OCTOBER 2011

October has been a really fun and really busy month filled with a trip to Indiana, celebrating our anniversary, and Melissa’s birthday!

We were so glad that we got to visit Indiana and see some of our friends and family. Christopher also got to experience the legendary Fall Festival. (For those who haven’t had the opportunity to attend the Fall Festival, you are missing out on a whole mile worth of booths full of FOOD!) We were in a constant state of full the whole week!  We ate many Monster Ears, a few Texas tenderloins, fried s’mores, Stromboli’s, meatball sandwiches, walking tacos, corn on the cob, bacon wrapped jalapenos, and Christopher even tried a Brain Sandwich! We loved spending time with Kate, Lily, and Elise (and the older people too!) and we already miss them so much!

We also LOVE having family close too! We were able to celebrate Emily's birthday this month!

Happy Birthday, Emily!

Emily had a few helpers :)

Madeline smiling at Jonny

Christopher & Jack are matching!

We celebrated our 1^st anniversary! What a wonderful year! Christopher surprised me at work with a beautiful bouquet of star gazer lilies. They smell so good! I also gave Christopher a notebook that I wrote in during the whole first year of marriage. He really liked it, I think :).  It really has been a wonderful year of being married! And the best is yet to come!

And I had a great birthday! Christopher bought me a whole new set of makeup brushes from MAC, new hair brushes, and new Love Rocks lotion and spray! He really spoiled me by sending her to work with a bag of goodies, bringing me lunch from Zupas, and getting ingredients to make me a yummy cake! It is great to have Christopher to celebrate with!

✮ BIRTHDAYS! (and other adventures) ✮

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!! I know you are thinking, no, not quite Christmas yet. But we love autumn! We love when the air starts to turn brisk and the leaves start to change colors.

Christopher and I have made some fun new recipes including homemade pizza, sour cream enchiladas, crock pot roast and peach cobbler.

We love living close to some of our nieces (we just wish we lived close to ALL our cute nieces!!). Elizabeth and her family welcomed a new baby girl, Madeline. She is so sweet!

Birthday Banner Melissa hung up above Christopher's bench at work.

Christopher turned 29 years old! We had a great day! We went to the Cheesecake Factory to eat and then to the Hales Center Theatre to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was fun day!

             

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHRISTOPHER!

☀We love Summer!☀

We got to go to a professional marching band Drum Corp show last week! We loved it! It was fun explaining all the technical aspects of marching band to Christopher as we watched the performances. The sound was amazing! We had great seats right on the 50 yard line.

Our favorite show to watch was the Blue Devils (but it's hard to have a favorite when they are all so good!)

Satisfied Audience :)

And we went to Bear Lake! It was a much needed vacation! We rode our bikes, went running, went boating, took naps in the hammocks, and enjoyed the nightly campfire. And we especially loved spending time with our family! Can't wait to go next year!

We rode our bikes into IDAHO!

Relazing in the Hammock :)

Can you see the rainbow in the backgroung??

Friends

I wish people would tell you what they want or need you to do. I hate sitting back and watching friends go through hard times. I rack my brain to try to figure out what to do. Send an encouraging, “You can do it” email? Call them and leave a message letting them know that you were thinking of them? Make them cookies? Set up a time to hang out? It is so hard to know.  My intent is not to bother them or give them someone else to stress about. I just want to be there for them.

The problem is that we are all different and our needs/wants greatly vary.  But all people, no matter how similar they may seem, are so different! Yet we are all the same. We all want someone to care and magically be able to know what we need of them as friends. But most of the time we don’t even know what will make us feel better.

But the truth is, there are important moments in each of our lives when we need to cry ourselves to sleep, hash it out to our journal, or just think about what is going on in our lives by ourselves. We must pass through these hard times alone.  It’s a time where we grow and progress, or at least put ourselves back together.  

So I conclude that “being there for them” means that we are willing and ready to help them when they are ready for you. This means you might have to sit back and watch them struggle and cry. As much as I want to, I can not force my “help” on them.

Therefore, my dear friends, here is my commitment to you:

 “I care about you. I want to be there for you. I don’t like to see you sad. I know that you might not know what to tell me to do to help you feel better, but I’ll try as many things until you do. I’ll talk through what is worrying you until we’re blue in the face (and then some). I’ll take you out to dinner so you can feel spoiled and eat some good food. I’ll give you hugs and tell you that you are good enough and let you cry. I’ll sit and watch a funny movie with you to help you forget about how you feel. I’ll put on my running shoes and run a few miles with you until you feel better. Or if you just need time to yourself, know that I’ve been praying for you and wishing you the best. Just know that I love you and I am ready to do whatever it takes to make you feel better. I'm here.”

“What’s New with YOU?”

            First of all, we would like to apologize for not updating our blog for quite a while. We appreciate the chance to keep up to date with all of you, and we know how antsy we get when people we love (YOU!) do not update for MONTHS! So, we will try harder to be better at keeping those we love informed on what we are up to. We have kept ourselves busy these past few weeks. We both have logged countless hours at work.  But we are grateful for our weekends together where we can recharge and get things done.

