Deck Stairs

I forgot to post a picture of Brett's stairs. He did a great job! I think the deck project will be put on hold till the spring. We just have the benches and side railings to go!

I think this is definitely an improvement from the previous steps:

Now our winter project will be finishing that bathroom we tore apart oh so long ago!

Air Conditioner

The original Air Conditioner: The New Air Conditioner:

Would anyone be interested in the 1984 air conditioner??? We're selling it for only $200! I'm just kidding, it's free. :)

Happy Belated Halloween!

Brett wasn't interested in carving the pumpkin with me, so late last night, while he was playing xbox, I carved the pumpkin. I just chose an easy pattern because I lost some of my enthusiasm. (Please excuse the moldy inside. Hopefully next year we'll get around to carving a pumpkin before Halloween).

I was planning on doing one of these pumpkins and blowing everyone away! Now mine looks really lame compared to these. I guess I'll have to wait till next year...

Where Does the Time Go?

We have been so busy that Halloween came and gone and we haven't even celebrated it yet! The guy we found on Craigslist to install our furnace wanted to do it Halloween weekend and so Brett spent Friday and Saturday helping him and I was working and doing my usual Saturday routine (workout and errands all day). I got home late on Saturday and just wanted to sit down. We haven't even gotten around to carving our pumpkin! In fact, we just barely bought a pumpkin a couple days before Halloween. I am super bummed because I really wanted to go to a Pumpkin patch or hunted house for a date night and now Halloween's over and I'll have to wait till next year! (Our Friday night date nights lasted two weeks. Why am I not surprised? lol). Brett was going to throw the pumpkin away but I told him that even though Halloween is over, it's tradition and we will still carve it! So hopefully soon, before it get's too rotten, we'll get around to it.Here's Brett working on the furnace. The guy, Kevin, who is helping us install it on the side (to save us money) thinks he can get the furnace and AC done this next weekend. I hope so because we're paying him by the hour and it's taking longer then we had hoped.

In other exciting news, on Sunday we were driving home from Stake Conference and all of a sudden there was a "pop" sound on the passenger door and my seat belt got all loose! Something must have snapped and there is no tension what so ever to the seat belt. Now if we ride together in my car, one of us has to sit in the back. I'm not too happy about this. I wonder if it's even worth fixing (if it is even fixable) because my car probably doesn't have more then a year left on it's life. Any one ever have this happen to them? Maybe this just happens when your car is 15 years old...

Stacy's Baby Shower

Today was Stacy's baby shower (my cousin Scott's wife)! They are having a girl and I'm so excited for them! I've seen diaper cakes before and thought they were so cute! So I spent any spare time I had the past week rolling diapers! I think it turned out really good!
The top layer with the flower is one of my baby headbands I sell. My website is finished (I just have to get professional pictures taken (taken by Brett of course) of all the products and have our web designer put the pictures on the website. (So a post about Ella Dee Boutiques will be coming soon!)

I used almost 100 diapers!

Congratulations Scott & Stacy!

Salon 500

In high school I worked at Salon 500 in Burnsville and started getting my hair done by Katie. Katie is the best (and her prices reflect that). Like I always say, you get what you pay for! I've always been a big hair person so I'm willing to pay for the best when it comes to hair. I continued going to her even after I stopped working at the salon. She always does an amazing job and we also became good friends. She came to the hospital to visited me when I had my heart surgery and she also came to our wedding reception in Minnesota. Anyway, after marring Brett, I knew getting my hair done by Katie would not get to continue.

Well a couple months ago I got a letter in the mail from Katie with a $50 gift certificate. The letter said she misses me and wants to see me. I called the salon to see her prices (knowing full well that they've probably gone up in the past 5 years), and they had. I told the receptionist I would have to call back knowing that even with $50 off, it would still be twice as much as I have been paying the past two years (only because I was going to this lady from church who did it out of her home for super cheap). The receptionist must have told Katie I had called asking about her prices because about 20 minutes later the receptionist called me back and said Katie would give me a discounted rate because I used to work there. So sweet Katie gave me a great discount on top of the gift card! It was so fun to see her again and she did an amazing job! I think I'll have to continue to go to her now because the lady I was going to from church moved to Utah, so I would have to start paying full rates at a salon again anyway. :)

My Day with Megs!

