I Love Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone! I love this Holiday. Even when I was single I loved it. Jonathan was super sweet and sent flowers to work on Friday. Tulips. My all time favorite! Then I came home on Saturday from work to a nice home ooked meal, that we don't do often enough and the most amazing chocolate cake ever! I am calling it my better than anything and everything cake! Loved it! Now we are watching Be My Valentine Charlie Brown. So Fun. Here are a couple pictures of my way pretty flowers. Also notice the super cute vase he bought for them. I have the best husband ever! Happy Hearts Day All!

Late Christmas Post...

Over due on a new post. Surprise surprise. Jonathan and I had a killer time in Colorado for Christmas, minus that fact that a grand majority of the time was spent trying to help whoever had the flu bug at that particular point. We stayed in a cabin in Woodland park, and by cabin I mean a large house that is in the mountains. At least on person was sick each day. Sad. I was the only one who didn't end up sick. Not quite sure how that happened. Poor Jonathan got sick our last day there and so we left to come home a day later. Yea for me for getting an extra to spend with my parents, and Kim and Chris and the kids, but sad for Jonathan. We stayed at the cabin Sunday-Friday and then crashed at my parents house until we left on Monday. It was so fun to get to see and spend time with everyone. Jonathan and I really are enjoying Iowa, but being in Colorado and spending time with family, made us really wanting to be closer and see family more often. We have a year and a half left, and then who knows? We want to go out west. I will tell you one thing, I don't think that I can handle one more winter here than is absolutely neccesary. It is frigid here. Tonight the low is -36. Yikes. When you have to close the schools just becasue of cold, that is a bad bad sign. Anyway, back to Christmas, Jonathan's parents were extremely generous in their gifting...When I was making my list this year I was putting a bunch of stuff just for the heck of it, totally not expecting to get most of them...I was wrong in that assumption. They got me my Kate Spade flatware! I was shaking when I unwrapped it, once I new what it was, and then was in super shock when I opened the second place setting. So amazing!!!!! Here is a picture! They are super cute!



Before...


After...



My parents also got us a kick butt food processor. We are having a fun time figuring out things to use it for. If anyone has any suggestions or recipes let me know! The presents were wonderful, but the best part was being able to see family and just be around each other, even if everyone was sick at some point. We wanted to split up the cooking for the week being that there were 12 adults and 2 kids, so we decided to do a cook-off. Each couple was a team and then the singles were a team. Jonathan and I made Gyoza. It was awesome and I am so glad that we learned how to cook it. Everyone made really delicious food, but the single team brought the heat and smoked everyone! Who can compete with game hens for everyone, with that many people, appetizers, 3 side dishes, homemade cookie ice cream sandwiches covered in magic shell, AND a freaking murder mystery dinner?!? No one could and so therefore, they took home the Allen Goblet of Awesomeness, and rightfully so. No need to fear though, we fully intend to bring our A game next time...mwah ha!!

Here are some pictures from the cabin. All the rooms had a theme. Jonathan and I stayed in the tent room. That's right our beds were inside a tent on the floor. It was pretty much awesome!

The Cabin

Our Killer tent room!

The view to downstairs.

Happy Holidays!

Jonathan wanted me to post this weeks ago, but I just never got around to it. We put our tree and other Christmas decorations up the week before Thanksgiving! I was just too excited. We went to go buy a new tree this year, because our old one got a little bit wet in the flood this summer. I didn't want to wait to put it up. So we watched ELF and put our stuff up! So fun! I love the Holidays, it is my favorite time of year! I also finished all my Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving as to avoid the masses of shoppers. So not only has our tree been up for a while, but it has presents under it! So Fun! I found these gold and red holly berries at Hobby Lobby this year and bought a bunch to put on our tree. They are probably my favorite part of the tree beside our 2 trombone ornaments and our starfish on the top! Also, check out the snowman! I totally made it all by myself! I made it at a relief society activity. I nailed and painted it all by myself. I am so not crafty, so I was really proud of myself! Jonathan and I are also was stoked for Colorado in a week! It is going to be a blast! Also, I am really excited to have a little over a week off work! About time! Anyway, here are some pictures of our tree and other such decorations.

