Oregon Trip!

Get ready for a few posts on our Oregon trip! We had so much fun and it was nice to get away before we have to invest all of our time in landscaping this summer. I'm sure more of that talk will come later though.

We left on a Saturday morning and didn't want to waste anytime. We headed straight to the famous Saturday Market in downtown Portland, it was the first one of the year. There were so many cool artists there and I was tempted to buy about everything, but I managed to resist! This market is basically like the Farmers Market in Salt Lake but it is so much bigger. It's one of the biggest markets in the country.

After the market we decided to eat at the street vendors, which is another famous Portland thing. Each food vendor sells something unique, whether it's vietnamese, greek, or polish. I walked away with the most amazing grilled cheese sandwich I've ever had. The vendors did not disappoint!

After a much needed vacation nap (I know, already on the first day we're there) we grabbed dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings and headed to Star Theatre for a concert.

I know what you're thinking, and no we did not attend the Giggle and Blush Peepshow :) We went to the Noah Gundersen and Joshua James concert. Tyler heard about Joshua James first in Sacramento and has taught me to love his music just as much as he does. The concert was amazing and we listened to his music the whole rest of the trip, didn't even get sick of it ;)

This is just a cool shot that Ty got of the hotel we stayed at. It was very nice and right in downtown Portland. Ty and I planned our trip so that we wouldn't need to rent a car for the time we spent in Portland. Little did we know that Portland is probably the easiest place to get around using public transportation. Using our Iphones, we could route anywhere we wanted to go and never had to wait for a bus or the light rail for longer than 5 minutes. Our hotel was in the perfect location for us to do this.

On Sunday we woke up leisurely and decided to walk to OMSI, Portland's science museum. We went  on $2 Sundays so the line was long to get in to it but it was so worth it. Take a look at this picture below and see if you can find something wrong in it other than Tyler hugging a tree man:

Anyone? Anyone? ...The sneak picture of the car accident right behind! We were just walking along and all of a sudden I hear this loud CRUNCH thinking it was a garbage truck or something. Oh no. It was a four car pile up and the poor girl who started the whole accident got the worst of it and was just beside herself. I felt so bad for her :( but it made for a cool picture!

Anyways, continuing our walk to the museum. Gotta do some awesome poses right?

This is the only picture that I got at the museum and it's because I was so proud of myself! They had a bunch of mind-puzzle type games and I tried probably 10 of them and was only able to solve this one. Tyler then goes on to solve it and says, "Wow that one was so easy!"

After the museum we were starved and it seemed like we walked forever to find a place to eat on that side of town. Then we walked some more to the mall and walked around and did some shopping. LOTS of walking! Oh and more walking to the Living Room Theatres that night to see Argo. The Living Room theaters was such a fun theater. You can order from the restaurant before the movie and then they bring the food to you and you eat it while sitting in your lounge chair watching a movie! A nice finish to our long day :)

Quick Valentines Recap

I realize I am slightly behind if I am just blogging about valentines day so I'm just going to write a quickie today!
I can't remember if I mentioned this in an earlier post but Ty got me a juicer for an early valentines present! I am in love, it's the best invention ever and we got ours for a rockin price from bed bath and beyond.
Ty wanted a power pot for his gift and is pretty excited about. If you want to learn more about what a power pot is, ask Ty, he loves telling people about it :)
So valentines morning my sweet husband woke up at 5:30 to make me breakfast before I headed off to work. He spoils me big time! He made fresh OJ, pancakes, eggs, and bacon. I have never had a better breakfast! I was definitely feelin the love :)
Then I was able to get off work early and Ty and I headed up into the mountains to hike up to donut falls! So gorgeous! Everything was covered in snow, I didn't even realize that we had reached the falls. I was even brave enough to crawl into the tiny hole that takes you under the donut. Yes, I know, it's a miracle I even went on a hike!
We then did a quick change, stopped
At 7 eleven and got these amazing new flavor of Doritos that I hope to find again someday, and headed to city creek for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory! I was a little upset we couldn't make reservations but the wait ended up only being 45 minutes. Not too shabby!
So that was our valentines day this year! Pretty simple but I loved it! And I'm so lucky to have this hunky valentine of mine for every valentines day from here on out!