My friend Megan is a busy girl! Her and Tyler are originally from Iowa and they have been going down there almost every weekend for friend's weddings and to plan their wedding. I had to schedule a date with her and Tyler over a month ago! And Megan and I made a whole day of it on Saturday!

We met at Gold's Gym in the morning for Body Pump but the class was canceled so we just worked out on our own.

Then we went to Let's Dish! It was so much fun! We each made four meals and we're going to start making it a monthly date! It was my first time doing something like this and it was TOTALLY worth it! I learned how to make four new meals (and my first time ever making a home-made-lasagna)! I like to cook but this took out the two parts of cooking I hate (the grocery shopping and the clean up)!

Here we are while making our Chicken Cordon Bleu. Yummy!
(We went straight from working out, so I look a little sweaty).

Then I went to her townhouse and she showed me pictures of her GORGEOUS wedding dress! Can't wait till next September! I wish I could post a picture of it, but we can't let Tyler see... :)

After stuffing our faces with pasta that night, we went back to Tyler and Megan's townhouse to watch a movie. Thanks guys for the fun night!

Chiquita Banana

I saw this Banana costume the other day at Target and I thought it was too cute! I still think Riley's best costume has to be the Hot Dog.

The Fall Decor

300 Post & Dinner with Ms. Erin

This is my 300th post! Holy cow!

Erin text me the other day to tell me she's pregnant!!! We had to go out to celebrate! So after work today I met Erin and Kimberly at Panera Bread! I used to worked with them at KinderCare. I miss those girls (they are about all I miss from there though)! :) They filled me in on all the kids who are out with H1N1 right now. Yep, sure don't miss that place.

Below are some pictures of Erin's baby room she painted a several months ago. She is such a good artist! She's been advertising on Craigslist to paint baby rooms, but now that she's prego, she's not going to paint for a while. I told her I'm totally going to hire her someday to do a playroom for me!

Mall of America

On Thursday, my cousin Jen and her cute son came up from Rochester to meet me at Mall of America! It was so fun to hang out with them! (And to go to the mall, I hardly EVER shop).

An old friend of Justin's (Amanda H.), came up to me in the mall to say hi and I asked her to take a picture of us. I kinda thought she was getting Brit in the picture, but obviously not. Sorry Brit.


And look who we saw at the mall! It's Dave Ryan from KDWB! I had to get a picture with him so I could show Brett because I thought it was just too funny (because of my earlier post below)! Dave knows my cousin Julie because they live in the same neighborhood, so I told him she was my cousin and he thought that was cool.


Thanks Jen! I'll meet you again anytime! :)

Happy Birthday Dads!

Happy Birthday to both our dad's! My dad's birthday was yesterday and today is Gordon's birthday! Hope it's a great one!

Another October in Minnesota

Holy cow, I'm on a role! It's October 11th and I've already have 7 posts this month and 3 (4 tomorrow) posts in my journal!It's October so the cold is only to be expected. Our furnace still has not arrive, nor has it even been shipped yet. We'll have to make it a few more weeks with it being 55 degrees inside. Hopefully it won't get any colder because this is hard enough to bare. Riley always wears his jacket and tries to sit where there's sunlight (if any) to stay a little warmer. Today was probably our last time this year giving Riley a walk around Colby Lake. It snowed the other day, but I heard tonight it's supposed to snow, and this time, the snow will be here to stay. I'm not ready for this!

Bins!

I love organizing and I especially LOVE bins! We have so much random stuff and the other day I decided I just had to organize it because it was driving me crazy! I think I was mostly motivated after I was babysitting for Carmen, my Visiting Teaching companion. She is the most organized person in the world! She has everything so neatly organized in clear bins with labels. So I headed off to WalMart and Target!

You may remember this post from last year. But it now looks like this:

Brett cut the top shelf off so we could fit them in this little alcove spot in our garage. But since we lost the top two shelves, I had to buy another shelving unit for all the bins. I also had to add another Christmas bin from all the day-after-Christmas shopping that I did last year. This was actually done a long time ago but I still wanted to include it in this post. The total cost for this was quite a bit because I got 3 metal shelving units, but it was worth every penny! I actually regret that I didn't' get nicer bins that have tops that latch instead of these cheapo ones. (P.S. You may be wondering about the little chicken wire fence thing in front of it. That's Riley's path from the entry garage door to the doggie door on the other side of the garage. That's so there won't be an accidents driving in or out of the garage, but we hardly even use his doggie door anyway).


