Phew I haven't posted in quite a while... We have had a lot of events happen in the past few months. Most of them, not the best. Which is my main reason for not keeping updated on our blog. I have not been sure whether to share my feelings or share the events that have happened in the past few months. But I think I am working up more courage to write about it... not today though!

A little update, 

Dal is gone ALL of the time!!! I never see him, he started school the end of august and since then, I seem to feel like a widow, and I know that Sarah and Kelly can relate. He goes to school in Richfield 2-3 days a week and stays with his brother Devin and his family while he is there, then comes home and works every thursday through saturday, which is a bummer because I only work 1/2 days on fridays and have saturdays off of work, and whatever time he is at home and not sleeping, he is studying in his office, but I do get to see him most Sundays, which is a blessing! We go to church and hold hands during sacrament and then we usually take a nap after church, along with Pepper, and then he packs up and drives to Richfield on Sunday nights. Dal is doing really good at school and doing really well on all of his tests, he will take his finals on Dec 11th. and then he has 2 1/2 weeks off of school, yay! I went to his work and begged them to schedule him during the week instead of on the weekends for those few weeks so that we could spend some time together on the weekends, cant wait! 

Im trying to plan something fun for us to do, any ideas?!

As for me, I work all week, when I come home after work Pepper is right there to greet me at the door, she gets so excited that she pees a little, haha. Its so cute and makes my day! So Pepper and I usually go for a walk to get the mail, it should only take a few minutes, but it usually takes about an hour because of all of the little kids that we run into along the way. Man, these neighbor kids sure love Pepper! It is to the point that I know exactly what time and what day each child will take a turn to knock on our door to ask if Pepper can come out and play. The kids know that I get off work between 5-6 pm and sure enough they are all waiting by my door when I pull in to the driveway. Pepper doesn't mind playing with them, she just gets really annoyed and tries to run back in the house as soon as she gets the chance.

But my nights are pretty lonely, I have a few tv shows I watch, I catch up on emails, watch chick flicks, and play fetch with Pepper for hours waiting for Dallin's phone call if he is at school or waiting for Dal to get done studying so we can read scriptures and then go to bed.

As sorry and boring as my life is, I feel super bad for Dal, he is always either working or studying. I am really proud of him though, and know that all of this will pay off in the end! So keep trucking right?!

Pepper is 6 months and is so playful and cute. We sure love her! She brings a lot of joy and frustrations to my life. We have to constantly keep the bathroom doors closed, and the toilet paper has to sit on top of the toilet, she loves to unroll the tp and try and eat it. She loves to bark at herself in the mirror and try and attack the image in the mirror. She loves to play fetch and CONSTANTLY wants to play it. She gives really good high fives when she brings the ball back before I throw it again. She is the best cuddler when I take naps or go to bed (which is nice to have someone to share my bed with the first 1/2 of the week when Dal is in Richfield), she always needs attention which results in me never getting to blog or read, etc. Every time I turn up the computer she knows how to turn it off, haha. She is so darn smart. She loves treats and always wants to eat what we are eating instead of her food. She has chewed up all of her toys, so that made for an easy choice of what to get her for Christmas. She loves to scratch and bite me, don't know why, she is so nice to everyone else, and she is nice to me most of the time, she just gets mean sometimes to me and bites me! little stinker! But I sure love her so much and am so grateful that we have her!

Some adorable sleeping pictures

 I had such a hard time getting out of bed that morning, just wanted to snuggle up in bed with my two babies! Could you blame me? So Cute!

Summer catch up

It's been such a busy fun filled summer and we loved every minute of it! We got to see so many family members and Dal and I got to spend lots of time with each other.

This post will be like a timeline so I can look back at this one day and 

see all the fun things we got to do, and when we got to do them.

Let's start out with my birthday on July 17th! I turned 23 this year, which is fine because I kept telling everyone last year that I was 23 anyways, somehow I skipped 22! But, I definitely feel one year older, and wiser too (haha gotta love being in primary)So Dal had to work in Provo on the 16th and 17th, which left me alone on my bday, however my Auntie J came to visit and stay with me the 16th-18th. She took me out to lunch and we had lots of fun staying up late and talking, it was a lot of fun to have her visit! Also, I have the best bosses ever, they brought me gluten-free cupcakes at work for my bday, and they were delicious! Oh and my bday present.... well that will have to wait for a few days later in this timeline to tell about what I got!

