A Toast to Taz

Today was Tazi's last day. He was having some serious heart problems and the lower half of his body was slowly becoming paralyzed. My Dad took him to the vet this morning and said goodbye, then Taz drifted off to the big dark park in the sky to hang out with Bogie (our other dog). Being the mature adult that i am, i bawled my eyes out all day yesterday when i found out that his health was beyond the fixing point, and all day today when i was told that he was gone.

I decided that i wanted to give Tazi a little toast. To Taz: the best dog on the planet (i may be a little biased). Thanks for being such a character, for being my napping buddy, for being "the nurse" when we were all sick, for being scared to ride in the car, for being deathly afraid of thunder, for being this girl's best friend, for having a mohawk (despite the fact that the breeder said it would grow out), and for being sweet and wonderful. I'll miss this little guy a whole lot.

Driving Coast to Coast... Literally

I really did drive from the east coast to the west coast in a span of 7 days. It really was quite the adventure seeing as Aaron doesn't drive stick shift so i had to do all the driving. It started in Virginia Beach on Friday night. We left at about 9pm to head back to D.C. so that we would miss the beach traffic. It was about 230 miles. We spent saturday packing up our belongings and preparing for the long drive back to Utah. Saying goodbye to my family was the worst part about leaving

Sunday morning, bright and early (6:30am) we left on our 3 day 2,000 mile adventure. Our First stop was in Valparaiso Indiana where our friends Paige and Trey live (a distance of 663 miles from D.C. to Valparaiso). Unfortunately they weren't actually at their house, Paige was on vacation and Trey was traveling with the Valpo football team. But they were nice enough to let up stay at their place and they even left us a goody\ie bag full of gifts.

Aaron checking out their HUGE townhouse ( i was so jealous).
Me checking out the goodie bag
This pretty much sums up how we felt after 663 miles of insanity.
Day 2 of our extravaganza was crunch time we went from Indiana to the outside of Wyoming spanning 1,012 miles. How we drove that much in one day, i'll never know, but i was so glad to crawl in bed that night.

On our stretch we stopped in Iowa... we did a lot of growing while we were driving through...

And in NebraskaOn day three we only had about 500 miles left to go before we got to Provo. Thankfully it went by really fast and we got into Provo at about 2:00pm. We unpacked our car and went to Cafe Rio for Dinner. The next two days in Provo we packed our little hearts out and said goodbye to a few of our friends. (We didn't get the chance to say goodbye to everyone that we wanted to because we were there for such a short period. Sorry to those we didn't get to see but we love you and we'll miss you!)

Saying goodbye to:
The Henderson's and the Partridge's
To the Pillow Talk Ladies: Erika (i stole this from your blog if you couldn't tell)

And Leandra (we are all sorts of upons in this picture!)
And finally saying goodbye to Aaron's side of the FamilyWe put the finishing touches on packing this madness
Loaded this truck:
And we moved to San Jose, another 838 miles. I never want to drive anywhere again.

More Beach Pictures

Don and Lulu. These two were buddies the entire time we were at the beach.Matt and the grandkids the day he flew back to Oregan.
The Stringham Kids (in birth order, cause we're just that cool): Ashby, Stacey, Matt, and Yours truly.
These pictures weren't taken at the beach but my mom sent them to me and i think they're hilarious. I think Snow White might be having an identity crisis.
HEEEEY, I'm Snow White!

The Beach Week

All Summer i had been counting down the days until we could go to the beach. It was a little bitter sweat because i knew that as i counted down the days until our vacation, i was getting closer and closer to the day that we had to leave. The beach was the big finale to our summer in Virginia and it didn't disappoint. The weather was beautiful (aside from wednesday), and Stephenie Meyer's new book was out so we basically tanned and read the entire week. Now that is what i call vacation. Ashby and I reading Breaking Dawn. It was so wonderful having Edward and company back in my life again.

Ashby and Lulu (Emma) at the pool watching the Beach Ball Challenge. (Its where you have to try to balance on a huge beach ball and try to get across the pool. I think its safe to say that Ryan dominated the entire family)
This beach trip was the first in a couple of years where the entire family was able to come. So family pictures were a definite must.

All the grandkids: Taylor (2), Carly (5), Brooklyn (4), Lulu (1 1/2)

family pictures can really take it out of you... apparently. Don't you like the blanket that Matt is using.. NICE!I can't wait for next year's beach trip.

Coming to a Close

I can't believe that the summer is almost over. I guess its a good thing that i'm moving to a state where the temperature is warm enough where i could trick myself into thinking that its summer all the time. I'm definitely going to miss living in Virginia and being close to my family, and even though i'm nervous about "real" life in California, i'm really excited to finally being moving there.
Bring on the Fall.

Go Mavs!

Here are two of my favorite boys decked out in Dirk jerseys. My Dad had gotten Taylor a Jazz jersey when he visited, and Aaron thought that Tay needed a little Dallas flava in his life. I think they look pretty dashing.