My recent bin extravaganza:

Our house has been a complete disaster while I've been working on this because I've pulled everything out of the closets to start fresh. I still have to put more stuff back into the closets, so the top shelves won't be empty and clean like they are now. Guess that means I'll have to get more bins for the top shelves! :)

2nd Bedroom Closet
Total cost: $10.50

Entry Way Closet
Total cost $20

Master Closet
Total cost: $24 or $28?
These are the types of bins I would definitely recommend. They are much nicer and definitely worth paying more for.

Computer Desk
Total Cost: $13 for 5 bins

This is my favorite because it used to be such a disaster! Now it's neatly organized into 5 stackable bins.

I would love to start a closet organizing business if it paid enough! It was a lot of work, but totally worth it! I know these pictures may not look very exciting to you, but if I would have taken before pictures, you would have been amazed at the difference!

SYTYCD

Tomorrow night (Tuesday) are the Salt Lake City auditions for So You Think You Can Dance?! Watch for my nephew Porter to show off his brake dancing skills! They filmed him three times!

Our Date Night

Brett and I usually spend Friday nights running to WalMart or the grocery store, or at home with Brett playing XBox and me doing dishes or laundry or something fun like that. :) Some of our friends who have kids tell us how we will regret that we never take advantage of this time. So a couple weeks ago I decided we're actually going to start doing something just the two of us on Friday nights. Last Friday we went to the Olive Garden and shared our favorite dish, Steak Gorgonzola-Alfredo. Yum!

Then this last Friday, we were planning on going to Aamodt's Apple Farm in Stillwater. The weather was really cold and rainy but I still wanted to go because the KDWB DJ's were there and I thought it would be fun to see what they looked like. Brett thought I was ridiculous that I still wanted to go when we weren't going to pick apples, and after seeing that there were only about 15 people there (most of them being girls between the ages of 9 and 14), I did feel a little ridiculous. I was not going to ask to take a picture with them but I figured I had to at least get a picture for the blog, so here it is! That's Stevo, Dave, and Lena. Lena looks a lot different then I pictured in my mind.

I still had a good time (the 15 minutes we were there). :) Brett and I shared a Carmel apple and had some apple chips. I entered us in a drawing for Taylor Swift tickets, so I hope we win! Oh, and after Aamodt's Apple Farm, we spent the rest of the evening at WalMart. :) Hopefully it will stop raining around here and we can go back to Aamodt's to pick apples. (And so we can work on the deck before it snows)!

Brett and his Hair

Brett is very frugal. Let me emphasize the word very. I thought I was pretty frugal until I met Brett. Don't get me wrong, being frugal can be a great thing. :)

Anything Brett can do himself, he does it. Which can be great and also not-so-much, because let's face it, no one has time to do everything in the world! He feels he rather spend all morning cutting his hair himself, then paying $10 to get it done. It literally takes a couple hours and then I have to completely clean the bathroom because his hair is everywhere. And he always seems to pick the day after I just thoroughly cleaned the bathroom to cut his hair!

He usually has me help him with the back, but I was in the middle of making scrambled eggs when he was yelling for me. I told him I would just be a minute (as you know, eggs only take like 2 minutes), so I couldn't just leave them on the stove. Well, I guess he didn't want to wait one minute...
He wanted to shave it all off but I kindly asked him to leave it the way it was. I told him he could just tell his work friends that I messed it up. I couldn't see anyway of fixing this and since Brett's a guy, it would grow back in a couple weeks anyway. Plus some friend's of ours were going to take pictures of us for our Christmas card and I reminded him how no one will see the back in the pictures. He thought it would look better if he at least shaved the back so this is what he did:

Ah, Brett...how you make me laugh (well not at the time but it's pretty funny now). :)

I was kind of in a bad mood yesterday because I had a list of things I wanted to get done before General Conference. We missed the entire first session and not one thing on my list got done because we spent all morning on his hair. And to think all of this could have been avoided for $10!

