New Lamps!

I needed some new lamps in our new little living room! So what better place to go to than the DI right!? So we go, I found this lamp that was pretty ugly and outdated but defiantly had extreme potential. It didn't have a price tag on it, so at check out they lady gave it to us for 3 dollars! I was so excited!!!! After we left DI, I was so ecstatic that we had to go to Home Depot right then so I could pick out a spray paint color for the lamp. I picked a nice chocolate brown!

Before:

After:

The best part is that a couple days later we went to a different DI to find more awesome deals. I went by the lamps to see if there was anything better than what I got, and what I found was the same exact lamp that I had just bought a few days before! It was crazy! I couldn't believe it, I was really excited to have a matching lamp. When we brought it up to the register it was tagged for 5 bucks, and the guy said, "Eh, I'll give it to you for 3!" Awesome yeah!? I love finding good deals, it's rare for me.   

Summer Vacations!

We have had a very fun summer. A couple of weeks ago we got back from vacationing in Minnesota and Colorado! We had a really fun time! In Minnesota all the LaClaires went up a cabin in Hackensack. The cabin was right off a lake called Pleasant Lake. It was fantastic! We fished, boated, ate and partied all week! We love hanging out with everyone. I got to meet Paul's Grandpa Russ, Aunt Vicki and Uncle Pete. It was really cool to meet them.

Tubing was so much FUN!! Curtis has a cool boat and tube. We had such a blast being pulled and whipped around by Curtis. My stomach hurt from laughing so much, and I got blood blisters on my hands from holding on so tight. It was awesome!

We were up at the cabin for my birthday also! It was a really good day. Kim made a jell-o cake that was so so good! I got some great presents! I have such a great family:) Noelle and Josh announced that they are pregnant, due in March 2011! We are all very excited for them! 

We also got to visit Colorado. It was a very relaxing trip. I went through a lot of my old stuff from grade school, middle school and high school. Some of my work was so funny to read that I was crying I was laughing so hard! We also got to go a Rockies game! It was Paul's first time in an outdoor stadium. It was cool, and the Rockies won!!

Now Paul has started school and got back his old job at Dish One selling Dish Network (he is a very good salesman). I start school this coming monday, happy to get back in the swing of things even though my girls at school already graduated. We are excited to both be in our last semester of school! Yay us! :)
Tonight the Vikings play the Saints, and you guessed it, we will be watching it! GO VIKINGS!

Airport Layover

Paul, Noelle and I are in the Denver Airport waiting to go to Minnesota! I wanted to do something while I was waiting, so why not take some pictures with my handy webcam, and then blog about it! The flight from Salt Lake took 55 minutes, Our layover is double that! But it's okay, I'm glad that we can all hang out while we are waiting for our next flight. We are very excited to get to Minnesota!!

Paul's NEW computer

Paul loves his new computer. About 3 years ago he bought a computer and an extended warranty at Best Buy. With in the past year he has a some problems. He's had to get several new batteries, new power cord, the hard drive crashed, new mother board twice and some other things I can't think of. SOooo because of all that his computer had to be sent out multiple times (4 to be exact) to be fixed, he qualified to get a brand spanking new computer!! He was like a kid in a candy store, or me in a candy store :) He couldn't even wait to go after work to pick one out. We went during his lunch break one day! It's a very nice Toshiba 16 inch screen, it even has a 10 key! It's a better computer that his old because there was no way to match the specs exactly to get the same computer because the technology just keeps getting better. It has a bigger screen, faster processor, the new windows 7 and bigger hard drive. We hope it will last a while, neither of us have ever had any experience with Toshiba. It's reviews are awesome! 4.5 stars out of 5 :)

Paul also got a new knife. He uses it when ever he has a chance!

Nauvooooooo!

I just got back from a great week in Nauvoo for a family reunion. Paul was so nice to let me go while he stayed home and worked. I had so much fun being with my family, I was very happy I got to go. 

Day 1: My mom didn't know I was coming with them to Nauvoo. I told my Dad I wanted to come so he got everything figured out so I could come and keep it a secret from Mom. It was so fun to surprise her. She didn't know what to say when she saw me!! Needless to say, she was excited I was there and I got to come with them :) My mom is the stake primary president, so she was planning an activity for the young girls in the stake. Right after I flew to Colorado, that activity was going on so I got to help out and paint nails and have fun with the girls!