July 20-22nd we spent in Manti at Jake and Becca's house. My mom, Rachel, Matthew, and Sarah and her kids were all there for the weekend. On Friday we stayed up late talking and catching up, (it's been a year and a half since that group of us have been together!)

Saturday, July 21st - Manti High 5 Year Class Reunion

We had a potluck at a park in Ephraim, and just sat around visiting and catching up on the past 5 years. It was so much fun to see some of my classmates and to hear about their successes and to see their cute babies! It's kinda funny cause I don't think I sat by Dal the entire time. He knows most of my classmates just as much as I do and he was working his way around the room and talking to almost everyone there. At the end I asked if he enjoyed himself at a Manti class reunion, he replied, "never in my entire life did I ever imagine myself at a Manti class reunion, and let alone enjoy myself!" haha I guess thats what I get for marrying a boy from Gunnison! 

After my class reunion my family all went swimming at the Manti pool, we had so much fun playing water games and going down the water slide with my nephews.

The boys played lots of baseball games with Dallin, he had so much fun pitching to them.

And we ended the night with a rousing game of POUNCE! A family favorite and very competitive card game.

Sunday we went to church and we sat by our friends Kayla and Tyson and we talked all through church like we did when we were young, haha. It was fun to have 5 out of the 7 siblings all in church together (Josh was in Michigan, Jess was in Cedar.) 

On the way back to St. George on Sunday afternoon, we made a little stop in Holden, Utah to get my Birthday present from Dal! Hooray!!

Meet the newest addition to our family, and my bday present, Pepper!!

Isn't she the most adorable thing?!

 Pepper in her cute pink bed.

 She is a yorkie-poo (yorkshire terrier/ mini poodle), 

she is all black with 2 back white paws and a little white under her chin.

To backtrack on how we got her, on July 9th Dal met with a lady in St. George in a parking lot and picked out our little girl, he came to get me for lunch and told me he was taking me to meet our puppy, I was so excited my cheeks hurt from smiling so much! When I held her for the first time it was like the happiest moment since Dal and I got married, and I didn't want to give her back to the lady. (We had to wait patiently til she was 6 weeks old to pick her up, waiting patiently did not come easily!) So you can imagine my excitement to pick her up and take her home with us! We sure love her and she makes us so happy!

Dal's parents stayed with us on Sunday night for the 24th Holiday.

On Monday, the 23rd, we went to the Tuacahn theatre here in St. George to watch the musical, Aladdin with some of Dallin's family members. It was not my favorite play I have seen there, but it was still really good, we had a fun time watching that together.

(the flying carpet scene)

 

For the 24th Holiday we enjoyed our day off work and spent the day re-cooping and cleaning from being gone over the weekend and from having family over.

We gave Pepper her first bath, she has the cutest curly fur!  

 

She looks 1/2 her weight when she is wet.

 

All Clean!

  

After work on Friday (27th), we drove to Milford to spend the weekend with my family there. This is the first time my family has met Pepper, and they all loved her. 

Our nephews had so much fun playing chase with her in the backyard, and she loved it too. 

On Saturday we drove up Beaver Mountain to go fishing, Dal's most favorite hobby. Sadly, this is the first time all year he has been able to go fishing, poor guy. But he was so excited to go fishing and was so good to help all the nephews out with their poles. On the drive up, it was me and Dal in my dad's truck and for some reason all the little boys wanted to ride with us, so we had 4 little boys in the back, and pepper. haha those boys are so funny and have the cutest imaginations, they talked and played for the entire 1 1/2 hour drive. At the lake, Dallin and Cade caught a fish together, Cade's face was so darn cute and full of excitement! haha and so was Dallins! Watching him fish is one of my favorite things to do, he is like a giddy little school boy and loves every minute of fishing, it's so darn cute! Pepper had a fun time running around the mountains and dipping her paws in the lake, it made me a nervous wreck that she would jump in, so I was cautiously watching her the whole time, but all that fun definitely tuckered her out.

