Sedona/Grand Canyon

So, last Thursday my mom came to town. Picking her up at 2:00 in the afternoon in Phoenix pretty much settled Alex and I's feelings on moving to that area, NOT HAPPENING. It was 113 Degrees!!!!! :\ Big change from what we are used to. We stopped in Anthem on our way back to show mom how nice it is and to get her something to eat. Then we headed back to the cooler mountains :) That night we went to Alex's softball game ( THEY WON!!!! ) First win of the season! whoohoo!
Friday we went down to Sedona. There are tons of little shops there and neat stuff to look at so we did that for a couple hours and then we went to the Chapel of the Holy Cross. It was pretty neat. It looks out over Sedona and it set back in all of this red rock. It set up above this 25 Billion dollar house, which was a bit ridiculous. I think Alex took a picture, so I will have to add that when I add pictures later, but it took a lot of attention away from the chapel...After that we headed back to Flagstaff. It started raining on our way back, but it stopped just intime for us to stop at a neat look-out area. There was a double rainbow which was AWESOME and you could see where one of them ended down in the canyon. Too bad we couldn't go down there to retrieve the pot of gold :( That night we played some Dominos and UNO, which was really fun :)
Saturday was a big day. We got up and got some groceries to make lunch for the Grand Canyon then we headed out. It is only about an hour and a half north of us, to the South Rim. We've heard the North rim is awesome, but it takes about 3 to 4 hours to get there (next time). Anyhow, we walked around most of the south rim and got some neat pictures. It is definitely a big hole, in the middle of nowhere haha. Mom about died a few times when she saw people standing out on the ledge or sitting on rocks that just had a straight drop. One guy was just trying to enjoy his lunch and she started screaming and backing away. Quite commical I must admit :-) Alex and I just shook our heads and laughed. It was definitely a great day though.
We ate at this famous burger place that night "Diablo Burger" it was DELICIOUS!!! Then we walked around downtown for a bit.
Sunday we went to church and then my roommates moved in. They are all REALLY fun and energetic! I think its going to be a great year :) Syd, my roommate is AMAZING! She is super fun and bubbly and outgoing.
Monday morning Mom and I left about 5:15am to get her back to Phoenix for her flight home. It was a pretty drive with the sun rising! But once again...it was 95 degrees at 7:00am. Once again, Not moving down there! haha. Rush hour was not very fun to get through either, but that's to be expected in a big city.
All-in-all the weekend was great, but very busy!!!
This week has been good! Started working more, which is nice! Alex had another game lastnight- they lost, 17 to 1 :/ yikes. But they had fun. Alex got a battle wound. He slid and left a good chunk of hair and skin from his leg on the field. Poor guy!
This weekend there isn't much going on. Probably just hang out with the roomies more and enjoy my last weekend of summer ;) yay!

Finally a post from Alex

Hey everyone!! Sorry it's been so long since I posted anything, I kinda forgot about this thing. Anyway, I know Kate has said that I will be posting about my job for a while so here it is. I'm actually at work right now, which might tell you something about it already. So far, I've just been helping out with troubleshooting machines and learning how they work. I don't have any projects of my own yet, so unless somebody needs help, I just kind of sit around and browse the internet. It's a lot like my last two jobs. :) When I am busy I really like it though. This type of controls programming is very different than anything I've done before, so it's pretty interesting learning how it all works. One of the machines I've been helping with is actually one of the most complex machines they've made. I can't say too much about it without getting in trouble, but it basically uses cameras and motors to position a stent at a certain point on a catheter and then crimps it on. I've mainly been doing hardware troubleshooting (checking wiring and connections). The software portion will come later on. I like that, although we are software engineers, we get to do a lot of hands-on work on these machines. It's mainly because there are so many wiring errors, but it's ok. I'm excited to start doing some programming of my own, and it sounds like it might start soon. My boss, Jake, sounds like he has a lot of ideas for new projects, so I'm hoping I get to work on at least on of them. Overall, I like MSI a lot and I'm excited to actually start doing some real work.

Other than work, I haven't been up to too much. I think Kate has let you know about just everything we've done. We went golfing the Sunday before last, and Kate beat me. I played absolutely horribly and Kate was doing great. We'll go out again soon so I can hopefully get some of my pride back. Kate's mom is coming on Thursday as she said. We're planning on maybe going down to Sedona on Friday afternoon and the Grand Canyon on Saturday. Should be a pretty fun weekend. I'm sure there will be lots of pictures to post. Kate's roommates move in on Sunday. I'm excited to meet them, and happy that Kate will finally have somebody to hang out with while I'm at work during the day. Anyway, life in Flagstaff is great, and you all need to come out and visit. Sooner than later would be a good idea unless u really like snow :)

Heyyy :)

Another rainy day here. It started raining about Noon while we were in church. When we were driving home the streets were FLOODED and there was not much visibility. Kinda scary at times, but it smells great and once its done, the ground soaks it up pretty fast! haha.

