Busy Weekend

Danna's baby is not cooperating. And this is proof.

The last switchback!

Danna did it!

Provo/Orem (I'm the shadow)

We (Danna, her mom Sue, and I) hiked the Y. The whole thing! To the top! Danna is over nine months pregnant, past her due date...and NOTHING! So I've decided to be patient. She will come when she comes. But man, I'm excited. And very impressed Danna did that hike without a problem.

Also, we made pasta Sunday morning. Then after church we finished everything else up and had some friends over for dinner. It was pretty tasty. But I feel like homemade pasta is one of the most delicious things in the world. And it's SO simple! Plus, we have a pasta maker. :)

This is how we do it. 3 cups of whole wheat flour, 1 cup of white flour, and 5 eggs. Mix in kitchen aid. Then kneaded by hand to get the feel right. We had to add water. It shouldn't be sticky, but it also shouldn't be dry. (kind of like pizza dough)

KitchenAid working hard

Nathan kneading that dough!

I run it through starting thick, and keep adjusting to make it thinner

Then you pick the thickness of the noodles. (we did the thicker ones) And you separate them, and let them dry.

Monday Nathan started school. I packed his lunch, and made him take a first day picture. He tried to look as nerdy as possible. (I suggested wearing some of my glasses...he declined. he didn't want to look THAT nerdy.)

I dropped him off, then drove by where I'm having another interview today. Cross your fingers! I picked him up from the bus stop when he was done. It went well, and he already had some homework. At 6, they had freshmen convocation. It was a presentation about why UVU is so great, and why it's a good choice and blah blah. I was mostly interested in the live sculpting! There was a guy on another stage that was sculpting the whole time. So cool! All the freshmen (and family) got fancy hats, and popcorn, snocones, cotton candy, pulled pork sandwiches. We were then entertained by the Green Man Group, which is the UVU drum line. And Nathan won another shirt. It's 2XL. I said I'll sleep in it. Pretty cool.

Oh, and I cut my bangs.

I may shorten them up even a little more. We'll see. 

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Last Week of Freedom

Nathan starts school at UVU on Monday. As he says, this is his last week of freedom. This week has been running around trying to get tuition paid, books bought, getting school supplies and trying to have fun. (we don't have to try very hard.) We had his orientation, we've walked around and found all his classes and now his books are all on our coffee table. He's ready to go. To get away from school, before it even begins, we went to SLC. We were given a Cheesecake Factory gift card for our wedding, and we finally got to use it. There's a Cheesecake Factory in Murray, so that's where we started for lunch. Our waiter was hilarious, and the food was delicious. For dessert, we obviously had cheesecake. I had red velvet cheesecake, and Nathan had some kind of oreo explosion.

so tasty!

They were both very good, but I think we were both happier with our own. After we were full to the brim, we walked around the mall. And I have to say, I'm really surprised at the stores that I've seen in this area. When we were at City Creek, and then at this mall in Murray...some serious stores. J. Crew, Banana Republic, Express, Tiffany & Co., Porsche Design. I mean...seriously...people have money to shop at these places? We enjoyed window shopping and trying on makeup at Sephora. (Wait...I enjoyed it.) We also went to the Art of Shaving. Nathan's become fascinated with straight razor shaving, and they had a store in the mall dedicated to it. (Put that on the Christmas list)

After the mall, we headed over to Capital Theater in SLC to try to win Wicked Tickets. Again. I almost think that trying to win tickets is almost worse than just not getting tickets. You enter your name on a piece of paper that's thrown in a cauldron, stirred and then 10 names are drawn. The anticipation is terrible! The little girl next to us got her name called. She was crying she was so happy! Our name wasn't called, I was crying because I was so sad. Just kidding. I didn't cry, but I was pretty sad. I really wanted Nathan to be able to it! I had seen it in high school, with some awesome friends. We decided we'd just come home.

Oh, I forgot. At orientation, we set up Nathan's ID card as a debit card. And when you do that, you get a free starving student card. A starving student card is pretty awesome. It's a bunch of free stuff, two for ones, and sweet deals to places around town. So today, while we were taking stuff to recyling and getting school supplies (and a tennis ball for the dogs), we picked up one of our free items! There's a little place called Juice Press, and they make really good smoothies. And we got one for free! We decided we couldn't share and bought one as well. The flavors we picked were Max Green, and Green Delicious. They were both pretty bomb. Gotta admit, I liked Nathan's more. His was spinach, pineapple, peach..and some other stuff. Mine was raspberry, spinach and some other stuff.

