Celebrations!!!

It has definitely been way too long since we have updated our blog. We have had a ton of things going on and most of them are celebrations, so I'm excited to update you all.

Our new little niece, Dani Jo Blair was born at the end of September. She is very cute and we can't wait to meet her! My sister, Chelsea had some health issues about a month after Dani was born and had to be in the hospital for a few days. Thankfully she is getting better and we know it is because all of the prayers and fasting, so we thank all of you that have helped her in any way.

Callen and I celebrated our 1 yr anniversary this past October 9th and decided it would be appropriate to go on a cruise to celebrate since we went on one for our honeymoon. This time we decided to go on a 7 day cruise to Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Since the ship departed out of Long Beach, CA we were able to see and spend time with some of my family members. It was so great to spend time with them and to babysit 3 of our nieces on one of the days. Those girls love Callen, so they were all over him. :) Even when  I was painting their fingernails and toenails, they wanted Callen to get his painted too, but of course he wouldn't let us. :) We left Long Beach on Sunday (the day of our anniversary) and that Tuesday we got to Cabo. The water was too shallow to pull the ship all the way in, so we had to take a tender to and from the shore. I wasn't a huge fan of those and the water taxis because there were a lot of waves in that area and I was paranoid that we were going to tip over into the water, just like our rafting experience in ID over the summer. lol Cabo is a very tourist area, so we had tons of people coming up to us wanting us to come into their shops or even take pictures with Iguana's, which scared the crap out of me.  I am terrified of reptiles, so seeing those iguanas just freaked me out. haha :) We spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Cabo and Thursday we were supposed to spend time in Puerto Vallarta, but there was a hurricane. I was really bummed about that because I had heard Puerto Vallarta is an amazing place. Since we couldn't go there, we went to a place just north of Cabo called La Paz. La Paz is very different. The water was very pretty and calm which was very different from Cabo. It takes about 30 minutes to get to downtown from where the ship pulled in. When we were riding on the bus to downtown it was so weird because you look to the left side of the road and all you see is desert and then when you look to the right you see the ocean. You never see that, so it was very interesting. We found that the food is really cheap in La Paz, but everything else is expensive. For example, we forgot to bring Sunscreen on the cruise, so we were going to buy some in La Paz, until we saw they sell it for $15.00. How ridiculous is that when here in the states you can get some for $1.00. After that day in La Paz, the next 2 days were sea days on the ship and then we returned to Long Beach that Sunday.

That next Tuesday happened to be my birthday so we celebrated by going to dinner at The Olive Garden, which is one of my favorite restaurants and then Callen surprised me by taking me to his sister, Lori's house and they had dessert for me. :) It was very sweet, especially since I didn't expect them to do anything for me. It was a very nice birthday even though I did have to work. :/

For Halloween we went over to Callen's sister, Arianne's house and we took the kids trick or treating. I was surprised just how long those kids could stay out there for and how far they could walk. They are little troopers! :)

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we are excited to spend it with Callen's family in Saratoga Springs. We are still going to make and have our own Thanksgiving meal though...yes we still want to go all out even though it's just the 2 of us :) HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!

BYU and Jimmer!

We were able to go to the Jimmer All Star game a couple of weeks ago and had a lot of fun, even though Jimmer's team lost. Most of the players were just showing off their dunks, so it was super entertaining. :) The next night we went to a BYU football game. One of our friends gets season tickets and had some extra for this game so we were in some really good seats. Thankfully it was the night BYU actually one. Their previous game against the U was pretty ridiculous, so I was really worried about the game we attended, but Heaps pulled it off. This last game against USU started off ok but then at Halftime you could see BYU wasn't doing very well. After the half BYU started putting a new QB in (Nelson) and because of him they won the game. I think everyone will agree with me when I say, they just need to keep playing Nelson and get rid of Heaps. He's the one that's the problem!

We are celebrating our 1 yr anniversary a week from today! We are heading to Cali on Friday night (7th) and leaving on Sunday (9th) for a week long cruise to Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta. We are really excited to get away and what's better than going on a cruise? We went on a cruise to Ensenada and Catalina for our honeymoon and loved it, so after that we decided we wanted to try to do an annual cruise. If any of you ever want to go on one let us know :) Cruises are fun when it's just you and your spouse, but they are a lot more fun with friends and family.

Crafts!!!

I have really been getting into trying new things lately especially with crafting. Here's just a few things that I have tried so far: fall wreaths, rag wreaths, flower ball decorations, and flower/photo boards. I have even been selling them to people on ksl too, which I'm excited about. :) There's this girl that is getting married and asked if I would make 12 flower balls for her that will hang from chairs going down the aisle. Hopefully she won't be too disappointed, especially since it's her wedding...I'm a little nervous!

