May 30, 2011
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
On March 17th, we celebrated St. Patrick's Day by eating green eggs for dinner. I seriously tried taking 50+ pictures and these are the only ones that turned out remotely good.
Spring Break!
We were really trying to figure out what to do for Spring Break. We love Food Network and especially the show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Well one thing led to another and we decided to go to Minneapolis with our friends, the Eagars and experience a Triple D vacation.
We left on Sunday after church, and made the 5 hour or so drive to MSP.
When we got to the hotel, we cooked our pizzas (yes we had one of those awesome rooms with a kitchen in it-Thank you Mike for the hookup!) and planned out our days!
We were going to play games but the kids melted down and we separated. We skyped with our parents and then just went to bed early.
The next morning we ate at the hotel and headed to Como Park Zoo & Conservatory
For lunch, we made our first Triple D stop: Donatelli's
It was AWESOME food! We will definitely go back there.
Then we tried out this other random mall...ended up being a flop as a place just to browse so we rearranged our plans and headed to Mall of America. MOA is overwhelming even for people who grew up in a big city. We browsed through lots of stores for several hours and only made it through one wing of the store. The sad part of the whole thing is the only place we bought stuff was at stores we have here in GF...oh well. We decided to eat an early dinner at the Mall and then go to a Triple D restaurant for the late night happy hour appetizer thing. We decided on Panda Express and the Eagar's made it to Chipotle.
We headed back to the hotel so Lisa and I could watch the season finale of the Bachelor (hey don't judge me and I was right about who ended up as the last one). The boys ditched us so they could go see a movie they wanted. When they got back we were all so tired, we didn't feel up to going to another restaurant. We made plans for Tuesday and the Eagars went to their room. Steven and I stayed up late talking and seriously had one of the best chats of our whole marriage. Reminded me why we are best friends too.
Tuesday we woke up, checked out and headed to breakfast at the Colossal Cafe. Now we watched all the segments of Triple D for all the restaurants we were going to visit. Let's just say Triple D did a good job of making the Colossal Cafe look HUGE...and it wasn't. It held 10 people maxed and we were 6. But, the food was pretty good. This was a little cash-only 2 people working type place in the middle of a neighborhood. They actually had to call in another person to come work because it was so busy (lol).
After the Colossal Cafe, we headed into downtown and went to the Mill City Museum. There used to be a huge flour mill there that exploded and burned down. Well they made the cite into a museum that is really cool. We got to go on a tour on the elevator that told the whole story, watched a rather odd movie, and saw all the original packaging for Pilsbury, Betty Crocker, etc.
We decided to hit one more Triple D restaurant on our way out of town. We stopped at Psycho Suzy's Motor Lounge. We walked in and it was a pretty cool lookin place. When we got there and said we have 4 adults and 2 high chairs, the owner (who we recognized from Triple D) was like...um we don't have 2 high chairs. When the hostess informed her they just got another one in, she got really excited. That should have been our first clue it wasn't really a family restaurant--seriously who only has 2 high chairs?! But, the people were really nice and the food was AMAZING!! We had battered cheese curds and some really good pizza. We would probably go back there again but only if it was in the early afternoon again so we weren't there for the bar scene.
On the way home we stopped at the outlet malls about an hour outside of the cities and I got some good deals at The Children's Place and Carter's. We drove almost the rest of the way, stopped to nurse the baby, and finally made it home about midnight.
It was the funnest vacation ever! We had no car problems. We had a nice hotel room that wasn't in the ghetto. We had awesome company. We had just enough to do, but not too much. AND we stayed under budget.
We left on Sunday after church, and made the 5 hour or so drive to MSP.
When we got to the hotel, we cooked our pizzas (yes we had one of those awesome rooms with a kitchen in it-Thank you Mike for the hookup!) and planned out our days!
We were going to play games but the kids melted down and we separated. We skyped with our parents and then just went to bed early.
The next morning we ate at the hotel and headed to Como Park Zoo & Conservatory
For lunch, we made our first Triple D stop: Donatelli's
It was AWESOME food! We will definitely go back there.
