The Joys/Hardships of a House

We have now been in our house exactly two months. Although we have been enjoying many things about our house, we have also already had problems! 

Joys

1. Almost triple the room of our apartment

2. Decorating (but not the cost of decorating)

3. No next door or upstairs neighbors

4. Beautiful views and people watching

5. A garage

Hardships

1. Dealing with Comcast (who had to come out 6 times to finally fix it)

2. Installing a sprinkler system has taken us a long time and still isn't finished

3. On Sunday we noticed a leak and our water line setter had broken

4. Neighbors setting off firecrackers in our yard (what are you thinking?)

5. A LOT more space to clean, so I banned John from the upstairs bathroom

Overall we have loved our new house. Once the yard is finished I can stop looking so enviously at our neighbors lush green grass. 

Olympic Celebration

Last night we had the perfect opening to the Olympic games. We did go out and get our fish and chips from Culivers, and some delicious frozen custard. I couldn't even eat all of mine it was so good and filling.

Then Cindy and Spencer came over with all of these amazing goodies. We had, M&M's, zucchini bread, brownies, chips, candy from England, and my personal favorite raspberry cheesecake cookies from subway which Spencer had bought for us. Who could blame me for eating to much after all of that amazing food?

We watched the beginning of the opening ceremonies and started playing hand and foot (taking lots of breaks to watch the best parts).

I can proudly say that Cindy and I won both games, which never happens by the way.

The opening ceremonies weren't as good as China (in my opinion), but here are some of my favorite moments.

#1. Mr. Bean

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nudfEdfjekk

#2 James Bond

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frsz303emkw

#3 Torch Lighting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKXGqQLPRnM

I'm currently enjoying the women's basketball game and hope I can catch all of my favorite sports this year! Hope you all enjoy the Olympics!

Opening Ceremonies

Tomorrow is the opening ceremonies and I don't know about you, but I'm pretty excited. I watched most of the US Olympic trials so I'm already invested. 

The opening ceremonies can be pretty long, but I love to watch all the shows and performances. I can't wait to see if they will be able to top China!

We are going to have some English food for dinner, maybe fish and chips? Then Cindy and Spencer are coming over to get their hand and foot on. We might have to take breaks to watch though. 

What are you doing for the Olympics?

Jared's Visit

Jared finished off his first semester at BYU-Idaho and got to spend a couple days with us before he left to go back to Atlanta. We had a lot of fun with him.

Saturday we put him to work on our sprinkler system and then we spent the day at Seven Peaks water park. It was John's company party so we got in for free (thanks John) and had a blast. When the public got kicked out it was practically empty and there were really short lines. We spent most of our time in the lazy river and the wave pool, and dinner was delicious!

The shirt barely fit me :(

Sunday we hung out and played some games.

Monday we went to temple square and walked around. I also showed Jared City Creek which he thought was pretty cool. We liked the fountains.

We also made our way to the nickel arcade after John got off work. The nickel arcade is always fun with John because he takes it so seriously and wants amazing prizes. Well, we worked hard and got a lot of tickets! John ended up just getting candy, Jared got a wooden flute and played it the whole way home, and then I got a bumper balloon. Overall a great day!

Tuesday was Pioneer day and Jared and I spent most of it at home (John had to work) but we did make an appearance at Provo Pioneer Park.

Then we saw Batman, which the guys loved! I thought it was okay, and then watched some fireworks from our house. 

We had a good time with Jared and was glad he got to visit.

Storing Memories

When we got married I knew that I wanted to try and keep track of our lives. I knew that I was never going to be diligent enough to keep up with journalism, and no way was I going to deal with all the money, time, and creative genius it takes to keep up with scrap booking.

Let alone the giant mess it causes in some part of the house!

So I had an idea that every year I would create a picture book every year we were married. It started when I found a website that did picture books and I used it to make our guestbook and also made a present for John and decided I liked the program.

It is called blurb.com

I can say now three years later that I'm doing pretty good! I have April 2009 to April 2011 and am about to finish my third book (I'm just missing one picture) after working on it for a couple hours yesterday. Tomorrow I hope to start this years.