Callen has started traveling for work and doing "on-sites" which is him traveling to our customer's business and training them on our software. So far he's been to Denver and will go in a week to Cedar City. He's enjoying it!

My sister Chelsea just had a baby girl this past week. I can't wait to see her in person. They named her Dani Jo! Unfortunately we won't be able to see her until Christmas time.

Paige's Baby Blessing!

Today a bunch of the family was able to be at Paige's baby blessing, which is Callen's sister, Lori's baby. It was nice to have a lot of family there and nice to hear Lori and Aaron share their testimonies. Paige is a very cute baby and she didn't even cry when being blessed. :) We are excited to see her grow up. :)

Weekend Trip to Tropic!

This past weekend we went to Tropic and we only able to be there for about a day and a half. Bummer! We would have liked to have been there longer, but unfortunately with our work schedules we had to be back at work on Monday. We went hiking at Calf Creek about 10 mins out of Escalante, which is about 45 minutes from Tropic. The hike wasn't bad except for it felt like we were hiking forever even though it was only 3 miles to the water fall and 3 miles back to the car. We started out early in the morning so we were the first people to the falls which ended up being perfect for us since as we started heading back to the car, a lot of people were hiking to the falls. When we got back to Tropic Callen and I crashed and took a nap at his parents house. I started getting sick with a cold the night before so it was nice to sleep. Callen, his Dad, little sister, and Grandpa went fishing later that night. I wanted to go but was feeling really sick so decided to stay at the house and hang out with Callen's Mom. While we were there we also got pie from the best place called Pine's, which is close to Bryce Canyon. Pine's no joke has the best pie I have ever had. The owner is the only one that makes the pies, so no one knows the recipe unfortunately. Callen used to work there when he was younger so I was hoping he would know her secret recipe, but nope. :( We are hoping to go down to Tropic again in the next couple of weeks since Callen is having a class reunion. Should be fun, so hopefully we can make it back down there. 

Our CRF 450 X

We got Callen his dream bike a couple of months ago. It's a CRF 450 X and Callen has been so happy to have it. It's a dirt bike as well as street legal. He loves riding it. I'm starting to think he loves it more than he loves me. haha jk pretty close though. My brother has the same bike, so both of them are stoked to ride together. All we have left to do is get a truck to put it in when we go dirt biking! :)

Baby Paige and RSL!!!

About a month ago our newest niece Paige came into the world. She's definitely a cutie! We were also able to take a couple of our nephews, Gavyn and Carter to the Real Salt Lake soccer game. We were able to get some awesome seats and had a lot of fun. Carter loved it as he is a big sports fanatic and Gavyn mostly just went for the food as he usually does. haha

I'm not liking this...

Yesterday Callen left to go camping and fishing down in southern utah. I was unable to go due to work, which I was bummed. The hardest thing though is that I have to be away from Callen for just about 5 days. :( I haven't even been away from him for 1 day let alone 5. I think the most I was away from him even when we were dating was 2 days, so this trip of his is kind of hard on me. It's even harder not being able to talk to him since he doesn't get service where he's at. :( I have been finding myself calling his phone just so I can hear his voice....I know I'm crazy. haha That should tell ya that I really can't wait to see him. :)

Pyper Family Reunion!!!

 

