Exciting News!!!

We are hoping to expand our family through adoption. We are using the agency LDS family Services to go through. We just got approved to be a potential adoptive couple. We are so excited. We need your help though. If you know of a birth mother who is considering making a plan for adoption for her child or wants to learn more information about it, please have them call LDS Family Services at 801-566-2556. If she is interested in us she can view our profile by going to:

www.beta.itsaboutlove.org/ial/profiles/22850888/ourMessage.jsf

We will post more about this later.

Off to Grandmothers House We Go...

We stopped off at my Grandma's house this weekend and had a nice visit with her. Whenever we go and visit her we never leave empty-handed. Well this time it was some fruit. We took a pear home with us. She wanted to give us more fruit, but we declined. She is an amazing example of someone who has very little, but is willing to give everything she has to others. One time we went over there and she just purchased a new TV. We helped her set it up and while we were there she wanted to give us her new TV. We obviously did not accept. She is so funny. Crazy German Grandma.
She is working on some photo albums for her kids and grandkids. We were able to look through them so far. It is really neat to see old pictures of my mom and her family while they were growing up. My grandma has done a great job and we will treasure these albums in the years to come.

Bliss

I have absolutely enjoyed the weather this past week. The warmer weather makes me so happy. Mat and I dusted off the tennis rackets this weekend and hit the courts. We were a little rusty because it was our first time this season, but we had a great time playing anyway.

Game Night

Game Night with the fam is always fun. We played Phase 10 this time. We both enjoy this game and play it by ourselves quite a bit too. I taught Mat how to play it when we first got married, but I actually taught him wrong. We soon learned the right way to play and I can still beat Mat at the game. However, the best game night so far was when we played Guesstures. My mom was Hilarious with her actions and movements, but she won't play it again because we laughed at her so much.



We had a nice time at game night. We love to play games. When we were first married our favorite game to play together was Deluxe Yahtzee. We played so much that we got tired of it and have not played it in a couple of years.

Better Late Than Never

Congrats to my sister. She is going on a mission to Berlin, Germany. This is Mat and I with her right after she opened up her mission call. We are so excited for her. She will be a great missionary.




This is my sister and some family after she went through the temple for the first time. It was a nice evening and now all of my siblings have been through the temple.


It was freezing outside.

Our trip to Dingo Country...

So CUTE!!!

Downtown Melbourne is was very nice.

This is my Aunt and Uncles home in Australia. It is big and beautiful. We stayed here while we were in Melbourne.

Puffing Billy is a famous train ride you can go on in Dandenong. We enjoyed the scenic view in our roofless train compartment, not to mention the sunburn that showed up the next day.

Melbourne, Australia Temple. It is a really small temple, but we enjoyed being able to go there.















The Royal Botanical Garden in Melbourne was so beautiful. The pictures we took of it do not do it justice.















Maybe the Dingo ate your baby...
maybay?

I took this souvenir from the zoo home with me.

We needed more food to feed the Kangaroo's.

We took a weekend excursion and drove the famous "Great Ocean Road." It was a gorgeous drive and had fantastic beaches along the way.

Mat and I on the beach on the hottest day ever in Melbourne. It was around 118 degrees. Ouch...

We played some tennis in Lorne which is a city along the Great Ocean Road. This was our first time playing on a grass court. We enjoyed it!

"The Chase Begins"










My Uncle wanted to drag me into the water, but I did not want to go.




"The Chase Continues"













"The Dive"











My uncle finally got a hold of my shirt. FYI he is completely air borne.

My Uncle finally got a good hold on me and dragged me into the water with my clothes on.

The Twelve Apostles along Great Ocean Road was absolutely breath-taking.

This starts our pictures from Sydney, Australia.
We climbed the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It was so awesome. If you look really hard you can see people climbing on top of the bridge.

Mat did some surfing at Manly Beach. Being the great wife that I am I took some pictures of him surfing, well almost. We actually zoomed in and found out this is a picture of some girl surfing not Mat. My bad, I was too far away and could not tell. However, he did get up on his very first try.

We took a tour of the famous Opera House.

At the Botanical Gardens in Sydney they have Huge fruit bats. You can't tell from the picture how big they actually are, but they were huge and hundreds of them.

Sydney is a beautiful place. We enjoyed our stay there for a couple of days. We also really enjoyed Melbourne as well.

Aussie Land

Mat and I were able to go to Australia for two weeks in the beginning of February. We spent most of our time in Melbourne;however, we were also able to visit and stay in Sydney for 3 1/2 days. We had a great time and it was hard to come back to "normal" life again. Here are just a few of the pictures we took and just some of the things we did. Here is a taste of the Land Down Under.

The Land Down Under....

Mat and I recently got back from the Land Down Under. We had a great time. More pictures and details to come...