Here's What Happened in July!

It's Sunday night and Bill has just whisked away to go lock up the church. He asked me to come with him. I told him I had to blog. So I better keep my word and do as I say so that I can start building up the reputation of a reliable person in our marriage. ;)

Look Honey! I'm blogging! :)

Today was a very eventful Sunday full of snow, ice, and rushing around.

We went to church this morning and heard some great lessons from our different classes.  Then lucky us, we had a cookie linger longer after church! Last night, Bill had a great idea to make Muddy Buddies, so we went against the grain and brought those as our treats. Our little Dixie cups full of Muddy Buddies brought a little character to the cookie table. We were happy to provide a little variety to the other delicious treats.

Then we attempted to have choir practice after the linger longer. Bill is the ward choir director and I am the ward choir piano accompanist. We really enjoy having a calling that we can work together on! It's brought us closer together and has really helped us to get to know a good chunk of our ward. We're starting to feel really comfortable where we are at. *Knock on wood.* It's a soon as we are comfortable that the Lord sends us something to break us out of our comfort-zones. I should watch what I say. ;)

Choir practice didn't really happen. Instead I lightly practiced the piano for our upcoming Christmas Fireside while some of our close friends talked about the latest Zelda game for the Wii. I never understood how many people actually play video games until I met Bill. Now I feel like the minority. ;)

This is the last week in November before the Thanksgiving holiday. Naturally, it then becomes designated has Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching Sunday! Our Home Teachers came at 1:30, I went Visiting Teaching at 2:30 and 3:00, and Bill went Home Teaching at 3:00 and 3:30.

Tonight we had a most excellent dinner. We were planning on having hobo dinners, but we put an exciting and adventurous spin on it! Bill mentioned the only down side to hobo dinners was there wasn't much to go off of by way of left overs. I suggested we could make a couple extra to last us a couple more meals. Besides your traditional hamburger, potatoes, carrots, and onions, we like to put a little extra flavor to ours, but we couldn't decide which route to take. So...we didn't decide. We went with all four of our choices! We made a hobo dinner flavored with pico, one with barbeque sauce, one with Worcestershire sauce, and one with Teriyaki sauce. Holy heavenly smell of flavors! Our house smelled divine as the dinners were cooking up. (Which in turn, killed off the smell of our new shower curtain liner that had caused our house to smell like Smith and Edwards...or nasty factory plastic).

We had to sample all of them while we were at it! So once we were done, we opened each of the tinfoil dinners and sampled a portion of each flavor. Yes...we have a few spatulas. The winners? It depends who you ask. But we are quite the fans of Worcestershire hobo dinners. So good!

Hobo Dinners!

As we were cleaning up dinner, we had a knock on our door. It was the Berg's!...Coming to drop off the check list for locking up the church building. :) David and Jaci Berg are members in our ward...and we're convinced we have found Bill's twin. David is also 24. They eat otter-pops the same way, they love Kool-Aid, they hate water, they sit the same way, they listen to some of the same music, they like the same kinds of video games, they're not fond of exercising, and are chemistry-nerds for life. We laughed and laughed at this semi-eery realization tonight. Jaci practically died because she was laughing so hard. Also! Jaci watches "I Love Lucy" on Hulu! And she claims she's like a six year old. Oh my heck. I am too. :) It was a really fun evening having them stop by and just chatting.

Then off to tithing settlement with the Bishop! LIFE is good. :)

Now here I am blogging as fast as I can before I have to go off to sleep!

Here's what happened in July!

Al and Loraine giving us a sweet serenade.

On the first of July we went to Logan's 4th of July Celebration held at Romney Stadium. Since Bill and I worked for USU Housing at the time, we were given the okay to go and watch the fireworks from the loading dock like we had the year before. We brought a few friends a long and set up camp on the cement. We lit up sparklers, listened to some sweet guitar music and just chatted as friends.

It's so cool to be so close to the fireworks launching. It's so loud that it practically jars your whole body! The blinding white and insanely loud POP fireworks work the best for feeling the intensity.

Then Al and Loraine came back to our place and we had some great conversation!

