Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

As some of you may know, my Husband is in the Marine Corps. 

Lucky for me, when he signed up after high school, he decided just to stick with the Reserves. 

This means he heads to Camp Williams about one weekend a month for Drill. 

This past weekend, he had Drill for 3.5 days. 

Basically, my entire weekend dragged on, 

but lucky for me, Mom knows how to keep me busy! 

Mike had the brilliant idea of taking our wedding flowers and putting them into a wreath for our door! So, my amazingly talented Mother helped me put this beauty together!

I'm pretty proud!

We spent a couple of hours Friday and Saturday night canning fresh apple juice!

I'm not going to lie, I wasn't really looking forward to all the work that would go into it, but it turned out to be a lot of fun! 

Our Work Station!

Also this weekend, Kara Kocherhans did my hair! 

It was time for something new. Still getting used to the change,

but I'm loving it!

She works at Suggestions Salon, and always does a fabulous job!

She should do everyone's hair!

Got to spend some time with Dad and my Brother. 

This picture is so priceless! Buck truly is Dad's best friend!

Sunday evening was Mike's last night at Drill. 

All day was spent waiting around for him to come home! 

Juli and Jeff came over and made all of us such a delicious dinner!

Baby Benjamin (Nephew) was wearing these adorable pants! 

We love his widdle pumpkin bum! 

 Love this boy so much!

Each Sunday is a battle to see who gets to hold him!

Finally the time came for Mike to come home! 

I may or may not have been sitting by the door with my nose pressed up against the glass waiting! 

(I definitely was... I'm not ashamed!) 

They say "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

This phrase is 100% true! 

So happy to have my husband back and already dreading his next weekend away.

Thanks for Reading!

The Ridings

This is it: The Apocalypse

About a year ago, I was introduced to the television show, The Walking Dead. 

I'll have to be honest though, it definitely was not an immediate love.
I hated anything to do with violence, and I even refused to watch most action movies!
As I continued to watch, I learned to ignore the grossness of the show; I even found myself anxiously awaiting the next episode!

Lucky for me, after talking the show up a bit with help from a good friend, Alex Plaster, Michael was up for trying the show out.

It took Mike a while to get over the violence as well, but we can't help but watch!
Mike gets pretty into it... :)

We blasted through the first season in 2 days, and now we're in the middle of season 2.

We're hoping to eventually catch up to the current season, but we've still got quite a ways to go!

Although we do enjoy our time watching this show, be warned: This show may cause nightmares!  

I guess you could say it's kind of consumed our evenings!

Every night, Mike comes home, we talk about our day and normally we get time to relax. 

Then, we make dinner, set the cedar chest in our living room we use as a coffe table for dinner, and eat while watching. 

We are love it!


Thanks for Reading!
The Ridings

Date Night!

If asked what is the best night of the week, I think any married couple would say date night!

I can't force any others opinions, but it is definitely my favorite! 

Last Saturday, we went to the Sunset Festival at the Gateway Mall!

It was so much fun! They had sidewalk sales, and even live music!

This weekend, Lokalgrown was the band that played! They were so good! We all loved listening to them perform! 

It isn't a date night without Mike's "date shoes!"

Michael and Myself sitting outside listening to the concert, drinking Apple Beer of course!

Lucky for us, Alex and Gabi were able to double with us! 

Aren't they just the cutest!

   

After the concert, we went out for a movie. 

We saw Here Comes The Boom, with Kevin James.

We all LOVED it! It was an extremely entertaining movie.

We would recommend you going to see it!

Then it was off to CPK for dinner!

It wasn't a super fancy date, but it was definitely a good one! 

We love going out and having a fun time! 

If you ever are in Salt Lake, and want to hang out, give us a call!

Thanks for reading!

The Ridings

Fall Decor!

A difficult part about getting married and moving out, is that when Holidays come around, you don't have any decorations! 

Decorating is something we've been trying to really work on! 

We both decided we wanted to try to decorate our home as much as possible for each Holiday. Obviously right now we don't have the money for complete and total Halloween/Fall blow out, but we are slowly gathering decorations! 

This is our entertainment center!

(It's actually a dresser for clothing, but we converted it.)

We bought these cute pumpkins and ghost lights from Target!

Hint: If you're looking for cheap decorations, definitely look at Target!

Look in the Target Dollar Section! 

We found a couple of these cute pumpkins too!

And of course, Halloween isn't complete without the classic skeleton! 

We loved this one! 

Also, in the dollar section of Target, we found these super cute Scarecrows!

We simply could not pass them up! 

A little something for our door!

Another nice way to collect Halloween decorations, is when people get to many and give them away! We got these from Mike's parents! 

We scored big with these cute guys!

My Mother is also going to help us make our own this year! Simple enough!

Just cut them out of wood, and paint them! 

I'll post pictures once we get them done! 

Again, we've got a long ways to go, but not bad for our first year! Any more suggestions on cheap places to buy? Let us know! 

Thanks for reading!

 The Ridings

Havasupai

This past weekend was a trip we have been waiting for! 

 A couple of months ago, Mike's brother's planned a trip to go to Havasupai, and it has been all Mike can talk about!

This past weekend, we finally got to go!

After a long car ride, we were ready to make our way down!

We spent Alex's birthday down in Havasupai!

