That Other Dog

So I'm sure you've noticed from previous blogs that we have another dog! I'm horrible because I don't even remember exactly when we got him, but I think it was around February. First of all, let me explain how we came to have this new little member of our family. My mom's house is at the very end of a road and is surrounded by a lot of desert. Well, someone drove out there and dropped off two little black puppies..... mean, huh? Well my mom's neighbor took the little girl and was gonna take the little boy puppy to the pound. I took one look at him and decided that I had to take him. Yes, we already had Andy and definately didn't need another puppy..... but I just couldn't let him go to the pound! Mitch didn't love the idea of another dog, but he loves ME so he let me keep him! haha So now we have these two dogs, up to no good, at our house. I'm not sure why, but Mitch has refused from the beginning to help me name the dog. I've come up with several names.... but Mitch won't help me pick..... so here we are 3 months later and our puppy still isn't named! Honestly, we refer to our puppy now as "That other dog". Sad, I know! Anyways, our ideas for names are Maddox (like Greg Maddox), Simba (his eyes remind us of a lion), and Mitch's only suggestion is Cousin Moes (Dwight's cousin on The Office). So if you have any suggestions, please don't refrain from sharing! Anyways, here are some pictures of the two dogs. Btw, the puppy is now about the same height as Andy and still growing like a weed! He's gonna be a big dog! And we're not exactly sure what kind of dog he is, but we're assuming he's at least half lab :)

This is when the puppy was still little

They usually sleep curled up together like this :)

Our cute little Andy

This is Andy sleeping "spread-eagle" haha

Little No Name

Andy "helping" Mitch build our grill haha

Andy thinks she's a bear apparently

Isn't he such a cute little dog?!

Snow Canyon With My Hubby!

Last week was Mitch's spring break so he got to take a break finally! He caught up on some much needed sleep, and we were able to go do some fun stuff with his time away from homework haha. One day after I got off work, we decided to drive up to Snow Canyon Park because I'd never been there before. It was a really pretty drive, but way shorter than I thought it'd be. So we decided to get out an go on one of the hikes. Welp.... let's just say that it wasn't too successful haha. There was a short path that led to huge sandstone hills...... and after that, we had NO clue where to go! So we wandered around for a while... not even sure what we were looking for. Eventually we just turned around and walked back to the truck. Mitch has decided that whoever made up the hikes up there is a "Dumb-A" haha. Anyways, it was still lots of fun. I LOVE going on little adventures with Mitch. He is such a good husband and honestly the best person I ever could have found to be with! I could write a whole blog about how much I love him.... but I'll spare everyone from that right now and just post some pictures from our hike :)

For some reason, Mitch thought this big sandstone rock was way cool :)

Petroglyphs

Mitch and I both really like to go on hikes and do things outdoors, so a couple days ago Mitch suggested that we take some of my nieces and nephews to see some petroglyphs. We drove about 15 minutes out to Little Black Mountain where there used to be Indian ceremonies and stuff.... so needless to say there were lots of petroglyphs. We ended up taking all 4 of my brother Casey's kids and 2 of my brother Tyler's kids. Of course we couldn't leave our dogs (yes dogS.... we have another puppy that I'll write about later!) We had quite the load with us, but it was tons of fun. The kids had a blast climbing and hiking all over. I took my camera, so this blog is gonna be mostly a ton of pictures :) There may be 2 mothers who are gonna be scared when they see some of these pics with their kids on top of huge boulders!!! haha But rest assured that everyone made it home in 1 piece!

All 6 of the kids and both dogs as our adventure began...

It's kinda hard to tell, but the top of this rock has lots of petroglyphs

Kenzee, Kylee, Payton, Blake, Dillon, and Mariah

All the kids

Dillon crawled in EVERY hole we saw!!! haha

A rock wall covered in petroglyphs

Kenzee and Andy

This huge rock was covered in petroglyphs!

I love the sun drawing!

So I'm guessing this is supposed to be a man?

The Boys

The girls

Dillon found himself a seat :)

Mitch convinced the kids that this was an "indian bath" so Ky and Payton tried it out!

So we're still not sure how Andy got up on this rock cuz it was really high!

Some sort of animal...

Mariah, Kylee, and Kenzee.... and obviously someone was climbing above me so it was raining dirt

Ky thought this looked like a McDonald's window haha

Blake and Andy

They not only climbed up, but DOWN into every interesting spot they saw!

Kenzee and Kylee hangin over the edge!

Dillon and Blake chillen out...

So I'll be writing a blog later about our newest puppy :)

Isn't Kenzee so cute?!

Blake found a bed :)

Scorpion Update

I know I've already written about how we have scorpions in our basement, but I thought I'd give a little update. There for a little while, we weren't seeing as many as we had previously. Then all of a sudden we started getting about 2 a day! Luckily the majority didn't make it into the house, they just got caught on our nifty sticky traps! We killed one on our wall in the kitchen the other day though, and I walked into the bathroom barefoot the other night and there was one running around in there! It just reminded me why I should ALWAYS wear shoes in our house! Anyways, I took some pictures of our traps. We have them lining a door that goes into a storage room..... we're pretty sure that's where the majority of them come from. But yeah... here they are!

So this is a view of all of them....

This is a closer view of part of the traps that has the most scorpions on it... they're kinda hard to see, but there's about 7 on them!

And here are about 3 more on another part of the traps!

I'm glad that we're catching a lot of them before they get it, but it just scares me to think about how many probably do get in here that I don't know about! YIKES!!

