Gluten Free Frenzy!

My friend chandice has a new blog http://www.glutenfreefrenzy.blogspot.com Check it out if your interested in yummy gluten free recipes. She has devoted to making the gluten free lifestyle easy fun and healthy for everyone. My grandma is on a gluten free diet and this blog that Chandice has put so much effort into has helped with new gluten free recipes. She right now is having a give away! Check it out and if you like copy and paste the blog to your blog!

Temple weekend.

Andrew and I had the pleasure top attend the Mesa Temple a few times this past weekend. Andrew's sister went through the temple for her first time on Friday. We had the pleasure of suprise by Mandi and Jonathon when we arrived at the temple. It's great sharing these events with such beautiful people Then...the following day we were able to go to Leon and Amy's adding two to their family. There was sucha good turn out and luckily i was a little hidden behind a few others where i could not directly see amy or leons faces too well so i could not start to cry when they did. It was so spiritual that day seeing these boys sealed to such a great family. Leon and Amy have done such a great job raising the boys in just the year that they have had them. It was a great day although i didnt get any GOOD pictures. This picture was taken by the wonderful camera woman rachel for our engagement photo. My favorite while at the mesa temple...I thought i would throw it in:)

Not sure what Troy is doing, but Jenny looks cute!

I got the tail end of the phot taking. my apologies. Here is Leon and Amy's completed family.:)

Sex change

I have to let this info out of my mind. Yesterday me and Andrew were flipping through the channels on tv and came across a show on ABC about a family (Mom, Dad, and 2 sons). The dad's name was Tim but was now... Chloe... Yes he...she...had a sex change. Of course me and Andrew were intrigued because the nature of this is kinda strange. We kept watching. The two boys were so cute and we could not beleive what they were being subject to. I am totally okay with people doing what they want and all...but this was mortifying for these kids. They were so confused and were sad they didnt have a dad anymore and they said their mama nay was sad because dad turned into a girl. The way they described it was that there was a girl inside daddy and he went to the hospital one day to get the girl out. Tim...Chloe... explained to his/her sons that she had an operation done to change her part down there and she pointed to it, from a boy part to a girl part. She got her boobs done and her face reconstructed and honestly she did not look that bad. The family was struggling to get by and tim/chloe spend 70k to transfor from a man to a woman. It was sad. For reasons like this I truly am grateful to have the guidance of our prophet and the gospel. I can only imagine the world getting worse. I could not imagine if Andrew ever came to me and told me he wanted to become a girl, ESPECIALLY if we had kids. The weird thing is is the wife was supportive of it and did not want to get a divorce...she wanted to stay a FAMILY. To me that is just condoning satanic things but not everyone is held to a standard. I hope and pray that the boys going through that show and what their dad was doing turn out normal and someday find the gospel and know what is right. I googled a blog today about sex change. Here is the URL http://plasticsurgeryphotos.blogspot.com/2007/10/sex-change-surgery-before-and-after.html You may go here, i wont tell you to or tell you not to. It tells how the surgery works from guy to girl and girl to guy. It's interesting and its facts. It does show a few graphic pictures so make sure none of your little ones are around.

There's a wedding coming...

Many of you know that Jesse and Sarah are getting married soon. Me and Sarah took a trip to the craft store and refurbished the frames we used for mine and Andrew's wedding that my sister made. They turned out SO cute!

Wind Rose House

We drove out to our house today to take a different route and see how long it takes to get over to the west side and i'ts not too bad. Alright... so here it is... our first house. There are some cosmetic things we are going to change on the outside as well as the inside... but our awesome realtor talked the seller down 20,000 below asking price! We got a killer deal. Today i met one of our neighbors and she said that when they bought the single story house to the right of ours in thei picture they paid like 240,000!!! I could not beleive it. When we went looking for houses Kevin had us nick name all the houses so this house was the "Wind Rose" house. It is in a cul-de-sac so not much traffic and it has a huge wrap around green belt to the left and the back of it. All the other info is just hodge podge. It's just under 2300sf 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bath with 2 living spaces. I can't wait to decorate.