Then we tried out this other random mall...ended up being a flop as a place just to browse so we rearranged our plans and headed to Mall of America. MOA is overwhelming even for people who grew up in a big city. We browsed through lots of stores for several hours and only made it through one wing of the store. The sad part of the whole thing is the only place we bought stuff was at stores we have here in GF...oh well. We decided to eat an early dinner at the Mall and then go to a Triple D restaurant for the late night happy hour appetizer thing. We decided on Panda Express and the Eagar's made it to Chipotle.
We headed back to the hotel so Lisa and I could watch the season finale of the Bachelor (hey don't judge me and I was right about who ended up as the last one). The boys ditched us so they could go see a movie they wanted. When they got back we were all so tired, we didn't feel up to going to another restaurant. We made plans for Tuesday and the Eagars went to their room. Steven and I stayed up late talking and seriously had one of the best chats of our whole marriage. Reminded me why we are best friends too.
Tuesday we woke up, checked out and headed to breakfast at the Colossal Cafe. Now we watched all the segments of Triple D for all the restaurants we were going to visit. Let's just say Triple D did a good job of making the Colossal Cafe look HUGE...and it wasn't. It held 10 people maxed and we were 6. But, the food was pretty good. This was a little cash-only 2 people working type place in the middle of a neighborhood. They actually had to call in another person to come work because it was so busy (lol).
After the Colossal Cafe, we headed into downtown and went to the Mill City Museum. There used to be a huge flour mill there that exploded and burned down. Well they made the cite into a museum that is really cool. We got to go on a tour on the elevator that told the whole story, watched a rather odd movie, and saw all the original packaging for Pilsbury, Betty Crocker, etc.
We decided to hit one more Triple D restaurant on our way out of town. We stopped at Psycho Suzy's Motor Lounge. We walked in and it was a pretty cool lookin place. When we got there and said we have 4 adults and 2 high chairs, the owner (who we recognized from Triple D) was like...um we don't have 2 high chairs. When the hostess informed her they just got another one in, she got really excited. That should have been our first clue it wasn't really a family restaurant--seriously who only has 2 high chairs?! But, the people were really nice and the food was AMAZING!! We had battered cheese curds and some really good pizza. We would probably go back there again but only if it was in the early afternoon again so we weren't there for the bar scene.
On the way home we stopped at the outlet malls about an hour outside of the cities and I got some good deals at The Children's Place and Carter's. We drove almost the rest of the way, stopped to nurse the baby, and finally made it home about midnight.
It was the funnest vacation ever! We had no car problems. We had a nice hotel room that wasn't in the ghetto. We had awesome company. We had just enough to do, but not too much. AND we stayed under budget.
Mar 7: Grad Party
Steven threw me a little grad party for Family Home Evening. He made lots of food and invited over our 'grand forks family'.
Some of the food.
I didn't take any pictures during the party except:
There was lots of good food and even better company. The question I got asked most frequently was, "How does it feel to be done?" My answer: "It feels like a giant weight that I didn't even know was there is lifted off my shoulders".
We are truly blessed to have good friends here. As we told everyone it was Family Home Evening, we thought it best to have some sort of message. I shared this quote:
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, A Prayer for the Children (Apr 2003 CR, 90)
“Live the gospel as conspicuously as you can. Keep the covenants your children know you have made. Give priesthood blessings. And bear your testimony!11 Don’t just assume your children will somehow get the drift of your beliefs on their own. …
“Nephi-like, might we ask ourselves what our children know? From us? Personally? Do our children know that we love the scriptures? Do they see us reading them and marking them and clinging to them in daily life? Have our children ever unexpectedly opened a closed door and found us on our knees in prayer? Have they heard us not only pray with them but also pray for them out of nothing more than sheer parental love? Do our children know we believe in fasting as something more than an obligatory first-Sunday-of-the-month hardship? Do they know that we have fasted for them and for their future on days about which they knew nothing? Do they know we love being in the temple, not least because it provides a bond to them that neither death nor the legions of hell can break? Do they know we love and sustain local and general leaders, imperfect as they are, for their willingness to accept callings they did not seek in order to preserve a standard of righteousness they did not create? Do those children know that we love God with all our heart and that we long to see the face—and fall at the feet—of His Only Begotten Son? I pray that they know this.
