Fun Fun.

I am determined to post more often! Not too much in news lately. Jonathan and I are off to Las Vegas on Thursday for Nick's wedding. It will be a fun weekend! Work is finally slowing down! Ya Hoo! Very excited about that. The weather is getting warmer. Life is good. So the past few weeks the girls from work and I have been going to Karaoke night and this local place. Tons of funs. Here are some pictures of our most recent adventures.


um... yeah


Amanda and I





Me, Amanda and Allison





Fishy face with Al!

Good times. For anyone in the area Karaoke is Thursday night in North Liberty! Come one and all!!!

Hey All.

Been a while. Been busy. Jonathan had his recital this past week. His parents and 3 of 6 siblings were here. It was a lot of fun to hang out with them and just chill. It was also my first Saturday off since Christmas. Much welcomed! It is always sad when family leaves, but this time wasn't so bad because we were able to say "see you in a few weeks" as we will all be in Vegas in 2 weeks for Nick's wedding. It will be fun to hang with everyone! Welp, the real reason that everyone reads blogs is for the pictures, so here are some pictures of recent Allen's goings on.



I was leaving the mall and the "Red Hat" club was in front of me. It was kinda sad because the lady with the walker got stuck in the sliding door, it closed as she wasn't fast enough to get past it. So I had to take a picture. They were cute old ladies.




We went to a Rough Riders hockey game in Cedar Rapids and they were selling these horns. OF COURSE Jonathan had to have one I mean come on! It was awesome!




Being the prefectionist that he is, Jonathan is shaping the mouthpiece so he can get a better sound. It was a 5 dollar horn!


And yes, this is him tuning the horn. He has a tuning app on his phone. I love my tromboneing husband!









There is an Oregon Trail app for iphone. You can now get attacked by a bear!! It is nasty looking too! Kinda funny though.

Seriously?!?!?!?

I am completely speechless. All I can manage to say is SERIOUSLY!? Needless to say, here is why...

So I went to work on Saturday thinking that it was going to be your average long, busy day. Well, it was that and so much more. SO they day went fine and then about 10 minutes to closing a rush of people decided that they wanted help. I was working with a couple on an invitation order, Amanda was helping a couple girls gets bridesmaid dresses ordered, LeAnn was vacuuming and Julie had greeted these 2 prom girls that had walked in. We were all in a hurry and just wanted to get home. After the craziness subsided and everyone left, we were all noticing that the store smelled a little funny. Thinking that someone was just a little funky, we shrugged it off. It continued to get worse and we thought maybe it was the prom girls. So a couple of the girls went back to the room that they were in to see if the smell was there. Welp, sure enough there is was. Poo. Diarrhea on the floor, the curtain, the pillow, and the cushion on the bench!!!! Apparently just because you are old enough to shop for a prom dress by yourself, does not mean that you are old enough to know when to go to the bathroom. I mean COME ON!!!! Who does that? So Jonathan went to the store and bought gloves and carpet cleaner and I then had to proceed to clean it up. Yuck. Not how I pictured spending my day. I think I used almost a whole bottle of Febreeze to try and get rid of the smell. We then bagged up all the poo-infested stuff and took it to the dry-cleaners.

There is just no way that happened. Also, if one more person tells to wait until I have kids because I will be cleaning up poo all the time, I will freak. This is SO not on the same level as cleaning up your own child's poo. This is not in my job description. So enough ranting. All I have left to say is to the girl that poo'd in the room and well at least we know that "you can really work it out" Thank you Wesley WIllis for that marvelous quote. Who is Wesley Willis you ask... Here is a little clip to introduce you if you don't know him.

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...