Chicago

I know it has been a while, so here is a funny story for you. So, as of right now my only days off are Sunday, because we are short staffed and it is slow season, so there isn't a lot of traffic in the store. I was finally able to take a Saturday off. My first real day off in like 2 months. I wasn't planning on doing much until my friend Kim asked me to go Chicago with her. She had a class that she needed to take and she knew that my sister Kim lived there and thought that I would want to go. So sweet of her to think of me. I thought that it would be super fun. I called Kim(sister) and told her about the trip and of course it was a weekend that she wasn't going to be there! Figures. I still wanted to hang out with Kim(friend) and Kim(sister) said that we could stay at her place anyway. Fun. I was packing to leave when I realized that i forgot to call her on Friday and remind her that we were coming and to leave the house unlocked. So I called her Saturday just before we left, and she said that the house was locked, but that the back door was easy to card. No big deal. Kim(friend) and I left Saturday afternoon and headed to Chicago. We stopped at a super huge outlet mall that has all these super ritzy stores like Coach and Gucci and of COURSE we had to go into the Kate Spade outlet! Wow. That is all I can say. Loved it! Too bad I can't afford anything in there right now. One day. Sigh. So after that Kim(friend) really wanted to go to the Nordstoms Rack just a little ways away. I was totally game being that I hadn't been to one since we lived in Salt Lake. I forgot about all the great stuff they have there, especially their shoe section! I found 2 pairs of super cute shoes for 20 bucks total after tax! I know, your jealous, that okay though, I would be too. Just kidding. So at this point we were both starved and found a pizza place called Giordanos. It was awesome! They have these stuffed crust pizzas that the crust seriously is like 5 inches tall. Kim(friend) and I got the thin crust. They looked crazy good, but there was just no way! After having driven 4 hours, shopped and eaten, we were ready for bed, so off we headed for Kim's(sister) house. Well to make a long story short we tried for about 45 minutes to card the door to no avail. We tried knocking on a couple different neighbors houses for help, but no one answered. Sad. I'm sure we were quite a site to see. Well, thankfully I have an amazingly generous father who used some of his Mariott Points to get us a hotel room for the night. When we finally got to the hotel, it was about 2 hours later that we had wanted to get to bed. What a night. Well, the next day proved to be tricky. Kim's(friend) class was from 9-6, I was planning on just hanging out at Kim's(sister) house until she was done, not now, obviously. Checkout at the Hotel was at noon and it was a Sunday. What was I going to do? Sit in the lobby all day? Thankfully my knight and shining armor Jonathan, drove to Chicago and picked me up that afternoon. The sad thing is though, is that Kim(friend) had to drive home by herself! I felt so bad! What a weekend. Next time I take a day off I am staying in bed!!! Just kidding, it was a lot of fun to hang out with Kim(friend) and now we have this killer story to share! So seriously this is a lot longer that I thought it would be. If you have finished this novel then congrats and thank you for not bailing out mid story!!! Here is a picture of us in the hotel after a long day...it was taken with my phone. Not the best picture ever...

Just a quick shout-out to my awesome husband!!! Happy Happy Birthday!

So, I figured that if I changed my template that I would get in trouble that I didn't actually post anything. I knew that I wouldn't be able to get away with that one... Sadly enough, though I don't have anything really very interesting to talk about. Jonathan and I have been super busy with work and school. I officially taken over as the Manager and because we lost Katy, the only other full time employee, I am now working about 45 hours a week. Kinda sucks. Right now my only days off are Sunday. I really shouldn't complain though, because I do get overtime pay and my raise was a hefty one. I just know that I desperately need to get someone hired for busy season or life will really suck. I wish that I had some fun pictures to post, but alas, I just haven't gotten around to it. I do have some from my really good friend Katy's wedding a couple weeks ago. We had a blast and she, of course, looked beautiful! Here are some fun little tidbits...


This is me and my buddy Allison. We work together and were both Katy's personal attendants. This is just before the reception.




This is me with my friend Monica and the beautiful bride!




This is quite a few of the wedding party and some other randoms. I wish that you could see how beautiful the wedding was!




Had to throw this one in. Jonathan and I with our ribbon mustaches. It was a great night!!!

Okay, seriously I know that I need to be way more consistent in my blogging. A lot has happened since my last post. Jonathan and I moved into our new apartment, went to Colorado, Jonathan started school, and I got offered the Manager position at work. Crazy. So, we love our new apartment and the community we live it. We have a great couple that is in our ward that live across the hall from us. Also, there is also a lot of other families from our ward that live close which is a really nice change. It is nice to see a lot of them more than just on Sunday. A week after we moved in we went to Colorado the visit my Mom and Dad. We had a great time. We were able to hang out with Chris and Ixchelle and meet our cute new nephew Shaden, So fun! Mom and Dad were generous enough to take us to a Colorado Rockies game!! We had such a blast. It was my first professional sporting event. They were playing the Arizona diamondbacks, so we got to see Randy Johnson. He is huge!!! So freaking tall! What made the night really memorable was late in the game when it started to rain these huge rain drops and then the rain turned in to slush. Only in Colorado in August. We came back home and started to get more settled. Jonathan got started with school and is super busy, as the school of music won't be open theis year due to all the flooding, the have classes all over the city. Makes for long crazy days. Too make things more crazy, I will be taking over as the Manager of the store in about 3 weeks. Jonathan and I right now are trying to talk the owner into selling us her store. We right now are waiting to get a number from her. So hopefully we will be store owners by the end of the year. Lets all keep our fingers crossed. So, that is a quick update of what has been going down here in Iowa. Here are some pictures of the new place and and of some of our summer fun.




If you couldn't tell, this is Jonathan and I at Garden of the Gods. We weren't able to stay too long. The altitude got to us faster then we thought.




This is us outside of Coors Field. I bought a new hat for the occasion. Sadly enough, I have such a small head I had to buy a childrens hat...




Here is our living room. Notice behind Jonathan is our new fireplace! Wahoo!! It was a selling point for me, Also, you can see that the bookshelf made it! Hallelujah!




Here is our messy kitchen, but it is bigger!

So there is the short tour of our new place, I guess if you want to see the rest that you will just have to come and visit! We are always open for guests!!!! Please come visit! We live only 2 hours away from Nauvoo!!