We Have Foundation!

These Saturday house runs are becoming my favorite part of my week...I know, you must be as surprised as me, right? I'm hoping to get good enough shots to make a good slideshow at the end. I'll post what I have so far at the end of this blog post, it's not a lot, but it's still cool to see the foundation.

We had our meeting with the superintendent on the 13th where we went over all our plans and make sure everything looks the way it should. Now that we are digging and moving I get more and more excited. The dates right now are looking like we'll be in around July 20th, it might be sooner, it might be later (more likely the latter), but that's what we're aiming for now.

We've got a phone call scheduled with the lenders to get all that fun stuff figured out in a couple weeks. I REALLY can't wait to get that stuff done with (I love paying bills, but I hate changing things up so I really want to know what we need to change our budget to).

Now to go shopping to fill up this future beauty with amazing furniture...just kidding! Larry's making me wait so we don't have to move over even more crap than we have now...he's smart like that ;)

Road Trip!

Today I took a mini adventure and did a road trip up to Idaho to visit my sister and her new baby girl. I've been itching to get away and plan a vacation and while this wasn't necessarily a vacation it was so nice to get out of Utah for a day! The road up there was amazing, it was mostly clear, I had my favorite road trip snacks, and even though the CD player in my car is broken, the radio lasted me a long while! It was just me that went so I didn't take too many pictures, but I think that's better. I had time to think and sing and snack and just do whatever I wanted.

OOOH yeah!

I was surprised when I got there that my dad, Don, was there. He answered the door and it took me a few seconds to realize Ariel and Nathan were in the room, no where near the door and then I had to take a second look to see who answered...they have video of it somewhere haha. The baby is adorable, even if she does scream because she hates sleeping. Once she's out, she's out and you can then ooh and ahh over her ;) There is PLENTY to ooh and ahh over too!

Technically she was throwing a fit
Here, but I'm pretending she's
Still asleep ;)

It was also nice to catch up with part of the family, see what the plans are for the next year, and see my sister as a mom (yes that is still weird for me!). We went to eat at Hickory's, then to visit Tori at her job, and then back to the apartment to visit for a little bit. The food was good, the company was good, and the baby was my favorite (sorry family, but babies win all but cats in my life right now haha)

Going home...I had no idea
What was coming

Now the drive back home was a big nightmare! I might be a bit over dramatic to say the fact that I'm alive is pretty incredible to me, and I hope over time I realize that's a silly description, but it feels so true right now! I called my mom to just kind of visit and talk to on the way home, but by the time I hit the Bear River City area (just North of Brigham City) a rain storm from Hell the likes of which no one else has ever seen washed down upon us (us being the cars around me and me)! I had to hang up and start paying crazy attention to the road. I've never been so scared to change lanes or have someone around me change their lanes. I started singing curse words and saying "This too shall pass" over and over because it was just too scary. I had to think of being back home and cuddling on the couch. I had to not think about how badly I had to go to the bathroom! It was a mess of emotions to say the least. It made me almost swear off road trips...I'll definitely not be taking any by myself anymore. I need a calm driver to take me from now on...and by calm driver I mean Larry haha.

We get to go out in May for the pre-baby blessing (by pre I mean we are going out the day before to visit again) and luckily Larry will be with me then. It's only a month away, but I'm very excited to see them again. I love holding babies and feeling their soft skin and seeing their cute tiny nails. It's so fun being an aunt!

Thanksgiving Point Tulip Festival

This year my grandma and I went to the Thanksgiving Point Tulip Festival together and I have to admit it was more fun than I thought it would be. We coordinated with my mom so she could walk the gardens they have out her way and we'd send pictures back and forth (it worked out mostly well).

Anyways, now that we're getting a home I've been going crazy thinking of fun, creative ways to make the backyard amazing. Even though it's not something we'd do right away, I like the idea of researching now and then I'll  know what I love when the time comes. Plus the home planning has been a good distraction from the impatience I've had haha. Going to the gardens gave me lots of ideas of flowers I love and design ideas, it was amazing! I can't wait to have a yard to take care of now (except for mowing....that's on Larry!)