Here's Puma with her new tennis ball.

she may or may not have eaten it.

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Birthdays & More Weddings

Thursday we drove to Liberty Park in SLC for Bret's wedding luncheon. (but it was at dinner...is it called...a dinnereon?) Nathan met Bret in the MTC, they were on the same floor. Oh, and they're cousins! The first time they met they were 19! They were so cute! His new brides name is Erica, and she was barefoot. It was a small gathering, with Cafe Rio catering. The best part of this dinnereon? Nathan's grandparents from Cali drove up to be there! It was great to see family the second weekend in a row. After we talked in the park, we wished Bret and Erica a happy honeymoon and headed over to grandma and grandpas hotel. We just hung out there and chatted for awhile. While we were there I received the cutest voicemail from my niece. I saw that I had a voicemail from Heidi and I wish there was a way I could let you all hear it, it was SO cute. Nyssa started singing happy birthday to me, and you hear Heidi in the background..but it's not her birthday! Then Nyssa says, "I know, I just want to sing it to her ok?" So she proceeds to sing me happy birthday!  Super cute.

We also found out we were going to go to a birthday party the next day. Whose birthday is it? President Monson. So Friday afternoon we headed back to the hotel. We brought stuff to sleep their because they had a suite with a pullout bed in the living room. So we changed, and headed over to temple square. We watched the Joseph Smith movie. I had never seen it. It was really good. If you haven't seen it, I would recommend it. It gives a brief history of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was restored, and all the persecution and trials that came along with it. It made me very grateful to live in the time that I lived in. Yes, there is still a lot of smacktalk about Mormons, but we aren't being chased out of town or killed. It was great. Go to it. It's in the Joseph Smith Memorial building in Temple Square, inside of there..the Legacy Theater. It's free. And it's awesome.

the beautiful Salt Lake City Temple

After the movie we walked over to Farrs ice-cream to meet some more family. We had sandwiches and ice-cream before we headed over to the conference center. I forget how cool of a building the conference center is. Religion aside, the building itself is quite amazing. It's huge! I think it holds 21,000 or something like that. And we had great seats!

We were on the third row of the balcony. (the first balcony. there was still another level above us!)

The performance was so great! It was called Golden Days: A Celebration of Life. President Monson loves Broadway, so we got to hear some amazing musicians play/sing broadway. Obviously the Mormon Tabernacle choir sang, and the Orchestra at Temple Square played as well.

Some of my favorites were...
All I Ask of You from the Phantom of the Opera sang by Rebecca Luker
Bring Him Home from Les Miserables sang by Dallyn Vail Bayles
Seventy-Six Trombones from The Music Man sang by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Memory from Cats sang by Rebecca Luker

Through the show, videos would play with old friends or church leaders saying nice things about the prophet. Then President Uchtdorf and President Eyring (his counselors) got up a spoke a little bit. It was an amazing show! Like Silvija said, "You couldn't pay enough money to watch a show like this." Truly so much talent in one building.

After the show we headed back to the hotel. We had ice cream bars and chatted. (you can never have enough ice cream) The next morning, we all ate breakfast together, then the grandparents started on their way back to California. We headed down to the Capital Theater. Wicked has been playing in SLC and only for one more week. I found out that they have a drawing before every show for $25 orchestra seats. Since it was Saturday, they had a matinee showing so we filled out our forms and crossed our fingers. And then they drew the names. We weren't called. Bummer. I know that I've already seen wicked, but we've been listening to it in the car lately and I really want to go. Unfortunately, tickets are about $130 each. And those are the cheap seats. So we'll try again next weekend, and if not, then we'll finally use our Cheesecake Factory giftcard. So we weren't called, and I was sad. But then we walked down to the City Creek Mall. It's amazing!

this is INSIDE. there is a fact a creek running through the city. 

We didn't end up buying anything but lunch. Which was pretty good. We were tired so we headed back to the car and back to Orem. We finally planted our tomato starts. They are now giants and needed to be planted 2 weeks ago. But they are planted. And they look happy!

