From Pittsburgh to Vegas... then to St. George!

After Pittsburgh we flew into Vegas and spent the night at the Excalibur. The next day (Tuesday) my mom and Aunt Lori came and picked Jeff and I up and took us to St. George so we could spend the week with mine and my Aunt's family. We had a blast. It was so nice to just relax and not worry about a thing. Our condo we stayed in had 3 pools, tennis courts, racquetball courts, and basketball courts. We spent a lot of our time in the pool and playing tennis. We also went to the musical, "Les Miserable" at the Tuachan theatre. The play was excellent, Jeff and I both loved it. I highly recommend anyone who hasn't been to a muscial at the Tuachan theatre to go check it out the next time you're in St. George. This is probably the 4th or 5th one I've been to with my family, and we keep coming back for more! A lot of us also went and saw the movie "Batman". I didn't think I would be too big of a fan of this movie, but I was happily surprised because I quite enjoyed it. We got home Sunday night and the drive from St. George to Idaho Falls really wasn't all that bad. We thought it was going to suck but we were home before we knew it. Anyway, thanks mom and dad for such a fun trip! We wish we could have stayed another week!

Welcome to Vegas baby!

We walked all the way down the strip the the Bellagio to watch the water show in 107 degree heat, to find that the water show didn't start until 3. Bummer!! I wasn't sure I was going to make it back, it was so blasted hot!

The Eiffel Tower... sorta

And this is where we stayed... the Excalibur.

We stopped to watch the Lions for a bit in the MGM Grand... we also ate at a breakfast/lunch buffet. We were so stuffed afterwards we could barely walk!

The M&M factory.

Who makes the better impressionist?

This picture is for Caleb... I think Jeff's pointing at where he used to work.

Smile Jeff! We wanted to ride the rollercoaster ride but when we got there it was 15 bucks a person. I don't know that any rollercoaster ride is worth 15 bucks! 10 maybe... What a rip off!

We went and ate at the Pizza Factory in St. George. I love this place, the pizza is excellent!

My two favorite boys... and the best looking at that!

Playing Ticket To Ride... I had just dominated right before that!

My dad's not very photogenic... he looks like he's about to eat the camera! Brynli wasn't too happy either..

Jeff and I at "Les Miserable". So Good!!

Pittsburgh

I know everyone has been waiting for this post, so I apologize to all of you who have been waiting so patiently. :) Here are a few pics of our trip to Pittsburgh.... and of course some pics of our house. We finally found a house on Monday, the day we were to fly home. We had originally found a house that we were pretty excited about but there was a whole lot of fixing up to do on the home, so we would have ended up putting a lot of time and money into this house. Plus once I realized we could do some remodeling I started naming off all the things I would have liked to do... I think that's when Jeff started having second thoughts. He didn't exactly have all the remodeling plans in mind that I did. :) We actually went in to sign the papers for the house and our realtor, after looking at the home inspection, informed us of a few more things that needed fixed... such as a whole new roof. So... we thought about it for a night and decided that maybe that wasn't the best idea, we would have been forking out a lot of the money we had saved up just to fix the house and who knows how long it would have ended up taking us. Anyway, to make a long story short, we had looked at a house a couple days before that that we both really loved, but we were uncertain of the area. We talked to a few people who are going to dental school right now and live in this area. They told us we would be in a great ward (the other house was in a branch) and that there is about 7 other LDS couples going to dental school who live in this area as well. Anyway, they eased our doubts and we bought the house. We both are excited and feel really good about it. Plus we love the house! It was by far the best one we had looked at. We were lucky to get it, the house had only been on the market for a couple of days. And we just got the home inspection back and they found nothing. They said the house was in perfect shape and that it was one of the best homes they had ever seen. What a blessing! The people living in it now have really done a good job at keeping it up and making it look cute. Everything is up to date and I even like the colors they painted the walls with! Did I mention that this house is 96 years old??? :) It has 3 bedrooms and one bathroom. One of the bedrooms is quite small so we will use that for the computer room and Jeff's study room. There is a basement as well that I didn't get pictures of. We will mainly use that for our storage and to do laundry. That was also an eye opener for me, the basements weren't what I was picturing. Some of them I didn't even dare look at. I just had Jeff go look at them. They are creepy, and I just know there are spiders just waiting to attack. If you've ever seen a really old home you'll know what I'm talking about. They are the basements with the cement floors and no finished ceilings. A lot of them have toilets, but most of them haven't been used in 50 years. And they have like 5 doors leading to who knows what. I wasn't about to open them to find out. The basement is where everyone has their washer and dryer hook ups. Luckily the house we got had the best basement I'd seen. I might actually dare go downstairs without Jeff to do our laundry now! I kept asking Jeff, "is there a way we can have the washer and dryer upstairs?? I don't think I'll be able to do the laundry unless you come down to do it with me!" He thinks I'm a wuss, and I'll be the first to admit it!