This weekend has been pretty great! Got to see our friends Lauren and Matt from NE yesterday for a few hours which was AmAzInG!!!!!!! Very fun to see them and hear about their summer adventures and such. Definitely sad to see them leave, but they can go tell everyone else how awesome Flagstaff is so that they come visit us! haha....hint hint Lauren. :)

I made some homemade icecream today- I thought it was going to be a flop, but it actually turned out pretty darn good!

This week there isn't much exciting going on until Thursday when my Mom is coming :) Yay!!!

We are going to go up to the Grand Canyon on Saturday and just hang out. Then my roommates move in on Sunday!!! I am VERY excited to meet them!

Other than that, kind of the same ol' same ol'.

Sunset Crater Hike!

Yay for Caves and Lavaflow!

Last Saturday we went to Sunset Crater National Park. These are pictures of lava flow and the volcano that errupted 100s of yrs ago. There is one picture that there is not much shrubbery on the side of the mountain, thats just because the lava burned the soil and nothing has grown back- pretty crazy right?! The rest of it is mostly lava rock that is just left over. It was pretty awesome to see!! It was a short hike, but definitely worth the scenery.
This week has been good!! I've been training all week at Hozhoni which has been pretty fun. A lot of it has been reading and listening and watching videos, but today we learned how to do proper restraints and how to get ourselves out of tough situations which was fun. Definitely the most interactive class of the week! Tomorrow I learn how to distribute meds and write Incident Reports- whooohooo!!! Next week I get to do orientation at one of the houses and then I'm done with training :) yay!
Alex has been good!!! Had another softball game tonight(lost again.) Poor guys :( They were having fun though so that is good! Work has been better this week. Yesterday he was busy all day troubleshooting a machine, today he was doing the same thing and had a meeting for a couple hours, so I think things are getting better :) We went out to eat with a few of his co-workers after the game. We got to hear a lot of crazy stories about MSI Gatherings, so that was fun and definitely something to look forward to.!
A couple of our friends from Omaha are going to be going through Flagstaff on Saturday (Lauren and Matt) YAY!!! That is probably going to be the highlight of my month! I am SOOO excited to see someone from home for a while!!!
Nothing too exciting planned for this weekend other than that though.

TTFN

Apartment

This is my apartment! It looks a little different now, my room has more stuff in it, I have a shower curtain and the kitchen isn't quite as messy. I took a picture of the living room but there are boxes EVERYWHERE so I will add a picture of that later :) I think my bathroom is my favorite room, because everything looks so good and matches so well in there...but I also love my comforter and sheets and lamp that all match as well :) The apartment is good, I can definitely hear rumblings of trains at night, which is a-okay with me. I grew up about 3 blocks away from train tracks so it feels a little like home. It still smells kind of funny, there are lots of cats surrounding it, so it smells a bit like cat litter, and something else that I cannot figure out- but I'm sure once there are 4 girls living in there, all of our scents will clear that out :)

It's been a little while since I have blogged....Sorry about that!

Newest updates this week, I started at Hozhoni on Tuesday. Just doing some basic training with signing a bunch of papers and getting a tour of the Administration building. Yesterday I had First Aid/CPR training. I was not looking forward to that at all because it is SO redundent, but I got to test out of First Aid and CPR was quick! The lady that will do most of my training is AWESOME. She is also incharge of the Thereputic Gardens so when I got done with my CPR test she took me through that and was telling me all about it. It was great :) We were chattin it up and joking around about stuff. Next week I have about 20 hours of training, so that will be fun, hopefully. Some of the sections seem like they are a little common sense, but not everyone is blessed with that, so they have to teach it :) haha.

I MADE A FRIEND :) Alex had his first work Softball game lastnight. One of the wives of his co-worker is about 22 or 23 and she was giving me the run-down of what it is like to be the significant other of a MSI employee. Sounds pretty rough- lol! We had a lot in common though which was awesome!! She is studying Child and Family science and Psychology, which is what I was originally doing, so it was fun to talk to her about that. She told me many many stories about MSI get-togethers, sounds pretty crazy, but fun!!! It was really nice to be able to talk to a female that I will hopefully see on a regular basis. :)

Softball was, fun! haha. Most of the men on the team are 40+ or maybe late 30s. There are only 4 guys that are 20-30 years old. So, they lost, which apparently is nothing new, but they had a really good time.

Alex is hopefully going to blog about MSI today, because he has nothing to do at work- ha.

We are going camping tonight! I am SOO excited. It sounds like an awesome place. There is a lake close and hiking trails and a monument thing. I will take pics and post them later! It will be nice to get away for a bit and relax outside :)

Better get to packing!!