The "wild" West

So we got into town April 9th (close to midnight). We got into the house no problem, but we lacked a couple of necessities...electricity, water, etc. So we slept on a mattress that we found in our garage and woke up on Tuesday to get to work. The movers showed up in the morning and dropped everything off. Luckily, Sarah's Aunt and Uncle live about 45 minutes from here and gave us a hand over the next couple of days.

On Saturday, when most of the "fun" was over, we drove up to Wickenburg for some outdoor fun with Rob, Holly, and Helen Marie. We went hiking near Vulture's Peak and enjoyed the sights. The terrain was awesome, the horses were fun, and we even had a close call with a true Arizona diamondback rattlesnake. No, I didn't get any pictures of the snake. I wish that I did, but it wasn't the first thought that came to my mind. Afterwards we went back to Rob and Holly's for dinner. We talked and ate, we ate some more, we ate dessert and talked, then made some more dessert and talked. We finally left just before midnight and drove back to the Valley. Thanks for the day of fun guys!

Rewind

So we've been a little busy lately so it's time to rewind the tapes a little bit and catch everyone back up that actually reads this. I'm not really sure how many people do read this...ok, so here's the deal, if you read this before May 13th (our 1-yr anniversary), send us an email at crazycrossfamily@gmail.com ...if you don't want to do that, leave a quick comment on here.

Just humoring myself and assuming that I have an audience, here we go. In March we took pictures of the Haynes and the Browns. I'm sure we wrote something about taking their pictures earlier, but we didn't show any pictures. So here are the pictures, enjoy!

We're BACK!

We're up and running in lovely Phoenix, Arizona!

Yes we have some pictures...no they're not going in this post. We haven't taken them off the camera yet. Details of our time here will come later as well. First, we must recap the past.

So the cruise was a good time. We met two families, the Ryan's and the Clabeaux's. We spent lots of time hanging out with them and roughing the ports of call with a sort of reckless abandon. The quick break down on the ports of call...

Jamaica was pretty, but it was pretty expensive to go on the tour to Dunn's River Falls. We hired a cab with the Ryan's and we were off. The falls were $15/person to get in and if you take a guide, you'll hold hands with people all the way up...not cool. We chose not to take a guide and had a good time following Sarah as she blazed the trail up the falls. As you leave the falls, you are sent through the gauntlet of high pressure sales from the "poor" locals...again, not cool. Afterwards we hit a "local" place to eat and were charged over $20 for food that was maybe worth $5. Then we hit a local beach and played around before we had to call it a day.

Grand Cayman was very pretty, but it can be well summed up if you simply call it a tourist trap. The redeeming part was going to the Courtyard Marriot beach and walking up the beach 200 yards around the corner to have the beach virtually to ourselves. It was fun to splash around and do some snorkeling, but the real fun began when Mike saved the day and picked up some ice cold beer at the local liquor store.

Cozumel rocked. We (Clabeaux's this time) hired a taxi for the afternoon and he took us to the East side of the island (away from 95% of the cruise line passengers) and to this awesome beach area where we spent a good portion of the day. As things would have it, we ran into the Ryan's there. We took a bunch of pictures at this beach because it was so pretty. When taxi time was running out we took a tour of the rest of the island and got dropped off to do some shopping.

I could probably write a couple more pages about the trip, but its getting late, I'm tired, (insert lame excuse #3 here), and you just want to see the pictures anyway. So here are a couple of our favorites, enjoy!

We're OUT!

Just a quick update for anyone that is wondering why we haven't updated in forever. I (Ryan) was away for 3 weeks for training, Sarah went home for a week, and we were getting ready to move. I got back on Saturday night in time to make the final preparations for our move and hang out with some friends. Our friends have been wonderful in this time as we've been running around like crazy.

While I was gone, Sarah took pictures of the Haynes'. Then on Sunday we took pictures of the Browns. We've got some great photos, but not really time to put them up on here right now.

So, our movers are here right now and I'm sitting on the bare floors typing this up. We will be on our honeymoon cruise 1-8 April and then we'll be off for Phoenix. We'll hopefully get everything updated when we get settled there. Thanks for keeping up with us.