The view of Pittsburgh...




We are up at a lookout point, overlooking the city. It really is quite pretty.


Pittsburgh is known as the "city of bridges." I've never seen so many bridges.


Lots of tall buildings...


Here is Heinz Field the football stadium where the Steelers play.

Welcome to our home....

This is how close the houses are in Pittsburgh. It's so crazy! And everything is so hilly! It's so different from Utah where everything is basically flat..

This is our front porch. They said they would leave us the swing!

The living room.... I love the wood floors.

The dining room...

I love the old phone on the wall!

They really kept this house immaculate. Everything was so clean and organized!

We also talked them into leaving all the window treatments...

Love the stairs...

Nearly all the homes we looked at only had bathrooms upstairs. We maybe saw one with a bathroom on the main level, and we probably looked at over 50 homes.

Guest bedroom

Master Bedroom... the one thing about old homes is there is never any closet space. We are going to have to make the small room into a half office/half closet.


Looking down the stairs.

Our backyard. All of the yards in Pittsburgh are so little. It's nothing like what I'm used to. A lot of the homes we looked at didn't even have a yard, but I'm not complaining, it's less for us to mow.

This is for my mom. She loves trees, and this one is in our backyard. Everytime I told her about a house we were looking at she'd ask, does it have trees in the yard??" Haha... here you go mom.

Last day of work...

Here are a few pics of my last day at work. My coworkers were all so nice, everyone brought some kind of dessert and then they ordered sandwiches for lunch. I felt like I just kind of wandered around all day because the new girl had already taken over my drawer. It actually turned out pretty nice, I was able to talk to whoever I wanted for as long as I wanted without having to feel bad about the long line. :)

No More Work!!

Tomorrow is my last day of work.... hooray!!! I'm going to be a little sad leaving some of my coworkers and some of the customers I have gotten to know really well. (Notice I said SOME) haha. But it will be a relief to finally be done with work so I can get started on packing up our stuff and cleaning our apartment. We have so much to do before we leave... ahhh!

Jeff and I are flying out to Pittsburgh early Thurday morning to find us a place to live. I'm excited to finally get to see the city. Wish us luck in finding a place!! I will take lots of pictures and post when we get back...

Dinner with the parents...

On Saturday Jeff and I, and both of our parents enjoyed a nice dinner at Deer Cliff Inn in Preston. I love the atmosphere, it's such a pretty place to have dinner. The food was great... but the company was even better. Thanks Tony and Kathie for inviting us all to dinner. We had a great time!

I was also able to spend Friday night with a few of my friends. We've been trying to get together for a while since I am going to be leaving soon. Although not all of us were able to make it, we still had a good time. Kelli, Abby, Stacey, and I went to dinner at Firehouse and then went to Stacey's afterwards and talked until all hours of the night. It's so fun to reminisce and laugh just like old times. We missed all of you who couldn't make it! (Once again, I forgot to get a picture... dang it!)

4th of July

Even though the 4th was a couple of weeks ago I still wanted to post about our fun filled weekend. We drove home Thursday night and stopped at Angie's for a minute to visit with Jeff's fam and wish Kenna and Tayler a Happy Birthday. Then we met up with my family at the research park by Lee's to watch the fireworks from Romney Stadium. We ordered some pizzas, played some games, and just hung out until the fireworks started. Then of course we ended the festivities by sitting in traffic all night. Gotta love it...



Here we are.... waiting for the fireworks!

Ohhh.... how cute...

On the 4th we went with my family to the Bee's game in Salt Lake. It's a family tradition of ours that I always look forward to. They always have the best fireworks and yummy hotdogs.

Doesn't he look good in glasses?? :)

My mom, Marci, Jason.... and Brynli in her carrier.

My sister Ashlee and her boyfriend Hayden.

Me and my madre...

Jeff got pooped and decided to take a quick little nap before the fireworks started. He found a great headrest!

We were walking back to our car and I just thought this was a darling picture of my neice.

On Saturday we met up with Stacey and Brian and had lunch at Cafe Sabor (Jeff's favorite restaurant). He was finally able to convince me to go. (It's my least favorite restaurant). Then we played games that night with my family. Sunday was Brynli's baby blessing and I'm mad I didn't get a picture of that. We had so many people over at our house... it was crazy! I'm glad we've been so lucky to spend so much time with family and friends, I'm really going to miss them all when we move...

We also made our decision to go to Pittsburgh this weekend. It was a tough decision but we both feel good about it and are excited to make the trek out there. Thanks everyone for your love and support! We will be leaving August 17th and Jeff's parents have so graciously offered to drive with us out to Pittsburgh. They will be driving our car and we will be driving the U-Haul. It's going to be an adventure... :)