The 4th of July weekend also included our first camping trip together! We had bought all our own camping gear with some of our wedding money and were pumped to try it all out! The only thing we didn't buy, was a tent. We borrowed a tent from Bill's parents and it was a lot smaller than we had anticipated. Claustrophobia? It was a bit rough. But oh-so-memorable!

Dad, Chad, and Bill deciding how to best go about moving this tree.

 Are you jumping on the trees?

Whilst on our camping trip we went for a drive, which is a Sorenson thing to do. Dad and Chad took Chad's truck, and Bill and I followed behind in the Subby. The men had a grand old time driving the dirt roads and clearing all the fallen trees from the paths. I sat in the Subby and enjoyed taking pictures of them being manly men. They were really aggressive about clearing the trees! Chad hooked up his truck to a few of the trees, pulled into reverse and drove until the trees would let out a deafening snap. I was glad to be in the Subby.

Marie and Mom playing Bananagrams!

And Bill and cousin Tyler became best friends. :)

There was one point on our honeymoon that we attempted to drive up to the Paris Ice Caves, but alas, it was early June, and the road was still snowed in. It was now a month later and Bill really wanted to try and make it out to the caves again. Out of the handful of times that I have gone to this place, this was by far the best! We were actually able to enter the cave and see...the ice! I thought it was beautiful.

Marie, Mom, Dad, no Val, and Jord.

After a busy weekend full of camping and adventure, we made it more crazy and drove down to Weber High to see some 4th of July Fireworks with my family. It was pretty good. They had a flash mob. :)

Don't forget the Kool-aid!

 Placing in the final piece to the puzzle.

We bought our first piece of furniture together! A pretty dark wood shelf - which matches all our other furniture so nicely. We had a fun time assembling it together.

Aunt Lesa works for the Ogden Standard Examiner and always gets free tickets to go see Corps Encore! at the Weber State Football Stadium. I guess the stadium was under construction this summer, so they moved the marching band show to Rice Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah. My mom called the day before offering us the extra tickets. We decided it would be fun to go, especially since Bill had never been to it before. In the end, it only ended up being my mom, me, and Bill who went, but we had a good time! Professional marching bands are so neat. The walls of sound give me chills...even when there are immature high school girls screaming and talking their head off behind you. Don't worry. Bill gave them a talkin' to. ;)

Alicia and Jeff

Did you know my uncle Jeff is in a band? Neither did we. We told Alicia and Jeff that the next time Jeff was performing, we wanted to hear about it and come see. So we did! Jeff and his band had their beginnings at a ward talent show and now they just go around playing oldies music and having a good time. Jeff is the youngest member of the band. This concert was at Cherry Hills on the lawn. It was really fun to hear him play his guitar and listen to old men sing!

Finally, my Bill took me on a hike! I was so excited. After attending Jeff's concert, we stayed the night over at Bill's parents. In the morning we got up and went up Adam's Canyon! It was so fantastic! Well...I thought it was fantastic! Bill may not enjoy the uphill part, but seeing the waterfall, rescuing the pink toy cell phone, eating lunch together, and walking downhill makes the hike all worthwhile.  ;)

 

 Fred, Brent, and Dallon

Jord and Gramps

Silly Pops

Phoenix

Oakley

Grandma Higley and Mom

Freddy

In honor of pioneer day, we went to Grandma Higley's house and did fireworks with the cousins! Brent set off a dry-ice bomb...and I now understand why dry-ice can only be sold to 18-year-olds and why the bombs are illegal. Bill and I brought our left over sparklers from the Stadium fireworks and we had a sparkler frenzy! When it got dark enough, we set off fireworks in the front yard and enjoyed our first legal Utah aerial firework display. Bill got chased around Grandma Higley's house by a thousand little cousins in the dark. I've never seen him run like that...and I've never seen him do it since...I don't know if I will ever see it again. :) And I got dog-piled and tickled. Worst combination ever!

And because my best friend happens to have a birthday around a state holiday, I had work off! So I went down to visit Taylor for her 20th birthday. We celebrated by doing the usual - bubbles, parks, picnics, snow cones, more parks (the wonky dizzy park), walking in the rain, exploring the town, and driving. It was good to see her and actually talk to her without a wedding going on. ;) I love me some Taylor time.

And that was a large piece of mine and Bill's crazy July! Married LIFE is great for all the reasons above. You get to start making your own memories together. :)