September visit home

Finally pictures from our visit home in September. First off I just want to say how grateful I am that I have had the opportunity to go home 3 times this year! There is nothing better than going home to visit family. My family (both sides) means everything to me and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss them or think about them. I always have the best time when I go home to visit, but it always go by WAY too fast. Now it's back to real life and the trip seems like a huge blurr.

I wasn't as diligent with my camera as I should have been, but I was able to capture some of the highlights.

Whenever I go home I always think how beautiful Utah is. It's funny because I've lived in Utah my whole life, but after moving away it feels like I'm seeing everything through fresh eyes. I absolutely love the Utah mountains. I love how clean it is and how friendly every one is. I love the Salt Lake temple. Most of all I love the feeling of Salt Lake because it feels like home. Michelle likes to tease me because when I come home to visit all of a sudden I turn into a tourist... I get excited about ordinary things such as going to the Avenues 'Smiths', going to 711, going to Walmart & Target, going for a walk up city creek canyon, eating at Chilies, walking around temple square. Things that I use to do all the time, but never really thought about before.

Here are a couple of my more touristy photos...

State capitol building over looking Memory Grove

Salt Lake temple

Hands down the best part of being home is spending time with family. Which we were able to do lots of and luckily we were there long enough to spread our time evenly between both families. One of the highlights was on our first night we had a huge family BBQ with the Reese family and Amussen family. It was so much fun getting everyone together... even if Brandon and I were a little loopy from jet lagg. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the BBQ.

Also, while we were home we got to catch up with Brandon's great Aunt Marilyn for her birthday. :) We also celebrated my brother in-law's b.day... unfortunately no pictures of that either. I'm terrible when it comes to taking pictures. Happy birthday Brad!

We love you Marilyn!

I was able to spend a couple days up at my families ranch. This is my ultimate sanctuary and is full of such wonderful childhood memories. I love going up into the mountains away from everything and being able to relax and spend time with family. It was also fun to see the new renovations my family has done on the cabin. The deck outside is new!

At the ranch

Another highlight of the trip was having the whole Reese family together. It has been 2 years since we have all been together. August of 2009 Ryan, Brandon's younger brother, left for a mission in Ecuador and just got back a few months ago. It was so much fun seeing him and hearing about his mission. We missed him so much! It was also fun having the newly weds, Ashlee and Jason, in town from Oregon to visit. I love this crazy bunch and am so happy that I get to be a Reese!

And I love spending time with my cute little nephew who is growing up so fast! I still feel like he should only be a few months old. He is getting so big! This is one of my favourite pictures from the trip. So cute!

So, I am obsessed with haunted houses... don't ask me why because they really freak me out (especially the freakishly tall grim reaper looking people... they literally make me want to cry) but I love them!!! Halloween in general is one of my favourite holidays and I always feel a little jipped because it isn't really celebrated here in Australia. So even though it was September Brandon and I made sure to go to Nightmare on 13th and it was worth every penny. Following the haunted house we all went to village inn for dinner.

Dinner at Village Inn

Love my Sista

Well there were lots more exciting things that happened... but I of course forgot to take pictures. Another highlight from the trip was seeing my best friend Rachel from California, who flew out to visit me. :) And Brandon and I got to see our long lost buddies from Utah State who just moved back from Florida. We have missed you goobers! Other highlights include going to the avenues fair & farmers market, walking sawyer... or should I say having him walk me, doing crafts with Michelle, catching up with friends, eating LOTS of yummy food and going shopping!

All in all it was an amazing trip and I miss everyone so much already!

At the airport flying back to Perth

Well I hope I can come home to visit again soon. I can't wait for my family to come out in December for an Aussie Christmas. Get ready for the heat family because it's going to be a scorcher!

Club Pinterest day #1

I recently became a fan of pinterest ! When I went home for a visit (pictures to come) Michelle showed me pinterest and I've been hooked ever since. If you haven't already signed up, do it! Pinterest is an online pinboard and you get to collect different things you are interested in. For example I am collecting recipes, speech pathology resources and arts & craft ideas. My friend Dannii is obsessed with pinterest as well, so we decided to make a pinterest club. So far the only members are myself, Dannii and Jade, but we hope to have more people join... we are making it into a facebook club. We decided it would be fun to get together once a month and have each person choose a pinterest craft activity to do and bring along a new recipe to share.

Friday Dannii and I commenced our first Pinterest club meeting. We decided to make memo boards. We bought all of the supplies at the reject shop (discount store).

All the supplies- ready to go!

We hired Brandon on as our personal photographer (even though he teased us the whole time and said that we should call the club 'Over 80' because we were acting like old ladies). This is his action shot he took from behind the glue bottle. haha He did a good job. I think we might have to hire him for the next meeting.

Half way done

Yep we even did the hammering. We are tough like that.

And the finished product came out.......

Like this! :)

Can't wait for our next Pinterest day!