What I like about Blub.com

1.They are pretty cheap

2. Easy to use

3. Variety of Layout options

4. Turn out great

5. Easy and fun to look through

 I hope that our kids will enjoy looking through them too, and instead of one copy every year I will print them off a copy too.

So, how do you keep your memories?

Friday 13th

Friday night we used our Pass of All Passes (which is amazing by the way) and got into the Utah Blaze game (indoor football) for free!!! Well, we had to use gas to get to Salt Lake and pay for parking, but it was worth it!

Our seats were pretty high up, but we could see everything, so we didn't complain. This was the last game of the season and the Blaze scored more points than ever before (we won by twenty points), and we had the most people in attendance than ever before. Two records in one night, we felt special.

After the game we went to City Creek and ate at the cheesecake factory! The restaurant there is beautiful and we sat next to a couple who had gotten engaged that day. That brought back memories for John and I. Neither of us could finish our meal, but I HAD to get cheesecake, so we got it to go. 

Overall a great nigh, and can I just say, John is becoming quite the photographer :)

Hope your weekend went well!

Nightmares

Everyone has nightmares, but John and my mom think that I have an unusual amount of nightmares. I normally have one at least twice a week and can't sleep afterwards. 

Is anyone else out there like me?

They are mostly dark and horror movie like dreams that are two violent to retell, and I don't even know how I think of these things. On TV I watch Survivor, Food Network, HGTV and similar shows so I don't expose myself to any further horror than I see in my dreams. I can't even handle Criminal Minds, that gave me nightmares for weeks. Lately they have been about our baby, which I hear is normal, but this has gone on for quite some time now. John says I need to write a book with all my dreams since they are so weird, but I have found that I don't want to relive my dreams, and I'm too lazy to do that. 

Anyone have any insight?

The Best Burger!

Where do you go to get the best burger? I love a good burger! Here are some of my favorites. What are yours?

Five Guys

I love how you can make your own burger and the fries are super delicious! Plus, my sister works at Five Guys, so I always tease her we are helping contribute to her college fund every time we go.

Red Robin

Love the fries!!! This is my favorite burger there, Bonzai Burger which is teriyaki and pineapple. They also have really good fry sauce you can get. Did I mention you can have as many fries as you want? Good thing they don't have a Red Robin closer to our house.

In and Out

John is not a big fan of In and Out so we don't go very often, but I was able to go yesterday with John's family since Karita and Joseph love it so much. The thing I like the most about In and Out is the sauce on the burger and that it is the perfect size for me. I don't walk out feeling stuffed and their prices are pretty good.

These were my top three burgers, what are yours?

Bainbridge Reunion

Yellowstone Trip

For the Bainbridge reunion we all traveled up to Yellowstone. We didn't have very long, but we wanted to optimize our time with Karita and Joseph since they flew in from San Antonio.

We stayed in a beautiful cabin along the river that we rented in Island Park.

On the first day we went into the park and got backed up for miles because of some bison. It was cool to see them, but definitely not worth the hour delay!

First we had to see Old Faithful and we got lucky and saw the Beehive Gyser that only goes off every 18 hours and is more impressive than Old Faithful.

And of course Old Faithful!

In between each of the stops was a lot of driving and Savana and Sierra took every moment they could to sleep.

John allowed two pictures for him to be smiling. This one didn't turn out that great, but it was one of my two so I had to show you. It was out by Yellowstone Lake.

We didn't stay long at any place since we packed Yellowstone in till a day and a half. But we did admire the beach and John got a little wet.

A couple times the bison got really close to the car and it was a pretty cool experience.

That night we raced over to a dinner theater and scarfed down our food to make it before the show started. The dinner was huge! I probably got a 20 oz prime rib and couldn't eat very much of it but it was very good. The show was pretty funny, and a couple times John couldn't stop laughing.

On day two we went water rafting and barely beat the rain. John and Joseph were the only ones who got in the water, and none of us got burnt! Afterwards we returned to Yellowstone and went to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

And then we saw some Geysers and saw a beautiful sunset.

It was a wonderful trip, and the worst part was coming back. If only we could be on vacation all the time!