Mesa Verde



Can you tell I was excited?



So I finished teaching on Friday May 25th. Where were Matt and I by 3 pm that afternoon? On the road to Mesa Verde of course! We decided to squeeze in this trip before Hawaii and it was so worth it. The drive is pretty long, about 6 hrs, but it went by faster than I expected. We went straight to the campground when we arrived on Friday night, but Saturday morning we were up with the sun (after a looong, windy night) and ready to see some cliff dwellings. By Sunday afternoon we had seen pretty much all there was to see--cliff dwellings, hikes, various sites and ruins, lots of deer and wild turkey--and had treated ourselves to an amazing dinner at the lodge. We highly recommend this trip, especially for those of you with little kiddos in tow. The ranger's presentations were actually entertaining, the cliff dwellings are amazing, and the trails were very well kept. We give this place a two thumbs up.                                                                                                               



This is Cliff Palace. They estimate that about 100 people lived here, and they think it also served as a gathering place for residents of the other communities.



These next few pictures were taken at Balcony House. This place was one of our favorites!

We liked crawling through the tunnels . . .

Seeing all the "kivas". . .

And climbing ladders!



Matt at Long House.



Hoorah for camping trips and national parks!

Pizza Night

Tonight's culinary adventure proved to me, once and for all, that any leftover can be made into a deliciously inventive pizza. Matt is the mastermind here--he planned out the toppings, different combinations, and the meticulous order of pizza assembly. I was skeptical at first, but I was wrong. I shouldn't have doubted. We made three different kinds and they were all SO GOOD. So good that I decided to blog about them.

Now, I'm no food photographer and our camera is mediocre at best, but here they are. In all their glory.



On the top left-ish we have the classic mozzarella, tomato, basil, pizza with a bit of pesto spread on the crust for an extra kick. This was our backup pizza in case the other two failed.

Top right-ish is probably the most creative of the three. A turkey chili, sour cream, baked potato pizza. We mixed together the chili and sour cream, spread that on as a sauce, and topped it with seasoned baked potato pieces. The sour cream looked a little funny after baking, but the flavors in this one were pretty delicous.

The bottom one was my favorite. Mexican pizza with refried beans, taco meat, corn, kidney beans, hot sauce, green salsa, diced tomatoes, and cheddar cheese. I think I'll call this one Taco pizza from now on. Or maybe Burrito pizza? Anyways, it was spectacular.

Anyone have pizza breakthroughs of their own to share? I'm all ears!

A Book List

I've tried to read as much of the popular YA lit as I could this year so that I could get my students all pumped about reading. I'll be honest, some of them were totally obnoxious, but these are the ones I enjoyed more than I'd like to admit...

Top Ten YA Books That Grown Ups Should Read Too (in no particular order)

1. House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
2. Lost Hero by Rick Riordan
3. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
4. Divergent by Virginia Roth
5. Matched by Ally Condie
6. Crossed by Ally Condie
7. Shifting by Bethany Wiggins
8. Michael Vey: Prisoner of Cell 25 by Richard Paul Evans
9. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
10. Everlost by Neal Shustermann

Update: We Graduated!

The last few months have actually been fairly eventful over here. Matt and I graduated in April, which was very exciting and a little surreal. I thought it was pretty awesome that we got to graduate and walk together. It feels like I just graduated from High School. Has it really been 5 years since I obsessed over how to make that weird little hat look somewhat normal? And now I'm graduating college? With a husband? Awesome.
Anyways, Matt graduated with a degree in Math and I graduated with a degree in English Education. My mom came over from Hawaii to join in the festivities, and we also got Michael in on the fun before he entered the MTC a couple weeks later. The Scotts were all there, Grammie and Grandpa came, it was a party!

In other news, I'm still teaching 8th grade. It's great, I love it, but I'm really excited for summer. Possibly even more so than my students. Why? Because on May 30th we'll be boarding a plane for Hawaii! And this isn't just any vacation, my friends. This is a month-long vacation in paradise with my family who I haven't seen since last July. Can you blame me for counting down the days?

Matt is spending his "vacation" doing manual labor around our house and his parents' house. I'm still loving yoga, teaching the young women, and cooking random stuff.

Life is good!

Happy Thanksmasversarynewlentines Day!