Since the weather has tried to be nicer, we have been able to start hiking. We love it! A few weekends ago, we went on a fun night hike with our friends Curtis & Shae. It was such a beautiful night! We can’t wait to do more of that kind of outdoorsy things this summer.

We planted our first garden! It’s so cute! We went to the plant store and we were astonished at all the different kinds of tomatoes there were! We decided to get three different kinds and experiment a little. We also go some cucumbers and peas. We are now eagerly waiting for them to be ready to eat. We’ll keep you updated!

We have also been working hard to get into shape and take advantage of being able to run outside now. We don’t exactly LOVE running, but we do enjoy doing it together and feel the results of a good workout.  We are signed up to run a 5k at the end of the month. Here’s the link if you feel like joining us!

 http://intermountainhealthcare.org/communitysupport/giving/uvfoundation/events/af-half-marathon/pages/race.aspx

This past weekend we went up to Green River, Wyoming. Christopher worked on many sewing machines to make all the quilters in Wyoming happy again. There was a big quilting convention called “Quilting on the Green” and so there were lots of sweet ladies waiting for their machines to work smoothly again. While we were there, we were invited to a thing called a “Trunk Show”.  Melissa thought that Christopher would enjoy this event and said that we are excited to go only to find out it was a few ladies showing off many of their quilts.  Surprisingly, it was pretty interesting. Here are a few that caught our attention.

We’ve also been experimenting with some new recipes. The latest and greatest one that we have made is Pig Cake. It is easy to make and deliciously good. Melissa got the recipe from the Pioneer Woman website. We just love it! You’ll have to check it out and try some of the recipes for your self.                          http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2011/01/pig-cake/

That's all for now. Check back soon because we have lots of fun things planned.

Refinishing Our Piano

We have refinished our piano! It was a LONG process, but now it is over! We bought the piano in December, but we knew that it would be quite the process and we finally set aside time to get it done. When we first bought the piano, we envisioned stripping off all the paint and staining the wood.

*We searched for a "before" piano shot, but we don't have one. sorry!*

We spent hours and hours stripping the 5 layers of paint off, sanding down the wood, priming the wood to be painted, and then painting two coats of paint and replacing all the tops of the keys. However, we quickly realized that it had so many different colors of wood. We then decided to paint it black. The construction site took over our kitchen.



Outside to use the sander





Inside our kitchen ready to be primed



Primed :)



However, with our hands busy, we were able to listen to the prophets and apostles of God speak to us in General Conference. We loved the talks and loved learning new things to work on. We are excited to use the talks for our FHE lessons for the next six months. We are so grateful to have continuing revelation from our Heavenly Father to guide and direct us in this crazy, yet wonderful life.

We wearingly finished the last coat of paint and were grateful for the chance to make some good process on the piano. It was a good experience in which we were again reaffirmed that we work really good together as a team and that sometimes we bit off a little more than we should.

We are happy to have our piano back.

 

 

Mexican Riviera Cruise

Cruising is the best way to vacation! We had such a fun trip! We were on vacation for almost a week and a half, but it still didn’t feel long enough!

We were so excited to go on our cruise and spend lots of time with each other. We were able to visit some great friends in LA before we shipped out of the port at Long Beach.  We were on the Carnival Splendor ship and we couldn’t believe how big and beautiful the boat was!

We also had a great big room with a window! It was fun to watch the waves and see the ports from out our window. Our room steward also made us cute towel animals in our room each night!

Our first stop was Cabo San Lucas. We had to ride these little tender boats to the pier. Melissa thought they were so fun. At Cabo, we decided to go parasailing. We got into a little canoe with a motor and were taken to the boat that did the parasailing. It was a little scary having to jump from one boat to another while the boat was still moving!!! But it was totally worth it!

 







 






 






 











We also LOVED these guys that dressed up like statues! They were so cool!

The next day we woke up and we were in Puerto Vallarta! It was such a fun little town. We went on a city tour and rode in a van up steep cobblestone roads.  Our tour guide was Francisco and he was great! We were also offered tequila. We told them that we don’t drink and they said, “Wow, you must be rich!” We also found another impressive guy that was covered in sand. Melissa felt sorry for him but Christopher was totally impressed. We also stopped at the Wal-Mart there just to see how different it was.

Then we were on our way back to Long Beach. We had a few days at sea where we slept a lot, ate a lot, and enjoyed some shows that the boat put on. Our favorite thing to do was to go to dinner. Each night of the cruise, all of the guests had the same table and same server for a very elegant meal. Each night the menu changed and the food never disappointed. Christopher loved the all you can eat lobster, shrimp, and snails, and Melissa loved the cream of fruit soups that varied each night. And we couldn’t get enough of the amazing chocolate melting cake!!!!

We had such a fun time together. We can’t wait for our next cruise to bring our friends and family with us!!!