Day 2: This was the day we had to get ready to head out for Nauvoo. My mom, dad and Emily had to pack and get ready to go. My mom and I mowed the lawn so it wouldn't be ten miles long when we got back! Everyone was all packed and ready that night.

Day 3: Road trip!!! On the way to Nauvoo, we broke the driving up into 2 days. We left Longmont and drove to Omaha Nebraska. While we were driving through Nebraska my dad continually said, "Did I mention there is lots of corn in Nebraska?" haha! PS: If you haven't been through Nebraska, there is TONS of corn, that's not exaggerated either! My dad also pointed out the many "points of interest" while we were driving through the very flat state. As you can see, growing up in Colorado is such a treat that it's very hard to see anything prettier!

Day 4: We stayed in Omaha that night and went to church at a local ward. It was a nice ward. We found out that there are many people going to Nauvoo stop and go to church there, which makes sense. After church we continued our trip to Nauvoo. While we were in Nauvoo, we stayed in a cabin that was big enough to fit 14 people. It was way fun. Grandma Anne made us a wonderful lasagna dinner, it was delicious!!

Day 5, 6 and 7: Exploring Nauvoo! There are so many things to see in Nauvoo. We saw every show there is to see: Sunset By the Mississippi, Just Plain Anna Amanda, Rendezvous, and High Hopes and River Boats and of course the famous Nauvoo Pageant. My Aunt Ali and Uncle Todd and their family were in the Pageant. It was so fun to see them preform in it. I would love to go and be in the Pageant sometime. They say it's a wonderful experience! :) Most of the the other shows were done by young preforming missionaries that try out to be in the shows at Nauvoo. If they get in, they are called on a four month mission to Nauvoo to preform in the shows. Every one of these shows we saw were amazing! We decided when we go back we would go see the shows multiple times. In between going to shows we got to tour all the places in Nauvoo and learned how the pioneers lived. We went to the gunsmith, post office, bakery, John Taylor's home, blacksmith and many more. 

I love being with my cute cousins. Poor Evan with all us girls, haha! I think his face in this picture says it  all!! This was before our other boy cousins got to Nauvoo.

This is everyone having fun at pioneer past times. We had lots of fun doing the activities that the pioneers probably did! :)

At the end of day 7 we were on our way to the Boyack reunion in Qunicy. Quincy is about 45 minutes south of Nauvoo. On our way to Qunicy we got to stop in Carthage and take a tour of that. My family had been to Nauvoo and Carthage before but many of my Aunts and Uncles and their families hadn't been there. It was a great experience for everyone :)

Once we got to Quincy for the family reunion we checked into our hotel and settled in. We went up to the ballroom in the hotel for a major sweet dance party! It sounds way fancy, but this hotel was really old, but I'm sure that in it's day of it's newness and awesomeness, it was probably really nice and a hoppin' place, but not so much anymore. It was a perfect area for our family though, I had so much fun dancing with my all my cousins!! We were rockin' out all night!! 

Day 8: This day was the day of the famous Boyack Olympics! The person in charge comes up with fun relays for every team to do. I got the sweet job of being a team caption. We were team Mercury with and awesome cheer: Hot Hot Hot!! Jordyn made up the cheer because Mercury is the hottest planet! After the olympics we were treated to BBQ in the park. After we got back to the hotel it was time to start planning for the commercials that would be performed during the first ever Boyack game show! I was in charge of helping out the 7-9 year olds. I was the only college aged kid at the reunion this year, so I got to help the little guys. We came up with a catchy Boyack song that goes along with the Oscar Meyer Bologna song! It turned out way cute. 

Day 9: Final day of the reunion, picture day, exploration day, Boyack game show and banquet day!!

We took a big picture with everyone that was at the reunion. It was a very cool picture! I'm glad that they planned to do that. Then we drove to Hannibal Missouri where Mark Twain lived. They have many things as tributes to Mark Twain. We got to go on the Mark Twain riverboat. It took us up the Mississippi River for a hour. The boat went a speedy 3 mph, the skipper told us stories about Mark Twain and it was really good weather. We had fun!! We came back and enjoyed the game show. My mom was the host. She did an awesome job! Every aged group preformed their commercial, they were way creative and fun! After that we got ready for the banquet and had a nice meal. The older folks told us stories about the original Boyacks that started these reunions. It was cool to learn about them!

Day 10: The long 14 hour trek home got started at 7 am. We drove all the way home in one day. It seemed like it would take forever, but it went by really fast. We had fun driving together. I really love road trips with my family.