“Brothers and sisters, our children take their flight into the future with our thrust and with our aim. And even as we anxiously watch that arrow in flight and know all the evils that can deflect its course after it has left our hand, nevertheless we take courage in remembering that the most important mortal factor in determining that arrow’s destination will be the stability, strength, and unwavering certainty of the holder of the bow.”
I didn't take any pictures during the party except:
There was lots of good food and even better company. The question I got asked most frequently was, "How does it feel to be done?" My answer: "It feels like a giant weight that I didn't even know was there is lifted off my shoulders".
We are truly blessed to have good friends here. As we told everyone it was Family Home Evening, we thought it best to have some sort of message. I shared this quote:
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, A Prayer for the Children (Apr 2003 CR, 90)
“Live the gospel as conspicuously as you can. Keep the covenants your children know you have made. Give priesthood blessings. And bear your testimony!11 Don’t just assume your children will somehow get the drift of your beliefs on their own. …
“Nephi-like, might we ask ourselves what our children know? From us? Personally? Do our children know that we love the scriptures? Do they see us reading them and marking them and clinging to them in daily life? Have our children ever unexpectedly opened a closed door and found us on our knees in prayer? Have they heard us not only pray with them but also pray for them out of nothing more than sheer parental love? Do our children know we believe in fasting as something more than an obligatory first-Sunday-of-the-month hardship? Do they know that we have fasted for them and for their future on days about which they knew nothing? Do they know we love being in the temple, not least because it provides a bond to them that neither death nor the legions of hell can break? Do they know we love and sustain local and general leaders, imperfect as they are, for their willingness to accept callings they did not seek in order to preserve a standard of righteousness they did not create? Do those children know that we love God with all our heart and that we long to see the face—and fall at the feet—of His Only Begotten Son? I pray that they know this.
“Brothers and sisters, our children take their flight into the future with our thrust and with our aim. And even as we anxiously watch that arrow in flight and know all the evils that can deflect its course after it has left our hand, nevertheless we take courage in remembering that the most important mortal factor in determining that arrow’s destination will be the stability, strength, and unwavering certainty of the holder of the bow.”
You can call me Master.
So, in case we're not facebook friends or you missed a few posts back, I have been working on finishing my Master's Degree. After a LOT of work, an almost all-nighter, and a lot of typing I FINISHED!! I actually finished with a 10 hours to spare. My final paper was supposed to be a thesis...which I wrote the first half of in my class last fall. Well, they changed the program requirements and changed it to a case study analysis. Awesome right? But, I sucked it up and wrote the dumb thing. Throughout my writing, I kept writing myself notes of encouragement.
Also, a few times in the middle of the night when I was writing I bought myself a few books on Amazon to motivate me to finish writing. I knew exactly how many points I needed to earn on the final to still pass the class (I had to get a D on the paper at least to pass with a C). Seeing as how I was completely burned out, I set my goals on just passing...and I did...with 101% (thank you extra credit) for my final grade. It was a rough last week, but I won't lie it feels great to be done with it! I started the program before I had any thought of being pregnant and I'm pretty proud of myself that I kept going and finished even though my life changed quite a bit!
Here's what it takes to finish a MA in HR:
wheat thins, several drinks, lots of encouragement, food, books, paper, and of course post-it notes.
To celebrate me actually finishing, we ran errands and I bought my new glue gun (Steven and I made a deal that I could get it and I had a coupon so it was like $2 bucks)
AND we went to Denny's. As anyone with kids probably knows, it's almost impossible to enjoy a meal at a restaurant when you have a very curious baby with you.