I love the stairs that are not just straight up...my sister in law Jenny came looking at houses with me on Sat, she told me what it was called but i forgot...but since my husband is a hunter he will have wall area to hang his mounts:)

The backyard is HUGE! it is bigger than this, but this is all i could fit in the camera... Andrew will have a blast landscaping this.

This would be the upstairs loft that is almost too big i don't even know what to do with yet. Me and Andrew live in Old peopleville and there are some pretty good thrift stores here. We got some "vintage" furniture to put up here. It's gonna be pretty fun. All who come to the house warming party let me tell you now... It was ALL andrew's idea...if you dont like it.. if you do then its mine. :)

I'm thinking now... why didnt i take a picture of the WHOLE kitchen... I just needed the memory that the cabinets were light.. They will be changing to dark though. Cool thing about this house is that EVERYTHING is brand new, carpet paint, appliances, cabinet, tile! We got SO lucky

The REAL house... for real

Today we got the signed contract and are now "under" contract with the seller. Andrew and I are so blessed that we found a house with such an amazing deal on it. Let me tell you how the spirit fulfilled its duty. One day about a month ago I said to Andrew that we should buy a house. I got looking into the prequalification not really thinking that we would be fortunate enough in this market to get qualified for a loan. I sent in the documents with wishful thinking. 3 days later our back called and said we were qualified up to this much money... The amount we were approved for was obviously WAY too much but nonetheless we were going to be able to buy our very own home. The mortgage lender referred me to a woman who worked with Remax, which i have been told that the company is very good and well known. We met with her at her house one morning. First impression...not good... but she was real. She looked like she had rolled out of bed, brushed her teeth and pulled her hair back. She was wearing capris and flip flops with a strapless shirt... hmmm. We sat down in her "office" that she shared with her big black cat and began to tell us what happens when buying a home... She was real and honest i will tell you that much. She did however have a buyer's addendum hat basically wed the two of us together so she says..."If i do all this work and then you go buy from someone else... I'm going to get my commission either way..." Leaving her house me and Andrew both agreed we liked her but a few things came to my mind. Her card she gave us had a picture of her i would say dated 15 years back at LEAST! I found that strange to say the least. Well anyway, getting to the better part of the story... I work for Verizon wireless and i got a call from a man using a palm and having wireless sync issues... he also mentioned that he was a real estate agent. I automatically assumed he was one of these HORRIBLE tempered Realtors who call in and use E-Key (a third party software used to open the lock boxes on the houses) and basically shut off all emotions on the call. I get alot of those Realtors if you can't tell. HAHA. Well anyway, he didn't use E-key and he actually ended up being our realtor! When we fixed his issue I had a few "general" questions about buying a house and wanted to see if all that our realtor woman had told us was true. It WASN'T. So anyway BEFORE he had even known that i was interested in looking i find out that he lives in AZ...( I talk to people all over the world) and also that he was really nice about answering my questions. I got a good warm feeling that he was somebody i needed to talk more about buying a house... not to mention he wanted to help a few friends of mine with foreclosure... SO... we met him and we looked at houses right away...Here we are maybe 2 weeks later and we already bought a house! At the end of our call he asked me if I was LDS. He said i spoke of my husband alot...maybe non LDS girls don't talk of their husbands that much!?... anyway I just thought it was neat the way it all worked out and the path that was laid out for us. He is a great realtor, i would recommend him to all. He sells some BIG MONEY real estate... I'm talking the house beneath this post, but he still takes time to help the little buyers such as Andrew and myself find our first home. I know it wont be the last home we buy from him. Andrew and I are so excited for our house and to have all our family over to see it:) I will post a few pictures next...

We finally found our house.

So i looked at some houses today! This house just happen to jump out at me. It's listed at 1.2 million dollars. I figured since i work for verizona dn Andrew has a really good job that this one would do for us. I figured out our payments to be about 6,785.00 a month... not bad eh? I mean after all what's the point in finding a house that you will just move out of in 3 or 4 years. This one is big enough to fit out family of 8 that we want someday. So i was sold on it. I crunched the numbers a little bit and found that it would be possible if i work 50 hours of overtime a week. We would still have a little money left over to pay our other bills. It's a nice fit... So when do we move in? um... NEVER!@ are you serious... I saw this house on the market for 1.2 MILLION dollars... it's 4 bedrooms and 4 baths. It's 4191 Sq ft. This is CRAZY! The first house me and Andrew were going to buy was 3000 Sq Ft and it was only 105,000.00 and in PERFECT condition. This almost makes me sick to look at the houses like this. I cannot imagine how much this house is either upside down or lost value it has. Anyway there is another of my thoughts! I'm full of it tonight. I should and am grateful that we are even in a position to buy a house, but when i come across things like this i just could not help to imagine even the payments on this thing. Wow~!

