I am thankful for...

mother nature.

Lately, I have had such a grateful heart. I am so blessed to have married Ryan. He shares my love for the outdoors. We are very blessed to have the oppourtunity to live in such a beautiful area. We love to go to the Mountains and each time we go, I can't help but take a deep breath of fresh air, enjoy all the beauty that surrounds me and enjoy being alive!

All the stress I feel and the cares of life just vanish.

We love hiking. We tried to go hiking each Sunday afternoon for at least a couple of hours. Ryan was in search of antlers to collect, and I was just along for the ride. Enjoying the time we can spend together, and the places that we go.

Next summer I hope that we can climb the Grand Teton. Its something that we have both wanted to do for so long, but we have never been able to make it happen. Ryan's dad loved climbing while he was alive and (this part is a secret from him) I'm planning on doing an overnight trip on his dad's birthdate.

We love to fish. Well, Ryan loves to fish and I love to be on the river or lake. The peacefullness that comes with the sound of water is amazing.

(I didn't take this photo ;) i stole it from somebody else but don't tell)

The Teton's mean a lot to us personally. We met while we were skiing at Targhee, and we are both obsessed with skiing, or winter for that matter. We have some of our greatest memories revolving around the tetons. This picture is actually printed in a gallery in Jackson and it is bookoo bucks but it WILL be the first purchase that I make when we have our own house to hang it in!!

Our horses have taken us to some of the most beautiful places I've ever seen!! One of my favorite things to do is go on overnight trips with my dad and Ry on our horses. :)

We went on an overnight horse riding trip this last weekend and it was so much fun. We ended up riding more than 25 miles! Talk about a sore butt! 

Here we are :) awwwww 

For all those who hate the winter, I feel sorry for you guys. Skiing has taken us to the most amazing places! For us, there is nothing better than waking up, getting McDonalds on the way to the hill, skiing and laughing with each other all day and then watching a movie and snuggling all night. That is honestly my definition of the perfect day!

This is my favorite picture of us. It was taken with a disposable right after our honeymoon. It always makes me happy to look at it :)

For our honeymoon we could have gone anywhere we wanted, but we chose to ski :) We went to Schweitzer, which is in North Idaho, almost to the Canadian border and it is the most BEAUTIFUL place I've ever been. It is smack dab in the middle of a crazy mountainrange and overlooks lake ponderay!

AND.....

For our next adventure...drum roll please... We are planning on moving to Bend, Oregon for the winter. To be ski bums you might ask? YES!!!!!!!!!! We have been trying to get everything in order for awhile now and if all goes as planned we will be skiing at Mt. Bachelor everyday this season :) Probably the 2nd most amazing place to ski and 2nd only to Targhee!! We decided that we wanted to do something like this before careers and future kiddies. We have both always wanted to do this and we think that it will be so fun. We will have our first thanksgiving, christmas, new years, valentines and our first aniversary as a old married couple alone, just us :) We are now taking reservations for guests!! If anyone would like to come ski at a beautiful place and have a place to say, you will be welcome at our house!!

Thank you all for reading my rant on my favorite things :) I think I will probably do posts with things I am thankful for more often.

my eye torture

This picture was taken almost exactly a year ago. Today, I am looking very similar. It all started last year when Ryan's sweet little niece accidentaly ran her fingernail right through my eye. It completely tore through the layers of tissue in my eye and was probably THE most painful thing that has happend to me in my life. I've had multiple broken bones, teeth pulled etc.

I got to wear a patch for a few days and somehow have misplaced the hilarious pictures of me walking around with a pirate patch on. I was ordered by my eye doctor to put lubricating jelly in it each night before I went to sleep and to put drops in it each morning as soon as I open it to keep it from re-opeining the scratch. I am usually really dilligent in doing this.

It has re-torn 6 times since the first incident!! Each time I go straight to the eye doctor and sit in the "torture chair" as I like to call it while he numbs it and takes tweezers and removes the top layer of tissue off. ALL while i can see the tweezers just scratching around on my eyeball (hence the name "torture chair"). I then have to wear a medicated contact for a week to let it regrow the new layer of tissue. All I can say is IT SUCKS! With all the harvest dust in the air, it has been aching for the last few days and I have doubled the ammount of meds that I put in it at bedtime.

Last night I couldn't sleep because it was just killing me all night. It kinda felt like I had gotten stabbed with a knife in the eye...and now we are back to square one. Red nasty watery eye that i cant see out of!!!!!

I came up with a solution.

and this is the conversation via text with the hubbb

Me: I think we should look into getting me a glass eye.

Ry: ha ha that would be SO funny I would pop it out and shine it up for you every day!

