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.”

Steven turned 25!

In July...and I'm just now posting about it. BUT it was the very last day of July, so I'm not really THAT behind.
For his birthday, he voted to have his gift be getting to go to the OshKosh Air Show in Wisconsin with a group from school. He left me for like 5 days and went and looked at airplanes, met pilots, camped out, did other man stuff. I stayed home and hung out with the baby. So, that was technically his birthday present.

But, it was BEFORE his birthday and I still wanted to celebrate somehow...so we had a party with some of our friends. It was the first time we had really had a group of people over since we've lived here. Our new apartment isn't huge, but it was big enough to have people over. We played Jenga Max (one of Steven's gifts) and we also played Mad Jab. AND we had cake, ice cream, and some other foods that I never took a picture of.

The families with kids all left right as the other couple without kids showed up. They stayed and chatted with us for awhile (but I forgot to take their picture!). We watched this crazy rain storm that blew in too.

Overall, it was pretty fun. Steven got to hang out with all of our GF friends, spend some time with airplanes, and his old mission companion even called from Brazil. Here's some pictures of the party

The cake-it got kind of melty, but I made that bad boy into an airplane!


Blowing out LOTS of candles:


Playing Jenga Max


The Butlers


The Smiths


The Adams


The Piersons (minus Dallin who was at summer camp for ROTC)

22

So my birthday was last Saturday. Here are the highlights:
-Joleen and the kids came and kidnapped me and took me to Ihop for breakfast. I haven't got to hang out with them for awhile and I loved it.
-Anna took me to see Eclipse (for the second time-don't judge us) on Friday afternoon and it was wonderful again!
-I called and talked to my dad (we share a bday) on Friday which was his Saturday. He loved his present and it was just good to talk to him. We haven't really missed celebrating our birthday together since I was born.
-Steven and I stayed up until it was 12:01 AM and I opened the package from my mom and the card from my in-laws.
-My sister Talia was the first to text to say Happy Birthday and Steven only beat her to it by half a second.
-Baby D let me sleep in for 2 extra hours (minus bathroom trips). It was awesome!
-Steven showed up to the house with flowers after his flight.
-We tried to go to a clay center that we thought was a paint-your-own pottery place. It was more like a non-profit place with a small exhibit in the front. But, the guy gave us the background and the whole tour of everything.
-Steven and I ran errands and he bought me a storage ottoman that I've been wanting.
-Anna and Sam came to visit and brought me pink flowers and chocolates!
-Steven made me dinner.
-We installed the AC unit in our bedroom. (Steven also slammed his finger in the window in the process)
-My mother in law called and I got to talk to her.
-Steven took me to see the Eclipse movie again.
-Steven made me birthday cupcakes and we ate all but one by ourselves.
-My phone stopped working at noon on my bday so if you text me or called me, I didn't get it but thanks anyways!
-Joleen & Mike and Sarah all threw me a combined FHE birthday party the following Monday. Sarah picked up a sweet pinata and Joleen made a wonderful ice cream cake. It was fun to celebrate with so many good friends. And, I didn't even know it was a bday party until we got there. Here's some pictures from that because I didn't feel like having any other pictures taken that weekend :)







PS Steven said he was going to post 22 things he loves about me...we'll see what happens!

4th of July

We celebrated the fourth all weekend long.
We started by having breakfast at Ihop. Growing up pancake breakfast was a July 4th tradition. They don't do that here, so we had our own.
We also bought some new flip flops at Old Navy for $1...we bought some for Baby D for next summer too!

Basically, it was about 95 degrees on the July 3rd. We had just moved and didn't have AC units. Thankfully, we have some now thanks to a couple in our ward. It was so hot inside that we were basically stripped down to our underwear and trying not to touch anything and stick to it.
Just before the ward BBQ, we decided to brave the heat and made these Rice Krispy treat flags (idea stolen from my sister).


The BBQ was pretty fun and the weather was very much improved (breeze and only 90 degrees). We enjoyed socializing, watching other people's kids (and then giving them back), LOTS of good food, and Steven even got to play a round of horseshoes.
After the BBQ, I came home and tried to cool off and Steven drove to go shooting and light off some fireworks (as a preview) with two of our friends.

The next day, we went to church as usual. I used my pipe chimes for our primary music time. I had fun hopefully the kids did too! After having a nap and finishing up some homework, it was the most anticipated event of the weekend: FIREWORKS!
Steven was ecstatic to be able to light his own fireworks. We were rather deprived of that as kids in AZ. He had a budget and I let him go pick out fireworks alone earlier in the week. Such.A.Bad.Idea. These fireworks stores are bigger than Costco and filled with fireworks...and he went to 2 of them! He came back with all of this:


I took the lighter away and held onto it until it was time. We planned our evening with the Hanson family. Anna & Sam tried to join us at first too, but Sam did not like the fireworks. She was shaking and trying to go 'bye bye' the whole time so they had to leave. We started lighting off fireworks right behind the university apartments...well as Amy predicted, the University Police showed up. He just rolled down the window and said "NO. Take them outside of city limits". Luckily he didn't just give us the ticket that costs $101. We were trying to figure out where to go outside of city limits and we decided to stay in town and watch the city fireworks first. After a pretty good city display, we were on the hunt for a new location. We drove about 2 miles south (it's a small city) and were out of the limits. We pulled up to a house that is still being built and had a large dirt driveway to light off fireworks in. Steven & Gary preceded to light off their fireworks for the next 2 hours. There were a few close calls when they weren't sure which way the firework took off, but we all returned home safely.

Steven has a list of the fireworks he's going to buy for next year. I can't wait. I hope our baby likes the fireworks. I love the fourth of July.