Ryan & Sarah

Pictures available....and Web Site Launch

Today is exciting for us...we've completed editing the pictures from Tripp & Carly's wedding from Saturday. They're available here. We've placed a minimum order of $10 in the program for now until we see exactly what this program can do. This is simply to keep from having to pay some expenses from orders out of our own pockets. We expect things to be seamless on our end of the ordering process. Once we see that it is, we'll remove the minimum order restriction.

We'll be able to place future photo galleries on the web as well. They will be at www.crossphotography.photoherald.com. This feature will allow people to view our pictures and place an order using our professional printer. As we work more with this interface, we will add more features and packages to allow for easier ordering.

Finally, we're publicly announcing the launch of our website. You can check it out here. A word of caution...I've not tested the site from other than this computer, so if things look weird, or the picture gallery doesn't work quite right, I'll iron those details out soon. If something doesn't work, I'd love to get some feedback from you mailto:ryancr711@gmail.com.

Johnson - Siefken

Our friends Tripp and Carly got married Saturday the 24th. Sarah and I assisted Carla Blanchard http://www.blanchardphotography.com/ taking pictures for the wedding. Lots of people braved our "beautiful" North Texas weather to see the wonderful ceremony at the North Chapel, Sheppard AFB. Despite the closing of the Main gate, a nasty wreck just in front of the chapel, the roof partially blown off the Hospital Gate shoppette, and 50+ mph winds, the ceremony kicked off right on time. Glenn Balsis officiated the wonderful ceremony and things went off without a hitch.

After family pictures, everyone headed over to the Howard Johnson Plaza for the reception. At the reception, everyone donned their dancing shoes after a wonderful meal and wedding cake. Tripp showed off his line dancing skills and helped get everyone into the party mood.

Tripp and Carly changed out of their wedding clothes and prepared for the big getaway. After their farewell, they ran through a line of sparklers and drove off for their honeymoon in Montego.

We're still processing the hundreds of photos taken, but here is a slideshow of the day. I couldn't decide on the sappy love song version or the more upbeat version, so I'm posting both. Keep posted, pictures of the entire wedding will be posted soon!

Sappy love song version.

Ten Shekel Shirt version.

When things can't possibly get worse...

...everyone knows how this cliche ends.

But this is the story of how our cliche actually ended. So, Sarah's 26th birthday was on the 17th of February...which I remembered...without any help. This date also is relatively close to a special day...you know it...Valentine's. So what does a 1st year husband do for this occasion? You guessed it...plan a romantic weekend trip to the place (read Austin, TX) his wife has been begging to go to for months...still with me???

So my game plan (a surprise)...book a room for the weekend on the executive floor of the downtown Hilton...within walking distance to all of the downtown festivities...a nice relaxing weekend where beautiful weather was forcast...things were looking good.

Game plan execution: we're driving to Austin, I get the reservation confirmation sheet out because it has directions on it...(everyone is thinking...since when did Ryan use directions?!?!)...and I see at the top of the sheet something to the effect of "Ryan Cross - Hilton Hotel Reservation 2/24/2007-2/26/2007". So after freaking out for a second about making reservations for the wrong weekend...we start making phone calls trying to find a room in downtown Austin...no luck. We park near the Capitol building, and decide we'll try our luck walking around downtown...no luck. After exhausting 15 ish hotels, we finally ask why every hotel is booked. It appears that the 2007 Austin Marathon is in town and 30,000 or so people were in town for that...

So Sarah in her plot to get even with me for messing up Valentine's Day and her Birthday, cons me into running this stinkin' marathon (26.2 miles of pain) with her (that's my story and I'm stickin' to it). So she had been running 20-25 miles a week...I had run 25 miles in the last two months...MAYBE. So, we run the marathon and stick together the whole time. We finished not only talking to each other, but arms wrapped around each other in a far from World Record time of 5 hours 23 minutes and 14 seconds...not bad for me not training and Sarah running in brand new running shoes.

So that's how our weekend went. It may not have been perfect like you see in the movies...but it was perfect for us.

Picture of our finish:

http://www.asiorders.com/view_user_photo.asp?EVENTID=14533&ID=32267764&FROM=photos&BIB=5626