Attempt at Being Martha Stewart

You know those days when you envision yourself being the perfect homemaker like Martha Stewart? Today was one of those days for me. I was going to make homemade bread and delicious honey butter and it was going to be perfect, just like how Martha does it.
Well, I am sitting in my bed with a heat pad on my tail bone and honey splattered clothes, dishcloths, and rugs in the washer. What happened you ask? Here's how my perfect homemaking day went.
-made the bread dough and tried out the Bosch for the first time. It is awesome!
-let the dough rise for 45 minutes and then stick in the oven. Got it.
-decide to make the honey butter while the bread is baking. Whoops, ran out of honey!
-call mom to steal some of her honey because honey is so dang expensive! Gotta hurry, only have 25 minutes.
-park in moms treacherous driveway because I think all that ice has melted. Nope. Fall hard on my tailbone.
-get over it, you've got bread in the oven! Hurry back home with honey in hand and you've got 4 minutes to spare. Perfect! Timer goes off and bread is definitely brown on the top... Martha's would definitely not look like that! Well I'm sure it will still taste good :)
-start putting my honey mixture in the food processor, so far so good.
-BAM! I turn the processor on and the explosion of all explosions happen. There is honey butter all over my floor, cabinets, counters, and me. How this happened I have no idea! Lesson learned: do not use a food processor to make honey butter.
Martha definitely does NOT have explosions or even messes in her kitchen. Luckily I was able to salvage most of the honey. Not all of it came cascading out of the processor.
So after cleaning up all the honey that got in the most random places I put the honey and bread to the test. Oh my goodness gracious I am very pleased with the turnout even if the journey was a little chaotic! Second lesson learned: not everything has to be perfect like Martha to have a good turnout. Oh, and make sure Ty is home when I go on these endeavors so he can help me clean up :)

January 2013 Events

I can't decide whether to write that lots of things have been going on this month or nothing very eventful has been happening at all this month! We have been busy but I don't feel it has been busy with things worth writing about... This goes hand in hand with my thoughts about the month of January.
January is my least favorite month ever. It is always cold, the snow is pointless because Christmas is over, and it's just plain depressing. This particular January has been colder than I ever remember it being. We have had a major snowstorm that gave us about 2 feet of snow and just today had an ice storm! Pretty sure I have never been in an ice storm, but this morning on my way to work I had to pull over to scrape my windshield off because everything that was falling onto it was just sticking.
Is this post already super depressing? Yes! And I am going to add to it. My poor mother has been to the ER twice this month. One, for falling on the ice and breaking her elbow and two, for being in a car accident and breaking her collar bone on the other arm! She currently is sporting a beautiful purple cast :) we feel so bad for her but have also realized how blessed we are with all the people who have made her dinner and bought groceries for her and just cheered her up when she couldn't do much with both arms out of use. We are truly grateful for everyone who has helped!
Though I talk about how I hate this month, we have still been able to have fun with other things! We are loving living in our house and putting it together to make it a home. We have loved going to the gym in our development as part of our New Years resolutions to stay in shape. And I have LOVED cooking in my kitchen. I don't know what it is but a bigger, nicer kitchen just inspires me. I even made homemade bread! Weird.
Side note: back to the New Years resolutions. I say my resolution was to stay in shape, but really I am going to the gym more to help with my goal of a stress relieved year! My plan is to work off all the stress that I hold inside so that I can be a much more calm person. Every time I tell people this is my plan for the year they all seem to nod in agreement and are probably thinking, "ya that would be a good idea for her...!" :) yes, I think so too. Well, if your wondering what the results are, I feel I have been doing pretty good but there is still room for improvement :)
Another way I have relieved some stress is by shooting my brother, sister in law, and husband.... With nerf guns! Yes, we had a nerf gun war at our house and it was awesome! We set up barricades and had sneak attacks and everything :) Mom joined in but I think she was a little afraid of getting shot in the collarbone.
Wooh! Big breath, that was a lot of rambling, glad we made it through! Hopefully next time won't be so depressing because January is almost over!!

