a favorite pastime

Last fall when Jake had his knee surgery, and we were confined to the bed or couch, we stumbled upon a great discovery....The discovery was that Jake and I read at exactly the same speed.  Because of this finding we are able to snuggle up and read books together.  It makes our pillow talk/book club amusing as we analyze what we are reading as we fall asleep. In the last couple of months we have read the following books, and we recomomend all of them!

thanks mom for passing along the fun reads...

not so scary goblins...

This weekend we took off on Thursday and went to Goblin Valley with our good friends Trevor and Melissa.  They are some of our best friends and are moving to the windy state later this month, so we decided we needed to go camping as one last hoorah!

We had such a great time! Some of the highlights from our trip include:

an incredible camping spot, 9 mile hike through the saweet slot canyons of little wild horse,

mountain man breakfast, tinfoil dinners, smores & bannana boats, shooting competitions,

and lots and lots of not so scary goblins. 

cinco de mayo

5 traditions we celebrate on the cinco de mayo:

1.      The husband will ONLY speak Spanish to me all day (including texts)…until I go muy loco.
2.      I get to sign a paper saying that “I will be fluent by the next cinco de mayo”…this is the year, I just know it.
3.      We share a yummy dessert called “never on sunday” from the pizza factory in lindon.  Yes, we know this tradition is not very festive, but for some reason we started it when we were dating and you can't break a tradition, right?
4.      We drive up to our favorite look-out point up the mountain and listen to spanish music while we talk about life and how fun our summer is going to be.
5. We make a homemade pinata with goodies inside-jake made ours this year and he did an exceptional job!      

Me gusta el cinco de mayo.

love birds

Dear Love Birds,

           I am happy that spring has finally sprung. I love that the flowers are starting to bloom. I love smelling the fresh air, and I love the fact than I can start wearing flip flops again without getting weird looks. I know that you sweet love birds like spring too. We love listening to your chirping every morning as we leave for work. We’ve obviously enjoyed your chirping so much that we failed to recognize where you two wanted to start your little birdie family until the other day, when we caught you flying into our BBQ…hmmm so we opened the lid and sure enough we found your humble abode. We have decided to let you stay-consider it our gift to you…but be warned little birdies, come next spring, we are charging rent.

                                                                            -xoxo

ps. Since you are living in our BBQ, we are currently counting you as food storage. If we happen to have a natural disaster, we won’t hesitate to fire up the grill…

a royal celebration

...we may not have been in the "official" wedding party, but we partied like we were...and it was brilliant!

coming out of hibernation

I guess it is finally warm enough to come out of my cave. Oh wait, did I say warm? Yeah, pretty sure this morning I woke up to a blizzard...oh well, I'm sick of hibernating... 

So what's been going on in the Hoyt Household as of late? 

Well, in January & February we worked on decorating our house, saw way too many movies, and read lots of books together-

In March all we could think about was Youth Conference, Youth Conference Youth Conference... in our callings we get to work with the youth but we got an extra calling last December to be completely in charge of YC-holy smokes-so much work, but it turned out to be so rewarding!

...and this month we took a trip to Disneyland, and had a wonderful Easter!

                         

Bring in on Spring-we are ready to rock and roll!

a few things worth blogging about

Jake and I have been busy lately, but we are LOVING this holiday season. Here are a few things that we have been up to...

1. Jake had his knee surgery over a month ago and his recovery has been well...memorable. The surgery and recovery has been a lot longer than we anticipated, but no worries because Jake has learned to have fun with his injury... For example, Jake used his 'cane' to cast spells at me on a regular basis (he believes that his cane resembles the elder wand-maybe you harry potter fans can agree)- He also thoroughly enjoyed using the scooter at walmart & home depot on multiple occasions. Anyway, he is currently going to physical therapy every other day and I am just grateful to have a walking husband again!

2. Last night we returned home from a delightful vacation. For Christmas Jake's parents took the whole family on a week cruise to the western Caribbean where we were able to visit Honduras, Belize, Mexico, and the Cayman Islands. We had a blast and we loved creating some fun family memories! The weather was perfect and having a tan in December is not to shabby. Thank you so much Randy & Susan!

3. Our house is finished!!!! It has been a fun and semi-stressful process to watch it go up. We have learned so much during the building of it and we feel so blessed for the way things have turned out. We are so excited to move in this week!

4. This last week Jake took his FINAL final making him done with his undergrad! Hooray! I am excited to spend more time with that handsome hubby of mine! I am so proud of him working full time and going to school full time. He is AMAZING, I don't know how I got so lucky! With that being said, we are now ready for some serious christmasing! Merry Christmas!

previous to 2007, the autumn season reminded me of football and school.

Now, the fall reminds me of this:








I miss my home away from home.

music and the arts

Jake and I shared a fun weekend. On Friday we went and saw Brad Paisley in concert and it was amazing!! We had so much fun! Here we are sporting the cowboy hat... and I'm sorry to say that we might just look more like farmers than cowboys...

On Saturday we decided to take a 'mini getaway' and travel to FAR AWAY Salt Lake City where we enjoyed a funny and sparatic night on the town and then retired early to the Sheraton so we could read Catching Fire, which we have been reading together (ps. we loved it)

The next day we took a trip out to see Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. The Spiral Jetty is one of the most famous earthworks and being an art historian, it was about time for me to see it in person. For those who do not know what an earthwork is....it is a large-scale artwork built on the land with materials of the land, and brings consciousness to the place that you might not otherwise have because you might not go to that place if it weren't there. Pretty amazing eh?

Jake was the MAN --for the trip turned out being different than we had anticipated. It was an adventure with all the off-roading and poor Jakey had to hobble around with his torn acl, but now I can check off another item on my "to do before i die" list, right?

hoyts+jetty+sprained ankle+donuts for breakfast=a great weekend:)

**if you are an art nerd like me you might find this article written on the spiral jetty interesting.**

click here

Recap of Summer...

I am seriously baffled by how fast this summer flew by. I love the summertime and all the fun activities that are associated with it....this year for the first time in what-like 17 years or so that my summer has been extra long. It is a strange and yet glorious feeling not to go back to school with everyone else. I am sure that I will miss it soon enough but for now I am enjoying all this extra time!! Well, our summer was wonderful like always. Our top 5 highlights are as follows:

1. Our various camping trips. We were able to take some trips with family and friends and we sure had a lot of fun!

2. This summer I worked at the Springville Museum of Art at night when Jake was in class and I absolutely loved every minute!

3. The birthday week. I love having our birthdays just a few days apart so we can party all week long!

3.5 Eating warm strawberries and other delectable items from our garden:) yumm

4. Our anniversary (prev. post)... including our trip but also including all the fun things we've done together to celebrate marriage:)

5. and...last but not least, well maybe least...racking up some serious medical bills..ha.. this summer has brought us to the doctor on multiple accounts...I am basically a genius when it comes to insurance now;)

Goodbye Summer-we will miss you!