I had tons of fun with all my family in Nauvoo, but I really missed Paul and wished every minute that he was reunioning with us so I'm glad I'm back in Arizona with him! I got back last night finally, after my flight was delayed 2 hours! But I am safely back in this wonderful 105 degree weather:) We have less than 2 weeks in Arizona. Then we will be going on vacation to Minnesota and Colorado! We are very excited to see our wonderful family!

one year

It's been one year already since Paul and I were married :) It went by so fast! I can't believe that it has been a year. We had a great weekend celebrating. We went to a fun restaurant on Friday night to celebrate! It's called Rustlers Rooste, it is a western type place. They have live country music, a huge live bull outside, a slide you can slide down instead of going down the stairs, and cotton candy at the end of your meal (that was my favorite)! The food was really good, Paul loved his all you can eat ribs and my BBQ chicken was awesome also!

On Saturday we started out going to see Toy Story 3 in the theaters. It's a very cute movie, we liked it a lot! After that we got a pizza at Hungry Howies and went over a friend's house to watch the USA get beat in the World Cup against Ghana. Paul was very sad. He got a little happier thinking that he had England to root for still. That lasted until Sunday morning when England got beat 4-0 by Germany! Anyways, after the game, we went to Massage Heights to get a nice couples massage! It was really fun, they did a great job relaxing us and giving us tips on what we can do to strengthen our backs. After the massage we were so tired! I felt like a ton a bricks had fallen on me! So we came home and relaxed some more and watched TV. We just recently started watching Lost the TV show. I think we are kind of addicted! Sunday was our anniversary!! Paul surprised me with breakfast in bed! It was very tasty, he is a very good cook. We went to church and came home and had dinner. Last week my parents came into town. My mom had saved the top tier of our wedding cake from our wedding and brought it for us to eat on our year anniversary. So on Sunday night, we ate some of our cake. Surprisingly after being in the freezer for a whole year, it was not half bad! We have continued to eat some of it since then too!

We have had very fun weekend! But really we always love being together no matter what we are doing or what the occasion is! We are very blessed to be together.

weekend adventures

We have had many great weekends doing fun things the past few weeks. We try and think of fun things to do so we aren't just sitting at home doing nothing. On this particular day we decided to go feed the ducks at a lake just down the street from us. We had been saving the heels of our bread loafs to do this for the past couple of weeks. We decided that was a good idea since we would have thrown away the heels. It was really fun. Some of the ducks would actually eat from our hands, but they weren't as daring as the pigeons were. They gathered around Paul and me and loved every piece they could get!

You'll never guess what's hanging from this duck's beak.

(In case you were wondering, it's Paul's spit! Gross!)

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Another weekend we got invited to go to an indoor football arena game from Ryan Pace a friend that moved back here to Arizona from Utah. Neither Paul or I had never been to a football game like this, so it was pretty exciting. On our way to the game Paul found a note on his windshield.

He was so honored that someone took the time to appreciate his luxurious car! (direct quote from Paul). He called the number to see what it was all about and found out it was bit of a scam, they wanted paul's car for $2000, but we know it's priceless:) So we go to the game. It was really exciting, the team had quite the entrance with fire and spotlights and loud music! Two little kids were sitting in front of us with their fingers in their ears, with good reason. In arena football, the field is only 50 yards so the teams score alot more than regular outdoor football. Every time the arizona rattlers would score a big cannon would go off, it scared me every time!

Before we went to the game we had some time to kill. So of course we decided to go the mall. The malls down here are so awesome, they are big and air conditioned and there are so many in a small radius of where we live. In the Scottsdale mall there is hardly anything we can afford, but we like to go walk around and window shop. As we were walking around we saw the Microsoft store had a radio station visiting. This Microsoft store is set up a lot like the Apple stores with many interactive things and computers. But this radio station was giving away concert tickets so we decided to enter the drawing. While we were entering, Paul batted his cute eyelashes and charmed the ladies to rig the drawing! To make a long story short, we won Toby Keith tickets!! We were really excited to go until we found out it's on a Sunday. We are going to try to sell or give them away.

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Paul thinks it's April fools day everyday! He is always playing jokes on me. He's pretty clever. I mean, who would think to do this!?....

Yes, those are my pajamas in the ceiling fan above our bed haha! He's funny because he can never keep a straight face when he has done something, so I always know when something's up, which makes it even more funny! It's never a dull moment when you're with Paul LaClaire!!!! I will have to take more pictures of other pranks he pulls.