and since they are just refinishing over an existing product it saves some major $$ (which I'm all about as well.)

Here is the finished look. Not too shabby eh?

What? We're Moving?

So about this whole moving thing...

When Isaiah and I bought our home we planned on staying here for at least 2 kids. Oddly enough 4 years later and no kids we just felt it was time to move. We really weren't planning on it. In January we refinance and got a rockin' awesome rate, we LOVE our ward and our neighborhood, and really have no reason to move. I've always heard about people getting that feeling that it was time to move. Well apparently it's a real thing because about a month ago I couldn't shake the feeling. Isaiah and I went to the temple and prayed about it and here we are - a for sign sale in front of our house and no plan on where we are going next. One of my young women described it as one of those "I will go and do" things.

We've had good traffic through our house considering it's not the best market to be selling a house in. In the first week and a half we had 3 people walk through our house, and we have 2 people walk through last week. We're in no hurry to sell but it's nice to have so much traffic early in the process.

So if you know anyone looking for an amazing cute little first home send them our way. Seriously our ward is the greatest, we have awesome neighbors and in the last few years Isaiah and I have replaced every appliance in the whole house!

Wish us luck, if I had to guess where we'll move to I'd say Hawaii....err that's just were I wish. I think we'll probably end up somewhere around Riverton.

School's Out for the Summer!

Woo hoo! I'm all done with my classes. Nothing too exciting to say about them except that online classes ROCK! I'm so glad I took my classes online - between working full time and getting called into Young Women's at the beginning of the semester there is no way I would have found my way into a classroom.

I only have 2 classes to go before I can get my Chemistry Associates. I know it's not much but it's something to show for my years of work :)

Finally an Adoption Update...

I haven't posted much about our adoption contacts because every time I almost post something - something else comes up and I never get around to it. So here goes...

Since getting our adoption approval in November Isaiah and I have been lucky enough to have 3 adoption "nibbles" as we like to call them.

In December a sweet birth mom started emailing us. She found our profile on itsaboutlove.org and was interesting in getting to know us better. We emailed back and forth everyday for about 3 weeks and then...nothing. One day she stopped emailing us and didn't return any of the emails we sent her. We realized getting to know a birth mom is like dating again (in a weird sort of way) and we just got dumped :) LOL. She was an amazing women with a hard choice. We're not sure if she decided to place her baby for adoption or not but either way we wish her nothing but the best. We're grateful for her emails because it's exciting to have any contact with a birth mom early in the process that it made the first few months in adoption land eventful.

Our next nibble came in February. We got a call one morning from our case worker. A baby boy had been born prematurely the night before and they needed to place the baby in the next 48 hours. The little boy was born at 26 weeks and only weighed 1.5 lbs. We went to the NICU to see him and he was the smallest person we had ever seen! The nurses were amazing and gave us a realistic idea of what we could expect if we adopted him. Since he was extremely premature he would likely have some special needs.

Isaiah and I left the hospital and did a lot of praying. I think we both wanted to give this little guy a home so badly that we didn't really listen to the uneasy feelings we felt when we prayed. About an hour before we were supposed to sign the adoption papers we received a call from our case worker. She said the nurses had done an MRI on the baby's brain and had found level 2 bleeding. Isaiah and I were crushed. We looked online and found out babies that small regularly had severe bleeding in their brain and that level 2 could quickly progress to level 3 which is normally fatal. We hung up with the case worker and prayed again. We realized that as much as we wanted to have this baby in our home our Father in Heaven had different plans for him. The hardest thing we have ever had to do was call our case worker and tell them we couldn't adopt this baby.

While this experience was so difficult I am so grateful we went through it together. It taught me how to sincerely pray and receive answers, it brought Isaiah and I closer together, and it taught me how precious life is and that our Father in Heaven has a plan for all his children. Unfortunately because of HIPAA laws we may never know how the little baby is doing but we hope his is well and that he found the family that he needed to go to.


Our last adoption nibble came a few weeks ago also from itsaboutlove.og. The birth mom asked us a few questions but didn't give us any information about herself. Our case worker called a few days later to get some more information about us for her. We still don't know anything about the birth mom so we'll see if anything comes of it.

We've found a pattern in our birth mom contacts. It seems like they come every other month so I'm expecting our next contact will be around June :) We'll see. Although the adoption world is full of crazy emotional highs and lows I am sooooo grateful that Isaiah and I have the blessing of starting our family this way. Through adoption I've learned that every child deserves a loving home, that our Father in Heaven loves ALL his children and that life is precious. .I am very blessed to have an amazing husband who is just as excited as I am to adopt.

We are grateful for everyone who has kept us in their prays and who has told someone they know that we are adopting. One - third of all adoptions come through referral so we really are grateful for everyone's help.

Hooray, It's a Boy!

Just a quick shout out to my newest little man Wyatt. Isaiah's brother Jeremiah and his sweet wife Leslie had a baby boy on April 23rd. We have 2 nieces already so we are all excited to welcome our first nephew.


Makayla checking out her new little brother.

The proud Aunt and Uncle.