 This was on top of a minivan parked at the lake. So weird!

 It rained really hard on the drive home.

 

Gramma and Grampa Elkins and Aunt J and Jackson came later that afternoon to Milford, and we spent the entire afternoon and night watching the olympics! Go USA! It was such a fun weekend to be with family! 6/7 of us siblings were there, (missed you Josh, and of course Kelly and the kids, and Ben.) It has been way too long since we have all been together, I hope that someday soon we can have that opportunity to have all 7 of us and our spouses and kids all together! But since we all live in different cities and states, it seems to be a difficult task to achieve. So we soaked up all the fun and talking that we could that weekend because it could be another year or two before that opportunity will happen again.

We drove home Sunday night, unpacked, threw in a few loads of laundry and repacked for Lake Powell. 

I worked on Monday, and thank heavens Dal had the day off so that he could get our house back in order and finish packing/getting ready for Lake Powell. After I got off work we drove to stay the night in Gunnison with Dal's parents to try and cut the trip in half instead of waking up at 4am to leave St. George the following morning. We got to Ron and Gayle's house by like 9:30pm, helped pack up the boat, then Kellen and I went for a midnight run to get a last minute workout before we had to wear swimsuits for a week straight. Kel was a good sport to let me run with him and for him to slow down his miles so I could keep up, he is training for a marathon later on this year and I am nowhere close to his speed or length! Then Dal, Kel and I stayed up talking til 2 am. (this is nothing new, we do this every time the 3 of us are together, despite how early we have to wake up the next morning!) 

Lake Powell

Dal drugged me up with Dramamine to get me through the car ride without throwing up (I get really car sick)and we were off to Lake Powell, hooray! A trip we have been looking towards all year. Lake Powell is like Heaven on Earth. We had the best time, especially because I wasn't as afraid of the water this year and I wanted to be in it constantly, unlike the previous years. (Don't ask why I'm afraid, I just think there are mer-people or enormous creatures that will come up and eat me!)

We swam lots, 

 had slide contests,

and diving contests, 

 we water ski-ed, 

 wake-boarded,

went on lots of boat rides, 

 cliff jumped, (pictures to come)

soaked in the hot rays, hiked, 

water tubed, 

we lounged around talking, laughing and eating lots of yummy foods, 

and Dal even caught a bat! 

and Pepper swam for the first time, which was so stinkin' cute!

She had so much fun playing in the sand and chasing all the little kids around. She didn't love the heat; her black fur soaked up the heat, so we carried around a squirt bottle to keep her cool.

We celebrated our 3 year anniversary on Wednesday, August 1st! 

The last 3 years have gone by so fast. 

 We snuck away for a few minutes to exchange a few smooches and "I love you's", other than that, we spent our anniversary surrounded by 28 of our family members; which just reminded us of our Wedding Day being surrounded all day by family. However, unlike our wedding night, we spent this night on top of a houseboat surrounded by our cousins! haha.

Love you baby, can't wait for many more years and memories together!!

August 4th- Our last day at Lake Powell

We spent the last morning at Lake Powell going to the Indian Ruins 

and learning all about them from a tour guide, they were pretty neat!

Can't wait til next year!

The drive home was not the best, of course I'm full of Dramamine, but I still got pretty sick, so I slept for most of the ride. It was a 5 hour drive and we followed the GPS' route home, it took us some crazy route home and we passed through towns that we have never heard of before.

When we got home we unpacked, washed some laundry and got the house back in order. (sounds like Deja Vu' huh?)

I woke up early Sunday morning and finished prepping my lesson, we went to church, came home and took a nap and when we woke up my family was here to stay for a few days. 

We went swimming at the pool lots.

 On Monday Sarah and her kids flew back to Tennessee, Kelly and I took her kids and Matthew shopping at the outlets and took them to play at a splash pad.

It was fun to have them all stay with us for a few days.

Pepper discovered her favorite seat in the car...

 ...the cup holder.