I hope he had a good one!

Coming up on the Village! 

It was definitely a welcoming sight after at least an 8 mile hike!

The beautiful rock of the Grand Canyon!

This was the first Waterfall we came up on.

I'm not very good at remembering what all the names are,

but look how blue that water is! 

We were so excited!

Mike's first jump of the trip! We figure this jump was about 30 or 40 feet.

Although it took a while at first, most the girls did this jump too!

My first jump!

It took only 20 minutes of thinking about it!

Note to jumpers: DON'T THINK! JUST JUMP!

After my first cliff jumping ever!

I was so scared!

So many beautiful sights down there! 

Most of our group jumped off of this waterfall!

After making the scary decent down to Mooney falls!

You grab chains, and climb unstable ladders, and slippery rocks!

It's pretty steep!

At some parts, you actually climbed down in the rock,

like a cave!

The Bottom of Mooney falls!

This might be Beaver Falls, but i'm not entirely sure.

At Beaver though, there is this cool place to jump off! Technically, you aren't supposed to jump off waterfalls, but the ranger who talked to us ended up giving us rope to help us make the climb back up! He was pretty chill!

The jump was probably 55 feet from the higher ledge and 40 from the lower.

Most the girls jumped from the lower, and boys from the higher!
Only Jaimie Riding and Kristen Lee were the
girls were brave enough to jump from the higher ledge!

Hiking back from Beaver! There is a random Palm Tree in the middle of the Grand Canyon! It was the only one we saw down there the entire time! 

This spot was my favorite. You could easily go behind the falls, and although there was no place to jump, it was so gorgeous! We swam around in this spot for quite some time!

Couldn't get over how pretty it was there!

This was my first real backpacking trip, and although my feet are blistered and my body hurts worse then ever before, it was such an amazing time!

We're so grateful for the time we were able to spend there with friends and family! 

Can't wait to see what next year's backpacking trip brings!

Thanks for reading!

The Ridings

Our Most Recent Obsession!

If any of you know Michael, you know he is obsessed with the 80's & 90's.

He loves the music, clothes, movies, tv shows, and just about anything else related to these years.

Before we got married, Mike picked up a couple of television series from the 80's we'd never heard of, but we've been hooked on!

HUNTER! 

Hunter is our most recent obsession. 

Unfortunately we only have season 1 but we plan on getting all 7 seasons!

Hunter and his partner McCall are detectives for the Los Angeles Police Department. 

Although their methods are not the norm, every episode they get the job done!

Plus, in every episode there is always an epic car chase! 

Although Hunter's car almost always falls apart, 

it definitely makes for an exciting show!

21 JUMP STREET!

The other TV series Mike scored in buying is 21 Jump Street. 

No, not the movie that just came out. 

I'm talking straight old school. 

Johnny Depp plays a cop that goes undercover as a teenager in an attempt to put a stop to crime in local schools. 

It's definitely fun to see 

Johnny Depp acting at a younger age!

This show even got Mike's younger siblings attention!

I think they've seen more of it then we have!

We have absolutely loved getting into these old shows!

We highly recommend them!

Thanks for reading!

The Ridings

Good Clean Fun! Getting Dirty!

What a weekend! It was definitely a lot more then what we were planning on,

but goodness me did we have fun!

September 28, 2012

Friday we had another soccer game! This one was definitely the most intense to watch!

Lucky for us, a lot of players could come so not having enough subs was not an issue!

They played supposedly the number 1 team in their league.

They Flyin Franger's (Brad and Mike's team) definitely gave the number 1 team a run for their money! 

September 29, 2012

Today was COLOR FEST! My sister Juli has a friend from work who has been working really hard on putting together a Color Fest! He has this whole fundraiser designed for children's camps! Basically it was a really great deal! 5 dollars to get in, and 2 dollars per bag of chalk! They had a chalk throwing every half hour for a couple of hours, then switched it to every hour! The Color Fest is also planned for a couple of places out of Utah so for more information 

visit: www.gotocolorfest.com

Michael didn't want to inhale all of the Chalk! 

His nose was so squished! 

Right After the first Chalk Throw we participated in! 

These were the shirts Juli and Jeff were selling!

Juli and Jeff!

We were all so dirty! 

After our final throw! 

I had the red chalk... I dominated everyone! :)

Later that night was the general Relief Society Meeting, so my Mother came up.

She took us out to eat at the Blue Lemon where I got the 

Grilled Balsamic Chicken Panini.

It was the most delicious Panini I may have ever had!

The choir filing in before our meeting!

Our attempt at getting a good picture of us!

It was the best we could do!

September 30, 2012

This morning we had a meeting with the Bishop. 

Obviously, we were about to get our first calling in the new ward!

We are now officially the Nursery Leaders!

This is the singing time Popcorn Tree! 

Sometimes the kids try to eat the gross glued on popcorn!

The interesting thing about this Nursery, is that we also watch some of the 

Russian kids from a branch in our stake!

They are so adorable!

This was Kira. She was just visiting the Russian Branch, 

but she really loved Michael!

We are definitely going to enjoy this calling!

We can't help but laugh at all the silly things the kids do!

Well, thanks for reading! It wasn't anything to epic, but it was still an amazing weekend! We are so grateful to be where we are! 

Thanks! 

The Ridings