We were able to go to my brother's house in Idaho for my immediate family reunion. It was great to see everyone and spend time with the family. We flew in on the 22nd and let me just say a 45 minute flight is amazing. It goes by so fast. I loved the short flight. The 22nd is my sister Mindy's birthday, so that evening we celebrated her birthday and my brother took some of us sight seeing in Boise which is the city he lives in. He lives about 10 mins away from the airport which is perfect especially since his wife Alysha is a pilot. It is a tradition in our family that when it is our birthday we have to take a bite out of our cake using only our mouth and usually someone smashes your face in the cake...it's fun!!! Since it was Min's birthday she had all of the grandkids help her blow out the candles and she wanted Dylan to help her take a bite in the cake, but as you can see from the pictures, she ended up smashing Dylan's face in the cake instead. haha :) That's our family for ya! The next day the boys went golfing in the morning while us girls got massages. Callen was a little jealous and wanted to be one of the girls since he loves massages, but he still had a good time with the guys. That afternoon we decided to go to the hot springs, but come to find out after driving for about an hour on a windy road, the hot springs haven't been open for about 10 yrs. So, we ended up stopping at a little river and played in the water. The water was freezing but everyone still had a great time, especially the boys taking turns diving in the water and the grandkids putting mud all over grandpa. On Friday, all of us except for Chels and my Dad's wife, Donna went river rafting in the Payette river. We had to separate into 2 groups since there was so many of us. Our group was me, Callen, Mindy, Pat, Brandon, and Alysha. We had a lot of fun and Brandon and Alysha were both able to ride the bull, which means they got on the very front of the raft and held on for dear life. haha We went through some pretty rough rapids, but were able to get through them due to our awesome guide Gary. However, nothing was about to prepare us for our very last rapid....The waves were too big and rough that it knocked all of us except for our guide into the water. Our raft has a rope around it, so we were told that if we ever do get knocked into the water, we are supposed to grab the rope and pull ourselves up. All of us were really scared when we got knocked into the water, afraid that we might drown. The waves kept hitting us in the face and luckily for me I was the first one to make it back into the raft. I remember being under the water and seeing a lot of white small bubbles above me and thinking I was further down than I thought I was. Not having been able to take a deep breath before going under, as soon as I came up I took a deep breath and grabbed the rope. I got into the raft and saw my sister, brother, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law get pulled in, then I thought, "oh no" where is my husband? I look out into the water to see Callen far away and water keep slashing him in the face. He had this look of fear in his eyes and that's when I started to panic and I yelled out to him and told him to swim, swim, swim. We finally got him into the raft and he struggled to catch his breath, then we all realized we were all in some pain from the water. Some of us had cuts and blood and some of us were really sore and had bruises. We were just happy to be alive. The thing that scared me is that when I made it into the raft I noticed that my life jacket was almost completely off of me. I was talking to my grandpa's wife, Patty about it and she told me that my uncle's friend died in a rafting trip because he fell into the water and his life jacket fell off. Heavenly Father was definitely looking after us. After rafting, some of us drove about 10 mins north to some hot springs. We didn't know we had to hike almost 1 mile up to them though, which was a pain in the butt, especially since some of us didn't have the proper shoes. It was still fun though, especially seeing the nude guys as soon as we got there...that was Callen's favorite part. haha ;) jk Later that night my Dad had put together a white elephant game for us but they were super nice gifts, so Callen and I got a coin counter and lantern. A couple of nights some of us were in the mood for Dairy Queen, so both times, me, Callen, Pat, and Jay went and oh my heck, those 2 times had to have been the funniest times ever. The first time Pat drove and he had to repeat himself a million times for the lady and he asked about almost every blizzard and how it tasted....soooo funny!!!! The last time we went which was on Saturday night, Jay drove and the same thing happened again. The lady could not hear us order and when we finally pulled up to the window to get our desserts Pat got a large cherry shake and as soon as Jay handed it to him, Pat dropped it on the floor and it went everywhere....we all were busting up mostly because of Pat's hilarious remarks, like "we aren't gonna do well in our checkout..."....we had rentals that's why. I can't remember the other comments but we couldn't stop laughing.

Saturday morning we took family pictures and then some of us went shooting. After that we went to a place which I can't remember the name but it was like a beach. It had sand and water and there was a huge fountain in the middle of the water. We had a BBQ and played soccer and minute to win it. The trip was a ton of fun and unfortunately it went by way too fast.

4th of July weekend was fun also because my sister Mindy and her family was able to come into town. We spent the weekend in Park City at their condo at the Canyons. Callen and I went up there on the Friday night before the 4th. We woke up Saturday morning and watched the womens soccer game and wimbledon tennis matches. That day we played tennis and went swimming while waiting for my sister's family to arrive. Sunday we went swimming and hot tubing and just relaxed. On Monday we went to the outlets and got some cool stuff at Lids and Adidas. We also went to the Chocolate Factory and later that night Mindy and I spent some time together shopping at Walmart. It's hard to be away from my family and I missed them as soon as we departed. My niece Pyper drew us a picture to hang on our fridge and in the front it says, I love Callen and Auntie Muffie Forever!!! It touched my heart. She's my little twin!!! :)

I was happy to spend the 4th with a member of my immediate family and that being one of my best friends, Mindy. As most of you know, my Mother passed away on the 4th of July in 2009, so now when that time of the year comes, it's not a very joyous time. It's been 2 yrs now and I miss her so much. Her birthday was 2 days later on the 6th and my brother texted me a picture of the sunset in ID and he told me that he felt like it was my Mom giving him a hug to help him through the day at work. That touched my heart so much and even though my Mom isn't alive, she is still very much apart of mine and my siblings lives. My sister Mindy has been the one that I have looked up to as a Mom since my Mom isn't here. Mindy took my Mom's place at my wedding and helped me so much. When I was sealed I looked at her and saw her crying so hard and I knew it was because she wished my Mom was there and I knew my Mom was crying even though I couldn't see her and to me Mindy's tears were hers.

Next on our list is to go to Tropic for the 24th and go camping, so we will keep you all posted on how that goes!!!