Happy Mother's Day

I love my mom so much. She is my total super hero, my idol, my inspiration, the kind of person I want to become. I love you mom.

For those of you that do not already know, a few weeks before my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. It was a total shock, a total wake up call, a total mind blow that something like this could happen so close to our family. Still to this point it is unreal. My mom has been so strong through the whole thing and I look up to her greatly. Not only having to go through a serious surgery to remove the existing tumor and 6 rounds of chemo, but having to loose your hair would be one of the hardest things to EVER have to go through. I look up to my mom so much, not only is she so beautiful, she is so strong. I love her so much!!

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Cazookie

I have a new favorite thing to make and a perfect way to end a date night: the cazookie. Now I wish I knew who first came up with such a treat so I could pay proper credit, but in the end, the origin isn't what matters. What matters is this delicious, crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, sinful cookie dessert with ice cream. Holy cow. Yumm.

The first time I had this dessert was at a restaurant in Orem called "The Chocolate". What a cazookie basically is is a cookie cooked in a pizza dish at 475* for 10 minutes. The high tempture perfectly cooks the outside but leaves the inside all doughy. 

Here is the recipe of the one we made tonight:

Peanut Butter Cazookie

1 1/2 tablespoons butter, softened
3 tablespoons chunky peanut butter
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 tablespoon beaten egg
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
9 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup chocolate chips

1/2 tsp salt

Mix everything together except the chocolate chips with an electric mixer. Then stir in the chocolate chips and pour into a small deep dish pizza dish. Cook for 10 minutes at 475!!

The Family

I can't wait for the long weekend to be able to go through all the pictures from our wedding. These were a few already on my computer that my uncle took. Our wedding day was awesome, best day ever!

Puerto Vallarta

On our cruise we spent a day in Puerto Vallarta. It was our favorite port. It was beautiful there and so fun to explore the city! We started our day having breakfast at the buffet and then took off exploring the city. We took a taxi instead of their hot and smelly shuttle and Dan and a great time getting to speak spanish to our driver.
Downtown Puerto Vallarta is beautiful (and super hot). There was so much going on! Street performers, beach art, and kids selling chiclets. It was a such a bright and color city that loves catering to us tourists.
For lunch we ate at this really cool resturant/hut that was right on the beach. It was great too because it had free wifi haha *even on vacation we still crave the internet.

Parasailing

During our second day in Cabo we met up with our friends that morning at breakfast and found out they were going parasailing. They invited us along for the ride and I am so glad we did! It was a blast. After we finished sailing the skies we got dropped off at a beach where we spent the next few hours floating around and soaking in the rays.

"Nothing here is worth your life"

My dad and this brothers have been talking about purchasing some land up here in Utah as a wilderness retreat and vacation spot. I always thought that it was just a dream but on Thursday, my dad flew out and the deal went down!! Dan was able to take Friday morning off and we went down with my dad, cousin, uncle and aunt to go check out the land. It is beautiful up there!! So quiet and peaceful. My dad and cousin were telling me that you can purchase these log cabin sets and they are both planning on building them up there. Here is the link to see what it will look like: pine hollow log homes.
Dan's favorite part of the ride up there was to get to fire off his new gun.... and everyone else's. It was a blast (pun)!
The best line of the day was when my cousin said that we need to hang up a sign at the front of the property that reads "nothing here is worth your life".

Zip Lining in Cabo!!

Hello all! Here are some more fun pictures from our cruise that we went on at the end of April (which I am slowly blogging about)
Dan and I  planned on doing one shore excursion on our trip and we picked zip lining. I had done it once before with my family back in high school and had such a blast that I wanted to go again with Dan.
We looked up how much it would be to book through our cruise and it was $130 per person. Since Dan and I are such smart and savvy shoppers, we decided to book it ourselves online! We found a place in Cabo that was the exact same company our cruise worked with and the cost was only $85!
We got off our boat and hopped on this bus that took us down a very sketchy dirt road off the side of the highway. The road kept getting narrower and narrower as we traveled up and up the side of a mountain until we reached this dessert like resort. Thankfully the place we were zip lining from was not as sketchy as our bus ride.

We weren't supposed to but we snuck off a banana and an apple and some little bags of cereal off the boat. I'm glad we did too because the food they served up there was $17 for a burger!!

Right behind us is where we were zipping. You can see the lines they have set up in the background!

When we got back to the port we were both pretty hungry and craving some Mexican tacos (because of course we were in mexico). Dan's Spanish came in handy when he asked one of the vendors where the best tacos were. He told us to follow him and he lead us down an alley, through a hole in the fence and toward a parked truck we lawn furniture set up. It was by far authentic looking..... we saw some Americans sitting at one of the tables really enjoying their food and they told us that this was the best they've had. Dan asked me about 4x if I wanted to stay. I think he was afraid of getting sick haha. I thought to myself that we might as well give it a shot! The food was so tasty!! Definitely worth it!

Dan was telling me all about al pastor tacos and how they are his favorite. He ordered 3. I ordered a fish taco, an al pastor, and carne asada. The al pastor was my favorite. Al pastor is marinated pork and pineapple and it has been cooked on a rotisserie. Yummy.

I've got to give the photo credit for this one to Dan. Doesn't that look delish???? This is the al pastor taco.

Pawn Stars

Dan and I finally got to go on our honeymoon last week. It only took us 6 months!!! We went on a Mexican Rivera Carnival Cruise. We left out of Long Beach, CA and spent two days in Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta. It was such a blast and honestly, the BEST value for your money for a vacation.
We started our drive down to Long Beach last saturday and as we were driving, we decided to break up our drive by spending the night in vegas. I hoped onto my phone and loaded up my "Priceline Negotiater" App.
We found a room for $35 at the Downtowner Motel. That's right, the Downtowner Motel. It was ghetto hahahah. PLEASE click on that link and look at the pictures of the beautiful rooms. Here was ours:

I really wish I took a picture of the outside. The place looked like such a dump. Dan and I still laugh about how crazy we were to stay there. The room really wasn't that bad, and we felt safe because of the stairwell was bared and locked and the 24/7 security guard was always on call hah.
We wandered up and down the strip, watched the fountains at the Bellagio, melted in the 100 degree weather, and lived vicariously through watching the blackjack players.
Vegas was fun but the best part was when we got to go down to Gold and Silver Pawn, the location of the hit TV show Pawn Stars.
My dad has great taste in television shows. He's been the one to introduce me to some of my favorite shows: Storage Wars, Deadliest Catch, American Pickers and of course, Pawn Stars.

We got there around 10 and the line was already out the door. We were hoping to see the cast but they told us that they only come in when they hear about something really really good.

The shop was smaller than it looks on tv and most of it was souvenirs, but they did have so really cool (and expensive) things in the shop.

Sunday morning we got up early and continued on our journey to Long Beach.