Well, it's been a while since we have posted anything but life has been crazy busy!! Mel finally graduated from ASU and since that time we have had family reunions, job searches, Lake Powell trip (thanks Tingey fam!) and the much awaited move to Utah! We are finally here in Bountiful and are staying with Charlie's sister and her family. It has been great and we are so grateful to Jenny and Drew to let us stay with them for a little while. Utah has been a refreshing change from the 112 degree heat we would be experiencing in Arizona right now. Mel finally found a job last week with a company that works with mentally and physically disabled people. It should be fulfilling work!!! Life is good and we feel extremely blessed!!

I finally graduated!! Yippee!!

Well I finally did it!! I graduated from ASU last Friday and it feels awesome!! I thought this day would never come but it finally did and I'm excited to start a new chapter of my life. The weekend was so much fun and it was great having all of my family here. The ceremony was very nice and Hugh Downs from sixty minutes was one of the speakers! The student speaker was a transvestite, who had a great message but I was a little surprised!! Afterwards we had a great party with family, friends and food! The weekend was full of good food, swimming, visiting and overall having a nice, relaxing time with one another. I will certainly remember this fantastic weekend for the rest of my life. I'm so thankful that my family came and have supported me through my entire educational career. I feel so blessed to have such amazing family and friends that care for me so much!! I'm one lucky gal......especially because I had an unbelievable husband who helped make my day so special!!

Me and my mama!

Me and my handsome husband!

Long time no post.....

Well it has been a while since we have posted anything but it has been a busy month and a half. But now Melanie is done with school and is able to donate more time to the family blog!! Mel graduated last week and it was really exciting to have all of our family here. It was a red carpet event. As we posted before, President Obama spoke and he gave a really nice speech. It was really exciting to sit so close to the president and hear him speak! We saw air force one fly in since the airport is next to the stadium and saw his limo pull up. We were right next to the stage so we had a good view of him. Plus our seats were higher up so we got to see the snipers too!! It was so cool! Before commencement began, Alice Cooper and his son performed and that was kind of neat. All in all, it was a great night that we will always remember!

Commencement 2009

I just wanted to make a quick post about my upcoming commencement ceremony. We just found out that ASU's keynote speaker is going to be President Barack Obama!! Even if you did not vote for him, I think it is pretty cool. I will keep you posted on the total chaos of trying to herd 8000 graduates and their family/friends into Sun Devil stadium with secret service running around!

The Best Five Years.....

Charlie and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary on Friday March 20! I can not believe we have been married that long but I can say it has been the best five years ever!!! We are looking forward to many more years and many more memories. Luckily Charlie and I had the same week off for spring break, so we were able to take a little trip to celebrate. We first went to the AZ/UT border and camped and hiked in the Paria wilderness. It was absolutely amazing! We want to backpack the entire Paria canyon some day, just not in March!! It was a little bit colder than we expected!! After camping for two nights, we packed up and made a stop at the Lower Antelope Canyon outside of Page, AZ. I had heard this slot canyon was awesome and it lived up to its reputation. This canyon was one of the most beautiful natural wonders we have ever seen and would recommend it to everyone. Yesterday, we were able to go out to dinner and just relax with each other, which was a wonderful way to finish celebrating this great marriage milestone!

The pictures below are of Buckskin Gulch (part of the Paria canyon) and our cute campsite. We knew the canyon would have water but we did not know it would have freezing water and slippery mud! Even though we couldn't feel our feet, the canyon was amazing. The entire Paria wilderness was absolutely beautiful!!

I am old!!

Well, I am officially 26 years old!! It feels a lot like 25 except I plucked more gray hairs out of my head this year......but seriously, I did pluck some. I had a nice low key birthday and it felt great to relax. We are going to party it up over spring break to celebrate my b-day and our anniversary! I did wake up in the morning to our entire dining room decorated with streamers and balloons and our bathroom and my car got a little make over as well! We went out to eat at this great BBQ place, went swimming (it was 83 degrees) and watched my new birthday movie....Dan in Real Life......such a good movie. Charlie has a great way of making me feel special on any day but he knows me well enough to know that I enjoy being fussed over on my birthday!! He is a good husband and he made my birthday great!!!!

