Random Happenings

After rushing to find my camera to get a picture today I started looking through the pictures on the camera and saw so many fun things I could have blogged about! Thus, my random post of various random happenings in our lives.

First, the picture I was rushing to get today. I have been telling Kory that Buster (our dog) has become quite addicted to the cherry tomatoes growing in our garden. Of course he doesn't believe me, who has ever heard of a dog loving cherry tomatoes? I stepped outside today and there she was eating tomatoes right off the plant! She got a little camera shy once I got there but I feel I now have documented evidence!

Selecting the perfect tomato!
If you look closely, you can see the red tomato in her mouth. (proof people, proof)
And of course, the satisfied after-effect of the tomato.

Conference! Kory's family was lucky enough to get some tickets to the Sunday Afternoon Session. It is always such a special experience to be there in the building and hear the powerful messages, feel of the spirit as the prophet walks in, and, my personal favorite part, being in the same room as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir when they sing.I must say we had a pretty good view!

The wonderful fam! Sorry Kory!

We had the chance to go to the rodeo this summer. Ever since we have been married we have been telling each other how fun it would be to go to a rodeo. This year we decided it was time to actually do something about it and it was a blast. I think I'm ready to make this a yearly tradition.
The "Indians" did some very cool tricks bareback.

Not our sexiest portrait. I promise we are much cuter and skinnier in person.

Finally, I have to do a little bragging because I am so proud of my accomplishment. You will see on my sidebar I have a recipe blog that I follow faithfully. melskitchencafe.blogspot.com. Well not only do I love ALL the meals I try from her website but I also always marvel over how pretty she makes her food look. She had a salad on there that looked challenging, gorgeous, and delicious and I was determined to try it. It took me forever to make and I used at least 10 bowls to make it. It turned out to be so YUMMY! Kory got extremely impatient at the end when I was arranging it all on a serving platter (it took me probably 15 minutes just to make it pretty enough for a picture) so I could get proof of my hard work. What do you think? For a beginner I thought I did a dang good job!

So there you have it a small catch up on the random happenings in our life!

4th of July!

Kory and I had a couple adventures for this 4th of July. One perk to Kory's job is he will sometimes get free tickets to various events. This time it was to a Demolition Derby in Ogden. Neither Kory or I have ever been to a derby before and I was a little hesitant. How fun can watching cars run into each other be? We had a blast. We both had fun picking our favorites and cheering them on to the finals. Not to mention the fun we had watching people around us. Lets just say Demolition Derbies attract some...interesting people.
On Monday we met up with Kory's family at Dierke's Lake in Twin Falls Idaho for a little swimming, cliff jumping, and dutch oven-ing. I have never been cliff jumping. The idea scared me to death. There were kids there jumping from cliffs the height of the Rocket at Lagoon, into water, without seatbelts, or chairs! Kory got me up on a medium sized cliff and I stood there about a half hour before I had to climb down. :-( I did eventually jump from a rock. Yes, it was extremely low, yes, I got major butterflies doing it, and yes, I am very proud of myself. Here is a little video of Kory's jump. If you scroll forward to about 18 seconds you can see the grand moment.

And here is a picture to hopefully show the height a little bit better. If you look at the picture the rock he jumped from is not where he is actually standing but from where the strangers feet are in the upper left area. And if you look in the lower right area you can see the amazing beast I conquered. (right behind the bush :-) WOW!)

Vacation!!!

I thought it was due time to post about our vacation to Disneyland a couple weeks ago. We were able to get a really nice 4 star hotel on priceline for only $35 a night! It was definitely the nicest place we have ever stayed. Our plan was to go to Disneyland for 4 days and do something else in the middle to break it up. I LOVE Disneyland! We met up with my sister and her family there and it was a BLAST! I started contemplating moving into one of the houses in New Orleans Square right by Pirates of the Carribbean. Kory put a stop to that notion as soon as I started to mention it. :-(
Kory is in love with the Pixar movie Cars. He could watch it over and over and over again. When he saw that there was a spot to pose with them he was thrilled! We also had to run all the way from one end of Disneyland to the middle of California Adventure one day in 5 minutes to make it so Kory could witness Lightning McQueen and Mater in live action in the parade.

You can't see it here but Minnie wouldn't even look at me. She just sat there and flirted with my husband the whole time. The nerve!!!!
We took a break from Disneyland midweek and went to an aquarium and the beach.
Brian, my bro-in-law was nice enough to let Kory give his body board a whirl. I think he caught a wave once for a couple seconds. I have a video but it ended up being about 10 minutes. All in all it was an amazing trip. I so did not want it to end. I just love vacations!

More Excitements

2 posts in one day! I'm trying to make up for all my missed time. I don't know if it is odd to blog about every new thing we buy or make or do with our yard but it gives me thrills to show off the cool stuff and is about as exciting as we get here in this home. I've been saving up extra money here and there to buy a cute end table with a lamp for our living room. I was able to find a lamp shade that is our accent color but with the same pattern we made our ottoman with. What luck!Tonight we built a border for our garden. Not only is is much more pleasing to the eye, but hopefully this will stop the people who have decided our yard is simply a trail to the park behind our house from trampling our garden once it is in.
Next step: fence?

Sewing Frenzy!!

