Monday, June 29, 2015



First, I am so grateful for the temple. We got to go early one morning. 
We went to Hawaii during Nathan's spring break. We spent a week on the North Shore of Oahu, in Hau'ula. We found a little rental on VRBO. We spent the week laying on the beach, swimming, hiking, surfing, eating, snorkeling and relaxing. Here are just a few pictures from our trip.


It's pretty humid...

Sea Turtle. These animals are so fun to watch!


Jurassic Park

At the Polynesian Culture Center, Nathan wearing a lava lava.

This was the beach a few steps away from our rental.
Our favorite place, North Shore Tacos. Their ginger lemonade is the best.

At the PCC.
This is right after I was splashed with a wave. 
Exploring near Hanauma Bay

crash

We went snorkeling at Hanauma Bay.

Hanauma Bay

Lanikai Beach 

:)

Nathan trying the Loco Moco. Bed of rice topped with a
hamburger patty, fried egg, and brown gravy. Weird.

On our Eco Tour.

On our Eco Tour.
On our Eco Tour.
Our guide on our tour. 

Our guide, Keola after the tour. 

Driving.

Giant Snocone.


Nathan after his surf lesson

The morning we left, we watched the sunrise on our beach. 

Friday, April 17, 2015

Welcome to the T H E  L O F T at 1 9 0 9. Sounds like a sweet new club right? Kind of. More like, our home. Here's a photo tour. Sorry it has taken me so long. I keep getting text messages from friends asking what our place looks like. So here it is!

This is actually the view from the downstairs bathroom.
But you can see our front door and the stairs. 

Downstairs bathroom. And the glorious tub.

Coming out of the bathroom. 


Ruby's hooks. Yes, she has two leashes. 

The living room. 

Kitchen and Dining Room

View from table. Everyone always asks why our tv is there. It's on a swivel, and we
really don't watch it that much, so it made sense to stick it to the side.

Bedroom. (The cardboard on the left side of the bed is to cover our windows at night.
We don't have blinds yet. But it keeps it super dark...which is nice.)

My office from the beside the bed. 


Saturday, February 14, 2015

Today is Valentine's. Give your love a kiss, or eat some chocolate. Or both. Today we made breakfast burritos for my family, and also took some to Nathan's parents since they are sick. Then we went on a little walk in the Chamna Trails. We talked about our bucket lists, made some plans, and Nathan showed me where he crashed his bike. (by the way, he has a follow-up appointment on the 26th. Right now he's on a 10b weight limit for 2 weeks.) This is our day so far!


We woke up. 


We saw this creeper owl.
It was legitimately really scary. 

Ruby got in some good sniffin'
We took a selfie. 
And later, we're going to a Pawn Shop. How romantic. (I want to see if I can trade in my camera for one that also does video.) Happy Valentine's Day!

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Nathan was recently called into the Young Men's presidency. He's 1st counselor, which is over the Teachers. He loves it! And he gets to do their fun mutual activities. This past weekend, they were going to do a day trip to the snow to...do whatever you do in the snow when you're a boy scout. I guess...not freeze or something. Well, with the ridiculously warm weather, the snow was pretty melty, and it was raining. So they cancelled the snow trip, but still wanted to do something fun. So the teachers decided they wanted to do mountain biking.

It was a scramble to get everything organized on such short notice. And there needed to be two leaders. Problems with bikes and scheduling, that took a little time. One of the boys didn't have a bike, so they had to borrow one from Greenies. The morning of Nathan was a little stressed trying to make sure everyone had a bike, a helmet, knew where to meet etc. I said, maybe you should just cancel it, as they didn't have a second leader until about 20 minutes before the activity. But they got it figured out, and off they went to the Chamna Trails down by the Yakima River.

It's just a cool little nature reserve with some biking trials, and jumps. This is how I understand what happened. Nathan took a jump and landed it, but then his foot slipped off the pedal as he was coming to a double jump. He got his foot on, mostly went over the first jump, but because there was a second right away, his front tire went down, back tire up, and flipped him over. He hit his head and shoulder first. (Thankfully he was wearing a helmet!) Then the bike landed on him. ha.

