GO BIG BLUE!!  

I can't believe that it has already been 1 year here in AZ.  We are about to enter yet another year of school!  It wasn't that long ago that I was applying to get in to school and doing a lot of praying and then, Ta-Freakin-Da I am in my second year of PT school!  It has been such a wonderful year not only in school but life here in AZ.  This new school year brings a whole new list of challenges for Mel and I.  This picture is my campus in Mesa, but it only shows the main building.  This is where I will be spending countless hours of studying, practicing and learning how to be a Physical Therapist.  This summer I completed my first rotation as an intern, and it was such a neat experience.  I was finally able to use all the things I learned about for a year on real people!  This next quarter is a busy one filled classes like neuroscience, spinal conditions, integumentary, neuro conditions and a couple of rehab classes.  Its a good thing I have such a wonderful wife that brings me dinner when we have long nights at the library. 

This is where Mel is going to be spending a lot of her time for the next few months again.  She didn't get much of a break having to take summer school to finish more quickly.  She is going to be staying busy taking classes in pursuit of her Psychology degree.  She is taking a number of different classes including a couple of classes dealing with the environment, a personality psych class, calculus :( all on top of being research assistant in the psych department, and making sure our house doesn't fall apart.  She is however grateful to have the opportunity to finally finish what she has worked so hard for; a very expensive piece of paper, aka a Diploma.  I would also like to add that since Mel has been attending ASU she averaged over a 4.0 in all her classes!!  She is going to kill me for putting that in here but I love her so much and am very proud of her and her accomplishments.  I just wish I was able to scan in her letters from the Dean on making the Dean's List each semester.

VIVA LA BOISE!

Well as some of you know Charlie and I decided to go to Boise last minute for an impromptu visit. We miss Boise so much that we had to go back and bask in its glory! The fun part was that none of Charlie's family members (except Jenny and Drew) knew that we were coming. We parked down the street, jumped over Wendy and Al's fence into the backyard and knocked on the back door. To Wendy's surprise, the two of us were standing there. This was the weekend of Kylee's baby shower so not only did we get to see Charlie's parents and siblings, we were able to spend time with a lot of extended family and friends as well. It was such a great visit and the trip rejuvenated us until we can go back north again. The seventeen hour car ride and over 2000 miles traveled was well worth it!!! We can hardly wait until Thanksgiving where we will be able to get out of the 100 degree weather and play in the snow!



Once through this opening, the view was spectacular. This was in Arizona, shortly after we crossed the Utah/Arizona border. The view overlooked a huge valley with the beautiful AZ red rock and part of the Grand Canyon. It was breathtaking!











Some more fun pics on the way home.....somewhere in the middle of nowhere!













Once we saw this sign we knew we had to eat here to represent Charlie's dad....BIG AL!! This was a hole in the wall burger joint in Kanab that we ate lunch at.









While in Boise we got to see our cute niece Carly who is now one and a half! She has the cutest smile ever....We love this girl!

































Here are some pictures at the beginning of the Grand Canyon on the Navajo reservation. It was awesome!

Happy Birthday Charlie!!

On August 5 we celebrated Charlie's 27th birthday! The day of his birthday wasn't that exciting because Charlie had to work ten hours that day, but that evening we had pizza from our favorite place, ice cream cake (Charlie's favorite) and went to see the new batman movie. That movie is intense!!
That Friday we went to a really fun restaurant called San Tan Flats to celebrate Charlie's birthday but to also celebrate the birthdays of two of Charlie's classmates (and friends) .....Whitney whose birthday is August 6 and Carlos whose birthday is August 8. This restaurant was so much fun. It is a BBQ joint that has seating inside but most of the seating is outside. Once outside you sit in a courtyard and in the courtyard they have a stage for live country music, dancing, pool tables, darts and a "saloon"....which we never visited of course! But the coolest thing they had were fire pits where you could roast marshmallows!! If it wasn't 96 degrees that night I would have been all over that!! Besides the heat, it was a really fun night!