Our first FHE as a family of 3!

Q's first Family Home Evening was on Oct. 25th at 6 days old. First, we had pumpkin-shaped pizza.

Then, we read in The Ensign about temples and talked about how grateful we are to have a temple marriage and an eternal family.
Last, we played Swipe. Click the word to read how you play it. This is a game Steven & I have played since our honeymoon. So in almost 3 years, we've played it quite a bit...and Steven has only won me ONE TIME!!!
So for FHE, Q was on Steven's team. Steven had him breath on the dice and rubbed his head for good luck. Well it worked because they got ALL the chips and I only had 2 die. Q must have beginner's luck. Check out the look of shear astonishment on Steven's face...he was so excited he almost woke Q up when they won!

Bismarck Temple Trip

A few weeks ago, Ya ya I'm behind again...sue me, it was Stake Temple Day. We have always participated in this whenever we could, but it has never been the same as it was this time.

First, it means a lot more when you have to drive 4 hours each way to get to the temple. We wouldn't change this trip for anything. We have always been spoiled living less than an hour away from a temple. We have also lived by a temple that operates almost every hour (sometimes on the half hour too) every day of the week except Sunday & Monday. It was surprising to hear that the Bismarck temple only operates on Thursday night at 5 & 7, Friday night at 6 & 8 and Saturday at 9, 11, & 1. All in all, it takes a lot more effort and planning to attend the temple here. Several times in AZ, Steven and I would randomly decide to have date night at the temple, or we could take the youth during the day. It was close enough to go on a weekday even! We definitely took advantage of it there.
We left Friday afternoon with our new, awesome friends the Hanson's. We rented a car...I don't remember what it was, but it was nice and saved so much money on gas (The Hansons also drive a gas-guzzling jeep). The 4 hr trip there FLEW by because of the great conversation, yummy road trip snacks, and Steven's persistence of listening to Michael Jackson.
We got there and checked in our hotel, visited the Smiths for a bit (they had gone up earlier in the day), jumped on our bed for a minute, and then we went to the pool. After the pool when we were all starving, we circled the city for some food. Never in my life have I been so excited to see a 10 story building before! Bismarck was a huge city compared to Grand Forks!
We were all indecisive and finally decided on Applebee's. BUT as soon as we turned in to Applebee's, we saw the sign for Olive Garden and quickly, unanimously changed our mind! There are two Applebee's here in GF and there is no Olive Garden. Also, Steven and I have never been to an actual Olive Garden restaurant. Our wedding luncheon came from Olive Garden, but that was a limited Olive Garden experience. The food was SO good! How did we never go there before? Poor little Hannah (the Hanson's daughter) got wiped out and fell asleep on the floor while we finished eating.
Oh and some guy proposed to his girlfriend at the table right behind us...it was distracting, a little awkward, and I hope Olive Garden had some more romantic meaning or memory to them than just being random...
After dinner, we went back to the hotel and watched Food Network a little before we crashed. The next morning we slept in and took advantage of the awesome continental breakfast (nice hotel= nice breakfast). Then, we checked out and headed to the temple. The temple was a small temple, but just as beautiful as the rest. I have never been in a temple that small before, but it felt how it should and I was happy to be there!

*PS I wear tights now-isn't that so not me? But I'm rather attached to my legs, so they are not optional.

When our session was over, we went and found the Smith's kids and Hannah at the church and stayed there talking for awhile. When we could avoid it no longer, we headed home (after stopping for lunch first). We got home when it was still daylight and had a blast. Thank you for Gary & Amy for planning this and letting us come along for the ride! The next stake temple trip is in April, and we can't wait!

Endings & Beginnings

It's hard to think that exactly one week ago from today we were packed up in the U-haul, saying goodbyes to friends and family and headed into the unknown.

We are *mostly* settled in now so we figured we should hold true to our promise. Our new years resolution: to blog once a day for the entire time we are in Grand Forks, ND. Why? Well because it will be a good way to MAKE ourselves write down what we are doing. AND it will make our mom's more at ease if they can see what we're up to.

