October in Arizona

Well, we have been soooo busy since our move to Arizona. I am going to do my best to fill everyone in a little. October 5th we arrived in Warm Arizona, we now how a great Apartment a few miles from my brothers and their homes. We are like 3 minutes from Costco, Walmart, Inn-n-out, and so much more. We LOVE our new ward! We are luckily in the same ward as Brad and Cynthia and we have already received callings. Joseph is a primary teacher and I am a Beehive adviser.
Our second week here, we were both at work one night and I was totally caught off guard when I looked up and saw John and Trudy VanCott! Once I saw them I had to wait and see Joseph's response once he finally noticed. He was so excited! We really miss family and friends down here so it was so nice to spend the next couple of days with them.

Well, I had my 21st Birthday
Amy's birthday is the day before mine

It was a great birthday, I even had parents in town.
It was full of gifts like, pedicures, dvd players, the sound of music dvd, a new ipod player, a dozen roses, and a lot of happy birthday wishes. Thanks everyone!Halloween was so much fun! Isaak was Thomas the Train.Sophia was a princess fairyNoah was Buzz Lightyear, probably my favorite costume
And Bryce was a skeleton as you can see it was the warmest halloween I have experienced
People here give away really good candy and Brad kept us going until the kids couldn't hold their own buckets anymore :) Here is a picture of them showing me how much candy they got.
Joseph and I love working together all day and getting discounts on such great food everyday. I can't seem to get sick of the food! Joseph has just been promoted to Assistant manager and we are currently looking at a few different places to start up Costa #3 (our Costa). We will definitely keep you informed!

Hawaii! Tons of pictures . . . but still not enough.

We were so excited about going to Hawaii, it was my first time to Oahu and Joseph's first time ever. We loved it! For the first two nights we stayed in busy Waikiki. Joseph learned to fish from a native and enjoyed fishing for the whole day :)

We went and hiked Diamond Head

I had to get a picture of this guy :)

The view from the top is amazing, you can see everything

Our Juice Boxes

After our hiking fun, we came across a banyan tree. This entertained us for like 15 minutes ha ha.

For the last 3 days of our trip we went and stayed with the Wesley's and got great hook ups. Sister Wesley got us into the Polynesian Cultural Center for free! It was such a fun day.

They teach you games and activities the islanders play. The funny thing is we kinda got stuck in an Asian group for part of the day.

We learned how to throw spears and of course Joseph was the best out of the guys ha ha . . . really though.
Pretty waterfalls and scenery everywhere you look.
Okay so I have a question. . . There are lots of Asians in Hawaii (well known fact), but whenever they take pictures they make peace signs with their hands. Why is this? We loved it so much we took pictures like this too.
Joseph making fire
The Beautiful LDS Temple. It is currently closed for remodeling, I wish we could have done a session.
Joseph and I LOVED the passion fruit that you find everywhere. We had Passion Fruit on our ice cream every night. It is soooo good!
Our much missed friend KATE! She is currently at school at BYU Hawaii and she graduates in April. I have missed her and it was so fun to spend 3 days with her in Hawaii and have her get to know Joseph. We went surfing, boogie boarding, pie eating, . . . it was great!
The peaceful beautiful beach. We both want to go back :)
A woman at the PCC made this rose for me out of palm leaves. It was fun to watch because she did it in like 20 seconds and didn't even pay attention to what she was doing.
After a fun day on the beach

So we don't have many beach pictures because we wanted to be careful with our camera and really enjoy the beach. This is when we were just watching Joseph and Keli'i play because the waves were too huge and scary for us to play in.

Anyway, we were way high up on the beach and this wave crashed and came so high on the beach that we were panicking trying to grab my sandals, my phone, the car keys, the camera, the boogie boards, our clothes . . . Too much to grab so my camera got wet. I was so sad!
We went home and put the camera in rice and 2 days later it worked great! Too bad it was when we were on our way home.

We had a lot of fun and decided we would open our restaurant in Hawaii. Well we are now in Arizona and enjoying the warm weather. We miss our family and friends a lot, Love you all!