I told him for Christmas, Santa will be getting him a gift card to Fantastic Sams or Cost Cutters and then he'll just have to use it because he knows I would never go there. Brett told me that he would just sell it on Craigslist! Brett, you are something else! :)

Favorite Things Party

My friend Brittany had a "Favorite Things Party" with some of the ladies from church last Thursday night. It was really fun! We all brought three of our favorite things (under $20) to give to someone else. We each drew three names, and those three ladies gave you one of their favorite things. The three lucky people that drew my name and got my favorite things, were Andrea G., Brittney, and Brooke. :)Of course one of my favorite things is a Fruit Tart. I asked Rainbow not to put Blueberries on it because blueberries are not my favorite, or more like my least favorite. It took everything I had to get this to Brittney's house without half of it missing. :) Brittney ended up getting the fruit tart and I was hoping she wouldn't like it and give it back to me. (But, of course, she loved it)!

Another one of my favorite things is food (you know, besides the fruit tart). :) So I got a gift card to Sati Coffee. Sati has the BEST crepes and hot chocolate ever! Crepes and Hot Chocolate are two of my favorites! I was telling the ladies at my work about Sati and they said the owner is a patient of Dr. Powell's (where I work) and that he always brings coupons! I hope he'll be coming back to get his teeth cleaned soon! I'll ask him to hook me up with coupons! (The crepes are not cheap). Andrea G. got that. Hope you enjoy it!

And my last gift was a Bath & Body's Works lotion and Ghirardelli chocolates! I love chocolates! I love Ghirardelli, but honestly they are probably my third favorite chocolates after Godiva and Dove, but I had coupon. :) I also like yummy smelling lotion but lotion isn't a huge favorite thing of mine. Sorry Brooke for getting my lame gift. ;)

Rebekah, Allison and Shelley

Andrea G., Jenni, Brooke, and me

Also there, who are not pictured, was Brittney, Amanda, Becky H., and Martha.
Thanks Brittney for the fun party!

I Had To Blog This!

Snuggie for Dogs! Brett and I were at WalMart tonight and saw this and could not stop laughing! It's true that we have to keep Riley rapped in a blanket at our house so he doesn't freeze. He shakes really bad and will start whining when he's really cold. I joked about how Riley would probably prefer a Snuggie so his arms would be free. You know, free to hold the remote and eat popcorn like the dog pictured. Or free to play a game of backgammon with his other doggie pals. :) Sorry Riley but it will only be about a week before our new furnace is delivered, so you won't have to freeze too much longer!

P.S. I was hoping to find a larger picture of the dogs playing backgammon, but this was the best I could find. We could not stop laughing when we saw it on the back of the box! I think it's hilarious!

CHRISTmas

I am sadden how the real meaning of Christmas has been lost for a lot of people. I was thinking that when we have kids, maybe just their birthday's will be a time for gifts so that gifts will not be a big focus at Christmas. Don't get me wrong, Santa can still come to our home and leave small gifts in their stockings, but it will be nothing extravagant. I had a thought the other day that our gifts to our children could be things that are Christ/church centered, such as a CTR ring, picture of Christ, a church CD, new scriptures or something along those lines. I also would like to spend Christmas day as a family serving others by either volunteering at a soup kitchen, making Christmas dinner for a family in need, cleaning the church, etc. It makes me really sad to see so many children (and even adults) these days being centered on the gifts and about how much money is spent on THEM.

Those of you with children, I want your advice and ideas on how to teach children the real meaning of Christmas?

Hilarious!

You have GOT to watch this video! My FAVORITE part is at about 37 seconds!

More pictures

I hadn't realized that in my earlier post, I didn't include any pictures (besides the family one) of Justin or my mom. Some people were offended. My apologies. Here you go...

Lost and Found

This morning Brett could not find his keys. We looked for almost two hours! Finally, since we were both running VERY late, I told him to take my car so he could get to work and I would find rides to some of the places I needed to be. This morning I was helping a lady in my ward paint. Then I had a LONG "To Do List" that I was planning on getting accomplished before my Relief Society meeting tonight. Well, I found a ride to the lady's house to paint, then I spent the rest of the day not on my "To Do" list, but rather, tearing the house apart looking for Brett's keys so I could take Riley to the vet for his shots. I finally found Brett's keys and got Riley to the vet an hour late (I had called them). Were the keys in the garbage that we went through? No. Were they in the pile of laundry? No. Were they under the furniture that we tipped over all throughout the house? Nope. Were they in the kitchen cabinets or drawers? No. Where they in the yard because Brett had gone to the mailbox? No. Were they in the car or the garage? Nope. I'm too embarrassed to even say where they were because they were just where Brett always puts his keys and right in front of my face the whole time but we both somehow didn't see them for the 2 hours we were looking in the morning and the hour and a half I was looking when I got home from painting! Well now my house is a mess and nothing got down on my list of things to do today. Ugg! But I'm very grateful I found them because Brett only has one set of keys to his car so we weren't sure what we were going to do! So much for a productive day! Well, off to church...

