Gila Valley Temple Openhouse

Alright... starting out with a preface...

Steve Pennington and I are dating and very happy in our relationship! The short story is that we really enjoyed being together in California for Spring Break and found that we had feelings for each other that had never really surfaced before. So, we decided to give this dating thing a shot (after being close friends for 5 years...) and it's working out really well so far! Here's a "funny" picture, taken almost 5 years ago... "Funny" because we look so young and different and probably had no clue that we'd take this long to finally end up together...

Disclaimer: I promise I'll update major courses of action (either positive or negative), so no need to ask me crazy things like "are you engaged yet?" or "when is the wedding?". It took us 5 years to get to this point, so who knows what the timing of our future will be like. So just chill. You'll know.

Ok, so now that your curiosity about my new boyfriend is out of the way, we can focus on the FANTASTIC day trip we took to Safford/Thatcher/Pima, AZ. We planned this a couple of weeks ago to take a day off work and drive out for the Gila Valley Temple openhouse.

The temple was beautiful, as expected. And the members volunteering as ushers and tour guides were so proud to show off their temple (and rightfully so!). Here's us outside of the temple after our tour:

We were only at the openhouse for about an hour, but since we made the 2.5 hour trip out there, we decided to do some more exploring. So, after our pizza buffet lunch at R&R Pizza, Steve just started driving us up Mt. Graham. We didn't think to bring a change of clothes, so we did a little hiking in our church clothes. That made for some fun memories!!

Memories like me hiking up my skirt a bit to climb up the trail...

...or trying not to get my skirt dirty (or flash Steve) for a photo op...

...or losing my shoe in the water when I took it off so I could cross the creek barefoot...

(Good thing Steve was there to capture the moment...)

...or Steve doing "interesting" things in order to trail blaze an easier path for me...

I'm pretty sure we were the only two people on that mountain, so we had to get a little creative with the automatic timer on my camera. Sometimes it didn't work out so hot:

(You can tell we're still having so much fun though...)

But we were able to get a few gems of pictures:

(Aww... so cute!)

The weather was gorgeous. The surroundings were beautiful. The day was perfect.

This was a much needed getaway for both of us... he's been stressed with finals coming up and we haven't been able to spend stress-free time, just the two of us, since California. Can't wait until the next getaway with Steve! :)