So in this blog, we'll give ya a run down of our last week- which could possibly be our most busy week yet. Therefore, it's a tad bit on the longer side. Read as far as you want & keep in mind all of these pictures are from long days of driving, I was sick and we were both very tired :)

We started our moving road trip last Wednesday, December 30th, 2009. We got off to a late start, but all was well. We simply ran out of time the night before to try and finish everything. We drove about 12 hours. It probably would have been less time but we drove through almost 8 hours of weather. YUCK! We finally made it to Amarillo, TX late that night.

Thursday, December 31st, 2009-

We woke up to a light snow fall. We decided to head out and hope that we could beat the storm that was supposed to head in the direction we were driving. The odd thing was, the worst weather we had was in Amarillo, TX and just outside of Albuquerque. We had no weather after we got out of Amarillo.

We took the opportunity to stop at the Oklahoma City, OK temple. It is very small and it was our first taste of the cold weather. The stake center it was next too was almost as big as the temple. But, like all temples it was beautiful.

We got all the way through Oklahoma, and Kansas and we ended up in Lincoln, NE. We checked into our hotel about 45 minutes before the new year. Steven was sad that the ball had already dropped in NYC (he forgot about the time difference). I was still feeling very under the weather (nothing like waking up the morning of a long road trip with a terrible cold), but we resolved to celebrate nonetheless! Steven cut his hand open while trying to open our bottle of Martinelli's, but nothing would stop us! We enjoyed our sparkling cider watched some Food Network (that is our official hotel room entertainment) and crashed.

Friday January 1st, 2010

We allowed ourselves to sleep in because we knew we had a shorter drive, it was cold, and let's face it, we were EXHAUSTED!! Luckily the hotel manager was very chill because she let us check out a few minutes late.

We headed up to Omaha, NE because we wanted to stop and see the Winter Quarters temple. Turns out there is a visitor's center there called Mormon Trail Center and a pioneer cemetary. We took some pictures and had the tour of the visitor's center. It was very neat. We left in awe that pioneers lived there for winter- we were freezing and we had on coats and lots of layers!! They lived in log cabins with sod roofs!

After stopping for some lunch, we decided to put some road behind us. We traveled and traveled and traveled. In some random town in Nebraska, we stopped to get gas and they wouldn't let us pay before we pumped---in fact they couldn't even do that. It was all on the honor system and you paid after you got your gas. Also, we saw two people come and park their cars, leave them running and unlocked and go inside into the gas station...small towns I guess. After a lot of endless miles of snow covered surroundings (but clear roads) we ended up in East Grand Forks, MN in our hotel.

10 states

3 days

2 drivers/sore butts

1 cause

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

We woke up to the coldest weather either of us had ever experienced. The first sign should have been that the car wouldn't remote start. That is problematic seeing as how it was close by our room and it's almost brand new. We walked out to the car to find almost everything FROZEN!! and when I say frozen, there is NO exaggeration. Steven had left his leather coat in the back seat, in a pile. When we took it out, it was still in the same form, crumpled up, frozen. The i-pod dock cord was frozen in almost a horizontal line. Cords are supposed to bend. We could go on and on, but it makes us shiver.

We headed from the hotel back into Grand Forks* and to the apartment leasing office. Then, we followed the leasing agent to our new home sweet home. And then the fun really began. We unpacked and unpacked and we are still unpacking. Luckily, one of the guys from our new Elders Quorum showed up. A BIG shout out goes out to Mike Smith. We would never have made it without you. You are the ultimate EQ 1st Counselor. It was the coldest day in history (at least in mine and Steven's history) and you were helping us move!

After having all of our boxes INSIDE of our new apartment, we headed to the thrift stores to look for some furniture (we left most of ours at home). We didn't have much luck, but we did find a sweet deal on a down coat for Steven.

After this, we decided we were very tired of pulling the Uhaul, so we returned it. We went to Wal-Mart and bought some storage stuff (aka our dresser) and some groceries.

We headed home and unpacked the kitchen. We're happy to report that all but 3 cups *that we are not particularly attached too* made it through the move. A BIG thanks to Mom & Dad Dorn for helping us pack up everything! We unpacked the kitchen, and had a little picnic on some moving boxes in our living room/ dining area.