Mom's Surprise Graduation Party

This past weekend we threw my mom a surprise graduation party! With it being my first surprise party I've ever given anyone, I thought it was a success! She had absolutely no idea it was coming.
David and mckenzie got her to our house by telling her that we were going over wedding plans. She totally fell for it! No matter that we were all hiding in the dark for 20 minutes (due to some miscommunication), the surprise was priceless.
We were so lucky to have everyone there and are grateful for everyone who helped make it happen! We are also so proud of my mom who decided to go back to college a few years ago and has pursued her degree to the end with flying colors. She is an inspiration to all of us!

Welcome to Our Home

This will probably be the longest post ever but at least it's mostly pictures!
We are finally in our home! It has been a long time coming since we have been looking at houses since the summer. We are so excited to finally be home owners!
We decided to build our home and we did it through Woodside Builders. We have loved every minute of the building process, it shows with how many pictures we have taken! Our decision came in June, after looking at already built houses in bountiful and salt lake and taking in all of our options, we knew that we definitely wanted to build our first home. Then it came to deciding which company we wanted to build with. Obviously woodside took the cake!
After we made our decision, picked our plot of land, and designed our home, we had to wait for our street to be put in so the building of our house did not start til Sept. 17. We were so excited when we found out and decided to celebrate at Wingers!
The next step came on oct. 11 which was our first walk through of the home with our superintendent. We invited Mark and Joan Johnson to come with us since we are a little naive when it comes to building homes. At this point all of the framing was up, roof on, and garage and windows installed. Also the plumbing and electrics were all done. By Oct. 18 they had completed all the dry wall in the home.
Ty and I had three options to choose from for what the outside of our house would look like. We started by picking a brown tone for our house but after seeing it on another house we decided that we wanted to design the outside ourselves. Even though it cost us more money it was one of the best decisions we ever made! We got to go down to the design studio and pick out the color of our siding, stucco, trim, garage door, and front door. We knew that we wanted a grey house with white trim and a black door and black shutters. We could not be happier with how it turned out! We have gotten so many compliments and love that our house looks different than the others. Although, when we were at the design studio there was another couple there and after seeing all the things we had picked, they decided to bag their design and copy exactly ours. Luckily they are building in a different location!
A couple months went by of finishing up the house and on Dec. 13 (right on schedule) we had our final walk through. This is the one where we check everything in the house and make sure there are no dings in the walls and all the doors and sinks work. The superintendent gave me a roll of blue tape to tape anything I wanted fixed. That was a mistake since I taped any little ding in the wall that I found and anything that I wanted them to clean again, I was a little picky :)
On Dec. 19 we closed on our house and immediately started the move from my mom's house to ours! We were so excited to finally be able to move in that we made sure we would be able to at least sleep in our new home. Then the next day we completed the move by taking all of our stuff out of storage and bringing it to our house. We had so many people come to help us even though it was on a work night and we are so grateful for all of them! If it hadn't of been for them, we would have had to wait until Saturday and I was just way too anxious for that!
After all the moving, we worked super hard to get all unpacked so that we could have Christmas Day dinner at our house and the mission was accomplished! We would stay up till all hours of the night completing all of our little projects that we needed to do. That list is never ending!
Anyways, the first few nights of sleeping at our house we felt like we were staying at a hotel! All of it was so nice and new! But now we are getting into the swing of things and are still in love with our home! We are so grateful for all of the people who helped us to get where we are now and are so grateful that we could start out with such a beautiful home. We are spoiled!
Here are pictures for the grand tour of our home. I put them in order of progress for each part of our house. Thanks for stopping by at our lovely abode!