Cabin Pictures

I finally got around to making some of the pictures smaller file sizes. Here are a few more pictures up at my uncle's cabin.

The guys were always playing this game. I forgot what it's called.

Trying to keep our boys warm on an evening pontoon ride.

Grandpa and the boys.

Porter's a little fish.

Boys jet skiing.

Porter tubing with Uncle Butt.
(That's what Porter and Ethan call Brett).

Tubing with Uncle Brandon.

Aaron got the biggest fish!

Captain Ethan

Cute.

Ethan making faces.

Me & PoPo

Ethan & Auntie Andrea

Brett & Andrea

Matching Minnesota shirts
I look awful because I had been crying. (Too much family time, I guess).

Blender Advice

I love these Bacardi Strawberry Daiquiri and Pina Colada mixers! I make them all the time. But just this last weekend our third blender broke while crushing the ice for my Strawberry Daiquiri. We need advice on a really good blender. Our last one was rated pretty well and was also pretty pricey, so I thought it would be in our family for longer than a year or two. Brett said we'd probably have to buy the "Will it Blend?" blender since we've gone through three high quality blenders. However, after looking it up, the "Will it Blend?" blender costs over $400! We're not looking to spend quite that much. :) But please tell me if you have, or know of a great blender that won't brake down crushing ice (and that costs less than $400)! I have a Colada and Daiquiri mix in the freezer just screaming my name!

I Heart the Ellen Show!

Brett and I love Ellen Degeneres! She is so funny! I've tried to get tickets out to her show last year, but no luck. I'll have to try again this year. Anyway, I recorded yesterday's show because it was her season premier. You have to check out this clip of her from yesterday's show with the top ten dancers from last season's So You Think You Can Dance?! So funny!

Too Much Fun in the 'Sota!

Woodbury Days
Last weekend we took a few minutes of our Saturday to go to Woodbury Days. It's a pretty big deal here in Woodbury and we've never gone before. It's pretty much just a small version of the fair the last weekend of August. We walked around for a few minutes and rode the Ferris wheel. It was kind of fun, I guess. :)

Minnesota State Fair!
On Wednesday I had the day off and Brett took a half day for us to go to the Minnesota State Fair! We decided to go on a weekday to miss the weekend crowds. The MN fair is a huge deal here! In fact, I was watching the news the other night and they were live from the fair asking pass-er-byers where they were from and people from all over the US had flown to MN just to come to the fair. Isn't that crazy! I was really hoping to go to the Kelly Clarkson concert at the Fair but it was on a Sunday, so I didn't go. But it turns out she did her vocal warm-up and then canceled due to voice problems, so I didn't really miss out on it after all.

The 1st place biggest pumpkin, over 1,000 lbs from Buffalo, MN!

And of course, the one thing that is a MUST at the fair, the cookies! Yummy!

It was a fun couple of hours, but we were both glad the tickets were free (thanks to my boss giving me two tickets). I guess the fair just isn't our kind of thing. P.S. We went into the Swine building and I almost threw up because of the smell. So gross! Plus I ate about 10 too many cookies, so that probably didn't help either. :)

The best part of the fair (besides the cookies), was when Brett and I ran into Sven Sundgaard! I wanted to get a picture with him but I was too chicken to ask! (He's this super cute weatherman on Kare 11). It's a shame Sven's not into the ladies if you know what I mean. ;)

Trying to get Conan O'Brien to come to the MN State Fair:

More Deck Pictures

I thought I would add a few more pictures of the deck progress.

Brett finishing up the frame

Brett starting to lay the decking!
This is where we are at today! Woot Woot!
Just a few more weekends left of this project (we're hoping)!

Day One & Two of Tiff's Visit

I still have so many pictures I want to post but I just don't have time to post them all, so I'll just start with this.