Weekend Update

So since getting married, Mitch and I have realized that we both really like working on the yard. Even though we're just in his grandma's basement, we do have our own little backyard. For the last couple weeks, we've been working on weeding the yard and we decided to make a flower bed. We already had a small one under the kitchen window, but we made another one to go along one side of the lawn. Amazingly, my work gave me a Saturday off, so last weekend Mitch and I bought some flowers and got to work! I took some "before" and "after" pictures for everyone to enjoy :)

So this is obviously the "before" picture... though this is better than what it looked like before we weeded it!


These are the flowers and we bought :)

And here is our "after" picture. I put some old gas cans in the garden that I had found out in the family junkyard they have on Mitch's family's hill. I think they're way cute



I also took an old stove that was just sitting in our dog pen and planted flowers in it. Come to find out, it used to be the stove in the Schmutz family farmhouse and so Grandma Schmutz was happy that it was getting used somehow :)

And here is a view of the back of our house.... we also planted a pot next to our door and put flowers under the kitchen window. I yet again put "junk" in the backyard by putting an old metal heardboard up against the wall that I had found out in the junkyard. Mitch thought he was very clever when he said it was for our "flower BED" haha

Our First Home!

As I mentioned in a previous blog, Mitch and I are living in his Grandma Schmutz's basement. That may not sound too great, but really it's nice! First of all, Grandma is very easy to live with, not only because she's the nicest person on earth, but because she's basically silent upstairs, and she actually lives in Oak City for like 8 months of the year (so we'll be in the house by ourselves). Anyways, our basement has a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. I should probably also add that it has a storage room and bomb shelter! haha We have our own door so we can come and go whenever we want.... so really it feels like we live on our own. The biggest blessing though, is that we live rent- free! We pay for the satellite and that's about it! Anyways, we love our basement house and really are grateful to be here!

I'm starting to realize that the beginning of marriage comes with all sorts of new adventures.... and our living situation has definately had it's share! First of all, there is something wrong with our vents or something, because anytime the heat is on, a HORRIBLE smell blows out! And I don't mean just a slightly unpleasing smell..... it gives me a stomach ache! They checked the septic tank and it's not that, so we're assuming that maybe something died in a vent? Thank goodness, someone is coming to check the vents tomorrow so hopefully it'll be gone! Over the last few months, I have gone through my fair share of candles, air freshener spray, wall plug-ins, the smelly powder you put on carpet before you vacuum, and even air fresheners that are made to go in vents! And much to my dismay, our house nearly always smells like rotten eggs! Everyone say a prayer that they fix it tomorrow!

Another fun part of our basement is that our TV, computer, and microwave are all on the same fuse. Most days we don't have a problem.... but every now and then, it just can't handle it anymore, and the fuse blows about 3 times in one day! Luckily Mitch can just go switch it back on and we're back in business! haha Another great side-effect of these all being connected is that whenever you turn the microwave on, the images on our computer screen shake back and forth violently..... looking at the screen for longer than about 20 seconds will make your eyes hurt :) Again, we love these little adventures of being married and moving into a new place!

Perhaps my FAVORITE of all the surprises that have come along with our little house includes eight legs, claws, and a tial full of venom!!

Our house seems to be a haven for all the local SCORPIONS!! Maybe I should explain that Mitch's family owns a big hill in the St. George Washington Fields, and we live up on top of it. So we are surrounded by desert... and an animal kingdom. It has the perks of waking up to bunnies all over the lawn... but also includes lots of bugs, esp scorpions! We only found about 4 in our first month and a half of living here, but all of a sudden a few weeks ago, we killed 5 in a day! We have killed about 14 in the last 3 weeks. Idk if it's the warmer weather, or the construction above our house causing them to come into our house more... but they are NOT welcome visitors! They come out mostly at night... so now I always wear shoes in the house, but esp when I hop out of bed to go potty at night. It isn't even a surprise anymore to kill a scorpion or two when I make a bathroom trip at night. Though I now suffer from not being able to fall asleep at night because my feet itch like crazy as I lay there thinking about the scorpions crawling all over our floor! But rest assured, we are fighting back! Mitch has nearly gone crazy trying to find them! I have come home from work to find him, shovel in hand, out in the desert with our dog trying to HUNT the scorpions. So far he's found ONE. haha We also bought spider and mouse traps that are flat and sticky, so we put them by the door that the scorpions sneak in through... and much to our dismay, we've only caught two. But we are still on the watchout. Hopefully they all find somewhere else to go, because I really am not in the mood to get stung! Somehow the idea of intense pain, followed by burning, and then numbness for a week, just doesn't seem appealing! Anyways, my point in that I hate scorpions!

So this blog probably makes our basement sound horrible, but it really is a great place to live! It's way bigger than an apartment and lots of fun to be so close to our family. I've attempted to make our little house took like a home.... but it has mostly been decorated with hand-me-downs, including my sweet couches that my mother tried to give away when I was 16, but I made her save them for me! They go perfectly with the farm wallpaper that Grandma has on the walls down here! Anyways, I took some pictures of our house, so enjoy!

This is our living room... and the door that Andy often runs into!

Another picture of our living room and sweet country couches... thanks mom!

Again the living room... btw I LOVE our brick wall! It's way cute!

Here is our cute kitchen... we bought an island for the middle that is quite useful

Here is our pink bathroom... I know you're jealous of the pink marble!

And here is our bedroom... this pictures makes it look even less colorful than it really is!