Has it really been 3 months since our last post? I can't believe how fast time flies. I know I say that all the time. Everyone says it all the time--biggest cliche in the book. But it's so true! Rather than try to catch up on every little exciting thing that has happened in the life of Matt and Sarah, I'll just tell you that Thanksgiving, Christmas, our 1 year anniversary, and New Years were awesome! We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with the Scotts and also spent time with the Berrys and my brother Michael. All of our "Hawaii family" was greatly missed (counting down to June guys!) but we skyped and called and made it through. Our 1 year was a joyous occasion complete with lots of food, a good movie, and a surprisingly fun trip to the "nickelcade" in Provo.

So lets pick up here. Valentines day. Best Valentines day ever! I got a surprise breakfast, beautiful tulips, and I don't have to cook all week because my sweetheart is cooking all of the dinners for us! The best part of that gift was that he also did the grocery shopping on Saturday. What a dream.

Teaching 8th grade on Valentines day was a whole new ball game for me. Man, I tend to think that those kids are crazy on regular days, but introduce valentines, sugar, sugar, cookie deliveries, and more sugar, and they go nuts. It was quite a day!

Here's the funny part of the story. Matt and I had planned for a nice quiet dinner at Outback Steakhouse, thinking that we could call ahead around 4 and get in by 6-ish. Wrong! I called at 3:30 and they were booked until 9:00. No way were we going to wait that long, so, switch to Plan B. El Mexsal: the random little place that is the site of our first date. Unfortunately that plan fell through when we drove up and I saw that the place was EMPTY. I don't know what happened, I was suddenly just hit with a wave of awkwardness at the prospect of us being the only ones in a mediocre hole in the wall restaurant on Valentines day at 5:30 in the afternoon. Even with the sentimental value, I just wasn't feelin' it.

Luckily, my brilliant husband came up with a Plan C that he knew I would love. Drive through at Los Comalitos for a super huge order of carne asada fries and a bean burrito, then home to eat in the living room and watch the greatest love story of all time. Wall-E. It was perfect. We'll hit up Outback another time, but for now? Los Comalitos will do. I'm so lucky he's my guy!

St Louis, Missour-uh

A couple of weeks ago Matt and I took a trip to St. Louis. About a week before we left I began trying to convince him that nobody in Missouri actually says "Missour-ee," it's pronounced "Missour-uh!" I continued to pronounce it that way throughout the whole trip, even though I knew I had been beat. What can I say, the joke just never got old! :) 

You may be wondering why we decided to go on vacation to Missouri in the first place. . .

Originally, this trip was planned around a med school interview at A.T. Still (a school located an hour or two outside of St. Louis). Then, two days before we were supposed to leave, Matt received acceptances to two other schools! We decided that we weren't too keen on living in rural Missouri so Matt politely declined the interview invitation and we took our trip anyway.

We had so much fun exploring the city. We were there the night of the World Series so we got to walk around the stadium and then watch the game in a little sports bar deep in enemy territory (Matt's a die-hard Rangers fan). Actually, the entire city was enemy territory. St Louis loves their Cards! They even died the fountains red in honor of the game. Too bad they lost. . .

 

We got to see the Gateway Arch

Took a tour of the old capitol building and saw the courtroom where the Dred Scott trial took place.

And then drove out to Nauvoo to visit Grandma and Grandpa Watkins! They are serving a mission in the Nauvoo Temple right now. We haven't seen them since our wedding!

We went to the Blacksmith, Bakery, Printing Press, saw a play, and learned how to make candles out of animal fat.

Of course, the temple was the highlight of the trip. We even got to do a session with Grandma and Grandpa!

Happy Halloween!

One of my favorite things about Halloween is searching through blogs for fun recipe and craft ideas. Mels Kitchen Cafe, my absolute favorite recipe blog, had a series of "spooky treats" last year and one of her ideas was to make your breadsticks into "bones." I tried this last year and failed, so I was excited to try again this year! Matt even offered to help. Can you guess which one of us is taking Anatomy this semester?

We enjoyed our quiet Halloween night together. We carved our pumpkins and set them outside, got our candy bowl ready, and then settled in for Hocus Pocus, hot chocolate, and homemade clam chowder. It was perfect. Especially since our doorbell only rang 4 or 5 times--more Snickers for us!

Another highlight this year was going to a pumpkin patch to pick out our own pumpkins! We actually got there as it was getting dark and hitched the last hayride out to the pumpkin patch. This was a real pumpkin patch--they were all mixed in with the cornfield! We felt very adventurous and had so much fun looking for the perfect pumpkins. It was dark by the time we started picking our way back through the stalks of corn and heard the hay wagon guy calling out "anyone else out there?" Luckily he heard our yells and didn't leave us out there!