We then showered and got dressed for yet another wedding reception. This time it was Nathans mission companion, Paul Bills. He married Maddie. After they were sealed in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple, they had their reception at Le Jardin in Sandy. It was so pretty! Basically, a giant green house with paths running through it. Super pretty. Here's the happy couple!

ignore the fan. haha.

And we're off to play games with some old friends, and some new ones!

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DIY Wall Plaque

Another pinterest project. Found here! This one was almost as easy as the hot pad. I found this wood plaque at DI for $1, it already had some saying on it. So I just painted over it and slightly distressed it. You then have to pick what you'd like it to say. I used Adobe Illustrator to type the phrase, and reflect it. But I'm sure Microsoft Word has a similar technique. Before you print, it's so important that you flip or mirror the words. If you don't, then the words will be backwards on the sign. So print out your words backwards, place on the sign, and get a paintbrush slightly wet, and "paint" over the words. Then you take the back of a pen and rub the letters. The water makes the ink release from the page, and the pressure transfers it onto the wood. 

wet and rub

after the paper is pulled off. 

It's kind of hard to read. If you did a lighter colored paint, you could just leave it like that. But I painted over the words. I also added a few streaks of the paint.

I then sanded it, even over the letters. I'll probably throw it around outside tomorrow for a little more worn look. But I hung it up in our bedroom. (obviously still isn't finished. I'm going to be adding an "a" and a "n" to this little collage, possibly some other things. it still needs help.) 

start of collage

and there ya have it! 

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Little Things

Slowly our apartment is starting to feel more like home. Here are a few photos of little things we've done.

painted our bedroom wall

put up a vinyl saying

put up our gallery wall

sold our loveseat for $150. (we got both couches for $125. SCORE!)

sold our two little bookshelves, and bought a big one and put it together.

babysat kittens (they are gone now)

It's coming along. Yesterday we started to store things under the stairs. So we went through everything in the other room, and put things in the under the stairs storage. Little by little we are making progress.

Oh, and we saw Batman last night for FHE. I gotta say, I actually enjoyed it. And I cried...twice. What the heck!

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Two Weddings, One Day

August 11th is apparently the day of love. We had a wedding and two receptions to attend Saturday. We got up Saturday morning, got ready and headed to where we thought the wedding of Nathan's cousin Heather, and her fiancé Michael were getting married. When we got up the hill and arrived at the Draper Temple, there were no cars in the parking lot, and the gates were closed. Oops. How did we both have Draper in our heads? Luckily we're in Utah, and only a few minutes away from several other temples. :) We checked out paper that told us what time we needed to be there...and the correct temple. Jordan River. So we hurried back on the freeway, drove like we're from Utah, and made it to the correct temple. We got inside, and met family in the waiting room. It was so great to see Nathan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. It was a busy day at the temple. 15 weddings BEFORE noon! Madness. But the sealing was so great, and they looked so in love.

Jordan River Temple

coming out of the temple

 After the ceremony we drove into the canyon to Mill Creek Inn. Their reception was SO beautiful! There were flowers on all the tables, and it was outside.

love the color of these flowers

 Luckily, it had rained the night before so it wasn't too hot. Something that was really neat about their reception, they had a photobooth guestbook! It was the cutest ever! You took your picture, it printed out two copies. One, you glue in a book, and sign your congratulations. The second is for you to keep. I loved it!

our photos

We had really good time chatting with family and friends, and eating delicious food.

Nathans plate

And Heather and Michaels cake was so cool! And the setup was beautiful with little chandeliers on either side.

Heather and Michaels wedding cake. 

Then we were off to wedding number two, Natasha and Adam. Natasha was a roommate of mine my very first semester of college. We have been really good friends since. I haven't seen her in years, and it was so great to be there for her special day. They were married in the Logan temple, and had their reception at a church in Menden. (Super beautiful drive by the way.) Their colors and theme were very elegant. Mostly gold with calla lilies.

calla lilies in water

It was so great to see her, and she looked absolutely beautiful.

isn't she gorgeous? 

We got there in time to see their first dance, and also the father/daughter dance. I'll admit, I was a mess. I'm such a baby when it comes to this. I don't get emotional too easily, but every wedding reception with that dance, I cry.