Me: oh thats so romantic :) but i seriously think it would be awesome.

Ry: your crazy.

You know you've got true love it your husband would offer to clean your non exsistant glass eye!!!

i hope this never EVER happens to anyone else EVER!!!!

Powderpuff

On Wednesday we went to watch my sisters play powderpuff football!

Homecoming week was one of my favorite parts of high school so i was excited to go and watch them!! Alaina is a big senior and she played center! She had a blast and she pretty much had every tackle!

Cute Ashley(on the right) is a sophomore, and she played defensive end. The sophomores were able to beat the seniors so my sisters actually got to play each other which was very fun!!! Ash even got a real tackle on the senior quarterback.

In this picture my sister Ash is going for the tackle on #22

In this picture my sister Alaina #16 is holding Ashley back from getting another sack!!

I just love my sisters! :)

home improvements :)

This is our current little house!!! We had to make a move when we got our little puppy, and we love it! It is in my parents ward, and close enough for us to mooch off them at dinner time ;)

We are just renting, but the lady who we are renting in from asked me to paint the bathroom. I enlisted the help of my little sisters and it didnt take much time at all! :)

My little sister Ashley is quite the trooper!! She held me up like this while i taped around the wallpaper and the ceiling.

We got this table when we first got married from my parents. It once served as a game table in the upstairs of our house but over the years it got busted up and spilled on, and made its way to the garage. Ry and I have used it regardless of its flaws. But, I decided that we needed to at least give it a makeover!

Here is the after picture! It took a lot of sanding and 4 coats of paint, and is now looking better than ever! I am thinking about mod-podging the top with different patterns of scrapbook paper, but that is a whole new project!

Here is one of the broken chairs before.....

And, here is after.

toodles

it was labor day weekend...

Labor Day Weekend = Opening Weekend for HUNTING......oh joy!

Grover Family Wife = Widow During Hunting Season

BUT

On Labor Day Weekend, families are invited! We left for the hills late friday night, and didnt get up until dark. We got to set our trusty tent up in the dark. Ryan wanted to get food on the way up, and his choice was McDonalds...not good!! Sometimes Ryan gets these weird tummy ulcers and so greesy food does wonders on his tummy, needless to say that by the time we got up there he was pretty sick!

The guys decided that they would be leaving around 4:30 am to hunt! (note: my family takes hunting so serious) Ryan says "yeah wake me up and I will see how im feeling." At 4:30 he gets up and feels worse than he did the night before and opts out of the first day of hunting!

In the mean time I have to go down and work for a couple hours before coming back up later. He decided to come with me and got some medicine and ate something a little less yucky. When we got back up to the hills at 7, we were suprised to find out that

THIS

AND THIS

(eating of the heart)

had happend while ryan was busy being sick. Needless to say he was so bummed out. He is just barely starting to get into hunting and he has never seen anything killed in Archery season :(

The next day they went hunting again, and weren't able to get anything because it was quite yucky weather. We decided to go on a family hike :) We didnt get far because it was SUPER windy, so we decided to hide out in our tent!!

and take silly pictures! : )

yeah, we were pretty bored for a while when the wind was really bad!!!

We just love our puppy, she is so good with the kids, and they love her!!

The Grover Camp!!!

Me and Jace riding 4-wheelers. He was very sick last year during the Labor Day camping trip, and a few days later was diagnosed with Leukemia!! Now, a year later he is doing great, and we are so grateful!!

Ryan playing games during the down time in the day.

We had a great time camping, but I have to admit I'm not looking forward to the next two months. During hunting season, the guys spend alot of weekends up in the mountains. Ryans tags don't start for another couple of weeks, so he is just helping/learning from everyone else until its his turn!!Good thing my parents live close to us because I sure am scared to sleep home alone!!!

The aftermath of our long weekend :)

toodles

embarrassing moment

Last night we had probably the most embarrassing moment to date since we have been married! Ryan, Ziggy and I went to our cousin Haydens grid kid football game. Pretty much our whole Grover family was there and we were enjoying ourselves. The boys (aka grown men) were playing catch and the kids were running around playing with Ziggy. After the game was over, catch turned into throwing the whole length of the field and the kids and ziggy were running all over the field. All of the sudden I hear " AUBREE, YOUR DOG IS CRAPPING ON THE FIELD".....Sure enough I look over and my cute sweet puppy was caught red handed by pretty much everyone at the game....Good thing we brought a plastic bag to the game. Just in case something like this happened...little did I know it would actually happen in the middle of the football field! Ryan was a good sport and cleaned it up, and carried the bag, so I didn't throw up.

Yay for Ziggy for causing the embarassment of the century!!!