July 4th

We took a break from the heat of Arizona earlier this month to go to Scottsbluff for the July 4th weekend. It was a wonderful and relaxing trip. We both had a ton of fun with the whole family there. We played golf, went to the pool, ate lots of great food, played ligretto, went to some movies, raced go carts, conducted our own fireworks display, and a ton of other fun things. We were having so much fun that we almost forgot to take any pictures while we were there. Here are a couple of our favorites from the trip.

Solo!

So this post is a little...or a lot overdue. So I had my solo flight June 5. Sarah was able to go out on the flight line and take pictures of me. We've been pretty busy since then and I haven't had a chance to update the blog. So here's a quick update with a couple of pictures. The first is me getting ready for engine start and the second is the Top Dog salute as I'm taxiing out.

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.