A few things on my mind

Do you ever just have one of those days where you want to rip your hair out and then cry like a baby? I am about having one of those. So as if there is not ENOUGH stress with buying a house the accident has to come along and ruin so many things. Today was the best day i had in a while I was feeling slightly better and then a rock cracks the windshield of my rental car!UGH! REALLY???? So yesterday (friday) we went through the temple with Caroline which was amazing, then today we had the opportunity to go back for Amy and Leons family sealing. Just when everything is going good in life something had to destroy it. It was hard enough clearing my mind in the temple so i could have the spirit with me as i went through trying to grasp and learn new things. It's just seems frustrating. My mom says today " Just get down and pray." Sometimes it just seems because there is so much in the way that praying wont even help, although everyone knows it will. I am so thankful for the opportunity to have the temple so close to where i can forget about these bad feelings i am having at the moment. It ALWAYS seems like when life is going so good, no one better then SATAN has to come through with his stupid crap he liked to pull to test our strength. If this period in my life does not drive me absolutely mad then I'm a stronger person than i thought. I usually don't buckle under pressure very often but right now it seems the only tension release would be to tear something up. Did i also mention that I HATE people who think it is so important to go drink then drive home putting everyone elses life and world at risk and danger! Why do people have to be so selfish sometimes? I guess i won't get an answer back to that right now so I will go do some laundry to try and clear my mind. Too bad i can pour some oxy clean in my brain to clean up all the STAINS from this week. I hope whoever reads this is having a better day and they don't leave this blog feeling dark and gloomy:)

Our house!

So after losing our first choice home, we decided to go after our second choice. I will just note...I do not like the INVESTORS who sweep the market and pay cash for all the good deals just to fix them up and ask for MORE money out of them. It REALLY puts a damper on buying your first home.... anyway...We put in an offer and they accepted!... but under one condition... we kinda didnt like it so we resubmitted an offer and are now awaiting it. I wanted to blog a little about it because we did get the acceptance, but then again there is a chance that they wont take our second offer... If they do then i will post more pictures of the inside! The house is immaculate! Everything is brand new. Some of the houses we looked at were so disgusting that we didnt even finish looking. There was one however, that needed like 15,000 of work done to it before move in. We love the house but not sure if we are up for doing it on our first home. So here it is! Cross our fingers and hope they accept our counter offer!

Car accident

Look a new car!!! I love it when i get a new car since it happens SO often! alright... im so sarcastic. This is my rental car! my car is down below. Me and Andrew have been house hunting quite a bit lately and we took the day off on Monday to knock out some houses. We had just got back from Heber the night before on Sunday pretty late so we decided to take a day off. We had a very successful day of looking at houses and we even found the home we wanted to buy! On our way home we went to go pick up his truck, so i dropped him off and went on my way home. well as i was stopped at a red light in the turning lane I look in my rear view mirror and there i saw lights... that were not stopping. There is information i cannot disclose due to the lawsuit now but let's just say there was no skid marks and there was alot of alcohol involved. I now almost feel like a vegetable, its hard to sleep, walk, sit, stand. It's saddening! One thing i will note though thanks to having the spirit... When i pulled up to the light there was 3 or 4 card in front of me and something told me to not get too close to the car in front of me. Now i realize why. When you get rear ended and you end up hitting the car in front of you... your at fault... Suprisingly i DIDN'T hit the car in front of me and i'm so thankful for that. Andrew took a ride in the ambulance with me where we spend the remainder of out night in the ER. Needless to say we didn't get to put an offer in on the house... and it was gone the next day. It's so sad when things like this happen. It's totally out of anyone's control. It ALMOST ruined both of our day. Now I just have to suck it up until i recover fully to my normal state. Here is the photo my whole family has been bugging me for... Enjoy!

