Our Animal Kingdom

Mitch and I joke that our house is the animal kingdom. I have some pictures to show why though! At first we only had the normal bugs and then scorpions.... but lately we have had all sorts of animals around the house! It's made me a little paranoid and sometimes scared haha Anyways, here are the animals you may find when you come to visit us!

This is a scorpion that we found crawling in our kitchen window a month ago

I'm pretty sure this is a centipede. I found it under our kitchen trash... and I think they're poisonous

A bunny on our lawn.... the dogs go crazy when they see them!

We have three baby birds in a honeysuckle bush by our steps outside

They're so tiny!

It's kinda hard to see, but we saw two deer in the middle of town on our way to church 2 weeks ago! I think they wanted to cross River Road, but the traffic was too busy!

K, so Mitch was feeding the dogs the other night and Andy was going CRAZY trying to catch something... so Mitch caught it and it turned out to be THIS crazy thing! Grandma Schmutz looked it up and we think it's a Desert Night Lizard

Vegas Vacation!!

A few weeks ago, Mitch and I decided that we needed a little vacation. He's been stressed with school and work, and I work everyday except Sundays...... so we just wanted to get away!! We decided to go on Hotwire and get a room in Vegas for a night. We went down to Vegas on Sunday night and stayed at my brothers (sadly I hardly see his family even though they're still close). We slept in Monday morning and then went to lunch with my sister in law Robyn and my niece Brooklyn. After that, we went to Circus Circus to ride the little rollercoaster....... I'm still not sure how we paid 14 bucks for 20 seconds of excitement haha Then we walked through the Fashion Show Mall. Yes, I said "walked through" because Mitch wouldn't let me walk into a store, let alone shop! Anyways, then we checked into our room/condo at the Trump International Tower. I don't think that either one of us has ever stayed at a 5 star hotel before, so we were pretty excited! We had a really nice room and got to relax for two days! We layed around and watched movies on Monday, which was fun. Then on Tuesday we went to the pool and both got a little fried! Oh, I forgot to mention that Mitch's truck decided it wanted to overheat right as we pulled into Vegas on Sunday, so after sitting on the side of the road for an hour, my brother came to rescue us! So when it came time to come home on Tuesday afternoon, we loaded up on coolent and hoped for the best! We had to pull over before we even made it out of town, again in Glendale, and again in Mesquite.... but we finally made it home about 3 hours later! We now know that there is a leak in a hose somewhere, so that's why it was overheating. Hopefully my brother will be able to fix it tomorrow, because we're currently borrowing my parent's truck. Anyways, the trip was a lot of fun and we both really needed a little vacation from our everyday lives! Like I said, we were pretty excited about the hotel, so I took lots of pictures! Enjoy!

This is the lobby

The most comfortable bed on earth!

The little kitchen

Living Room thingy

Yes, there was a tv in the bathroom mirror!

This tub was huge!!

Busy Busy Mitch

In case I haven't mentioned it before, Mitch has been swamped this semester..... and has handled it like a champ! First of all, he had a full load of classes, most of which were pretty hard. Before school everyday, he works from 4 to 7 am at the college! So after waking up at 3:30 am, working all morning, going to school, and coming home to lots of studying and homework, he had several other activities to take up his time! On Monday nights he now volunteers at the hospital (which will hopefully help him get into the radiology program) from 5 to 9 pm. On Tuesdays, he had his busiest days with work, school from 9am to 3 pm, and then he umpired for a league from 6 to 10:30pm! Basically, I haven't seen my husband on a Tuesday in months! And then on Wednesdays he plays softball at the same place he umpires. Needless to say, he has been a busy boy... but managed to do pretty well in all his classes. I'm excited that he's done with school for a month, he finished playing softball last week, and I think this next Tuesday is his last night to umpire! I get to have my husband back...... at least for a little while until everything starts back up again! haha it's kinda frustrating at times to feel like I don't see him, and when we are at home together, he's usually studying...... but I really appreciate all that he does to contribute and how hard he works! One day..... far far away, we'll have more free time :) Anyways, here is a picture of Mitch in his umpire uniform. He thinks he's pretty tough hahaha

My little Mitchypoo!

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 :)