We were going to watch a movie (the first thing Steven unpacked was the new TV...after all he did wait to open it from Thanksgiving to Christmas and he didn't even get to use it until we moved- I know I'm mean) BUT we were exhausted. After dinner, we set up our matress on the floor with the flannel sheets, electric blanket and down comforter and finally headed to bed!Steven said "I'm gonna go shower and then I'll come back and we can say prayers together and go to sleep" Well, I said my prayers and I was OUT before he even got out of the shower. Tired does not even cover it!

January 3rd, 2010

Well, we were sore as heck and we slept like bears in hibernation underneath our warm covers. If it hadn't been for the people running up and down the stairs (that are above our bedroom) we may never have woken up. We did however wake up...at 10:30am. Which is not that big of a deal normally except that church started at 10. So, we frantically threw open a few suitcases, found some clothes and got to church by 11:30. Did we mention it takes 15 minutes longer to get anywhere here because you have to wait for the car to get warm enough to use the power steering? It's great, trust me.

Church was great as always. The experience was much more welcoming than our first impression. We got to go to adult sunday school together for the first time in 2 years. That is a miracle by itself. We met several other ward members and the weather really wasn't anything compared to what it had been on Saturday. You would be surprised how many people from Arizona move here. crazies.

After church, we came home and worked on unpacking some of our living room and bedroom. We took a brief nap and woke up to go eat dinner with some ward members. Remember Mike Smith, the guy who saved us by helping us move? Ya well him and his sweet wife Jolene invited us to their house for Sunday dinner because they knew it would probably be hard to find things to cook with. They are a sweet, sweet family and we hope to get to know them better. They have 3 ADORABLE kids that were tons of fun to watch and play with. They had also invited another young couple from the ward, the Jacobs. Mike is an A&P (Airplane mechanic). The husband of the Jacobs, also named Steven, is going to school for ATC (Air traffic control) and my Steven is the pilot. It was fun to see all three angles of different things they were talking about. We enjoyed delicious lasagna, salad, bisuits. Best of all, was dessert. We made our own waffle cones and we had home made ice cream. And I'm not kidding. It was negative somethin degrees outside and we were eating ice cream! At first when they offered we laughed because we thought it was a joke...but turns out it wasn't and we were glad it wasn't. Those were some good waffle cones and REALLY good ice cream!

We left and came home to Skype with our moms. We talked with Steven's mom first and gave her and Andrew the tour of our new house. Then, we called my mom and walked her through setting up her own SKYPE so we could give her the tour. We are super greatful for modern technology and I'm pretty sure our mom's are too.

We ended up staying up late enough to watch our movie. The commissioning movie for the new TV- well Transfomers of course.

Monday, January 4th, 2010-

This was a rather productive day. We set up our bed, organized our living room, built our desk, filing cabinet, and bookcase (we bought them on Saturday) and unpacked all of our clothes (which was about 5 suitcases-no small feat!)

After everything was mostly out of the boxes, we were able to better assess what storage needs we had. So, we set out on adventure to Target. At Target, we found a new kitchen table, storage drawers for the bathroom (that match our shower curtain colors PERFECTLY). A rack to hang all of our coats and jackets on and curtains for both the living room and the office. We got a killer deal on everything!

We also went back to Wal-mart to buy another 'dresser' to match the one we bought on Saturday. We also had to buy a heavy duty extension cord. Steven got the car all ready for cold weather. Everyone here uses a block heater- basically you plug in your car to make sure it doesn't freeze and die. The extension cord we had snapped in pieces because of the cold. So, we bought a heavy duty one that is supposed to work up to -40 degrees. We hope it doesn't have to test that limit!

We came home from our shopping adventures and went to work settling in. We got a text from my mom saying my siblings wanted to see our new house too. So we Skyped yet again and it was good to see the brothers. They liked that they could get the tour of the apartment virtually.

After, we got almost everything but the office unpacked and decorated & decided to treat ourselves for our productive day by watching My Sister's Keeper- it's a sad sad movie, but a good one.

Tuesday January 5th, 2010

Happy 2 year anniversary to us! Since this post is about what we have been doing, we'll just stick to that for now. Maybe tomorrow will be the 'here's us on our wedding day, here's us now- still in love' type post. BUT today-

We woke up and ate breakfast together. Then, we got all of the last minute school stuff taken care of for Steven-books, double checking classes, etc. Then, Steven worked on hiding all of the boxes- under the bed, he's a genious I tell ya! and I worked on organizing the bathroom stuff. Afterwards, we went to work on the office. If any of you saw our office in AZ, you'd be so proud of our office here. It's almost spotless!