The first day the Hansen's were here, we went to visit Grandma Lue. I drove to my parents house after church so I could carpool with them for the 2.5 hour drive to Lake Lillian. Grandma Luella is 96 years old and she claimed she knew who we all were when my dad asked her, but she never did say any of our names... When my dad asked her if she knew who he was, she said, "I'll always remember you." It was so sweet.
On Monday, we put Aaron to work! He just loves coming to visit because it's never a vacation for him. :)

Brett and Aaron worked all day digging the holes for the deck but they couldn't get them deep enough (48") because the soil in our neighborhood is basically clay, so the deck now has to be a floating deck since it wouldn't be up to code. So all that work and $60 to rent the auger, well... It was a learning experience for next time I guess. Let's just look at it that way. :)

We sleep with the window open and at 7 AM on Tuesday I woke up to noise in the backyard. I woke up Brett and said, "I think someone's stealing our wood!" (We had almost $1,000 of ceder just piled up in the backyard). We went downstairs and looked out the patio door, and there's my dad working on the holes at 7AM! He drove all the way out to our house to come help and just started working on it by himself.

We really appreciate all of Aaron's and my dad's help on the deck. Thank you so much! Hopefully it will be finished soon!

Family Pictures

The Larson Family It was very windy this day and started to rain, so this was about the only picture that turned out without our hair blowing everywhere.

The Family

The Men

The Girls

The Siblings
I'm sad this is blurry, we were having problems with the camera because Brett had previously dropped it. :(

The Hansen's
The Livingston'sWhat stinks about a digital SLR, is not everyone knows how to use it, so when someone takes pictures of us, they ever turn out. :( Way to go, Tiff. My husband's a ghost.

How cute?

Are we done taking pictures yet?

Old Year Book Photos

A marching band of Andrea's in 1954

Andrea 1982
(two years before I was born).

Brett in 1988

Brett in 1964

Andrea in 1992

Andrea in 1984.

http://www.yearbookyourself.com/

Lots to Post!

I have a ton of fun pictures to post from the Hansen's visit but it will have to wait a few days as I am really overwhelmed right now with my church calling, work, laundry, household projects, etc. But knowing me, I'll probably give in soon and skip a workout, put off grocery shopping, or something more important to make time to make all the pictures smaller file sizes and post them. So look forward to it! ;)

p.s. I updated my journal

Coin Laundry

I saw this for the first time on my friend's blog and I'm in love with it! Lisa Mitchell was the winner of "Australia Idol" season 4. At first I thought the song was a little weird, but I kept finding myself going back to Sheena's blog to listen to it over and over and now I'm a big fan!

The Deck

A couple days ago:



The Deck today:
There's no turning back now! I hope I'll be posting an "After" picture soon!

(P.S. don't look too closely at the 2' tall grass. Our lawn mower broke and we're not sure whether Brett's going to be able to fix it, or if we'll have to buy a new one. And yes, the neighbors HATE us. Although, it's pretty funny watching Riley play in the "jungle").

(P.S.S. I updated my journal).

Salt Lake City

Me & Hansen's with the Eberhard's
We stayed at the Eberhard's in Utah. Becky was our babysitter back in the day. She used to live in Minnesota and started babysitting us when she was just 9-years-old! She was the best babysitter ever! We have stayed in touch over the years and she even flew out to Salt Lake (from Texas where she was living at the time) for my wedding five years ago! I haven't seen the Eberhard's since my family met them in Park City almost 4 years ago!

Saturday we went to the Gateway mall. The kiddos had fun playing in the fountains. Saturday night my friend Katie from my Interior Design days met me at Gateway for dinner! I hope she didn't mine me tagging along on her date. :) I can't believe I haven't seen this girl since before her mission (which was like 2004?)! Where has the time gone?! I told her maybe I won't wait so long to come visit if I have a wedding to come out for. Just kidding, no pressure. :)

The Salt Lake Temple

It was VERY hot on Sunday. The boys, including Aaron, were not happy to be there, but I really wanted to go since we were just 30 minutes away and I haven't been there since my wedding day! Thanks for taking me Hansen's! I wish my hubby would have been there with me though.

Idaho

I can't believe it's been 3 years since I've last been to Idaho! It really doesn't feel like that long ago. Tiff and Aaron's house is absolutely gorgeous! It's for sale if anyone's looking to move to Rigby. Here's a little bit of my trip (the Idaho part, I'll post Utah tomorrow).