As always, we were taking turns with each other to eat, catch the toys, and entertain the baby. Also we were attracting attention of all the elderly couples around us. After a particularly long time which ended in Steven taking the baby for a walk, we finally finished. When we went to pay, we learned that someone else had paid for the majority of our bill. We are pretty sure it was an elderly couple we had noticed watching us and the baby. Did they know that we were there celebrating such a big thing for me? Probably not. Will they ever know? Probably not. But we hope they are blessed for their kind deed :)
AND as if this day could get any better, we got a call on the way home to learn that our sister-in-law was in labor. She ended up having the baby within the night...
So in one day:
I finished my MA in HR
We got dinner paid for by an anonymous stranger
AND we became an aunt, uncle, and cousin!
Also, a few times in the middle of the night when I was writing I bought myself a few books on Amazon to motivate me to finish writing. I knew exactly how many points I needed to earn on the final to still pass the class (I had to get a D on the paper at least to pass with a C). Seeing as how I was completely burned out, I set my goals on just passing...and I did...with 101% (thank you extra credit) for my final grade. It was a rough last week, but I won't lie it feels great to be done with it! I started the program before I had any thought of being pregnant and I'm pretty proud of myself that I kept going and finished even though my life changed quite a bit!
Here's what it takes to finish a MA in HR:
To celebrate me actually finishing, we ran errands and I bought my new glue gun (Steven and I made a deal that I could get it and I had a coupon so it was like $2 bucks)
AND we went to Denny's. As anyone with kids probably knows, it's almost impossible to enjoy a meal at a restaurant when you have a very curious baby with you.
As always, we were taking turns with each other to eat, catch the toys, and entertain the baby. Also we were attracting attention of all the elderly couples around us. After a particularly long time which ended in Steven taking the baby for a walk, we finally finished. When we went to pay, we learned that someone else had paid for the majority of our bill. We are pretty sure it was an elderly couple we had noticed watching us and the baby. Did they know that we were there celebrating such a big thing for me? Probably not. Will they ever know? Probably not. But we hope they are blessed for their kind deed :)
AND as if this day could get any better, we got a call on the way home to learn that our sister-in-law was in labor. She ended up having the baby within the night...
So in one day:
I finished my MA in HR
We got dinner paid for by an anonymous stranger
AND we became an aunt, uncle, and cousin!
Date night: Mar 4th
For Family Date night, Steven decided to give me a break from writing my final paper and we went to dinner at a place called Space Aliens...In true ND style, it is a family joint, connected to a bar with an arcade in it. I swear we're not THAT bad of parents...but Quintin really thinks he needs lots of food.
By the way...he only sucked on it. We didn't let him eat it and it had no spices on it.
We also let him try out his first arcade game. Clearly he was really excited about it.
After date night, we went home, got Quintin in bed and I went back to writing my beast of a paper.
We also let him try out his first arcade game. Clearly he was really excited about it.
After date night, we went home, got Quintin in bed and I went back to writing my beast of a paper.
First Trip to the ER
On March 3rd, we took Quintin to the ER. He had been running a fever and tylenol wasn't really helping. Diagnosis: Ear Infection.
Why is it that your kid can be MISERABLE all day at home and then you take them to the Dr. and they smile and coo at all the nurses?! Our ER takes patients in order of severity...so of course because Quintin decided to coo and smile we got put at the bottom of the list. But, we got some antibiotics in him and he was back to normal in no time.
Also...we learned that even though we knew Q wasn't deathly sick, it was still AWFUL to see him on the hospital bed getting examined :(
PS...this was why we were waiting for the dose of medicine...it was almost midnight...and I had spent a long day working on my final paper and taking care of a sick baby.
Why is it that your kid can be MISERABLE all day at home and then you take them to the Dr. and they smile and coo at all the nurses?! Our ER takes patients in order of severity...so of course because Quintin decided to coo and smile we got put at the bottom of the list. But, we got some antibiotics in him and he was back to normal in no time.
Also...we learned that even though we knew Q wasn't deathly sick, it was still AWFUL to see him on the hospital bed getting examined :(
PS...this was why we were waiting for the dose of medicine...it was almost midnight...and I had spent a long day working on my final paper and taking care of a sick baby.
Presidents Day-Feb 21
For President's Day, we went to IHOP as usual...Guess who's big enough to sit in the high chair :)
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