Fourth of July! cont...

Every fourth of july we go back to our home town Heber to watch the fireworks and see our family. Unfortunately this year i did not take my camera to the high school with me so i got no picture of my fam or friends we have not seen in a long time. We did spend some time at the middle school on the swings, shooting off rockets, and learning how to ripstick. As i was swinging watching Andrew Ripstick, he came over and climbed ontop of me to spider swing! I had not done this since like 4th grade

It was a lot of fun.. haha

He got pretty good

Daniel coaching him along.

Andrew's parents are always cooking up something good when we go up there for a special occasion. This year chester cooked a whole pig! I was a little hesitant at first after andrew told me he cut off the head and the limbs and they were in the back of the truck, not to mention he threw in there that the pig had pretty blue eyes:( It was really good though! There was so much meat left over! He was a big pig His little tail was so cute! this was after he was cooked obviously

Chester putting the coals in

mmmmmm... looks kinda gross but it was so good.,..

This was before the little piggy got cooked. His tail is so cute!

Fourth of July!

As i blogged below in prev post almost all the family participated in the run. I was not kidding when i said a FAMILY of runners. It was really nice to be a part of it though. As i came around the corner to the finish line everyone was there to cheer me on, all i heard was "COME ONE AUNT MANDY!" It was really cute. Oh yeah, that's where my husband was during the WHOLE race.

Troy's family of runners

Leon's family of runners

This was all the family who ran that day... missing is chester... he had to go cook the pig... and Andrew who is....sleeping;)

Amy coming to the finish line

Chester coming to the finish line

Jenny coming to the finish line

Marcie coming to the finish line

Leon finished first for the men running the 6k. He is such a good runner!

So now I returned from the prior catch up post

So this... Running... since i caught up on everything else... So just in case you don't know... I married into a family of runners pretty much. Chester and Marcie were track coaches they all ran blah blah blah. They are all very good runners and are very good athletes! Now since Jenny started running she has gotten me all inspired to run and go from not a runner and hating to run, to a half way runner and WANTING to not hate running! Needless to say i am just so lazy sometimes that i would just rather go to the gym then go run and feel like jello and have burnt lungs that make me cough. Leon would say suck it up, it gets batter. SO! I have been cordially "invited" to participate in the ragnar with them...them being most of the family INCLUDING troy and my husband Andrew.. so i said yes... Well from buying a house and working some crazy overtime it has been hard to fit into the schedule. I started running with my sister in law Amy, first day...torture! second day a little better. I felt just so good that i could run 2 miles and still be alive. Stopping frequently from a side cramp or my stupid toe throbbing because it needs surgery again. I am such a baby! I don't like to run indoors watching TV because i get too bored and i hate to run outside where i show anyone a sign of weakness. Jenny PROMISED me that once i got past the first 2 miles it would be easier. Easy for her to throw at me the other day..." Mandy, I ran 10 miles today"!@!!!!! WHATY!!! I just can't beleive how far she has come all by just starting! and keeping at it. So needless to say I am going to get my butt up and RUN! It's so good to have family that cares and wants to help keep me motivated. I'm excited for the ragnar. I'm going to blog through it and post my success as i do it and you all can yell at me if i don't! ha...Not to mention ANOTHER mishappening that happened to stop me from running. On Tuesday morning Leon called me at about 9:30ish to give me crap about not running with Amy that morning. I was supposed to work from 6AM-11PM all week so it would not have worked out anyway, but me and Amdrew decided to take the day off of work and go look at houses on Monday. On our way home from picking up his truck I got into an accident! :( So my body is not runable at this time nor is it really anythingable 100% yet. So to get back to the running. A schedule will be posted for me and I am going to get past theose few miles and just keep going. I have about8-9 months of training and then acheive my goal.:) Over the fourth of July weekend we went up to Heber of course. Carissa's run was the morning of the 4th and I didn't think I would do it since i had worked 17 hour days all week, had some dental work sone and needed 2 root cancals, and would not get up the mountain until about midnight. At about 5:50AM Leon comes in the room where we were sleeping and asks andrew if i was gonna run, andrew said no and leon was gone. It registered to me then that i WANTED to do the run. I hurried and got ready and raced out the door to find the race had started with not a single runner in site... so i registered and took off down buckskin road. I soon found runners and i didn't finish last! LJ, Alice, Amanda, Troy and all his kids, and all 4 of amy and Leon's kids did the 2k. Jenny, Amy, Leon, Chester, and Marcie all did the 6k. It was alot of fun! That's the feeling i get when i run, like i really accomplished something, and it's great following through with it.