While I was unpacking and working on stuff, Steven made a trip to the dumpster...an otherwise irrelevant detail, except that while he was gone, he walked down to the chocolate factory and bought me some chocolate covered cinnamon bears. He's a keeper...

I'm kinda excited to go back to work next week and work in our office. And, I really like the curtain. and, it's my office so Steven lets me do whatever I want as far as decorating, organizing, etc.

And then, the most daunting task of the day- Laundry. We googled to find a laundromat here in GF. They all have very odd combinations. A few were laundry & tanning. One was laundry and a car wash. The one we went to ended up being laundry & re-upholstery shop. Figure that one out. Is that normal pairings for laundromats? Anyways, we did laundry. It took about 5 loads. Keep in mind we were washing some new towels and about 1 1/2 weeks worth of clothes. It's pretty amazing how fast the cost adds up when you're paying in quarters. I think it stung more because we're not used to paying to do laundry. Anyways, we read and talked and hung out doing laundry. It was kind of fun actually.

After our laundry adventure (there's not really an adventure but I think everything seems more exciting when you call it an adventure), we came home to get ready for our anniversary dinner. We went to a steakhouse called Ground Rounds. It was delicious and our server was very good. Steven had some steak and shrimp and really good fries. I had this delicious tortellini in a creamy sauce. Yum- almost makes me want to eat the leftovers right now! Anyways, after dinner we came home again and started this blog. Which is taking forever, and we hope you all appreciate this....

After getting through the first few days via blog, we left to go to the movies. We saw "The Blindside". We wanted to see it awhile ago, but didn't get to and it was well worth the wait. If you haven't seen it, we highly suggest it. Especially if you like "Remember the Titans" or "The Express".

And now we're here. Home, happy & still madly in love. Stay tuned for tomorrow's posting of our new adventures.

*East Grand Forks, MN is across the street/ Red River from Grand Forks, ND. We live in Grand Forks. The towns are often referred to as one big town. We'll try to distinguish even though it doesn't particularly matter :)

A Long Overdue Update-Summer Version

As far as I can tell, I haven't truly updated since May...As you can probably tell, we've been busy. So here is our long overdue update--summer version.

In May I threw a bridal shower for my sister-in-law to-be:

Steven went on Father's/Son's campout with his dad/ brothers:



I spent Memorial Day Weekend with my sisters and mom in San Diego. We spent time on the beach, went to a Padres game, ate LOTS of good food, went shopping, bought lots of flip flops and had TONS of fun!!!
June--
The best part of June was that I said goodbye to KinderCare and hello to the Make-A-Wish Foundation!! I started as a summer intern and I'm still there. MAW is by far the greatest place I have ever worked. It will get it's own post when I leave in a few weeks :)

Also in June, we welcomed another Dorn to the family...Greg got married to Caitlin. Steve was best man and I was a bridesmaid.
Shortly after that wedding, I flew to Utah to see my dear friend, Katie get married to my other friend Gabe. I got to spend the better part of the week there to see her go through the temple, go to a Kelly Clarkson concert for the bachelorette party, help set up and attend the reception & be in the temple for her sealing. I know Heavenly Father believes in marriage!
A big shout out goes out to Jed and Jeff (two of Steve's mission buddies) who drove me from the airport. They actually parked in the garage to come pick me up in person, but I was waiting on the curb trying to minimize their efforts. They took me to the open house of the Oquirrh Mtn temple & to the temple for Katie's endowment. They waited while I was in the session and ate before they picked me up again and took me to my friend's house in Provo! AND Jed came and got me and took me back to the airport (and dealt with a minor meltdown I was having) on Saturday. Seriously those 2 saved me several times & I couldn't have been there for all the partying without them!!