Valentine's Day

Well, Charlie and I had an awesome Valentine's Day!
We spent the weekend in California and went to the
sealing of my dad and Jan!! Our family is finally official!!
We are so excited that Jan decided to take the plunge
and get sealed for time and all eternity to dad. We love
Jan and are thrilled that she is celestially our second mom!!

A Costa Rican Christmas

So as most of you know, Charlie and I had the opportunity to spend Christmas and the New Year in Costa Rica with my family. It was absolutely amazing!! We have a lot of pictures we want to share with everyone so a slide show is forthcoming. For now here is a little summary about what we saw and did. Let me start off with all of the wildlife we saw. I'm not talking about seeing animals in a zoo. We saw all of these animals out in the wild: sloths, monkeys, coati, marsh crab, toucans, iguanas, crocodiles, caymans (part of the croc family), howler monkeys, parrots, frogs, geckos, a boa constrictor!, bats and every giant insect created! Our first couple days were spent by the beach in a town called Manuel Antonio. This is where we had most of our beach time and saw a lot of animals. The hotel we stayed at had this amazing ocean front view and we would wake up early to hear howler monkeys outside our room! Christmas was very untraditional. We went zip lining through the jungle. One cable was over 2500 feet long and 200 feet above the ground! During our trip we saw three volcanoes, two which are still active. Arenal volcano is the most active volcano in Costa Rica. We were lucky enough at night to see lava flowing down the mountain! That trip was really cool because the volcano's geothermal heat warms a large area of hot springs which we were able to enjoy. We visited waterfalls, museums, a couple trips to San Jose and took a river ride down the Sarapiqui. As for New Years Eve, we went out to dinner and played games and resorted to the fact that Costa Ricans spend the night with there families and there wasn't much going on. Then midnight hit. We went outside and the entire valley, filled with millions of people, was exploding with fireworks!! Fireworks are not illegal in Costa Rica and you can shoot them off where ever you want. There were so many fireworks that off in the distance it looked like lightening! Unfortunately this description won't do it justice, however it was one of the coolest sights we have ever seen! However, once the fireworks died down, there was the deafening sound of ambulances. The day before we left Charlie and I went by ourselves to go white water rafting down the Pacuare river. It was so much fun and a lot more intense than we expected. Plus the scenery was absolutely breathtaking. All in all, it was a wonderful trip. We would recommend that everyone see this beautiful country. Plus the people there are so nice! Thanks Dad and Jan for a great trip!

Thanksgiving 2008

Well I know it has been a while since our last post but with end of the semester assignments/tests and the holidays, Charlie and I did not have a spare second! Now I have a couple days before my last semester (yeah!) starts, so I will catch everyone up on the last couple months. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Charlie's family in Idaho. Charlie's parents rented this beautiful cabin near McCall and we all hung out, relaxed and enjoyed each other's company. Plus Stacie told us the fantastic news that she is pregnant!!! We're sooo excited for her (and Trav)! It was nice to see everyone and we miss our family very much. It would be nice to have another get together soon! Here are some pictures.

So here is the story of the fox. This fox came into the yard of the cabin and the boys kept feeding him. We left a pizza outside on the front porch and this little guy got caught digging into it. The fox was pushed away and the pizza was taken inside. Mr. Fox must have not liked the fact that we took away his dinner because he came back and took a crap on our cooler that was also on the balcony!! It was hilarious and disgusting all at the same time!!

Here is the beautiful cabin we stayed at.

Happy Halloween!!

The best looking Napoleon Dynamite and Sarah Palin there is!!!

Charlie Video

Hilarious!!

Brynlee Mae Spencer

Our cute niece Brynlee is finally here! She is so precious and we already love her so much! We can't wait to meet her in person and give her a huge kiss!!!

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!