Vacation has come to an end...with special thanks

And a special thanks from us to Amy and Leon for planning such a fun and memorable vamily vacation!

Some radom pictures at the Start pass resort where we stayed. We had such a great time. Cutting the cake for Chester's birthday

watching baseball

Right as we pulled up to our resort for the first night coming back from grocery shopping there were deer in front of out suite. you can only really see their eyes in the picture because it was dark

A little frog came to visit us the night we got locked out of our room. "somehow" the dead bolt inside the room gets locked and the front desk had to come open it.

For chester's birthday we decided to find him what we thought to be the "ugliest" shirt in the store. He actually wore it the very next day. What a trooper!

Happy Father's Day mixed vacation broken down car

After we finally got our car fixed and a new battery put in, we made our way to the brazilian Steak house in Chandler. Fogo E Brasa. Since Leon server his mission in Brazil he loves this type of food. Ever since me and Andrew started dating he has been wanting us to go to this place so we finally did for Father's day. It was so good. I was not expecting to like it so much. It is like 31 dollars a plate, but you get 14-15 types of meats, pineapple, fried bananas, full salad bar loaded with all kinds of crazy things, 4 appetizers, rice and beans and this bread type stuff that i cant pronounce let alone try to spell. The kids were all really good and had just as much fun as we did trying all the different meats. The pineapple was SO good i ate it until i was pretty much stuffed! I'm pretty sure that one was ham

Graham ready for more food

the fried bananas. I was also surprised by these. They were really good as well

What a cutie

Andrew was sick:( poor guy was sick since SAturday night after we got home from the wildlife museum!

Leon and Graham...

Leon and Savannah, what a great gift for dad on father's day.

The girls. They have such great personalities

Amy, Josh, and Ashlyn

Crandell Family Vacation Part V

On Sunday the day we were leaving, we decided to make one last fun day. We went to the Pima Air and Space Museum. I guess we sure did alot of Museums this trip! This place had a father's day special for the dad's for father's day so they got in half price! It was full of guess what... Planes! It was pretty cool to see all of the old and wrecked planes that have been recovers and restructured to put on display. The museum was SO big that we decided to skip a few things because us and Amy and Leon had a dinner date planned for father's day back in Chandler. After we got done with the museum and we were all set to go home... our car decided to not start. It was a horrible mess. It was so hot out there and we had no idea what was going on. My father of a mechanic was back in phoenix could not help. With it being father's day AND a Sunday we were pretty much doomed. Much to our surprise Amy and Leon and Troy and Jennie were such good sports! They helped us figure out the problem and Amy and Leon even had to make 2 trips for us to get the right parts! It was awful...needless to say we wont be going to anymore museums on Sunday...:) This little one was names Bumble Bee

This is so funny. These were paintings of alot of the old planes that had things painted on them. Some are pretty Risque.

This was in the space building. I can't wait until we have our own kids i can photograph:)

And the other two kids.

This is ridiculous... Let me explain. That little tiny spot inside that glass box is a SPEC of moon rock. Me and Troy argued over this for some time. WHY does a TINY piece of moon rock need the BHIGGEST dispay int he whole museum?... "Because its been on the MOON..." Troy says...

I thought this picture was neat.

Some of the fam that went that day.

These two men are so amazing. They are such good guys and mean so much to me. Brothers.

Me and Andrew. We are so sarcastic from time to time

That's a true statement

There was a memo that went with this but too small to read,. Basically the pilot of this airplane was never found after it crashed in the ocean. It's so cool that it can stay semi-preserved under water.

This is 2 actualy outfits from way back in the day

Another one of the smaller airplanes

The wright brothers plane, it may have some other name. It made a nice entrance though