He said it hurt obviously, but thought it was just because he crashed his bike. He was able to keep riding, and continued the activity. Later on that evening, the pain and swelling continued. We iced it for awhile, but decided to go into urgent care. We met with a PA there and they did a bunch of testing, moving the arm and shoulder all over. They did X-rays of both shoulders to compare, and there was obviously a difference.



One his left, you can see the clavicle touching the shoulder blade. (AC joint)
On the right, they are not touching. 


From what I understand, it's actually nothing to break, it's all ligaments. So they hopefully just got a little extra stretched. The PA said his case is worse than mild, but not terrible? He had us make an appointment with the orthopedic doctor. We have an appointment today at 1:00. We are hopeful that he will be able to continue his schooling with clinical. Both his instructor, and supervisor for work said he needs to be totally cleared in order to work or participate in clinical, which includes lifting 50 pounds.

I am hoping it's a few weeks off in the sling. He can make up clinical, if he's cleared before the end of the semester. As far as work, he does have what's called Health Streams, which are basically computer type training that he can do. They needed to be finished before April anyways, so he'll just do them now.  I'll update after our appointment today! Cross your fingers! (and toes.) (and pray) :)

Saturday, January 24, 2015

I'm 26. Twenty-six. It feels significantly older than 25, but I don't feel old. I think leading up to 25, I was looking forward to being a year older, and now...it's just downhill to 30. ;)

We celebrated by using my gift certificate to Polka Dot Pottery that I got for Christmas. Polka Dot Pottery is similar to Color Me Mine in Utah. They have unfired pottery, cups, plates, figurines, etc. Then you glaze it however you like, they fire it, and you pick it up a week later. I'm excited to pick them up! The pictures obviously aren't fired, they will be brighter and shinier once they're fired.

Nathan doing his plate. 


A little fat, but I'm very impressed, that was free hand!
(I kept telling Nathan, if it was perfect, we could have just bought one.) 


My spoon rest. These are raised dots, they even glaze like that. This isn't practical, but hopefully it will be awesome. 


After that, we went to PF Changs (another gift card) for their half off appetizers. I was surprised we were basically able to walk in around 5:40 on a Friday, during happy hour. We went a little crazy.
Like...ordered 6 appetizers crazy. We got veggie lettuce wraps, wontons, crispy green beans, dynamite shrimp, ahi tartare and a California roll. Um, holy food. I even got a ginger beer, which was really interesting. You couldn't drink a lot at a time because it was really ginger-y. But I really liked it! We should have taken a picture of our tiny table with all our food. It was all delicious and the leftovers were even good today! I was surprised.

After dinner, we had Nathan's parents come over for cake. I'm surprised that we had room, but you HAVE to have cake on a birthday right? Nathan made me a white chocolate raspberry bundt cake. It was super moist and delicious. I found the recipe here.  *You're not allowed to think about the caloric value while eating it.* Birthdays are once a year.

The candles made a halo reflection off the lense. Or that's just how I look naturally. 

I got all but 2. I am getting old! haha.

I opened presents from my mom and in-laws. An awesome lime squeezer, it's life changing, really. Also homemade laundry soap and q-tips, also essential. I had opened my gift from Nathan as soon as I woke up. One yoga class at Unity Yoga and yoga capris! Yay!

Then, if we hadn't eaten enough, the doorbell rings. It's two laurels from my class, they made me a fruit pizza. We had talked about that a few weeks ago at mutual and were sweet enough to remember I love it. 



We rolled ourselves into the other room and watched The Maze Runner. It was WAY more suspenseful and scary than I thought it would be! I kind of want to read the books now, so I know what happens next.



Today we had a youth temple trip. We had a big group, how fun. I'm an awesome towel-passer-outer. I made everyone cupcakes for my birthday so we had those outside the temple. Yum!

On our way home we swung by the loft, and the upstairs bathroom is done!

Essential for a bathroom. 

Vanity

Look how pretty! 

The mirror opens to...ANOTHER TWO MIRRORS..WITH SHELVES!
(There's still plastic on them, but it will be glorious!) 

I took this picture so you could see the wall color with the trim.
 It looks fabulous. It's FLOORS NEXT!

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