I've decided I need to brag about myself. I've been in a sewing mood for a couple months and have had a couple projects i'm rather proud of, if I do say so myself. My sister got married in March and her colors were brown and blue. Naturally I needed to make a new skirt for the occasion. This was going to be my first item of clothing I have attempted to make without my mom with me every step of the way. I think it turned out rather well.
I also saw a woman with a super cute purse at my sister-in-laws bridal shower. Upon conversation I found out her mother made it for her. Well that was good and bad. First step we got a picture and I sent it to my mom and asked her to make up a pattern for me. Then I sent my sister to the same material store the other purse started from. I told her to find me something cute and sent her a picture of what kind of purse I was making. Surprisingly she brought me the exact same fabric! After a lot of phone calls with my mom I have an extremely close replica of the original and what I think is a very cute purse.

Recent Happenings

Remember less than a year ago when Kory and I were planting grass in our back yard? How proud we all were of the beautiful yard that came in? Those were glorious times. The snow has melted and this is what we have found. Yes those are eaten away tracks. 75% of our back yard has been uprooted by mice. We found various nests that were hidden under the snow and in the small part where snow had not melted, a network of tunnels. Not to mention the couple of mice Kory chased with a shovel today. This is a common problem, at least on our street. However, last year we only had a small portion of our yard by the creek that had been targeted. Our hopes were high that if we watched closely enough our hard work in the back yard would be safe. Not so! Looks like another spring of replanting.

On a much brighter note I have finally gone snowboarding! I have never done either snowboarding or skiing so this was an exciting day. And let me tell you, I am good! Well, at least I felt like I was doing pretty good for the last 15 minutes or so of our 4 hour adventure. The rest of the time was pretty miserable and I haven't been that sore well ever. I think maybe I will try again next year :-) I wish I had a picture of Kory with me to document this momentous occasion but I could not get him to pose with me! I guess you will just have to imagine!

I realized I never posted any pictures from our Christmas Vacation. Here we are on the beach in Delaware!

Christmas Chaos

Be warned! This is a long ventful post!

We had a very eventful trip to get to Maryland for Christmas this year. We were very worried about making it because we had a layover in Minnesota and there were all kinds of warnings that flights may be cancelled going in and out of Minnesota. We called the airport numerous times before the flight to make sure we were good to go, they kept telling us we were but to make sure we got there two hours early just in case. Our flight left at 5:47 so like dutiful flyers we arrived at the airport at 3:30. The baggage takers (i'm sure they have a name but I don't know it) did not arrive til 4:30. Grrr. Oh well, we just dozed on some chairs and watched the cleaners.

This flight left without a hitch and we were told we were just fine to land in Minnesota. After we landed there was another plane in our holding spot so we had to wait off to the side for 40 minutes before we were allowed to finally pull up-the only problem was we landed at 9:25 and our next flight left at 10. I was in a panic!!!! We finally got off the flight in the "G" gates and our flight to leave was in the "C" gates. If you have ever been to the Minnesota airport you can get an idea of exactly how far we had to run to try and get on a flight that left 5 minutes ago! And on top of that the ticket agents refused to call the correct gate to let them know we were on our way. Lucky enough the flight was delayed to leave until 10:15, a blessing we thought. Apparently, however, the pilot for this flight did not know he was supposed to be flying it so we had to wait another hour for him to arrive to fly our plane!!! Ridiculous!! Then another half-hour for them to de-ice our wings. It's okay, all we had to get to was Baltimore, and we were just grateful there were no taking off or landing hitches in Minnesota.

We arrived to Baltimore and felt like the plane just kept circling and circling and circling. Sure enough the pilot gets on the intercom and tells us it is too foggy to land and he is going to keep circling until it clears up. We circled for about 10 minutes when we started gaining a lot of altitude. We figured, it's okay, if we can't land he will just take us to the nearest airport in D.C. and that will be fine. The pilot gets on the intercom and tells us that for safety reasons he has to land the plane as fast as he can and he is heading to his nearest landing option-Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. WHAT!!!!! That is 4 hours away from my parents!!!!! Noooo!!!! (By the way: My Little Sisters flight landed with no hitches in Baltimore 30 minutes later!)

We landed and they assured us they would do whatever it took to get us to Baltimore. Whatever! 15 minutes later they told us to get off the plane because they were headed back to Minnesota and if we wanted to go back that way then we could stay on the plane. Oh and by the way, there are no flights out to Baltimore but we will pay for a bus ride or for a hotel room for you. Great! We decided the best way to go was just to get on the bus, it wouldn't arrive for another 4 hours and we would get there about midnight. We just wanted to get there and figured that would just be the best way. 20 minutes later-never mind on the bus, they can't get one to go to Baltimore. This is Crazy!!!!! Are we not meant to get to Maryland for Christmas?

The guy behind us in line received a call from his wife who had been looking online and found a flight that the airport claimed to know nothing about. That flight doesn't exist, they tell us. After a lot of badgering from the people in the lines this flight all of a sudden opened up!!! How weird is that?!?!? We only had to fly to Detroit, Michigan, and from there D.C. It was better than any other options and we would arrive there at 10:00 at night.

We made it! 9 1/2 hours late and in the wrong city but we got there! I'm sorry that was a long spiel but I just had to vent somewhere! Kory has had a goal all year long to accomplish when we made it to Maryland and as you can see below he made it! I think you better watch out Kory!