Natasha and Adam (sorry it's blurry, far away on cell phone.)

And this is where the seriously blubbering comes in...

Natasha and her dad (again, sorry for the blurry)

After their dances, the crazy dancing began. It was so fun to see all the little kids go crazy. :) They then had a slow song, a country one even, and Nathan & I danced. It was fun to dance with him. I think that was the first time since we've been married. (besides the kitchen) We had to head out because it was a bit of a drive back home. On our way out, we saw this...

Congratulations Heather & Michael and Natasha & Adam! We love you all!

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DIY Hotpad

I saw this little DIY project on pinterest awhile ago and thought it looked so cute! (and easy) So we did it tonight for Family Home Evening. Yes, Nathan helped me. 

pick out the flat rocks.

glue them on a circle of felt 

it's done.

put something hot on it.

Isn't it cute? We are slowly unpacking and organizing our new place. So far, we love it. And it stays nice and cold since it's the basement, and there's AC. (Mom, you would hate it. Lenise, you would love it.) One of my favorite things about it? You can hear the crickets outside, even with all the windows shut. They are SO loud. Love it!

Also, we like playing fetch with Puma outside.

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Update

The blog got a makeover. Isn't it cute?

oh...and here's a funny video.

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Moving to Utah

We got back from Washington Sunday night. We had Monday and Tuesday to pack and clean. We were moving to Utah on Wednesday. Basically, it was total madness. But we pulled it off. The drama didn't begin until Tuesday night. I called Budget to see if we could get our truck that night, instead of Wednesday at 8am. They then told me, well you may not even get your truck at 8am. Trucks weren't going to be in until 3pm. Umm....what? And how come noone let me know of this until I contacted them? We called several people, and received calls from even more people. Basically what it came down to is Budget over booked trucks. There weren't enough trucks for the the amount of people that had reserved trucks. Pretty lame.

Wednesday morning, we had the breakfast of champions, then drove over to budget.

mcdonalds

Nope. Not a single truck. We hung out a little bit while they made some calls. Then we received a call, trucks weren't going to be in until 3pm at the earliest. But we could drive to Jackson, Wyoming to get a truck. That's at least an hour & half each way of driving up the Teton Pass. Umm..no thanks. The local Budget guy told us that actually, they were going to drive the trucks from Jackson to Rexburg. I called back the Inventory Specialist who just called me, and told him what the local guy told me. The specialist said, "I gotta be honest with you, there are 2 trucks coming to Rexburg, there are 4 people waiting for those 2 trucks. If you go to Jackson, you have a truck with your name on it."

*sigh* I called Jackson Budget to make sure that my name was indeed on a truck. She didn't know what I was talking about. She said she'd call me back. She finally did, and she had a truck reserved for us. SOOO...we drove to Jackson, through construction, up the Teton Pass. Awesome.
Luckily the drive is pretty, and we made jokes about the mean things we wanted to do to them. We got our truck, and turned right around, Nathan followed me in the truck back to the Burg.

our truck, complete with dead AND alive tomato plants.

We were basically completely packed up, so loading the truck went really fast. We had three guys come and help. So I didn't have to do much, for which I was grateful since I pulled my shoulder boating back at home. :) After we were in the truck, we did some last minute cleaning touchups and we were off.  It was a little sad leaving Rexburg, I had spent the last 5 years in this little town. (on and off of course) But I was more excited for this new part of our adventure.

almost forgot plankton in our empty apartment. just kidding!

We got into Orem around 9pm. We had Josh and Danna (Danna only carried in very light things that we tested out before we let her carry them. haha), Marshall and Ben help us move in. It was funny, I went to hug Danna, and bounced of the bump! She's gotten a lot bigger since the last time we've seen each other. So excited for her baby girl to get here!

Hello Utah!

We're unpacking, and rearranging. AND we found a couch while we still had the truck. So we went and picked that up and got it into our basement apartment. Here are a few pictures. I'll post more when our place is together!

view of backyard

view from kitchen. stairs are the entrance to our place. this is Puma, she loves fetch.

our couches. obviously...we need to do some rearranging.

tomato plants made it from washington!

garden area. next weeks project so we can get some good food still this year!

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