more time = more fun

This last month and a half . . . probably more, Jared and I (mostly me) have been going back and forth between the decision for me to stay working at Arthur Murray Ballroom Dance.  I just wasn't spending the time I wanted to with Jared.  With his work schedule being from about 8am to 5pm and mine from about 5pm to about 1030pm some evenings and morning until afternoon on Saturdays, I just wasn't seeing him.  Don't get me wrong - I absolutely LOVE to dance and love teaching, but weighing my time between work and spending time with Jared, well you can guess which side won.  SO I am now able to be a better homemaker and make him yummy dinners, and actually spend time with our friends during the evenings as well.  We've been trying some new recipes here and there and we've really grown to love crockpot meals :)  Just some of the many we love - Potato casserole, Meatloaf and a Chicken Tortilla Soup.  Super yummy - in other words, because I'm home more in the evenings, trying out new recipes is a lot more eventful and wonderful.

Here's our potato casserole that we loved:

As a result of no longer working evenings, I have also been able to go out and explore with Jared and experience the wonderful city that we live in.  Austin is really beautiful - we've gone on some "hiking" - more like walking trails that have rocks and some water :P there are beautiful trails and usually Saturdays are the best day to go (Jared's not working) and the best time to go is during the mornings, when it's not too hot - which was when I was working and not able to go unless it was after work (when I was tired from dancing all morning).

For those who don't know much about Texas - we're in a drought right now (ok almost all the time we're in a drought), but it's been pretty bad lately, but we've recently been getting a lot of thunderstorms and rain and flooding. There was one night that it was so loud we could barely sleep and my phone went off with these really loud beeps . . .

oh and our ceiling looked like this . . .

It was a fun eventful day trying to avoid some of the flooding areas, luckily Jared doesn't have to far at all to work and I could stay in for the morning.

Because I haven't been working weird hours, I've also been able to do more in photography, which has been a passion of mine for a while.  I absolutely love going back and looking through old photos.  

Here is a photo that I took of my nephew that will always be one of my favorites:

Jared has been really patient with me as it's been an up and down transition for me quitting my job - physically and emotionally; not knowing whether to quit and then finally quitting and feeling wonderful was a relief.  He's been good about keeping me busy and looking for work.  I'm grateful for him and his driven attitude to stay active and busy, both physically and spiritually.  On a side note, we've recently gotten involved in our Church ward volleyball team and it's been a blast - social and good exercise all in one.  We've also been able to go on walks (most every morning) because I don't work late and we can get up early, which has been tons of fun.  We're staying busy, enjoying the little moments and just loving life.

beautiful weather beautiful scenery

For the fourth, Jared and I decided that we would go walk downtown in the morning and beat the craziness and have a relaxing morning walk on some trails.  The weather was nice; however, I'm really good at getting sunburned and heat exhaustion, so we decided to find a trail that was shaded a bit.

While walking we kind of reached a dead end, but that never stops Jared - he just hopped along through water and on rocks, while I'm wearing crappy shoes to do that . . . aka no traction, no shoelaces and can easily get soaked, but being the awesome wife that I am *cough cough* I followed him.  ACTUALLY Jared was really sweet and helped me across so my shoes wouldn't be soaked and we could enjoy the rest of our trail haha.

He stood there a bit smiling because he could see that I wasn't going to just walk through all that water haha so he came back to help me :)

Later that evening we were invited to go and watch some professional fireworks in a neighborhood (Austin has a fire ban - so personal ones are limited), before they started we were in a grassy field playing games with some friends and had a beautiful view of a rainbow.  Once the sun went down, the fireworks started, we were a little too close and the fireworks were super loud . . . we went home with headaches, but they were still beautiful.

Later this month we wanted to make a bird feeder like Jared had done growing up, but we realized how nearly impossible it is to find pine-cones in Texas! (At least the area we're in) Who would've thought . . . so we improvised.

Jared was in charge of the main construction, because I had never made one before.

For those of you who don't know, I'm not a fan of the smell of peanut butter, so this was kind of a struggle, but I managed.

It was very entertaining to look back and see the measures it took to get this bird feeder out onto the tree from our 3rd floor balcony :) broom handle + 2 wrapping paper cardboard rolls + yellow ducktape = win!

I think the birds were all too scared of our feeder, that sadly no birds came.  We're going to try again soon, and this time with real pine-cones and we'll let you know how it worked out.

Another wonderful adventure that we had this month, we got to dog sit for our cousins.  Lots of fun, but after a week, we're not going to ever have a dog - too much work for an animal that will never talk to you :( BUT we still enjoyed their company for that week, or rather, they loved ours haha

Entertaining for us to watch them sit on each other though (I don't know if you can see one of their heads poking out, but the girl would always sit on the boy).

And last but not least, we got to spend a weekend exploring and found this wonderful outlook over a bridge in Austin that overlooks a major lake.  Beautiful weather and beautiful scenery.