Sunday: Church


Reading at bedtime.

Wednesday: I got my hair done at Tiff's Salon. I was supposed to have lunch with Chelsey but my stylist took forever and went an hour past my scheduled time! Chelsey joined me while she waited for me. I felt so bad because she had gotten someone to watch her kids to have lunch with me! Needless to say, lunch was cut short. I was bummed I hardly got to see Chelsey while I was in Idaho.

Thursday: Porter's Soccer Game
Porter and his team did awesome! I can't believe how good 4-year-olds are at soccer!

The Rexburg Temple

(Thursday through Sunday in Utah coming soon!)

Monday: Tiff, the kids and I spent a couple hours at Rigby Lake before my flight back home (well, the day I was supposed to fly home)....

Porter

Ethan

My flight was scheduled to be Monday night from Idaho Falls to Denver, then Denver to Minneapolis. There were storms in Denver so my flight kept getting delayed. I knew I would miss my connecting flight from Denver to MSP (if that flight was on-time). They assured me that flight would probably also be delayed. I called Brett and he looked up my connecting flight and it was showing that it was on time (and also that is was the last flight to Minnesota for the day). Finally after a few hours of waiting at the Idaho Falls airport, I asked if I could change my flight to the next day so I wouldn't be stuck in Denver over night. Then when I called Tiffany to come pick me up, she wouldn't! Her and Aaron had just gotten to a friend's house in Rexburg for dinner and Family Home Evening. She told me I would have a wait a few hours for them. I waited about an hour and then my friend Chelsey called me and she came and got me! I was so grateful for that and also so happy to get to see her again! And this time I got to see her cute family!

I flew home early the next morning. It wasn't so hard to say goodbye this time since the Hansen's are coming out to Minnesota in 3 weeks! We're really excited to use Aaron's skills and build a new deck while he's here! I'm sure Aaron is just as excited as every time they come out, he's put to work on his vacation! I promised him this time, he'll get paid (well, a little bit anyway). :)

Our Visitors!

Brett's parent's, Gordon and LaNeal, came to visit Minnesota a few weeks ago! Gordon spoke at the Health and Physics Conference in Minneapolis and at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. We really enjoyed getting to see them! It was their first time back in MN since our wedding reception 5 years ago and their first time seeing our house. We went to the 'Two-Story-Target' in Minneapolis, the Sculpture Garden's, and a concert at Lake Harriet.

Sculpture Garden's
Aren't they such a cute couple?

Lake Harriet

They also helped us get some work done on our house! It was so helpful! Gordon and LaNeal bought us these beautiful exterior lights for our birthdays. I would say they are a slight improvement over the originals. ;)

Front Before

Back Before
Don't you just love the "just a light-bulb look?" ;)


After
Aren't they so nice?! Thanks again Gordon & LaNeal! Come back soon!

P.S. I got back yesterday from Idaho, I'll blog that trip in a few days when I have more time. :)

Idaho & Utah, Here I Come!

I'm leaving today for Idaho! I'm really nervous about flying and I'm wishing I would have spent a little more for the direct flight. Idaho & Utah friends, call me!

Happy 40th Anniversary!

Brett's parent's Gordon and LaNeal are here in Minnesota this week and Saturday was their 40th wedding anniversary! Brett made his yummy cheesecake! Happy Anniversary Gordon and LaNeal!

4th of July!

I have been so busy this past week, I haven't even had a minute to post our great 4th of July at the Hogan's! We enjoyed swimming and snorkeling in their pool, had the greatest meal ever, and even got front row seats to Jana and Melissa's synchronized swimming show!

Jana & Melissa

Brett

Andrea & Bobbie


Then, just when you thought the day couldn't get any better, it was topped off with a spectacular fireworks show on the driveway!

Thanks Hogan's!!!!

The First Tennis Match

One great thing about our house is the location. We live by a beautiful lake and try to take advantage of it by biking and walking Riley around it. I've always noticed the tennis courts but it wasn't until a couple weeks ago I thought, 'hey, we should get some racquets and start playing!' I told our friends Megan and Tyler to get some racquets too so we can play together! We played on Wednesday night and it was so fun! We're thinking it will take a few more practices before we are good enough to start playing an actual game. :)