Five things on Saturday... night.

1. You may remember this little fella at that used to sit at the top of our blog:

(It reads: **Attention anyone who reads "The Peaden Life"** The author, Shantel, is suffering from a severe case of "Needstobevalidated-osis". The only way for her to overcome this terrible illness is for you to leave a comment at the bottom of her posts. It can just be "I read this post." It can even be "I think your posts are lame, but I read them anyway." She just needs some serious validation. Thank You!)

I posted it as a joke when we first started our blog and then ended up leaving it for who knows what reason. I actually grew kind of attached to it because I think it's funny and because I really do love to get comments. Recently I got a comment from a friend, Molly, that just said "i read your blog!" repeated about 60 times. I laughed out loud.  However, I realize that it's probably a little silly and immature. So i decided to take it off. The only thing is - I really do like getting comments. I try to comment on the blogs that I read because I know that I like knowing when someone reads my post.  I know people are reading - but my blog details read like this: 

You can see only a fraction of the people reading our blog are actually commenting. Only two out of 39? What did the other 37 people think? (I realize that some of these are probably repeat people, but we don't track our own pageviews so it still means that a lot of people are reading.) 

I'm not too worked up about this - but the reason that i'm writing about this is that I recently hit the limit for people who can access my private blog. As new people have asked to be added, I've been going through and deleting people that I don't think follow anymore. I'm always worried that I'm going to delete someone who reads but just doesn't comment. So the moral of the story - if you want to keep from getting deleted, comment once in a while so I know you are following. 

Sorry for this random first item- it ended up being longer than I intended - in our real news of the week:

2. For David's birthday I got him a pair of Pass-of-all-passes. We've been mini-golfing once, but because October is at the beginning of winter (and the beginning of busy season) we haven't really been able to use them much. We were so excited when we realized that Monday was one of the Real Salt Lake soccer games that we could go to for free. After David got home from work, we ate a quick dinner and then we bundled up and headed to the game. I can't tell you how much I loved handing the guy our passes and then having him hand us two front row seats without any monetary exchange. It was awesome. 

Lydia's first soccer game! And really, my first real soccer game. I've watched little kids play soccer, but I've never been to a real soccer game (although I have watched a few on TV with David). And when I say real, I mean... actual. Not necessarily Real. That is hard to type out and make sense. 

It was a little chilly. The wind was blowing and even though we were bundled up with coats and a couple of blankets it was still a little cold. Lydia didn't like the idea of staying under her blankets because she wanted to be moving around. The best part of the night was when a family came and sat behind us and Lydia let me wrap her  up and cuddle with her while she watched the kids talking to each other. (There were lots of "Umm, that baby is staring at me" 's and  "Seriously, she won't look away!"'s - I tried not to laugh and silently thanked them for providing her with entertainment.) 

Our awesome seats at the game. 

We had a really fun time, even though we didn't stay for the whole thing. We packed up just a few minutes before halftime (about 45 minutes) and headed home because Lydia was getting pretty cold and tired. But it was totally worth it and we would definitely go again. 

3. Thursday was HBM's annual "End of Busy Season Party". This year the party was held at the Boondocks in Layton. We dropped Lydia off with David's parents in West Jordan and then made the 40 minute trek to the party. 

 I asked David to describe it in three words and he said "Awesome, spin-out, fast." Then he said "Really... It. Was. Awesome." Haha. You can see that we had a good time. 

It was worth every mile. We started out by chatting with some of David's co-workers while we stuffed ourselves with pizza. Up next were some fairly intense go-kart races. We really like the people that David works with and so we had a good time talking to them in line and then racing out on the track. This Boondocks has a couple of pretty fun racetracks and they let you go for a decently long period of time. Last year I was SO pregnant, so we stuck to the mini-golf portion of the fun center. (It probably wouldn't be advisable for a 8 1/2 months along pregnant woman to drive a go-kart. The volcano at the end of our mini-golf game almost put me into labor.) This year I was excited to be able to get out and race and we both had a really good time. After a while we were ready to head back inside so we played some arcade games (David rocked me at skee-ball and I beat him at basketball) then headed to the bowling alley. We both bowled great! David scored a 149 and I scored a 115. That may not be great for some people, but we felt pretty good about it. We decided to head back out to the racecar track before it got completely dark and I'm so glad that we did. We had some of the most epic races of the night, including a neck-and-neck race with one of the partners (Paul) which ended up with me spinning out in the middle of the track and being rammed into 4-5 times before they could come and pull me back the right way. It was awesome. We ended the night with another game of bowling and then a few last arcade games. 

We are so grateful for HBM for putting on such a fun party. It's so nice to know that (for the most part) busy season is behind us and we have the summer to look forward to. (Yay for half-day Fridays!) I appreciate their effort to say thank you to their employees for working so hard. We had a fun time hanging out with all of David's friends and coworkers and can't wait for the Summer Party. 

4. You may or may not already know that I have been looking for a swimsuit for Lydia for ages. I worked myself into a tizzy one day stressing about how so many of the baby swimsuits are made to look so mature and... "sexy". Grr. Why would my 12 month old baby need a padded/ruched bustline? She doesn't. *cough* Sorry, back on topic. I wanted it to be cute, without being too "adult" but I also wasn't willing to pay $20 (or more). Finally... FINALLY... I found the perfect suit. It's navy and white stripes with a little red flower at the top and I love it. It's got pretty little ruffles along the top and as a bonus it matches a cute little swim skirt that I got in a bag of clothes from my mom! (The skirt is navy with a little red belt- darling.) I could practically sing I am so happy. I paid a little more than I was hoping to pay. ($12) But it really was worth it.  Sooooo worth it. 

 In fact, the whole shopping trip was super successful. (Sue came with me and I told her that she must be my good luck charm.) In preparation for Lydia's 1 year pictures next weekend, I found some darling little silver shoes, a pretty white jacket/bolero, and a yellow scarf for me. I still haven't decided exactly what Lydia is wearing, but it is narrowed down to two outfits that are both yellow and blue. I figure that either way, if I wear a yellow scarf and David wears a blue shirt it will be really pretty. I hope so.

Again, can I just tell you how excited I am for that little swimsuit? Now I just have to somehow hold off until our pool opens next month. Whose bright idea was it to not open the pool until after Memorial Day? I want to go swimming NOW! (Impatient much? - Yes.)

5. To finish off our wonderful week, David and I were blessed enough to be able to go to the temple today. Wendy and Sam offered to watch Lydia for us, even though they had an extremely busy day themselves. Before we had Lydia we never missed a month of attending the temple, and although I knew it would be hard after Lydia was born- I thought that we would just make it work. But, it's been much harder than I thought. There are so many other things that you have to do that it's pretty easy to use up all of your babysitting passes for the month and then it's hard to ask someone to watch your baby for 2-3 hours. Anyway, we definitely want to to better - because we love attending the temple. We are so grateful that Lydia was taken such good care of and that we were able to go. I love the feeling of peace and comfort - and also the desire to be a better person - that comes from the temple. 

Today I've been filled with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for my life. I have so many good things - especially a wonderful husband and loving baby girl. Life can be hard, but it can also be SO so good. And those good things are the things that count most of all.