After flying home, I was picked up at the airport by my cute husband and Raf. We drove straight to GIRLS CAMP!! Seeing as how I have been camp director for two years, I obviously couldn't miss camp. I ended up only missing the initial bus ride up and the decorating the cabin part. Luckily I had an AMAZING assistant director (Rikki) who went up with the girls and everything was great when I got there!!! I learned a lot about myself at Girls Camp...as an individual and as a leader. I got to see little glimpses of how special the Young Women are. I imagine that is how Heavenly Father feels about all His children who make good decisions. I can't tell you it was an easy week, but I sure learned A LOT and more importantly I learned to love the YW even more. It's easy to feel the Spirit when you're surrounded by all of God's beautiful creations!!!


Another fun thing in June was getting to go to a Dbacks game with the other summer interns. We went out for dinner (appetizers) at Macayo's and then took the light rail downtown to the game. We ended up split up for the game, but I had fun with Carrie & Victoria who also interned in my department!!!

Whew---we were clearly very busy in June. No wonder I didn't blog more this summer!!
For the 4th of July, we decided to combine our families (sometimes having in-laws that are good friends is SUCH a blessing & fun thing) to have a big BBQ/ Swimming party. We also watched the fireworks from the roof of my parents house. I almost drown in the early evening but did recover after my inhaler, lots of coughing/puking up water and taking the rest of the afternoon easy. The food was SOOOO good, I ate way too much and it was fun to have both families together.

Next, I turned 21...yipee! Here were some highlights:
-Steven bought me the cutest shoes ever for my birthday and he bought me a pink maglite.
-Steve came to work and took me out to lunch at Macayo's.
-My boss planned a surprise party for me with our department complete with DELICIOUS cake, balloons, streamers, EVERYTHING, even pretty crazy daisies (one of my faves)in a COOL vase
-The CEO of the company came up and wished me happy birthday and talked to me a bit!
-a few of my YW and my sister came over to have cake and watch chick flicks with me (Steve had previously committed to taking his Boy Scouts camping, so it was girls night)
All in all, it was a lot of fun!!

*Note: The shoes Steven picked out for me are the pink polka dot ones. He's pretty great.


For those of you who don't know, I'm daddy's girl THROUGH AND THROUGH...this may have something to do witht he fact that we share a birthday (or it's just that I'm very spoiled and he's always been WRAPPED around my finger...) Anyways, for our birthdays, my mom bought the four of us tickets to go see WICKED!!! Despite the close call of the lake trip for YW (that was supposed to be only morning and turned into an all day thing) and making it to the show, it was amazing. I've seen it before on San Diego Broadway, but Steven had never heard more than a few of the songs...needless to say he was hooked. One of the actresses (Galinda) accidentally threw her wand at part of it and it was HILLARIOUS to see the two leads try not to laugh and keep going. Good to know everyone is human!

*NOTE: I typed this post and then added pictures later...I realized the Wicked pictures are on my mom's computer...I'll have to find those!

Also in July, we said temporary goodbyes to our dear friends, the Drotars. They went to Pennsylvania for a few months for Raf's internship. We had a fun little get together with some other friends & we went to the temple with the four of us and Chris. We missed them like crazy and are glad they're back!!


In July, Steven turned 24!!! July is a month full of birthdays for us!! We love it :) We are three weeks short of 3 years apart. On Steve's actual birthday, we went mini golfing with our friend Tom and his girlfriend Chole (pronounced Show-lee) and her son Caleb. For family celebration, we went to Sardella's and had a cake that I attempted to decorate.



Also in July, probably the most important thing that happened for us was that Steven finally got his private pilot's license!!! He worked so hard and went through a lot of trials to get it, but he did it!! It's so good to feel progress when things start to feel like they are standing still. He felt ligit wearing his aviator sunglasses (birthday present) because he finally had his license. One down, several to go!!! (I'm not really sure how many he'll end up with)


In August, we discovered that our bed makes for a very cool fort. We decided to make a fort and watch a movie in there. While I showered, Steven decided we needed the complete surround sound office set up and snacks. I came out to quite the set-up!!
*Note: see all those cords, those were for the surround sound he hooked up.

My Beehives also threw a triple baby shower for 3 of the ladies in YW who are pregnant. I'm glad they're all finally showing (and one had her baby) because I was tired of getting asked if I was the pregnant one!! The girls did a great job...it was lots of work, but what party isn't?!

Clearly, we had a very busy summer! Stay tuned for the long overdue update-Fall version!