Here are some (completely unedited) shots from the gardens:



The colors were so vibrant!

This was one of my favorite shots

It was really windy so excuse the hair



One of my other favorites

My favorite section ever!

Look at the jagged edges of this one
I want one!

And who can resist the waterfall

I love the gardens here, Larry and I even got some engagements done here before we got married...they were some of my favorite pictures of us.

After we walked the gardens Grandma wanted to go do the Dinosaur Museum since she gets us in for free and I had never been. It was really fascinating! I've decided my history classes were wasted on me when I was in school. I find a lot more things interesting than I did back then and so I'm glad we have museums like this to learn about things again. If you haven't been it's good for a visit, especially with kids! There are many kid areas. And for a Saturday it didn't seem too packed to me.

Until the Weather Warms Up

So I'm discovering that I'm not so good as a homebody these days. During the week I love to be lazy once I come home from work (I'm pretty much a zombie from 4:30 PM until bed time every day aside from home planning), but Saturdays I always want to do something outside the house. This isn't always the same mind set as Larry so I've been doing what I can with others while I'm waiting for the weather to warm up a bit and then I can drag him around haha. None of which are new or too exciting to warrant their own blog post, but here's what I've done so far:

A few weekends ago I was able to talk my brother into going to the Zoo. I figured him and I always have a lot of fun together, I needed someone who would be okay taking their time at the Zoo (Larry and I rush through it so quickly that it makes it noth worth the money), and I wanted to ask him about birthday plans (I've come to love our tradition of taking him out to get him out of the house and catch up for his birthday). It ended up taking us quite a few hours to walk through it and we saw lots of fun things: the polar bears random circle pattern he always has to do ( I'm convinced he's OCD because he always has a pattern when I see him), the wolves chasing each other around and acting like dogs (can you say awww!), the lions chasing the birds and acting like cats, seeing turtles eat with their babies (I love turtles and baby animals so I was in heaven!), and even watching the elephants bang their heads against a door to tell the feeders they wanted a treat. After the Zoo I met up with Cindy and two of her girls so we could walk around The Container Store (which is SO going to be my favorite store once we are in the house), then we walked around Scheels (Wow! That store is HUGE on the inside), and then we went to eat at Blue Lemon (yum!) while we caught up. We both live farther away from each other so we hardly see each other in person. It was a nice get together with family members.

Aww...I love the bears!

A couple weekends ago Larry and I decided to hit Wendover since we had a free weekend. I love going out there once in a while, even though we hardly ever really win anything. The buffet is always my favorite part, but I also love when their TVs show different parts of the world. It makes me get vacation envy, but also ideas of which places to add to my ever growing list of places in the world I need to see. As for the gambling, Larry was doing REALLY good in the beginning, he was really on fire. I started losing really quickly. We went to eat and then afterwards both of us started doing even worse than before. I ended up being down like $50 and Larry lost it all. But we still consider it a fun time out there. Next time we'll just drive out ourselves and then once we start losing we'll hit the buffet and come home...although we say that every time and we always end up taking the Fun Bus because it's...well fun! Haha.

This weekend I met up with Stacey to go baby shopping. She's having her third but has decided she wants to keep the sex a secret (she already has two boys) so she wanted to get some newborn sized girl clothes in case baby M is a girl...just something to hold them over until they can get more. I can't believe how cute newborn clothes (especially swim suits) are! I don't think I've ever bought newborn clothes and I haven't had to buy baby stuff in a while so I had a lot of fun looking around with her. Baby shopping is just the best and Stace always has the cutest baby belly. She'll be leaving me in July (she's headed to Texas for her husband's work) so I'm trying to soak up as much time with her (and her little one as soon as M is here) as I can get!

So like I said, nothing TOO special, but still fun times. Looking forward to the summer so I can drag Larry on lots of hikes and maybe a couple camping trips :)