August 9th- School Orientation

Dal had his school orientation today in Richfield. I can't believe that school is starting so soon, his classes start on August 28th. I need to mentally prep myself because he will drive to Richfield and stay there for 1-3 days for classes and clinicals and then come home and work every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and when he isn't at school or at work he will be studying. He has already been studying about 2 hours every day for the past 2 weeks. 

But Sunday is our day together, I'll see him at church and then he will probably just crash from the weeks worth of things. Sounds like I will be doing a lot of crafting and exercise classes to keep myself occupied!

August 10th-11th- Miss Sanpete Pageant

After I got off work on Friday we drove to Ephraim to help Desirae and Kellen with the Miss Sanpete Pageant. There was a pageant Friday and Saturday night. After the pageant on Saturday night we all went to Denny's for a midnight dinner, it's a tradition we do every year, kind of like a reward after working so hard with the pageant. After we ate, Dal and I had to drive through the night to get home in time for Dal to go to work at 6:00am. We got home @ 3:15am so he got about 2.5 hours of sleep, and then had to wake up and work a 12 hour shift. Poor guy! He is such a trooper to be able to work long hours with little sleep most nights. Not sure how people in the medical field can do their hard hours, but sure am grateful that they do!

August 14th- Date Night

Dal and I went and saw Batman, and it was AMAZING!! We loved every minute of it, and there were a lot of minutes since it was a 3 hour movie! 

August 16th- Temple Night

We had ward temple night tonight before the temple closes for the next 3 weeks, funny thing is that 3 other wards decided to have their temple night the same night at the same time. The session was too full that they asked a large group of us to go to do sealings. What an amazing thing though, the session was full, the sealing room was overflowed and to do an initiatory was a 45 minute wait. The temple workers were beaming and slightly frantic at how full the temple was and most of us had to wait for almost an hour before we could do anything. But it was so neat to see the temple that full! We were in the sealing group and I feel that we were supposed to do those for a reason. Since we just celebrated our 3 year anniversary it was so great to remember our covenants that we made to each other on our wedding day.

Ball Family Reunion- August 17& 18

We have a Ball family reunion every year at a cabin in Paragonah canyon and it's always a lot of fun.

I found out something there that I have never known before, my baby can shoot a gun, and shoot it really good! The men shot skeet on Saturday and Dal shot about 97%. It's fun to still learn new things about each other. He hasn't picked up a gun since high school, (because we don't like them) and so I was quite impressed at how well he did. 

 Here's pepper hiding between my legs, the gun shots were too loud and pretty scary for her.

We also split up into teams and play 'Minute to Win It' every year, that is always so fun to play and even more fun to watch!

Stacking cupcakes on their foreheads.

 We had to pull out all of the tissues out of the tissue box, whoever did it the fastest one.

 It got pretty intense, and I won! The prize, all of the tissues not in the box and the empty box!

 Stacking golf balls.

 Ball toss. They had to catch plastic golf balls in a bucket on top of their head.

 The games were all really fun and it was so pretty up there. It was fun to spend time with the Ball family.

(We took some family pics up there)

Our first family picture together!

August 19th- Date Night

It was so much fun being with family for the past 5 weeks, but it's so nice to get back in to our regular routine! For date night we rented Hunger Games and cuddled on the couch. We love that movie!  

August 25th- Date Night

We had a free date night tonight! Those are the best! We got a gift card from Gramma and Grampa Elkins to Applebee's for our anniversary (Thank you Gramma and Grampa!!) so we used that to order out some yummy garlic mashed potatoes to go with the squash and zucchini I cooked (thanks to Jake and Becca's garden,) that was such a yummy meal. Then we used some coupons to get free Miniature Golf; we had a lot of fun golfing! Despite me getting 2 hole in ones, Dal still won by a few points! Afterwards we went to YogurtLand and used my gift card from my visiting teaching partner to get some frozen yogurts, 

and those were delicious! 

We had a very fun date night! (we were probably more able to enjoy ourselves because it was all free!)

Hooray! FINALLY caught up with the blog! 

As you can see, we have had a Very busy and Very fun summer, and we loved every minute of it!!