Happy Halloween

These things are so funny, so I decided to do one of my Nephews and Niece. I left out Noah, Sorry! The picture I tried for Noah didn't turn out. Anyway, I hope everyone has a great Halloween and I am excited to see pictures of everyone and their fun night!

Oregon

I know it has been a while, but as you know, things have been CrAzY. So I will now try to do some updating . . . We made our decision to move to Arizona and really do this, we dropped out of our classes and decided to take our well needed vacation before our crazy move. We packed for Oregon and Hawaii, a 2 week vacation, in about 30 minutes and began driving to Oregon. We had to go to Oregon because I have never been and it is a favorite vacation spot for the VanCotts. It is Beautiful there! I have a lot of great pictures to post, I will try to narrow them down.

We stopped in Idaho to sleep for the night. The next morning I was wanting to wash my hair so Joseph nicely went to the front desk to get some mini shampoo and conditioners . . . this is what the nice lady at the front desk gave him :)
Pantene Pro-V, pretty Classy
I loved this waterfall
Huge Octopus at the museum
When the tide goes down you can walk out on the rocks and they are covered in starfish, crabs, anemone, all kinds of things.
We pretty much sat on the beach every night to watch the sunset
There are beautiful Lighthouses everywhere
It was such a fun crazy trip because we never knew where we would be sleeping the next night, or what we would go do, we just kind of did whatever. We decided we wanted to camp one night so we brought all of our gear and camped on the night when of course there was a storm. Everything was soaked! We were up all night and that is when Joseph's tooth started to give him trouble.
You can't see enough beautiful views, its amazing.
Oh and of course I have to end with this. It was the night before we left to Hawaii and we knew our loaf of bread we packed and ate many pbjs with was going to go bad, so Joseph wanted to try something. We went and parked on the beach, ripped up pieces of bread and he threw them near our car and on our car. We had birds attacking us forever and one almost got Joseph's finger. This was my favorite picture!
We loved it and hope to go back again. I will post Hawaii's pictures soon. We love and miss you all!

The Planner

If you know me, you know I love to plan. Planning out goals, vacations, a busy day. . . the list goes on. I often make a 5 year plan where I set goals and plan when I want to accomplish them. When I first graduated from High School I had a 5 year plan . . .
- Go to College
- Work and save up for my mission
- Graduate with my Bachelors in Psychology/Behavioral Science
- Go on a mission
- Come home and get my Masters
- Get married at age 23-25

As you can see, it all worked out. . . not! That's the funny thing, I love to plan and feel like I have thought out every detail perfectly. Then I have to humble myself and remember, I don't always know whats best for me. That is when prayer comes in.

My 5 year plan 2 weeks ago went kind of like this.
- Apply for the Dental Hygiene Program in the spring
- Begin the DH Program in the fall and finish in 2012
- Support Joseph till he has finished school
- Complete projects on the home during all of this

I really thought this plan ^ would work. I guess that's why we are moving to Arizona in a week and 1/2!
That's right, for the past few months, my Dad who owns Costa Vida Restaurants down in Arizona, has been mentioning to us that we should go down and work/own one of his restaurants. We were thinking that we would do it, just in 5 years or so. Before we knew it, we found ourselves talking and praying and talking and praying some more. We felt like we came to our conclusion. We are really doing it, and we have so much to do before we go.


That's why we are in Hawaii right now ha ha. Really, we are. We took off to Oregon the day after it was all decided and spent a week there, then caught a flight to Oahu. We are so happy to have some time to enjoy these trips because we haven't had a break from school or work since last year (literally).

We are trying to prepare ourselves for this big change and find ourselves getting a little sad about leaving Family, Friends, and Utah. But we will come visit and always welcome visitors, so don't forget about us :). We really are excited to work together and learn everything from my brothers so we can expedite the opening of Costa #3! I hope this clears things up for you. We love you all and hope things are great at home!

P.S. We will be leaving October 3rd, just to let you know.

Our lives this Fall . . .

My thoughts 90% of the day . . .

His thoughts 90% of the day. . .

What you will most likely find me doing . . .

What you will most likely find him doing . . .

We are both happy to have the summer over with and to be home :)